 Hello, everyone. This is Professor Albrecht Lassen. Here is Martina once again. We're changing our style once again And we are here in our studio kind of You know, it's modern media. Why not sometimes as opposed to all used to this anyway, you love to watch films So we just do it from time to time The very practical reason why I'm doing this together with Martina today is because once again, I'm out of town I'm invited to give some guest lectures at Westfield State University in Massachusetts That's one of those things, you know scholars are being invited And so I have to be away from time to time to share some of my research with other students and other colleagues Today's job, however, is to talk about Ocasin and Nicolette as a very unusual text The good thing is in a way that Martina does not quite know the text. That's perfect so then she can kind of serve in your function and Just ask the same kind of questions and she will be very curious about it I thought before we start with Ocasin and Nicolette, which is a French text We're not quite sure when 13th century and we'll talk much more later. I thought would be good idea Just to give you also some visuals Right and Russians are always very nice. I've given you from time to time an idea of how medieval manuscripts look like and They're quite quite fascinating aren't they? I mean, even if you're not an art historian, but when we look at some of the artwork It's I think it's quite stunning what they they did. So why don't we start with that? I turn my book aside and Just like to give you a couple of examples They are not necessarily related. All right, so we do have only one manuscript of Ocasin and Nicolette That's in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale. We don't have any very particular nice Illustrations, but since our text. It's a literary text reflects in many ways life at large, right? And so we have kings, we have Dukes and we are Senate shells. We have merchants. We have harbors We have forests. The whole spectrum of life is there So why not to simply take a look at some of the manuscripts and get a sense I brought two manuscripts with me or rather facsimiles. You know what a facsimile is? So I know I don't know how to explain in English, but I know Well, just I mean like as we say a facsimile, you know when I send a fax The modern word facts. I'm sending a fax is really a short form for facsimile Now we'll show you later We have the great details. This is a modern print So this is a medieval manuscript and the modern printers the publishers have recreated this manuscript Precisely that's the way how it looks like they copied it in a way So you can see all the dirt and all the holes or whatever it is precisely the same as You have it in original, but it's a copy. So modern technology can do it today So I thought we will take a look at a couple of those examples this is a smaller one and I want to use the other one just to give you a sense of how Artists at that time 13th century Reflected courtly culture makes sense. I think right. So what I would like to start with this is a major major huge manuscripts and It deals with the history of Alexander the Great Probably familiar with that. It's one of those large stories people always like to talk about and we have these fabulous manuscripts Actually, so we all know these manuscripts are made out of animal skin So if we take that a whole book, let's say Let's say 200 pages How many animals they think had to die had to give their life their skin they will play these poor guys What do you think how many animals had to die hundred pages? Yeah This is animal skin, you know, so they have to cut properly and Well, it depends how big other yeah, so let's say sheep and Cow sometimes goats a couple. Yeah Well, I think about the size of the body Yeah cows pretty big, but it depends on how big were the The pages what the page is usually right there. It was as we see 200 You know, you cannot take the skin of a leg very well That doesn't quite work and the face if you cut the face it doesn't work so well You have to be the belly or you know the side so you get a nice big page so You cannot take every skin 20 I Think you underestimate that's a for such a nice book as certainly maybe 150 150 Animals so you can imagine if they want to write the entire Bible. Oh My goodness not the entire Bible then yeah, maybe 500 animals for the oh my gosh Well, it's not such a Traumatic thing imagine these animals have to be butchered anyway, you know people have to eat So let's say you have a monastery with let's say 300 monks. They have to eat every day So they have to butcher every day So every day you have at least five to ten sheep or whatever They have to be butchered. Otherwise, they don't have enough meat So but it's still it's a major enterprise Why don't we start with this big one Alexander the great and I just lift it up a little bit We have later some very nice close-ups, but you can see this is a huge huge Manuscript and we basically disappear behind it. You don't see us right there So let me just get up a little bit so that you can see and Martina You can take a look at it together with me What strikes you first of all? I mean this is a page That is supposed to be part of a book, but we wouldn't have our books like that today, right? What strikes you maybe as being really different compared to to modern books? The colors yeah a lot of colors Even the text has different colors red black So different types of ink and If you then see all this here you call this the margin huge margins and They really intriguing things if you look at the details my god, they're strawberries Mmm delicious strawberries. I'm getting hungry Flowers sometimes there are monsters. They're sometimes really odd little things The artists seem to have had a lot of freedom and they enjoyed really Painting whatever they