Volume 10: 2017-18 ISSN: 2041-6776
The Genesis of the Self in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (1958)
Jonathan McAllister
English Dissertation: Full Year
Supervisor: Dr Joel Evans
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he turns from fact of anti-mind alien to mind to thought of anti-mind constituent of mind - Samuel Beckett, The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett. III: Krapp’s Last Tape.
In any case, once the hegemony of skin and skull is usurped, we may be able to see ourselves more truly as creatures of the world - Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers, ‘The Extended Mind’.
For Alex.
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Contents
Abbreviations List 4 Introduction 5 Section 1: Critical Frameworks 6
Section 2: Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) 12 Conclusion 18 Bibliography 18
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Abbreviations Abbreviations of manuscripts relating to Krapp’s Last Tape.
EM ‘Été 56’ notebook, UoR MS 1227-7-7-1, Beckett International Foundation, University of Reading. ET1 English Typescript 1, HRC MS SB 4-2-1. ET2 English Typescript 2, HRC MS SB 4-2-2. ET3 English Typescript 3, HRC MS SB 4-2-3. ET4 English Typescript 4, HRC MS SB 4-2-4. ET5 English Typescript 5, UoR MS 1659. PPF Page proofs for Faber and Faber (KLT 1959).
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Introduction
On 7 March 1958, Samuel Beckett wrote to Donald McWhinnie: ‘I have written a short stage monologue for Magee (definitely non-radio). It involves a tape-recorder with the mechanics of which I am unfamiliar’.1 The monologue in question was Krapp’s Last Tape, in which Beckett sought to stage a relation of the human and technology. The phrase ‘definitely non-radio’ demonstrates the importance Beckett placed on staging the materiality of the body and tape- recorder, in a post-Cartesian exploration of the entanglement of cognition and materiality. This dissertation provides a critical analysis informed by post-structural theories of the self of the genesis of Krapp, to explore the writing of cognition into the tape-recorder. This couples the mind and technology in a dialectical relation to engender the self. I therefore argue that Beckett conceived the self as a biomechanical entity, an idea that has ramifications for conceptions of selfhood. This is demonstrated through an analysis of the Été 56 notebook, which contains the earliest version of the play. I further contend that the Été 56 notebook manifests Beckett’s subversion of the Manichean duality of mind and body through the human-machine relation, a framework he brought into play in his 1969 Schiller-Theater Werkstatt performance in Berlin. This idea is explicated through an analysis of biological metaphor and of the looping of the technology with Krapp’s neurology. Ultimately, my argument extends beyond critical frameworks of the post-structural self to conceptualise Krapp’s self as extended into the world, through drawing on cognitive integrationist and extended mind theory.
1 Samuel Beckett, The Letters of Samuel Beckett, eds. George Craig and others, IV vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), III: 1957-1965, p. 115.
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Section One Critical Frameworks
Genetic Criticism
Genetic criticism is a European approach to text that took form in the early 1970s. Jed Deppman situates its emergence alongside post-structural philosophy that seeks to theoretically decentre the presence of meaning. He argues that genetic criticism ‘grows out of a structuralist and poststructuralist notion of “text” as an infinite play of signs’.2 Its development was therefore coextensive with the intellectual shift in critical conceptions of text that arose out of structural linguistics. This shift generated conceptual questions concerning the boundaries of the textual product, and destabilised the notion of a singular, self-contained text. The historical notion of text as the presence of an author’s intentional semiotic system in a fixed object thus came under theoretical scrutiny. Roland Barthes’ essays of 1977 questioned the closure of text, augmenting the nexus of theoretical and critical approaches that allowed genetic criticism to emerge in the late twentieth century. He defined text as a ‘tissue of quotations’ that inter-textually relate the text outside of itself.3 Genetic criticism accordingly focuses on notebooks and manuscripts to analyse the temporal dimension of textual production, complicating the idea of a ‘definitive text’ through a focus on inter-textual and derivative aspects of textuality. In this post-structural conception, the boundaries between the textual product and the trace of the textual process disintegrate into an inter-textual play of signifiers. In examining ‘text’ we therefore come to unfamiliar conclusions regarding the ontology of text; our language subsequently becomes twisted and warped. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak notes that Derrida’s practice of writing under erasure is the ‘mark of this contortion’.4 I shall therefore follow Derrida’s practice of writing sous rature, and place ‘text’ implicitly under erasure in this dissertation. 5 The genetics scholar Jean Bellemin-Noël criticises the efforts of critics who worked with manuscripts in the 1950s and 1960s. He argues that they were too preoccupied with the conscious intentions of the author, and that poststructuralist theories of the subject, the sign, and the text undermine their work.6 He therefore coined the term ‘avant-texte’ in 1974 to denote the documents that provide a record of the textual process. Under Bellemin-Noël’s theory, these documents form an inter-textual network apart from any consciousness of intention. He further opposes the idea of ‘variants’ of a text, arguing that such an idea implies a singular text with alternative formulations. Genetic critics generally accept Bellemin-Noël’s term ‘avant-texte’ with different nuances, and the term is used throughout the essays in Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-Textes that introduced this critical approach to an Anglophone academic audience.7 In recent genetic criticism, however, the critic will often select a ‘base text’ to compare different ‘textual variants’.8 This allows for a critical diachronic analysis of the text that can be non-teleological. There is a texture and multiplicity that emerges through engagement with the heterogeneous space of textual processes. This texture is absent from engagement with a ‘singular’ text in codex form. Louis Hay argues that empirical studies of the traces retained in writer’s manuscripts ‘texture the discourse, increase the significations and multiply the
2 Jed Deppman and others, Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-Textes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 2. 3 Roland Barthes, ‘Death of the Author’, in Image, Music, Text: Essays, sel. and trans. by Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), p. 146. 4 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2016), p. xxxii. 5 Ibid., pp. 19-28. 6 Deppman and others, Genetic Criticism, p. 8. 7 Ibid. 8 See BDMP, ‘Editorial Principles and Practice’, in Krapp’s Last Tape: a digital genetic edition (The Beckett Digital Manuscript Project, module 3), ed. by Dirk Van Hulle and Vincent Neyt (Brussels: University Press Antwerp, 2015),
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possible readings’. 9 The text is related through identity and difference in genetic criticism; consequently, multiple readings emerge from this space, proliferating the significations of the text. In his work on the textual genesis of modernist selves, Finn Fordham argues that ‘drafts, in their variant and unfinished states, indicate an author in a split condition of undecidability and incompleteness’.10 The vacillations of paradigmatic and syntagmatic linguistic units that evidence this indecisiveness are retained in the material traces of the avant-texte: crossings out, re-drafts and insertions. I would argue that critical attentiveness to these material traces indicates the potentiality of text in process. This potentiality occurs as the text unfolds in a spatiotemporal process of différance. The philosopher Jacques Derrida coined the term différance to articulate the condition of linguistic semiotics. He writes that différance is the ‘becoming-space of time or the becoming time of space’.11 Therefore, the unfolding of language in time becomes the space of writing, and the space of writing becomes time in the unfolding of language. Derrida incorporates the notions of difference and deferral in this neologism. It signifies the concept that meaning emerges from a field of linguistic difference, and is simultaneously deferred through the temporal process of writing. I would argue that the text in process as différance therefore gives form to the writer’s thought: thought is not anterior to language, but emerges in the space and time of linguistic production. This is a dialectic process, whereby the phenomenology of the unfolding text affects the writer’s conceptualisation of the work in progress. Their drafts retain the material trace of this condition and manifest the ‘split condition’ of the author. Beckett contributed to the archiving of materials that relate to the Beckett œuvre. The Beckett archive at the University of Reading forms a complex inter-textual network that retains the trace of the textual process and the social context of textual production. The plenitude of this archive accordingly affects the perception of Beckett’s published works, through providing supplementary material in the form of the avant-texte. The Beckett scholar S.E. Gontarski has coined the term ‘the grey canon’ to denote these writings that the published works implicitly refer to through their inter-textual relations. The ‘grey canon’ consists of the notes, letters, diaries, criticism, self-translations, drafts, and abandoned works that encroach on the ostensibly complete, enclosed work.12 Beckett’s contribution indicates that he recognised the importance of these documents in scholarly research and interpretation; they allow scholars to trace the diachronic production of text through an analysis of the trace of textual processes. Further, Beckett’s contribution to the research on his œuvre demonstrates his engagement with the epistemic shift of the late twentieth century in European philosophy and literary criticism. This shift, as stated above, was toward the theories of French poststructuralist philosophers and the practice of genetic criticism. However, the political implication of this archiving process is that materials are placed in the confines of an institution, rather than being widely accessible to the public. Derrida’s argument of the drives in Archive Fever (1995), in addition, provides a psychoanalytic framework for interpreting this archiving impulse. Derrida argues that archive fever - a cathexis of the archiving impulse - is associated with Freud’s death drive in its repetitive structure:
[I]f there is no archive without consignation in an external place which assures the possibility of memorization, of repetition, of reproduction, or of reimpression, then we
9 Louis Hay, ‘Does “Text” Exist?’, Studies in Bibliography, 41 (1988), 64-76 (p. 69). 10 Finn Fordham, I do I undo I redo: The Textual Genesis of Modernist Selves in Hopkins, Yeats, Conrad, Forster, Joyce, and Woolf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 25. 11 Jacques Derrida, ‘Différance’, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. by Alan Bass (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), pp. 1-27 (p. 13). 12 Quoted in Dirk Van Hulle, ‘Introduction: A Beckett Continuum’, in The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett, ed. by Dirk Van Hulle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. xvii-xxvi (p.xvii).
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must remember that repetition itself, the logic of repetition, indeed the repetition compulsion, remains, according to Freud, indissociable from the death drive.13
This relates to Hannah Arendt’s notion of homo faber: the compulsion to create material things ‘whose stability will endure and outlast the ever-changing movement of [human] lives and actions’.14 Therefore, Beckett’s contribution to the archive is not only to provide resources for the ‘loutishness of learning’, but a symptom of the psychical structure of the death drive.15 The criticism that has emerged from engagement with these archived materials, moreover, has been made accessible in different forms. Beckett’s works have been revised and republished by Faber and Faber (2009-) through reference to archival resources, and the editors of each work provide an introduction that discusses the avant-texte.16 James Knowlson started the Beckett archive at the University of Reading in 1971. In his editor’s note to the facsimile editions of the theatrical notebooks, he writes: ‘it is a misconception to think that [Beckett] believed he or anyone else could ‘fix’ his plays’.17 This argument implies that Beckett did not see texts as stable, unified objects that an author or director could semantically fix. However, scholars are here presented with a critical paradox. Beckett revised the contract that licenses the performance of his plays in the 1980s to include a clause that blocks deviation from the script or stage directions. This decision ostensibly contradicts Knowlson’s argument. Nonetheless, I interpret this paradox through defining the published dramatic work as a blueprint for performance. I would argue that Beckett considered this the space within which the proliferation of meaning and interpretation arises. In this conceptualisation, the work is an extensive play of signifiers: it is reinterpretable and always in the process of re-signification through its semiotic multiplicity and inter-textuality. The publication of Beckett’s letters (2009-) and the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (BDMP) (2011-) further invigorates this play of the Beckett œuvre. The BDMP is an internet resource that provides access to a digital facsimile of Beckett’s text, and an extensive analysis of the composition process to facilitate interpretation.18 Through providing a searchable, digital facsimile of the avant-texte, the BDMP expands on the codex facsimile and transcript of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1971), and the internet concordances of James Joyce’s work of a decade ago. The publication of the ‘grey canon’ in different forms provides a plethora of information with which to re-interpret the published works, and this undergraduate dissertation makes extensive use of multiple resources. My research would thus have been difficult to carry out a decade ago, due to funding and time restrictions. This reveals a shift in the work that scholars can produce with digital resources. The digitalising of Beckett’s manuscripts of Krapp (2015) allows this dissertation to provide a genetic analysis of the play informed by critical approaches to the self and technology.
The Self and Technology
In Difference and Repetition (1968), Gilles Deleuze offers the following poststructuralist critique of identity: ‘we must always contemplate something else in order to be filled with an
13 Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. by Eric Prenowitz (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 11-12
14 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 173. 15 Samuel Beckett, The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett, ed. by Seán Lawlor and John Pilling (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), p. 55. 16 See, for example, Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable (London: Faber and Faber, 2010). 17 James Knowlson, ‘General Editor’s Note’, in The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, ed. by James Knowlson, IV vols. (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), III: Krapp’s Last Tape pp. ix-x (p. ix).
18 See BDMP, ‘Editorial Principles and Practice’,
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image of ourselves’.19 This critique of self-presence accords with the intellectual shift that is discussed above. European post-structural theories deconstruct the idea of an essential self; this deconstruction results in a concept of the self as an other that emerges in interaction. This proposition argues that the self takes its form through the things of the world. The self thus manifests in the form of something other than its own being, in opposition to the notion of a formed, stable ontological entity prior to its emergence in the form of things. In line with this theory, I argue that the ontological structure of the self emerges from within the other-than- self. In this post-structural thought, objects in the world provide a form to the self I take myself to be. This occurs through a psychical introjection of the other-than-self. The self is thus ideated as a fluctuating entity that emerges structurally from within something other than itself, in the spatiotemporal field of self-articulation. Michel Foucault’s definition of discourse as ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ agrees with this approach to the self.20 He argues that selfhood is formed through the semiotic structures that govern its articulation in discourse. In writing the self, the writer is therefore in the process of forming an unstable self through the re-introjection of writing in process. In the writing process, the self is conceived as a spatiotemporal fluctuation, its form affected by the phenomenology and reworking of the object through which it manifests as a self. Fordham adopts this post-structural critical approach to study the textuality of modernist selves. He argues that attention to the writing process nuances critical understandings of the self in literary texts. He proposes the following thesis:
[B]ecause of the variety of its formations, the reach of its referentiality, the simplicity of its iterability, the sophistication of its manipulability – writing is the primary technology in the formation of an identity.21
Fordham’s argument is that a critical approach to the textual process is integral to understanding the modernist self from a postmodernist perspective. He argues that writing brings the form of a self into the world. The introjection of this other-than-self of writing gives the self a form through which to contemplate itself. Critically, Fordham uses Roland Barthes idea of ‘ergography’. This allows Fordham to articulate the importance of genetic criticism in conceptualising the writer’s process of thinking through writing to formulate the self. Barthes states that ‘what needs to be done is to trace not the biography of a writer, but rather what might be called the writing of his work, a sort of ergography’.22 This is an appeal for a critical approach that studies the avant-texte to articulate the shifting self of a writer or protagonist. Further, this task demands a critical approach to analyse the différance of the linguistic semiotics that govern a particular self in text. Steven Connor argues that technological machines are a tehknē through which the self can be imagined. In Dream Machines (2017), he contends that the writing of technology (technography) is always a writing of the self (psychotechnography). Therefore, he puts forward the idea that humans perceive the self through the mediation of machines in a catachrestic process, in which self-relation is constituted through a series of substitutions of the self. He articulates his central thesis thus: ‘the psyche comes between machines and writing; machines come between the psyche and its writing’.23 This triadic relation of psyche, machines, and writing indicates that in Connor’s thought the shaping of the self occurs through
19 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. by Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 74-75. 20 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. by A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 1972), p. 49.
21 Fordham, I do I undo I redo, p. 16. 22 Quoted in Fordham, I do I undo I redo, p. 24. 23 Steven Connor, ‘Psychotechnographies’, in Dream Machines (London: Open Humanities Press, 2017), pp. 7-24 (p. 21).
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the creative process of imagining machines and their workings. Therefore, through writing about machines the writer conceptualises the psyche, and through writing about the psyche the writer conceptualises machines. This theory further suggests that the use of metaphors of machines to linguistically formulate the workings of cognition operate to give a form to our self and cognition. These metaphors thus work to mediate self-relation. As Connor states: ‘there are cogs in cogitation’.24 Following this logic, there is no tehknē that can allow for the literal mediation of the self to the self. This dissertation extends these arguments through integrating them with those of extended mind theory. In my reading, Fordham’s argument of the self suggests the coupling of the cognitive resources of the biological organism with the material traces of writing. Furthermore, Connor’s triadic relation of psyche, machines and writing problematises the Cartesian stable boundary between inside and outside of the self. This reading situates Fordham and Connor in relation to cognitive integrationist theory, which argues that the mind is hybrid and integrated. The philosopher Richard Menary explains:
[T]he integration of neural and external processes leads us to understand cognition and the mind as: hybrid - involving both neural and external processes - and integrated – neural and external processes coordinate with one another in the completion of cognitive tasks.25
I therefore argue that the act of inscribing or reading is a process that involves neurological processes and graphic materiality in an integrated system of the self in process: the emergence of the self through the other-than-self. The argument that a malleable external environment gives form to the self is expanded by the notion of the extended mind. The philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers argue that the mind is neither inside nor outside of the skin and skull, but instead a ‘coupled system’ of ‘biological organism and external resources’.26 They describe a process whereby cognition is the making present of information to consciousness. In this process, ‘the relevant parts of the world’ that manifest the information are ‘in the loop’ that constitutes an individual mind.27 Andy Clark extends this argument through the contention that bodily actions implement representational and computational operations in addition to neurological processes. He explains that ‘the difference is just that the operations are realised not in the neural system alone but in the whole embodied system located in the world’.28 Cognitive processes are therefore conceptualised as making use of materiality beyond the boundaries of consciousness. This extends the mind into the world to materially realise certain operations. The etymology of ‘cognition’ makes clear the relevance of this theory to my argument. The word ‘cognition’ is from the Latin cognōscĕre, which denotes a getting to know. 29 Cognition of the self can consequently be expressed as a getting to know the self, or the process of acquiring knowledge of the self. I extend the post-structural theory of the self as an introjected form that is other-than-self through extended mind theory. My contention is that the self is a coupling of the biological organism and the external world, in a dialectic of neural processes and material forms. This engenders the presence to consciousness of a conceived self. The self is not bound within the confines of corporality, but spreads into the world and is
24 Ibid., p. 11. 25 Richard Menary, ‘Writing as thinking’, Language Sciences, 29:1 (2007), 621-632 (p. 627).
26 Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers, ‘The Extended Mind’, in The Extended Mind, ed. by Richard Menary (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2010), pp. 27-42 (p. 39).
27 Ibid., p. 29. 28 Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 14. 29Oxford English Dictionary, (Oxford University Press, 2010)
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the things of the world. I therefore argue that Krapp’s self extends into the world. He manipulates material objects to acquire knowledge of the other-than-self he himself is. Beckett phrases it thus in his director’s notebook: ‘[Krapp] turns from fact of anti-mind alien to mind to thought of anti-mind constituent of mind’.30
30 Samuel Beckett, The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, ed. James Knowlson, IV vols. (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), III: Krapp’s Last Tape, p. 141.
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Section Two Krapp’s Last Tape (1958)
In January 1958, Samuel Beckett went to the BBC studios in Paris to hear the recordings of Patrick Magee reading extracts of Molloy (1951).31 There he listened to the disembodied voice reading his words, while watching the tape-recorder process the material inscription of the acoustic signal. Beckett would have seen spools of archived tape in the studio, which contained materially inscribed speech with the potential to be made acoustically present through audio technology. Knowlson and others have considered this moment as formative in the conception of Krapp.32 However, the role of the tape-recorder in relation to post-structural theories of the self that complicate the boundaries between subject and object has been largely neglected. Typical considerations of the play have read the tape-recorder as a metaphor for memory and cognition: Knowlson describes it as a ‘taped memory-bank’, and Ruby Cohn reads it as a ‘stage metaphor for time past’.33 This section seeks to reassess the importance Beckett placed on staging the materiality of the body and tape-recorder in this post-Cartesian exploration of the entanglement of the self, cognition, and materiality.
Psychotechnography
Beckett’s visit to the BBC studios in Paris catalysed in his imagination the conception of Krapp. His correspondence indicates that this visit was the first time he saw a tape-recorder in operation, a sophisticated technology of the time that forms the central device of his play. Writing to Con Leventhal on the 20 January 1958, Beckett states: ‘I heard the tapes in the BBC studio in Paris […] I have been trying to write another radio text for the [BBC’s Third Programme], but with no success’.34 Beckett had found it difficult to write another radio play after All That Fall (1957); in early 1958, he was struggling with the composition of Embers (1959). He was, however, able to conceive of a re-conceptualization of the self through his contact with the technological apparatus in operation. The ostensibly disembodied voice of Magee was inscribed in the materiality of the tape and tape-recorder, which suggests imaginative modalities in which to explore the philosophical hypothesis of Cartesian duality. Dirk Van Hulle argues that Beckett’s approach to cognition was post-Cartesian.35 I argue further that Beckett’s approach to the self is post-structural. In Krapp, the self is engendered through an entanglement of materiality and mind, as opposed to a self-reflecting, essential entity. This extends Descartes’ hypothesis, to reflect upon the notion of an embodied and material form of the self. The Été 56 notebook held at the University of Reading contains manuscript notes that represent the earliest versions of Krapp.36 Gontarski has observed that although Beckett referred to this notebook as a ‘first draft’, the manuscript notes represent a number of stages
31 James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), p. 444. 32 Ibid. 33 James Knowlson, ‘Krapp’s Last Tape: the evolution of a play, 1958-75’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 1 (1976), also available at
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in the play’s development.37 The editors of the genetic edition of Krapp agree with this interpretation, also identifying different versions of the play in the notebook.38 They determine four versions of the work in this textual document, a version defined with reference to Peter Shillingsburg as ‘one specific form of the work - the one the author intended at some particular moment in time’.39 The notebook therefore retains the trace of Beckett’s unfolding thoughts as they shift and are revised as material inscriptions on the page. To identify a revision to the lexical item ‘switch’, that is the subject of this subsection, a syntactic alignment of the different versions proves useful:
starts up machine (EM, 12r) switches it on (EM, 11v) switches it on (ET1, 1)
This moment is taken from the start of the play, when Krapp first switches on the tape-recorder after identifying ‘Box … three … spool … five’ (EM, 11r). The use of the term ‘starts up’ in the first version, before its revision in the second, reflects Beckett’s unfamiliarity with the operational terminology of a tape-recorder. The phrase ‘starts up’ denotes a setting in motion, as opposed to the dichotomous on/off of tape recording technology. Furthermore, the phrase ‘starts up’ has its technological signification temporally situated in the nineteenth century. The tenor of this phrase in collocation with ‘machine’ is ‘to set in operation’ or ‘to cause to begin to function or operate’, usually in reference to mechanical technologies that originated in the early Victorian period.40 Moreover, the idea of setting in motion is associated with early technological sound reproduction though the use of gramophones and record players. The proliferation of the term ‘switch’ in the early twentieth century, in contrast, testifies to a condition of modernity, in which transitions between states were made more thinkable due to an epistemic shift in conceptualisations of technology; Steven Connor notes that the idea of switching on and off made ‘absolute transitions easy and familiar’.41 Significantly, this terminology was used in the use of radios, televisions, and tape-recorders, with computer systems representing the postmodern condition of switching through the flexibility of binary code. This epistemological change, in which transitions between states became more thinkable, affects our understanding of what a self is, in Connor’s idea of psychotechnography. Beckett’s revision to ‘switch’ is accordingly coextensive with revisions to the play that have ramifications for conceptualisations of the self. Throughout the second version of the play, Krapp ‘broods’ on particular moments, as when he ‘stops the machine, broods’ (EM, 15r) on the memory of the ‘girl in a shabby green coat, on a railway-station platform’ (EM, 15r). Beckett further revises the play so that Krapp ‘remains motionless’ (PPF, 4r) or ‘remains a moment motionless’ (PPF, 4r) at particular moments, ‘drowned in dreams’ (PPF, 8r). These moments of silent, melancholic reflection on the failure of his artistic career and relationships counterpoise certain moments of frustration that Beckett coextensively introduces. For example, Krapp becomes impatient with the vision that his 39-year-old self relates, and therefore ‘switches xxx off machine, winds tape forward, switches on again’ (EM, 17r) and ‘curses’ (EM, 17r) at the continuation of the vision, and then ‘curses louder’ (EM, 17r). In revising the play in typescript form, Beckett adds the adverb ‘impatiently’ (ET1, 2r) and considers the adverb ‘violently’ (ET2, 4r) to describe the winding. Therefore, the manuscript revisions and drafts written after the incorporation of the notion of
37 S. E. Gontarski, ‘Crapp’s First Tapes: Beckett’s Manuscript Revisions of Krapp’s Last Tape’, Journal of Modern Literature, 6:1 (1977), 61-68 (p. 62). 38 See BDMP, ‘Editorial Principles and Practice’,
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switching evince the idea of a biomechanical self that switches between states. Krapp’s response to the recordings is processed neurologically, and the automatic bodily reaction is entangled with the emotional response, with Krapp either motionless or responding with an impatient gesture and curse. This has led N. Katherine Hayles to argue that it is ‘as if he too were a machine with a binary on-off switch’.42 Beckett thus re-imagines the self as switching between the states of automatic irritability and motionless reflection, through adapting himself to use the tape-recorder. This accords with Connor’s notion of psychotechnography, in which tehknē indicates ways of imagining the form of the self through the other-than-self of machines.
Dualities
Scholars often note Beckett’s identification of the symbolic critique of Manichean ethics within Krapp in his director’s notebook of 1969.43 This is a notebook he kept while directing the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt performance in Berlin. In this document, he lists numerous allusions to the interrelations of light and dark in the play under the title ‘Mani’. This is a reference to the Persian founder of the gnostic religion Manichaeism.44 One of Beckett’s sources for the Manichean system was an article in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which he had in his personal library.45 It contains reading traces on the article ‘Manichaeism’ in the form of underlining, indicating this as a source text.46 This article emphasises the dualistic theology of Manichaeism in late antiquity: ‘the Manichean system is one of consistent, uncompromising dualism, in the form of a fantastic philosophy of nature’.47 Knowlson notes that Beckett wrote into the play a consistent attempt ‘to mingle the light and the dark, expressing Krapp’s desire to reconcile and promote a union between sense and spirit’.48 This notion of the interrelationship of light and dark that Beckett emphasised in his 1969 production is further explored by Dougald McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld. They note that ‘the basic elements of the Manichean ethics’ were already present in the Été 56 notebook.49 An overlooked and critical point, however, is that Krapp is also preoccupied with human embodiment in a manner related to Manichaeism and Cartesian duality, to which the genesis of the play testifies. In the Été 56 notebook, Beckett wrote, ‘empty the bottle now and get to bed. Finish this vomit tomorrow. Or leave it at that’ (EM, 19r). This occurs when Krapp becomes frustrated with himself, berating his effort to go on with the recording. The lexical unit ‘vomit’ goes through several alterations that can be traced through a syntactic alignment of the different versions:
Finish this vomit tomorrow (EM, 19r) puke Finish this vomit tomorrow?. (ET1, 3r)
42 N. Katherine Hayles, ‘Voices Out of Body: Audiotape and the Production of Subjectivity’, in Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies, ed. by Adalaide Morris (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 74-96 (p. 81). 43 See Sue Wilson, ‘Krapp’s Last Tape and the Mania in Manichaeism’, Samuel Beckett today/aujord’hui, 12:1 2002, 131-144. 44 Beckett, The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, III: Krapp’s Last Tape, p. 133.
45 See ‘Beckett Digital Library’,
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Finish this pukx0½ tomorrow. (ET2, 5r) Finish this puke drivel in the morning. (ET4, 6r)
This vacillation shows a hesitancy in Beckett’s thought process of the form of the metaphor for Krapp’s speech. The decisive ejection of ‘vomit’, I would argue, is too forceful for the subjectivity of Krapp, closer to the logorrhea of Not I (1972), in which mouth’s relation to words is one of alienation.50 Beckett decides, therefore, on the noun ‘drivel’, drawing on its signification of nonsense, and the more infrequent meaning of ‘spittle flowing from the mouth’.51 Beckett’s source article for Manichean theology states: ‘of course men’s bodies as well as the souls of the unsaved […] fall under the sway of the powers of darkness’.52 The body in Manichean epistemology is accordingly an abject entity that must be subdued and transcended by the self, a self which is related to language as a semiotic system that ostensibly transcends materiality. Beckett, however, entangles the symbolic medium of language with the biological aspect of embodiment, intimating the notion that the abject bodily incarnation is constituent of the self in Krapp. The association of words with bodily ejections undermines the Manichean injunction to separate knowledge and the self from embodiment, as knowledge and the self are inseparable from language. Beckett inscribes words in a metaphor of biological tenor that couples the semiotics of the self and materiality in an inseparable ontology. The ‘vomit’, ‘puke’, or ‘drivel’ that are Krapp’s words are constitutive of his identity, as they form the semiotic structure through which Krapp emerges as a self. The abject darkness of Krapp’s embodiment and the materiality of language therefore manifest his self through the other-than-self. Krapp is an exile from the Manichean system, unable to transcend materiality which clings in all its abjectness. He mingles light and dark, body and mind: ‘I love to get up and move about in [the darkness], then back here to … [hesitates] … me. [pause.] Krapp’ (PPF, 5r). Julia Kristeva writes of the exile:
[N]ecessarily dichotomous, somewhat Manichean, he divides, excludes, and without, properly speaking, wishing to know his abjections is not at all unaware of them. Often, moreover, he includes himself among them, thus casting within himself the scalpel that carries out his separations.53
Krapp’s ‘vision’, his realisation that ‘the dark I have always struggled to keep under’ (PPF, 7r) manifests the self, implies the notion of the exile always attempting to divide and exclude, but actually ‘includ[ing] himself among’ the thing he attempts to reject. He therefore comes to the realisation that body and mind, self and other are entangled. Beckett utilises the device of the tape-recorder to couple the biological Krapp with the mechanical device, casting the tape- recorder within the realm of Krapp’s selfhood as a biomechanical self. The writing of the play therefore allowed Beckett to formulate an embodied, material notion of the self, despite Western philosophical hypotheses attempting to conceive of the self as anterior to material semiotic structures. This captures an epistemological shift identified by Ulrika Maude. She argues that Darwinian thought, neurology and psychoanalysis ‘pointed to a biomechanical rather than a conceptual understanding of the self’.54 The self was thus understood to be materially realised, as opposed to an internal Cartesian cogito. Historicising my reading thus articulates the wider intellectual shift that Beckett wrote within.
50 Samuel Beckett, ‘Not I’, in Complete Dramatic Works (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), pp. 373-383. 51 OED. 52 Harnack and Conybeare, ‘Manichaeism’, p. 574. 53 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 8.
54 Ulrika Maude, ‘Beckett, Body and Mind’, in The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett, ed. by Dirk Van Hulle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 170-184 (p. 183).
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Krapp’s Extended Self
Joseph Anderton, in his monograph on the creaturely life of the Beckettian protagonist, states that ‘Beckett’s depiction of the mind often involves equalising the levels between the cerebral and the terrestrial’.55 The argument throughout this dissertation has been that the equalising of these levels leads to an entanglement of the self and other that cannot be separated without a loss of the self. This argument is present in many recent critical studies and papers on Beckett’s work. Julie Bates argues that the Beckettian protagonist’s ‘possessions remain irreducibly their material selves’, and David Pattie observes that ‘the system in which [Krapp] is trapped is a system that the protagonist himself creates’.56 Krapp constitutes his selfhood within a system that ensnares him in an ineluctable material ontology, and the possession of the tapes and recorder constitute his self through giving form to that self. Krapp manipulates the external environment to preserve memories in the form of recorded tapes. This allows for tapes to be played, so that particular memories are made available to consciousness. Menary argues: ‘human memory is no longer restricted to the boundaries of the body, but is now extended by external memory systems’.57 The repeatability of these ‘external memory systems’ constitute a material aspect of the mind that works in a dialectical relation with the neurological capacities of the biological brain. The tapes and writing of thoughts in the play are ‘external memory systems’ for Krapp. Beckett’s writing of the play evidences a moment at which a shift occurs in his thinking through the workings of the mind:
Sat by the firse looking into the fire with closed eyes turning over in my mind winnowing , out as it went separating the grain from the chaff. Jotted down a few notes, on the back of an envelope. (EM, 14r)
These two syntactic units are taken from the section when Krapp first plays the tape, and his 39-year-old self is relating how he has spent his birthday. In the Été 56 notebook, there is a deletion of ‘turning over in my mind’. Instead, the suggestion of considering the important things in life is given in the metaphor ‘separating the grain from the chaff’. The deletion of the prepositional phrase ‘in my mind’ indicates the undermining of the inside/outside dichotomy of Cartesian philosophy. Moreover, the use of the metaphor ‘separating the grain from the chaff’ gives material form to thought. This indicates that Krapp thinks through material things to determine the meaning of his life. Beckett thus extends Krapp’s thinking into the world, allowing material objects to acquire semiotic potential. This allows them to be looped with neurology to operate cognition. In this play, I contend, there is no cognition without the material things of the world in the loop. Therefore there is no self without the material things of the world, as cognition is a getting to know the other-than-self a self is. Furthermore, Krapp jots down some notes on a piece of paper, in order to retain a material form of a particular thought. This is similar to the recording of voice to retain a graphic inscription of a particular thought. At the moment when the 39-year-old Krapp determines what he has ‘chiefly to record’, Beckett writes in the Été 56 notebook:
This, is what I have I realized in the Winehouse, is what I have chiefly to record this evening against the day when all my work is will be done and perhaps no place in my place
55 Joseph Anderton, Beckett's Creatures: Art of Failure after the Holocaust (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), p. 136.
56 Julie Bates, Beckett’s Art of Salvage: Writing and the Material Imagination, 1932-1987 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 194; David Pattie, ‘“At me too someone is looking…”: Power Structures and Coercion in Beckett’s Theatre’, Jouer Beckett / Performing Beckett Symposium, University of London, London, 12 October 2017. Transcribed from an audio recording.
57 Menary, ‘Writing as thinking’, p. 625.
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left in my memory for of the wonder that made it possible place left in my memory, and no thankfulness for the wonder that made it possible. (EM, 16r)
The verb ‘record’ refers to the recording function of the tape-recorder to create the record that retains the trace of a sensory impression as a memory. It therefore captures the notion of the record of a trace that is able to become conscious through its iterability as a graphic or neurological inscription. Moreover, the crossings out of ‘no place in my memory’ indicate an indecisiveness over its inclusion in the play. Its inclusion corroborates the notion that external resources are utilised to retain information. The deterioration of the body and its neurological resources is inevitable, and so Krapp demands a material form in which to preserve a trace of the self. Krapp has an archival compulsion that is of the form of Arendt’s homo faber or Derrida’s archive fever: an attempt to mitigate against the destruction of information and the fluctuation of human life. The tape-recorder is thus an aspect of his cognition. It retains memories for him to recall and make present through the repeatability of audio technology. This allows extended cognition to make Krapp known to himself: the material selves give form to the self Krapp is, through the reintrojection of graphically inscribed acoustic signals.
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Conclusion
There has been particular critical oversight of Beckett’s technological imagination, despite recent studies of Beckett’s ‘material imagination’. This dissertation has argued that a framework of psychotechnography supplemented by extended mind theory allows for a genetic analysis of Krapp’s Last Tape that elicits interpretations of the self informed by the workings of technology. I have paid particular attention to the materiality of the tape-recorder: graphic inscriptions, switches, and the material form. This provides productive directions for the future of Beckett studies, particularly through a focus on the implications that material objects have on Beckett’s œuvre.58 The research that informs this dissertation generated many questions regarding this area of scholarship. My future research, therefore, will explore the significance of the tape- recorder manual sent to Beckett by McWhinnie on Beckett’s technological imagination.59 I shall also attend to a page of the Été 56 notebook that indicates the model of the tape-recorder, the E.M.I L2B, which was used in the first performance at the Royal Court Theatre in 1958. Further research on this model will explore the significance of this recorder and others on Beckett’s technological imagination. The historicisation of these material objects is situated within a shift in Beckett studies towards analysing Beckett’s material imagination.60 This dissertation and the future research it has generated thus provides a significant critical intervention into Beckett scholarship.
Bibliography
Anderton, Joseph, Beckett's Creatures: Art of Failure after the Holocaust (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016). Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (London: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Barthes, Roland, ‘Death of the Author’, in Image, Music, Text: Essays, sel. and trans. by Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977). Bates, Julie, Beckett’s Art of Salvage: Writing and the Material Imagination, 1932-1987 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Beckett, Samuel, ‘Été 56’ notebook, UoR MS 1227-7-7-1, Beckett International Foundation, University of Reading. ------, Krapp’s Last Tape and Embers (London: Faber and Faber, 1959) ------, The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, ed. James Knowlson, IV vols. (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), III: Krapp’s Last Tape. ------, Beckett’s ‘Dream’ Notebook, ed. by John Pilling (Reading: Beckett International Foundation, 1999). ------, Complete Dramatic Works (London: Faber and Faber, 2006). ------, Murphy, ed. by J. C. C. Mays (London: Faber and Faber, 2009). ------, The Unnameable, ed. by Steven Connor (London: Faber and Faber, 2010).
58 I shall share insights from this dissertation with the global community of Beckett scholars in my paper ‘The psychotechnographic genesis of Krapp’s Last Tape’ at two international conferences: Historicizing Modernism / Modernist Archives, University of York, and Samuel Beckett and Technology, Charles University, Prague.
59 McWhinnie to Beckett, 14 March 1958, in ‘Samuel Beckett, Scriptwriter: 1953-1962’, BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham.
60 My MPhil dissertation at the University of Cambridge (2018-2019) will explore the directorial approach of Samuel Beckett, to examine the strategies he used to complicate the phenomenology of theatrical objects.
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------, The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett, ed. by Seán Lawlor and John Pilling (London: Faber and Faber, 2012). ------, The Letters of Samuel Beckett, eds. George Craig and others, IV vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), III: 1957-1965. ------, Krapp’s Last Tape: a digital genetic edition (The Beckett Digital Manuscript Project, module 3), ed. by Dirk Van Hulle and Vincent Neyt (Brussels: University Press Antwerp, 2015),
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Hayles, N. Katherine, ‘Voices out of Bodies: Audiotape and the Production of Subjectivity’, in Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies, ed. by Adalaide Morris (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 74-96. Hippo, Saint Augustine of, Confessions, trans. by R. S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin Books, 1961). Infield, Rebecca, ‘“Krapp’s Last Tape”/ “La Dernière Bande”: Translation, Revision and Performance’, Jouer Beckett / Performing Beckett Symposium, University of London, London, 13 October 2017. Knowlson, James, Light and Darkness in the Theatre of Samuel Beckett (London: Turret Books, 1972). ------, ‘Krapp’s Last Tape: the evolution of a play, 1958-75’ in Journal of Beckett Studies, 1 (1976), also available at
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‘He was telling you to shut up because you hadn’t been raped’: A linguistic investigation into the domination of female rape victims in courtroom cross examinations
Safia Bolton
English Dissertation: Spring Semester
Supervisor: Dr Kevin Harvey
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Introduction 23 Background 23 Methodology 25 Analysis 26 Discussion 31 Conclusion 32 References 34 Appendix 36
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Introduction A 2005 Home Office Report on sexual assault states there is a ‘continuing and unbroken increase in reporting to the police over the past two decades’, whilst the number of convictions remain static with as low as 5.6% of reported cases ending in conviction (Kelly, Lovett and Regan, 2005: x). In 2017 there were 121,187 incidents of sexual offences against women reported to the police, yet another 14% rise from the 106,111 reported in 2016 (ONS, 2018). It is also estimated that 83% of the sexual offences against women which occurred were not even reported to the police, meaning as many as 573,000 offences may have taken place in 2017 (ONS, 2018). The top reasons women list for choosing not to report sexual violence to the police include embarrassment, humiliation, not thinking they would be believed and not wanting to go to court (ONS, 2018). Women are overpowered by men when they are raped. A woman choosing not to report as a result of fear about being humiliated for a sexual attack by a man underlines that this overpowering of women exists beyond the act of rape: our social structures make women feel responsible for male attacks (Matoesian, 2001). My analysis focuses on how this notion of female responsibility for rape is reinforced in the courtroom setting. Despite arguments that there has been progress for women in legal cases of rape, Luchjenbroers and Aldridge-Waddon’s work analysing current courtroom and media discourse nonetheless underlines that ‘outdated perceptions’ about rape victims continue to be reproduced both inside and outside of the courtroom (2017: 16). Language is the means through which our law is communicated; linguistic investigation is essential for improving the low reporting and convicting rates for sexual violence. The dominating nature of courtroom language allows lawyers to put a woman’s character and behaviour ‘on trial’, a form of domination and revictimisation for rape victims which is arguably ‘as humiliating as the actual rape’ (Lees, 1997: 53). Providing that courtroom discourse continues to perpetuate ideals of female culpability for rape, women will remain socially perceived as responsible and continue to fear reporting rape. My work combines Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) and Conversation Analysis (henceforth CA) to underline the linguistic techniques used in a courtroom cross examination to dominate a woman, Helen, during her rape trial. CDA considers discourse as ‘socially constitutive as well as socially shaped, helping sustain and reproduce the social status quo’: for rape discourse this includes disapproval of women’s autonomy over their own choices, for example, what they wear or drink and who they have sex with (Fairclough, Mulderrig and Wodak, 2011: 358). Adopting this CDA principle and combining it with turn-by-turn sequential CA is fitting for my research question: How does cross examination discourse (re)dominate rape victims and reproduce social ideals about rape victim responsibility?
Background Courtroom discourse is highly structured institutional talk. Thornborrow’s work on power relationships in language defines institutional talk as discourse with differentiated, pre- inscribed and conventional participant roles (2014: 4). The UK jury trial involves a number of participants who hold such assigned roles, including the judge, jury, lawyers, the accused and witnesses (Coulthard and Johnson, 2007: 96). Characteristically for institutional talk, the different participants in the jury trial do not hold equal control over the conversation: the turn taking process is structurally asymmetrical, controlled by the lawyer who asks questions of the witness. Power is ‘fundamentally concerned with asymmetrical relationships’, and therefore lawyers, in control of asking questions, possess power in cross examination discourse over witnesses who are expected to answer their questions (Johnstone, 2002: 112). Lawyers’ position of power over witnesses means their questions control the narrative construction of the events on trial presented to the jury. As Coulthard and Johnson’s legal linguistic analysis asserts, stories are ‘central to legal cases’ (2007: 97). Witnesses, expected to perform within their participant role, are only able to tell their story in court through answers they provide to questions posed by lawyers. During a cross examination analysed by Levinson in his work on conversational goals, a girl who accused a man of rape is asked about her clothing, her make-up, how she was previously ill and still decided to go out, and her drinking and partying habits (1992: 83). Answers to these questions are already known – this is
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 21-38 ‘He was telling you to shut up because you hadn’t been raped’: A linguistic investigation into the domination of female rape victims in courtroom cross examinations 24 highlighted by, for example, tagged assertions: ‘you had had bronchitis, had you not?’ (Levinson, 1992: 83). The questions do not aim to uncover new information. They are sequentially ordered by the lawyer to create a story about the girl’s behaviour. Levinson asserts that these questions build up a ‘natural’ argument for the jury to draw the implicit conclusion that the girl is ‘not of good repute’ and was actively ‘seeking sexual adventures’ (1992: 84). But the focus of Levinson’s (1992) work ‘remains within the courtroom’, as Eades says in her analysis of racial prejudices in courtroom discourse is the case for the majority of courtroom linguistic analyses (Eades, 2012: 37). Labelling the line of questioning he analyses as a ‘natural’ argument means Levinson (1992) fails to acknowledge how such ‘natural’ conclusions function so powerfully as a result of wider social expectations for women. In Language and Power, Fairclough states that language should be considered as social practice determined by social structures (1989: 25). Linguistic analysis of a rape trial must include critical consideration of these social structures beyond the courtroom. This means challenging ideological beliefs that are sustained through discourse, beliefs which are almost always ‘naturalised’; perceived as rational and universally true (Ehrlich, 2001: 65). Levinson’s work highlights how implicit conclusions are effortlessly and seemingly naturally drawn from a lawyer’s discourse (1992: 84). Critical analysis means challenging how these conclusions are so readily available and how the conclusions relate to existing social structures (Haworth, 2006). Critical Discourse Analysis principles, as presented in Fairclough’s later work (2010), consider language as both socially constituted and possessing the power to reproduce and sustain socially constituted ideals. These principles are used in Ehrlich’s (2001) book Representing Rape, which investigates how lawyers’ questioning ‘insidiously’ embeds ideological beliefs about female behaviour (2001: 63). Considering language as social power is necessary to uncover how pre-existing social ideologies can make judgements that women hold responsibility for being raped appear ‘natural’ (Fairclough, 1989: 2). Behaviours women should implement to be socially considered as true rape victims are defined in multiple analyses of rape victim discourse (see, for example, Lees, 1997; 2002; Matoesian, 2001; Ehrlich, 2001; 2010; Luchjenbroers and Olsson, 2013), including three key ideals: 1) The woman should not be interested in sex. 2) She should do nothing to invite the alleged assailant’s attentions. 3) She should have obvious, physical wounds from doing everything she could to fight the assailant off. These behaviours all fit an ‘utmost resistance’ standard, which, as Ehrlich argues, is an ideological framework dictating socially acceptable behaviour for women in rape cases (2001: 65). Ideological frameworks are typically undisputed beliefs which social behaviours are accordingly constructed to, or expected to be constructed to (Ehrlich, 2001: 66). The ‘utmost resistance’ framework means that unless a woman did everything she could to prevent an attack, she holds responsibility for being raped (Ehlrich, 2001: 66). These key ideals outlined in current analyses emphasise that resistance at an earlier stage, before physically resisting by fighting an attacker off, are required for social acceptance as a victim: a woman’s choices, including her clothes, makeup, drinking, choice of bar/club/event, going on a date with or talking to a man, etc. can all be perceived as 1) an interest in sex or 2) an invitation for male attention, leading to conclusions that a woman is not sufficiently discouraging a sexual attack. Although these standards for women’s behaviours are social expectations about consent, not standards defined by sexual assault laws, the UK law for sexual assault includes two sections involving the beliefs and verbal exchange of those in the interaction: (c) B does not consent to the touching (d) A does not reasonably believe that B consents (Government Legislation, 2003). These two sections underline that ideological standards for what is socially perceived as consensual behaviour can support defence lawyers’ ultimate aim to challenge the credibility of rape victims. In a situation where it is common that the only witnesses are those directly involved, beliefs about what constitutes as a woman giving her consent are critical for whether she is viewed in court as a credible victim instead of as responsible for being attacked. Lees’
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(2002) work on British jury trials underlines that ideological behaviour standards for female rape victims are both explicitly and implicitly utilised repeatedly by defence lawyers to attack female credibility. Ehrlich (2001) argues women might feel unable to achieve the ‘utmost resistance’ standard by physically preventing an attack as a result of their subordinated position to men in society: women may not resist assault if they fear that doing so will bring them more harm from a stronger, dominant male force (Ehrlich, 2001: 67). Compliance with a man’s demands can be seen by victims as their safest option, but a victim’s compliance is regularly presented by defence attorneys as proof of consent (Ehrlich, 2001: 66). Matoesian’s critical analysis of the William Kennedy Smith rape trial involves further focus on how female responsibility is reinforced by lawyers’ discourse contrasting the 'rational’ and ‘logical’ way to behave in a rape situation with the ‘irrational’ way women behave (Matoesian, 2001: 39-38). The attorney cross examining Patricia Bowman, who accused Smith of raping her after meeting him in a bar, undermines Bowman’s credibility through a sequential line of questioning focusing on her choice to keep on her underwear: ‘you said after you left the Kennedy home that you felt dirty, is that correct’, ‘when you drove home you still had the same panties on’ (Matoesian, 2001: 41). This questioning manipulates Bowman’s actions after the encounter to suggest her responsibility for rape: • True rape victims should not be interested in sex, as stated above. Thus, women should prioritise immediately removing anything associated with unwanted sex. If the victim felt ‘dirty’, then the ideal ‘rational’ behaviour is to cleanse herself of sexual fluids post-attack (Matoesian, 2001: 44). • Repeated use of the word gendered word, ‘panties’, instead of neutral term ‘underwear’ functions as a reminder to the jury that keeping on her underwear is an action of sexual behaviour which Bowman chose (Matoesian, 2001: 44). • ‘Dirty’ holds also a more symbolic interpretation: Bowman felt dirty because women inviting sexual attention or having ‘impersonal sex’ can be considered socially deviant. The lawyer implicitly suggests Bowman would create a false rape allegation to avoid negatively affecting her reputation (Matoesian, 2001: 45). Each implication of Bowman’s responsibility for rape can only be constructed as a result of the lawyer’s ability to contrast her behaviour with an ideological framework of how she ‘rationally’ should have behaved (Matoesian, 2001: 44). Each implication pushes culpability onto a woman for male sexual actions even after the rape occurred. This notion of female accountability for being raped highlights what has been coined by Luchjenbroers and Aldridge as the ‘autonomous testosterone’ myth: once a man is aroused, his testosterone will overpower him (2013: 305). It becomes a woman’s responsibility to regulate her behaviour so that she does not arouse a man. Both Matoesian (2001) and Luchjenbroers and Alridge (2013) underline in their analyses the subordinated position which women are placed in and how their actions are viewed as responsible for male desire – dangerous ideologies which, as shown in Matoesian’s (2001) analysis, are reinforced by lawyers’ discourse. In a rape trial, then, a woman faces judgement about how her choices fit into an ideological framework of behaviour which is based almost entirely on a standard for women in which the woman is more responsible for male action than a man is himself.
