A New Book of Hours

The Nature of Comedy -- Essays 4, 5, and Final

2009-01-19T20:52:00.002-06:00

Grafting a Crab Upon a Medlar:
Wit’s Evens, Desire’s Odds, and Astringent Fertility in Congreve’s The Way of the World

Susanne Langer, in Feeling and Form, hypothesizes that comedy at its deepest level arises from something that brings to mind Bergson’s élan vital (Gillies 14), a vital force interestingly not discussed in Bergson’s essay on comedy (Bergson):

Comedy is an art form that arises naturally wherever people are gathered to celebrate life…it expresses the elementary strains and resolutions of animate nature, the animal drives that persist even in human nature… What justifies the term “Comedy” is not that the ancient ritual procession, the Comus…was the source of this great art form—but that the Comus was a fertility rite, and the god it celebrated a fertility god, a symbol of perpetual rebirth… (Langer 331)

In this essay, I will consider how Congreve, in The Way of the World, pruned and trained this wild fertile energy, creating a comic espalier (EDIS Publication System) upon which a harvest of crab-tart wit and medlar-soft (Reich 88) generosity ripened. Further, I will explore how Langer’s focus on libidinous energy in “The Comic Rhythm” needs to be extended to more cerebral forms of desire in order to help us understand The Way of the World, particularly when examining the role of desire in Congreve’s play. At the end of this essay, we shall see what Congreve produced by shaping, through reason and wit, Langer’s theoretically earthy comic root.

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In contrast to Langer’s supposition of a purely biological rhythm at the root of comedy, there is little animal fertility in The Way of the World. Mrs. Fainall’s potentially ruinous pregnancy did not happen (Congreve 346); “the curate’s wife, that’s always breeding” is disagreeably pale and faint according to Lady Wishfort (Congreve 354); and despite the number of love affairs past and present in the play, there are no children to speak of. Congreve’s fertility is astringent, cerebral; more a tartly witty crabapple grafted on the old medlar stock of ripening libido than, to echo Fainall’s comment about Witwould, “a medlar grafted on a crab.” (Congreve 329) By expanding Langer’s notion that comedy is fueled by the “sex impulse” (Langer 330) to include the broader range of transmuted desires, we can appreciate Congreve’s brilliance at shaping character, wit, desire, and plot into a metaphoric espalier—one whose stock is unshakable and whose fruit, though astringent, is made delectable once ripened by Congreve’s moral center and reason.

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An Iconic Comedic Diptych:
Artists and Communities in Gogol’s “The Portrait”

In her essay “The Comic Terrain,” Louise Cowan writes of “the necessity of distinguishing the image of a world—the comic terrain—lying behind the action of the work…” (Cowan 8) and further identifies comedy with community: “Comedy endures and perseveres in a fallen world, occurring in city streets or drawing rooms…making its way by mutual helpfulness toward a community of love within the larger order of society.” (Cowan 10) Since Cowan puts forth an almost holographic view of the nature of comedy—

…the character of comedy is so definitive…that one can discern its nature even from a brief experience of the work. Its qualities permeate it, as the vanilla permeates the pudding and thereby modifies its component parts. … One should be able to choose any page of a work…and discern whether or not the work is comic. (Cowan 4-5)

—I chose not to focus on all of the Petersburg Tales we were assigned, but rather on one, “The Portrait.” In this essay, I will explore its diptych of artists and communities and their estrangements and reconciliations, and see whether a diptych glance at some of the conventions of Eastern Orthodox icon painting and the movement called Romanticism can help us gain insight into the nature of comedy in Gogol’s comedic terrain.

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Ultimately, despite the Romanticism of Gogol’s focus on specific individuals in “The Portrait,” it is in each individual’s relationship to the community of a loving God—whether estranged from or reunited with that community—that we see how even the darkest parts of “The Portrait” are deeply comic. Using the language of painting to describe Gogol’s comedy, the diptych that comprises “The Portrait” contains areas of comic pentimento—areas where an under-painting of agapē shows through even the wildest, darkest elements, promising the possibility of reconciliation even for those most separated from what Gogol implies is the most important community, the community of God’s love.

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Lux, Lumen, Shadow, and Laughter:
The Chiaroscuro of Jorge’s View of Comedy in The Name of the Rose

The murderous Jorge in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose would have us believe he violated the fifth commandment of the Catholic ethical Decalogue (The Holy See) for a far greater good—that of preventing the dissemination of the contents of Aristotle’s mythic second book, which Jorge believes will ignite “the Luciferine spark [of blasphemous laughter] that would set a new fire to the whole world…[where t]he people of God would be transformed into an assembly of monsters belched forth from the abysses of the terra incognita…” (Eco 472-475). In this paper, I will show how Jorge’s blindness in equating blasphemous laughter with comedy was an apt depiction of his darkened, flawed understanding of what comedy can be. Using concepts and approaches from the time and place Dr. Eco set his tale, I will also show how, transmuted from its origins in pagan rite (Berger 16) into something that serves a Judeo-Christian mythos, comedy connects us with physical and symbolic light—and how, in fact, Jorge himself is a potential beneficiary of the light of comedy.

***

Jorge was wrong, even in the context of his role and his time, to disdain laughter and to despise comedy. While laughter may occur in the course of comedy, it is not necessary; what is necessary to comedy is a Lux-engendered lumen of the heart, a reconciliation. Comedy is the enemy of fixity without love, of the static shadow; darkness is not completely dark if there is some hope for change, for the unexpected and indeterminate. Although Jorge is condemned and not redeemed within the novel, Eco’s indeterminate ending opens the possibility of an outside-the-narrative reconciliation. In such a Deus ex fabula, as in the scripture Jorge claimed to love, even Jorge’s shadows would recede before the approaching, all-encompassing Light.

