Mittelalter-Rezeption

Assesses the reasons for the relative disregard for the study of the continuity of religious thought and faith by scholarship in Medievalism Studies over the last 25 years. Postulates that medievalism scholars have an ethical obligation to investigate and historicize religion and theology, at least in its temporal manifestations. An extended version was published in: "Medievalism and the Subject of Religion." Studies in Medievalism 24 (2015): 11-19.

Originally published at The Medieval Review [email protected], 4/8/2018. While researched, written, and published before most of last year's momentous discussions about the role of race, gender, politics, and ideology in medieval studies and medievalism, Andrew Elliott's study is a timely and relevant contribution to the field. It continues the work begun by Louise D'Arcens and Andrew Lynch (eds., <i>International Medievalism and Popular Culture</i>, 2014), Tommaso Carpegna di Falconieri (<i>Medioevo militante: La politica di oggi alle prese con barbari e crociati</i>, 2011), David M. Marshall (ed., <i>Mass Market Medieval: Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture</i>, 2007), and Bruce Holsinger (<i>Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror</i>, 2007), but deepens their insights with a focus on the roles of contemporary media and communication, specifically online medievalisms. It also offers an original theoretical framework for future investigations.

Dieser Text, der aus verschiedenen Bearbeitungen des Nibelungenliedes kompiliert ist, entstand ursprünglich für den Workshop Im Laboratorium: Entwurf und Experiment als ästhetische Zugriffsweisen auf ‚Welt', der im Herbst 2015 an der Universität Bayreuth stattgefunden hat (https://kolloquiumgekuwi.wordpress.com/). Sein Zweck war etwas, das ich in meinem im Entstehen befindlichen Projekt mit dem Arbeitstitel Transformationen des ‚Nibelungenliedes' im 15./16. Jahrhundert und seit 1945 untersuche, im Rahmen einer " eigenen " Wiedererzählung unmittelbar am Gegenstand bzw. an den Gegenständen selbst evident werden zu lassen.

Es gibt im 20. Jahrhundert kaum einen Dichter, für den die Erforschung der Geheimnisse der unmittelbar nicht wahrnehmbaren menschlichen Daseinsform so wichtig gewesen ist -und der diese Geheimnisse so besessen konsequent in der Erweiterung und Vertiefung der inneren Welt des Menschen gesucht hat -wie Rilke. Das Bestreben, "mitten im Gelärm des Tages hineinzuhorchen bis in die tiefsten Einsamkeiten des eigenen Wesens", ist bei ihm deshalb nicht nur die Bedingung der modernen Lyrik, wie es in seinem 1898 in Prag gehaltenen Vortrag lautet, 1 sondern es ermöglicht dem Menschen auch, vor dem eigenen Tod ein eigenes Leben zu führen. So entfaltet sich in der Rilkeschen Poesie innerhalb des Motivkomplexes 'Einsamkeit' und 'Fremde' das schicksalhafte Beispiel des blinden Menschen, der dieses "Hineinhorchen", die "Innensicht", verkörpert. In den Gedichtbänden Buch der Bilder und Neue Gedichte finden wir mehrere Gedichte, die dieses Motiv darlegen und es zum Teil sogar schon in ihren Titeln hervorheben. Die hier zu behandelnden Texte (Die Erblindende, Der Blinde, Pont du Carrousel, Die Blinde) ergeben zusammen eine sichtbare Einheit, indem sie die verschiedenen Aspekte derselben Problematik thematisieren und sich so gegenseitig ergänzen und erläutern. Um auch die "innere Logik" dieser Motivreihe besser darstellen zu können, werden die oben erwähnten Werke nicht chronologisch gedeutet, sondern nach der Folgerichtigkeit des "motivischen Prozesses", der mit der Verwandlung des erblindenden Menschen beginnt und bis zu seiner kosmischen Erhöhung führt, um dann schließlich auch die geheime Verbindung zwischen der Erleuchtung des in sich gekehrten Menschen und dem Tod zu zeigen. 1. Die Verwandlung: Die Erblindende Sie saß so wie die anderen beim Tee. Mir war zuerst, als ob sie ihre Tasse ein wenig anders als die andern fasse. Sie lächelte einmal. Es tat fast weh. 1 RILKE, RAINER MARIA: Sämtliche Werke. Frankfurt a.M: Insel, 1987, Bd. 5, S. 360.

