Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Mankind

Mankind

Ashley, Kathleen M.
Necastro, Gerard

Paperback

Series: Teams Middle English Texts

Literary CriticismFiction AnthologiesPlays

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ISBN10: 1580441408
ISBN13: 9781580441407
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Published: Apr 1 2010
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.35
Height: 0.20 Width: 6.90 Depth: 9.90
Language: English

One of the most interactive and theatrically sophisticated early English plays, the fifteenth-century Middle English morality play Mankind balances and complicates a conventional allegory of vice and virtue with a thematic emphasis on language. Associated with Lent and the pre-Lenten season of Carnival, it dramatizes a verbal battle waged for Mankind's soul: it pits the stately, Latinate preaching of Mercy, who embodies Lent's emphasis on penitence, confession, and piety, against the rhetorical tricks of the demon Titivillus and jokes, derision, and vulgarity from the four vices of worldly temptation, representing carnival themes of revelry, trickery, and social upheaval. Each side addresses the audience throughout the play, implicating them in their machinations for or against Mankind. Engaging with the late-medieval religious conflict between English-language Lollardy and a Catholic orthodoxy built on Latinate authority, Mankind demands that its audience distinguishes between virtuous and vicious uses of language, whether in Latin or English.

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