Flirting with a Handkerchief

In a poem of 1620, Richard Johnson attributes the Honi soit qui mal y pense motto to the queen of France, in his “Gallant Song of the Garter of England.” When her garter falls during a feast, the snickering courtiers seem to accuse her of dropping it deliberately to attract the king’s attention, so it is actually the queen who coins the motto in their reproof:

But when she heard these ill conceits

And speeches that they made,

Hony soyt qui mal y pens,

                        the noble Princes said.

Ill hap to them that evill thinke,

In English it is thus

Which words so wise (quoth Englands King)

                                   shall surely goe with us …

This reminds me of those stupid scenes in Mickey Mouse-vintage cartoons, where a simpering female character would drop her lace handkerchief in front of a male she wanted to attract. He is supposed, gallantly, to return it, and thus start a conversation. 

My question is this: what's the oldest known reference to this kind of behaviour? I did a quick google search and found an allusion, but it was a website selling a C19 French lace handkerchief. http://www.rubylane.com/shops/nicole-la-bay/item/1208LAC: 

At a time when women were not allowed to talk to a stranger, handkerchiefs were literally a means of communication, as ladies would drop these precious pieces of lace on the sidewalk, whenever they wanted to attract the attention of a gentleman.
Gentlemen were of course extremely flattered to pick them up and give them back to their owners.

I've no idea if this is just made up or refers to a "real" C19 practice. So, dear readers, from your wide reading in history, fiction, poetry, textile history, etc., can you think of any examples? I guess Johnson's poem suggests an early suspicion of feminine wiles, but it's the handkerchief that has become the iconic object here. But since when?

Australian undergraduate essay prize: Medieval and Early Modern Studies

A note about a neat essay prize open to Australian undergraduate students...

National Undergraduate Essay Competition 2009: Medieval and Early Modern Studies

The UWA Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS) is sponsoring a National Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) Undergraduate Essay Competition in 2009.

The Competition will recognise and encourage excellence in the MEMS area of study at the undergraduate level. The writer of the winning essay will be presented with a $1000 cash prize at an award ceremony at UWA; be offered a two-week research-intensive internship with CMEMS; and be invited to present their essay as part of a CMEMS seminar. Financial assistance with travel and accommodation will be provided where required.

The judging panel will be made up of three CMEMS senior academic staff members, representing different MEMS-related disciplines. Essays will be submitted to the judging panel anonymously. The judges¹ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into concerning the correctness of their decision.

Eligibility:
The Competition is open to students enrolled full time or part time in an undergraduate degree in an Australian university, who:
* are undertaking the second or third year level of their degree in 2009,
* enrolled in a unit during 2009 relevant to medieval and early modern studies,
* are available to spend two weeks at UWA at a time to be negotiated.

The Essay:
Students who meet the eligibility requirements are invited to submit an essay:
* of between 3000 and 5000 words on a medieval or early modern topic (defined for this purpose as being between the 5th and 18th centuries).
* The essay may be, or be based on, an essay submitted as part of the student's current course of study, or it may be written specifically for the competition.
* All primary and secondary sources used in preparing the entry must be acknowledged using an appropriate citation system. A bibliography must be included.


The Rules:

Submitting An Entry:
Before submitting their essay, students should ensure they adhere to the
following requirements-:
· The essay should be typewritten in 12 point Times New Roman font.
- Double-spacing should be used.
· Do NOT put your name anywhere on the essay itself. Your name should only appear on the cover sheet.
· Ensure the cover sheet is completed, signed and attached.
· Ensure you have a copy of the essay.
· Emailed documents should preferably be sent as a pdf file

When submitting their essay students should:
* Sign the declaration on the cover sheet provided certifying that the entry is his or her own and unaided original work.
* Ensure their essays have been submitted (either by registered mail or electronically) by Monday 30th November 2009, 5pm WST. No late entries will be accepted.

Each candidate can only submit one essay.

Entry is free.

