It's always a bit embarrassing to see someone litter their language with ends and tags of others, isn't it? Proust noticed, in typically nastily observant fashion, when Odette suggests '.. venir une fois prendre a cup of tea, comme disent nos voisins les Anglais...' Silly pretentious affectation. I think I'll carry on doing it, just to annoy myself.

I have been back in the country for two weeks and am no longer surprised by the local money and accents. And without an insurance claim to keep my attention as happened last time, there is the usual after-holiday feeling of 'did we actually go at all?' But various resolutions of the New Year type seem to be forming by themselves, and my back has seized up again after a month of carrying far too much luggage up and down stairs and not doing enough yoga: both of which would indicate that yes, really I have been away.

Dylan Moran suggests that that is why people take photos of themselves when on holiday, to prove they have been anywhere (and by extension, that they exist at all.)

( photographic evidence )

Went to hear Xerxes on Thursday night and was absolutely gobsmacked by the vocal gymnastics they achieved, particularly the chap in the title role. OTOH the acting was pretty ordinary, but never mind. I went straight after a dentist appointment, so had a lithp when collecting my ticket (having to tell them my name, which has both a 'th' and 's' in it): which transient lisp had disappeared by the end. Well, it amused me. Also was pleased that the largothatalwaysmakesmecry seemed quite incidental to the plot, totally at odds with the general Gilbert-and-Sullivan mood of the opera, and apparently thrown in for no particular reason. The sublime turns out to be ridiculous as well :-)

While in Durham, stickybeaking in other people's bookshelves as usual, I came across the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, attributed to Francesco Colonna, Leon Battista Alberti and various others. My host wanted someone to do a PhD on it, but for all that would be great fun and useful, it strikes me as crying out not so much  for a PhD, as for an opera. Which I am not going to write.
(can't think why Mozart didn't, though. He even worked for people who could have afforded the sets demanded by a plot that is largely about architectural fantasies.)

There is a short animated film, though:

Cole, Andrew. Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xx, 298. $99.00; £50.
ISBN-13: 978-0521887915.

Reviewed by John M. Ganim
University of California, Riverside
John.Ganim@ucr.edu

(from The Medieval Review, stable URL here)

For the past twenty years, marked by the publication of Anne Hudson's The Premature Reformation in 1988, the place of John Wyclif and Lollardy in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century literature has served as something of a litmus test, though what it was testing was not always clear. For some scholars, it has served as a window into the unofficial imagination of the late fourteenth century, inseparable from the sweeping social forces of the time, from the Rising of 1381 to the explosive growth of vernacular literature. Their suppression, in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, has been regarded as an ominous assertion of orthodoxy through brute force and omnipotent surveillance. For others, the tendency to see a Lollard under every rock and bush is an exaggeration of the breadth and depth of Wyclif's influence, and misunderstands the capaciousness and broad cultural tent offered by the late medieval church. For Andrew Cole, in Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer, the actual impact of Wycliffite ideas, especially as they are expressed in literature, are more complex than scholars have heretofore have assumed. His argument is something of a tour de force, reanimating a debate that seemed to have run its course, and offering new ways of thinking about the relation of theology and literature, as well as about the
social practices they both reflect and shape, justify and criticize.

( Read more... )

If I gave up my 5-7pm Tuesday shift, I'd just have time for a French lesson and then yoga.
On the other hand my pay for that two hours is exactly as much as French, yoga and a tram fare would cost- so if I had the time, I wouldn't have the money.

Is this what happens when we all pay each other the standard wage?

ETA: Even if I had the time, Madame does not, this semester. Next semester my roster(s) will be all different so maybe problem solved.
ETA, next semester: my roster(s) is all different, problem solved.

I was worried about whether my Lydgate-related flight of fancy has either a) been long established and is now a truism and not worth saying, or b) long disproved and would be stupid to say.

Turns out to be both, sort of: b) the opposite of my idea has been the prevailing one for quite some time, and a) it has now been revised (of course, the fashions are cyclical and predictable) including three years ago by a Neminence, who said something close to what I was going to say. Bugger. Ee well, foreshadowing me shows he was clearly on the right track :-P But I can still improve on his, I think.

Also, enname having become somewhat enamoured of the phrase 'blancmange of pedicles', I note that Lydgate describes something as having 'pinnacles of beryl and crystals'.

To work with me then.

