Holy Innocents Research Articles

“The Country We Built Up”: Geocriticism, Rhodesian Places and the Nefarious Bush in John Eppel’s The Holy Innocents

This article discusses John Eppel’s Bulawayo novel, The Holy Innocents, in order to see how space and place are constructed. By deploying geocriticism as a spatially oriented theory, the article shows how attention to literary geography reveals political insights into histories of race and Zimbabwean belonging. The city of Bulawayo and the literature it inspires provide a unique commentary on the cultural imagining of place. It is demonstrated that the suburb, as a locale in John Eppel’s writing, is a key unit of analysis in exploring the literary city. The political transition and cultural metamorphosis of Rhodesia into Zimbabwe are discussed through the prism of geography. Through recognising the power of space and the arguments about place Eppel makes, our understanding of Zimbabwean literary culture and its interactions with spatiality is developed.

‘El mío no es un asilo’: Aging Masculinity, Disability, and Animalization in Mario Camus’s Los santos inocentes

As an attempt to reflect 1960s rural Spain under Franco’s dictatorship, Mario Camus’s 1984 film adaptation of Miguel Delibes’s Los santos inocentes [The Holy Innocents], published three years before, depicts the daily coexistence of human and non-human animals in an Extremaduran cortijo. Within the highly hierarchized social structure of the Francoist regime, the elderly male characters that are physically or mentally disabled are consistently exploited and humiliated by the caste of señoritos as a metaphorical reproduction of the type of class-based hierarchy established after the Spanish Civil War between the victors and the defeated. The aim of this paper is to examine how the aging, disabled male body of the dispossessed contributes to deepening the class divide through their animalization. By aesthetically emphasizing the blurring of species boundaries in the lower social strata, Camus recreates the type of rural Spain that, under the auspices of the dictatorship, endorses an understanding of the normative, young masculine body as one that distinguishes itself through biological, class-based and androcentric determinism. This triply reinforced canon of the male subject, so irreparably bound to tautologies between class and species, places the aging, masculine body at the heart of an oppressive social system that seeks to justify its hierarchy, mythologizing it as the only viable option through which to erect an empowered, reputable nation.

Fighting Feasting Fools: Nicolas de Clamanges and the Reform of Saints’ Feast Days

ABSTRACT The French humanist and reformer Nicolas de Clamanges (ca. 1363/64-1437) wrote a blistering treatise against new feasts, De nouis festiuitatibus, which contrasts with his related sermon praising the holy innocents, De sanctis innocentibus. This contrast is ironic because their feast during the Christmas season had become the occasion for out-of-control celebrations known as the Feast of Fools, especially in Clamanges’ northern France. This essay uncovers and contextualizes his complaints within his style of reform: he uses the early church as a model, for instance, and launches into rhetorical flourishes, especially in the sermon. The essay also compares Clamanges’ positions with those of his classmate Jean Gerson (1363-1429) and their shared mentor at the University of Paris Pierre d’Ailly (1351-1420). All three hoped that good devotions come from good intentions, but both intention and devotion must be patrolled for superstition and excess.

An Analysis of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers from a Symbolist Perspective

Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, adapted from the novel The Holy Innocents by Gilbert Adair, is set against the backdrop of Events of May 1968 in Paris, though without making much visible effort to reconstruct the look of the period. This paper attempts to analyze the character behavior of The Dreamers from the perspective of Freudian psychoanalysis and explore the ideology and culture represented by Isabella, Theo, and Matthew from the perspective of symbolism, with the interperation of the story background and metaphor of the whole film.

