[See also: ANGLO-NORMAN LITERATURE; COUVIN, WATRIQUET
BRASSENIEX DE; DIDACTIC LITERATURE (OCCITAN); LAURENT
D’ORLÉANS; MATFRE ERMENGAUD; PHILIPPE DE NOVARE]
Brayer, Edith. “Contenu, structure et combinaisons du Miroir du monde et de la Somme le roi.”
Romania 79(1958):1–38, 433–70.
Langlois, Charles-Victor. La vie en France au moyen âge du XIIe au milieu du XIVe siècle. 4 vols.
Paris: Hachette, 1926–28, Vol. 4: La vie spirituelle.
Lefèvre, Yves. L’Elucidarium et les Lucidaires: contribution par l’histoire d’un texte a l’histoire
des croyances religieuses en France au moyen âge. Paris: Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises
d’Athènes et de Rome, 1955.
Trethewey, W.H. “The Seven Deadly Sins and the Devil’s Court in the Trinity College Cambridge
French Text of the Ancrene Riwle.” PMLA 65(1950):1233–46.
MORALITY PLAYS
. The morality play was one of the major dramatic genres in France during the late
Middle Ages. The term moralité, long used to designate a moral teaching or doctrine, was
applied in the 15th century to plays that taught moral lessons by means of allegory.
Though references to allegorical plays survive from the late 14th century, the earliest
extant moralité was staged at the Collège de Navarre in Paris in 1427. About seventy
morality plays written between that date and 1550 have come down to us.
A morality play may be generally defined as an allegorical drama in which the
protagonist is required to make a moral choice between good and evil. The plays,
however, vary greatly in scope and style. They range from fewer than 200 to more than
30,000 lines. A few have only two or three characters; the longest has more than eighty.
Some morality plays, like Homme Pécheur, present a single human character who
alternates in choosing between good and evil. Others, like Bien Advisé et Mal Advisé,
have dual protagonists, one good and one bad. Some plays, like Homme Juste et Homme
Mondain, present the human protagonists on the journey of life from birth to death and
confront them with a full range of personified virtues and vices to choose among. Others,
like the Blasphémateurs, treat only a single vice and cover a short period of time. These
four plays bear a superficial resemblance to the Passion plays in that they are quite
lengthy, probably requiring several days to perform, and their staging includes both
Heaven and Hell with the usual complement of angels and devils. They are essentially
different from the Passion plays, however, because their plots are allegorical fictions
rather than historical representations. The staging of Hell differs also in that the morality
plays show the torments of the sinners inside Lucifer’s lair rather than just the Hell-
mouth entrance as in the Passion plays. In Bien Advisé et Mal Advisé, for example, Hell is
depicted as a kitchen in the house of a great lord. Here, sinners are forced to partake of an
infernal banquet where every dish is liberally seasoned with sulfur and sauce d’enfer.
Some morality plays also bear a superficial resemblance to farces, either in the scenes
that provoke laughter or in those that portray the trickery and deception involved in a life
of sin. Here, too, though both genres represent fictional worlds, there is a fundamental
difference. Dull-witted farce characters are laughable because they are the butt of tricks
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