Thesis (Mus.Bach. 1968) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Music, 1968.

Issued also as inaugural dissertation, Munich. / "Quellen und literatur": p. [x]-xv.

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No description available.

This study examines dance and dance-like sacred performance in four texts by or about the thirteenth-century beguines Elisabeth of Spalbeek, Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Agnes Blannbekin. These women wrote about dance as a visionary experience of the joys of heaven or the relationship between God and the soul, and they also created physical performances of faith that, while not called dance by medieval authors, seem remarkably dance-like to a modern eye. The existence of these dance-like sacred performances calls into question the commonly-held belief that most medieval Christians denied their bodies in favor of their souls and considered dancing sinful. In contrast to official church prohibitions of dance I present an alternative viewpoint, that of religious Christian women who physically performed their faith. The research questions this study addresses include the following: what meanings did the concept of dance have for medieval Christians; how did both actual physical dances and the concept of dance relate to sacred performance; and which aspects of certain medieval dances and performances made them sacred to those who performed and those who observed? In a historical interplay of text and context, I thematically analyze four beguine texts and situate them within the larger tapestry of medieval dance and sacred performance. This study suggests that medieval Christian concepts of dance, sacred performance, the soul, and the body were complex and fluid; that medieval sacred performance was as much a matter of a correct inner, emotional and spiritual state as it was of appropriate outward, physical actions; and that sacred performance was a powerful, important force in medieval Europe that various Christians used to support their own beliefs or to contest the beliefs and practices of others. / Dance

In my dissertation, I argue that the medical milieu of the 13th century contributed to shape vernacular secular culture. I demonstrate how the historical and scientific contexts of the Italian peninsula, from the Sicilian school of Frederick II and Manfred to the communal realities of Bologna and Florence, testify to the active reception of the works of Aristotle, Galen, and their Arabic and Western commentators in poetic circles. I show how the Italian 13th century was informed by a high degree of intellectual and scientific knowledge, and how the far-reaching penetration of medical sources connects an emerging vernacular culture to the intricacy of urban networks. "Of Poets and Physicians" addresses the following questions: what is the contribution of medical literature to Italian poetry of the 13th century? How can the reception of Aristotelian and Galenic physiological theories help us illuminate the way Medieval literature produced its tropes? Why should we consider these cultural and intellectual environments as productive frames of thought for poetical writings? My dissertation addresses these questions in three macro-chapters. In the first chapter (On Fluid Memory), I argue that under the patronage and influence of Frederick II and Manfred, the reception of Aristotle’s physiology of the soul informed the tropes of the memory image of the lady engraved into the heart, used by Giacomo da Lentini and the other vernacular poets at court. In the second chapter (Minding the Brain), I study the influence of Galen and Arabic Galenism on the intellectual circles of the second half of the 13th century. I argue that the influence of the Bolognese Galenism of Taddeo Alderotti informed a great part of Guinizzelli’s poetry, not only with respect to the phenomenology of love, but also in his views on nobility and natural determinism. In the third chapter (All Things Natural), I combine the Aristotelian discourse on ethics and the Galenic question of temperamental determinism. I analyze how the scientific background on the relationship between bodily balance and the functions of the soul is discussed in Taddeo Alderotti’s translation of an epitome of Aristotelian ethics, and how these debates are reframed in the poetry of Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, and Cino da Pistoia, by virtue of the relationship between love and reason. While contextualizing the uses of medical thought in the poetical production of philosophical and poetic authors, I demonstrate how the active reception of scientific theories testifies to the high degree and pervasiveness of medical education in the intellectual circles of the 13th century.

My dissertation analyzes the role of Ovid’s Heroides in Alfonso X’s General Estoria, a massive historical compilation in six volumes that the “Learned King” commissioned in 1272. The way in which eleven of these fictional epistles were incorporated by the Alfonsine translators sheds light on how ancient texts were perceived by medieval scholars. According to the study, King Alfonso relies on Ovid as an accurate historical source and uses the epistles of the heroines as historical documents while preserving their literary dimension. The thesis is divided into six sections. Chapter one introduces the topic of translation in relation to history and literature and argues for the use of a culturesemiotic perspective in the study of medieval translations. Chapter two looks into the General Estoria in order to frame the generic register/s to which the Heroides and Ovid belonged in Alfonso’s historic discourse. Some of these issues include literature and its historical value, and how the ancient past (in this case the times of characters in the Heroides) was used in order to investigate and interpret the concerns of the present, and form decisions about the future. Chapter three speculates on the bearing that the habitus or socio-cultural conditioning of a potential translator like Archbishop Jiménez de Rada could have had in the Alfonsine approach to translation. Chapter four analyzes the uses of and references to Ovid as a writer and his works throughout Europe in order to recreate the position both him and his works held in the socio-cultural milieu of thirteenth-century literature, history, epistolography, and rhetoric. Chapter five focuses on how the Latin text was initially adapted and segmented according to translation patterns and norms. This observational analysis of the Heroides in the GE approaches the text from the perspective of the discipline of Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). My research does not seek to propose or refute any theories but, rather, to make a contribution to DTS in the form of an observational analysis.

