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Podcast: New Books in Literary Studies
Episode: Kyle A. Thomas and Carol Symes, "The Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo): A New Verse Translation, Edition, and Commentary" (Medieval Institute Publications, 2023)
Description: The Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo) was composed around 1160 at the imperial Bavarian abbey of Tegernsee, at a critical point in the power-struggle between the papacy and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. In this new translation, Carol Symes provides the first full and faithful rendering of the play’s dynamic language, maintaining the meter, rhyme scheme, and stage directions of the Latin original and restoring the liturgical elements embedded in the text. Kyle A. Thomas, whose dedicated research provides the foundation for an analysis of the play’s broader contexts, also brings perspectives from the first fully staged modern product...