tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46663675491852141332024-03-13T14:09:03.167-04:00Mostly Medieval:Images and ReflectionsMarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-18864007961743750422022-08-09T11:13:00.003-04:002022-08-09T21:29:25.156-04:00Dobbs and Abortion in the European Middle Ages<p>A <i>New Yorker</i> article on abortion in the U.S. written prior to the Supreme Court’s <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">Dobbs decision</a> but anticipating its overthrow of Roe vs. Wade, quotes a gynecologist named Franz Theard as saying “I cannot believe that people who were born after ’73 are going back to the Middle Ages” (June 20, 2022, p. 21). Even before I read that, I had expected someone, somewhere, to make a medievalizing reference to describe a post-Roe America, given how often the European Middle Ages are used today to represent the “bad old days.” </p><p>What surprised me was the actual medieval reference in Justice Alito’s opinion in Dobbs. In claiming that English common law treated abortion after “quickening” as a crime, he quotes “Henry de Bracton’s 13th-century treatise” as stating that if someone has “struck a pregnant woman, or given her poison, whereby he has caused abortion, if the foetus be formed and animated, and particularly if it be animated, he commits homicide” (p. 17). This reference to the Middle Ages clearly stood out to Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, as in their dissent they describe Alito’s historical survey of abortion laws as “going back as far as the 13th (the 13th!) century” and later refer to his opinion as checking our laws “against the Dark Ages” (pp. 13 and 15). However, I’ve seen little discussion of this part of the opinion outside of legal history circles (see this post from <a href="https://lawandhistoryreview.org/article/abortion-was-a-crime-three-medievalists-respond-to-english-cases-dating-all-the-way-back-to-the-13th-century-corroborate-the-treatises-statements-that-abortio/" target="_blank">Law & History Review </a>and this one from <a href="https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2022/05/13/alitos-leaked-draft-majority-opinion-and-the-medieval-history-of-abortion/" target="_blank">Legal History Miscellany</a>) – other than a <a href="https://youtu.be/mLMp-1NdzR8" target="_blank">Saturday Night Live sketch</a> that recycles multiple misconceptions about the medieval past (no one can read or write, everyone is dying of plague, a disruptive woman is called a witch and so on). </p><p>At the same time as this was happening in our public sphere, I was doing some reading on abortion in the Middle Ages for <a href="https://char.hypotheses.org/25401" target="_blank">a conference talk</a>. In this post, I want to bring that reading to the medieval reference in the Dobbs decision to see what happens when we put it into the context of medieval laws and other regulations around abortion. My sources here are Zubin Mistry’s <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Abortion_in_the_Early_Middle_Ages_C_500/eJm7CgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover" target="_blank"><i>Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c. 500-900</i></a> and Wolfgang Müller’s <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Criminalization_of_Abortion_in_the_W/mNcnDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover" target="_blank"><i>The Criminalization of Abortion in the West: Its Origins in Medieval Law</i></a>, which focuses on the later Middle Ages. However, the conclusions I draw based on these sources are my own. To clarify my position, I am a medievalist but not a lawyer or legal historian. And I am one of the <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/united-states/abortion" target="_blank">approximately 24% of American women</a> who has had an abortion and so am a stronger supporter of reproductive rights. </p><p>I’m going to take Alito’s quote from Bracton one phrase at a time, because there is a lot packed into it. It first describes someone striking a pregnant person and so causing an abortion. Reading that, we probably imagine a scenario in which someone deliberately strikes another person in order to end their pregnancy – possibly even at the pregnant person’s request. And such things did happen: Müller cites a case from southern France in 1466 in which Jehanne Collette tried multiple ways to help her future sister-in-law, Katherine Armant, end a pregnancy that had started while her intended husband was away. She first tried beating Katherine with her fists but it didn’t work and they went on to try bleeding and various medications. However, this is probably not the scenario that was on Bracton’s mind because the main concern in English common law in the 13th century, when it came to the ending of a pregnancy, was with what Müller calls “miscarriage by assault.” This happened when there was some sort of violent incident, one of the people involved was pregnant, that person was injured, and as a result they lost the pregnancy. This part of the Bracton quote, then, is probably not about abortion as we understand it today at all. </p><p>In 13th century England, cases of miscarriage by assault were treated as homicides and so as “crown pleas” and “felonies,” meaning that they were tried by royal courts and could end with the death penalty. For example, Müller cites a case from 1283-84, in which Joan of Hallynghurst - who was pregnant - tried to intervene in a fight between Maude de Haule and Agnes la Converse. Maude drove Joan out of the house, Joan fell down some stairs, and 4 days later Joan delivered a dead infant. Maude was condemned to be hanged. However, it was rare for these cases to go that far; most were settled or just quietly disappeared at some point. Müller argues that this is because the person who had lost the pregnancy was using the court case to pressure the person they had accused to pay compensation for their loss. When that happened, or when it became clear it wasn’t going to happen, they would let the case drop. The idea of resolving such cases by paying compensation to the injured party appears in earlier medieval law codes from the European continent. The primary goal of these law codes was settling disputes between different families or social groups and they accomplished that goal by setting up compensation schemes for different types of injuries. Mistry provides multiple examples of these schemes: for example, in Visigothic law as documented in the 7th century, if a freeman or freewoman caused a freewoman to lose a pregnancy, the payment was 150 solidi if the infant was “formed” or 100 if “unformed” (more on that distinction below); if a freeman caused a slave girl to lose a pregnancy, he paid 20 solidi to her master; if a slave caused a freewoman to lose a pregnancy, he received 200 lashes in a public beating and became her slave (slaves couldn’t pay compensation because they didn’t have money); and if a slave caused a slave girl to lose a pregnancy, the slave’s master would pay 10 solidi and the slave would get 200 lashes. </p><p>In England, cases of miscarriage by violence became increasingly rare in the royal courts in the 14th century and then disappeared from them. This change happened not because these kinds of incidents stopped happening, but because royal justices stopped recognizing them as felonies. For example, Müller cites a case from 1329 in which a man had beaten a woman who was pregnant with twins, one of the twins died, she gave birth to the other, and it died two days later. The man was brought to court but was released because “the court believed that there was no felony” (p. 138). This change in English common law clearly undermines Alito’s use of Bracton in his opinion. Meanwhile, these types of cases continued to be brought in church courts in England and in church and civil courts on the continent. Church or canon law had a special interest in these cases because, if priests were found guilty of homicide in them, then they could no longer serve at the altar. Civil law in France again treated these cases as homicides meaning they were tried by royal courts and were capital offenses. </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf7WnhzISc41m8AveXxaJqtZxECHvxWAvspPlEcACBnzVEGx0d0gsIH5hO5qsiNJMKiUKkAZfMcmBk7axEACdfIr5ycQAwTQlcT-C5DsHUjPpIsOXYXz-m23JYuRyfMbG1peQ2HTrE6VDo0N6tNv4qiCvsv-Q3XlgyTtTbWysk2NCwVKstG_x_RQoi/s4011/IMG_0300%202.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="4011" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf7WnhzISc41m8AveXxaJqtZxECHvxWAvspPlEcACBnzVEGx0d0gsIH5hO5qsiNJMKiUKkAZfMcmBk7axEACdfIr5ycQAwTQlcT-C5DsHUjPpIsOXYXz-m23JYuRyfMbG1peQ2HTrE6VDo0N6tNv4qiCvsv-Q3XlgyTtTbWysk2NCwVKstG_x_RQoi/w724-h192/IMG_0300%202.jpeg" width="724" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Yarn dyed with madder root. In the Middle Ages madder was used as a dye and in medications to promote menstruation and cause abortion. See the <a href="https://isidore.co/CalibreLibrary/Green,%20Monica%20H_/The%20Trotula_%20An%20English%20Translation%20of%20the%20Medieval%20Compendium%20of%20Women%27s%20Medicine%20(4855)/The%20Trotula_%20An%20English%20Translation%20of%20the%20-%20Green,%20Monica%20H_.pdf" target="_blank">Trotula</a> and the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Book_Of_Women_s_Love/2W4ABAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover" target="_blank">Book of Women's Love</a>.</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>However, Müller argues that interest in abortion-related cases shifted in the later Middle Ages to the provision of abortifacient medications, potions, or “poisons,” and so to the second of Bracton’s interests in the quote used in the Dobb’s opinion. This emphasis goes back to Roman law, which became increasingly influential on both canon and civil law beginning in the 12th century. From the 3rd century onward, providing abortifacient and aphrodisiac medications was illegal in Rome and could be punished with exile to the mines or, for upper-class people, to an island. Mistry suggests that the concern with abortifacients was the danger they posed to the lives of the women who took them. But that doesn’t explain the linking of abortifacients with aphrodisiacs. One possible explanation for that connection comes from Roman moralistic texts that criticize women for using abortion to hide their sexual offenses and so out of a concern to protect their reputations. <p></p><p>Similar concerns appear in early Christian texts and so again outside of the legal sphere: church counsels at Elvira (Spain) in the early 4th century, Ancyra (modern Ankara, Turkey) in 314, and Lérida (Spain) in 546, all link abortion to adultery, with Lérida specifying that these are abortions done with “potions.” All three specify that people who have offended in this way should not receive communion for a set period of time – from 7 years to the rest of their lives – and Lérida adds that priests involved in these cases are no longer able to serve in that role. These are sins, not crimes, and so receive spiritual sanctions, not legal punishments. The same came be said of the appearance of abortion through “<i>maleficium</i>” in early medieval penitentials – lists of sins and recommended penances for them. In one of the earliest of these texts, from 6th century Ireland, abortion appears in a section about clerical sins. Here the text first focuses on clerical sexual sins and then moves on to <i>maleficium</i>, including potions that 1) harm someone (six years penance); 2) don’t harm anyone but are given “out of dissolute love,” recalling the Roman concern with aphrodisiacs (1 year of penance); and 3) “if a woman has destroyed someone’s offspring by her <i>maleficium</i>,” which could include causing miscarriage or abortion. The penance prescribed for the last sin is a 1/2 year on bread and water, no wine or meat for 2 years, and 6 years of fasting on bread and water at Lent. In the text, this is followed immediately by “But if, as we have said, she bears a child and her sin is manifest, six years as is the judgment about a cleric, and in the seventh she should be joined to the altar, and then we say that she can restore her crown and ought to don a white robe and be pronounced a virgin” (Mistry, pp. 133-34). This woman is, by inference, a nun who has given birth to a child: she receives a heavier penance than someone who has caused an abortion through <i>maleficium</i>. The apparent reason is that the birth of her child has made her sexual transgression “manifest.” Here abortion is again linked to sexual transgression and to reputation, but it is now the church’s reputation that is at stake. Its elite members, monks and nuns, needed to be seen as upholding their vows of celibacy and so a quiet abortion could be preferable to the spectacle of a nun bearing a child. </p><p> Finally, Müller argues that court cases involving abortifacients became more common in the later Middle Ages for a different reason: because they were easier to bring than other cases of homicide. Rumor was enough to bring a case against someone for distributing abortifacients, where other cases required eyewitnesses, a confession, or a dead body. And so in 1298, a court in Manosque, near Marseille, investigated a Jewish doctor named Issac for providing Uga, the daughter of Petrus de Dia, with an abortifacient. There was no dead body and no witnesses and the doctor did not confess, but in the end he paid a 50 pound fine. In these cases, there was also no need to prove intent. And so in 1425 a woman named Alyson Rancerre, who lived in Beaune in France, was arrested for having caused a miscarriage. She had a 20-year career of providing medical care to women and had treated a woman with a regime to reduce inflammation in the womb, but only after asking the woman if she was pregnant, to which she replied “not that she knew.” We know of this case from a letter Alyson wrote requesting a royal pardon based on her ignorance of the woman’s pregnancy: Müller does not tell us whether her pardon was granted or not (pp. 164-5). According to Müller, the ease with which these cases could be brought made them a way for communities to target marginalized people: the Jewish doctor mentioned above is one example of that dynamic. The same dynamic also shaped which women were in danger of being prosecuted for ending their own pregnancies, who tended to be young, poor, and lacking in family and community support. For example, Müller cites the 1453 case of Marion Faudier who was raped by her father and became pregnant. Her father and his wife tried to force her to take an abortifacient, even using a stick to force her mouth open. The father had confessed, but Marion was concerned that she might face legal repercussions too, since intent did not matter in such cases. We again know of her case from a letter she wrote requesting a royal pardon: it was granted. </p><p>The different ways that abortifacient potions or “poisons” appear in medieval texts demonstrate the importance of paying attention to the contexts in which abortion is discussed in order to understand just what is at stake in the discussion. Bringing that back to the Dobbs decision clarifies some aspects of the 19th and early 20th century U.S. state and territory laws that Justice Alito provides in his two appendixes. The first two of these, from Missouri in 1825 and Illinois in 1827, both state that “every person who shall willfully and maliciously administer or cause to be administered to or taken by any person, any poison, or any other noxious, poisonous or destructive substance or liquid, with the intention to harm him or her thereby to murder or thereby to cause or procure the miscarriage of any woman, then being of child, and shall thereof be duly convicted, shall suffer imprisonment not exceeding 7 years (in Missouri, 3 in Illinois), and be fined not exceeding three thousand dollars (in Missouri, one thousand in Illinois).” These are anti-poisoning statutes, not anti-abortion laws, and intention is crucial in them: the actions must be taken both “willfully” and “maliciously.” Abortion by surgical means was not originally included in either: Missouri’s law was changed in 1835 and Illinois’ in 1833 to include abortion by “instrument” and so turn these into anti-abortion laws in line with those that had been passed in other states. Beginning with a New York law from 1828, these laws begin to include exceptions for the preserving the life of the mother. However, that exception often came with the restriction that this must be “advised by two physicians to be necessary for that purpose” (New York 1828, Ohio 1834, Michigan 1846, New Hampshire 1849, Wisconsin 1858, Florida 1868, Georgia 1876), by a “respectable physician” (Alabama 1841), by “two physicians licensed to practice in the State of New Mexico” (1919), or by “two reputable licensed physicians” (Mississippi 1952), or must be done by a physician “in the discharge of his professional duties” (Idaho 1864, Montana 1864, Arizona 1865), by a “regular practitioner of medicine” after consulting with one or more “respectable physicians” (Maryland 1868), by a “regular practicing physician” (Arkansas 1875), or by a “competent licensed practitioner of medicine” (Washington D.C. 1901). These phrases make clear the connection between advancing restrictions on abortion during this period in U.S. history and t<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099795225/before-roe-the-physicians-crusade" target="_blank">he increasing power and authority of the medical profession</a>. </p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigCVt10eGBhRR36_xhW_5KGn0MbMTZDOqTwAZ7IIPBj8WSaiLiGsQM5VDYbXvTiwob_hWTaAWNcZbTKAobBJRRhreRN5tuNlj9uQ1t4KoX6Z9SjLaS803dAg-9tgBju7c_z93seEImh9cSNtMDVIIMueAWfvwBvuVj_qNriSg7wAswo1nCsYfWxPrF/s4032/IMG_0284.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigCVt10eGBhRR36_xhW_5KGn0MbMTZDOqTwAZ7IIPBj8WSaiLiGsQM5VDYbXvTiwob_hWTaAWNcZbTKAobBJRRhreRN5tuNlj9uQ1t4KoX6Z9SjLaS803dAg-9tgBju7c_z93seEImh9cSNtMDVIIMueAWfvwBvuVj_qNriSg7wAswo1nCsYfWxPrF/w300-h400/IMG_0284.jpeg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Dyeing yarn with madder.