Wedding Feast Research Articles

Spatial Representation in European Popular Fairy Tale

Using selected examples, this article investigates the problem of spatial representation in European fairy tales and brings together a number of elements for a systematic analysis of its significance for narration. Aesthetic space, which Ernst Cassirer (30) distinguishes from mythical and theoretical space, constitutes in a general sense an artistically presented reality. The virtual space in narrative art, particularly in the folktale, can be regarded as such an aesthetic space, but one is not independent of the narrators personality and context (i.e., the narrator's performance), of the story's narrative perspective, of national or regional variants, or of oral and written adaptations. The European fairy tale creates two nonhomeomorphic worlds-a magical world of supernatural beings from the beyond, and a nonmagical one of normal human beings-worlds are divided from one another through occasionally fluid but sometimes also inflexible boundaries and frontier regions. With this first structure a second coexists in for the narrator and the listener both worlds belong in any case to the same magic virtual world of the fairy tale, which is clearly separated from their own real one. Between the areas of the here and the beyond there are crossings and frontier regions such as a bridge, river, pond, seashore, well or spring, stone, forest, thorns, and so on. The forest is a passage-way of particular importance. Its name alone (forest, wood) seems to characterize a scenic court (Meder 123). It is regarded, in both the real and metaphorical sense, as a place of mortal danger and forbidden desires (140).1 It is represented negatively as an antithesis of courtly urban society and linked to the stereotypical adjectives dark, huge, and lonely. And yet it is not always possible to distinguish, in the Euclidian sense, the spatial areas of the real and the other world. On the contrary, we are confronted with a fabled shifting of spheres. For example, when the hardworking daughter in the fairy tale Frau Holle (AT 480) is down in the underworld making the bed and energetically shaking out the bolster so that the feathers fly, then it is snowing in the world.2 And the vertical movement of the daughter's jump into the well is at variance with the horizontal movement of her homecoming, which happens not by arduous climbing up out of the depths, but simply by stepping out of the otherworld (Heindrichs 64). While the printed fairy tale relies solely upon linguistic means for spatial construction, the oral storyteller, who performs the tale and uses the additional elements made possible by performance, is able to transform the narrative space (composed of the narrator and the audience) into the narrated scene of the fairy-tale action, to make it visual. He does this by employing not only linguistic means of narration3 but also gestures and significant movements, and by using props or models to illustrate and visualize the story being told: the wine glass he moves back and forth across the table is at one moment the ship on which the hero sails the seas, at another an animal. In this way the space surrounding the storyteller is re-created as the world of adventure (Karlinger 266). At the beginning and end of the fairy tale the two worlds are at variance, and their synthesizing has to be established by narrative or by formula. A Breton storyteller, for example, achieves this in an amusing way at the end of his narrative by asserting he had never had a share of the wedding feast; instead, he had been given a kick sent him flying through the air to land in the chair he was now sitting in.4 His rhyming conclusion draws attention away from the fairy tale to the teller of tales, from the world was being described to the world of the narrator. Whereas the formulas at the beginning set the narrated fairy-tale world in a faraway place and a far-distant time in the past, the formulas at the end serve, among other things, to collate this narrated world with the world of the storyteller, the narrated space with the narrating space (Koll 3). …

A New Word on 'The Brothers Karamazov' by Robert Louis s> Jackson (review)

128 SEER, 83, I, 2005 Reticence on the part of Tolstoi is equally tantalizing. A large number of references to Dostoevskii appears in the index of names, but hardly any of them fall within letters penned by Tolstoi: despite frequent mentions of the writer and his works by Strakhov,Tolstoi is rarely drawn to comment. The notable exceptions are, of course, Tolstoi's expressionof grief at the death of Dostoevskii, and his measured response to Strakhov'spersonal attack upon his deceased collaboratorand erstwhilefriend. These well-known statements notwithstanding,it is intriguingto see that Tolstoi chose to say so little to his most valued correspondentabout Dostoevskii, when it might have produced an interestingperspectiveon many of the issuesdebated between them. This is where the value lies in being able to see both halves of the correspondence, because it is clear that the unwillingness to discuss Dostoevskii was not apparenton both sides. Other names appearing in the index, however, are testament to the wideranging nature of the interestsof both men, and their abilityto drawout and interlinkideas fromthe most diversesources.Given the easinessof navigation around the volumes, it is as equally rewarding to focus on one figure, for example Schopenhauer, and see how both Tolstoi and Strakhovengagedwith his philosophy, as it is to read severalconsecutive letters and watch the tone shift from the mundane and conversational to the lofty and abstract, or to chart the highs and lows of Tolstoi's emotional strength and witness the supportStrakhovlent him. The correspondence ended with Strakhov'sdeath in I896. We can only guessat what might have passedbetween them regarding,say,the publication of Resurrection, the creation of Whatis Art?,or Tolstoi's excommunication in I90I, had Strakhov lived longer. Tolstoi must have felt the absence of his friend most keenly at these moments. The last letter in the collection, written by Tolstoijust a few daysbefore Strakhov'sdeath, and which the latternever received, is annotated with Tolstoi'sreaction to the sad news in his diary:'Ia zhiv, no ne zhivu. Strakhov. Nynche uznal ob ego smerti' ('I am alive, but lifeless.Strakhov.Today I learntof his death')(p. 1029). This bleakstatement is, remarkably, the only expression of grief Tolstoi permitted himself in writing: there are no outpourings of feeling either in his letters around this time, or even furtheron in his diary.This fact goes unmentioned in Donskov's essay and would perhaps have merited some analysis, especially when compared to Tolstoi's reaction to the death of Dostoevskii, a man he never met. Here is where the value of a collection of letters can be most fully appreciated: when we catch a glimpse of the life beyond those parts documented on paper, of the essentiallyunfinalizableindividual. Department ofRussian andSlavonic Studies S. F. HUDSPITH University ofLeeds Jackson, Robert Louis (ed.).AJNew Word on'TheBrothers Karamazov'. Studiesin Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston , IL, 2004. Xii + 26I pp. Notes. $79.95. THE essays in this fine new collection edited by Robert Louis Jackson demonstratethe healthy state of contemporaryDostoevskiistudies.As Robin REVIEWS 129 FeuerMiller states in her lively introduction, many of the contributionsoffer refreshing new approaches to TheBrothers Karamazov, typically focusing on hithertorarelyconsideredmoments and motifsin the text. Forexample, Kate Holland'sexamination of 'thelegend of the ladonka' and Horst-JurgenGerigk's discussion of the door in Fedor'shouse on the night of the murder both crucial to Dmitrii's trial and conviction -introduce questions about the status of narrativewhich unite these seemingly minor details to the fabric of the novel as a whole. Particularlyevident is the profound and positive influence of recent work on the religious bases of the author's oeuvre by Russian scholars,which has opened up many new modes of analysis. Gary Saul Morson writes on the opposition of the 'eschatologicalhopes' of pure faith and 'the belief in small, prosaic acts of goodness' (p. Io8). Susanne Fussorelatesmasturbatorymotifs from A Raw Youth to Alesha's ecstatic response to his vision of the marriage feast at Cana, to suggest his achievement of spiritual manhood. Maxim D. Shrayer links Liza Khokhlakova's anti-Semitic anecdote about the crucifixionof a child to the incident with Captain Snegirev,to reconfigurethe latteras a scapegoat, and contextualize his son's revenge. Elsewhere, Donna Orwin...