The Nature of Comedy -- Essay 3

2008-11-15T10:32:00.003-06:00

This week I had my first experience "teaching" a graduate-level seminar. Yay!

One of my former professors had to leave town to attend a conference, and to my delight she asked me to substitute for her one night.

The seminar discussion centered on Silko's novel Ceremony, and while I mangled the pronunciation of the word "synecdoche" -- as well as malaproply referring to the anthropic principle as the "anthropomorphic theory" (sheesh) -- I think it went pretty well. The people in the class all seemed engaged, with the exception of one soul who looked as if they would rather be anywhere else but there.

And, bonus teaching moment fun -- after class, one of the students asked my advice on their final project. How cool is that?

I learned more about Silko's book through this teaching experience, as I hoped I would. All told, a really fun change of pace for me, and I hope it was an equally good experience for those students.

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Since I have heard the handful of people who stop by here are as busy as I am -- and therefore too busy to ask for, or read, those essays I've been posting -- I am changing the format.

Going forward, I'll post the first paragraph and the last, so you can get a tiny bit of the wrap-up. Let me know if this is mo' bettah.

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“But Elizabeth Knew Nothing of the Art”:
Society, Comedy, and Portraits in Pride and Prejudice in Relation to Bergson’s “Laughter”

As Jane Austen herself intimated in Pride and Prejudice, an artful portrait—whether painted with words or with brush—can provide a sufficiently different perspective from one’s own prejudice to shift the viewer’s, or reader’s, internal social landscape. In this brief paper, I will consider some of the ways in which Austen’s palette of laughter in Pride and Prejudice supports Henri Bergson’s statement, “By organizing laughter, comedy accepts social life as a natural environment, it even obeys an impulse of social life.” (Bergson 71) I will also show how Austen’s work undermines both the continuation of that statement, “And in this respect [comedy] turns its back upon art, which is a breaking away from society and a return to pure nature” (Bergson 71), and Bergson’s notion that comedy is not quite art. Moreover, I will explore the role of the comic impulse, defined by Bergson as vanity and its puncture (Bergson 71-72), in Austen’s portrait of Elizabeth and her visit to the Pemberley picture gallery.

...

However, the scene itself shows the prejudice in Bergson’s statement, “And in this respect [comedy] turns its back upon art, which is a breaking away from society and a return to pure nature.” (Bergson 71) There is nothing further from pure nature than late-18th century English portraits. (Tscherny) Comedy may turn its back on the flattering vision Reynolds produced, but “pure nature” is nowhere in evidence. Further, when Bergson writes that comedy is not quite art (Bergson 63), Austen’s artful work in her social comedy contradicts him. Elizabeth’s comedic arc is Bergsonian in that her vanity, vanity held because of others’ regard for her wit and insightfulness, is punctured. That puncture began in the picture gallery, where a somewhat idealized portrait allows her to feel something new for Darcy. It is the non-Bergsonian emotion at the end of the novel, in that last mention of pained laughter in Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth’s portrait is nearly complete. Austen’s painting of Elizabeth’s dreadful doubt surpasses Reynolds, and vanity’s puncture no longer matters. Her, and our, hope for love and a happy ending carries us away from Bergsonian laughter into something richer.

The Nature of Comedy -- Essay 2

2008-11-09T13:42:00.003-06:00

My husband Murry is astonished that anyone would actually want to read my schoolwork. I told him that most of my friends are art-and-lit-nerds who think it'd be fun, and if you're reading this blog, you likely resemble that remark.

;-)

That said, here's an intro to my second essay.

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Is the Spirit of Comedy a Genius Loci?
An Essay on Meredith’s Consideration of Molière and its Extensibility Beyond Cultural Boundaries

George Meredith’s elegant, eloquent disquisition on the “comic spirit” led me down an unexpected path. In this essay, I will not only examine Molière’s Tartuffe and The Misanthrope, seeking the thoughtful laughter Meredith considers a hallmark of the comic spirit. I will also seek examples of that laughter in a culture which, at least superficially, resembles the Court of Louis XIV—that of the Chinese Ming Dynasty. If the Court of Louis XIV inspired Molière, an exemplar of the comic spirit according to George Meredith, might we find the Spirit of Comedy in different culture containing a similar setting? While this brief essay cannot hope to make sufficient assay across so broad a topic, I hope the abbreviated effort to determine whether Meredith’s spirit of comedy is a genius loci or not will bring a smile to the essay’s reader.

When Meredith wrote “One excellent test of the civilization of a country…I take to be the flourishing of the Comic idea and Comedy…” (Meredith), he implicitly raised a question—if the Spirit of Comedy reflects what is both human and humane in a civilization, is it found not only in Western civilization, but in Eastern as well? Or is the Spirit of Comedy a genius loci, its smile not a universal smile but one constrained by cultural boundaries? Meredith himself hints this may be so in his unflattering description of German laughter:

"The German literary laugh, like the timed awakenings of their Barbarossa in the hollows of the Untersberg, is infrequent, and rather monstrous—never a laugh of men and women in concert. It comes of unrefined abstract fancy, grotesque or grim, or gross, like the peculiar humours of their little earthmen. … This treble-Dutch lumbersomeness of the Comic spirit is of itself exclusive of the idea of Comedy…"(Meredith)

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Want to read more? Leave me a comment to that effect. And any comments, to any effect, are of course welcome.

The Nature of Comedy -- Essay 1

2008-11-07T22:46:00.002-06:00

I had heard this course was challenging. Since I am way too susceptible to things resembling dares, I registered.