Methodology Data The data I have chosen is taken from a cross examination recorded in the BBC ‘Anatomy of a Crime’ documentary filmed in 2001. The documentary followed the case of a twenty-seven-year old man who was convicted of raping a fourteen-year-old girl (alias Helen) by dragging her into an alley whilst she was walking home and threatening her with violence if she did not let him have sex with her. For Helen’s identity to remain anonymous, the cross examination recording in the documentary is an actor’s reconstruction using the verbatim transcript of Helen and the lawyer’s interaction. I have made a transcript of the recorded reconstruction (located in appendix) to analyse their discourse. The analysis focuses only on the language exchanged between the lawyer and Helen – this is to avoid analysis of features
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Approach This qualitative approach will use CA, which involves analysing the sequential order of the cross examination and how questions are structured (Pomerantz and Fehr, 2011). It will draw upon Conley and O’Barr’s (2005) CA of rape trial discourse, analysing how the lawyer’s questions function to dominate the interaction. I combine CA with CDA principles, adopting a social stance in support of women, the dominated and oppressed gender. This allows me to investigate how discourse sustains and reproduces beliefs about women’s responsibility for men’s actions (Fairclough, Mulderrig and Wodak, 2011: 358). As Ehrlich (2001; 2010) and Matoesian (1995; 2001) achieve in their work, this research aims to deconstruct how pre- existing male domination outside of the courtroom enters courtroom discourse. My work is also informed by Lees’ (1997; 2002) influential observations on how a woman’s character is controlled and attacked by lawyers in cross examinations. The analysis is divided into three topics the defence attorney raises which link to social beliefs about rape victim behaviour: 1. Clothing, 2. Alcohol, 3. Consensual Activity. Synergising CA and CDA methods is essential for a thorough examination of how the lawyers hold turn-by-turn control over topics and how these lawyer controlled topics reinforce social beliefs outside of the courtroom about female culpability for rape. It is thought that approximately 90% of rape victims know their attacker prior to the offence (Rape Crisis, 2018). This means Helen’s case, being raped by a stranger, is a less common type of rape. However, stranger rape is the type most stereotypically viewed as ‘real rape’: a forceful violent sexual attack by a stranger in a dark alley (Estrich, 1987: 13). My investigation aims to reveal how, even when a rape is considered a socially perceived ‘real rape’ (Estrich, 1987: 13), the breadth of social prejudices available against women mean their choices and behaviour are still heavily scrutinised in the courtroom.
Analysis Clothing As Conley and O’Barr say in their CA of rape victim cross examinations, one method lawyers can use to dominate witnesses is making ‘covert evaluative comments’ about witness behaviour within their questions (2005: 27). Embedded in lines 12-16 is the lawyer’s description of Helen’s clothing on the night of the rape:
12 L: Help me with this, we know you were wearing evening clothes 13 in the evening, you were wearing a skimpy sports top and 14 tracksuit bottoms. Your mum phoned, around five o clock that 15 evening, she wanted you home because they were having a 16 barbeque
Instead of directly asking Helen what she was wearing, the lawyer uses the declarative form, ‘you were wearing’, which increases his control over the narrative of events which occurred by preventing Helen from describing her own clothes. He reconstructs the events in his own terms. The length of the lawyer’s question means it is difficult for Helen to dispute his embedded comments: giving an alternative description would mean deviating from her participant role of answering questions in the strict turn-by-turn structure. Inserting comments about Helen’s clothing within a longer question allows the lawyer to critique Helen’s image without straying from the question-and-answer format of the cross examination (Conley and O’Barr, 2005: 27). Use of ‘skimpy’ is evidence that this description is a negative critique of Helen’s outfit. ‘Skimpy’ suggests her outfit was in some way lacking or inadequate. The implicit conclusion is that Helen does not fit the ideological framework of female victim behaviour, as this involves a woman not performing any behaviour, including outfit choice, which may invite male
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attention. Considering Matoesian’s proposal of an ideal male ‘rationality’ in his critical analysis, labelling Helen’s clothing choice inadequate means the lawyer indicates the ‘rational’ behaviour for Helen is to make dress choices which actively discourage male attention (2001: 39). I agree with Lees’ argument in her analysis of female treatment in rape trials that ‘the identification of women as “prey”, liable to be attacked on the basis of how they dress, is a reflection of women’s subordinate situation in society at large. The misogyny behind such depictions may not be apparent to most jurors, it is so taken for granted’ (Lees 2002: 138). Commenting on Helen’s choice of ‘skimpy’ ‘evening clothes’ means the lawyer sustains this deeply ingrained social belief that a girl’s clothes are of relevance in a rape case. Repeatedly in sexual assault trials ‘the young woman who dresses quite normally in today’s fashions is put on trial’ (Lees, 2002: 138). Further, even if she was not dressed ‘normally’, there is no outfit that is an open invitation for male attention or being touched. Explicitly accusing a fourteen-year-old girl of dressing inadequately means placing a young person on trial. It implies Helen should have more control of her underdeveloped body and sexuality than an adult man has over his. Any discourse supporting and replicating the existing idea that a girl’s or a woman’s choice of clothing is a relevant factor for being sexually assaulted, or a factor synonymous with sexual consent, will continue to undermine a woman’s control over her own choices. It will continue to imply that women must structure their life in consideration of the ‘autonomous testosterone’ theory: a man is overpowered by testosterone once aroused, and therefore to prevent being raped women should not dress in a way that could arouse a man (Luchjenbroers and Aldridge, 2013). As Luchjenbroers and Aldridge (2013) found in their analysis of police interviews with child sexual assault victims, interviewers repeatedly question what children were wearing. This functions to ‘normalize sex with minors’, treating them as potentially responsible or ‘complicit’ in sexual activities, (Luchjenbroers and Aldridge, 2013: 305), as the lawyer does by labelling Helen’s outfit as ‘skimpy’. Questioning the victim’s outfit choices means absolving the man of blame for his sexual attack and pushing blame onto the victim. Within lines 12-16, the lawyer continues his previous narrative construction in lines 1- 12 of a girl of poor repute who avoids school and chooses not to spend time with her family. Helen’s clothing description is connected to this narrative construction through the lawyer’s repetition of the declarative forms of earlier questions: ‘you got’, ‘you must’, ‘you will’ (lines 1, 4, 9). As proposed in Conley and O’Barr’s CA, there is a question continuum in which the WH- form (questions beginning e.g with ‘what’ or ‘why’) invites a narrative from witnesses and so is the least controlling, whereas the tag form of questions (e.g ‘didn’t you?’) exerts far more power over the answers available to witnesses, demanding only a yes/no answer (2005: 26). Repetitive declarative question forms allow a narrative flow controlled by the lawyer, attacking Helen’s credibility as a victim by threading together, over multiple questions, an image of a socially deviant girl who ‘does not follow defined rules and norms’ of social behaviour (Coulthard and Johnson, 2007: 98). Further, pointing out twice during this short transcript that Helen was wearing ‘tracksuit bottoms’ (line 14, line 94) can be seen as an attack on Helen’s social class, especially as the lawyer’s narrative construction links her outfit to other forms of social deviancy. Estrich (1987) argues that the class status of the victim and rapist can affect the outcome of a rape trial, and I argue that in the transcript the lawyer develops his identity construction of Helen by utilising social stereotypes that a girl who chooses ‘tracksuit bottoms’ as ‘evening clothes’ is someone of a lower status. Credibility in the courtroom is tied with social reputation (Lees, 2002: 155). This means the lawyer’s scrutiny of Helen’s clothing choices reinforces a negative view of her character and suggests she does not hold moral credibility ideologically expected of a rape victim (Lees, 2002). Her clothing choice is implicitly used to highlight both her lack of responsibility in preventing a rape and her lack of ideologically expected rape victim credibility due to her supposed social status.
Alcohol Heavy importance is placed on Helen’s intoxication, with 11 out of the 39 questions the lawyer asks mentioning alcohol. The declarative question form the lawyer uses in line 33
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 21-38 ‘He was telling you to shut up because you hadn’t been raped’: A linguistic investigation into the domination of female rape victims in courtroom cross examinations 28 explicitly focuses on Helen’s day drinking behaviour: ‘you were drinking vodka’. By replying with ‘I had a little taste’ (line 34) instead of submitting to a yes/no answer form, Helen attempts to reduce this slur on her character. In response to Helen’s attempt at mediation, the lawyer uses the common cross examination technique of rephrasing the question to elicit a more affirmative response from the witness (Conley and O’Barr, 2005: 27). He asks ‘Is that when you were drinking vodka?’ in line 42, focusing again on how Helen was drinking spirits before the rape. This question does not ask if Helen was drinking but instead assumes she definitely was drinking, despite her reply that she only had a small amount. The lawyer therefore overrides Helen’s replies. Controlled, repetitive topic management is a form of courtroom domination allowing the lawyer to highlight Helen’s own decision to drink alcohol (Conley and O’Barr, 2005: 26). As outlined in Ehrlich’s analysis, a woman’s decisions before or during rape are scrutinised for disparity from the ideological ‘utmost resistance’ standard (2001: 67). Emphasising Helen’s intoxication for 11 questions pushes responsibility onto Helen for being raped, because intoxication is a choice which her lowers inhibitions and decreases her ability to resist an attack. Lees’ (2002) observations on rape trials found that a woman’s drinking habits are a consistent feature pushed into cross examinations by defence lawyers. This underlines that drinking alcohol is a choice regularly perceived as relevant for being sexually assaulted as it does not fit the ideological framework in which a woman should actively regulate her behaviour to prevent an attack. Bernhardsson and Bogren found in their analysis of media discourse concerning drinking and sexual assault that ‘intoxication is used as an excuse or extenuating circumstances for male aggressors, while intoxicated women who are sexually assaulted are held responsible for putting themselves at risk’ (2012: 2). Social expectations do not attribute men and women the same responsibility for their actions when drunk – women are framed as even more responsible for being raped. Female responsibility is furthered through the socially constructed link between women who drink and ‘unleashing’ sexuality (Lees, 2002: 145). The lawyer reproduces this ideological link prevailing outside of courtroom discourse (Bernhardsson and Bogren, 2012) in lines 50-51: ‘one of the painters remembers a girl who tapped him on the bottom, she was a bit giddy. Was that you?’ Labelling Helen as ‘giddy’ ties together her alleged intimate act of touching a stranger with her lowered inhibitions as a result of drinking. The previous 4 questions (lines 40, 42, 44 and 46) sequentially build up the focus on Helen’s drinking, meaning that by lines 50-51 the lawyer presents her as having a sexual interest unleashed as a result of drinking because she is less in control and so more likely to act in a promiscuous manner. A woman being uninterested in sex is fundamental to ideological expectations of a credible rape victim, therefore, focus on Helen’s alcohol consumption attacks her credibility. I am not suggesting if Helen in fact did tap a painter on the bottom that that was acceptable or should be excused (as that would be sexual assault on the painter), I am arguing that connecting Helen’s ‘giddy’ lowered inhibitions with unleashing a sexual action reproduces the belief that women’s sexual desires accidentally emerge as a result of drinking. The lawyer therefore implies that when sober a woman should actively suppress her sexuality. Suggesting Helen’s intoxicated state led to unleashing sexual feelings, which ideologically should be suppressed, lays the foundation for a common presumption made in rape trials as observed in Lees’ (2002) trial work: women lie about being raped. Focusing on Helen’s interaction with this other man prior to the sexual interaction with the rapist means Helen is presented to the jury as a girl who regretted unleashing sexual interest when ‘giddy’. This leads to the implicit conclusion that she had consensual sex when drunk but later, when sober, created false rape allegations to prevent the social ridicule associated with women having sexual interests. Multiple stereotypes of women’s behaviour relating to alcohol are able to work together and point to a woman’s own responsibility for sexual assault: either by increasing her vulnerability or increasing her sexual feelings. This is the ‘sexual double bind’ which women face during cross examination, as Conley and O’Barr say in their CA of rape victims (2005: 32). Helen is either a sexually excited ‘calculating pursuer’ or a vulnerable ‘helpless victim’ because of
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alcohol, and social ideologies mean that either way the rape can be structured as her fault (Conley and O’Barr, 2005: 34).
Consensual activity This final analysis section focuses on techniques the lawyer uses to construct the events as consensual and Helen as a liar, first through other forms of consensual activity and then by recasting the sexual interaction as initiated and pursued by Helen. The questions in lines 68-75 highlight that Helen was interacting with the man prior to her accusing him of rape:
68 L: You got into conversation with one of the men 69 V: Got asked where me house was 70 L: He got up from the bench, started walking and you followed him. 71 There’s a time when you walked off that he put his arm around you, 72 and you had your arm around him. 73 V: Can’t remember 74 L: Is it not true that you went off walking with your arms around each 75 other?
Continuing the narrative control applied in the questions focusing on Helen’s clothing (lines 12-16, 20-21), the lawyer’s questions in lines 68-70 are statements structured as questions. Even sharper focus is placed on this physical touching between Helen and the man by the lawyer’s next question (lines 74-75), with the domineering yes/no form of question repeating the previous statement. Matoesian’s analysis underlines that during cross examination a woman’s decision to engage in intimate behaviour of one kind is often presented as an ‘irrational’ female logic if she did not want to have sex (2001: 47). Emphasis on Helen’s consent to one form of interaction can therefore be perceived as logically meaning she must have consented to all types of sexual behaviour (Matoesian, 2001). Sexual interactions are far more complex than this simplistic ideological, ‘rational’ (Matoesian, 2001: 47) view of sex wherein one consensual interaction means future consent: for example, if two people have had consensual sex before that does not mean they must consent to sex every time in the future. But these ideas that talking and touching mean consent are deeply ingrained social beliefs: Amnesty International’s 2005 ‘Sexual Assault Research’ Poll of 1,095 adults revealed that one third of people believe women are at least partially responsible for being raped if they flirt with the assailant beforehand. This idea of a logical accountability of women for rape links again to Luchjenbroers and Aldridge’s (2013) theory of the ‘autonomous testosterone’ myth that, as well as a woman’s clothing choices, her choice to talk to or touch a man risks arousing his sexual urges beyond his control. Questions focusing on Helen’s engagement in some form of contact with the man before he raped her therefore implicitly push responsibility onto Helen for being raped. Sharp attention to Helen’s other forms of intimacy with the man means the lawyer implies Helen was interested in sex and invited male attentions. This separates Helen from characteristics expected of an ideological rape victim and undermines the credibility of her rape allegation. ‘You got into conversation with one of the men’ (line 68) is also a question which amplifies Helen’s lack of credibility as a rape victim by furthering the construction of her as ‘calculating pursuer’ who engaged in consensual sex, as initially shown in the Alcohol analysis section (Conley and O’Barr, 2005: 32). Line 68 presents Helen as the agent of the situation, therefore reducing the man’s responsibility for engaging with Helen. The lawyer’s presentation of Helen’s agency is emphasised in lines 77-80:
77 L: Let me put this to you, it was you who suggested to this man when you 78 walked off that you went down the alleyway 79 V: No 80 L: And you went down willingly
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 21-38 ‘He was telling you to shut up because you hadn’t been raped’: A linguistic investigation into the domination of female rape victims in courtroom cross examinations 30 Beginning the question with ‘Let me put this to you’ allows the lawyer to create his narrative of events in which Helen is the initiator of the sexual interaction. Although Helen’s response denies this narrative, beginning the next question with ‘And’ allows the lawyer to disregard Helen’s answer and continue his domination over narrative construction (Matsumoto, 1999). As Conley and O’Barr say, a witness’s ‘denial may be lost in the flow of the lawyer’s polemic’ due to the strength of the lawyer’s statement questions (2005: 26). The ‘And’ question form continues the narrative flow of Helen as sexually interested by describing her behaviour as ‘willing’. Constructing questions in which Helen is the agent solely responsible for the sexual interaction means the lawyer portrays Helen as older and more in control of her decisions than is defined by law which states she is under the age of consent. Asking in line 82 ‘How was he able to get your trousers and knickers off?’ furthers this portrayal that Helen possesses more agency and control in the situation than the man does. It suggests that the man would not have the ability to use considerable force over a much younger girl. Using ‘How’ may seem to be a less controlling question form, however, this open ended question implies that it would be difficult for the man to have taken off Helen’s clothes. The question disregards the strength and domination men can have over women, meaning, as Ehrlich points out, it is disregarded that a woman may be afraid of a man (Ehlrich, 2001: 67). Instead, the lawyer implies men and women have the same amount of power and if Helen did not want him to take her clothes off then she would have felt able to resist. This results in the conclusion the lawyer makes in his next question that if Helen’s trousers were taken off then she must have wanted ‘him to take them off’ (line 84). At this point in the transcript, the lawyer begins completely opposing the idea that Helen is a rape victim by rejecting the notion that the sexual interaction was non- consensual. Helen attempts to negate the accusations that she initiated sexual actions, but this is combatted by the lawyer who regains his control:
85 V: I didn’t follow him, I tried to push him away I were crying and 86 screaming the whole time, I told him I didn’t want to do it 87 L: He didn’t put his penis inside you, did he?
Helen tries in lines 85-86 to construct an identity of herself which fits with the socially expected rape victim behaviour of actively resisting male advances. Her attempted construction is responded to with the most controlling question form, the tag ending question, ‘did he?’, meaning the lawyer regains domination and regulation over his narrative of Helen as a liar (Conley and O’Barr, 2005: 26). The question removes male responsibility by forcefully proposing that the man did not have agency in the situation. In the next questions, the lawyer further reduces male responsibility by heightening the image that Helen initiated the sexual interaction: ‘I suggest you were not crying and screaming and you took your own tracksuit bottoms and knickers off and laid down on top of them’ (lines 92-93). Beginning the question with ‘I suggest’ means the lawyer transforms the cross examination from ‘dialogue to self-serving monologue’ (Conley and O’Barr, 2005: 26). Using ‘I suggest’ allows the lawyer to repeat and contest Helen’s narrative that she was ‘screaming and crying’ (lines 85-86), overpowering her attempt at her own narrative construction and reconstructing the narrative to implicate Helen’s own agency, instead of the agency of her attacker, in removing her clothing. As shown in the Clothing analysis, Helen’s choice of dress is scrutinised as a choice which is relevant for being raped. Earlier in the transcript, in line 13, the lawyer criticises Helen’s insufficiency in maintaining responsibilities expected of a woman to prevent rape by labelling Helen’s clothes ‘skimpy’, and now in lines 92-93 he furthers the idea that Helen’s clothing choices mean she is not a credible rape victim through suggesting she invites male attention by taking them off herself. Lines 92-93 directly attack Helen’s own narrative construction in lines 85-86 and thus her credibility as a victim, implying that after dressing promiscuously she also promiscuously removed them and ‘laid down on top of them’ (line 93).
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Specific use of ‘knickers’ in the accusation that Helen took her own underwear off relates to Matoesian’s findings in the William Kennedy Smith rape trial that using female specific words for underwear instead of gender neutral terms functions as a reminder of a female sexuality (2001: 44). Using the declarative form ‘you were’ and ‘you took your own’ omits any male responsibility and pushes responsibility further onto Helen for supposedly inviting sexual interaction. The final transcript questions accuse Helen of lying about rape after her promiscuous seduction of the man in which she initiated sex:
95 L: I suggest you heard the car, you stood up yourself, saying you 96 you didn’t want anything else 97 V: [No 98 L: [That’s when you started shouting and screaming 99 you had been raped 100 V: No 101 L: He was telling you to shut up because you hadn’t been raped 102 V: No 103 L: He didn’t rape you
Repeating the question structure ‘I suggest’, as used in line 95, means the lawyer continues to dominate the narrative image of Helen, persisting with his implications that Helen was the agent in the situation who made all of the decisions concerning sexual interaction. The lawyer’s argument in these final questions that Helen is lying about being raped focuses on the idea that hearing a car (line 95) was the moment in which she stopped her sexual engagement. He suggests her reason for stopping sex was because she became aware that someone may see her acting in a promiscuous manner: these accusations align with Matoesian’s findings that his victim is shamed in court for the dirtiness of ‘impersonal sex’, implying that women should be embarrassed about their sexual promiscuity (2001: 45). The lawyer’s argument rests on the existing belief, already implied by the suggestion of Helen’s drunken unleashing of sexual behaviour analysed in the Alcohol section, that in rape trials women tell ‘nothing but lies’ (Lees 2002: 134), and that women tell these lies to prevent a promiscuous image and maintain sexual reputability. Linking the lawyer’s final accusations in lines 101 and 103 with Matoesian’s (2001) ideal of a male ‘logic of rational behaviour’, the lawyer implies it is more logical that a woman would fabricate a rape allegation than that she is telling the truth about being raped (Matoesian 2001: 45). The ‘logical’ conclusion is that Helen cares so strongly about her social acceptability that she would lie about being raped, when she had consensual sex, to prevent receiving a socially deviant reputation. The lawyer argues Helen was told to ‘shut up’ because she was making a false claim of rape (line 101), not because the man wanted her to stay quiet about the sexual violence he enacted on her. A rapist telling their victim to ‘shut up’ means attempting to silence a victim who tries to make a stand against domination. Reusing the words of Helen’s rapist, ‘shut up’, in the courtroom setting revictimises Helen. It punishes her for ‘breaking the silence’ enforced by societal ‘emphasis on female respectability and chastity’ (Lees, 1997: 73).
Discussion Using CA allows my research to show that Helen is overpowered in cross examination as a result of the lawyer’s sequential topic management. He maintains his control over the interaction through his use of question structure, repetition and covert comments on Helen’s behaviour. Controlled questions focusing on her clothing, her choice to drink and her other supposed consensual behaviour mean the lawyer seizes power over the image of Helen’s body. He dominates Helen, reconstructing her image to attack her credibility as a rape victim. As Conley and O’Barr’s CA research says: ‘the basic linguistic strategies of cross examination are domination and control. When used against the background of the rape victims experience, they can bring about a subtle yet powerful re-enactment of that experience’ (2005:
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 21-38 ‘He was telling you to shut up because you hadn’t been raped’: A linguistic investigation into the domination of female rape victims in courtroom cross examinations 32 37). The lawyer’s forceful possession of Helen’s bodily description through his institutional control of the interaction parallels with the physical domination women undergo during rape. Combining CA with CDA underlines that elements of the horrific trauma and domination Helen experienced when she was sexually assaulted are reproduced by the sequential control the lawyer possesses in court, and that this lawyer controlled scrutiny of her conduct is effective as a result of the plethora of pre-existing social stereotypes outside of the court for rape victim behaviour. In addition to dominating Helen on a turn-by-turn sequential basis, the language used in courtroom cross examination is socially constituted: ‘it relates to existing social structures and reproduces social structures’ (Fairclough, 2010: 3). The lawyer’s discourse is constituted by existing myths of ‘utmost resistance’ (Ehrlich, 2001) and ‘autonomous testosterone’ (Luchjenbroers and Aldridge, 2013) which reinforce women’s social position as the oppressed gender. The lawyer reduces male responsibility for raping women through instead focusing on how women’s behaviour and character make them responsible for being raped. Ideals of victim culpability are reproduced by the lawyer, firstly through criticism of Helen’s inadequate clothing and alcohol behaviour and then by accusing her of being the sexual agent taking off her inadequate clothing to seduce the man. The maintenance of a status quo which emphasises female culpability for being raped shown in the lawyer’s discourse is also found in media discourse analysis, including work by Clark (1998), Bernhardsson and Bogren (2012) and Luchjenbroers and Aldridge-Waddon (2017). Fairclough asserts it is essential for CDA work to focus on social relations between discourse (2010: 3): these media discourse analyses highlight that social ideals about rape victim responsibility persist outside as well as inside the courtroom setting. Helen is disadvantaged against a barrage of pre-existing ideals the lawyer can utilise, and reinforce, about how a victim should ‘rationally’ or ‘logically’ behave (Matoesian, 2001: 39). Clark’s discourse analysis states that ‘in our society men commit acts of violence on women every day. All women’s lives are affected by this: by actual violence or by the fear of it’ (1998: 183). Analysing Helen’s cross examination reveals that after this actual violence of being raped, she is subjected to further victimisation during cross examination in which she is blamed for rape as a result of not fearing male violence enough. Men are depicted as unable to be held accountable for their acts of sexual violence, and therefore if women do not regulate their behaviour, they are responsible for being raped (Matoesian, 2001; Luchjenbroers and Aldridge, 2013). The lawyer’s focus on how Helen should regulate her behaviour in relation to a fear of male violence reflects Lees argument that cross examinations function as a way of controlling women instead of protecting them (1997: 69). Control is further exerted through the questioning focusing on Helen’s sexual behaviour: the sequential organisation of the questions moves from implying Helen drunkenly unleashed sexuality to explicitly asking her ‘did you want him to take them off’ (line 85). Helen is shamed by the lawyer for performing these sexual actions which the lawyer himself introduces into her description. The man in Helen’s case was found guilty of rape. However, my analysis reinforces Matoesian’s (1993; 2001) and Lees’ (2002) assertions that the courtroom experience can feel as invasive, humiliating and violent as the act of rape itself. The lawyer’s cross examination labels Helen as someone who dressed provocatively and acted ‘giddy’ (line 51). It accuses Helen of enjoying the sex and lying about rape. It victimises Helen by reusing the words of her rapist, that she was told to ‘shut up’ (line 101), as a means of attacking her reliability as a rape victim. My introduction stated the leading causes for the 83% of women who chose not to report their rape in 2017 included fear of humiliation, embarrassment and the courtroom (ONS, 2018). CDA aims to ‘produce interpretations and explanations of areas of social life which both identify the cause of social wrongs and produce knowledge which could contribute to righting or mitigating them’ (Fairclough, 2010: 8). CDA of Helen’s cross examination underlines that the small proportion of women who do feel able to report rape are subject to humiliation in the courtroom. There is currently a repeating cycle wherein women’s subordinated social position under male domination leads to fear of reporting rape to the police, and those who do report are dominated again in the courtroom, affecting both reporting and conviction rates.
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Conclusion This dissertation investigated the pressing social issue of the subordination of the female identity in the courtroom. Synergising Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse is a strength to this work, showing that after being raped Helen is victimised and attacked again in cross examination by the strength of the lawyer’s questions on two levels. Firstly, he controls the institutional interaction through his forceful questioning techniques which allow him to control the description of Helen’s body and behaviour. Secondly, this control of Helen’s image, reputation and character is powerful as a result of pre-existing social ideals about how rape victims should behave and how women can be responsible for being raped. My analysis underlines the invasiveness of the lawyer’s questioning and the institutional domination faced by those women who do feel comfortable to break the socially expected silence of women (Lees, 1997) and speak out about being sexually assaulted. My work focuses only on one transcript; additional research into how ideological beliefs about rape victims strengthen lawyers’ attacks on rape victim credibility is necessary. Quantitative analysis is needed in further studies to provide a more extensive overview of the trends in how lawyers depict rape victims during the courtroom. Using a combination of CA and CDA methods when investigating trials of other forms of sexual assault, including victims of acquaintance rape and date rape, is essential to further understand the problematic nature of rape trial discourse in which victims are subjected to further domination. Research into how ideological beliefs impact courtroom discourse of trials for male sexual assault victims as well as female victims is also needed. We must continue to question how reporting rape and conviction rates for rape are consistently so low (Ehrlich, 2001). We must continue to investigate how social prejudices against victims of sexual assault are utilised and reinforced in our courtrooms, subjecting victims to further domination.
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Matoesian, G. M. (1995). ‘Language, Law and Society: Policy Implications, of the Kennedy Smith Rape Trial’. Law & Society 29(4): 669-701. Matoesian, G. M. (2001). Law and the Language of Identity: Discourse in the William Kennedy Smith Rape Trial. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Matsumoto, K. (1999). ‘And-Prefaced Questions in Institutional Discourse’, Linguistics 37(2): 251-274. Office for National Statistics. (ONS). (2018) ‘Sexual Offences in England and Wales: year ending March 2017’. [Online]. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/sexualoffen cesinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2017#toc [Accessed 2nd April 2018]. Pomerantz, A. and Fehr, B.J. (2011). ‘Conversation Analysis: An Approach to the Analysis of Social Interaction’. In T. A. van Dijk (eds.) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. (2nd edn.). London: Sage Publications Ltd, pp. 165-190. Rape Crisis. (2018). ‘Sexual Violence Statistics’. [Online]. Available at: https://rapecrisis.org.uk/statistics.php [Accessed 21st March 2018]. Thornborrow, J. (2014) Power Talk: Language and Interaction in Institutional Discourse. London: Taylor & Francis Group.
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Data transcribed from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQGd22KFcnc [Accessed 15 March 2018]
Part one cross examination – video time - 47:26-50:58 Part two, the same cross examination continues on the next day – video time - 52:02-54:00
Key: L – Lawyer V – Victim J – Judge
Notes on transcription: [ – simultaneous speaking
Part one Cross Examination
Line Speaker 1 L: You got into a bit of trouble for not going to school, for playing truant 2 from school? 3 V: Yeah 4 L: You must remember what you were doing during the day, just 5 walking the street just wondering around? 6 V: Yeah 7 L: What did you do? Where did you go? 8 V: Nowhere 9 L: It was a pretty awful day, you will remember it well 10 V: We were just ‘anging around, me mates were over the brittanic pub 11 it’s just over from the white square. 12 L: Help me with this, we know you were wearing evening clothes in the 13 evening, you were wearing a skimpy sports top and tracksuit 14 bottoms. Your mum phoned, around five o clock that evening, she 15 wanted you home because they were having a barbeque 16 17 V: Can’t remember 18 L: Did she say you hadn’t been to school? 19 V: Can’t remember 20 L: You arranged to meet your boyfriend at six fifteen that evening and 21 he gave you the time his bus was coming in 22 V: Yeah 23 L: Can you remember where you went? 24 V: We went to tescos, cos he said he wanted a drink, so we waited 25 outside for him and he got a can of beer 26 L: Are you sure about that? Think about it, you want to stick to that? 27 28 V: Yeah 29 L: He bought a bottle of vodka, didn’t he? 30 V: Yeah 31 L: You can remember that? 32 V: Yeah 33 L: You were drinking vodka
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34 V: I had a little taste 35 V: You keep trying to make out that it’s my fault 36 J: We’ll take a short break 37 L: How long were you under the bridge with your boyfriend and the 38 other girl? 39 V: About two hours 40 L: Is that when you were drinking vodka? 41 V: Yeah 42 L: Was there anything else you were drinking? 43 V: Had some cans 44 L: Who bought the cans? 45 V: Boyfriend bought cans of beer 46 L: How many cans of beer did he buy? 47 V: Three or four 48 L: Do you remember some men, painting in the station? 49 V: Yeah 50 L: One of the painters remembers a girl who tapped him on the bottom, 51 she was a bit giddy was that you? 52 V: Can’t remember 53 L: Why did you see your boyfriend to his bus but he didn’t see you to 54 yours? 55 V: Because his bus were due in and if he missed it he would’ve had to 56 walk home 57 L: How did you intend to get home? 58 V: Just wanted to walk 59 L: You could’ve caught a bus home 60 V: My bus was already gone 61 L: I thought the reason you went with your boyfriend was so that he 62 could get his bus and you could get yours 63 V: No I said that to him 64 L: You just said that to us 65 V: I’m going to leave it now cos you’re confusing me
Part two cross examination
Line Speaker 66 L: Why did you walk past the railway station, was that your way home? 67 V: Because it were lighter and it’s easier 68 L: You got into conversation with one of the men 69 V: Got asked where me house was 70 L: He got up from the bench, started walking and you followed him. There’s 71 a time when you walked off that he put his arm around you, and you had 72 your arm around him 73 V: Can’t remember 74 L: Is it not true that you went off walking with your arms around each other? 75 76 V: I can’t remember 77 L: Let me put this to you, it was you who suggested to this man when you 78 walked off that you went down the alleyway 79 V: No
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 21-38 ‘He was telling you to shut up because you hadn’t been raped’: A linguistic investigation into the domination of female rape victims in courtroom cross examinations 38 80 L: And you went down willingly 81 V: Well he told me it would be a quicker way, so I thought it would be 82 L: How was he able to get your trousers and knickers off? 83 V: Pulled them 84 L: Did you want him to take them off 85 V: I didn’t follow him, I tried to push him away I were crying and screaming 86 the whole time, I told him I didn’t want to do it 87 L: He didn’t put his penis inside you, did he? 88 V: A little bit yeah 89 L: You never saw it at any stage, how do you know it went inside you? 90 91 V: Cos I could feel it pushing 92 L: I suggest you were not crying and screaming and you took your own 93 tracksuit bottoms and knickers off and laid down on top of them 94 V: No 95 L: I suggest you heard the car, you stood up yourself, saying you didn’t want 96 anything else 97 V: [No 98 L: [That’s when you started shouting and screaming you had 99 been raped 100 V: No 101 L: He was telling you to shut up because you hadn’t been raped 102 V: No 103 L: He didn’t rape you 104 V: Yes, he did, I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t
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It’s in Their Nature; Examining Revenants in The Icelandic Sagas and What They Represent in Early Medieval Society
Caitlin Scally
English Dissertation: Viking Studies
Supervisor: Professor Judith Jesch
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 41
COMMON CHARACTERISTICS 41
THE UNDEAD 42 EYRBYGGJA SAGA THOROLF TWIST-FOOT------42 THORGUNNA------42 GRETTIS SAGA GLAM------43 LAXDÆLA SAGA KILLER-HRAPP------44 VINLAND SAGAS THE SAGA OF GREENLANDERS------44 EIRIK THE RED’S SAGA------44 ANALYSIS 44 ONE OF US? ------45 IMMIGRATION AND ORIGIN MYTHS------45 LAW AND PERSONHOOD------46 CHRISTIANITY------46 JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVER------48 LIFE AFTER DEATH------48 DON’T GO OUTSIDE------50 CONCLUSION 50
BIBLIOGRAPHY 51
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INTRODUCTION Concepts of revenants and walking corpses can be found as far back as the Iron Age in most of Europe.1 Apart from the eastern European vampires, they are perhaps most prominent in Icelandic literature and there is a specific word to describe a walking corpse: draugr. Like the vampire, Icelandic revenants are corporeal and have more in common with them than other Western European ghosts; Bram Stoker’s first Icelandic translator even called Dracula a manndraugr.2 Draugr is translated as ‘the dead inhabitant of a cairn, ghost, spirit’3 and the term is usually translated into English as ‘ghost.’4 In poetic language draugr is used to mean a wooden log as a kenning for humans.5 Although it is generally agreed that these are separate words, Ármann Jakobsson has argued in his 2011 article that the revenants could conceivably have gotten their name from the poetic metaphor, identifying the dead body as returning to its ‘natural state’. After all, in Norse mythology the first humans, Ask and Embla, are created from two logs.6 The Icelandic ghosts usually wake of their own accord, though there is a tradition in literature and poetry of waking the dead to ask the future. The word draugr itself is used rarely in medieval Icelandic texts, but is more commonly employed as a catch-all term for a revenant in modern scholarship.7 With this in mind I will primarily refer to the undead as revenants or ghosts, though if I use the word draugr it will be in this way. Although there are endless facets of revenants in the literature to be examined, I will be focusing mainly on the ghosts themselves in the sagas, who they were, what they did while alive and after death, and what this reveals about the society at the time of writing. Revenants were people who did not fit well into the community and wider Icelandic society. They disrupt or reveal disruptions in societal norms in life and in death. Usually first-generation immigrants or people with a non-Norwegian or Icelandic background, they are disliked or cause trouble and violence. I have concentrated my study on five sagas which include at least one person who becomes a walking corpse; Eyrbyggja saga, Grettis saga, Laxdæla saga, and the Vinland sagas. First, I will recount the story of the revenant in each of the sagas and then analyse the ways in which they are disruptive to the community while living and when they are revenants, focusing on their actions in the texts.
COMMON CHARACTERISTICS Most of the revenants are people who do not assimilate into the community in life and manifest this after death as well. Alternatively, they can appear because of some societal slight or embody the religious conflict of the time. They are often foreigners or recent immigrants. While living they are often disliked by others in the community or they make them uncomfortable, through violence and strife or even just their appearance. After death, the ghosts are corporeal and able to interact with the living, to varying extents. It is often difficult to bury them as they grow heavy and start to swell. But when they are disinterred, though their appearance has become monstrous, they have not decomposed and are unnaturally preserved. They haunt at night, especially in winter, and only on the farms and properties that they had a connection to in life, riding the roof of the hall. Animals either die at their hands or from mere proximity to the grave, there are also several incidents of the ghost manifesting as an animal and haunting that way. Several of the revenants possess some magic or prophetic ability, often foretelling their own death. Their main purpose after death is to haunt and in doing
1 Classen, ‘When the Dead No Longer Rest: The Religious Significance of Revenants in Sagas Set in Viking Age Settlements Around the Time of Conversion’, in Death in the Middle-Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death, 2018, 133. 2 Jakobsson, ‘Vampires and Watchmen: Categorizing the Mediaeval Icelandic Undead’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 110 (2011), 299. 3 ‘Draugr’, Zoega’s Old Icelandic Dictionary,
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 39-53 It’s in Their Nature; Examining Revenants in The Icelandic Sagas and What They Represent in Early Medieval Society 42 so they regularly harass and even murder people. The people who are killed by the revenant often haunt alongside it, becoming undead themselves. They are banished by the removal of the head followed by cremation or alternatively through legal proceedings, or the resolution of conflict.
THE UNDEAD
EYRBYGGJA SAGA Eyrbyggja Saga is one of the earliest Icelandic sagas and is notable for the numerous supernatural elements it contains. It tells of the settlement and the early history of the Snæfellsnes peninsula as well as the development of Icelandic society, which takes shape as the plot progresses.8 The two revenants, Thorolf Twist-Foot and Thorgunna, are both catalysts for the series of supernatural events that follow their deaths.
THOROLF TWIST-FOOT Thorolf Twist-Foot enters the saga with violence, he is well versed in it and he is described as a ‘great viking.’9 He is the son of Geirrid who was given land at Borgardale by her brother Geirodd, one of the first settlers of Eyr. Because of Thorolf’s late arrival he must gain his lands through violence and he fights Ulfar to the death for his farm. The fight results in an injury to Thorolf’s leg, causing him to walk with a limp and earning him the nickname ‘Twist-Foot.’ Thorolf is greedy and disliked and believes he does not have enough property or power which is the cause of all his disputes and his eventual death. Thorolf dies in a fury after his son refuses to help him feud against Snorri the Priest to gain more land. He storms home in a rage and is found the next morning lifeless and still sitting in his high-seat. Thorolf haunts the farm at Hvamm at night, the oxen who pulled Thorolf’s body to his cairn are trollriđa (‘ridden to death by trolls’) and animals around his grave go mad and die.10 He chases the shepherd home every night, eventually killing him. He rides the roof at night and haunts his widow until she also goes mad and dies, while everybody else abandons the farm. Everybody who is killed by Thorolf is later seen haunting alongside him. Arnkel eventually decides to move Thorolf’s body, but when the cairn is broken open the corpse is discovered ‘uncorrupted and very ugly looking.’11 Thorolf’s ghost resumes haunting the farms and estates around him after Arnkel’s death until he is disinterred once again, this time by Thorodd Thorbrandsson, the new owner of the Ulfarsfell and Orlygsstad estates. When revealed, his body is again uncorrupted and ugly, but this time also as black and swollen. Thorolf’s body is taken down to the foreshore and burned to ashes. The ashes are collected and deposited into the sea but most were scattered by the wind and end up being licked up by one of Thorodd’s cows. The cow gives birth to a huge calf given the name Glæsir (another incarnation of Thorolf). The calf grows into an ill-tempered bull who goes mad and kills Thorodd before disappearing into a river, never to be seen again.
THORGUNNA Thorgunna is the second revenant in Eyrbyggja Saga. She arrives from the Hebrides soon after Iceland’s conversion to Christianity, though she is already Christian. She is a ‘massive woman, tall, broadly built, and getting very stout.’12Though she is devout and proper ‘she wasn’t easy to get on with and didn’t waste much time on conversation.’13
8 Wanner, ‘Purity and Danger in Earliest Iceland: Excrement, Blood, Sacred Space, and Society in Eyrbyggja Saga’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 5 (2009), 213. 9 Eyrbyggja Saga, trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (Edinburgh: Southside, 1973), ch8. 10 Eyrbyggja Saga, (Reykjavik: Kostnađarmađur Sigurđur Kristjánsson, 1921) ch34. 11 Eyrbyggja Saga, 1973, ch34. 12 Ibid, ch50. 13 Ibid, ch50.
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A portent in the form of a black cloud arrives and moves towards Frodriver which bursts and rains blood over the farmstead. The blood dries everywhere but on the hay that Thorgunna had been working. She foresees her own death and tells Thorodd her instructions for her body and belongings. She asks for a Christian burial at Skalholt which she predicts will soon become the most venerated place in Iceland, and it does eventually become the seat of the first native Icelandic bishop.14 She gives specific instructions for her bed and bed-clothes to be burnt, warning trouble if they are not. Her wishes are ignored as Thurid persuades Thorodd to let her keep the bed-linens. Thorgunna’s body is carried off by the corpse-bearers who encounter extremely bad weather on their way to Skalholt and ask for shelter at a farm but are refused hospitality. Later that night sounds are heard from the larder and when investigated, Thorgunna is found there preparing food for the corpse-bearers. She lays the table, serves the meal, and when the farmer apologises for his inhospitable behaviour she walks out the room again, back to her coffin. People begin to die at the farm, starting with the shepherd who begins to act ill- tempered and dies in his bed. Thorir Wood-Leg is confronted by the shepherd one night on his way to the out-house and dies soon afterwards. The illness spreads to one of the farmhands and then to six others who all die. At one-point a seal rises up through the floor of the living-room and turns its eyes towards Thorgunna’s bed canopy and then disappears. Thorodd and his men are drowned and their bodies are never found. Soon after, Thorodd and his men appear at their own funeral feast followed by Thorir Wood-Leg and the others who died and sit by the fire every night. Thorgrima Witch-Face another six people die and they haunt alongside the rest. Thorgunna’s bed-hangings are eventually burnt and the rest of the ghosts are summoned to a door court where they are banished one by one. Holy water is then sprinkled and holy relics carried to every corner of the house, while mass is sung the next morning banishing the ghosts once and for all.
GRETTIS SAGA GLAM Glam is hired as the shepherd for the farm at Thorhallsstad, which is being haunted. He is a new settler from Sweden and disagreeable. He is described as very striking, a big man with ‘large grey eyes and wolf grey hair’ and he is unafraid of the prospect of ghosts.15 Glam is hated by the household because ‘he abstained from mass, had no religion, and was stubborn and surly.’16 Glam eats his meal on Yule-tide eve, ignoring Christian customs. Afterwards he goes out to work in a blizzard and does not return in the evening. Glam’s body is found up in the mountains and his corpse is black and swollen and it is assumed that he has fought and been killed by the previous spirit. The people of the community try to carry him to a church but he is too heavy and his body disappears when a priest arrives. They try to move him three times over three days but he is too heavy even for oxen to move so he is buried under a cairn of stones where he lies. Glam haunts the farm, causing injuries, riding the roof, and driving people off. The next shepherd to be hired, Thorgaut, is Christian and popular but he is killed in the same way as Glam; he disappears on Yule-tide eve and is found by Glam’s cairn with his neck and every bone in his body broken. Although this time when Thorgaut is buried, it is in the Church and he does not haunt alongside Glam. Everybody but Thorhall, Gudrun, and the cowherd are run off the farm, and soon the cowherd is found dead with his back broken. Grettir hears of the haunting from his uncle and rides to Thorhallsstad. Grettir’s horse is killed on the second night and Glam shows up on the third night, tearing through the house and riding on the roof. They fight in the hall and Glam struggles to get out the door, but ‘Grettir saw that however hard he was to deal with in the house, he would be worse outside.’17 Eventually
14 Ibid, ch51. 15 The Saga of Grettir the Strong, trans. G. A. Hight (London: J. M. Dent & Sons ltd,1929), ch32. 16 Ibid, ch32. 17 Ibid, ch35.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 39-53 It’s in Their Nature; Examining Revenants in The Icelandic Sagas and What They Represent in Early Medieval Society 44 they fall out of the house and Glam looks up at the moon, causing Grettir to freeze and Glam curses him. Grettir cuts off Glam’s head and lays it between the thighs and he and Thorhall burn Glam to ashes, put the ashes in a skin and bury them ‘far from the haunts of man or beast.’18
LAXDÆLA SAGA KILLER-HRAPP Laxdæla Saga is one of the earliest family sagas and spans more than a century.19 Hrapp is Scottish on his father’s side and was born in the Hebrides. He was known as Killer- Hrapp and had fled to Iceland after he refused to make retribution for crimes he committed on the islands. A ‘big, strong man’, Hrapp is a bully and disliked by his neighbours, he becomes more and more aggressive though he becomes confined to his bed as he ages.20 He predicts his death from illness and asks to be buried upright in the kitchen doorway so that he can always watch over his property. He haunts the farm after death and kills most of his servants causing Hrapsstadir to become deserted. Hrapp’s body is disinterred and moved, after which the hauntings decrease. Thorstein then decides to move to Hrappsstadir but the crossing is difficult and their ferry becomes stuck against the current. An extremely large seal, with long flippers and human-like eyes appears and swims round the boat several times. Eventually the boat becomes unstuck but is capsized by a sudden storm and everybody aboard dies, leaving the farm at Hrappsstadir abandoned. The farm is bought many years later by Olaf the Peacock. The first winter though, the farmhand refuses to go to the cowshed because Hrapp is standing in the doorway. Olaf tries to attack Hrapp with a spear but Hrapp breaks it before sinking into the earth. Hrapp’s body is dug up and found perfectly preserved with the broken spear blade of Olaf’s. They burn his body and spread his ashes out at sea, ending the hauntings.
THE VINLAND SAGAS The Saga of the Greenlanders and the Eirik the Red’s Saga make up what is known as the Vinland Sagas. Written down separately in the thirteenth century, they both recount the same basic tale and contain some of the earliest recorded descriptions of North America.21 THE SAGA OF THE GREENLANDERS THORSTEIN EIRIKSSON AND GRIMHLID In the Saga of the Greenlanders Thorstein Eiriksson marries Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir and sets off to Vinland to collect his brother Thorvald’s body. They encounter storms on the journey and only make it as far as Lysufjord in Greenland. Thorsteinn and Gudrid accept an invitation from Thorstein the Black for accommodation over the winter, though he warns them that he and his wife are still pagan. Thorstein Eiriksson’s companions become ill and die and the illness spreads to Grimhlid, Thorstein the Black’s wife, and Thorstein Eiriksson himself. Grimhlid is the first to die and when Thorstein the Black leaves the room, Grimhlid sits up and feels for her shoes. She collapses again when Thorstein re-enters the room. Like most revenants she has become extremely heavy and Thorstein the Black struggles removing her from the room: ‘he was a large, strong man, and needed to call upon all his strength before he managed to remove his wife from the farm.’22 Thorstein Eiriksson then worsens and dies but during the night he sits up and asks for Gudrid three times. Thorstein the Black asks him what he wants and Thorstein Eiriksson then answers with a prophecy for Gudrid’s future after which Thorstein’s corpse falls back and he is taken to the ship.
18 Ibid, ch35. 19 Smiley, The Sagas of the Icelanders (New York: Penguin Group inc., 2000), p274. 20 The Saga of the People of Laxardal, trans. Keneva Kunz (New York: Penguin Group inc., 2000) ch9. 21Ibid, p626. 22 The Saga of the Greenlanders, trans. Keneva Kunz (New York: Penguin Group inc., 2000), ch5.
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EIRIK THE RED’S SAGA THORSTEIN EIRIKSSON AND SIGRID In Eirik the Red’s Saga the story is much the same, Thorstein Eiriksson marries Gudrid and tries to travel to Vinland but gets stuck in Lysufjord. In this version Thorstein Eiriksson owns Lysufjord and Thorstein the Black owns a half share and his wife is named Sigrid. The first to die of the illness on the farm is the unpopular foreman, Gardi. The sickness quickly catches and Thorstein Eiriksson and Sigrid fall ill. Sigrid and Gudrid go to the outhouse one night and Sigrid sees all the dead standing in the doorway, herself and Thorstein included. Sigrid dies in the night and the men leave to go fishing, but at dusk Thorstein the Black is fetched back to the farm as Sigrid is getting up and trying to get into bed with Thorstein Eiriksson. Thorstein the Black rushes back and strikes her with an axe in the chest. Thorstein Eiriksson dies after sundown and Gudrid is woken in the middle of the night because he is asking for her. He tells them that God has allowed him extra time in order to tell Gudrid her future. He speaks to her quietly and then asks to be taken to church along with all the other dead and buried properly in consecrated ground, he says that Gardi should be burned on a pyre though because he started the hauntings. He tells her that her future is promising but that she won’t marry a Greenlander and he also asks her to donate their money to the church or the poor, after which he sinks down again.
