This is our backup site. Click here to visit our main site at MellenPress.com

Taylor, Jefferey H.

Dr. Jefferey H. Taylor is Associate Professor of English at Metropolitan State College of Denver. He received his Ph.D. in English from Southern Illinois University. Much of his research involves applying the Grid/Group theory of the anthropologist Mary Douglas to literature and rhetoric. He is also involved in a project undertaken by the International Boethius Society to catalog and analyze the many translations of Boethius’ Consolatio.

FOUR LEVELS OF MEANING IN THE YORK CYCLE OF MYSTERY PLAYS:
A Study in Medieval Allegory
2006 0-7734-5578-7
Explores the four levels of medieval allegory (literal, typological, tropological, and anagogical) in the York Cycle, arguing that these epistemological perceptions were not merely scholastic tools but an integral part of social cosmology. Analysis of the literal level demonstrates that these plays were culturally evocative, refuting their common description as didactic impositions. Analysis of the cycle as an extended anagoge explores the ritual level of medieval York’s self-defining discourse and the ritual compensation for the inability to directly possess God’s Eternity and the cultural past, the central sources of contemporary cultural meanings.