Speaking faces

To Troilus right wonder wel with alle
Gan for to like hire meuynge and hire chere,
Which somdel deignous was, for she let falle
Hire look a lite a-side in swich manere
Ascaunces, "what, may I nat stonden here?"
And after that hir lokynge gan she lighte,
That neuere thoughte hym seen so good a syghte.

I am currently writing a paper for a very cool-sounding conference in Berlin in a couple of weeks. It's called "Performing the Poetics of Passion – Chaucer’s “Troilus & Criseyde” and Shakespeare’s “Troilus & Cressida” (just look at the list of papers below and see what an incredible treat is in store for me).

I'm worrying away at this stanza from book I, trying to think about the performative elements of Criseyde's expression, which she "let falle" ... "a lite a-side", as if to say "what, can't I stand here?" I love the defensivess of this facial expression. Boccaccio's is more direct, "E non ci si può stare" (None can stand here). His Criseida holds out her mantle to make space for herself: Chaucer's has only to cast a downward glance and she finds room for herself.  Chaucer's Criseyde's sideways look is followed by the lightening of her glance, as if she is relieved somehow to have silently spoken her anxiety on what may be her first public appearance after being welcomed by Hector.

According to OED and MED, this Ascaunces, "as if to say", while obscure in origin, is quite separate from modern "askance" (obliquely, or with disapprobation). However, influenced by the "let falle hire look a lite a-side", I find it hard not to see both senses in Chaucer's use here.

My question to all you rhetoric buffs out there is whether there is a name for this figure by which Chaucer and Boccaccio describe their heroines' faces as speaking. I guess it's a form of prosopopeia or enargia, but even this wonderful website, Silva Rhetoricae doesn't give any specific examples.

And what other medieval examples are there? There's the Book of the Duchess, of course ("By God, my wratthe is all foryive"), and even Troilus's appeal, equally ascaunces, to the heavens, "loo, is this naught wisely spoken?"

I must say it is lovely to be working so closely on a little bit of text. It's particularly lovely to think of other ways of reading faces than through physical features, which some of us find excruciatingly difficult. We have just started a five-week sequence on the Troilus in my honours class today, and I took them through some of the problems here. 

Here's the list of papers: what an amazing couple of days it will be:

Thursday, May 13
15.30 – 16.30 Welcome Coffee and Registration
16.30        Welcome Address
17.00    Paul Strohm ‘As for to looke upon an old romaunce’: Looking and Overlooking in Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s Troy
18.00        Conference Dinner

Friday, May 14
9.30 – 11.00    Wolfram Keller Passionate Authorial Performances: From Chaucer’s Criseyde to    Shakespeare’s Cressida
                         Andreas Mahler Potent Raisings: Performing Passion in Chaucer and Shakespeare
11.00 – 11.30    Coffee Break
11.30 – 13.00    David Wallace, Changing Emotions in Troilus: the Crucial Year
                          Kathrin Bethke, Value Feelings: The Economy and Axiology of the Passions in Troilus and Cressida
13.00 – 14.30    Lunch
14.30 – 16.00     Robert Meyer-Lee Criseyde’s Precursor: Dido, Emotion and the Literary in the House of Fame
                          Hester Lees-Jeffries ‘What’s Hecuba to him?’ Absent Women and the Space of Lamentation in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida

Saturday, May 15
9.30 – 11.00    James Simpson ‘The formless ruin of oblivion’: Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and Literary Defacement
                         Stephanie Trigg Public and Private Emotion in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
11.00 – 11.30    Coffee Break
11.30 – 13.00 Kai Wiegandt ‘Expectation whirls me round’: Hope, Fear and Time in Troilus and Cressida
                       Richard Wilson ‘Like an Olympian wrestling’: The Pause in Troilus and Cressida
13.00 – 14.30    Lunch
14.30 – 15.15    Ute Berns Love and Desire Delineating Selves in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida
15.15 – 16.00    John Drakakis ‘No matter from the heart’: Passion, Value and Contingency in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

In which I make myself cry

Through the course of the various re-structures of our syllabus and curriculum reforms we've undergone over the last few years, I struggled to find the right balance of medieval literature and medievalism in the one subject I offer in second and third year. I'm glad to say I think I might have got the balance just about right. The subject is called Romancing the Medieval, and we have 75 students reading Chaucer and Malory in Middle English, Sir Gawain and Margery Kempe in modern translation, amongst a few other things, while I gave a lecture last week on medievalist poetic tradition (OE translations by Tennyson, and Heaney; and thanks to Chris Jones who is expert in this stuff, a sonnet by Borges on Old English; and Chaucerian extracts from Lydgate, Spenser and Dryden, as well as Ted Hughes' poem about Sylvia Plath declaiming Chaucer to the cows, etc.). We will move, soon, to Tennyson's Lady of Shalott and some of the Idylls, The Lord of the Rings, and a week on medieval fairy tales.

