Reviewed by:

• Vision and Audience in Medieval Drama: A Study of The Castle of Perseverance by Andrea Louise Young
• Matthew Sergi (bio)

In Vision and Audience in Medieval Drama: A Study of The Castle of Perseverance, Andrea Louise Young reconstructs the dynamic visual mise-en-scène that underlies The Castle of Perseverance, identifying cues for live performance and stage design during a sustained beginning-to-end close reading, which emphasizes references to vision across the play. Young claims that "vision—as a physical, moral, and cognitive process—is the organizing principle [End Page 299] that informs the play's staging, structure, and narrative, and its constantly shifting actor/audience relationships" (3). Not an organizing principle, but the organizing principle: she asserts that "once and for all. . .the play is both about, and is driven by, vision" (129). Young isolates and examines a set of common conceptions about vision that, she argues, undergirded all medieval drama in performance—conceptions that Castle's unusual staging, realized within the booming material culture of East Anglia, exploits particularly well: "The Castle of Perseverance attempts to enact different kinds of gazes from the spectators as part of its moral and visual training. The playing place becomes, in effect, a training ground for the audience—a place where they will learn how to see" (8).

Chapter 1, "Vision, Visuality, and the Audience," introduces Young's primary thesis on vision training. It includes, in a series of subsections, summaries of medieval writing on ocular biology and optics, most usefully from Peter of Limoges, who identifies the eye as a moral organ ("the eye must be educated to look in the correct way, and, by looking on the correct things. . .[it] receive[s] further training," 10). A section on "Extramission and Intromission" (14–17) is especially well done: Young describes then-opposing beliefs on whether vision enters into or emanates from the eye, then demonstrates that Castle's versatile staging encompasses both sides at once. A final section, on "Being an Audience" (18–22), thinks through the slippery heterogeneity of spectator viewpoints.

Chapter 2, "Staging The Castle of Perseverance," begins with a comprehensive (and collegially critical) survey of modern interpretations of the abstract stage diagram that survives in the Castle manuscript, including a superb against-the-grain analysis of David Parry's landmark 1979 PLS production of the play (32–33). Young then offers a Castle staging diagram of her own (35), this one drawn to scale with crisp clarity by Phil Kiel, dotted with numbered points that correspond to Young's Appendix A, a systematic scene-by-scene collation of apparent visual cues in the text—thus mapping out the reconstructed staging to which she refers throughout the remainder of the book. Young makes a decisive case for "actor-audience fusion" (that is, for actors and fully mobile spectators to interact fluidly and continually in the same space during a performance), both as an assumed convention across extant medieval drama (31) and as an essential part of Castle. She includes a list (36) of the various physical positions which spectators seem likely to have occupied or passed through during the show. The play-space in toto becomes a "castel town" (41), resonating with specific architectural features of East Anglia, so that the "main tower. . .could be interpreted as evoking the construction of a parish church" (43). The chapter resolves into a running commentary on the first three scenes of the play (lines 157–274), demonstrating how efficiently Young's visual model works for the various implicit staging cues in Castle's text.

The remaining chapters continue that running commentary across the rest of the Castle text. Chapter 3, "Angelic Visions," covering Castle lines 275–1237, identifies positive lessons in how to see (against the negative examples from [End Page 300] the first three scenes) and in how to participate in the "communal vision" (66) of good society, of which the real gazes of fellow spectators become the most prominent symbol (Pride's directive for Humanum...

审核人：

• 中世纪戏剧中的视觉和听众：安德烈·路易丝·杨（Andrea Louise Young）的“坚毅城堡”研究
• 马修·塞尔吉（马修）

在《中世纪戏剧的视觉与观众：对恒心城堡的研究》中，安德里亚·路易丝·杨（Andrea Louise Young）重建了恒心城堡基础上的动态视觉场景，在持续的从头到尾的过程中，确定了现场表演和舞台设计的线索。结束阅读，强调整个戏剧中对视觉的引用。扬说，“视觉是身体，道德和认知的过程，是组织的原则。[结束第299页]（3）不是组织原则，而是组织原则：她断言“一劳永逸。。“这部戏既是关于视觉的，也是受视觉驱动的”（129）。Young认为，关于视觉的一套共同概念被认为影响了所有中世纪戏剧的表演，即卡斯尔在舞台上实现了不寻常的演出的构想。东英吉利州蓬勃发展的物质文化得到了特别充分的利用：“毅力城堡试图在其道德和视觉训练中，尝试使观众凝视不同的目光。实际上，游戏场所成为了观众的训练场-他们将学习如何观看的地方”（8）。

