Okay, I feel more accomplished today. One whole book and the remainder of Shakespeare's Sonnets (later!) down. It was 223 pages, too, no small feat even if I suspect the type is smaller in today's books (it was published in 1964).
Overview
C.S. Lewis calls this book an introduction to medieval literature spun from his lectures. He does this by invoking (constructing?) a medieval Model of how the world worked, and then demonstrated how the authors of the medieval world (a) got the ideas and (b) used them. The first couple of chapters give a general overview of the medieval situation, followed by detailing the most important sources for medieval literature outside the Bible, Ovid, and Virgil. Then he details the medieval conception of the universe, including the Spheres, the Longaevi (fay), living creatures, reason, history, and so on. Then he closes by stating how the Model functioned, particularly in comparison to the model we have now.
Observations
1. The Model is an example of the most accessible view of medieval life that we possess. It is an intellectual view that is present even in such works as the South English Legendary. Lewis acknowledges its limits (I think in the Reservations chapter, Chapter 2). The best poets often were aware that the model could be defied, and the most common ones often didn't concern themselves with the model much at all.
Yet it is important to state the limits of the model anyhow. Lewis constructs it around the high cultured man, either of the aristocracy, the church, or the bureaucracy that was robust by the 15th century. Of course he does, since Lewis's project is a literary one, and the literary even in this period is rooted in the written tradition, which has a traceable trajectory that Lewis studies very well. I could clamor for the alternative viewpoints to be uncovered, those of the commoner, but that road is difficult and usually small in scope, delving in traces that often have little that can firmly be placed. It's like trying to find references to the Peasants' Rebellion in Chaucer. Oh, maybe that's one! That sounds like it, but maybe he's just good at describing a clamour in Troilus!
The other option is that perhaps there was not as much unity as the Model proposed. Here the criticism of late Lewis is the same as early Lewis - taking a tendency, making it into a rule, and failing to acknowledge that any exceptions could form a separate school. This isn't to blame him. I love his work, I think he gets the rule right, and he does as much with the rule as he conceivably could have. But he misses the other traditions and other lines of influence that I think are there. I don't know, for example, how the model would address the Christian mystics. Or the seemingly independent tendency in France and England around 1400 to start the querelle des femmes. Again, Lewis is excused, since he was going for a general view. I don't challenge the view, but only ask, as a career-long question, what other eddies of influence might characterize the medieval period, and why we imagine that Lewis's model is the true medieval quintessence? The first question is firmly medieval, and the second will have to take recourse in the Renaissance, to the 19th century, and beyond. That is, for example, my reason for delving into the 15th century, because something changes there (is changing?), or becomes manifest (manifests?), that leads to the rupture of the Renaissance, but which still feels continuous with what came before.
2. I love his summaries of selected materials that got adapted by the medievals. His summaries of the philosophers is particularly useful, since I doubt that I'll have recourse to return to Chalcidius, Macrobius, or Pseudo-Dionysius before my exams.
3. I should pay close attention to his discussion of the Longaevi, since this is the bit that gets at the pagan tradition from a classical angle. Perhaps the angle is more the way that they could have been explained, while the folk influences adopted the mode of the fay. Would it be too obvious to say that something magical happens here through the influence of the popular tale and the romance? This would be a second Model, or the rudiments of one.
4. On p. 142 and following, there's a discussion of maps and conceptions of geography.
5. On p. 162, Lewis lays down the distinction between the five senses and the five wits. I'd heard of the wits, and later today ran across the Shakespeare sonnet (141) that mentions them:
"But my five wits, nor my five senses can / Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee." (9-10)
The wits incline inward, and are Memory, Estimation, Imagination, Phantasy, and Common Wit. Estimation detects the practical parts of a situation (it's intentiones). Phantasy and Imagination are similar, though Phantasy is the higher faculty of the two. Imagination retains what is perceived, according to Albertus Magnus. Phantasy separates and unites it. Finally, Common Sense (Wit) is that which tells us we are sensing, and puts together the senses so that judgments and other conceptions can then be judged. It's the moderator of senses.