Influence of Social Occupation on Relapse among Recovering Alcoholic Rehabilitees in Selected Rehabilitation Centres in Meru County, Kenya

Relapse remains a significant challenge in the treatment of alcohol-related disorders, particularly after the completion of inpatient treatment programs. In Kenya, relapse rates range from 20-80% among recovering rehabilitees. This study emerged to investigate the specific social occupational factors contributing to relapse among alcoholic rehabilitees in selected rehabilitation centres in Meru County, Kenya, addressing a gap in local research on the topic. The study aimed to delve into the social occupational influences on relapse rates, a relatively unexplored area in previous local research about relapse. The respondents of the study were individuals who had relapsed and were currently undergoing treatment in three selected rehabilitation centres in Meru County: Holy Innocents BPSS Centre in Timau, Methodist Treatment Centre in Kaaga, and St Nicolas Rehabilitation Centre in Tigania West. Employing a correlational research design, the study gathered data through interviews and questionnaires, focusing on a target population of 93 relapsed alcoholics receiving inpatient treatment. Prior to the main data collection, a pilot study was conducted at Harmony Therapy Centre in Nkubu, Meru County. This pilot study was crucial in refining the data collection tools and ensuring the response validity, which is essential for the credibility of the research findings. Descriptive statistics results related to social factors influencing alcohol relapse among the respondents revealed that work-related stress (M=3.29, SD=1.239), lack of work (M=3.12, SD=1.160), financial instability (M=3.34, SD=1.137), and boredom (M=3.34, SD=1.229) significantly contribute to alcohol relapse among rehabilitees in Meru County, Kenya. Participants agreed that these factors were influential in their relapse. However, multi-regression analysis (β=-0.017, p=0.845) showed no significant relationship between social occupation and relapse, suggesting that while these factors are acknowledged by the rehabilitees, the broader influence of social occupation on relapse may be less significant in this specific context. The comprehensive analysis suggests that effective treatment for alcohol-related relapse requires personalized and holistic approaches. These should address the specific social and occupational risk factors that individuals face and aim to build resilience and well-being in their recovery journey. Thus, the findings of this study emphasize the importance of designing treatment programs that not only focus on the addiction itself but also on the broader life context of the individuals, promoting a more sustainable and supportive recovery process.

Boys rule!: Purim and the holy innocents in early modern Worms

AbstractThe role of boys and young men in premodern societies was both precarious and promising. Being in a liminal space between childhood and adulthood, they needed to practice their future roles in society. This article discusses Jewish and Christian annual celebrations involving groups of boys and young men in late medieval and early modern Worms that show similar features and an effort across different religious groups to provide a space for them. Jewish youth took leading roles in the liturgy and in festivities outside the synagogue on and after Shabbat ha‐baḥurim (the boys’ Sabbath), observed on the first Sabbath after Purim. Cathedral choristers and other Christian schoolboys in Worms, led by boy kings and boy bishops, celebrated in connection with the Feast of the Holy Innocents. These festivities were structured similarly in both communities and consisted of the selection of leaders, processions, liturgical inversions, and festive meals. With these celebrations, both communities offered an occasion for young men to practice masculine behaviors and internalize masculine norms.

From Thaumaturgus to Gift Bringer: The Influence of the Role of Children in Hagiography and Folk Practices on the Iconography of Saint Nicholas

This paper demonstrates how Saint Nicholas developed from a wandering miracle worker to the benefactor and protector of children. It shows the development in the Western pictorial tradition from the translation of the relics onwards, and showcases the changes that concern children. The West developed a unique iconography of its own, supplementing the traditional Greek model of depiction with new additions to the legend, many of which concerned the rescue and well-being of children. These new additions to the legend granted Saint Nicholas an aptness for being incorporated into children’s celebrations, folk customs and youth culture, and previous research has shown how from the twelfth and thirteenth century onwards, the customs surrounding the feast day of Holy Innocents gradually migrated to and intermingled with the customs of the feast of Saint Nicholas on the 6th of December. The influence of the presence of medieval children and their customs made them into ‘iconological agents’. They gave rise to new types of Saint Nicholas’ iconography, such as the depiction of Saint Nicholas as a child bishop himself, the depiction of significantly younger children as the students pickled in the vat, and the depiction of Saint Nicholas with three apples as his attribute. These three iconographic types would not have been possible to identify by relying on the classical iconological methodology. The origins of these types can only be thoroughly explained through the interdisciplinary approach of new iconology, an approach that combines iconology, visual studies and historical anthropology. The author uses an integration of folklore studies and iconology to produce these new insights.

