Revealing New Perspectives: Studies in Honor of Stephen G. Nichols
“The breadth of topic and learning in this celebratory volume are a fitting tribute to the remarkable Stephen Nichols. It would be difficult to imagine a more distinguished international array of colleagues, all writing in warm admiration of Nichols’s pioneering influence in manuscript studies, the visual arts, narrative, drama, and lyric in Italian, Iberian, German, Byzantine Greek, and Middle English as well as French. Kevin Brownlee and Marina S. Brownlee have assembled a vital testament to the ‘pathos and passion of philology’ in its most contemporary and medieval senses.”
Ardis Butterfield, John M. Schiff Professor of English; Professor of French and of Music, Yale University
“Revealing New Perspectives is a fitting tribute to the pioneering scholarship and ongoing innovation of Stephen Nichols. A volume that includes the fruit of long-standing reflections by some of today’s most eminent medievalists and exciting new work by a number of Nichols’ former students, Revealing New Perspectives offers rich reading for established scholars, and accessible pathways for students to some of medieval studies’ most compelling current issues, including the opportunities for investigation opened up by new technologies and the insights to be gained from engaging with the specificity and complex situatedness of each medieval work.”
Daisy Delogu, Professor of French, University of Chicago
“The first thing one notices upon perusing this book is the extraordinary list of contributors, a line-up that befits a celebration of Stephen G. Nichols’s impact on medieval studies. These engaging essays reflect the innovativeness and interdisciplinarity of their honoree’s approach, and, in keeping with the spirit of Nichols’s own work, open up intriguing possibilities for further exploration.”
Geri L. Smith, Professor of French and Chair, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida
“To honor medievalist and comparatist Stephen G. Nichols, this beautifully illustrated book assembles a roll call of skilled literary critics and historians from across the globe. In five sections, sixteen essays probe texts and topics in English, French, German, Iberian, Italian, and Occitan, from the Middle Ages through the mid-twentieth century. The striking breadth and depth— methodological, linguistic, and chronological— pay fitting tribute to Nichols, whose long and distinguished career has stretched the study of medieval poetry through the creation and application of (just for example) material and digital philology.”
Jan M. Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Harvard University
Revealing New Perspectives
This book is part of the Peter Lang Humanities list. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production. quality
New York • Berlin • Brussels • Lausanne • Oxford
PETER LANG
Revealing New Perspectives
Studies in Honor of Stephen G. Nichols
Edited by Kevin Brownlee and Marina S. Brownlee
PETER LANG
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Control Number: 2022013124
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
For Steve— with admiration and friendship.
evin Brownlee and M arina S. Brownlee
2. Philology and Poetry: The Petitcreiu Ekphrasis in Gottfried’s Tristan
M ar K C hinC a
3. Errant Glory: The Lineages of Peter Schlemihl
daniel h eller-r oazen
4. Syllogisms in Stone: Theophilus, Stephen, Abelard on the Walls of Notre-Dame de Paris
r howard Blo C h
5. Signs on the Wall: Painting History into Satire in the Roman de Fauvel of Paris, BnF MS fr. 146 105 n anC y F ree M an r eG alado
6. Burlesque Signs: Performance, Translation, and the Betrayal of Sexism 125 Jody e nder S
Lyric
7. François Villon and the Ages of Life 143 JaC queline C erquiG lini-toulet
8. The Alterity of Medieval Iberian Poetry 153 JoaC hi M Küpper
9. The Space in the Poem: Jordi de Sant Jordi, IX & XIV 185 a l Bert l loret
Alterity
10. Gaston Paris and Anatole France 207 M iC hel z in K
11. Fictionalizing Modernization Theory in Alejo Carpentier’s Los Pasos Perdidos: The Middle Ages in the Jungle 221 n adia a lt SC hul
12. Material and Spiritual Exchange: Examples from the Greek East and Latin West 241 M arina S. Brownlee
Reworkings
13. Boccaccio’s Decameron Novella I, 3
a ndrea S K a Blitz
14. Chaucer’s Early and Late Uses of the Two French Rose Authors 277 K evin Brownlee
15. Narrative and History in Paris, BnF, fr. 1553: The Roman de la Violette in the Context of a Late 13th-Century Anthology Manuscript 289 K athy K rauSe
