The Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo): A Dramaturgical Analysis, Historical Commentary, and Latin Edition with a New English Verse Translation

Kyle A. Thomas; Carol Symes

Ahead of Publication Published by Medieval Institute Publications 2023

The Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo)

A Dramaturgical Analysis, Historical Commentary, and Latin Edition with a New English Verse Translation

Kyle A. Thomas and Carol Symes

In the series Early Drama, Art, and Music

Overview

About this book

The Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo) was composed around 1160 at the imperial Bavarian abbey of Tegernsee, at a critical point in the power-struggle between the papacy and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. This new translation and commentary reveals this drama to be strikingly representative of the role that theatrical performance played in shaping contemporary politics, diplomacy, and public opinion. It also shows how drama functioned as an integral component of the educational curricula of elite monastic institutions like Tegernsee, where political administrators and diplomats were trained, and how performance served as a common, connective lingua franca among monasteries in twelfth-century Bavaria.

In this new translation, Carol Symes provides the first full and faithful rendering of the play’s dynamic language, maintaining the meter, rhyme scheme, and stage directions of the Latin original and restoring the liturgical elements embedded in the text. Kyle A. Thomas, whose fully-staged production tested the theatricality of this translation, provides a new historical and dramaturgical analysis of the play’s rich interpretive and performative possibilities.

only verse translation in any modern language
only modern edition to restore liturgical material referenced in the sole medieval text

Author information

Kyle A. Thomas is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Missouri State University and a theatre historian with a specialization in medieval drama and performance. His work focuses on dramaturgical methodologies for analyzing early medieval Latin drama and postmodern approaches to staging medieval plays. His innovative staging techniques were applied in productions of The Play about the Antichrist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and The Play of Adam at the Met Cloisters, New York City. Kyle is also the chief editor of the journal, ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama.

Carol Symes is Professor of History, Theatre, Classics, and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has also published verse translations of the 12th-century Latin comedy Babio and of the Old French　Ordo representacionis Ade (Play of Adam), which received its premiere at The Met Cloisters in New York City, in a production directed by Kyle A. Thomas. Her work interrogates the role of documentation as a medium of premodern communication and the mediation of knowledge in, and about, the medieval world.　

Topics

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Audience: Medievalists, scholars and students of Theatre and Performance Studies
Pages
- Front matter: 10
- Main content: 174
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 4
- Coloured Illustrations: 4
Keywords: Medieval Drama; Medieval Theatre; Medieval Liturgical Drama; Antichrist; Apocalypse

eBook

Planned Publication: August 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781501513572

Paperback

Planned Publication: August 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781501517983