Expresando el cambio litúrgico en la Iberia de los siglos XI y XII a través de la festividad de los Santos Inocentes

La fiesta de los Santos Inocentes es un ejemplo especialmente informativo sobre el cambio litúrgico del rito viejo hispánico al Romano en la Península Ibérica después de 1080. No solo implicó un cambio de nombre y de fecha de la fiesta, sino también un cambio en el tenor y el significado de la misma que siempre debía encontrar el equilibrio entre la tragedia y la celebración. Las elaboradas lamentaciones alegóricas de la liturgia viejo hispánica fueron sustituidas, al principio, por lecturas y cantos más neutrales centrados en los infantes como santos mártires. Sin embargo, exposiciones más narrativas de la Masacre de los Inocentes pasaron a dominar en el siglo XII. Colecciones de sermones u homilías desempeñaron un papel importante en este proceso. Imágenes en pinturas murales –y, después de 1150, en escultura– comenzaron a manifestar plenamente el drama de esta fiesta.

Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780–1830 by Erin-Marie Legacey

Reviewed by: Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780–1830 by Erin-Marie Legacey Alice J. Strange Legacey, Erin-Marie. Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780–1830. Cornell UP, 2019. ISBN 978-1-5017-1559-4. Pp. 210. This work examines the crisis in the burial practices of Paris prior to the French Revolution and the chaos that followed as a new burial culture was created. For centuries the remains of the dead of Paris had been deposited into anonymous mass graves in one of the thirty-two churchyards in the city. The oldest and largest gravesite was the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents in central Paris, in use for more than five hundred years. By the late eighteenth century, it was overflowing with decomposing human remains and was a peril to neighboring residents. Although the space was surrounded by a wall, it emitted noxious airs and underground vapors that invaded surrounding buildings and made their way into living spaces. In 1780, a royal proclamation ordered the closure of this and other cemeteries and the relocation of remains to an underground quarry on the urban periphery, which eventually became the Paris Catacombs. The Old Regime failed to address the burial problem before its own demise in 1789, and cemetery reform was left to successive regimes. Legacey argues that the French Revolution was central to transforming attitudes about the proper treatment of the dead. Revolutionaries called for an end to religious burial practices and a new system based on the ideals of equality and fraternity. They were unable to realize these goals, and during the Terror, the remains of thousands of secretly executed victims were placed in open mass graves, complicating the problem. Instability continued into the Napoleonic Empire. It was gradually accepted that individual burial sites were preferable to communal graves. Architects and urban planners offered innovative reforms. One proposal, for example, argued that the dead should be judged for their civic contributions and assigned a place in a new cemetery according to their worthiness. Finally, in 1804, burial standards were codified by Napoleon in a decree that set forth twenty-six articles governing the design for burial spaces. Cemeteries were to be located on the periphery of cities rather than within urban areas, preferably on an elevated terrain east of the city. Père-Lachaise cemetery was opened in 1804 in accordance with the guidelines. Cemeteries were no longer unpleasant and unhealthy places to be avoided, but aesthetic and attractive sites. The new design aimed to accommodate individual gravesites with monuments, although some communal graves continued to exist. The living were encouraged to contemplate the achievements of the heroic dead. Ideally, the new cemetery would unite Parisians of all classes and instill a sense of shared history. The Paris Catacombs, opened to the public in 1809, were an indispensable component of the new culture. Bones from many cemeteries were arranged artistically to draw visitors, combining a macabre appeal with a reminder of the leveling effect of death. In this thoroughly researched study, Legacey presents compelling archival material to trace the revolution in Parisian cemetery culture and the corresponding transformation of attitudes toward the dead. Her work [End Page 240] makes a significant contribution to the social history of Paris in the early nineteenth century. Alice J. Strange Southeast Missouri State University, emerita Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Prevalence and Risk Factors of Helicobacter pylori Infection among Children Aged 1 to 15 Years at Holy Innocents Children's Hospital, Mbarara, South Western Uganda.

