This book is the result of a series of meetings organized by a network of scholars from Europe and North America. These meetings built on the work of an earlier network assembled in the early 2000s which resulted in the publication in 2008 of The Reach of the Republic of Letters: Literary and Learned Societies in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, likewise edited by Arjan van Dixhoorn and Susie Speakman Sutch. Initially titled ‘Communication by Performance: Literary Societies and the World of Learning’ the key term of our meetings soon developed into ‘Performative Literary Culture’. From there the title of the present book was devised: Performative Literary Culture. Literary Associations and the World of Learning, 1200–1700. The notion of ‘Performative Literary Culture’ was developed as a technical term for what had been identified as the common denominator in the various literary cultures of late medieval and early modern Europe that were discussed in The Reach of the Republic of Letters. The aim of the follow-up book project was to describe the features of performative literary culture with more precision. The ideas were prepared in a series of meetings starting in 2008.
The network behind The Reach of the Republic of Letters was set up in Rome in 2003 on the initiative of Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, Catrien Santing and Arjan van Dixhoorn with the aim to study the history and dynamics of (in particular, vernacular) institutionalized literary cultures in late medieval and early modern Europe. The idea of performative literary culture was introduced at our second meeting in 2006. The series of meetings in preparation of our second book were again organized by members of the network behind The Reach of the Republic of Letters, and later also by new members of the evolving network of authors who have contributed to the present book. The first meeting, titled Ways of Communication: Literary and Learned Societies in Early Modern Europe, was organized at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel in June 2008 by Gabriele Ball and Andreas Herz. The meeting was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The attendants discussed the outlines for our next book project. While The Reach of the Republic of Letters was organized into a series of chapters focused on regional clusters, the aim for the new book was to analyse more thematically the world of performative literary culture that we had uncovered.
Performative literary culture as we defined it refers to the plays, songs, and poetry performed for live audiences in (semi-) public spaces and the organizations championing performative literature through performative meetings and events. These organizations included chambers of rhetoric, confraternities of the Puy, joyous companies, guilds of Meistersingers, the Consistory of Joyful Knowledge, academies, companies of the Basoche and Inns of Court, and the institutions or people organizing the Spanish justas. The aim was to better understand performative literary culture, which we contended was at the heart of the production and distribution of knowledge or learning in the later Middle Ages and the early modern world, both in Latin and in vernacular cultures. The question to be answered: how did performative literary culture shape the exchange of public learning, knowledge, and ideas between the oral, theatrical, and literary spheres? At the meeting in Wolfenbüttel we decided to focus on agents and the media for exchange: authors and networks, and texts and practices.
Hence, at the second meeting organized by Arjan van Dixhoorn and Katell Lavéant at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Wassenaar, The Netherlands, 1–5 July 2009 (and funded by the NIAS), we focused on the role of performative culture in shaping literary and learned careers in late medieval and early modern Europe. At the NIAS meeting we discussed what was meant to become the second part of the book, Careers, which would focus on individual careers of writers and/or performers. The discussions were guided by Ignacio García Aguilar, Francisco J. Álvarez, and Inmaculada Osuna. The attendants at this meeting agreed upon a first table of contents and the topic of the next meeting, focused on ideas (rather than individual texts) and practices.1 Most of the papers dedicated to careers of writers/performers presented at this meeting have been collected in part 2 of this book.2
The third meeting was organized by Inmaculada Osuna, Francisco J. Álvarez, and Ignacio García Aguilar at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Filología, 21–22 July 2011. The meeting was funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Goberno de España, with the collaboration of FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders); Université de Versailles, Saint-Quentin- en-Yvelines; Institute of Culture and History, University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Humanities; Grupo P.A.S.O (Poesía Andaluza del Siglo de Oro). Most attendants at this meeting would contribute to one of the chapters of part 1 of this book. Other papers presented at the meeting by attendants who have not contributed to this book have been instrumental in the shaping of ideas in various chapters of part 2.3
The Performative Literary Culture (PLC) network also organized a meeting on ‘Institutions of Knowledge and Civility in Europe (1300–1700)’ with the Italian Academies Project (funded by the Art and Humanities Research Council at the British Library, Royal Holloway University of London, and the University of Reading). The meeting was hosted by the Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal en Letteren (Royal Academy for Dutch Language and Literature) in Ghent in 2012. The aim was to investigate the position of the Italian academies in the world of performative literary culture. The meeting was funded by the Italian Academies Project, Group for Early Modern Studies (GEMS, at Ghent University) and FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders). Finally, the PLC network organized three series of panels at the annual meetings of the Renaissance Society of America (Venice, 2010; San Diego, 2013; New York, 2014).
In the year following the meeting in Madrid the final team of authors of the present book was put together. It was also decided in the course of writing the chapters that the book would have two parts: the first a thematic part with a focus on trends and patterns of the ideas, forms and practices that characterized late medieval and early modern performative literary culture, and a second part dedicated to the careers of individual practitioners. The editors of this book wish to thank all the funding agencies, host institutions, co-organizers of events, participants in our meetings and panels and our (teams of) authors who were instrumental in shaping the ideas behind this book and its final content.
