'New Historicism': A Critical Overview

New Historicism: A Critical Overview

Introduction

The term ‘New Historicism’ was first used by the critic, Stephen Greenblatt in the introduction to a collection of Renaissance essays in Genre with parallel reference to Michel Foucault’s term wirkliche Historie or effective Historian.

These terms refer to a historian who talks about disunity and fragmentation, disruption and reversal, rather than the unity favoured by traditional historians which is often the unity of the historian’s own limited vision or even bias imposed on the past events.

New Historicism as Cultural Poetics

The other term that Greenblatt uses for New Historicism is Cultural Poetics. This term has general and specific meanings. The general meaning can be best described by evoking Frederic Jameson’s claim that historicism refers to “our relationship to the past and our possibility of understanding the latter’s monuments, artifacts and traces”.

A New Relationship to the Literary Past

New Historicism in literary studies promises a new relationship to the literary past and specifically it refers to a particular brand of cultural poetics associated with the works of Greenblatt, Louis A. Montrose, Hayden White, Jonathan Goldberg, Stephen Orgel, Steven Mullaney, Jean Howard, Leonard Tennenhouse, Frank Whigham, Don Wayne and others.

The Cultural Materialists

The same trend of work was carried out by the British critics who called themselves ‘Cultural Materialists’ – a term borrowed from the Marxist critic, Raymond Williams. They are Jonathan Dollimore, Alan Sinfield, Catherine Belsey, Paul Brown, John Drakakis, Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Simon Shepherd, Thomas Healey, Kate McLuskie and others.

These two groups of critics have a lot in common. They came from universities that were not privileged but iconoclastic like California, Columbia, Sussex, Cardiff and Essex. Their Leftist leanings are well-known with their Althusserian emphasis on subversion than containment.

‘Structuralism and Literary Criticism’ - Critical Summary

‘Structuralism and Literary Criticism’ – Gerard Genette

Critical Summary

Introduction

Gerard Genette is the most important French literary theorist after Roland Barthes. Genette is primarily associated with Structuralism, especially for reintroducing a new rhetorical vocabulary into literary criticism - terms as narratology, trope and metonymy, etc. In this essay, Gerard Genette puts forward Structuralist Criticism as a profound and valuable contribution to Literary Criticism.

Structuralist Thinking: The world is Made Up of Relationships and Not Things

Now, how does this sign get its meaning?

According to the renowned structuralist Terence Hawkes, ‘The true nature of things may be said to lie not in things themselves, but in the relationships which we construct, and then perceive, between them. This new concept, that the world is made up of relationships rather than things, constitutes the first principle of that way of thinking which can properly be called ‘structuralist’. 

Hence, the essence of Structuralism is the belief that ‘things cannot be understood in isolation, they have to be seen in the context of larger structures they are part of’. In this context it is interesting to know that Gerard Genette proposed the term ‘transtextuality’ as a more inclusive term, along with paratextuality, hypertextuality, architextuality, metatextuality, etc.

The Focus of Structuralism: Not on Individual Works but on Larger Structures behind it

Meaning is not found in Individual Works but in Larger Structures behind it

Since, larger structures are formed by our way of perceiving the world, in structuralist criticism, consequently, there is a constant movement away from the interpretation of the individual literary work towards understanding the larger structures which contain them. For example, a structuralist analysis of Browning’s poem “My Last Dutchess” necessitates more focus on the relevant genre – the dramatic monologue, and the concept of courtly love, Aristocracy in Renaissance Italy, etc., rather than on the close reading of the formal elements of the text.

Structuralists firmly believe that all human activity is constructed, not natural or “essential.” Hence, they focus their attention on systems/codes that give meaning to any human activity. Language is one such code. By doing so, structuralists embark on the massive project of giving literary criticism the rigour of a science of language. Its historical origins are in Russian Formalist criticism and the Linguistics of Saussure.

The Centre for Studies in Violence, Memory, and Trauma

Department of English

University of Delhi

invites you to a talk

“Kashmir, the border and beyond”

By

Ali Ahmed

Time: Wednesday, 9 November, 2016 at 3.00 pm.

Venue: Room 56, Faculty of Arts, Delhi University.