Herausgegeben im Rahmen des vom Nationalen Forschungsfonds Ungarn geförderten Projekts OTKA Nr.  Die dem Band zu Grunde liegende internationale Tagung wurde vom Österreichischen Kulturforum Budapest unterstützt. © Eötvös-József-Collegium und die einzelnen Verfasser/innen, Alle Rechte vorbehalten Umschlaggestaltung mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Ungarischen Nationalarchivs unter Verwendung einer Urkunde von Kaiser Sigismund aus dem Bestand des MNL OL (DL ) I eines Schreibers eingetragen, der um die Mitte des . Jhs. als ein Konventuale des Schottenklosters tätig war, dessen Name jedoch nicht weiter bekannt ist. Dieser Schreiber findet sich in zahlreichen Handschri en des Wiener Schottenklosters in unterschiedlichen Funktionen wieder: als Korrektor, Redaktor, Bearbeiter und Schreiber. In diesem Aufsatz wird die Bandbreite der Aktivitäten des Schreibers anhand des bisher gesichteten Materials dargestellt und so Einblick in die Handschri enpflege und -produktion im Schottenkloster des . Jahrhunderts gewährt. 4 Pilotphase zur Digitalisierung mittelalterlicher Handschri en an den deutschen Handschri enzentren https://www.bsb-muenchen.de/die-bayerische-staatsbibliothek/ projekte/digitalisierung/pilotphase-handschri endigitalisierung/ (18.10.2015). 5 Vor allem sind hier die Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, die Universitätsbibliothek Graz, die Universitätsbibliothek Klagenfurt und die Oberösterreichische Landesbibliothek in Linz zu nennen. 7 Da die CD-ROM als Datenträgermedium immer mehr an Bedeutung verliert, erfolgt die Publikation der Begleitaufnahmen zu den Handschri enkatalogen seit 2015 nur mehr online. 8

"The concluding interview between Workman and Richard Utz reminds us that while we can to some extent attribute scholarly developments to intellectual or cultural paradigm shifts, we should never discount the force of individual imagination and tenacity. Workman's account in this interview of his own singular intellectual path from childhood to the present also demonstrates - most appositely, given the often deeply personal nature of medievalism - the equal importance of the public and private self in the forging of a scholarly passion." Louise D'Arcens, Prolepsis (2000)

Chapter V.2 form "Disziplinäre Dichtung. Philologische Bildung und deutsche Literatur in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts" (Berlin 2013):

With the onset of modernity, the study of poetry emerged as a legitimate academic discipline. Conversely, authors became connected to a specialized discipline that organized and expanded knowledge about German literature. For the first time, the studies in this volume systematically discuss this connection using the philological practice and poetology of expressionist authors and the works of Holz, Mann, Stadler, Broch, Schaeffer, and Borchardt.

Вступительное слово доктора Ричарда Утца, президента Международ-ного общества изучения медиевализма. В этой небольшой и в чем-то интимной заметке исследователь рассуждает о факторах, влияющих на оптику ученого, о «я» познающего субъекта и о «публичных» медиеви-стах и медиевалистах.Ключевые слова: дилетант; другой; любитель; медиевализм.

Introduction to Russian translation of chapter 1, "What’s Love Got to Do with It? Our Middle Ages, Ourselves," in Medievalism: A Manifesto (2017).

Вступительное слово доктора Ричарда Утца, президента Международного общества изучения медиевализма. В этой небольшой и в чем-то интимной заметке исследователь рассуждает о факторах, влияющих на оптику ученого, о «я» познающего субъекта и о «публичных» медиевистах и медиевалистах.

Ключевые слова: дилетант; Другой; любитель; медиевализм.

(Zus. mit Andreas Bihrer): Narrating the King. Historiographical and Literary Representations of Alfred the Great in German-English Discourse of Domination in the 19th Century [u. a. zu Theodor Körner und Theodor Fontane]. Vortrag im Rahmen der »Seminar Series«, 15. März 2016, German Historical Institute (GHIL/DHI), London.

