MRDS Session 1
Friday, December 29, 8:30-9:45 a.m.
Toronto, Hyatt Regency Chicago
Teaching Early Drama With Modern Technology: The Message and the Media
Presiding, Sally-Beth MacLean, Univ. of Toronto, Saint George Campus;
Geoffrey Rockwell, McMaster Univ.
MRDS Session 2
Saturday, December 30, 10:15-11:30 a.m.
Columbian, Hyatt Regency Chicago
Staging the Medieval Body: Modern Perspectives
Presiding, Jody Enders, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara
Respondent: Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford Univ.
EVERYMAN in Chicago
Everyman in Chicago is produced by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and directed by Frank Galati, Tony Award winner for Steppenwolf's production of The Grapes of Wrath. The Everyman show opened on November 22 and plays through January 14. During the week of the MLA convention there will be performances Tuesday, December 26, Wednesday, December 27, Thursday, December 28, and Friday, December 29 at 8 p.m., with performances at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturday the 30th, and 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sunday the 31st. Tickets are $30.00 on weeknights and $35 on Fridays and Saturdays. Call (312) 335-1650 for tickets. The production features the Windy City Gay Choir, singing Gregorian Chant.
May 8-12, 1996
MRDS Kalamazoo Program—1996
Details in Spring Newsletter
Crossdressing on the Medieval Stage
Organized by Robert Clark
Drama Between the Acts
Organized by John Coldewey
Hrotsvit: Dramatic Works
Organized by Margaret Pappano
Theater, Dance, & Spectacle in the New World
Organized by Max Harris
May 14, 1995; Fetzer Patio, 5:30 p.m.
Larry Clopper, presiding
The minutes were approved as written.
Announcements:
Publishers have finally announced that the special issue of Mediaevalia is on its way. It is still possible to order copies at 20% off.
Two other collections of essays are well underway. Columbia University Press has agreed to publish a volume dedicated to Martin Stevens, edited by Lawrence M. Clopper, James J. Paxson, and Sylvia Tomasch. The second collection is a tribute to David Bevington.
A Call for Papers was circulated for the Sixth Annual Columbia Medieval Guild Conference on "Performance, Ritual, and Spectacle in the Middle Ages."
According to the MLA, the only possible way to provide for the computer needs of the upcoming session on Teaching Early Drama with Modern Technology will be to rent the equipment which will cost $3200 for the one-hour session. Other options are being considered.
A round of applause and a vote of thanks was offered to Margaret Grasso for her untiring efforts to assist in the production of the MRDS newsletter and other administrative matters. A suitable gift will be offered as a token of our appreciation.
The MLA has required that MRDS provide documentation for renewal of our status as an Allied Organization. These materials have been provided and we await confirmation of our renewal.
There was discussion and a ratifying vote on the emendation to the MRDS Constitution stipulating that the annual meeting be held in Kalamazoo. Concerns regarding the emendation included the implications of moving to a venue that favors medieval studies.
Topics for future sessions. It was voted to accept the following topics and organizers for sessions at future meetings (subsequently modified):
Kalamazoo 1996:
Between the Acts (John Coldewey)
Cross Dressing in Drama (Bob Clark)
Hrotswitha (Margaret Pappano)
MLA 1996:
New World Theatre (Max Harris)
From Mankind to Marlow: 30 Years Later (...)
Other topics proposed for later meetings include:
Law and Drama (Elza Tiner)
Is there Life after Bakhtin (Ralph Blasting)
The German-Low Countries Connection (John Cartwright)
Drama and Confraternities (Konrad Eisenbichler)
Boy's Drama in the Renaissance (David Bevington)
Intertextual Drama: Connections (...)
Regional Traveling Companies (...)
Staging the Medieval Body (...)
Spectators and Genre (...)
Upcoming Events: SITM program in Toronto, August 2-7, 1995.
Nomination of new officers. Two new Councilmembers need to be chosen. Nominees include Ralph Blasting, John Coldewey, Theresa Coletti, and Shirley Carnahan. The slate of candidates was approved by majority vote.
Jesse Hurlbut made available instructions on how to access electronic resources: Perform and Dscriptorium.
Milla Riggio announced that a directory of members with addresses and e-mail will be prepared and distributed.
—Respectfully Submitted,
Jesse D. Hurlbut
Please consider offering a paper in one of our two excellent sessions at MLA 1996. Send titles and abstracts by February 15, 1996 as directed below.
Session 1. Crossdressing in the Theater of Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
Organizer: Robert Clark, Kansas State University
This session proposes to examine the phenomenon of cross-dressing as it was practiced or
represented in the theater of medieval and early modern Europe. Crossdressing was the standard
practice in the medieval theater of much of Europe, but since it has always been accepted
as "standard," it has also been seen as unproblematic. In Renaissance drama studies, on the
other hand, crossdressing has received extensive scrutiny, but this scholarship, for all its
critical insightfulness, has invariably turned a blind eye to the continuity of crossdressing
as dramatic practice. Here, the assumption has been that crossdressing became problematic
only with the advent of early modern theater. The aim of the session is to bring
together work on theatrical crossdressing from a wide spectrum bridging the artificial
medieval-Renaissance divide. Papers may be on aspects of performance or production in
different kinds of theater (liturgical, religious, or comic) or on the motif of crossdressing
as a dramatic device within particular plays. In any case, the organizers will strive to
include a diversity of approaches providing fresh theoretical thinking on this complex and
multifaceted phenomenon.
