Title: Theater, culture, and community in Reformation Bern, 1523-1555 /
Authors: Ehrstine, Glenn.
Publisher: Brill,
Year: 2002
Subjects: Swiss drama (German) Switzerland Bern (Canton) History and criticism.; Swiss drama (German) History and criticism.; Christian drama, German Switzerland Bern (Canton) History and criticism.; Theater Switzerland Bern (Canton) History; Protestantism and literature.; Reformation Switzerland Bern (Canon); Arts, Swiss Switzerland Bern (Canton); Reformation Switzerland Bern (Canton); Bern (Switzerland : Canton) Church history
Abstract: "This study examines the sociocultural context of ten plays performed during the formative years of the Bernese Reformation. It treats not only three pre-reform carnival plays by Niklaus Manuel, but also six newly edited works by local court secretary Hans von Rute." "Individual chapters focus on the plays' polemics, staging, and choruses, as well as on local Zwinglian reform. An appendix contains the plays' fifteen song texts." "The vivid staging and choral interludes of Bern's Reformation theater belie the assumption that the city's Zwinglian reform, which eliminated imagery and song from religious worship, rejected images and music in all forms. The confessional diatribe of Rute's later works further illuminates Bern's policies towards Zurich and Geneva, demonstrating that biblical plays were no less political than their carnival predecessors."--BOOK JACKET.
Contents: 1. Performing the protestant reformation: Theater and reformation in Bern ; The stage as pulpit: Reformers on theater ; Enacting community -- 2. Bern at the crossroad of reform: Bern, Swiss Protestantism, and the Helvetian confederacy ; Literature and the arts ; Plays and playwrights -- 3. Protestant carnival: A contradiction in terms?: Transgression, politics, and religion ; Niklaus Manuel and Barnese Carnival before 1528 ; Reformation theology and Carnival ; Post-reformation Carnival in Bern (1530-1534) -- Theocracy and theater: Piety and patriarchy ; The Armor of faith: Goliath (1535, 1545, 1555) ; Pious on account of good works: Potiphar's wife in Joseph ; Revolt, order, and iconoclasm in Gedeon (1540) ; That it be told every instant: Bearing witness in Noe ; Un-Luther characters: Confessionalism in Osterpiel (1552) -- 5. Protestant visual culture and the stage: Niklaus Manuel: From Painter to Playwright ; Protestant theater as visual medium ; Theater as broadsheet ; Theater as Merkbild -- 6. Music, play, and worship: Zwingli, Bern, and the music of Swiss Protestantism ; The choral interludes of renaissance theater ; The music of Barnese reformation drama -- Mediating change