Evolution and the Study of English Medieval Theatre
Abstract: The study of medieval drama in England emerged in the early 20th century, coinciding with the flourishing of evolutionary theory. Researchers use the theory of evolution as a method to explain the phenomenon of medieval theater, arguing that medieval theater has gone through a process from simple to complex, from performances in churches to city streets and markets: the authors of dramas have changed from clergy to citizens and believers; Secularization is the embodiment of the development and progress of theater. The research methods of evolution have had a profound impact on the study of medieval theater, but with the continuous excavation of medieval theater data, the research results of evolution theory are not lacking in bias.
In the mid-16th century, the concept of "Middle Ages" only appeared in Western history. In his work on the history of Protestant martyrdom " The English Martyrs Act and Model " , the historical hermeneutic John Fox translates the Latin " medium aevum " into English " Middle Ages " to refer to the era before the Reformation , which is considered to be an " intermediate age between the pure early church of the late classical era and the restoration of the Anglican monarchy. Antiquarian William Camden, proposed "Middle Ages" in 1605 to refer to the period between the classical era and the literary revival during Elizabeth's reign, has cultural significance. There are still some words in English that can be replaced, such as "Medieval" and "Medievalism". Created in the 19th century by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, "Medieval" uses the Middle Ages to define the pre-Renaissance era.
"Medievalism" first appeared in the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Ruskin, and was used to refer to the nostalgic aesthetic paradigm of the pre-Raphaelite, Gothic Revival and artisanal movements. The Middle Ages was an era either based on religious evaluation or as an era of humanism and Renaissance concepts, but lacked the characteristics of the era itself. As Blaine Stock said: "The Renaissance invented the Middle Ages in order to define itself; The Enlightenment, in order to praise themselves, kept them alive; Romanticism resurrects them in order to escape the self. Under the widest influence of the Middle Ages, they thus constitute one of the most popular cultural myths in the modern world. "The evaluation of the Middle Ages in academia is always influenced by specific value judgments, and the study of medieval theater is no exception.
Many of Shakespeare's pre-Shakespeare plays were products of Roman Catholicism, so the Protestant bias since the Reformation and the prejudice of literary criticism based on modern anti-clericalism and scientskism made the plays of this period infamous for the next four hundred years. At the beginning of the 20th century, academia invented the concept of "medieval drama" to understand and evaluate early theater, two words express the needs and inspiration of the times, adjectives reflect the concept of the Middle Ages that does not need to be romanticized and protected; The noun embodies the profound experience of 20th-century theater.
The beginning of the study of modern medieval drama coincided with the flourishing of evolutionary theory, which asserted that living beings all descended from the same ancestor and underwent evolution from simple to complex, from lower to higher. Organisms are mutating, new species are being created, old species are dying out. There are different variations between different individuals in the same group, and species compete with each other in natural selection. Although Darwin did not deal with sociology or literature, evolution became the most influential method of literary interpretation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When interpreting the process and characteristics of the development of medieval drama, the academic community takes the theory of evolution as the internal driving force and development characteristics.
The formation of the main ideas of medieval theater studies is directly related to the work of E.K. Chambers and Carl Younger. Chambers was the first significant modern critic of medieval theatre studies, introducing evolutionary methods into medieval theatre studies for the first time. In many collections of essays, such as his Medieval Stage, it is insisted that the drama passed from the clergy of the church main hall and choir to the faithful of the market and the kilt. At the same time, Chambers went on to discuss the relationship between the Latin drama of the church and the folk celebrations, arguing that the goal of the "secularization of the drama" was "the evolution of the ritual drama described in the last two chapters, which can be clearly seen to have been completed around the mid-13th century." Any further development is theatrical and no longer ceremonial. The next few hundred years were a period of transformation. During this period, the new form of theater underwent a process known as secularization, while the theme of the drama remained religious. ”