This thesis examines the dissemination of visions of the otherworld in the long thirteenth century (c.1150-1321) by analysing the work of one enthusiast for such visions, Helinand of Froidmont, and studying the later transmission of three, contrasting accounts: the vision of the monk of Eynsham (c.1196), the vision of St. Fursa (c.656) and the vision of Gunthelm (s.xiiex). It relies on a close reading and comparison of different versions of these visions as they appear in exempla collections, religious miscellanies, history chronicles and sermons. In considering the process of redaction, it corrects two imbalances in the recent scholarship: a focus on searching for, then discussing ‘authorial’ versions of the narratives and a tendency among students of literature to treat visions of the otherworld as an independent sub-genre, prefiguring Dante’s later masterpiece. Instead, by looking at the different responses of a number of authors and compilers to visions of the otherworld, this thesis shows how they interacted with other elements of religious culture. On one hand it reveals how all medieval editors altered the narratives that they inherited to fit the needs and rules of genre. These rules had an important influence on how visions were spread and received by different audiences. On the other, it explains how individual authors demonstrated personal or communal theological and political motivation for altering visions. In doing so, it notes a divergence in the way that older monastic communities and travelling preachers responded to the stories. By explaining these variations, this study uncovers a range of complex reactions to trends in thirteenth-century eschatology (particularly the development of the doctrine of Purgatory) and how they interacted with wider religious concerns such as pastoral care. Finally, it shows how an examination of the pattern of a vision’s dissemination can lead to a re-consideration of the earlier texts themselves and the religious milieu from which they emerged.

This research consists of three separate studies, which examine these texts in the order they were written, exploring the myriad cultural, political, religious and legal forces situated in the time and place where the texts were created to determine what forces may have influenced their authors in depicting the Jews the way they did. In the first study of the epic Poema de mio Cid, I focus on the legal quandary about whether the Cid should have repaid the two Jewish moneylenders from Burgos who gave him a loan for his military campaign. I examine the anti-Jewish canon and secular laws from this era, particularly those dealing with usury, and explore how the Castilian kings’ flouting of these laws created hostility and, in one telling instance, violent attacks against Jews from Christians who were angry about royal favoritism of the Jews. I compare the twelfth century attacks against an unpopular king and his royal property – the Jews – to the Cid’s deception of Raquel and Vidas, arguing the Campeador’s trick was also a way of inflicting harm on an unpopular king and his royal property, the Jews. I also examine the interrelationships between the increasingly hostile anti-Jewish laws and the Christian’s anti-Jewish social stances and attitudes, exploring how both the legal context and social and cultural contexts could have informed the poet in his portrayal of the two Jews in the text. In the second study, I focused on the various Jewish messianic prophecies detailed in the writings of twelfth century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides that existed in Spain during the time the Toledan liturgical drama Auto de los reyes magos was written and performed to see if they may have influenced how the unknown author negatively depicted the Jewish rabbis and members of Herod’s court in the play’s final two highly original scenes. The portrayals of the Jews’ eschatological confusion, I show, may have been created to stop Jews, considered vital to Toledo’s growth and stability, from following contemporary messianic prophecies and migrating to the Holy Land. In the final study, I focus on Gonzalo de Berceo’s caustic representations of Jews in Milagros de Nuestra Señora to determine if his harshly negative portrayals of Jews were a way to deflect attention from the papal-sanctioned clerical reforms that targeted heresy, including clerical abuses in the Benedictine Order, and caused Berceo’s beloved “black monks” to lose substantial funding and power in the Church. By portraying Jews and their behavior as real heresy and as the biggest threats to Christianity, Berceo underscores that clerical abuses and sins of the flesh are less problematic and pardonable.

Across medieval Europe, the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain traced a lattice web of popular culture. From the lowest peasant to the greatest king and churchmen, the devout walked pathways that created an economy and contributed to a social and political climate of change. Central to this impulse of piety and wanderlust was the veneration of the Virgin Mary. She was, however, not the iconic Mother of the New Testament whose character, actions, and very name are nearly absent from that first-century compilation of texts. As characterized in the words of popular songs and tales, the mariales, she was a robust saint who performed acts of healing that exceeded those miracles of Jesus described in the Bible. Unafraid and authoritative, she confronted demons and provided judgement that reached beyond the understanding and mercy of medieval codes of law. Holding out the promise of protection from physical and spiritual harm, she attracted denizens of admirers who included poets, minstrels, and troubadours like Nigel of Canterbury, John of Garland, Gonzalo de Berceo, and Gautier de Coinci. They popularized her cult across Europe; pilgrims sang their songs and celebrated the new attributes of Mary. This dissertation uses the greatest collection of these songs, Las Cantigas de Santa Maria compiled in the thirteenth century under the direction of Alfonso X, King of Castile and Leon, to construct the history of a lay piety movement deeply rooted in medieval popular culture. Making the transition from institutionalized, doctrinal saint to popular heroine, Mary becomes a subversive conduit through which culture moved from Latin poetry to vernacular verse and from the monasteries of scholasticism to the popular pathway of Wycliffite reform.