postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 2013
There is a viscous porosity of fleshmy flesh and the flesh of the world. This porosity is a hinge... more There is a viscous porosity of fleshmy flesh and the flesh of the world. This porosity is a hinge through which we are and of the world.
With a title that is simultaneously declarative and descriptive, one might think we would have a ... more With a title that is simultaneously declarative and descriptive, one might think we would have a confident answer to the guiding question of this essay: what are the pleasures of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde? This question remains difficult to answer, for reasons that pertain to the poem's construction of Troilus's masculinity out of the fracturing experience of suffering. At its basic level of plot and character, the tale of an arrogant and sulky bachelor who wins the fleeting love of a morally inscrutable widow through the oily machinations of her lascivious uncle seems an unlikely source of literary pleasure. With its formulaic structure, featuring love's debilitating desire, its momentary reward, and its inevitable loss, Troilus and Criseyde seems almost deliberately unappealing. For instance, Gretchen Mieszkowski argues in her feminist analysis of the text that “Male Chaucerians may be surprised to learn that reading Troilus and Criseyde for the first time is ...
‘that view does not prevent us from trying to understand the past’ (p. 17). While fully acknowled... more ‘that view does not prevent us from trying to understand the past’ (p. 17). While fully acknowledging the necessity of ‘tap[ping] as many sources of knowledge as possible [...], whether [...] written text, painted image, material artefact, oral testimony, embodied memory, or other means of transmission’ (p. 17), she simultaneously raises the question of practice-as-research. Confronting headon the concerns of some scholars regarding this—it does not fit easily within ‘established research paradigms’ (p. 31), applying methodology and rigour can be difficult, and some see it simply as ‘fun’ instead of ‘serious’ scholarly research—, she nevertheless argues strongly that investigating medieval performance practice in this way ‘can expand our search for both fuller knowledge about early performance and for heightened awareness about the assumptions of such an attempt’ (p. 34). This is a welcome endorsement and, it is to be hoped, one that will encourage exciting new forays into the performance of medieval drama and related theatre. Sponsler’s chapter acts as a touchstone for the other eleven. Other authors frequently refer back to her, so that her work becomes a thread linking the chapters—disparate though they are in topic—and running through the entire volume. In a neat symmetry, the last chapter of the book—Butterworth’s ‘“Ymage off Seynt Iorge” at St Botolph’s’—both echoes and builds on Sponsler’s suggestion that experiment and creative practice can be a useful way of advancing knowledge. Butterworth’s chapter is an account of his liaison with Eric Williamson to draw up plans for ‘a conjectured version’ (p. 14) of the fifteenth-century semiautomaton St George and the Dragon. The diagrams accompanying the text are particularly helpful for visualizing and understanding how the model may have worked. Hopefully Butterworth and Williamson will one day have the opportunity to take this research to the logical next step, and produce a working replica of the automaton. This book will be of most interest, relevance and value to those working closely and in detail with late medieval performance, but is also clear and engaging enough to be accessible to advanced undergraduates or those with a more general interest. It is highly recommended. eleanor blooMfield, The University of Auckland
Scotland: Allegories of Authority achieves more than it claims for itself. The book is framed by ... more Scotland: Allegories of Authority achieves more than it claims for itself. The book is framed by a series of modest propositions: 1) English and Scottish poetry between 1485 and 1528 is shaped by the experience of court service; 2) the unstable sources of authority that influence English writers John Skelton, Stephen Hawes, and Alexander Barclay, as well as Scottish writers William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, inflects the shifting subjectivity explored in their literary productions; 3) in their representations of late-medieval literary patronage, these poets evince a yearning for identification that invariably ends in failure; 4) in their renderings of literary authority, these poets frequently avail themselves of allegory in order to displace the failures of identification that emerge within literatures that imagine the court as a space of subject formation for poet and patron alike. These are ideas that scholars of late medieval and early modern poetry have seen before. Even so, in Hasler's capable hands, these contentions become more than critical commonplaces, moving beyond any mere suggestion of the mutual destabilization of subject formation and literary production. Hasler is careful to distinguish the historical circumstances that differentiate English and Scottish court service, but he considers these poets together because they share similar literary preoccupations. And, while this period is usually treated on the way from or to another point in literary history, Hasler focuses welcome attention on this era's
The most disappointing chapter for the historian of women and gender is Chapter Five ("Funerary F... more The most disappointing chapter for the historian of women and gender is Chapter Five ("Funerary Feasting in Early Medieval Gaul and Neighboring Regions," 69-91). Effros devotes most ofthe chapter to wrangling with Baily K. Young concerning the extent to which funerary feasting and the deposition of foodstuffs in graves even were current practices in Merovingian Gaul at all. She refers to (75), but does not explore the gendered dimensions of, the famous controversy between Ambrose of Milan and Augustine's mother Monica over the latter's desire to stage feasts in honor of the martyrs in Milanese cemeteries," and she notes in passing that, at Erstein, "the interred whose graves included foodstuffs were identified as predominantly female" (80). However, instead of actually providing here a solidly researched and argued discussion of the issues, Effros merely concludes, in "Future Directions for Research," that "an assessment of whether all or certain vessels appeared more frequently in men's or women's burials, or in adolescents' or adults' sepulchers, would prove very useful. These distinctions would suggest some of the possible connotations of feasting rites and whether they were directly linked to particular gender-or age-identities" (90).
... All Chaucer quotations are taken from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Houghton Mi... more ... All Chaucer quotations are taken from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Houghton Mifflin, 1986) unless otherwise indicated. ... Linne R. Mooney, "John Shirley's Heirs," YES 33 (2003): 1-17, suggests that Harley 7333 was written by "at least eight scribes" (190). ...
postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 2013
There is a viscous porosity of fleshmy flesh and the flesh of the world. This porosity is a hinge... more There is a viscous porosity of fleshmy flesh and the flesh of the world. This porosity is a hinge through which we are and of the world.