16. Sapience, Prudence, and Theatricality: Preparing the Political Princess
Illustrations
Figure 4.1
Figure 4.5
Figure
Figure 4.7 Theophilus, Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure 4.8 Theophilus, Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure 4.9 Saint Stephen’s Portal, Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure
Figure 4.11 Saint Stephen’s Portal, Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure 4.13 Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure 4.14 Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure 4.15 Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure 4.16 Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure 4.17 Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure 4.18 Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Notre-Dame, Paris
Figure 5.1 Col. A, min. 52, Fortune, Fauvel, and Vaine Gloire; col. B, min. 55, Le Palais de la Cité; col. C, min. 56, Seine River Scene 107
Figure 5.2 (left) The Royal Motets; (right) col. A, min. 16, The Narrator Reading His Book; (right) col. B, min 17, Fauvel Enthroned 108
Figure 5.3 Fol. 12r, col. B, min. 18, Charnalité 110
Figure 5.4 Min. 61, Fauvel’s Wedding Night, The Chalivali 111
Figure 5.5 Min. 26, Fauvel in Colloquy with the Vices 112
Figure 5.6 (left) col. B; (right) col. A, Conditio / O Nacio / Mane; (left) col. C; (right) col. B, description of the wall painting
Figure 5.7 (left) The Creation of Eve; (right) Two Centaurs
Figure 5.8 Min. 46, Fortune, Fauvel, and Gilbert de Poitiers
Figure 6.1 Title page of the Discours facétieux des hommes qui font saller leurs femmes (1600)
Figure 15.1 Frontispiece, Paris, BnF, fr. 1553
Figure 15.2 Frontispiece, Richard de Saint Laurent’s De virtutibus (depicting Robert de Béthune, abbot of Clairmarias Abbey)
115
116
118
134
292
293
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the contributors to this volume for their scholarly essays and for their deep-felt collegial recognition of Steve’s achievements. We also thank Cecilia Hsu and Samantha Pious for their essential editorial assistance. Our special thanks to Philip Dunshea, Senior Acquisitions Editor for the Humanities at Peter Lang, and to the fine work of the production team.
Introduction
This volume of studies in honor of Stephen G. Nichols by colleagues, friends, and students is called Revealing New Perspectives because that is what his career exemplifies. As both the verb and adjective forms suggest, Steve has undeniably changed the course of medieval studies in ways that have had a global impact that continues to be profound.
We are delighted to have this opportunity to celebrate this world-class medievalist whom we have had the great good fortune to know since the late 1970s when he hired us at Dartmouth fresh out of grad school. Since then we have enjoyed a truly special friendship, and thanks to Steve’s vision, indomitable energy, and generosity, we have collaborated on many innovative projects.
After completing his undergraduate days at Dartmouth and his graduate degree at Yale, Steve taught briefly at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin before joining the faculty at Dartmouth for 18 years, at Penn for 7, and at Johns Hopkins for another 18. While building French, Romance Languages, and Comparative Literature departments and programs at these institutions and others, he was also invited to teach and provide administrative advice at many other prestigious institutions both in the U.S. and abroad.
The wealth of contributions that he has authored in countless books, articles, and colloquia, as well as digital projects, is admirably daunting, and to do it justice would require a book in itself. So instead we would like to focus briefly on a few of Steve’s publications that articulate some of his most transformative ideas.
Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (1983),1 winner of the James Russell Lowell Prize, showed how a medieval literary artifact must be analyzed along with the artistic, architectural, political, and historical currents that prevailed during the moment of the text’s production. By means of a reading of the Oxford Roland alongside art, hagiography, and history, Steve carefully charts how a historical figure can acquire the status of a martyr. Romanesque Signs illustrates the “multi-media literacy” at issue
in medieval textuality and the fact that secular and sacred elements and ideas oftentimes, far from being antithetical, reinforce one another constructively.
