Marie De France Dreams of Steampunk
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, Vol. 7, No.2/3, 2017, pp. 174-197. Marie de France Dreams of Steampunk E. L. Risden In two parts, this project demonstrates the creative energy of remix. First, the author creates a fictional remix of medievalism and steampunk, in which medieval author Marie de France, inspired by a “magical” tapestry, envisions a Victorian future of steam-engine trains and lace-collared romance. Then, the author provides a critical reflection on some theoretical aspects of remix and how they suggest productive ways to think about storytelling. Not an idea isolated to music or any other particular art, remix applies to nearly any artistic endeavor: the artistic process by its nature takes up elements from varied sources of inspiration to create something new, remixing the history of influences with the author’s own history of creative work. Keywords: fiction, literary history, medievalism, remix theory, steampunk Ffffsst! The wick of the beeswax candle fussed to life as she touched to it the spill she had lit at the fire in the hearth. Marie could not sleep. She had got up and padded from her bed across the cold floor to the window that looked out over the keep—she could hear from the other side of Dover Castle the sound of the surf hustling, furling, whirling, and withdrawing again. She could see the darkness gathering itself like a hood, the stars like a thousand eyes beaming from underneath. She had gone from the window to the mantel of the great stone hearth for the solace of candlelight. But something else was cuddling up to her thoughts and purring with a hum like a hive of working bees, something loud and insistent enough that even after a deep draught of fresh air and a lingering look at the crescent moon in the clear night sky she could not return to her pillow. A shadow, dark and metallic, surrounded her, embraced her like a wave, and fled, rumbling, leaving her behind. She felt as if Bisclavret had called her from sleep and cried, “Marie, bring my clothes, please, for my wife has left me cold and hungry in the woods, and I would not travel among noble folk in nothing but a grey pelt, however fine!” Not a real sound wringing the sensual ear, but a spirit from the world of dreams, some rough beast waiting to be born . Not a wolf, not a vampire, not a Christmas ghost, but another voice had called her firmly, irresistibly out of sleep. It called each time she wafted from twilight toward dreams; it called with the voice of the owl—or the call of the kettle on the fire, or the mad flash of the bolt from the arbalest as it pierces the pillar-posted targe as another’s already pulled quick from the quiver. It was a practical sound, not an artful one, a guildsman’s mechanical sound, not the virtuous marksmanship of a yeoman or a knight or of a lady in playful contest. She did not recognize the sound—she could have said “like this,” but could not have said, “Aye, oui, it is this.” E. L. Risden (Ph.D., Purdue University) is Professor of English at St. Norbert College. He can be reached for com- ment on this essay at [email protected]. Dreams of Steampunk 175 Henry II loved holidays there at the castle only a day’s ride from Canterbury, and he had sum- moned Marie to tell his favorite story, “Lanval,” after the afternoon banquet. No matter how many times she had told the lai in his presence, he never shied from requesting it again and clapping thunderously with an enormous smile crossing his face like a burst of sunshine when she had finished. Dover Castle had become his particular favorite, a renovation project, and he had called court there for Christmas to inaugurate its nearly completed refurbishment. Of course such an occasion once again demanded his favorite story, the tale of a fine but poor knight rescued from Gwenevere and Arthur by his beautiful beloved faerie princess. “The resurrection of a castle to celebrate the birth of the Christ-child,” Henry had said with another of those beaming smiles and a booming laugh, shaking his red-brown mane like a proud lion. “And the resurrection of a condemned man though love and the magic of Avalanna!” Henry enjoyed King Arthur stories. He especially liked stories of troublesome women who found themselves silenced by their own folly or by the wisdom of men. But he also loved stories of men and women who crossed boundaries beautiful or bitter into magical lands beyond place and time and of the adventures they had there. Marie liked the Arthurian tales, too, but she preferred stories of bright and able women who either had or found a way to gain control of their own situations—and Christian stories of course. She threw a long cloak around her shoulders over her night dress, but let her hair fall free to her shoulders. Night hours away from the convent and free of the habit felt heavenly. Marie stood still for a moment holding her candle aloft to find her ways to the stairs. She thought she heard a bell clang: once, twice, three times. Its eager clang rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell as it echoed through the banquet hall below. It seemed to her more a dull summons than a shriek of fear in the night. But, no, she had heard no bell. It may have been a phantom, a nervous memory of the habitual calls to prayer on the canonical hours. It may have been something deep below her waking thoughts warning her to go no farther. As she reached the head of the stairs, faint smells of roast lamb, of braised beef and root soup and pease porridge with herbs, fresh bread brushed with warmed butter wafted up the cascade of steps—does one smell things in dreams? Yes, she couldn’t have heard that sound: she heard no rustling and rushing of anyone else rising from sleep and dashing toward the call of warning or command. The sound had come, like the feeling and the image, from the realm of sleep. But the smells were real, as real as the steep staircase where she stood, prepared to step down in as near as she could to silence. Before she descended, she let her thought take fuller shape. She had first dreamed of “Equitan,” the story that always troubled her so much. Many Reli- gious often asked her for that one: a knight with a beautiful wife falls for a more beautiful damsel; the wife grants him release from the marriage so that he may have the damsel and becomes a nun; when the knight and his new wife grow older and tired, they release each other and, well-taught by the first wife, they too retire from the world to end their days in contemplative prayer far from the passions of this transitory life. Her listeners could seldom just let a story be a story. Marie wondered if they saw the allegory as she did, or if they (monks) simply loved to approve of the husband’s decision, or if they (nuns) loved to disapprove of the husband and cling to the first wife, or if they (priests) loved to see the progress from sin and attachment to redemption and hermetic prayer. 176 Risden But Equitan and his loves had passed away in the gossamer of an early-night dream. Another, a fragment, had taken its place, one from the flood-tide of midnight, when dreams take fuller shape and substance in the present, in sense and the pulse of blood rather than in old stories. Equitan, character and tale, had given way to physical presence, to the heft, the weave, the smell, to the artful, motive, liveliness of the tapestries, the flowing wall-hangings that sat opposite the great leaping and pounding fire of the cavernous banquet-hall of Dover Castle below her. The tapestries—no, one of them—summoned her no less insistently than the confessor, the king, or the death-bell. Henry’s improvements to the castle had included not just repairs and structural additions, but also decoration. He had tapestries brought from Firenze and Madrid, and had commissioned French and Flemish weavers for specific designs, and one he had had made in Winchester by his own English craftsmen, the best he could find among the folk he ruled. One of the English master- weavers he had called a mad genius, equally worthy of praise and pensions as of cell safe from the potential to influence Normans or Saxons alike. His figures, Henry said, seemed to come to life before one’s eyes, almost to move and speak. That one had caught Marie’s eye, and it had already invaded and placed its banner in her dreams, increasing her pulse and flushing her skin even in sleep. She remembered a large dun-colored background with three levels: they swept from left to right, turning at the right edge of the tapestry and rising to the second level, then turning again at the left edge and rising again to a conclusion on the right. At the bottom left stood the figure of a man driving an ox-cart. Whereas most woven figures, except perhaps for churchmen, kings, and of course Christ, looked much the same, this one seemed to take life as one looked at it. It held to the proportions of a man, and it seemed almost sentient, ready to drive its cart up the road ahead.