A medical revolution in death-hastening decisions

On one level it was a perfectly ordinary wedding—elaborate floral bouquets adorned the room, the family's favorite lemon cake was covered in sugar-frosted curlicues and topped with traditional tiny statuettes of a happy couple, the bride's gown was splendid, and the wedding feast was complete with shrimp cocktail, filet mignon, and champagne. On another level, as the bride's mother, 58-year-old Amy Plasse slowly walked down the aisle, everyone in the hospital chapel knew that they were participating in an extraordinary event. This was the culmination of Amy's life; she had achieved her final goal—to witness the wedding of her only daughter. The way was prepared to stop the life-support treatment of dialysis and to end the prolongation of her suffering.

The Wedding Feast: Frans Snyders's Larder with a Maidservant

The Wedding Feast: Frans Snyders's Larder with a Maidservant

Culinary Exhibition: Victorian Wedding Cakes and Royal Spectacle

hen Adrian Harley, the pampered gourmand and theatrical voyeur of George Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), discovers that Richard has defied his father and married in secret, he takes it upon himself to inform the family of Richard’s nuptials. In a chapter called “The Procession of the Cake,” Adrian gleefully distributes pieces of Richard’s wedding cake to his shocked relatives, savoring the delicious spectacle of their outrage and disappointment and forcing upon them not only the knowledge of Richard’s mesalliance but also a kind of guilty complicity with the act. When Richard’s dyspeptic uncle and erstwhile guardian rejects the proffered morsel as poisonously rich, Adrian responds, “Your share you must take and appear to consume. One who has done so much to bring about the marriage cannot in conscience refuse his allotment of the fruits” (314). Accepting the cake would mean accepting the marriage, becoming a mute if somewhat belated witness to the ceremony. The rite of inclusion that Adrian stages as a series of unwelcome revelations is really nothing more than a warping and expansion of the wedding feast proper, since the distribution of the cake is always an apportioning of responsibility, an act of inclusion via gustatory performance. Issues of witness, responsibility, and performance have long swirled around critical discussions of the marriage ritual, from J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words (1962), in which the nuptial “I do” is the locus classicus of the performative speech act, to Andrew Parker and Eve Sedgwick’s discussion of the silent and corrosive interpellation of the queer wedding guest. As Parker and Sedgwick write of “the dynamic of compulsory witness” invoked by the marriage ceremony: “It is the constitution of a community of witnesses that makes the marriage; the silence of witnesses (we don’t speak now, we forever hold our peace) that permits it; the bare, negative, potent but undiscretionary speech act of our physical presence [. . .] that ratifies and recruits the

Paolo Veronese: piety and display in an age of religious reform

Introduction - Early career in Verona: Venice - the rooms of the Council of Ten in the ducal palace - Daniele Barbaro consolidation - the frescoes at Villa Barbaro Maser consoliation in Venice - San Sebastiano recognition and the revival of Venetian tradition when seeing is believing the master narrator - the mature secular narratives the master narrator - the mature religious paintings late style - the religious paintings piety and display. Part 1 From Verona to Venice: Venice - the heir of Constantinople and new Rome change in Venetian society and art Veronese the Venetian patrons Veronese's other patrons. Part 2 Public display, 1550-65: recognition Veronese and the tradition of the Venetian altarpieces Veronese and the tradition of Venetian ceiling painting San Sebastiano the ceiling of the Jesuit church of Santa Maria dell'Umilta Venetian tradition renewed Veronese and Catholic renewal. Part 3 Public display, 1566-88: the saint as martyr the Council of Trent and the cult of saints the saint as exemplar Veronese and the tradition of the Venetian altarpiece Christ's baptism and crucifixion lavish display in existing churches - San Giacomo, Murano San Nicolo ai Frari - Santa Maria Maggiore the new status. Part 4 Paintings for private display: smaller devotional paintings larger narrative paintings paintings for camere grandi - the Coccina palace Old and New Testament subjects for the Bonaldi - Charles Duke of Savoy, Simone Lando and Charles de Croy. Part 5 Christ's feasts and last supper: feast in the House of Simon, Turin the marriage feast at Cana feast in the house of Simon, San Sebastiano and S. Maria dei Servi feast of St Gregory the Great, Monte Berico feast in the house of Levi, SS. Giovanni e Paolo Last Supper, Santa Sophia.