just could of course the central part is the one event here We'll take a closer look later. That's Alexander the great There's a tent soldiers We have a castle city in the background some trees some elevations stones rocks plans All kinds of things a tent very beautiful 10 very luxurious Of course these are art object books for the nobility. So really luxury items I wouldn't even be able to tell you how much such a manuscript really would have cost I would think at least equivalent. Let's say for this one alone. Maybe like a superclass of a Porsche or Mercedes. I mean really 40 to $60,000 maybe even more now so and if you think about if you hold up this one this little manuscript This is a facsimile That even as a modern print that cost something like $500 So because the printing is so expensive. They cannot just simply print they have to run it Mainly many different times to get all the colors So these are we and the paper is very very thick. So even the modern facsimiles are very very expensive Let me just turn over to another page, which I find very interesting which will also will help us beautifully Here a scene Well, what do you see Martina or big ship a castle many soldiers And just be facetious. Would you entrust yourself to the ship? Does it look like? Inviting yeah, I mean, do you think you will be able to traverse the ocean? It's very detailed You have masks you have all the I mean, it's very very detailed as a ship. So the the artist might have really known Ship ships seafaring voyage at least he's trying really hard to give us an idea, right? So That makes it interesting art historians can help us a lot to understand much more about that time And so since we will talk a lot about seafaring today, there's a lot of crossing the water once again very common theme It's interesting to see this By the way here again, we have strawberries a lot of strawberries other kinds of fruit and Really quite quite interesting and let me just turn over the page just to give you another very interesting scene We have even entertainment. I mean this entertainer look at this guy. What is this guy doing? Very funny. So we have a court this society there and they all watch this guy We will call him today a tumbler or you know an athlete or an acrobat in the Circus maybe so these are people who just entertain people other people. So the court wants to have these tumblers and We have interesting perspective right into the city We have a little garden scene there and also I think very interesting fashion You notice I mean we can really tell the way how people were dressed at that time. That's standard clothing So art historians The logists historians can all collaborate nicely to get a good idea how that culture looked like So I think I just turned over one more so you get a little bit different impression this is huge and The funny thing is even in the cleave right there It begins to break its its color over it indicates how the actual manuscript looks like so you have much more text here We have a smaller image that is an initial so that represents actually a letter and then much more text They obviously didn't finish you can see they started doing the marginal drawings and Well, maybe they ran out of time out of money, whatever But at least we have the text from time to time. We have very beautiful initials and You can see stains here You can see all kinds of dirt there so on there You know the way how you turn over a page when you turn over a page What do you do and let's say the page doesn't turn properly with my finger? I try to yeah Oh, you lick your finger, right? So what we can do today. Can you imagine that we have found the DNA? So we found remnants of the saliva off. Let's say 14th century readers Turning over the page There's a random of human DNA and we can identify precisely today who Read the book at what time because of the DNA. It's like criminology. It's not hilarious so all kinds of interesting things are happening also medieval studies and Or maybe let's turn over to the other book This is a very beautiful little book by Gaston de Paris and It is a hunting book In other words, it is a book Which shows how to do hunting? Have you ever gone hunting? No, would you? No, I wouldn't either. I've never gone hunting. I would never go hunting I couldn't kill animals. I cannot I have a hard time even killing a fly sometimes But these people seem to have gone seem to have gone hunting a lot, right? Why? I mean it was a very common thing in higher society, right? Even like after the Middle Ages still a long time, right? 1900s. Yeah, entertainment. Yeah sports Free time free time Challenging activities knighthood preparing for that All those those things I think are very important. It's part of noble activities. Yeah, social aspects social aspects correct cultural aspects It's also showing off your own individual skills. You know if you can kill a boar for example I mean don't think about the little javelinas Here in Arizona we have javelinas. They're tiny little peccaries. I'm not so bad in Europe We have boars. Have you ever seen a boar in Germany? In Germany that these big boars a herd of boars. I've seen it. I'm a creature with a boar Boars in Wiltschwein. Oh, yeah. Oh boy. They are monsters animals huge and heavy They can destroy an entire field over night. I Mean digging out everything there ever was planted I've seen that there feel the farmer had plowed had planted potatoes a whole huge field I don't know four or five acres the next morning everything was dug up. No potato left Everything was destroyed. So these are ferocious animals And if you want to hunt them Skin is thick and if you don't have a really good gun and we don't have guns So it is dangerous really even for the best hunters Anyway, so what I'm saying is hunting is a great sport and it shows whether someone has all the skills