第1章“视觉，视觉和听众”介绍了Young关于视觉训练的主要论文。它在一系列小节中包括中世纪关于眼生物学和光学的著作的摘要，最有用的是利摩日（Peter of Limoges）的彼得，他将眼睛识别为道德器官（“必须教育眼睛以正确的方式看待，并且，通过观察正确的事物…………接受进一步的训练，”（10）。关于“外向与内向”（14-17）的部分做得特别好：Young描述了当时相反的信念，即视觉是进入眼中还是从眼中散发出来，然后证明了Castle的多用途阶段同时涵盖了双方。最后一节“成为观众”（18-22），通过观众观点的湿滑异质性进行思考。

第2章，“坚持不懈的城堡的演出”，首先是对在城堡手稿中幸存的抽象舞台图的现代解释的全面（并且是学院派批评的）综述，其中包括对David Parry 1979年地标性建筑的精湛的反颗粒分析。 PLS剧本的制作（32-33）。Young然后提供了自己的Castle分期图（35），Phil Kiel用清晰清晰的比例绘制了这张分期图，点了与Young的附录A相对应的编号点，这是对场景中明显视觉提示的系统逐个场景核对文本-​​从而绘制出她在本书其余部分中所引用的重构阶段。Young提出了“演员-听众融合”的决定性案例（即，以便演员和完全机动的观众在表演期间在同一空间中进行流畅和连续的互动），既可以作为现存中世纪戏剧的惯例（31），又可以作为Castle的重要组成部分。她列出了观众在表演期间可能占据或通过的各种身体位置的清单（36）。多多的游乐空间变成了“城堡镇”（41），与东英吉利的特定建筑特征产生了共鸣，因此“主塔……可以解释为唤起教区教堂的建设”（43）。本章分析了该剧的前三个场景（第157-274行），展示了Young的视觉模型对Castle文本中各种隐式舞台暗示的有效作用。既定是现存中世纪戏剧的惯例（31），也是城堡的重要组成部分。她列出了观众在表演期间可能占据或通过的各种身体位置的清单（36）。多多的游乐空间变成了“城堡镇”（41），与东英吉利的特定建筑特征产生了共鸣，因此“主塔……可以解释为唤起教区教堂的建设”（43）。本章分析了该剧的前三个场景（第157-274行），展示了Young的视觉模型对Castle文本中各种隐式舞台暗示的有效作用。既定是现存中世纪戏剧的惯例（31），也是城堡的重要组成部分。她列出了观众在表演期间可能占据或通过的各种身体位置的清单（36）。多多的游乐空间变成了“城堡镇”（41），与东英吉利的特定建筑特征产生了共鸣，因此“主塔……可以解释为唤起教区教堂的建设”（43）。本章分析了该剧的前三个场景（第157-274行），展示了Young的视觉模型对Castle文本中各种隐式舞台暗示的有效作用。她列出了观众在表演期间可能占据或通过的各种身体位置的清单（36）。多多的游乐空间变成了“城堡镇”（41），与东英吉利的特定建筑特征产生了共鸣，因此“主塔……可以解释为唤起教区教堂的建设”（43）。本章分析了该剧的前三个场景（第157-274行），展示了Young的视觉模型对Castle文本中各种隐式舞台暗示的有效作用。她列出了观众在表演期间可能占据或通过的各种身体位置的清单（36）。多多的游乐空间变成了“城堡镇”（41），与东英吉利的特定建筑特征产生了共鸣，因此“主塔……可以解释为唤起教区教堂的建设”（43）。本章分析了该剧的前三个场景（第157-274行），展示了Young的视觉模型对Castle文本中各种隐式舞台暗示的有效作用。

其余各章继续在城堡文本的其余部分进行运行注释。第3章“天使幻象”涵盖了城堡第275-1237行，为如何观看（相对于[End Page 300]前三个场景的负面例子）以及如何参与“共同幻象”提供了积极的经验教训（ 66）良好的社会，其中，观众的真实注视成为最显着的象征（Pride的Humanum指示）。