Patterns of Divine Comedy: A Study of Mediaeval English Drama

This is the first book to explore medieval dramatic comedy with an understanding of its real aims, generic coherence and structural patterns, and to apply to it the critical principle commonly found in any assessment of classicalor renaissance drama.
The miracle cycles and early morality plays are examined in the context of the medieval understanding of comedy, the contemporary allegorical vision of the world, and the prevailing theological conception of time. This approch explains how medieval comedy contains the material of history and tragedy while still remaining joyous. It also illuminates the place of laughter in divine comedy; in his extended treatment of this topicProfessor Jack shows how some comic techniques have been obscured by too resolutely Christian an interpretation, and how others were more subtly employed due to their spiritual context.