(feat. bibliography)
It’s finally coming out: I’d resisted sending off my piece on amor cortesa & amor coral elsewhere, so as to include it in the (second) Festschrift volume for Karl D. Uitti. I thought that was paying due homage, being I reckoned one of the better / less foolish ideas I’d had, and one very much to do with him and close to his heart. There was a certain amount of kicking-self subsequently, as I’d rather see ideas in circulation much faster. If they’re good, they’ll spread; if they’re really good, they’ll encourage conversation and generate further ideas, even if good = controversial, not universally-acccepted, and maybe even regarded as wrong and wrong-headed by some/many. When I say “finally,” this is partly testament to good editorial practices, as Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Publications are good solid old-fashioned people who actually edit and proofread properly, at a sky-high standard. This takes time.
(Admittedly, this took quite a long time: my own chapter in this book was originally dispersed in a couple of parts of my doctoral thesis—final draft in 2005, submitted & accepted & available to all and sundry 2006—and in the intervening period I’ve changed my mind on the date of composition of Flamenca. Or rather: dates, plural. Which changes some things.)
It’s looking to be a very good volume indeed. As a volume as whole, and thanks to the contributions of those more illustrious contributors, most of whom are easy to spot: people who appear before me in the table of contents…
Here’s the blurb from the publishers (click for link to their site):
Here is the man himself (with link to the Princeton University obituary): a scholar and a gentleman, brilliant to the point of uncanny prescience, and honorary father to many a doctoral student:
For a longer and lovely obituary, see Peter F. Dembowski, “In memoriam: Karl David Uitti (1933-2003),” Romance Philology 58.1 (2004): 109-116.
Online c/o Brepols if your institution has a subscription… which UBC doesn’t… otherwise c/o hard copy in most decent university libraries.
You’ll notice that some of the contributors to Festschrift 2.0 weren’t Uitti F2 Scholars; amongst them John V. Fleming, who wrote a nice piece apologizing for himself here. Can a colleague be an honorary student? I don’t see why not, given that scholarship is an integrated va et vient of teaching-and-learning-and-discussion, bouncing back and forth, where the participants (including books, individuals represented via their writings, and other non-current-persons) bounce ideas off each other. By a certain lofty stage, scholars are all scholars, and all have students studying together. I’d humbly submit the case of these two splendid scholars as evidence…
I should also bring another volume to Medievalists’ attention, or remind you of its joys, which are well worth revisiting. A great collection of great essays by—well, calling a spade a spade—many of the greats of Medieval (French and European literary) Studies, a who’s who of the last quarter-century and more:
Translatio Studii: Essays by His Students in Honor of Karl D. Uitti for His Sixty-fifth Birthday.
Ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Kevin Brownlee, Mary B. Speer, and Lori J. Walters.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000.
ISBN 978-9042005136
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments.
Preface.
The Published Works of Karl D. Uitti.
Peter F. DEMBOWSKI: Karl David Uitti: A Biographical Sketch.
Grace Morgan ARMSTRONG: Engendering the Text: Marie de France and Dhuoda.
Renate BLUMENFELD-KOSINSKI: Sexual and Textual Violence in the “Femme d’Arras” Miracle by Gautier de Coincy.
Kevin BROWNLEE: Mimesis, Authority, and Murder in Jean Froissart’s Voyage en Béarn.
Marina SCORDILIS BROWNLEE: “Oh, Ambivalent Organ”: “Fertile Tongues” and “Circumcised Lips” in Medieval Spain.
Jean DORNBUSH: ‘Songes est Senefiance’: Macrobius and Guillaume de Lorris’ Roman de la Rose .
Nancy VINE DURLING: Women’s Visible Honor in Medieval Romance: The Example of the Old French Roman du Comte de Poitiers.
Patricia E. GRIEVE: Paradise Regained in Vida de Santa María Egipçiaca: Harlots, the Fall of Nations and Hagiographic Currency.
Edward A. HEINEMANN: “Low-Level” Computing as an Aid to the Study of Repetition in the Chanson de geste.
Sylvia HUOT: Confronting Misogyny: Christine de Pizan and the Roman de la Rose.
Claire NOUVET: A Reversing Mirror: Guillaume de Lorris’ Roman of the Rose.
Elizabeth W. POE: A Bird in the Hand: Toward an Informed Reading of En Peire, per mon chantar bel (PC 335,23 = PC 453,1).
Earl Jeffrey RICHARDS: Where are the Men in Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies? Architectural and Allegorical Structures in Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la Cité des Dames.
Duncan ROBERTSON: Authority and Anonymity: The Twelfth-Century French Life of St. Mary the Egyptian.
David ROLLO: William of Malmesbury, Gerbert of Aurillac and the Excavation of the Campus Martius.
Debora B. SCHWARTZ: Par bel mentir: Chrétien’s Hermits and Clerkly Responsibility.
Mary B. SPEER: Gaston Paris, Philologist and Mythographer: Discursive Doubling and Methodological Stalemate.
Lori WALTERS: Parody and the Parrot: Lancelot References in the Chevalier du Papegau.
Returning to Dame Philology’s Charrette: here’s the final pre-publication proof of my piece on amor cortesa e coral, “Reading (and) Courtly Love in Flamenca, via the Charrette.” NB: it’s not necessarily identical to what is in the volume, not to be reproduced without due consultation etc., and for citation purposes and so on as per usual do check against and indeed use the official proper version in the finished published book.
- the traditional-text form in PDF (2010-09), suitable for printing out and reading in the old-fashioned way
- the blog-post form (Valentine’s Day version with extra cheese; 2014-02-11), suitable for reading online
On the subject of courtly love: there will be another two allied Obrienaternal papers, on their way, appearing at some point this summer:
- a piece currently tentatively entitled “How Gaston Paris was (Poetically) Right about Courtly Love,” based on an invited talk at NUI Maynooth a while back; it’s nicely meta-meta, being literary criticism of literary criticism
See also: “On Philology (new publications + some thoughts)” (April 2009, just after that talk…): includes BIBLIOGRAPHY of the Grands classiques incontournables on courtly love
UPDATE: done: The Old Talks Series: “Courtly Love and Chrétien de Troyes’s ‘Lancelot’ (or, Why Gaston Paris Was Not Actually Wrong)” (2014-01-24) - a second piece on “nobility of heart” as distinct from other forms of nobility (esp. that of birth and/or (F)/fortune) and as a distinctly humanist idea; see Castiglione for a later example, and some early 13th-century Catalan writers for, well, earlier ones
UPDATE: done: First of the old talks: on Guillelmus de Aragonia, “De nobilitate animi” (2014-01-10)