cliosfolly | Recent Entries

Dear Writer: Thank you! Thank you for participating in Yuletide! Thank you for carving out the time and energy for fic writing as a gift! <3 <3 <3

General DNWs: Rape/non-con, graphic depictions of violence, underage sex, death of requested characters

General Likes: I lovelovelove “What happens next?” especially when “next” is years after canon—I like seeing what happens when characters grow up or age. Future AUs <3!!! I also enjoy slashfic, gen, and het, books, manuscripts, textual history, material culture (the discussions about tea cups and tea service in the Raksura books are my jam), world-building, transformation (esp. where one has to grapple with a changing sense of self, like Izuku Midoriya’s in BNH or Youko’s transformation in The Twelve Kingdoms, the consequences of which I think get underplayed), characters being honest and open about their feelings, characters being total nerds, fluff, humor, slice of life. I love seeing characters get back on their feet and recover their groove after making mistakes or after/in spite of trauma. I love soulmate AUs, except those involving physical changes (like tattoos or the ability to see in color).

Third person POV preferred, but I'm open to more unconventional approaches if you can pull it off!

I prefer Gen or light shipfic (rated G or T) over PWP. For a fic dealing with mature themes and canon-typical violence, it's okay to get up to a M rating if you feel the subject matter warrants it; I'll leave that to your discretion.

General Dislikes: Hurt no comfort, partner betrayal, jealousy trope, amnesia, fake dating, hate sex, coffee shop AUs, medieval-ish AUs, sexual teacher/student or mentor/student or parental figure/student are big turn-offs for me--basically any relationship where there's a big power imbalance or experience gap.

And here are my requests this year!

Juuni Kokki | Twelve Kingdoms — mostly I want to know what happens to Youko in the future, particularly if she lives as long as Shouryu. Do Suzu and Shoukei still help her? What does friendship over centuries look like for them? How has her relationship with Keiki developed (not really interested in a sexual relationship between these two, or Youko with Suzu or Shoukei)? I hope they grow more at ease with each other: what does that look like? What is Kei like under Youko as a queen for centuries? What happens when more people fall from our world into the Twelve Kingdoms, with our reliance on cell phones (or whatever tech the future brings)—how does Youko deal with them, with hints of changing tech, given that she lives in a pre-industrial world? (Please let her solution not be to industrialize Kei!)

Archy and Mehitabel – Don Marquis — anything about any character, in vers libre (or whatever meter is appropriate to the speaker) or epistolary. I love the fact that Archy’s choice of verse form has a material culture component—that is, he doesn’t use caps or punctuation because he can only press one key at a time, so anything involving the shift key is inaccessible unless caps-lock is in place, and accessing punctuation changes his verse form into rhyme. I love Mehitabel’s disregard for being a so-called proper mother (even as she claims maternal sentiment: I <3 her seeming hypocrisy). I love Warty Bliggens the Toad. I once looked up some of the poems that were collected in Archy and Mehitabel and found out that the line breaks were in different places because the column width of their original publication in the newspaper affected their layout. What happens when Archy learns that Don Marquis has published his poems—and collects royalties off them? (I don’t remember publication being discussed in any of the volumes, though it’s possible I missed it, and if I did, an AU for this question is welcome.)

Beowulf — I love that Maria Dahvana Headley translates “Hwaet!” as “Bro!” to emphasize the masculine focus of the poem’s worldview. For this poem, my interest mostly lies in excavating a space for women between the lines of the text, particularly Grendel’s mother. What’s her name? I’m fascinated by her hoard in the mere, and wonder how and why that came about, why she chose an underwater dwelling rather than (as Grendel did) a life on land/marshes. I like that the poem indicates that she understands Danish culture (i.e., blood price), and that understanding forms the grounds for her killing of Aeschere: that is, she has a good grasp of the laws of a culture to which she doesn’t belong—how did that come about? And I love postcolonial interpretations of the poem (reminding us that Hrothgar and the other Danes moved into an area already inhabited by Grendel and Grendel’s mother: despite the poem’s sympathies, the Danes are colonists, though they never recognize this).

Blue Castle – L. M. Montgomery — very much wondering “what happens next?” for Valancy and Barney. Also I feel affection towards Cousin Georgiana, to whom is given the privilege of caretaking cats, Good Luck and Banjo; and towards Doc Redfern, with his ready affection for Valancy, but also a wild penchant for weird medicine invention. That seems like a situation fraught with humorous (or frustrating) challenge, should Valancy ever become pregnant.

