The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity , livre ebook

THE JUGGLER OF NOTRE DAME
volume 5


The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity
Vol. 5: Tumbling into the Twentieth Century
Jan M. Ziolkowski






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© 2018 Jan M. Ziolkowski


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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-534-0
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-535-7
ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-536-4
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-537-1
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-538-8
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0148
Cover image: Illustration of the juggler performing before the Virgin. From Anatole France, Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame , illustrated by Maurice Lalau (Paris: A. & F. Ferroud, 1924), p. 23.
Cover design: Anna Gatti
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Contents
Note to the Reader
3
1.
Juggling across Print
5
Printed Books as Pseudomanuscripts
11
Image-Makers Go Mainstream
13
Missal Attack
37
Handwriting the Medieval
45
Typing a Translation
52
Medieval French for Amateurs
55
A One-Novel French Novelist
56
French Language-Study
59
2.
Juggling across New Media
63
Making a Spectacle of Miracle
64
Sister Beatrice
71
Sister Angelica
86
Audio Recording
87
Silent Film
91
Charlie Chaplin: Tramp Meets Tumbler
92
3.
Juggling across Faiths
95
The Ecumenical Juggler
95
The Hasidic Whistle-Blower
100
The Jewish Jongleur
104
The Catholic Juggler
108
The Juggler and the Paulines
114
Two Bills: Buckley Jr. and Bennett
116
The Lyric Juggler and Patrick Kavanagh
119
“The Chapel at Mountain State Mental Hospital”
124
4.
The Yuletide Juggler
127
Easter Tumbling
127
The Commercial Aesthetic of “Ye Olde”
129
Noel Juggling: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
144
The Juggler in Holiday Books and Cards
154
Amateur Theater
161
Mass Radio
165
Mid-Century Medieval US Television
172
Postwar Britain
174
The French Connection
177
Juggler Film
179
Juggler Christmas Books Live On
180
Related Stories of the Season
183
5.
Children’s Juggler and Child Juggler
193
Suitable for Children
193
Downsizing the Juggler
199
American Children’s Literature
204
European Children’s Literature
213
Global Children’s Entertainment
227
Folktale or Faketale?
229
Tomie dePaola’s The Clown of God
238
Notes
247
Notes to Chapter 1
247
Notes to Chapter 2
269
Notes to Chapter 3
280
Notes to Chapter 4
293
Notes to Chapter 5
321
Bibliography
345
Abbreviations
345
Referenced Works
345
List of Illustrations
369
Index
385


To Mary Carruthers
Nothing that has ever happened should be granted as lost for history. Admittedly, only redeemed humanity inherits its past fully; that is to say, only redeemed humanity has its past in each of its moments become citable.
—Walter Benjamin


Note to the Reader
This volume is the fifth of a half dozen. Together, the six form The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity . The book as a whole probes one medieval story, its reception in culture from the Franco-Prussian War until today, and the placement of that reception within medieval revivalism as a larger phenomenon. The study has been designed to proceed largely in chronological order, but the progression across the centuries and decades is relieved by thematic chapters that deal with topics not restricted to any single time period.
This fifth installment, labeled “Tumbling through the Twentieth Century,” documents the explosion of interest in the story after the success of Massenet’s opera Le jongleur de Notre Dame in the early twentieth century. One manifestation of popularity comes to the fore in books, typescripts, and manuscripts. Another can be traced in performances, recordings, and films. A third category of evidence appears in the appropriation of the story by members of different faiths, especially but not solely as it is made into stock Christmas fare for theater, radio, television, and film.
The final volume will follows the story of the story from the Second World War down to the present day. The narrative was put to an astonishing range of uses during the war years. In the fifties and sixties, it experienced what turned out to be a last hurrah in both high culture and mass culture. Afterward, it became the occasional object of playfulness and parody before slipping into at least temporary oblivion.
The chapters are followed by endnotes. Rather than being numbered, these notes are keyed to the words and phrases in the text that are presented in a different color. After the endnotes come the bibliography and illustration credits. In each volume-by-volume index, the names of most people have lifespans, regnal dates, or at least death dates.
One comment on the title of the story is in order. In proper French, Notre-Dame has a hyphen when the phrase refers to a building, institution, or place. Notre Dame, without the mark, refers to the woman, the mother of Jesus. In my own prose, the title is given in the form Le jongleur de Notre Dame , but the last two words will be found hyphenated in quotations and bibliographic citations if the original is so punctuated.
All translations are my own, unless otherwise specified.


1. Juggling across Print


© 2018 Jan M. Ziolkowski, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0148.01
In these times of plenteous knowledge and meager performance, if we do not study the ancient work directly and learn to understand it, we shall find ourselves influenced by the feeble work all round us, and shall be copying the better work through the copyists and without understanding it, which will by no means bring about intelligent art. Let us therefore study it wisely, be taught by it, kindled by it; all the while determining not to imitate or repeat it; to have either no art at all, or an art which we have made our own .
—William Morris
The first two and a half decades of the twentieth century turned over a new leaf in the story of the tumbler or jongleur. In both Europe and North America, the tale is attested first and foremost in what might be called high culture. The ground for this interest, and for this specific mode of making the medieval modern, was readied in more than one way. In the initial stage, philologists from within the Germanosphere participated, alongside peers from other European traditions, by establishing the text of the French poem from the Middle Ages after its discovery. Augmenting their work, Gaston Paris promulgated appreciation of the original to a larger public in France, through concise but glowing praise of Our Lady’s Tumbler in his lectures and literary histories.
The next phase came thanks to the reception of Anatole France’s short story. His prose narrative would hav