</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Medieval texts link abortion and its regulation to sexual transgression, reputation, judicial procedure, and the fate of marginalized people. They do not link it to a concern for the “potential life” (to take language from Roe) of the fetus or the life of the “unborn human being” (to take language from the Mississippi law upheld by the Dobbs decision). Neither English common law, nor civil law on the continent, nor canon law held that life began at conception and so they did not treat all miscarriages or abortions as homicides. The first is obvious from the final part of the Bracton quote, which states that causing miscarriage or abortion is a homicide “if the foetus be formed and animated, and particularly if it be animated.” The implication is that prior to formation, and maybe even after formation but before animation, it was not homicide. Beginning in the 14th century, in English common law, causing miscarriage or abortion was not treated as homicide even after formation and/or animation. In a treatise from 1557, William Staunford explains this by stating that, prior to birth, infants are not “in the nature of things” and so cannot be victims of homicide (Müller, p. 140). Again this undermines Alito’s position that English common law criminalized abortion. <p></p><p>Early medieval penitentials were similar to English common law at Bracton’s time in making a distinction between abortions performed at different stages in a pregnancy. One common scheme can be traced back to penitentials written by Theodore of Tarsus, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 600’s: a woman who had an abortion prior to 40 days of pregnancy was to do penance for a year, but if it was after 40 days her penance would be 3 years. Some texts explain that the 40-day mark corresponded to the fetus acquiring a soul and that the longer penance was that done for a murder. Visigothic law as cited above likewise made a distinction in the payment due for causing the miscarriage of a formed vs. an unformed fetus. Finally, in canon law, a crucial text on this point was a 1211 letter written by Pope Innocent III that entered the collections used in law schools. Innocent had been presented with a case in which a priest had grabbed his lover by the belt and caused her to miscarry their child: the question raised was whether this priest needed to stop saying mass. Innocent's response was yes, if the fetus was formed and animated, but no if it was not. If it was formed and animated, the priest was guilty of homicide and could be subject to criminal penalties. If not, he should do penance for the sake of his salvation. Canon law thus presented miscarriage by violence prior to formation and animation as a personal, religious or spiritual matter, and not a legal matter at all. What these texts means by "formation" is hard to define, but juries in court cases apparently knew it when they saw it and knew when they didn’t. Müller cites a case from 1280 in which Walter Gode was charged with beating Alicia, the wife of Adam le Present, and causing her to miscarry. The jury refused to convict, however, because they could not tell if the fetus was a boy or a girl, meaning it was not yet “shaped” or formed, and so this was not a felony case. </p><p>Again, bringing these medieval laws and rules back to the Dobbs decision can clarify some points. Some of the early U.S. state and territory laws included in the appendixes make a similar distinction between abortions performed before and after “quickening,” giving different penalties for the two situations (New York 1828, Ohio 1834, Missouri 1835, Virginia 1848, New Hampshire 1849, Hawaii 1850, Washington 1854, Kansas 1859). However, others – and particularly those passed later in the 19th and into the 20th century - do not make that distinction. In his decision, Alito uses this change in U.S. state and territory laws to argue against quickening as a meaningful distinction and this forms part of his argument against the viability line established by Roe: that prior to a fetus being able to survive outside the womb, a pregnant person’s right determine the course of their own life should be paramount, and only afterward should the state’s interest in protecting “potential life” restrict their choices. The background of medieval laws and rules shows just how radical the change in law in the U.S. in the late 19th century was and reframes Roe’s viability line as a return to a longstanding attempt to recognize a difference between abortions performed early and late in a pregnancy. </p><p>This brings me, finally, to my primary observation about the Dobbs decision as a whole, which is about its basic incoherence. On the one hand, the decision overrules Roe because at the time of the passage of the 14th Amendment, no one thought it granted a right to abortion. But on the other, Alito’s decision repeatedly states that the same logic doesn’t apply to other rights that have been granted based on the 14th Amendment, even though no one at the time would have thought they were covered by it either – these include the rights to interracial marriage, to contraception, and to same-sex intimacy and marriage. This incoherence is the focus of Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion, in which he argues for extending the same logic to overrule these other rights, and it comes up multiple times in Justice Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan’s dissent, where they question the motivation behind the decision. Is it about an “originalist” reading of the Constitution? Or is there something else going on? Much of the public reaction to Dobbs has focused on the first and on ways of safeguarding these other rights. My reading of the decision points to the second possibility. I see another motive in Justice Alito’s repeated justification for overruling Roe but not the decisions granting these other rights: that abortion alone destroys “potential life” or an “unborn human being.” My reading of the decision is as a document laying the groundwork for an argument in favor of fetal “personhood” that would lead to a nationwide ban on all abortions. Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan recognize this possibility in a footnote in their dissent, where they label this position “revolutionary” (p. 27, note 7). The background of medieval laws shows just how revolutionary it would be. Rather than taking us back to Middle Ages, this decision points to a potential new dark age ahead.
</p><br />Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-77751726048330365132017-09-20T12:03:00.002-04:002017-09-20T12:03:53.149-04:00The Virgin at Chartres, White Supremacy, and Medieval StudiesMedieval Studies <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/whats-with-nazis-and-knights_us_59c0b469e4b082fd4205b98d?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003">blew up online</a> this past weekend when a Rachel Fulton Brown, an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Chicago (my graduate institution, although I did not study with her), published a few pieces on her blog aimed at Dorothy Kim (an Assistant Professor at Vassar College, who I know from the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship) for her insistence that medieval studies as a field needs to grapple with the way its materials have been and are currently being used by white supremacists to support their ideology and that those of us who teach medieval materials need to signal our rejection of white supremacist beliefs to our students.<br />
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While the first post begins (and the second continues) an attack on Kim, the bulk of it is given over to an argument about the Virgin Mary that is framed around a famous window from Chartres Cathedral, known as <i>Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere </i>(our lady of the beautiful window). According to Fulton Brown, the window shows Mary with dark skin, identifying her as a Jew, and further identifying her with the "tents of Kedar" as a tabernacle that contained the presence of God. Her overall argument seems to be that since medieval people could understand Mary as having dark skin and being Jewish, then medieval studies as a field can't be implicated in white supremacism today.<br />
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There are several problems with this argument.<br />
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One, the second point does not logically follow from the first: even if medieval people did not hold white supremacist views, that does not mean that materials from the Middle Ages have not been and are not being used to support those views today. The fact that medieval materials are being used in this way has been documented repeatedly. For documentation see <a href="http://www.wnyc.org/story/when-neo-nazis-lay-claim-your-field">David Perry recent interview with On The Media</a>, and his piece in in <a href="https://psmag.com/education/nazis-love-taylor-swift-and-also-the-crusades">Pacific Standard</a>, as well as the <a href="https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-racism-middle-ages-toc/">Public Medievalist's special series on Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages.</a><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C_C9yB8MfAE/WcAYfbAkJXI/AAAAAAAAAlU/zim079pAW2M14aUqLjugoh6txEdink5WQCLcBGAs/s1600/1200px-Vitrail_Chartres_Notre-Dame_210209_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="996" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C_C9yB8MfAE/WcAYfbAkJXI/AAAAAAAAAlU/zim079pAW2M14aUqLjugoh6txEdink5WQCLcBGAs/s640/1200px-Vitrail_Chartres_Notre-Dame_210209_1.jpg" width="392" /></a></div>
Two, and this is the point I want to focus on here, the Virgin in <i>Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere</i> does <b>not </b>have notably dark skin. She might appear to in the extreme close-up view that Fulton Brown includes in her post (after a view of the window as a whole) as a way of proving her point and that has been repeated (on its own) in a supporting post by Milo Yiannopoulos.<br />
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But when seen in context, as in the photograph to the right here, her skin is not markedly darker than that of the child in her arms or the angels around them, particularly not the angel in the upper-right section near Mary's head. <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Vitrail_Chartres_Notre-Dame_210209_1.jpg/1200px-Vitrail_Chartres_Notre-Dame_210209_1.jpg">Click here to see this image in a larger size and with more detail.</a><br />
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The Virgin's skin tone here does appear somewhat different from the child's in being more mottled and inconsistent in color. Several stained-glass experts who commented on the window in a Facebook discussion in the Material Collective group over the weekend suggested that this might be the result of damage over time from exposure to the elements.<br />
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But all of this does not take into account the fact
that it has been extensively restored. The Virgin's
head in particular was restored <span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">by Felix Gaudin in 1906 (<i>Corpus Vitrearum France, Vitraux du Centre, Baie</i> 30, p. 32</span></span> - and I owe that reference as well to stained-glass scholars commenting in Facebook). This may account for the difference in weathering in that the 1906 glass may have reacted to the environment differently than the original 12th-century material.<br />
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Fulton Brown struggles to deal with the window's restoration in her post. In it she quotes extensively from Margot Fassler's book on the Virgin at Chartres, including the following passage: "Radiant too is her <i>restored head</i>, surrounded as it is by a beaded orb of light" (Fassler, <i>The Virgin of Chartres: Making History Through Liturgy and the Arts</i>, p. 217-19 as cited by Fulton Brown, emphasis added). Fulton Brown inserts an asterisk here and then states at the end of her post "Not being an art historian, I am a little unclear on what Fassler means here. Even if Mary's face has been restored (and who is to say whether it was restored accurately) my argument still stands: somebody in Europe wanted Mary depicted as dark, whether in the Middle Ages or the nineteenth century..."<br />
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As an art historian, although not a glass specialist, I think it is quite clear that Fassler is referring here to the restoration of the head portion of the Virgin. She seems to be doing so in order to signal the fact will not subject the Virgin's head to detailed analysis, even though she does so for the rest of the window, because it is not original.<br />
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Fulton Brown is correct that we cannot know now how accurate that restoration is to the original colors of the Virgin's head. But the fact of the restoration should raise doubts about attributing any specific significance to the Virgin's skin tone as it appears in this window today. If she did have a notably darker skin, then it would make a difference if that skin tone reflected the original medieval coloring of the window or if it were a product of the restoration. But regardless, the Virgin's skin tone here is <b>not</b> significantly darker than that of other figures in the window.<br />
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Looking at other images of the Virgin in the stained glass at Chartres reinforces my point that her skin tone is not shown to be notably darker, or lighter, than that of the surrounding figures. Instead, skin tone seems to be consistent among the figures in any given window, although it does vary from window to window. That variation may have to do with the original dates of production of the individual windows, the level of damage each has incurred over time, the amount of restoration each has been subject to, and the circumstances under which the photographs of the windows have been taken - which is an issue that should also be taken into account for <i>Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere</i>. Here are some examples (all from <a href="http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/Chartres_default.htm">MedievalArt.org.uk)</a>:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IYOeIGpIVRM/WcBln8xS2zI/AAAAAAAAAmE/IpCkxVXGyssv8CK5KHV8ar-qH_uFGm4awCLcBGAs/s1600/Chartres_Bay_28b_Virgin_Panel_17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="778" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IYOeIGpIVRM/WcBln8xS2zI/AAAAAAAAAmE/IpCkxVXGyssv8CK5KHV8ar-qH_uFGm4awCLcBGAs/s400/Chartres_Bay_28b_Virgin_Panel_17.jpg" width="388" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Nativity from The Life of the Virgin Window (ambulatory, Bay 28B)</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nL0-UVS6OEU/WcBlrDSmbOI/AAAAAAAAAmI/HNYA5cquJRE-nWMyWL0dDuCaMzmJoDq_gCLcBGAs/s1600/Chartres_Bay_038_Miracles_of_the_Virgin__Panel_07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="918" height="347" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nL0-UVS6OEU/WcBlrDSmbOI/AAAAAAAAAmI/HNYA5cquJRE-nWMyWL0dDuCaMzmJoDq_gCLcBGAs/s400/Chartres_Bay_038_Miracles_of_the_Virgin__Panel_07.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Virgin and Child with Adoring Angels, from the Miracles of The Virgin Window (Bay 38)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-acq3kYxe7D8/WcBlubKrEyI/AAAAAAAAAmM/8MSuhG9dhREiPI1GOFU87i49jSj6LfdQQCLcBGAs/s1600/Chartres_Bay_49_Tree_of_Jesse__Panels16-18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1379" height="231" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-acq3kYxe7D8/WcBlubKrEyI/AAAAAAAAAmM/8MSuhG9dhREiPI1GOFU87i49jSj6LfdQQCLcBGAs/s400/Chartres_Bay_49_Tree_of_Jesse__Panels16-18.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Virgin Mary from the Tree of Jesse Window (west end, Bay 49)</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lwDeutJZ70Q/WcBpDbYa01I/AAAAAAAAAms/L6KiG2CBBAQGFzGgCShT3BiZObKO4e4ZQCLcBGAs/s1600/Bay_050_Infancy_and_Ministry_of_Christ__Panel27.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="629" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lwDeutJZ70Q/WcBpDbYa01I/AAAAAAAAAms/L6KiG2CBBAQGFzGgCShT3BiZObKO4e4ZQCLcBGAs/s640/Bay_050_Infancy_and_Ministry_of_Christ__Panel27.jpg" width="332" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Virgin and Child Enthroned from the Infancy and Early Life of Christ Window (west end, Bay 50)</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Virgin and Child Enthroned from the center of the North Transept Rose</td></tr>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-erk2P2vjxiA/WcBu-2hw4kI/AAAAAAAAAnI/xHLkU8UAFTITtp1mz6GZZOtSSmHoqy-DwCLcBGAs/s1600/Chartres_Bay_121_North_Transept_Rose__Panel_C2det.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="441" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-erk2P2vjxiA/WcBu-2hw4kI/AAAAAAAAAnI/xHLkU8UAFTITtp1mz6GZZOtSSmHoqy-DwCLcBGAs/s400/Chartres_Bay_121_North_Transept_Rose__Panel_C2det.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>
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One window at Chartres where I might be willing to see a meaningful difference in skin tone is the lancet showing St. Anne holding the Virgin as an infant, from below the North Transept Rose (shown to the left). Here Anne's skin tone does seem to be significantly darker than Mary's and that difference is reinforced by the different colors of their garments. This difference may be meant to signal their age difference, for in medieval texts on art-making, instructions are given for special skin tones for older figures. In his discussion of fresco painting, Cennino d'Andrea Cennini first gives a recipe for the flesh tone for youthful saints, including the Virgin, and then advises darkening it for an old man (Chapter LXVII). Likewise, in his section on panel painting, he suggests tempering the paint used younger people with the whiter yolks of town eggs, and the paint for older people with the redder yolks of country eggs (Chapter CXLVII).<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xDBY0x-a2mM/WcEBQaZZmwI/AAAAAAAAAnk/LtXkYF9cNSAzTrVXt0jW-KpZbz0pRELrwCEwYBhgL/s1600/4703300724_16685154a4_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xDBY0x-a2mM/WcEBQaZZmwI/AAAAAAAAAnk/LtXkYF9cNSAzTrVXt0jW-KpZbz0pRELrwCEwYBhgL/s320/4703300724_16685154a4_b.jpg" width="240" /></a>Fulton Brown continues the note at the end of her post with "Plus, this is not the only Black Madonna that survives; there are hundreds more." She is correct here, but <i>Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere </i>does not belong in this category of images. That group is made up of two types of works of art, Byzantine icons and western European sculptures, not stained glass windows. Fulton Brown seems to think that motifs translate across media and genres, but art historian have long known that they do not.