But today it was the Prioress's Tale. We are moving into the second half of the course, and now that they have had a pretty solid introduction to medieval literature, I wanted to start thinking about scholarly medievalism. I got them to read Michael Calebrese's essay (the one Eileen had a bunch of us respond to for one of BABEL's sessions at Kalamazoo last year) for its uncompromising scrutiny of the easy absolutist ethics the Prioress seems to encourage amongst readers.

Anyhoo, in thinking about this tale of blood libel against the Jews, who are said to have murdered the little Christian boy so devoutly singing his Marian hymn, I also told the story of St Hugh of Lincoln, and remembered my visit to Lincoln Cathedral, where next to the remains of his shrine, the cathedral has framed this notice and prayer:

Trumped up stories of "ritual murders" of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later.  These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives. Lincoln had its own legend, and the alleged victim was buried in the Cathedral in the year 1255.

Such stories do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and so we pray:

Lord, forgive what we have been,

amend what we are,

and direct what we shall be.

Perhaps it's because I'm overtired, and frankly, a little up and down in spirits at the moment, I couldn't read this prayer to the class with choking up a little. It's the sheer simplicity of the acknowledgement of wrong that gets me. Yet this often seems such a hard thing for the church to say...

But of course, in the context of Calabrese's critique of emotional absolutism, and my discussion in the lecture of affective piety, I don't really trust my emotional response here. Was it too easy?

In thinking about the Prioress, though, I kept returning to the description of her in the General Prologue, where we are told she "peyned hire to countrefete chere/ Of court, and to been estatlich of manere." So here's my question to the Chaucerians amongst you: has anyone ever suggested that the Prioress's sentimentalism is part of this performance of courtly demeanour? Do we know anything about a self-conscious fashion for this kind of piety in the Ricardian court? Is there something blindingly obvious I'm missing here? Yes, I promise I will do my own research on this soon enough, but in the meantime, what do you reckon?

The wo that is in lecturing

Once a year I manage it. I work hard the night before a lecture, typing up bits of text I want to focus on onto the Powerpoint slides, uploading pictures and links to break up the sound of my voice (a 90-minute lecture slot to 80 students) ... and then I leave the disk or memory stick at home. Today I didn't even download it from my computer. So there I was at 9.30, with nothing. Zip. Talk about self-sabotaging behaviour.

As I was preparing the slides last night I was thinking it was a bit wasteful of time to be typing up or uploading text when the students have the books. But since I don't really have notes any more when I lecture (on medieval literature, at least), I have come to depend on the slides as an aide-mémoire. But when you don't have notes or slides, it is certainly that much harder.

I thought about jumping on the bike and racing home, but it would have been a bit tight, and the wise Annemarie counselled me against it. So I sat in my office, found a link to an online Chaucer edition and a couple of manuscript pages I wanted to look at, and made myself a few notes.

It was ok. It wasn't great; it was a little short (for which I'm sure everyone was grateful). It wasn't brilliantly organised. But it was on the Wife of Bath's prologue, and while it shouldn't really surprise me that this should happen, I found myself more than once just mentally reeling at the genius of this poetry, the play of voices and textual traditions. One line jumped out at me today, in particular.

But — Lord Crist! — whan that it remembreth me
Upon my yowthe, and on my jolitee,
It tikleth me aboute myn herte roote.
Unto this day it dooth myn herte boote
That I have had my world as in my tyme.
But age, allas, that al wole envenyme,
Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith.
Lat go. Farewel! The devel go therwith!
The flour is goon; ther is no more to telle;
The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle;
But yet to be right myrie wol I fonde.
Now wol I tellen of my fourthe housbonde.

It's that second-last line, with its determination to be merry — the willed nature of the emotion here, that leapt at me.

I was pretty tired the rest of the day: a couple of meetings with students, a Faculty meeting, a talk I had to give (how's this for irony?) on teaching practice, and then a seminar to go to on Coetzee's Disgrace.