With a title that is simultaneously declarative and descriptive, one might think we would have a ... more With a title that is simultaneously declarative and descriptive, one might think we would have a confident answer to the guiding question of this essay: what are the pleasures of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde? This question remains difficult to answer, for reasons that pertain to the poem's construction of Troilus's masculinity out of the fracturing experience of suffering. At its basic level of plot and character, the tale of an arrogant and sulky bachelor who wins the fleeting love of a morally inscrutable widow through the oily machinations of her lascivious uncle seems an unlikely source of literary pleasure. With its formulaic structure, featuring love's debilitating desire, its momentary reward, and its inevitable loss, Troilus and Criseyde seems almost deliberately unappealing. For instance, Gretchen Mieszkowski argues in her feminist analysis of the text that “Male Chaucerians may be surprised to learn that reading Troilus and Criseyde for the first time is ...
‘that view does not prevent us from trying to understand the past’ (p. 17). While fully acknowled... more ‘that view does not prevent us from trying to understand the past’ (p. 17). While fully acknowledging the necessity of ‘tap[ping] as many sources of knowledge as possible [...], whether [...] written text, painted image, material artefact, oral testimony, embodied memory, or other means of transmission’ (p. 17), she simultaneously raises the question of practice-as-research. Confronting headon the concerns of some scholars regarding this—it does not fit easily within ‘established research paradigms’ (p. 31), applying methodology and rigour can be difficult, and some see it simply as ‘fun’ instead of ‘serious’ scholarly research—, she nevertheless argues strongly that investigating medieval performance practice in this way ‘can expand our search for both fuller knowledge about early performance and for heightened awareness about the assumptions of such an attempt’ (p. 34). This is a welcome endorsement and, it is to be hoped, one that will encourage exciting new forays into the performance of medieval drama and related theatre. Sponsler’s chapter acts as a touchstone for the other eleven. Other authors frequently refer back to her, so that her work becomes a thread linking the chapters—disparate though they are in topic—and running through the entire volume. In a neat symmetry, the last chapter of the book—Butterworth’s ‘“Ymage off Seynt Iorge” at St Botolph’s’—both echoes and builds on Sponsler’s suggestion that experiment and creative practice can be a useful way of advancing knowledge. Butterworth’s chapter is an account of his liaison with Eric Williamson to draw up plans for ‘a conjectured version’ (p. 14) of the fifteenth-century semiautomaton St George and the Dragon. The diagrams accompanying the text are particularly helpful for visualizing and understanding how the model may have worked. Hopefully Butterworth and Williamson will one day have the opportunity to take this research to the logical next step, and produce a working replica of the automaton. This book will be of most interest, relevance and value to those working closely and in detail with late medieval performance, but is also clear and engaging enough to be accessible to advanced undergraduates or those with a more general interest. It is highly recommended. eleanor blooMfield, The University of Auckland
Scotland: Allegories of Authority achieves more than it claims for itself. The book is framed by ... more Scotland: Allegories of Authority achieves more than it claims for itself. The book is framed by a series of modest propositions: 1) English and Scottish poetry between 1485 and 1528 is shaped by the experience of court service; 2) the unstable sources of authority that influence English writers John Skelton, Stephen Hawes, and Alexander Barclay, as well as Scottish writers William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, inflects the shifting subjectivity explored in their literary productions; 3) in their representations of late-medieval literary patronage, these poets evince a yearning for identification that invariably ends in failure; 4) in their renderings of literary authority, these poets frequently avail themselves of allegory in order to displace the failures of identification that emerge within literatures that imagine the court as a space of subject formation for poet and patron alike. These are ideas that scholars of late medieval and early modern poetry have seen before. Even so, in Hasler's capable hands, these contentions become more than critical commonplaces, moving beyond any mere suggestion of the mutual destabilization of subject formation and literary production. Hasler is careful to distinguish the historical circumstances that differentiate English and Scottish court service, but he considers these poets together because they share similar literary preoccupations. And, while this period is usually treated on the way from or to another point in literary history, Hasler focuses welcome attention on this era's
The most disappointing chapter for the historian of women and gender is Chapter Five ("Funerary F... more The most disappointing chapter for the historian of women and gender is Chapter Five ("Funerary Feasting in Early Medieval Gaul and Neighboring Regions," 69-91). Effros devotes most ofthe chapter to wrangling with Baily K. Young concerning the extent to which funerary feasting and the deposition of foodstuffs in graves even were current practices in Merovingian Gaul at all. She refers to (75), but does not explore the gendered dimensions of, the famous controversy between Ambrose of Milan and Augustine's mother Monica over the latter's desire to stage feasts in honor of the martyrs in Milanese cemeteries," and she notes in passing that, at Erstein, "the interred whose graves included foodstuffs were identified as predominantly female" (80). However, instead of actually providing here a solidly researched and argued discussion of the issues, Effros merely concludes, in "Future Directions for Research," that "an assessment of whether all or certain vessels appeared more frequently in men's or women's burials, or in adolescents' or adults' sepulchers, would prove very useful. These distinctions would suggest some of the possible connotations of feasting rites and whether they were directly linked to particular gender-or age-identities" (90).
... All Chaucer quotations are taken from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Houghton Mi... more ... All Chaucer quotations are taken from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Houghton Mifflin, 1986) unless otherwise indicated. ... Linne R. Mooney, "John Shirley's Heirs," YES 33 (2003): 1-17, suggests that Harley 7333 was written by "at least eight scribes" (190). ...
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