6. I would find 185 interesting in studying temporality, since Lewis deals with the ways of looking at time. The view then - that things were once better. I'd challenge that this was the only view, but would agree that the views are more optimistic than are often construed.
7. Look to 191 and following for an introduction to rhetoric.
8. p. 214 - I leave this, as a definition of literature: "Literature exists to teach what is useful, to honour what deserves honour, to appreciate what is delightful. The useful, honourable, and delightful things are superior to it: it exists for their sake; its own use, honour, or delightfulness is derivative from theirs. In that sense the art is humble even when the artists are proud; proud of their proficiency in the art, but not making for the art itself the high Renaissance or Romantic claims."
Showing posts with label secondary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secondary. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The English Romance in Time: More Thoughts
When I had initially typed it up, I lacked my notes. Now I have a few, mainly a list of points where I was particularly interested and wanted to later return.
Women and the quest
I had some disagreement with the claim that Cooper makes on page 53, in the midst of discussing the quest and pilgrimage. She dismisses the female quester: "The outside world is masculine space, where few women venture willingly. ... Apart from a few women warriors - Grisandol in the prose Merlin, the eponymous Silence, Yde in Huon of Bordeaux, Ariosto's Bradamante and Spenser's Britomart - women who find themselves in a situation analogous to the hero's quest in romance are most often victims rather than agents, compelled to leave the safety of their own homes and at other people's mercy. The lone woman at large in romance is more likely to be cast adrift in a rudderless boat than to choose to follow the call of adventure" (53). Now, Cooper has undoubtedly read more romance than me. That was a frustrating point of this book, that I didn't have the context to always be able to knowingly agree with the generalizations. Sometimes I granted it to her on faith.
But, and maybe I've read the romances that are exceptional to this, I think the opposition between agent and victim is a false one. Women are often empowered through the quest, and often undertake a line of action that can be considered a quest. I think of the frequent times that women accompany and initiate quests in Le Morte Darthur. If the space they traverse is dangerous, it is not masculine, since they often show themselves to be better at reading the landscape than the males are. Reading women's journeys as quests in fact alleviates the interpretive problems with some romances, since it allows one to recover senses of motive and development that remain lost when the assumed quester remains a man.
For example, The Weddynge of Sir Gawayne and Dame Ragnell only became fruitful for my studies when I realized that the questing figure here is as much Dame Ragnell as King Arthur. Choice isn't a qualification for questing either - neither Dame Ragnell, Arthur, nor Gawain choose the situations they find themselves in. Instead, a quest is about seeking an end that might be unknown, which promises development and worship to the successful pursuant. Ragnell seeks a reversal of the curse that renders her sexuality into a lewdness that then gets displayed in all of her features. To do this, she must find a husband that will grant her her own sexual autonomy, what women in the poem really want. The curse is perhaps a reflection of the common claim that women could not be trusted or virtuous if they were unchaste, and the related claim that no woman can be unchaste in spirit. The hag is the feared reflection of this paranoia, the representative of unrestrained sexuality improperly applied. Gawain is offered the choice of whether she should be ugly during the day or ugly at night. When her own choice is respected, her sexuality is not a cause for lewdness at all, and she is no longer subject to the misogynistic claims that her sexuality is both inevitable and dangerous. Because she is trusted with the decision by her husband, she is truthful, and her beauty shows for Gawain and for everyone at court. The quest logic forms an instantiation in this case of a querelle des femmes debate that relates indirectly to Christine de Pisan and directly to Chaucer, particularly his Wife of Bath, who tells a similar tale after a lengthy prologue that refutes many misogynistic claims. Where the Wife of Bath walks the line of sincerity and parody (though a flawed character could be right in sentiment and wrong in action), Weddynge strikes me as supporting the women's side of the debate.