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Interestingly, there are two sculptures at Chartres that have both been categorized as Black Madonnas and that Fulton Brown could have discussed in her blog post instead of <i>Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere</i>. Like the window, however, both are objects with long histories of restoration and even reconstruction and that has to complicate discussion of them.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XYcqzqdu5H4/WcECMIy6wPI/AAAAAAAAAnw/iOJEw_ZzV80x9RFEaNy6zmCBXGO3au0owCLcBGAs/s1600/nd_pilier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="208" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XYcqzqdu5H4/WcECMIy6wPI/AAAAAAAAAnw/iOJEw_ZzV80x9RFEaNy6zmCBXGO3au0owCLcBGAs/s400/nd_pilier.jpg" width="186" /></a>The older of the two, a sculpture that dates back to at least the eleventh-century, is known as <i>Notre Dame de Sous-Terre</i> (our lady underground) because it was located in the cathedral's crypt. This sculpture was burnt during the Revolution in 1793. In 1976 a new sculpture, based on drawings of the original, was installed in the crypt in its place. This recreated sculpture is made of cedar wood and is unpainted and so has an overall dark coloration (shown above).<br />
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The other known as <i>Notre Dame du Pilier</i> (our lady of the pillar), because it sits on top of a stone column, dates to the early 1500's. It was originally placed in the nave in order to be accessible to pilgrims. It is also wood, but was polychromed or painted, and traces of that paint survive on the sculpture today (shown to the right). <a href="http://www.cathedrale-chartres.fr/themes/pelerinages/21_origine_nd_pilier.php">According to information from the cathedral,</a> it was known as the <i>Vierge Noir </i>or Black Virgin because there was also an alabaster and so white Virgin installed in the nave. It was renamed <i>Notre Dame du Pilier</i> in 1806 when it was reinstalled in its current location in the chapel in the north ambulatory. Since 1855 it has been crowned and enveloped in richly decorated garments.<br />
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This sculpture has recently been restored, as part of a general restoration project underway at Chartres, and its skin tone has been considerably lightened, in keeping with the restoration's general lightening and brightening of the building. The reason given for this overall change at Chartres is that it is removing layers of smoke from candles, lamps, and fires, and returning the building and its decoration to their original appearance. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/arts/design/chartres-cathedral-restoration-controversial.html?mcubz=0"> The change, including the repainting of the sculpture, has been controversial</a>. A similar explanation has been given for the phenomenon of the Black Madonnas in general, that their dark color is the result of accumulated smoke and soot. Only a detailed investigation of these images could determine if that is the case for each individual work of art.<br />
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Third, and finally, if some medieval sculptures did represent the Virgin with darker skin (although again <i>Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere</i> does <b>not)</b>, what would tell us about medieval attitudes towards race, or more specifically, towards skin color as a marker of significant differences between people? In that case, Fulton Brown would probably be correct in saying that the Virgin's dark skin had to do with her very particular devotional and theological identity. It then most likely did not identify her as belonging to a group of people defined by their skin tone. Jews are not typically distinguished in medieval art by skin color. As <a href="http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/597#.WcKRB4qQyT8">Debra Strickland</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernard-starr/five-stages-of-anti-semit_b_6707728.html">Sara Lipton</a> and others have shown, Jewish men can be identified by their beards, by distinctive pointed hats, and often by their large, hooked noses - a feature that pushes these images over the edge into antisemitic caricatures. Images of Jewish women are rare, but the Jewish-identified figure of <i>Synagoga</i> is typically distinguished from the Christian <i>Ecclesia</i> by her blindfold and her defeated posture.<br />
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The possibility of medieval artists showing Mary with darker skin feeds into the complexity of medieval attitudes towards skin tone as a potential marker of difference. That complexity is demonstrated in several of the pieces in the Public Medievalist's series on Race and Racism. In a piece entitled "<a href="https://www.publicmedievalist.com/medieval-people-racist/">Were Medieval People Racist?,</a>" for example, Paul Sturtevant argues:<br />
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Medieval people were likely not significantly more racist than we are
today (if such a thing could even be quantified). In both times, if you
look to find racism, both personal, institutional, and structural, it
can be readily found. And in both times, you can find those who reject
it. What we can say is that medieval racism <i>was</i> very different.
This should not offer us any comfort; nothing gives modern-day racism a
pass. Racism is a problem that plagues most periods and cultures in
humanity, but the most successful, innovative and just societies are
those that can most effectively conquer it.</blockquote>
It is this complexity of the medieval past that Kim, Perry, and others are calling for medievalists to emphasize in their teaching, emphasizing specifically the fact that this complexity should undermine any attempts by white supremacists today to appropriate this past to legitimate their own beliefs. Kim, Perry, and others are further calling for medievalists to make that point explicitly in their teaching. Otherwise, as Perry states in his On the Media interview, we risk leaving a blank space that white supremacists are able to fill with their own agenda. Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-48547367210041585442017-05-15T10:59:00.000-04:002017-05-15T10:59:25.259-04:00Make + Risk = Craftivism: A Roundtable and Yarnbomb Project for Babel 2017For the 2017 <a href="https://babel-meeting.org/2017-meeting-call-for-papers/">Babel Working Group Meeting in Reno</a>, I'm organizing a project for The Material Collective. The full proposal appears below. Get in touch if you are interested in participating!<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Make + Risk = Craftivism: A Roundtable and
Yarnbomb Project </b></div>
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A dominant symbol of the January
2017 Women’s March on Washington was the pink pussyhat: a knit or crochet hat
constructed in such a way that cat ears appear on the wearer’s head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Large numbers of women participated in making
pussyhats and wore them at marches in Washington and other cities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet the hats were also a focus for critique,
as the product of a white middle-class feminism that often fails to take into
account the experiences of other women, and as excluding transwomen in
particular through their reference to biological sex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In many ways, this combination of responses
to the pussyhats mirrors the responses to the March itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also demonstrates both the productive potential
and the potential pitfalls of “craftivism:” that is, of activism pursued
through forms of craft production that have traditionally been done by women.</div>
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Through this proposed roundtable
session and hands-on project for Babel 2017, The Material Collective seeks to
engage with the issues raised by the pussyhats in two ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, through a roundtable session featuring
multiple short presentations and time for discussion, we aim to set the hats
within a larger historical context of craftivism, to further explore the
potential of this form of activist production, and simultaneously to further
its critique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Secondly, we aim to
explore these issues through practice in a “yarmbomb” project: yarnbombing
refers to knit and/or crochet projects that are installed in public space on
the model of street art or graffiti.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While not all yarnbomb projects are also craftivist projects, some are,
and yarnbombing itself is open to critique on a number of levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We envision a yarnbomb project conceived with
the themes of the Babel 2017 conference in mind, produced largely at the
conference itself, facilitated through a knit and/or crochet workshop or
workshops as part of the conference, and installed throughout the conference
space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We invite participants to present
in the roundtable, to collaborate with us in conceptualizing the yarnbomb
project, to make work for that project in advance of the conference, to lead a
workshop or workshops in knit/crochet techniques at the conference, and to
contribute materials (yarn from stashes, hooks and/or needles) for the
project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Participants may chose to be
involved in one or more or all of the above.</div>
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Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-46986428031447675392016-12-13T15:51:00.001-05:002016-12-13T15:51:46.423-05:00Eating Medieval Art: Buran (Meatballs in Eggplant Sauce)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Since election day, writing about medieval food and cooking has seemed a little silly to me. I've wanted to privately take refuge in the Middle Ages, reading books and writing my lectures about medieval art, but putting medieval stuff out over the interwebs has seemed to be beside the point.<br />
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But. Then I got thinking about this recipe, which I made the week before the election, and is a medieval Middle Eastern dish. According to <i>Pleyn Delit</i>, Middle Eastern or "Saracen" food was the trendy new cuisine in western Europe in the Middle Ages. That fits a pattern I often talking about in teaching medieval and Islamic material: the medieval perception of the east and specifically of the Islamic world as a source of good things that people wanted for themselves. In the current political climate, it also strikes a useful contrast against perceptions of the Middle Ages that have begun to concern the broad community of medievalist scholars: specifically the idea that the medieval past can serve as the origin point for a "European" identity and so can provide historical legitimacy for contemporary extreme right and white nationalist movements in Europe and in the United States. <a href="http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2016/12/white-nationalism-and-ethics-of.html">Sierra Lomuto's guest post on "White Nationalism and the Ethics of Medieval Studies" </a>and <a href="http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2016/11/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-medieval.html">Dorothy Kim's on "The Unbearable Whiteness of Medieval Studies,"</a> both on <a href="http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/">In the Middle</a>, provide an excellent introductions to these issues. Imagining medieval people enthusiastically eating "Saracen" food can strike a very immediate blow again any idea of a "pure" European past, as it shows medieval people as actively incorporating the "other" into themselves.<br />
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To get to the cooking: there isn't a charmingly ye olde English version of this recipe in <i>Pleyn Delit</i>, since its from an Arabic source. The book has you start by boiling the eggplant, whole, and then frying it, again whole, until it gets soft.<br />
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The meatballs should be either lamb or beef: I picked lamb. <i>Pleyn Delit</i> recommends buying it ground but then asking the butcher to grind it again, to get it a finer texture. I don't have a close relationship with a butcher, so I bought it ground and then whirred it up in the food processor to break it down further.<br />
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Then the meatballs get formed up and fried. Interestingly, they are pure meat balls - no fillers and no binders, no breadcrumb or eggs. And the eggplant gets peeled and whirred up in the food processor with some yogurt and spices.</div>
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<br />Finally, the eggplant sauce gets added to the meatballs and the whole thing cooked together to marry the flavors. I obviously had a proportion problem: since you cook the eggplant whole, I had to use the whole eggplant, but I didn't want to make more meatballs than I could eat, so I ended up with a lot more sauce than I needed. If I had been smart, I would have saved half of the eggplant for later. I served this with more cariota (carrots) in order to avoid carbs, but it would have been better with rice or naan or pita.</div>
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Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-75785201754892481442016-11-03T08:47:00.000-04:002016-11-03T08:47:02.161-04:00Eating Medieval Art: "Tartys in Applis"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />In talking about my food preferences and how they are shaping this project, I neglected to mention one thing: I have a major sweet tooth. I love chocolate, but it's off the table for this project since it's a New World product. I'm also a big fan of baked fruit desserts and so, when I saw a recipe for an apple tart in <i>Plyen Delit</i>, I knew I would have to give it a try.<br />
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The original recipe reads: "Tak gode applys & gode spycis & figs & reysons & perys, & wan they arn wel ybrayd colour wyth safroun wel & do yt in a cofyn, & do yt forth to bake wel." I substituted prunes for figs, because I had some in my cupboard, and I didn't use any pears, because I didn't want to wait for them to get ripe. For apples, I used Granny Smiths, as my favorite for baking in general. The most unusual part of the recipe was the direction that the fruits be "wel ybrayd:" the authors of Plyen Delit translate that as chopping them up together in the food processor. The result was similar to a mincemeat pie, but with no meat. <br />
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The recipe didn't give directions for the pie crust, so I had to decide on a crust for myself. I used this <a href="https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/11/pie-crust-102-all-butter-really-flaky-pie-dough/">Smitten Kitchen pie crust</a> and was very happy with the result. My major issue with most apple pies is the soggy, flabby, mushy bottom crust. This one was firm and light and flaky. The only real difference I could see from pie crust recipes I've used in the past was not using the food processor for mixing in the butter. I think Smitten Kitchen is right that using the processor always immediately over-processes but the butter, chopping it up much too finely and mixing it in much too evenly. Doing it by hand kept the butter chunks much bigger - they were visible in the dough - and much more irregular in their distribution. It also takes longer and requires more effort, but the results were worth it for me and I'm going to continue doing it that way.<br />
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<br />Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-18812701483836846402016-10-23T15:53:00.000-04:002016-10-23T15:53:00.562-04:00Eating Medieval Art: Gourdes in Potage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I picked this for my second recipe from <i>Pleyn Delit</i> because it looked fairly simple and looked like it would reheat well - that's one of my major criteria for normal recipes since I don't have time to cook every night. I was also curious about it because I couldn't imagine what texture it was going to have. <i>Pleyn Delit</i> doesn't include any photographs of the prepared food so it's hard to imagine in advance was the finished dishes are going to look like. <br />
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The original is given as "Take yong gowrdes; par hem and kerve hem on pecys. Cast hem in gode broth, and do therto a gode pertye of oynouns mynced. Take pork soden; grynde it and alye it therwith and with yokes of ayren. Do therto safroun and salt, and messe it forth with powdor douce." "Gourds" here means squash and I chose to use butternut, since its a squash I'm used to working with. The squash is boiled in broth along with some onions and then that is mashed together: I used my potato masher and kept a fairly rough texture because that somehow seemed more appropriate, more "medieval," to me. <br />
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Then cooked ground pork is added along with an egg or egg yolk and some spices. I assume the egg is meant to thicken and bind the whole, although I don't know if it was really necessary. On the first night the dish was rather bland, despite the spices. So when I reheated it later in the week (and it does reheat well) I added additional spices, including some pepper even though that isn't mentioned in the original. <br />
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<br />Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-21360420919693210232016-10-15T20:44:00.003-04:002016-10-15T20:44:51.192-04:00Eating Medieval Art: Chykens in Hocchee and Cariota<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm starting this project by focusing on the cooking aspect and, for now, I'm not worrying about connecting the cooking to medieval art-making practices, but am focusing on getting familiar with medieval techniques and tastes. Focusing on the cooking allows me to integrate this work into my everyday life, by simply making one of the meals I prepare each week a medieval recipe. This should allow me to make progress on this new project even while I keep up on my work as department chair, teach, and put finishing touches on the book.</div>
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Since I am integrating this aspect of the work into my regular cooking, it is being shaped by my preferences and practices when it comes to food. To set some of that out: I do eat meat and I eat a broad range of meats - chicken and beef but also pork, lamb, veal, duck, and occasionally rabbit. Sorry if that bothers anyone. I don't eat much fish, but I do like shellfish. I try to avoid carbohydrates, only because if I don't try to avoid them I'll end up eating mostly carbs. And I have a problem digesting dairy, although I really like cheese. I will sometimes put up with a bellyache for a good cheese and sometimes will remember to take a "milk pill" first. I typically cook more elaborate things on Saturday and Sunday nights and I look for recipes that will reheat easily later in the week. I live alone so I half most recipes to get 2-3 servings.</div>
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For a first medieval meal I picked "Chykens in Hocchee" and "Cariota" both from <i>Pleyn Delit</i>. The original recipe for "Chykens in Hocchee" is: "Take chykens and scald hem. Take persel and sawage, with obere erbes; take garlec and grapes, and stoppe the chikenus ful, and seep hem in gode broth, so that they mey esely be boyled therinne. Messe hem and cast therto powdour douce."</div>
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I chose this because it didn't seem so strange and so seemed approachable, but it ended up being stranger than my first reading suggested. Making it required first stuffing a game hen with a mixture of grapes, herbs, and garlic; then sealing that shut; and then poaching it in broth. You are supposed to add some lemon juice in with the grapes to compensate for the grapes available today being sweet and medieval grapes sour. I forgot to do this and so added the lemon juice to the poaching liquid insead.</div>
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Poaching isn't my favorite way of cooking a bird: the flabby white skin doesn't appeal. That's probably why <i>Pleyn Delit</i> suggests removing it. My biggest surprise in cooking this one was that the grapes didn't break down at all, but stayed whole and firm.</div>
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Before the serving, the meat is sprinkled with "powder douce," a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and salt. It's not a combination of spices that I associate with meat - more with baked goods. It's not bad, just, strange. It makes everything smell a bit like Christmas. I boiled the poaching liquid down to create some sauce. To go with it, I made "Cariota," roasted carrots mixed with some chopped herbs. I kept my carrots whole for the visual appeal.</div>
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<br />Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-54886283227124437182016-10-02T15:56:00.000-04:002016-10-02T15:56:16.096-04:00Introducing "Eating Medieval Art"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last fall, I taught a seminar entitled "Materials, Making, and Meaning in Medieval Art," for which the main text was Theophilus' twelfth-century art-making manual, <i>On Divers Arts</i>. As we read that text, my students and I kept making connections to our own, twenty-first century, culture of food and cooking: his from-scratch instructions for making artists' materials read to us like recipes; his directions for using extra fish parts (heads and guts) for making glue reminded us of the current interest in using the whole animal; and his prescription that certain twigs be gathered at a specific time of year recalled for us the movement towards seasonality in food. <br />
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Those connections peaked my interest in exploring connections between medieval art-making and medieval cooking and food culture and so, with this blog post, I announce my new research project, "Eating Medieval Art." To be clear, this is not a project about images of food in medieval art (not that there would be anything wrong with that as a project). Instead, it is about overlaps in materials and processes between these two areas of medieval practice: it is about eggs, fish, cheese, and green vegetables, and about grinding, mixing, heating, and cooling. And it is about how such overlaps might have informed the meanings of both art-making and cooking and eating for medieval people.<br />
