This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
Olga Duhl, associate professor of foreign languages and literatures at Lafayette, has edited Le Théâtre Français des Années 1450-1550: État Actuel des Recherches (French Theater between 1450-1550: the Current State of Research), a collection of essays published by University of Bourgogne Research Center in Dijon, France.
Originally presented at an international colloquium organized by Duhl at University of Bourgogne in November 1999, the essays are by leading specialists in the fields of French medieval and Renaissance history, literature, text edition, and culture.
“This is the first book in which French drama of the end of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance is examined through an interdisciplinary perspective as a coherent, although evolving corpus that is deeply linked to the historical, social, political, and cultural conditions of a changing society,” says Duhl.
Senior Gabriela Martins, a double major in neuroscience and French from Newark, N.J., contributed to the book project last year under Duhl’s guidance through Lafayette’s EXCEL Scholars program, in which students assist faculty with research while earning a stipend.
Charles Mazouer of University of Bordeaux III inaugurates the volume by examining the social and aesthetic overlaps between the medieval farce and the comedy of the Renaissance, two major genres traditionally considered incompatible. Jonathan Beck of University of Arizona analyzes the ideological and formal characteristics of the morality play, a typically medieval theatrical form, which was still in vogue in the 16th century and beyond. Marie Bouhaïk-Gironès of University de Paris VII looks at archival documents to support the view that the farce and the sotties, two comic genres associated with the popular tradition, were actually linked to the legal profession and emerging corporations of law clerks.
Bruno Roy of University of Montreal uses archival data to show that the Farce de Maistre Pathelin, the epitome of medieval French comic theater, was composed in the south of France, not in the Parisian region as generally believed, while Jelle Koopmans of University of Amsterdam looks at text edition as a multidimensional task, which includes study of such neglected cultural aspects of medieval performances as audience, readership, and the printing press. Pierre Kunstmann of University of Ottawa highlights the significance of technology as a valuable research tool that makes it possible for the editor to “recontextualize” the medieval miracle play as a developing corpus still of interest in the beginning of the Renaissance. Madeleine Lazard, professor emerita of Université de Paris-Sorbonne nouvelle, concludes the book by showing that the differences between late-medieval and Renaissance theater tend to be more theoretical than practical, and that from the classical to the contemporary, this type of theater has never stopped to inspire playwrights.
Among the ten or more Lafayette students that she has mentored, Duhl has worked with several EXCEL Scholars in recent years, including Vilas Menon ’02 of Wassenaar, Netherlands, who graduated with a degree in chemical engineering and a bachelor of arts degree with majors in International Studies and French. Menon presented ‘’The Trials and Rewards of Translating Old French Texts” at the 15th annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research.
Duhl joined the Lafayette faculty in 1992. She is the author of Folie et rhétorique dans la sottie, published in 1994 by Droz, Geneva. She also has written numerous book chapters, book reviews, articles, and translations, including publications in Fifteenth-Century Studies, Le Moyen Francais, Romance Quarterly, Studi francesi, Réforme Humanisme Renaissance, and Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance. She is on the editorial board of Revue d’études françaises.
Forthcoming publications include ‘’Most is Less than Nothing: Allegories of Bliss in Marguerite de Navarre’s Trop, Prou, Peu, Moins (around 1544),” in Des deux félicités, céleste et terrestre, au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance, Memini, Canada; “Le fou et le roi dans le théâtre comique de la fin du XVe siècle et du début du XVIe siècle,” in La Folie de l’Antiquité au XIXe siècle, Conference Proceedings, University of Bourgogne, France; “La Grant nef des folles de Jehan Drouyn (1498): traduction, imitation, innovation,” in Le Moyen Français; and ‘’A New Biography of John Pace,” The New Dictionary of National Biography, under contract to Oxford University Press for publication in 2003.
Duhl has given papers and lectures at International Conferences of Middle French Studies, Montreal, Canada; Renaissance Society of America Conferences, Vancouver, Canada, and Bloomington, Indiana; the International Conference on French Women Writers during the Ancién Regime, St. Louis, Mo.; the Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference, St. Louis, Mo.; the Thirteenth Annual Medieval and Renaissance Conference, New York; and other events.
She holds a master’s degree in French from the University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and a doctoral degree in French from Rutgers University.
Duhl’s awards include a Pro-Cultura Grant for the Humanities, 1998; research grants in 1993, 1994, and 1997, and Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award, Lafayette; Mellon Foundation Grants in 1996 and 1998; a Marandon Fellowship for Research in France, 1990; a University Fellowship, Rutgers University, 1990-91; and a Marion Johnson Fellowship, Rutgers University, 1989.