In the post-Festschrift 4am sleepless madness, I seem to have submitted an abstract to this (Lydgate's Churl and the Bird). Since nobody else is going to pay for me, I think  I'll go whether or not my very abstract abstract's accepted, if I'm allowed in. (Ooh and this one). Try for some concentrated intensive history interspersed with wandering around Europe, since it's all so temptingly close to each other...

Poop-poop!

Recs?
-------------------------
Interrupting Gargantua and Pantagruel yet again, and having got to the bit of Burrows' History of Histories that is Renaissance and therefore I should concentrate and stop reading it while half-asleep (which means of course I stopped reading it at all): ( Cut for a swift gratuitous survey of the last few books )

it's all good though and I am even reading the odd Lydgate-related thing :-P

I'm not letting the kite get away from me here-



-just sort of preoccupied; the Festschrift we're organising is soon and you don't want to read the disparate minutiae that has been occupying the space where thoughts should be. (Having said which, my paper, though it isn't written yet, has an argument. This is unprecedented. It's very exciting.)

There's an interview with the artist who took the kite picture here (click on the picture for more of her work).

Been listening to this band an awful lot lately, notably while moving my brother and his girlfriend from their respective places into a place together on Saturday. It poured with rain most of the day, which didn't make that much difference really, except to make the light and ambience pleasant and keep the Babelfish on his toes while driving a full truck around the inner city... it was all good.

Neglected to footnote where I saved this image from- if anyone can tell me anything about it, please let me know.

Slight problem with proving the presence of irony, yes. In a 524 year old document. In a language I don't know.

(Why yes, the entire credibility of my argument does depend off it.)

ack.

*headdesk*
How did I get to here?

Oh that's right, I followed my interests. Even unto the land of Actual Work, it appears. It appears, it appears suddenly in the foreground, looking distinctly like work. Eh well-

Take warning, people and mark well the words of Quentin Crisp: 'Never, ever, work.'

Today is a national day of mourning for the victims of the bushfires of ten days ago.*

Arguably worse than those of 2006, 2003, the Ash Wednesday fires a week before I was born, or the 'Black Friday' of 1939, to say nothing of the ones not mentioned, since about ten days ago much of the state (approximately the size of Britain) has gone up in smoke. Oh yes, and the neighbouring state has not escaped.

I myself have not been, as they say, 'directly affected'; that is, neither I nor (AFAIK) anyone I know personally has lost either their lives or their houses in any of the fires.

But many people have. The human death toll is at 209^, and they haven't finished counting yet.

Donations of money are in the tens of millions, and they haven't finished that either.

Donations in kind, from blood to pasture for stock, are pouring in on a similar scale. The generosity is staggering. In fact charities are begging people to donate cash and not goods, as they are overwhelmed with sorting and transporting and the next few years are going to be well, quite expensive (see 'drought').

They were going to be quite expensive for the world in general as it was, but if anyone would still like to donate, here's the Australian Red Cross site, and Wildlife Victoria. Of course there are many other charities working for the same cause- the Salvation Army for example- and of course you may choose to donate to them instead, but those are the main ones we seem to be pointed at.

The damage, of course, has not been calculated either, and will not be for some time, as at least four fires are still burning and well, it isn't raining and it won't rain much if it does.

(Please note that this comes after 10 or so years of drought**, during which everyone is on water restrictions and many a dam, lake and reservoir is dry. What's left after fighting fires is not nearly enough for the state's households let alone the rest of the summer's vigilance, and has quite a lot of ash in it now.) If someone could tilt the continent so that we got the runoff from Queensland's simultaneous floods, that would be useful as well as fun, but alas. Many a Queenslander has donated their flood relief money to bushfire relief, though. Like I said, staggering generosity.

A friend of a friend's put together a charity concert on March 1st, for those in town, details at the link; I see there's one on Tuesday too, and that's only one venue. There's also an LJ community, vicbushfirefund , where people are offering [the proceeds of the sale of] all manner of things. And auctions on Etsy. It's endless.

a minute's silence contemplating loss, weather, arson, death, smoke, electricity, vigilantism, governance and generosity

I shall spare you the horrific photos and leave you with a poem from my father's youth, I think.