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My work on this project is going to take two forms. One will be the traditional, scholarly, academic work of research and reading. The other will be experimental and experiential and will involve cooking medieval recipes along with experimenting with medieval art-making techniques. For the latter, to begin with at least, I will be working with modern cookbooks that present somewhat modernized versions of medieval recipes, starting with Sharon Butler, Constance Hieatt, and Brenda Hosington's <i>Plyen Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks</i> (second edition). <br />
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The cooking portion of this project is a way for me to bring together my personal and professional interests and so to trouble the boundary between amateur enthusiasm and properly distanced scholarly work (as advocated in Carolyn Dinshaw's <i>How Soon is Now?</i>). I've always enjoyed cooking and so this is a way for me to bring that enjoyment into my work. It is also the portion of the project that I plan on documenting here. I don't know what else may come out of this work, in terms of publications, etc. I'm trying not to focus on the outcome(s) of the project, but rather on the process of the work itself. <br />
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<br />Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-79379863164395330822015-10-07T15:17:00.002-04:002015-10-26T16:06:46.493-04:00To Free WritingI've been thinking a lot about scholarly processes lately; about the how, rather than the what, of what we do. I started focusing on this issues while working on <a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2014_10_01_archive.html">my contribution to last year's Babel Working Group meeting in Santa Barbara</a> and it led to the session that Asa Mittman and I organized for this year's Babel meeting in Toronto and my own contribution to that session. The session as a whole is summarized in a post on the Material Collective's blog and so the point of this post is to highlight my own contribution. This took the form of a video entitled "To Free Writing" which is available <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/QsmwL8VWVtuP">here</a>. The text in the video was developed through my process of freewriting, which I documented in additional videos (<a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/vXGjJV2olgM">Freewriting 1</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/Fgt3ZK2b1nb">Freewriting 2</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/F0okpmEo">Freewriting 3</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/rlR4Z9J3iY">Freewriting 4</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/3rEDW17wr">Freewriting 5</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/GPFGuyjp2">Freewriting 6,</a> <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/nKkzJuX89am">Freewriting 7</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/tUpabVhyYR">Freewriting 8</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/53baQipwJ">Freewriting 9</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/R5utB2bt">Freewriting 10</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/u93QP8ZNfn">Freewriting 11</a>, <a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/llWmmrFP9uD">Freewriting 12</a>). Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-72324088137318300912015-06-20T15:21:00.000-04:002015-06-21T14:55:59.493-04:00Moissac/Transi Chapter: Introduction<i><a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2014/06/returning.html">I'm back to the idea of "writing in public" and so of posting parts of the book as I write them, if only as a tool to get myself to actually write them.</a> The chapter I'm working on now is in many ways the hardest: it's the one I started with, but I've never been happy with it, and so a lot of my anxiety about the project is lodged in it. Now I think I've finally figured out how it should work, but I'm still struggling to get myself to work on it. Here is the Intro which includes an overview: let me know what you think.</i><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LHiutJ1uCoQ/VYW7e-vAHiI/AAAAAAAAAb8/rWRajZBUXLc/s1600/06f_1100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LHiutJ1uCoQ/VYW7e-vAHiI/AAAAAAAAAb8/rWRajZBUXLc/s640/06f_1100.jpg" width="419" /></a></div>
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The woman stands
with her head bent down and turned slightly to her right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her thick locks of hair continue this
downward movement as they extend down and out over her chest and
shoulders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One lock on her left side
stands out as it extends straight down, crossing over the prominent horizontal
bars of her ribs, and leading to her breasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Here the shape of this lock of hair is repeated, reversed, magnified,
and multiplied as the heads and hanging bodies of two snakes that have attached
themselves to her breasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The snakes’
bodies loop up and over her bent arms and then trail down around her legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The loops in their bodies form a line with her
bent elbows and this line draws attention to her navel, positioned in the
otherwise empty space of her abdomen below.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Its prominent mark is further emphasized as it is framed by the angled
shapes of the snakes’ bodies above and by angled lines in her groin below.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These lines further extend the downward
movement initiated by her head and hair as they lead down between her thighs to
where another creature, conventionally identified as a toad but currently
little more than a blob, attaches itself to her genitalia. </div>
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The line formed by
the woman’s elbows and the snakes’ bodies is further extended, and their
rounded forms are repeated and inflated, by the bloated belly of a demonic
figure that stands on the woman’s right side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His big belly extends towards her and the prominent mark of his navel
further associates his swelling body with her form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He reaches out to grasp her right wrist and
the spreading locks of her hair connect this gesture up into her face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This suggests the line of her sight, looking
down first at his hand on her arm and then at his distended abdomen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Above this line, the shape of his belly is
repeated as another rounded form, another toad, that extends from his face and
points to hers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, damage caused by
time and moisture has veiled her eyes.</div>
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This striking
sculpture from the porch of the church of Saint-Pierre at Moissac is one of a
group of images of women with snakes attached to their breasts found within the
corpus of French Romanesque sculpture and found in particular on churches in
western and southern France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other
examples of this type of image appear on the churches of Saint-Pierre, Aulnay;
Saint-Nicholas, Angers; Saint-Sernin, Toulouse; Sainte-Croix, Bordeaux;
Saint-Jouin, Les-Marnes; Saint-Colombe, Angoumois; and elsewhere.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4666367549185214133#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"></span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Moissac snake-woman sculpture stands out
from this group, however, because of its size and its location.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of these images are on a small scale and
appear in elevated positions; on sculpted capitals (Saint-Pierre, Aulnay;
Saint-Nicholas, Angers; Saint-Sernin, Toulouse), in doorway archivolts
(Sainte-Croix, Bordeaux), and on the upper reaches of church facades
(Saint-Jouin, Les-Marnes).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Moissac
sculpture, by contrast, is a nearly life-sized figure that appears at the base
of one of the sculpted side walls of the church’s entrance porch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These differences heighten this particular
snake-woman’s impact upon its beholders, both medieval and modern, by
increasing the immediacy of their contact with the woman’s tormented body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Moissac sculpture has thus been a focus
for art-historical inquiry into this group of images and will be the focus of
my work in this chapter.</div>
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Most medieval art
historians would immediately identify the Moissac snake-woman or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">femme-aux-serpents</i> and similar
sculptures as images of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">luxuria</i> or
the sin of lust, shown personified as a woman suffering torments in hell as
punishment for her sexual sins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed,
this interpretation of the sculptures’ significance has come to be such an
art-historical commonplace that it has essentially ceased to function as an
interpretation: instead <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">luxuria</i> in
some form (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">luxure</i>, unchastity) has
come to function as the identifying name or title for these works of art and as
a result their meaning as images of sexual sin is now simply assumed.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"></span></span></span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this chapter, I move to re-open the
question of the Moissac sculpture’s meaning to its medieval beholders by
re-reading the texts on which the current interpretation is based and by
re-assessing the composition of the sculpture’s medieval audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I argue that both the texts and the sculpture
present motherhood as monstrous in its combination of life with death and the
human with the non-human (the demonic and the animal).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the texts, that monstrous combination
appears as women are punished in hell for their acts of infanticide by having
serpents draped around their necks or attached to their breasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the sculpture, the attention given to the
woman’s breasts and genitalia could suggest either sexual activity or
motherhood; however, motherhood is strongly suggested by the emphasis on both
the woman’s navel and the demon’s, by the link this creates between his big
belly and her form, and by visual relationships between the snake-woman and the
demon and pairs of figures in the scenes of the Annunciation and Visitation –
the same themes considered in the previous chapter – that are located on the
opposite wall of the church’s porch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
woman’s motherhood is made monstrous, moreover, by the intimacy established between
her body, the demon, the snakes, and the toads, as described above.</div>
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The meanings
attributed to these monstrous forms of motherhood, furthermore, would have
differed depending upon their audiences, the readers of the texts and the
beholders of the sculptures, who would have approach them from within their own
horizons of expectations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While male
monastic readers and beholders may have understood these monstrosities within a
moralistic framework, as punishment for the woman’s sins, I argue that lay
women among the sculpture’s beholders may have understood its monstrosity
instead in in relationship to their own experiences of motherhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E2a4IPTsCgg/VYW8DxIlVUI/AAAAAAAAAcI/lQMAysx-EC8/s1600/DSCF1624.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E2a4IPTsCgg/VYW8DxIlVUI/AAAAAAAAAcI/lQMAysx-EC8/s640/DSCF1624.JPG" width="312" /></a></span></div>
To make this argument, I introduce a second
sculpture, the transi figure of Jeanne de Bourbon-Vendome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Likely the product of Jeanne’s own patronage,
this sculpture uses monstrous forms that are strikingly similar to those of the
Moissac snake-woman as a form of self-representation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, returning to Moissac, I suggest that
lay women at this particular site may have been able to see the snake-woman’s monstrous
maternity as a form of salvific suffering and so may likewise have been able to
give a positive significance to their own monstrous maternal experiences.</div>
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Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-22209721546054594612015-04-30T10:59:00.001-04:002015-04-30T10:59:35.905-04:00Paris, patterns, textures, textiles: A photo-essay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I head home from Paris tomorrow. I've done a lot of work here: finished drafting an article and wrote my talk for Kalamazoo. But I've also taken a lot of photographs of the city and done a lot of knitting, producing two now of these yarn-bombs for lamp posts (I'll install the second tomorrow morning before heading to the airport. It was intended to replace the first, but since it's actually still there, the second will have to go on a different lamp post). This blog post is meant to tie those last two pursuits together, very visually. It's also, then, a meditation on one of the things I love about this city; the textures, the patterns, and the details in the architecture, the street furniture, and the street itself. <br />
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Yarn-bomb in the Place Louis Aragon on the Ile St. Louis.</div>
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Crosswalk on the Rue St. Antoine.</div>
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Yarn-bomb detail.</div>
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Detail of wrought-iron work on a tomb in Pere Lachaise.</div>
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Yarn-bomb detail.</div>
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Architecture sculpture from the Musee Canavalet.</div>
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Shadow-selfie in St. Germain de Pres. </div>
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Shadow-trees in the Place Louis Aragon.</div>
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Vuillard-selfie at the Petit Palis.</div>
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I'm back in Paris working on a number of projects: an article on transi tombs (see my previous posts on the transis of <a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.fr/2012/06/death-and-therefore-life-or-vice-versa.html">Jeanne de Bourbon-Vendome</a> and <a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.fr/2013/05/henry-chicheles-junk.html">Henry Chichele</a>), a presentation/provocation for the upcoming Kalamazoo congress on Medieval Studies, and the next chapter of my book. A few days ago, though, I took a day off from all of that and went on a day trip out to Chartres. My main reason for going was to see the restoration work that has been done to the interior surfaces of the cathedral. This work has been somewhat controversial: in the US at least, it began with a piece by <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/14/scandalous-makeover-chartres/">Martin Filler in the New York Review of Books</a>, continued with responses by <a href="http://medievalart.org/response-concerns-chartres-cathedral/">Madeline Caviness</a> and by <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/17/new-chartres-exchange/?insrc=hpbl">Caviness and Jeffrey Hamburger, and then with Filler's response to their responses.</a> In going to Chartres, I was following Caviness and Hamburger's suggestion that we should go, see, and judge for ourselves.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z8yPZSWq8ks/VSt6JNeUPNI/AAAAAAAAAXM/APfu0CmOrB4/s1600/DSCF4190.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z8yPZSWq8ks/VSt6JNeUPNI/AAAAAAAAAXM/APfu0CmOrB4/s1600/DSCF4190.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
Having done so, what do I now think? Well, it sure is different! You can see that in this photo, in the contrast between the old/unrestored surface on the left- the mottled grey - and the new/restored surface on right - the tan/buff/beige with the white faux-mortar lines between the stones (faux because they don't actually correspond to the breaks between the stones). And I'm not quite sure what's going on with the marbled-pinkish section to the far right. In general it's a lighter, brighter, softer, warmer Chartres: much less "Dark Ages," which could be a good thing! After all, the notion of a "dark" "middle" age was invented by Renaissance writers to highlight what they saw as the brilliance of their own time period. Most medievalists that I know hate that term.<br />
<br /> Even as I write that, however, I'm aware of how much it is shaped by the expectations I had going out to Chartres this time and by the photographs I chose to take while I was there. I went to see what was different, and so I saw it, and I chose to take photographs that would highlight exactly that difference. Expectation and photography also played an important role in Filler's scandalized reaction to the restorations: he begins his original piece by remembering his first trip to Chartres, some 30 years ago, and remembering also his prior knowledge of it from photographs. He apparently expected the building as it stands today to conform to his memory of that prior trip, much as his experience of it then conformed to his prior knowledge of it from, presumably, black-and-white photographs. Certainly my first knowledge of this building in particular, and of medieval architecture and architectural sculpture in general, came from the black-and-white photos in my college textbooks from 25 years ago. One of shocks of my early research trips in graduate school was realizing that, even without their original polychromy, medieval stone buildings and stone sculptures are rarely the grey that they appear to be in those photographs, because the stone itself isn't grey but tan or beige or buff or pinkish or a whole range of colors depending on what stone was used, depending on what stone was available in that locality. And so one of the best things I can say about the tan color used on the interior surfaces is that it is very similar to the color of the exterior stone work, including the stone sculptures, now that they have been cleaned: the photo below comes from the north porch. Although the cleaning of the exterior raises some of the same issues about photography and expectations: <a href="http://medievalmeetsworld.blogspot.fr/2014/08/restorationrenovation-chartres-encore.html">Anne Harris writes wonderingly in her own blog post on the restoration work at Chartres</a> of how a playfully manipulated black-and-white photo of the north transept sculptures better corresponds to her expectations of the building than what is visible there now.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vd0vNsaQDhQ/VSuORVm41tI/AAAAAAAAAYU/Kqu7_tKadcI/s1600/DSCF4169.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vd0vNsaQDhQ/VSuORVm41tI/AAAAAAAAAYU/Kqu7_tKadcI/s1600/DSCF4169.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Another of the shocks of those early trips was realizing that these buildings are not exclusively, or even primarily, historical monuments, but are instead still living places of worship and so of human activity. While I was Chartres on that Friday, people were walking in the labyrinth at the west end of the nave, praying in the Notre Dame de Pilar chapel, sweeping up the altar area in preparation for a mass, working in the gift shop, begging at the western gates, climbing up and down the exterior scaffolding to continue work on the building, and towards the end of the day gathering in "medieval" costumes for some sort of a concert I think (I had to go catch my train before I could see what was happening). This not a building trapped in the past, not in Filler's memories of 30 years ago, and not in the Middle Ages either. The restoration work as described by Caviness likewise moves the building through time: the restored faux masonry and painted vault bosses are baased on a fifteenth-century restoration of the thirteenth-century work and the choir has been brought back to a Baroque state. <br />
<br />
And finally even the idea of restoration itself warps time: the "new" restored surfaces, as restorations, are not intended to be "new" at all, but to be in fact older than the "old" unrestored areas! Time doesn't stand still here, but neither does it move in a simple, straightforward, linear flow. We bend and twist time at Chartres, through our memories and our expectations - Filler looking to see again what we remembers seeing 30 years ago - as well as through active interventions in the building itselfMarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-87172292913931679462015-01-19T11:22:00.001-05:002015-01-19T11:22:49.721-05:00Charlie Hebdo and Islamic Aniconism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Bk750VilVz8/VLwa3geNRRI/AAAAAAAAAVw/kLKaed4k_KA/s1600/imrs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Bk750VilVz8/VLwa3geNRRI/AAAAAAAAAVw/kLKaed4k_KA/s1600/imrs.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></div>
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As a wanna-be Parisian and a professor of Islamic art, I've been following
the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris with interest. I've
been spending a month at a time in Paris every few years since 2006 (I will be
there for the month of April this year) and have been teaching courses on
Islamic art regularly since 2002. The latter was my response to 9/11:
although a medievalist by training, I've become a self-taught Islamicist in
order to teach that material because I believe that Americans need to know more
about Islam and because teaching Islam through art history has the advantage of
presenting it as part of a sophisticated high culture.<br />
<br />
In following reactions to recent events, I've been most interested in two
topics: reactions against the "Je suis Charlie" slogan and
discussions of Islamic attitudes towards - or against - images and specifically
images of Muhammad. The most recent Charlie Hedbo cover, which I've
chosen to include above, brings these two issues together by showing an image
of Muhammad holding the now-ubiquitous "Je suis Charlie" sign.
