Transgressive language in medieval English drama : signs of challenge and change

Forest-Hill, Lynn Elizabeth (1997) Transgressive language in medieval English drama : signs of challenge and change. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

This thesis examines the use of transgressive language in the cycles of biblical plays usually referred to as the mystery cycles: Chester, N-Town, Towneley, and York; in the three fifteenth-century moralities known as the Macro plays: The Castle of Perseverance, Wisdom and Mankind; and in three sixteenth-century moralities Magnyfycence, The Play of the Wether, and King Johan.

Medieval drama and society recognise the same forms and uses of language as transgressive. In medieval society language transgressed when it broke the rules governing its use. Medieval sermons and laws set out these rules, and define the moral significance of language, but the punishment of transgression in society reveals a difference between reality and dramatic representation in which social criticism and religious instruction flourish.

Dramatists use the moral significance of transgressive language to define the spiritual and social status of biblical characters in the cycles, and personified abstractions in morality drama. Changes in the use of transgressive language represent changes in spiritual status. The characterisations created prompt emotional and intellectual responses from the audiences, and dramatists adapt the language to the kinds of audiences they address. Audience response make significant contributions to social criticism and religious instruction in biblical and morality plays, although dramatists cannot entirely control the effects of, and responses to, transgressive language.

The biblical plays and moralities use many different forms of transgressive language. While biblical plays continued to be performed without change, sixteenth-century morality dramatists adapted transgressive language, and introduced new forms, using them with great subtlety to address the problems of cultural, political, and religious change, and eventually inverting the moral significance of transgressive language.

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