But now I'm home. I have prawns marinating in ginger and garlic and dollops of all kinds of delicious sauces in the cupboard. I'm going to fire up the rice cooker in a minute and then sit down with Joel for a couple of episodes of Scrubs.

Hey, maybe one of the reasons I'm so tired is the single parenting I've been doing for five of the last seven weeks. J is no trouble, and helps with cooking, etc. but there's no doubt the household runs more smoothly when there are two adults in it. Just a couple more days and P is back.

(There's some weirdly ironic thing going on here about marriage and the Wife of Bath and P being away, but I'm too tired to untangle it.)

What is Wrong with This Picture ...

... when the teenager stays at home re-arranging his room and doing his music practice while his parents go out to see the new teenage sparklie vampire love storie movie. The movie was washed down with a bag of mixed lollies and some tall glasses of Westgarth's finest sangria. As Chaucer says, "This ys absolutelie the beste teenage sparklie vampyre love storye ich haue evir reade" and the same goes for the movies, too. I've now read the last two books and seen the first two movies, and so while I can't quite remember what happens in Volume 3, I think I have a reasonable grasp of the entire sorry trajectory.

I say "sorry", because although in the first movie I was completely entranced by the brooding mystery of Edward, this movie reminded me that I don't really like vampires very much, despite what Chaucer describes as the "fayre skyn and fashion-sprede slow-mocioun hotenesse of the Cu Chulainn clan, the which have all eaten long ago of the magical Irisshe Salmon of Really Good Hair (oon byte of this magical salmon and ye shal have good hair for evir)."

There's been an awful lot written and said about Stephanie Meyer being a Mormon, and the programmatic chastity of the Twilight sage: no sex — or becoming a vampire — until you are married. Again, I'll quote Maister Chaucer (who's proving himself a most adept textual and cultural critic), when he remarks, "Ther is considerablie moore sexual tensioun than in Piers Plowman."  This is undeniably true. But there's something disturbing, and I would have thought rather un-Mormony about the idea that you might well have a soul; but that you would willingly destroy it for love. I can see romance fiction not being bothered with the idea of a soul, but once you invoke that metaphysic, don't you have to do something with it? Not easy, of course: and even Philip Pullman, for all his brilliance, couldn't quite bring it all off. If Meyer — and the films — get away with invoking the idea of a soul as a plot device, but countenancing perpetual everlasting romantic love and sexual desire and a prodigious child as sufficient compensation for its loss, it's not in any easy agreement with any model of Christianity I'm familiar with.

So the easy dismissive reading of Meyer — that she is somehow cynically exploiting teenage desires to push a Mormon model of sexual restraint— seems to me rather a thin one. Or perhaps it's true that for this religion, morality is more important than spirituality.

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.

Slow teaching movement?

When we bought our piano, Leon generously offered to give Joel a couple of extra lessons, in the manner, I guess, of a personal master class. He had his first one on Wednesday and he was very very nervous. We had to drive way out into the depths of the south-eastern suburbs in peak hour — grey clouds and misty rain.

I sat down on the couch with the PhD I am examining (yes, this is what you do on long service leave if you don't finish it while on study leave), and half-read; and half-listened.

They started working on Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major, a piece J has only just started to learn. Over the hour, they worked through the right hand melody, but I was so struck by Leon's teaching, as they spent a good twenty minutes on the first phrase. There are some nice performances on YouTube, but the wikipedia page has a recording, plus the score of the opening (scroll down to Opus 9, No.2):



Those first two notes for the right hand feature an anacrusis, the unstressed B flat quaver, that reaches up to the (dotted crotchet) G, which is the first note of the first full bar. Leon described the relationship between these two notes in grammatical terms, as the article before the noun. Yes, it's common enough to think of music as a language, but his analogy has really stuck with me as a way of articulating the relationship between the unstressed and the stressed syllables (sorry; notes). They also did lots of analysis of the chord progressions. I'm sure Leon sensed Joel's nervousness (he normally teaches more advanced students), and was able to modulate his teaching as he worked out what Joel could and couldn't do.

But the slowness of the teaching reminded me of the beauties of close reading, a technique that is often reviled these days as apolitical, overly-formalist and privileging a certain aestheticist kind of writing and reading practice. Yet in medieval literature (and in other forms, too), it can be the best way to teach. I do remember feeling quite pleased, one time, that I had spent a good ninety minutes on the first two stanzas of Chaucer's Parlement of Foulys. Partly because this was the way I was taught, and partly because it was so satisfying to plumb so many depths of syntax, language, classical allusion, voicing, etc. Because I've quoted Chopin, I'm going to quote Chaucer, too.