And then I saw the syllabus...reading two plays or more per week, a form I've struggled with in the past. An essay due every other week. And no advance info on the essay until the week before -- OMG, how was I going to get it all done?!

I had no idea, and no idea what I was in for...

Below is the intro to my first essay (sans MLA formatting.) If you'd like to read more than this bit, you can leave a comment to that effect, or email me at lwitzel {at} austin {dot} rr {dot} com. In any case, I'm glad you stopped by!

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The Two Plauti: Reflections on Seeing Double with Frye and Bakhtin

Plautus wrote his plays primarily for audiences who expected to be entertained (Slater 6), rather than for literary theorists and critics—so why consider his work through the lens of literary theory? More specifically, what is the relevance of literary theory to Plautus’ comedies The Brothers Menaechmus and The Haunted House? In this essay, I will briefly consider how two literary theorists, Northrop Frye and Mikhail Bakhtin, think about comedy; how applying their views to Plautus yields a doubling that recalls the comedic complications of Plautus’ same-named twins in The Brothers Menaechmus; and what this might tell us about the role of literary theory in relation to comedy.

Let us first consider Northrop Frye’s approach to literary theory. Frye believed the critic held the key to understanding art; in his view, artists could not understand and unlock the value of their own work, nor could the public, without the added perspective provided by criticism (Hart 56-64).

"The axiom of criticism must be, not that the poet does not know what he is talking about, but that he cannot talk about what he knows. To defend the right of criticism to exist at all, therefore, is to assume that criticism is a structure of thought and knowledge existing in its own right, with some measure of independence from the art it deals with." (Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, in Hart 59)

Renewal

2008-10-31T20:44:00.003-05:00

In response to a gentle clamor from Marly, among others, I'm refreshing and renewing this blog.

The expanded mission?
Sporadically share my classwork, independent study, and experiences, for those who are inclined to read such.

The rules of the game?
I'll post the first paragraph or two from my writings; if you'd like to read more, leave a comment to that effect. If needed, I'll spell out my email address in a comment reply. You can then email me your address if I don't have it, and I'll send you a soft copy of the whole thang (in some cases, minus images -- the file sizes grow unmanageable with images.)

That way, I'm not easily feeding a 'bot trolling for plagarizable fodder, and I'll know who's reading what.

Most recent set of "be careful what you wish for" circumstances?
The class project that spawned this blog, my very first MLA class, led to a directed studies in art history focused on medieval illuminated manuscripts.

Which led to my asking some interesting questions about the medieval frame tale in relation to Giotto, which led to my being nudged to write an abstract for a possible presentation at a medieval conference, which led to my work being accepted and me presenting, and then to another conference accepting my work for presentation this coming spring.

What was it like having completed only three MLA classes, and presenting alongside professors of art history?
Terrifying beforehand; gratifying after. Dr. Steele and Dr. Elliott could not have made me feel more welcome, and have been supportive and in touch post-conference.

Thank goodness for Dr. MacArthur, the adjunct art history professor at St. Ed's, helping me rehearse, and those friends of mine who were kind enough to play audience.

Would you like more details?
Do you want me to share some of the essays I've written to date for my current class, "The Nature of Comedy"?
Let me know what you'd like to know.

A taste of things to come

2008-04-19T08:02:00.002-05:00

An intro section from my Directed Studies in Art paper.

Warning: For any lazy so-and-so's who found this in an effort to not think or write their own thoughts for work or school, remember these lines are very findable through Google as well as through turnitin.com. Don't plagiarize. Aside from the bad karma, everything you find that I've written is copyrighted by me.

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Image and After-Image:
Some Reflections on Carnival Marginalia and Images of Jews
in Medieval Christian Illuminated Manuscripts

Although George Kubler’s classic work, The Shape of Time, focuses on form through sequence/series rather than iconography (Kubler vii-viii), it offers an interesting platform from which to consider the content of illuminated medieval manuscripts. Kubler posited, “…astronomers and historians have this in common: both are concerned with appearances noted in the present but occurring in the past.” (Kubler 19) The thought-exercise of comparing art historians to astronomers and works of art to stars (Kubler 19) serendipitously mirrors the importance of the heavens, both physical and spiritual/psychic, to medieval Christians and Jews. Indeed, Kubler’s analogies are relevant to a central challenge of understanding medieval art—that of understanding it in context, despite our apparent remove in space and time from the world of the works’ creators.

Why, other than these felicitous metaphors, am I choosing an art historian known mainly for his writing on ancient Mesoamerican art as a connecting thread in an exploration of medieval Christian imagery? In part because Kubler famously (and controversially) wrote that “art stands outside culture” (Willey 674-75), he provides a useful counterpoint as we test the resilience of established methodologies and the strength of cultural filters applied by modern scholars to medieval art. Since Kubler downplayed the importance of an individual artist’s biography when considering the impact of the work itself (Kubler 5-8) he may provide an approach to the communal creativity represented by medieval codices. And his discussion of prime objects and replications (Kubler 39) is of particular interest for an examination of the images of Jews in medieval Christian illuminated manuscripts, if we consider real Jews of the time as prime object and the progressive change over time and series in depictions of Jews as replication.

In this paper, I will examine contemporary scholars’ views of medieval Christian illuminated manuscripts across a variety of secondary sources, with a look at the role of carnival imagery—imagery full of mockery, sex, filth, inversions, monsters, and puns—in marginalia, and a more persistent gaze at the role of images of Jews whether in marginalia or not. Specifically, I will discuss imagery associated with the concept of “the good Christian” and the accompanying after-images of “the Jew” in an effort to understand the meaning of these images for medieval Christian culture and the impact of these images on medieval Jews. In a very modest way, I hope to clarify the powerful impact these images had on medieval people and—in line with Kubler’s thought that the metaphoric light or shadow cast by a work of art creates a field of influence (Kubler 19) through time—I hope to show the equally powerful impact they continue to have on us.

