Newsletter
Medieval Institute Publications at 蜜桃社区 Michigan University looks forward to exploring what it has meant to be human through the ages with you!
When you subscribe to our newsletter, you'll receive monthly updates on new titles; special offers and conference discounts; features about the people who make MIP work, including our authors, series board members and acquisitions editors; and more. You'll also have the chance to enter monthly drawings for free books! You'll be automatically entered into your first drawing as soon as you sign up.
Thanks for joining us!
Book Drawing
November 2024
Subscribe to our newsletter to enter our drawing by November 30th for the chance to win:
Mummings and Entertainments
by John Lydgate, edited by Claire Sponsler
John Lydgate, the Benedictine monk of Bury, was a prolific fifteenth-century poet. Though Lydgate is known for his longer literary works, this edition compiles fifteen of his Middle English mummings, folk dramas typically performed at festivals, holy days, and royal or civic ceremonies. They may include music, spoken word, costuming, and gesture or action to accompany occasions like pageants, royal processions, and pictorial representations. For example, Soteltes at the Coronation Banquet of Henry VI offers verses recited during themed subtleties (culinary conceits made of confectionary) at the titular king鈥檚 inaugural feast while The Legend of St. George dramatizes the eponymous hero to honor the building of a guild hall for London armorers. Some embrace a comic or ludic tone, inviting audience participation, while others suggest proper behavior through Classical and Biblical exempla. Written from the late 1420s to the early 1430s in Lydgate鈥檚 鈥渁ureate鈥 style, these mummings provide rare insight into how performances were commissioned, created, and disseminated.