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,
Thassay so hard, so sharp the conquering,
The dredful Ioy, that alwey slit so yerne,
Al this mene I by love, that my feling
Astonyeth with his wonderful worching
So sore y-wis, that whan I on him thinke,
Nat wot I wel wher that I wake or winke.

For al be that I knowe nat love in dede,
Ne wot how that he quyteth folk hir hyre,
Yet happeth me ful ofte in bokes rede
Of his miracles, and his cruel yre;
Ther rede I wel he wol be lord and syre,
I dar not seyn, his strokes been so sore,
But God save swich a lord! I can no more.

But am I becoming hopelessly old-fashioned in my teaching? Is there such a thing as going too slowly? Or being too precious? Certainly in teaching for performance, as with the Chopin, it's hard to imagine rushing through at some global level. Conversely, in some subjects and contexts, I'm conscious of going very quickly, to make sure we can grasp the whole of a text, or a good chunk of it, as the full range of meanings aren't always evident — of course! — in the microscopic examination of two stanzas. But perhaps this kind of detailed explication de texte is not as satisfying to students as it is to me.

I realise, now, as I look at those stanzas, that Chaucer is at one level working through the same problem. Life (or love) is so short, like a text that passes quickly, but the skill of reading and negotiating one's way through it, takes years to learn how to do properly. And the text, like love, like life, that slit so yerne (slides away so quickly) under such examination? No wonder I spent so long on these stanzas: they were insisting I did so!

Blogging, tweeting, conferencing and speaking with Chaucer

Once again, medieval studies demonstrates its technological magic-loving supremacy, with Eileen Joy's virtuosic tweeting of Jeffrey Cohen's plenary talk, "Between Christian and Jew," at the Leeds Congress of Medieval Studies. Of course, you have to read it backwards, unless you scroll down to the bit where Jeffrey appears at the lectern. Eileen says she had to tweet discreetly, but Jeffrey describes it as "finger magic."

If I had been giving a talk, and seen the formidable Eileen tapping into her phone in the front row, it would have made me very nervous, but I guess, as with the Hansard reporters, one could get used to it. Not that I personally am used to Hansard reporters, but you know what I mean. Actually, I get a little nervous when my students cite my lectures in the footnotes to their essays, but I try not to let that show.

Anyway, this feed (and I must admit I was following it last night as Jeffrey was speaking in Leeds on Monday morning), reminds me to prompt medievalist readers of this blog to send me a proposal for the New Chaucer Society Congress in Siena (Si, Siena!!) next July.

Jeffrey has already agreed to appear on this panel: hooray! I was also thinking if there was enough interest in this topic that I might even start a new blog a few months prior to the congress, devoted simply to the discussion of medieval blogs, so that the panel's deliberations could include those who weren't going to be at Siena, and those who wanted to remain anonymous, etc. But wait, there's more.... I have every reason to promise that such a pre-conference blog will feature occasional contributions from the ultra medieval blogger. So this is your great chance to speak with Chaucer.

Here's the call for papers: the deadline is officially tomorrow, but I'll accept offers for at least the next week.

SESSION 7 (PANEL): ROUNDTABLE BLOGGING, COMMUNITIES, AND MEDIEVAL STUDIES
Session organizer: Stephanie Trigg (sjtrigg@unimelb.edu.au)

For those scholars who are aware of them, the professional landscape of medieval studies has been changed, in recent years, through the advent of blogs and other online fora for the exchange of ideas. From the wildly engaging Chaucer blog to the collaborative scholarship of In the Middle, and a range of more or less anonymous blogs from individual medievalists, it seems that certain medievalists love to blog. But why? To what extent has blogging changed the way medievalists communicate with each other? In the idealised answer to this question, blogging makes it possible for isolated scholars, junior scholars, graduate scholars, disabled scholars and others to take part in a more democratic, more easily accessible exchange of ideas. But blogging can’t escape hierarchies or intellectual imprecision altogether, while the ease of anonymous or pseudonymous publication potentially threatens the accountability of more formal and more highly regulated mode of publication and intellectual engagement. Other questions arise, too. What are the copyright implications of sharing drafts or published material on blogs? How has blogging changed our understanding of medieval studies and its communities? Is there anything distinctive about medieval blogs? What is the future of medieval blogging? Papers are invited from bloggers, lurkers on blogs, and non-bloggers.

