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Olga Anna Duhl, associate professor of foreign languages and literatures, has received a Renaissance Society of America research grant to produce a French critical edition and English translation of La Grant nef des folles (The Great Ship of Foolish Maidens), a medieval French text of great significance.
Her research will include a trip to France this summer to examine five editions of La Grant nef des Folles at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Musée Condé in Chantilly. Her critical edition will be included in a series of early-modern texts on women’s education during the Ancien Régime (pre-revolution France) to be published by Editions Champion, Paris, a leading publisher in the area of early-modern French literature and culture.
Duhl is currently working with EXCEL Scholar Meredith Terlecki ’03 from Littleton, Col., a behavioral neuroscience and French major, who is studying the linguistic peculiarities of the text. She is one of several Lafayette students to collaborate with Duhl on the project, including Gabriela Martins ’03 of Newark, N.J., who is pursuing degrees in neuroscience and French. Terlecki shared her research March 13-15 as one of 23 Lafayette student presenters at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Salt Lake City, Utah.
In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students conduct research with faculty while earning a stipend. More than 160 students participate annually, many going on to present their research in scholarly journals and/or conferences.
La Grant nef des folles is a French version of The Ship of Fools, an allegorical poem penned in 1494 by Sebastian Brant that satirizes the follies and vices of late-medieval society.
“It has been described by generations of critics as one of the most influential books of early-modern Western civilization. Written in German and translated and adapted to Latin, French, Dutch, English, and Low German, the Ship of Fools stimulated both the development of vernacular cultures and the rise of humanism and the Reformation,” says Duhl.
Her research on the Middle French version has already resulted in the publication of two papers in academic journals. Her continued work will directly benefit her teaching, she says.
“Specifically, it will enhance at least two of my advanced French courses, High and Popular Culture in the Middle Ages & the Renaissance and The Sword, the Rose, and the Pen: The Quest of the Hero in the Middle Ages & the Renaissance,” she explains. “In addition, this text will be pivotal to two interdisciplinary courses — Educating Women in Early-Modern France and Medicine and Literature in Early-Modern Europe — that I plan to develop in the future.”
In her translation, Duhl is following the general rules established by the specialists of 16th century French literature.
“In addition to proper rendering of the lexical, grammatical, and orthographic (spelling) peculiarities of Middle French, these include a critical apparatus composed of an introduction, notes and variants, a glossary, and a bibliography,” says Duhl, who had the opportunity to examine La Grant nef des folles during an enhanced sabbatical leave funded by Lafayette during the 2001-2002 school year.
Terlecki’s contribution involves work on an accurate Middle French translation that explores the issues brought up in both the Latin and French versions of The Ship of Fools. Various words in Middle French are ambiguous and confusing to the modern reader, she notes.
“I am carefully making minor textual modifications to the Middle French so the reader can understand the text without deviating from the language,” says Terlecki. “I am also responsible for gathering material about the historical, biblical, and mythological figures that are referenced. This material will eventually be incorporated in the critical notes that will help the reader to understand thoroughly the historical perspective of the text.”
Terlecki is also noting technical errors that may have occurred because of the switch between medieval and modern typeface.
Duhl has conducted extensive research for the project on late-medieval medical and theological theories of sensory cognition. Her multidisciplinary scholarship includes the relationship between translation practices, rhetoric, and gender, “which represents an important, although understudied factor in the consolidation of the French cultural identity,” she says.
”My critical edition of La Grant nef will be of interest to several disciplines within the academic community: to cultural historians, as a document on early-modern representations of folly, as well as on cross-cultural contacts; to art historians, as a rare book dating from the early years of the printing press; to specialists of gender studies, as an original contribution to the querelle des femmes (first French literary debate on feminist issues); to philosophers, as a document on the Devotio Moderna (pre-Reform religious movement); to philologists, for the status of Middle French as a vehicle for cultural dissemination. In general, it will promote a better understanding of the vernacular as an emerging culture soon to overshadow the academic tradition.”
This spring, Duhl will submit her critical edition of Sotise a huit personages for publication. Written in 1507 by an unknown author, the book is a “fools’ play” that offers a synthesis of the late-medieval French comic theater, including the sottie, a type of late-medieval French satirical drama that flourished between 1450-1550.
Duhl also is editor of 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 last year 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.
Martins contributed to the book project as an EXCEL Scholar. Among a number of other Lafayette students, Duhl worked with EXCEL Scholar 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 his research with Duhl, ‘The Trials and Rewards of Translating Old French Texts,” at the 15th annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research.
Duhl 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, Paris, Klincksieck, 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 Ancien Régime, St. Louis, Mo.; the Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference, St. Louis, Mo.; the Thirteenth Annual Medieval and Renaissance Conference, New York; and other events.
Her 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.
A member of the Lafayette faculty since 1992, Duhl holds a master’s degree in French from the University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and a doctoral degree in French from Rutgers University.