You know nightly skills now this manuscript is very small and very hard to see we'll try later to give you a close-up and But it just gives us all kinds of scenes how people were hunting what techniques they used what animals they were hunting What weapons they used and what strategies they had dogs They had different types of forcing animals into corner and then scaring them or they build pits or something like that But what is really valuable once again? We have all these beautiful marginal drawings the details if the miniatures and We can learn a lot about what kind of plants exist the trees What kind of weapons these? Nights used to what extent they used farmers to do all the hunting and of course you'll also have text So Gaston wrote here really a very detailed very elaborate book about hunting and So this is one of the beautiful Valuable manuscripts today housed in the BP take national one of the great libraries of the world that's just a gems and We would call them bibliophile items, so items that book lovers really enjoy and If you ever want to take a look at any of these books You can do that. You don't have to go to Paris. You don't have to go to work in Britain You can simply go to our special collections This is right there. You know our library the East Wing when you enter the library then But rather before you enter the library then you go to the East Wing and Online actually can find another YouTube video where I and James Howell Introduced you to special collections, so I invite you to take a look at that. So hey, we are on TV already Excellent, so a little bit the bibliophile history history of books now. Let's turn actually to our actual story we want to talk about and Ocasar Nicolette, this is a Absolutely amazing strange story and the good thing is that Martina doesn't know it so I have to kind of summarize the story and then you will fire with questions at me so she will kind of help you all getting through the text and She will serve as your mouthpiece in a way Hopefully, of course. Yes, so I would think I just go quickly through some of the highlights and Give you the introduction. Of course, you do have an introduction that I've written here It is one of those strange texts. We call it shant the phablet meaning that the poet Sometimes falls into verse. So it's really like a song and then he returns to prose So he goes back and forth so you can see this actually in the entire text Yes, sometimes the poem then you have okay verse at least then you have the narrative again and In essence, it is a very simple very sweet little love story once again. You have a prince a prince who has a problem and We have read that before Marie de France had a young prince who had a problem. Do you remember? This young man who was not actually in love and then he was going hunting and Then he was wounded and then he traveled and then he fell in love with this lady Gijama, right? So anyway, so there's some similarities with the exception that now this young man is in love But he loves according to his father the wrong woman Father doesn't like whom he loves Sounds modern sounds familiar Yeah, right that happens all the time Whatever let's say today might not be the right social class or the father might be racist Or whatever or religious conflicts. We have it all the time Let's say a Christian man falls in love with a Muslim woman or a Muslim man falls in love with a Jewish man Oh, whatever These are problems that do not go away Right, would you all agree with me? That this is nothing that goes away. We still need to talk with about these things But it's I think hide to talk about the current conflicts. We are so much involved So again, I would like to say it's great to have this literary story It's a lens like a little telescope and once we have gone through this. We will suddenly get a sense of oh It is really us in a different way So who does he love? young Ocasin Christian Prince, of course loves Nicolette Nicolette Used to be a Saracen Arabic Saracen is the pejorative term negative term for Muslim or Arabic woman We never learn anything really about her religious background We only know that she was captured at some point by pirates and sold us a slave So she has entered the slave market Even in the Middle Ages, we do have slaves It's an interesting story. We'll talk about that in a minute So she was bought by her you'd say foster father and who baptized her And I'm sure force baptism Getting problematic, but this author doesn't really talk about it. At least she is now a Christian a young Christian woman, but of Arabic descent the author never quite addresses that but she certainly looks Arabic Actually, we know that she comes from Tunisia. There's the reference to Carthage and Carthage was a famous ancient city Queen Diado had lived there. Anyway, that's ancient history and the ruins of Carthage Today located near Tunis the capital of Tunisia Whether the people or the author read understood much about that doesn't really matter for us What matters is I think we have here an extremely interesting example About something I like to call Synology, have you ever heard that word? Xeno Xeno meaning foreign alien So the difference between one culture and the other and so what we do today a lot in Humanities in general in anthropology sociology religious studies with We do Synology we study how people perceive the other It's quite interesting actually German studies does that a lot you know looking at Turkish cultures Turkish German writers and there are lots and lots of issues even today a Japanese Americans Chinese Americans Korean Americans All kinds of other people live in our country and we have all kinds of problems today and the same thing of course happened in the Middle Ages, right? That's People always migrated people always moving around always issue of that sort Right, so it makes