A report by Giovanna Truong, 1st year DPhil student in Modern Languages:
Enough rays to make functional the St Edmund Hall sundial; yellow, orange, and burgundy tulips; the four-note blast of that iconic hunting horn: these signs heralded the beginning of the three-day GBOFFL Conference of medieval Germanists one late afternoon in April.
The GBOFFL participants — from universities whose cities make up the abbreviated title, i.e. Geneva, Bern, Oxford, Freiburg (im Breisgau), Freiburg (im Üechtland), and Lausanne — kicked off the conference with a gathering in the cosy, climate-controlled Old Library of Teddy Hall, where they noshed anise cake and perused materials from the Hall’s collection, including a pamphlet on St Edmund and a Monty Python-themed cardboard catapult.
GBOFFL participants engage with the Teddy Hall collections (Photograph: Giovanna Truong)
After the reception, and with the rare books safely stowed, the participants poured tea and coffee and partook in analyzing and performing the Passionsspiel, in particular scenes from the Frankfurt and Alsfeld versions which are being prepared for an edition focussing on the life of Mary Magdalen — more on this during a workshop on medieval German drama on 2 May! With their dramatic prowess soundly proven, the Germanists poured into the Wadham Room of The King’s Arms for a celebratory pint, each looking forward to the schedule of lectures and workshops in the days to come.
The ninth of April saw a slate of four lectures by graduate scholars Monty Powell, Luke Cooper, Jasmin Eggel, and Felix Stürz. Each prepared a 30–40-minute presentation and fielded questions for the remainder of the given hour. Lively discussions ensued, on the voice of God, on magical poets, on video games, and on many further interesting topics, that are too many to elaborate here (,der zu vil zu schreiben wer’). A surprise lecture was given by Cornelia Herberichs on the etymology of the word GBOFFL, which proved not just to be an acronym, but a Swiss German description of a spirited (if labour-intensive) gathering.
After lunch, doctoral student Giovanna Truong (that’s me) led a workshop on letterpress printing (and early Yiddish typography) in which the GBOFFL participants learned to set their own names in lead type. With the expertise of Richard Lawrence, the Bodleian Bibliographical Press’s master printer, the students and faculty were able to print the list of names on a card alongside a linocut image of a peacock under a GBOFFL banner (designed and produced by yours truly with materials and assistance from Henrike Lähnemann). Some participants also printed t-shirts bearing the unofficial logo.
The card lists the names of workshop participants and bears a description in Yiddish: “דאָס קאַרטל איז געדרוקט געװאָרן אין אָקספֿאָרד אויפֿן גבאָפֿפֿל” — “This card was printed in Oxford at the GBOFFL.”
The day ended with a candlelit vegetarian dinner in the St Edmund Hall Old Dining Hall, where joyous chatter could be heard until twilight. Some of the merry group migrated to the Hall’s Crypt, where gowned Oxford scholars sang Compline in Latin and Middle High German around an Easter candle. The evening ended after sundown with the sung prayers of Havdalah, marking the end of the Jewish Passover holiday.
GBOFFL Schola in the Norman crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East, the library church of St Edmund Hall
The GBOFFLers returned the next day to Teddy’s Doctorow Hall for an enlivening of the senses — an early lecture by Susanne Finkel on visual poetics in Partonopier and Meliur works. The schedule called for a trip to the Weston Library for the weekly Coffee Morning, this week led by Philine Armbruster, Lucian Shepherd, and Henrike Lähnemann on the topic of manuscript fragments (and, as usual, including a few minutes for gazing at the dreaming spires from the roof terrace).