Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture (Trends in Medieval Philology)

The volume assesses performative structures within a variety of medieval forms of textuality, from vernacular literature to records of parliamentary proceedings, from prayer books to musical composition. Three issues are central to the volume: the role of ritual speech acts; the way in which authorship can be seen as created within medieval texts rather than as a given category; finally, phenomena of voice, created and situated between citation and repetition, especially in forms which appropriate and transform literary tradition. The volume encompasses articles by historians and musicologists as well as literary scholars. It spans European literature from the West (French, German, Italian) to the East (Church Slavonic), vernacular and Latin; it contrasts modes of liturgical meditation in the Western and Eastern Church with secular plays and songs, and it brings together studies on the character of ‛voice’ in major medieval authors such as Dante with examples of Dante-reception in the early twentieth century. The volume assesses performative structures within a variety of medieval forms of textuality, from vernacular literature to records of parliamentary proceedings, from prayer books to musical composition. Three issues are central to the volume: the role of ritual speech acts; the way in which authorship can be seen as created within medieval texts rather than as a given category; finally, phenomena of voice, created and situated between citation and repetition, especially in forms which appropriate and transform literary tradition. The volume encompasses articles by historians and musicologists as well as literary scholars, it spans European literature from the West (French, German, Italian) to the East (Church Slavonic), vernacular and Latin; it contrasts modes of liturgical meditation in the Western and Eastern Church with secular plays and song, and it brings together studies on the character of ̀voice' in major medieval authors such as Dante with examples of Dante-reception in the early twentieth century. --Book Jacket Frontmatter Content Medieval Culture ‘betwixt and between’: An introduction Performing the Penitential Psalms in the Middle Ages ‘Remember me in your prayers’ Performing Parliament in the Rotuli Parliamentorum Scurrilitas: Sex, magic, and the performance of fictionality in Anselm of Besate’s Rhetorimachia Authorship and performance in Dante’s Vita nova Paradoxes of performance: Autobiography in the songs of Hugo von Montfort and Oswald von Wolkenstein Performative desires: Sereni’s re-staging of Dante and Petrarch Singing Sweetly to the Virgin: Josquin’s Inviolata Re-presenting set-piece description in the courtly romance: Hartmann’s adaptation of Chrétien’s Erec et Enide. ‘Ich pin der haid Aristotiles. ein exempel nemend des’: Performing Aristotle’s lessons Dante’s reception in German literature: a question of performance? Backmatter