Jan M. Ziolkowski

Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin Jan M Ziolkowski

Explores the links between tales preserved in Latin from the Middle Ages and "classic" fairy tales from the collections of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen

The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies

Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales

Mary Jean Carruthers

Remarque Professor of Literature (Emeritus) Mary Carruthers

"A volume that will interest a wide spectrum of readers."--Patrick Geary, University of California, Los Angeles

An Anthology of Texts and Pictures

The Medieval Craft of Memory

Lions, goats, wolves, and flies ululate (and buzz) in this work, dispelling views of medieval Latin poetry as staid or dull. Asserting that the poems offer more than an entree to the Roman de Renart, Ziolkowski (medieval Latin, comparative literature; Harvard U.) explores their likely inspirations, and surveys what is known and speculated about them. He appends his own translations of 32 poems spanning the 10th through 12th centuries. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750-1150

Talking Animals

The Meaning of Grammar to a Twelfth-century Intellectual

Alan of Lille's Grammar of Sex

In this two-part anthology, Jan M. Ziolkowski builds on themes uncovered in his earlier The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity. Here he focuses particularly on the performing arts. Part one contextualises Our Lady’s Tumbler, a French poem of the late 1230s, by comparing it with episodes in the Bible and miracles in a wide variety of medieval European sources. It relates this material to analogues and folklore across the ages from, among others, Persian, Jewish and Hungarian cultures. Part two scrutinizes the reception and impact of the poem with reference to modern European and American literature, including works by the Nobel prize-winner Anatole France, professor-poet Katharine Lee Bates, philosopher-historian Henry Adams and poet W.H. Auden. This innovative collection of sources introduces readers to many previously untranslated texts, and invites them to explore the journey of Our Lady’s Tumbler across both sides of the Atlantic. Reading the Juggler of Notre Dame: Medieval Miracles and Modern Remakings will benefit scholars and students alike. The short introductions and numerous annotations shed light on unusual beliefs and practices of the past, making the readings accessible to anyone with an interest in the arts and an openness to the Middle Ages.

Medieval Miracles and Modern Remakings

Reading the Juggler of Notre Dame

This book studies an extraordinary Latin dialogue with a woman called Jezebel, who is flamboyantly vulgar and irreverent. Ziolkowski first explores medieval attitudes toward the biblical Jezebel. He then sets the poem in the cultural milieu of eleventh-century Normandy. The book contains an edition, a translation, and a copious commentary.

A Norman Latin Poem of the Early Eleventh Century

Jezebel

Mary Carruthers

"A volume that will interest a wide spectrum of readers."—Patrick Geary, University of California, Los Angeles

Nota Bene explores a little-known juxtaposition of verbal text and musical notation in the Middle Ages. This particular intersection deserves attention from those interested in music, the reception of classical Latin literature, the history of education, and the development of punctuation. Between the late tenth century and the late twelfth century, the musical notation known as neumes was provided in dozens of manuscripts for, among other texts, a number of Horace's Odes as well as for sections of epics by Lucan, Statius, and Vergil. These materials constitute a paradoxical corpus of "classical poems in plainchant" that complicates our views of both how students learned Latin and what was being sung in an era most often associated with Gregorian chant. The book wrestles first with the literary-historical puzzle of why certain passages and not others were "neumed" and later with the ethnomusicological riddles of how, where, when, and by whom the passages were sung.

Reading Classics and Writing Melodies in the Early Middle Ages

Nota Bene

As the Byzantinist Ihor &Šev&_enko once observed, &"Philology is constituting and interpreting the texts that have come down to us. It is a narrow thing, but without it nothing else is possible.&" This definition accords with Saussure's succinct description of the mission of philology: &"especially to correct, interpret, and comment upon the texts.&" Philology is not just a grand etymological or lexicographical enterprise. It also involves restoring to works as much of their original life and nuances as we can manage. To read the written records of bygone civilizations correctly requires knowledge of cultural history in a broad sense: of folklore, legends, laws, and customs. Philology also encompasses the forms in which texts express their messages, and thus it includes stylistics, metrics, and similar studies. On Philology brings together the papers delivered at a 1988 conference at Harvard University's Center for Literary and Cultural Studies. The topic &"What is Philology?&" drew an interdisciplinary audience whose main fields of research ran the gamut from ancient Indo-European languages to African-American literature, signaling a certain sense of urgency about a seemingly narrow subject. These papers reveal that the role of philology is more important than ever. At a time when literature in printed form has taken a back seat to television, film, and music, it is crucial that scholars be able to articulate why students and colleagues should care about the books with which they work. Just as knowledge will be lost if philological standards decline, so too will fields of study die if their representatives cannot find meaning for today's readers. On Philology will be of interest not only to students of philology but also to anyone working in the fields of hermeneutics, literature, and communication.

