The poetic correlation between the Marian miracle and the Passion of Jesus in Codex Vatican, BAV, Pal.Lat. 1969

Résumé 0

The earliest Passion plays in the vernacular raise important questions about the dramatic genre and its possible means of performance. Reconsidering the question of the supposedly narrative verses that were inserted in a dialogic, octosyllabic form, this article examines the poetics of theatre by noting the material in which the Passion du Palatinus (Vatican, BAV, Pal. Lat. 1969) is recorded, and the internal literary context whereby it is preceded by the Marian miracle. As a result of its dramatic composition and its versifying structure, several of the work’s formal characteristics establish a parallel between the Passion play and romance, like the splitting of an octosyllabic couplet. This opens up a poetic parallel solidified in the character of Mary, which combines spiritual tradition and textual kinship with sacred subjects through the medium of romance cycles, where the Passion des jongleurs, the hypotext of the drama, makes itself known, and whose form marks the earliest composition of religious plays in the fourteenth century.