Background Helicobacter pylori infection affects more than half of the world's population. The infection is generally acquired during childhood but can remain asymptomatic, with long-term clinical sequelae including gastritis, peptic ulcer disease, and stomach cancer. Methods The study was approved by Institutional Review Committee of Mbarara University of Science and Technology. After obtaining informed consent from parents/legal guardians, illegible children who presented with gastrointestinal complaints at Holy Innocents Children's Hospital were recruited; structured questionnaires were administered to the parents/guardians to collect information on sociodemographic data and risk factors of H. pylori infection. Four (4) millilitres of blood was collected from each child and tested for H. pylori blood Antibody test and stool specimens were used for H. pylori antigen test. Results The prevalence of H. pylori infection among the study participants was 24.3%. The infection rate increased with increase in age of the participants, from 16.2% among 1to 5 years old to 27.2% among 6 to 10 years. Infections were higher among school going children (68/74, p=0.003, OR 3.9; CI: 1.5 to 10.6) and children from crowded households (59/74, p<0.001, OR 2.6, and CI 1.3 to 5.0), unsafe source of drinking water at schools (46/74, p=0.003), and lack of sanitary facility at homes (57/74, p=0.001, and OR 1.6 CI 0.7 to 3.6). Conclusion The prevalence of H. pylori infection among children aged 1 to 15 years at Holy Innocents Children's Hospital was high and increases with age. School attendance, lack of sanitary facility, lack of safe drinking water, and overcrowding were the risk factors associated with H. pylori infection.

Hrvatski tradicijski čestitarski ophodi, pohodi i običaji od Božića do Sveta tri kralja

U hrvatskoj tradicijskoj kulturi božićno vrijeme obuhvaća blagdane: Božić, Sveti Stjepan, Sveti Ivan, Nevina dječica, Silvestrovo, Nova godina i Sveta tri kralja. U radu se navodi i multidisciplinarno interpretira stotinjak primjera čestitarskih ophoda, pohoda i običaja od Božića do Sveta tri kralja. Ti primjeri nalaze se u literaturi od 1846. godine do naših dana, a sedamdesetak je primjera suvremenih izvornih terenskih zapisa iz Republike Hrvatske i Bosne i Hercegovine. Ti zapisi nastajali su od 2004. do 2017. godine. Neki čestitarski ophodi, pohodi i običaji iščezli su, neki su se modificirali i reducirali. U čestitarskim ophodima, pohodima i običajima ogledaju se pretkršćanski elementi. Običaj posipanja položaja žitom i položajnikovo kresanje vatre i izgovaranje želja za nastupajuću godinu ima panspermijsku funkciju. Kada bi položaj nakon položajenja došao blizu kuće svoje djevojke ukućani bi ga pozdravili pucanjem iz pušaka. Taj običaj imao je apotropejsku funkciju. Simbolično šibanje djece na blagdan Nevine dječice također ima apotropejsku funkciju. Istu funkciju ima i upotreba pirotehničkih sredstava u dočeku Nove godine. Taj običaj u hrvatskoj tradicijskoj kulturi nastao je u drugoj polovici 20. stoljeća i najmlađi je običaj koji se interpretira u radu.