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More to come...if you'd like the whole thing once done, please email lwitzel {at} austin {dot} rr {dot} com, thenkyewverymuch.

Better images

2008-02-23T10:21:00.002-06:00

Shelly Lowenkopf's prototype pages.
You can also see it on Flickr here.

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Rachel Barenblat's prototype pages.
You can also see it on Flickr here.

A big, juicy dream

2008-02-15T20:41:00.002-06:00

I've been steeping and stewing on the self-portrait portion of this semester's class, and have been feeling a little anxious. I've been working so hard I was feeling dried out, wondering if I'd run the well dry.

Thank goodness the spring that feeds the well of creativity keeps flowing, whether I'm in an arid phase or not.

I had a big, juicy dream last night, and in the interest of keeping the compost freshly turned, I'm posting it -- and accompanying random notes, all unfinished and raw -- here.

For your puzzlement, your enjoyment, your whateverment. Seems like there's lots going on beneath the surface after all.

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Dream notes

I was living in some beautiful large city—unnamed, but “in the heartland”—and I went to a very beautiful suburb to see an art exhibit by the potter Gary Soto and his wife. (Gary Soto is a poet in real life, and Ishmael Soto is a local Austin potter.) In the dream, they were friends of mine. A Craftsman-style house was the gallery, and walking in I expected to see pots, but didn’t. I saw, however, the most beautiful modern flattened barrel-vaulting (think of 2’ wide ribs, slightly bowed down, spoon-polished in a very clean way and at the joints almost suede-like matte) for the ceiling. At first I thought it was burled wood, but then realized this was the ceramic work—a sky of earth, smoke-swirled and just gorgeous. I met up with Gary and his wife; Gary was a lean and witty Hispanic man, his wife was a sharp-featured, curly-blonde-haired-blue-eyed slender German woman who had such a melodious voice I asked if she were a singer. She was, and she sang some bits of beautiful soprano-toned lieder. We had a very nice chat, and they told me I needed to see the Children’s Art Museum (downstairs in the basement level.) As I went down the first flight of stairs (again, all was light, with honey-colored wood and the most open/serene feeling about it) I saw the museum shop. I looked in, and saw a fantastic ring—of pale green, almost light-jade-colored chalcedony, architecturally carved and with the center a delicately sculpted carving of the Tablets of The Law as a shield in front of a medieval synagogue. I decided to buy it, and was told by my friends I could wear it in lieu of my wedding ring—Murry wouldn’t mind. And then the alarm went off, and I woke to go to work.

Content:
Chalcedony was one of the stones on the High Priest’s ephod or breastplate.

From http://www.eifiles.cn/js.htm

"In 1272, while in western China Marco Polo wrote, “Chalcedony and jasper, which are taken for sale to Cathay (the populous eastern provinces), and such is their abundance that they form a considerable commerce.” This is a key, for the gemstones that Marco Polo thought were chalcedony and jasper are in fact white jade and spinach jade from Xinjiang Province in west China. These two nephrite jades have colours similar to chalcedony and jasper, (familiar stones in Marco Polo’s home country Italy). This helps us to identify both jewels from Revelation 21. CHALKEDÓN is white jade, and ÍASPIS is spinach green jade. Jade jewels are costly; the white and green jades are both elegant jewel stones and well suited to carving. Modern chalcedony gets its name from Chalcedon, an ancient Greek seaport of the eastern Aegean Sea known for the jewel trade. But Pliny the Roman historian described CHALKEDÓN as different from modern chalcedony. (In his time white jade was evidently marketed under that name.)"

The white jade relates to the tribe of Dan. Dan—a tribe of great judges, a tribe associated with serpent energy, a tribe “not sealed” because of its affinity for pagan practices.

From
http://tribes.tribe.net/darkgoddesses/thread/37849a99-539a-4f46-939f-16ee1cb2a1ce

“Writers of the Old Testament disliked the Danites, whom they called serpents (Genesis 49:17). Nevertheless, they adopted Dani-El or Daniel, a Phoenician god of divination, and transformed him into a Hebrew prophet. His magic powers were like those of the Danites emanating from the Goddess Dana and her sacred serpents…. Daniel was not a personal name but a title, like the Celtic one.”

Daniel was the dream-interpreter, the one who acquired power through “translating” dreams—and winning the confidence of the king.

From the Tanakh, the Daniel section:
“MENE MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN.

This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE, G-d hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end.

TEKEL, Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.”

What did the words literally mean? Per Wikipedia, in the verb form, they were: mene, to number; tekel, to weigh; upharsin, to divide - literally "numbered, weighed, divided".

Adam Kadmon, c'est moi

2008-02-02T08:57:00.000-06:00

Thinking about the potential “creative component”—a fine art work of some kind related to the content of the art history study—I’ve been struggling.

There are artists like Michael Ray Charles and Kara Walker who’ve taken racist iconography and have suborned it and made it their own, transgressing the transgressors. While that approach has worked brilliantly for those folks (although not always for others), the thought of making more images using elements whose origins rest in ignorance, fear and hate was too toxic for me.

But I didn’t want to do something weak and inadequate—a “happy face” uplifting gloss— in response to the difficult content I’m studying.

I met with a potential instructor/mentor for the creative component of this semester’s work. I showed him the two prototype pieces I finished for the Book of Hours project, and he said, “These are beautiful—what do you need me for?”