Session 2. From Mankind to Marlow: 30 Years Later
A session searching for its leader. The minutes—alas—did not record a convener for
this session. Would the designee please speak up! If we don't hear from you by January 1,
we'll appoint a new leader. Meanwhile, send titles and abstracts to Milla Riggio, English
Dept., Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106.
Papers are invited on any aspect of Renaissance studies and on the following special topics:
Send inquiries to the program chair, James Baumlin, Department of English, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, MO 65804 (417) 831-6585; e-mail mfb137f@vma.smsu.edu. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 1995.
ACMRS at Arizona State University invites papers for its second annual interdisciplinary conference on Medieval and Renaissance studies on the general topic of problems and new directions in the study of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Possible session topics include, but are not restricted to:
While we want a broad spectrum of area studies represented, we are particularly interested in papers on Scandinavian, Baltic/East European, Judaic, and Mediterranean Studies. There will also be a number of opening sessions.
Papers accepted for sessions on Mediterranean Studies will have passed the first level of review for publication in the journal of Mediterranean Studies, sponsored by the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, the Medieval and Renaissance Colloquium (MARC) at the University of Michigan, and ACMRS at Arizona State University.
The conference will be held at the Radisson Mission Palms Hotel, two blocks from the ASU campus in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.
Proposals for sessions and detailed abstracts or complete papers were accepted beginning July 1, 1995. The deadline was November 1, 1995.
For more information, contact Robert E. Bjork, Director, ACMRS, Arizona State University, Box 872301, Tempe, AZ 85287-2301. Email: atreb@asuvm.inre.asu.edu. Phone: (602) 965-5900; Fax: (602) 965-1681.
**THEATRE FOR A NEW AGE**
The 1996 Convention will be held at the Radisson Plaza Hotel at Mark Center, Alexandria, VA on February 16, 17, and 18, 1996.
ECTC is looking for panels, workshops, performances, papers, or presentations that are in any area of theatre; production, performance, history, criticism, or theory.
For an application and further information, please contact:
Margret M. Tocci, Program Chair
6133 Redwood Lane
Alexandria, VA 22310
Phone: (703) 960-7713
Fax: (703) 317-0568
ECTC is a regional organization that includes the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Our members are from all areas of the theatre; high school, college/university, community, professional, and special interest area.
PROPOSED sessions for the Thirty-second Congress in 1997 are subject to approval by The Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University. SHAKESPEARE AT KALAMAZOO has organized programs at the International Congress since 1989.
Session 1. Domesticity and the Unruly Woman: Marriage and Gender Issues in
Shakespeare
This panel session invites scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss gender issues
in the late medieval and early modern periods. Panelists will focus their discussion on how
the diverse voices of Shakespeare's women, particularly the disruptive or otherwise "unruly"
women, reflect, undermine, or transcend gender, class, and societal expectations and convey
a feminist ideology that developed over the late medieval and early modern periods. Topics for
this panel may include the family circle, domestic relations, class structure, marriage,
kinships, domestic settings, and service. To enable greater participation in this session,
panel presentations should be no longer than 10 minutes.
Session 2. Mapping Shakespeare
This session provides an interdisciplinary forum in which to explore aspects of social and
political geography as well as various geographical places Shakespeare mentions in his works.
Papers might discuss travel, maps, cityscapes, locales, the pastoral, the social landscape,
among other topics that address a Renaissance sense of place emerging from the Medieval
world view. This session invites scholars in all disciplines including art, history, music,
folklore, and philosophy as well as literature.
**The Congress on Medieval Studies provides a unique milieu or an exchange of insights on Shakespeare's place in the continuum of culture. The following rules corresponding to those established by the Board of the Medieval Institute should be strictly adhered to if you intend to submit an abstract:
All Abstracts must include the following information at the top of the front page: title of paper; name of author; complete mailing address, including e-mail and fax if available; institutional affiliation, if any, of the author; confirmation of the 10-minute or 20-minute reading time length; statement of need (or no need) for audio-visual equipment.
Abstracts or papers must be typed, double-spaced, not more than 300 words long, and must clearly indicate the paper's thesis, methodology, and conclusions. Accepted abstracts will be submitted for publication to the Shakespeare Newsletter or other periodical. Publication of abstracts does not preclude publication of complete papers.
THREE HARD COPIES OF ABSTRACTS or, PREFERABLY, COMPLETED PAPERS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY SEPTEMBER 1, 1996. Abstracts or papers submitted after that deadline cannot be considered. Three members of the governing board of SHAKESPEARE AT KALAMAZOO will select the papers. E-mail submission is encouraged to facilitate transmission among the selection panel.
Submission of an abstract or papers will be considered agreement by the author to attend the Congress if the paper is accepted.
It is understood that papers submitted will be essentially new and have not been presented in public before.
Graduate students who wish to submit an abstract should consult their advisors about the suitability of their work and the regulations (if any) of their university.
Papers submitted may not require more than 10 MINUTES OF READING TIME for Session 1 or 20 MINUTES OF READING TIME for Session 2, including slides, films, or other audio-visual support. Session leaders will hold papers strictly to this limit to facilitate discussion.
In order to allow as many scholars to participate in the program as possible, ONE ABSTRACT ONLY should be submitted to The Thirty-Second Congress.
