Books by Glenn Ehrstine
Page 1. Glenn Ehrstine Theater, Culture, and Community in Reformation Bern, 1523 -1555 Page 2. Pa... more Page 1. Glenn Ehrstine Theater, Culture, and Community in Reformation Bern, 1523 -1555 Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. This study examines the sociocultural context often plays performed during the formative years of the Bernese Reformation. ...
Papers by Glenn Ehrstine
Speculum, 2018
In January 1503, during his final papal indulgence campaign in Northern Europe, cardinal and papa... more In January 1503, during his final papal indulgence campaign in Northern Europe, cardinal and papal legate Raymond Peraudi (1435-1505) issued an indulgence for the annual Corpus Christi play performed in Zerbst in Central Germany. For the next two decades, Peraudi's play indulgence fostered the incorporation of papal pardon ritual in the local Corpus Christi festival, provided an annual revenue stream for the town, and helped generate a larger complex of performance materials that reveal in unprecedented detail the workings of the late medieval indulgence and the monetary power of material objects of devotion. My analysis focuses on the council's promotion of the indulgence as a marketing strategy, as a revenue source, and as an invocation of divine grace through its combination of iconic tableaux vivants and the "indulgence cross" (Ablasskreuz) adapted from papal pardon campaigns.
In _Power and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Theater_, ed. Cora Dietl, Christoph Schanze, and Glenn Ehrstine (Göttingen: V&R unipress) , 2014
Theater historians have long been puzzled by the absence of a crucifixion scene in the ‘Künzelsa... more Theater historians have long been puzzled by the absence of a crucifixion scene in the ‘Künzelsau Corpus Christi Play’. In its place, an adoration of the cross (‘adoratio crucis’) occured, in which a priest displayed a cross to the audience. Based on connections between the 1479 play text and the Künzelsau procession of holy relics documented for 1499, it is apparent that the cross in question was a reliquary crucifix containing what contemporaries believed to be a fragment of the True Cross. The crucifixion was thus not absent from the play, but rather represented through other, non-mimetic means.
This English-language essay reconstructs the performance context for the reliquary crucifix. The German-language essay "Crux Interpretationis" considers the broader theater historical implications of the play's substitution of a (transcendent) prop for an actor.
Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, 2015
This essay represents my first write-up, in German, of the indulgence practices surrounding the Z... more This essay represents my first write-up, in German, of the indulgence practices surrounding the Zerbst Corpus Christi play (1507). My 2018 Speculum essay, "Raymond Peraudi in Zerbst," provides a more focused treatment in English of the economic aspects of the "indulgence cross," adapted by Zerbst play organizers from the papal indulgence ritual instituted by Raymond Peraudi and the implications of the play's indulgence revenue for our understanding of pre-Reformation indulgence practices. The German essay here offers a broader discussion of the play's "figural" performance, which featured some seventy-five typological tableaux vivants, referred to by contemporaries as "figurae."
The pdf file here includes handwritten corrections of minor errata in the original publication, including the misidentification of the Zerbst "plebanus," or "Leutpriester."
In _Das Geistliche Spiel des europäischen Spätmittelalters_, ed. Wernfried Hofmeister and Cora Dietl, Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft 20 (Wiesbaden, Reichert Verlag), 2015
This essay offers a critical analysis of the tendency to treat medieval crowds, and by extension ... more This essay offers a critical analysis of the tendency to treat medieval crowds, and by extension medieval audiences, as inherently unruly and undisciplined. I reject the thesis that the behavior of spectators at public executions offers an appropriate point of comparison to the likely comportment of attendees at religious plays. I offer an alternate model based on the chronicle accounts of annual reliquary displays, such as those in Nuremberg, which regularly drew app. 100,000 visitors, and the documented prayer postures of audience members at play performances.
In _The Oberammergau Passion Play: Essays on the 2010 Performance and the Centuries-Long Tradition_. ed. Kevin Wetmore, Jr. (McFarland), 2017
This essay examines the extra-theatrical elements of the 2010 performance of the Oberammergau Pas... more This essay examines the extra-theatrical elements of the 2010 performance of the Oberammergau Passion Play that made the role play of locals transparent for visitors: the town museum, the built environment, pre-performance tours of the passion theater, and the audience's interactions with actors on the streets of Oberammergau.