On Philology

Solomon and Marcolf: Vernacular Traditions offers an array of relevant texts, in English for the first time, that display the mysteries of the "rogue biography" that is Solomon and Marcolf. The astonishingly varied and fascinating pieces have been translated from medieval and early modern French, Russian, German, Icelandic, Danish, and Italian.

Vernacular Traditions

Solomon and Marcolf

In antiquity and the Middle Ages, memory was a craft, and certain actions and tools were thought to be necessary for its creation and recollection. Until now, however, many of the most important visual and textual sources on the topic have remained untranslated or otherwise difficult to consult. Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski bring together the texts and visual images from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries that are central to an understanding of memory and memory technique. These sources are now made available for a wider audience of students of medieval and early modern history and culture and readers with an interest in memory, mnemonics, and the synergy of text and image. The art of memory was most importantly associated in the Middle Ages with composition, and those who practiced the craft used it to make new prayers, sermons, pictures, and music. The mixing of visual and verbal media was commonplace throughout medieval cultures: pictures contained visual puns, words were often verbal paintings, and both were used equally as tools for making thoughts. The ability to create pictures in one's own mind was essential to medieval cognitive technique and imagination, and the intensely pictorial and affective qualities of medieval art and literature were generative, creative devices in themselves.

Dante put Muhammad in one of the lowest circles of Hell. At the same time, the medieval Christian poet placed several Islamic philosophers much more honorably in Limbo. Furthermore, it has long been suggested that for much of the basic framework of the Divine Comedy Dante was indebted to apocryphal traditions about a “night journey” taken by Muhammad. Dante scholars have increasingly returned to the question of Islam to explore the often surprising encounters among religious traditions that the Middle Ages afforded. This collection of essays works through what was known of the Qur’an and of Islamic philosophy and science in Dante’s day and explores the bases for Dante’s images of Muhammad and Ali. It further compels us to look at key instances of engagement among Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

Dante and Islam

This ambitious and vivid study in six volumes explores the journey of a single, electrifying story, from its first incarnation in a medieval French poem through its prolific rebirth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Juggler of Notre Dame tells how an entertainer abandons the world to join a monastery, but is suspected of blasphemy after dancing his devotion before a statue of the Madonna in the crypt; he is saved when the statue, delighted by his skill, miraculously comes to life. Jan Ziolkowski tracks the poem from its medieval roots to its rediscovery in late nineteenth-century Paris, before its translation into English in Britain and the United States. The visual influence of the tale on Gothic revivalism and vice versa in America is carefully documented with lavish and inventive illustrations, and Ziolkowski concludes with an examination of the explosion of interest in The Juggler of Notre Dame in the twentieth century and its place in mass culture today. In this volume Jan Ziolkowski follows the juggler of Notre Dame as he cavorts through new media, including radio, television, and film, becoming closely associated with Christmas and embedded in children’s literature. Presented with great clarity and simplicity, Ziolkowski's work is accessible to the general reader, while its many new discoveries will be valuable to academics in such fields and disciplines as medieval studies, medievalism, philology, literary history, art history, folklore, performance studies, and reception studies.

Volume 5: Tumbling into the Twentieth Century

The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity

Bringing together cartography, history, philosophy, philology, and other disciplines,Dante and the Greeks taps into the knowledge of scholars of the medieval West, Byzantium, and Dante. Essays discuss the presence of ancient Greek poetry, philosophy, and science in Dante's writings, as well as the Greek characters who populate his works.

Dante and the Greeks

Controversy has raged about Christian perspectives on Muslims in Dante's Divine Comedy. One extreme emphasizes "clash of civilizations," another peaceful cohabitation. Dante's fit within orientalism remains debated. Sifting the issues requires investigating the Qur'an and Islamic learning, Dante's images of Muhammad, and engagement among Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Italy.