That's an easy example, because the question is built right into the poem. I think that the woman's quest is often obscured because it is conflated with magic. Quests often get defined by the tools that are used in them, sword and shield and lance and horse and helm and armor and the rest. Magic also forms an important tool, though one that too easily falls into the background. Magic often gets treated as a suspected art, which is used to support or hinder a knight's quests, often without motivation outside of mischief. Think of Morgan le Fay in Malory, showing up to entrap Lancelot randomly. Lyonet is not remembered for her sagacity in guiding Gareth towards the proper way to be a knight, but for the weird magic she pulls that preserves her sister's and his chastity. When women are involved in a quest, they are often wielders of magic. If we interpret their concerns as the material for a quest though, I think that magic and enchantment combine with a more general skill, that of knowledge and sagacity in general. Reading, even reading a situation, is after all a form of magic - grammar, glamour, and grimoire all having the same root.
So, summarily, I agree with most of Cooper's arguments in the book, but she touched a sore point here. I think that women are more agents than victims in many cases, and quite often a combination of both that really renders them worthy of neither name. In some cases, I would even say that the woman quester is the one that earns the most success and renown. (Perhaps Ragnell had to die so that Gawain would remain the most renowned unattached knight.)
Saint's Life and Romance
I liked her tendency on pages like 124, in the chapter on sea voyages, of comparing legendaries and hagiographies to the romance. I don't really have anything deeper to say here, except that I think the common points between the two are far more common than is typically allowed, particularly in the motifs they tend to trade. They might be somewhat restricted in the different context, but I feel like saints' lives are set aside because we want to mark a distinction between the miraculous and the fictional that may not have been a firm boundary back then.
Women and Enchantment
Whoops, guess I returned here again after getting a lot of my fire out at first. The page I noted (160) discusses perceptions of witchcraft before shifting to a history of Morgan. I wonder why here Cooper is perfectly willing to delve into heroines and their history, but elsewhere is reluctant to conflate such heroines with the quest as an archetypal narrative function. But when I do write on enchantment, I want to return here. Best point: "Witchcraft in the Middle Ages was taken to be an act, not a state, and it was an act that was at least as likely to be performed by men as by women" (160).
Rapacious Sexuality and Antifeminism
Okay, so my notes really did follow a common trajectory. I just liked the example given by Tom a Lincoln of disruptive sexuality on 391. I also liked the example of suspicion given a little later on 398, from The Knight of Curtesy and the Fair Lady of Faguell, except this time the husband's jealousy is unfounded, and ends when he makes his wife die after she eats her best friend's heart. And on that note...
One More Note: C.S. Lewis
Wow, the guy really doesn't get any favor in this book. Mainly it is his depiction of love that is at dispute, one that assumes that an affair must happen extramaritally for there to be a relationship of love. In other words, C.S. Lewis assumes that Andreas Capellanus is the normative influence int he medieval period, when that might not be the case.
Women and the quest
I had some disagreement with the claim that Cooper makes on page 53, in the midst of discussing the quest and pilgrimage. She dismisses the female quester: "The outside world is masculine space, where few women venture willingly. ... Apart from a few women warriors - Grisandol in the prose Merlin, the eponymous Silence, Yde in Huon of Bordeaux, Ariosto's Bradamante and Spenser's Britomart - women who find themselves in a situation analogous to the hero's quest in romance are most often victims rather than agents, compelled to leave the safety of their own homes and at other people's mercy. The lone woman at large in romance is more likely to be cast adrift in a rudderless boat than to choose to follow the call of adventure" (53). Now, Cooper has undoubtedly read more romance than me. That was a frustrating point of this book, that I didn't have the context to always be able to knowingly agree with the generalizations. Sometimes I granted it to her on faith.
But, and maybe I've read the romances that are exceptional to this, I think the opposition between agent and victim is a false one. Women are often empowered through the quest, and often undertake a line of action that can be considered a quest. I think of the frequent times that women accompany and initiate quests in Le Morte Darthur. If the space they traverse is dangerous, it is not masculine, since they often show themselves to be better at reading the landscape than the males are. Reading women's journeys as quests in fact alleviates the interpretive problems with some romances, since it allows one to recover senses of motive and development that remain lost when the assumed quester remains a man.