The Arlecchino and Three English Tinkers

The Arlecchino and Three English Tinkers Nina daVinci Nichols In the certainty that he towered above his time, traditional criticism tends to deny that Shakespeare also was of his time, one in which Italian theater had been flourishing for nearlya century before London's first theaters were built. To the contrary, however, as Harry Levin points out, Shakespeare "was not less but more responsive than others to the currents ofhis age.... He had achieved them by using the same materials and techniques that they [the Italians] did and can be most fully understood in the light of conditions they shared."1 In a spirit of inquiry about such shared conditions and theatrical cross-currents from approximately 1590 to 1625, 1 consider the likelihood that the Arlecchino, star ofcommedia dell'arte, served as godfather to several English player-fools, from Shakespeare's drunken tinker Christopher Sly, to his singing tinker Autolycus, to Chapman's riddling tinker, Capriccio. Each stands in a dappled shadow of Italy's nimble impersonator and each excites a consciousness of fooling as deeply antiauthoritarian. Whether or not an Arlecchino ever visited England, he seems to glimmer like a sprite in these characters, whose respective works bear other signs of Italian appropriation —a pivotal reason for my choosing to examine them. To position my argument theoretically: theArlecchino oícommedia synthesizes several traditions about fools in folklore, myth, medieval drama, and sixteenth-century styles of playing, both in theaters and on the piazze. These wide-ranging antecedents, many with near parallels in England and Europe, add to the probabilitythat reports ofanArlecchino usually, unknowingly, refer to the archetypal impersonator who is liminal , transformational, and without apropriapersona. He becomes a character onlywhen in a particular role. Even then, to the extent that fooling and role-playing always pull against the grain ofromantic plot and character , fools are appositional outsiders, perched at the edge of a drama 145 146Comparative Drama and more accurately defined in theatrical rather than representational terms. The archetypal fool might present himself to the playwright's imagination as a sketch, a ghost, a template, so to speak, as insubstantial as fools by their own report, capricious nothings. Some such concept reputedly inspired Moliere, Gozzi, Goldoni, Marivaux, and Pirandello— and I propose, inferentially, may well have inspired Shakespeare and his contemporaries.2 Additionally, certain kinds of fools seem to be as thoroughly integrated into comic situations or theatrical strategies as borrowed literary texts are in a finished work. Just as a pastoral like Guarini's much translated IlPastorFido was reinvented in Italyand flourished in Shakespeare's late plays, so some roles travel with a particular form. Critics have noticed such resemblances as "intertextuality," referring to a hypothetical descent ofstrategies or situations from a common ancestral text. Analogously ,Arlecchino would be a"text" composed oftheatrical and historical legacies, traits, styles, actions, and emblematic signs called upon by performance ofa role. One action repeated in scenari with anArlecchino, for instance, strongly suggests that either he or one ofhis near ancestors appeared in the earliest known Dialogue in commedia style (1568), almost a scenario, performed as the entertainment at a wedding feast and illustrated on the walls ofTrausnitz castle.3According to its description, the action involving a Zanni and a Magnifico grew out of a recognition scene dramatizingthe antitheses ofauthorityand antiauthority.The scene became standard in full scenari and crucial to romance plots that hinge on one or more mysterious identity. Shakespeare wrote both comic and tragic variations on the basic recognition scene in all but three of his plays. Finally, the theme of transformation in Renaissance comedy, romance , and masque relied for its expression on spectacle—acting, singing , dancing, sets, and staging. Comment about these and their relation to commedia draws on records and illustrations once considered idiosyncratic ratherthan authoritative evidence: diaries,playbills, broadsides, reports of performances by private persons, and like materials. I admit to guesswork about the Arlecchino who appears in these sources since he is, literally, manifested only in disguises, inversions, doubles, and a whirlwind of illusory roles assumed in the interests of transformation. Nina DaVinci Nichols147 About this, a reminder: Commedia was theater without a playwright; thus, a theater of actors; thus essentially theater about theater. Its...

In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Modern Reform Rural China (review)

Reviewed by: In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Modern Reform Rural China Margaret Swain (bio) Xin Liu . In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Modern Reform Rural China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000. 245 pp. Hardcover $45.00, ISBN 0-520-21993-7. Paperback $15.95, ISBN 0-520-21994-5. Xin Liu's carefully crafted ethnography of rural life in late twentieth-century central China carries the reader deep into Shaanxi loess country along dusty paths, across valleys and hilltops, into the cave houses for which this region is renowned, and then into the lives of the people themselves. His research site of Zhaojiahe is geographically situated between Xi'an, an ancient capital highly symbolic of imperial Chinese civilization, and Yan'an, Mao's headquarters, often labeled in popular discourse as the cradle of the communist revolution. Located within such opposite poles, in the back of the beyond, this Han community is neither highly cultured nor on the cutting edge of current government reforms. In a kind of moral geography, Liu explores ideas about backwardness—being in the shadow of the modernizing process. We hear stories, familiar to anyone living in and/or studying contemporary Chinese society, of deprivation, ideological struggles, personal trials and triumphs, family relations, and economic reforms. The acuity of Liu's dynamic analysis of everyday practice, in tension with cultural production and symbolic forms of the modernizing countryside, makes this a notable book. The introductory chapter frames local practices with the phrase "dead brains" (sinaojin), applied by an out-migrating youth to people left behind, meaning those so backward, so incapacitated, that they can make no changes in their lives. In contrast to those who leave, the villagers who remain have great nostalgia for the good old days of collectivism under Mao. They are deeply suspicious of a present that devalues peasant status and marginalizes their way of life. These folks are Liu's fascinating subjects. To analyze their lives, Liu engages a [End Page 189] theoretical orientation built from Pierre Bourdieu's and Michel Foucault's notions of individual and collective practice. From this perspective he critiques two tendencies that he perceives in scholarship about Chinese society: a lack of attention to the social unconscious embodied in everyday experience and a focus on state-driven power dynamics overlooking the practices that constitute constantly changing subject positions (p. 25). Liu successfully portrays and explains the complexity of these everyday lives in a world made inexplicable through political and economic transformation. This is a community mired in an "immoral politics" of arbitrary meanings that inform their negotiations and relationships. Xin Liu has brought to his ethnographer's task a "halfie" perspective—that of someone who partially understands from his own lived experience just what is going on. As an urbane Beijing native, Liu has an insider's view of the political economy while being a cultural interloper—about the same as any of his university colleagues. This dynamic of knowing but not knowing the moral economy of Zhaojiahe shapes Liu's analysis. The depth of his understanding comes from diligence as well as theorizing. Woven throughout the book are reminders of how Liu felt, what was uncomfortable, pleasing, or confusing as he puzzled out just why people were acting the way they did. Some of these actions seem inexplicable as they are first described by Liu, who then parses them as signs of the times. For example, the knock-down brawl of two lipstick-smeared grannies at a wedding feast (p. 147) is seen by Liu as violence that has immediate bodily meaning, but no order. These images stick in your mind, and this book is a pleasure to teach with. Students will grasp Liu's clear presentation of practice theory and then plunge into the lives of people in Zhaojiahe. They will be intrigued by the contrast between Liu's analysis and other contemporary scholarship on guanxi relations and reciprocity. The minutiae of household arrangements—what it is like to live in carefully circumscribed spaces of kang platform, cave house (yao), and walled courtyard (yuanzi), and the dynamics...

