DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
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Professor Pamela King
Professor of Medieval Studies
Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies
Deputy Head of Research, School of Humanities
Room: 1.8
Phone: 0117 928 8909
Fax: 0117 331 7933
Email: fapmk@bristol.ac.uk
Contents
Research interests
I am an interdisciplinary medievalist, working chiefly on late medieval and early Tudor theatre and drama, but also on manuscript studies, iconography, and cultural history as well as ‘canonical’ Middle English literature. I also write about the performance of pageantry, spectacle, processions and civic shows from the Middle Ages to the present, from Spain to Shetland and beyond. The Bristol University Theatre Collection offers opportunities to work with rare archive material on the history of twentieth-century reconstructions of early theatre in Britain, and I am interested in attracting postgraduate students to work with me in this territory which is currently attracting new interest.
My doctoral dissertation was on "Contexts of the Cadaver Tomb in Britain to 1500".
Research projects
I have been Principal Investigator of a European Science Foundation funded Exploratory Workshop on Re-inventions of Early Performing Arts and the Creative City, Civic Regeneration and Cultural Tourism, held in Budapest in 2012. The international group of theatre historians, social scientists, theatre practitioners, and archivists who met are now working towards larger funded projects as a result. Previous to this, I led an archive-based project sponsored by WUN, collaborating with colleagues in Toronto, Sydney, Leeds, Cape Town and Lancaster, as well as with Bristol Theatre Collection, on Modern Productions of Medieval Plays which formed an on-line collection level catalogue of modern productions of medieval plays in the Anglophone world. The early productions fought, and won, the battle with the censors which prevented the impersonation of the deity on the stage between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Some significant individual archives have also been catalogued at item level by the Project.
I was co-director of York Doomsday Project, a multi-media computing project on mystery plays. Collaborating with Lancaster University and initially with the Department of Manuscripts in the British Library (“Initiatives for Access”), funded in 1995-96 by a major award from the British Academy, and in 1997 by a grant from the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek - Vlanderen of Belgium and the British Council for a joint project with the Centre for Medieval Studies, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven.
Books
- 2013. Yearbook of English Studies: Early English Drama. Edited by Pamela King, Sue Niebrzydowski, and Diana Wyatt.
- 2011. Medieval Literature 1300-1500. Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press.
- 2009. According to Ancient Custom: Essays presented to David Mills, Parts One and Two. Medieval English Theatre, 29 and 30. Edited with Phil Butterworth and Meg Twycross.
- 2006. The York Cycle and the Worship of the City. D.S. Brewer.
-- Winner of the 2006 David Bevington prize for the best book on early drama in the year and of the Beatrice White Prize of the English Association, 2008. - 2004. Chaucer: The Merchant's Tale. York Notes Advanced, London. Pearson Education.
- 2001. Porci ante Margaritam: Essays in Honour of Meg Twycross, Leeds Studies in English, n.s. XXXII. co-edited with Sarah Carpenter and Peter Meredith.
- 2001. Metaphysical Poets. York Notes Advanced. London. Pearson Education.
- 2000. The Coventry Plays. Medieval Institute Publications. Kalamazoo - a new scholarly edition with extended introduction co-edited with Clifford Davidson.
- 1999. Chaucer: The Miller's Tale. York Notes Advanced. London. Pearson Education.
- 1997. Coventry Mystery Plays, Coventry. Historical Association Publications.
- 1995. London and Europe in the Middle Ages. London. Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies - co-edited with Julia Boffey.
- 1992. La Festa D'Elx, Elche (Alicante). Patronato de La Festa D'Elx - co-translated and edited with Asuncion Salvador-Rabaza Ramos.
- 1984, 2nd edition 1995. York Mystery Plays: a Selection in Modern Spelling, World's Classics. Oxford. Oxford University Press - co-edited with Richard Beadle.
Articles
- 2013. The End of the World on the Medieval English Stage. Apocalypse Now and Then a special volume of Literature and Theology.
- 2012. Texts in Plays: the Case of Mankynde. Medieval English Theatre, 32.
- 2009. 'Playing Pentecost in York and Chester: Transformations and Texts'. Medieval English Theatre, 29. 60-74
- 2007. 'Losing Faith in Transformation: Protestantism and Theatre', Medievalia, 28.1., 79-94.
- 2007. 'Twentieth-Century Medieval-Drama Revivals and the Universities', Medieval English Theatre, 27 for 2005 (2007), 100-118.
- 2005. 'The York Plays in Performance: Civitas versus Templum', Medieval English Theatre, 25 (2005 for 2003), 84-97.
- 2003. 'My Image to be Made All Naked': Cadaver Tombs and the Commemoration of Women in Fifteenth-Century England. The Ricardian, XIII. 294-314.
