Aspects of Fifteenth-Century Society in the German Carnival Comedies Speculum Hominis

This study examines two fields of research: German society of the fifteenth century, and its carnival comedies. This is a detailed treatment of the four classes (peasants, urban middle class, clergy, and nobility), including such aspects as health, the self and its historicity, and general rules of conduct. The German carnival plays are valuable literary texts allowing insight into fifteenth-century life. This book examines most of the 127 comedies in the Keller collection, listed in one of the indices, and provides translations of all quotations into modern English. It also contains a synoptic tabulation of the Nürnberg plays, valuable to both drama specialists and medievalists.