The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe by Emily M. Rose

Reviewed by: The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe by Emily M. Rose Robert C. Stacey The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe. By Emily M. Rose. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. xvi, 394. $27.95. ISBN 978-0-1902-19628.) In 1144 a twelve-year old skinner's apprentice named William, a younger son in a clerical dynasty of some local note, was lured from his residence in Norwich and murdered by person or persons unknown. William's uncle, a married English priest named Godwin Sturt, accused the small, recently-established Jewish community of Norwich of the murder, but little seems to have come from this initial accusation. William's body was buried in the churchyard of Norwich Cathedral Priory, to which his family had some connections; but there it lay, largely ignored, until 1149, when the claim of Jewish culpability for William's murder was revived by William Turbe, the newly-elected Cathedral Prior, who used the charge to defend Simon de Novers, a local Norwich knight against allegations that Simon had murdered Deulesalt/Eleazar, the leader of the Norwich Jewish community, to whom Simon owed large sums of money. A year later a newly arrived monk of the Priory named Thomas of Monmouth took it as his life's mission to vindicate William not only as a victim of Jewish malice, but as a martyr and saint whose body and relics were a precious gift to Norwich Cathedral Priory. Thomas began composing his Life and Passion of William of Norwich in 1150. By the time he completed it, sometime after 1170, the claim that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children in a ritualized demonstration of anti-Christian animus had already been repeated in Gloucester (1168) and on the continent, where it led, in Blois (1171), to the execution by fire of more than thirty Jewish men, women, and children. Ten years later, this "blood libel" (or, as other historians will prefer, the "ritual crucifixion charge") was employed by King Philip II to justify the expulsion of all the Jewish communities from the Ile-de-France. From France the libel swept on to the rest of Europe, passing ultimately to Russia and the Middle East, where it continues even today to be repeated, promoted, and believed, with horrific consequences for Jews and Jewish communities that have rippled down through the centuries. Dr. Rose's new book is the boldest and most thoroughgoing of the many attempts over the past sixty years to make sense of this enormously consequential yet entirely specious claim. Her argument is straightforward, and in its broad strokes persuasive. Although Thomas of Monmouth was the first to give literary form to the blood libel, the libel spread not through Thomas's text, nor as a result of competition from rival pilgrimage centers for visitors, but as a result of the efforts of a series of political and religious authorities to make use of the charge for their own ends. In Gloucester, the libel was used to extort loans from the local Jewish community to support Earl Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare's (Strongbow) longshot invasion of Ireland. In Blois, Count Thibaut V used it, and the executions that resulted from it, to assert his independence from the growing strength of the Capetian monarchy. In Bury St. Edmunds, the alleged martyrdom of Robert of Bury at the hands of Bury's Jews was an element in Samson of Bury's successful [End Page 568] campaign to be elected Abbot; while in Paris, Philip II used the libel to clear Paris of Jews, so that he could redevelop the city into a modern commercial capital from which he profited handsomely. The sources for reconstructing this story are not plentiful, but Dr. Rose has done excellent work in unearthing plausible details about William's family and its clerical connections in East Anglia, and in emphasizing King Philip II's associations with the Cult of the Holy Innocents. These points will surely find their way into other historians' arguments. She is also clear and fair in addressing the contrary interpretations that...

The Fountain of the Innocents and its place in the Paris cityscape, 1549–1788

ABSTRACTThis article analyses how the Fountain of the Innocents appeared and also how it was used and perceived as part of the Paris cityscape. In the 1780s, the plan to transform the Holy Innocents’ Cemetery into a market cast doubt on the Fountain's future; earlier perceptions now shaped discussions over reusing it as part of the transformed quarter. The article documents how the Fountain was dismantled in 1787 and re-created the following year according to a new design, explaining why it was created in this form. Finally, the article considers what contemporary reactions to the remade Fountain reveal about attitudes toward the authenticity of urban monuments before the establishment of heritage institutions and societies.

Responsory prosae and the post-Christmas ‘Choir Solemnities’ at Salisbury Cathedral

ABSTRACTThe Christmas octave in the Sarum rite included the singing of prosae on Christmas Day and on the three days following Christmas – the feasts of St Stephen, St John the Evangelist and the Holy Innocents. After the Vespers preceding each of these three days, a procession was made to an appropriate altar in the church, during which a responsory was sung with its prosa and wordless melismas after each prosa verse, with two responsory prosae based upon the melody from Christmas. These processions featured, in turn, the deacons, the priests and the choirboys, vested in silken copes and carrying lighted candles, going to the altar of St Stephen, of St Peter and All Apostles, and of Trinity and All Saints (the Lady Chapel). Rubrics indicate their special character, especially for St Stephen, described as solemnitas diaconorum, but also for all three, described as being for the sake of deacons, priests and choirboys in turn. Processions to altars in Salisbury Cathedral were strictly limited to one each year; these processions took up those three altars, which then had no further processions on their proper days. The processions had been established during the initial building-phases of the cathedral, when only these three altars existed. This exceptional series of processions emphasised the distinct importance of the Christmas octave and honoured the hierarchy of the choir, who served the liturgy throughout the year.