"That You Came so Far to See Us": Coleridge-Taylor in America

By time that Samuel Coleridge-Taylor made his first visit to United States in 1904, American audiences were not only aware of status of this young musician as foremost composer and conductor of England but, by degrees, were also becoming acquainted with his music. Following European model, American choral organizations had historically adopted masterworks of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn as staples of their repertory. But in year following London premiere of Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, American choral societies began to tackle this experimental and work, which was based on words of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. On March 23, 1899, Temple Choir of Brooklyn, New York, performed Hiawatha's Wedding Feast (Janifer 1967, 187). Almost a year later, on March 14, 1900, highly respected Cecilia choral organization of Boston performed work under baton of J. B. Lang, repeating it two days later in response to high demand. In 1901, society added Hiawatha's Departure to its repertory and in 1903 performed it again along with The Death of Minnehaha. According to records of New York Public Library dated May 2, 1901, Albany Musical Association of New York gave first United States performance of trilogy, known as The of Hiawatha (187). A highly significant early performance of portions of Hiawatha music took place in Winsted, Connecticut, on June 5, 1901. The Litchfield County Choral Union of Norwalk, Connecticut, then a young and little-known choral society, presented Hiawatha's Wedding Feast and The Death of Minnehaha at its spring festival with an ideal assembly of musical forces. Soloists and a chorus of 190 members were accompanied by sixty instrumentalists selected from orchestras of Philharmonic Society and Metropolitan Opera House, New York, conducted by Arthur Mees. The lengthy program included arias from Wagner's Tannhauser and Die Meistersinger, Indian Bell Song (Vaill 1912a, 64, 65) from Delibes' Lakme, and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2. (1) Coleridge-Taylor was made an honorary member of Littlefield County Choral Union, only second person to receive this distinction, which was later accorded composers such as Saint-Saens, Horatio Parker, Sibelius, and George Chadwick. Comments on choral union program highlighted position of new entry into America's choral music repertory. The Hartford Courant observed, It is well known how shy old-established societies are of new works, as almost inevitable deficits have made them timid; and so money-sure 'Elijah' and 'Messiah' are in a sense stagnating influences (quoted in Vaill 1912a, 66, 67). The writer described Hiawatha works as intensely modern and fascinating for a strangely weird cast of melody and brilliant, sumptuous instrumentation. His conclusion that the chorus is now on record as one of best in State, suggests that he considered ability to sing Scenes from Hiawatha a defining test of a choir's excellence. Indeed, a certain prestige came with successful presentation of Hiawatha music and brought fame to Litchfield County Choral Union, especially in Europe. The Litchfield County Choral Union was an unusual organization. Established in 1899, it consisted in 1907 of nearly seven hundred singers from five choral groups in Litchfield area--the Norfolk Glee Club, Winsted Choral Union, Salisbury Choir, Canaan Choral Society, and Torrington Musical Association (Vaill 1912b, 208). The latter, last to be admitted, presented second performance of Hiawatha music for community in 1907. The groups performed together in a series of festivals established and largely supported by Carl Stoeckel and his wife, Ellen Battell Stoeckel. Carl Stoeckel, a philanthropist and patron of music and soon to be a good friend of Coleridge-Taylor, was son of Gustav Stoeckel, first head of Yale University School of Music; Ellen Stoeckel was daughter of Norfolk jurist and philanthropist Robbins Battell, a man of considerable wealth, in whose honor festivals were established (Vaill 1912a, 23-24). …

WHAT IF JUDGES HAD BEEN WRITTEN BY A PHILISTINE?

AbstractJudges 13-16, the saga of Samson, is a text that, in popular imagination, is typically described as depicting the exploits of the heroic Samson against the Philistine barbarians. But, in fact, as commentators have often pointed out, Samson, although endowed with superhuman strength in this tale, is otherwise something of a fool and a boor: posing an unfair riddle at his wedding feast, engaging again and again in acts of violent destruction, and revealing the secret of his uncut hair to Delilah even though she has made clear that she intends to summon the Philistines to seize him after rendering him powerless. Yet however stupid Samson and however forthright Delilah are depicted as being in their interactions together, popular imagination again has almost always remembered Delilah as the evil seductress who leads the helpless Samson astray. Philistine interpreters, though, might well have remembered Delilah as an equivalent of the Israelite hero Jael: as a woman who, in terms of ethnicity, seems to stand outside of the dispute in which she plays a role; as a woman who is not necessarily a part of the household of a father or husband; and as a women depicted in terms of erotic imagery that is primarily maternal in nature. From a Philistine point of view, that is, Delilah might well bear the epithet Israelite tradition awards to Jael in Judg. 5:24: "most blessed of women."