Submit your essay to CMEMS by 5pm WST on Monday 30th November, by either of
the following two methods:

Email as a pdf file to: cmems-arts@uwa.edu.au

- or -

Send by Registered mail to:
CMEMS Essay Competition
UWA Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies M208
University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA, 6009

For further information please contact Pam Bond (pam.bond@uwa.edu.au)

Pam Bond
Administrative Assistant
Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Faculty of Arts, Humanities &
Social Science
Administrative Assistant
ARC Network for Early European Research, School of Humanities

University of Western Australia
M208 / 35 Stirling Highway
Crawley WA 6009
Australia

email: pam.bond@uwa.edu.au
tel: + 61-8-6488 3858
fax: + 61-8-6488 1069
http://www.neer.arts.uwa.edu.au/
http://www.mems.arts.uwa.edu.au/
CRICOS Provider No.00126G

Blogging between the covers

As my year of leave from teaching draws to a close, it'll soon be time to contemplate the things I haven't done. At one point I thought (and with no small encouragement from a publisher) that I might write a book about blogging, and about this blog in particular. That didn't happen, for lots of reasons. Not having yet finished the two other books I'm supposed to be writing, let alone another project or two, is just one of them.

Another is the somewhat thorny question of translating blogs to print. So I am intrigued to read, over at In the Medieval Middle, that there is a plan afoot to bring the Chaucer blog into print.* Jeffrey Cohen is writing an essay on medieval blogging (and other online and electronic fora and media) as part of this Palgrave project, and in the collaborative spirit of a collaborative blog with a large readership, he's blogging about the process and inviting commentaries and discussions on-line. So this is my first writerly appearance at In the Medieval Middle in the "post", not the "comments" box. Matthew Gabriele's post is also up, and there'll be others to follow.

I'm hoping these discussions will constitute another layer of background and context for my panel on blogging at NCS next July, too.

In the meantime, for the record, over the last nine and a half months, I have actually been quite productive, work-wise, and am really truly about to send off my first six chapters of the Garter book; and have done other things as well. But I'm especially pleased with the things I've done on my long service leave, when you are supposed to have a real break from teaching and research and everything. Thus, I did have a short holiday in Europe; I did start learning Italian (still going); and I did join a gym (also still going). I haven't painted the back of the house, yet, as I'd planned. And I didn't write that book about the blog either. That's ok: at the moment, the thing I think the world really needs is a fabulously exciting book about the Order of the Garter.


*If you haven't checked out this blog for a while, there's a cracking new entry in part about a medieval teenage sparkly vampire book series: Chaucer Sparkleth in Sonne.

Son of Humanities Researcher Has (Yet) Another Blog

As my family approaches a great festival — my mother's 80th birthday party on Saturday — and as my sister has travelled from London to join the celebrations, we are thinking about generations and families in this household.

Non-Melbourne residents may have heard about our big horse race tomorrow: the highlight of the spring racing carnival that goes on forever (if I see another stupid bit of black tulle perched on the head of some simpering WAG ...), and whose madness has taken over the city so completely that school today, the day before the race-day holiday, was declared "optional" and the main street on which we live is carrying what seems like only Sunday traffic.

Anyway, Joel and I are having a quiet "pyjama day", only showering just before lunch, and talking about what my sisters and I did when we were young, and so forth. What he has been doing is starting a new blog: it's at least the fourth I know about, and perhaps there have been more.

Scroll down for a sight of the piano, and yours truly lounging on the sofa.

Why I Love my Readers

A while back I asked if anyone would be interested in reading a chapter of my book on the Order of the Garter. I was overwhelmed by people's willingness to do this, and am now slowly working through these comments as I try to get my six chapters ready to send to the publisher (hopefully, within a week or two). I'm working backwards, so as to leave the hardest chapters (1 and 2) to last, and so that I have the fullest sense of the book as I revise those crucial opening chapters.

