Copyright
Jan M. ZiolkowskiISBN
Language
- English
THEMA
- NHDJ
- JBGB
- DSB
- D
- NHD
BISAC
- HIS037010
- REL033000
- LIT011000
- SOC011000
- LCO008000
Keywords
- Titivillus
- Medieval demons and folklore
- Medieval manuscript culture
- History of scribal and typographical errors
- Medieval religious and literary traditions
Titivillus, the Devil of Error: An Anthology
Vol. 3: European Drama, Late Medieval and Early Modern Western Folktales and Hindu Myth
Meet Titivillus: a minor devil with an extraordinary afterlife. Emerging in medieval Europe as a demon who collected the mangled words of careless chanters and recorded the gossip of inattentive churchgoers, he later evolved into the mischievous spirit blamed for scribal slips, printing errors and typographical blunders. Jan Ziolkowski’s Titivillus, the Devil of Error: An Anthology traces this remarkable transformation across more than eight centuries. Volume 3 follows Titivillus beyond sermons and religious exempla into European drama, folktales and comparative mythology. On late medieval and early modern stages, he becomes a boisterous and often comic performer: a tempter, trickster, embodiment of sloth and crowd-pleasing member of the devilish spectacles that enlivened German, French and English religious drama. These plays reveal how the once watchful recording demon was reshaped through costume, gesture, slapstick and popular entertainment. The volume then traces the story’s migration from ecclesiastical instruction into oral tradition. Across European folktales, the demon’s record of sinful speech is reworked to reflect lay perspectives, local cultures and resistance to clerical authority. Extending the comparison to Hindu myth, Volume 3 illuminates the movement of stories across languages, religions and social settings, and the continual transformation of written exempla into living narrative traditions.
Contributors
Jan M. Ziolkowski
(author)Jan Ziolkowski (A.B. Princeton University, Ph.D. University of Cambridge) has focused his research and teaching on the literature of the Middle Ages, especially in Latin. His special interests have included such areas as the classical tradition, the verbal arts of grammar and rhetoric, the appropriation of folktales, and the Latinization of Germanic epic. Additionally, he has developed broad interests in medieval revivalism down to the present. He has published many books on literature and culture, including interpretation, editions, translations, and reference works. He has published seven books with OBP, all devoted to The Juggler of Notre Dame. At Harvard he chaired Comparative Literature, the Committee on Medieval Studies, and (fleetingly) Classics, and founded the Medieval Studies Seminar, which still exists. He directed Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, a Harvard centre in Washington, D.C. Ziolkowski is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Europaea, and Medieval Academy of America, and member of the American Philosophical Society, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. His research been supported by the American Academy in Rome, NEH, American Council for Learned Societies, Guggenheim Foundation.