Malory: Texts and Sources by P.J.C. Field (review)

110arthuriana p.j.c. field, Malory: Texts and Sources. Arthurian Studies XL. Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, N.Y: Boydell & Brewer, 1998. Pp. x, 313. isbn: 0-85991-5360. $90. Malory: Text and Sources assembles twenty-three essays which the learned and assiduous P.J.C. Field published separately in edited collections and scholarly journals between 1972 and 1996. As one would expect from the reviser of The Works ofSir Thomas Malory cd. Eugene Vinaver, Third Edition, a concern with the texts ofboth Caxton and Winchester dominates a number of essays, including "I he Earliest Texts of Malory's Morte Darthur,' 'Author, Scribe and Reader in Malory: The Case of Harleuse and Peryne,' and 'Malory's Place-Names: Westminster Bridge and Virvyn.' Several essays are combative in tone. 'Caxton's Roman War' deals with an academic controversy initiated at the Exeter Arthurian Congress in 1975 when a paper by William Matthews proposed that Malory himself revised from a longer account the version of the Roman war which Caxton printed. Charles Moorman's defence of the theory, published in Arthuriana (5.2 Summer, 1995), Field, relying on Yuji Nakao's statistical proof, condemns as 'inaccurate,' 'implausible,' and 'false.' Claude Luttrell's complaint that the hunt associated with Arthur's wedding feast is obscure and confused in the Morte compared with its French source (Arthurian Literature IX, 1989) is countered in 'Hunting, Hawking and Textual Criticism in Malory's Morte Darthur.' Not only had the English author developed a different kind ofstory-telling technique, one that aimed at conciseness, speed, and heightened suspense, but his own expertise in hunting matters led him to add realistic details that departed from the French source. Moreover, some discrepancies can be blamed on scribal error. Medievalists are suigeneris hypothesists. Expressions such as 'perhaps,' ' suppose,' 'would have had to have been,' 'something very like it could well have appeared,' and 'a reasonable guess' are frequent throughout this collection. Sometimes the assumption of lost manuscripts and scribal additions or errors is used to support theories when mere coincidence might provide a more reasonable explanation. Consider Malory and The WeddingofSir Gawain andDame Ragnell which proposes Malory as the author of the metrical romance. In the fifteenth century when the London standard ofEnglish prevailed in written works and when the language had not yet been enriched by abundant Renaissance imports, a commonality ofdiction and expression, particularly in the romance genre, is more likely to explain the seven examples ofsimilar wording. Nor do the common motifs relating to hunting, marriage, and happy endings prove that one work was drawn from the other. One is also dubious about the number ofbooks that this impoverished knightprisoner , a military man not a scholar, is said to have known. Given that the 800 volume library ofCharles V, which the Duke ofBedford acquired in 1425, contained only thirteen Arthurian texts, it is unlikely that in addition to his five major French sources and two English metrical romances Malory could also have acquired Perlesvaus, Arthur and Merlin, The Avowing ofArthur, Lybeaus Desconus, Ywain and REVIEWS111 Gawain, the Suite de Merlin, Robert de Baron's Joseph, Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain, Lancelot and Erec, Sir Triamour, Girart d'Amiens' Escanor, not to mention Hardyng's Chronicle, Chaucer's Trodus, Knight's Tale' and 'Franklin's Talc' and other volumes as suggested in 'Malory's Minor Sources,' 'Malory and Perlesvaus! 'Malory and Chrétien de Troyes' et al—to which Field adds, Tt is unlikely that we yet have a full list.' On the subject ofwhat particular manuscripts constituted Malory's 'Frensshe bookes,' however, 'Malory and the French prose Lancelot' describes a procedure which might bring us closer to answering this perennial question. Using as his base the sixteen Lancelot manuscripts now in the British Isles along with Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MSS fr. 119-20, Field compares the Malory text, episode by episode, with the French texts and tabulates significant agreements. The results indicate that in choosing as his yardstick London, British Library Additional MS. 10293, Vinaver 'could hardly have chosen worse.' Alexander Michas Lancelot, based on Oxford, Bodleian MS. Rawlinson D.899 is closer, giving a better image ofMalory's source manuscript 'which must have stemmed from early...

Reflections on Rhiannon and the Horse Episodes in "Pwyll"

