Performative literary culture emerged as a set of practices that shaped production and distribution of learning in late medieval and early modern Western Europe, both in Latin and the vernacular. Performative literary culture encompasses the plays, songs, and poetry performed for live audiences in (semi-)public spaces and the organizations championing performative literature through 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. Written by a team of experts, the contributions in this book explore how performative literary cultures shaped the exchange of public learning, knowledge, and ideas between the oral, theatrical, and literary spheres.
Contributors include: Francisco J. Ãlvarez, Adrian Armstrong, Gabriele Ball , Anita Boele, Cynthia J. Brown, Susanna de Beer, Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, Ignacio GarcÃa Aguilar, Laura Kendrick, Samuel Mareel, Inmaculada Osuna, Bart Ramakers, Dylan Reid, Catrien Santing, Susie Speakman Sutch, and Arjan van Dixhoorn.
Arjan van Dixhoorn, Ph.D. VU Amsterdam (2004), was appointed Hurgronje Professor of the History of Zeeland in the World at Utrecht University (University College Roosevelt at Middelburg) in 2013. He has published on early modern knowledge cultures and public opinion in the Low Countries, in particular on the Dutch-speaking rhetoricians.
Susie Speakman Sutch, Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley (1983), was a postdoctoral researcher in the History Department at Ghent University. She has published on the contribution of devotional brotherhoods, chambers of rhetoric, book production and translation to urban culture in the Low Countries during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Preface List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors
1 Introduction
âArjan van Dixhoorn
Part 1: Institutions of Performative Literary Culture
2 Formal Inscriptions of Performance
âAdrian Armstrong, Cynthia J. Brown, Samuel Mareel and Bart Ramakers
3 âTo Speak Well and Prudentlyâ: Literary Associations and Civic Corporate Culture
âDylan Reid
4 Benefits of Joyfulness: Ideas into Practice
âSusanna de Beer, Catrien Santing and Arjan van Dixhoorn
5 Careers: The Role of Literary Exercise
âArjan van Dixhoorn with the collaboration of Ignacio GarcÃa Aguilar, Francisco J. Ãlvarez and Inmaculada Osuna
6 Transformations: The Rise of New Institutions
âArjan van Dixhoorn and Gabriele Ball
Part 2: Individual Careers
7 Performative Practices in Eustache Deschampsâ Occasional Verse
âLaura Kendrick
8 Pervasive Performance in the Work of Jean Molinet
âAdrian Armstrong
9 Luis de Milán: Performativity at Court
âFrancisco J. Ãlvarez
10 Jan de Baertmakere Alias Smeken and Urban Festive Culture
âSamuel Mareel and Susie Speakman Sutch
11 The Jovial Mode of Konrad Celtis
âCatrien Santing
12 Pierre Gringore: Interpreter of Sixteenth-Century French Performative Literary Culture
âCynthia J. Brown
13 Jacques Sireulde: The Handsome Usher
âDylan Reid
15 Be Who Thou Art: The Vernacular Learning of Johan Fruytiers
âArjan van Dixhoorn
16 Literary Activities and Theatricality at Leuven University: The Case of Erycius Puteanus
âHilde de Ridder-Symoens
17 Lope de Vega: Performativity and Professionalization
âIgnacio GarcÃa Aguilar and Inmaculada Osuna
18 Countess Anna Sophia of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Her Concept of âVirtueâ
âGabriele Ball
Bibliography Index
All interested in the literatures, urban cultures, and the festive and ritual cultures of late medieval and early modern Western Europe, and those interested in the intersection of learned and more popular spheres. Keywords: Europe (Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany), performative literature, poetry, theatre, cultural history, intellectual history, literary institutions, literary associations, literary events, late medieval, early modern, 1200-1700.