Clifford Flanigan (August 2, 1941 – October 27, 1993) was an American professor of English, medievalist, and theatre historian.
Charles Clifford Flanigan grew up as an only child in Baltimore, Maryland, in a family descended from German and Irish immigrants.
When, in 1973, he completed his dissertation on the origins of liturgical drama, he was already employed as a junior professor at Indiana University Bloomington's program in Comparative Literature.
Flanigan's research was considered by many medievalist colleagues of the time to be unconventional and progressive, because he applied ideas from recent Critical Theory to medieval topics.
[4] As a dramaturg, director, and actor, Flanigan was devoted to staging medieval dramas, for instance the Passion Play from the Carmina Burana, which was performed in Bloomington and New York City.