The PAediatric Risk Assessment (PARA) Mobile App to Reduce Postdischarge Child Mortality: Design, Usability, and Feasibility for Health Care Workers in Uganda.

BackgroundPostdischarge death in children is increasingly being recognized as a major contributor to overall child mortality. The PAediatric Risk Assessment (PARA) app is an mHealth tool developed to aid health care workers in resource-limited settings such as Sub-Saharan Africa to identify pediatric patients at high risk of both in-hospital and postdischarge mortality. The intended users of the PARA app are health care workers (ie, nurses, doctors, and clinical officers) with varying levels of education and technological exposure, making testing of this clinical tool critical to successful implementation.ObjectiveOur aim was to summarize the usability evaluation of the PARA app among target users, which consists of assessing the ease of use, functionality, and navigation of the interfaces and then iteratively improving the design of this clinical tool.MethodsHealth care workers (N=30) were recruited to participate at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital and Holy Innocents Children’s Hospital in Mbarara, Southwestern Uganda. This usability study was conducted in two phases to allow for iterative improvement and testing of the interfaces. The PARA app was evaluated using quantitative and qualitative measures, which were compared between Phases 1 and 2 of the study. Participants were given two patient scenarios that listed hypothetical information (ie, demographic, social, and clinical data) to be entered into the app and to determine the patient’s risk of in-hospital and postdischarge mortality. Time-to-completion and user errors were recorded for each participant while using the app. A modified computer system usability questionnaire was utilized at the end of each session to elicit user satisfaction with the PARA app and obtain suggestions for future improvements.ResultsThe average time to complete the PARA app decreased by 30% from Phase 1 to Phase 2, following user feedback and modifications. Participants spent the longest amount of time on the oxygen saturation interface, but modifications following Phase 1 cut this time by half. The average time-to-completion (during Phase 2) for doctors/medical students was 3 minutes 56 seconds. All participants agreed they would use the PARA app if available at their health facility. Given a high PARA risk score, participants suggested several interventions that would be appropriate for the sociocultural context in southwestern Uganda, which involved strengthening discharge and referral procedures within the current health care system.ConclusionsThrough feedback and modifications made during this usability study, the PARA app was developed into a user-friendly app, encompassing user expectations and culturally intuitive interfaces for users with a range of technological exposure. Doctors and medical students had shorter task completion times, though all participants reported the usefulness of this tool to improve postdischarge outcomes.

MUSEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY IN CASTILLA Y LEÓN: THE HOLY INNOCENTS

En una region caracterizada por su extension, despoblacion y anemia economica, el recurso a la etnografia como sena identitaria de la accion museistica, especialmente a nivel local, ha generado varias oleadas de centros, apoyados o instados por las administraciones, y ha derivado en un panorama tanto mas nutrido como uniforme, en el que se echan en falta perspectivas renovadoras, divergentes, y una planificacion a escala territorial.

Peinture et bibelot: prégnance du pictural dans l’œuvre de Joris-Karl Huysmans par Jérémy Lambert