ANALYSIS
ONE OF US? IMMIGRATION AND ORIGIN MYTHS A common characteristic of the Icelandic revenants is that they are all either recent or first-generation immigrants and from somewhere other than Norway. Identity is a difficult thing to define in the early medieval period and it would be irresponsible to say that these characters saw where they were born as a cornerstone of their personality, as is common today. Three years’ residency in Iceland meant that a foreigner could be accepted as a judge and was brought under the umbrella of Icelandic law.23 Clearly nationality and identity were fluid, at least in the eyes of the law. That being said, with the emerging nationalism of the period in which that sagas were written down, the roots of the people who become revenants is significant. Though Iceland was settled from a variety of different British and Scandinavian countries, Norway was and is seen as the cultural homeland. Ari Thorgilsson writes in the Íslendingabók that Iceland was settled entirely from Norway.24 Thorgilsson essentially creates a national identity which leads to the valuation of Norwegian kinship groups over others and this is shown in the characterisation of the revenants in the sagas. This hierarchy can be seen in the Grágás law books, as foreigners who can speak dǫnsk tunga or ‘our language’ (commonly used for ‘Norse language’) are allowed more legal rights than those who do not speak the shared language.25 Thorgunna is Hebridean and Hrapp is half Hebridean and half Scottish. They are both late settlers and both from a country that is within the Viking diaspora but with linguistic differences and therefore ‘other.’ Glam is Swedish and is doubly ‘other’ because he is resolutely pagan. Swedish settlers are usually portrayed in a more negative light in the sagas because they took longer to convert to Christianity than the rest of Scandinavia.26
23 Vohra, ‘One of Us? Negotiating Multiple Legal Identities across the Viking Diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39 (2016), 218. 24 Jesch, ‘Identities’, in The Viking Diaspora (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 192. 25 Vohra, 2016, 211. 26 Bennett, ‘Burial Practices as Sites of Cultural Memory in the Íslendingasögur’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 10 (2014), 45.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 39-53 It’s in Their Nature; Examining Revenants in The Icelandic Sagas and What They Represent in Early Medieval Society 46 There is no mention of where Thorolf Twist-foot was born, we know that his uncle is one of the first settlers of Eyr and Thorolf’s mother arrived soon after, followed some years later by Thorolf. Despite this genealogy, Thorolf’s late immigration means that he has arrived after all the land has been claimed and he sets out to gain his own through violence. Compounding this, Thorolf chooses to sell off portions of his land to two freedmen in chapter eight. Land-giving was an important social process for the early Icelanders, creating social ties, obligations and cementing relationships.27 Thorolf’s refuses to do this and instead chooses material wealth over long-term obligations and prestige. His refusal to abide by the customs of the community sets him apart and actually costs him the power that he so desperately wants. Hrapp purchased his farm when he arrived in Iceland, also setting him apart from the community and the custom of land-giving. His arrival is preceded by violence as he had to flee the Hebrides as an outlaw. Like Thorolf, he is greedy and covetous of property and power which he has been denied because he has not followed the proper route to property ownership. He continues his violence and bullying against his neighbours in Iceland as does Thorolf and their violence continues in their hauntings after death.
LAW AND PERSONHOOD Legal belonging was built into the functioning of the social group of early Icelanders. 28 The early period of Icelandic history is characterised by its status as a society without any real royal or aristocratic state but an elaborate and highly developed legal system.29 Legal identity is tied up with personhood and status in the period. It was up to the individual to bring charges if they had been wronged and justice is carried out in the public realm.30 The legal system is therefore incredibly important to the community. It is telling that the drowned men of Eyrbyggja Saga are banished through legal means: they are summoned to a door court. The ghosts are summoned one by one and accused of ‘trespassing on the home and robbing people of life and health.’31 The revenants’ presence is negatively affecting the living in the community and they and can no longer stay. When each of them stand to go they repeat some version of the refrain, ‘I’ve sat here as long as people would let me.’32 The world of the living is no longer their proper place, emphasised by the fact that they sit by the fire each night and cannot get dry, but they are still bound by the law and its power. Because they no longer fit into the community they must leave it, and they do, but only when forced. Thorgunna’s ghost appears when the farmer and his family at Nether Ness refuse the corpse-bearers hospitality. She takes it upon herself to do what the farmer should have, and her waking appears to be a moral lesson. The disturbing sight of a naked ghost preparing a meal is compounded by the inherent threat in her emergence. She has risen because the farmer will not act properly within the rules of society and shelter the corpse-bearers. Not only are they making an already difficult journey worse by not offering basic hospitality but they are also threatening Thorgunna’s Christian burial itself. When Thorolf is buried for the second time, Arnkel asks for help to move the body and we are told by the author that the law states that ‘everybody must help bury the dead if he is asked for his assistance.’33 The corpse- bearers are doing as the law requires and the farmer is hindering that. The societal and legal infractions of the farmer lead to Thorgunna’s appearance. And it works, as Thorgunna’s ghost frightens the farmer so much he offers the hospitality due to the corpse-bearers and Thorgunna walks out and does not rise again.
27 Mclennan, ‘Monstrosity in Old English and Old Icelandic Literature’ (University of Glasgow, 2010), 74. 28 Vohra, 2016, 208. 29 Mclennan, 70. 30 Ibid, 70-71. 31 Eyrbyggja Saga, 1973, ch55. 32 Ibid. 33 Eyrbyggja Saga, 1973, ch34.
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CHRISTIANITY While all the sagas I am dealing with straddle the conversion period, there is a clear Christian bias towards the characters who have converted. This is unsurprising as the sagas were written down in a time when Iceland was vehemently Christian. The purpose of the revenants in the Vinland Sagas is to contrast Christianity and paganism. In the Saga of the Greenlanders, Thorstein Eiriksson returns to reassure his wife that he has gone to a good resting place (heaven?) and to tell her a prophecy of her future, which includes her taking holy orders and dying in a church she builds on her farm. In the Saga of Eirik the Red, Thorstein claims that god has allowed him to return: ‘’It is God’s will that I be granted an exception for this brief time to improve my prospects.’’34 He criticises how Christianity has been practised in Greenland, especially the burial practices, and requests that he and his companions have Christian burials in a church. He also asks Gudrid to donate their money to a church. His return serves as a lesson in how a proper Christian should act, as he comes back to improve his chances in the afterlife, which he does by donating money to the church and poor and making sure his body is treated correctly. In the Saga of the Greenlanders, after death Grimhlid sits up and tries to put her shoes on while in Eirik the Red’s Saga Sigrid tries to get into bed with Thorstein Eiriksson. Grimhlid is stopped by the mere return of her husband to the room while Thorstein the Black stops Sigrid with an axe to the chest. Neither Grimhlid or Sigrid speak, marking them as different than Thorstein Eiriksson at once and demonstrating their return as unnatural. Thorstein Eiriksson has been given more time by God to speak to his wife, which he does and then sinks back down leaving the world at the right time. Grimhlid and Sigrid do not seem to accept that their time is up, their return is unnatural and characterised by their inability to speak and their slow, uncoordinated movements.35 The death and ‘otherness’ of the pagan revenants separates them from society while Thorstein can still communicate and interact, making a statement about Christianity’s place in the community. The other revenants carry more subtle messages about religion. Glam is resolutely pagan and his death occurs on Christmas eve after he does not fast as is ‘proper for Christian men.’36 He responds derisively, doubting the power of superstitions and compounding the insult with the statement: ‘‘The ways of men seemed to me better when they were called heathen.’’37 Glam’s body mysteriously disappears when a priest arrives and grows so heavy when people try to move it to bury it in a church that he ends up covered with stones where he lies. Glam’s refusal to obey the rules of the community and religion appears to directly cause his death, as the last thing he does is mock Christianity and its customs. This is underlined by Thorgaut, the replacement shepherd that Glam murders. Thorgaut is Christian and though he dies in exactly the same way as Glam, he allows himself to be buried in the church and the author makes a point of saying that Thorgaut did not haunt with Glam and lies peacefully. Thorgunna arrives in Iceland already Christian and at her death she predicts the seat of the first native Icelandic bishop. Her request for a Christian burial occurs just before her death along with her request that her bed-hangings be burnt. Though the journey to Skalholt with Thorgunna’s body is extremely difficult, it is made clear that this is entirely due to nature rather than supernatural means, like Thorolf earlier in the story or Glam in Grettis Saga. Ian Wyatt has compellingly argued that the author of Eyrbyggja Saga emphasises the bad weather, high rivers, and tough travelling conditions that the corpse-bearers had to battle, making the pause in the journey a natural one and disassociating Thorgunna from the other revenants.38 The illnesses and hauntings that follow are then due to the rest of the household not obeying Thorgunna’s wishes, as they stop when Thorgunna’s bed-linens are finally burnt,
34 Eirik the Red’s Saga, trans. Keneva Kunz (New York: Penguin Group inc., 2000) ch6. 35 The Saga of the Greenlanders, ch5 and Eirik the Red’s Saga, ch6. 36 The Saga of Grettir the Strong, 1929, ch32. 37 Ibid. 38 Wyatt, ‘The Landscape of the Icelandic Sagas: Text, Place and National Identity’, Landscapes, 5 (2004), 65.
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JUDGING A BOOK BY IT’S COVER Appearance is not overly focused on in the sagas and there is no description of the appearance of the revenants, alive or dead, in either of the Vinland Sagas. Much of the time someone will be described as beautiful or striking and not much else. So, when appearance is described in some detail, it is doubly significant. Thorolf, Thorgunna, Glam, and Hrapp are all described as large, intimidating people. Their very physicality seems to mark them out as different. Thorgunna especially is tall and broadly built and described as ‘massive.’39 Thorgunna’s appearance and demeanour at once mark her out as ‘unfeminine’, her outward appearance signifying her ‘otherness’. Thorolf Twist-Foot walks with a limp that he gained through violence, and Hrapp is a big, strong man who likes to throw his weight around. Glam’s appearance is especially disconcerting, with his ‘wolf grey hair’ and large grey eyes.40 The word vargr (wolf) and compounds like vargdropi (wolf-born) is used in the Grágás concerning outlaws, serving to emphasise the criminal’s alienation from land and society through their association with wolves.41 Glam’s appearance resembling a wolf is a mark of his separation from society. After death their difference is accentuated by extreme growth and their skin turning blue or black like Glam and Thorolf. Their appearance marks the future revenants out as ‘other’ even before they die. Their off-putting appearance seems to also indicate their disagreeable personalities. Thorgunna is proper but cannot hold a conversation, Thorolf is violent and can’t control his emotions, and Hrapp is an outlaw and a bully. Both Thorolf and Hrapp are dissatisfied with their power and properties in life and they refuse to let go in death. The very nature of a revenant is greed, as they refuse to leave the world of the living and what they had there. They haunt the properties that they owned while alive and try to stop anyone else from living and thriving there. Hrapp wants to be buried upright in the doorway so that he can ‘keep a watchful eye on [my] home.’42 Even Thorgunna, though she shares out the rest of her belongings and gives a good reason for the burning of her bed-clothes, is described as selfish by Thurid.43 Their physical features and demeanour show their inability to fit in with the community and foreshadows their later incarnations.
LIFE AFTER DEATH DECOMPOSITION AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN BODY When Thorolf is disinterred the first time his body is described as ‘uncorrupted and very ugly looking.’44 The second time it is again uncorrupted but this time also ‘black as death and swollen to the size of an ox.’45 Thorolf had been buried for at least half a year before the first reburial and for several years before the second. His lack of decomposition is clearly unnatural and disconcerting, especially for the early Icelanders who would have been much more familiar with the process than the average person nowadays. Human decomposition begins four minutes after death and is usually described in four stages: autolysis, bloat, active decay and skeletonization.46 Autolysis begins immediately after death and excess carbon
39 Eyrbyggja Saga, 1973, ch50. 40 The Saga of Grettir the Strong, 1929, ch32. 41 Vohra, 2016, 207. 42 The Saga of Grettir the Strong, 1929, ch17. 43 Eyrbyggja Saga,1973, ch51. 44 Ibid, ch34. 45 Ibid, ch63. 46 ‘Human decomposition’, https://www.aftermath.com/content/human-decomposition [accessed 11/05/2018]
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dioxide leads to an acidic environment and the break-down of membranes and cells. Additionally, rigor mortis sets in causing the muscles to stiffen. Bloating caused by the build- up of gases leads to the body expanding, sometimes to double its size. Sulphur compounds released by bacteria also cause the discolouration of the skin. Active decay is the organs, muscles and skin liquefying and the soft tissue decomposing, leaving only the hair, bones, and cartilage, and ending with skeletonization.47 The corpse has then become something no longer resembling anything alive and has completed its natural journey. All this, hidden in the grave, is the accepted and expected cycle. But when the corpse does not decay and instead leaves the grave, drawing attention to that fact, it is acting as ‘other’ and defying the natural order. Though some descriptions of the revenants could be seen as the natural stages of decomposition, like the colour change of Thorolf and Glam, and the swelling of Glam to an incredible size, along with these descriptions we are told they are perfectly preserved, indicating that these physical changes are not anything nearly as natural as decomposition. There are burial practices designed to prevent the return of revenants, from deposition outside the community or in water,48 to being buried face-down so that the ghost will only dig deeper into the ground.49 Placing stones on the neck or in the mouth of a body has been interpreted as an attempt to stop the deceased from becoming a revenant.50 Decapitated burials, sometimes with the head placed between the legs, are often found in Poland, which is the way that Grettir disposes Glam in chapter thirty-five.51 Deviant burials like these serve to mark the ‘otherness’ of the supposed revenant and separate them from the rest of the community. The most sure-fire way to destroy a revenant though, is through cremation. Though Grettir cuts the head off Glam and places it between his legs, Thorhall will not let that be enough and additionally burns Glam down to ‘cold cinders’ which he places in a skin and then buries in a ‘place far from the haunts of man or beast.’52 The illness and hauntings that began with Thorgunna’s death only end through a combination of burning her bed-hangings and a law court, banishing the dead from the hall. In Eirik the Red’s Saga, Thorstein Eiriksson orders that the body of Gardi, the first to die, should be burned on a pyre instead of buried with the rest of them as it is his fault that the hauntings started, separating him from the rest of the community. Hrapp’s hauntings are eventually stopped when Olaf the Peacock has him disinterred and cremated and his ashes taken out to sea. Cremation is presented as a last resort and atypical (at least in the sagas), separating the revenants from the rest of the community even in their burial method. Original iconography of the danse macabre and the three living/three dead motif did not depict skeletons, instead the figures were corpses in the middle of decomposition, sometimes with worms and insects at work or with the skin burst over entrails.53 The discomfort of these images and with the stories themselves reveals the same kind of attitudes as those towards revenants. The revenants no longer belong in the world of the living but they will not give it up. Once the decomposition of the body is complete, there is no more danger of it becoming a revenant. We can see this in embodied in Norse mythology when, after eating, Thor instructs his companions to place the bones of the goats back in the skins so that he can bless and revive them in the morning.54 The flesh holds some kind of vitality that, while it remains, carries the danger of becoming a revenant. This is probably why the uncorrupted state of Thorolf and Glam is so disconcerting; they have not started decomposing and it is unclear if they ever will, allowing them to stay and haunt indefinitely. Sometimes even
47 Ibid. 48 Caciola, ‘Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture’, Past & Present, 152 (1996), 30. 49 Simpson, ‘Repentant Soul or Walking Corpse? Debatable Apparitions in Medieval England [1]’, Folklore, 114 (2003), 390. 50 Gardeła and Kajkowski, ‘Vampires, Criminals or Slaves? Reinterpreting “Deviant Burials” in Early Medieval Poland’, World Archaeology, 45 (2013), 789. 51 Ibid, 782. 52 The Saga of Grettir the Strong, 1929, ch35. 53 Caciola, 2003, 25-26. 54 Sturluson, 1995, 38.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 39-53 It’s in Their Nature; Examining Revenants in The Icelandic Sagas and What They Represent in Early Medieval Society 50 cremation is not enough however, as with Thorolf Twist-Foot who is reincarnated as the bull Glæsir when his ashes are licked up by one of Thorodd’s oxen. Clearly the additional disposal of the ashes is also required for the worst offenders so that there is nothing at all for them to inhabit.
DON’T GO OUTSIDE The revenants almost always appear at night and outside the house. They are often heard riding the roof of the hall and tearing about the farm. After Thorolf’s death in Eyrbyggja Saga ‘after sunset no-one out of doors was left in peace.’55 Glam is said to walk day and night but people are especially wary of going out at night, and refuse to search for Thorgaut’s body and ‘trust themselves into the power of trolls in the night.’56 During his fight with Glam, Grettir does not want to be pulled outside as he knows the fight will be worse for him. And it is, as Glam is able to look at the moon and curse him before Grettir cuts off his head. When Gudrun and Sigrid go together to the outhouse during the night, they are confronted by the revenants and Sigrid sees herself among them.57 In chapter twenty-four of Laxdæla Saga, the farmhand refuses to go to the milking shed, located in the forest away from the farmhouse, in the evening because Hrapp will be there. Often the first people to be attacked are the shepherds and people who work on the outskirts of the community. The revenants are the manifestation of the ‘otherness’ and danger of the outside. Just like in Beowulf and other Germanic literatures, the hall is a place of safety from the supernatural world. With this in mind, the doorway itself is a liminal space and is a boundary to the unknown. Grettir first sees Glam in the doorway and then struggles on the threshold during the fight. Hrapp appears to Olaf and the farmhand standing in the doorway of the cowshed. The door is the border and controls the access between the inside and outside of the inhabited space. In her 2013 article, Marianne Eriksen argues that crossing the threshold and leaving the ‘safety’ of the inhabited space is recognised in both ritual and language as a transition from one social role to another.58 The power of the doorway is recognised in law as well, as the ghosts in Eyrbyggja Saga are banished at a door-court. Summoned to the front door of the hall and banished from the social space of the living, they then leave through another door. The doorways act as a threshold between the world of the living and the supernatural, banishing the ghosts from the community.
CONCLUSION Throughout this dissertation I have presented some of the ways in which revenants are representative of social discord. Thorolf, Thorgunna, Glam, and Hrapp are social outcasts in life and remain so in death. Their appearance and attitude marks them as ‘other’ even before they die, as does their nationality. There is a clear bias characterising those with a Norwegian background, which is then mirrored in the Grágás. The appearance of the revenants gives away their ‘otherness’ in life and after death as their bodies reject the natural process of decomposition and so they must be destroyed through cremation, setting them apart from the community in another way. They manifest when the laws and rules of the community have been ruptured or ignored, not just by themselves but by others as well and they serve as a lesson on the consequences of such. Thorstein Eiriksson and Grimhlid/Sigrid represent the disharmony of the conversion period and interactions between Christians and pagans, and the superiority of the new religion. After death the mere presence of the revenants is disruptive and can only be fixed by resolution of the conflict or by complete destruction of the corpse. The ghosts haunt the night outside the safety of the hall, representing the danger posed by
55 Eyrbyggja Saga, 1973, ch34. 56 The Saga of Grettir the Strong, 1929, ch33. 57 Eirik the Red’s Saga, 2000, ch6. 58 Eriksen, ‘Doors to the Dead. The Power of Doorways and Thresholds in Viking Age Scandinavia’, Archaeological Dialogues, 20 (2013), 188.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 39-53 Caitlin Scally 51 the unknown and the space beyond the threshold. Revenants are the ultimate manifestation of fear of the ‘other’ both in the natural and supernatural community. There are more aspects of the revenants and ‘other’ I did not manage to mention, including their connection to magic and prophecy, and trolls and the supernatural. Targeting of animals and shape-changing is a key aspect of the revenants also and something I think would be valuable to examine. Additionally, I would have liked to do a more in-depth analysis of appearance as a marker of ‘otherness’, the fear of the outside and the concept of riding the roof. Finally, I think my dissertation would have benefitted from a further linguistic study of the words used for the revenants before and after death and their connotations. Unfortunately, my understanding of Old Norse is not yet developed enough to do that justice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES ‘Eiríks Saga Rauđa’, in ĺslendinga Sögur (Reykjavik: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1946), 323-359. ‘Eirik the Red’s Saga’, trans. Keneva Kunz in The Sagas of the Icelanders, Jane Smiley (ed.) (New York: Penguin Group inc., 2000) 653-674. Eyrbyggja saga, (Reykjavik: Kostnađarmađur Sigurđur Kristjánsson, 1921). Eyrbyggja Saga, trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (Edinburgh: Southside, 1973). Eyrbyggja Saga, trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (London: Penguin Books ltd, 1989). ‘Grænlendinga Saga’, in ĺslendinga Sögur (Reykjavik: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1946), 361- 390. Grettis Saga Ásmundarsonar, (Reykjavik: Kostnađarmađur Sigurđur Kristjánsson, 1921). Grettis Saga, trans. Jesse Byock (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2009). Laxdæla Saga, (Reykjavik: Kostnađarmađur Sigurđur Kristjánsson, 1920). Sturluson, Snorri, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes (London: Everyman, 1995). The Poetic Edda, trans. Carolyne Larrington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). The Saga of Grettir the Strong, trans. G. A. Hight (London: J. M. Dent & Sons ltd, 1929). The Sagas of the Icelanders, Jane Smiley (ed.) (New York: Penguin Group inc, 2000). ‘The Saga of the People of Laxardal’, trans. Keneva Kunz in The Sagas of the Icelanders, Jane Smiley (ed.) (New York: Penguin Group inc, 2000) 270-421. ‘The Saga of the Greenlanders’, trans. Keneva Kunz in The Sagas of the Icelanders, Jane Smiley (ed.) (New York: Penguin Group inc, 2000) 636-652.
SECONDARY SOURCES Amin, Mabast A Muhammad, ‘Materiality of Body: The Material Practices of Life and Death in Medieval Britain’, International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies ISSN, 4 (2017), 87–92. Bennett, Lisa, ‘Burial Practices as Sites of Cultural Memory in the Íslendingasögur’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 10 (2014), 27–52. Caciola, Nancy, ‘Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture’, Past & Present, 152 (1996), 3–45. Camp, Cynthia Turner, ‘The Temporal Excesses of Dead Flesh’, Postmedieval, 4 (2013), 416– 26. Chadwick, N K, ‘Norse Ghosts (A Study in the Draugr and the Haugbúi)’, Folklore, 57 (1946), 50–65. Chadwick, N K, ‘Norse Ghosts II’, Folklore, 57 (1946), 106–27. Classen, Albrecht, ‘Death and the Culture of Death on the Middle Ages. Universal Cultural- Historical Observations, with an Emphasis on the Middle Ages’, in Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death, 2016, pp. 1–58. Classen, Albrecht, ‘When the Dead No Longer Rest: The Religious Significance of Revenants in Sagas Set in Viking Age Settlements Around the Time of Conversion’, in Death in the
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 39-53 It’s in Their Nature; Examining Revenants in The Icelandic Sagas and What They Represent in Early Medieval Society 52 Middle-Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death, 2016, pp. 131–54. Clunies Ross, Margaret, ‘Realism and the Fantastic in the Old Icelandic Sagas’, Scandinavian Studies, 74 (2002), 443–54. ‘Draugr’, Zoega’s Old Icelandic Dictionary,
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Poole, Russell, ‘Myth, Psychology, and Society in Grettis Saga’, Alvíssmál, 11 (2004), 3–16. Poole, Russell, ‘Old Norse/Icelandic Myth in Relation to Grettis Saga’, in 11th International Saga Conference
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FAN ANSEO 1 An Anthology of Fiction and Poetry *
Aine Healy
English Dissertation: Creative Writing
Supervisor: Dr Spencer Jordan
1 ‘Fan anseo’ is Irish for ‘stay here’.
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Contents
1. Your Own Two Feet: A Short Story ………………………….p.56 2. Lines Across The Tide: Four Poems…….....……………….p.63 - London, Spring 1951………………………p.63 - Birmingham, Summer 1955……………p.64 - Boston, Autumn 1960……………………..p.65 - New York, Winter 1987…………………...p.66
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Your Own Two Feet A Short Story * … time, time to go through the mud and the squelch and the thump thump thump and the cows in the shed not long now, not long now … but no, no, no, it’s time, time to go and the squelch and the thump and the mud in your toes, let me race, race, race you, time to go, time to go… * September, 1986 There are two shoes pushed together in the hallway. Black, patent, gleaming aside from a slight scuff on the left heel which she meant to polish. ‘Won’t be long! Won’t be long now...’ Her voice is like music; she has always been a good singer, even when she is not singing. But she has been singing now. You have been listening to that old melody, waiting in the hallway beside her black patent shoes. ‘‘Tis far away I am today…’ It is a song she sings often: when she is sad, when she is happy, when she is rushing around, as she has been now, opening and closing drawers, moving with a swift slipper-tread across the carpet above, telling you she won’t be long now, won’t be long at all. You are just about to shout when she appears, at the top step, slightly out of breath, calling over a mountain of pink silk. ‘I have it, I have it…’ You envy the rhythm in her voice, the energy, the fearlessness. ‘I’m Irish,’ you said once in the school playground. Nobody believed you. You never said it again. She comes down the stairs, quickly, lightly, tossing the gown into your arms. ‘I’ll just get a bag,’ she calls, already in the kitchen. You can hear the creak of a stool, the scuffle of slippers kicked across lino, the slap of bare feet on the seat as she climbs up and reaches for the top shelf, still singing, but talking in the breaks between lines, the words that she forgets. ‘Mammy, we’re late!’ ‘Sure, isn’t college meant to be awful relaxed?’ ‘It’s university.’ ‘Isn’t it all the same?’ She reappears, rustling, with a crumpled carrier bag, slips the folded dress inside, and slides her feet into the black patent shoes. As she opens the front door, you realise she has stopped singing. That evening, dump your cases in a musty room, stare at the peeling walls and hum her favourite tune. Think of how you always seem to fight with her, like you did the whole way here, whining accusingly, the unpacked brown boots, letting her turn up the cassette and telling you to grow up for God’s sake. Think of the way you arrived, the way you must both have looked, emerging stiff and red-faced from the faded blue Cortina, lugging cumbersome cases up three flights of stairs, throwing nervous, aching smiles to the faces around you. Think of her driving home in the empty car, the thin ribbon of road dissolving into distance. Eat dinner in a silence cold as the bacon that has been slapped onto your plate. Somebody asks if you know what you’re wearing to the ball and you nod, saying nothing. You should probably save your money so you ignore the telephone on the corridor below, the one you must share with three floors of students. You couldn’t speak to her anyway, there is nothing much to say. That night, lie in the low, creaking bed and hear other people laughing, their shoeless feet thumping the carpeted floor. * … today we go, all aboard with our big cases, let me race, race, race you, loud feet on deck and my face is all wet, far far away and looking for faces, that man and melodeon, not sure
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where I’m going yet, more faces and smiles, and anyway, child, where is it you’re from, not far, not long, just south of Clifden, and ah that’s nice, right by the sea then, and the horn and the fog, and my stomach dancing, dancing so will I go over, will I ask him, ‘tis far away, ‘tis worth the chance, this… * October, 1986 Walk all day in the brown boots she posted, alone and rustling through the leaves by the river. Find a damp bench, sit on a carrier bag and try to write poetry, eating soft grapes bought days ago. Miss three lectures and decide it doesn’t matter. Eat dinner with people you now call friends in the old, draughty dining room, laughing about last month’s ball. ‘That dress. You wore. Gor-geous!’ says a dark-haired girl with a strong Northern accent; you have already forgotten her name, there are so many people. ‘I just loved it.’ Give up trying to decide if she means it. Lie awake on your creaking bed for hours, half-dreaming. Think of home. Of the kettle, steaming, even though nobody wants a cup of tea. ‘Just habit.’ You can almost hear her slippers in the hallway, the quick, whispering shuffle of worn soles across old carpet. * … far, far away and where am I going and where will I stay, losing sight of the crowds, but me and this tall girl, County Down, we’ll manage somehow… doors and slabs and streets unpaved with gold, no dreams but we’re fine here, we’re sold, out feeding our souls with bags of chips.… no blacks, no dogs, no Irish… still laughing, singing old songs, telling ourselves the next one, the next one, surely be to God the next one after this… no Irish, no Irish, no Irish… tell me, is it worth the price, this… * November, 1986 You watch winter creep into the new city and meet a friend for coffee. A cheap place on the corner. Where you sit, there’s damp, folded newspaper wedged under one table leg, but it still rocks when you put your cup down. Talk of lectures, that tall handsome lad who always sits at the front. Going to the hairdressers, there’s this new style, like what’s her name… have you seen Dirty Dancing? Exam stress and deadlines and would you ever miss home, like? Smile and arrange to watch Dirty Dancing sometime. She sends a letter in the post; some notes tumble onto your bedroom carpet. Hope you’re looking after yourself. Get yourself some change for the phone calls. Mammy Go to the salon and let your guilt simmer beneath the dryer. Tell her on the phone how everything costs so much. * … away we go, away we go like these envelopes home, drilling screws in car doors to build their bones, but holy mother of God my money’s all spent, only one shilling eight pence for Tuesday nights, Mickey Mouse and the melodeon man, catch me if you can, round the house and smash the dresser, know you, know you, know you better now, faces, shake this, smiles, laughter, remember after colours, darkness, not so hard this, city, pretty, pretty girl, lipstick, laughter, give us a twirl and laugh, laugh, all the while, smile but what, what, where, when and why, cry, cry, cry in the darkness… is it hard, this… * December, 1986 When you come home at Christmas, she doesn’t like your new hairdo. Or those shoes. ‘Doc Martens…’ ‘I don’t care whose they are…’ Sharp mutterings. Arguments. Heavy thuds up the stairs. Somehow, it is not how you remember. Not quite.
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She takes you for a meal and you sit in half-sullen silence. Something is wrong and the scrape of her fork against the plate annoys you. And there is work to be done. Lots of it. ‘Reading in the dark! You’ll strain your eyes…’ ‘I’m nearly nineteen, Mum…’ ‘Mum?’ * …far, far away, dawning of the wedding day with them and you and us and all the trust, back home like an envelope and how will we cope, next year in the summer with the tight fear, all the way over here, having a baby, baby-having, having your baby , my baby, why baby, well I must say then Davy what a lovely surprise, opening my eyes to congratulations, action stations and white blankets, yellow blankets, then pink frills, pink dresses, any guesses and to think we are over here, now, putting roots in the ground like babies, melodeon sounds in the ferry- fog, no Irish, no Irish, no blacks, no dogs, going once, going twice, going, gone… * January, 1987 Go back up North in a car full of suitcases, loose quilts, tossed pillows, a lamp stand prodding you in the cheek. Stand your Doc Martens on the shoe rack beside your wardrobe. Nestle your notebooks back into the book shelf over your desk. Fail your first proper exam. When you call, her voice hisses like electricity. ‘What are you crying for? No point in crying.’ Hear the bottom step creak as she crosses her legs. She is sitting there; you can see her, twiddling the cord between her fingers like a strand of her own hair. ‘The next one will be better…’ she says. Tidy your room, hanging dresses, straightening the fabric and watching the creases tumble out. * … don’t go, don’t go and I know, I know she is getting fierce big, so this, this is it, the year, tight, tight fear as she stands here, in the hall waiting for me, sing my song, then she is gone, gone, in the car with lamps and wires and Good Luck cards, and screeching tyres, won’t be long, won’t be long, hear him call across the boat, the rustling coat, sure, didn’t I meet you once, back home, just come with me and build a house, with Mickey Mouse and huff and puff and blow it all… * February, 1987 Down by the river, walking out of a Modern Poetry seminar, you meet a girl with red hair. ‘Dervla’s an Irish name, isn’t it?’ Her accent is strong, lilting. You ask her where she’s from. ‘County Limerick.’ ‘Ah, my lot are Galway. Not too far.’ ‘But you? You’re from…’ ‘Born in Birmingham.’ Hum things like Tell Me Ma. The Black Velvet Band. Galway Bay. ‘I always forget the words to that one…’ ‘My mum used to sing it. It goes…’ * … ‘tis far away, ‘tis staying here, ‘tis tight, tight fear, the baby, crying, all these nappies, I don’t know dear, are we happy…
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... the empty house, sounds of being gone, Maureen, love, come on, we need the money, baby having, baby coming, dusk till dawn, dusk till dawn…
… cows in the shed and the thump thump thump, before we met, before the bump was born, dusk till dawn, dusk till dawn… * March, 1987 Start going out. Lots. Drink pints and feel your head spin. A world of colours. Don’t You Want Me Baby. Material Girl. Everything I Own. New songs and ways of moving your body. Just keep dancing. There are things you don’t say down the phone. * No sleep. Left in me. Rescue me. Davy, please! Where is she? ‘‘Tis far away…’ ‘Tis hard to say…’ But anyway. Why. Am I. Talking? To myself? ‘Again.’ ‘Again.’ ‘Again.’ Long night ahead.
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* April, 1987 There is a Smarties egg left in a basket in the empty hallway. And a torn scrap of paper. Gone to the doctors, won’t be long. There’s some bacon and mash on a plate in the fridge. Should only take a few minutes in the microwave. Mammy X You insisted on getting the train this time. Nineteen, you see. It’s no joke. But now you can hear the stillness, the quiet hum of the fridge, the warble of the radiator, the old house breathing and creaking. Your stomach twists, tightens in angry fear. Her face is drawn when she comes back. She eases into her slippers and flicks the kettle absently. ‘You told me nothing!’ you hear yourself screaming. ‘Nothing.’ ‘I just haven’t been sleeping much,’ she says, fingers stroking her temples. ‘That’s all.’ The silence rises like kettle-steam. ‘How is college, anyway?’ * …shoes made of kettles did you ever, did you ever… Mickey Mouse, build the house, forget the dresser… baby shouting, could do better…
* May, 1987 Spend days hunched over your desk with blank pages. Walk downstairs and stare at the telephone for a long time. Let the month pass. Sit exams. Write essays. Your room feels too small and the sky is too crowded with clouds. It is supposed to be spring. Start talking to lots of people who don’t believe in God and wonder why you still go to Mass. Skip a few weeks. There is too much to do. And she never asks anyway. One Sunday night, questions crackle down the line. ‘How was Mass?’ Wince into the empty hall and wonder how she knows. ‘Sleeping better?’ ‘Bits.’ *
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… thump, thump, thump, they’re closing the ground, Brum is burying him down, down, down, calling my name across the sound of crying nights, cry baby, why baby, don’t you want me here and now, or far, far away, down, down, down…
* June, 1987 Look yourself in the eye, the mirror misted with breath and warm air. Consider a new haircut. Think of the money. Decide against it. Shout at her, that night, down the phone over the hole in your new skirt, your uncultivated sewing skills. ‘You never taught me!’ ‘It’s not for want of trying!’ ‘You don’t understand!’ ‘What?’ The silence wails like a memory. ‘What it’s like.’
* … try and try and try again, baby books and baby names, baby running through the mud, thud, thud, thump, thump, oh God, a fall, a bump and all over the bath would you look at that and what’s that, what’s that, blood, blood like a sea, so much, so much, and the boat, never wrote, talk to me, talk to me…
* July, 1987 Wonder what you will write about for your poetry project as you absently kick the newspaper from beneath the table leg. Watch the coffee spill and stain the table cloth. Apologise politely as a waitress appears with a sponge and says never mind, these things happen all the time. Walk along the river afterwards and try to write a poem, realising you are not very good and only ever thought you were. Wonder why people lie to themselves and what it all matters anyway, in the grand scheme of things.
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When you get back, she is standing in the corridor. ‘I drove,’ she says. She holds up a sandwich bag. ‘They’re bacon.’ Eat sandwiches and walk by the river. Hear things about her you never really knew. How she missed home for years and years, and still does, you know, from time to time. How she met your dad on the boat coming over and they watched Mickey Mouse in the Carlton on Tuesday nights. How it felt when the foreman came to the door and told her he wasn’t coming home. And tell her things you’ve never said. How you’re scared, how your pen sometimes shakes when you try to write. How you feel guilty sometimes, with her all on her own back home. How you want to be amazing, popular, beautiful, intelligent, how you don’t know if you can. Watch the car drive away. Keep waving to the empty road, realising you are humming. Run upstairs and write some poetry. * … home through the squelch and the mud and the thump thump thump to the fire in the grate and the calves just been born, just been born, not too late, safe and warm, and bacon on plates, sure isn’t this great, sure isn’t she having a ball… * August, 1990 Graduate three years later. Take her with you to the big hall and touch her sleeve. In the evening, drink champagne in the living room, humming. ‘Tis far away I am today…’ Let plans and possibilities fill the hot, summer air. Travelling? Teaching? Journalism? The sofa creaks as she stands to straighten her skirt. ‘He’d be proud, you know. Your dad,’ she says, moving to the kitchen with the empty glasses. The silence is broken by the words she throws over her shoulder. ‘I know I am.’ Listen to the brief clatter of glasses in the sink, the trickle of tap water flowing. Look at your knees as you call through the doorway. ‘Will we go for a meal then, so?’ You know she is smiling as she calls back. ‘I’ll just put my shoes on.’
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Lines Across The Tide Four Poems
London, Spring 1951
Lay bricks and think of Kerry turf, the way the sods smell, of how it could be worse, how sure as hell you’ll get used to the change you haven’t spent yet. Half-smile and let the smooth cement start setting
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Birmingham, Summer 1955
Feel tight fear that’s almost truth and weep burnt bacon tears over something new, as if the Youghal years themselves have blackened, charred. Now, we stand here welding in the dark with golden eyes and learn to feed new appetites on Friday nights, heads reeling from the dancefloor heat, laughter harsh as factory grease, the walk half-lonely down the street, the powder printed on my cheek, the way we almost didn’t speak, but somehow always knew
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Boston, Autumn 1960
They call it ‘fall’. But you have a different kind of story scrawled across the sea of years with all that half-meets the eye, leaving all that falls behind that broken moment, the day you stepped off the boat with muddied shoes and sang cheap blues on street corners. They warned you not to fall in puddles or get in the kind of muddle you deserved,
but you were green as the Clare hills that knew you, threw you out across the sea with torn socks and melodies. Now, sing to me those old songs, the ones moaned on deck in the ferry-fog:
Galway Bay, Spancil Hill, The Wild Rover. Read over every chapter, asking what it matters to say ‘autumn’, to just fall short of the right answer
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New York, Winter 1987
I wake to the shape of a dream, the late Brooklyn morning, the way the snow falls, quilting the street like a dim ocean.
I’m hoping, already, that you’ve read the letter I blew like a kiss across the star-lined sea. Perhaps you’re writing back
to me, already half-free and wondering what it is divides the lines we write like streams of distant emerald light
like fading dreams, like kisses, wishes you were here, that postcard pout on Dun Laoghaire pier. I’m down and out.
The slow tears tickle my cheeks like trout we’d catch on Sundays at Lough Ree. Now, you see the snow falling softly over Mullingar, murmuring Joyce and trying hard to forget me. One night last week,
I sat up, office-tired to scrawl these lines across the tide, our faint sketched hopes, our dim green lights
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A Communal Tragedy: Representing the Irish Emigration Experience in Poetry and Fiction Aine Healy
Ireland has a long history of emigration, with 400,000 Irish citizens leaving the country in the 1950s alone.1 In recounting his own experiences of emigrating to find work during this particular era, John B. Keane, the Kerry-born author, recognises a duality of feeling. Amidst ‘the heart-breaking frightful anguish of separation’, he identifies a connecting force: ‘a communal feeling of tragedy which embraced us all’.2 Here, Keane’s dychomtized understanding of his own emigration experience is symptomatic of the term’s use more generally. Indeed, the very definition of emigration rests on a distinction between two places, referring to the act of ‘[leaving] one’s own country in order to settle permanently in another’.3 Additionally, the word itself exists as part of a further linguistic dichotomy: whilst emigration involves leaving, immigration is ‘the action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country’.4 I will argue that much of the literature representing Irish emigration is shaped by such a dichotomized understanding of the term. I will focus particularly on the seemingly conflicting senses of disconnection and connection recognised in Keane’s account, exploring how my own poetry and fiction responds to this tension.5 As noted by Wondrich, the theme of disconnection recurs across Irish literature, which often portrays migrants as oppressed exiles. 6 This is often foregrounded in characters’ speech, with Enright recognising the ‘humiliation’ of having a strange accent in her short story, ‘What You Want’, and Boland using poetry to describe the Irish coast as the place ‘where / the emigrants set down their consonantal n’.7 Across my anthology, I continually return to this idea, emphasising the difference between ‘Mammy’ and ‘Mum’, as well as ‘college’ and ‘university’ in my short story ‘Your Own Two Feet’, as well as distinguishing between the American use of ‘fall’ and the Irish preference ‘autumn’ in my poem ‘Boston, Autumn 1960’. All of these examples contribute to the thematic construction of new places as ‘other’ within Irish literature.8 However, as O’Brien suggests, the experience of emigration can also be registered more subtly through formal techniques which create a ‘representation of the missing’.9 Hence, my work draws upon a wider range of Irish writers than those who deal with emigration directly, taking particular inspiration from the experimental style of Eimear McBride. In her novel A Girl
1 Wills, Clair, The Best Are Leaving: Emigration and Post-War Irish Culture (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p.1. 2 A Bold Buck Navy in England: 1963, online video recording, RTÉ Archives
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 67-71 A Communal Tragedy: Representing the Irish Emigration Experience in Poetry and Fiction 68 Is A Half-Formed Thing, the chaotic thought processes of its young female protagonist are reflected in a striking deviation from grammatical norms.10 I incorporate a similar absence of traditional structure in ‘Your Own Two Feet’ to represent the memories of an Irish woman in England. Like McBride, I allow semantic and phonetic associations to shape structure, disorientating the reader and thus intensifying the emotional whirlwind of displacement. I also incorporate experimental elements from other Irish fiction, employing a lengthy run-on syntax reminiscent of Dermot Healy’s style to represent the musicality of my character’s voice. Additionally, I draw on Healy’s intercutting of different voices, alternating between the thought processes of the Irish woman and the perspective of her daughter, born in England and now starting university there.11 This use of a second and more extended narrative perspective structurally displaces the emigration experience, allowing the break from traditional structure to heighten the disconnection inherent in Irish emigration. An experimental approach to form is also a feature of much Irish poetry. Whilst poetic form is by definition already more fragmentary than fiction, this element has been intensified by poets such as Ciaran Carson. In his collection For All We Know, he uses an extended sonnet sequence to create what Delattre terms a series of ‘shifting melodic fragments’.12 Each of these fragments contribute to an overarching narrative describing the relationship between two lovers. Because each poem is presented as part of a story, therefore, the incompleteness of poetic form itself is registered. I encapsulate a similar fragmentary quality across my own short collection of poetry, ‘Lines Across The Tide’. Each of my four poems describes a different place at a different moment in time, as made clear in the titles: ‘London, Spring 1951’, ‘Birmingham, Summer 1955’, ‘Boston, Autumn 1960’ and ‘New York, Winter 1987’. In this way, both my fiction and poetry allows the theme of dislocation to resonate on a formal level also, creating ‘a language beyond language’.13 However, despite the strong sense of disconnection that has long been recognised in emigration literature, Wondrich postulates that more recent Irish writing treats the notion of exile more critically, acknowledging that it fundamentally relies on ‘attachment and belonging to the homeland.’14 Indeed, this attachment underpins Claire Keegan’s collection, Walk the Blue Fields, which continually intertwines the inner movements of characters’ consciousness with physical movements across the rural landscape. My own story opens with a comparably dynamic interaction between the natural world and thought, describing the Irish mother’s memory of feet moving through the mud as a young girl on her way to school. This characterises her in terms of her deep-rooted attachment to her home, a connection that transcends physical separation. Similarly, my poetry, whilst split across separate foreign locations, is haunted by linguistic echoes of the Irish landscape. I construct personas whose memories of home are also inextricably connected to landscape, whether that be the smell of ‘Kerry turf’ in ‘London, Spring 1951’ or the green ‘Clare hills’ in ‘Boston, Autumn 1960’. Here, I am influenced by Eavan Boland’s ‘The Lost Land’ which evokes a strong emotional attachment to ‘Dublin Bay’.15 Indeed, this deep connection to Irish landscape sits within a wider poetic tradition of what Kennedy-Andrews terms ‘writing home’, encompassing the work of W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney.16 Consequently, a deep emotional
10Eimear McBride, A Girl is A Half-Formed Thing (London: Faber & Faber, 2014). 11 Dermot Healy, Banished Misfortune (London and New York: Allison & Busby, 1982) – in particular, see ‘Kelly’, pp.53-65; Fighting With Shadows (London and New York: Allison & Busby, 1984). 12Ciaran Carson, For All We Know (County Meath: The Gallery Press, 2008); Elisabeth Delattre, ‘“Through the Forest of Language”: For All We Know by Ciaran Carson’, Estudios Irlandeses, 7 (2012), 10-18 (p.11). 13Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, Ciaran Carson: Critical Essays (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), p.16. 14Wondrich, ‘Exilic Returns: Self and History outside Ireland in Recent Irish Fiction’, Irish University Review, P.3 15 Eavan Boland, The Lost Land (London: Norton, 1998). 16 Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, Writing Home: Poetry and Place in Northern Ireland 1968-2008 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), p.1.
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connection to home can co-exist alongside - and is arguably even intensified by - the theme of displacement. Furthermore, the process of registering disconnection can open up new kinds of connection. O’Sullivan recognises that moving to new places created the opportunity for migrants to meet people from other Irish counties, resulting in the shared and consequently strengthened culture that remains to this day.17 I address this thematically across my poetry and fiction, incorporating characters from a plethora of Irish counties (including Galway, Limerick, Kerry, Down, Clare and Dublin), as well as sustaining a continual connection to culture through repeated references to traditional Irish songs. I also enforce this enriched sense of Irishness on a structural level, often using the same techniques that evoke a feeling of displacement. For example, the fragmentary style utilised in both my fiction and poems in each case contributes to a richer understanding of the emigration theme. After all, whilst the shifts in place and time between each poem do create a sense of disconnection, they simultaneously register an overall sense of continuity, with each poem advancing forward temporally. This temporal movement is reflected not only in the year that each poem relates to, but the progression of seasons across the four poems. Here, I again draw inspiration from Carson’s For All We Know, in which he ultimately uses the overarching narrative to connect as well as distinguish between the fragments within it. Although he further separates the collection into two distinct parts, each poem in the first part is connected to a poem in the second part through a shared title.18 In my short story, the fractured narrative style brings together two voices, and thus the emotional experiences of both characters. In a modern day context, the daughter’s account of leaving home to start university is arguably more emotionally accessible. However, I use the alternating narrative modes to continually draw parallels between her emotional journey and that of her mother, struggling to build a new life in England in the 1950s. After all, both characters move through feelings of fear, sadness, homesickness, excitement and a desire for independence. This is mirrored in the narrative resolution, where the metaphorical distance between mother and daughter is finally overcome in direct conversation, itself an act of connection. Thus, in engaging with the issue of emigration, Irish literature often establishes seemingly conflicting themes of disconnection and connection. However, the same experimental formal techniques are typically manipulated to evoke both of these thematic concerns, complicating this dichotomized understanding. Indeed, the most authentic Irish literature representing emigration arguably construes physical disconnection as an opportunity for new kinds of connection to be created, whether through ‘writing home’ or developing a deeper sense of Irishness in being separated from Ireland itself. I address both manifestations of renewed connection in my creative portfolio, Fan Anseo. Indeed, the ambiguity of the chosen title, which is Irish for ‘stay here’, registers possibilities of both connection and disconnection, with the deictic marker ‘here’ potentially referring to the Irish homeland or the new sense of Irish unity discovered by Irish migrants. Furthermore, in combining poetry and fiction within the same anthology, I structurally enact a process of bringing together seemingly disconnected items in order to create a deeper sense of connection between them. Whilst separation is apparent in Irish emigration literature, therefore, it is most authentic and consequently evocative when treated as a starting point from which unity can develop.
17Patrick O’Sullivan, ‘Developing Irish Diaspora Studies: A Personal View’, New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, 7:1 (2003), 130-148 (p.143). 18Carson, For All We Know.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 67-71 A Communal Tragedy: Representing the Irish Emigration Experience in Poetry and Fiction 70 Bibliography A Bold Buck Navy in England: 1963, online video recording, RTÉ Archives
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Strand, Mark and Eavan Boland, The Making Of A Poem: An Anthology of Poetic Forms (New York: Norton, 2000). The Works of W.B. Yeats (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1994). Wills, Clair, The Best Are Leaving: Emigration and Post-War Irish Culture. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Wondrich, Roberta Gefter, ‘Exilic Returns: Self and History outside Ireland in Recent Irish Fiction’, Irish University Review, 1:30 (2000), 1-16.
