Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Literary Studies
Episode: Laura S. Lieber, "Staging the Sacred: Performance in Late Ancient Liturgical Poetry" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Description: Staging the Sacred: Performance in Late Ancient Liturgical Poetry (Oxford UP, 2023) examines the importance of Christian, Jewish, and Samaritan liturgical poetry from Late Antiquity through the lenses of performance, entertainment, and spectacle. Laura Lieber proposes an account of hymnody as a performative and theatrical genre, combining religious and theatrical studies to examine how performers creatively engaged their audiences, utilized different modes of performance, and created complex characters through their speeches.To truly consider performance and engage with these poems fully, Lieber urges readers to imagine the world beyond the page. While poetry and hymnody from Late Antiquity ar...