I want to explore that combination here, because I see the two as having in
common a tendency to over-simply complex issues and in so doing to collapse the
world into a binary of us-vs-them, and because this is a tendency that I want
to disrupt. <br />
<br />
The case against the "Je suis Charlie" response is well stated in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/12/je-ne-suis-pas-charlie-nuance-groupthink?CMP=fb_gu">this
piece by Roxane Gay from The Guardian.</a> If only way to express my
opposition to the murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists is by identifying
with them - by proclaiming that I AM them (je SUIS Charlie) - then I loose all
ability to be critical of their work, and being critical of it becomes
identifying instead with their murders. And in this way the world becomes
divided into us and them, victims and terrorists; you are either with us –
indeed ARE us - or you are against us, there is no space in-between.
<br />
<br />
Likewise, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/10/drawing-prophet-islam-muhammad-images">in
this piece also from The Guardian</a>, two spokespeople for contemporary Muslim
groups in the U.K. state that Islam forbids images in general and images of
Muhammad in particular, and one asserts that this has always been the case -
despite recognizing the existence of images of Muhammad made by Muslims in the
12th and 13th centuries. Their position seems to be that Islam is
now/has always been what they/the groups they represent say that it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What get’s lost when they assert that
position is complexity and diversity within Islam, both historically and in the
present day. Image use and its rejection thus become a wedge issue
dividing us from them: “we” Muslims don’t use images where “you” westerners/Christians
do; or “you” Muslims have this issue with images that “we” westerners don’t
share and don’t really understand.<br />
<br />
And yet, as Christiane Gruber has pointed out, repeatedly, in the piece I
linked to above and in an <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/koran-does-not-forbid-images-prophet-298298">article in Newsweek </a>and in a piece for
<a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-01-15/you-cant-draw-muhammad-unless-youre-one-many-muslim-artists-who-did">The World </a>on NPR and elsewhere, the Koran does not in fact prohibit images in
general or images of Muhammad in particular.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As Oleg Grabar discusses in his classic “Islamic Attitudes toward the
Arts” from his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Formation of Islamic
Art</i>, the Koran doesn’t really say much about art or images and what it does
say is oblique: the jinn make statues for Solomon as signs of his prophetic
status, but then they also make him water troughs and cooking pots - what are
we supposed to make of that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Grabar goes
on to argue that a largely anti-image position did develop within Islamic
tradition, historically, over time, in reaction against the
Roman/Byzantine/Christian context in which it developed; note that his title
here is “Islamic AttitudeS towards the Arts,” not THE Islamic attitude towards
the arts, so that he explicitly allows room for multiplicity and for change.<br />
<br />
As both Gruber and Grabar state, furthermore, the Koran’s real concern is
with idolatry: not with the existence of images, but with their (improper) use
in (pre- and so non-Islamic) forms of worship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
this is a concern that the Koran shares with the Jewish and Christian
texts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is most clearly stated in the
Jewish scriptures/the Old Testament in the 10 Commandments, where God warns
first against worshipping other Gods and then against making idols/images of
things that appear in the world and finally against bowing down to or
worshipping those idols.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The concern in
this sequence of ideas seems to be that making images will lead to worshipping
them and so to worshipping things other than the one God who is to be
worshipped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The story of how
Christianity in particular went on despite these warnings to develop a rich
artistic tradition and to incorporate images into its forms of worship is a
long and complicated one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it is
marked at several junctures by rejections of images and image use: specifically
in the Byzantine Empire in 700’s and 800’s and in northern Europe during the
Protestant Reformation in the 1500’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These anti-image episodes were frequently marked by violence, furthermore,
although typically violence against the images or artworks themselves rather
than against their makers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This period
in Byzantine history is known as Iconoclasm, that is, the breaking or
destruction of images.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in Basel in
1529 a crucifix was dragged out of a church by a horse, hung as if it were
being executed, and then buried in the horse’s stall (See Amy Powell's <i>Depositions: Scenes from the Late Medieval Church and the Modern Museum</i>). Thus rather than standing
in between Islam and Christianity/the west as defining the difference between
us and them, these concerns about images and image use, and the tendency of
these issues to spill over into violence, are something that the two religions
and their histories share.<br />
<br />
Finally, to return to Charlie Hebdo, the real problem with the cartoonists’
work – because I do find it problematic - is not the fact that they depicted
Muhammad, but the way in which they did so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because unlike the cover I included above, many of their images of
Muhammad are highly offensive – and offensive in much the same way as many of
their images of Jews and of the Pope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thus being offended by Charlie Hebdo is also something that Muslims,
Jews, and Catholics, and many many others, have in common.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this is because those cartoons were meant
to be offensive to broad range of different types of people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that, of course, does not excuse or
justify the murder of the cartoonists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nothing could. <br />
Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-49255963874336383002014-10-29T13:57:00.001-04:002014-10-29T14:04:15.606-04:00Babel Beachcombing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zOLdLTwrO3A/VFEr9-7XipI/AAAAAAAAAU8/puLZaVUmorw/s1600/Landscape.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zOLdLTwrO3A/VFEr9-7XipI/AAAAAAAAAU8/puLZaVUmorw/s1600/Landscape.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
Last week I was at the Babel Working Group meeting in Santa Barbara where I participated in an experimental "Beachcombing" panel organized by Lara Farina. This is Lara's description of the project:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: enriqueta,serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span class="color_15">Participants in this panel have a scattered assortment of fragments of
the medieval past to sort through. The tide has washed some of this
flotsam and jetsam in to the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://middleshore.omeka.net/" style="cursor: pointer;" target="_blank">site at Omeka</a></span>,
where shell collectors, treasure-hunters, and those just out for a
stroll will find it littering the beach. They might pick some things up,
sort them into displays, use them in making sandcastles or words
scratched out with a stick, take them home, or throw them back. They
might leave some of the things they brought with them behind--as a
present to the sea or as unwanted junk. </span></span></span></blockquote>
Participants in the panel worked (mostly) with the "flotsam and jetsam" collection of objects that Lara had assembled in the Omeka site cited above to create online exhibits. Because of some technical difficulties, though, most of our work ended up at a <a href="http://cms.hyperrhiz.net/middleshore/">second Omeka site provided by Hyperrhiz.</a> My exhibit is the one entitled <a href="http://cms.hyperrhiz.net/middleshore/exhibits/show/beachcombing">"Sand, Sea, Sky"</a> and the underlying collections are primarily Lara's original "Low Tide" and the additional items I added in "Shells and Badges." Below is the text thaat I presented as part of the conference panel.<br />
<br />
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In creating my final, finished,
exhibit for this project I decided to begin by taking Lara’s metaphor of
beachcombing as seriously as possible and this meant working rather
intuitively; because in my experience of beachcombing I typically collect
things without a clear intention or motivation or outcome in mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead I pick up whatever appeals to me, for
whatever reason, and without much reflection on those reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so I picked one item from our collective “shore”
collection each day over six days, picking whatever appealed to me on that
particular day, and creating a page in the exhibit for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, in this case I did take a next step
of reflecting in writing on why I picked that particular item, on what specific
appeal it had for me: this writing forms the first paragraph on each page in
the exhibit itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the title of
each page names its item’s specific appeal: Making, Difficulty, In/Complete,
Wearing/Being, Intimacy, and Energy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
To stay as close as possible to the
beachcombing metaphor, I then chose to pair the items that I had selected for
the exhibit with a number of actual beachcombed objects, stones and shells that
I had gathered on a trip to the Oregon coast several years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I picked a stone or shell to pair with each
item in the exhibit by trying to match the specific appeal that I had
identified for that item with a similar quality in the beachcombed object: my
reflections on that match form the second paragraph on each exhibit page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I pressed the metaphor of beachcombing in
the direction that Lara had set for us as a way of thinking about our relationships
to the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I considered how the
specific appeal I had identified for each exhibit item, the quality that I had then
identified for the shell or stone, might also appear in relationships to the
past; sometimes thinking specifically about my own work on medieval art and
sometimes more broadly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This work forms
the third and last paragraph on each exhibit page.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Finally, for some reason, after
that trip to the Oregon coast, I had assembled my beachcombed stones and shells
into a landscape and photographed it: this is the image that appears on the
Introduction page for the exhibit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
decided to allow this image to dictate the structure of the final exhibit,
taking the location of each beachcombed shell or stone in the landscape as
determining its page’s place in the exhibit as a whole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this also then established the sections
for the exhibit and their order, moving from foreground to background as Sand,
Sea, and Sky.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Rather than talking through the
exhibit further at this point, because you can of course look at it for
yourselves – and I hope that you will – I instead want to take some time to
reflect on my process of putting it together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I will admit that this was a difficult project for me to work on: I put
off getting started on it and I had several false starts before I finally came
up with what I have here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issue was
that I initially wanted to have a clear idea of what the outcome of my work,
the final exhibit, was going to look like before I started to do any work on
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I didn’t have an idea so I
didn’t get started.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I had a
couple of ideas, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of them, and so I would get
started on something sort of half-heartedly and then would give up on it and
delete what I had done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has a lot
to do with my tendencies towards anxiety and depression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The uncertainty of not-knowing what the final
outcome of something is going to be can make me very anxious and then can get
in the way of me doing it at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Especially since I tend to try to jump ahead and imagine an outcome, but
I often imagine negative outcomes, and that further discourages me from doing
the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t imagine that these are
unique feelings, my understanding is that they are actually pretty typical of
structures of anxiety and depression, and I’m sure I’m not the only person here
who struggles with those issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The key for me in finally getting
past all of that for this project was shifting my attention from the end
product to the process that I was engaged in. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this is where I really found Lara’s
beachcombing metaphor to be helpful; because when I think of beachcombing it’s
typically a process that doesn’t have an end product. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this trip to the Oregon coast, for
example, my sister-in-law was also picking things up on the beach but I believe
she left all of hers behind because she didn’t really know what she would do
with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I brought my objects back to
Cleveland with me and made this photograph with them, but then they ended up in
this container of rocks that I use for drainage for potted plants, and I had to
dig them out for this project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
experience of working on the project, then, has me thinking about the tension
between product and process; about our tendency to over-value product and
devalue process, which has to do with these mental structures, but I think is
also exacerbated by our current working environment and the pressure we all
feel to be productive in order to prove our worth to our institutions as well
as ourselves; and finally it has me thinking about ways of resisting that
tendency and coming to value process itself.</div>
Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-52582421427286683122014-08-18T10:34:00.000-04:002014-08-18T10:34:45.905-04:00Virgins Chapter: Intro<i>I've moved on to revising what will be the last chapter of the book, on fourteenth and fifteenth-century Virgin and Child sculptures. I'm working on a couple of issues here: first, giving the reader a stronger sense of the sculptures themselves as objects and works of art; and second, strengthening the sense of argument throughout. This is the first, intro section for the chapter and so crucial for both of those points: let me know what you think!</i><br />
<br />
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{page:WordSection1;} </style><a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2014/06/introduction-first-three-paragraphs.html">Like the fourteenth-century sculpture featured in the Introduction, </a>this fifteenth-century Virgin stands
with her weight shifted to her left, to where she holds the child on her hip
with her hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The comparison of these
two sculptures, however, points to the latter’s exaggeration of the mother’s
body’s twists and sways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, the
draperies on Mary’s lower body form thick folds that move on strong angles over
to the child and the top of her body repeats that action as her head bends over
and down towards him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These exaggerated
curves extend this Virgin’s body out sideways and create a breadth to her form.