In _Das Theater des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit. Kulturelle Verhandlungen in einer Zeit des Wandels_, ed. Elke Huwiler, Amsterdam German Studies (Heidelberg: Synchron Verlag), 2015
Theater historians have long been puzzled by the absence of a crucifixion scene in the ‘Künzelsa... more Theater historians have long been puzzled by the absence of a crucifixion scene in the ‘Künzelsau Corpus Christi Play’. In its place, an adoration of the cross (‘adoratio crucis’) occured, in which a priest displayed a cross to the audience. Based on connections between the 1479 play text and the Künzelsau procession of holy relics documented for 1499, it is apparent that the cross in question was a reliquary crucifix containing what contemporaries believed to be a fragment of the True Cross. The crucifixion was thus not absent from the play, but rather represented through other, non-mimetic means.
In _Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces_, ed. Elina Gertsman and Jill Stevenson (Woodbridge, England: Boydell and Brewer), 2012
The essay examines how medieval play spectatorship crossed the thresholds between private and pub... more The essay examines how medieval play spectatorship crossed the thresholds between private and public devotion in four main areas: 1) the claiming of public space for private devotion; 2) the acceptance of standing and other alternative body positions for viewing the passion; 3) the rehearsal of an affective response to depictions of Christ’s suffering; and 4) the literal reimagining of stage action in the post-performance reading of play manuscripts.
This essay explores the interventions of the exegetical proclamator and related figures in late-m... more This essay explores the interventions of the exegetical proclamator and related figures in late-medieval theatric representations of Christ’s passion. The „proclaimer“ directed audience attention both towards and away from the physical presence of the Christ figure on stage, thereby regulating spectators’ experience of the Eucharistic body. The Lucerne and Frankfurt passion play traditions exhibit opposing trends in this regulation of presence. In the Lucerne Passion Play of 1583, exegetical figures apostrophize the audience following scenes of Christ’s torture, verbally invoking the violence witnessed and shaping it for later devotional memory. In contrast, the "proclamator" of the Frankfurt Passion Play (1493), here in the guise of Augustine, recedes from the stage during the play’s violent depiction of the passion. The audience is left with an unmediated experience of the staged crucifixion, which, lacking devotional channelling, likely incited anti-Semitic sentiment.
Analyzes the representation of the Ottoman Sultan in the Nuremberg carnival play "The Turk's Carn... more Analyzes the representation of the Ottoman Sultan in the Nuremberg carnival play "The Turk's Carnival" (ca. 1456) through the topsy-turvy rhetoric of carnival. In contrast to the portrayal of Jews as "others" on the carnival stage, who are consistently vilified in an effort to maintain traditional social hierarchies over carnivalesque inversion, the figure of the sultan enjoys considerable license to critique Christian society, functioning as a mask behind which the play's organizers ridicule the corrupt nobility of the Holy Roman Empire. At the same time, the representation of the sultan and other Muslims in the play is bivalent: they are the only figures to be discredited through their association with the grotesque body.
Concerns the role of "figura" in late medieval theater as a marker of a transcendent gaze on the ... more Concerns the role of "figura" in late medieval theater as a marker of a transcendent gaze on the part of the spectator and the topography of medieval mansion staging as spatial mnemonic.
Book Reviews by Glenn Ehrstine
Sixteenth Century Journal, 1996
Uploads
Books by Glenn Ehrstine
Papers by Glenn Ehrstine
This English-language essay reconstructs the performance context for the reliquary crucifix. The German-language essay "Crux Interpretationis" considers the broader theater historical implications of the play's substitution of a (transcendent) prop for an actor.
The pdf file here includes handwritten corrections of minor errata in the original publication, including the misidentification of the Zerbst "plebanus," or "Leutpriester."
Book Reviews by Glenn Ehrstine
This English-language essay reconstructs the performance context for the reliquary crucifix. The German-language essay "Crux Interpretationis" considers the broader theater historical implications of the play's substitution of a (transcendent) prop for an actor.
The pdf file here includes handwritten corrections of minor errata in the original publication, including the misidentification of the Zerbst "plebanus," or "Leutpriester."