Medieval Dance: Transmissions and Traces

In recent years, medieval studies scholars have reassessed the relationship between dance and religion. Scholars have examined the Church’s disapproval of dance and also uncovered how dance worked in the service of religion. Teeming with tension, dance was always a controversial subject in medieval Europe. The Cursed Carolers in Context, a collection of ten interdisciplinary essays edited by Lynneth Miller Renberg and Bradley Phillis, uses a story that has circulated since the eleventh century as a central narrative to explore the significance of dance for medieval society. In their introduction to the volume, Renberg and Phillis summarize the cursed carolers story, outline its major transmissions, and situate their book within recent medieval dance scholarship. In brief, the cursed carolers story is a tale of a group of rowdy dancers in a village in Saxony who skip Christmas mass and instead dance in the churchyard, after which they become cursed and must dance for a whole year. As Renberg and Phillis indicate, the earliest texts pertaining to the cursed carolers were composed in Latin and may date from around 1021. The story was soon translated into several languages, including Anglo-Norman (a variant of Old French), Middle English, and German vernaculars. It also migrated to Scandinavia. By the early modern period, the story was replaced by tales of dance epidemics, yet it remained relevant in many cultures well into modernity. According to Renberg and Phillis, “by analyzing the story in specific historical contexts, the chapters show how the story of the cursed carolers became a space in which medieval readers, writers, and listeners could debate the meaning and significance of a surprising variety of questions, including ecclesiastical authority, gender roles, pastoral responsibility, and even the conduct of the crusades” (p. 2). This book is one of the first attempts in medieval studies scholarship to bring together an “array of voices and disciplinary perspectives on medieval dance,” and all of the