Overview

This year’s tally of innocent deaths in Kashmir nears the three figure mark. Alongside, a terror attack in Uri accounted for 20 lives. India has in rebound gone in for strategic proactivism. The lecture seeks to examine the shift from strategic restraint to strategic proactivism by discussing the inter-twined military doctrines of the two states – India and Pakistan. The interplay between the doctrines at the three levels – subconventional, conventional and nuclear – appears combustible. The possible futures going down a proactive route are discussed in a way as to allow the audience to be able to think through the issues involved – Kashmir, military doctrines, strategic restraint and strategic proactivism – by their own lights.

About the Speaker

Ali Ahmed works with an international organization on security and political issues. He is the author of India’s Doctrine Puzzle: Limiting War in South Asia (Routledge, 2014), On War in South Asia, and On Peace in South Asia (both Cinnamon Teal, 2014), and India’s National Security in the Liberal Lens (Cinnamon Teal 2016).

‘Preface and Prelude’ to TWC - Critical Summary

‘Preface and Prelude’ to Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon

Critical Summary

Introduction

In the 'Preface and Prelude' to his famous book, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, Bloom defends the Western canonical literature from its enemies – who are out to destroy all intellectual and aesthetic standards in the humanities and social sciences, in the name of social justice. These enemies are the ‘Feminists, Marxists, Lacanians, New Historicists, Deconstructionists, Semioticians’ - all of whom Bloom gathers under the controversial epithet, ‘the School of Resentment.’

The Western Canon is more of an elegy that sings praises to the realm of the purely ‘aesthetic’ and the ‘imaginative’ in literature, and a vehement attack on the ‘destroyers’ of the canon – literary theorists who disrupted the aesthetic experience of literature with the futile advocacy of ‘politics’ and ‘multicultural pluralism’.

The 'Twenty Six' Western Canonical Writers

Bloom defends his choice of 26 canonical writers, from Dante to Beckett. When choosing these 26 writers, he says that, he has represented national canons by their crucial, important literary figures, and the famous five for England are – Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Dickens. The other eminent writers who form part of the Western Canon are – Samuel Johnson, who is considered the greatest of Western literary critics, apart from Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Kafka, Neruda, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, George Eliot, etc.

What makes an Author Canonical? Their Strangeness and Originality

After a survey over a lifetime's vast reading, Bloom chooses for discussion these twenty-six authors from Dante to Beckett who have enriched his reading and his life. To him, strangeness is the first quality that makes an author canonical. Strangeness, to Bloom, is a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange. Walter Pater defined Romanticism as ‘adding strangeness to beauty…’ Likewise, when one reads a canonical work for the first time they encounter a stranger, an ‘uncanny startlement’ and their ability to make you feel strange at home.

Special Lecture @ MIDS

We will have high tea before the lecture. Please join us for tea and lecture at 5.30 pm.

Preparation for NET/JRF English - 9

Topics so far –

1. The Road Map for NET/JRF in English

2. Outline to NET/JRF English – Papers II & III - Syllabus January 2017

3. Geoffrey Chaucer: An Overview of the Poet and His Age

4. The Age of Chaucer: His Contemporaries

5. Chaucer’s Imitators and Disciples in England and Scotland

6. Beginnings of the English Drama – Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes

7. Background to the Renaissance in England

8. The Renaissance in England: Part - I

Now - 

The Renaissance in England: Part - II

Elizabethan Satire

In 1597 a young man by name Joseph Hall who had just left the university wrote a collection of satires. In the past, Piers the Plowman and Steel Glass flourished as satires and Spenser had produced the harshest and most successful satire of the century - Mother Hubberds Tale.

Thomas Lodge, a year before Hall, published A Fig for Momus. Hall became a Bishop, and it is remarkable that the other satirists of the period also ended as clergy.

John Marston was the most cynical of all the Elizabethan authors. His licentious poem Pigmalion was attacked for its immorality. At the same time as Hall and Marston, John Donne, as early as 1593 composed his first satires. With Marston and Hall, Donne represents classical Elizabethan satire.

At the end of Elizabeth’s reign, several poets flourished who are variously interesting, some who were influenced by their predecessors, and some who adventured in new paths.

