Centre for Medieval Studies
Dr Diana Wyatt
Diana Wyatt first came to York to study for her PhD, which was completed in 1983; the thesis was entitled ‘Performance and Ceremonial in Beverley before 1642: an annotated edition of local archival materials’. Since completing this edition –a sort of experimental prototype of a Records of Early English Drama collection – Diana has been engaged in documentary research into early performance, festive customs and entertainment and has published articles on, among other topics, the challenges of editing archival material, the usefulness of REED findings to lexicography, the various approaches to staging Noah’s ark in Yorkshire plays, and how to reconstruct plays from documentary evidence unsupported by texts. She has taught a range of undergraduate and adult courses, as Senior Lecturer in Literature at the Polytechnic of North London (now London Metropolitan University), and as a tutor in literature and drama at Oxford University, the WEA, and (until 2013) the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Oxford.
REED research and publications:
- co-editor, with Alexandra F Johnston, John R Elliott, Jr, and Alan H Nelson, of REED: Oxford (2004). 2 vols. University of Toronto Press and The British Library
- since 2013 she has been attached to the AHRC-funded project Records of Early English Drama North-East, based at Durham University, as editor of REED: Yorkshire East Riding (in progress).
Recent publications:
Print: ‘Play titles without play texts: what can they tell us, and how? An investigation of the evidence for the Beverley Corpus Christi play’, in Staging Scripture: Biblical Drama, 1350-1600, ed. by Peter Happe and Wim Husken, in Ludus 14, 2016.
Online: ‘Shakespeare: the Hull connection’, on the mysterious figure of John Jackson, Shakespeare’s London associate who may have come from Hull(!), for the BBC Shakespeare on Tour website.
Forthcoming 2018: ‘Elizabeth Nevile’s Wedding Entertainments: a Yorkshire family celebration in 1526 and its contexts’, in Medieval English Theatre, vol. 39.
Conference papers 2018:
‘The murderous mumming and other unexpected finds in the East Riding of Yorkshire’, in session ‘REED North-East: five years in’ at the Internaiotnal Congress on Medieval Studies, UWM, Kalamazoo (May 2018)
‘”Such fryvolous and vaine exercises”: the anomalous attitude of Hull city councils to visiting players’, at the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium on Performance, Ceremony and Display in Late Medieval Britain, July 2018.
