Performative Literary Culture

Performative literary culture emerged as a set of practices that shaped production and distribution of learning in late medieval and early modern Western Europe, both in Latin and the vernacular. Performative literary culture encompasses the plays, songs, and poetry performed for live audiences in (semi-)public spaces and the organizations championing performative literature through meetings and events. These organizations included chambers of rhetoric, confraternities of the Puy, joyous companies, guilds of Meistersingers, the Consistory of Joyful Knowledge, academies, companies of the Basoche and Inns of Court, and the institutions or people organizing the Spanish justas. Written by a team of experts, the contributions in this book explore how performative literary cultures shaped the exchange of public learning, knowledge, and ideas between the oral, theatrical, and literary spheres.

Contributors include: Francisco J. Alvarez, Adrian Armstrong, Gabriele Ball , Anita Boele, Cynthia J. Brown, Susanna de Beer, Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, Ignacio Garcia Aguilar, Laura Kendrick, Samuel Mareel, Inmaculada Osuna, Bart Ramakers, Dylan Reid, Catrien Santing, Susie Speakman Sutch, and Arjan van Dixhoorn.