KU scholars receive national recognition for humanities research


LAWRENCE — Two University of Kansas professors are putting medieval studies in the national spotlight. The National Endowment for the Humanities funds just 7% of the more than 1,000 fellowship applications it receives each year. Last month, only two of the $60,000 grants went to scholars in Kansas — both of them at KU.

Misty Schieberle, associate professor of English, will use her grant to write a monograph that revises traditional narratives of English literary history to account for the influence of proto-feminist French author Christine de Pizan, whose poetry prominent male writers relied upon but rarely cited by name.

Anne Hedeman, who is the Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History, won her grant to co-write a wide-ranging study of illuminated manuscripts produced in France during the 14th century.

Schieberle’s book, “Patriarchy, Politics, and Christine de Pizan’s Influence on English Literature, 1400-1478,” uncovers new evidence of de Pizan’s influence on major late medieval authors such as John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve.

Schieberle has been researching Christine de Pizan’s books of advice for aristocrats, which were widely popular in England in both French and English translations, for several years now.

“While doing lots of manuscript research and lots of reading of Middle English authors to situate those works within an English context, some things clicked for me that suggested that Christine's works were far more influential on some major 15th century writers than modern scholars have realized,” Schieberle said. “I found some episodes in Middle English writing that I believe could only have been influenced by Christine's works.”

Specifically, Schieberle said, “There are original figures like the goddess of wisdom, Othea, that she invented. Then there are some stylistic choices that she makes and some unique theories of how fortune affects the lives of people that I think resurface in Middle English authors who have read her.”

That includes, Schieberle said, “the major English poet” of the 1400s, Thomas Hoccleve.

Schieberle said Hoccleve translated Christine de Pizan’s “Letter of Cupid,” the god of love, from French into English, “never giving Christine credit for it” and adding certain misogynistic elements to her text.

“Hoccleve and another major poet, John Lydgate, are potentially the most responsible for establishing Chaucer's reputation, immediately after his death, as the father of English poetry. And at the same time, they are silently drawing on the work of Christine de Pizan.”

Especially since there are no English women secular poets in the Middle Ages, Schieberle said, telling the story of Christine de Pizan's significant influence reveals that early English literary history is not as exclusively masculine as it initially appears.

Hedeman is excited about the fact that she and her medieval studies program colleague, Schieberle, are the only Kansans to qualify for NEH grants in this most recent round. And she looks forward to working once again with Elizabeth Morrison, senior curator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, with whom Hedeman collaborated on a major exhibition and catalog, “Imagining the Past in France,” a decade ago.

Hedeman said she and Morrison were invited by the editors of the series A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France (HMMSF) from Flemish publisher Brepols to write a volume covering the period in which they specialize, the 14th century. The entire series covers the period from the seventh to the 16th century.

“We were excited to write on the 14th century because people have often viewed it, not necessarily in a negative way, but through a limiting frame,” Hedeman said. “The dates of the survey — 1320 to 1380 — that roughly coincide with the dates of the first three Valois kings — Philip VI, John the Good and Charles V. And the 100 Years War between France and England was happening, so people often consider the manuscripts from of this period the standpoint of ‘There was a war and outbreaks of plague, and the economy and patronage declined.’ But, actually, one can look at this time in a positive way. Although the economy and society were disrupted, there was a lot of innovation, and we hope our volume will reveal that the very circumstances of political and societal upheaval in the 14th century drove the book market to be one of the most inventive, impelling new types of books, illumination programs and stylistic experiments."

Hedeman said she and her co-author have spent the past year narrowing down their list to feature 100-150 manuscripts, making sure to have samples that show the diversity of books and the range of quality of the artists who illuminated them.

“We don't want to have only the artistic peaks,” Hedeman said. “We want to have some things from the valleys. And we want to discuss different kinds of books. So, for instance, one thing that we have included is a modest almanac. It’s very practical and portable — a little book you could tuck in your belt.

“But we’ll also include big, secular manuscripts that you open up for display, and they're resplendent, and others ranging from liturgical books made to be used at the altar to privately owned prayer books that are also distinctive.”

They’ll survey religious texts, law books, science, history, classics and new translations of older and contemporary works.

“The book is designed to be an indispensable reference work for scholars and also to offer beginning scholars an overview of the visual culture of a distant time and place and of the material, intellectual and art-historical significance of 14th century books,” Hedeman said.

Photo: Detail from a work Anne Hedeman will feature in her book project, “Saint Louis and his sons at sea,” by Guillaume de Saint-Pathus from “Life and Miracles of Saint Louis,” ca. 1330-40 (Paris, BnF Ms. Fr. 5716, p. 40). Credit: Bibliothèque nationale de France

Fri, 01/22/2021

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Rick Hellman

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