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An exploration of narrative perspective in relation to the protagonist’s descent into madness in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Kirstie De Lusignan
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a significant early work of American feminist culture that uses a homodiegetic fictional female narrator in order to critically examine nineteenth century attitudes towards women’s mental health. When the story was first published in 1892, critics saw it as a ‘detailed account of incipient insanity’ (Gilman 1935: 119), almost like a medical textbook. It was only in the 1930s when her autobiography was published that it began to be seen as a great work of feminist literature. Stylistic analysis therefore reinforces the reappraisal of the work. Narrative perspective relates to ‘the distinction between what is described and from what perspective it is being described’ (Short 1996: 256). Analysing point of view therefore allows the reader to develop greater empathy and understanding for a character, which is important in this novella as it is a social and political commentary on the rights of women, examining the way their lives were controlled and limited by men. The fictional text is a collection of first person journal entries written by an unnamed woman. Her physician husband named John rents an old, remote mansion for the Summer and, as a form of mental treatment, the character-narrator is forbidden from working, staying in the mansion to recuperate her ‘temporary nervous depression’ (Gilman, 2012: 2). The narrator’s descent into madness is evident as she is hindered from any intellectual or creative invigoration. With no stimulus other than the wallpaper in her bedroom, the patterns become increasingly intriguing and she begins to believe that there is a woman hiding behind the pattern. This image plagues her to the point that the narrator rips off the paper and convinces herself that she too was once trapped. This essay will compare the female protagonist’s narrative perspective before her mental breakdown, during, and the highest stage of her insanity. Before her breakdown, the character-narrator is more aware of the outside world, which will be analysed through spatial deixis and ‘locative expressions’ (Fowler 1996: 157). Her psychological perspective is evidenced by epistemic modality, revealing her worries and uncertainty about the treatment she must go through. As the protagonist is not allowed to exercise her mind, she focuses entirely on the imagery of the wallpaper, which is repeated over the course of the novella, mirroring the repeated pattern of the wallpaper’s design. The narrator therefore shifts from having a broad perspective of life within her narrative ‘camera angle’ to becoming trapped in a closed off bedroom whilst going mad. Emotive and evaluative expressions highlight her disgust towards the wallpaper, and she begins to believe there is a woman stuck behind it. An analysis on social deixis emphasises the enigmatic character coming to life within the perspective of the protagonist. The coherence of the character’s narrative then breaks down as sentences become disjointed, and the previous emphasis on epistemic modality shifts to a focus on deontic modality, verifying her incessant desire to embody the imaginative woman. Even at the end of the story when her husband uses interrogative constructions, the protagonist ignores him, stressing the height of her insanity. As this novella is written in first person, there is a distinct limiting of point of view to that of the individual character within the narrative. The narrative of discours is an experiental style that uses an eyewitness account of the story. The internal, homodiegetic narrator, who is on the ‘same’ plane of exegesis as the narrative, allows us to fully understand and conceptualise the inner workings of the character’s mind. As the narrator is also the hero of her own story, the narrative can thus be defined as ‘autodiegetic’ (Genette 1972: 253). Who speaks is who sees, and there is no escape from the single perspective. The reader is therefore restricted to the cognitive perspective of the character-narrator. This ‘consistently restricted’ mind-style
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 72-78 An exploration of narrative perspective in relation to the protagonist’s descent into madness in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 73 (Fowler 1977: 105) brings us psychologically closer to the central character. This ‘focalised ignorance’ (Hardy 2005: 374) demands the reader to look beyond the restricted world-view of the character-narrator at the bigger picture, which is that the speaker gives voice to all oppressed woman. Stylistic cues about the viewing position that Gilman privileges includes the semantic principle of spatial deixis, which works by positioning the speaker within a physical space. A deictic centre is formed by the reflector of fiction, an ‘origo’ around which objects are situated in relation to their distance or proximity to the reflector. Before the protagonist experiences the height of her madness, she is more aware of her surroundings, the garden and her bedroom, and does not obsess solely over the wallpaper:
‘Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house’ (Gilman, 2012: 8).
The reflector of fiction is in her bedroom looking out of the window, exposed through the repetition of the locative expression ‘out of’. The narrative camera angle moves from one window to the other as the narrator peers between both. She looks out onto the garden, which is described through positive lexis including ‘lovely’ and ‘beautiful’. The distal spatial deictic markers, ‘those [mysterious deepshaded arbors]’ and ‘there [is a beautiful shaded lane]’, exposes the distance away from the speaker. Additional locative expressions include the description of the ‘lane that runs down there from the house’. spatial deixis is heightened within the text as the protagonist is forbidden to do anything that exercises the brain. Spatial deictic markers, ‘runs down’ and ‘from the’ reflects the narrator’s wandering eye and healthy state of mind. Further emphasis on spatial deixis is depicted through the movement of the character- narrator:
‘So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal […] I lie here on this great immovable bed – it is nailed down, I believe – and follow that pattern about by the hour.’ (Gilman 2012: 13)
Temporally, the character moves quickly from place to place. Locative expressions help the reader to keep up with the movement of the character, expressing how the narrator is not yet confined to the happenings of the wallpaper. Prepositional phrases indicate the place and directionality of the protagonist. These include, ‘on the porch’ and ‘under the roses’. These phrases mark the character’s position in relation to other objects. Further locative verbs include ‘I walk’, ‘lie down’, ‘lie here’ and ‘nailed down’, indicating the movement of the character around the scene. Demonstrative words including ‘that [lovely lane]’ and ‘that [pattern]’ express the physical orientation in language by indicating where the character-narrator is positioned in relation to other objects. The demonstratives in this instance propose that the narrator is located some distance away from the referents, the ‘lovely lane’ and ‘pattern’. The deictic relationships are therefore distal as they are some distance away from the speaker. The demonstrative word ‘this [great immovable bed]’ implies a proximal relationship to the referent. She is lying on the bed reflecting her spatial actions. By foregrounding a spatial point of view, Gilman suggests that the female character is aware of her surroundings, revealing her healthy mind. In addition to physical viewpoint are additional stylistic markers, including references to the reflector’s thoughts, feelings and senses. Uspensky (1973) describes how ‘the authorial point of view relies on an individual consciousness (or perception)’ (81). The nameless narrator must therefore be scrutinised on the psychological plane of subjectivity. Before her ensuing madness, she is a more passive character. She passively accepts her imprisonment and her surrender reflects how she increasingly looks inside the room including the
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happenings of the wallpaper. Her passivity is foregrounded through the use of epistemic modality:
‘I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me […] But I find I get pretty tired when I try [...] I wish I could get well faster.’ (Gilman 2012: 9)
Rimmon-Kenan explained how narrative perspective relies on ‘the cognitive and the emotive orientation of the focalizer towards the focalized’ (1983: 79). The psychological narrative perspective of a character is therefore of great importance in grasping the meaning of Gilman’s narrator. The narrative is rich with what Uspensky (1973) calls verba sentiendi, words expressing perceptions, thoughts and feelings. This is exemplified in mental cognition processes, ‘I think’, ‘I find’ and ‘I wish’. These hedges reveal the narrator’s degree of thought, reinforcing her own opinions on the treatment. She is completely aware of her psychological state at this point, ‘wish[ing]’ to get better. The grammatical system of modality, which represents expressions of obligation and belief must also be closely probed. The modal verbs ‘would’ and ‘could’, which describe epistemic modality, reveal the narrator’s efforts to understand and make sense of her situation. The text is rich in ‘words of estrangement’ (Fowler 1996: 177), reinforcing the speaker’s degree of ambiguity and uncertainty. Negative shading is therefore of prominence emphasising her ‘bewildered’ personality. Although the narrator is uncertain about the effectiveness of her treatment, she is obliged to acquiesce. This passivity is reinforced by her husband, a proxy for the paternalistic and misogynistic society of the nineteenth century. Despite the narrator’s spatial awareness of her environment and the focus on epistemic modality, she frequently returns to describing the wallpaper through emotive and evaluative expressions. The repetition of the wallpaper throughout the narrative is representative of the fragility of her mental state and resulting madness. The emotive, evaluative expressions reveal the narrator’s perceptions of the wallpaper as disgusting, initiating her desire to rip it down:
‘The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.’ (Gilman 2012: 5-6)
Descriptive adjectives, ‘yellow’ and ‘orange’ are typically symbolic of brightness, sunshine and happiness. This directly contrasts the negative affective adjectives, ‘revolting’, ‘smouldering’, ‘strangely’ and ‘sickly’. The affective adjectives reveal the altered perspective of the speaker who views the wallpaper with such disgust, so much so that she cannot stand it. However, for someone who despises it, she cannot stop talking about it, continually returning to its description, and essentially driving her insane. The more she describes the wallpaper, the more it comes to life, and she begins to believe that there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The enigmatic woman however is only a figment of her imagination, metaphorical of the trapped female condition of the late nineteenth century. The speaker also describes the wallpaper as having a ‘yellow smell’ (Gilman 2012: 25), which is an unusual way of expressing a particular odour. This abnormal description uncovers her deteriorating mind; her perception of the senses are blurring and she cannot identify the differences between them. Before the speaker’s height of madness, she would ‘lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately’ (Gilman 2012: 19). The description of the pattern is therefore additionally ambiguous for the reader who follows the point of view of the narrator. The narrator explains how she ‘didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern’ (Gilman 2012: 20). The point of view of the character has therefore become limited. The attenuated focalisation of ‘the thing’ expresses an impeded, distanced visual perspective, and the reader is temporarily limited to the visual range of the character. Like the narrator, we wish to find out
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 72-78 An exploration of narrative perspective in relation to the protagonist’s descent into madness in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 75 what ‘the thing’ is. However, her perception changes and essentially becomes ‘clearer’ when she becomes more mad, realising later that:
‘The front pattern does move – and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright stops she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern – it strangles so’. (Gilman 2012: 25)
The character’s perception change, indicative of her on-going madness, is emphasised when realising that the pattern in the wallpaper ‘does’ move, the italics further highlighting the narrator’s sudden recognition. Exclamatives additionally determine the perception change of the character, emphasising the importance of a particular statement and therefore the narrator’s mind. The female narrator exclaims, ‘no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!’ stressing her realisation and shift in consciousness. Although the narrator is adamant about the reason for the shaking wallpaper, she also uses ‘words of estrangement’ (Fowler 1996) highlighting uncertainty, including ‘Sometimes [I think there are a great many women]’ and ‘sometimes [only one]’. Although she cannot determine the number of women behind the wallpaper, she is positive there is someone. This level of ambiguity accentuates her deteriorating state of mind. The metaphor of the woman or women stuck behind the patterns comes to life further through an emphasis on distal deictic markers. The distal social deictic marker ‘she’ reveals the speaker’s viewpoint as she watches the enigmatic woman in the wallpaper. The distal temporal deixis ‘then’ and the distal spatial deixis ‘crawls around’ and ‘climb through’ highlight the movement of the imaginary woman. The progressive verbal aspect ‘crawling’ and ‘trying’ indicates that the character is ‘in progress’ (Huddleston 2009: 74), bringing the woman to life. The progressive aspect ‘implies that it is conceived of as taking place, thus as having a more or less dynamic character, rather than being wholly static’ (Huddleston 2009: 74). The woman behind the wallpaper is therefore depicted as dynamic and more ‘real’ to the narrator. The metaphor continues as the speaker begins to rip the wallpaper down to free the enigmatic woman stuck behind:
‘I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.’ (Gilman 2012: 28)
The spatial deixis ‘got up’ and ‘ran’ determines the speaker’s urgency to rescue the metaphorical woman. The repetition of ‘and’ emphasises the haste and panic of the character. The proximal social deictic marker ‘I [pulled]’ and ‘I [shook]’ corresponds with the social distal deixis, ‘she [shook]’ and ‘she [pulled]’. The imaginary woman is personified into what the character-narrator believes is real life. The first person pronoun and second person pronoun then morph together to form the plural personal pronoun ‘we’; evidence that the speaker and the enigmatic woman appear to have become one entity. They work together to fight against the metaphorical patriarchal male oppressors that confine them. After the sense of cathartic release depicted from ripping down the paper, the speaker is not only relieved but is also at the height of her madness. The speaker’s lexis then begins to break down, and it is as if she is more freethinking and liberated when mad. This is emphasised through Gilman’s use of disjointed sentences:
‘I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again. How those children did tear about here! This bedstead is fairly gnawed! But I must get to work.’ (Gilman 2012: 29)
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An issue of cohesion in the expression of the character-narrator’s point of view is revealed. The coherence of the speaker’s language shifts as sentences become fragmented and random. The change in the character’s syntactical expression proves the sporadic mind of someone who has gone insane. As she can no longer fixate on the wallpaper which has been ripped down, she begins to jump from sentence to sentence in an uncoordinated manner. Her mind is racing, depicted through the short, chopped sentences. The exclamatives additionally stress the character’s erratic emotions. The disjointed sentences and exclamatives therefore evidence her independent and liberating mind, which contrarily goes hand-in-hand with her psychosis. Moreover, deontic modality is of focus as the speaker describes that she ‘must [get to work]’. The modal verb ‘must’ indicates how she is required to do so but it is ambiguous as to why. Perhaps it is her hindrance from intellectual work under her strict ‘treatment’ that her mind is rebelling from, forcing her to ‘get to work’ and the auxiliary verb ‘must’ accentuates this further. Transferring to deontic modality from the previous instances of epistemic modality highlights her incessant desire to use her brain and actually do something with her time - which drove her mad in the first place. There is an overall shift in modality across the course of the novella from epistemic to deontic. According to Saeed (2003), deontic modals may convey two kinds of social knowledge, including obligation and permission. Obligation is concerned with ‘what a person must do’ and permission deals with ‘someone’s authority to permit somebody else to do something’. (Saeed 2003: 136) Obligation is heightened in The Yellow Wallpaper as the protagonist’s embodiment of the imaginary woman becomes enforced through deontic modal verbs. Control over herself and her identity is lost. It is instead a necessity for her to embody the ghostly, creeping woman. Deontic modal verbs are foregrounded when the speaker describes that ‘outside you have to creep on the ground’ (Gilman 2012: 31), and also when the husband arrives home and faints, she ‘had to creep over him every time!’ (Gilman 2012: 32) ‘Have to’ and ‘had to’ are deontic modal verbs, establishing her compulsion to embody the woman behind the wallpaper. Her perceptions are warped by her madness – she is obliged to do as her mental state overcomes her. Despite her internal obligations, she does not listen externally to her husband John when asking the female protagonist direct questions:
‘‘What is the matter?’ he cried. ‘For God’s sake, what are you doing!’ I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. ‘I’ve got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’’ (Gilman 2012: 32)
The interrogative constructions, including the direct question, ‘What is the matter?’ would usually change the perspective of a character, however for the female protagonist it does not and she ignores him, highlighting her broken mental state. The interrogative construction, ‘what are you doing!’ which uses a exclamative rather than a question mark stresses John’s sudden fear and worry over his wife. The questions fail to change the perceptions of the protagonist, and instead she ‘kept on creeping’. The progressive aspect ‘creeping’ exhibits how she still has not stopped, emphasising further her disregard of John’s direct questions. She emulates the enigmatic, imaginary woman she created in her mind who crept behind the wallpaper, and this is confirmed as she states, ‘I’ve got out at last […] And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’ The modal verb ‘can’t’ evidences permission, a form of deontic modality – the speaker has gained an element of control over her husband at the height of her madness. To conclude, the experiental style and subjective narration of The Yellow Wallpaper allows the reader to delve deeper into the mind of the unnamed female narrator. Before her mental breakdown, the female speaker is someone who is more aware of her environment and physical surroundings, examined through spatial deictic markers. She is also more attentive psychologically; she desires to get rid of her illness and also questions whether her treatment would really succeed, surveyed through epistemic modality. Despite her broad awareness, the recurring imagery of the wallpaper is ever-present, which leads to her insane outburst. The repetitive imagery of the wallpaper plagues her, evidenced through emotive,
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 72-78 An exploration of narrative perspective in relation to the protagonist’s descent into madness in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 77 evaluative expressions. Over time, she begins to believe that there is a woman stuck behind the wallpaper, and her spatial perspective therefore becomes limited to it, even personifying the imaginary woman through distal social and spatial deictic markers. The coherence of the speaker’s lexis and syntax begins to break down, describing how she is losing control over her mind. At the height of her madness, she is obliged by her mental state to embody the imaginative, creeping woman behind the wallpaper, evidenced through deontic modality. She has become, or so she thinks, the woman trapped behind the wallpaper, ignoring the interrogative constructions given by her husband/doctor. It is important to analyse point of view within this novella as it allows the reader to place themselves within the position of a female driven mad by the restrictions on her intellectual growth, implemented by her husband. As we follow her descent into madness at first hand, we are compelled to empathise with her character. Despite gaining an element of freedom at the end of the short story, the protagonist’s mental state has completely deteriorated, highlighting the detrimental effects of patriarchy on the female condition.
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References
Fowler, R. (1996). Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fowler, R. (1977). Linguistics and the Novel. London: Methuen.
Genette, G. (1972). Figures III. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Gilman, C. P. (2012). The Yellow Wallpaper. London: Virago Press.
Gilman, C. P. (1935). The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography. New York: D. Appleton-Century Co.
Hardy, D. E. (2005). ‘Towards a stylistic typology of narrative gaps: Knowledge gapping in Flannery O’Connor’s fiction’, Language and Literature 14 (4). London: SAGE Journals.
Huddleston, R. (2009). English Grammar: An Outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rimmon-Kenan, S. (1983). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen.
Saeed, J. L. (2003). Semantics. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Short, M. H. (1996). Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. London: Routledge.
Uspensky, B. (1973). A Poetics of Composition (trans. V. Zavarin and S. Wittig) Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Examine the value of place names as evidence for the history, landscape and, especially, language(s) of your chosen area.
Jasmine Higgs
Introduction
The corpus listed details forty place-names from the county of Essex (see Appendix). As is the case for much of England, the dominant nomenclature is Old English but the corpus also exhibits other languages such as British, Latin, Old Norse, Old French, and Middle English. We can extract details about the history and languages of this area of Britain through examining place-names, which fossilise these details, first looking at the other languages of the corpus and then finishing with the dominant Old English names.
1. Languages
Pre-Anglo-Saxon
The Germanic migration to the British Isles results in British, a Celtic language, having limited influence on the place-names of North Essex. Evidence for a continued pre- English presence after the migration through place-names is sparse in comparison with the West of the country, being in Jackson’s Area 1 with a low number of Celtic-derived names.1 Nonetheless there is British influence in the corpus, including the river names Stour and Colne. Colne, an ancient pre-English river name of uncertain meaning,2 features as an element in the Colne village names in the corpus, Wakes Colne, Earls Colne, Colne Engaine, and White Colne. These names are likely to have survived because they were known to a great many number of people and this gives the name a greater survival chance.3 Indeed, topographical features that are prominent in the landscape means that the name for it in the native language would be continually used even if the language is replaced; but for that to happen there either needs to be frequent trade between the two peoples, or co-habiting an area.4 Walton-on-the- Naze challenges the assumption that the Britons did not live with the Germanic tribes in the East. Walton-on-the-Naze means ‘farmstead or village of the Britons’, from OE walh, ‘Briton’. Names featuring OE walh suggest that the settlement is recognisably British5 and Gelling suggests that these names are evidence for cohabitation for a time between the Germanic tribes and the Britons.6
1 Kenneth Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain: A Chronological Survey of the Brittonic Languages, First to Twelfth Centuries (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953), p. 15 2 David Mills, A Dictionary of British Place Names (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 3 Margaret Gelling, Signposts to the Past: Place-names and the History of England (Chichester: Phillimore, 2010), p. 92 4 John Baker, Cultural Transition in the Chilterns and Essex Regions 350-650AD (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2006), p. 138 5 Baker, Cultural Transition in the Chilterns and Essex Regions 350-650AD, p. 198 6 Gelling, Signposts to the Past, p. 17
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 79-90 Examine the value of place names as evidence for the history, landscape and, especially, language(s) of your chosen area 80 Dovercourt’s element dŵr ‘the waters’ describes its position on the coast and at the mouth of the Stour estuary; British elements typically describe topographical features.7 Instances of Latin being borrowed into Old English nomenclature are rare:8 though Latin was the administrative language of the Romans in Britain, it is possible that the Latin spoken by the Romano-British appears in Dovercourt. Dovercourt features the specific element *cort, from Latin cohors meaning ‘piece cut off’, which describes Dovercourt’s geographical position.9 Gelling notes that *corte is a single instance borrowing and is thus likely directly borrowed from Latin speakers.10 Therefore, Dovercourt could be a continuum of the name used before the Germanic migration due to the use of both British and Latin.
Another unclear name is Colchester. Colchester’s earliest recording is Camulodonum, Reaney suggests is Celtic for ‘the fort of Camulos’.11 Later names featuring the element ‘colonia’ include veteranorum colonia, indicating a Roman veteran’s colony. Though the first element of Colchester could be a syncopated form of ‘colonia’, it is unlikely that the early names contribute to the Colneceastre in the 10th century and beyond. Whilst the caster element is a borrowing from Latin into Old English, the element ‘colne’ is most likely related to the River Colne nearby, like the Colne villages. The naming process appears to undergo metathesis, a transposition of letters within a word, with the entry Colneceastre going to Colenceaster and remaining so for several attestations possibly before the unstressed syllable (underlined) in Colenceaster disappears, leaving Colcestre (12th century) and other variations. Layer Breton, Layder de la Haye, and Layer Marney, all have the same element with manorial affixes attached; however, ‘layer’ is contested, like Colchester. Whilst it is possible that it comes from ON leirr, ‘clay’12, the settlements are on superficial deposits of sand and gravel. Instead, a lost Celtic stream name Leire has been suggested.13
Old Norse
There had been Viking settlement in the British Isles from around 870AD, and in 886AD, the Treaty of Guthrum and Alfred was formalised, creating an area of Britain now under administrative control of the Danes,14 “up on the Thames, and then up on the Lea, and along the Lea unto its source, then straight to Bedford, then up on the Ouse unto Watling Street”.15 This means that the corpus area was part of the Danelaw. The names of the corpus suggest Norse contact in Essex. Thorpe-le-Soken and Kirby- le-Soke both feature common ON elements. Gelling notes that the name Kirby, ‘a village with a church’, are usually settlements that are appellative, describing their dominant feature, which in this case would have been a church. ON þorp, meaning ‘secondary settlement’, is difficult to distinguish from it’s cognate, OE throp16; however, the closeness to the other ON name in the corpus means that it is probable that Thorpe-le-Soken is Norse in origin.
7 Kenneth Cameron, English Place-names (London: B T Batsford, 1996), p. 36 8 Gelling, Signposts to the Past, p. 81 9 P H Reaney, The Place-names of Essex English Place-name Society 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935), p. 377 10 Gelling, Signposts to the Past, p. 82 11 Reaney, The Place-Names of Essex, p. 367 12 Harald Lindqvist, Middle-English place-names of Scandinavian origin (Uppsala:Uppsala University Press, 1912), p. 72 13 Mills, A Dictionary of British Place-names (Oxford, 2011) 14 Matthew Townsend, ‘Contacts and Conflicts: Latin, Norse and French’, in Mugglestone, Lynda [eds.], The Oxford History of English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 94 15 Wallace Notestein, and Albert White [eds.] Source Problems in English History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1915) https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/guthrum.asp 16 Gelling, Signposts to the Past, p. 229
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Supporting this is an OE name, Harwich (OE here-wīc, ‘army camp’); though there is no Norse element, indicating that the Vikings did not name the settlement themselves, historical context could suggest that this area was a Viking army base due to the area being close to warring Wessex, supporting the notion of Scandinavian influence in the area, but little widespread settlement.
Norman French and French
Though the Norman French dialect had a profound impact on the English language as a whole,17 this affect was not seen widespread across place-names due to being the language of the elite18 resulting in little bilingualism and few complete Old English name replacements, but resulting in a change in phonology.19 There is only one instance of all elements in a place-name being of French origin in the corpus, and that is Beaumont-cum-Moze, being OFr bel + mont, ‘beautiful hill’. The site’s first recorded name was Fulepet in the 1086 Doomsday Book, meaning ‘foul pit’. Thus the site undergoes a re-naming in French after the Conquest; many of the names of Norman origin in England are “deliberate creations of the builders… not spontaneous descriptions of the site that arose in natural speech”20 and reflect aspiration aspects of French naming practise in England. Gelling notes that the Normans made “violent changes… to render English names pronounceable”.21 Phonetic change over time can be seen in the earliest recordings of place- names. Elmstead Market’s earliest recordings suggest influence from a Norman scribe: both Elmesteda and Almestedā are early recording in 1086 from the Norman scribe written Doomsday Book, and Aunestede in 1248, with alm- and aun- being due to such influence.
1. Old English
1. I Topography.
Woodland
Gelling explains that there is “relationship between what is plentiful in the landscape and the objects selected as defining features”.22 There are diverse woodland names, suggesting that these were prominent features of the landscape when being named. The wood-related names are clustered together (fig. ‘woodland related names’). Examples include Mistley (mistletoe), Oakley (oak), Weeley (?willow), Little and Great Bromley (broom), Little and Great Bentley (bent grass), Elmstead Market (elm), and Boxsted (beech). Ardleigh, Bromley, Bentley, Mistley, Oakley contain lēah, ‘woodland, woodland clearing’, but two, Boxsted and Elmstead Market, have OE stede ‘place’. Three names stand out with the elements OE feld and OE leah, Bradfield, OE brād ‘broad’ + feld ‘open land’, and Ardleigh and Bromley, suggesting patches of less dense woodland.
17 Townsend, ‘Contacts and Conflicts: Latin, Norse and French’, in The Oxford History of English, p. 95 18 Dick Leith, A Social History of English (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 22 19 Gelling, Signposts to the Past, p. 238 20 Gelling, Signposts to the Past, p. 239 21 Gelling, Signposts to the Past, p. 242 22 Margaret Gelling and Ann Cole, Landscape of Place-Names (Stamford: Shuan Tyas, 2000), p. 1
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 79-90 Examine the value of place names as evidence for the history, landscape and, especially, language(s) of your chosen area 82 These tree-related names suggest that the area was once heavily wooded; the maps can show us that the patches of woodland are close together (fig. ‘remains of heavily wooded area’) supporting the idea.
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Water
The area of the corpus has two major rivers, the Colne and the Stour, as well as an eastern coast with the Stour estuary, which is the tidal mouth of the river Stour. There are names in the corpus that reflect the water’s dominance of the area. Several names such as Dovercourt, Earls Colne, Wakes Colne, and Colne Engayne, feature the river names Colne and Dŵr, demonstrating their proximity to the river. Wrabness and Walton-on-the-Naze feature the element OE ness, ‘headland’, where it is used for low-lying land jutting into water or marsh, common in Essex.23 Marsh or wetland is also indicated through the names. Element OE ēg, ‘island’, features in two names and the names suggest that ēg is not ‘island’ in the modern sense. Though Brightlingsea is surrounded by water, the OE ēg in Ramsey describes a drier area surrounded by wet ground as mentioned by Gelling,24 not an island surrounded by water. A marsh is indicated in the name Lamarsh (OE loam + marsh).
Furthermore, wet ground is indicated through the name Weeley. Reaney in his EPNS volume suggests that Weeley has the element OE wīh or wēoh, ‘idol’.25 However, Weeley (fig.’Weeley’) is situated on a superficial deposit mixture of silt, clay and sand, silt being a material carried by running water. Willows enjoy wet ground, and thus willow would be a feasible name.
23 Gelling and Cole, The Landscape of Place-names, p. 196 24 Gelling and Cole, The Landscape of Place-names, p. 37 25 Reaney, Essex, p. 331
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Though it is clear through British nomenclature that the Anglo-Saxons had an extensive vocabulary around hills and valleys, the corpus does not exhibit a wide range. Wivenhoe, featuring OE hōh, describes a particular type of hill shape that has a slow incline peaking then drops concave. Hōh is one of the names that, according to Gelling, are used persistently for a specific shape of hill; however, in East Anglia, hōh is used to describe any spur of land, which explains Wivenhoe’s lack of conformity.26 Another possible hill name is Coggeshall. Coggeshall, possibly ‘nook of a man called *Cocc or *Cogg’, alternatively the first element may be OE cocc ‘cock, woodcock’, *cocc ‘heap, hillock’, or *cogg ‘cog wheel’. All of these possibilities except the personal name could suggest a description of the landscape surrounding the settlement, though it is notable that Coggeshall is not situated on a sharp incline.
The Norman French influence on the hill names for Essex can be seen in the names Mount Bures and Beaumont-cum-Moze, both featuring ‘mount’, with Mount Bures being from Middle English borrowed from French, ME munt, ‘at the mount or hill’, and Beaumont-cum- Moze from OFr mont, demonstrating the Norman influence on topographical naming.
Vegetation and farming
The system of the hundreds, first recorded by Edmund I, was an area of land that can have 100 households reliant on it, whilst also having farming, administrative and punishment responsibilities.27 This appears to be the case for the nomenclature of the chosen area; the number of tūn names suggests that farming was one of the dominant industries. For example, names featuring the element tūn, ‘farmstead’, are Alphamstone, Frinton-on-Sea, Clacton-on- Sea, and Walton-on-the-Naze, with Alphamstone, Clacton-on-Sea, and Walton-on-the-Naze all featuring a personal name element, suggesting that particular people owned such farms. Nonetheless, Frinton-on-Sea’s early attestation Frientuna causes some ambiguity: either ‘farmstead of a man called *Fritha’ or ‘protected farmstead’ from OE *frithen, ‘protect’. Another indication that farming was prevalent in the area is the use of more specific elements such as OE hramsa in Ramey, ‘island where wild garlic grows’, and OE ersc ‘ploughed field’ in Pebmarsh, ‘ploughed field of a man called Pybba’. There are also more generic elements such as OE *tiege ‘enclosure’ in Marks Tey, and wīc, ‘specialised farm’, used to form the simplex name Wix.
Habitative, group, and personal names
It can be noted in the corpus that from the abundance of names featuring personal names, personal names have played a sizeable part Britain’s nomenclature. All of the names in this corpus are Old English, and the names that we can tell feature personal names almost certainly are Alphamstone, Braintree, Brightlingsea, Clacton-on-Sea, Dedham, Lamarsh, Lawford, Pebmarsh, Wivenhoe, and Wrabness. Further possible names with personal name
26 Gelling and Cole, The Landscape of Place-names, p. 186 27 Sean Miller, ‘Hundreds’ in [eds.] John Blair, Simon Keynes, Michael Lapidge, Donald Scragg, The Wiley Balckwell Encylcopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), p. 249
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elements include Alresford, Coggeshall, Frinton-on-Sea, and Manningtree. Some of these names are duethematic names (two themes in the name), such as Ælfhelm (Alphamstone) and Beorhtric (Brightlingsea), whilst others are monothematic, like *Clacc (Clacton), or monothematic with added final vowel such as the possible Fritha (Frinton-on-Sea). These place-names also demonstrate the fossilised Old English genitive case (weak gen. –n), such as Wivenhoe and the early attestations of Pebmarsh, Benenhers. Wievnhoe features ‘Wīfe’, either a woman’s personal name or indicating notable female settlers; furthermore, St Osyth was named after the priory dedicated to a sainted princess Osgyth in the 7th century. Two names, Langham and Walton-on-the-Naze, are group names, being ‘homestead of the family or followers of a man called *Lahha’, OE pers. name + -inga- + hām, and ‘farmstead or village of the Britons’, from OE walh (genitive plural wala) + tūn.
There are several instances of additional suffixes in the corpus that denote ownership of land or of a settlement. These are not necessarily English in origin, instead denoting the Anglo-Norman families that dominated land ownership after the Norman Conquest; examples include Marks Tey, Layer Breton, Layer de la Hay, Layer Marney, Colne Engayne, and Wakes Colne. Most of these are familial affixes, but the ‘earls’ in Earls Colne related to the rank of the owners, the Earls of Oxford, and one hide of land in White Colne was held by Dimidius Blancus, Dimidus Blancus being contracted to ‘miblanc’ in Colne Miblanc in 1225 and then translated into English as ‘white’, appearing in the name by 1272.28
Administration, infrastructure, and boundary markers
The corpus demonstrates evidence of administration throughout the area. The OE cæster indicates a Roman settlement, and they are likely to have remaining structures. Colchester’s extensive Roman buildings and remains would have been a suitable administration site and archaeology confirms that the Germanic tribes did indeed settle early in the town and in the surrounding areas, with graves between the 5th and 7th centuries.29 Further structures referred to includes Layer Breton: an early name, stokkeneleire, comes from OE stoccen, ‘made of logs’, and indicates a wooden structure in the area. River crossings are suggested through the names Alresford, Lawford and Fordham, containing the OE ford, ‘ford or river crossing’. Administration and area organisation can also be found in the corpus. Colchester’s previous attestation, colonia veteranorum suggest that there was a Roman military colony in the town. Later administration and land ownership is shown through the affixes of the names Thorpe-le-Soken and Kirby-le-Soken. These names contain ‘soken’ from OE sōcn, ‘area of particular jurisdiction’, owned by the Chapter of St Paul’s in London30 and this additional element appears to be a recorded marker for the places since the 14th century.
Possible boundary markers or meeting places are shown through Braintree (tree of a man called *Branca) and uncertain Manningtree (tree of a man called Manna). Manningtree is positioned at a narrowing in the River Stour, so would be a practical meeting place, whilst Braintree is positioned along the Roman road Stane Street.
2. Conclusion
28 P H Reaney, The Place-names of Essex English Place-name Society 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935), p. 150 29 Baker, Cultural Transition in the Chilterns and Essex Regions 350-650AD, p. 119 30 Chris Thornton, Victoria County History, Essex XII (work in progress)- Landownership: the Sokens (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007), p. 2
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The study of the place-names of North-East Essex can be hugely informative and a useful approach in the historical study of England. Place-names fossilise vocabulary of the every day speech of the people living in the British Isles that would otherwise not survive due to not being recorded in written documents, especially personal names found in the fore mentioned corpus such as *Ægil and *Branca. It also allows us to learn about how the Anglo- Saxons and others thought about their landscape like the extensive and precise-meaning water-names in this corpus. The corpus also demonstrates the extent of language contact in an area, and contributes to the discussion around cohabitation of Britons and the Germanic migrants. Therefore, it is clear that the study of place-names is an exceptionally valuable discipline in learning about the history and language of Britain.
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Appendix
All are David Mills, A Dictionary of English Place-names Names (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), except where interpretations differ; different interpretations are cited individually throughout the text.
Alphamstone – Alfelmestuna 1086 (DB). ‘Farmstead or village of a man called Ælfhelm’. OE pers. name + tūn.
Alresford- Ælesford c.1000, Eilesforda 1086 (DB). ‘Ford of the eel, or of a man called *Ægel’. OE ǣl or OE pers. name + ford.
Ardleigh- Erleiam [sic] 1086 (DB), Ardlega 12th cent. Probably ‘woodland clearing with a dwelling place’. OE eard + lēah.
Beaumont-cum-Moze- ‘beautiful hill’, OFrench beau or bel + mont. Beaumont Essex. Fulepet 1086 (DB), Bealmont 12th cent. The earlier name means ‘foul pit’ from OE fūl + pytt.
Boxted- Bocchesteda, Bucchesteda DB, Bochesteda c1130 bodl, Bokestede 1180 P. Looks like OE bōc- hāmstede ‘homestead among the beeches’ [Erkwell, p. 56]
Bradfield-‘broad stretch of open land’, OE brād + feld; examples include: Bradfield Essex. Bradefelda 1086 (DB).
Braintree- Branchetreu 1086 (DB). ‘Tree of a man called *Branca’. OE pers. name + trēow. The river-name Brain is a back-formation from the place name
Brightlingsea- Brictriceseia 1086 (DB). ‘Island of a man called Beorhtrīc or *Beorhtling’. OE pers. name + ēg.
Clacton- Claccingtune c.1000, Clachintune 1086 (DB). ‘estate associated with a man called *Clacc’. OE pers. name + -ing- + tūn.
Coggeshall- Kockeshale c.1060, Cogheshala 1086 (DB). Possibly ‘nook of a man called *Cocc or *Cogg’. OE pers. name +halh. Alternatively the first element may be OE cocc ‘cock, woodcock’, *cocc ‘heap, hillock’, or *cogg ‘cog wheel’, also perhaps ‘hill’.
Colchester- Colneceastre early 10th cent., Colecestra 1086 (DB). ‘Roman town on the River Colne’. Ancient pre-English river-name + OE ceaster. Alternatively the first element may be a reduced form of Latin colonia‘ Roman colony for retired legionaries’ (the Romano-British name of Colchester being Colonia Camulodunum, this last being a British name meaning ‘fort of the Celtic war-god Camulos’).
Colne Engaine- Colne c.950, Colun 1086 (DB), Colum Engayne 1254, Erlescolne 1358, Colne Wake 1375, Whyte Colne 1285. ‘(Places by) the River Colne’, an ancient pre-English river-name of uncertain meaning. Manorial additions from possession in medieval times by the Engayne family, the Earls of Oxford, and the Wake family. White Colne was held by Dimidius Blancus in 1086 (DB).
Dedham- Delham [sic] 1086 (DB), Dedham 1166. ‘Homestead or village of a man called *Dydda’. OE pers. name + hām. 4262419 ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES Q33220 AUT 17-18
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 79-90 Examine the value of place names as evidence for the history, landscape and, especially, language(s) of your chosen area 88 Dovercourt- Douorcortae c.1000, Druurecurt [sic] 1086 (DB). Possibly ‘enclosed farmyard by the river called Dover’. Celtic river-name (meaning ‘the waters’) + OE *cort(e) (perhaps from Latin cohors, cohortem).
Elmstead Market- Elmesteda 1086 (DB), Elmested Market 1475. ‘Place where elm-trees grow’. OE *elme or *elmen + stede. Affix market from the important early market here.
Fordham- ‘homestead or enclosure by a ford’, OE ford + hām or hamm: Fordham Essex. Fordeham 1086 (DB).
Frinton-On-Sea- Frientuna 1086 (DB). ‘Farmstead of a man called *Fritha’, or ‘protected farmstead’. OE pers. name (genitive -n) or OE *frithen + tūn.
Great Bromley- usually ‘woodland clearing where broom grows’, OE brōm + B: Great & Bromley, Little Essex. Brumleiam 1086 (DB).
Harwich- Herewic 1248. ‘Army camp’, probably that of a Viking army. OE here-wīc.
Kirby-le-Soken- a common name in the Midlands and North, usually ‘village with a church’, OScand. kirkju-bý; examples include: Kirby le SokenEssex. Kyrkebi 1181, Kirkeby in the Sokne 1385. Affix is from OE sōcn ‘district with special jurisdiction’.
Lamarsh - Lamers 1086 (DB). ‘Loam marsh’. OE lām + mersc.
Langham- usually ‘long homestead or enclosure’, OE lang + hām or hamm: However the following has a different origin: Langham Essex. Laingaham 1086 (DB). Possibly ‘homestead of the family or followers of a man called *Lahha’. OE pers. name + -inga- + hām.
Lawford- probably ‘ford of a man called *Lealla’, OE pers. name + ford: Lawford Essex. Lalleford 1045, Laleforda 1086 (DB).
Layer Breton, Layer de la Haye & Layer Marney- Legra 1086 (DB), Leyre Bretoun 1254, Legra de Haya 1236, Leyre Marini 1254. Probably originally a river-name Leire of Celtic origin. Distinguishing affixes from early possession by families called Breton, de Haia and de Marinni.
Little and Great Horkesley- Horchesleia c.1130. ‘Woodland clearing with a shelter’, or ‘dirty, muddy clearing’. OE *horc or horsc + lēah.
Little Bentley- a common name, ‘woodland clearing where bent-grass grows’, OE beonet + lēah; examples include: Bentley, Great & Bentley, Little Essex. Benetleye c.1040, Benetlea 1086 (DB).
Manningtree- Manitre 1248. ‘Many trees’, or ‘tree of a man called Manna’. OE manig or OE pers. name + trēow.
Marks Tey- Tygan c.950, Teia 1086 (DB), Merkys Teye 1475. From OE *tīege ‘enclosure’. Manorial affix from possession by the de Merck family.
Mistley- Mitteslea [sic] 1086 (DB), Misteleg 1225. Probably ‘wood or clearing where mistletoe grows’. OE mistel + lēah. 4262419 ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES Q33220 AUT 17-18
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Mount Bures- Bure, Bura 1086 (DB), Buras c.1180, Bures atte Munte 1328. ‘The dwellings or cottages’. OE būr (plural būras). Distinguishing affixes from the dedication of the church and from ME munt (‘at the mount or hill’).
Oakley, Great and Little- a fairly common name, ‘wood or clearing where oak-trees grow’, OE āc + lēah; examples include: Oakley Beds. Achelai 1086 (DB). Oakley Poole. Ocle 1327. Oakley, Great Essex. Accleia 1086 (DB).
Pebmarsh- Pebeners 1086 (DB). ‘Ploughed field of a man called Pybba’. OE pers. name (genitive -n) + ersc.
Ramsey- probably ‘island where wild garlic grows’, OE hramsa + ēg: Ramsey Cambs. Hramesege c.1000. RamseyEssex. Rameseia 1086 (DB).
St Osyth- Seynte Osithe 1046. From the dedication of a priory here to St Ōsgȳth, a 7th-cent. princess. Its early name Cice1086 (DB) is from OE *cicc ‘a bend’.
Thorpe-le-Soken- a common name, from OScand. thorp ‘outlying farmstead or hamlet, dependent secondary settlement’. Thorpe-le-Soken Essex. Torp 12th cent., Thorpe in ye Sooken 1612. Affix is from OE sōcn ‘district with special jurisdiction’.
Walton-on-the-Naze- a common name, often ‘farmstead or village of the Britons’, from OE walh (genitive plural wala) + tūn; examples include: Walton on the Naze Essex. Walentonie11th cent., Walton at the Naase 1545. Affix means ‘on the promontory’, from OE næss.
Weeley - Wilgelea 11th cent., Wileia 1086 (DB). ‘Wood or clearing where willow-trees grow’. OE *wilig + lēah.
Wivenhoe- Wiunhov 1086 (DB). ‘Hill-spur of a woman called *Wīfe’. OE pers. name (genitive -n) + hōh.
Wix- Wica 1086 (DB). ‘The dwellings or specialized farm’. OE wīc in a ME plural form wikes.
Wrabness- Wrabenasa 1086 (DB). Possibly ‘headland of a man called *Wrabba’. OE pers. name + næss. 4262419 ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES Q33220 AUT 17-18
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 79-90 Examine the value of place names as evidence for the history, landscape and, especially, language(s) of your chosen area 90 Bibliography
Baker, John, Cultural Transition in the Chilterns and Essex Regions 350-650AD (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2006).
Blair, Johnm Simon Keynes, Michael Lapidge, Donald Scragg [eds.], The Wiley Balckwell Encylcopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).
Cameron, Kenneth, English Place-names (London: B T Batsford, 1996).
Gelling, Margaret, and Ann Cole, Landscape of Place-Names (Stamford: Shuan Tyas, 2000).
Gelling, Margaret, Signposts to the Past: Place-names and the History of England (Chichester: Phillimore, 2010).
Jackson, Kenneth, Language and History in Early Britain: A Chronological Survey of the Brittonic Languages, First to Twelfth Centuries (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953).
Leith, Dick, A Social History of English (London: Routledge, 2005).
Lindqvist, Harald, Middle-English place-names of Scandinavian origin (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1912).
Mills, David, A Dictionary of British Place Names (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Mugglestone, Lynda [eds.], The Oxford History of English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Reaney, P. H, The Place-names of Essex English Place-name Society 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935).
Notestein, Wallace, and Albert White [eds.] Source Problems in English History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1915) https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/guthrum.asp
Thornton, Chris, Victoria County History, Essex XII (work in progress)- Landownership: the Sokens (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007).
Illustrations
All maps throughout the project are created with http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 79-90 Volume 10: 2017-18 ISSN: 2041-6776
The early bird is the wyrm: if and how the literary use of wyrm in Genesis A & B and Beowulf informs its linguistic meaning? Ranait Flanagan
The predominant linguistic factor that bleeds into any literary presence of the Old English wyrm is its three potential definitions: ‘worm, serpent, dragon’.1 Derived from ‘Indo-European ṷer- (‘to turn, to bend’)’2, with cognates such as ‘Old Norse ormr, Old Saxon and Old High German wurm…’3 and so on, the multi-faceted word has significant presence in Germanic medieval literatures. Within Genesis, in the retelling of the first sin through Genesis B and surrounding Genesis A passages (until line 950), wyrm makes an unlikely occurrence in order to describe the well-known “serpent” within hagiographical literature. In Beowulf, wyrm is used to describe the final monster in particular: the dragon. However, the same word is used in vastly different texts to denote different serpentine creatures. Whilst this may initially stem from the heteroglossic definitions, this essay will question whether an overarching characteristic follows wyrm in surrounding physical appearance, physical movements, or function. By examining the literary presentation of the wyrm in each text, as well as the presence of an Indo-European verb-phrase, I will assess if and how the literary descriptions create additional meaning to the definition of wyrm. Wyrm is principally used as a noun to describe the text’s serpentine creatures. As a heteroglossic word4, it cannot be reduced to a singular meaning. The three potential definitions help to inform the function of the character whom wyrm is ascribed to. In Beowulf, that character is the final ‘monster’5, a dragon, described when þa se wyrm onwoc, wroht wæs geniwad (2287)6
“Then the worm awoke, accusation was renewed.” Whilst in Genesis B, Satan’s lackey transforms himself into a wyrm: wearp hine þa on wyrmes lic and wand him þa ymbutan þone deaðes beam þurh deofles cræft (491-492)7
1 Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, 1st edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p.416. 2 Haruko Momma, "Worm: A Lexical Approach to The Beowulf Manuscript", in Old English Philology: Studies in Honour Of R.D. Fulk, 1st edn (Boydell and Brewer, 2016), p.201. 3 Calvert Watkins How to Kill a Dragon, p.416. 4 Joyce Tally Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon, 1st edn (Trowbridge: Hisarlik Press, 1998), p.3. 5 J. R. R. Tolkien, "Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics", in Beowulf: A Verse Translation, 1st edn (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002), p.103. 6 Unless stated otherwise, all Old English Beowulf transcriptions are from John Porter, Beowulf: Text and Translation, 3rd edn (Pinner: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1993), and all translations are my own. 7 Unless stated otherwise, all Old English Genesis B transcriptions are from A. N. Doane, The Saxon Genesis, 1st edn (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), and all translations are my own.
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“He then cast himself into a worm’s body and then wound himself around the tree of death through devil’s craft.” It is evident that these are two different depictions and uses of wyrm as a noun. The serpentine creature in Beowulf is not only that, but also synonymous with a draca “dragon, serpent”.8 However, in Genesis B se laða, “the hateful one” (496), simply casts itself into a wyrm’s body; the wyrmes lic is a disguise. Consequently, the basic functions of wyrm is explicitly different between the two texts. Descriptive nouns build on the difference functions of the two wryms to showcase the respective characters’ motives. Satan’s serpent is repeatedly referred to as lað ‘[noun] hostile one, enemy, etc’9, at least 6 times in Genesis A & B.10 The significance of lað results from how wyrmes lic is a disguise in Genesis B; the creature’s appearance is not the character’s defining characteristic, rather his hatefulness and evilness is. The wyrm in Beowulf opposes this: the very existence of the mythological beast and its monstrosity as a creature is the focus of the section. The ‘Latin-derived word draca…occurs as a simplex in the poem [Beowulf] five times,’ whilst also appearing in 6 different compounds, including ‘niðdraca, “hostile dragon” (2273a) [and] ligdraca, “fire dragon” (2333a, 3040b)’.11 The subscribed use of draca confirms the use of wyrm as a ‘real worm [dragon], with a bestial life’.12 Despite introducing both serpentine creatures as wyrm, disguised or not, the distinct differing descriptions again show that wyrm does not necessitate the same type of being, proving wyrm’s heteroglossic linguistic nature. The physical description of the two wyrms further expand the word’s different meanings, especially between the respective serpentine creatures. Beowulf’s enemy is implied to have wings, or at least the capability to fly, the ability to breath fire, and snake-like features. When entering the narrative, the hordweard, “hoard-guard” is presented as nacod niðdraca, nihtes fleogeð fyre befangen; (2273-2274)
“[the] naked strife-dragon, flyer of night encompassed by fire.” As a “flyer”, the wyrm is thus suggested to have wings, reinforced through descriptive nouns such as lað lyftfloga “hostile flier in the air” (2315). The passage’s use of nacod suggests that the creature has ‘scales like a serpent…[through] a term which may imply the smoothness of the scales.’ Despite no other explicitly serpent physical attributes, the wyrm is narrated to ‘[fight] coiled like a snake’13 through depictions of ‘coiled’ action in hringbogan, “ring-coiled” (2561)14, and wyrm wohbogen “coiled worm”. Finally, the monster has the ability to breath fire, arguably its most devastating weapon. These physical attributes are repeated throughout the battle, highlighting the creature’s monstrosity, which culminates when …se gæst ongan gledum spiwan, beorht hofu bærnan; bryneleoma stod
8 Marsden, The Cambridge Old English Reader, p.477. 9 Richard Marsden, The Cambridge Old English Reader, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p.512. 10 In lines 496, 592, 601, 647, 711 in Genesis B and in line 917 in Genesis A. 11 Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon, p.28. 12 Tolkien, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, p.114. 13 Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon, p.30. 14 Trans. Porter, Beowulf: Text and Translation, p.155.
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“the guest began to spit fire, to burn bright homes; the fire-beam stood, malice to the leader.”
The physical disguise of the wrymes lic in Genesis B, on the other hand, does not contain many narrative descriptions. The suggestion of the wyrm’s reptilian appearance is evidenced when Eve calls the creature who deceived her a nædre, “snake”15 (897): Me nædre beswac and me neodlice to forsceape scythe (897-898)16
“The snake deceived me and zealously persuaded me to crime” Eve’s use of nædre suggests that the wyrm who deceived her had a reptilian undertone, and that the “messenger” was evidently still in wyrmes lic. However, the most detailed description of the wyrm is made by Eve after she has eaten þæs ofætes, “the fruits [of the Tree of Death]” (599), as she convinces Adam to do so too, describing: …þes boda sciene, godes engel god, ic on his gearwan geseo þæt he is ærendsecg uncres hearran, hefoncyninges… (656-659)
“this shining messenger, God’s good angel, I see by his attire that he is a messenger to our lord king of heaven…” The description itself is initially puzzling as Eve describes se laða as appearing like an angel, though only one transformation has occurred: Satan’s servant into a wyrm. Therefore, Eve seems to be conflating the wyrm appearance with an angel’s, suggesting they are similar in appearance. When Eve goes on to describe how she sees God, she describes what angels17 look like: Geseo ic him his englas ymbe hweorfan mid feðerhaman, (669-670)
“I see him [God] roam around his angels
15 Marsden, The Cambridge Old English Reader, p.524. 16 Unless stated otherwise, all Old English Genesis A transcriptions are from A. N. Doane, Genesis A: A New Edition, 1st edn (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), and all translations are my own. 17 When Adam reveals that Eve has been looking at Hell, not Heaven, it implies that the “angels” she saw were the Hell’s “angels” who were cast down.
