Karl Young

Karl Young (born November 2, 1879 in Clinton , Iowa , † November 17, 1943 in New Haven , Connecticut ) was an American drama scholar, medievalist and university professor.

Life

His father was a lawyer and the grandfather of a Calvinist pastor. Karl Young grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan and initially studied at the University of Michigan . His master’s degree (1902) and doctorate (1907) followed at Harvard University . Between degrees, he taught at the United States Naval Academy for two years , then returned to Harvard to complete his doctorate. The Chaucer Society published his dissertation on Troilus and Cressida in 1908 . Young taught from 1908 to 1923 at the University of Wisconsin – Madison . The high point of his career were the two decades as a professor at Yale University (1923–1943). In 1933 he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . 1940 saw his election as President of the Modern Language Association ; several honorary doctorates followed and the Gollancz Memorial Prize in 1941.

Since the publication of an essay in 1908, Young's research has increasingly focused on what he called liturgical drama . He built the term, which was never accepted unconditionally in German-language theater studies, on preliminary work by Charles Magnin . Magnin, and after him Léon Gautier, believed that modern European theater emerged from the Mass rite , especially from the Quem quaeritis trope . The thesis reached a wide English-speaking audience through Young's two-volume life's work, The Drama of the Medieval Church (1933). It has been reprinted several times and has been required reading in many lectures.

Later generations questioned whether the occidental theater came from the celebration of mass, because the liturgical culture of the Middle Ages was diverse and varied: the liturgical play was subsumed in the celebration and not necessarily separated from it as a self-confident drama . Liturgical robe and ceremonial movement were common in the history of the celebration of Mass, but that did not make the religious celebration theatrical. Indeed, post-war theater researchers have found that performative representation is multidimensional and multifaceted. The research on play, ritual and entertainment was so deepened that a reference back to Young's theses hardly seemed tenable.

Karl Young's academic papers, which focus on the liturgical play of the Middle Ages, are held in the Yale University Music Library.

Books (in selection)

• The Harrowing of Hell , Madison 1909.
• A Liturgical Play of Joseph and his Brethren , Baltimore 1911.
• The Origin of the Easter Play , Baltimore 1914.
• Officium pastorum. A Study of the Dramatic Developments within the Liturgy of Christmas , Madison 1914.
• The Drama of the Medieval Church , 2 volumes, Oxford 1933.

swell

• Wilmarth S. Lewis, et alia (including Karl Young's widow), A Memoir of Karl Young (New Haven: self-published 1946).
• Michael Norton, Of 'Stages' and 'Types' in Visitatione Sepulchri, Comparative Drama (1987), pp. 34-61 and pp. 127-144., Especially pp. 127-131 (on Young's 3 stages).
• Michael Norton, Liturgical Drama and the Reimagining of Medieval Theater (Kalamazoo, 2017), pp. 61–63.
• Oscar James Campbell, Karl Young, in College English 5.4 (1944), p. 222.
• Witter Bynner , Karl Young, in The Yale University Library Gazette 23.3 (1949), pp. 145-147

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Regula Meyer Evitt, Karl Young, in: Handbook of Medieval Studies Terms - Methods - Trends , ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin 2010), pp. 2724-2729.
2. ^ Karl Young, The Origin and Development of the Story of Troilus and Criseyde (London, 1908).
3. ↑ Cf. Clifford Flanigan, "Karl Young and the Drama of the Medieval Church: An Anniversary Reappraisal", in: Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 27, pp. 157-166.