George Wither, William Browne and two brothers Giles and Phineas Fletcher and Drummond of Hawthornden may be cited as in the succession of Spenser.

George Wither & William Browne

George Wither, the Puritan satirist, satirized the court in his Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613). The satire is general, without personal attacks, but it caused such displeasure that Wither was imprisoned in the Marshalsea. He was there for several months, and there he wrote one of his most charming poems, The Shepherd’s Hunting published in 1615. It is a sort of pastoral in the form of a dialogue between Willy, who represents the poet William Browne, and Philarete, the friend of virtue, which is Wither himself.

William Browne, the close friend of Wither, wrote only pastorals. His Brittania’s Pastorals has made him the classical representative of pastoral poetry in his country. He was greatly inspired by Spenser’s Calendar, especially in his Shepherd’s Pipe (1614), which is a series of eclogues. Browne was capable of seeing Nature as she is, and sometimes he painted her successfully. He could make English birds sing in concert, and he could bring a hunt to life or depict an effect of dawn in a village.

Ben Jonson & John Donne

In contrast to the poets of this period who followed beaten tracks, we have two pioneers, Ben Jonson and John Donne. Their influence was felt by the greatest number of their own countrymen down to the Restoration.

Ben Jonson: The spirit of satire looms large in his Epigrammes and The Forrest published together in 1616. Ben Jonson also wrote moral satires which were more nobler in tone and more sincere in expression than those of Hall and Marston. His Epistle to Sir Edward Sackville is a heavy attack against patrons who grant their favours generally to the undeserving.

John Donne: John Donne, who after a libertine youth took orders at the age of 43, in 1615, is perhaps the most singular poet. His verses offer examples of everything condemned by the classical writers as bad taste and eccentricity. Although Donne’s love is always profoundly sensuous, it in revolt against the poetic canons of the age. He is at his best in his short pieces.

Elizabethan Prose

Poetry dominates the whole of the renaissance to such a point that it often invades he sphere of prose.

Greene, Lodge & Nashe

Robert Greene was Lyly’s disciple and successor, who imitated the prettiness of euphuism.

The Winter's Tale

He wrote Arbasto and Pandosto. Pandosto’s romantic character supplied the plot to The Winter’s Tale. Worn out by debauchery and poverty, he brought out a series of pamphlets filled with sorrowful self accusation, titled Confessions.

Congratulations Winners...!

Friends, 

It gives me immense joy in announcing the ‘bestest’ tidings of the month -

that as of now, - a record sixteen of our candidates - have cleared their SET [State Eligibility Test] in English, for which the results were put up yesterday. 

Thank you dear all for sharing with us the wonderful news. 

Let the momentum continue! May you all be placed in the ‘bestest’ of institutions and be shining lights radiating knowledge and dispelling ignorance! [the full list of candidates will be displayed here shortly].

I also wish to place on record that NET SET GO English has been prescribed and made a part of the II MA English Syllabus in all colleges that come under Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli. We thank God Almighty for this stupendous, remarkable achievement, and to all our well-wishers, friends and students for making this happen.

  

Thank you so much. 

As Ulysses says,

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought”

Well,

Therein lies the zest, the zeal, the spirit and the verve!

Keep rocking!

Best and regards,

Benet, Rufus & the entire team at 'NET SET GO'

Appreciating Your Originality...

Dear Students,

The ‘top three’ original, creative, impressive and well-written assignments for each paper [that comes under my purview] will receive gift vouchers worth Rs.500 each from StarMark, Express Avenue Mall, apart from five Bonus marks. 

This will be a regular event from this year onwards, exclusively for the II MA English Literature classes. If the magic figure 'three' doesn't show up, the prize will be shared between the first two!

This apart, as your course teacher, i shall strive to have them published in a reputed journal too.

For more on how to write a good assignment, you may want to check out on our back links HERE & HERE.

Regards, 

Rufus

Course Teacher

Image courtesy: pinterest.com

Dear Students of II MA English Literature,

All your CIA/Assignment marks with me for this semester [June to Nov 2016] are now ready. They will be given to you on Wednesday, 26 October 2016 at 8.30 am, when I meet you in class.