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with wings.” If the wyrm and angel’s appearance are the same, as evidenced when Eve describes the deception, the comparison of the wyrm to winged angels suggests that the wyrm disguise also possesses wings. The Genesis B wyrm may also have a physical connection to fire, implicit through Eve’s description of the boda sciene. After eating the fruit, Eve’s mistakenly identifies Hell and the englas there as Heaven. After Adam eats the fruit, he admonishes Eve for not realising it was the bright fire of Hell: … Nis heofonrice gelic þam lige (794-795).
“Heavenly Kingdom is not like that fire [of Hell]” However, if Eve mistook the fire of Hell for the Heavenly Kingdom’s glow, it is possible she mistook fire, or some Hellish glow on the wyrm who she sees as godes engel god, as heavenly sciene. The “bright”, and potentially fiery, attribute of the wyrm in Genesis does thereby suggest a similar physical appearance between it and the wyrm in Beowulf. Nevertheless, the physical description of Genesis B’s wyrm is conjecture: it’s matching wings, fire, even reptilian nature to the wyrm in Beowulf, are mixed in with its evil purpose to Eve. The wyrm, who is repeatedly stated as deceiving mid ligenum, “with lies” (496), is a slippery character. The physical shell still remains a disguise in the end, and unlike the wyrm’s physical ferocity in Beowulf, the defining attribute of Genesis’s wyrm is its deceptive nature. Despite the difference in the literary purpose of wyrm, its linguistic etymology and the consequential proposed Indo-European dragon slaying formula provides a sense of an ancient tradition to both, and sets up the wyrms as the greatest adversaries. In How to Kill a Dragon, Calvert Watkins derived a linguistic formula to describe the bidirectional ‘slaying of or by a “dragon”’18 Indo-European verb phrase used and developed throughout linguistically connected literatures. Of all Old English works, Beowulf demonstrates the dragon slaying formula most clearly. The focus on heroic deeds within Beowulf is made none clearer than when ‘a mounted scop is prompted by Beowulf’s exploits to tell of previous Germanic heroes (and villains)’19 The potentially ‘common…dragon-slaying myth’ of Sigurd and the dragon20 foreshadows the interaction between Beowulf and the wyrm, paralleled in literary theme and linguistics, particularly through the use of the following formula: ‘HERO SLAY (*g’hen-) SERPENT/HERO’21 Watkins further rationalises the fact that the Indo-European dragon-slaying formula is bidirectional: the dragon can be killed and it can kill22 (416), which occurs in the following statement23: …bona swylce læg, Egeslic eorðdraca ealre bereafod, bealwe gebæded. Beahhordum leng
18 Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, p.422. 19 Marsden, The Cambridge Old English Reader, p.307. 20 Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, p.415. 21 Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, p.422. 22 Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, p.416. 23 The coloured text corresponds to the appropriate terms in the formula.
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“killer [wyrm] likewise lay, fearful earth-dragon, stripped of life, maliciously oppressed. The coiled serpent could not control the ring-hoard…” The wyrm is equally “stripped of life” as much as it is a “killer”. As a result, the wyrm is the ultimate adversary for Beowulf. Although Tolkien describes the wyrm as ‘not dragon enough’24, it is the only monster that could deliver a wunde wælbleate, “mortal wound” (2725), to Beowulf. Through battle with the wyrm, Beowulf thereby establishes himself as part of the Old Germanic heroic literary tradition25 with their verb phrase, part of an “ancient” literary tradition and ‘common [linguistic] inheritance’.26 However, Genesis’ use of the formula is complicated in the technical linguistic sense. The verb phrase to bonan weorðan, “to slay”27, is not present within the creation of sin narrative as no one is killed. But, if we view ‘the basic verb [as denoting] violent action’, the theme and myth of wyrm smiting man can be applied to Genesis. When explaining to God why she ate the fruit, Eve states Me nædre beswac and me neodlice to forsceape scyhte and to scyldfrece, fah wyrm þurh fægir word, (897-899)
“The snake deceived me and zealously persuaded me to crime, and guilty greed, that inimical worm, through fair speech.” Admittedly, this language does not initially seem to match the violence of phrase in Beowulf. Yet, for violence within the context of Genesis and the story of sin, it is the most violent it could be. The “guilty greed” refers to Eve eating the Þæs ofætes from the Tree of Death. Whilst no immediate violence occurs, in terms of death or injury, the consequence of Eve’s “greed” is that him beon deað scyred, “death is ordained to him” (485). In other words: to bonan weorðan. The use of the “dragon slaying” myth within Genesis gives it a sense of ancient tradition, and helps ‘explain and legitimates the religious…status quo’, as it does with other “creation” myths.28 And so, the wyrm achieves the most violent of acts in Genesis with powerful weapons, Þæs ofætes and mid ligenum, ensuring death for mankind and thus is the ultimate adversary towards the human race and God. The position of the wyrms as ultimate adversary is reinforced through compounds using – sceaða ‘[meaning] ‘one who does harm, an enemy’’ 29 in each text. In Genesis, the wyrm is also called and se hellsceaða “hellish enemy” (694) and lað leodsceaða “hateful enemy of people” (917), whereas Beowulf refers to the draca as se ðeodsceaða, “enemy of the people” (2278), se guðsceaða Geata leode, “water enemy of the leader of the Geats” (2318), and se
24 Tolkien, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, p.114. 25 Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, p.415. 26 Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, p.414-416. 27 Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, p.422. 28 Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon, p.6. 29 Lionarons, The Medieval Dragon, p.29.
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mansceaða, “enemy of mankind” (2514). In particular, lað leodsceaða “hateful enemy of people” (917) in Genesis and se mansceaða, “enemy of mankind” present the wyrm in each text as positioned against all else. As the “ultimate” adversary, their hatred towards all others ties the bow on a presentation focused on maintaining adverse characteristics of an old tradition. Whilst the wyrms cannot be shown as an adversary through noun alone, these compounds help highlight the position of ‘enemy’ that each wyrm occupies. The problematic motives of the wyrm in Genesis complicates any comparative literary analysis and any conclusions. Eve does suggest Genesis’ wyrm has a very similar physical description to the wyrm in Beowulf through the reptilian appearance, wings and possibly fiery attitude. But the characteristics she describes are potentially flawed as she is in the midst of deception. Consequently, the literary analysis cannot explicitly inform the meaning of wyrm beyond suggestion. Instead, it is the linguistic background to wyrm which supports the existence of an overarching characteristic of wyrm felt beyond the definitions of ‘worm, snake, dragon’. Both Beowulf and Genesis ingrain the sense of an ultimate adversary through pre-medieval use of wyrm through the use of the dragon slaying Indo-European formula. The extreme adversity informs the same basic characteristic and moral of a dragon: the wyrm ‘[is] dangerous to man’.30
30 Louise W. Lippincott, "The Unnatural History of Dragons", Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 77.334 (1981), 2-24
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 91-97 The early bird is the wyrm: if and how the literary use of wyrm in Genesis A & B and Beowulf informs its linguistic meaning? 97 Bibliography Doane, A. N., Genesis A: A New Edition, 1st edn (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1978) Doane, A. N., The Saxon Genesis, 1st edn (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991) Lee, Alvin A., Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon, 1st edn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998) Lionarons, Joyce Tally, The Medieval Dragon, 1st edn (Trowbridge: Hisarlik Press, 1998) Lippincott, Louise W., "The Unnatural History of Dragons", Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 77 (1981), 2-24
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How far do dream poems or visions interrogate and/or reinforce ideas of authority? Jessica Inzani
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The House of Fame (1379-80), Robert Henryson’s The Lion and the Mouse (circa.1480) and James I of Scotland’s The Kingis Quair (1423-24), all interrogate ideas of authority. Through their exploration of multiple authority figures, texts, and traditions, these dream-vision poems examine the nature of texts, and problematise literary authorities to different extents. In The House of Fame, Chaucer presents a variety of literary authorities to sceptically interrogate. As Windeatt states the prologues of dream-visions establish a theme which is ‘played off’ throughout the poem, Chaucer’s proem explores the nature and causes of dreams: ‘Why this a drem, why that a swevern’ (9).1 Continuing for 52-lines, the extended dubitatio not only parodies the opening of Le Roman de la Rose, but destabilises Macrobian dream-theory: by presenting dreams as binary oppositions, the profusion of possibilities ‘disrupt[s] any sense of certainty’, moving the reader to a state of unobtainable truth.2 Thus, Chaucer undermines Macrobian authority to highlight ‘the artificiality and essential arbitrariness of fictions’.3 Furthermore, when the narrator recounts Virgil’s Aeneid, he translates Virgil’s opening, but continues with Ovid’s rendition of Dido’s perspective. Indicating that these texts contradict and undermine each other, this mixing of opposing sources creates a ‘slippage in their authority’ as Chaucer foregrounds ‘the conflict between auctoritee and truth’.4 This unreliability of literature is furthered when the narrator recalls ‘…how fals and reccheles / Was to Breseyda Achilles, And Paris to Oenone; And Jason to Isiphile…In certeyn, as the book us tellis’ (397- 426). Presented with multiple exemplums in vacuo, whilst the extended rhetorical listing conveys ‘the blinkered view of literary tradition as unambiguously supporting one side or the other’, ending with ‘In certeyn, as the book us tellis’, Chaucer problematises the trust readers put in literature by emphasising the discrepancies of stories.5 Having highlighted the dubious truth value in literature, the narrator desires new textual authorities. Clemen indicates the medieval poet was primarily concerned with ‘giving due consideration to prescribed forms and genres’, however, Chaucer plays with the conventions of the authorial Epic genre: ‘O God of science and of lyght, Appollo / thurgh thy grete myght…Unto the nexte laure y see, / And kysse yt…Now entre in my brest anoon!’ (1091- 1109)6 As Justman argues ‘citation of authority in Chaucer is a matter of parody [or] dispute’, whilst Chaucer conforms to using formulaic phrases like ‘entre in my brest anoon’, he impersonates Dante’s popular invocation to Apollo and undermines his imaginative arrogance
1 Barry Windeatt, ‘Literary structures in Chaucer’, in The Cambridge Chaucer Companion, ed. by Piero Boitani and Jill Mann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p.196. Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The House of Fame’, in Riverside Chaucer ed. by Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p.347. 2 Robert Clifford, “'A Man of Great Auctorite': The Search for Truth in Textual Authority in Geoffrey Chaucer's The House of Fame”, Manchester University Press, 81:1 (1999), 155-165 (p.158). 3 Katherine Terrell, “Reallocation of Hermeneutic Authority in Chaucer's ‘House of Fame’”, The Chaucer Review, 31:3 (1997), 279–290 (p.280). 4 Clifford, p.163. Wolfgang Clemen, Chaucer’s Early Poetry (London: Methuen & Co, 1963), p.113. 5 Priscilla Martin, Chaucer’s Women (London: Macmillan, 1990), p.207. 6 Clemen, pp.2-3.
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with comedy.7 Thus, subverting expectations of authority, Chaucer advocates the need to reinterpret these authorial genres and produce new texts. Consequently, when the narrator leaves the temple of Venus looking for answers in Book I, he is faced with ‘a large feld…Withouten toun, or hous, or tree’ (482-4). Unlike Kane who states such fluctuations in the story reflect Chaucer’s ‘lacking full critical self-assurance’, King suggests the desert setting symbolises ‘the wasteland of a poem robbed of its confidence in tradition’.8 Accordingly, this aventure section indicates the narrator’s search for ‘somme newe tydynges’ and authorities as ‘The flight into the skies is an ancient religious and literary motif [for]…greater knowledge’ (1886).9 Therefore, because the Eagle is inspired by Dante, Boitani highlights an ‘old book’ inevitably produces a ‘new’ book, and this layering of sources not only foregrounds the impossibility of retrieving truth in literature, but in applying ‘fresh motives’ to traditional frameworks, Chaucer expresses his desire for new authorities.10 As figures of authority are of central importance to the dream-vision genre, in The House of Fame, Chaucer undermines these figures to question the value of authority. Describing his approach to Fame’s palace ‘That stood upon so hygh a roche’, the narrator declares: “up I clomb with alle payne…A roche of yse, and not of stel. / Thoughte I, ‘By Seynt Thomas of Kent, / This were a feble fundament’” (1116-32). Whilst this comical trek battling the treacherous foundations reflects the difficult pursuit of fame, and the symbolic resonance of ice encapsulates the ephemeral notion of fame, Chaucer is in fact borrowing from the typography of Fortune. Boethius was the ‘first writer to associate [Fortune] with an unstable physical environment…detailing her caprice’.11 His work inspired other texts like the fourteenth-century poem Le dit de la panthere in which Margival situates Fortune’s castle on a mountain of ice.12 Therefore, representing this similarity to Fortune, Chaucer hints that Fame is ‘as arbitrary and ephemeral in her favours as her divine sister’, demeaning her authority.13 Whilst her fluctuating stature reflects the aggrandising power of fame: ‘she was so lyte…But thus sone…with hir hed she touched hevene’ (1369-75), this quality also references Boethius’s Philosophia. Using Philosophia as a template for fickle Fame, Chaucer destabilises Boethius’s idea of a wise philosophical authority. Hence, describing ‘as feele eyen hadde she / As fetheres upon foules be…fele upstondyng eres / And tonges, as on bestes heres’ (1381-90), the enjambement stylistically reinforces Fame’s ghastly number of eyes and tongues as Chaucer also draws on characteristics of Virgilian Rumour. Because Fame is based on these figures from canonical texts, their association with arbitrary fame ‘depletes any sense of power held by [these] textual authorities’.14 Thus, contradicting Petrarch and Bocaccio who believed that worldly fame was to be a ‘legitimate object of poetic aspiration’, Fame’s problematic characterisation ‘destabilises the auctoritas of the ancient poets’ as Chaucer complicates the value of literary authorities.15 Unlike Chaucer’s speculative approach, Henryson adopts a distinctly negative portrayal of literary authority to simultaneously interrogate political authorities. Working to establish, and later undermine these authorities, Henryson’s The Lion and the Mouse sets up the dream-vision framework to coerce the audience into believing the power of literary
7 Stewart Justman, ‘Medieval Monism and Abuse of Authority in Chaucer’, The Chaucer Review, 11:2 (1976), 95–111 (p.96). 8 George Kane, Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p.37. Pamela. M. King, ‘Chaucer, Chaucerians and the theme of poetry’, in Chaucer and Fifteenth-century poetry ed. by Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen (Exeter: Short Run Press, 1991), p.4. 9 Derek Brewer, A New Introduction to Chaucer, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1998), p.129. 10 Piero Boitani, ‘Old books brought to life in dreams’, in The Cambridge Chaucer Companion, p.44. Clemen, p.114. 11 Christiania Whitehead, Castles of the mind (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), p.162. 12 Nicole de Margival, Le Dit de la panthère, ed. by B. Ribémont (Paris, 2000). 13 Whitehead, p.178. 14 Clifford, p.164. 15 Whitehead, p.180. Ibid.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 98-106 Jessica Inzani 100 authority. In keeping with the visionary style, the poem begins set ‘In middis of June, that sweit season’ (1321-8).16 Establishing a promising atmosphere of bliss, words like ‘delitious…plenteous…paradice’ create an Edenic opening to an apparently hopeful tale (1329,1332,1337). As Aesop enters wearing a gown ‘quhyte as milk / His chymmeris wes of chambelate purpour broun, / His hude of scarlet bordowrit weill with silk’ (1349-51), this elaborate dress compiled of materials including silk and camel’s hair reflects his authoritative status appropriate for his title of ‘maister Esope, poet lawriate’ (1377). Equating the words ‘poet lawriate’ with ‘maister’, Aesop is bestowed with a grand authority as the regal connotations of the colour ‘purpour broun’ assigns a majestic status to writers. Therefore, revealing he is ‘of gentill blude…In civile law studyit…And now my winning is in hevin for ay’ (1370-4), these descriptions all contrast with Caxton’s depiction of the author as ‘most deformed…euill shapen…[and] dumb’.17 As a result, it is clear Henryson is aggrandising Aesop’s literary status as a poet which is furthered through his scholastic appearance: ‘Ane roll of paper in his hand he bair / Ane swannis pen stikand under his eir, / Ane inkhorne with ane prettie gilt pennair’ (1356-8). These fine details attributed to Aesop’s writing tools assign a rich and respected authority to authorship and literature. Having said this, whilst Aesop is set up physically as a figure of superior status, his words of authority no longer resonate. When asked to tell a fable, Aesop identifies the issue with his authority: ‘…quhat is it worth to tell ane fenyeit tail / Quhen haly preiching may nathing availl?’ (1389-90) As the rhyming couplet falls on ‘tail’ and ‘avail’, Henryson reinforces the powerlessness of all literature as drawing ‘a parallel between fable-telling and preaching…[he] casts doubt on…[both] instructive enterprises’.18 Moreover, as McKenna notes Henryson’s tragic figures obtain ‘a godlike capacity’ posed against the question of ‘What can such a capacity accomplish?’, Aesop’s arguable tragic status is revealed when he recognises: ‘The eir is deif, the hart is hard as stane’ (1393).19 This focus on ‘eir’ and ‘hart’ places responsibility on the readers as Aesop’s moral instructions are lost upon the state of humanity. Hence, whilst Gopen notes the dream-vision form produces ‘Henryson’s utopian vision’ where mercy and justice prevail, Machan explains that because Aesop is rendered part of the fiction, the authority “imputed to him as an ‘Auctor’” is undermined as dreamers must eventually wake up and return to reality.20 Destabilising Aesop’s authority, this powerlessness of literary authority is likewise reflected in the unheeding behaviour of the fable’s protagonist. Initially given a status of authority, the lion is referred to as ‘nobill lyoun…lord of hie honour…king of bestis coronate’ (855,1500,1462). Whilst this authority is reflective of his potent status as king of the jungle, the inclusion of words such as ‘nobill’, ‘lord’ and ‘coronate’ also suggest the lion is a symbol of kingship as he declares ‘I wae baith lord and king / Of beistis’, underlining a distinction between ‘lord’ of the court and ‘king’ of the jungle (1430-1). In contrast, whilst the mouse is branded an ‘unworthie thing’ by the lion (1427), Aesop renders her more spiritually authoritative as she becomes his mouthpiece: In everie juge mercy and reuth suld be… Without mercie, justice is crueltie
16 Robert Henryson, ‘The Lion and the Mouse’, in Robert Henryson, The Complete Works: Fables ed. by David J. Parkinson (Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010), Robbins Library Digital Projects [accessed 11 April 2018] 17 William Caxton, The Fables of Esop (London:1596), sig.Ar, Early English Books Online [accessed 8 May 2018] 18 Sally Mapstone, ‘Robert Henryson’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100–1500, ed. by Larry Scanlon (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p.246. 19 Steven R. McKenna, Robert Henryson’s Tragic Vision (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1994), p.135. 20 George D. Gopen, “The Essential Seriousness of Robert Henryson's ‘Moral Fables’: A Study in Structure”, Studies in Philology, 82:1 (1985), 42-59 (p.55). Tim William Machan, “Robert Henryson and Father Aesop: Authority in the Moral Fables’”, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 12 (1990), 193-214 (p.209).
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As said is in the lawis spirituall. Quhen rigour sittis in the tribunall, The equitie of law quha may sustene? (1468-73) Writing during the severe reign of King James III, this personification of rigour combined with the rhetorical question offers a didactic exploration into the authorial principles of kingship. Indeed, the internal rhyme falling on ‘mercie’ and ‘crueltie’ highlights the reality of ruling without ‘reuth’, or ‘compassion’, as the mouse envisages a more just ‘tribunall’ court informed by the ‘lawis spirituall’.21 However, despite the mouse’s appeal to intellect, she finally convinces the lion not to eat her by appealing to his ‘stomok’ (1492). As this detail diverges from Henryson’s source text, the Elegiac Romulus, Smith argues Henryson problematises the ‘moral living taught by earlier examples of the fable genre’.22 Thus, because ‘political treatises of fifteenth- century Scotland use…natural imagery…[to] set a high ethical standard for princely governance’, Henryson’s fable diverges from tradition and exposes ‘the relentless force of bestial appetite in humans and animals alike’ as the freed lion returns to the hunt, and ‘slew baith tayme and wyld, as he wes wont’ (1512).23 Therefore, presenting a pessimistic view of the world, the lion ignores the mouse’s advice and subsequently becomes a lazy ruler: ‘Quhilk suld be walkrife gyde and governour…To reule and steir the land and justice keip, / Bot lyis still in lustis, sleuth, and sleip’ (1576-79). As the sibilance reinforces the lion’s laziness, the rhyming couplet ‘keip’ and ‘sleip’ caustically highlights the failures in the expectations and behaviours of the king that are built up in the stanza. This prevailing sense of disappointment and hopelessness is reflected in the structure of the Fabillis which continues after The Lion and the Mouse with an increasing cynicism to an ending of utter despair, demonstrating that ultimately authorial literature cannot neutralise the insidious behaviours of humanity. In a similar way to Henryson, James’s The Kingis Quair differs from his authority text to highlight all individuals and experiences are different. Encapsulated in the opening line, the narrator describes ‘The rody sterres twynklyng as the fyre…slepe for craft in might I no more…Bot toke a boke to rede apon quhile’ (1-14).24 This ‘pattern of restless movement’ combined with picking up Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae connects this sense of change to literature, symbolising the narrator’s desire to be original.25 Moreover, this book framing highlights how literary authority becomes ‘a mirror of life’ as the narrator compares his own experiences with Boethius’s.26 In fact, James’s narrator takes issue with Boethius’s insurmountable virtue: ‘Enditing in his faire Latyne tong, / So full of fruyte and rethorikly pykit, / Quhich to declare my scole is over young’ (44-46). As the narrator recognises his inadequate moral compass, this recurring image of ‘Unrypit fruyte’ as a symbol of learning immediately establishes the theme of maturity, both moral and philosophical, independent of a literary authority (93). Thus, looking for ‘Sum newe thing to write’, he reinterprets Boethius’s authority and begins his own story (89). As The Kingis Quair is considered a bricolage of multiple authority texts, it diverges from its Boethian influence in certain areas as James reinterprets authority to achieve a different objective. Whilst Fortune is certainly not supposed to be considered an authority figure as in Consolatione, in The Kingis Quair, she is given an authoritative status. Unlike the other goddesses, the narrator details his journey to Fortune: ‘Endlang a river pleasant to
21 Middle English Dictionary < http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED37312> [accessed 19 April] 22 Greta Smith, “Readership, the Fables of the Elegiac Romulus, and the ‘Moral Fabillis’ of Robert Henryson”, Philological Quarterly, 94:1/2 (2015), 51-69 (p.52). 23 Laura Wang, ‘Robert Henryson and the Animal in the Mirror’, The Review of English Studies, 66:273 (2015), 20–39 (p.20). Ibid. 24 James I of Scotland, ‘The Kingis Quair’, in Fifteenth-Century English Dream Visions ed. by Julia Boffey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.94. 25 Helen Phillips ‘Frames and Narrators in Chaucerian Poetry’, in The Long Fifteenth Century ed. by Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p.84. 26 King, p.12.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 98-106 Jessica Inzani 102 behold, / Enbroudin all with fresche flouris gay…The cristall water ran so clere and cold’ (1059- 62). Introducing a locus amoenus common in dream-visions which favours ‘fresh water…lush plants and trees’, this idyllic landscape differs to Boethius’s images of ‘mountains lashed by winds and waves’, and Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudanius which was the first text to describe Fortune’s home featuring ‘Two rivers of sweet and poisonous water’.27 In fact, the alliteration underlines that ‘The cristall water ran so clere and cold’, emphasising James’s departure from traditional sources. Within this landscape, he also notes: ‘treis saw I, full of levis grene, / That full of fruyte delitable were to sene’ (1075-6). These images of blooming trees and ripened fruit symbolise the narrator’s developing maturity as the textual framing indicates that Fortune will be benevolent to those who learn from Venus and Minerva. Introduced standing at her wheel, Fortune is described as wearing: ‘A mantill…That furrit was with eremyn full quhite (1120-21). Whilst Venus also wears ‘a mantill’ signifying their equal statuses (671), ermine is a white fur traditionally used for trimming the ceremonial robes of judges.28 Thus, portraying Fortune’s respected and dependable judgement, perhaps ironically, James endows her with a superior authority. Not only through her appearance is she authoritative, but the text seems to have a predestination of encountering Fortune as the final authority figure: The ‘sudayn weltering’ of Fortune’s ‘sloppar’ wheel recalls the waves of the tempestuous sea (1135-6): ‘Upon the wavis weltering to and fro, / So infortunate was us’ that began his journey (162-3). This progression towards Fortune becomes an instruction manual for kingship as ‘bad fortune is likened with...youthful self-government [and] good fortune with a prudent God-fearing kingship’, thus, culminating with a positive reversal of fortune, Mapstone suggests this corresponds with James’s approach towards governance as ‘James presented himself as a restorer of order and peace’.29 Therefore, because the authorial advice is received within the dream, this demonstrates that James’s sense of ‘regulatory principles of self-government came essentially from within himself’, and because the narrator’s thankful address appears outside of the dream, the poem ends in a mood of “Boethian ‘felicitee’” to indicate that the narrator has learnt from his experience and the advice of the authority figures, proving him worthy of kingship.30 In conclusion, the authors interrogate literary authorities for different purposes. As the narrators encounter multiple authorities, texts, and figures, whereas James commemorates and reinterprets these authorities, Chaucer problematises the truth value of literature, and Henryson complicates the power of literature. Yet, in desiring to diverge from their sources to produce new texts and explore new themes, they all establish their own literary authorities.
27 Boffey, Fifteenth-Century English Dream Visions, p.142. Whitehead, p.162. 28 Oxford English Dictionary
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Bibliography Primary Resources Chaucer, Geoffrey, ‘The House of Fame’, in Riverside Chaucer ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp.347-373. Henryson, Robert, ‘The Lion and the Mouse’, in Robert Henryson, The Complete Works: Fables ed. by David J. Parkinson (Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010), Robbins Library Digital Projects [accessed 11 April 2018] James I of Scotland, ‘The Kingis Quair’, in Fifteenth-Century English Dream Visions ed. by Julia Boffey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp.90-157.
Secondary Resources
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Chance, Jane, The Mythographic Chaucer: The fabulation of sexual politics (London: University of Minnestota Press, 1995). Clemen, Wolfgang, Chaucer’s Early Poetry (London: Methuen & Co, 1963). Clifford, Robert, “'A Man of Great Auctorite': The Search for Truth in Textual Authority in Geoffrey Chaucer's The House of Fame”, Manchester University Press, 81:1 (1999), 155-165.
Delany, Sheila, Chaucer’s House of Fame: The Poetics of Skeptical Fideism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972).
Dempster, Germaine, Dramatic Irony in Chaucer (New York: The Humanities Press, 1959).
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 98-106 Jessica Inzani 104 Edwards, Robert R., The Dream of Chaucer: Representation and Reflection in the Early Narratives (London: Duke University Press, 1989). Ferster, Judith, Chaucer on Interpretation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985). Fisher, John H., The Importance of Chaucer (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992). Flyer, John M., Chaucer and Ovid (London: Yale University Press, 1979). Furrow, Melissa, Expectations of Romance: The Reception of a Genre in Medieval England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2009). Gopen, George D., “The Essential Seriousness of Robert Henryson's ‘Moral Fables’: A Study in Structure”, Studies in Philology, 82:1 (1985), 42–59. Gray, Douglas, Robert Henryson (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1979). Horobin, Simon, Chaucer’s Language (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Jordan, Robert M., Chaucer’s Poetics and the Modern Reader (London: University of California Press, 1987). Justman, Stewart, ‘Medieval Monism and Abuse of Authority in Chaucer’, The Chaucer Review, 11:2 (1976), 95–111. Kane, George, Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). Kelley, Theresa M., Reinventing Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). King, Pamela. M., ‘Chaucer, Chaucerians and the theme of poetry’, in Chaucer and Fifteenth- Century Poetry ed. by Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen (Exeter: Short Run Press, 1991), pp.1- 14. Kruger, Steven F., ‘Dialogue, Debate, and Dream vision’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100–1500 ed. by Larry Scanlon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.71-82. Lynch, Kathryn L., “Robert Henryson's 'Doolie Dreame' and the Late Medieval Dream Vision Tradition”, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 109:2 (2010), 177-197. Machan, Tim William, “Robert Henryson and Father Aesop: Authority in the ‘Moral Fables’”, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 12 (1990), 193-214. MacQueen, John, Robert Henryson: A study of the major narrative poems (Oxford: The Claredon Press, 1967). Mapstone, Sally, ‘Kingship and the Kingis Quair’, in The Long Fifteenth Century, ed. by Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp.51-70. Mapstone, Sally, ‘Robert Henryson’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100–1500, ed. by Larry Scanlon (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.243-256. Margival, Nicole de, Le Dit de la panthère, ed. by B. Ribémont (Paris, 2000). Marlin, John, “Robert Henryson's 'Morall Fabilles': Irony, Allegory, and Humanism in Late- Medieval Fables”, Fifteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2009), 133-147. Martin, Priscilla, Chaucer’s Women: Nuns, Wives and Amazons (London: Macmillan, 1990). McKenna, Steven R., Robert Henryson’s Tragic Vision (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1994).
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Middle English Dictionary < https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med- idx?type=id&id=MED37312> [accessed 1 May 2018] Miller, Robert P., Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). Miller, T. S., “Forms of Perspective and Chaucer's Dream Spaces: Memory and the Catalogue in ‘The House of Fame’”, Style, 48:4 (2014), 479–495. Miller, T. S., ‘Writing Dreams to Good: Reading as Writing and Writing as Reading in Chaucer's Dream Visions’, Style, 45:3 (2011), 528–548. Newlyn, E. S., ‘Robert Henryson and the Popular Fable Tradition in the Middle Ages’, Journal of Popular Culture, 14:1 (1980), 108-118. Overbeck, Pat Trefzger, “The ‘Man of Gret Auctorite’ in Chaucer's ‘House of Fame’”, Modern Philology, 73:2 (1975), 157–161. Oxford English Dictionary < https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ermine> [accessed 12 April 2018] Patch, Howard Rollin, The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature (Harvard University Press, 1927). Phillips, Helen, ‘Frames and Narrators in Chaucerian Poetry’, in The Long Fifteenth Century ed. by Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp.71-98. Quinn, William A., “Chaucer's Recital Presence in the ‘House of Fame’ and the Embodiment of Authority”, The Chaucer Review, 43:2 (2008), 171–196. Riedel, Frederick Carl, ‘The Meaning of Chaucer's House of Fame’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 27:4 (1928), 441–469. Ruffolo, Lara, “Literary Authority and the Lists of Chaucer's ‘House of Fame’: Destruction and Definition through Proliferation”, The Chaucer Review, 27:4 (1993), 325–341. Smith, Greta, “Readership, the Fables of the Elegiac Romulus, and the ‘Morall Fabillis’ of Robert Henryson”, Philological Quarterly, 94:1/2 (2015), 51-69. Terrell, Katherine H., ‘Reallocation of Hermeneutic Authority in Chaucer’s House of Fame’, The Chaucer Review, 31:3 (1997), 279-290. Timmis, Patrick, ‘Saturn and Soliloquy: Henryson’s Conversation with Chaucerian Free Will’, The Chaucer Review, 51:4 (2016), 453-468. Tinkle, Theresa, Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sexuality, Hermeneutics, and English Poetry (California: Stanford University Press, 1996). Scanlon, Larry, Narrative, Authority, and Power: The medieval exemplum and the Chaucerian tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Strohm, Paul, ‘The social and literary scene in England’, in The Cambridge Chaucer Companion, ed. by Piero Boitani and Jill Mann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.1-19. Wang, Laura, ‘Robert Henryson and the Animal in the Mirror’, The Review of English Studies, 66:273 (2015), 20–39. Wheatley, Edward, “Scholastic Commentary and Robert Henryson's ‘Morall Fabillis’: The Aesopic Fables”, Studies in Philology, 91:1 (1994), 70–99.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 98-106 Jessica Inzani 106 White, Terence Hanbury, The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century (Wisconsin: Parallel Press, 2002). Whitehead, Christiania, Castles of the Mind: A study of Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003). Windeatt, Barry, ‘Literary Structures in Chaucer’, in The Cambridge Chaucer Companion, ed. by Piero Boitani and Jill Mann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp.195-212.
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Conflict as Performative Masculinity in Icelandic Sagas
Callum Walker
Masculinity is a subject within Icelandic sagas that exists in a state of fluidity. The performance of it shifts according to both the needs of the narrative and the ways different types of conflict impact masculinity. Characters adopt more culturally male or female coded characteristics as the narrative develops, with both physical and non-physical conflict impacting this change, and therefore changing the character’s performance of masculinity. The physical conflict in The Saga of the Jomsvikings is far removed from the verbal, non-physical conflicts from Skalds, mainly occurring between Gunnlaug and Hrafn in The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue. Eirik the Red’s Saga we see the impact that this performance can have on the narrative. Characters utilise the established standards of the physically masculine against the non- physically feminine as a way of insulting warriors, and potentially critiquing the idea of such a rigid gendered divide itself. Judith Butler argues that ‘gender is not a radical choice or project that reflects a merely individual choice, but neither is it imposed or inscribed upon the individual. [...] the gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space and enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives’.1 Within the context of Icelandic sagas, this means that characters perform to existing cultural standards of gender rather than performing alone – they are only known in relation to existing standards of gender. It could be argued that these pre-existing directives do not exist in Icelandic sagas, being that most are highly fictionalised with supernatural elements and thus bear little relevance to concepts of gender. This is not the case, as the names of characters gives an important insight into what attributes as a society and culture were viewed as masculine and what were viewed as feminine. Men are almost always described by their physical attributes. Within The Saga of the Jomsvikings appears ‘Einarr the tiny’, ‘Gormr the mighty’, ‘Hávarðr the hewer’, and ‘Þhórðr the left-handed’ and this is far from an exhaustive list.2 3 4 5 Despite the fact that not all of these descriptions are heroic, (‘tiny’ and ‘left-handed’ carrying connotations of otherness in contrast with other more heroic descriptions) all of them rely on a physical description of characters. There are even contrasting positive and negative physical descriptions for the same person with little mention of their mental abilities, ‘Sigvaldi the son of Earl Haraldr, had sallow features and an ugly nose. But he was very tall and very nimble and had excellent eyesight’.6 Opposing this are the descriptions of the women in the saga, ‘a very intelligent daughter called Þyri’, and ‘a wise and popular daughter called Álof’.7 8 Importantly, both of these women are won as brides by male characters in the narrative, presenting the attributes of intelligence, wisdom, and popularity as feminine ideals to aspire to and be won by male suitors. Admittedly, some characters fall outside of this physical masculine/mental feminine dichotomy, either through being men described with a more mental description (‘[Fjólir] was wise, cunning, and malevolent’) or through their descriptions being too vague to assign as either mental or
1 Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre Journal, 40:4 (1988), 519-531 (p. 526). 2 N. F. Blake, trans., The Saga of the Jomsvikings (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962), p. 33. 3 Ibid., p. 2. 4 Ibid., p. 30. 5 Ibid., p. 34. 6 Ibid., p. 19. 7 Ibid., p.2. 8 Ibid., p. 11.
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physical descriptions.9 This is the case with ‘Geirmundr the white’, whose name could possibly be a physical description of white hair or pale skin, or a comment on his character, with white carrying connotations of innocence and purity.10 Many women are described as being fair or beautiful, but usually these descriptions are less frequent than descriptions of internal attributes. These titles and descriptions should be considered outliers however, as the vast majority of names across multiple sagas follow this gendered split. The Saga of the Jomsvikings is not the only text to have these gendered titles. Eirik the Red’s Saga also features this, with the reader being reminded of the men’s associations with combat with ‘Hrafn the Dueller’.11 The clearest division between the physical masculine and the mental feminine appear in the opening passage describing Oleif’s family, ‘As his wife he took Aud the Deep-minded, the daughter of Ketil Flat-nose’.12 These titles juxtapose one another, a positive, mental description in ‘deep-minded’ and the negative physical ‘flat-nose’. In doing so, the writer has furthered the gendered difference between the descriptions, making clear the traits associated with each gender. These names are more than just simple descriptions and are more so the lasting reputation of these characters. For many of these characters, whether historical or not, these short descriptions give all we know about them. The gnomic poem Hávamál makes clear this importance of reputation as a way of securing a legacy, ‘I know one thing which never dies: / the reputation of each dead man’.13 The cultural importance of these titles and descriptions in maintaining the legacy of each described individual and the clearly gendered associations of different descriptions helps define the existing directives that characters perform gender in relation to. Feminine directives are generally internal, like wisdom and intelligence, whereas male directives are grounded in physicality and strength. How these directives are interpreted varies with the different types of conflict within the texts. Physical conflict as performance of masculinity is integral to the Jomsvikings. Their laws dictated that all the men must be of fighting age, ‘no man should become a member who was older than fifty or younger than eighteen’.14 This age difference is contested with the arrival of the twelve year-old Vagn, who must prove his worthiness to join this group as a boy through physical conflict, thus proving his masculinity. Similarly, the city of Jómsborg was off limits to women, ‘No one must have a woman in the city’.15 This meant that the city was a place of masculinity, only inhabited by men and only those men capable of fighting as a means of asserting this. This shows the importance of the performance of masculinity within The Saga of the Jomsvikings, being integral to their customs. The main conflict occurring in the saga is during the battle of Hjörungavagr. Almost all of the combatants are men, with the only female presence in the battle being the witches Þorgerðr and Irpa. Unlike the physical conflict between the Jomsvikings and the Norwegians, the inclusion of this feminine presence shifts this into a supernatural conflict. The Jomsvikings remark on this during the battle, making a point of distinguishing their female presence, ‘”I don’t think that we are fighting against men alone”’.16 The depiction of the witches here is a negative one through the use of the word ‘ófreskir’ as a description of the warriors who can see the witches first.17 Blake translates this in relation to the Norwegian dialectal ‘ufriskje’, meaning ‘ghost, what causes fear (especially evil spirits’).18 Many sagas feature supernatural
9 Ibid., p. 8. 10 Ibid., p. 33. 11 Keneva Kunz, trans., ‘Eirik the Red’s Saga’, in The Sagas of the Icelanders, ed. by Örnófur Thorsson and Bernard Scudder (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 654. 12 Ibid., p. 653 13 Carolyne Larrington, trans., The Poetic Edda, Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 23. 14 Blake, Jomsvikings, p. 17. 15 Ibid., p. 18. 16 Ibid., p. 37. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid.
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elements but here they are scorned, possibly due to their female associations and the fact that witches do not partake in the physical conflict in the same manner as the Jomsvikings, instead fighting at range when ‘they saw that an arrow flew from every finger of the witch and each one found its mark’.19 The witches are not the only combatants to not take part in the physical conflict. There are numerous skalds that take part, many of whom have no part in the physical combat and instead compose verse during the battle. Skjald-meyjar-Einarr even refuses to take part in the combat as his lord is not generous enough, declaring ‘I’m off to join Sigvaldi; this earl gives grudgingly’.20 Einarr here prompts conflict with the Earl as a means of attaining more wealth – the Earl being forced in the face of the skald insulting him in front of his men to offer him a set of engraved scales to stop him from fleeing. There is no physical conflict between the two: Einarr’s insults are solely verbal, lacking the masculine impact of the Jomsviking’s physical violence. It’s interesting to note that the Earl does not give a weapon to Einarr as payment as would be typical for a gift, as noted in The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, ‘”Other kings give fine treasures – good swords or splendid gold bracelets – as rewards for poems”’.21 This could be a deliberate action by the Earl to point at the fact Einarr is unwillingly to fight and meant as a slight against his masculinity. However, Einarr is still at the battle and boasts in his verse of his physical prowess, ‘The bender of the wound-snake will not repulse me / when I meet the warrior’, the ‘wound-snake’ here being a kenning for a spear or sword.22 Einarr does not appear in the saga after this point so it is unknown if he fulfils his boast. While this may be as a result of the scale of the conflict meaning the writer focused on more central characters, it’s possible he didn’t join the battle at all, instead performing masculinity quite literally – boasting of his physical exploits without actually having to achieve them. When exploring the masculinity of Skjald-meyjar-Einarr it’s important to examine his name. The word ‘meyjar’ is the genitive form of ‘mær’, but more importantly it is a feminine word with two definitions. Either a poet, or ‘maid, girl, virgin’.23 Being Einarr’s title, this is his description given by those around him, showing that he exists outside of the physical masculine world of the Jomsvikings, in part to his lack of engagement in physical conflict as a skald. The titular character of The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent Tongue also exists outside of this entirely physical masculine world. After insulting Thorir, one of Earl Eirik Hakonarson’s followers, Gunnlaug prompts him to violence which forces the Earl to order him to ‘Leave it be’, and that ‘Real men don’t pay attention to things like that’.24 This portrays skaldic insults as not masculine. Despite prompting physical violence (as Einarr does in The Saga of the Jomsvikings,) Gunnlaug’s attempt at conflict has not been sufficient enough to warrant a physical confrontation, and is therefore not true performance of masculinity in the Earl’s eyes. Kit R. Christensen argues that even in these simple verbal disputes there is still an underlying element of physical violence that is ever present, arguing that ‘even these nonviolent conflict resolution strategies presupposed the agonistic personalities of the dominant males involved’.25 This might be the reason that Gunnlaug is never fully feminised for his lack of physical conflict – it underlies what he says and therefore helps him retain this performance of masculinity.
19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 33. 21 Katrina C. Attwood, trans., ‘The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue’, in The Sagas of the Icelanders, ed. by Örnófur Thorsson and Bernard Scudder (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 575. 22 Blake, Jomsvikings, p. 33. 23 Geir T. Zoëga, A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926), p. 306. 24 Attwood, Gunnlaug, p. 571. 25 Kit R. Christensen, Revenge and Social Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 75.
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Gunnlaug does have moments of physical conflict in the saga, particularly in his duel in Iceland with Hrafn late in the saga. Here most of the conflict is verbal, with the two poets taunting each other in verse before combat. The writer makes a point of establishing that this does not compare to the physical conflict he takes part in when raiding the Hebrides, where he ‘proved himself to be a very brave and valiant fellow, and very manly’.26 This description of skalds taking part in combat is rare in the saga in that every other time there is a battle it is won through trickery. This is the case earlier with Gunnlaug duelling the berserker Thororm where he tricks him into believing he is fighting with a blunted sword. Later, the mortally wounded Hrafn only kills Gunnlaug through trickery, making him take off his helmet to fetch him water. Gunnlaug even remarks upon this himself, saying ‘”Now you have cruelly deceived me”’ and that Hrafn had ‘”behaved in an unmanly way, since I trusted you’”.27 Much like the honour-driven Jomsvikings, trickery here is looked down upon. Hrafn’s trickery is something that emasculates him, though as this is said in dialogue from Gunnlaug it is likely just Gunnlaug’s opinion and meant as an insult. Gunnlaug’s trickery of Thororm is viewed very differently, where instead Gunnlaug wins ‘great fame for [defeating him] in England and beyond’.28 This difference might be as a result of Thororm being a bandit and Hrafn being a respected skald, but it shows that trickery (and therefore, non- masculine behaviour) is acceptable through some forms of conflict, depending on the victim. Conflict for Hrafn and Gunnlaug is not always a performance of masculinity as it is with the Jomsvikings. For them, conflict is mostly verbal and when it eventually escalates to physical conflict, they have to use trickery to succeed which is remarked upon for being unmanly. Conflict as a means of performing masculinity is also present in Eirik the Red’s Saga during the confrontation with the natives. Despite the expedition containing both men and women, only men initially actually partake in the battle, ‘The men took up their red shields and went towards them’.29 When the men retreat from the battle Freydis insults their masculinity as they flee, ‘Why do you flee such miserable opponents, men like you who look to me to be capable of killing them off like sheep’.30 Freydis’ actions during the battle operate in a strange area when viewing conflict as a performance of masculinity. Despite the overwhelmingly masculine connotations of physical combat, she engages with it as a pregnant woman. However, her performance during combat is still feminine as she uses her breasts to win victory, ‘Free one of her breasts from her shift, she smacked the sword with it. This frightened the natives who turned and ran’.31 Here Freydis engages in physical conflict but it is not a performance of masculinity, instead being an expression of her femininity. It’s rare for a woman to partake in combat within sagas, and even less so to not adopt masculine actions as she does so. This might be a way of subverting this existing narrative convention as a means of showing Freydis’ strength and willingness to fight to protect her unborn child. Alternatively, Freydis’ actions might just be a narrative tool to highlight the cowardice of Karlsefni and his men. Freydis herself remarks that ‘Had I a weapon I’m sure I would fight better than any of you’, in reference to the men.32 By proving Freydis’ claim to be correct (herself routing the natives, something the men were incapable of doing) the saga emphasises the cowardice of the men by showing a woman to be superior to them. An argument could be made that as Freydis is partaking in physical conflict she is performing masculinity, but this is not the case as her femininity is highlighted as a means to comment on the men’s own masculinity. The use of conflict as a means to perform masculinity in these three sagas is something with varied effects due to the range of conflict within them. Masculinity is performed in relation to directives established through the naming conventions of characters. Men are described with predominantly physical names detailing their appearance or their skill in battle, whereas
26 Attwood, Gunnlaug, p. 589. 27 Ibid., p. 591. 28 Ibid., p. 574. 29 Kunz, Eirik, p. 670. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., p. 671. 32 Ibid., p. 670.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 107-112 Callum Walker 111 women’s names focus more on internal skills like wisdom and intelligence. The Jomsvikings lend themselves well to this world of masculinity with their battles, skill at arms, and male- exclusive city. Their treatment of the few female (albeit, supernatural) characters in the saga shows their disdain for unmanly, non-physical conflict. When men perform non-physical conflict, as is the case with the skalds present in both The Saga of the Jomsvikings and The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, this performance of masculinity becomes more nuanced. While Gunnlaug, Hrafn, and Einarr are all men, they attempt to distance themselves from masculine physical conflict and instead adopt the more feminine aspects of wisdom and intelligence. As a consequence they are treated as somewhat effeminate by those around them. When they do engage in physical conflict they are praised as manly by their peers, but when they use trickery within this concept it is seen as unmanly and therefore shameful. In Eirik the Red’s Saga, physical conflict is partaken in by men, with the exception of Freydis. Though performing a masculine action, she performs it using feminine means. This could be a way of insulting the masculinity of the men by proving that a woman is their equal in combat, or might be a critique of the idea of a male-exclusive physical conflict in itself. Overall, the use of conflict as a performance of masculinity is not as clear-cut as might be assumed within these sagas. While physical conflict remains a pinnacle of masculinity, those engaging in non-physical conflict have a more negotiated position within this scale of masculinity, not quite fully masculine but not quite fully feminine either. This gives an insight into on Norse attitudes on the interplay between conflict and gender.
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Bibliography
Blake, N. F., trans., The Saga of the Jomsvikings (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962). Butler, Judith, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’, Theatre Journal, 40:4 (1988), 519-531. Christensen, Kit R., Revenge and Social Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Larrington, Carolye, trans., The Poetic Edda, Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Thorsson, Örnófur and Bernard Scudder, eds., The Sagas of the Icelanders (London: Penguin, 2000). Zoëga, Geir T., A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926).
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‘The pleasure of intelligence and the price of invention’: An Exploration of the Problematic Pursuit of Knowledge and its Relationship with Socialisation in Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, The Prince of Abissinia and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.1 Lucy Wride
Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, a timeless moral tale, ‘rests upon the notion of the insatiability of the human mind.’2 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, likewise, though ambiguously, critiques ‘the Romantic genius’, for relinquishing domestic relationships in favour of pursuing egotistical energies.3 In the midst of the Industrial Revolution, Shelley’s ‘Monster making […] plays out, in Gothic exaggeration, the fear [of] the new science and its technological products.’4 Both authors condemn man’s voracious yearning for more, specifically within, or rather, trying to exceed, the bounds of knowledge. The pursuit of metaphysical desires motivates almost all of Johnson and Shelley’s characters within both novels, with sociability emerging as an inherent construct necessary to achieve the individuals’ desired happiness and success. The removal of human companionship, which is increasingly driven away in pursuit of knowledge, is proven to have calamitous effects, particularly in search of narcissistic gratification. Both authors utilise predominantly characterisation to depict these pitfalls, didactically warning, as Gómez asserts: ‘knowledge has the potential for community, mutuality and connectivity, but also the potential to make us strangers to ourselves and to each other.’5 Therefore, sociability and integrity must remain at the forefront of each endeavour. Victor Frankenstein emerges as an implicit condemnation of both the rapid technological progresses and the polymathic Romantics of the nineteenth century, regarding mandatory respect for humanization. From childhood two chief tribulations of the megalomaniac’s desire to learn ‘the secrets of heaven and earth’ materialise.6 Firstly, the scholar outlines his pursuit as principally, and problematically, insular; unsupervised, he recalls being ‘left to struggle with a child’s blindness, added to a student’s thirst for knowledge’ (p.40). A Lockean tabula rasa, Frankenstein’s scholastic ambitions are initially malleable, but upon encountering the pre-Enlightenment work of Cornelius Agrippa, spurned by a ‘fatal impulse’, he is led to ruin (p.32). Poovey sees Shelley’s antisocial dimension as her most
1 Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), ch.8.
