Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction Civic Drama and Worship
- Part 1 Corpus Christi Play
- Part 2 The Selection and Organisation of the Cycle
- Part 3 Feast of Feasts
- Part 4 … or Feast of Fools
- Select Bibliography
- Index of Liturgical References
- General Index
Part 3 - Feast of Feasts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction Civic Drama and Worship
- Part 1 Corpus Christi Play
- Part 2 The Selection and Organisation of the Cycle
- Part 3 Feast of Feasts
- Part 4 … or Feast of Fools
- Select Bibliography
- Index of Liturgical References
- General Index
Summary
In the previous chapters the case has been made for the uniqueness of the York Cycle as a dramatic phenomenon, our only surviving text of a full cycle of fifteenth-century Corpus Christi pageants, modelled on patterns of lay worship and with a particular sacramental focus. Of the great urban cycles, it is the earliest and the most obviously liturgical in its influences and resonances. We have seen firstly how the Play as a whole is connected with devotion to Corpus Christi, fashionable amongst the York urban élite who managed its production, and how that accords with contemporary fashions in eucharistic worship, how it is an overt celebration of Christ's presence in the community through the mystery of transubstantiation designed as the focus of the annual feast. We have explored further how the content of the cycle is organised and selected, and how its version of biblical narrative relates to the calendrical sequence of liturgical reading.
In this section we will explore another of the ways in which the York Cycle is unified by structural understandings drawn from the practices of worship. A number of episodes in the York Play involve the enactment of a biblical/historical event, where that enactment is in turn mediated through the recurrent festive celebration of the event as an adjunct to the annual round of worship. One of the things we will see is how those festive practices are reinvented in the performance of the cycle.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City , pp. 87 - 92Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006