OK? So get to it and wing me a proposal.

The boy is back in town

Yay for Geoffrey Chaucer! After a period of exile when his blog was taken over by the Lords Appellant, he has reclaimed his blog spot and tells us he was at Kalamazoo, dancing and all, in most jocound fashion.

Jeffrey is blogging about serious issues of anonymity and professionalism, and the future of the discipline. It's an interesting question on which he and I clearly have a mild disagreement: I think anonymity can sometimes be a good thing. Yes, it can be used improperly; but it can also be used provisionally, experimentally and playfully. The world of medievalist bloggers — sometimes anonymous, sometimes pseudonymous, sometimes named — shows us how hard it would be to be absolute about this question, since one of the points of blogging, for me, at least, is to blur the distinction between the formal/professional and the more informal and personal.

But I feel I'm rambling: time to try and harness the energies unleashed at Kalamazoo and get to work on my book.

Unlikely connections and textual spirals

Today in Chaucer class we were looking at Troilus's apostrophe to Criseyde's empty palace. Troilus is waiting for Criseyde to return from the Greek camp, and goes through the streets of Troy to look at the house once adorned with Criseyde and now empty; the lantern whose light is extinguished; the ring without the ruby; the shrine without the saint.

Than seide he thus, "O paleys desolat,
O hous of houses whilom best i-hight,
O paleys empty and disconsolat,
O thow lanterne of which queynt is the light,
O paleys, whilom day, that now art nyght,
Wel oughtestow to falle and I to dye
Syn she is went that wont was vs to gye.

"O paleis, whilom crowne of houses alle,
Enlumyned with sonne of alle blisse,
O ryng fro which the rubie is out falle,
O cause of wo that cause hast ben of lisse,
3et syn I may no bet, fayn wolde I kisse
Thy colde dores, dorste I for this route;
And far wel shryne, of which the seynt is oute."

Of course we talked about the difficulties of "queynte" here, but for the life of me I could not remember the Greek name for this figure until now, when I've just looked it up in an article I've co-written (!), which quotes Larry Benson discussing "the most beautiful example of paraclausithyron [the poem before the closed door] in our literature". He argues that Chaucer would not have introduced that obscene pun; and that we err if we are always on the lookout for the double entendre.

But instead of being able to remember this word (I got the "claus" bit but not the rest), I could remember most of the lyrics of "I have often walked down this street before/ but the pavement's always stayed beneath my feet before", from My Fair Lady and I'm sorry to say I sang a couple of stanzas, with a little help. I've also been singing this lovely song all afternoon.

So. Yes. Songs are more memorable than Greek rhetorical terms. No surprises there. And no, it's not exactly the same situation, though I can't remember at what point Freddie sings this song. But it was, all the same, one of those historically impure moments that helps us read the medieval text, I think. Are Chaucer's characters medieval? or timeless?

Another lovely circle has been playing in my mind, too.

Last night we watched Tony Richardson's 1970 film of Ned Kelly starring Mick Jagger. I liked this much maligned film very much indeed. I especially liked seeing Jagger singing the Wild Colonial Boy.

And the Waylon Jennings soundtrack has some great Kelly ballads. One of them is called "Blame it on the Kellys" ("I think I'll steal a horse myself and blame it on the Kellys"). This also has a Robin Hood moment: "bread and milk on the windowsill? Blame it on the Kellys".

At the film's end, though, Kelly is staggering down the railway tracks in the morning mist, wearing the iconic armour and long coat, reeling as more and more police climb down the embankment and fire at him. He staggers and keeps going, and I have the irresistible image of John Cleese as the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The film recovers itself, but I'm then driven to think about the resemblance between Kelly and the Knight. I mean: look at them!



It's a pretty distinctive shape for a helmet, and I reckon it's not implausible that the Python team had seen the Jagger film.

These are both lovely examples, I think, of the way medieval studies and medievalism both set up these spirals of reference and allusion.

Chaucer and love (Friday poetry blogging)

Every year for the last half-dozen or more, I've taught Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde in my honours class. We take four or five two-hour seminars and work through the text. This is my favourite poem, no contest. It never ceases to amaze me, too, that every year I find something in it that takes my breath away.

On Wednesday, we were reading Book III. Early in the book, the lovers have finally met in person and exchanged words, but have not yet consummated their affair. As they wait for Pandarus to arrange this, they see each other and speak a few times, with utmost discretion, so no one will know of their love.