Send inquiries, abstracts, and papers to Megan Lloyd, Department of English, University of Rio Grande, Rio Grande, Ohio 45674. Phone: (614) 245-7419 / Fax: (614) 245-7432 / E-mail: mlloyd@urgrgcc.edu
The Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota is organizing a conference on The Medieval Practice of Space for April 10-13, 1997. The conference organizers are Barbara Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka. Participants will include Donnalee Dox, Tom Conley, Michael Camille, Jody Enders, Kathleen Biddick, Andrzej Piotrowski, Valerie I.J. Flint, and Michal Kobialka.
The medieval uses and definitions of space are becoming increasingly important as a subject matter as well as an analytical tool for a number of different disciplines studying the Middle Ages. In the area of cartography, for instance, it is quite apparent that medieval maps divide space differently than modern ones in that Jerusalem is often put at the center of the map or the routes of pilgrimages are seen as linear rather than following the terrain. In cathedrals, the use of the internal space changed frequently with, perhaps, the most dramatic being the erection of rood screens that divided the congregation from the choir, clergy, and high altar. It is not only the use of space, however, that is engaging medievalists in a reevaluation of how medieval people thought and lived. The realization that people divided space by gender is becoming more apparent: women occupied rooms, houses, quarters of fields, oceans, cities, battles, and so on. Space carried meanings. The king's peace in England, for instance, originally meant the area around his person, but as his legal authority expanded, breaking the king's peace meant breaking one of the king's laws. Not only did people create uses for space, but having done so, that space could influence the behavior of those who occupied it; defining space tended to define behavior within it.
The title of the conference draws attention to the shifting uses of space and lack of stability of the concepts of space during the Middle Ages. The practice of space encompasses its uses, but can also be abstracted in concepts such as mental, physical, social, political, real, or imaginary. Some of the theoretical thinking about space has come from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, de Certeau, Foucault, Zumthor, Le Mesure du Mond, and Yi-Fu Tuan, Topaphilia. The conference topics that we will be looking at include:
Contact:
Jody Enders
Associate Professor of French
Dept. of French and Italian, UCSB
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
(805) 893-3111/4696 or (805) 569-3943
fax: (805) 893-8826; email:
jenders@humanitas.ucsb.edu
A review:
Ben Jonson: Text, History, Performance
Leeds, Yorkshire, July 5-7, 1995
This was as well-organized and coherent a conference as I have ever participated in. The credit belongs to Martin Butler at Leeds and Ian Donaldson at King's College, Cambridge (as of this summer). Wishing to pursue their proposal to edit all the works of Ben Jonson for Oxford University Press, as a replacement for the standard edition of the works by C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, Butler and Donaldson gathered together a group of about fifty scholars from around the world. A previous international assembly at Oxford in the summer of 1993 had outlined the problems and started the editors on their way. This summer's conference was designed as a constitution and a working session.
Discussion was not narrowly focused on the edition itself. Instead, those who presented papers looked at all aspects of Jonson's work from the perspective of the mid 1990s. We heard one paper at a time, and followed up on each with extensive discussion that involved most of those who were attending. David Gants, a fellow of the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia, led off with a report on "The Printing, Proofing, and Press-Correction of the 1616 Folio Workes of Benjamin Jonson," demonstrating how Jonson's involvement in proof correction was especially intense at first, with Every Man Out of His Humour, and then became progressively sporadic as time went on. Mark Bland, a student of Don McKensie at Oxford, went on to show, in his report on "William Stansby and the Printing of Jonson's Workes 1615-16," that Jonson's attention to the esthetic dimension of the printed page is deeply informative of his artistic intent—and aspect lost in most modern editions.
In the late afternoon of that same first day I gave the keynote address of the conference, bringing to bear Gants's and Bland's textual insights on the gritty particularities of a modern-spelling edition. My paper, entitled "Why Re-Edit Herford and Simpson?", compared Jonson and Shakespeare editing today, in an effort to understand why Herford and Simpson has continued to stand unchallenged as the authoritative edition despite its age and the manifest need to update its scholarship, critical views, stage history, and much more. Joseph Loewenstein then presented the last paper of the day, a delightful jeu d'esprit on "Personal Material: Jonson and Book-Burning," arguing that behind the "Execration upon Vulcan" and Poetaster lie a diffuse penal culture and a particular engagement with Marlowe. A collegial dinner and a concert of lute songs rounded out the first day.
Kevin Donovan, of Middle Tennessee State, took up the matter of "Forms of Authority in the Early Texts of Every Man Out of His Humour," revealing how Jonson's thorough involvement in the production of the published text raises special problems that affect how we read the play. By this point in the conference it was clear that we were debating the ways in which Jonson as author regarded the Folio publication as his chance to turn stage works into literary artifacts. What are an editor's responsibilities and choices, given that penchant for the monumental and literary? Does one preserve massed entries at the head of "continental" scene divisions, as Jonson preferred? In a companion essay on the same panel, Helen Ostovich of McMaster University in Ontario delighted us with a demonstration of how dramatic the scene of St. Paul's walk is in Act III of Every Man Out, and how the Quarto version presents this theatricality far more vividly than does the Folio version. At the same time, discussion suggested that this was a matter of literary semantics more than anything else; Renaissance readers, attuned to Roman texts in their schooling, probably know how to "read" massed entries and the rest and savor the dramatic intent, whereas we have that ability today.