- 2002. York Plays and the Feast of Corpus Christi: a Reconsideration. Medieval English Theatre, 22 for2000. 13-32.
- 2001. 'He pleyeth Herodes upon a scaffold hye'?. Leeds Studies in English, n.s. XXXII. 212-28.
- 2000. Corpus Christi: Valencia, European Medieval Drama, 4. 181-205.
- 2000. Seeing And Hearing: the Audience of Medieval Plays, Early Theatre, 3. 155-66.
- 1998. Corpus Christi Plays and the 'Bolton Hours' 1: Tastes in Lay Piety and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century York. Medieval English Theatre 18 for 1996. 46-62.
- 1998. Calendar and Text: Christ's Ministry in the York Plays and the Liturgy . Medium Aevum LXVII. 30-59.
- 1997. The York and Coventry mystery cycles: a comparative model of civic response to growth and recession.Records of Early English Drama Newsletter, 22:1. 20-25.
- 1997. Records of Early English Drama: Reflections of a Hardened User. Medieval English Theatre, 17 for 1995. 52-57.
- 1997. Beyond REED? The York Doomsday Project. Medieval English Theatre, 17 for 1995. 132-148.
- 1995. Minority Plays: Two Interludes for Edward VI (revised and expanded version) Medieval English Theatre, 15 for 1993. 87-102.
- 1995. Corpus Christi, Valencia, Medieval English Theatre, 15 for 1993. 103-108.
- 1995. York Plays, Urban Piety, and the Case of Nicholas Blackburn, Mercer. Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 232. 37-50.
- 1992. La Festa D'Elx : a modern English translation of the text, with Asuncion Salvador-Rabaza Ramos. Medieval English Theatre , 14. 4-21
- 1990. The Cadaver Tomb in England: Novel Manifestations of an Old Idea. Church Monuments, 5. 26-38.
- 1990. Elche again: La Venida and Semana Santa. Medieval English Theatre, 12:1. 4-20.
- 1986. La Festa d'Elx: the Festival of the Assumption of the Virgin, Elche (Alicante), Medieval English Theatre, 8:1. 21-50.
- 1985. The Iconography of the Wakeman Cenotaph in Tewksbury Abbey. Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 103. 141-48.
- 1984. Dunbar's The Golden Targe: A Chaucerian Masque. Studies in Scottish Literature, XIX. 115-31.
- 1981. Eight English Memento Mori Verses from Cadaver Tombs. Notes and Queries, 28(6). 525-26.
- Reviewing for Comparative Drama, The Ricardian, Times Higher Education Supplement, Theatre Notebook, Medieval English Theatre, Medium Aevum, Journal of English, and German Philology.
Chapters
- 2013. Finis huius: The Final Pageants in The Towneley Plays. The Towneley Manuscript. Edited by Meg Twycross.
- 2013. Rules of Exchange in Medieval English Religious Plays in Dialogic Analysis: Literature as Dialogue. Edited by R Sell.
- 2013. Medieval English Religious Plays as Early Fifteenth-Century Vernacular Theology: the Case Against, in 'Diuerse Imaginaciouns of Cristes Life': Devotional Culture in England 1300-1550, edited by Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry. Turnhout. Brepols.
- 2012. The Early English Passion Play in the British Isles. Yearbook of English Studies 43: Early English Drama. Edited by Pamela King, Sue Niebrzydowski, and Diana Wyatt.
- 2012. John Heywood, The Play of the Weather, commissioned article for The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, edited by Greg Walker. 207-23
- 2010. Confraternities and civic Ceremonial: the Siena Palio. The York Mystery Plays: Performance in the City. Edited by Margaret Rogerson. York Medieval Press. Cambridge. Boydell and Brewer. pp.181-204.
- 2010. Squads and Ha’s: Civic Space and Gender Roles in Lerwick’s Up Helly Aa, Gender and Fraternal Orders in Europe, 1300-2000. Edited by Maire Fedelma Cross. Basingstoke, Hants. Palgrave MacMillan. pp.244-59. 2010. The Drama: Sacred and Secular. The Companion to Medieval English Poetry. Ed. Corinne Saunders. Oxford. Blackwell. pp.626-46.
- 2009. 'Memorials of Ralph Woodford (d.1498) Ashby Folville, Leicestershire: the Death of the Author?', in Julia Boffey and Virginia Davis, eds, Recording Medieval Lives. Donington: Shaun Tyas/ Paul Watkins Publishing. 182-88.
- 2008. 'The Morality Plays', in Richard Beadle, R & Fletcher, A.J (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, c. 1350 - c.1520. Cambridge University Press. 235-62.