Corrections/clarifications – if any – can be made with me personally on this day. Kindly note that NO change in marks – whatsoever – will be entertained after the said date.

Regards,

Rufus

Course Teacher 

Dr. Leon's Lecture @ MCC - Intimation on Change of Venue

Dear Students of MA English Literature,

The much-awaited ‘exclusive’ lecture by the well-renowned scholar Dr. Leon Litvack, [School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University, Belfast, and an authority on Postcolonial Studies], on Monday, 07 November 2016 @ MCC, has now been shifted to the University of Madras, due to the Semester Examinations that happen during that entire week, here at MCC.

I request you to kindly make a note of the change in venue, and just in case you don’t happen to have your exam on the 7^th of November, and if you’ve sufficiently prepared well in advance for your exam papers, you are most welcome to attend the event in the forenoon session on that eventful day, at the Department of English, University of Madras. Dr. S. Armstrong, Professor & Head, Department of English, University of Madras is now hosting the event.

Preparation for NET/JRF English - 8

Topics so far –

1. The Road Map for NET/JRF in English

2. Outline to NET/JRF English – Papers II & III - Syllabus: January 2017

3. Geoffrey Chaucer: An Overview of the Poet and His Age

4. The Age of Chaucer: His Contemporaries

5. Chaucer’s Imitators and Disciples in England and Scotland

6. Beginnings of the English Drama – Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes

7. Background to the Renaissance in England

Now –

The Renaissance in England: Part - I

The Great Age of Translations

The Great Age of Chronicles

The Glorious Age of Theatre

The University Wits and their Significance

Age of Patriotic Exaltation

The High Conception of Poetry

The Pioneers in Poetry

Erotic Poets,

Pious and Reflective Poets

The Age of the Harshest Satire

The Age of the Prettiest ‘Euphuistic’ Prose

The Age of Literary Criticism

Religious Prose

Philosophical Prose: Bacon &Burton

The Pamphleteers

The Fertility of the Drama

Shakespeare – the crowning glory of the Age

The Beginnings of Literary Criticism

The Age of the Pamphleteers

Age of Translations

The Translations: Their Influence

The rich soil of the Elizabethan literature was fertilized by a deep layer of translations. By 1579 many of the great works of ancient and modern times had been translated into English. Practically, all the great books of the past and the present were brought under translation. Philemon Holland, the good humanist was called the ‘translator-general of his age’. He gave his country Livy (1600), Pliny the Elder (1601) and Plutarch’s Moral Writings (1603).

But the masterpiece of verse translation was incontestably Chapman’s Homer. Thanks to Chapman, the Iliad (1598-1609) became a great Elizabethan poem. Its energy and brilliancy were so powerful that it enthralled and inspired the young Keats two centuries later, who had no access to the original sources of Hellenism. Du Barthas was called the treasure of humanism and jewel of theology. His Semaines was translated vigorously between 1592 and 1606.

These translations from du Barthas and Homer became part of the treasure of Elizabethan verse, as the versions of Plutarch and Montaigne belong to the great prose. English style and prosody were formed by these countless translations, as the sonneteers were the most considerable of the borrowers.

Translation of The Bible

It was the question of translating the Bible which brought Sir Thomas More into direct conflict with William Tindale. Tindale, inspired greatly by Martin Luther, began translating the New Testament into English in 1522. As he was prevented from pursuing his work in England, where the king was still a defender of Catholic orthodoxy, he took refuge on the Continent, and had his translation printed in 1525. In spite of the measures taken by Henry VIII, it was introduced into England, where the ground had already been prepared by Wyclif. Tindale’s version of the New Testament was founded both on Luther’s translation, and on the Greek and Latin commentaries of Erasmus, which was the basis for the famous Authorised Version of 1611.

The Influence of the Bible: The English Bible has been a potent influence in our literature, Owing largely to their poetical or proverbial nature(multitudes of Biblical expressions have become woven into the very tissue of the tongue: "a broken reed," "the eleventh hour," "a thorn in the flesh," "a good Samaritan," "sweat of the brow," and so on'. More important, probably, is the way in which the style affects that of many of our greatest writers. Bunyan shows the style almost undiluted; but in the works of such widely diverse writers as Ruskin, Macaulay, Milton, and Tennyson the effects, though slighter, are quite apparent.