Another inspired and inspiring insight was launched with his “Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” in a volume of Speculum coedited with Howard Bloch entitled The New Philology. 2
Here Steve boldly proclaims that “In medieval studies, philology is the matrix from which all else stems” (1). What is revolutionary in this conception is that he invokes a new philology that “should seek to minimize the isolation between medieval studies and contemporary cognitive disciplines” (1). He has always been committed to not only contextualizing the intellectual and artistic production of the past in which a work was created but also considering it according to the current theoretical optics of our time, since each age has its own set of aesthetic and cultural realities and expectations.
It is this strong belief in the paradoxical “mutable stability” of the medieval text itself and of its readers over time that has also made Steve a trailblazer in exploring philology by means of digital tools. Paul Zumthor articulated the notion of mouvance, the instability particularly of anonymous medieval texts, and Bernard Cerquiglini focused on the variante, or varying articulations of vernacular works and their impact on textual authority. Yet Steve has taken these notions of textual instability and their implications for authorship and authority to a much higher level by creating a global network of possibilities for studying hundreds of texts and miniatures from many disciplinary angles. He has achieved this by spearheading the Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts, 3 an elegantly configured website that continues to grow and provide scholars with invaluable access to manuscripts worldwide.
Much more could be said of these and others of his visionary projects, but we will conclude by mentioning his 2016 monograph entitled From Parchment to Cyberspace: Medieval Literature in the Digital Age. 4 This book considers the exciting possibilities of digital tools for medieval book history and the ideological mentalities that differentiate digitized manuscripts from critical editions. It is the narrative of a personal adventure, as is clear from the book’s introduction entitled “Why I Wrote this Book, or Medieval Manuscripts Unchained.” And it is an adventure from which we have all been enriched.
Kevin Brownlee
Marina S. Brownlee
Notes
1. Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).
2. “Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65, no. 1 (1990): 1–10.
3. Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts , http://dlmm.library.jhu.edu/en/digitallibrary-of-medieval-manu scripts.
4. From Parchment to Cyberspace: Medieval Literature in the Digital Age (New York: Peter Lang, 2016).
Curriculum Vitae of Stephen G. Nichols
S tephen G. niC hol S , Ja M e S M. Beall p ro F e SS or e M eritu S o F F ren C h and hu M anitie S and r e S ear C h p ro F e SS or at John S hop K in S univer S ity
Education
Ph.D. Yale University (Comparative Literature), 1963.
B.A. Dartmouth College (cum laude), 1958.
Dissertation
Rhetorical Design in the Chanson de Geste (1963), dir. René Wellek.
Honors
Fellow, Medieval Academy of America, 1988.
Docteur ès Lettres Honoris Causa, University of Geneva, 1992.
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2013.
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation International Prize, Berlin/Cologne, 2009–10.
Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize Reprise, Berlin/Cologne, 2015–16.
Senior Fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory, 1988–2001.
Honorary Senior Fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory, 2001– present.
Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, French Ministry of Culture, 1999–2007.
Officier des Arts et Lettres, French Ministry of Culture, 2007.
Comité scientifique, Martin Bodmer Foundation, Geneva, 2015–19.
European Research Council (Brussels), Scientific Research Grants Selection Committee, Humanities Panel, 2008–15.
C urriC ulu M vitae o F S tephen G. niC
Appointments
Academic
James M. Beall Professor Emeritus, July 1, 2010– present.
Research Professor, July 1, 2010–16.
James M. Beall Professor of French and Humanities, Johns Hopkins University, 1992–2010.
Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor of Humanities, University of Pennsylvania, 1986– 92.
Professor of Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania, 1985– 86.
Edward Tuck Professor of French, Dartmouth College, 1984– 85.
Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College, 1968– 84.
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1965– 68.
Assistant Professor of French, University of California, Los Angeles, 1963– 65.
Administrative
Director of the School of Criticism and Theory, 1995–2000.
Chair, Department of German and Romance Languages, Johns Hopkins University, 2006– 09.