The group of stories known collectively as The Four Branches of the Mabinogi contains some of the most fascinating and vigorously disputed material in the entire medieval Welsh literary corpus. It is in the first of these four tales, Pwyll Prince of Dyfed, that the enigmatic figure of Rhiannon features most prominently. The text is full of tantalizing hints that she is more than simply a British chieftain's daughter who happens to take a fancy to the Prince of Dyfed. Rather, she seems to be a complex blend of euhemerized Celtic goddess, fairy mistress, folktale heroine, and elegantly imagined literary character. In this discussion I shall be focusing on two specific incidents in the first Branch which may help shed light on certain aspects of this mixed parentage. Pwyll tells the story of the early career and marriage of the Prince of Dyfed and the plot falls fairly neatly into three sections. In the first Pwyll meets the Otherworld king Arawn while hunting and exchanges forms and kingdoms with him for the space of a year. The second section deals with Pwyll's meeting with and subsequent marriage to Rhiannon, daughter of Hefeydd Hen. In this part, Pwyll first encounters his future bride by sitting upon a magic mound near his court at Arberth, from which he observes Rhiannon riding by on a slow-moving white horse. No matter how fast his messengers gallop after her, they are unable to overtake the lady until Pwyll on the third try calls out to her to wait. They then arrange to marry, despite the fact that Rhiannon has been promised to another man, Gwawl son of Clud. Pwyll foolishly manages to promise away his wife at the wedding feast, but a year later wins her back by following her clever advice to trick Gwawl into climbing into a magic sack. In the third section, the story has advanced three years and there are grumblings at court because Rhiannon has not produced an heir. Pwyll rejects advice to divorce her and she soon thereafter gives birth to a son. The baby then vanishes mysteriously from his mother's chamber and the terrified maidservants smear puppies' blood on Rhiannon to frame her for infanticide and cannibalism. While Rhiannon suffers penance by sitting next to a mounting block and offering to carry court visitors on her back, some distance away in Gwent there are other strange happenings. The local lord, Teyrnon, who has lost his mare's newborn foal on May Eve of every year, keeps watch this time in the stable and encounters a monstrous claw which reaches in to steal the animal. After cutting it off and rushing outside to find the monster vanished, he re-enters the stable and discovers a baby boy wrapped in silk. Teyrnon and his wife raise the child, Gwri Golden-Hair, as their own until it gradually dawns on them that he is the missing heir of Dyfed. All is then resolved happily, with Rhiannon restored to favor and the boy renamed Pryderi (anxiety or loss). There is an abundance of scholarship dealing with Rhiannon, much of it concerned with her apparent relationship to horses.l This equine connection is manifested as follows: Rhiannon first appears riding a magic steed which outstrips all pursuers without galloping; when falsely accused of devouring her child, Rhiannon is condemned to sit by a mounting block and offer to carry visitors to the court on her back; Rhiannon's baby is apparently abducted by the same mysterious agency that carries off Teyrnon's foals every year and is rescued in a stable along with the laststolen colt; Gwri at three years old would bargain with the grooms of the horses to let him take them to water (lines 552-53)2 and is soon given the colt which Teyrnon rescued along with him; and in the Third Branch, Manawydan, Rhiannon and Pryderi are imprisoned in the Otherworld with asses' collars around their necks. The prevailing interpretation of this material is that Rhiannon is the literary descendant of a British goddess called *Rigantona (roughly, Great Queen) who was herself a regional variant of the widely-attested Continental divinity Epona whose mythic affinity to horses has never been seriously in dispute. …

Harlequin, Holberg and the (In)visible Masks:Commedia dell'artein Eighteenth-Century Denmark

The profound influence of thecommedia dell'arteon European theatre is commonly acknowledged, although it has not yet been extensively analysed. In Northern Europe some of its first traces are iconographic. There are masked Venetian characters among the paintings collected by the Danish king Christian IV. The first such masks to appear in a Danish context are three Pantaloons acting as stage hands in a court ballet which was part ofDet store Bilager(‘The Great Wedding Feast’), the grandiose festivities celebrating the Crown Prince's wedding in 1634. Later, German troupes may have presented harlequinades. The first reliable accounts of Italian actors playing in Denmark feature a certain Venetian comedian-charlatan: Sebastiano di Scio, known as Harlekino, who travelled the country with a twenty-four strong entourage, at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was employed as a royal comedian and physician, and furnished the Royal household with obscure medicines for obscure diseases. The combination of comedian and charlatan is, of course, typical.

Mary, Mother of Jesus: Sketch of a Theology

Before God created, he knew what he would reveal and how he would save us. So, he included in creation all the realities he would use to make himself and his plan for us known, and to carry out that plan. Among those realities are sex and the interpersonal relationships that presuppose sex. Thus, God created fathers and sons so that he could reveal himself as Father and Son, and call us to be children in the divine family; he created marriage, so that he could faithfully love Israel as his unfaithful wife, make the Church the Lord Jesus’ spotless bride, and promise an unending heavenly marriage feast. He made both motherhood and virginity possible, so that the incarnate Word could be both the Son of God and the son of Mary, whose virginity points to Jesus’ divine origin and personhood, and whose motherhood manifests his humanity.The Incarnation, considered as the coming to be of the created humanity assumed by the Word, neither began nor ended at the Annunciation. Part of any human individual's make up and identity is having ancestors, living within a tradition, belonging to a community, and sharing its culture. Thus, the whole history of Israel is necessary for Jesus to come to be as the man he is and to live the life he lives. Mary in particular contributes to Jesus’ make up and very identity. To regard her as simply and absolutely other than the Lord Jesus is either to deny the Incarnation or to suppose that a real human individual can be only contingently related to his or her parents—to suppose that each of us could have had other parents while remaining the same individual.

Marriage, Markets, and Merchants: Changes in Wedding Feasts and Household Consumption Patterns in Rural Kazakstan

In recent years, economic anthropologists have become increasingly interested in the relationship between consumption and social experience, especially in connection with the consumption of global commodities (Friedman 1994; Miller 1987,1995; Rutz and Orlove 1989; Tobin 1992). Throughout the world, goods such as food and clothing are used in distinct ways by different social groups and classes (Bourdieu 1984; Douglas and Isherwood 1979; Weismantel 1988). The recent anthropological literature on consumption stresses that preferences do not simply reflect social and cultural diversity. Rather, consumption is an activity that can create and change social relationships and systems of meaning (Miller 1987; Rutz and Orlove 1989; Wilk 1994). By emphasizing the social component of consumption, scholars have brought attention to the various motives for consuming particular goods and the contested meanings assigned to this behavior. And, since local cultural meanings are attached to the consumption of outside goods, they argue that consumption does not signify a naive emulation of Western culture or a loss of local cultural authenticity (Miller 1995; Wilk 1994). In rural Kazakstan, large ceremonial feasts for weddings and circumcisions provide a valuable lens for observing the link between household consumption and social relationships. Conspicuous consumption—and conspicuous exchange—are a central part of these feasts. Despite the perception and reality of economic hardship during the post-Soviet transition to a market economy, rural Kazaks have continued to spend large portions of their income and resources at frequent, extravagant feasts. Most rural Kazaks estimate that over half of their household income is spent on feast gifts. Elsewhere I examine how the exchange of gifts and labors at ritual events helps rural Kazaks maintain invaluable household networks (Werner 1997). In this paper, I focus on the meanings behind the consumption and exchange of foods and objects, respectively, at wedding feasts. I am particularly interested in the ways rural Kazaks use both local and imported goods to establish social status and identity in the post-Soviet period. Examples are taken from the various foods and gifts associated with wedding feasts and festivities. In the following section, I provide a brief description of marriage in rural Kazakstan, followed by a more thorough treatment of the foods and gifts exchanged at Kazak weddings.