For example, The Weddynge of Sir Gawayne and Dame Ragnell only became fruitful for my studies when I realized that the questing figure here is as much Dame Ragnell as King Arthur. Choice isn't a qualification for questing either - neither Dame Ragnell, Arthur, nor Gawain choose the situations they find themselves in. Instead, a quest is about seeking an end that might be unknown, which promises development and worship to the successful pursuant. Ragnell seeks a reversal of the curse that renders her sexuality into a lewdness that then gets displayed in all of her features. To do this, she must find a husband that will grant her her own sexual autonomy, what women in the poem really want. The curse is perhaps a reflection of the common claim that women could not be trusted or virtuous if they were unchaste, and the related claim that no woman can be unchaste in spirit. The hag is the feared reflection of this paranoia, the representative of unrestrained sexuality improperly applied. Gawain is offered the choice of whether she should be ugly during the day or ugly at night. When her own choice is respected, her sexuality is not a cause for lewdness at all, and she is no longer subject to the misogynistic claims that her sexuality is both inevitable and dangerous. Because she is trusted with the decision by her husband, she is truthful, and her beauty shows for Gawain and for everyone at court. The quest logic forms an instantiation in this case of a querelle des femmes debate that relates indirectly to Christine de Pisan and directly to Chaucer, particularly his Wife of Bath, who tells a similar tale after a lengthy prologue that refutes many misogynistic claims. Where the Wife of Bath walks the line of sincerity and parody (though a flawed character could be right in sentiment and wrong in action), Weddynge strikes me as supporting the women's side of the debate.
That's an easy example, because the question is built right into the poem. I think that the woman's quest is often obscured because it is conflated with magic. Quests often get defined by the tools that are used in them, sword and shield and lance and horse and helm and armor and the rest. Magic also forms an important tool, though one that too easily falls into the background. Magic often gets treated as a suspected art, which is used to support or hinder a knight's quests, often without motivation outside of mischief. Think of Morgan le Fay in Malory, showing up to entrap Lancelot randomly. Lyonet is not remembered for her sagacity in guiding Gareth towards the proper way to be a knight, but for the weird magic she pulls that preserves her sister's and his chastity. When women are involved in a quest, they are often wielders of magic. If we interpret their concerns as the material for a quest though, I think that magic and enchantment combine with a more general skill, that of knowledge and sagacity in general. Reading, even reading a situation, is after all a form of magic - grammar, glamour, and grimoire all having the same root.
So, summarily, I agree with most of Cooper's arguments in the book, but she touched a sore point here. I think that women are more agents than victims in many cases, and quite often a combination of both that really renders them worthy of neither name. In some cases, I would even say that the woman quester is the one that earns the most success and renown. (Perhaps Ragnell had to die so that Gawain would remain the most renowned unattached knight.)
Saint's Life and Romance
I liked her tendency on pages like 124, in the chapter on sea voyages, of comparing legendaries and hagiographies to the romance. I don't really have anything deeper to say here, except that I think the common points between the two are far more common than is typically allowed, particularly in the motifs they tend to trade. They might be somewhat restricted in the different context, but I feel like saints' lives are set aside because we want to mark a distinction between the miraculous and the fictional that may not have been a firm boundary back then.
Women and Enchantment
Whoops, guess I returned here again after getting a lot of my fire out at first. The page I noted (160) discusses perceptions of witchcraft before shifting to a history of Morgan. I wonder why here Cooper is perfectly willing to delve into heroines and their history, but elsewhere is reluctant to conflate such heroines with the quest as an archetypal narrative function. But when I do write on enchantment, I want to return here. Best point: "Witchcraft in the Middle Ages was taken to be an act, not a state, and it was an act that was at least as likely to be performed by men as by women" (160).