Stephen Orgel (Stanford) gave a fine presentation on "Marginal Jonson," with slides, in which he took up theatrical magic in Jonson both as a quality of language and a way of one's establishing oneself and rising in society, as Face and Subtle undertake to do in The Alchemist. The play is "about getting rich and powerful in the world of Renaissance capitalism." At the same time Jonson employs the topos of the wife as a compliant book who is open to her husband, even while his plays dramatize wives who refuse to enact the obedience topos. Queen Anne and her daring costumes may well have helped set a fashion generated from above. Orgel explored insightfully the threatening image of the Queen's blackness in Jonson's Masque of Blackness. Martin Butler, on the same panel, turned his attention to the masques written for Prince Henry's masques, Barriers (1610) and Oberon (1611), arguing persuasively against a formalist approach in favor of one that pays attention to materialist history; the masque is seen as a symbolic arena playing out negotiations between courtly factions.
A session on stage history was fully as entertaining as the subject demanded. Michael Cordner (York University) talked about "Restoration Jonsons" in terms of what he called the "Jonson aftermath" in such plays as Wilson's The Cheats and Shadwell's Epson Wells. Lois Potter (University of Delaware) took us through recent productions of Jonson, especially at the Swan in Stratford in a wonderfully informed and amusing fashion, pointing her discussion at the productive editorial question: "What is the best way to make the reader aware of an author's theatrical quality?"
On Friday, the last day, Robert Evans of Auburn, Montgomery, spoke about "Jonsonian allusions," with a practical view to what kinds of allusions belong in a standard edition of a writer like Jonson. Hugh Craig of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, gave us a detailed illustrated lecture based on computer work showing how key "function words" support the hypothesis, for example, that A Tale of a Tub, first performed in Caroline England, does indeed have a substratum of earlier writing.
Blair Worden (Oxford) acutely addressed the issue of Catiline His Conspiracy in terms of Renaissance views of Sallust—an influence that allowed Jonson to explore dark and troubling issues of political corruption among England's governing class. Cicero in particular affords a key to the vexed problem of reconciling virtue with political Machiavellism. In the final address of the conference, Ian Donaldson brilliantly took up the issue of double-dealing in the context of Jonson's need, as a converted Catholic, to lead a double life. Donaldson's account of Jonson's relationship to the family of Esme Stuart, seventh Seigneur d'Abigny, was particularly fascinating.
On Thursday and Friday, after hearing and discussing papers, we had a chance to debate pragmatic issues of editing. Jason Freeman, from the Oxford University Press, was present to express that press's interest and concerns. The talk was lively and friendly, but also divided, inevitably, I suppose, between committed modern spelling advocates (like myself) and those who tellingly pointed out the many losses incurred by modern spelling practice. These and other points were of great help to Messrs. Butler and Donaldson, who, I am grateful to report, have asked me to join with them as one of the senior editors of the project.
We also had a chance to talk about electronic Jonson. David Gants brought along his equipment and expertise from the Virginia Electronic Text Center, enabling us to speculate at length on how an edition of Jonson to be published around the year 2000 can incorporate hypertext possibilities of on-line modernized text, facsimiles of originals, archives of stage history and allusions, and the like.
Fifty participants is a splendid number for a conference of this sort. We were housed in a separate residence, Devonshire Hall, at Leeds, with its own kitchen and remarkably cordial staff. Tea and refreshments were available at all hours. We dined together and breakfasted together. We had a chance to get to know just about everyone present, which included graduate students and senior colleagues, old friends and many new acquaintances. The unity of topic and the freshness of concern with the matter of re-editing Jonson today energized this gathering into one in which every contribution made its mark. I can't remember when I've been so caught up at a conference with what absolutely everyone had to say.
David Bevington
University of Chicago
The Sixth Annual Medieval Guild Conference
Performance, Ritual, & Spectacle in the Middle Ages
Saturday, October 14, 1995
Philosophy Hall, Columbia University
Keynote Address: Dr. Miri Rubin, Pembroke College, Oxford
Roundtable Monitor: Professor Robert Hanning, Columbia University
Performance: The Digby Killing of the Children
This conference investigated definitions and theories of performance, ritual and spectacle as they have been developed, borrowed and adapted by scholars in all disciplines of medieval studies. It addressed if and how these categories are relevant, both singularly and plurally, to the study of medieval texts, art, religious and secular artifacts and historical documents.
Topics included: drama, Latin and vernacular lyric traditions, political arenas, narrative and issues or orality, magic and miracles, liturgy and liturgical procession, gladiators and gore, rituals of daily life, torture and punishment, minstrels and troubadours, preaching, religious ceremonies and ceremonies of race, class and gender.
The Spring 1996 Tour of MacBeth, sponsored by ACTER (A Center for Theatre, Education and Research) will offer week-long teaching and performing residencies at the following locations: February 10-18, UNC-Chapel Hill, NC; February 19-25, University Of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN; February 26-March 3, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; March 4-10 Orlando FL, the Disney Institute and several local colleges; March 11-17, Clemson University, Clemson, SC; March 18-24, The Folger Institute, Washington, DC; March 25-31, Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, CA; April 1-7, Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, CA. There is a possibility that ACTER will also appear at the International Shakespeare Festival in Los Angeles, April 7-14. For more information on these residencies or our 1996-97 season, contact Cynthia Dessen, General Manager, 919/967-4265 (phone and fax) or at mailto:csdessen@email.unc.edu.