the topics that interest them are treated elsewhere. For example, although there are only two essays in the chapter on the danse macabre, it is discussed in other chapters. The Parisian Cemetery of the Holy Innocents has no single chapter devoted to it, but figures prominently in several essays. A broad spectrum of genres including epic and lyric poetry, Arthurian literature, beast epic, and romance share space with chapters organized around lies and suicide, laughing at death, and image and text. Carlos Clamote Carreto investigates the spilling of the martyr’s blood and the dismemberment of the epic hero. Vicenta Hernandez Alvarez ponders the cortege of words (38) announcing epic deaths. Pierre-Gilles Girault, observing death is everywhere in the Middle Ages (62), focuses on the pilgrim and the warrior, both journeying towards salvation.Agnès Echène considers the fatherless hero. Laurence Cousteix notes Merlin’s dis- and re-appearance in Arthurian literature. Lydie Lansard addresses the Passion of Christ in vernacular versions of the Gospel of Nicodemus. Jean-Louis Benoit expertly considers miracle stories, which are didactic but teach literarily rather than directly, and in which death lies on the path to eternal salvation.Alexandra-Kathrin StanislawKemenah provides close readings of Eustache Deschamps’s poems on senescence, wisdom and the ubi sunt motif. Caroline Denhez investigates the strange links between dance/(life) and death in the danse macabre. Karin Becker reads Martial D’Aubergne’s neglected Danse de femmes, based on an exhaustive tracing of the development of the danse macabre. ZoéVerveropoulou traces death’s cathartic working out in farce, a genre predicated on all death destroys: the body and its functions. Martijn Rus argues that in the Renaissance, death lost its absolute horror. Natalie Vrticka ponders post mortem silences and speech as signifiers of consolation and dis-illusion. Ji-Hyun Philippa Kim also examines stillness whether suicide or swoon. Ian Laurie stretches the death motif to argue compellingly that Eustache Deschamps suffered a double death, corporeal and literary.The Miroir de mariage,possibly three different works,may have been smoothed into cohesion by the poet himself, though interrupted by his death. Julie Singer locates Pierre de Hautville in indestructible loci, the cemetery, the poet’s own work, and the reader. Caroline Denhez returns the reader to the danse macabre and the inescapable connections between death and suffering, depicted satirically as the reader is asked to consider making his own good end. The volume concludes with Jean-François KostaTh éfaine’s own edition of Isabeau de Bavière’s will.This document lets us hear the voice of a medieval queen, who recognizes the diverse and deadly perils of her century. Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ) Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi Lambert, Jérémy. Peinture et bibelot: prégnance du pictural dans l’œuvre de Joris-Karl Huysmans. Paris: Champion, 2012. ISBN 978-2-7453-2495-5. Pp. 227. 25 a. Contemporary interest in exploring ways in which text and image are linked should make this careful study of the close relationship between Huysmans’s writing 276 FRENCH REVIEW 88.4 Reviews 277 and the art of painting of interest to many. Lambert describes and analyzes what he calls the pictorial esthetic that organizes Huysmans’s life and oeuvre, beginning with a short chapter on Huysmans’s genetic and esthetic heritage. Born into a family of painters, the young Huysmans visited his father in his studio every evening until he died when Huysmans was only eight. Lambert interprets Huysmans’s life—and work—as a quest for meaning inspired by idealization of the lost father. Substituting the pen for a paintbrush, perhaps, Lambert posits, due to a lack of confidence in his own talent for painting, Huysmans sought Baudelairean correspondences between word and image, literature and painting, this world and another, in all he did. He often portrayed aspects of his life and self-image in his characters, confirmed aesthetes (and bachelors) who sought to become their own creators by making of their lives original and unreproducible works of art. This compelling story gets somewhat lost as Peinture et bibelot progresses. Lambert offers a highly structured, carefully documented, and extremely dense study of various images, influences...

Protestant Animals: Puritan Sects and English Animal-Protection Sentiment, 1550–1650

Unprecedented animal-protection sentiments correlated strongly with zealous Protestantism in late Renaissance England. This inadvertent side-effect of Calvinism undermined the proud human exceptionalism based on rationality while exalting other virtues--simplicity, perseverance, blind obedience, and faithful service--more evident in livestock than in their human masters. Embattled Puritans identified with other holy innocents oppressed by arbitrary human authorities, and Civil War radicals fantasized a renewed Edenic (often vegetarian) co-existence. Calvinist soteriology provoked invocations of the Golden Rule, in hopes that gratuitous kindness to animals -- including the imputation of virtues and therefore rights--might model similarly gratuitous kindness to human souls from God.

‘Hic est vere Martyr, qui pro Christi nomine sanguinem suum fudit’: representations and reflections of violence and suffering in the responsoria prolixa of saints' offices in the ‘Codex Hartker’

ABSTRACTThis article aims to show the relevance of musical and musical-textual analysis of saints' offices in approaching socio-historical aspects of the Middle Age. It investigates the moral and socio-historical concepts conveyed by the responsoria prolixa in honour of martyred saints in the famous Codex Hartker (CH-SGs 390–391, c.1000). What were the right ways to deal with violence and suffering? Did these differ for men, women and children? In the analysis of responsories in honour of St Stephen, St Lawrence, the Holy Innocents, Sts Cecilia and Agatha, striking musical or textual-musical features which emphasise or even interpret the message of the text have repeatedly been found. The quantity and similarity of such observations lifts them out of the haze of arbitrariness Indeed, it is possible to identify gender-specific and role-specific differences with regard to the behaviours which enabled people to attain the degree of sainthood.

