Hinged Bodies and Hidden Hosts: The Prioress’s Tale and Easter at Barking Abbey

ABSTRACT

Bringing the Prioress’s Tale into discussion with its Vernon analogue, “The Chorister,” this article compares the movements and transformations of these poems’ boy martyrs to the “puppetry” of the Barking Abbey Easter rites. As previous scholars have suggested, the Barking nuns represented Christ’s death and resurrection using a so-called movable sculpture of Christ crucified, a hinged corpus that their priests removed from the cross and buried. The puppeteering of this object at the hands of the clergy and the dramatic removal of the Eucharist from the tomb on Easter Sunday offer a fresh perspective on the affective workings of these boy martyr poems.