Counterfet Countenaunce: (Mis)representation and the Challenge to Allegory in Sixteenth-Century Morality Plays

Author: Griffiths, Jane¹

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 38, Numbers 1-2, 1 July 2008 , pp. 17-33(17)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

This chapter examines the use of personification allegory in a number of sixteenth-century morality plays, focusing in particular on the vices' use of assumed names in Skelton's Magnyfycence and Udall's Respublica. It argues that these plays manifest a striking self-consciousness about the limitations of the allegorical mode, and that they thereby both reflect and contribute to contemporary linguistic debates. They should therefore not be thought of as a static medieval survival, but rather as making a practical and dramatic contribution to changing sixteenth-century perceptions of how language signifies.

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: University of Bristol

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