Overview
Ranging from France and Russia to America in the throes of world war and revolution, ""Medieval Roles for Modern Times"" investigates how critics and creative artists made medieval culture a part of their modern world through the-atrical role playing. On both the Left and the Right across Europe, partisans used medieval drama to express the ideological struggles dividing them. Helen Solterer explores the case of the Theophiliens, a Parisian youth group in the 1930s and '40s whose members included Roland Barthes and Alain Resnais. This troupe began performing the earliest dramas known in France - from the Adam play to the Mystery of the Passion - with surprising popular success. The book focuses on two key figures of the Theophilien troupe: founder Gustave Cohen and actor Moussa Abadi. While Cohen eventually went into exile in America, Abadi went underground in France. He established a network for refugee families and taught Jewish children role-playing skills to help them evade detection by the Gestapo. Abadi helped save hundreds of children from deportation, and his compelling story has never before been published.
Full Product Details
Author: Helen Solterer (Duke University)
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Imprint: Pennsylvania State University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 17.80cm
, Height: 2.80cm
, Length: 25.40cm
Weight: 0.880kg
ISBN: 9780271036144
ISBN 10: 0271036141
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 01 March 2010
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock 
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Table of Contents
Contents List of Illustrations Prologue 1. French Mysteries and Russian Miracles: Role-Playing, the Great War, and Bolshevik Revolution, 1905-1925 2. Gustave Cohen and the Drama of Belonging to France: Paris, 1933-1934 3. The Theophilien Troupe's Coming of Age: Paris, 1935-1939 4. Theatrical Double Jeopardy: Paris, 1939-1944 5. La France Eternelle in American Exile: New York, 1941-1944 6. Moussa Abadi and Playing for Life: Nice, 1943-1944 Epilogue Postwar Dramas: Paris, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, 1944-1952 Acknowledgments Index
Reviews
Solterer's fascinating book explores the power of the Middle Ages in the French imagination from the early twentieth century through two world wars. She does justice to the full complexity and contradictions of that power in an investigation that is supported by prodigious research and superb writing skills. This book shows how fascists, monarchists, and the Popular Front were all able to claim medieval spectacles as celebrations of their deeply incompatible views of the nation and the republic. - Dorothy Kaufmann, Clark University
""Solterer's fascinating book explores the power of the Middle Ages in the French imagination from the early twentieth century through two world wars. She does justice to the full complexity and contradictions of that power in an investigation that is supported by prodigious research and superb writing skills. This book shows how fascists, monarchists, and the Popular Front were all able to claim medieval spectacles as celebrations of their deeply incompatible views of the nation and the republic."" - Dorothy Kaufmann, Clark University""
Author Information
Helen Solterer is Associate Professor of French at Duke University. She is the author of The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture (1995).
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