Well, my art history prof won’t mentor or evaluate creative work…and so, without a fine arts prof involved, while I might do the art, I won’t get the stamp-of-approval for it.

And if I want to teach creative work, I need that MLA to serve as a useful credential; therefore I need more not less review and mentoring from the fine arts side of the academic fence.

Once he heard that my art history prof wouldn’t review creative efforts, Don Haughey was ready to help. He sparkled with interest about one approach to the problem—the possibility of my using elements of these medieval texts, as well as medieval Jewish Kabbalistic imagery focused on “Adam Kadmon” or the primordial, ur-Adamic prototype Kabbalists posited as one of the stages of the material universe manifesting—but as an armature for a self-portrait.

The transgressive element is, of course, a modern woman using “male” medieval imagery as the landscape for her form of expression, in a reflection of one of the portions of Genesis—“…male and female He created them.” The redemptive element is my use of the same, and of some items from Christian medieval iconography.

And the detox? By focusing on the proto-creation, the “creation before creation,” I can indulge my hopeful side and my strong faith that creative energy is a positive, healing force (even when it shows up as Kali Ma ringed with skulls.)

As we discussed this approach, I told him, “It scares me.”

Why? You, dear reader, might find this funny (reading it as you are on a blog the whole internet-connected world can see) but I’m scared of what a self-portrait might reveal to the world at large.

Don said, eyes twinkling, “But think about the self-discovery!”

No less scary, that. And so, because it scares me, I’ll have to do it. And Don said “Yes” to working with me.

Stay tuned…more to come, of course.

Tangental, between drafts

2008-01-27T14:23:00.001-06:00

This tiny short story is what happens when one spends too much time looking at medieval illuminated manuscripts and reading scholarly exegesis of the same.

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The Book of Night

There is a corner of the Cloisters Library, among the papers of Sumner McKnight Crosby, where no light shines.

***

The Benedictine monks of the Abbey of St. Denis, devoted as they were to rooting out heresies, bought manuscripts produced by enemies of the Church in order to study what lies they contained and in order to keep them from the hands of the laity.

Unlike the beautiful gilded manuscripts produced by the Church, most were scrawled by mad ascetics in a crabbed hand with oak gall…except for one. One manuscript, written with minium, illuminated with lead, and smelling of salt and sulfur, was an early alchemical text of unknown authorship titled “The Book of Night.” The masons building the Abbey were greatly distressed when the monks bought this particular codex, for wherever the book was placed, shadow fell and light disappeared, making it impossible for construction to proceed.

The head of the masons’ guild tried to reason with the brothers of the order that this manuscript had no place in God’s house, to no avail. And so the masons took it upon themselves to entomb the book within a false wall and burn the plans that showed where it had been laid. The Benedictines were never again able to find the codex, and this act of rebelliousness sowed the seeds for later discord between Masonic guilds and the Church.

***

In 1938, the art historian Sumner McKnight Crosby began supervising the excavation of Saint-Denis. Plagued for years by insomnia, he was surprised to find he had less and less trouble sleeping as the work proceeded; and while he had difficulty retaining workers for the delicate work around the crypt, he himself felt oddly at peace, as if this was work he had been born to do.

The world was not at peace, however, and Crosby had to abandon his efforts in the face of the encroaching conflict—but not before he uncovered a hollow wall where light seemed to vanish into velvet blackness. Although he did not speak about what he found, Sumner McKnight Crosby never was troubled by insomnia again.

On those days where the weight of time and scholarship pressed him hard, Professor Crosby would tell his assistants that he wished not to be disturbed.

They’d see the lights dim through the milky glass on his office door, then darken to an inky black. Inside, Crosby would rest for a few endless minutes within a starless, dreamless corner of Night before hiding the instrument of his respite in an old linen sack and returning to the wakeful world.

***

To this day, if you were to search through the papers of Sumner McKnight Crosby at the Cloisters, you would not find all of Professor Crosby's work. There is one archival box too dark to be seen—the box containing “The Book of Night,” its lead illuminations casting an eternal midnight, waiting for another sleepless wanderer.

Here's the scoop, er, scope

2008-01-11T20:34:00.000-06:00

After a lovely back-and-forthing through email, Rick MacArthur and I have a plan jelled. I have not been able to make contact with the prof who'd guide the "creative work" part of the project, so until I do, the scope may not include "for credit" art or other creative activity outside paper-writing.

That said, the outline of the work-to-unfold is below.

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As I take on a project full of hateful imagery made part of beautiful objects, the question I keep coming back to is this:
How do I make something beautiful and useful, an akido-like transmutation of hate into love, from a work like this?

I use the word "beautiful" in the Navajo sense of hózhó, wholeness and balance.

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Oddly enough, most of the books I need for this effort have been checked out of the University of Texas library, so someone else local is working on a similar project.

There has been a recent spate of scholarly publishing around the negative images of Jews in medieval illuminated manuscripts, so my poking at the metaphoric edge of these things will at least be grounded with some well-thought and well-vetted religious historians and art historians.

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The roadmap, aka the outline for this work.

The Indispensable Other: Some Reflections on Images of Jews in Christian Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

1. Introduction.
1.1. Background on medieval illuminated manuscripts.
1.1.1. What does this form represent?
1.1.2. Who are its patrons? Audiences? Creators?
1.1.3. Was it a primarily secular or religious form?
1.1.4. Why look more deeply into a subset of the form—religious Christian medieval illuminated manuscripts?
1.2. Thesis statement.
1.2.1. Christian medieval illuminated manuscripts are full of carnival imagery with seemingly scatological, outside-the-sacred content. In this paper, I will briefly examine the role of carnival imagery—images of the Other—in medieval Christian art with a particular focus on marginalia and on images of Jews. I will reflect in more depth on the indispensability of the Other-as-Jew for medieval Christian culture as shown in images, and discuss the impact of images of Otherness for medieval peoples and for us.