2 Fred Parker, ‘The scepticism of Johnson’s Rasselas’, in The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, ed. by Greg Clingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p.128.
3 Mark Hansen, ‘“Not Thus, after All, Would Life Be Given": Technesis, Technology and the Parody of Romantic Poetics in 'Frankenstein'’, Studies in Romanticism, (1997), 575-609 (p.580).
4 Martin Tropp, Images of fear: how horror stories helped shape Modern Culture (1818-1918) (McFarland, 1990), p.34. 5 Claudia Rozas Gómez, ‘Strangers and orphans: Knowledge and mutuality in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’, Educational philosophy and theory, 45:4 (2013), 360-370 (p.361). 6 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1993), p.30.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 113-120 ‘The pleasure of intelligence and the price of invention’: An Exploration of the Problematic Pursuit of Knowledge and its Relationship with Socialisation in Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, The Prince of Abissinia and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 114 potent critique of ‘the indulged imagination.’7 Yet Victor’s educational gluttony proves equally troublesome, as he reflects: ‘in scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder’ (p.40). Indicating the insatiability of knowledge; private intellectual desire is outlined as dangerous, rather than admirable. Although clearly gifted, Victor lacks the key ingredient for success: socialisation. For Gómez, pursuing knowledge to singularly benefit the self, ‘devoid of critical dialogue and engagement with others’, portends inevitable destruction.8 Leaving home, cutting his immediate domestic ties, Frankenstein isolates himself in study, consumed singularly by scientism, having ‘lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit’ (43). Intent on creating life, Victor’s aspiration is comparable to ‘the radical desire that energized some of the best known English Romantic poems, the desire to elevate human beings into living gods.’9 Yet the Modern Prometheus ‘finds nothing admirable in what should be a remarkable creation’, which Rauch attributes to the omission of ‘the humane qualities that clearly make knowledge effective, particularly nurturing and caring.’10 Considered Shelley’s most overtly feminist criticism, the missing ingredient from the creation is the previously biological necessity of a mother. Creations consequently, even born from the highest degree of intellect, are outlined as accursed, should the invention be void of human relations. Further, instead of creating something to benefit society, as is the assumed moralistic mandate of scientific discovery, Frankenstein instead fulfils his egotistically rooted longings, to have ‘many happy and excellent natures […] owe their being to [him]’ (p.43). Only upon destroying the creature’s female companion does he finally comprehend the wider impact on civilisation, reflecting upon ‘the beings of [his] own species […] because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery’ (p.165). This illustration simultaneously envelops the voracious nature of Victor’s pursuit. Destroying the product of ‘a filthy process’ (p.126), the inventor resolves ‘that to create another like the fiend [he] had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness’ (p.131). A closer reading, though, reveals extreme irony in Frankenstein’s resolution; as he is simultaneously ‘employed in cleaning and arranging [his] chemical apparatus’, items he apparently will never use again (p.130). Rauch sees this instance as ‘a moment of honesty in an otherwise entirely fabricated narrative’, implicitly enforcing the toxic, inescapability of education.11 The pursuit of knowledge, for Shelley, takes on a very sinister guise. Like Goethe’s Faust, Frankenstein, as Mellor explains, ‘has sold his soul to gain forbidden knowledge’, and in ‘attempt to override evolutionary development and to create a new species sui generis’, ‘becomes a parodic perpetrator of the unorthodox creationist theory.’12 While spared from the underworld, Victor is nevertheless punished for his egocentric misuse of knowledge, particularly for discounting societal needs. Although his creation is liberated, the creator remains confined; bound by an eternal secret, and with this, a private duty to destroy it. Attempting to extinguish the creature, Frankenstein himself programmes into a kind of technology, referencing a ‘vengeance that burned within [him] […] as the mechanical impulse
7 Mary Poovey, "My Hideous Progeny: Mary Shelley and the Feminization of Romanticism", Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 95, (1980), 332-47 (p.334).
8 Gómez, p.365. 9 Anne Mellor, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (New York: Routledge, 1989), pp.70- 71.
10 Alan Rauch, ‘The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein’, Studies in Romanticism, (1995), 227-253 (p.228). 11 Rauch, p.233. 12 Mellor, p.101.
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of some power of which [he] was unconscious’ (my emphasis) (p.156). Having personified the very ‘alien machinism’ he created, and loathes, Shelley forewarns the pressing technological risks present in contemporary society, which are not only capable of exceeding man, but eventually- with an omission of sociability- destroying him.13 To compliment this, an epistolary narrative is utilised, with the young explorer, Walton, relaying the tragic scientist’s story. Similarly embarking on a quest of discovery, Walton emphatically doubles the young Frankenstein. Divergently wishing to surpass the geographical rather than the metaphysical, Walton also partakes in a notably collective enterprise, and, writing letters to his sister, maintains connection with the domestic world. Thus, Walton is able to act on the more demanding human concerns of his expedition- namely saving his crew- and so aborts, Victor having warned him in the novel’s opening and closing. Frankenstein’s admonitions can be taken as ‘an apt moral’ for the reader too (p.24), as he pleads: ‘[l]earn from me […] how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow’ (p.42). Tropp sees Frankenstein’s ending as typically Gothic, ‘with the representative of a new generation witnessing the destruction of the old.’14 Yet Walton’s clear ambivalence towards his withdrawal is simultaneously indicative ‘that others will be sure to continue down that path’, referencing the ambiguous revolutionised future, and the persistently striving Romantic attitude.15 Johnson likewise portrays characters deeply affected by their misplaced sociability, favouring instead, isolated, knowledgeable pursuit. In this regard, numerous characters in Rasselas align with traits of Victor, though proving less tragic, and with reversible flaws. Imlac, similarly consumed by intellectual aspiration, begins ‘drinking at the fountain of knowledge, to quench the thirst of curiosity’ and, much like Walton, ‘began silently to despise riches’, preferring the admiration achieved through knowledgeable conquest (ch.8). However, like both of Shelley’s aforementioned characters, Imlac is thwarted by his pursuits and, returning home, disgusted by his education, finds his father dead with his former companions struggling to remember him. Thus, his imagined fame is disenchanted. Johnson consequently chastises the consumption of knowledge for glory, yet Imlac, unlike Victor, realises this in time to save himself, retiring to the Happy Valley. Tomarken sees Imlac as ‘reminiscent of the eighteenth- century beatus vir, the man who turned to the natural garden in order to understand the Lucretian order of things’, retreating for contemplation, but also from sheer disappointment, having failed to progress as an esteemed intellectual.16 Further, Tomarken contends ‘Johnson modifies the beatus vir convention to make Imlac’s tale within a tale serve as an illustration of learning that involves the thwarting of hopes and expectations.’17 So Imlac’s somewhat dejected history becomes a warning for not only Rasselas, but the reader too: to not place knowledge as an exceptional means in which to achieve happiness. Considering the more extreme characters who reject socialisation, the hermit and the astronomer equivalently pose as hyperbolic critiques of isolation. The hermit, like Imlac, withdraws from the offensiveness of society, admitting he was ‘impelled by resentment than led by devotion into solitude’ (ch.21). Renowned for his wisdom, the recluse, like Victor, hoards his knowledge, rather than constructively educating mankind on their misconduct, which instigated his seclusion. Meeting Rasselas and his companions, and more significantly witnessing ‘the important sociability of the travellers’,18 the hermit denounces his lifestyle choice, confessing: ‘[t]he life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly
13 Hansen, p.608 14 Tropp, p.42 15 Ibid. 16 Edward Tomarken, Johnson, Rasselas, and the Choice of Criticism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), p.55. 17 Ibid. 18 Parker, p.141.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 113-120 ‘The pleasure of intelligence and the price of invention’: An Exploration of the Problematic Pursuit of Knowledge and its Relationship with Socialisation in Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, The Prince of Abissinia and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 116 devout’ (ch.21). Resolving to return to the very city which he so vehemently fled from, the eremite ‘gazed with rapture’ upon Cairo; in awe at the prospect of reuniting with civilisation, and decisively shedding his insincere status of a devout intellectual (ch.21). The concluding individual introduced in Rasselas is the astronomer. Driven insane by his own seclusion, the genius believes he has the ‘great office’ of controlling the weather, and, although appearing happy upon introduction, repents his sequestered lifestyle (ch.42). When questioned by the prince on the choice of life, the astronomer finds himself unable to offer instruction, having mistakenly ‘passed [his] time in study without experience – in the attainment of sciences which can for the most part be but remotely useful to mankind’ (ch.46). So, he, like Victor, has squandered domestic relations; and in doing so blasted his chances of happiness. Thus, both academics choose to pursue knowledge- unserviceable to society- at a very high price. For both the hermit and the astronomer, it is not until achieving their fortunate, microcosmic sociability, in the form of Rasselas’ entourage, that they can comprehend their flawed lifestyles. Davis notes the ‘strong, personally embodied attitude to life’, present across Johnson’s works.19 An academic himself, though obsessed with maintaining socialisation, Johnson notoriously dreaded his own academic inadequacy. Consumed in aspiring to disproportionate overachievement, the author was recorded questioning his accomplishments in conversation with Hannah More: ‘How can I tell when I have done enough?’.20 So, like his own characters, Johnson censures not only sequestration- notoriously fearing insanity- but also the desire to learn beyond achievable bounds, personally experiencing that it is not conducive to contentment. In the conclusion, where famously, and frustratingly, ‘nothing is concluded’ (ch.49), Tomarken notes ‘[t]he only resolution is a negative one: isolation […] is a mistake because it prevents the self-correction possible in the society of the world at large.’21 So, for Victor and Walton, and Imlac, the hermit and the astronomer, the search for knowledge can often disastrously prompt a separation from society, and eventually, the self. Yet, unlike Shelley’s tragic protagonist, Johnson’s characters prove capable of re-joining society; so, the conclusion is not so adverse as Tomarken claims. Ultimately, both authors evidently necessitate sociability and a controlled, moralistic pursuit of knowledge, crucially renouncing egotistical motives. As aforementioned, the reclusive Victor is incapable of creating something valuable to society, and as Rauch explains, consequently creates something as repulsive to civilisation, as socialisation is to the scientist.22 The subsequent creature, or rather, ‘body of knowledge’, is inevitably problematic, as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ knowledge, unexplained, will have a ‘monstrous quality’ and to remove such requires ‘de-monstration’; communicating the unknown in order to avoid the preordained epistemological dilemma.23 Yet, rejected by his own creator, there is no hope for the creature to be understood and so, conjointly, accepted and socialised. Critics repeatedly see the creature as ‘a striking image through which to visualize fears engendered by the Industrial Revolution’, Shelley having ‘created a model for popular fears of the factory system in her horror story of man and Monster […] in concert with what the
19 Philip Davis, ‘Extraordinarily Ordinary: the life of Samuel Johnson,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, ed. by Greg Clingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p.8. 20 William Roberts, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More, 2nd edn. (London, 1834), p.376. 21 Tomarken, p.101. 22 Rauch, p.236-237. 23 Ibid.
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Romantic poets around her were writing on the subject.’24 The creature’s accidental gigantic stature is considered a reflection of the first enormous steam engines populating the English landscape- the ‘dark satanic mills’ in Blake’s Jerusalem (1808). Wordsworth was also troubled by the effects of industrialization, initially articulating approval in his Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), but by 1814 overtly denouncing the vices of the Industrial Revolution, specifically in the eighth and ninth books of his epic poem The Excursion. These unexplained technological advancements caused significant anxiety throughout the early nineteenth century, so Victor’s enigmatic creature was likewise, contemporarily, a terrifying fusion of man and machinery. Ironically though, disparate from his master, the creature longs to be understood and socialised by the very civilisations that fear him; desperately seeking companionship and basing his entire pursuit of knowledge upon thus. The creature voyeuristically obsesses over the DeLacey family, anxious to join their affectionate homestead. Recognising he must first learn to communicate with them, the creature treats language, the ‘godlike science’, as an all-consuming discipline, a lifeline for socialisation (p.86). Before attempting to reach out, though, the creature learns of his own ‘miserable deformity’ (p.88), seeing for the first time his reflection in ‘a transparent pool’ (p.89). This revelation powerfully teaches the creature that literacy, or any education, will never win him acceptance into society, but rather, knowledge ‘only discovered to [him] more clearly what a wretched outcast [he] was’ (p.101). Increasingly estranged with increased education, I disagree with Gómez that ‘[t]he more the Creature learns, the more connected he feels to others.’25 Rather, I approve Small’s view, that the more the creature learns, the more alienated he becomes from his objective; as before any education, he is rather ‘in the happy state of pre-lapsarian Adam.’26 Having not yet eaten the knowledgeable fruit, the creature remains hopeful of being accepted, and, upon devouring this poisonous understanding, learns of his eternal seclusion. Unsupervised in his studies, like Frankenstein, the creature misinterprets his conveniently discovered books, treating them as ‘histories’ (p.98). Relating himself to Adam, then Satan in Paradise Lost, the creature tries to identify with other beings, supporting Storey’s assertion that ‘even as it makes us aware of ourselves, reading tends strongly to delude us about ourselves, as Rousseau experiences.’27 Contemplating the education of the creature without equivalently drawing on Rousseau would be difficult. While disordered prior to his education, the creature, like Rousseau’s ‘natural man’ can satisfy his primal desires: feeling ‘pleasure’ at the sight of the moon, ‘delight’ in the warmth of a fire, and ‘wonder’ at the rising sun (pp.80-81). Whereas, upon associating with society- though disastrously as an outsider- the more desolate the creature becomes, impelled by misreading and rejection. Society, as Rousseau explained, provides the individual with self-consciousness, which, once gained, cannot be discarded.28 The creature’s consciousness significantly being his own individuality, as ‘a blot upon the earth’, a man-made artefact of techno-science (93). Subsequently wishing ‘to shake off all thought and feeling’, the creature discovers that ‘knowledge’, or more precisely, self-consciousness, ‘clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock’ (p.93). We may consequently question would the creature be happier illiterate and oblivious to his own isolation? Indeed, McWhir posits the creature as
24 Tropp, p.36 25 Gómez, p.365. 26 Christopher Small, Ariel like a Harpy: Shelley, Mary and Frankenstein (London: Gollancz, 1972), p.63.
27 Benjamin Storey, ‘Self-Knowledge and Sociability in the Thought of Rousseau’, Perspectives on Political Science, 41:3 (2012), 146-54 (p.147).
28 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by Mallory Conyngham (Virginia: Blacksburg, 2001).
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 113-120 ‘The pleasure of intelligence and the price of invention’: An Exploration of the Problematic Pursuit of Knowledge and its Relationship with Socialisation in Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, The Prince of Abissinia and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 118 ‘a literate Caliban’, ‘deformed by his social and literary experience’, ‘given no Rosseau to read […] he comes to believe in the anti-Rosseau position that man is weak without society.’29 Facing solitude, and vengeful on mankind after recurring rejection, the creature not only despises knowledge, but crucially, wishes to change what constitutes as such. While needing the agent, Frankenstein, to justify his product, the creature instead has to teach himself and others of his conception, without opportunity to do so, as civilisations drive him away upon first appraisal. Snapping his final link to society by refusing to make the creature a mate, Frankenstein’s creation ultimately becomes a monster; ‘embark[ing] on its systematic destruction of domestic harmony’, which he resentfully cannot ever obtain.30 Similarly, Rasselas, although confined within a ‘prison of pleasure’ (ch.47), longs to be immersed within civilisation. Like the creature he desires knowledge and socialisation, albeit to different means. Smith sees Rasselas’ departure from the Happy Valley in accordance with ‘the Platonic mode of repetition […] ”grounded in a solid archetypal model.”’31 The plot ‘imitates the Christian archetype of man’s origins’: falling from innocence within paradise, searching for lost innocence in the outer world, and- presumably- returning to paradise at the end of the novel.32 Like Adam and Eve, Rasselas proves dissatisfied with the luxuries afforded within his own Edenic kingdom. The prince craving ‘something to pursue’ (ch.3), chases knowledge ‘impatient as an eagle in a grate’ (ch.5), though also seemingly comes to regret his search. The novel occupies a deeply repetitive narrative structure. Rasselas comically interchanges between hope, disappointment, and then revamped optimism, cyclically; until finally giving up on his impossible endeavour. Believing knowledge can provide him the answer to eternal happiness, which ‘must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty’, Rasselas pursues the unachievable, and like Frankenstein’s creature, equivalently fails (ch.17). Progressing on his philosophical journey, the prince becomes increasingly knowledgeable and decreasingly optimistic. Disgusted at the two-dimensional characters he meets- the young hedonists, the counterfeit philosopher and the isolated, miserable, scholars- Rasselas regrettably turns from his own ideals that led him from unenlightened seclusion. Having found society to be, as Imlac warned, ‘a sea foaming with tempests and boiling with whirlpools’, teeming with ‘waves of violence’ and ‘rocks of treachery’ (ch.12). Although the creature’s acquired social experience turns him into the very fiend his appearance would recommend, Rasselas is merely disappointed. This is due to his maintenance of domestic relationships, which, as aforementioned, the creature cannot obtain. Notably, in the conclusion as the prince, Nekayah and Pekuah voice their ideal choices of life, ‘all three of the fantasies that they now exchange concern communities.’33 So, although disenchanted, they significantly learn the essentiality of socialisation, and appreciate such. It seems Rasselas has acted on Imlac’s earlier advice: ‘while you are making the choice of life you neglect to live’ (ch.30). In becoming consumed by the pursuit of knowledge, and forgetting to enjoy life’s existing pleasures, this guidance can be taken universally. Understanding the conditions of his writing Rasselas, Johnson’s censure becomes increasingly poignant; composing the novel in just one week to raise money for his mother’s funeral. Thus, the
29 Anne McWhir, ‘Teaching the Monster to Read: Mary Shelley, Education and Frankenstein’, The educational legacy of Romanticism (1990) 73-92 (p.75-76). 30 Poovey, p.337. 31 Duane Smith, ‘Repetitive Patterns in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 36:3, (1996), 623-639 (p.627). 32 Ibid. 33 Parker, p.140.
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message is clear: to enjoy and appreciate existing pleasures, and not squander such in pursuit of the elusive ‘beyond.’ In conclusion, for all of the characters explored, knowledge proves not only anticlimactic, but baser still; breeding insolence and hubris for Victor and Johnson’s scholars, and at best, promising everything yet pilfering optimism, as for Rasselas’ entourage and the creature. Socialisation, which is either rejected or ardently sought, proves inseparable from knowledge. The omission of such generating failure in the individual’s intellectual endeavours, or the search for it revealing the cruelties of humanisation. The astrologer’s reflection that ‘knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful’ (ch.41), is proven through the scholars’ disregard for wider society, and their ensuing misery- which Shelley seemingly sees as a fitting punishment for her egotistical Romantic peers. Equivalently, the creature and Rasselas likewise fail in pursuit of unmanageable schemes, as from birth both are quarantined from socialisation; the prince in the limited society of his siblings and attendants, the creature completely alone. Thus, ignorant to domestic reality, both aspire to unachievable ambitions. In overcoming these assorted failures, both Shelley and Johnson implicitly advocate moralistic ambitions and a strong regard for, and upholding of, humanistic relationships.
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Blake, William, ‘Milton: a Poem’, Plate 2, Blake Archive http://www.blakearchive.org/copy/milton.b?descId=milton.b.illbk.02 Davis, Philip, ‘Extraordinarily Ordinary: the life of Samuel Johnson’, in The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, ed. by Greg Clingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Gómez, Claudia Rozas, ‘Strangers and orphans: Knowledge and mutuality in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’, Educational philosophy and theory, 45:4 (2013), 360-370. Hansen, Mark, ‘“Not Thus, after All, Would Life Be Given": Technesis, Technology and the Parody of Romantic Poetics in 'Frankenstein'’, Studies in Romanticism, 36:4 (1997), 575-609. Johnson, Samuel, Rasellas, Prince of Abissinia (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015). McWhir, Anne, ‘Teaching the Monster to Read: Mary Shelley, Education and Frankenstein’, The educational legacy of Romanticism (1990), 73-92. Mellor, Anne, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (New York: Routledge, 1989). Parker, Fred, ‘The scepticism of Johnson’s Rasselas’, in The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, ed. by Greg Clingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp.127-142. Poovey, Mary, "My Hideous Progeny: Mary Shelley and the Feminization of Romanticism", Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 95, (1980), 332-47. Rauch, Alan, ‘The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein’, Studies in Romanticism, (1995), 227-253. Roberts, William, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More, 2nd edn. (London, 1834).
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by Mallory Conyngham (Virginia: Blacksburg, 2001). Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1993). Small, Christopher, Ariel like a Harpy: Shelley, Mary and Frankenstein (London: Gollancz, 1972). Smith, Duane, ‘Repetitive Patterns in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 36:3 (1996), 623-639. Storey, Benjamin, ‘Self-Knowledge and Sociability in the Thought of Rousseau’, Perspectives on Political Science, 41:3 (2012), 146-54. Tomarken, Edward, Johnson, Rasselas, and the Choice of Criticism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989). Tropp, Martin, Images of fear: how horror stories helped shape Modern Culture (1818-1918) (McFarland, 1990). Wu, Duncan, Romanticism: An Anthology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
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In his book Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida writes: ‘Even if there is never a pure signified, there are different relationships as to that which, from the signifier, is presented as the irreducible stratum of the signified’. Discuss the relationship between figurative language and signification in the poems ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath and ‘The Hollow Men’ by T.S. Eliot Daniel Lyons
When discussing the social function of poetry, T.S. Eliot states that good poetry should involve the ‘communication of some new experience’, ‘some fresh understanding of the familiar’ to enlarge and refine our ‘consciousness’ and ‘sensibility.’293 Poets, therefore, adopt techniques of figurative language and manipulate poetic form in order to convey meaning; to express an idea by way of a separate idea which subsequently enriches comprehension. By extension, this attempt to create meaning can be understood through the Poststructuralist framework of Jacques Derrida. While poets can use metaphor as a form of expression, according to Derrida there can never be a ‘transcendental’ or ‘absolute’ signified meaning; there is always a space between the metaphor itself and its cognition, the signifier and signified.294 Written nearly forty years apart and in living memory of two World Wars, Eliot’s poem ‘The Hollow Men’ and Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’ utilise this metaphorical distance within the figurative language of their poems to varying effect. While Eliot uses abstract nouns and open metaphorical mappings to imitate the passivity and non-action of “the hollow men” themselves, Plath utilises more specific semantic fields and hyperbolic metaphors in order to replicate the voice of an immature speaker. The gap between signifier and signified, therefore, is often far wider for Eliot; he deliberately uses more abstract vocabulary where Plath is purposefully direct. Moreover, there has been considerable controversy surrounding Plath’s use of the Holocaust as a metaphor for expressing her familial issues, Leon Wieseltier simply referring to it as ‘inappropriate’.295 It can be argued, however, that much of the controversy surrounding ‘Daddy’ is due to the lack of distance between what Plath signifies and the meaning she constructs. While not definitive, her language and metaphors are grounded in specific references and ideas. Plath’s intentions are more transparent, and therefore shocking, because of how direct and seemingly callous she is when referencing the Holocaust. However, as Mowbray Allan argues, Eliot responded to the world not through an ‘artificial’ construction yet not by a grounded ‘realism’ either.296 Eliot’s poetry is thus separated from direct interaction, allowing for a more speculative, less controversial form of poetry. While both poets use figurative language, their approach to direct or indirect representation varies considerably; both poets utilise the space between signifier and signified, but depending on where they fall in this space alters the difficulty and ambiguity of their works. In ‘The Hollow Men’, Eliot uses a conglomeration of abstract nouns to create ambiguity and reflect the directionless and passive nature of the hollow men themselves. As Derrida argues, ‘the formal essence of the signified is presence’, suggesting that, by nature, abstract
293 T.S. Eliot, ‘The Social Function of Poetry’, in On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), p. 18. 294 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2016), p. 21. 295 Leon Wieseltier, ‘In a Universe of Ghosts’, New York Review of Books (25 November, 1976), pp. 20-23 (p. 20). 296 Mowbray Allan, T.S. Eliot’s Impersonal Theory of Poetry (New Jersey, NJ: Associated University Press, 1974), p. 37.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 121-126 In his book Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida writes: ‘Even if there is never a pure signified, there are different relationships as to that which, from the signifier, is presented as the irreducible stratum of the signified’. Discuss the relationship between figurative language and signification in the poems ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath and ‘The Hollow Men’ by T.S. Eliot 122 lexis is more difficult for cognition due to the lack of reference to concrete imagery.297 From the opening section of the poem, Eliot uses nouns such as ‘form’, ‘force’ and ‘motion’ that are not only abstract in themselves, but are referenced in conjunction with other abstract nouns such as ‘shape’ or ‘gesture’.298 Additionally, these abstract nouns are characterised by the preposition ‘without’, meaning they are abstract to the extent of lacking a description from another abstract noun; the ‘voices’ of the hollow men are thus ‘meaningless’ to the point of emptiness, existing within an abyss. There is a distinct absence of concrete imagery or clarification provided in this opening section, implying a sense of stagnation. The notion of non-action is pertinent to the poem’s final section as the hollow men are ‘between the idea/And the reality’ and ‘the motion/And the act’. This indicates an inability to take definitive action, existing in limbo where nothing is accomplished. While it can be argued that Eliot’s use of abstract nouns increases the ambiguity of the poem, Stan Smith diverges from this view. Smith proposes that Eliot often finds ‘introspective power’ in ‘the abdication of the agent, the contemplative abstraction of the subject’.299 In slight contrast to Derrida’s argument that “presence” is essential for signification, Smith implies that Eliot’s meaning is derived from the fundamental absence of direct or concrete imagery. The images of the hollow men are defined by what they lack, similar to notions of positive absence or lacuna. By detaching his lexis from the physical world, Eliot’s poem imagines a ‘dream kingdom’ in which the delusional ‘hollow men’ reside; an empty, ‘dead land’. ‘The Hollow Men’ does not occupy a specific semantic field that weaves all the abstract threads together. Instead, the poem implies a lack of direction and a sense of passivity, only emphasised by the free verse with no set rhyme scheme. Therefore, the relationship between the signifier and signified in ‘The Hollow Men’ is distant, but to the effect of characterising the hollow men themselves as intangible and passive voices. Conversely, Plath’s poem ‘Daddy’ is constructed with an abundance of proper nouns, which allow for little ambiguity and contribute to the overarching metaphors of the poem. ‘Daddy’ has garnered a fair amount of criticism for its use of the Holocaust and Nazism as a metaphor for the speakers’ relationship with a paternal figure. As critic Roger Scruton states, Plath’s ‘verse is brutal’, using ‘only a cluster of images fathered into plain and ugly words.’300 Indeed, Plath’s use of proper nouns coincides with Scruton’s argument in order to create simple yet unpleasant imagery. The poem references ‘Dachau, Auschwitz’ and ‘Belsen’ in conjunction with the speaker describing themselves as a ‘Jew’.301 The imagery becomes shocking because of the direct use of language and its connotations of tragedy. As the poem progresses there is continued use of proper nouns with ‘Luftwaffe’, ‘Aryan eye’ and ‘Meinkampf look’, all adding to the specificity of the references. More pertinent, however, is that Plath turns some of these proper nouns into adjectives to describe the features of the father figure. The nouns, such as ‘Aryan’ and ‘Meinkampf’, have a fixed meaning associated with a specific semantic field of Nazism. Due to this use of grounded imagery, the distance between the signifier and signified is far closer than in Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’. While Eliot uses abstract nouns to create a lack of meaning, Plath’s language is concrete to the extent of using proper nouns or fixed descriptors to detail and enrich her images. Despite critic Marjorie Perloff stating that the poem uses ‘cheap shots’ and ‘topical trappings’ in order to ‘camouflage’
297 Derrida, p. 19. 298 T. S. Eliot, ‘The Hollow Men’, in T.S. Eliot: Selected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), p. 67. 299 Stan Smith, Inviolable Voice: History and Twentieth-Century Poetry (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1982), p. 97. 300 Roger Scruton, ‘Sylvia Plath and the Savage God’, The Spectator, 227 (18 December, 1971), p. 890. 301 Sylvia Plath, ‘Daddy’, in Sylvia Plath: Selected Poems, ed. by Ted Hughes (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), p. 53.
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meaning, she perhaps inadvertently offers a useful criticism for the poem.302 It is the “topical trappings” of a tight and limited thematic semantic field of the Holocaust that add to the sense of discomfort and claustrophobia. As Jacqueline Rose concurs, the critical issue surrounding the poem is not about its ‘slippage of meaning, but its fixing’.303 Along with the enjambed lines that quicken the pace of the poem and an irregular rhyme scheme that fails to transcend a childish /u:/ phoneme, the fixed lexis of ‘Daddy’ culminates in a tone of oppressive confinement. With the use of proper nouns and concrete imagery, Plath’s poem forces the reader to confront a distinct unambiguity; in which the close relationship between the signifier and signified enforces a feeling of suffocation, similar to the experience of the speaker themselves. Both poets use the figurative technique of metonymy to reduce an image to represent a larger whole, through the effects of this are divergent. As Rose argues, Plath’s speaker ‘accumulate[s]’ images that ‘cover up the sky’ of the poem as she predominantly uses metonymy to provide a symbol and give no further explanation.304 For example, when Plath’s speaker states ‘with your Luftwaffe’, the proper noun specifically represents the Nazi military air-force but also has connotations of war, destruction and fear. Not only is Plath referencing something concrete, but with the specific use of metonymy as a method of figurative reduction, the speaker also minimises the force of the Luftwaffe. As one cannot literally have a “Luftwaffe”, the poem metaphorically presents the destructive air-force as subordinate to the paternal figure; he is placed in ownership of the Luftwaffe and is thus considered more oppressive than the Nazi regime in the speaker’s eyes. By belittling the features of Nazism, the speaker not only equates their familial experience to the Holocaust, but indicates that their experience is somewhat worse. Concurring with Rose’s argument of “covering the sky”, Plath uses metonymy to equate the impact of Nazism with the speaker’s personal trauma, thus limiting the narrative perspective beyond that of childish immaturity; their emotions are of greater importance than that of historical tragedy. In contrast, Eliot uses metonymy in ‘The Hollow Men’ to reduce the impact of the hollow men themselves while simultaneously intensifying their ineffectuality. Hugh Kenner argues that Eliot’s poem is a reaction to ‘upper- middleclass twentieth-century’ gentility, a place ‘where one does not think of protesting too much […] no one speaks loudly’, unlikely to ‘disturb the silence.’305 Indeed, this is depicted through the gradual breakdown of language throughout the poem, resulting in ‘For Thine is/ Life is/ For Thine is the’; the hollow men become alienated and abstracted to the point where they cannot function practically and complete their sentences. In the last stanza, however, Eliot uses metonymy to emphasise this breakdown of language while also reducing and trivialising the hollow men further. In the poem’s last lines the speaker proclaims: ‘This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.’ As Eliot suggests, a ‘work of art should always be self-consistent’ and, within the context of the poem, the “whimper” functions as an image that represents a larger whole of intangibility, passivity and cowardice.306 Not only does this further imply the hollow men’s lack of practical linguistic capability, but the use of the metonym as a technique of reduction thus lessens their impact. The hollow men are alienated so far as they do not represent themselves, but are grouped together as a whole, minimised and portrayed by an image that itself is a reduction. As metonyms represent a whole entity through a small part, they are closer to the signified meaning and potentially less ambiguous. As such, it can be argued that Plath and Eliot use it to directly downplay political institutions. Although both are direct, Plath’s metonym is still closer to a signified meaning as it puts the Luftwaffe, a concrete image, in the ownership of the father figure and thus places it under
302 Marjorie Perloff, ‘The Two Ariels: The (Re)making of The Sylvia Plath Canon’, The American Poetry Review, 13:6 (1984), pp. 10-18 (p. 14-15). 303 Jacqueline Rose, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, 2nd edn. (London: Virago, 1996), p. 207. 304 Ibid., p. 232. 305 Hugh Kenner, The Invisible Poet: T.S. Eliot (London: Methuen, 1960), p. 159, 161-2. 306 T.S. Eliot, ‘The Elizabethan Dramatists’, in Selected Essays, 2nd edn. (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1960), p. 93.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 121-126 In his book Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida writes: ‘Even if there is never a pure signified, there are different relationships as to that which, from the signifier, is presented as the irreducible stratum of the signified’. Discuss the relationship between figurative language and signification in the poems ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath and ‘The Hollow Men’ by T.S. Eliot 124 poetic control; whereas Eliot’s hollow men are presented as incapable of actively controlling and representing themselves. Conceptual mappings of metaphors and similes is another way in which the relationship between signifier and signified can be explored in ‘The Hollow Men’ and ‘Daddy’; a way of deconstructing the poem’s language to illuminate its nuances. These ideas of metaphoric mappings can be linked to George Lakoff’s ‘Invariance Hypothesis’ in which he explains ‘mappings preserve the cognitive topology of the source domain’, that is, source and target domains of a metaphor have to have similar features in order to translate to the reader.307 This hypothesis can be applied to ‘The Hollow Men’ when the poem uses the metaphor ‘eyes are/ Sunlight on a broken column’. The metaphor is highly ambiguous as it refers to non-specific and indefinite things; the “eyes” remain anonymous and the “broken column” is not elaborated on in the proceeding line. While it could refer to casting light on a faded power, also highlighted in the image of ‘a fading star’, it is an open mapping due to the distinct lack of embodied features. More in line with the Invariance Hypothesis, however, is the signified difference between the domains of the metaphor itself. The relation between “the eyes”, the target domain, and “sunlight on a broken column”, the source domain, is palpably remote. The reader is invited to reconcile the two disparate images, increasing the potential for multiple interpretations or, as Fauconnier and Turner phrase it, conceptual blending; the cognitive space between inputs.308 Not only are the metaphoric mappings in ‘The Hollow Men’ open, but the images it attempts to convey have little relevance to one another outside the metaphor. This could add to the sense of the hollow men’s alienation from a real or tangible world. By increasing its distance from a concrete signified meaning, the poem embodies the form of the hollow men through its linguistic construction, as it shifts further away from a physical reality and into a ‘dream kingdom’. Furthermore, the figurative language in ‘Daddy’ is also subject to open mappings but uses them to the opposite effect of Eliot and, in turn, provides more palpable meaning. Although ‘Daddy’ has an unambiguous and dominant overarching metaphor of linking paternal problems to the Holocaust, the poem itself has many open mappings. For example, in the simile ‘an engine/ Chuffing me off like a Jew’ all of the the domains are not inherently linked within their individual meanings. Additionally, Croft and Cruse have noted how similes present the two domains ‘as separate’; ‘we are certainly invited to consider the two domains together, but they are presented as distinct.’309 Whereas a metaphor states an image is another image, a simile functions on the likeness of the two images and is, therefore, potentially further away from signification. In ‘Daddy’, however, the simile feels restricted due to the confined semantic field of the whole poem; in spite of its open mapping. As Rose states, ‘the Holocaust can only represent itself’ due to its historical ‘singularity’.310 Therefore, despite any individual open mappings of the poem, ‘Daddy’ is still restricted and closed due to the very specific reference it uses to form its figurative language. Although the linguistic structures of Plath’s images are theoretically less ambiguous than Eliot’s, the use of physical and historical reference ensures that the distance between signifier and signified can never stray too far. Additionally, the open mappings simultaneously contribute toward overall theme of childish or immature perspectives that permeate throughout the poem. With the title being ‘Daddy’ and the listing of symbols that point towards Nazism and the Holocaust that are never elaborated upon, the entire poem is
307 George Lakoff, ‘The Invariance Hypothesis’, Cognitive Linguistics, 1:1 (1990), pp. 39-74 (p. 54). 308 Giles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008). 309 William Croft and D. Alan Cruse, Cognitive Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 213. 310 Rose, p. 215.
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emotionally exaggerated to the extent of irrationality. The speaker never particularly provides a reason for the anger toward their father but is resentful nonetheless. Due to the pervading concrete historical imagery and the immaturity of the speaker, ‘Daddy’, in spite of its openly mapped metaphors, is confined to hyperbole and close signification. Ultimately, the poetic techniques surrounding utilisation of figurative language and metaphor are closely tied to specific lexical choice; whether the language used is based upon ideas and concepts, or physical and memorable references. While not always the case, ambiguity in Plath’s ‘Daddy’ and Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’ predominantly relies on the specificity of their language; it is thus easier to convey intentions behind an expression, or a signifier, if the language itself refers to something non-metaphysical. Once the language transcends tangibility it becomes harder to process, and the distance between signifier and signified increases. As Derrida notes, ambiguity ‘requires the logic of presence’; words that refer to something immediate and non-abstract are often less equivocal.311 This is not a universal statement, however. Judith Butler argues that the importance of Derrida’s project was to ‘account for what permits articulation’, to separate oneself from what is considered ‘binary’, natural and unifying – to deconstruct supposedly innate and predetermined language structures and explore the space in between.312 Derrida’s framework is thus useful for exploring why figurative language can appear difficult or ambiguous, abstract or concrete. Both Eliot and Plath are highly metaphorical poets, employing metaphors, smile, metonymy and open mappings: the key difference, however, is in the specificity of which their figurative technique is constructed. Where ‘The Hollow Men’ refers to meta-physical concepts and abstractions to suggest the hollow men themselves are of passive quality, ‘Daddy’ uses precise and fixed images that connote the Holocaust and Nazism to elevate the both the speaker’s suffering and irrationality. Eliot and Plath both critique institutions, but the way in which this is enacted varies considerably through their language. Plath uses similar figurative techniques to Eliot, some even less direct such as simile instead of metaphor, yet she garners more criticism partly due to the singular extremity of the metaphor she uses. In the case of Eliot and Plath, meaning is therefore derived from the precision of images and their connotations, whether more abstraction is at play and how it effects ambiguity; the gulf between what is tangible or conceptual, the distance between the signifier and signified.
311 Derrida, p. 76-77. 312 Judith Butler, ‘Introduction’, in Of Grammatology, p. xi.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 121-126 In his book Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida writes: ‘Even if there is never a pure signified, there are different relationships as to that which, from the signifier, is presented as the irreducible stratum of the signified’. Discuss the relationship between figurative language and signification in the poems ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath and ‘The Hollow Men’ by T.S. Eliot 126 Bibliography
Allan, Mowbray, T.S. Eliot’s Impersonal Theory of Poetry (New Jersey, NJ: Associated University Press, 1974).
Butler, Judith, ‘Introduction’, in Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2016). pp. vii-xxiv. Croft, William and Cruse, D. Alan, Cognitive Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2016). Eliot, T.S., ‘The Elizabethan Dramatists’, in Selected Essays, 2nd edn. (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1960). pp. 91-100. Eliot, T.S., ‘The Hollow Men’, in T.S. Eliot: Selected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), pp. 67-70. Eliot, T.S., ‘The Social Function of Poetry’, in On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), pp. 15-25. Fauconnier, Giles, and Turner, Mark, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008). Kenner, Hugh, The Invisible Poet: T.S. Eliot (London: Methuen, 1960). Lakoff, George, ‘The Invariance Hypothesis’, Cognitive Linguistics, 1:1 (1990), pp. 39-74. Perloff, Marjorie, ‘The Two Ariels: The (Re)making of The Sylvia Plath Canon’, The American Poetry Review, 13:6 (1984), pp. 10-18. Plath, Sylvia, ‘Daddy’, in Sylvia Plath: Selected Poems, ed. by Ted Hughes (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), pp. 52-4. Rose, Jacqueline, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, 2nd edn. (London: Virago, 1996). Scruton, Roger, ‘Sylvia Plath and the Savage God’, The Spectator, 227 (18 December, 1971), pp. 890. Smith, Stan, Inviolable Voice: History and Twentieth-Century Poetry (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1982). Wieseltier, Leon, ‘In a Universe of Ghosts’, New York Review of Books (25 November, 1976), pp. 20-23.
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Considering the treatment of personal possessions in James Joyce’s Ulysses
Jonathan McAllister
They have taken no account of the fact that what they call “animal” could look at them, and address them from down there, from a wholly other origin. -Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am.313
Jacques Derrida, in his ten-hour address to the 1997 Cerisy conference, poses the following question: ‘Since so long ago, can we say that the animal has been looking at us?’.314 The ambiguity of the animal’s gaze disturbs the anthropocentric conscience of the human, since the Western philosophical tradition founds the animal-human dichotomy on an ontological distinction that deprives the animals of a point of view. This philosophical tradition repudiates the animal to produce the human, begetting the cosmogony that places the animal outside of the human, mute and objectified. James Joyce frequently jeopardises this dichotomy in Ulysses (1922) through pursuing the trace of the animals on 16 June 1904. In the interior monologue of the characters and in the domestic and public spaces of the Dublin metropolis the ‘insistent gaze of the animal’ stalks the human, precipitating a concern for the animal in the consciousness of the characters.315 This essay will trace the place of the domestic feline in relation to the human in Ulysses to discuss Joyce’s treatment of this domestic pet. I argue that the cat is our concern in the novel through being an enigmatic possession in the social context of Ireland 1904, compromising the integrity of domestication and tracing the boundary between human and animal. This develops into a reading of the parallels between Rudy and the cat, which indicates a complex relation between the human and pet cat in Leopold Bloom’s psyche. I will then consider the cat’s vocalisations with recourse to the science of anthrozoology and the arguments of Maud Ellmann to offer a reading that explores the semiotics of the cat’s meow. The essay will borrow insights from animal philosophy, anthrozoology, and literary criticism to consider this cat that cohabits 7 Eccles Street with Leopold Bloom in a multifaceted, episodic argument, punctuated by quotations from these disciplines to frame the argument.
‘domestic felines continued to have one paw in the wild’316
Leopold Bloom enters the narrative in the presence of a cat, for which he has considerable sympathy while acknowledging her feline wildness. The reader follows his interior monologue as he bends down towards her: ‘Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to her?’317 Critics such as Hugh Kenner have
313 Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I am, ed. by Marie-Louise Mallet, tr. by David Willis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), p.13. 314 Ibid., p.3. David Willis notes how Derrida plays on the double sense of regarder (“to look at” and “to concern”) in the phrase ‘que l’animal nous regarde’. This can also be translated as ‘that the animal has been our concern’. 315 Ibid., p.4. ‘Concern’ is used in the double sense (“to refer or relate to; to be about” and “anxiety; worry”) in this essay, Oxford English Dictionary (OED), (Oxford University Press, 2010)
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 127-133 Considering the treatment of personal possessions in James Joyce’s Ulysses 128 engaged with the displacement of Bloom’s masochistic desires onto the mice here, but the undermining of the human through the proximity of the cat has received little attention.318 Bloom is able to consider the point of view of the cat: her gaze is his concern, placing him as the object of her ‘cruel’ nature. Derrida, considering the gaze of his own feminine cat, states that this ‘gaze called “animal” offers to my sight the abyssal limit of the human’.319 The cat’s gaze precipitates an anxiety in Bloom through addressing him from a bottomless alterity, uninterpretable through its ambiguity: ‘Height of a tower? No, she can jump me’ (U, 45.28-9). The implication here is that although the biblical and philosophical traditions that produce the human are premised on ‘dominion over’ the animals, the recognition of the animal’s gaze jeopardises the supremacy of man: the abyssal limit offered by the gaze is unreadable, throwing the human gaze back to reflexively consider itself as destabilised.320 To be ‘seen seen’ by this pet cat subverts the positions of power: the cat is able to encroach on the human in her potential to position the human as her inscrutable concern.321 There has been little critical engagement with the implication that Bloom has seen the cat hunting for mice within the domestic space. John Bradshaw notes that the divide between domestic animals kept as companions and those kept for utilitarian purposes began to sharpen during the Victorian era. 322 Bloom’s relation to the cat therefore retains the trace of a dynamic bifurcation of domestic animals in modern urban society, a bifurcation brought about by an epistemic shift in the position of the domestic animal in relation to the human. He acknowledges the useful potential of the cat, withholding food to harness her hunting potential: ‘Give her too much meat she won’t mouse’ (U, 51.276). The fact that he encourages this wild, hunting instinct in her suggests that the wildness of the animal is sublimated in the domestic space through her utilitarian function. However, despite this sublimation, the cat retains the trace of her wild ancestry within the domestic sphere, evinced in the imprint this leaves on the lexical choices: ‘stalks’ (U, 45.19), ‘dark eyeslits narrowing’ (U, 45.34-5), ‘sniff in her shift’ (U, 307.1024), ‘claws’ (U, 629.936) ‘staring’ (U, 629.938). These lexical choices in the interior monologues of Leopold and Molly Bloom attest to the otherness, the wildness that is retained in the cat, threatening the domestic from within.323 Nonetheless, Bloom has an affectionate relationship with the cat, a relation that is ostensibly reciprocal. Bloom’s companionship with the domestic animal is evidenced in his consideration of the cat’s perspective when he ‘wonder[s] what I look like to her’ (U, 45.28-9) and in Molly’s thoughts of his ‘play with the cat’ (U, 628.934). The cat also occupies intimate spaces in the home: she bounds upstairs to ‘curl up in a ball on the bed’ (U, 55.469) and likes to ‘sniff in [Molly’s] shift on the bed’ (U, 307.1024). This relationship with the cat is suggestive of kinship and humanity: she prowls the borderline between family and nonfamily, animal and nonanimal.324 Bloom sublimates his own desire to curl up next to Molly on the bed and to sniff
318 For readings of the displacement of desire, see Hugh Kenner, Ulysses, revised edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p.45; David Rando, ‘The Cat’s Meow: “Ulysses”, Animals, and the Veterinary Gaze’, James Joyce Quarterly, 46:3 (2009), 529-543 (p.536). 319 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, p.12. 320 See Genesis 1:26. 321 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, p.13-4. 322 Bradshaw, The Animals Among Us, p.52. 323 This undermines the discursive construct that sought to inscribe Man’s dominion over the animals in the first definition of the ‘domestic animal’ within UK law in 1911. It states that a domestic animal is one that is ‘tame or which has been or is being sufficiently tamed to serve some purpose for the use of man’. This definition obfuscates the deconstructive potential of the wildness retained in domestic animals, which threatens to disrupt this relation from within. Furthermore, it inscribes the dichotomy between man and animal which I have shown is threatened in the self-reflexive gaze precipitated by the incomprehensible gaze of the animal; Protection of Animals Act, 1911, Ch 27. Available at:
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her undergarments – ‘her high notes and her low notes’ (U, 306.1011) – through allowing the cat to occupy intimate spaces, thus vicariously realising these sexually imbued desires. Furthermore, Bloom displaces a paternal affection onto the cat, talking and playing with her. The cat thus vacillates between wild and domestic, family and nonfamily, animal and nonanimal. The conjunction of this subversive wildness, utilitarian function, and domestic companionship therefore points to a nexus of relations to domestic animals that had begun to disentangle over the nineteenth century, and continued to do so through the twentieth century to the point where Derrida can posit the question: ‘What does this bottomless gaze offer to my sight?’325
‘only in death do the two parallel lines converge...’326
John Berger argues that an animal’s life can be seen to run parallel to the human’s.327 The intersubjectivity of human language means that a common communicative system bridges the gap between the gaze and consciousness, whereas the animal’s gaze does not confirm the human. The animal’s ‘lack of common language, its silence’, Berger states, ‘guarantees its distance, its distinctness, its exclusion from and of man’.328 In her interior monologue, Molly asks, ‘what was the good in going into mourning for what was neither one thing nor the other’ (U, 637.1307-8). David Rando notes that Rudy was speechless when he died, unable to traverse the communicative space that separates him from his parents.329 The implication is that Rudy was neither human nor animal, a life deprived of language and reason, though able to gaze from a consciousness that is uninterpretable. His short life was akin to the animals and thus parallel to the human. ‘[H]e insisted hed go into mourning for the cat’ (U, 637.1309-10): Molly states that Bloom would mourn the cat after death, which implies that he has displaced a paternal affection and unresolved grief onto the cat. There is no trace of the cat in Bloom’s memories prior to living at 7 Eccles Street, so the Blooms must have acquired the cat subsequent to Rudy’s death. Marc Shell notes that pets can ‘help people to deal with the loss by death of a friend or relative’, and the fact that Bloom would mourn the cat suggests he has not thoroughly mourned the death of Rudy, the cat therefore helping him to deal with this loss as a substitute object.330 Molly states that she is ‘not going to think [her]self into the glooms about’ the death of Rudy anymore (U, 640.1450-1), but Bloom’s thoughts throughout the day notably come back Rudy, and he ruminates over a sense of guilt and shame regarding his son’s death: ‘If it’s healthy it’s from the mother. If not from the man. Better luck next time’ (U, 79.329-30). Rando notes that Bloom traces the cause of Rudy’s death back to a fault in him, implicating himself in the pathology that inflicted the child.331 The implication here is that he is unable to mourn the death of his son due to the ambiguity and suddenness of the death, instead agonising over the death and the impact it has had on his sexual intimacy with Molly: ‘When we left Lombard street west something changed. Could never like it again after Rudy’ (U, 137.609-10). ‘Circe’ depicts a phantasmagoric staging of Stephen and Bloom’s inner thoughts, culminating in visions of their lost relatives. Bloom has a vision of Rudy at the age of eleven, which ends with his son returning his gaze: ‘RUDY. (Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom’s eyes and
borderline between those beings which may be eaten and those which may not). Pets stand at the intersection of kin and kind’ (p.137). 325 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, p.12. 326 John Berger, ‘Why Look at Animals’, in The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings, ed. by Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald (Oxford: Berg, 2007), pp. 251-61 (p. 253). 327 Ibid., pp.252-3. 328 Ibid., p.253. 329 Rando, ‘The Cat’s Meow’, p. 540. 330 Shell, ‘The Family Pet’, p.121. 331 Rando, ‘The Cat’s Meow’, p. 538.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 127-133 Considering the treatment of personal possessions in James Joyce’s Ulysses 130 goes on reading, kissing, smiling.)’ (U, 497.4964). The image of his son, as Jeri Johnson points out, is a projection of interior memory and fantasy that is exteriorised into an objective reality.332 The thoughts of Rudy that frequently manifest within Bloom’s interior monologue are here objectified in a fantasy of his son as an Eton schoolboy with decadent dress reading a Hebrew text (U, 497.4956-60). This transformation of interior thoughts into objective reality reinforces the argument that Bloom has not properly mourned Rudy: he is unable to abandon the confusion and guilt of having lost his son, thus giving this the psychical structure of melancholia that is exteriorised in ‘Circe’. Freud notes of melancholia that it is ‘like an open wound’, as some aspect of the lost object is withdrawn from consciousness and the subject is unable to fully process this; hence there is a cathexis of the lost love-object with psychical energy, as the subject fixates on their loss.333 I would therefore argue that the manifestation of Rudy as a phantasmagoric object is a result of this cathexis: its intense fixation on the lost love-object exteriorises Rudy, whom Bloom has been unable to mourn properly. He is ‘unseeing’ in this manifestation, as Bloom cannot interpret what seeing would entail for this mute being; thus, Bloom is ultimately unable to properly mourn what was ‘neither one thing nor the other’. Berger states that the parallels between the ontologies of animals and humans only converge after death, hence the ‘widespread belief in the transmigration of souls’.334 Arguably, the parallels between the cat and Rudy that begin and end Part II of the text are due to a parallel in Bloom’s mind between them. The cat and Rudy are deprived of language, their gaze uninterpretable and both precipitate a malaise in Bloom; the ‘white button under the butt’ of the cat’s tail (U, 45.22) is paralleled by Rudy’s ‘diamond and ruby buttons’ (U, 497. 4964-5); and, the first utterance of Bloom in Part II is ‘O, there you are’ (U, 45.17) addressed to the cat, with the last being an inaudible cry, ‘Rudy!’ (U, 497.4962). The displacing of affection and mourning onto the cat is therefore a way to complete the process of grieving Rudy: a metempsychosis in which the soul is displaced from Rudy to the cat in Bloom’s psyche.