This breadth is further extended as she holds her right hand out and away from
her center and uses it to hold her draperies likewise out and away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These draperies fall from her hand to fill
the space that would otherwise have been emptied by her shift to the side and
so accentuate her body’s breadth and bulk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As they fall, furthermore, these draperies form broad folds that zig-zag
from side to side, emphasizing the horizontal expanse of her form. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2014/06/introduction-first-three-paragraphs.html">As discussed in the Introduction,</a>the earlier sculpture simultaneously presses the mother and child together
within its narrow vertical format, links the two through the child’s reach for
her veil and the inside-out twisting of her mantle’s top fold, splits the two
apart by contrasting her looping folds to his tight vertical pleats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The later sculpture uses some similar drapery
forms, but to different ends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here too long
curving folds cross over Mary’s body, however, they now become horizontal lines
that lead into the child’s body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
line in particular runs from her extended arm in a deep fold across her body,
into the scroll he holds in his hand, and finally into his legs and her supporting
hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Below this major line, two other
folds cross her body and lead into his legs, and above it, a fold crosses her
chest to run into his lower arm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
sculpture thus uses its draperies to integrate the child into Mary’s ample form.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
These are just two of hundreds of
sculptural representations of the Virgin and Child that survive, from France
alone, from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These artworks come in a variety of materials
– including limestone, marble, alabaster, wood, ivory, and precious metals – in
a range of dimensions – from a few inches high for an ivory up to over five
feet (69 inches) for the fourteenth century example discussed above – and would
have had a variety of original locations – from church interiors and exteriors,
to the interiors of private chapels and domestic spaces, to the exteriors of
other structures, and to crossroads and other outdoor locations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The existing scholarship on these sculptures
has typically passed over these differences and focused on others; on differences
in drapery folds, facial types, other stylistic features, and iconographic attributes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the fourteenth-century sculptures, these
differences have been used to identify patterns of both change over time and
variation over space, with an emphasis on the latter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scholars have established regional groupings
of the sculptures, considered the relationship between Parisian and provincial
sculptural production, and sought to identify individual workshops and hands. The
dominating issue in the scholarship on the fifteenth-century sculptures is
their relationship to the work of the Burgundian sculptor Claus de Werve: can
individual sculptures be identified as his own work, that of his followers, or
of other sculptors influenced by him? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The existing scholarship on these
sculptures has thus focused on their production; on understanding who made
what, when, and where.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My interest here
is instead in their reception by medieval women and in women’s responses to
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To approach these issues, I first
need to focus on the differences noted above in the sculptures’ materials and
dimensions, because of what these differences suggest about their original
locations and audiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The majority
of these sculptures are now in museums, after having passed through the hands
of private collectors, and so their original situations are frequently unknown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have chosen to focus in this chapter on
sculptures made in less-precious materials – primarily limestone and wood – and
on a larger scale – three feet and above in height – because these are more
likely to have been situated in public spaces – church interiors and exteriors
and other outdoor situations – where they would have had a broad range of beholders,
like the architectural sculptures studied in the first three chapters of this
book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus the fourteenth century
example from the Introduction is made of limestone, is sixty-nine inches in
height, and there is no documentation of its original location.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the fifteenth-century sculpture introduced
above is made of stone, is thirty-eight inches in height, and in this case the
sculpture’s original location is recorded; it comes from the portal of the
Sainte-Apollinaire castle, near Dijon. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Like the previous scholars who have
written about these sculptures, I too an interested in differences in the forms
of their draperies, as is demonstrated in the comparison above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, instead of using these differences
to determine the sculptures’ dates, locations, or makers, I treat them as
potentially meaningful aspects of the sculptures for the women among their
original beholders and focus on the different relationships the draperies
establish between the body of the mother and the figure of the child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given the large number of these sculptures
that have survived into the present day, there must originally have been many
more of them, making them a common experience for medieval beholders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Medieval women would likely have seen
several such sculptures during their lifetimes, which would have given them the
opportunity to recognize the differences in the sculptures’ depictions of the
mother-child relationship, and so allowed them to use the sculptures to
consider the complex and ever-changing relationships they had with their own
children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The comparison above suggests
some of the dynamics of those relationships in the contrast between the
complete absorption between the mother and child in the later sculpture and the
subtle tension between the two in the earlier example.</div>
Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-78831119843053269732014-07-22T10:40:00.000-04:002014-07-22T10:40:03.993-04:00Intro Part 3: Lit Review and Overview<i>I'm very happy to say that I'm on schedule for my writing this summer: I've got a draft of this new Intro to the book finished just in time to leave town for my cousin Seth's wedding. The last part of it, which I am posting here, is the review of the literature (edited down a bit for this forum) and thee overview of the book as a whole. Let me know what you think.</i><br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Scholarship on motherhood in
general has been shaped by a split between motherhood understood as an
“experience” and as an “institution” since the publication of Adrienne Rich’s foundational
work in 1976.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The experience that
concerns Rich and those who have followed in her wake is that of the mother
herself, as distinct from that of the child. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed another set of terms for this
distinction is between “maternal subjectivity” - that is, the mother considered
as a thinking and feeling subject in her own right –and the “ideology of
motherhood.” Institution and ideology alike refer to cultural myths and
stereotypes of mothers and motherhood, and to the prescriptions and demands placed
on women as mothers by society at large, and so to motherhood as both a culturally
defined ideal and a socially constructed role.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By contrast, Rich’s maternal experience is primarily physical or bodily,
although she and others argue against it being dismissed as mere biology.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
This distinction has likewise
shaped scholarship on medieval motherhood beginning with Clarissa Atkinson’s
1991 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Oldest Vocation: Christian
Motherhood in the Middle Ages</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Atkinson places emphasis on motherhood as institution or ideology,
explaining that is she writing a history of ideas about motherhood as presented
in various texts. And subsequent scholarship, in particular the essay
collections <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Medieval Mothering</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in
the Early Modern Period</i>, has likewise focused on motherhood as a socially
constructed role, in particular that of caregiver or nurturer, while
downplaying motherhood as a bodily experience as biological and so a-historical.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
By contrast, my interest is in
motherhood as an experience as defined by Rich; as a bodily experience that is
also a meaningful experience as it becomes part of a woman’s subjectivity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where previous scholars on medieval
motherhood have frequently dismissed physical motherhood as natural and a-historical,
I seek to historicize it by considering the meanings it held for women in the
medieval past. Finally my work shows motherhood to have been a much more
complex, contradictory and ambivalent, experience than can be summarized as a
single term such as caregiving.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
To attempt to capture the
complexities of motherhood as an experience for medieval women, this book is
structured as something of a narrative of that experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is divided into two parts: the first
(Chapters One and Two) focuses on the woman’s process of becoming a mother, on
pregnancy and childbirth, and the second (Chapters Three and Four) focuses on
relationships between mothers and their children during the first few years of
a child’s life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two parts are joined
by a focus on the tension between life and death, the potential death of the
mother in bringing new life into the world (Chapter Two) and the potential
death of that new life – the death of the child (Chapter Three). The
organization of the book is thus not dictated by the dates of thee sculptures
themselves, indeed the chapters move from the thirteenth century (the Reims sculptures
in Chapter One), back to the twelfth century (the Moissac and Autun sculptures
in Chapters Two and Three) with a gesture towards the sixteenth (the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transi</i> tomb off Jeanne de
Bourgogne-Vendome in Chapter Two), and then forward again to the fourteenth
through sixteenth centuries (the Virgin and Child sculptures in Chapter
4).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Likewise I am not attempting to use
the chronology of the sculptures to track changes in motherhood as an
experience over time: my evidence does not support doing so. I also cross over
the boundary between the art-historical categories of Romanesque (the Moissac
and Autun sculptures) and Gothic (the Reims sculptures, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transi</i>, and the Virgin and Child
sculptures), simply because those categories are not relevant to my work
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Chapter One takes as its topic the
Annunciation and Visitation scenes from thee west front of Reims
cathedral.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I focus on the differences
between their images of the Virgin Mary and argue for seeing these changes as
the product of her impending motherhood – and so for seeing these sculptures as
representing motherhood to the women of medieval Reims as a transformative
experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chapter Two focuses on a
specific transformation wrought by motherhood, that of a living woman into a
corpse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The monstrous forms of both the
Moissac <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">femme aux serpents</i> and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transi </i>of Jeanne de Bourgogne-Vendome
are understood to represent the dead mother who, in dying, gives birth to her
own dissolution and decay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chapter Three
continues to address issues of life and death, focusing on the life and death
of the child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The central sculpture for the
chapter is the Eve from the church of St-Lazare at Autun, which is understood
in combination with the shrine to St. Lazarus that stood inside of the
church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I imagine medieval women coming
as pilgrims to this shrine on behalf of a sick, dying, or miraculously healed
or even resurrected child, and argue that the emotionality of the Eve image
would have provided a model for these women’s own emotions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chapter Four follows from the previous in
focusing on the relationship between the mother and child as represented in
multiple sculpted versions of the Virgin and Child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The chapter’s primary focus is on the
sculptures’ clothing, which structure the mother-child relationship differently
in each sculpture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I argue that these
sculptures cumulatively created a discourse on the combination of merger and
separation, love and hate, that characterizes parturition as an
experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally the book’s
Conclusion looks to representations of motherhood in contemporary (late
twentieth and early twenty-first century) art made by women artists and looks
for both continuities and changes in motherhood as an experience over time.</div>
Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-81209748803945757222014-07-13T10:49:00.000-04:002014-07-13T10:49:20.456-04:00On Scholarship and Self-ExposureWhile my last post hasn't gotten comments on the blog itself, I've received several responses to it privately. A common word in these responses is "brave:" I'm assuming this is in response to the final paragraph where I identify the abortion I had in graduate school as one motivation for my turn towards writing about motherhood in my scholarship. I've gone back and forth over whether or not to include that information in the book. I've decided (for now at least) to do it. And I want to talk here a little bit about why.<br />
<br />
First and most broadly, I have long accepted the fact that there is always some connection between a person's scholarship and his or her life and experiences. "Objective" or "disinterested" scholarship is a myth: why would someone spend years of their life working on something that s/he wasn't "interested" in for some reason? That connection, that reason, may not be obvious or clear, even to the person him or herself, but it is there. If it's not clear, then fine, leave it be. But if it is clear, as it is to me in this case - years later and after considerable reflection - then why not acknowledge it? After all, the point of writing is to communicate to other people and acknowledging your self-investment in the work should help that process of communication.<br />
<br />
That is particularly true, I think, in this case. Because I'm concerned that if I don't make my personal circumstances clear, readers will make some incorrect assumptions about me and so about the book: that they will assume that I am a mother myself and am bringing that experience to the writing of the book. I'm concerned that that could even become a way of dismissing the book: something along the lines of, "well she obviously has kids and so is just projecting her own experience as a mother on to the sculptures instead of doing real scholarship." Well, no and no.<br />
<br />
Of course I could take care of that simply by saying that I don't have children. I don't have to mention the abortion. But then I would feel like I was lying or at least being disingenuous. If I am going to discuss my own experiences in my scholarship, then I am going to be honest about them.<br />
<br />
And finally, this is where the scholarly and the personal meet the political. Women who have had abortions need to acknowledge that fact when the opportunity arises. I understand not wanting to do so. It is a controversial topic and so a difficult one to bring up; you can't be sure how other people are going to react. The legal right to make the choice to terminate a pregnancy rests on the right to privacy, which then defines that choice as a very private matter; something "between a woman and her doctor" and so something not to be discussed outside of that closed context. But to not talk about it also treats it as something that you are/ought to be ashamed of - as a dirty little secret. And for women who have exercised their right to chose to not talk about it allows the people who would take away that right to define the terms on which the issue is discussed. If women who have exercised this right are going to help ensure that other women have the same right to chose, then we need to talk about it.Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-79822559146691732462014-07-08T10:30:00.000-04:002014-07-08T10:30:11.280-04:00The (Dreaded) Theory Section<i>The next part of the Introduction is the dreaded theory section. Dreaded because it is absolutely crucial to everything that follows, because the concepts aren't easy to explain, because it contains some self-revelations, and because it is probably going to turn some people off to the book as a whole. I've cut it down a bit for this forum and taken out the footnotes. Let me know what you think.</i><br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The relationship between the
beholder and the work of art has been a major topic of interest in art history
as a discipline over approximately the past 40 years. Nevertheless, I find that
the most useful conceptual tools for understanding this relationship come from
the work of literary theorists writing about the relationship between the
reader and the text; specifically Hans Robert Jauss’s work on reception in
combination with Wolfgang Iser’s on response.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Jauss focuses on the reader or
beholder’s share in this relationship, introducing the term “horizon of
expectations” to refer to the store of experiences, ideas, and concerns that
readers bring to texts or beholders to works of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to Jauss, this "horizon"
forms the background to the text or artwork as foreground, the question to
which the work is an answer - or to which it is made to answer as it is
virtually re-made in the minds of its readers/beholders in order to fit within
their horizons, match their backgrounds, or respond to their concerns. This
horizon is variable and multi-layered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It changes over time as later readers/beholders bring different sets of
experiences and interests to surviving texts and artworks, so that the work of
the historian of literature or art is in part the reconstruction of past
horizons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It begins with the
reader/beholders’ prior experiences and expectations about texts or works of
art themselves and from this innermost horizon extends a much broader one
formed from the reader/beholder’s life experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This broader horizon stretches in different
directions for different readers and beholders, responding to the differences
in their social roles and experiences.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Thus medieval men and women,
members of the clergy and lay people, would have had differing horizons for the
sculptures that are the focus of the book and so would have remade them through
reception in different ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A central
premise for this book is that motherhood would have formed an important part of
medieval lay women’s horizons for these sculptures; that motherhood would have
formed a background of experiences against which these women would have
understood the works of art, and that the meanings of their maternal
experiences would have been a question that they looked to the sculptures to answer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
While Jauss’s work explicates the
reader/beholder’s contribution to the making of meaning, Iser’s focuses instead
on the role of the text or, by extension, the work of art. His interest is how
the form of the text or artwork shapes the reader or beholder’s experience of
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both perspectives are of equal
importance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For as much as the beholder
comes to the work of art with specific experiences and interests, so the work
of art presents her with specific forms and figures to consider in the light of
those experiences and interests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus
neither the beholder nor the work of art is a blank slate for the other’s
inscription of meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead both
are active agents in the process of meaning-making and its outcome is a
