The N-Town Plays: A Meditative Aide-Mémoire

Rushin, Elaine (2023) The N-Town Plays: A Meditative Aide-Mémoire. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis focuses on the N-Town plays (BL Cotton MS Vespasian D. 8), a single manuscript comprising a collation of forty-one devotional plays from fifteenth-century East Anglia, and how it may be understood as an extension of literary meditative devotional practice. I argue against the prevailing view that the N-Town plays are a play cycle in the same vein as the Corpus Christi cycles of York and Chester. My method is to use a three-pronged approach demonstrating that N-Town is a different kind of text. Firstly, I analyse the textuality and vocabulary present in the plays, secondly, I examine how the internal evidence of the only known surviving copy of the ‘plays’ reveals a manuscript for reading, and thirdly, I place the manuscript in a socio-religious context. This study argues for careful consideration of the role of devout lay communities, such as religious guilds and beguine-like groups, in the production and use of the primary play texts and the subsequent manuscript.

Chapter 1 provides a detailed account of the manuscript, its codicology, and the evidence I have uncovered which demonstrates it was created as a book for reading. Chapter 2 explores devotional reading practices with specific reference to women reading and the Virgin Mary reading in the N-Town Mary Play. In Chapter 3 I look at N-Town in relation to the teaching of the sacraments including penance and the Eucharist. I also examine how N-Town employs rhetoric to assist in its teaching agenda. Chapter 4 concentrates on how performances of the plays were probably used as a means of stimulating meditation in those watching. Lastly, in Chapter 5 I set the N-Town plays in a wider devotional context and explore the potential influence of contemporary devout communities in East Anglia and the nearby continent.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	19 Jun 2025 10:11
Last Modified:	19 Jun 2025 10:11
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99647
DOI:

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