And the narrator says:

But thilke litel that they spake or wroughte,
His wise goost took ay of al swych heede,
It semed hire he wiste what she thoughte
Withouten word, so that it was no nede
To bidde hym ought to doon or ought for-beede;
For which she thought that loue, al come it late,
Of alle joie hadde opned hir the yate. (III. 463-9)

Roughly...

But his thoughtful spirit paid such attention to every detail of the little they said or did, that it seemed to her he knew what she was thinking, without speech, so she had no need to command him to do anything, or to forbid him anything. And accordingly, she felt that love, even though it had come late, had opened to her the gate to complete joy.

This is one of those passages that compresses both the medieval and the timeless. There is something very moving about lovers, so tightly constrained within the conventions of courtly love, under siege conditions, in the layered formality of Chaucer's narrative, experiencing that intimate closeness — that feeling of being known, that words are unnecessary — that is a feature of most representations of Western romantic love.

What does it mean? that we learn how to think about love from Chaucer and the medieval poets? The obvious answer, I guess, is that Chaucer speaks to us across time and space, and that this timelessness is the measure of his greatness and one of the reasons why he has become a canonical poet. But right next to this is the deeply medieval convention of female sovereignty in love. Criseyde experiences this emotional intimacy as taking away the need to organise the details of Troilus's service to her. The notion of service, in love, is in complete opposition to (most) modern understandings of love. The stanza thus enacts the dialectic between romantic and sexual love as (a) mutual and (b) structured by the contradictory hierarchies of courtly convention and gender politics. (We were also looking at Elaine Hansen's critique of David Aers' conditional praise of the mutuality of the sexual encounter to come later in Book III.)

For me, this raises a difficult question: what to do with the notion of timelessness in the canonical text? I'm trained to read historically; and I'm sometimes embarrassed by the claims about the universal timeless greatness of Chaucer (and others), because such claims carry such heavy ideological freight. But there's no doubt that here, cheek by jowl with the medieval idea of courtly service in love, is an invocation of mutual understanding in love that has all the hallmarks of modern humanism. And I guess that's my answer: that it's the dialectic between the medieval and the modern that produces Chaucer's popularity. It's certainly a most blissful text to teach.

Chaucer conference blogging (2)

So the blog posts about NCS are starting to appear, as we arrive home, with a little time to reflect. Dr Virago (whom I met!) found it a little unfriendly and too full of academic posturing and competing for position, while Jeffrey Cohen wonders what has happened to Chaucer, given the multiplicity of other topics, periods, languages, cultures and historicisms we study. He also speculates on the question of timing. At what point do interventions into the field look like novelties? At what point do they seem to state the obvious? or at least, to encapsulate work that is already being done on a number of fronts?

These two points are not unrelated. In the corner of the field I'm interested in at the moment — the relation between medieval studies and medievalism studies — it's fascinating to observe the various waves of interest in the latter. The genealogy of medievalism, and its messy trajectories, would be an interesting study. It's very easy, in a closely contested field, to feel slighted if people don't cite your work; it's also easy to think you are more original than you really are (easy to forget you are standing on the shoulders of ... well, not so much giants, as your own colleagues). This is particularly germane to medievalism studies, which has had very little role to play at NCS in the past, but which has its own journal, and has had a pretty active presence on the fringes of medieval studies, not to mention the thriving business of Tolkien studies, for example. David Wallace's Presidential lecture in New York two years ago was the first "official", or at least, high level acknowledgement of the field at NCS, and in Swansea, the fact that Carolyn Dinshaw used the Michael Powell film, A Canterbury Tale, as a meditation on temporality, place, and the queer — even if she did not invoke the discipline of medievalism directly — suggests the field has rapidly accrued a new level of respectability.

In addition to the several plenary sessions, there were a couple of what I'll call "de facto plenaries", in panels that spoke so powerfully to so many people's interests that other sessions on at the same time must have lost most of their audience to them. These moments are hard to predict in a two-year cycle between conferences. Carolyn's paper was one such (though she is such a beautiful speaker she will always summon a big crowd): another was the "clash of the titans": a debate on the relationship between formalism and historicism, between Jill Mann and James Simpson, set up by Chris Cannon. Both spoke terrifically well, ranging from polemic to argument, across the history of criticism and medieval studies in the twentieth century. Jill was at pains to show that formalism was a retrospective formation; and that the work of F. R. Leavis, for example, was as much concerned with historical context as "the words on the page". James was concerned to unpack the ideology of such close reading (including its support from the Rockefeller foundation, as a front from the CIA that wanted to encourage artists, writers and critics to develop individualist expressions of aesthetics and criticism as part of the Cold War). This was high level debate of the best kind, and done with no special rancour.

