Prayer and performance: acts of belief as symbolic communication in the late medieval and Renaissance period
This conference seeks to explore aspects of prayer as a performative act in European culture during the late medieval and early modern periods, and to consider these findings in light of the most current theoretical and anthropological perspectives. It will be, therefore, an intentionally interdisciplinary effort drawing together scholars of literature, material culture and religious anthropology.
How was prayer represented in literature, plays or works of art?
How do prayers in plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Middleton, for example, register responses to the controversies and debates about what constituted true or effective prayer?
How did communities utilize prayer as a distinguishing feature for their religious identity, and how were these forms policed?
How was prayer bound up in the material culture of religious practice (funeral rites, for example) and the social practices that determined social status of different periods?
More importantly, how might these literary, social and material gestures serve as a marker for shifting social perspectives and customs, especially during the Reformation?