The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity by Ziolkowski M Jan

• Title: The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity by Ziolkowski M Jan
• Author: Ziolkowski M Jan
• Publisher: Open Book Publishers
• Binding: Paperback / softback
• Art treatments & subjects
• No. of pages: 520
• Dimensions (approx. mm): 254 x 176 x 41

Product Description

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.