The animal can ‘address them from down there…’335
Frank Budgen writes in his ‘Further Recollections of James Joyce’ (1955) that Joyce ‘had a considerable sympathy for the cat with its persuasive manners and its compact self- sufficiencies.’336 He kept and observed cats while in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris, with a photograph of 1913 showing Giorgio and Lucia at the window of their Trieste flat, a cat embraced in Lucia’s arms.337 The attentiveness to feline behavior is therefore from Joyce’s own admiration and observations of this animal.338 Bloom is attentive to the differences in feline vocalisations; the narrative distinguishes between ‘Mkgnao!’, ‘Mrkgnao!’, ‘Mrkrgnao!’, and ‘Gurrhr!’ (U, 45-6.16, 25, 32, 38). Rando attributes this adept ability to hear differences in the repetition of meows to the ‘veterinary gaze’: the perception of the bodies and behaviors of animals through the language of rationality, brought about by a shift in the nineteenth-century attempt to understand animals through veterinary science.339 However, I would argue that the changes in the epistemology of domestic animals is also integral to these distinctions: the shift in the knowledge of the
332 James Joyce, Ulysses: The 1922 Text, ed. by Jeri Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p.922. 333 Sigmund Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, in The Penguin Freud Reader, ed. by Adam Phillips (London: Penguin, 2006), pp. 310-326 (pp.319-20). 334 Berger, ‘Why Look at Animals’, p.253. 335 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, p.13. 336 Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, and Other Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), p.357.
337 Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), plate XXI. 338 See also Ellmann, James Joyce, p.418; 462; 495; 691. 339 Rando, ‘The Cat’s Meow’, p. 535.
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animal’s place in society to a companion animal brought about the increased presence of animals in the home within bourgeois society, allowing citizens to become knowledgeable about individual animals and their behaviors.340 Anthrozoology, a science established in the 1980s, could further help literary critics to understand these different vocalisations of the cat that are transliterated in Ulysses. Anthrozoology studies the human-animal bond and has found that in domesticated cats two vocalisations can be distinguished: those vocalised when a cat is actively seeking food (“solicitation”), and those vocalised when a cat is content (“non-solicitation”).341 The authors of a study carried out to determine the purpose of these vocalisations write that solicitation purrs ‘have been shown to contain higher-frequency voiced components’ and that ‘these high- frequency voiced peaks occur at approximately the same frequency as human infant cries’.342 The use of feline utterances signified with the initial bilabial ‘m’ phoneme therefore enacts a sound-symbolism: the cat’s solicitation for food is transliterated into a phoneme that has the primary signification across many cultures of repletion, especially with reference to the infant and milk.343 The indication that Bloom is responding to these solicitation purrs by pouring ‘warmbubbled milk on a saucer’ (U, 46.37) indicates the feminised aspects of his character, responding to a cry for milk from an animal associated in the nineteenth century with women and effeminate men.344 Moreover, the finding that this vocalisation occurs at the same frequency as the human infant’s cry relates to the previous argument that Bloom is subconsciously responding to the cat as a parallel to Rudy. It also deconstructs the notion that animals cannot address the human; the cat is here subtly manipulating the human in order to solicit food through appealing to a mammalian instinct.345 Despite reading this solicitation into the initial bilabial ‘m’ that Joyce utilises, the animal’s address cannot transfer a stable meaning, despite the suggestion that it is soliciting food. The sound of the cat’s vocalisation is transliterated arguably to release - in Maud Ellmann’s term - the ‘semiotic underside’ of language in Ulysses, through proliferating multiple significations of the written letter: isolated, the utterances cannot be identified as feline purrs, but require context to stabilise meaning.346 The letter, therefore, cannot represent the feline utterances directly – its representational capacity does not include pure sound anterior to language - despite the attempt to trash the letter and release its semiotic potential: ‘The letter! The litter! And the soother the bitther!’, Joyce writes in Finnegans Wake.347 Through trashing the letter to litter in this trans-litter-ation of the cat’s meow, Joyce prefigures the punning, proliferating meanings of Finnegans Wake.348 This is evinced not only in the cat’s meow, but also in the sounds that encroach on the sense of words in Ulysses: ‘seesoo, hrss, rsseiss,
340 Bradshaw, The Animals Among Us, p.42. 341 Sarah L. H. Ellis, Victoria Swindell and Oliver H. P. Burman, ‘Human Classification of Context- Related Vocalizations Emitted by Familiar and Unfamiliar Domestic Cats: An Exploratory Study’, Anthrozoös, 28:4 (2015), 625-634 (p.626). 342 Ibid. 343 Steven Connor, Beyond Words: Sobs, Hums, Stutters, and Other Vocalizations (London: Reaktion Books, 2014), p.72. 344 Katharine M. Rogers, Cat (London: Reaktion, 2006), p.133. 345 Ellis et al., ‘Human Classification of Context-Related Vocalizations’, p.626. 346 Maud Ellmann, ‘Ulysses: Changing into an Animal’, Field Day Review, 2:1 (2006), 74-93 (p.77).
347 James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, ed. Robert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p.93. 348 Etymologically, the second morpheme is from the Latin littera, ‘letter’. ‘Litter’ is not etymologically related to ‘letter’, instead finding its etymological root in Latin lectus, ‘bed’, which went through a number of historical transformations before taking on the primary meaning it has today as ‘rubbish’ or ‘waste’. Joyce puns on the homophony of ‘litter’ and ‘letter’, which I have done here, but I also draw on the meaning of ‘a number of young animals born to an animal at one time’ to suggest the proliferation of semiotic offspring through the transliteration of the cat’s meow. OED.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 127-133 Considering the treatment of personal possessions in James Joyce’s Ulysses 132 ooos’ (U 41.457), ‘sllt…sllt…sllt’ (U, 100.174-177), ‘frseeeeeeeefronnnng’ (U, 621.596). Moreover, Maud Ellmann notes that ‘speech is fashioned out of an acoustic substrate that we share with animals, as well as with machinery and waves’.349 ‘Mrkgnao!’ therefore upsets the anthropomorphic conscious that would attempt to impose a stable meaning on this utterance; it is an unknowable utterance, uninterpretable for a singular meaning, instead trashing the letter to represent the proliferation of meaning in sound or, paradoxically, the collapse of meaning in sound. This brings us to the limits of the human.
‘The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. Thinking perhaps begins there’, philosophises Derrida.350 The animals of Ulysses become our concern when the human stands naked before them in infancy or destabilised. This essay has shown that the individual feline presence, as an enigmatic domestic animal, concerns Bloom in the novel. The cat may be his cat, but the destabilisation of the terms on which this claim is made undermines the notion of the pet as a possession; in other words, the cat’s presence in 7 Eccles Street deconstructs the very presuppositions on which the ownership of animals is founded. Its domestication and co-opting into the family retains the trace of the wild; its gaze is the gaze of Rudy, ‘neither one thing nor the other’; and, its vocalisations exploit the human as mammal and destabilise the human letter. ‘– Mrkgnao! the cat cried’ (U, 45.25). Finnegans Wake perhaps begins there.
349 Ellmann, ‘Ulysses: Changing into an Animal’, p.77. 350 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, p.29.
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Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio, The Open: Man and Animal, tr. by Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). Anderton, Joseph, ‘‘Hooves!’: The Equine Presence in Beckett’, in Beckett and Animals, ed. by Mary Bryden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 153-164. Berger, John, ‘Why Look at Animals’, in The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings, ed. by Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald (Oxford: Berg, 2007), pp. 251- 61. Bradshaw, John, The Animals Among Us: The New Science of Anthrozoology (London: Allen Lane, 2017). Budgen, Frank, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, and Other Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). Burroughs, William S., The Cat Inside (London: Penguin, 2002). Connor, Steven, Beyond Words: Sobs, Hums, Stutters, and Other Vocalizations (London: Reaktion Books, 2014). Davis, Helen, Peter Irwin, Michelle Richardson and Angela O’Brien-Malone, ‘When a pet dies: Religious issues, euthanasia and strategies for coping with bereavement’, Anthrozoös, 16:1 (2003), 57-74. Derrida, Jacques The Animal That Therefore I am, ed. by Marie-Louise Mallet, tr. by David Willis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). Derrida, Jacques, The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol.1, tr. by Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). Ellis, Sarah L. H., Victoria Swindell and Oliver H. P. Burman, ‘Human Classification of Context- Related Vocalizations Emitted by Familiar and Unfamiliar Domestic Cats: An Exploratory Study’, Anthrozoös, 28:4 (2015), 625-634. Ellmann, Maud, ‘Ulysses: Changing into an Animal’, Field Day Review, 2:1 (2006), 74-93. Ellmann, Richard, James Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Freud, Sigmund, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, in The Penguin Freud Reader, ed. by Adam Phillips (London: Penguin, 2006), pp. 310-326. Haas, Robert, ‘A James Joyce Bestiary: Animal Symbolism in Ulysses’, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, 27:1 (2014), 31-39. Hayward, Matthew, ‘Plumtree’s Potted Meat: The Productive Error of the Commodity in Ulysses’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 59:1 (2017), 57-75. Joyce, James, Ulysses, ed. by Hans Walter Gabler et al. (London: The Bodley Head, 1986; rpt. 2008) Ulysses: The 1922 Text, ed. Jeri Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Finnegans Wake, ed. Robert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Lewis, Janet E., ““The Cat and the Devil” and “Finnegans Wake”’, James Joyce Quarterly, 29:4 (1992), 805-514. Oxford English Dictionary, (Oxford University Press, 2010)
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The God in the Cloud
Max Alexander Randall
‘The God in the Cloud’ is an award-winning film, written and produced in its entirety by Max Alexander Randall. With the support of Dr Matt Green and Dr Steven Morrison, the film garnered its first literary prize.
The film takes elements from Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, Burgess’ ‘A Clockwork Orange’, and Blake’s ‘Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ and melds them with a dystopian narrative that explores the potential implications of virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
Please enjoy the film at the following link: https://youtu.be/yeY-dqNSk3E
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Margaret Cavendish: Socialite Scientist
Alex Hare
Throughout her prolific body of writing, ranging from scientific theory engaging her contemporaries to plays and epistolary fiction, Cavendish reckons the place of women in academic spheres, and appropriates these literary forms as scientific discourses. In this essay I will draw comparisons between Cavendish’s academic satire in The Blazing World, and her observations on friendship and artifice in Sociable Letters, attempting to demonstrate the ways that this sense of place influences her work and her philosophy. The term ‘science’ prior to the reformation period was applied to a myriad of various academic, economic and political professions, of which theology was the prime. Cawdrey defines ‘science’ broadly as ‘knowledge, or skill’, while ‘theologie’ is styled ‘the science of liuing blessedly for euer’351. As theology was considered a fundamental logic which defied the application of theory and evidence in the subordinate sciences, the foundation of the Royal Society in 1660 presented a direct challenge to this supremacy. While many natural philosophers attempted to establish definitive boundaries between these disciplines, Robert Boyle argued the case for trans-disciplinary study: ‘Mechanical Philosophy…strives to deduce all the Phoenomena of Nature from Adiaphorous Matter, and Local Motion. But neither the fundamental doctrine of Christianity nor that of the powers and effects of matter and motion seems to be more than epicycle... Of the great and universal system of gods contrivances, and makes but a part of the more general theory of things, knowable by the light of nature, improved by the information of the scriptures’352. This ‘physico-theological’ theory asserted that research into the lesser philosophy of physics could be utilised to illuminate and fortify theological conclusions. If Cavendish’s engagement with Boyle and his contemporaries throughout Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy and Philosophical Letters questions the conclusions her physicist contemporaries reach attempting to rationalise the natural world, The Blazing World as a companion piece questions the morality of this pursuit. Cavendish brings the scientific theorems and technologies she had previously scrutinised and parodies the hypocritical logic of their proponents. This is most apparent in the Empress’ criticism of her logicians: ‘Nature her self cannot boast of any perfection, but God himself; because there are so many irregular motions in Nature, and 'tis but a folly to think that Art should be able to regulate them, since Art it self is, for the most part, irregular.’353 The circular logic of the Bird- men is criticised for its abstraction from common sense, and alienated from the natural world it seeks to contextualise. Her argument that the irregularity of the natural world defies scientific rationale is a rebuke to the application of worldly science to questions of universal truth beyond it. Similar anxieties of obfuscation are evident in her discourse with the bear-men, whose observations trigger academic infighting: ‘they could not agree neither in this observation: for some said, It was but one Star which appeared at three several times, in several places; and others would have them to be three several Stars.’354 The utility of scientific apparatus is determined by its efficacy in determining motion. When observing lice through a microscope, ‘she desir'd to know, Whether their Microscopes could hinder their biting, or at least shew some means how to avoid them? To which they answered, That such Arts were mechanical
351 Robert Cawdret, A Table Alphabetical (London: Edmund Weaver, 1604) 352 Robert Boyle, The Excellency of Tehology, Compar’d With Natural Philosophy (1674) p.66; quoted in Peter Harrison, The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century (Sydney: Springer, 2005) p.173 353 Margaret Cavendish, THE DESCRIPTION OF A NEW WORLD, CALLED The Blazing-World, 1604 (London: S. Harding, 1799) p.60 354 The Blazing World, p.27.
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and below the noble study of Microscopical observations355’. Satisfied with scientific observance for its own sake, the academic culture takes pride in being inutile. The level of insight offered by scientific observation becomes transgressive, and the aesthetics and mechanics of nature are made mundane, and grotesque. In Cavendish’s vitalism, the telescope becomes innately paradoxical as a tool of observance. The applied science of astronomical observation is unable to truly perceive the celestial. In addition to satirising the inapplicability of science to theological questions, Cavendish also explores the inverse in Sociable Letters, applying these principles to the mundane; the incongruity of the appearance of explicit scientific discourse is most evident in Letter 160, which applies her observations on evaporation to the theory of baking: ‘I say, the same reason that much Butter makes Pye-crust Heavy, for it is much Moisture that causes such things to be Heavy, like as Dough is much Heavier than when it is throughly Baked, for the Fire Drying up the Moisture, causes it to be Light’.356 In the context of the neighbouring letters, which discuss the validity of theories of atoms and vacuums, physics is applied with inappropriate detail to the sphere of domestic life. She ends on a note of irony admitting that ‘’tis Probable my Cook can give better Reasons than I can’357. While observations on physics are beneath the divinity of the theologians, they are made inappropriate and redundant when applied to more tangible questions. In the intellectual structures women are confined to, the natural philosophers’ elaborate theories of the governing principles of the universe are placed in a redundant perspective. Cavendish’s satire reflects on the contradictory nature of her intellectual identity, and the innate hypocrisies of philosophical theory, which expresses its conceits as universal truths, while being simultaneously unable to offer greater insight on trivial domestic matters. While Cavendish criticises the application of scientific logic on both universal and trivial scales, her recognition of its imperfection is peculiar in the context of her vision of a world governed by the principle of order: ‘it was composed onely of the Rational, which is the subtilest and purest degree of Matter; for as the Sensitive did move and act both to the perceptions and consistency of the body…[it] appear'd so curious and full of variety, so well order'd and wisely govern'd, that it cannot possibly be expressed by words,’358 The ‘irregular motions’ in the natural world are a defining point of reference for Cavendish’s philosophy. Her curated world defies the discordant ‘chopt logick’359 of academia and irregularity of nature. In clarifying the inapplicability of ‘physico-theological’ theory to divine questions, Cavendish also admits that her philosophical vision is inarticulable. Her vision of a rational world is one governed by a synchronicity of motions unobservable in the context of the natural world. The discord Cavendish notes in nature is applied to the tumultuous social climate of the Restoration; when asked to observe her realm, ‘The Duchess used all the means she could, to divert her from that Journey, telling her, that the World she came from, was very much disturbed with Factions, Divisions and Wars’. Cavendish’s vision of a world governed solely by rational motion becomes contextualised by her royalist political views; her protagonist justifies restricting the school of logicians ‘lest besides the Commonwealth of Learning, they disturb also Divinity and Politic, Religious and Laws, and by that means draw an utter ruine and destruction upon Church and State.’360 Cavendish’s idyll of a natural harmony between matter is reflective of her support for monarchal rule; as Sarasohn notes, ‘Nature often faces discord, just as the good monarchy Cavendish had hoped for was destroyed by civil war…The sensitive matter sometimes rebels against the rational matter, and the rational matter sometimes agitates the sensitive matter.361 The discordant world political climate of the 17th
355 Ibid, p.33 356 Margaret Cavendish, Sociable Letters ed.by James Fitzmaurice (Toronto: Broadview, 2005) p.223 357 Ibid, p.223 358The Blazing World, p.101-102 359 Ibid, p.58 360 Ibid, p.60 361 Lisa T Sarasohn, The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish : Reason and Fancy during the Scientific Revolution (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2010) p. 108
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century contextualises Cavendish’s priority of the institutions of power over scientific endeavour. Reckoning Cavendish’s position within this academic community presents the complexity of her intellectual sense of belonging. In her introductory message ‘To all Professors of Learning and Art, she assures that ‘were I Emperess of the World, I would Advance those that have most Learning and Wit, by which I believe the Earth would rather be an Heaven, since both Men and Government would be as Celestial’362. Though this idyll of a society governed by science and philosophy becomes inverted in The Blazing World, which concludes that ‘'tis better to be without their intelligences, then to have an unquiet and disorderly Government’363, here Cavendish presents the enlightening power of the sciences as not only rationalising, but potentially spiritual. Cavendish also acknowledges her writing as peripheral, and expresses her difficulty in reckoning herself with a scientific culture, and once beautiful and paradigmatic, but with the intangibility and esoteric properties of the divine. The Blazing World reckons this disparity between the scientific and spiritual bodies of thought. In her meeting with the Spirits, the Empress attempts to determine the nature of their relation to the physical world: ‘I pray inform me, whether you Spirits give motion to Natural Bodies? No, answered they; but, on the contrary, Natural material bodies give Spirits motion...Then the Empress asked them, Whether they could speak without a body, or bodily organs? No, said they; nor could we have any bodily sense, but onely knowledg.’364 Her efforts to determine the extent of the corporeality are reflective of her use of an inverted microscope to observe a whale, which ‘appear'd no bigger then a Sprat’365; the application of natural philosophy to natural phenomena strips the spectacle of its majesty. later, when Cavendish herself is transported self-insertion becomes literary artifice, and makes the physical principles of her universe lapse into the magical. Her inappropriate application of physical properties to the omnipotent ethereal beings and supernatural occurrence appears to criticise the encroachment of a subordinate logic to a purer knowledge. Cavendish meditates on the nature of ‘physico-theological’ cross-reference, satirising its inapplicability to questions only comprehensible in the philosophical framework of the theologian. Cavendish meditates on her experience as an academic spectator in Letter 199 of Sociable Letters; her protagonist describes a dream in which she enters a ‘Banquet of Wit…in which room were a number of Poets met, as Nature's Guests, which when I Saw, I was extremely out of Countenance, as being all Men’.366 Confronted with the illusion of equality with her male peers, her protagonist is intimated by this notion and resigns to ‘bashfulness’. The table of the feast is fashioned from ‘Famous old poets Skulls, and the tablecloth…was made of their Brains’; the wisdom of the men who preceded her is made the foundation of her pleasure in consuming the results of modern academic labour, manifested as dishes representative of various academic pursuits. The ‘Dish of Natural Philosophy, a Dish I love to Feed on, although the Meat is very Hard, and not Easily to be Digested’ becomes representative of her place – despite her participation in philosophical writing, Cavendish finds identity reckoning her role as a consumer of natural philosophy. Cavendish argues that the female intellectual experiences the advance in modern science through the confines of the domestic sphere. At the end of her feast, she is handed a ‘Prospective Glass, where we saw other Worlds, Creatures, and Celestials, but some saw not so far, or so Much as others’. Her description of her observances approach spiritual epiphany, but are ultimately only partially realised by herself and the myopic perspective of her peers. As an observer, the inquisitive female is unable to actualise these discoveries – she experiences the world of scientific observation vicariously through literature, reading and correspondence with members of academic institutions.
362 Sociable Letters, p.40 363 Ibid, p. 122 364 Ibid, p.70 365 Ibid, p.72 366 Sociable Letters, p.268-269
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The significance of motion to defining Cavendish’s philosophy extends beyond its application to universal physical principle, taking on a mode of spiritual significance. In Philosophical Letters 33, her protagonist describes nature as ‘an infinite self-moving body; where by the body of Nature I understand the inanimate matter, and by self-motion the animate, which is the life and soul of Nature, not an immaterial life and soul, but a material, for both life, soul and body are and make but one self-moving body or substance which is corporeal Nature. And therefore when I call Animate matter an Extract, I do it by reason of its purity, subtilty and agility, not by reason of its immateriality’367. Cavendish’s concept of the ‘soul’ is reckoned in terms of a motion unobservable by scientific apparatus. The significance of motion to Cavendish’s philosophy, however, is actualised in the context of the confining domestic sphere. In Letter 159, Cavendish clarifies her doubt over the theory of atomic composition, arguing that were they to exist ‘they must be both the architects and materials, neither could they do they do that work, unless every atome was animated with life and knowledge…passions and appetites, as well as wit and ingenuity, to make worlds, and world of creatures, as also passions and appetites that sympathise and antipathize’368. The composition of the world on a molecular level is not fundamentally matter, but the society that holds the matter together. Cavendish’s relation of scientific principle to the spheres of domesticity, rather than demonstrating a scientific basis for social life, suggests the opposite – that for these physical laws to exist, they must be governed by a harmony of social motions. Cavendish goes on to note that a world of atomic synchronicity is not one of conformity, but one where actions and reactions correspond: ‘Sympathy and Antipathy might cause the Continuation of the World, for if they did always Agree, there would be no Change, an if they did always Disagree, where would be a Confusion’. Despite her idyll of synchronicity, Cavendish acknowledges that this belief cannot be reckoned with her vitalist approach. In her perspective, the atomic universe can only be realised through a reactive and discordant relationship between all matter, a principle reflected in social artifice and the dynamics of friendship and correspondence. In both Cavendish’s epistolary fiction and The Blazing World, female friendship is foundational to her scientific, social and political discourse. Barnes notes that ‘in Philosophical Letters she defies the masculine bias of philosophy by anchoring her critique of contemporary philosophers to a rational dialogue between female friends’369. In Letter 83, Her protagonist describes how ‘you Chid me for Loving too Earnestly, saying, Extreme Love did Consume my Body and Torment my Mind, and that whosoever Love to a High Degree are Fools’370. She responds by assuring her that My Love is not Fix'd Suddenly, for it takes Experience and Consideration…which have been my Guides and Directors to Love you, which makes me Love you Much, and shall make me Love you Long.’ The rational nature of this exchange is fundamentally an exercise in friendship and mutual betterment. Correspondence between philosophers of many disciplines indicate a sense of familiarity and obligation – scientific correspondence received by Charles Cavendish from Francois Derand declares himself ‘je vois suis, Monsieur, Serviteur tres humble et tres obeissant’371. While cordial, the modes of scientific exchange centered primarily on decorum and mutual respect. Cavendish’s social correspondence with Constantijin and Christiaan Huygens and the Oldhams indicates politeness and acquaintance above sincere friendship; Cavendish closes as ‘your humbled Servant’372, while Oldham excuses himself as ‘Your humble servant to Command’373. Here,
367 Philosophical Letters, p. 533 368 Sociable Letters, p. 222. 369 Diana Barnes, ‘Familiar Epistolary Philosophy: Margaret Cavendish’s Philosophical Letters (1664), Parergon, 26:2 (2009) p.11 370 Sociable Letters, p.137. 371 Stephen Jordan Rigaud, Correspondence of Scientific Men, I (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965) p.29 372 Nottingham, University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, Newcastle Collection, Nec15, 335/336. 373 Nottingham, University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, Portland Collection, Pw1.481
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friendship and courtesy is not recognised by mutual friendship, but by deference. In both Philosophical Letters and Sociable Letters, her protagonist’s affirmation as ‘Your Faithful Friend’ before ‘servant’ cements the context of their exchange, regardless of content, as a correspondence between friends. In the context of decorum, Barnes notes that the relation of the unnamed protagonists to the unidentified socialites who surround them ‘represent two modes of social relationship: one based upon sameness and equality, and the other upon heterogeneity or difference.’374 This description of the dynamic of friendship reflects the vision of a homogenously synergetic world governed by motion in The Blazing World; the synchronicity of the feminine friendship, despite being an intangible idyll, becomes a vision worthy of pursuit. While rejecting the vision of interdisciplinary philosophy shared by members of the Royal Society, Cavendish’s appropriation of plays, epistolary fiction and the novel contextualises her scientific observations through their representation in various forms. Both Sociable Letters and The Blazing World are intimately concerned with the feminine perspective of the spheres they occupy; before her departure, Cavendish is asked for counsel from the Empress, ‘she being her dear Platonick Friend…could not forbear, before she went from her, to ask her Advice concerning the Government of the Blazing-world’375. Removed from the confinement of the domestic, Cavendish now determines the fate of the academic world. In the inversion of social roles, feminine friendship is made a more powerful mode of social influence than the male spheres of academics and politics, eclipsing their logic and philosophy and ending the narrative on a note of clarity. While her epistolary fiction celebrates the mutually fulfilling experience of feminine friendship, Cavendish is openly satirical of feminine conceit and artifice. In Letter 66, intending to send a letter extoling the admirable qualities of a correspondent, her protagonist mistakenly sends a message penned earlier with ‘all the Defects I could Think or had observed in her’. She argues that ‘I am not guilty of a Crime to her, for I was free from Malice or Envy, or any Evill Design…since I onlely writ it as a philosopher’376. Cavendish appropriates the objective gaze of the scientist and applies this outlook in the context of social discourse for comic effect – although acknowledging the clarity offered by scientific analysis, she recognises its inappropriateness in the context of social decorum. This satire is applied more seriously in Letters 200 and 201, in which Cavendish’s persona writes to her sister comparing the love they share to their obliged bonds with their husbands, then telling another sibling ‘I Cannot Advise you to Marry, unless Men's Souls, Minds, and Appetites, were as Visible to your Knowledge as their Persons to your Eyes, for though there may be much Deceit even in Outward Forms’. Her persona restricts her honest observation in the intellectually stifling context of epistoral decorum. Cavendish’s satirical hypocrisies in Sociable Letters can be read as a treatise on the application of scientific observation on the social sphere – at times socially inappropriate and dangerous, but necessary for open and honest correspondence. Ultimately, despite the eclectic and occasionally disorderly and hypocritical nature of this correspondence, Cavendish’s satire of social artifice embraces hypocrisy. Her persona sends a poem in Letter 198 expressing the centrality of this artifice to the human condition: ‘If we must nothing Artificial wear,/Then go stark Nak'd, and all the Body Bare...But if thou Artificial things think'st Vain,/Then like a Beast in Woods and Fields remain/,And feed on Grass Vnmow'd…For if that Art did not Increase the Store/Of every thing, the World would be but Poor’377. Although Cavendish identifies the social conceits of herself and her peers, her work simultaneously champions women’s social and intellectual independence. As with her extended satire of the esoterics of academic culture to the spheres in which women operate, she noting their incompatibility with her own vision of a state governed by the principle of order, she celebrates this imperfection, and frames her account of its shortcomings in the framework of feminine friendship. Her eccentric public persona, her incisive criticism of
374 Diana Barnes, Epistolary Community in Print, 1580-1664 (Taylor & Francis, 2013) 375 The Blazing World, p.121 376 Sociable Letters, p.120 377Ibid, p.265
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Bibliography
Barnes, Diana, ‘Familiar Epistolary Philosophy: Margaret Cavendish’s Philosophical Letters (1664), Parergon, 26:2 (2009) Barnes, Diana, Epistolary Community in Print, 1580–1664, (Taylor & Francis, 2013).
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Nottingham, University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, Portland Collection, Pw1.481.
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Nottingham, University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, Newcastle Collection, Nec15, 335/336.
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Finding The Nation's Place In a Globalised Space: a critical exploration of site- specific performance in The Passion and The Battle of Orgreave
Bethany Angella
Michael Sheen’s The Passion and Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave demonstrate the power of site-specific performance to examine the political foundations of society.378 By comparing the historical and contemporary spatial use of real sites in a heterotopic performance that incorporates local residents, the construction of hegemonic social orders can be challenged, which thus enables real political empowerment. Deller’s use of re- enactment enables ex-miners to reclaim the history of the miners’ strikes in 1984, whilst Sheen’s use of local anecdote in a site-specific passion play disrupts the supposedly limited political expectations of a globalised space. To demonstrate how these performances achieve a more politically advanced staging of the nation, I will examine the construction of identity through space and place, how heterotopias can thus be created through performance, and how site-specificity in conjunction with local residents and visitors enables long lasting implications for the places of the spaces in which the performances occurred.
Tim Creswell suggests that ‘[p]laces are locations with meaning’, that the space is the geographical location of objects and the place is the concept of what occurs and has occurred in that space to make it a certain place (although a space is shared, place is dependent on the individual).379 This concept seemingly enables both productions to critique Benedict Anderson’s idea of the ‘nation’ as an ‘imagined political community…[where] members…will never know most of their fellow-members…yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’, since the plays seemingly break down the illusions of locals’ identities that may be based on stereotypes of the physical space, by performing alternate places in the same spaces.380 Thus, what Doreen Massey terms, the ‘sense of place’ (which is created by the physical space and anyone who associates meaning with it) can be challenged by listening to the stories of people who actually practise and have practised place in local spaces, rather than relying on hegemonic national conceptions of an imagined identity.381 This is especially important since the imagined conceptions of place may arguably be limited by the force of globalisation, where, according to Dan Rebellato, ‘Transnational Corporations…produce commodities…and sell them globally…[which] undermin[es]…local economies,…cultures, customs and traditions’.382 Since Henri Lefebvre argues that ‘[a]ctivity…is restricted by…space’ and Kevin Hetherington suggests that ‘spaces act as sites for the performance of identity’, the physical limits of a space thus act as a limit of identity. 383
378WILDWORKSbiz, The Passion of Port Talbot. It Has Begun! BBC WALES Documentary., online video documentary, YouTube, 09 August 2013,
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 144-152 Finding The Nation's Place In A Globalised Space: a critical exploration of site- specific performance in The Passion and The Battle of Orgreave 145 This potentially limits conceptions of place (and therefore the identities of those who perform it) held within the imagined community (the nation). For example, in Port Talbot, residents were forced to move (and thus stop practising the space as ‘home’) when the M4 was built and Llewelyn Street was demolished, which may suggest to ‘outsiders’ that the town is a place worth driving past. Whilst in Orgreave, the tight-knit community of miners was disbanded after the coking plant closed and miners were forced into alternate jobs, where the place is potentially reduced to a disenfranchised working-class community built on a historical site of violent civilian riot. In light of this, I suggest that, since Fiona Wilkie defines site-specific performance as a ‘performance specifically generated from/for one selected site’, the staging of location- dependent performances allows the physical spatial limits of Port Talbot and Orgreave to be ideologically re-evaluated.384 Lefebvre’s suggestion then, that ‘[s]pace lays down the law because it implies a certain order – and hence also a certain disorder’, entails that these performances constructed heterotopias, since they created ‘spaces in which an alternate social ordering…[was] performed’.385 This should therefore resist (but also engage in a conversation with) the impacts of globalisation, whilst shattering limiting conceptions of the ‘imagined…community’ based on spatial assumptions of ‘place’ within the nation.386 In The Passion, a temporary heterotopia of resistance was arguably created under the M4, since Michel Foucault suggests heterotopias require ‘behaviour…[to be] deviant in relation to the required…norm’, which enables them to ‘have a function in relation to…the space that remains’. 387 Here the performance embodied a temporal change or ‘heterochrony’ in relation to the ‘dominated’ globalised space: the motorway (‘[d]ominated space’) still functioned as a place for drivers, whilst locals performed ‘ghosts’ underneath.388 Since the space has been modernised and marginalised (where the M4 has been ‘introduce[d as]…a new form into a pre-existing space’), according to Hetherington, the performance would thus enable ‘cultural resistance, transgression and alternative identity formation’.389 I argue that, by enacting possible spatial practices of past residents (as though they had revisited the space as it is now and asked the audience to ‘look for’ them), the locals undermined the imagined community’s expectations of a dominated local identity, which thus undermines the notion that the nation can be ‘truthfully’ imagined when the space can be practised as different places simultaneously by different members of the community.390 This site-specific performance feasibly epitomises the transformative power of the heterotopia and its resistance of globalisation therefore, since Hetherington argues it should ‘unsettl[e]…one’s everyday experience of that space’, which is seen when an emotional audience member proclaimed she could ‘imagine…[her] great grandparents…saying what those people were saying’.391 Thus the performance seemingly confirms Rebellato’s argument that ‘the assertion of the local…[can create] a site of resistance to the global’, where locals reclaimed space, place and thus identity.392
384 Fiona Wilkie, ‘Mapping the Terrain: a Survey of Site-Specific Performance in Britain’, New Theatre Quarterly, 18:2 (2002), 140-160 (p. 150)
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Furthermore, by using the actual site beneath the M4, as Joanne Tompkins suggests, the heterotopia is arguably more powerful than those created in theatres, where the creation of alternate worlds is expected.393 Thus, by using site-specific performance this conclusion to National Theatre Wales’ first year demonstrates how theatre (and the staging of ‘nation’) can create real political change and empowerment within these places due to the fact they are not expected to be practised in a way that deviates from what the physical, globalised domination of space ‘determines’ or what the fallacy of an ‘imagined…community’ therefore expects.394 Although Hetherington suggests that the importance of a ‘heterotopia is not the space…[itself] but what…[it] perform[s] in relation to other sites’, here, the heterotopia is arguably not only created in relation to the site above it (M4), but also in relation to the memories of that space (as both ‘under the M4’ and ‘Llewellyn Street’). 395 Thus it is both the prior ‘sense of place’ of that space and its relation to other spaces that enable a multi- dimensional heterotopic performance.396 This highlights how the ‘unscripted texts’ of the ‘real’ space that Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks argue are fundamental to site-specific performance (e.g. the sounds of the motorway) are essential in creating this heterotopia, since these features could be a ‘mnemonic trigger’, which Jen Harvie suggests connect the current practised place of the space with previous practices of place in the same, recognisable space.397 Pierre Nora’s argument however that memory ‘takes root in the concrete, in spaces, gestures, images and objects’ suggests that spatial features or repeated acts would be necessary to evoke memory.398 This seemingly happens to some extent in The Battle of Orgreave’s details – the clothing, police formations (including a cavalry charge) – which would increase the heterotopic ‘reality’. 399 Indeed, many of the ex-miners described how they felt ‘emotional’ during the re-enactment and that the process brought back a lot of memories.400 However, the fact that the space itself has been changed (e.g. by the M4 or the demolition of the coking plant), entails that these spaces have become what Nora describes as ‘lieux de mémoire, sites of memory, because…[they] are no longer milieu de mémoire, environments of memory’.401 This is arguably why the power of site-specific performance relies not only on the space itself, but also on the local people who perform in it. As Gay McAuley highlights, incorporating local people will mean ‘they will continue to frequent the place after the performers have left’, where the fact the performance occurred will be part of their individual conception of the place, that it is now practised as a place that has heterotopic abilities.402 For example, Port Talbot’s residents would remember going to the beach, and thus ‘know’ the spatial practices expected for ‘the beach’ as a place. To then watch the performance of the crucifixion during The Passion at ‘the beach’ would not only create a heterotopia, but it would also symbolise the death and rebirth of the town in their communal decision to take control of the spatial changes of where
393 Joanne Tompkins, Theatre's Heterotopias: Performance and the Cultural Politics of Space (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 40-41. 394 Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 6. 395 Hetherington, The Badlands of Modernity, p. 49. 396 Massey, For Space, p. 130. 397 Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks, Theatre/Archaeology (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 17; quoted in Tompkins, Theatre's Heterotopias, p. 43. Jen Harvie, Staging the UK (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 42. 398 Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, trans. by Marc Roundebush, in Representations, No. 26.Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (1989), 7-12; cited in Theories Of Memory: A Reader, ed. by Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 146. 399 Jones, The Battle of Orgreave (2001). 400 Ibid. 401 Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’, p. 144. 402 Gay McAuley, ‘Local Acts: Site-Specific Performance Practice, Introduction’, About Performance, 7 (2007) 7-11 (p. 9); quoted in Mike Pearson, Site-Specific Performance (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 146.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 144-152 Finding The Nation's Place In A Globalised Space: a critical exploration of site- specific performance in The Passion and The Battle of Orgreave 147 they live. This potentially enables a resistance to stable spatial stereotyping of a national identity by exploring how identity is locally created by individual decisions and not necessarily (as Lefebvre suggests) by what their physical space determines.403 Performing a lost past that clearly cannot be fully re-created may seem counterproductive, since it may highlight the repressive changing of space that has forced a place and some of the community’s identity to be ‘lost’. However, creating a heterotopia arguably enables Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering’s concept of ‘critical nostalgia…[which] derives not from the desire to return but from the knowledge of the impossibility of return, and in the face of that seeks to uncover and assess which aspects of the past may act as the basis for renewal in the future’.404 For example, by completing a ‘truthful’ re-enactment (in creating a self-reflexive performance that acknowledged the limitations of its capabilities), other truths were exposed, as seen when ex-miners explained ‘that Mr Scargill, the miners’ leader, was not pushed to the ground at the height of the battle, but lost his footing…and slipped’.405 This arguably exemplifies the subjectivity of memory and especially history (which, according to Nora, is an ‘incomplete…representation of the past).406 This therefore provides evidence for how a ‘collective memory’ – Maurice Halbwachs’ conception of the living continuum of perception about a current place, ‘manifest[ed]…in individual memories’ that together create a sense of identity – is more ‘truthful’ than a documented history, such as that reported by the BBC.407 By creating the re-enactment, the villainization of the miners as the ‘enemy within’ (and thus the villainization of Orgreave, where Christopher Hart suggests the coverage of the police-miner altercation locations ‘were depicted as battlefields’) can be addressed and thus counteract the ‘shrunken imaginings of recent history’ provided by the BBC that Anderson suggests creates imagined communities.408 The site-specific re-enactment arguably enabled Nora’s idea that a ‘moment…of history [can be] torn away from the movement of history, then returned’. 409 However, it may not have been quite ‘returned’, since the miners mnemonically re-visited the historical episode and re-documented it by recording their memories of the battle, where the cameras were placed on the miner’s side, rather than solely on the police’s.410 Thus although Étienne Balibar argues that ‘the projection of individual existence into the weft of a collective narrative…[means that] only imaginary communities are real’, I argue that some imagined communities (which inform our ‘sense of place’ and subsequently nation) are more ‘real’ than others, since some are based on stereotypes or misleading histories, rather than ‘truthful’ collections of individual memories.411
403 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 143. 404 Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering, The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 137. 405 Martin Wainwright, ‘Strikers relive battle of Orgreave’, Guardian, 18 June 2002, p. 3. 406 Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’, p. 146. 407 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. by Francis J. Ditter, Jr. and Vida Yazdi Ditter (New York: Harper & Row, 1992), p. 40; quoted in Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture, trans. by Sara B. Young (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 16. Jones, The Battle of Orgreave (2001). 408 Ibid. Christopher Hart, ‘Metaphor and intertextuality in media framings of the (1984-1985) British Miners’ Strike: A multimodal analysis’, Discourse & Communication, 11:1 (2017), 3-30 (p. 14)
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Furthermore, Wilkie suggests ‘[s]ite-specific performance’s act of writing on a space might simultaneously be an act of erasing what has previously been written’. 412 Thus these performances may re-write limited conceptions of places that can be practised in the space (which may erase documented lies of past events, such as those the BBC reported).413 However, rather than ‘erasing’, I suggest that by drawing on the relationship with past places in the same space, site-specific performance merely adds to the space’s capabilities and its ‘sense of place’.414 This is arguably essential for enabling the barriers of an ‘imagined…community’ (and therefore limitations of nationhood) to be shattered through creating a dialogue between spatial expectations based on past place and the spatial reality of the current place of heterotopic communal performance.415 Furthermore, Wills suggests that ‘it is possible to construct a progressive agenda in place through the incorporation of ideas and practices from further afield’. 416 This seemingly occurs in Port Talbot by highlighting Oberammergau’s passion play as the inspiration for The Passion, as well as having Sheen as the ‘leader’ – as both local and Hollywood icon – which may combat the complete villainization of globalisation (as just the town vs. the fictional global corporation, ‘I.C.U.’), where, by the end of the play, visitors who had learned about the play through national reviews met, joined and spoke with thousands of local people during the final procession.417 Whilst, in The Battle of Orgreave, the incorporation of re-enactors from across the country and the choice to have some ex-miners playing ‘miners’ and some playing ‘policemen’ would add to Orgreave’s progressive stance toward history by, as Bishop suggests, ‘dismantling…any nostalgia for sentimental class unity’.418 The active political progress can arguably be seen when an ex-miner told Howard Giles, the re-enactment director, about how he was there in 1984 and hid behind a hedge because the police were coming, where Giles could then obtain permission to use local houses in the re-enactment to enable this ex-miner to recreate the moment.419 However, whilst Bishop suggests ‘Deller juxtaposed [the ex-miners]…with the middle class…to write a universal history of oppression’, it is arguably less about the universality of oppression (Mike Figgis’s documentary highlights how ex-miners are still impacted by the events in Orgreave), but how these stories do not need to create boundaries ‘between “us” and “them”’, of who is allowed to tell a community’s story and who isn’t.420 Instead it enables a local ‘meeting place’ of people to consider a place’s history, memory and present together in spite of their differences.421 Having said this, it is important to highlight that The Battle of Orgreave constituted a masculine-dominated reclamation of space (and place), where women were positioned as audience members. Although they still contributed to the heterotopia, by strengthening the created place of ‘re-enactment performance’, this arguably reinforces Massey’s observations of these communal spaces during the strikes, where women were not
412 Fiona Wilkie, ‘Kind of Place at Bore Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Rules of Spatial Behaviour’, New Theatre Quarterly, 18:3 (2002), 243-260 (p. 251)
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 144-152 Finding The Nation's Place In A Globalised Space: a critical exploration of site- specific performance in The Passion and The Battle of Orgreave 149 part of the active workforce.422 Whilst this adds to the re-enactment’s ‘reality’, it potentially reduces its progressive abilities by not including women (as it did with middle-class re- enactors) in reclaiming the place of Orgreave. Furthermore, Kirsty Sedgman and Dave Beech argue that, due to the ‘external’ artists’ inputs, neither community was fully empowered in performance to re-write their places.423 As seen in The Battle of Orgreave, the ex-miners were restricted in what roles they were ‘allowed’ to play where only trained re-enactors could throw stones.424 Whilst in The Passion, it may be suggested that having a writer adapt locals’ stories for performance may diminish individual expression, and that Sheen patronisingly collectivises and owns the town’s memories as he exclaims on the cross, ‘I remember’.425 However, by using Sheen (and the fact therefore that these are clearly not his memories), the performance of spatial memory seemingly highlights Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt’s argument that the ‘truth’ of history is acknowledging how it is constructed from other people’s representations of events that are retold by others. 426 By retelling stories and memories, a collective truth of the place of Port Talbot can inform the present performance and conceptions of identity. Thus, whilst there are individual and localised differences, they can be celebrated in performance, rather than used as a basis for stereotyping and separation. Thus, these performances stage these areas of the nation in a collaborative manner that appeases Massey’s concern of ‘how to hold on to…geographical difference…without being reactionary’.427 By combining information and talent from within and outside a community, and listening to those who hold the deepest memories of these places, a more ‘truthful’ imagined community and progressive sense of place (that is at once collective, individual and aware of its subjective limitations) can be created. The use of site-specific performance enabled both Sheen and Deller to empower local people to consciously consider the use of space and how this impacts the place they live in and the identities this enables them to perform. By creating these performances, the space itself can be ideologically transformed, and thus create places of political defiance and reclamation, that empowers local identities in globalised spaces, whilst demonstrating the communal versatility of the nation.
422 Doreen Massey, ‘Industrial Restructuring as Class Restructuring: Production Decentralization and Local Uniqueness’, Regional Studies, 17:2 (1983), 73-89 (p. 77)
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Bibliography
‘The Passion | National Theatre Wales’, National Theatre Wales (2011)
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn (London: Verso, 2006).
Balibar, Étienne, ‘The Nation Form: History and Ideology’, in Race Critical Theories, ed. by Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg (London: Blackwell, 2002), pp.220-230, in Theories Of Memory: A Reader, ed. by Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp.253-261.
Beech, Dave, ‘“The Reign of the Workers and Peasants Will Never End”: Politics and Politicisation, Art and Politics of Political Art’, Third Text, 16:4 (2002), 387-398
Bishop, Claire, ARTIFICIAL HELLS: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012).
Creswell, Tim, ‘Place: encountering geography as philosophy’, Geography, 93:3 (2008), 132– 141
Erll, Astrid, Memory in Culture, trans. by Sara B. Young (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Foucault, Michel and Jay Miskoweic, ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics, 16:1 (1986), 22-27
Gallagher, Catherine and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Halbwachs, Maurice, The Collective Memory, trans. by Francis J. Ditter Jr and Vida Yazdi Ditter, intro. Mary Douglas (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1980), pp. 78-84, in Theories Of Memory: A Reader, ed. by Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 139-143.
Harpin, Anna, ‘Land of hope and glory: Jez Butterworth’s tragic landscapes’, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 31:1 (2011), 61-73
Hart, Christopher, ‘Metaphor and intertextuality in media framings of the (1984-1985) British Miners’ Strike: A multimodal analysis’, Discourse & Communication, 11:1 (2017), 3-30
Harvie, Jen, Staging the UK (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
Hetherington, Kevin, Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics (London: Sage, 1998).
Hetherington, Kevin, The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and social ordering (London: Routledge, 1997).
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 144-152 Finding The Nation's Place In A Globalised Space: a critical exploration of site- specific performance in The Passion and The Battle of Orgreave 151 Hughes, Catherine, ‘Is That Real?: An Exploration of What Is Real in a Performance Based on History’, in Enacting History, ed. by Scott Magelssen and Rhona Justice-Malloy (Tuscaloosa: University Press: 2012), pp. 134-152.
Jones, Jonny, The Battle of Orgreave (2001), online video documentary, YouTube, 19 August 2013,
Keightley, Emily, and Michael Pickering, The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
Massey, Doreen, ‘A Global Sense of Place’, Marxism Today, 35:6 (1991), 24-29.
Massey, Doreen, ‘Industrial Restructuring as Class Restructuring: Production Decentralization and Local Uniqueness’, Regional Studies, 17:2 (1983), 73-89
Massey, Doreen, For Space (London: Sage).
Nora, Pierre, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, trans. by Marc Roundebush, in Representations, No. 26.Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (1989), pp. 7-12, in Theories Of Memory: A Reader, ed. by Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 144-149.
Pearson, Mike and Michael Shanks, Theatre/Archaeology (London: Routledge, 2001).
Pearson, Mike, Site-Specific Performance (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Rebellato, Dan, ‘Playwriting and globalisation: Towards a site-unspecific theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 16:1 (2006), 97-113
Sedgman, Kirsty, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen Follow Me, Please Put on Your Beards: Risk, Rules, and Audience Reception in National Theatre Wales’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 27:2 (2017),158-176
Tompkins, Joanne, Theatre's Heterotopias: Performance and the Cultural Politics of Space (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
Wainwright, Martin, ‘Strikers relive battle of Orgreave’, Guardian, 18 June 2002, p. 3.