Milla Riggio was production dramaturg for the Hartford Stage Company production of Romeo and Juliet. Directed by Mark Lamos, this production sold out every show in a five-week run, setting a new record for sales for the Hartford Stage. David Bevington and Milla Riggio offered presentations at a CHC (Connecticut Humanities Council)-sponsored Institute for teachers in conjunction with the production.
Sunday, August 6, 1995
2:00-7:00 p.m.
Alumni Hall, Victoria College
73 Queen's Park Crescent East
De Kleren van de Dokter by the Marot Theatre Co. under the direction of Femke Kramer from the Univ. of Groningen.
Les Bonimenteurs by la Compagnie Théâtrale Embarquement Immédiat, directed by Georges-Philippe Dann from Paris, France.
Man's Desire and Fleeting Beauty by the Firehouse Theatre, under the direction of Michael Barbour from Syracuse, New York.
Mankind produced by the Lewditores, under the direction of Garrett Epp, Univ. of Alberta.
Monday, August 7, 1995
5:00-8:30 p.m.
Outdoor Performances on Wagons
Victoria College
The pageants were as follows, and they were all directed by members of the PLS:
The Annunciation, directed by Kim Yates
Birth of Jesus, directed by Linda Phillips
Joseph and Mary, directed by Vicky Cook
Adoration of the Shepherds, directed by Chet Scoville
Othello in Chicago
was held on November 3-4, 1995
The event was organized by Michael Shapiro, at the University of Illinois-Urbana, and was attended especially well by colleagues from that campus and from the University of Illinois at Chicago. All attended the performance of Othello directed by Barbara Gaines at Shakespeare Repertory on Friday night. All day Saturday, the following series of workshops took place: Miriam Gilbert showed a set of directors' notebooks on the scene of Iago's taking the handkerchief from Emilia, inviting—and getting—very lively discussion on the options thus opened up. Carol Neely talked movingly about her own shift from seeing the play in angrily feminist terms (mainly centered on Emilia) to a play that is also profoundly about race. In the afternoon, David Bevington acted as moderator, interviewing the director, Barbara Gaines, about her choices, and then interviewing the composer of the largely African music that he had written to underscore Othello's African heritage. About 60 persons attended in all, mostly teachers. It was a fine affair.
—Submitted by David Bevington, University of Chicago
Here is a brief update on the status of various projects being undertaken for EEDTS:
Arnoul Gréban's Mystère de la Passion (Day Three), translated by Paula Giuliano. Page proofs are now being prepared for final approval. We expect the book to go to the printer in December.
Three complete translations have been submitted and are now being reviewed by members of the EEDT Editorial Board. These include a translation of the Dutch Abele Spelen and accompanying farces from the Van Hulthem manuscript (Anneke Prins), the Jour de Jugement from Besançon (Richard Emmerson and David Hult), and a collection of six French farces (Thierry Boucquey).
Works nearing completion include the fourteenth-century Innsbruck (Thuringian) Easter Play and Corpus Christi Play (Stephen Wright) and the Resurrection de Jesuschrist par personnages by Eloy du Mont (Janet Ritch).
Other translations in progress include a collection of medieval Scandinavian plays, a set of German Carnival plays by Hans Sachs and other Nürnberg playwrights, the complete Künzelsau Corpus Christi Play, and anthology of six Castilian plays, and a collection of six plays from medieval Poland.
—Stephen Wright, co-editor
Catholic University
Comparative Drama, Vol. 29, No. 1, a special issue, has been reprinted as a paperbound book for nonsubscribers under the title Emblem, Iconography, and Drama by Medieval Institute Publications; the cost is $12.00 ($3.00 for postage and handling), payable to Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008.
Included in the special issue are:Tables of contents for the Summer 1995 and Winter 1995 issues (the latter was issued around the first of October) include the following:
SUMMER:
WINTER:
The Fall issue of The Early Drama, Art, and Music Review contains Nils Holger Petersen, "Il Doge and the Liturgical Drama in Late Medieval Venice"; Martial Rose, "Salome's Sword Dance"; and Philip Butterworth, "Comings and Goings: English Medieval Staging Conventions." Reviews will include Lynette Muir on The Book of Sainte Foye, trans. Pamela Sheingorn; Douglas Sugano on The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle; Louise Lillie on Medeltida teater och gotländst kykokonst, by Bengt Stolt; and Nicholas Rogers on Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. Brendan Cassidy. The EDAM Review is available through Medieval Institute Publications.
Medieval and Early Renaissance Drama: Reconsiderations
Guest Editors: Martin Stevens and Milla C. Riggio
Vol. XVIII
Table of Contents
Preface
New and Upcoming Publications from TEAMS
Two volumes in the Middle English Text series have been reprinted (with corrections):
Six Ecclesiastical Satires, ed. James M. Dean, and Three Middle English
Charlemagne Romances, ed. Alan Lupack. Three new volumes have been published in the
Middle English Texts Series:
The Middle English Briton Lays, edited by Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury. [Sir Orfeo, Lai le Fraine, Sir Laufal, Sir Degare, Sir Cleges, Sir Gowther, Emare, and The Earl of Toulous. With Appendices that include Marie de France's Lai of Sir Launfal and Lai le Fresne, and Sir Landevale.]