This ambitious and vivid study in six volumes explores the journey of a single, electrifying story, from its first incarnation in a medieval French poem through its prolific rebirth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Juggler of Notre Dame tells how an entertainer abandons the world to join a monastery, but is suspected of blasphemy after dancing his devotion before a statue of the Madonna in the crypt; he is saved when the statue, delighted by his skill, miraculously comes to life. Jan Ziolkowski tracks the poem from its medieval roots to its rediscovery in late nineteenth-century Paris, before its translation into English in Britain and the United States. The visual influence of the tale on Gothic revivalism and vice versa in America is carefully documented with lavish and inventive illustrations, and Ziolkowski concludes with an examination of the explosion of interest in The Juggler of Notre Dame in the twentieth century and its place in mass culture today. Volume 4 examines the famous Le jongleur de Notre Dame by the French composer Jules Massenet, which took Europe by storm after premiering in 1902 and then crossed the Atlantic to the impresario Oscar Hammerstein and the diva Mary Garden, who gave the opera new legs as a female juggler. Presented with great clarity and simplicity, Ziolkowski's work is accessible to the general reader, while its many new discoveries will be valuable to academics in such fields and disciplines as medieval studies, medievalism, philology, literary history, art history, folklore, performance studies, and reception studies.

Volume 4: Picture That: Making a Show of the Jongleur

The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity.

This ambitious and vivid study in six volumes explores the journey of a single, electrifying story, from its first incarnation in a medieval French poem through its prolific rebirth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Juggler of Notre Dame tells how an entertainer abandons the world to join a monastery, but is suspected of blasphemy after dancing his devotion before a statue of the Madonna in the crypt; he is saved when the statue, delighted by his skill, miraculously comes to life. Jan Ziolkowski tracks the poem from its medieval roots to its rediscovery in late nineteenth-century Paris, before its translation into English in Britain and the United States. The visual influence of the tale on Gothic revivalism and vice versa in America is carefully documented with lavish and inventive illustrations, and Ziolkowski concludes with an examination of the explosion of interest in The Juggler of Notre Dame in the twentieth century and its place in mass culture today. The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity is a rich case study for the reception of the Middle Ages in modernity. Spanning centuries and continents, the medieval period is understood through the lens of its (post)modern reception in Europe and America. Profound connections between the verbal and the visual are illustrated by a rich trove of images, including book illustrations, stained glass, postage stamps, architecture, and Christmas cards. Presented with great clarity and simplicity, Ziolkowski's work is accessible to the general reader, while its many new discoveries will be valuable to academics in such fields and disciplines as medieval studies, medievalism, philology, literary history, art history, folklore, performance studies, and reception studies.

Volume 1: The Middle Ages

This ambitious and vivid study in six volumes explores the journey of a single, electrifying story, from its first incarnation in a medieval French poem through its prolific rebirth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Juggler of Notre Dame tells how an entertainer abandons the world to join a monastery, but is suspected of blasphemy after dancing his devotion before a statue of the Madonna in the crypt; he is saved when the statue, delighted by his skill, miraculously comes to life. Jan Ziolkowski tracks the poem from its medieval roots to its rediscovery in late nineteenth-century Paris, before its translation into English in Britain and the United States. The visual influence of the tale on Gothic revivalism and vice versa in America is carefully documented with lavish and inventive illustrations, and Ziolkowski concludes with an examination of the explosion of interest in The Juggler of Notre Dame in the twentieth century and its place in mass culture today. In this concluding volume, Ziolkowski explores the popularity of The Juggler of Notre Dame from the 1930s through the Second World War, especially in the Allied Resistance. Its popularity in the United States was subsequently maintained by figures as diverse as Tony Curtis and W. H. Auden, and although recently the story and medievalism have lost ground, the future of both holds promise. Presented with great clarity and simplicity, Ziolkowski's work is accessible to the general reader, while its many new discoveries will be valuable to academics in such fields and disciplines as medieval studies, medievalism, philology, literary history, art history, folklore, performance studies, and reception studies.

Jan M. Ziolkowski

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