Lavan, Eleanor, “The stage of the nation in medieval Cornwall”, in: Philip Payton (ed.), Cornish studies 18, 18, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010. 162–178.
- article in collection
Using medieval Cornish drama and sport as our exempla, we can show that, for living communities, cultural differences can often stand as more relevant markers of space, and more powerful stimulants of a sense of local allegiance, than mapped or geographical boundaries. It will be argued here that languages generally, and the Cornish language specifically, offer the script to which local-national identity runs; this argument is supported by this article's focal text, the Cornish Ordinalia. Loosely dated as a fourteenth or early fifteenth-century drama, this religious cycle is of obvious dialectical difference from comparable plays in medieval vernacular English. Still unsettled is the academic debate that attempts to reason the author's choice of Middle Cornish, the predominant language of the text's composition. Alongside this instant distinction from contemporary texts, the allusions to local place-names, landscapes and mythologies create a definitively Cornish biblical narrative, which should be presented and their purpose interrogated. It is also important to consider the physical as well as verbal realm of culture. Academic research and archaeological activity have uncovered the playing-places of medieval Cornwall, once used commonly by both dramatic and athletic practitioners. Extending cultural performance beyond words, action through sporting traditions can be understood as a literal, physical embodiment of local identity.
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