Said Hanrahan


*Officially 'Black Saturday' was February 7th, 2009, but obviously fires do not start, burn and go out in a day. Friday to Tuesday sort of blurred together for me. I can't imagine what it was like for those within range: different for everyone I expect.
^All figures are correct to the best of my knowledge at time of writing (the small hours of Sunday, February 22nd), are linked to their sources, and are difficult to calculate as they are still finding people and some fires are still going.
** 'Drought' = not so much 'less rain than one needs', as 'even less rain than usual'.
------------------------------

In other news, I've just seen the Victorian Opera's Bluebeard/Carmina Burana double bill, which was lovely, and shall now go to bed, perchance to clean the house tomorrow and *ahem* come up with an abstract for a certain Festschrift before the due date.
Which I set myself.
For my birthday on Monday.
I mean tomorrow.
Birthday drinks tonight.. well, writing in a glow of bottled inspiration on a napkin at the bar is a time-honoured form of scholarship.

The Babelfish's sisters and his cousins and his aunts and I have a regular tea party together. The next is soon, in celebration of which I note the:

Proper moments for drinking tea

When one's heart and hands are idle.
Tired after reading poetry.
When one's thoughts are disturbed.


Madge Gill

Listening to songs and ditties.
When a song is completed.
Shut up at one's home on a holiday.
Playing the ch'in and looking over paintings.
Engaged in conversation deep at night.
Before a bright window and a clean desk.
With charming friends and slender concubines.
Returning from a visit with friends.


End of a past tea party

When the day is clear and the breeze is mild.
On a day of light showers.
In a painted boat near a small wooden bridge.


Queens Bollege Bambridge

In a forest with tall bamboos.
In a pavilion overlooking lotus flowers on a summer day.
Having lighted incense in a small studio.
After a feast is over and the guests are gone.
When children are at school.
In a quiet, secluded temple.
Near famous springs and quaint rocks.

-Hsu Ts'eshu


cafe near home

Mum [sings]: There's a porn shop, on the corner, in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania...
Nons: ?
Mum: It's a quirky love song from the forties.
Nons: About porn.
Mum: No, not about porn! It's about selling what you have to buy your sweetheart a present.
Nons: ! Pretty quirky for the forties, then.
Mum: Not a P-O-R-N shop, a P-A-W-N shop.
Nons: ... oh.

Wish I could find the various skits, from music hall up, that have been based on that particular homophone. I imagine a lot of mutually misleading nodding and winking and perhaps a structure similar to Monty Python's Hungarian phrasebook thing. Perfectly postive such must be plentiful, but failed to find any. Here's the song, though. A bit In the Jail House Now, a bit How Much is That Doggy in the Window.

In other news, contrary to my usual practice of not applying for everything to the point of not applying for anything, I am applying for things. Money, mostly, for various purposes. (several potentially fun things appeared at once. You'd think they were working off the same calendar or something...) A weird pastime it is.

European Film Treasures

-is not a catalogue of everything, but it is a fairly comprehensive and user-friendly catalogue of the lovely, the weird and the both. Go forth and enjoy!

(found at Cachemire et Soie)

Also, chronographia hath drawn a beautiful concept on many levels- click my wee version to see it in its full glory in her journal.

enname posted the weather forecast for the next few days.

Folks have been consoling ourselves in the usual way by talking about it a lot, citing surprising facts such as that the last time it was over 40 (104) degrees for five days was in 1908, Australia is one of the sunniest places on earth along with the Pacific and Sahara, the Australian Open venue has a rather complicated procedure for deciding when to close the roof, etc etc. These things surprise me mostly in their capacity to underwhelm. Five days at over 40 is hardly extreme, although I admit I'm glad it's not 1908. For one thing, I'd not have been to university, and thus would probably be wearing my corset, stockings, bloomers, several layers of petticoats and boots in a country town, stacking hay in a flat and treeless paddock before coming home to a corrugated iron roof. Mm.

Other things I like about this heat:
-sandal patterns on brown feet
-waking early
-long evenings with a lime and soda, waiting till it's cooler outside than in and we can open up the house (er, around midnight)
-it's reassuring that the world appears to be having appropriate weather for January
-washing my feet before going to bed
-the resilient -no, the insouciant- sage, parsley and celery in the garden. Sadly the same cannot be said of the mint or strawberries.
-more people wearing hats, scarves and/or carrying parasols. The penny droppeth, ever so slowly.....
-my own rather lovely hat
-it's dry heat. So most of us are no less sane than usual. I've been boring people silly, but still can't express how grateful I am that it's not humid.
-coming out of an air-conditioned building. You can feel your skin shrivelling from the sheer radiant heat off the ground. For those where it's cold, heat your oven to around medium, then sit in front of it and open the door. relatively Exciting.
-swimming
-falling asleep on the grass at a music festival (Neil Young's version of A Day in the Life was as different as the Arctic Monkeys' version of Red Right Hand and as right for the occasion as the Babelfish's daal and a two-token cold beer.)

now can I have a day cool enough to ride to work, please? Paying this much for frequently delayed trains is  less pleasant. And I'm sure the old would appreciate it.