creative synthesis of their contributions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, the two perspectives differ as they enter into historical
work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jauss’s work on reception stakes
out of historical difference and distance as the horizon of expectations shifts
over time, whereas Iser’s work on response emphasizes instead the possibility
of continuity and contact over time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>According to Iser, the historian-as-reader or beholder’s response will
be scripted by the text or work of art itself in much the same way as the
historical reader/beholder's was and that will allow the later reader/beholder
to experience a previous historical situation – at least to some degree.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Iser’s work thus encourages me to
take my own responses to medieval artworks seriously as avenues towards
historical understanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This book is
shaped by my responses to medieval sculptures in two ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, I chose the specific sculptures to be
considered here based on my responses to them: these were works of art that
stood out to me as being potentially productive to consider in relationship to
medieval women’s experiences of motherhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so I can speculate, at least, that they would have likewise appealed
to the lay women who were among their original beholders as potentially
productive sites for thinking about their own maternal experiences. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Even as I trust my own responses to
the sculptures, however, I also need to acknowledge my own horizon of
expectations, the experiences and interests that I bring to these works of art
and so to this book as my act of meaning-making.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I began writing about motherhood as a
context for understanding images of female bodies in medieval art in my
doctoral dissertation and this book is a continuation of that work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In turning to motherhood, I was looking for a
way of writing about these artworks that was not shaped by the medieval
church’s highly misogynistic teachings about sexuality and sin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the light of Howard Bloch’s work on
medieval misogyny as a discourse of citation and repetition, I was concerned
that continuing to write about this discourse, even in a critical light, only
served to perpetuate it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
My horizon for this project,
furthermore, is personal as well as scholarly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I am not a mother and so motherhood is not an experience that I bring to
these sculptures, nor to this book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, during work on my dissertation, I was briefly pregnant and I
chose to terminate that pregnancy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
that happened at approximately the same time as my turn to motherhood in my
writing, it is clear to me that there is a relationship between the two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I do not regret the choice that I made,
it seems clear that my turn to writing about motherhood in my scholarship is
also my effort to understand this experience that I chose not to have in my own
life.</div>
Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-27751706593500351652014-06-27T10:33:00.000-04:002014-07-01T09:09:34.003-04:00Introduction: The First Three Paragraphs - Revised! And now it's four.<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">The first thing I am doing in my work on the book this summer is writing a new introduction. My thought is that doing this will help me to frame the book clearly, first of all for myself I continue working on it, and then for its eventual readers.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Below are the first three paragraphs of the new Intro and so the projected first three paragraphs for the book as a whole. My goals here are to get someone interested in actually reading the thing and then to lay out some big ideas for the book as a whole - the theoretical perspective plus some sense of the argument. Let me know what you think.</span></i><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">7/1: I did a bit more fiddling with this - added a sentence and moved some things around. I've highlighted the new sentence. </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
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--></style>She stands with her weight shifted slightly
to her left and with that hip pressed outward and upward, in a version of the
classical contrapossto pose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She puts
that pose to a different end, however, propping a baby up on her hip and
securing him against her body with a strong grasping hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He reaches out with one hand to grasp her
veil and pull it over her chest – and with that gesture he calls attention to the
play of fabric folds that the contrapossto pose creates over her lower
body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On her right, a series of curves
at varying depths arc across her body from her extended hand to where the
child’s body presses against hers. The topmost of these folds flips the garment
inside out, revealing its white inner surface and so rhyming with her white
veil above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On her left, by contrast,
the fabric gathers into tight folds along vertical lines that extend down from
the pleats in the lower portion of the child’s garment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the very end of her veil gathers into
similarly tight folds as it dangles from his hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The placement on this flare of folds against
her chest calls attention to her breasts, which are further emphasized by
curving lines that extend upwards to them as drapery folds created by the tight
cinch of her belt below.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
This book asks what this sculpture
– an early fourteenth-century French Virgin and Child – along with a host of
other medieval sculptural representations of female bodies – including the
Annunciation and Visitation pairs from Reims cathedral, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">femme aux serpents</i> from the church of
Saint-Pierre at Moissac, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transi </i>of
Jeanne de Bourbon-Vendome, the Eve from the church of Saint-Lazare at Autun,
and a number of other Virgin and Childs – have to say about motherhood in the
Middle Ages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most obvious answer to
that question is little or nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
work of anonymous but presumably male sculptors, often working for clerical and
so celibate male patrons, there is little to no chance that these artworks
speak of motherhood on the level of their makers’ self-expressions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Likewise, these sculptures were not made for
women as their primary beholders and so were not made to speak directly to
women about their social roles as mothers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
However, the sculptures were
produced as public art for the exterior walls and interior spaces of church
buildings where they had a wide range of beholders – including lay women who
were mothers and potential mothers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
difference between the producers of these sculptors and women as mothers as one
group of their beholders opens a gap between their intended meanings and the
other meanings liable to be produced by women coming to these artworks with
their own interests, ideas, and concerns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus to understand these
sculptures in relationship to medieval women as mothers, we must first
recognize that the interaction between a work of art and its beholders is a
meaning-making activity - a theoretical perspective that is developed in this
Introduction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Approached from this
perspective, the sculptures become sites where medieval women could consider
their own experiences as mothers and the meanings those experiences held for
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Indeed, the reason this book
focuses on sculpture as a medium is the opportunity that this gap between
producers and beholders, intended and potential meanings, creates to consider
medieval women as active makers of the meanings of their own lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
As they continue to exist today,
furthermore, these sculptures create opportunities to reconstruct at least some
of these women’s maternal experiences and some of the meanings they made from those
experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This work of reconstruction
shows motherhood to have been a complex experience for medieval women, one
riven by tensions and oppositions, between life and death, empowerment and
subordination, merger and separation, joy and sorrow, even love and hate. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To return to the Virgin and Child introduced
above as an example, the visual forms of this sculpture suggest the tension
between merger and separation that marks the process of parturition, which is
explored in detail through an examination of multiple such sculptures within
the context of the medieval cult of the Virgin in Chapter Four.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mother and child are pressed together
here within the vertical format of the work of art, but they are also
distinguished by the two different types of drapery folds; her horizontal
curves in contrast to his vertical pleats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As those curving folds accumulate on her lower abdomen they suggest her
former pregnancy in contrast to the child she now holds in her arms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as these same folds lead across her body
to that child, they suggest his movement out of her body, a suggestion that is
reinforced by the inside-out twisting of the topmost fold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet as her veil resembles that fold, so
his reach for it becomes a reach back into her interior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as the veil transforms from a curve into
a tight flare of folds, it indicates his hold over her in his continuing need
for her, as his need for nourishment from her body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are thus both joined and separated, split
apart and tied together.</div>
</div>
Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-27012904049696804332014-06-24T11:08:00.000-04:002014-06-24T11:08:07.241-04:00Returning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s99kIuy7LXk/Tpgo75m72zI/AAAAAAAAAB8/BpmSnnv5ldw/s1600/aulnay2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s99kIuy7LXk/Tpgo75m72zI/AAAAAAAAAB8/BpmSnnv5ldw/s1600/aulnay2.jpg" height="280" width="400" /> </a></div>
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I'm returning to the image that I used <a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2011/10/openings.html">in my first post in this blog</a> in order to mark a return to the blog itself. I've not written anything here for a good long while now and am very aware of that. I've been wondering whether I want to continue to writing here or not and why. Thinking about where I am now compared to where I was when I started this and about what I might want this platform to do for me now.</div>
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I've not been writing here, first, because I've been doing other things. Primarily service work, chairing a couple of committees and so getting my department and college ready for a major curriculum change that will be going into effect in the Fall. Looking back at my first post here, I wrote about not wanting to get dragged into service and hoping to use writing in this forum as a way of resisting that. That didn't work out, obviously, but I've also changed my attitude towards service somewhat - seeing it not as a time-sink but instead as a training ground for a potential move into administration. </div>
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Any further moves in that direction, however, will have to wait as I will be on sabbatical this coming year and have a lot of writing to get done during the year. But the context of my writing has also changed since I started this. Then, I was immediately post-tenure and wondering how I was going to continue to be productive as a scholar without the pressure that I had lived under for so long - to finish the PhD, to get a tenure-track job, and then to earn tenure. I was also feeling the release of that pressure in the new possibility of writing new and different kinds of things, things that wouldn't have "counted" in my tenure process, this blog among them. However, over the past few years my university has instituted a new workload policy that put the pressure back on and take that freedom away. Now post-tenure we have to continue to produce specific types of things at a specific pace (basically 2 journal articles in 3 years or a book in 5) or else our teaching loads will be increased. The administration likes to talk about this new policy as a way of opening different avenues for faculty in their careers, allowing people to "chose" to focus on teaching for example, but the way it has been implemented instead treats increased the increased teaching load as a punishment for unproductive or unsuccessful scholars. It is under this cloud that I will be writing over the next year. The work I produced in the run-up to tenure has kept me safe from teaching increases so far, but now I need to get new work out. And needing to get the work out is making it hard for me to do the work, making me anxious about the work that I am doing even as I am doing it. </div>
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Unfortunately, furthermore, the major project that I want and now need to be working on is a book that I've been working on, off and on, for years and that I have always been very anxious about. Partly because of the content - theoretical, feminist, not at all a straightforward piece of traditional scholarship. And partly because, well, its a book and I've never written a book before and don't really know how.After an initial consultation with a potential publisher it's clear to me that a major issue with the book so far is that the only reader it has had so far is, well, me. And it needs to start making sense to other people if its going to be published. So my thought is to use this forum to facilitate that over the next year so. I'm going to be doing a version of <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/writing-public#sthash.k4EO6iVo.qxdWDUwa.dpbs">"writing in public,"</a> using the blog as a place to post bits and pieces of the book as I write them, looking for comments and suggestions. I hope it works. That's really up to you all. </div>
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<br />Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-50853438774542831442013-09-09T10:20:00.005-04:002013-09-09T10:20:50.747-04:00Touching Ivory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9RHhrsqL7to/Uiy2IPJQAgI/AAAAAAAAAPM/VCW00i12QiA/s1600/Figure1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9RHhrsqL7to/Uiy2IPJQAgI/AAAAAAAAAPM/VCW00i12QiA/s640/Figure1.jpg" width="393" /></a></div>
I've been thinking about ivories for a while now. Then, a few days ago, I got to touch some.<br />
<br />
To explain more: I've been working on an article on ivory Virgin and Child statuettes for several years now. Originally, it was an outgrowth of the work on Virgin and Child imagery that I was doing for the book that I've also been working on for a long time now (about 10 years). I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of Virgin and Child statues that I was encountering in museums and so I decided I would limit my work for the book on larger-scale stone and wood versions and then use some of the same contextual and theoretical framework for a separate article on ivories (<a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2011/10/ivory-virgins.html">for some of that thinking see this previous post</a>). But I quickly realized that I would also have to take into account in the difference in material and all of the differences that go with it - in size and scale, in ownership and viewership.<br />
<br />
I started to read up on ivory and got more and more interested in the material itself and so the article began to change from one about Virgin and Childs that just happened to be made ivory, to one about ivory objects that just happened to represent the Virgin and Child. The thing that really interested me about ivory as a material was its diversity of uses: on the one hand, for religious images/objects like these statuettes, but on the other, for functional things - boxes and mirrors, the handles of knives and fans, and little things like game pieces, dice, and buttons. I started to wonder about how this other use for the same material might have informed medieval people's experiences of the statuettes. And what struck me about these other things is that they are all hand-held things and so would have brought ivory into the hand, making it a material to be experienced through touch.<br />
<br />
To write about that experience with any authority, I wanted to touch some ivory myself. And so I asked the curator at the CMA if he had any ivories he could let me touch: the subject matter didn't matter, neither did the date, nor the condition. He came up with several things in their education collection, two Virgin and Childs from the 17-18thC and one very damaged 14th C folding tabernacle, and I spent an hour or so touching them.<br />
<br />
The first interesting thing to me about the experience was my reluctance to actually touch them, even though that was what I was there to do. My first automatic response was to clasp my hands behind my back and lean in to look. How different from the response of someone, a medieval person, for whom ivory was an everyday material, the stuff of buttons and boxes, and so one meant to be held.<br />
<br />
Then, the curatorial assistant who was with me encouraged me to pick one up and experience what strikes her about ivories every time she handles them: their weight. They are surprisingly heavy for their size. I struggled a bit to lift the largest object they had brought out for me and even the small fragments from the tabernacle had a recognizable heft. The larger Virgin and Child statuettes cannot have been lifted, held, or moved very often. And even the smaller statuettes and functional objects would have had substance and presence in the hand as the were lifted, held, and used. The weight would let you know the ivory object was there.<br />
<br />
After lifting them, I spent some time running my (gloved) fingers over them and was struck by the different textures the material is capable of conveying. It can be polished smooth. Or it can be cut into deep depressions in irregular patterns. Or into tight groups of parallel grooves at varying depths. The last was probably the most interesting of textures, to me at least. I went back and forth between wanting to move my fingers along the grooves, to almost pet the piece, and wanting to move across them, to feel their resistance to my touch. And finally I wanted to discover the difference between the carved texture and any naturally occurring texture and so I sought out some veins. You can feel them, they aren't just color changes, but they feel very different from the carving, much finer and much sharper.<br />
<br />
When I was done touching, I went out into the galleries to visit the statuette above - my favorite at the CMA - and to use my experience of touching the other ivories to imagine the experience of handling this one. First, picking it up: it is rather small, only a few inches high, but would pack quite a bit of weight into that small size, calling your attention to its presence in your hand. It has all of the different textures: the deep openings between the Virgin's legs, the grooves on her chest, the smoother surface on the faces, but then the veining on the Virgin's face in particular. The veining has an interesting relationship to the other textures: disrupting the smooth skin on her face, then running with the grooves on her chest, and finally countering the lines that make up the deep folds between her legs and running back into their depths.Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-72775585745420090262013-08-13T08:12:00.000-04:002013-08-13T08:12:49.270-04:00Gothic Ivory Virgins: A PoemNote: <i>I've been writing poetry over this past few months by cutting-and-pasting (literally with scissors and tape) words and phrases from scholarly art-historical texts. I've posted examples on some other blogs: <a href="http://academicfailblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/slices-and-splices-marian-bleeke-and.html">Fumblr</a> and the <a href="http://thematerialcollective.org/italian-painters-of-the-renaissance-a-poem/">Material Collective</a> group blog. Here I turn that activity onto one of my own texts, a recently rejected article on ivory Virgin and Child statuettes, to both rescue something from this rejection and advance my thinking on this project by coming at it in a different way.</i><br />
<br />
<i></i><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Embellishing Ivories</b></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/images/m/00164901.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/images/m/00164901.jpg" width="249" /></a>Allow us to imagine:<br />