But James had another target in mind: some intemperate remarks in reviews of his work by Derek Pearsall, and the lecture theatre was hushed in shock as he worked, passionately, through a critique of Derek's criticisms, quoting a particular sentence — a claim that literature does nothing; has no political effect — three times. Derek was given first right of reply, and said he would not engage with the issues, but would say only that yes, sometimes one wrote intemperately, and was sorry afterwards; and that he had immense respect for James' work, and hoped they would continue to engage in civil debate. James acknowledged Derek's generosity, and the debate went on. At one level, then, a good example of robust disagreement, but it's clear that feelings had been hurt on both sides.

I felt, then, that the "clash of the titans" between Jill and James had been displaced by the clash between James and Derek, and I thought that was a pity.

But James' strategy of going after this one sentence (well, not just this one!) made me think: how many of my own sentences would stand up under such scrutiny? There are lots of things I've written I hope people won't worry too closely over. And then in my own paper, and on my own blog, I had quoted a section from Maura Nolan's essay. I know this is what we do: we are highly trained and clever close readers, and analysing small pieces of text is what I love to do most. But the potential for damage, for the kind of point-scoring Dr Virago did not enjoy, at each other's expense, is great. In our dealings with each other, then, and with the bodies of critical work we deal with, it is just as important to tread a careful line between historicism (these are real people) and formalism (these are real words and ideas).

Chaucer conference blogging (1)

Well, I’m just back from the conference dinner on the last night of the Chaucer conference in Swansea. Lots of great papers, debates, arguments and discussions, which I’ll digest a little before I blog about in more detail.

For now, just some reflections on how to go to a big conference. There seem to be two main options. You can stay in the college accommodation on site, and meet your fellow delegates in the bathrooms down the corridor, and at breakfast, and on the bus to and from the excursions. As well as all day, every day, for the days of the conference. Or you can put yourself in a hotel, and hire a car, and pretend your life is not completely bound to that of the conference. I speak, of course, only of those not on a very tight budget. If you have the choice, there are actually pluses and minuses on both sides. But as the days wear on, in a very long conference, it is often very pleasant to have a little quiet time away from the madding crowds.

For this conference, I made a two-day road trip to get here, stopping at Winchester (Round Table, cathedral, pub lunch), Bath (fabulous restaurant), Wells (cathedral; purchase of green man boss), and Glastonbury (abbey; one of Arthur’s tombs; the chalice well), with three delightful travelling companions. We were all staying several miles out of Swansea, in the seaside town of The Mumbles, and had a hired car, so we could take ourselves back and forth at will. And I’m really glad we did.

It was especially nice to be able to offer lifts to colleagues, and so one night, Tom and I gathered up George and Jeffrey, who were staying in the dorms, and went out to Langland bay for a drink on the terrace, before heading down to a fish restaurant in the Mumbles. We sat in the early evening light, watching some kids digging out a boat of sand, relishing the incoming tide and the way it promised to set the boat free. We all felt, I think, somewhat liberated, to have chosen each other’s company, and to find ourselves observing ocean time, not conference time.

The funny thing was, we were each laughing at the other. Was it more laughable to be staying in humble student quarters on what can hardly be described as a lovely campus, or more laughable to be driving around from hotel to restaurant to beach to pub? Tom and I were expecting Jeffrey already to have blogged mockingly about our taste for the good life; so I’m glad to see, as I think, I have the chance to blog first…

We all had the afternoon off yesterday, too, so Tom and I played tennis, then drove out along the Gower peninsular and watched the tide come in over the Worm’s Head point. I will speak a brief paean to my writing collaborator, who is such a great friend and conference buddy. He is always the one who knows how to find a good restaurant, who always has something interesting to say about the session we’ve just attended, who is funny, and who is kind. When we were playing tennis, he was getting a little frustrated with some kids on the next court who kept wandering back and forwards across the courts, with some girls drinking diet coke and shouting, and kicking a soccer ball around too. It did get a bit hard to concentrate. But when we finished, he gave the new canister of tennis balls, which he had just bought the day before, to the kids, who had been playing with just one raggedy old ball, that was completely bald. “You’re a legend!” one said, and another: “A gift from the Americans!” I thought that was just a lovely thing to do.