Ausgehend von den Möglichkeiten zur digitalen Aufbereitung historischer Quellen im Rahmen des Projektes „Villux X“ der Universität Luxemburg (einem stadthistorisch ausgerichteten digitalen Atlas zur urbanen Entwicklung Luxemburgs seit 1820), kann visualisiert und dokumentiert werden, auf welchen Grundlagen die urbanen Pläne der Nationalsozialisten im besetzten Luxemburg fußten, aber auch welche Konsequenzen sie für die weitere Stadtentwicklung hatten.
Nach der Annexion Luxemburgs durch das Dritte Reich sah der von den Nazis eingesetzte Oberbürgermeister Richard Hengst die Gefahr eines Bedeutungsverlustes, da die Stadt – so Hengst Ende 1940 – „nicht mehr Regierungssitz eines kleinen, aber reichen Landes“ wäre. Die Aufstellung eines Generalbebauungsplanes sollte das Risiko kompensieren, auch um das Land soziokulturell an das Reich zu binden. Die daraufhin vom Leipziger Architekten Hubert Ritter entwickelten städtebaulichen Prinzipien besaßen eine bemerkenswerte Langlebigkeit und wurden in den 1960er Jahren sogar von den lokalen Behörden aufgegriffen.

Giovanni Cordini, Cultura e patrimonio culturale nel costituzionalismo comparato » 9 Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, Il discorso pubblico sulla Storia medievale nell'Europa contemporanea: tra unioni 'carolinge' e specifiche identità locali » 25 Giulio M. Chiodi, Intelligenza ermeneutica ed equilibrio umanistico nella cultura europea » 39 Péter Paczolay, Roma est patria omnium fuitque -origini e prospettive dell'identitá culturale dell'Europa » 57 Ugo Rossi Merighi, La cultura in Europa (Ottocento e Novecento) » ?? José María Sánchez, La Protection de la Culture dans l'Union Européenne. Dérogations Culturelles d'Après la Jurisprudence » 63 Franco Tamassia, Individuazione del patrimonio culturale europeo: politiche educative nell'UE » 75 5

Boccaccio-Leser. In: Boccaccio in Deutschland. Spuren seines Lebens und Werks 1313–2013. Ausstellung im Goethe-Museum Düsseldorf in Zsarb. mit der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, 5. Mai bis 18. August 2013. Hrsg. von Achim Aurnhammer, Nikolaus Henkel und Mario Zanucchi. Heidelberg: Manutius 2013, S. 41–42.

Assesses the reasons for the relative disregard of scholarly work on studying the continuity of religious thought and faith by scholarship in Medievalism Studies over the last 25 years. Postulates that medievalism scholars have an ethical obligation to investigate and historicize religion and theology, at least in its temporal manifestations.

"Richard Utz then takes up the afterlife of the Arthurian myth in ‘Hic iacet Arthurus?: Situating theMedieval King in English Renaissance Memory’. Opening with some explicit consideration of the workings of national commemoration, Utz proceeds to the Renaissance reception of Arthur, showing, with particular reference to Drayton’s Poly- Olbion, that Arthur was by no means so uniformly written off as a serious subject in the period as has often been said." David Matthews, Review of English Studies (2008)

Originally published with The Medieval Review, December 1, 2021.


Ziolkowski, Jan M. The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity,  volumes 5 and 6. Cambridge, UK: Open Book, 2018. Pp. 397; 324. £38.95  each (hb). ISBN: 978-1-78374-535-7; 978-1-78374-540-1 (hb).

  Reviewed by Richard Utz

  Georgia Institute of Technology

These  final two volumes of Jan Ziolkowski’s fascinating reception history of  the medieval juggler narrative display the same qualities as the first  four volumes: a wealth of connections across numerous media,  meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated, make this magnum opus  a rich tapestry of information for anyone interested in how the Middle  Ages have been researched, remembered, imagined, and used.