some ivory buttons,<br />
an ivory comb <br />
several ivory and silver boxes.<br />
And a set of metal chains - <br />
set into a gold flower on the Virgin's chest.<br />
Gilt in her hair, red on the inside of her veil,<br />
a green belt with gilt embellishments.<br />
Supplemented by precious stones,<br />
emeralds as well as an emerald,<br />
and thirty-two pearls (one missing).<br />
<br />
Allow to us image,<br />
against the background of the scarcity<br />
that just appears from behind her,<br />
in anticipation of his death,<br />
with unnamed images,<br />
with its accompanying angels,<br />
solitary figures joined by a string.<br />
Just a casual accumulation of goods<br />
reaches out and breaks the boundary<br />
to perform miracles for others.<br />
<br />
The object's miraculous potential<br />
rests on its silver chair<br />
and emphasizes its preciousness:<br />
one with a jewel in its chest and the other with a silver crown.<br />
Garments moving over her body.<br />
Gazes directed outwards.<br />
Boxes, buttons, combs, fans, game pieces, handles, and mirrors:<br />
St. Christopher kept in a box.<br />
Highly embellished objects with no embellishments.<br />
No documents for its prior existence<br />
preserved her hand from decay. Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-79794148550000933862013-05-27T15:38:00.001-04:002013-05-27T15:38:47.378-04:00À mon seul désir<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GdyFa7MjHx8/UaNf2kio8nI/AAAAAAAAANE/5h0LcwPqKCA/s1600/SCALA_ARCHIVES_10310196115.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="325" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GdyFa7MjHx8/UaNf2kio8nI/AAAAAAAAANE/5h0LcwPqKCA/s400/SCALA_ARCHIVES_10310196115.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
This post has been brewing for a while - since my Spring Break trip to Paris. It springs from one of my visits to the Cluny during that trip, when I ended up in the Unicorn tapestries room.<br />
<br />
I've been in there before of course, if only because it is the only air-conditioned space in the museum. My first month-long trip summer trip to Paris I took in July instead of June and it was hot (and a little smelly). I was spending my afternoons in museums looking at Virgin and Child statues and most of the Cluny's are gathered in a gallery right next to the tapestries room, so I would duck in there to sit in the a.c. for a bit whenever I got just too uncomfortable. On this most recent trip, in March, it was freezing cold and I got routed through the room because that space with the Virgins was briefly closed for some reason.<br />
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And for some other reason I was struck by the panel above, sometimes labelled as the Lady and the Unicorn. Struck not so much by its imagery, as by its text: the inscription that appears on the tent right above the lady, "à mon seul désir." The phrase stuck with me and started repeating it to myself: I liked saying those words and hearing them. So much so that I wanted to keep that experience going, so that when I got home I made myself a bracelet with beads that spell out that phrase. I've been wearing it everyday since.<br />
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This despite - or maybe really because of - some tension over the phrase's meaning, which is what I want to write about here. The tension comes from an ambiguity in its translation: "à mon seul" or "to my only" - that much is clear - "désir" - which literally means "desire," but could be interpreted to mean love. "To my only desire" or "to my only love," which is it? What is the difference between the two? And finally, what could either or both mean to me and so explain my sudden attachment to this phrase? In trying to think through all of this I came across Lauren Berlant's aptly titled <i>Desire/Love</i>, which I am going to make occasional use of here (and which you can download from Punctum Books <a href="http://punctumbooks.com/titles/desirelove/">here</a>).<br />
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First, I am very resistant - and so also very attracted to - the "to my only love" interpretation. Because I don't - and yet secretly want to - believe in the idea of an "only love," of a one right person. <br />
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In general, I don't believe in it because it is so obviously illogical, unreasonable, impossible: in this whole wide world, how could there be a one right person, an "only love," for each of us? I don't believe in it because it is so conventional as to be cliched, a product of every romance narrative from the Middle Ages forward. And I don't believe in it because it is coercive and limiting: if there is a one right person, then there is also a one right way to live a life, in a couple pair-bounded with that one right person; and if your life isn't like that - as mine isn't - it must be a failure of some sort; you must not have met that one right person yet and ought to be spending your life looking for him (or her); and if you aren't, if you don't want to, because you find the whole processes of dating to be disheartening and humiliating - as I do - then there must be something wrong with you. As Berlant points out, romantic love's failures are consistently read as personal failures rather than as evidences of its impossibility and in this way ideology sustains itself at a cost to the individual (p. 101). <br />
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And yet, the first of my reasons for not believing in an "only love" - it's illogical, unreasonable, impossible - is exactly one reason why I want to believe in it: because given that it is illogical, unreasonable, and impossible, how much more special must its real existence be? And then to hell with all of the rest of my objections. And because I secretly believe this, I'm not willing to settle for a good enough relationship with a nice enough person in order to have the one right lifestyle with someone other than the one right person (and am I the only person who gets a Match.com ad every time I log out of Facebook that promises "more relationships" than the site's competitors, as if simply being in a relationship, any relationship, were a worthy goal in itself?)<br />
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I am also both resistant and attracted to the "only love" reading of this phrase at this moment in my life because I both don't and do want to attach it to the last person I was involved with, in a relationship that ended just about a year ago (in fact I am very conscious of writing this on the one year anniversary of the last time I saw him, although at the time it was not in any way evidently an end to the relationship). I don't and do want to identify this person as my "only love," precisely because he is gone from my life and is not coming back (something that I am still struggling with a year later). I don't want to attach this idea to him because he is gone and so if he was the only love than that experience is in the past and not being able to sustain that relationship is an ultimate failure. But at the same time I do want to attach it to him because it seems like a way of somehow holding on to him even in his absence. I am evidently experiencing melancholia, in a Freudian sense and as explained by Berlant, a way of merging the lost object into the self in order not to experience the loss and so an inverse of the idealized love relationship understood as the fusion of two into one (p. 29). I identify him as the "only love" now that he is a lost love precisely in order not to lose him. In doing so I write our relationship into a slightly different, more tragic, but equally conventional and cliched narrative structure. <br />
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And so I, ironically, make our relationship much more conventional than it ever actually was. Because even though he and I were together for almost four years (a record for me by the way), our relationship did not conform to the quasi-marital pattern that people expect of a boyfriend and girlfriend. That was difficult for me to accept to begin with, because I had those expectations too; but after a while I came to like it, because for me it was a way of being in a relationship with someone without losing my sense of myself as I have in previous more conventional relationships. It continued to be difficult for other people to accept, however, and I experienced directly the coercive qualities of our culture's ideology of romantic love in other people's negative reactions to my decision to stay in the relationship as it was (see Berlant, p. 44-5, 87).<br />
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Not wanting and yet wanting the phrase to mean "to my only love," then, I've been trying to consciously read that last word as "desire" instead. And reading Berlant, that seems appropriate as desire can be distinguished from love by its ambivalence, which the narrative conventions of romantic love attempt to stabilize in order to produce a stable sense of self (p. 25, 44, 76, 95). Recognizing desire's ambiguity introduces some irony into the phrase, however; for how can there be an "only desire" if desire is always at least doubled? In desire, the drive for merger - for the "only love" - coexists with the drive to destroy - to critique all of these coercive cliches and conventions out of existence, at least in my own mind if not in the wider world. And the drive to master the other - to finally make our relationship conform to convention and so resolve the conflict with myself and others - meets the drive for recognition from the other - something that I cannot get from him in his absence and that makes the lost-love narrative finally unsatisfying (p. 39). <br />
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I choose to read it as "desire," for desire can be deeply positive exactly in its ambivalence or really its multiplicity: I read the bracelet as asking me what I desire in this or that situation, even situations that have nothing to do with romantic love. As Berlant writes building on Eve Sedgwick, desire can be productive of pleasure, of creativity, newness, and possibility - but only if it is not confused with the desire for stability or schooled by convention and by fear not to stray off of romantic love's overly beaten tracks (p. 44, 95). <br />
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<br />Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-92078550251784467272013-05-21T10:04:00.002-04:002013-05-21T10:04:13.036-04:00Henry Chichele's Junk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I loved my Kalamazoo paper for this year. Just absolutely fucking LOVED it!<br />
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Which is pretty amazing, since before I wrote it, I'd not written anything in months and was despairing a bit about my ability to write. I was deep into this curriculum craziness that is going on at my university and was feeling more like a mid-level bureaucrat than a scholar or an intellectual or a writer or a person or... You may have noticed that I've not even written here since February, when I try to write at least one post per month. I have to dive back into all that craziness now, but I want to try and capture this feeling first (in fact I fell down the curriculum rabbit hole for about a week and am now coming back to finish this and try and recapture that feeling).<br />
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On the one hand, the paper was a tight historical argument about the tombs of Henry Chichele (above) and Richard Fleming understood in the context of Lollard anti-image rhetoric and occasional acts of iconoclasm (given that Chichele and Fleming were both involved in anti-Lollard prosecutions and so would have been familiar with Lollard words, ideas, and deeds). And at the same time, it made some general claims about life, death, and sculpture. The links come through the transi figure on the lower level of the tomb, which represents Chichele's dead body, and the Lolllard tendency to identify sculptures as dead things; in combination with the effigy on the upper part of the tomb, which combines signs for death (the horizontal posture) with suggestions of life (the open eyes and active gesture), and Lollard acts of iconoclasm that kill images in order to prove that they were dead to begin with (because they weren't). The combination of the tombs and the Lollards gave me a way of articulating historically some of the same ideas about sculpture I've worked with here in terms of my own responses as <a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2011/11/oh-toes-oh-humanity.html">creepiness</a> and in terms of theory as <a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/sincerity.html">sincerity</a>.<br />
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Some quotes from the paper, because one of the things I LOVED about it was the language: <br />
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-</style>For the addition
of the transi effectively emphasizes the fact of death and so highlights the
deathly aspects of the effigy, but without eliminating the effigy’s contrasting
signs for life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is dead, he is dead,
he is dead – it seems to say – except in the ways in which he is still in fact
just a little bit alive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus we are
again doubly haunted, by the tomb’s doubled form, by the presence of death in
the transi, and by the presence of life in death in the effigy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And how much more true would this have been
in the approximately twenty years between the creation of Chichele’s tomb in
the 1420’s and his death in 1443.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
his tomb announced that he was dead, dead, dead, except that he was still alive!
Perhaps even seated in his throne positioned opposite the tomb inside of
Canterbury cathedral.</blockquote>
And<br />
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{page:WordSectio</style>The Lollards were thus haunted by images. Their insistence that images were dead, dead, dead – that each was the site of an absence – seems to have been a response to persistent disruptive perceptions of their potential for life – for each to be a presence. And so images had to killed in order to prove that they were dead all along, because they weren’t, or at least not entirely. Or else they had to be punished by burning, either for their disruptive potential liveliness or for their disappointing deadness. And so there are some structural similarities between the forms of Chichele and Fleming’s tombs and Lollard attitudes towards images: both insist on death, the tombs in joining the transi to the effigy and the Lollards in their rhetoric of dead sticks and stones, and yet neither can let go of the signs of life, the tombs through the effigy’s ambiguities and the Lollards through their iconoclastic actions and desires. </blockquote>
The language about haunting in both quotes refers to the theme of the session and to my own provisional definition of haunting as the disruptive presence of that which is supposed to be absent. I want to turn this piece into article in which this rough idea about haunting is replaced by some theoretical work on zombies, but I have to read up on that first.<br />
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The discussion in the session took an unexpected turn in focusing on one detail in Chichele's transi, which I'd not really thought much about, his gesture of covering his genitalia with the shroud. Its a little easier to see in this detail:<br />
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on the right side, the lower bit of cusping in the arch overlaps with his hand which is holding the cloth in place. <br />
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My first though was, well of course his junk is covered up, he was the archbishop of Canterbury after all, he's not just going to be letting it all hang out right there in the cathedral. But then, if it was just a matter or propriety or prudery, the sculptor could have covered his junk without making use of the dead man's hand. The shroud could have been there on its own, for example; its not really cloth after all, it's carved stone, and so it doesn't need to be held in place, it's not going to go anywhere. The hand gesture could be artistic convention, since its something like a pudica pose from ancient sculpture. Although that could suggest some interesting gender-bending, the archbishop of Canterbury as Venus Pudica? And yet as a dead and decomposing body?<br />
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Because the gesture is most interesting to me at least in relationship to the obvious deadness of the rest of his body. It is the one little sign of life in that otherwise clearly dead body. It then extends the ambiguity of the effigy into the transi, so that neither is entirely or simply dead nor alive. Both are both, at least to some degree; the effigy is maybe more alive, but still partly dead, and the transi mostly dead, but still a little bit alive. And life as signaled in the transi is defined in a very specific way by that gesture. What does it mean to be just a little bit alive? Is it to be able to produce life, thinking of the genitalia as life-giving organs? Or is it to have a sense of self-control, self-protection, self-possession - or simply of self - thinking of the gesture itself more than what it is covering? </div>
Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666367549185214133.post-8559263001916900132013-02-14T14:36:00.002-05:002013-02-14T14:36:41.095-05:00Love<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've loved these since I first saw them: Kate Clark's <i>Ceremony</i> on display at CSU gallery as part of <em>Animatopoeia: A Most Peculiar (Post Modern) Bestiary,</em> an exhibit curated by Art History major Omid Tavakoli (<a href="http://www.kateclark.com/index.html">here for the artist's website</a> and <a href="http://www.csuohio.edu/artgallery/">here for the gallery's</a>). Other people kept telling me they found these creatures creepy, but of course one of the things <a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2011/11/oh-toes-oh-humanity.html">I love about sculpture in general is its creepiness</a>. And I didn't find these creepy at all, I thought they were so - Nice. Gentle. Kind. Maybe it's the tilts of their heads, all off a bit to the side, as if in sympathy with their observers. Maybe its their skinny little legs, and hooves like pointed toes, that make them seem so delicate and their stances so precarious.<br />
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Like this guy, I got up close to peer into their faces and try - but never succeed - in meeting their gazes. Maybe that's what others read as creepiness, the way the creatures seem to draw you in to look, but then refuse to engage with you directly. Again, that didn't seem creepy to me. Instead it seemed, again - Gentle. Shy. <a href="http://mostlymedievalimagesreflections.blogspot.com/2012/04/sincerity.html">Sincere, </a>in the way I've used that word in that past here.<br />
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I've wanted to write about them, but haven't gotten around to it until now, because this is a crazy semester (hello endless curriculum paperwork). And because I didn't feel like I had much more to say about them that what I've already said about sculpture in general in the posts I've linked to here. Only that the combination of the human and the animal in these, and in Clark's work in general, pushes the creepy/sincere combination of proximity and distance that is basic to sculpture, for me at least, in a slightly different direction. These are close to me in their human faces and their awkward stances even as they are distant both in their animal bodies and in their status as sculptures. <br />
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But in that combination of proximity and distance I also see some basic truths about human relationships: for other people are both as close and as distant as these sculptures, as animals and as sculptures, are to me. And then I read this, in Barthes <i>A Lover's Discourse</i>, which I picked up at Powell's over Christmas and have been reading before bed:<br />
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I am caught in this contradiction: on the one hand, I believe I know the other better than anyone and triumphantly assert my knowledge...and on the other hand, I am often struck by the obvious fact that the other is impenetrable, intractable, not to be found. I cannot open up the other, trace back the other's origins, solve the riddle...Then all that is left for me to do is to reverse my ignorance into truth. It is not true that the more you love, the better you understand; all that the action of love obtains from me is merely this wisdom: that the other is not to be known; his opacity is not the screen around a secret, but, instead, a kind of evidence in which the game of reality and appearance is done away with...Or again, instead of trying to define the other...I turn to myself; "What do I want, wanting to know you?" What would happen if I decided to define you as a force and not a person? And if I were to situate myself as another force confronting yours? This would happen: my other would be defined solely by the suffering or pleasure he affords me.</blockquote>
And so I say again that I love these sculptures. But not in a loose, sloppy, gushy way. In a very precise, structural way - as Barthes is writing about love as a structure or a series of structures. This would be the structure of the last and of many of my relationships. I have a thing for difficult, even impossible, people. And maybe that is similar to my thing for sculptures. <br />
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<br />Marianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18301674249146929320noreply@blogger.com0