Should I illustrate this post?

Kelen, Sarah A. Langland's Early Modern Identities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. 225. $74.95. ISBN: 1-4039-6517-X.

Reviewed by John M. Bowers University of Nevada Las Vegas
John.bowers@unlv.edu

Palgrave's New Middle Ages series, under the editorship of Bonnie Wheeler, continues to publish some of the best new work on medieval literature, history and culture, and Sarah Kelen's book enters this lineup as an admirable contribution to reception-history by tracing the ways that Langland's Piers Plowman has been understood among readers from the Reformation to the early twentieth century. This exercise in historical semantics investigates the cultural materials of manuscripts, glosses and early editions, but not to produce a history of the editorial tradition so much as to expose the "metatextual" identity of the author and his literary work over several post-medieval generations.

The introductory section "Langland as an Early Modern Author" reminds us that when the Renaissance was re-christened by literary historians as the Early Modern, the boundary marker between periods looked up for grabs, and various specialists made their moves. Stephen Greenblatt continued to defend the integrity of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries against encroachments from the previous two centuries, almost again the Dark Ages in his formulation, while Lee Patterson and Paul Strohm found much in the works of fourteenth-century writers, particularly Chaucer, to suggest moving the boundary back to the reign of Richard II. Kelen focuses upon Langland, Chaucer's senior contemporary, and starts her discussion with the irrefutable fact that Piers Plowman was printed in 1550 as evidence that the agents of Tudor literary culture welcomed this work and made its author almost their contemporary, much as "presentism" makes Shakespeare ours. Hand-written copies of Piers continued to be produced during the sixteenth century, even annotated, most famously by the aristocratic reader Sir Adrian Fortescue in 1532. Early Tudor readers looked upon Langland's poem as a living work with theological messages that made the dream-allegory a forerunner of the English Reformation. But lacking a name and biography, the author of Piers also lacked the sort of "aura" that Walter Benjamin described as necessary for a writer attracting imitators, and so Skelton, Spenser and Shakespeare looked instead to Chaucer for their main inspiration. If the author of the Canterbury Tales was appreciated as singularly un-medieval--and still is--then Langland was specifically valued as super-medieval.

If you're interested, the full review is here.
---------------------------------------------------------

I just came across this blog, and have been enjoying pretty much every post.  Particularly the posts on 'Bringing Art to Life', parts I, II and III:



I hope you enjoy it as much I am.


Going to see Entre les Murs this evening, after the year's first cohort meeting. Both of which should also be good and tasty.

from here

Much gleeful puerile laughter followed by really quite a romantic sonnet

Poetic photography from Josef Sudek

_inbetween_  posted this video clip.

Crow Crag pictures from grace_poppy 

Next week, Skelton, Spenser and Shakespeare read Walter Benjamin: More Periodization Nonsense (with interesting between the lines.)

The official cufflinks for the Society for the Propagation of French (or Double) Cuffs: to be designed.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo, found at Cachemire et Soie.

Seen on the journals of

doublespeak and hannah_nutwood (and doing the rounds.)

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?

I saw snow.

I also bought a kit pinhole camera, gardened outside pots (no really, I never had, it was all balconies and courtyards) and found the world's only becoming sun hat.

2. Did you keep your New Year's Resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Not to read novels in English for the year: Shattered in many pieces, but I do get on faster and more easily now.
Learn to sew: I own a machine and some patterns and fabrics, I made pockets, and I made plans. Apart from mending and lining.



(I don't know where I got this image from; if you know or if it's yours, please let me know so I can credit it. All other images not mine are linked to their source.)

This year's resolutions range from the Life-changing and Significant, to the usual, to the ridiculously small but inexplicably difficult... and I might tell you about them if it's a good story when it happens.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not really close, although two friendsanrelations did. Both daughters are the first of their families and very patient with all the attention they get.
 
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Not really close, although two people at uni did: one of the lecturers whom I'd only seen in the hallways and who was close to retiring (in protest?), and one young coworker committed suicide. The saddest part of which was that we all said to each other that we 'didn't know her that well', and we didn't.
Also a fellow I was at primary school with died in a motorbike accident, he was 22.