Sir Perceval of Galles and Yawain and Gawain, edited by Mary Flowers Braswell.
Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales, edited by Thomas Hahn. [The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, The Avowying of Arthur, The Awntyrs off Arthur, The Knightly Tale of Gologras and Gawain, The Greene Knight, The Turke and Sir Gawain, The Marriage of Sir Gawain, The Carle of Carlisle, The Jeaste of Sir Gawain, and King Arthur and King Cornwall.]
Nearing completion, but not in time for use in Winter term 1995, are:
Four Middle English Romances: Sir Isumbras, Octavian, Sir Eglamour, Sir Tryamour, ed. Harriet Hudson, for the Middle English Texts Series.
Medieval English Political Writings, ed. James M. Dean, for the Middle English Text Series.
Sources for the History of Medicine in Medieval England, by Carol Rawcliffe, for the Documents of Practice Series.
Medieval Exegesis in Translation: Commentaries on the Book of Ruth, by Lesley Smith, for the Commentary Series.
(from News and Notes from TEAMS)
Gregory Roper
We are all coming to face the facts: the computer revolution has come to the humanities. The revolution has been digitized. Whether we are at the barricades or strolling around the park minding our own business, it happened, and now the world is... different. We are probably too close to decide if it is immeasurably better or worse, but we know for sure that it is different.
And slowly, but in many ways faster than our colleagues in other periods, we medievalists are starting to consider the pedagogical possibilities for using computers, CD-ROMs, the Internet, and the World Wide Web to enhance our teaching, our presentation of this world (often so alien to our students) in and out of the classroom. More sessions at conferences are starting to discuss these possibilities; whole conferences now discuss the use of the computers in the humanities.
I am one of those who is excited and optimistic about the electronic media and specifically about their pedagogical applications. Though I am not a "techie" by any means, I have experimented with using discussion lists, the Internet, and the World Wide Web in teaching Chaucer, the Beowulf to Milton survey so many of us teach, and other courses. But I am only cautiously optimistic, for I have found that, pace the utopians like George Landow, computers by themselves cannot change anything; it is still the imagination, experience, and skill of the teacher that makes any teaching medium work well for students, and still the financial and institutional support of the institution that enables the teacher to work well. And I have often found that even the best teacher can be hamstrung, unable to use this new technology to its real potential—and, in fact, doing a worse job than if there were no computers at all.
So I'd like to offer a few caveats to those who are thinking of diving into computer-assisted pedagogy and are unsure of how to do it, or where they should begin, or how things might turn out once they begin.
1) Make sure you have decent support, both technological AND human. Take a trip to your academic computing office; tell the people there what you would like to do and how you think electronic media might help you. The techies will be able to tell you whether you can accomplish your goals on the campus: whether they have the hardware and software to access Netscape, whether students will be able to have access 24 hours a day, and so forth. (One hint: dream large. Often, I'm told, professors come in asking for much less than current technology can accomplish, simply because they don't know how advanced things have become. If you tell them you want the moon—say, simultaneous Chaucer classes with three other universities, with video and audio hookups—they might be able to do it. If they can't, they back you down until they come up with what they can do. But if you ask for the minimum, they may not know what you really want to do.)
While you're there, size up the human support as well. If you or your students have trouble, will there be people around to get you out of the inevitable snafus? Do they seem excited or resentful or overworked? I have found that, without excellent human support, the most exciting computer classrooms can crumble into chaos when the glitches do arise. And nothing—and I mean nothing—will turn students off to computer pedagogy faster than glitches which remain unfixed. A student who can't get access, even though she has done everything right, a student who loses three hours of effort because the system crashes through no fault of his own, a student who can't even get on the system because there aren't enough terminals available when she gets off work—these are students who will just say "the hell with it" and give up on technology for good.
2) Know the software or medium yourself fairly well before trying it out on your students. We all have the experience of teaching a text we've never taught before: we race to stay ahead of the students, reading a few days ahead of them. We've become adept at this, and have learned how to do it from time to time. I've found that this is dangerous when using a new electronic medium; you can get into glitches and not be able to get out of them, or just hang yourself and the class in a weird back alley and blow a class period. (See above for how students respond to this.) If you're going to try one of these in class, spend a semester or a summer playing with it on your own first. Learn where the glitches are, where the shortcuts are. Your students will thank you.
Plan intensive, timely, and time-consuming training periods for the students at the beginning. We tend to think of students these days as completely computer-literate, and so we imagine that they don't need much training before they get started. I have found, to my chagrin, that this just isn't so. Upper-middle class students may have computers, yes, and had them for years; working-class and lower-class students often have had much less experience with computers than you might even imagine, and even those students with computers are learning something new. If you find yourself telling students that "Control-J" means "hold down the Control key while you hit the J key," or if you find students writing down every command in a notebook, then you are dealing with novices who have a high level of anxiety and difficulty, simply because they are unaware of things you and I now accept as second nature. Each new piece of software, each new piece of technology, can be as baffling as their first foray into word processing. Thus, the schedule needs to allow for time when you (and preferably a techie) work with the students until they feel comfortable with the new media and software you are using.