A Dylan Thomas-ish moment, too. As the kids were mucking around, a car drew up on the hill above the courts, one yelled out, “Oy.. Pritchard … Dav!”, in that beautiful Welsh lilt.

There’s heaps to think and say about this conference, but for the moment, the thing that’s strongest in my mind are the friendships I’ve made and consolidated over the last few days. And that’s a great thing to be able to take away from a conference.

Wade's Boat, Summer in Melbourne, and Four White Flowers

Another burning hot day in Melbourne. I spent a pleasant few hours this morning, though, in the State Library, comparing three — count them, 3! — copies of Thomas Speght's 1598 edition of the works of Chaucer (from 1598, 1602, and 1687); and for good measure, John Urry's dreadful but lavish edition of 1721. The Library has an excellent range of early Chaucer editions: a page of Caxton's 1478 Canterbury Tales, and six other sixteenth-century editions of the Works. I'm writing up a discussion of Speght's annotation to the mention of "Wade's bote" in the Merchant's Tale, and so I'm not really looking at the pre-1598 editions. The Baillieu Library at the University has another two copies of the 1598 imprint for comparison, too.

It's a lovely annotation. Chaucer's rich old man January determines to marry, but won't take any older woman.

I wol no womman thritty yeer of age;
It is but bene-straw and greet forage.
And eek thise olde wydwes, God it woot,
They konne so muchel craft on Wades boot,
So muchel broken harm, whan that hem leste,
That with hem sholde I never lyve in reste.

Speght comments: “Concerning Wade and his bote called Guingelot, as also his strange exploits in the same, because the matter is long and fabulous, I passe it over.”

In the paper I gave at the London Chaucer conference last year, and again in my response to Carolyn Dinshaw in Hobart in December, I looked at the responses to this annotation, particularly the vexation of commentators who cannot help reveal their frustration at Speght, so much closer to Chaucer than we are, but unwilling — or unable — to fill in this unknown gap. Robinson said, "it has often been called the most exasperating note ever written on Chaucer”. Various scholars have explored traces of the story of Wade, but the Merchant's meaning here remains relatively obscure. I myself think that's part of the point: I read the Merchant as alluding to women's knowledge, lost beyond all traces of official (written, scholarly) culture.

I am writing up this part of the two papers, which are both really more about multiple temporalities and the relations between medieval studies and medievalism, for the La Trobe Journal of the Library, so I am really focussing on Speght's edition and the kinds of knowledge it presents about Chaucer.

How lovely that these books are only a bike ride away (well, they would be if I could get around to fixing my puncture).

I got home early afternoon, to find Joel still in his pyjamas, playing his gameboy with Holst's Planets Suite roaring away at top volume.

Paul came home soon after, regaling us with the Kafka-esque tale of the day he had spent at the Customs Office, the Quarantine Office, and the Ports office, filling out a thousand forms, and commissioning an agent in Queensland to fax the forms back and forth, to take delivery of the large egg-shell laquer panels he had bought in Vietnam. Here's a glimpse of a lotus flower:



The sun is still really hot, as I'm writing at 6.30; and it's still about 34 degrees outside. I took these photos just a half an hour ago: here's a pile of white table linen, bleached and soaked and sun-brightened after the Christmas and New Year festivities, awaiting the iron.



These range from the long rayon cloth that I think was part of my mother's trousseau; the length of damask she bought at the Victoria market and hemmed up for me; and the round cloth she embroidered with white flowers for my 21st birthday. This photo was taken inside, but you can get a glimpse of the bright sun in that line of light along the floor.

Outside the garden is struggling, and I'm amazed to see the gardenias are still able to put forth their flowers. They last about a day each, flaring up in the intense heat and light of the day, and softening into a heady perfume at night:



And finally, the crowning glory (etymological joke): the stephanotis plant we put in last year has just started flowering.

Again, you can see how harsh the sun is, but these flowers have been out for several days now. Their fragrance is more delicate than the gardenias, but I have always wanted to grow these, ever since my father told me I was named after the Greek ho stephanos, "crown, garland". And there's the link to Pavlov's Cat: Y is it so? Naming Australia's women, 1950-1955. Yeah, she says I'm out of her chronological range, but I still want to play.

Chaucer hath cheezburger

Just in case anyone has missed this, check out Chaucer's Lolgrims.

I even knew what a lolcat was before Chaucer posted about them: I must be spending too much time blogging...