The Age of Chronicles

The patriotic impulse in England was responsible for the many chronicles, Protestant in spirit, which appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Edward Hall’s Chronicle (1548),

Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles published in 1578 and continued to 1586 were for long the reservoirs of national history, used by Spenser and Shakespeare among others.

John Stow’s Summarie of the English Chronicles,

John Speed’s History of Great Britain (1611), and

William Camden’s History of the Reign of Elizabeth were the other chronicles of the age.

Under the moonlight! Poetry Reading by the sea - Bay of Life

On

Saturday, 29 Oct 2016 @ 5:00 pm

By Bay of Life Surf School & Surf Shop Follow

Besant Nagar Beach, Chennai

Under the Moonlight is a monthly series held at the beach by Bay of Life. On Saturday, 29 October, come catch us at the beach for poetry, music and more... under the moon and the stars. Poets bring your poem and your voice, listeners bring an open mind.

Poets... Send Your Submissions for the session or Mail us Your poems at:  Moonlight@Bayoflife.Com asap and we'll respond to those shortlisted.

Register Here

Live & Personal Storytelling

On

Thursday, 27 October 2016 @ 6:00 PM

By The Narrative - the power of stories

Bistro100: Velachery, Chennai

Stories are powerful. Storytelling can transform one as much as it can transform the world around oneself. The Narrative's live and personal storytelling is a monthly, open-mic, themed personal storytelling event that is a platform for people to share and listen to each other's stories. The program intends to build a sense of community that bonds over stories. Participants share stories to entertain, inspire and sometimes, even influence. These shows are ticketed and follow certain guidelines.

Preparation for NET/JRF English - 7

Topics so far – 

1. The Road Map for NET/JRF in English

2. Outline to NET/JRF English – Papers II & III - Syllabus January 2017

3. Geoffrey Chaucer: An Overview of the Poet and His Age

4. The Age of Chaucer: His Contemporaries

5. Chaucer’s Imitators and Disciples in England and Scotland

6. Beginnings of the English Drama – Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes

Now - 

Background to the Renaissance in England

At the end of the 1400s, the world changed. Two key dates can mark the beginning of modern times. In 1485, the Wars of the Roses came to an end, and, following the invention of printing, William Caxton issued the first imaginative book to be published in England – Sir Thomas Malory’s retelling of the Arthurian legends as Le Morte D’Arthur. In 1492, Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas opened European eyes to the existence of the New World. New worlds, both geographical and spiritual, are the key to the Renaissance, the ‘rebirth’ of learning and culture. England emerged from the Wars of the Roses (1453–85) with a new dynasty in power, the Tudors.

The Curious Case of Henry VIII

As with all powerful leaders, the question of succession became crucial to the continuation of power. So it was with the greatest of the Tudor monarchs, Henry VIII, whose reign lasted from 1509 to 1547. In his continued attempts to father a son and heir to the line, Henry married six times. But his six wives gave him only one son and two daughters, who became King Edward VI, Queen Mary I, and Queen Elizabeth I.

The need for the annulment of his first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, brought Henry into direct conflict with the Catholic church, and with Pope Clement VII (1521–32) in particular. In reaction to the Catholic church’s rulings, Henry took a decisive step which was to influence every aspect of English, then British, life and culture from that time onwards. He ended the rule of the Catholic church in England, closed (and largely destroyed) the monasteries – which had for centuries been the repository of learning, history, and culture – and established himself as both the head of the church and head of state.

In a very short period of time, centuries of religious faith, attitudes and beliefs were replaced by a new way of thinking. Now, for example, the King as ‘Defender of the Faith’ was the closest human being to God – a role previously given to the Pope in Rome. Now, England became Protestant, and the nation’s political and religious identity had to be redefined. Protestantism, which had originated with Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in Wittenberg in 1517, became the official national religion, and the King rather than the Pope became head of the church. Although King Henry himself remained nominally Catholic, despite being excommunicated by the Pope, all the Catholic tenets, from confession to heaven and hell, were questioned.

