Drawing together well-known and less familiar works from English and German writers and
focusing on references to clothing Dutton and Kirakosian argue for important connections
between medieval visions and medieval plays. Reading across genres and languages with
particular attention on writing by women and on the figure of Mary Magdalen the authors
explore the dynamic power of clothing as a catalyst for imaginative processes in writers
readers and spectators alike.The authors draw connections between visions and plays that may be
initially surprising given the social nature of theatre that contrasts with the intensely
personal and subjective nature of the visionary experience. While an audience provides
collective witness to a play the visionary almost by definition sees something that others
do not: the visionary makes an audience of one for a drama presented - at least according to
the believer - by God. By contrast in the visionary text the visionary seeks to re-present her
vision in literary form for a wider audience of readers and to stir their belief in it.
Julian of Norwich writes for all her 'even-christians' an account of the 'Revelation of Love'
that God gave her in 'sixteen shewinges': her visionary text may thus be compared with for
example the Easter play from Redentin that creates for its spectator a 'series of beautiful
devotional images' (gar meng schön andächtig figur) that should each be contemplated by the
viewer as a 'showing' (zeigen). While the play text may be predominantly pragmatic and the
visionary text descriptive in both genres the act of seeing is to the fore - and clothing as
the authors show is particularly richly 'seen'.