The Man of Edessa, Bishop Rabbula, and the Urban Poor: Church and Society in the Fifth Century

The Man of God of Edessa, Bishop Rabbula, and the Urban Poor: Church and Society in the Fifth Century Han J. W. Drijvers (bio) The history of the Man of God from the city of Rome who was victorious and crowned by works of poverty in the city of Edessa in the days of the illustrious and holy priest Mar Rabbula, bishop of this city of Edessa, 1 as the heading of the Syriac text reads, is the earliest version of the well-known medieval legend of Saint Alexius. 2 The saint, offspring of a very wealthy Roman family, hated riches and choose a life of complete renunciation of worldly goods and of fasting. He ought to be called an angel, the hagiographer tells us, because he despised all the pleasures of this world. 3 [End Page 235] His parents possessed all the wealth and fame of this world, but their marriage was childless. Through many prayers, tears, and vows they at last got a son, who would become our saint. When this boy had reached the appropriate age, he was sent to school but did not pay any attention to mundane knowledge and instead devoted himself very seriously to the study of more lasting divine things. His father and mother were rather worried about this strange behaviour and, believing him to be simple-minded, tried to cheer him up by sending him beautiful slave girls which he, however, with lowered eyes sent away. His parents, however, did not give up their hope—most parents never do—found him a wife and arranged a pompous wedding to which the entire city was invited. The first day of the wedding feast, when the bride was to arrive and make her appearance, the bridegroom asked one of his best men to accompany him to the harbor. There the bridegroom took a walk all alone and prayed to God for the fulfilment of his true desire, a chaste life. God sent a ship at his prayer; he boarded it, and it brought him to Seleucia, the harbour of Antioch in Syria. 4 He traveled eastwards and at last arrived in Edessa, the city of the Parthians, where he spent the rest of his life begging. During the daytime he stayed in the church. Although a beggar he accepted nothing from anybody and spent the day fasting. At the beginning of the evening he took a standing-place at the door of the church and begged for alms from the devout. When he, however, had received enough for a simple daily meal, he closed his hand. When eventually he had got more than he needed, he gave the surplus to the poor, who abided in the church yard and among whom he lived. At night, when all the other poor were asleep, he stood up and passed the night praying, standing against a wall or a column with outstretched arms in the form of a cross. 5 Before dawn he entered the church to attend the first service, the officium nocturnum, and stayed there during the rest of the day. He told nobody about his former status and grandeur and did not even reveal his name, so that no one could discover his former glory. The saint’s parents naturally were overwhelmed by grief about their prodigal son and despatched their slaves to search for him in all harbours and in all countries. A Christian slave, one of the [End Page 236] saint’s former servants, arrived at Edessa in his search and informed Rabbula, the glorious Edessene bishop, about the Man of God and his high descent. But Rabbula obviously could not find him and did not even believe this strange story. Needless to say, the servants did not recognize their former master in the humble beggar in rags who stood at the entrance of the church. One night, however, the paramonarius, the doorkeeper of the church saw the humble saint standing and praying with outstretched arms like the crucified among the sleeping poor. Once his attention was drawn to it, he observed the same scene every night, so that he at last approached the saint and asked him from where he was...

Chaucer’s Ovidian Arts of Love by Michael A. Calabrese

REVIEWS and thus are "the expression of a body of ideas" (p. 123). Noting that Chaucer's techniques for characterization can be considerably more com­ plex than simply playing off conventional materials, Brown introduces calendar images of January portrayed as the two-faced god of antiquity who--in medieval depictions-becomes a solidly prosperous two-faced man, looking back on the past and forward to the future and intent on indulging himself in the seasonal activities of eating and drinking. The lavishness of January and May's wedding feast thus highlights how Chaucer draws on nature myths to enrich his portrayal ofJanuary. A number of formatting elements enhance the book's usefulness: ques­ tions precede and follow discussion ofthe text, helping to focus the reader's attention on relevant issues and guiding teachers interested in using this material with their students; an annotated bibliography at the end of each chapter functions as a ready resource for those wishing to meander further down the interpretive pathways the book has traced; a detailed index makes specific information easily accessible. Brown sees Chaucer's artistic purposes--entertaining his audience and encouraging dialogue on contemporary issues-as closely linked with the social milieu that gave him patronage. Although Brown's discussion-by virtue of the texts and images he selects-unavoidably leans more heavily in some directions than in others, he strives to facilitate analysis, to point toward fruitful avenues for exploration rather than to strain after definitive readings. In the spirit of Chaucer's own distaste for authoritative guides, Brown eschews the role of master-interpreter and presents his readers with a method that is adaptable to other passages and tales. Overall, his work helps students move quickly beyond the "roadside drama" approach and the focus on "realistic" detail; it directs them toward more contextual criti­ cal analysis. Readable and imaginative, it is a user-friendly resource for anyone seeking ro better understand Chaucer's compositional methods and to deepen acquaintance with a poet who prefers "open-ended debate rather than conclusive moral teaching" (p. 10). LILLIAN M. BISSON Marymount University MICHAEL A. CALABRESE. Chaucer's Ovidian Arts ofLove. Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1994. Pp. x, 170. $29.95. Chaucer's Ovidian Arts ofLove presents a close reading of Chaucer's Troilus, The Wife of Bath's Prologue, and the Retraction. Professor Calabrese reads 183 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER these texts against the textual tradition he calls the "medieval Ovid," a tradition that encompasses Ovidian texts in context, an "extending web of scholastic and poetic texts, treatments and testimonies" (p. 3). In Cala­ brese's terms, it is Ovid-the-love-poet-the author of the Ars Amatoria, the Remedia Amoris, the Heroides, and the Amores-that Chaucer studied and rewrote. In addition, Calabrese focuses as well on Ovid's "civic perils"­ especially his exile, understood in the Middle Ages as imperial punishment for the lascivious content of the Ars Amatoria. The Ovidian commentary tradition, with its interest in the ethical interpretation of an author's "life" as well as "art," offered Chaucer a "model of the life of a lascivious poet who had to answer for his crimes" (p. 21). Calabrese posits that Chaucer, as a vernacular poet alongside Boccaccio and Jean de Meun, confronted the contradictory nature of medieval re­ sponses to Ovid's love poetry. Ovidian amatory texts were simultaneously central to the canon and to vernacular poetics yet frequently condemned for their seductive dangers, a condemnation that elides rhetorical and erotic appeal. Calabrese briefly analyzes an anonymous fourteenth-century poem, the Antiovidianus, as an example of a countertradition to the ethical recu­ peration of Ovid's art and life in the conventional accessus. For Calabrese, it is this contradictory response to Ovidian art and life, rhetoric and desire, that Chaucer negotiates in the erotic machinations of the Troilus, through the subject position of the Wife of Bath, and in the authorial self-con­ sciousness of the Retraction. In two chapters at the center of the book, Calabrese reads Chaucer's Troilus as a vernacular narrative exploration of the Ars Amatoria and the Remedia Amoris. In this schema, Pandarus becomes identified as the quint­ essential Ovidian...

The Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast (Matthew 22:1-14) and the Parable of the Lame Man and the Blind Man (Apocryphon of Ezekiel)

The Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast (Matthew 22:1-14) and the Parable of the Lame Man and the Blind Man (Apocryphon of Ezekiel)

The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity

Reviewed by: The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity Celia Marshik The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity. Mary Russo. New York: Routledge, 1994. Pp. 233. $16.95 (paper). Russo sets out to relate the grotesque body to “spatial and temporal dimensions of modern spectacle” (6) and to explore the possibilities of the grotesque for a feminism she characterizes as too concerned with appearing mainstream (12). While her analysis draws on various theoretical traditions, Russo largely builds on Peter Stallybrass and Allon White’s argument that “the grotesque returns as the repressed of the political unconscious, as those hidden cultural contents which by their abjection had consolidated the cultural identity of the bourgeoisie” (8–9). 1 She foregrounds the interdependence of the grotesque and the normal and argues that the grotesque body provides “room for chance” within “the very constrained spaces of normalization” (11), incorporating “female exceptionalism” and the “monstrous and lacking,” taking in both “high” and “low” bodies (22–23). Crossing centuries, national borders, and genres, her cultural-studies inquiry suggestively juxtaposes grotesqueries from Amelia Earhart’s stunt flying to Georges du Maurier’s serial novel Trilby and David Cronenberg’s gynecological nightmare Dead Ringers. Russo contests traditional readings of these bodies as victimized and powerless, [End Page 183] arguing that “the assumption of death, risk, and invisibility may be the price of moving beyond a narrow politics of identity and place” (48). Risk is “not a bad thing to be avoided” (10), but neither should feminists normalize the figure at risk as “a safe woman” (29). Russo uses the grotesque as an intriguing model for alternative communities that would tolerate heterogeneity. Her analysis of the wedding feast in Tod Browning’s Freaks argues that the celebration is characterized by “a sense of solidarity and community [that] emerges from the participants’ collective differences” (90). The grotesque body does not necessarily point the way to a utopian spaceÑfor Russo’s purposes, Freaks is marred by a “normalizing narrative of sexual relations” (93)Ñbut she poses the interesting question of whether and how the female grotesque can model new kinds of relationships. If a society modeled on the classical body leaves “irregular bodies behind,” then the female grotesque might indicate how to achieve “a state of intimacy without oneness” (11Đ12). The project, however, has real limits, some of which are endemic to cultural studies. Russo’s definition of the grotesque and selection of examples are “avowedly personal and somewhat idiosyncratic” (13), and the book lacks cohesion as a result. The grotesque becomes so encompassing a category that it covers any female body that is not average, from acrobats to fetishized body parts. 2 Analyses of disparate bodies are suggestive, but challenging questions about the connections between them are unaddressed. The Female Grotesque also exemplifies what Stefan Collini identifies as a typical weakness of cultural studies: a tendency toward reductiveness in representing the “dominant” culture. 3 Russo opens with the contestatory claim that “feminism in the 1990s has stood increasingly for and with the normal” and accuses this “normal” feminism of “disarticulating” itself “from the strange, the risky, the minoritarian, the excessive, the outlawed, and the alien” (vii). Given that the proliferation of feminist work around the globe is too diverse to align with one “prevailing standard” (vii), this characterization of “feminism”Ñinstead of the now common “feminisms”Ñis problematic, not to mention the fact that in quite a few locales feminism certainly falls within the category of the grotesque by Russo’s definition. Russo also reifies “the cultural identity of the bourgeoisie” (9, emphasis mine), reducing complex and historically specific processes of identity formation to a one-size-fits-all model; her grotesque is interesting as an oppositional space of diversity and change, but such representations oversimplify the interaction between the abject and the “mainstream.” Russo’s lack of attention to historical detail, the most serious limitation to this study, prevents her from providing a model of the grotesque truly useful to feminism, a central aspect of her project. Her analysis of Trilby asserts that the novel created a community of young women who subversively mimed the fetish of Trilby’s famous foot, but Russo doesn’t present enough...

Mysticism as Seeking and Finding Meaning

Her Son and, thirdly, they relate to Her in that they conceive, each one in themselves, by the same spirit that imparts sanctity into them, the very same God of all, and keep Him, ~s She did, in themselves. Although She had given a bodily birth to Him, She nevertheless always had Him in Herself spiritually, and now and ever continues having Him indivisibly so. This is therefore the mystery of the marriage feasts which God the Father gave to His co-eternal and equal-in-dignity Son ...