sense. Wouldn't you agree that even from a modernist perspective? It makes good sense, right? I mean Germany has a lot of problems and France has a lot of problems Did you ever see any problem? I don't quite know on a personal level. Oh my personal yeah, yeah Actually, no, but I know what what exist. Yeah. Yeah, all enough. I have never seen anything either I mean I have lived in Germany after one gone back to Germany many many times actually every year And I know there are lots of foreigners and I hear all kinds of problems But I myself have never Witnessed well actually once and that was actually directed against my own son so anyway And this story it's incredible It's 13th century and let's use the modern word and it deals with racism Now much racism can be overcome By love I find that incredible racism Can be overcome by love. There's a beautiful movie. I've mentioned before you might remember Mississippi Masala, I don't know whether you ever heard that movie. It's a great great story about an Indian woman from Uganda who had to come with her family to United States and She falls in love with a black American Of course, both families hate this the black family doesn't want the Indian Family to connect it be connected with them so ultimately these two people just run away because they love each other and The amazing thing is that we face the same situation here in our story or Cassin and Nicolette in short the father Orcasons father Realizes that his son is in love with this young girl does like that. He's telling him very point blank no, you cannot do that and At the same time the father has a huge problem because he's in a war So he needs his son really to fight the war for him because the father's old so the young man Tries to negotiate with his father at some point says For one kiss if I may kiss her once Then I will fight so the father says all right do that. I will allow you to kiss her So the son of course fights quite valiantly strong successfully Comes back Then he says to his father. Okay. Let me kiss her and the father says No, confident no contract with you regarding that girl. I will ever hold So the father breaks all of his promises That's amazing So you have a huge problem huge conflict between father and son over the love He wants to develop he has passionately On to cut short a little bit. This doesn't work. Of course because ultimately The opposition is so strong both are thrown into prison both sides try to hold these people apart You know, they're really fighting very very hard. How can we prevent this love to develop further? Do you think that can ever happen when two people love each other and The families are against it What do you think will happen? well one Idealistically probably they're gonna turn their backs to their own family. I hope so Right, so of course, that's why we all together in this class We hope that we we believe in the true power of love and love that can overcome all difficulties right and love as the ultimate force that makes you to know the person and Well in modern terms that we will all become colorblind because we believe in love Right, irrespective of skin color background social background religion. It doesn't matter when you fall in love That's what you do Again to cut short there's several wars back and forth the father betrays his son repeatedly and ultimately the girl and Nicolette runs away and And so she disappears for a while. Okay, so it's very distraught Almost the despairing but he follows somehow his mistress travels and bannens his father as well and We then get to Two very interesting scenes and I would like to focus on both a little bit. First of all Nicolette Disappears in a forest, so she just hides in a forest and That is a scene on page. Let me just go there So we have this right away. This is on page 462. So if you could help me turn to page 462 and The Ocasana has now excuse me Nicolette. That's the girl has met a group of children While she is trying to hide in the forest Did we have for us before yes, let's say in Peace Claveré we had forest So the secret space we have had Walter von der Vogelweide in the one poem Remember under the Linden it's beautiful poem. Well, they're not in the forest, but they are right at the edge of the forest and Right there under the Linden tree They could realize their love. It's like almost a utopia away from society. It's beautiful, right? That was a wonderful wonderful poem and Here the girl Nicolette hides in the forest and she tells the children in case Ocasana might arrive Would you read this? Where is it right there? Oh Right at the top the first line. Okay. Tell him that there is a beast in this forest and that He is to come and hunt it and if he can take it. He would not part with one limb of it for a hundred for a hundred gold marks May not for five hundred nor for any price So it's the image or the metaphor of the hunt once again for that reason Gaston is a great example So everyone is hunting and in this case hunting for Love But why would she call him a beast? Why does she call herself a beast? Because love is ferocious It cannot be controlled and If he can manage to win her he has found the ultimate goal. It's just like Gizemar tracing his beloved Difficult crossing the ocean danger and Ultimately, of course then these two get together and the hunt is successful Okay, once again, how does he hunt her? He doesn't hunt you. He simply goes into the forest I find her. Yeah, he actually he breaks he falls and he breaks a bone and then she finds him and then he heals him So she becomes once again the Active actually this is the other point really the most amazing active person and So she is really doing this as an example of how strong women could be at that time She act actively Engages him. She actively pursues him. She actively sets up the setting so that They both can ultimately find