CALL FOR PAPERS: Fifteenth Round Table on Tudor Theatre (Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université François-Rabelais de Tours, France); 7-8 September 2017.
‘Forms of the Supernatural on Stage: Evolution, Mutations’
The subject presents an obvious specific interest in the English context, given the impact of the religious reforms (and counter-reforms) over the sixteenth century. On the one hand, the medieval biblical plays, miracles and moralities disappeared (though in chronologically and geographically uneven fashion), while, despite sporadic upsurges of a theatre of Protestant propaganda, the dramatic representation of sacred personages and explicitly religious themes became progressively more difficult, to the point of near-impossibility. On the other hand, from the development of the Elizabethan public theatre in the 1570s, playwrights found indirect and innovative means of dramatising spiritual issues and entities. With respect to dramatic works ranging from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, contributors to the Round Table will attempt to identify points of rupture and continuity in evolving dramaturgical practices, taking into account the operations of censorship, as well as questions of genre, the mentality of spectators, and staging techniques.
Proposals (200-300 words) for 30-minute papers in English should be directed to Richard Hillman (rhillman@free.fr) by 15 December 2016.