People's responses have been tremendously useful, and I'm amazed at the tact with which people have pointed out where the argument is hard to follow or doesn't make sense. I'm also thrilled at the deftness with which people have suggested clever readings of the primary material I look at. I feel the book is really starting to come together properly now, and it's absolutely due to these responses.

I'm just going through Chapter Three now and have Philip and David to thank, today, for helping me make sense of this chapter, which has to work through the many variants of the Garter myth. I hope Philip won't mind my sharing this comment, which makes me laugh out loud each time I read it.

Page 16: "Other versions and variants also circulated."

- Did you write this chapter in a linear way, from start to finish? At this precise point you're sounding a bit lethargic, as if the sheer quantity and variety of material was too much to bear. Which of course it is, but you may want to seem effortlessly clever...

No, my dear, I assembled it like the whole book, in bits and pieces and scraps, and occasional bursts of 5000 words at a time. And yes, of course, I want to seem effortlessly clever, though I suspect this blog may have blown my cover there. Anyway, I've deleted the offending sentence in an effort to appear effortless.

Hey ho: back to work!

World's Last Gothic Cathedral is Finished

Well, I guess this is a milestone of sorts:

From The Australian today:

OPPOSITION Leader Malcolm Turnbull tonight swapped the unholy noise of parliament for angelic tones in Brisbane's St John's Anglican Cathedral. Mr Turnbull and wife Lucy were among hundreds of guests from around the globe to celebrate the world's last Gothic cathedral to be completed. St John's was designed by English Victorian Gothic architect John Pearson in 1889. But it was not until this year that the third and final stage of its construction was finished - at a cost of almost $40 million. Brisbane's third Anglican bishop William Webber was mocked when he suggested the northern outpost have a cathedral, but he continued to push for the building because it would "inspire lofty thoughts and noble aspirations". The service combined the ancient and modern. It was webcast on the internet and featured indigenous elements including a traditional welcome and a Torres Strait island hymn. A didgeridoo played as Anglican Primate Dr Phillip Aspinall offered the consecration prayers. "We give thanks to God to everyone since 1906 who has laboured to create this magnificent building," he told the congregation.

I can't download them, but in my searching around I did see some rather intriguing images of the cathedral's new stained glass windows: I may have to go and visit. The picture above makes it look rather small, in fact: the spires look rather short and squat to me (especially in contrast to the new spires of St Mary's cathedral in Sydney - seen here on the left). Though both images interestingly demonstrate the difficulty of fitting gothic architecture into the format of modern cameras.

Weirdly, although the completion of Brisbane's gothic cathedral seems to establish a rather odd temporal disjuncture, there is also something medieval about taking a hundred years to build something.

Has anyone seen the Brisbane one recently? Is that picture a good image?

Another all-clear

The research assistant on the clinical trial, the nurse and the surgeon all said to me this morning, "it's going quickly, isn't it?" Yes, it's the third anniversary of my surgery for early stage breast cancer, and this morning I sailed through the annual mammogram, ultrasound and examination with Suzanne with flying colours. It was good to see the very reassuring initials NAD (nothing abnormal detected) going onto my files and x-ray reports.

But is it going quickly? Not really. Not when you examine every day closely as it goes by, as I do these days. This doesn't mean I always make the best use of a day: I rarely feel that. But I certainly do notice them as they pass.

One of the lovely things for me about this practice is the sense of these teams of women working so well together (surgeons, nurses, radiologists, receptionists, researchers). I did see Mitchell, my oncologist, striding into the waiting room to meet a woman wearing a long scarf — I think they adminster the chemotherapy in this clinic, too — but everyone who attended me today was a woman. It's peaceful there. No televisions, no piped music, just magazines, comfortable couches and white towelling robes to wear while you wait. Women come and go, and although there's always a level of anxiety on our faces, it's calm. We are being attended by kindly, efficient and skilled women who know exactly what they are doing, how best to manage our visit and our health. For a place that is closely associated with a deadly disease, it's remarkably serene.