A Poetics of Uncertainty: a Chorographic Survey of the Life of John Trevisa and the Site of Glasney College, Cornwall, Mediated Through Locative Arts Practice
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VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY A poetics of uncertainty: a chorographic survey of the life of John Trevisa and the site of Glasney College, Cornwall, mediated through locative arts practice By Valerie Ann Diggle Page 1 VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY A poetics of uncertainty: a chorographic survey of the life of John Trevisa and the site of Glasney College, Cornwall, mediated through locative arts practice By Valerie Ann Diggle Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) University of the Arts London Falmouth University October 2017 Page 2 Page 3 VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY A poetics of uncertainty: a chorographic survey of the life of John Trevisa and the site of Glasney College, Penryn, Cornwall, mediated through locative arts practice Connections between the medieval Cornishman and translator John Trevisa (1342-1402) and Glasney College in Cornwall are explored in this thesis to create a deep map about the figure and the site, articulated in a series of micro-narratives or anecdotae. The research combines book-based strategies and performative encounters with people and places, to build a rich, chorographic survey described in images, sound files, objects and texts. A key research problem – how to express the forensic fingerprint of that which is invisible in the historic record – is described as a poetics of uncertainty, a speculative response to information that teeters on the brink of what can be reliably known. This poetics combines multi-modal writing to communicate events in the life of the research, auto-ethnographically, from the point of view of an artist working in the academy. As such, it makes a pedagogical contribution to reflective writing about creative practice. John Trevisa, in the context of contemporary Cornish culture, is a contested figure because his linguistic innovations, in the course of translating key texts from Latin into the English vernacular, make no obvious contribution to Kernowek (Cornish), which is currently undergoing revival from a position of extinction. However, Glasney College, where Trevisa is likely to have been educated, is generally regarded as the centre for the production of the Ordinalia, a cycle of medieval mystery plays written uniquely in Kernowek. This thesis considers the vocabulary that Trevisa innovated, such as concept, fiction, virtual, as crucial to research writing but calls for a new vocabulary to articulate the feminised, labile research processes that characterise this research. It also uses the site and the figure as templates to articulate wider, contemporary systems under stress socially, culturally and politically. Key words : chora; uncertainty; poetics; deep map; reflective writing; autoethnography; Trevisa; Glasney; Ordinalia; creative practice. Page 4 Page 5 VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY contents · l i s t o f fi g u r e s ··········································· 8 · i n t r o d u c t i o n ············································· 10 · method: the heft and the hirsel ············· 28 · c r e a t i v e a u d i t : h i s t o i r e e t r é c i t ················ 52 · anecdotae 1 the bear house ························· 94 2 elvis the bull ····························· 106 3 goky and the air museum ········ 110 4 fallen language ························· 120 5 commun ···································· 130 6 anchorhold ······························· 144 7 a hide for shadows ···················· 158 8 anechoic birds ·························· 172 9 wreccum maris ························ 182 10 trevisa cake ······························· 202 · a sheep named conclusion ··················· 212 · bibliography ·········································· 238 Page 6 Page 7 VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY LIST OF FIGURES All uncaptioned images artist’s own. fig. 1: MORRIS, Wright 1968. From The Home Place Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press fig. 12: DIGGLE, Valerie. 2013. Anchorhold installed as part of the the Trevisa Project Newlyn Gallery : transition 10. fig. 2: MORRIS, Wright. 1968. From The Home Place. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press Photographed by Steve fig. 3: MORRIS, Wright. 1968. From The Home Place. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press fig. 13: KEEN, Elizabeth, 2007. The Journey of a book: Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things fig. 4: MORRIS, Wright. 1968. From The Home Place. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press [e publication] fig. 5: BDP.com. 2012. Architect’s visualisation: AIR building [last accessed 1st July 2017] fig. 14: Cornwall Archaeological Unit, 2003, Cornwall County Council, [PDF] 2003R081 - Cornwall Council fig. 6: BISCOE, Ian. 2013. Visualised conversations of AIR building installation [personal collection] fig. 15: BRODERICK, Sean, 2013. 3D visualisation of Glasney College, 3darchaeologyvisualization.wordpress.com fig. 7: FALMOUTH UNIVERSITY, 2013. Plan views of first and second floors of AIR Building, [last accessed July 1st 2017] fig. 8: TOLKEIN, J.R.R. 1937. Wilderland [endpaper] from The HOBBIT or There and Back Again fig. 16: CARTER, Aaron, 2009 Glasney College 3D visualisation [personal correspondance] fig. 9: ANON visitors map of Palo Alto. nd. [personal collection] fig. 17: CAMERON, Julia Margaret, c.1875, So like a shatter’d Column lay the King [photograph] V&A collection fig. 10: HIGDEN, Ranulph c.1350. Map of the world from the Polychronicon, England figs. 18 and19: Google earth July 2015. Loe Bar and Carminow creek, Cornwall www.earth.google.com fig. 11: ANON, Illustration to a Bible c. 1250 Historiée Rylands French MS 5 folio 16r John Rylands University Library, [last accessed December 10th 2016] fig. 20: KLEE, Paul. 1920, Angelus Novus [monoprint], The Israel Museum, Jerusalem fig. 21: ETHERIDGE, Katie and PERSIGHETTI, Simon , 2015, mapping glasney, [photographed by Cornish Drone], glasneyvisions.wordpress.com [accessed July 2016] Page 8 Page 9 VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY VAL DIGGLE: A POETICS OF UNCERTAINTY INTRODUCTION A poetics of uncertainty: a chorographic survey of the life of John Trevisa and the green charism Early on, I was beguiled by the site of Glasney College, Cornwall, mediated through locative arts practice discovery that many fragments of the original building did remain but were dispersed around the medieval heart of the It was not originally my intention to produce a poetics at the start of this Scene: int. daytime - a library all those words that are now your favourites, town, incorporated into its vernacular architecture, in houses and research. My concern was to pay attention to the process of making work Trevisa (whisper) I, John of Trevisa, translator, boundary walls. Then, the discovery of a 14th- century Cornishman in response to site. I was curious about the impulse to work site specifically, Before me, there was no word for abstract erstwhile scholar of Glasney, shaped your and translator, John Trevisa (1342-1402), who was probably educated about my own impulses to make this kind of work and about what seemed thought in this our language thoughts by giving you the words at Glasney as a child, provided me with an historically verifiable figure to be burgeoning place-based performative practices in the 21st century, inside No word to describe a general concept – such as to think them in your mother tongue associated with the site, albeit tenuously. It also provided me with and outside the academy. general or concept did I say Mother Tongue ? the opportunity to work imaginatively, to develop narratives about It was I who first gave you the word vir-tu-al Hold it. Bite it. Tie it. Trevisa’s relationship, not only to Glasney College, but also to a In 2010, when I first became interested in a site formerly occupied by a It was my word-gift to you - my charism I will return to that topic later….. set of medieval miracle plays called the Ordinalia, composed medieval seat of learning called Glasney College, in the centre of Penryn, Unwrap my gift and out will tumble all those suffixes of abstraction uniquely in the Cornish language (Kernowek) and possibly Cornwall, it had not received much attention from researchers who were Fiction -ty devised at Glasney during Trevisa’s time there. also contemporary practitioners in the arts. But it had been thought about by Immaterial -anc various interest groups who, for example, wished to celebrate the history of The essence of an angel is intellectual substance -ion Trevisa is historically significant because of his linguistic the site by establishing a landscaped garden on Glasney field or to expose – you heard that from me first Thank me Thank me for the atom thank me innovation that occurred when he translated, from Latin into the archaeological remains of the medieval building as a permanent visual Intellectual for zero English, two epic works; the Polychronicon (c1387), a universal feature and visitor attraction. For various reasons none of these projects had Before me no intellectual had made an history of everything and On the Particularity of Things (c1398), materialised. appearance in English a medieval encyclopedia. These innovations included invented Potential words, such as virtual, fiction, accidentally, concept and intellectual, to I was not interested in a literal recovery of shreds of information about express philosophical ideas for which there was no pre-existing