Writing, Dancing and Performing Death Across Late Medieval Europe

Texts and Contexts

Léglu, Catherine (ed.)
Oosterwijk, Sophie (ed.)
Ungeheuer, Laurent (ed.)

Our understanding of the medieval Danse macabre is changing with the recent discoveries of a theatrical script from Savoy, and of a related Castilian poem. This collection of texts from the Burgundian realm, France and Savoy, England, Castile-Aragon and the Empire, also contains critical essays that examine these texts and contexts from the fourteenth to the late fifteenth centuries.
This volume re-examines the development and impact of the Danse macabre within broader considerations of performance and poetry that focus on Death as a protagonist. It includes texts never before studied or translated and moves beyond the traditional focus on Paris and London to reassess the wide dissemination of this tradition. The volume complements a collection of studies by the same editors (Oosterwijk, Ungeheuer and Léglu) of the visual tradition across Europe, from Burgundy to Finland, Death and the Danse Macabre in Late Medieval Art: Dissemination, Reception, Evidence.