Medieval and early modern performance in the Eastern Mediterranean
By: edited by Arzu Öztürkmen and Evelyn Birge Vitz
Series: Late medieval and early modern studies -- v. 20; Late medieval and early modern studies -- v. 20.
Publisher: Brepols
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Turnhout, Belgium
Language: eng
Number of pages: 576
ISBN-13: 9782503546919; 9782503547398
Subjects: Performing arts; History; Storytelling; Civilization; Medieval Drama; History and criticism; Theater
Description: An exploration of traditional performances in the Eastern Mediterranean in the medieval and Early Modern periods. This book brings to life a broad array of performances in the Eastern Mediterranean. It covers many traditional types of performance, including singers, dancers, storytellers, street performers, clowns, preachers, shadow-puppeteers, fireworks displays, and semi-theatrical performances in folk and other celebrations. It explores performance of the secular as well as of the sacred in its many forms, including Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, and Alevi Muslims; Sephardic Jews and those in the Holy Land; and Armenian, Greek, and European Catholic Christians. The book focuses on the Medieval and Early Modern periods, including the Early Ottoman. Some papers reach backward into Late Antiquity, while others demonstrate continuity with the modern Eastern Mediterranean world. The articles discuss evidence for performers and performance coming from archival sources, architectural and manuscript images, musical notation, historical and ethnographic accounts, literary works, and oral tradition. Across the broad range of issues, chronology, and geography, certain fundamental topics are central: concepts of drama and theatricality; varied definitions of performance and related terms; the sacred and the profane, and their frequent intersection; and complex relations between oral and written traditions.
Notes: International conference proceedings.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 556-561) and index.
Table of contents: title: Part 1. Verbal art as performance. Metin And; title: Storytelling as performance / Metin And; title: The Maqama : between a tale and a one-man show : in search of its form of performance / Revital Refael-Vivante; title: Orality, text, and performance in the Book of Dede Korkut / Arzu Oztürkmen; title: Signals of performability in the Croatian Glagolitic legend of St John Chrysostom / Marija-Ana Dürrigi; title: The performance of Joinville’s Credo / Michael Curschmann; title: Medieval folktales, modern problems, and a gifted preacher : the case of Rabbi Joseph Hayyim and the ‘Tale of a fox that left his heart at home’ / David Rotman; title: The seven sleepers of Ephesus’ : can we reawaken performance of this hagiographical folktale? / Evelyn Birge Vitz; title: Part 2. Performance under Imperial realms. How to entertain the Byzantines : some remarks on mimes and jesters in Byzantium / Przemys Ław Marciniak; title: Between admiration, anxiety, and anger : views on mimes and performers in the Byzantine eorld / Tivadar Palágyi; title: Performance and ideology in the exchange of prisoners between the Byzantines and the Islamic Near Easterners in the early Middle Ages / Koray Durak; title: Fireworks in seventeenth-century Istanbul / Suraiya Faroqhi; title: Clowns at Ottoman festivities / Özdemir Nutku; title: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) : her Turkish performances / Danielle Haase-Dubosc; title: The fusion of Zar-Bori and Sufi Zikr as performance : enslaved Africans in the Ottoman Empire / Ehud R. Roledano; title: Part 3. Modes and varieties of entertainment. How dark is the history of the night, how black the story of coffee, how bitter the tale of love: the changing measure of leisure and pleasure in early modern Istanbul / Cemal Kafadar; title: One man and his audience : comedy in Ottoman shadow puppet performances / Daryo Mizrahi; title: Shadow theatre, the Karagoz (Kara Gyooz) and the texts of Ibn Daniyal (1248–1311?) / Mas'ud Hamdan; title: Armenian traditional music and the performance practices in the Armenian community of Jerusalem / Noune Zeltsburg-Pochosyan; title: Constructing the performed identity of Sephardic songs / Judith R. Cohen; title: Gypsy musicians and performances in the Ottoman Balkans / Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov; title: Part 4. Iconography. Scenes of performers in Byzantine art, iconography, social and cultural milieu : the case of acrobats / Victoria Kepetzi; title: theatricality of Byzantine images : some preliminary thoughts / Anestis Vasilakeris; title: Theatrical features in Armenian manuscripts / Emma Petrosyan; title: Capital initials with images of musicians in Armenian manuscripts / Hrant Khachikyan; title: Glorious noise of empire / Gabriela Currie; title: Part 5. Ritual roots of performance. Representing the Moulid : Salah Jahin’s Al-Layla al-Kabira between populist and nationalist aspirations / Samia Mehrez; title: Performative conceptions of social change : the case of Nevruz celebrations in pre-Ottoman and Ottoman Anatolia / Yücel Demirer; title: Alevi ritual movement : its representation in fifteenth and sixteenth-century texts and today / Fahriye Dinçer; title: The Moreška dance/drama on the island of Korčula (Croatia) : a Turkish connection? / Elsie Ivancich Dunin; title: The show and the ritual : the Mevlevî Mukabele in Ottoman times / Cem Behar; title: The ritual of Vardan Mamikonyan / Zhenya Khachatrenya; title: Epilogue. The performative turn in recent cultural history / Peter Burke.