Rapacious Sexuality and Antifeminism
Okay, so my notes really did follow a common trajectory. I just liked the example given by Tom a Lincoln of disruptive sexuality on 391. I also liked the example of suspicion given a little later on 398, from The Knight of Curtesy and the Fair Lady of Faguell, except this time the husband's jealousy is unfounded, and ends when he makes his wife die after she eats her best friend's heart. And on that note...
One More Note: C.S. Lewis
Wow, the guy really doesn't get any favor in this book. Mainly it is his depiction of love that is at dispute, one that assumes that an affair must happen extramaritally for there to be a relationship of love. In other words, C.S. Lewis assumes that Andreas Capellanus is the normative influence int he medieval period, when that might not be the case.
The English Romance in Time, Helen Cooper
The whole subtitle reads, "Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare." To be clear, the motifs themselves are transforming with the shift in time. The book does not purport to change them.
Helen Cooper is an author I've seen a lot in medieval scholarship. I'm familiar with her Chaucer writings secondhand. I chose this book because it was written in the past ten years, and seemed to be a general, thematic treatment of the medieval romance, one that made nothing of crossing between the medieval and Renaissance (a linchpin I want to study in more detail).
I like her approach. It is a basic one - pick out several of the motivating memes of different romances, and trace them as they progress through time. How do they develop? For what reasons are they appropriated at a particular time? Do their valent associations change through time? Do the tropes cross genres, as for instance with tragedy and comedy? In other words, what is the convention developed with the audience, how is it regularized, and in what ways is it broken? (21-22). Finally, what does all this mean for the work and its audience?
She emphasizes the word meme rather than trope in order to get at the social significance I was hinting at in the last few questions. A trope can be interpreted as something that exists in the literature, that is primarily static and formal. A meme is more fluid, dependent on social currency and spreading rather like a virus. Certainly the terms are interchangeable in this case, but it changes the determination.
The memes/tropes she focuses on include (copped with paraphrase from the Table of Contents):
Pilgrimage and questing - think of motifs of traveling, with its parallels with interiority in direction, motivation, setting, and so on.
Providence and the sea - "So we set this ship into the water, gave it no means of orientation or propulsion, and let God sort it out."
Faulty magic - "I got this cool ring but never got to use it," or "I tried using this ring but it didn't work," or "I guess the magic worked, but it was totally incidental and misleading."
Fairy rulers and so on - What happens when you ride the liminal line between the benign supernatural and the diabolic?
Desirable desire - is women's desire a good thing in different works? How does its motif get treated?
Women on trial - Pretty much about what it sounds like, with particular focuses on alleged and proven adulteries, and the normally supernatural interventions that attest the truth.
The Rightful Heir - inheritance, the Fair Unknown, the dangers of lacking an heir (ELIZABETH!!!)
Unhappy Endings - what happens when the typically happy romantic ending doesn't happen?
The book also comes with an extremely useful appendix listing the romances that were current in England after 1500. I don't trust the list as exhaustive, but it's sufficiently detailed that I've written down a lot of pertinent information from it.
To say one interesting focus that comes out of this, her approach to romances demonstrates something that I've thought to be true since I first sat down with Le Morte Darthur: one of the key subjects of romance, which one avoids only to the subtraction of one's work, is women. Women's place in chivalric order, in feudal order, in inheritance, in desire, in magic, in the quest, in trial (you can see I'm picking out the major memes of the book), all these are often far more progressive than one might expect, and are even interesting when they turn out to be antifeminist.