- 2007. Lament and Elegy in the Mystery Cycles: Englishing the planctus Mariae, Festshrift essay, forthcoming.
- 2007. 'The York Mystery Plays', in P. Brown, P (Ed.). A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350-c.1500. Blackwell Companions to Literature & Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. 491-506.
- 2005. Squads and Ha's: Civic Space and Gender Roles in Lerwick's Up Helly Aa, Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Papers of the Conference on Confraternities and Gender. University of Sheffield.
- 2004. Doomsday as Hypertext: Contexts of Doomsday in Fifteenth-Century Northern Manuscripts, 2: British Library Add. MS 37049. Prophesy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom: Proceedings of the 2000 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Nigel Morgan. Donington. Shaun Tyas. Harlaxton Medieval Studies XII. 391-403.
- 2004. Postscript. Tudor Drama before Shakespeare, 1485-1590. ed. Lloyd Kermode and Jason
- 2004. Scott-Warren. Palgrave Macmillan.
- 2003. The York Cycle and Instruction on the Sacraments, Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad, ed. Sarah Rees-Jones. Turnhout. Brepols. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 3. 155-78.
- 2002. The Treasurer's Cadaver in York Minster Reconsidered. The Church and Learning in Late Medieval Society, Harlaxton Medieval Studies XI, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Jenny Stratford. Ipswich. Shaun Tyas. 196-209.
- 1999. Contemporary Cultural Models for the Trial Plays in the York Cycle, Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. Alan Hindley. Brussels. Brepols. 200-216.
- 1998. The York Doomsday Project, with Meg Twycross and Andrew Prescott. Towards the Digital Library. London. British Library Publications. 50-57.
- 1996 The Festa D'Elx: Civic Devotion, Display and Identity. Festive Drama, ed. Meg Twycross. Cambridge. Boydell and Brewer. 95-109.
- 1994. The Morality Plays Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre c.1350 - c.1520, ed. Richard Beadle. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 240-264.
- 1993. Minority Plays: Interludes for Children and the Fashioning of Edward VI. Comedy: A Festschrift for Peter Dixon, ed. Elizabeth Maslen. London. Queen Mary and Westfield College. 14-34.
- 1991. Chaucer Chaucerians and the Theme of Poetry. Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry, ed. Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen. London. King's College London Medieval Studies. 1-14.
- 1991. Algunes reflexions sobre la Vinguda de la Marededeu: significats i origens. Festa D'Elx 43, 1991. Elche (Alicante). Excm. Ajuntament d'Elx. 171-77.
- 1990. Faith, Reason and the Prophets' Dialogue from the Coventry Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors. Themes in Drama, Volume 11, Drama and Philosophy, ed. James Redmond. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 37-46.
- 1989. La Festa d'Elx: Algunes Observacions d'una Forastera. Festa d'Elx 41, 1989. Elche (Alicante). Excm. Ajuntament d'Elx. 165-77.
- 1989. Le transi anglais: une nouvelle perception d'une idee ancienne. La Figuration des Morts dans la Chretiente medievale jusqu'a la Fin du premier Quart du XIVe Siecle. Fontevraud. Centre Culturel de l'Ouest. 253-69.
- 1987. Spatial Semantics and the Medieval Theatre. Themes in Drama, Volume 9, The Theatrical Space, ed. James Redmond. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 45-58. Reprinted in John Coldewey, ed. Medieval Drama: Critical Concepts and Cultural Studies. A 4-volume collection of essential essays for the study of medieval drama. Contracted with Routledge for publication in 2006.
- 1986. Drames Anglesos sobre l'Assumpcio de la Verge. Mon I Misteri de la Festa D'Elx. Valencia. 185-95.
- 1984. The English Cadaver Tomb in the Late Fifteenth Century: some Indications of a Lancastrian Connection. Dies Illa: Death in the Middle Ages, ed., Jane H.M. Taylor. Liverpool. Francis Cairns Publications. 45-57.
Memberships
- President of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society, 2012-
- Vice President of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society, 2009-2011
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of London, 2009-
- Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Education and Industry, 1997-
- Member of the International Association for University Professors of English, 1997-
- Council Member of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society, 2002-05
- President of the Société Internationale pour l'étude du Théâtre Médiéval, 2001-04
Prizes
Winner of the 2006 David Bevington prize for the best book on early drama in the year and of the Beatrice White Prize of the English Association, 2008 for The York Cycle and the Worship of the City (D.S. Brewer, 2006).
Editorial boards
- Founding member of the Editorial Board of Bristol Studies in Medieval Cultures. Member of the Advisory Boards of European Medieval Drama, and of Medieval English Theatre. Founder member of Westfield Publications in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Business Editor until 1994.