5. What countries did you visit?
Tasmania :-P

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?



7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I remember experiences, usually small and/or happy ones, but I don't remember dates after the event.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Probably the post for August 8th. I kid you not... That, or organising my sister's 21st.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Failing to finish the puppet costuming.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Recurring feverish unspecifiedillness again at the end of June. It reached a peak (not a nadir) in one day, during which I read Faust-related things. Positively pleasant.

11. What was the best thing someone bought you?
Scipio, the sewing machine. Thank you Mum xx (and for all the patterns, fabrics and tips...)
 
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The washing machine, which after breaking mysteriously in September, recovered just as mysteriously in December. Everyone involved swears they didn't touch it...

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Melbourne University sacking half its staff and not replacing them ('voluntary redundancies', my arse) and getting rid of a lot of irreplaceable, uncatalogued books, to replace them with what was described in the 'vision statement' as an airport lounge. Ok, the airport lounge happened last year, but the science and arts libraries are set to be similarly rearranged in 2009 and thereafter. And it is all being managed very dishonestly and inefficiently, may I add.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Sandwiches and train fares.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
A certain Festschrift... and a certain translation that never materialised.

16. What artists will always remind you of 2008?
Caravaggio, Lucien Freud and Yinka Shonibare.

 

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
b) fatter or skinner?
c) richer or poorer?

About the same, on all three counts.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
writing, sewing, drawing, something constructive about question 13, seeking out music and art, bicycle polo.



19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Discontented faffing about. (contented faffing is different and very good for one.)

20. How do you plan to spend Christmas?
Well, it's a while away. I'd actually like not to be here for it, I think a cold Christmas would be nice for a change.



21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
no... perhaps more in love.
 
22. How many one night stands?
Not a sausage. I'm too monogamous, too fastidious and too sleepy.
 
23. What was your favorite TV program?
Oh, let's say Flight of the Conchords. No, let's not. Let's say Silence in the Library and the Agatha Christie episode.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No. Almost the reverse: I went off university history this time last year (to the point of avoiding friends) and now I've stopped feeling trapped and feel benevolent and interested again.

25. What was the best book you read?
Georges Perec- Life: a User's Manual, and my dear friend Solideogloria gave me 84 Charing Cross Road for Christmas. I fully intend to bore you all with long, uncritical rants detailing exactly why I liked them so much, later.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Ross McLennan, Grandaddy. and VulgarGrad.

27. What did you want and get?
A laptop; John Burrow's History of Histories (Keith Thomas' Guardian review here): pretty thing, isn't it?



28. What did you want and not get?
To go to a friend's farewell-before-Oxford party. I actually stood outside the flats, very late and without phone reception, being too shy to ring all the bells and ask 'does J live here?' In the end I went home. I was so disappointed and ashamed of my lack of initiative that I never rang afterwards and explained why I said I'd go and then didn't turn up. I still haven't.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Persepolis was fun.



30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 25, and I must have enjoyed it in the usual way- reading, musing and such.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Leaving my job because I decided on a better plan of some sort. Both the changing, and the deciding, would have been satisfying.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
In my head, rather 1930s. In reality.. incoherent, limited and a bit dowdy. I own far too many odd skirts, stripy Tshirts and disreputable boots.

33. What kept you sane?
Other than the Babelfish and solitude, my coworkers, whom I like a lot and who are the reason I still work here. They tend to be kind, eccentric, responsible and interesting free spirits. I've never worked in such a pleasant context before (I have had a pleasant job at a B & B run by a kind, eccentric, responsible and interesting lady, but this is multiplied by many people and variety is part of the interesting.)

Also, people's names.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I tend not to do that, but the question was 'the most'. Oh... it'd have to be Jarvis. An oldie but a goodie.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Funding for universities is a political issue here. It's not just Melbourne.

36. Who do you miss?
Silvia and Olivia, Nick and James.

37. Who was the best new person you met?

unkoogabriel and _inbetween_ . I didn't really meet anyone new in terrestrial life, but I did see a few old acquaintances again that I hope to become friends with.

38. What was the best thing you ate?
Olives.



39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008?



(Graphic by the lovely chronographia , available to the public: here.) So I knew this, but perhaps not so well as I thought.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
It's getting cold, I'll catch the bus, see my friend when she's finished work and get some fish and chips, la da da da dum, what's on the box... -Photo Jenny, Belle and Sebastian

May your Christmases be as splendid, and your new year as flourishing, as the dentist's moustache was yesterday.