2. Challenges.
2.1. Lack of preservation of sources.
2.2. Issues involving access to sources, both primary and secondary.
2.3. Seeing through medieval eyes, not modern eyes.

3. The variety of carnival imagery.
3.1. Types and counts (Counts are optional, assuming I can find access to http://ica.princeton.edu/index.html.)
3.1.1. Hybrid monsters.
3.1.2. Animals and proverbs.
3.1.3. Sexual improprieties.
3.1.4. Mocking the clergy.
3.1.5. Mocking the nobility and others.
3.1.6. Emesis, defecation, and gold.
3.1.7. Depictions of other religions and cultures.
3.2. Iconographic content. What do scholars like Camille (and others) indicate these images meant to the people of the time?
3.3. Are these images found within or without the “core content” of the page? If without, what do scholars think that segregation represents?
3.4. Are images of Jews different from other types of marginal, carnival Others? If so, in what ways?

4. Jew and Christian—imagery of each as the ultimate Other.
4.1. A deeper look at images of Jews and Jewish culture within medieval Christian art.
4.1.1. Patriarchal Jews and contemporary Jews—“good Jews” and “bad Jews”?
4.1.2. Imagined Jews—anti-Semitic imagery in medieval England after the expulsion of the Jews.
4.1.3. Jews as source, Jews as target. (Jews and women as “source” discussed in Gender and Jewish Difference from Paul to Shakespeare, 2004, by Lisa Lampert.)
4.2. A brief look at images of Christians and Christian culture within medieval Jewish art. (Optional, depending on source availability.)
4.2.1. Purim— triumph-over-the-persecutor imagery and narratives.

5. The indispensability of the Other, the impact of images of the Other.
5.1. Implications of the imagery for the medieval viewer—imagined Jews and imagined Christians, real consequences.
5.2. Implications of the imagery for the modern viewer.

6. Conclusion.
In brief…
6.1. Is the Other indispensable? If so, what may trigger people to turn from wariness to hate?
6.2. What role do images play in this transformation, and what responsibility do image-makers have?
6.3. Have contemporary interfaith efforts used the power of images? If not, is there something to be gained by emphasizing imagery?
6.4. Areas for further research.

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Still waiting for time to get the artwork I made last semester back, and then off to a high-quality scanning service for hi-res images, and then off on a "tour de participants."

But that too shall pass.

Now, off to take another round of antibiotics for The Cussed Bicuspid, and to set to work on some reading.

Brainstorming -- input wanted!

2007-12-29T19:58:00.000-06:00

I had a great first meeting with my new prof-to-be, and I'm beginning to brainstorm what shape the further explorations of the Book of Hours will take.

Here are four different nuggets for a possible paper, each of which might lead my creative work and process down a very different path than the one I started on.

Do you have any preferences? Leave a comment and let me know...

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Nugget #1. Monkey-business and the Jews: A reflection on the marginalia in the Book of Hours and other medieval illuminated manuscripts.

In Michael Camille's Gothic Art: Glorious Visions and Image on the Edge, we find discussions of the hybrid monsters, scatalogical goings-on, and other babuini (follies) that play in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts. Given the prevalent anti-semitic tenor of medieval Christian society and the status of Jews as outsider, one might think there would be more mockery made of Jews in the margins of these manuscripts. However, there seems to be proportionately far less "Jew as Other" than there are creatures from the edge of the world, naked maids, and hairy apes in clerical garb.

In this paper, I will explore whether there have been surveys of the various kinds of Other, to determine whether the seeming lack of "Jew as Other" is an accurate observation. If I can determine the observation is correct, I will share hypotheses as to why this might be. I will also reflect on Eamon Duffy's study of Book of Hours marginalia and on Camille's notions of what The Other meant to those who created, saw and used these medieval manuscripts.

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Nugget #2. Inside-Out: A look at time in the medieval book of hours and in Sol LeWitt’s work.

For a medieval Christian, time, according to Michael Camille, "...had a beginning and an ending, a purpose and a plan, which were organized by God from outside time." (Gothic Art: Glorious Visions, 71.) He posits that, for these people, "...space and time were inextricably linked." (Camille 71) In this paper, I will explore connections between the process-focused implicit mysticism of conceptual art by Sol LeWitt and the process-focused exoteric religious imagery of the medieval Book of Hours.

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I also like these, but suspect they're not going to offer up as much room for surprises:

Nugget #3. Beating the Bounds: The liminal margin and the relationship between sacred and secular in the English Book of Hours.

Nugget #4. Edgy humor: Reflections on the marginalia in medieval books of hours and the marginal cartoons drawn for Mad Magazine by Sergio Aragones.

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I did get a grade higher than normal body temperature (in Fahrenheit, that is) as my final grade for the first MLA course (yippee!!!) -- but haven't gotten the final paper or artwork back yet, and I want to make hi-res images then send the art on a "Tour de Interviewees."

If I could only tie up the loose ends before starting to tangle myself in new projects and processes...

:-)

The last class is wrapped...

2007-12-11T05:57:00.000-06:00

...but the project will continue, in some form, next semester. There's too much to explore to leave it alone, so I'll be doing a Directed Study in Art on The Book of Hours...including further development of the creative portion (the pages.)

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12/17/2007: A special shout-out to all those folks who've come here courtesy of Rachel Barenblat! Thanks so much for your visit, and for honoring my efforts (most recently the effort of trying to get gold leaf out of my eyebrows) with your kind attention.