In volume 5, Tumbling into the Twentieth Century, Ziolkowski documents the increasing interest in the story in the wake of the success of Jules Massenet’s opera Le jongleur de Notre Dame  in the early twentieth century. One manifestation of this popularity  can be measured by the impressive number of retellings and reprints  (books, typescripts, manuscripts), and the inclusion of Anatole France’s  version of the medieval tale in textbooks for the teaching of French in  other countries, a clear sign that the narrative had come to represent  France and its cultural history. Another manifestation can be traced in  the vast number of planned or actual performances, audio recordings, and  films, including the idea for a film by a former clown, acrobat,  aerialist, and skater by the name of Charlie Chaplin; annual  performances during the weeks leading up to Christmas on Fred Waring’s  America, a 1950s vaudeville-type television show; and the 50-minute  made-for-television movie, The Juggler of Notre Dame, co-produced  (please imagine!) by Walt Disney and the Catholic Paulist Order in  1982. A third kind of manifestation of the story’s popularity appears in  its appropriation by members of many different faiths, and even in  sports: it seems New York Giants coach Allie Sherman rallied his 1960s  team by retelling the events of “Our Lady and the Juggler.” Finally, and  unsurprisingly considering its child-like main character, volume 5  includes a sizeable section surveying numerous adaptations of the tale  for children.


In volume 6, War and Peace, Sex and Violence,  Ziolkowski presents examples that demonstrate the extreme malleability  of the juggler narrative during WWII: Conservatives in occupied France  as well as in the areas under the Vichy régime found the medieval tale  and its nineteenth-century derivatives attractive, but they also  inspired members of the French, Belgian, and Dutch resistance movement.  In Great Britain, nostalgia and perhaps also loyalty to an occupied ally  may have inspired the publication of some English versions of the  story. Germany and Austria only show relatively little interest in the  juggler before and during the war. Beginning in WWII, and increasingly  so by the 1960s, the juggler’s story became associated with family  audiences and the Christmas season. A striking degree of otherness and  temporal distance emanates from many of these versions, one that may  remind academic medievalists of the alterity that medieval studies  scholars underlined in their work throughout the first half of the  twentieth century.



Ziolkowski  centers other observations on several case studies: the University of  Notre Dame, which called one of its campus literary magazines The Juggler (full title: The Juggler of Notre Dame;  founded in 1919), and especially one of the institution’s alumni and  professors, Richard Sullivan (1909-1981), who attempted to revive the  Marian aspects of the story; Robert Lax (1915-2000), a friend of  Trappist theologian Thomas Merton and convert to Catholicism, who  attempted to turn the juggler story into a movie; film star Tony Curtis  (1925-2010), who played the acrobat in The Young Juggler, a telefilm that aired only once and is now known only to 1960s film buffs; W. H. Auden, whose faux-naïf  poem “The Ballad of Barnaby” was originally drafted in 1969 as the  libretto for a musical to be performed by a girls’ school in  Connecticut; and various composers of music and ballet performances from  Alfred Huth, Francis Poulenc, Ulysses Kay, and Juan Orrego-Salas, to  Peter Maxwell Davis. Ziolkowski ends by describing the spurious use of  the juggler in art and photography, laments the slow disappearance of  the narrative as a result of “fable-fatigue” and “exasperation with the  miracle” (150), and expresses hope that the juggler story won’t  disappear entirely because “To kill off a story requires total  annihilation” (174). I would like to add that Ziolkowski’s own six tomes  dedicated to the narrative may well inspire some revivals, too. 


The  COVID-19 pandemic slowed down my reading and reviewing of this mega  project. I apologize for this delay because the books truly deserve to  be known and read. As a collection, they constitute the most detailed  and most readable medievalist reception history I know. Two conditions  rendered this result possible: the author’s awesome learnedness, and his  application of this learnedness to the broad online access to isolated  archives, scholarship, and otherwise unrelated factoids. Without the  author’s amazing ability to compartmentalize as well as synthesize the  millions of minutiae the Web yields, academic and non-academic readers  could very easily lose interest as the red thread of the juggler story  appears and reappears in a maze of genres, audiences, countries, social  classes, languages, and cultures. In addition, the author’s  determination to lower the linguistic drawbridge so that  non-medievalists will enjoy his books is evident everywhere. Puns in  chapter headings (“Membranes of Things Past” or “Missal Attack”) and  affective authorial responses throughout invite readers to immerse  themselves in one story, character, and subject after another, and a  gentle and benevolent attitude toward human foibles accompanies even the  strangest motivations among those shown to appropriate all or some  aspects of the juggler narrative. And those with an interest in  immersing more deeply will find all the scholarly commentary anyone  might want in the extensive annotations. Unlike the sometimes  unspeakably self-righteous academic investigations exclusively (and  unceasingly) focused on “the worst of the worst” of modern and  contemporary (ab)uses of the Middle Ages, Ziolkowski’s comprehensive  studies reveal that most references to and uses of the medieval past,  while integral to nineteenth- and twentieth-century mentalities, are in  no way intrinsically complicit in violent or discriminatory ideologies  or actions.

