Olga Anna Duhl Contributes Article to Landmark Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Olga Anna Duhl, associate professor of foreign languages and literatures, is a contributor to the landmark Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which was recently published.

The 60-volume encyclopedia contains more than 50,000 articles about people influential in British history, whether British citizens or those with a connection to Britain.

The Oxford DNB is recognized as a monumental publishing achievement, the most exhaustive work of its kind and the definitive bibliographic encyclopedia for breadth and depth of scholarly content.

The reference work was a long time coming. The original DNB was published more than 120 years ago and set the standard for bibliographic reference while being considered a model of literary thought.

Duhl authored an article on an influential 16th century scholar and court jester. John Pace abandoned his scholarly career to become a court jester, serving Henry VIII and becoming a thorn in Queen Elizabeth’s side.

Pace was clever, acerbic, and highly regarded as an authority in satirical literature, according to Duhl.

“He was the Renaissance version of a modern-day political satirist,” she says. “He was a court jester, witty, and intelligent, and he thought he could make better contributions by telling the truth in court.”

Duhl’s research found that Pace was regarded as a literary figure and compared to Machiavelli, Cicero, Ovid, and Roscius for his satirical statements.

Though not a specialist in English literature, Duhl’s background and academic accomplishments in medieval and Renaissance French literature made her ideally suited to the Oxford DNB, whose editors wanted to enhance the scholarly content of the original by incorporating the discoveries in historical research that had taken place since the original publication in 1882.

Duhl has written and published widely on folly in French literature, involving Lafayette students in her research through the College’s EXCEL Scholars program. Her study of European history, culture, and society has brought her in contact with the English courts of which Pace was a part.

“The two cultures [France and England] are interrelated at the time of the Renaissance because of religion, so we can talk about the Christian community more than particular cultures or languages. Religion is the main thing, the unifying entity that brought together cultures,” she says.

“Religion is so important in this article,” she adds. “He lived and he reflected upon the time in which major changes were taking place within the Catholic Church — the time of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth.”

Duhl has studied folly from a multi-disciplinary perspective – philosophy, 15th and 16th century culture, rhetoric, and politics — and she was “struck by the fact that some of these so-called ‘fools’ had a very high position, not only socially, but they became an ally of the king.”

“That was a very striking phenomenon,” she says. “I didn’t know what to make of it, so I went back to the 14th century and I realized there were court jesters – fools — who were appointed and were officials in the courts of various kings of France and England. They had the right to say the truth, the right to observe the environment, observe the courts, the behavior and language of people associated with the king — the counselors, his wife, and family.”

“This person made observations to the king. He was spying really, in a very jocular way. He’d make statements to the effect of ‘I know somebody hates you; somebody is preparing a coup; somebody wants to poison you’; something like that. But he would make this entertaining, performing a monologue or a mini play,” she reports.

Though she knew much about folly from her previous scholarship, Duhl knew little about Pace, though she was familiar with the scholarship on his brother Richard, a noted humanist, from her study of Erasmus.

Discovery research on John Pace was challenging. Duhl found numerous 19th century references to him, but they weren’t reliable enough for serious scholarly study. The original DNB story on Pace was more anecdotal, so Duhl sought source documents from the 16th century: his transcripts from Eton and King’s College at Cambridge, manuscripts, letters, and official records.

Unfortunately, Pace’s writings have been lost.

“I think it is no exaggeration to say he was a great literary figure, a great mind, and a critical thinker,” says Duhl. “According to what I read and how I feel about him – although we cannot be sure because the documentation is so fragmentary – he was a man of conviction. One might think a court jester is philosophically wishy-washy, wavering to suit whomever is in power. But he remained a committed Catholic, despite the trying times.”

Lafayette purchased a copy of the Oxford DNB (it also has a copy of the original version), the largest reference work in Skillman Library, according to Reid Larson, reference/instructrion librarian, taking up more than 12 feet of shelf space. Lafayette also has the on-line version of the work.

Larsen believes the resource is well worth the $13,000 cost.

“It is very comprehensive and provides short sketches of notable persons that are accessible and easy to read,” he says. “It provides a snapshot of what a generation of scholars feels is historically important.”

Duhl was recommended to the editors of the Oxford DNB by colleague Susanne Westfall, professor and head of English.

She has mentored Lafayette students in research projects such as an independent study by Emily Katz ’06 (Staten Island, N.Y.), a double major in history and French, that followed up on four weeks spent on the grounds of artist Claude Monet’s estate in Giverny, France.

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 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.

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 in 2002 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.

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 honors include a Renaissance Society of America research grant, 2003; a Pro-Cultura Grant for the Humanities, 1998; research grants in 1993, 1994, and 1997, and the 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.

Duhl holds a master’s degree in French from the University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and a doctoral degree in French from Rutgers University.