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If you're visiting from my Liberal Arts Perspectives class, I sure hope you'll leave a comment! Even if you're not a "member" of Blogger, you can leave an anonymous comment and share your contact info, so I can ping back.

My to-do's:
* Finish my transcription of Francis Raffalovich's interview so I can develop his prototype pages.
* Get high-quality image files made of the Shelly Lowenkopf and Rachel Barenblat prototype pages (I'm tired of these dim yellow snapshots.)
* Explore some of the questions that arose while working through the project (you can find the Whole Big Paper, with questions aplenty, here.)
* Determine what to do with the physical prototype pages created to date.
* Post the reference pics and interviews (assuming I have permission.)

Details

2007-12-08T12:51:00.000-06:00

While waiting for the gilding adhesive to dry, thought I'd share some more details.

The book text behind and to the left of Shelly's portrait sketch is a page from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I heard tell was one of Shelly's favorites. The dark material behind and to the right of his head is some cunning calligraphic mass-printed paper I found in the scrap-booking aisle of a chain art supply store.

I drew his sketch on tracing paper with an ink bottle stopper-dropper, and the ink has a shine where it pooled.

On the page where I've written out parts of his interview, the white glue-looking substance on the red square (watercolor) is gilding glue.

As I type these words, I'm waiting for it to dry enough so I can apply more gold leaf. The white streaky line on the black paper to the right is also gilding glue, drying so it can receive more silver leaf.

I'm sketching in Rachel's face with a pale watercolor wash. The collage portion is mostly Japanese paper with various fibers, dyes and metallic threads/powders spangled in. I've also used ribbon, metallic thread, and a variety of metallic and non-metallic pens on both page spreads.

You can see the white leaf adhesive on some of the Rachel layout text page watercolored insets...waiting for them to dry so I can apply more metallic leaf.

My apologies for the totally abysmal lighting on all these snapshots -- I haven't learned yet how to diffuse my camera's flash indoors, so I get harsh shadows when shooting with flash. Most of the photos have a very warm yellow cast. If you can imagine the base paper as being bright white, you can understand how dark the snapshots are.

Making these pages is a very "touch and go" process. I touch the materials, do a few things, then must go away until things have dried or set.

And I must go in search of fresh photos today...I am running low on new things to share on Chatoyance, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow.

Snapshots in time

2007-12-07T21:29:00.000-06:00

The things we do for love. And that’s what this project keeps feeling like—a labor of love…or is it love’s labor lost? All I need, to quote the marvelous Marvell, is world enough and time.

But I am running out of both, at least for this specific class project. I’ll post the final draft of my project paper December 11 on Chatoyance, since I figured out how to use Blogger’s “read more” code there but not yet here.

I’m feeling looser and the work is flowing faster on the prototype for Rachel Barenblat’s book spreads, so there is some kinesthetic learning and muscle memory from my arts and crafts past waking up.

The project is a shared, community effort in many ways. Not just because of your support and interest, and those other friends known and unknown who have stopped by this blog.

I also had help from those folks who live close by. My friend Beth came over today (I took a vacation day from work) and spent the day cutting mattes while I worked on pages and the paper. Our working side by metaphoric side was very reflective of the guild craftsmen who worked to fill the demand for books of hours back in the Middle Ages. Many hands, joined to one process.

Speaking of process…the deeper I dug into this project, what had been peripheral (process) became central. I found the unexpected tie between the project’s process and Sol LeWitt’s “Sentences on Conceptual Art” one of the most interesting things to have surfaced during this work.

To quote Sol: “The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion.” Is that true? I don’t know…but there were times when my will was weak, and the barrel of process I put myself in provided enough momentum to keep going.

Ananda Coomaraswamy defined art as “imitation, expression and participation.” It’s been (and will continue to be) a delight to participate in this with you, and this is not the last post.

There will be more after my last class, after I see what my professor thought of the work.

And I’m doing a directed study in art next semester focused on the medieval Book of Hours, so I will be able to riff on the theme even further.

(What’s the HTML for “a nicely theatrical bow as the author exits for the moment”?)

Pilgrim’s progress

2007-11-25T14:34:00.000-06:00

Hip-deep in making prototype layouts, and I’m surprised by the amount of intense adrenaline coursing through me as I work these through.

It feels like a combination of “readiness rush”—that feeling I used to get before a track meet, the feeling of no turning back as I pelt head-first into the moment—and performance anxiety, something exacerbated by doing this project right out here in public.

But where else would I do this? As I’ve been learning more about the historic Book of Hours, how much it connected to one’s secular community as much as one’s private devotional space, I’m struck by how inadvertently appropriate it is to blog the process with you, my virtual community, close at hand.

Anyway, here’s a series of snapshots of the page layout process so far for the Shelly Lowenkopf spread. Do I know what I’m doing? Nope, at least not in the sense of planned, deliberate effort.

For example, I initially thought I’d do these spreads in a horizontal format. But my study of the historic Book of Hours led me back to a vertical format. Interestingly, my quaternary grid becomes lots more cruciform…and also much more like an iconic window…in a vertical format.

I also thought I’d be doing more drawing, but I find myself drawn to collage, at least for now.

Many folks I know could do this sort of page design through digital collage, but for some inchoate reason it’s important to me that I make things tactilely, fingers on the material.

I made a choice to use relatively commonplace material, at least for now. I find most of what makes for an interesting textural surface can be had a mass chain arts-and-crafts stores, and there’s something nicely subversive about browsing the scrap-booking aisles with Shelly’s pages in mind.

I’ll start on Rachel Barenbaum’s spreads this week, and should finish out Shelly’s spreads enough for my course in the next week or so as well.

