ABSTRACT
Although this book is primarily concerned with the interpretation of early modern drama, it is informed by another kind of hermeneutic problem and by the author's work with Indigenous peoples and especially survivors of Canadian Indian Residential Schools. Experience and training have made it difficult for many in the highly literate environment of the academy to understand the practice and knowledge of communities that are traditionally, and often functionally, primarily oral, or the consequences of their erasure. The resulting misapprehensions have impeded the development of communications across cultural boundaries, as well as understanding across temporal ones. They have obscured perception of critical aspects of the development of early modern drama strongly influenced by oral practices, even as literate practices were expanding. While recent work in early modern studies has sought to widen the range of the cultural perspectives, the habituation of scholars to writing has continued to make oral practices, both now and in the past, a challenge to perception.