4) These media work best—and in fact, have their best chance of transforming teaching and learning—when students are encouraged to "play": to surf and find out things they can't easily find in other media; to explore the questions they have, rather than the ones we teachers ask; to frame new questions based on the huge amount of information newly at their disposal. I think what this means is that we need to come up with new sorts of syllabi, ones that will reward this new sort of play and free exploration. And perhaps that will transform the classroom itself in new ways. I won't attempt to prescribe ways that teachers should reward this sort of play; I simply call your attention to it. As you plan your syllabi, think of new ways of grading, assessing, and rewarding students' free exploration.
5) However, students won't take to this free exploration until you force them to do so. No matter what the utopians say, fallen human nature is stronger than technology. That is, students are like the rest of us—they will rarely take on new duties, stick their necks out, until they are forced to do so and find out that it is fun and worthwhile. I have learned to have several required assignments, graduated in difficulty, and graded sternly, early in the terms, to get the students going. Once I used the stick, the carrot takes over; the interest and fun of using electronic media begins to provide its own rewards.
If you are unsure about using new technology, I would encourage you to start small. Try using a bulletin board or discussion list in your class first. This is a way for students to bring up questions, discuss texts, explore different ideas, do things that you didn't have time for in class. This is not a complex technology, and students learn a great deal from it. They learn that they can come up with questions and topics on their own; shy people learn that they can speak; they learn how to cite evidence to defend their points and how to speak to and persuade an audience that is not "there" in front of them; they learn that, in the best of classes, class is never "over" but the conversation goes on twenty-four hours a day.
When you see this start to work, you will start to see other uses for the bulletin board; students can try out paper ideas, report on research, give historical background "lectures" to each other, even turn in their papers electronically so that the whole class can read and evaluate them. And as you and the students gain confidence, soon you might be asking your techies for images of manuscripts, snatches of chant, or view of Islamic cities in Spain.
Can computer technology—the Web, the 'Net—completely change teaching, democratizing the classroom and academia? No, I don't believe it can. Until every school has the financial resources of a Harvard or a Yale, and can thus buy the latest technology and software, this will never happen. And since I don't believe my school will ever have the financial resources of a Yale or UT-Austin, I don't see that happening. In fact, computers and software, because they are so expensive to maintain and update at the rapid rates necessary, may only increase the differences between the have and have-nots. For example, at my institution, someone had the foresight, way back in 1987 (the Jurassic era in computer time), to lay fiber-optic cables to every office and dorm room, and to provide a "computer" to every faculty member and student. It was proudly called—and still is today—"The Electronic Campus," the "first of its kind in the nation." Today, at this moment, I am working on the ancient Digital VT125 terminal that was installed in this office in 1987, using word-processing software that was out of date the moment it was installed. Why? Money. The legislature has not yet freed up the money for campus-wide installation of "Electronic Campus Plus," which will (we hope) put laptops in place of these horrible terminals.
Still, the stuff works, and my students can get access to the Internet, the World Wide Web (using Lynx), and the bulletin board I have set up for them, all from their dorm rooms. We haven't democratized the world, but I do believe that we can improve our teaching—in some ways—with a bit of creativity and ingenuity.
Department of English
Northwest Missouri State University
(from News and Notes from TEAMS)
The medievalist's first stop on the Web is Labyrinth http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html), a project sponsored by Georgetown University and co-directed by Deborah Everhart and Martin Irvine. Labyrinth provides organized access to more than a million filees located all over the world—medieval texts in English, French, Italian, German, and Latin; pointers to resources on medieval cultures, Arthurian Studies, pedagogical resources, databases and projects (including, for example, the Beowulf Project); and links to professional associations and journals. The image of the labyrinth on the home page is now "hot," which means you can click anywhere on it and be taken to another page. You could be happily lost for hours here. For those who prefer a more methodical approach, Labyrinth provides an organized menu.
Be sure to visit, directly or through Labyrinth, http://rodent.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/tmsmenu.htm to preview a few of the volumes in the TEAMS Middle English Texts Series (courtesy of the Camelot Project at the University of Rochester).
E-mail: Each of the classes I teach at Calvin has its own local e-mail discussion list. My students and I use it to discuss readings and ideas, to share questions, and to continue discussions begun in class. I wonder what might happen if we expanded our list to include students in other classes at other schools. But there are already bigger circles for scholars.
Medievalists were pioneers in organizing global electronic discussion groups. As a subscriber, you receive a copy of every message posted to the group. You can reply to the group or individual who posted a message. Such groups can be sites for lively debate, for soliciting opinions and ideas, for sharing appropriate announcements, for seeking advice. They can also, at times, spawn tangents (look for "TAN" in the header) and fruitless chatter. Subscribe sparingly; any one of these groups could drop a dozen—or twenty—messages a day into your mailbox.
Space permits me to suggest only a few groups here. List veterans, let me know about your favorites and I'll include them in future issues of this newsletter.
MEDTEXTL (Medieval Texts: Philology, Codicology, and Technology). To subscribe, send a message to LISTSERV@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu. Leave the subject header blank, and type "SUBSCRIBE MEDTEXTL" in the body of the message.
MEDIEV-L (Medieval History). To subscribe, send a message reading "SUBSCRIBE MEDIEV-L" to listserv@ukanvm.cc.ukans.edu. Leave the subject header blank.
ANSAX-L (Anglo-Saxon studies, with some medieval traffic). To subscribe, send a message reading "SUBSCRIBE ANSAX-L" to listserv@wvnvm.wvnet.edu. Leave the subject header blank.