I can expand that to include gender. I think that the romance is a rather amorphous genre that often includes works due to superficial reasons like, "Well, the magic in that is kinda funny," or, "Well, she went on a quest of sorts, nevermind that it was spiritual and totally a pilgrimage." In its collection of memes or tropes, every romance has the parts that don't fit the others, the part that gives the whole renown because it defies expectations in a way that is nonetheless desirable. Now, one place where expectations can be played with is gender. There is the woman who wields a sword, whether or not she uses it. There is the trope of disguise, whether as a man or as a woman. One can also be mistaken, without intention, as is the case in Le Morte Darthur when Lancelot falls asleep in a pavilion only to have another man snuggle up with him, because he thinks that Lancelot is his beloved lady. Even in more general terms, the romance often struggles with the question, "What makes a man the ideal man? What makes a woman the ideal woman?" Virtue, faith, fidelity, reason - whatever the guidelines, what happens when they succeed? Still worse, what happens when they fail?
And an observation - many times the criteria for men and women are actually quite similar. To say that men quest and women are rescued is far too simplistic. To say that women are punished for unchastity and men aren't is likewise reductive. Now, perhaps these are just true enough to become generalizations, but the rules are often broken. Sometimes the markers of assumed gender fall away, in such a way that it would be worthwhile to study a few romances in parallel to see how gender might have functioned. A theoretical structure for such a work might be to figure out whether the romance was a place where one could experiment with gender, or whether such flexibility was inherent in the society? Is this flexibility, or is it simply that we see flexibility as compared to what we think the past would hold gender to be? Perhaps its boundaries are different, its intersections different.
Helen Cooper is an author I've seen a lot in medieval scholarship. I'm familiar with her Chaucer writings secondhand. I chose this book because it was written in the past ten years, and seemed to be a general, thematic treatment of the medieval romance, one that made nothing of crossing between the medieval and Renaissance (a linchpin I want to study in more detail).
I like her approach. It is a basic one - pick out several of the motivating memes of different romances, and trace them as they progress through time. How do they develop? For what reasons are they appropriated at a particular time? Do their valent associations change through time? Do the tropes cross genres, as for instance with tragedy and comedy? In other words, what is the convention developed with the audience, how is it regularized, and in what ways is it broken? (21-22). Finally, what does all this mean for the work and its audience?
She emphasizes the word meme rather than trope in order to get at the social significance I was hinting at in the last few questions. A trope can be interpreted as something that exists in the literature, that is primarily static and formal. A meme is more fluid, dependent on social currency and spreading rather like a virus. Certainly the terms are interchangeable in this case, but it changes the determination.
The memes/tropes she focuses on include (copped with paraphrase from the Table of Contents):
Pilgrimage and questing - think of motifs of traveling, with its parallels with interiority in direction, motivation, setting, and so on.
Providence and the sea - "So we set this ship into the water, gave it no means of orientation or propulsion, and let God sort it out."
Faulty magic - "I got this cool ring but never got to use it," or "I tried using this ring but it didn't work," or "I guess the magic worked, but it was totally incidental and misleading."
Fairy rulers and so on - What happens when you ride the liminal line between the benign supernatural and the diabolic?
Desirable desire - is women's desire a good thing in different works? How does its motif get treated?
Women on trial - Pretty much about what it sounds like, with particular focuses on alleged and proven adulteries, and the normally supernatural interventions that attest the truth.
The Rightful Heir - inheritance, the Fair Unknown, the dangers of lacking an heir (ELIZABETH!!!)
Unhappy Endings - what happens when the typically happy romantic ending doesn't happen?
The book also comes with an extremely useful appendix listing the romances that were current in England after 1500. I don't trust the list as exhaustive, but it's sufficiently detailed that I've written down a lot of pertinent information from it.
To say one interesting focus that comes out of this, her approach to romances demonstrates something that I've thought to be true since I first sat down with Le Morte Darthur: one of the key subjects of romance, which one avoids only to the subtraction of one's work, is women. Women's place in chivalric order, in feudal order, in inheritance, in desire, in magic, in the quest, in trial (you can see I'm picking out the major memes of the book), all these are often far more progressive than one might expect, and are even interesting when they turn out to be antifeminist.