A case in point is Otto Blechman’s 1953 retelling/redrawing of the juggler narrative, The Juggler of Our Lady.  Freshly graduated from Oberlin, the young artist was offered to design a  “graphic novel” on a Noel theme. He was Jewish and apparently knew  little about the Christian holiday. However, as part of the ubiquitous  nature of postmedieval medievalia, he and some of his friends were  familiar with the story of the juggler, which seemed to have enough of a  connection to fulfill the publisher’s mandate for a book that would  sell as a seasonal gift. Although the young artist could very well have  secularized the story into a parable of his own life (the juggler  performing to a world full of indifference for his art and dedication),  he decided not to obliterate the religious theme involved. Armed with  the outlines of medieval culture in Will Durant’s influential cultural  history, specifically the volume on The Age of Faith, he resolved  to situate the juggler’s story in a medieval monastery, but managed to  ecumenize it so that it became attractive and acceptable to a larger  audience: it could speak to those with a nostalgia for such a simpler  “age of faith” as much as to those only deploring the general lack of  spirituality in the twentieth century. While a minor event within the  gargantuan cultural phenomenon of modern medievalism, Blechman’s  imaginative and unassuming transmutation, which was adapted into a  nine-minute animated version in 1957, with a voiceover by none other  than Boris Karloff, may well be as representative of the modern  reception of medieval culture as Hubert Lanzinger’s infamous 1935  portrait of Hitler as the knightly “Standard Bearer,” a meme that  nowadays seems to accompany every other article on the troubling  continuities between medieval past and medievalist present.

Jan  Ziolkowski’s patient and ground-breaking effort encourages us to pay  more attention to the benevolent and less sensational examples of modern  receptions of the medieval. His books, freely accessible as they are  via OpenBook publishers in .pdf and online versions  (https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/697), are decades ahead of  an academic industry still mostly wed to print and to prices that are  sustainable only for the richest university libraries and independently  wealthy individuals.

Join My Mailing List. Richard Utz. Western Michigan University. Professor of English; Contact Information; Curriculum Vitae [PDF]. Expertise. ... Speaking of Medievalism: An Interview with Leslie J. Workman. Richard Utz, University of Northern Iowa. Suggested Citation. Richard Utz. ...

Medievalism  is a highly infectious agent that has replicated in post-medieval human  societies at a global scale. Because it is capable of infecting all  areas of human life, it has invaded almost every thought system on Earth  and thus constitutes one of the most wide-spread human mentalities.  When infected, human hosts (and groups of hosts) are enticed to  precipitously produce countless copies and simulacra of the ‘original’  Middle Ages. Medievalism has a myriad of transmission pathways,  including language, memory, ritual, religion, music, technology,  nationalism, gender, race, politics, and education. We will look at many  of them as well as at humans’ responses, coping strategies, and  remedies.

What attracted artists and writers to admire the art and architecture of the cathedral from the late 18th through the early 20th century was an astonishingly cross-confessional and conservative and nostalgic desire to arrest the ever-accelerating movement of time, academic historicism, and scientific positivism, and the many other disquieting and de-individualizing cultural, economic, and social consequences of modernism and modernity.

Julia Ilgner: »Only connect!«. Mediävalimus und Autotextualität in Umberto Ecos journalistischem Kriminalroman Numero zero (2015). In: Umberto Ecos Mittelalter. Hrsg. von Angela Oster und Jörg Schwarz. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2023 (Rezeptionskulturen in Literatur- und Mediengeschichte 17)

Hardcover & Ebook:
https://verlag.koenigshausen-neumann.de/product/9783826078231-umberto-ecos-mittelalter/
ISBN: 978-3-8260-7823-1

Join us as Charles Lein talks to Dr. Richard Utz at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Richard Utz was a plenary lecturer at the 50th ICMS and presented on "The Notion of the Middle Ages: Our Middle Ages, Ourselves," and he was gracious enough to sit down with us a tell us more about his ideas on popular notions on the Middle Ages and how medievalists might benefit from embracing and working with popular medievalism.