The editors thank the anonymous reviewers for their critical comments and helpful suggestions, and Caroline Diepenveen for making the index. They are grateful to the series editor, Prof. Han van Ruler, for including our second book in ‘Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History’.
In Memoriam Hilde de Ridder-Symoens
A few weeks after the redacted manuscript was submitted to Brill for publication, our great friend, and academic mentor, Hilde de Ridder-Symoens passed away on March 5, 2023, at the age of almost 80 years. She was still full of travel plans and publication projects. Her colleagues, friends, and family mourn the loss of a great scholar, passionate about research, teaching and mentoring, erudite and with an inquisitive mind. She was also a warm and hospitable person, tolerant and accepting of differences in opinion or life choices. Hilde will be remembered as an example of academic and civic cosmopolitanism; she embodied the qualities of a world-oriented academic life that she passionately believed in.
Hilde de Ridder-Symoens was born in Molenbeek (Belgium) in 1943 in a family of teachers and pedagogues. In 1947, the family moved to Congo, where, in 1949, her father became the director of Royal Athenaeum in Leopoldstad (today’s Kinshasa). While her father stayed in Congo until he retired in 1975, in 1958 his family returned to Belgium. As a result of her family’s colonial background, Hilde grew up with a deep love and respect for Africa, and a lasting sense of the need to counter Eurocentrism. In 1960 she enrolled in the history program of Ghent University, and in 1962 she became involved in the history of universities, working as a graduate student, then as a PhD-candidate in a Flemish-Dutch project on the law faculty of the university of Orleans in the late Middle Ages. Her Dutch co-researcher Corrie Ridderikhoff would become a lifelong friend and colleague.4 Just before her passing, Hilde received a copy of Les registres-matricules de la nation germanique de l’ancienne Université d’Orléans, 1602–1689, volume 59 in the Brill book series ‘Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance’. This was the last of a series of books which they co-authored.
By the time she received her doctorate in 1969 under the supervision of Raoul Van Caeneghem (Ghent) and Robert Feenstra (Leiden), Hilde de Ridder-Symoens became an expert in the history of law and the history of institutions, and a world-leading authority in the history of universities and pedagogical cultures. In 1986 she was appointed professor of medieval history at VU Amsterdam. From 2001 until her retirement in 2008, she was professor of early modern history at Ghent University. Among her many memberships of national and international scholarly organizations, Hilde was an active member of the Royal Flemish Academy of the Sciences and the Arts of Belgium. With Dominique Willems, she was the co-initiator of the Young Academy of Belgium, founded in 2013.5
This book and the network that produced it would not have existed without Hilde’s support and erudite and inspiring contributions during our meetings across Europe. She not only had a profound knowledge of the history of the universities, but she was also an expert in the history of humanism, and the history of academies. Apart from her expertise in the history of the Latin world of learning, Hilde also developed a strong interest in the world of vernacular learning that is at the heart of this book. Together with the late Marijke Spies, she was the leader of a Flemish-Dutch project on the history of the late medieval and early modern chambers of rhetoric (the project started in 1998 in Ghent and Amsterdam). Our current book project is one of the many follow-up results of that project, which at the time aimed to re-assess the Dutch-speaking chambers of rhetoric from their European context. With Catrien Santing, Hilde was again among the initiators of this project, which then quickly developed into a study of (vernacular) literary institutions as a (western) European phenomenon. The first stage of this project began in Rome in 2003, and was followed by the publication in 2008 of The Reach of the Republic of Letters. This book on Performative Literary Culture is the result of the second stage, widening the initial network with additional experts. Both books are the products of Hilde’s intellectual inspiration and legacy, and her unparalleled networking and conversational skills. We honour Hilde’s role by dedicating this book to her in fond memory of her scholarship and friendship.
Arjan van Dixhoorn and Susie Speakman Sutch
The presentations at this meeting were prepared based on a questionnaire.
The French-speaking regions were represented by Jean Bodel (ca. 1165–ca. 1210), Adam de la Halle (ca. 1245–ca. 1306), Eustache Deschamps (ca. 1340–1406/7), Jean Molinet (1435–1507), Pierre Gringore (ca. 1475–1538), and Jacques Sireulde (early–mid-16th c.); the Dutch-speaking regions by Jan Smeken (ca. 1450–1517), Louris Jansz (ca. 1515–1589), and Johan Fruytiers (ca. 1520–ca. 1579); the Spanish regions by Luis de Milán (ca. 1509–ca. 1561) and Lope de Vega (1562–1635); the German-speaking regions by Anna Sophia of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (1584–1652); the Latin world of learning by Konrad Celtis (1459–1508) and Erycius Puteanus (1574–1646). The Bulgarian taxidiotis
Michael Baldzuhn’s paper on ‘Monuments of Performative Literary Culture’, and the paper on ‘Parodic Practices’ by Marie Bouhaïk-Gironès and Katell Lavéant.
On Hilde de Ridder-Symoens’ life and career see: Dirk Heirbaut and B.C.M. Jacobs, ‘De historica van de juristen en de rechtenfaculteiten. Rechtshistorici uit de Lage Landen (15): interview met Hilde Symoens’, Pro Memorie. Bijdragen tot de rechtsgeschiedenis der Nederlanden, 21 (2019) 1, 3–26.