The process is slow and very intense…not knowing where this is going, being surprised and at times frustrated by what’s happening, feels like a good thing.

To quote from Shelly’s interview, “You don’t have to know why…you have to trust you can.” In the doing, the action, there’s the trust.

Interviewing Francis Raffalovich

2007-10-14T08:38:00.000-05:00

Had a lovely, hour-long chat with Francis Raffalovich October 13. The S*bucks where we met was unbelievably noisy, so I have my recording transcription work cut out for me.

A couple of reference photos I'll use as a basis for sketching:

Highlights for me?

His story about how he came late to a faith and practice, and kept working as a geophysicist to support his wife and three daughters while attending seminary at night.

His pragmatic, self-deprecating wit.

His gratitude for his fortunate life, and his amazement about the love and acceptance he feels from God.

(Note: When I write about people, I'll use their own terms for the divine or what sparks them. Hence for Francis, the term "God." For others, there may be other terms.)

Yes, we have interviewees

2007-10-03T19:59:00.000-05:00

The project starts to coalesce.

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People who've expressed interest, and agreed to be interviewed and sketched:

Rachel Barenblat, one of my delightful blog-quaintances
Roberta Rosenberg, a friend I've known for years
Francis Raffalovich, the father of a work colleague
Donald Haughey, a recent acquaintance and art professor at St. Edwards University

More, hopefully, to come. Although not all may be used in the prototype, I want to be able to expand the project if I find it's interesting enough.

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Visual organization:

Horizontal layout (I'll work as if pages would be printed 9"w x 6"d, since that's a standard format available on Lulu.com)
A grid structure, based on a 4x4 grid (riffing on the quartile "Dawn," "Midday," "Dusk," and "Night" sectioning of Time) to provide continuity. The grid will function like invisible "bones" whose armature visually connects each spread.

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The questions:

Background questions: Name, faith and/or practice name, age, their age when they began their current practice, city or region they reside in.
Content questions:
"Dawn" -- Tell me about the beginnings of your practice/faith.
"Midday" -- How do you balance other aspects of your life with your practice/faith, how do other parts of your life interpenetrate your practice?
"Dusk" -- How has your faith/practice changed over time, or how have your experiences with the world changed over time as a result of your faith/practice?
"Night" -- What is the most unexpected, most surprising experience or outcome you've had so far connected to your practice/faith?
Is there an object--personal or otherwise--which is very meaningful to you in the context of your faith/practice? (I want to get a photo-reference for it, either directly or through other means.)
Is there anything else I should know about your practice/faith that I don't, and that you'd be comfortable sharing through this project?

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Appointments and email assignations will be set, art supplies will be sourced...and I'll post more as it unfolds.

Brief update -- the quest for interviewees

2007-09-28T22:57:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of folks who've said "yes" to my odd invite...waiting to hear from more. And I've been dusting off some old art technique books, looking for "how to" craft info about things like gilding.

I'll post more once I get a few more "yesses."

It shouldn't be long...

And so it begins.

2007-09-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

We have class final project lift-off. And this blog will be where I post documentation of the work in progress and related ephemera.

I emailed my prof the following.

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Good morning, Susan!

I’m prepping for a week out in California on business, but I wanted to share another final project idea with you for Liberal Arts Perspectives.

Before I do, though, I’d like to suggest a movie that may be a fit for the course content. It’s called La Jetée, and some Wikipedia background is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jet%C3%A9e

Now, on to the final project.

I’ve solicited others’ input on a variety of final project ideas, and this was the one that grabbed most folks.

And, unlike my “photographic enablement/seeing though others’ eyes” project idea, I believe I can get this done within one semester.

Project title: Creative Work: A prototype for a New Book of Hours

Project summary: The Catholic tradition of a “book of hours,” or a book that helped lay practitioners pray the correct prayer at the correct time of day or night, has connections to earlier Jewish tradition (specifically in the daily use of “siddurim.”) In addition, many other faiths have worship and meditative practice keyed to particular times of the day. The need for a guide to timely practice make these books a cultural commons containing approaches to art reflective of their time. For example, during the middle ages, wealthy worshippers commissioned lavish Book of Hours illuminations, but even the less well-off had Books of Hours featuring hand-made art.

What might a contemporary, non-liturgical reflection on the Book of Hours idea look like?

Using the conceptual platform of a Book of Hours, I’d like to:
* Interview 2-3 practitioners of different faiths about the beginnings of their faith (“Dawn”,) how they balance their practice with daily life (“Noon”,) how their practice has changed over time (“Dusk”,) and what has been most unexpected or most surprised them about their practice (“Night.”)
* Using a camera, document the interviewees enough for illustrative reference.
* Develop a production-friendly book design that connects this project to its illuminated manuscript ancestry.
* Sketch/illustrate in loose style the interviewees, hand-write highlights from the interview, and hand-write/illuminate a list of their daily practice.
* Compose 2-3 sample book spreads using the aforementioned material, one spread for each interviewee.

If this seems like a suitable idea, I’ll start identifying potential interviewees.

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She kindly emailed back.

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Lori,
This Book of Hours project has a lot of potential!! I say go for it!
Have been playing catch-up since returning from Seattle, but will take a look at that movie site soon.
See you in class next week.
SCG

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So, my dear invisible friends and blog-quaintances, I'll be doing outreach to some people in the Austin area who might be interviewees, and I welcome your input for Austin-area people who'd fit the project.

In addition, if you know people outside the Austin area who might be a fit, and I can figure out how to approach this using face-to-virtual-face approaches, send 'em on!

And a special P.S. to Gawain -- there is and will be a place for non-practitioners and those who worship beauty, but for my limited time and scope, I'll have to fold that into a later phase of the project...