The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary

The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name.

 
       
         
    STUDIA DRAMATICA - Issue no. 1 / 2008  
         
  Article:   THE MYSTERY OF THE THREE HEBREWS IN THE BURNING FURNACE: ICONOGRAPHY AND HISTORY OF BYZANTINE THEATRE / LE MYSTÈRE DES ENFANTS DANS LA FOURNAISE: ICONOGRAPHIE ET HISTOIRE DU THÉÂTRE BYZANTIN .

Authors:  ȘTEFANA POP-CURȘEU.
 
       
         
  Abstract:  

The Mystery of the Three Hebrews in the Burning Furnace: Iconography and History of Byzantine Theatre. The very existence of a Byzantine religious theatre has always been a question mark for historians and a challenge for scholars interested in the tortuous relationship between the Christian Church and the scenic representations. This article proposes a synthetic view upon a liturgical play, called The Three Hebrews in the Burning Furnace, trying to understand its birth and its evolution in the Byzantine and the Post-Byzantine world. Being often used as an example, as well as a counter-example, in the struggle for proving the existence or the non-existence of a religious theatre in Byzantium, this extremely theatrical ceremony leads us to rethink the essence of theatre compared to rites and rituals and raises a rather complicated question: where are the borders of theatre to be drawn when theatricality overflows religious ceremonies? Byzantine and Russian traditions may offer an answer.

Keywords: religious theatre, ceremony, tradition

 
         
     
         
         
      Back to previous page