For most university faculty members, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities means a chance to complete a lengthy research project.
For Northwestern religion department chairwoman and English Prof. Barbara Newman, a recently received grant means a chance to pay tribute to an old friend.
Newman received a $40,000 grant for her research and translation of “Marienleich,” a medieval German poem. She said she hopes her work will contribute to the memory of her friend Barbara Thornton, a member of an early music performance group who recorded a rendition of “Marienleich” before her death in 1998.
“It gives an added personal dimension to the project,” said Newman.
Newman said she did not start researching the poem, written by the German poet Heinrich von Meissen in 1300, until several years after Thornton’s death.
Since then Newman has completed an English translation of the poem. She said the grant will enable her to take a year off from teaching to write an introduction and historical commentary to go with the work.
She said she hopes to publish the translation and supplementary materials by 2005.
Newman also said she plans to include a copy of the recording made by Thornton’s performance group, Sequentia, with the published text.
“It makes me especially pleased that I will be continuing her work,” she said.
Newman discovered “Marienleich” while working on another book, “God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry and Belief in the Middle Ages,” published in the fall of 2002.
The poem was written in a dialect known as middle-high German in honor of the Virgin Mary, said Newman. She said von Meissen, the poet, was “highly sensual and erotic.” His pen name, Frauenlob, means “for the ladies.”
Newman said she decided to translate the work when she discovered it. It was not then well-known outside Europe.
“To be appreciated, it really has to be translated,” she said.
The grant money will be given directly to NU so that Newman can be paid her regular salary during her time off.
Newman said she plans to spend part of this time at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in northern Italy. She and her husband, NU religion Prof. Richard Kieckhefer, both received grants to spend a month at the center working on research projects.
Once her book is completed, Newman said, she hopes it will be adopted by university faculty and promote further study of von Meissen.
“Here’s a poet who was very famous in life and really influential through the 1600s who’s been pretty much forgotten,” she said. “I want to put him back in the literary canon.”
That sentiment was echoed by Jeffrey Hamburger, Newman’s former classmate and a professor of the history of art and architecture at Harvard University.
Hamburger attended Yale University with Newman in early 1980s. A fellow medieval German enthusiast, he wrote Newman a recommendation when she applied for the grant last spring.
He said he hopes Newman’s translation will help reinvigorate studies of the Middle Ages.
“The middle and high Middle Ages are attracting very few students right now,” Hamburger said. “It’s wonderful to see a scholar as gifted and imaginative as Prof. Newman devoting herself to fresh, new translation.”