WILDWORKSbiz, The Passion of Port Talbot. It Has Begun! BBC WALES Documentary., online video documentary, YouTube, 09 August 2013,
WILDWORKSbiz, The Passion of Port Talbot. The town tells it's story BBC WALES Documentary., online video documentary, YouTube, 09 August 2013,
Wilkie, Fiona, ‘Kind of Place at Bore Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Rules of Spatial Behaviour’, New Theatre Quarterly, 18:3 (2002), 243-260
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Wilkie, Fiona, ‘Mapping the Terrain: a Survey of Site-Specific Performance in Britain’, New Theatre Quarterly, 18:2 (2002), 140-160
Wills, Jane, ‘Place and Politics’, in Spatial Politics: Essays for Doreen Massy, ed. by David Featherstone and Joe Painter (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 135-145.
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What is the significance of seasonal imagery in the Middle English lyric? Charlotte Palmer
The abundant lushness of spring or the beating winds of winter and other seasonal images are not uncommon in the Middle English lyric, the elemental forces or natural impact taking up firm residence in lyrical tropes. Sometimes the superficial associations and images of death and rebirth are so easily recognisable that it is simple to overlook other potential interpretations; I argue, however, that the use of seasonal imagery can reveal a web of contextual meaning, and its use in Middle English lyrics aids a sense of movement within them. This is shown in two ways: on a symbolic level the cyclical nature of the seasons is mimicked in lyric structures and characters; on a more contextual level the use of seasonal imagery can demonstrate the fluidity of movement and influence between religious and secular lyrics. These may appear to be two rather different ideas but they come from different directions to work in harmony and help further understanding of contemporary lifestyle and belief. I aim to demonstrate, through the lyric culture, the deep influence and infiltration of the church on everyday life, and that attempts to separate and categorise religious and secular lyrics is reductive of their reciprocal nature. Duncan believes that separating and categorising religious and secular lyrics is the easiest and best introduction to them, and whilst it may be the easiest, it is not necessarily the best, and only in layering lyrics can one get a true sense of their borrowed meanings and origins and thus any wider applicable significance.428 Trying to strictly categorise these lyrics is like prising apart two glued objects, difficult and each leaving the other residually incomplete and destabilised. Duncan did, however, note the ‘common currency of word and phrase’ and there is certainly a sense of the trade of images, particularly those related to the seasons which had both religious and secular applications.429 This, therefore, partially becomes a social study, using the images and ideas of literary culture to draw conclusions about the social lifestyle and beliefs of the contemporary reader or poet. For the purposes of exploring any themes in detail I wish to focus closely on four lyrics: Dunbar’s ‘A Meditation in Winter,’ and the Harley MS. 2253, ‘Lenten ys come with love to toune,’ ‘When Y se blosmes springe,’ and ‘Wynter wakeneth al my care.’ Whilst Dunbar’s lyric may seem different from the otherwise solely Harley-based study its abundance of seasonal description is too rich to forego. The prominence of the Harley lyrics in my argument becomes an example in itself. Commonly believed to be compiled between 1314-1325 (much earlier than Dunbar’s, written during the reign of James IV) the manuscript has been described by Wenzel as a ‘helter- skelter’ in its mix of the religious and secular, Latinate and vernacular.430 In this example of manuscript culture, it is easy to see how images were allowed free interchange, an image once used for religious explanation being seen side by side and understood in a lyric with a more secular origin. In this context lyrics gain stability from one another and show the fluidity between genres. One of the key bridges between the religious and the secular is the notion of affective piety, the presentation of Christ as human with human emotions to elicit human responses of compassion and devotion. McNamer, in her study on affective piety in literature, stresses the focus on the reaction of the reader, and the immediate human emotion to which
428 Thomas G.Duncan, Companion to the Middle English Lyric (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2005), p.xxv. 429 Duncan, Companion, p.xxi 430 Siegfried Wenzel, Preachers, poets and the early English lyric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p.5.
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one could relate.431 In an agrarian society more dependent on the seasons than today’s, this is evident in many of the lyrics I explore. It is therefore not surprising that the link between seasonal and human disposition is embedded. There is an activeness in the lyrics that allows us to feel the significance of the seasons to medieval English life and helps explain its frequent use as such powerful image in the contemporary lyrics. The seasons as exemplifying movement, both religious and cyclical, is best seen by examining the role of personified, gendered and active seasons, seasonal openings to lyrics and the seasonal as divine. Many lyrics make a physical link between the seasons and the narrator’s mood, be this of joy or woe. Brook talks about the Middle English poet’s ‘responsiveness’ to the seasons, visualising medieval man’s reliance on and total surrender to seasonal whim.432 Many of the lyrics, however, reflect this responsiveness and dependency by personifying the seasons, implying their almost physical presence in the lyric. In some lyrics this is done to vilify the seasonal influence. For example, in ‘Wynter wakeneth al my care,’ (editorial title and l,1) the first line becomes accusatory, winter almost malicious in its active awakening of the narrator’s passive sorrow.433 Similarly, in Dunbar’s ‘A Meditation in Winter’ there are embedded formal examples of this inherent link between season and narrator, perhaps in an even more explicit manner. Lists of three are used to describe both winter and the narrator’s condition, the initial description of winter echoing in the narrator’s woe. ‘With mystie vapouris, cluddis, and skyis’ (l.3) is reflected in ‘I walk, I turne, sleip may I nocht’(l.11).434 These rhythmic similarities create an inherent pattern which is perhaps stylistically associating man’s temperament with the elemental and seasonal climate. There is an oppressive claustrophobia in the vapours and clouds which can also be seen in the discontented movements of the turning and lack of sleep. Even in the description of winter as first chronologically suggests that it is the proactive leading of winter which results in the narrator’s woeful disposition, and there is therefore an inherent link between narrator and season. These personified seasons are also sometimes gendered, or adopt gendered traits borrowed from other literary traditions. Again, Dunbar’s ‘A Meditation in Winter’ says his creative ailments are due to a ‘laik of Symmer with his flouris’ (l.10) This suggests that summer is like a remedy, but the masculine personification may align this more with a heroic male figure. The beckoning of ‘Cum, lustie Symmer,’ (l.49) also adds to the creation of an active, masculine figure. The Middle English Dictionary (MED) suggests many potential definitions for ‘lustie,’ but all revolve around something handsome and vigorous, the example given being that of a ‘lusti man.’435 These associations could perhaps play into the chivalric narratives where the masculine hero intercepts danger to save a feminine object of desire. If seasons take on these meanings then it allows us to delve further into the gendered roles within the lyric, and wider power dynamics of literary narratives. Chivalric tropes, if applied in this way, would suggest the narrator to be feminine, in her appeal to be aided by summer’s fruitfulness. This characterisation of a masculine summer thus takes on an active role, his entrance described as directly and actively removing winter, a push-pull dynamic not often considered with relation to the seasons which are more often seen as inevitably cyclical. This builds throughout Dunbar’s lyric to portray a summer so strongly personified in his active role within the narrative structure that he almost exceeds the human realm, surpassing the power of the narrative voice. Another definition offered by the MED for ‘lustie’ suggested a benevolent,
431 Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, University of Philadelphia Press, 2010), p.1. 432 G.L.Brook ed., The Harley Lyrics, the Middle English lyrics of MS Harley 2253 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968), p.25. 433 ‘Wynter wakeneth al my care,’ ed. Brook, Harley, p.53 (which all future references refer to). 434 William Dunbar, ‘A Meditation in Winter,’ http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/conlee-dunbar- complete-works-poems-devotional-and-moral [accessed 04-05-2018], (which all future references refer to). 435 ‘Lustie,’ adj. MED, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED26382 [accessed 04-05-2018].
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 153-158 Charlotte Palmer 155 divine will, and the narrator’s calling upon summer has an air of the divine.436 This impingement of the religious onto what is commonly read as a secular meditation demonstrates the ease of movement from religious to secular based on interpretation. Arguably, it is not too far-fetched to read the beyond-human might aided by the chivalric tropes as working in unison with the religious images of God’s will, embodied in the seasonal imagery. The seasons here appear powerful, beyond human control. The religious elements also emphasise the relative helplessness of the narrator. In looking at multiple interpretations, as I have done here, it demonstrates the versatility of the Middle English lyric and its active and ‘malleable’ possibilities which awaited readers of the material, and highlights the importance of individual interpretation.437 Although not irrefutable definitions, as I will later discuss, if summer is masculine then spring, and its associations with fertility and renewal, is often feminised. ‘Lenten ys come with love to toune,’ regularly described as one of the most vibrant descriptions of spring surviving in lyric poetry, offers a powerful evocation of spring’s arrival: the rose becomes rosier, and the moon shines brighter, both using the feminine possessive pronoun ‘hire’ (l.13-16).438 The feminine preening attributed to these seasonal components may conform to courtly poetry, whereby the women of desire are commonly described in terms of their lavish beauty through metaphor. Brook agrees that many of the secular Harley lyrics were ‘written under the influence’ of courtly conventions.439 The feminine presentation of spring, therefore, influences the wider narrative implications of the lyric, and, unlike ‘A Meditation in Winter,’ the narrator takes on a masculine persona, with the agency to gaze upon the physical beauty of spring. However, there is a degree of activity given to Dunbar’s narrator, albeit a trudging movement. The ‘into’ which opens the lyric (‘Into thir dirk and drublie dayis’(l.1)) creates the impression of reluctantly moving toward the enveloping gloom. The hesitation is emphasised in the alliteration of ‘dirk,’ ‘drublie’ and ‘dayis,’ the plosive sounds jarring the movement and not allowing any harmonious rhythm to the lyric’s initial tone. The unwilling movement of narrator into seasonal space runs in opposition to ‘Lenten ys come with love to toune,’ in which spring, the active member here, bursts into the frame of the lyric, love in tow. This sense of a proactive spring may appear to run in contradiction to my previous distinction between an active, male summer and a feminine, passive spring, but I feel it important to admit to contradictions. It is in this interpretation of personified seasons that I think the flexibility of the imagery becomes most apparent, and whilst there were huge influences across the lyrical and contextual tradition, this has been harnessed and interpreted to very different ends within the framework of individual lyrics. And in this context, the lushness and vitality of spring is overwhelmingly active. Images of springtime are frequently used to open Middle English lyrics, the lush renewal and rebirth lending great optimism to many of the opening lines. Whilst some lyrics retain these seasonal themes throughout, often they are used to create a rich opening and introduce some broader themes before the lyric moves away to other ideas. This is seen in both religious and secular lyrics, and Brook implies that the influence of seasonal openings works in a secular to religious direction of influence, the ‘phraseology of love lyrics’ being mimicked in affective meditations.440 Despite strong cyclical movements involved in the use of the seasons the departure after a spring opening can signify a more linear progression and meditation. For example, ‘When Y se blosmes springe’ has a remarkably similar opening to ‘Lenten ys come with love to toune’ with its density of images and the lush rejuvenation of spring. They also both comment on the beauty of the birdsong, but where ‘Lenten’ remains
436 Ibid. 437 McNamer, Affective meditation, p.19. 438 ‘Lenten ys come with love to toune,’ ed. Brook, Harley, p.43-44 (which all future references refer to). 439 Brook, Harley, p.6. 440 Brook, Harley, p.16.
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literal, the whole of the first stanza accumulating a wall of sound until the ‘wode ryngeth’ (’12), ‘When Y se blosmes springe’ begins with birdsong and a sweet love longing, reminiscent of another love which gladdens the narrator’s own song, revealed in the second stanza to be a devotional love for Christ. 441 Opening with spring imagery, as well as being implied to be inherently linked to the narrator’s disposition, could also stabilise the emotions affective piety was intended to arouse. Similarly to how affective meditation aims to lower religion from an incomprehensible level, the joy of spring can stir familiar emotions in the reader to set the prevailing tone when moving into the religious themes. It seems very natural to describe what one sees and the emotions this evokes regarding the spring imagery: ‘when y se blosmes springe,’ ‘that gladieth al my song’ (l.1, l.7). The use of this opening stanza and the very earthly and accessible images of spring therefore set a grounding from which the continued lyric ‘I’ can move into the biblical realm with the same relational understanding. The intended inhabitant of the Middle English lyrical ‘I’ has long been contested, but Woolf argues that it acted as instruction for ‘Everyman,’ especially in the religious lyric. 442 Therefore, the seasonal imagery, coupled with the inclusion encouraged by the lyrical ‘I’, could ease the transition from secular seasonal to religious devotion, a copying of trigger and elicited reaction. The seasonal opening aids the instructional tone, the joy one is supposed to feel being echoed in the joy one should feel at Christ’s love. A more pessimistic seasonal opening can be found in ‘Wynter wakeneth al my care,’ the desolate images of winter acting as a springboard for the following ideas and prevailing tone throughout the lyric. Line by line there is a degeneration from seasonal into personal misery. The first line attributes winter as being directly responsible for the narrator’s sadness, before physically comparing this to a symptom of winter, the ‘leves [which] waxeth bare’ (l.2). The description of winter ceases here and the lyric then becomes far more introspective: a personal meditation on the finite span of life. Winter imagery similarly opens Dunbar’s ‘A Meditation in Winter,’ but he also uses images of summer to close his meditation, a seasonal bookending. The opening two stanzas are packed with dismal images of winter, ominous in its bleakness, both in terms of weather and the narrator’s temperament. The middle section of Dunbar’s lyric takes the form of a Romance of the Rose-like encounter with allegorical characters, such as Patience, Prudence and Age, before returning to the seasonal imagery by appealing to summer. In doing this there is a cyclical nature to the structure, winter departing and summer taking its place by the end with the resultant hopefulness. This sense of hope is not echoed in the religious end to ‘Wynter wakeneth al my care.’ The cyclical resolution of Dunbar’s lyric contributes to the hope we glimpse at the end and the absence of this in ‘Wynter wakeneth al my care’ causes the ending to feel suspended and unresolved, similar to the image of purgatory it ends on: ‘For Y not whider I shal, | Ne hou longe her duelle’ (l.17-18). This suggests that the turning of the seasons could be mirrored in the very structure of the lyrics. Where the natural progression is adhered to, the promise of summer’s joys is implied and the lyric ends optimistically, but the dwelling on winter and the stagnation of the seasonal cycle destabilises the narrator’s disposition for the rest of the lyric, symbolised in the hanging statement of uncertainty of the final line. Until this point the focus of the essay has primarily been the influence of the secular on religious imagery, but this is a flexible relationship and there is certainly evidence to suggest a mutual sharing of images and patterns. Wenzel highlighted the key role interpretation played in the Middle English lyric, noting that whatever their original purpose, many lyrics were given religious meanings, especially in sermons and official religious teachings. In this vein, I want to re-examine ‘Lenten ys come with love to toune’ through the lens of its potentially religious connotations. The MED defines ‘lenten’ as both spring and referring to Lent, the very core of language demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between religious and secular, resurrection
441 ‘When y se blosmes springe,’ ed. Brook, Harley, p.54 (which all future references refer to) 442 Rosemary Woolf, The English religious lyric in the Middle Ages, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p.6 and p.14 respectively.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 153-158 Charlotte Palmer 157 and renewal.443 The lyric’s language is devoted to a wonderous portrayal of nature, at the point of spring bursting and the natural world coming, once again, to life. This lushness is only minorly interrupted with the revelation in the final three lines of the last two stanzas that the narrator is unlucky in love, that they are ‘on of tho | For love that likes ille,’ (l.23-24) concluding that in the event of being love lacking he shall ‘whyt in wode be fleme’ (l.36). There is a tinge of sadness to this but it does not overwhelm the poem, only ending it, with a fizzle more than a bang. The final stanza is filled with pairings of natural images or creatures, the moon and the sun, the dew and the grass and implications of sex or desire, the bizarre image of worms making love underground. The final stanza ends with the statement seemingly irrelevant to the previous themes, ‘Yef me shal wonte wile of on, This wunne weole Y wole forgon Ant wyht in wode be fleme’ (l.34-36). Although there is certainly disappointment in missing out on this wonderful richness of love, the sentiment is not described with the intense descriptors found in the rest of the lyric. I find it strange, then, that the narrator’s solution to this love woe is to exile himself into the woods, which houses much of the nature he has spent the past three stanzas discussing with wonderment. I think here a religious reading could be made. The natural elements of spring seem all consuming and unavoidable in their abundance, and the absence of an earthly love is viewed lightly. This could imply an underlying highlighting of the rejection of earthly love in favour of the richness of an ever-present and larger God’s love. That the narrator ends the lyric with an image of entering the woods could reiterate an acceptance of God’s love and the abundance which that brings in the face of earthly rejection. The term ‘fleme’ could also connote biblical exile. The earliest incidence of exile found in the Bible is that of Adam and Eve, and the poet’s rich description of spring is almost Eden-like in its lushness. Based, therefore, on interpretation, the use of seasonal imagery helped the cross-fertilisation of images, and the seasonal richness of spring is a fertile bed from which to grow and interweave other images of the sublime, such as the all-encompassing nature of God’s love. Although this does not come under the umbrella of affective piety, there is resonance of it in the use of religious metaphor based in earthly love and seasonal fertility. There is not the same equality between man and Christ as seen in ‘When Y se blosmes springe,’ a natural hierarchy still imposed, but we still find the use of understandable emotions within the secular imagery to transpose onto or help further the religious implications and meanings. Seasonal imagery adds a dynamism to the lyrics it pertains to, either by acknowledging the season’s cyclical nature or using it as a vehicle to transport ideas across thematic boundaries. Above all else, this study has demonstrated to me the importance and versatility of interpretation. I hope to have established just what active and important roles the seasons play in lyrical interpretation, and the plethora of ways in which this movement is shown. Seasonal imagery has strata of meanings within the medieval lyric. The use of personified seasons allows them to act as characters in the lyrics, a solidity of place, paradoxically, allowing them more agency and flexibility within the lyrical framework. By starting with seasonal imagery the lyric gains stability and meaning from it before moving outwards. The understandable reactions to the seasons, helped by the lyrical ‘I’ guides a reader’s emotional response to the further images and ideas introduced, particularly with regards to affective piety. On a contextual level, seasonal imagery demonstrates the fluidity between religious and secular culture and tropes, and the sharing of themes and the importance of interpretation. The importance of personal interpretation has made this a tricky study to anchor, but I do not think it’s importance to the Middle English lyric culture should be overlooked. Even if the season’s impact and role is not a hugely visible one it layers meanings and contextual associations which can only aid the richness of interpretation to be found in Middle English lyrics.
443 ‘Lenten,’ n. MED, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED25141 [accessed 04-05-2018].
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Bibliography Brook, G.L, ed., The Harley Lyrics, the Middle English lyrics of MS Harley 2253 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968). Dunbar, William and John Conlee, ed., “Poems Devotional and Moral,” TEAMS Middle English Text Series, http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/conlee-dunbar-complete-works-poems- devotional-and-moral [accessed 07-08-2018]. Duncan, Thomas G., Companion to the Middle English Lyric (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2005). Ferguson, Arthur B., The Chivalric Tradition in Renaissance England, (London, Associate University Presses, 1986). Gray, Douglas, Themes and images in the medieval English lyric (London: Routledge, 1972). McNamer, Sarah, Affective meditation and the invention of medieval compassion (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). “Middle English Dictionary, Lookups.” https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/lookup.html [accessed07-05-2018]. Nelson, Ingrid, Lyric Tactics: poetry, genre and practice in later medieval England (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). Wenzel, Siegfried, Preachers, poets and the early English lyric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Woolf, Rosemary, The English religious lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).
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Iago’s soliloquies adapted on screen: the reworking of Iago’s character in an adaptation and two appropriations of Othello.
Silvia La Paglia
In this essay I will discuss how screen versions of Othello present the character of Iago, focusing in particular on Iago’s soliloquies, as they are symbolic of the character’s significant role in the play. I will analyse one adaptation of the play, namely Orson Welles’s Othello, and two appropriations, specifically Geoffrey Sax’s Othello and Tim Blake Nelson’s O.444 I will thus argue that the ways in which Iago’s soliloquies have been reshaped in my chosen films is indicative of the way the director aims for the audience to perceive the character’s motives and actions. As each film’s treatment of the soliloquies varies significantly, I will show that the amount of power Iago is given varies as a result. I will also briefly discuss each movie’s treatment of socio-political issues, specifically race and social status, in order to outline the power dynamics between Iago and Othello. While Welles’s Othello can be defined as an adaptation on account of its dependence upon the source play, Sax’s Othello and Nelson’s O can be considered appropriations due to their reshaping of the play, specifically through the use of modern language and the shift to different genres and settings.445 In spite of the racial tensions present in America at the time Welles’s Othello was produced (mid-20th century), Welles divests his film of most of the racial elements present in the play.446 Welles’s choice to discard the racial quality intrinsic to the Shakespearean play almost completely erases Othello’s otherness, and by extent allows the character to retain a sense of authority that is not significantly undermined by a perceived racial inferiority. Welles’s treatment of Iago’s soliloquies is consistent with his choice to foreground Othello’s character and grant him authority. Soliloquies are able to generate empathy between audience and character, due to the audience being privy to the character’s private reflections and emotions, and their being able to adopt their perspective. Iago’s crucial role in the source play is, then, undoubtedly defined by the frequent soliloquies he delivers throughout the play. As is noted by Hatchuel, ‘not a single soliloquy of Iago is left intact’ in Welles’s Othello, as they are instead cut into fragments and integrated into the dialogue.447 Welles’s depriving Iago of his soliloquies strips the character of the connection he has with the audience in the play, bringing Othello to the fore instead. For instance, Iago’s ‘I hate the Moor’ soliloquy is entirely reshaped, becoming ‘I have told thee often, and I retell thee again and again, I hate the Moor; I’ll poison his delight’, followed by a dialogue between him and Roderigo. Not only does Iago’s statement lack the implication that Othello has had sexual encounters with Iago’s wife Emilia, –present in the play- but it is also Iago’s first utterance in the film, immediately establishing the character’s role as a villain.448 Accordingly, as the line is spoken the character’s back is to the camera, giving him the appearance of a shadow, further
444 Othello, dir. Orson Welles (Mercury Productions, 1951), YouTube, 31 January 2013,
447 Sarah Hatchuel, Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 77. 448 Shakespeare, William, Othello, ed. by E.A.J. Honigmann (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1996) I.3. 386-7
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 159-165 Iago’s soliloquies adapted on screen: the reworking of Iago’s character in an adaptation and two appropriations of Othello 160 enhanced by the effect of black and white filmmaking. The medium shot also enables the audience to see the character’s hooded figure in relation to his surroundings, namely the inside of a church, as well as the diegetic sound of the organ, further emphasising his devilish role. During Iago’s subsequent conversation with Roderigo, the camera frames him from low angle shots, giving him authority particularly in contrast with the high angle shot of Othello and Desdemona on the gondola. Sax’s British crime drama offers a striking contrast to Welles’s film, as it adapts Iago’s soliloquies by having the actor portraying Iago break the fourth wall and directly address the audience. This enables the character to retain a close relationship with the audience, becoming their ‘candid informant and confidant’, as he is defined by Cartelli and Rowe.449 The audience are thus captivated by the character’s forthrightness, which draws the audience in and invites them to adopt his perspective. The character is effectively the protagonist of the film, as the events are mediated through his perspective: his soliloquies open and end the action, and emphasise his point of view throughout. Accordingly, the soliloquy delivered by Ben after being made aware of John’s new role as Commissioner –the role that had been intended for Ben- can be regarded as an adaptation of Iago’s ‘I hate the Moor’ soliloquy, and fully conveys the character’s anger and jealousy. The moments leading up to the soliloquy are punctuated by the non-diegetic sound of bells, symbolically representing John’s tragic fate, sealed by his acceptance of the job. The character is transported to a different location through a quick wipe transition, as multiple following shots trace his fast-paced walk through the police station. The quick jump cuts convey the character’s rage and frustration and can be disorienting for the viewers, who experience the character’s inner turmoil as he delivers his speech and physically expresses his emotions through violent and extreme gestures. This is further highlighted by the incessant –most likely only partially diegetic- sound of ringing telephones accompanied by ominous non-diegetic music. The camera alternates between straight-on and low angle shots, providing mostly medium close-ups and close to extreme close-ups, as well as a single medium long shot. The camera thus allows the audience to view the character from multiple perspectives, symbolising the audience’s access to the character’s unfiltered thoughts. The close-ups and extreme close-ups are specifically used to emphasise significant parts of his speech, such as ‘you owe me everything’, and, notably, his final exclamation: ‘how could I love you now’. The audience’s deep insight into the character’s thoughts during the soliloquy is conveyed through the use of a claustrophobic setting that represents the character’s mind. As in Sax’s Othello, the Iago character in Nelson’s O becomes the protagonist of the film, as most of the events are mediated through his perspective, though his soliloquies are only present at the beginning and at the end of the film. Part of Iago’s ‘I hate the Moor’ soliloquy in the play is incorporated into the soliloquy Hugo delivers at the start of the film. The film begins through a fade-in, and, as the camera is initially out of focus, the audience is only able to see the contrast between the colour white against a black background, anticipating the racial symbolism present in the film. Through a gradual focus in, we identify the whiteness of the image as belonging to white doves, as harmonious non-diegetic music plays in the background. The character’s short soliloquy expresses his inability to ‘live like a hawk’, as the cause of his jealousy. Through a fade-out and a following fade-in, we are shown an image of a hawk and then an extreme close-up of Odin’s face. Owing to the avian –and racial- symbolism we are then able to recognise Hugo as a white dove and Odin as the hawk, and by extent the cause of Hugo’s jealousy and discontent, as his inability to ‘fly’ is directly paralleled to Odin’s ability to do so. Nelson’s O fully exploits the fascinating dichotomy between the power held by Odin in relation to his social status and his perceived racial inferiority. The film emphasises the ethnicity of the character by setting the action in a circumscribed environment, where he is almost exclusively surrounded by white individuals. The film thus exploits contemporary media stereotypes in depicting Odin (Othello) as both a young and successful black athlete as well as an individual with the potential to be violent, and
449 Thomas Cartelli and Katherine Rowe, New Wave Shakespeare on Screen (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p. 124.
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with a history of drugs.450 Therefore, the film makes use of the character’s ethnicity to estrange him from his environment and identify him as ‘other’, while his status as a successful sports star grants him authority, kindling Hugo’s (Iago) jealousy and thus setting the plot in motion. The power relations between the two characters are thus immediately established as crucial to Hugo’s sense of identity, as he perceives himself directly in relation to Odin. Observing the power dynamics between Othello and Iago in each film can therefore provide insight into the amount of agency given to the Iago characters. Welles’s Othello doubtlessly accentuates Iago’s power, and particularly that of his speech, visually displayed as capable of causing Othello to succumb to his manipulation. According to Hurwitz, Welles’s Iago ‘devilishly engenders the action of the play, unfolding the drama from his pointed words and phrases’.451 Accordingly, it is worth noting that Othello never obtains concrete evidence of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness, as the conversation between Cassio, Bianca and Iago is cleverly distorted by the character to only appear as proof. Likewise, Othello is ultimately persuaded by Iago’s words, (‘Lie … with her, on her, what you will’) causing the character’s loss of consciousness. Welles emphasises in particular the ability of Iago’s speech to affect Othello, and often highlights it by foregrounding Iago during dialogues that are significant in shaping Othello’s final capitulation. This is exemplified, for instance, in the scene in which Iago convinces Othello to hide so as to provide him with false evidence of Desdemona’s infidelity. As Othello attempts to climb up the stairs, Iago stops him by moving closer to him and positioning himself slightly above Othello. Othello’s second attempt to move is physically impeded by Iago, who is here at the centre of the frame. Through quick cuts, the camera angle shifts twice from a medium long straight-on angle shot to a close-up high angle shot that frames Iago as being literally and figuratively above Othello, showing the latter’s decreasing sense of agency. Moreover, Othello looks longingly towards the light of the outside world, symbolic of the mental liberty which Iago’s incessant speech –and by extent, manipulation- does not allow him to attain. The stairs in this scene symbolise the power relations between the two characters: accordingly, as Iago ceases to speak, he begins to climb up the stairs and is followed by Othello, in an emblematic attempt to retain control. The camera angle here shifts once again to a high angle shot, as Iago climbs up the stairs towards the light, while Othello is symbolically stuck at the bottom of the staircase, unable to escape Iago’s manipulation. The subsequent shots offer a clear contrast between the high angle shot of Othello at the bottom of the staircase and the low angle shot framing Iago as being above Othello, thus further displaying the former’s position of power over the latter. Significantly, the audience is here provided with Iago’s gaze through eyeline matching as he looks down at Othello, while Othello’s gaze is not provided, conveying a sense of detachment from the character mirroring the character’s own self-doubt. Welles’s occasional foregrounding of Iago in spite of his concern to enhance his own performance then renders Iago’s authority in the film even more striking. Nevertheless, the lack of soliloquies completely reshapes the character’s relationship with the audience. Rosenberg notes that Iago’s soliloquies in the play prevent the character from appearing as a one-dimensional villain moving from crime to crime.452 The duplicitous and ambiguous nature of the character in the source text is replaced by facile wickedness in Welles’s Iago, which, in conjunction with the lack of insight into his inner thoughts and emotions renders the character almost one-dimensional. Iago’s fate further exemplifies this notion, as he is shown as being incarcerated at the beginning of the film, thus immediately establishing his role as a villain who will deservedly be punished for his actions. While Sax foregrounds Ben Jago’s character throughout most of the movie, he too is able to visually capture the power he holds over Othello. That is to say, in the scenes depicting
450 Neil Taylor, ‘National and racial stereotypes in Shakespeare films’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, ed. by Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 276. 451 Gregg Andrew Hurwitz, ‘Transforming Text: Iago's Infection in Welles' Othello’, Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 13:4 (1997), 333-39 (p. 333). 452 Marvin Rosenberg, The masks of Othello; the search for the identity of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona by three centuries of actors and critics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), p. 173.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 159-165 Iago’s soliloquies adapted on screen: the reworking of Iago’s character in an adaptation and two appropriations of Othello 162 Ben’s verbal manipulation of John, we are often offered close-ups of both characters, showing respectively the power of Jago’s speech, and how it is capable of affecting Othello, as his mind becomes progressively more clouded as a result of his deceit. This is exemplified in the scene in which Jago shows Othello the pictures depicting Dessie (Desdemona) and Michael (Cassio) together. Jago’s faculty to shape Othello’s mind is visually shown through his ability to influence his body. As he stands up to massage Othello, he physically assumes a position of control over him: John’s responsiveness to Ben’s touch confirms the latter’s capacity to mould the former’s thoughts and thus symbolises his influence on him. The camera allows for the power dynamics between them to emerge through a medium shot throughout the massage and then a close-up following shot of Ben’s face as he moves his head down in order to speak directly into John’s ear: this is symbolic of his ability to penetrate and thus shape Othello’s mind through his words. The contrast between Ben’s clothed state and John’s nakedness reinforces this idea, as it emphasises the latter’s vulnerability in relation to the former, as well as Jago’s perceived racial superiority. The ending of the film is consistent with Jago’s role as a sort of heroic villain, as he survives to be assigned the role of Commissioner, thus ultimately being granted his wish. Smith finds this problematic, stating that Jago ‘not only goes unpunished but is elevated to a position of authority from whence he can continue to promote racist policies’.453 As race is crucial to the power relations between Jago and Othello in this film, the ultimate triumph of the Jago character can be defined as going against the trajectory of the film’s socio-political critique itself, or arguably extend this critique by presenting institutional racism as endemic. The main events in the film revolve around a case of violence against a black individual, and are inspired by contemporary events, specifically the negligent police investigation following the killing of a black teenager in 1993.454 The culprits in the film are never brought to justice specifically due to Jago’s interference in a further attempt to torment Othello, thus displaying his indifference towards the case. Regardless of the character’s racist tendencies, it is inexplicit whether the character is ultimately repentant or not. His ambiguous speech to the audience after the dinner scene (‘So, what do you think? I know, I feel it too. I’m almost sorry I started this. Too late now. He’s up and running, it’s beyond my control’) once again invites them to reconsider his emotions. Nonetheless, his final revelation conveys once again the depth of his hate towards John (‘Because you took what was mine’), undermining the reliability of his frequent declarations of affection towards him as well as his potential sense of remorse for his actions. In Nelson’s O, the contrast between the film’s juvenile setting and Hugo’s scandalous actions -particularly at the end of the film- makes them appear even more shocking. Aldama perceives Hugo as ‘[a] devious, resentful, drug-packed, scheming and maneuvering evil doer’.455 This interpretation of Hugo’s character brings him closer to Welles’s one-dimensional villain, as it lacks any indication regarding the character’s reasons for his actions. I would argue, however, that he is both a victim and a villain, driven to enact his atrocious plan by his father’s continuous neglect and the self-loathing caused by his inability to equate to Odin. Accordingly, the character seems almost incapable of controlling his actions towards the end of the film: the ambivalence of the character’s status as both a powerful villain and a helpless victim is expressed visually, particularly in the final scenes of the film. After the death of both Desi and Emily, a claustrophobic following shot frames Hugo as he stumbles backwards and is thrust on the floor. He is framed from a high angle shot, which evidently shows his loss of authority as Odin towers over him and points the gun at him. Despite that, as he gets up and faces Odin the camera offers a close-up shot of the character, who notably denies Odin an
453 Peter J. Smith, ‘‘Institutionally racist’: Sax’s Othello and tethered presentism’, in Shakespeare on Screen: Othello, ed. by Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 83. 454 James M. Welsh, ‘Classic Demolition: Why Shakespeare is Not Exactly “Our Contemporary,” or, “Dude, Where's My Hankie?”’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 30:3 (2002), 223-27 (p. 224). 455 Frederick Luis Aldama, ‘Race, Cognition, and Emotion: Shakespeare on Film’, College Literature, 33:1 (2006), 197-213 (p. 204).
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explanation for his actions, stating ‘from here on out I say nothing’, reminiscent of Iago’s words in the play: ‘[f]rom this time forth I never will speak word’.456 Subsequently, as Odin delivers his speech before committing suicide, the camera alternates between straight-on angle shots of Odin and low angle shots of Hugo, empowering him by identifying him as the cause of Odin’s agony. Nonetheless, as the dialogue progresses the low angles framing Hugo gradually turn into straight-on angles, anticipating the high angles that will frame him at the very end of the film. Accordingly, after Odin pulls the trigger, we are offered a close-up with a deliberately equivocal angle of framing –halfway between a low and a straight-on angle- of Hugo’s trembling figure, complemented by the shakiness of the camera and the light of the police sirens reflecting on Hugo’s face. The shot is thus in direct contrast with the freeze-frame shot of Odin’s suicide and the subsequent high angle shot of his motionless body. The succeeding long shot, which offers a striking contrast with the previous close-up and medium close-ups, makes Hugo appear as a shadow-like figure, similarly immobile in contrast with the moving policemen, signalling the character’s final loss of his sense of agency. Odin’s death marks the start of Hugo’s second soliloquy. A high angle shot conveys his lack of control as he is escorted by two police officers and forced into the police car, continuously looking back –literally and figuratively- at the consequences of his actions. The white doves present in the first scene are here shown as being inside a cage, symbolising Hugo’s ultimately failed attempt to ‘fly’. As he utters his final claim, the camera frames him again from a high angle shot, confirming his final loss of power. According to Howard, the fate of the Othello character in relation to the Iago character is problematic in a similar way as Sax’s Othello’s is, as Hugo ultimately dominates the film, in contrast to the fate encountered by Odin, who must still commit murder and then suicide.457 The end of the film reinforces the ambivalence of Hugo’s double role, emphasising that his actions stemmed from his need to obtain recognition and be valued, thus emphasising that he should not be regarded exclusively as a villain. However, I believe that the foregrounding of Hugo’s character throughout the film does not automatically suggest that he overpowers Odin, in spite of his survival; rather, it shows that Hugo’s fate is parallel to Odin’s, in that they are both ultimately unable to ‘fly’. Through the analysis of three different ways in which Iago’s soliloquies have been adapted on screen, I have been able to explore how the characterisation of Iago varies as a result, also focusing on his power to verbally influence Othello. The power dynamics between the two characters have been addressed with regard to issues of race and social standing, demonstrating how the manipulation of these elements can increase or lessen Iago’s sense of authority in relation to Othello. I have thus shown how Welles’s Iago appears as an almost entirely one-dimensional villain due to the absence of soliloquies, while being foregrounded at significant points in the film despite Welles’s enhancing of his own performance. In contrast, Sax’s Jago is given almost complete power on account of his ability to directly address the audience, and ultimately achieves his goal. Finally, though Nelson’s Hugo is provided with soliloquies and is foregrounded throughout the film, his sense of agency is ultimately shattered, as he is unable to fulfil his wishes.
456 Shakespeare, Othello, V.2. 301. 457 Tony Howard, ‘Shakespeare’s cinematic offshoots’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, ed. by Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) pp. 314-15.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 159-165 Iago’s soliloquies adapted on screen: the reworking of Iago’s character in an adaptation and two appropriations of Othello 164 Bibliography
Aldama, Frederick Luis, ‘Race, Cognition, and Emotion: Shakespeare on Film’, College Literature, 33:1 (2006), 197-213.
Burt, Richard, ‘Slammin' Shakespeare in Acc(id)ents Yet Unknown: Liveness, Cinem(edi)a, and Racial Dis-Integration’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 53:2 (2002), 201-26.
Cartelli, Thomas, Repositioning Shakespeare: National Formations, Postcolonial Appropriations (London: Routledge, 1999).
Cartelli, Thomas, and Rowe, Katherine, New Wave Shakespeare on Screen (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).
Cohen, Robert, Shakespeare on Theatre : A Critical Look at His Theories and Practices (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2015).
Hatchuel, Sarah, Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Henderson, Diana E., ed., A Concise Companion to Shakespeare on Screen (Oxford: Wiley- Blackwell, 2006).
Hirsh, James, ‘Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies’, Modern Language Quarterly, 58:1 (1997), 1-26.
Howard, Tony, ‘Shakespeare’s cinematic offshoots’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, ed. by Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) pp. 303-323.
Hurwitz, Gregg Andrew, ‘Transforming Text: Iago's Infection in Welles' Othello’, Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 13:4 (1997), 333-39.
Mason, Pamela, ‘Orson Welles and filmed Shakespeare’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, ed. by Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
O, dir. Tim Blake Nelson (Chickie the Cop, 2001) [on DVD].
Othello, dir. Geoffrey Sax (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2001) [on DVD].
Othello, dir. Orson Welles (Mercury Productions, 1956), YouTube, 31 January 2013,
Rosenberg, Marvin, The masks of Othello; the search for the identity of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona by three centuries of actors and critics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961).
Sanders, Julie, Adaptation and Appropriation (London: Routledge, 2006).
Shakespeare, William, Othello, ed. by E.A.J. Honigmann (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1996)
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Smith, Ian, ‘We Are Othello: Speaking of Race in Early Modern Studies’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 67:1 (2016), 104-24.
Smith, Peter J., ‘‘Institutionally racist’: Sax’s Othello and tethered presentism’, in Shakespeare on Screen: Othello, ed. by Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) pp. 76-91.
Stone, James W., ‘Black and White as Technique in Orson Welles's Othello’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 30:3 (2002), 189-93.
Taylor, Neil, ‘National and racial stereotypes in Shakespeare films’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, ed. by Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 267-79.
Welsh, James M., ‘Classic Demolition: Why Shakespeare is Not Exactly “Our Contemporary,” or, “Dude, Where's My Hankie?”’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 30:3 (2002), 223-27.
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A Portfolio of Modern Short Stories Adam Davies
She’s Going to Look Back I stand from my workbench and walk to the sink. I turn on the tap and run my hands under the water. I pick up the cloth and begin scrubbing, until I can feel the material right there, under the nail. The water is cold, as cold as the lake. I look over at the bench. Its long neck is bent back beneath itself, as though it can’t bear to look at me. I’m so fucking tired of them not looking at me. * “We’re wedged in like cattle to slaughter.” “Bit morose, Nige.” “Morose? Who says morose?” He was right. The traffic this morning really has been dreadful. The whole intersection between the plains and the university is in complete deadlock, with cars packed bonnet to bumper for a good half mile. The group speaking are ahead of me, all of them a mixture of knees and elbows. They’re an animated bunch; all chattering and clanging about, even though the bus is packed and they can barely move. They are hardly older than boys. “I could probably swim there faster than this.” “You could drown faster, you mean.” There’s a girl sitting next to me, on her phone. Engrossed. I look about, and everyone has their heads hunched over their chests, craning over the little screens. In the morning twilight the light reflects off their faces, and they look like ghosts. Even the boys ahead keep checking them, as though they’re waiting for an important call. “I would have gone too, if it weren’t for this lecture. My attendance is low enough as is.” “You’d only go because there’s birds there.” “Too right I would, it’s been weeks since I had a good -” The bus jolts forward a foot. Those standing lose their balance and clatter into one another. A woman falls against the side of the bus, unable to grab onto anything with a phone in her hand. After a few moments she steadies herself. No one says anything. Normal service is resumed. “I really should’ve gone.” “Gone to what?” “To what? You haven’t heard?” “How’d you miss all the posts?! It’s all over my Facebook.” “It’s all over everywhere.”
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 166-171 A Portfolio of Modern Short Stories 167 I pull my hat down, just a little lower. It’s a cold morning and I’ve forgotten my gloves. The traffic ahead starts moving forward, and for a moment a crowd of people can be seen around the university gates. A van fills the gap and the line is resumed, slowly crawling forward. The girl next to me tucks her phone into her pocket and begins drumming her feet against the floor of the bus, sounding a dull metallic ring. After a few beats she stands and turns. “Sorry, this is my…” “Of course,” I say, and step out into the aisle. She doesn’t get out straight away. I wait. Eventually she slips past me and walks quickly off the bus. * … rosby is the home to roughly 700 full time residents locals as we call them and about 1000 students point at graph once a thriving farming town the soil was overworked leading to a rapid decline in produce quality and therefore diminished profits speak louder the town now relies heavily on two streams of revenue use hands the first is of course from the university itself and the money you lot all spend in the pub on a Saturday night smile laugh the second is from tourism with the nearby lake a natural hub for bird life slowly of this a bevy of swans have become the main attraction change slide drawing in nearly a million visitors annually click to zoom it is hypothesised that without these famous swans the residents of rosby would have little to no income they’re not listening central to this is the tale of rosby clear throat you may have heard many stories about rosby before coming today most of which are not true eye contact the most famous of which is of course that of the aforementioned swans look at… * “…it begins with a scientist, an outcast, they say, becoming devoted to discovering the secret of flight. After years of travelling he came here, to this very place, and built his home out on the plains. He would watch as the birds flew over his house to the lake, and hypothesise of their trajectories and flight paths, and scrawl diagrams and figures on paper. The villagers of Rosby thought the man completely insane. Over the years the scientist became more and more extreme in his methods. He barricaded himself in his house and blocked the windows with the papers that detailed his own designs.” We all stare straight ahead, looking anywhere but him. Just as we had planned. “One night an explosion rocks the town to its foundations. The vibrations send the surface water all along the lake into turmoil, and waves crash against the marshes. The villagers run out onto the plains, to see that the entire house has vanished. All that remains, there on the sand, is a swan.” He looks out at the crowd. Anxious. Desperate. “All nonsense of course. If there ever was a house out on the plains it was likely swallowed by one of the many sinkholes that you will come to study during your time here. As long as you don’t fall in one after a night out!” He waits for laughter. In the pause that follows I realise that it must be now. “If you walk down to the lake then you’ll -” “-Professor-” “-surely see one of the beautiful creatures th-”
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“-what is your response to the various reports that -” “-I’ll take questions after, sweetheart.” The chatter of the crowd stops. There is silence. That would be enough. * “Morning, Andrea.” She doesn’t look up as I walk past. She’s occupied by one of her crossword puzzles and mustn’t have heard me. I hurry through the reception and up the stairs, into my office. I had left the door open last night, just as Ginevra had insisted. I glance at the clock above my door. Quarter past. I sit down behind my desk and login to my email. My hands are still cold and it takes several goes to get the password right. Inbox (0) They must have already been and gone. 15 minutes is a long wait, at their age. They would email when they got home asking if the meeting had been cancelled. I could use the time to reorganise my notes, although I’ve almost got everything back in place already. “Professor?” “Ah! I knew you’d still…” A girl is at the door, half her body visible, one foot in the room. “I have a few questions, if you’re free.” “If I’m free?” Her eyes widen slightly. She takes a step back. “No, no I meant – I – only if you have time. For the university magazine.” She’s young, likely a first year. She’s holding a notepad in one hand, a pen gripped in the other. She taps them together as she speaks. “We’re doing a profile on all staff. I can just say you were busy.” “I have a few minutes. Come in.” tap tap tap She sits in the chair opposite my desk. Her back is rigid, as though her spine has been broken and replaced with a wooden plank. “Would you like a drink? There’s a water fountain in the hall.” “No-no this won’t take long. I just need some background stuff.” tap tap tap “How long have you worked here, at the university?” I look at the walls of my office, and count the pieces of paper that almost completely cover the plaster. “Almost 22 years.” tap tap “And what brought you to work here?”
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 166-171 A Portfolio of Modern Short Stories 169 “My mother was also a lecturer. Many years ago.” “Ah.” tap tap “I have down that your father is a butcher?” “He was. He isn’t anymore.” That is the first thing she scribbles down. Her handwriting is delicate, although rushed. It would not make the wall. “And you specialise in Geography, yes?” “Geography and Environmental Management. I also supervise the first years.” Next to us a piece of paper comes unstuck from the wall. It floats to the floor, swaying from side to side like a bird in the breeze. We watch it fall. tap tap “What are all these?” “My students’ work. An essay from each year.” “I’ve spoken to some of your past students, actually.” “Oh?” “They describe your style as unconventional.” “It’s never been a problem before.” scribble scribble “Some even mentioned favouritism, and you taking a particular interest in -” “My wife says these walls are decorated with the hearts of my students. That with each essay they write they open themselves up to me, raw and naked and afraid. And that I cut out the best bits and hang the meat up to dry.” Her eyes are locked on mine. “Will that make a headline? Is that what you’re looking for?” The pen is still. I watch as her knuckles change colour. “Now if you will excuse me, I have another lecture I must prepare for.” She opens her mouth to speak. To ask what she really wants to know. What they all want to hear. “Yes,” she says instead. “Of course.” She leaves. The fallen piece of paper lies crumpled in her wake. * From my office window I watch as she walks away, this would be reporter. Her back is turned to me, heading in the direction of the lake. I wait for her to look back. In the distance, a swan takes flight from the surface of the lake and soars into the sky. It shakes the water from its wings and disappears on the horizon.
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She’ll look back. She’s going to look back.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 166-171 A Portfolio of Modern Short Stories 171 Romance is Dead She saw it first, I still had my eyes closed like some romantic fool, and she just started screaming.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 166-171 Volume 10: 2017-18 ISSN: 2041-6776
A Portfolio of Modern Poetry Esme Partridge
Pink I want to stain myself with pomegranate seeds or beetroot shavings, to remember this as if from above: the trees pressing down on her hatchback, driving in convoy to that ribbon of blue tied to the bottom of the clouds. They sit in front of me picking the music, like my parents in the way they love me, as family, as royalty, as inheritance. Then I lie down flat on the back seats and all I can think is to press hard into the underside of my forearm ‘remember this, remember this’.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 172-173 A Portfolio of Modern Poetry 173 Two Portraits i. My father after fishing trips: holding things over the sink gagging he would tip and rinse, all this black water is actually oil at the base. Can he divulge which treasured possession over the years, students have sobbed into? I’m thinking of thanking books, which are liberally scrawled on, and playing bluegrass music, but I’m afraid it’s hopeless. It all thickens by the day with Dialectics of Liberation. ‘And our government has been quite generous’ (profoundly corrosive of human) I believe that’s my father’s spirit: wake me up instead of my wife. ii. Ever see her kitchen, looking more herself than I will, flower blooms, in her pyjamas, her mother silent, shy eyes shining, pinning her hair behind pixie ears. My mum before she is: layered dusting of inner bunny fuzz on cheeks, surrounded by bridesmaids toasting her changed state and changed name imagining the reception in five hours’ time her twenty-third birthday, she looked out at the square race house the morning she got married, the morning of her.
INNERVATE Leading student work in English studies, Volume 10 (2017-2018), pp. 172-173 Volume 10: 2017-18 ISSN: 2041-6776
Black Pine: An Interactive Digital Story Theodore Perrin
'Black Pine' is a short piece of creative writing developed using Twine, an open-source tool for interactive fiction. Through the use of hyperlinks, the player/reader can affect the decisions of the narrative's protagonist, and thereby experience one of several branching paths through which a story is delivered. By utilising some fairly simple code in CSS and JavaScript, many of the passages in 'Black Pine' feature a cursor that imitates the light produced by the protagonist's torch. Rather than reveal his surroundings, this light appears to illuminate the protagonist's interior workings: his despair about the state of the world in which he finds himself, his anxieties about what the men he now navigates through it expect of him, and his grief for his dead partner. In this way - and due to audio elements that are also reactive - 'Black Pine' might be considered a video game as much as it is a piece of narrative fiction. My piece's development was informed by my experiences of reading Cormac McCarthy novels and playing Silent Hill 2 (2001) late at night in my room at university.
You can find the interactive piece at: http://philome.la/_theoperrin_/black-pine/play
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