Dr. Imani Mosley | UNC Music Research Forum

“Over the lande the watter spreades”: The Fenland Mysticism of Medieval East Anglia and Britten’s Noye’s Fludde
Dr. Imani Mosley, University of Florida

Medieval East Anglia was home to extreme piety and religious mysticism, visible in its saints and holy sages; many of England’s most well-known devout figures were from and resided in East Anglia such as Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Unusually devout even for medieval England, East Anglians tied their devotion to their natural surroundings. East Anglia is primarily fen and marshland and its cultural relationship to its waters is also rooted in medieval religiosity. Holy people were protected by marshes and the floods that often encircled them. This made mystery play performances about Noah’s Flood incredibly popular and continued on in the region, isolated, into the twentieth century. Britten’s chamber opera Noye’s Fludde was inspired by both this tradition and Great North Sea Flood of 1953, whose aftermath saw a resurgence in Noah’s Flood retellings as well as veneration of saints and mystics long connected with the fenland. This talk, through medieval water studies, ecocriticism, and medieval dramatic performance, will examine the intersections of hyperlocal mysticism and religiosity rooted in water and marshland and musical and dramatic religious performance and how those intersections manifest in the medieval modernist work of Britten’s Noye’s Fludde.

The UNC Music Research Forum hosts invited lectures by distinguished music scholars from around the world and informal research presentations by members of our department and colleagues across campus. It serves as an intellectual hub for the department and is open to all. The Forum is held on the final Friday of each month during the semester from 3:30-5:00 pm in Person Recital Hall.