Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 21:01:43 -0400
From: "Juris G. Lidaka" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask],
Medtextl <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Exempla to sermons
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I've been chasing around a few 15th-century English poems that
basically match Tubach 2731 or so (father-daughter incest; dau. kills
sons, then parents, turns to prostitution, realizes her sin, repents,
dies, & is acknowledged to have entered Heaven due to her sincere
contrition). This first turns up, so far as I can tell, in Etienne de
Bourbon 2 centuries earlier, and there are several variants in other
exempla collections in between. This exemplum also seems to appear as
the Dux Moraud play fragment.
The popular milieu of my poems is quite different from the more
learned, shall we say, environment of the exempla collections. And thus I
have been wondering about the transition from exempla collection to
popular poem. Basically, if I work by the apparently standard assumption
that exempla collections were fodder for sermons, then sermons would be
the intermediaries since people at large would have heard this exemplum,
and thus it could spread.
Confirming this assumption has proved intractable: I've zipped
through the Wycliffite sermons in print, plus several of the EETS volumes
of Middle English sermons. I haven't hopped through Brinton's sermons
yet, but I expect to find little sign of my exemplum in what few
collections of Latin sermons otherwise that I may be able to see in the
near future. (Predictably, the Wycliffite ones are fairly spare, devoid
of enlivening exempla, but some were quite intriguing rhetorically. For
those who recall my messing with a magic text, one of these had an
interesting use of the term "experiment" for how some men try to gain the
love of women.)
So, as I slave away on sermons, I was wondering if anyone has
references that would help guide me in studying the actual--as opposed to
theoretical--use of exempla collections in sermons. Since I haven't seen
anything from the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society for years,
I would also appreciate some references to published collections of
sermons that might contain my exemplum, so I could scan them. (I zipped
through some of the early ones, like Davy's, for Bartholomaeus Anglicus
references earlier, and I'll have to redo them now, though Davy is too
early for this use, I suspect.) If I have misunderstood the assumption
that exempla collections were intended for and used by sermon-writers, I
would very much like to be corrected.
So much might be more appropriate as private responses, but I
trust the basic issue of theoretical vs. actual use of exempla collections
by sermonizers might prove a fruitful and enlightening public discussion.
As always, I send my thanks in advance.
Juris
Juris G. Lidaka
WVSC Box 57
PO Box 1000
Institute, WV 25112-1000
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