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- Title
LES TORTURES DANS LES MYSTERES: Théâtre et réalité XIVe-XVIe siècle.
- Authors
Lalou, Elisabeth
- Abstract
In the later Middle Ages, city dwellers were familiar with all manner of harrowing sights: the blind, cripples and lepers were common in the streets, and executions by an ingenious range of methods, together with lesser but still brutal judicial mutilations and public punishments, were regular fare. But, according to records, these evoked pity and tears, and a salutory fear. The people who flocked to see them were thus clearly not desensitized by familiarity. How then did the same audiences react when presented on stage with similar tortures inflicted on the saints whom they venerated? Even given the difference in attitude towards the criminal and the saint, it would appear that, like modern audiences, they responded emotionally to the pathos of good acting, but appreciated the tortures themselves largely as theatrical effects, and could even laugh at the torturers.
- Subjects
FRENCH mysteries &; miracle-plays; TORTURE in literature; MUTILATION in literature; PUNISHMENT in literature; TORTURERS; MIDDLE Ages; LITERATURE collections
- Publication
Medieval English Theatre, 1994, Vol 16, p37
- ISSN
0143-3784
- Publication type
Article