I can expand that to include gender. I think that the romance is a rather amorphous genre that often includes works due to superficial reasons like, "Well, the magic in that is kinda funny," or, "Well, she went on a quest of sorts, nevermind that it was spiritual and totally a pilgrimage." In its collection of memes or tropes, every romance has the parts that don't fit the others, the part that gives the whole renown because it defies expectations in a way that is nonetheless desirable. Now, one place where expectations can be played with is gender. There is the woman who wields a sword, whether or not she uses it. There is the trope of disguise, whether as a man or as a woman. One can also be mistaken, without intention, as is the case in Le Morte Darthur when Lancelot falls asleep in a pavilion only to have another man snuggle up with him, because he thinks that Lancelot is his beloved lady. Even in more general terms, the romance often struggles with the question, "What makes a man the ideal man? What makes a woman the ideal woman?" Virtue, faith, fidelity, reason - whatever the guidelines, what happens when they succeed? Still worse, what happens when they fail?
And an observation - many times the criteria for men and women are actually quite similar. To say that men quest and women are rescued is far too simplistic. To say that women are punished for unchastity and men aren't is likewise reductive. Now, perhaps these are just true enough to become generalizations, but the rules are often broken. Sometimes the markers of assumed gender fall away, in such a way that it would be worthwhile to study a few romances in parallel to see how gender might have functioned. A theoretical structure for such a work might be to figure out whether the romance was a place where one could experiment with gender, or whether such flexibility was inherent in the society? Is this flexibility, or is it simply that we see flexibility as compared to what we think the past would hold gender to be? Perhaps its boundaries are different, its intersections different.
Friday, June 4, 2010
A Glossing of Arthuriana
Haught, Leah. "Gender and Genre in The Awntyrs off Arthure." Arthuriana 20.1, 2010. 3-19.
The author is currently writing a dissertation on discourses of failure in late medieval Arthurian romance, a topic that intrigues me. The focus of this piece is on the first part of the poem, where Guenevere talks to the ghost of her mother. Gawain is also present. The ghost prophesies Arthur and Guenevere's fall, but the method of transmission (a female voice) gets silenced and subdued all the more easily because of what it is, as each figure chooses to live obliviously. The point is a little unclear - she does not seem to be completely sure what historical point is being inevitably affirmed here - that we see the fall coming but fall into it anyway?
Otherwise, well-written, takes note of the intertextuality linking it. Good fun.
(Also, Helen Cooper's article in the same volume is good, if brief. See p. 90-95-ish, where she explains and analyzes the differences between editions of Malory for the student and scholar. The Norton edition comes out as the most accessible overall, but Vinaver/Field is more comprehensive, and Armstrong's is perhaps more accessible to the introductory student.)
And in 20.2, a couple of interesting book reviews, including one for Sian Echard, Printing the Middle Ages, about the post-medieval trajectory of printed facsimiles of medieval text, and the desire to print these even when the audience seems otherwise obscure.
The author is currently writing a dissertation on discourses of failure in late medieval Arthurian romance, a topic that intrigues me. The focus of this piece is on the first part of the poem, where Guenevere talks to the ghost of her mother. Gawain is also present. The ghost prophesies Arthur and Guenevere's fall, but the method of transmission (a female voice) gets silenced and subdued all the more easily because of what it is, as each figure chooses to live obliviously. The point is a little unclear - she does not seem to be completely sure what historical point is being inevitably affirmed here - that we see the fall coming but fall into it anyway?
Otherwise, well-written, takes note of the intertextuality linking it. Good fun.
(Also, Helen Cooper's article in the same volume is good, if brief. See p. 90-95-ish, where she explains and analyzes the differences between editions of Malory for the student and scholar. The Norton edition comes out as the most accessible overall, but Vinaver/Field is more comprehensive, and Armstrong's is perhaps more accessible to the introductory student.)
And in 20.2, a couple of interesting book reviews, including one for Sian Echard, Printing the Middle Ages, about the post-medieval trajectory of printed facsimiles of medieval text, and the desire to print these even when the audience seems otherwise obscure.
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