The Presence of Medieval English Literature: Studies at the Interface of History, Author and Text in a Selection of Middle English Literary Landmarks by Alan J. Fletcher (review)

alan j. fletcher, The Presence of Medieval English Literature: Studies at the Interface of History, Author and Text in a Selection of Middle English Literary Landmarks. Cursor Mundi 14. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2012. Pp. x, 304. isbn: 978-2-50353-680-4. euro 80.Approached as a summa of Alan J. Fletcher's distinguished career to this point, The Presence of Medieval English Literature: Studies at the Interface of History, Author, and Text in a Selection of Middle English Literary Landmarks repays attentive reading for its insightful treatment of a wide range of canonical Middle English texts. The book is really a loosely juxtaposed collection of essays, however, for its organizing logic amounts to little more than 'travels through the medieval English literary canon' (51) from a broadly historicizing perspective. Apprehended as a putatively unified whole, therefore, The Presence of Medieval English Literature adds up to rather less than the sum of its parts.This is unfortunate, since those constituent parts-chapter-length essays on The Owl and the Nightingale, Sir Orfeo, Pearl, Piers Plowman, works of Chaucer (chiefly The Canterbury Tales), and Malory's Morte Darthur-are often valuable on their own, individual merits. Chapters on Sir Orfeo and Pearl aie especially impressive, and I will treat them in more detail below. As I suggested above, however, the unifying logic by which the six core chapters have been stitched together is overly broad. Specifically, Fletcher's titular phrase, 'the presence of medieval English literature,' refers first to his selected texts' presence' today in the literary canon; his goal is to make these 'canonically privileged texts appear richer and stranger than they may hitherto have done...by restoring them to their [historical] moment in ways that allow aspects of their former presence to live again' (3). In practice, what this goal amounts to is historicist contextualization, typically the identification of an explanatory cultural lens for some element(s) of a given text (thus heresy for Chaucer's works, for example).Fletcher is at his most interesting when he bumps up against the limitations of this interpretive mode, as he does in the chapters on Pearl and Sir Orjeo; indeed, his chapter on Pearl is called, simply and powerfully, 'Pearl The Limits of History.' There, even as he identifies a new explanatory context for elements of the poem (preaching texts on the Feast of the Holy Innocents), he persuasively urges readers to 'guard against reading his [the /fc^rZ-poet's] text deterministically as if it were a thing available to be flattened into identity with matters that may have impinged upon it' (91). His chapter on Sir Orjeo, meanwhile, asks what explanatory contexts would have been available to medieval readers for the 'extraordinary chamber of horrors' (52) of folk taken to fairyland and then displayed there in various states of distress, death, or dismemberment. After considering three such explanatory contexts-aspects of Christianity, astrology, and fairy lore-that ultimately prove 'incapable of satisfactorily containing chaos in one totalizing explanation' (74), he concludes that 'the harper, and through him the consolidating power of performative culture that his harping represents, is allowed to become stability's champion' (79). These essays represent Fletcher at his best: widely read, intellectually curious, and interpretively nimble.The chapter on Malory will especially interest readers of Arthuriana, so I will summarize it at some length here. In 'Morte Darthur, the Endgame of Authority,' Fletcher argues that Malory's text is a meta-quest for stable sources of authority and meaning, and that although 'authority's traditional bedrocks may sometimes afford no absolutely secure foothold...Malory's sustained commitment to his authorityquest suggests his equally persevering belief, in principle, in authority's achievability (217). Most of the chapter is spent identifying 'tropes of authority' and 'formulas of authority' (I never fully understood the difference between these formulations, if any) that Malory evokes across his massive work. …