Chair, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, 1999–2006.
Chair, French Department, Johns Hopkins University, 1995– 99.
Sheridan Director (Interim), Johns Hopkins University Libraries, 1994– 95.
Director of the Louis Marin Center for the Study of French Classical and Contemporary Culture and Science, 1993–2009.
Director of Graduate Studies, French Department, Johns Hopkins University, 1992– 94.
Associate Dean for Humanities, University of Pennsylvania, 1988– 91.
Chair, Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania, 1987– 88.
Director of Graduate Studies (French), Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania, 1986– 87.
Chair, French and Italian, Dartmouth College, 1982– 85.
Academic Director, Dartmouth Institute for Executive Education, 1984– 85.
Visiting Professor, French, University of California, Irvine, 1985.
Faculty, Dartmouth Institute for Executive Education, 1980– 85.
Faculty, Comparative Literature Institute, New York University, 1979– 81, 1983.
Visiting Professor of Humanities, Arizona State University, 1981.
Visiting Professor of Humanities, Exeter University (England), 1980.
Visiting Professor of Humanities, Tel Aviv University, 1977.
Director, NEH Summer Seminar, Medieval Epic and Narrative, 1975, 1979.
Visiting Fellow, Medieval Institute, University of Toronto, 1971.
Grants, Awards
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Officer’s Grant for development of the Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts at Johns Hopkins University, March 1–July 31, 2013, $50,000.
Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Research Grant, October 2010–2013, $40,000.
Andrew W. Mellon Scholarly Communications Research Grant, “Innovative Scholarship for Digitized Medieval Manuscripts Delivered in an Interoperable Environment at Johns Hopkins University,” January 2011– March 2014, $346, 281.12.
Andrew Mellon Foundation Grant to continue the project for Digital Surrogates of the Roman de la Rose (with the Eisenhower Library of Johns Hopkins), 2006–2009, $719,000.
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Arnamagnæan Institute, University of Copenhagen, October 2003.
National Science Foundation Grant: “A Data Capture Framework and Testbed for Cultural Heritage Materials” (Rose Project), $497,827, 2002– 05.
ACLS Senior Fellowship, 2001– 02.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 1988.
James Russell Lowell Prize for the Outstanding Book, Modern Language Association, 1984.
NEH Senior Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, 1978–79.
American Council of Learned Societies Grant, 1968– 69.
American Philosophical Society Grants, 1968, 1977.
Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin, 1966– 67.
Samuel S. Fels Dissertation Fellowship, Yale University, 1962– 63.
Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, Yale University, 1959– 60.
Rotary Foundation Fellowship (France), 1958– 59.
Editorial Work
Editor, Medieval Interventions: New Light on Traditional Thinking, Peter Lang Publishing, 2014– present.
Co-Founder, Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Culture, hybrid e-journal and print journal published by the Johns Hopkins University Press (Project Muse), first issue, Spring 2012.
Co-Editor, Re-Thinking Theory: Critical Discourses in the Humanities , a book series published at the Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008–14.
Principal Investigator, Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts , Milton S. Eisenhower Library, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1996– present (URL: http:// dlmm.library.jhu.edu/en/digital-library-of-medieval-manu scripts/, accessed 1996).
Editor, MLN, French issue, 1995–2009.
Co-Editor, Parallax: Revisions of Culture and Society, a book series published at the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987–2009.
Editorial Board, Publication of the Modern Language Association, 1988– 89.
Advisory Committee, PMLA , 1980– 84.
Editorial Board, Medievalia , 1975– 95.
Editorial Board, Medievalia et Humanistica , 1974– 85.
Editorial Board, Olifant, 1974– 83.
Editorial Committee, PMLA , 1969–74.
Advisory Editor, Appleton- Century Crofts Old French Texts Series, 1963– 68.
Conferences Organized
Some 45 international conferences on such topics as “The Secret Life of Texts” (with Marina Brownlee); “Europe and the Mediterranean World” (with Andreas Kablitz and Joachim Küpper); “Digital Approaches to Medieval Manuscripts”; “The Present