each other We could explore this further We have had it a little bit in Elie Duke where the story also shows us the strong woman and Here it is much more the woman who is well a victim and yet a woman who can take on Agency I don't know whether you're familiar with that word. I love that word agency. She assumes her own Responsibility she she actively Structures her own life we call it now in feminist studies or gender studies Agency take on your own life pursue your own life be responsible for your own life So they both get together And that there's some color a couple of other difficulties And I want us to jump to the end in order to illustrate also How curious the whole text then can become because we have then this very curious experience of these two people the two lovers who Go to a foreign country They cannot really live either in the Christian world Nor in the world of her family. I mean at one point Nicolette actually gets home. She is recognized once again as the daughter of the sultan. So everyone is very happy, but She is not happy because her love drives her even away from our own family Very remarkable reflection The story is not idealizing Christianity and it's not idealizing Islam it simply shows there are two families two cultures They do not talk to each other But the two people Overcome they disregard all religious differences. Actually, there's no discussion about religious religious issues they just overcome those because they love each other and This is beautifully illustrated in The one story which I have to look for that is the story of the country of so-called Tori Lora It's just a little snapshot. We might say very odd situation They just travel. Let's put it this way and They come to this kingdom of Tori Lora where they first find and you will be surprised find the king lying in child bed Expecting delivery He thinks he's pregnant Wait a minute So they ask him then. Oh That's odd and then they ask where's your wife and He says well, why I am lying in child bed. My wife herself deal on the on the War field and she's fighting a war Okay, what so they go out and they observe the army the armies fighting against each other with cheese sausages Fruit vegetables, they're throwing these things again food fight. We would say Are they all women or is it just his wife? No, that's his wife Yeah, so just these two change gender and thereby it becomes a very odd story, I Think it's a reversal of everything and fighting with food is almost a reference to the country of cocaine In Germany's la raffle land the country of cocaine where there's lots and endless amount of food That's sort of a little playful illusion. The other one is however a deliberate attempt at Transgression nothing is right in this story Let's begin father not right Her father not right The entire country in the Christian world is not right And then she has to escape although she loves him Both get together and again. She is the active person because she kind of lures him into the forest and He has to follow her commands He has he's drawn to her and he goes with her and then when we travel when they both travel and then they come to this Country of Torah Laura, they realize oh my god everything is topsy-turvy so the this doesn't experience of How Constructed everything is I think it's a wonderful term society is constructed Genders are constructed. I mean that's what society does right? That's actually the latest Position that research takes in gender studies. Sure. We do have a by a lot biological gender but socially our gender is constructed and The poet already knew this of course He doesn't change the gender of the Nicolette and Oka son But he changes the gender the social gender of the king of Torah Laura and his wife and just plays whether it shows how things can be different and Then the amazing thing is that's very typical of a of a literary text. It just ends like that We don't hear any outcome and we don't know what happens with the Oka son Nicolette. It's just playful So they're in this castle and they watch the woman fighting in the war They then it ends they first of all tell the king I mean they almost the beat the hell out of him you get out of bed You assume your male row and then they tell the wife you queen you stop this. That's not your role back to your your gender roles So they try really to reestablish this The poet only projects the possibility of this very curious Playfulness and eludes to the constructiveness of all of society And if you take into view once again, how much father and son were fighting at the beginning if you consider how much this young girl was abducted enslaved and then baptized Doesn't really care and then she runs away and then they both get together again. How much life is is so Fickle there are no Steady forces except for one There's only one stable force in life You know what I'm talking about What I mean in light of all this Nothing holds steady no family relationships no political structures no gender roles, but one thing is always There love so the story puts love on this high pedestal and says Irrespective of all the vanguaries of life Irrespective of fortune and changes and instability Irrespective of social class irrespective of race irrespective of religion Love is there and love will always stay there So it's a little playful literary Utopia might say again a little sarcastic sarcastic and he's very free-weeding. This is a poet who cares about nothing We have only one manuscript so we don't quite know how popular the text was but we regard this today I was one of these little literary gems because absolutely and finally glorifies love which transcends all Barriers all borders and we have a beautiful latin statement which traverses all medieval literature Amor vincit omnia love conquers all Thank you very much, and I see you then on Thursday. Thank you so much