Karen Saupe
Department of English
Calvin College
3201 Burton S.E.
Grand Rapids, MI 49546
email: Ksaupe@calvin.edu
Home page: http://www.calvin.edu/~ksaupe
Frank Ardolino
Ralph Blasting
Lawrence Clopper
Clifford Davidson
William M. Hamlin
Forthcoming from St. Martin's Press...
The Image of America in Montaigne, Spenser, and Shakespeare: Renaissance Ethnography and Literary Reflection
Selected works of these three major Renaissance writers are examined within the context of early modern ethnographic discourse. In a series of imaginative and detailed discussions, William M. Hamlin explores the ways in which Renaissance ideas of savagery and civility evolved during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as a consequence, in part, of the fascinating and complex interaction between ethnographic reportage and literary representation.
Hamlin begins his discussion by arguing that all forms of ethnography or historiography are inevitably assimilative constructs. He then examines ethnographic writings of such early authors as Columbus, Martyr, Las Casas, Léry, Durán, and Sahagún to show how sixteenth-century through moves gradually toward the recognition of difference in equality—a recognition championed above all by Montaigne. Like Montaigne, Spenser's thought balances natural sufficiency with sociocultural sophistication, and thus reveals an implicit awareness of the interpenetration of the concepts of savagery and civility. This interpenetration is further explored by Shakespeare, particularly in The Tempest and King Lear.
Hamlin characterizes The Tempest's pastoralism as Montaignian, and argues that the interconnectedness of concepts of nature and culture in the writings of Montaigne, Spenser, and Shakespeare suggests the extent to which New World awareness in Renaissance Europe effected a partial erasure and reconstitution of Old World patterns of thought.
Contents: List of Abbreviations and Citations • Chronology • Prologue: Lizards, Toads, and Spiders • Unaccommodated Man: Representation and Theory • Montaigne's New World • Wondrous Uncertainties: Pastoral and Primitivism in The Faerie Queene • Shakespearan Accommodation and New World Ethnography • Epilogue • Notes • Bibliography • Index
Naomi Liebler
Sally-Beth MacLean and Scott McMillin
Wayne Narey
Johanna C. Prins
Milla C. Riggio
Stephen K. Wright
Miscellaneous News...
Medieval Scholars Awarded $100,000 NEH Grant
APPLETON, WIS.—Kathleen L. Scott, and independent scholar from Amherst,
Massachusetts, Michael T. Orr, associate professor of art history at Lawrence University,
Appleton, Wisconsin, Martha W. Driver, professor of English at Pace University, Pleasantville,
New York, and Ann Eljenholm Nichols, professor of English at Winona State University, Winona,
Minnesota, have been awarded a $102,650 research grant by the National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH) to study illustrations and other pictorial representations in English
manuscript books from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance periods. The prestigious
grant will fund the research project, which will be conducted in the British Isles and
North America, for two years.
During their research, the four scholars will catalog the pictorial contents of English manuscripts written between 1380 and c. 1525 and produce a series of finding lists, or indexes, for all illustrations in English manuscripts from this period. The indexes will identify the illustrations for reference by future researchers in a variety of ways, including by subject, by date, by manuscript author/title, and by the library where each manuscript can be found. The project will result in the first comprehensive survey of pictorial subject matter in the late fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth century English manuscripts and will be of use to art and social historians, literary scholars, feminists, and individuals working in a variety of other specialized fields.
Scott, who is widely respected as the leading authority on English manuscript illustration of the fifteenth century, will direct the project. A previous recipient of Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, J. Paul Getty, and John Simon Guggenheim fellowships, Scott has published numerous articles and books on fifteenth-century English manuscript illustration. Her book, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, is scheduled to be published later this year by Harvey Miller Press.
—Submitted by Rick Peterson, Associate Director of Public Affairs, Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin.
President
Professor Lawrence M. Clopper, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
Vice-President
Professor Milla C. Riggio, Trinity College, Hartford, CT
Secretary
Jesse Hurlbut, Lexington, KY
Council
Jody Enders, University of California at Santa Barbara (retiring this year)
Naomi C. Liebler, Montclair State College (retiring this year)
Lois Potter, University of Delaware (1996-97)
Victor I. Scherb, University of Texas at Tyler (1996-97)
Mimi Still Dixon, Wittenberg University (1997-98)
Martin W. Walsh, University of Michigan (1997-98)
Information for the Spring newsletter: please include performance news, publication information, works-in-progress, calls for papers, and anything else you find relevant to early drama. Please try to submit your material on a disk (in PC WP 5.1, MS DOS, or MAC Disks) or via email. If you are sending a disk, make sure to include a hard copy, also. No later than March 1st send to:
Milla C. Riggio
MRDS Newsletter
English Department
Trinity College
115 Vernon Street
Hartford, CT 06106
or email Milla.Riggio@mail.trincoll.edu
Co-edited by Kim Janczuk and Milla Riggio
Special thanks go to Margaret Grasso for management of the funds and for her help on the layout of the newsletter.
And a huge note of thanks goes to Kim Janczuk who worked this newsletter in among a myriad of duties resulting from the absence of Margaret Grasso, who, through an unfortunate accident, was disabled for 8 weeks this fall. It's hard to say how Kim did it all—but we are very grateful!
New format forthcoming!
As some of you may have noticed, the newsletter is a little different this time around. We're
moving toward a new style which should turn out to be a booklet form. Watch for it in the
Spring!