Henry VIII’s break with Rome was not carried out as an isolated rebellion. Two European thinkers, in particular, established the climate which made it possible. The first of these was the Dutch scholar Erasmus, whose enthusiasm for classical literature was a major source for the revival in classical learning. His contempt for the narrowness of Catholic monasticism (expressed in The Praise of Folly) was not an attempt to deny the authority of the Pope, but a challenge to the corruption of the Catholic church. Erasmus had no time for unnecessary ritual, the sale of pardons and religious relics. He wished to return to the values of the early Christian church and in order to do so, produced a Greek edition (1516) of the Scriptures in place of the existing Latin one. Through his visits to England, Erasmus became a friend of Sir Thomas More, who was later beheaded for refusing to support Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Although much of Erasmus’s work prepared the ground for Protestant reforms, his aim was to purify and remodel the Catholic church, not to break away from it. He represented the voice of learning and knowledge, of liberal culture and tolerance.

Martin Luther and his 95 Theses

It was a quite different temperament, the German Martin Luther’s, which marked the decisive break with Rome. Luther agreed with much of what Erasmus said about the corruption of the Catholic church but they disagreed on their responses and Luther refused to submit to the Pope’s authority. Many historians regard 1517, when Luther pinned to a chapel door his 95 Theses Against the Sale of Papal Indulgences, as the start of the Reformation and the birth of Protestantism. Luther’s continuing opposition to the Pope led to his excommunication (1521) and the further spread of religious individualism in Northern Europe. It is against this background that we should place Henry VIII’s adoption of the role of the head of the English church and the church’s own quite separate style of Anglicanism.

Preparation for NET/JRF English - 6

Topics so far –  

1. The Road Map for NET/JRF in English

2. Outline to NET/JRF English – Papers II & III - Syllabus January 2017

3. Geoffrey Chaucer: An Overview of the Poet and His Age

4. The Age of Chaucer: His Contemporaries

5. Chaucer’s Imitators and Disciples in England and Scotland

Now –

Beginnings of the English Drama

Mimicry and make-believe are universal human impulses and drama has therefore developed  independently at various times and places in the world’s history.

Among the Greeks it attained high distinction.

Among the Romans it was less popular, as conditions in the Roman Empire were politically disturbed, and the populace preferred to shout and cheer at the chariot races and gladiatorial combats of the circus and amphitheatre rather than quietly watch a play. The theatre apparently did not attract the best literary talents in Italy.

Plautus and Terence (Roman playwrights) are not comparable to Virgil, Horace, or Livy in other forms of literature, and Seneca’s tragedies were ‘closet dramas’.

The most popular theatrical entertainments were the performances of mimes in which coarse humor and indecency combined to secure at times the attention of the vulgar. With the rise of Christianity the theatre ran into other difficulties. The Church objected to its associations with paganism, to the fact that in its lower forms it often ridiculed the new religion, and perhaps most of all to the immorality of both performances and performers. With the fall of the Empire, Roman drama disappeared, and for five hundred years only a faint dramatic tradition may have survived, passed on from the mimes to the medieval minstrel.

It is ironical that the Church, the force that had done most to drive Roman drama out of existence, should have been the institution in which modern drama was to take its rise. For the drama of the Middle Ages is not a continuation of Roman drama but a development from entirely new beginnings in the services of the Church, first in the more solemn service of the Mass.

(a) THE MIRACLE-PLAY. It is in the Church and its liturgy that we find the stimulus which leads to the rebirth of drama. The commonly used antiphonal singing had in it the elements of dialogue, while the obvious dramatic possibilities in the Roman Catholic ritual, especially in the Mass, were gradually developed as part of the elaborate ceremonial of the great religious feasts like Easter. As early as the tenth century we hear of Easter representations of the empty tomb of Christ, with dialogue between one figure sitting outside and three others who come in as if seeking something. The authorities were quick to appreciate the instructional value of such presentations as an addition to the Latin liturgy, and to this dramatization of the quern quceritis (whom seek ye?) rapid additions seem to have been made, both at Easter and at other feasts.