Overview

This ambitious and vivid study in six volumes explores the journey of a single, electrifying story, from its first incarnation in a medieval French poem through its prolific rebirth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Juggler of Notre Dame tells how an entertainer abandons the world to join a monastery, but is suspected of blasphemy after dancing his devotion before a statue of the Madonna in the crypt; he is saved when the statue, delighted by his skill, miraculously comes to life. Jan Ziolkowski tracks the poem from its medieval roots to its rediscovery in late nineteenth-century Paris, before its translation into English in Britain and the United States. The visual influence of the tale on Gothic revivalism and vice versa in America is carefully documented with lavish and inventive illustrations, and Ziolkowski concludes with an examination of the explosion of interest in The Juggler of Notre Dame in the twentieth century and its place in mass culture today. Volume 4 examines the famous Le jongleur de Notre Dame by the French composer Jules Massenet, which took Europe by storm after premiering in 1902 and then crossed the Atlantic to the impresario Oscar Hammerstein and the diva Mary Garden, who gave the opera new legs as a female juggler. Presented with great clarity and simplicity, Ziolkowski's work is accessible to the general reader, while its many new discoveries will be valuable to academics in such fields and disciplines as medieval studies, medievalism, philology, literary history, art history, folklore, performance studies, and reception studies.

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9781783745296

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Reviews

Funny, erudite, compelling, The Juggler of Notre Dame stretches every boundary of what an academic book is. It has given me--and will give all its readers--further permission to extend the definition of the scholarly book. Imaginative, well-researched, genre-bending, this book makes multiple contributions to the fields of medieval history, philology, art history, performance studies, reception theory, and medievalism. --Prof. Kathryn Rudy, University of St Andrews A lifetime's knowledge has been poured into these pages with passion and dedication, and the reader feels, and shares, the author's enthusiasm along the Juggler's journey from the Middle Ages to the present. From medieval French manuscripts we follow the tale through early modern religious literature, post-Romantic editorial endeavours, anthologies of national literature and children's fiction, to modern adaptations in ballet, opera, and the visual arts. Such wide-ranging enterprise is matched by a fluent, witty narrative which succeeds in making complex terminology and concepts accessible to non-specialist readers. As such, the work is a major achievement. --Prof. Barbara Ravelhofer, Durham University

Funny, erudite, compelling, The Juggler of Notre Dame stretches every boundary of what an academic book is. It has given me--and will give all its readers--further permission to extend the definition of the scholarly book. Imaginative, well-researched, genre-bending, this book makes multiple contributions to the fields of medieval history, philology, art history, performance studies, reception theory, and medievalism. --Prof. Kathryn Rudy, University of St Andrews A lifetime's knowledge has been poured into these pages with passion and dedication, and the reader feels, and shares, the author's enthusiasm along the Juggler's journey from the Middle Ages to the present. From medieval French manuscripts we follow the tale through early modern religious literature, post-Romantic editorial endeavours, anthologies of national literature and children's fiction, to modern adaptations in ballet, opera, and the visual arts. Such wide-ranging enterprise is matched by a fluent, witty narrative which succeeds in making complex terminology and concepts accessible to non-specialist readers. As such, the work is a major achievement. --Prof. Barbara Ravelhofer, Durham University

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