Green Knowe Series – Lucy M. Boston —The Children of Green Knowe is a perennial reread at Christmastime for its lovely evocation of place and seasonality. And Green Knowe is a character in itself, one that I love, so worldbuilding is very welcome. A lot of the time I find myself wondering about Tolly in the future: it’s clear that he and Granny and some of the other family members meet as ghosts in a way that makes it unclear that they even know their state—like, in the Stones of Green Knowe, Tolly and a young Granny and one or two others who meet Roger aren’t sure immediately which of them is a ghost or is real that day. The malleability of time and sense of self that Green Knowe engenders is really interesting (or the way that Green Knowe engenders such stability of self that ghostliness or realness become irrelevant—I don’t know, it’s just so neat!). And of course all the physical and material details that make Green Knowe a place are so, so lovely. I’m open to Ping/Tolly, if that seems an interesting direction, but only in adulthood. Also this is the one fic where my dislike of character deaths does not apply, since Green Knowe kind of makes death (somewhat) irrelevant, although at the same time I’m not interested in a tearjerker deathbed story. Just: Green Knowe! Tolly! Christmas! Maybe Granny! Maybe Ping!

The Goblin Emperor series - Katherine Addison

I just want Maia being his kind self. Maybe he’s having a hard day, maybe a good one. Worldbuilding is welcome. Exploration of his relationship to his mother’s religion is welcome. Csethiro Creeden is awesome, and if she’s present she’s most welcome, and I’d prefer their marriage (in whatever way it’s present) to be a happy one. Let her fight people with swords! (Or at least threaten to via old-school letters.)

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yuletide

This journal is friends-only at the moment; please feel welcome to add me or drop a comment here if you'd like.

I've had this account for years, but it's been largely inert as I mostly shifted my energies away from lj (and thus dreamwidth) for the past few years. In the most recent lj discriminatory crackdown on lgbtq users, I transferred my posts here and thought I'd also say a bit more about what I've been up to.

What have I been up to? My job--I'm an assistant professor of medieval English literature on the tenure-track; in fact, this is the year I've been evaluated for tenure! The biggest and hardest requirement for tenure at my university is to write a monograph in my field and get it under contract with an academic publisher before going up for tenure (it's ok if the book gets published later). I managed to do that 15 days before I had to submit my files for tenure. As squeaking by might imply, it's been hard and hectic.

But things are looking well for tenure! The provost's letter just came through (the fourth in a series of six votes on my tenure application), but the last two are pretty pro forma, as the provost's positive recommendations have never been reversed. So it's not contractually finalized yet, but I'm on the downward slope.

In the meantime I've been putting a lot of energy into my book's revisions (due back to the publisher June 1) and teaching (a new class this semester on the Global Middle Ages, and the second semester I've designed a course using a specifications-based approach), and bullet journaling. Allllllllll the stationery ever is mine!

I'm hoping to start checking in on dreamwidth more frequently and to catch up and say hello!

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Everything's ( below the cut )

( And a bonus image )

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chaucer

Over the past few months, I have been consumed by a desire to read English country life novels of various sorts.

I've worked my way through a lot of Mary Stewarts (Rose Cottage, Nine Coaches Waiting, The Ivy Tree, Airs Above the Ground, Thornyhold, The Stormy Petrel), which included tossing a couple across the room when casual bigotry became too aggravating (as in the beginning of one set in Greece--I forget the title--which described the native simplicity of the Greeks in an offensively patronizing tone). Characters, settings, frequent elements of the supernatural, mysteries--all nicely done.

After that I went through a few novels by Angela Thirkell--High Rising and The Demon in the House are my favorites; in a way, these are like fan fiction focused on Trollope's Barsetshire, with a host of original characters. The ironic, humorous prose of the first two is just delightful, as are the discussions of writing, publishing, and the allusions to poetry (very Wimsey-and-Vane of the characters at times). The large cast of characters turns the later two novels of hers that I've read into collections of vignettes and social events united largely by pairing various characters off romantically by the end of the stories, which I don't enjoy as much as a linear plot.

Then I read Elizabeth Goudge's Scent of Water and Castle on the Hill. Both are full of much lament for the passing of country life (during and a bit after WWII), but have interesting characters, which I like. And I re-read Dorothy Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon, which intersects with the country life setting. Oh, and I re-read Lucy M. Boston's Children of Green Knowe and Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, which have the advantage of having magic, country life, and Christmas all figured very prominently.

Suggestions for what I might read next? I'm not in the mood for Trollope directly, but I would like more stories focused on the characters and foibles of English country life in the late 19th to mid-20th-c or so. Magic is a plus. (And I have read Jo Walton's "Small Change" series, in case you think to rec it. Also I've been dabbling in Miss Marple--tv mostly, though I'm considering branching out into the books.)

Tags:

books

UUHEREAS ðe English alphabet haþ been in an vnchanging, ſtatic ſtate for ſome centuries nouu,

KNOUUING ðat flexibility breeds creatiuity and innouation,

IT IS RESOLUED ðat a reuiual and reintroduccioun of certain loſt elements of orthography and the alphabet uuould lead to a flouriſhing of the arts and diuerse intellectual endeauors;

THEREFORE þis post urges all and ſundry to once again integrate þose letters heretofore ſet aſide:

ITEM j: ðe ash (æsc, æ). Perfect for all ae-digraphy needs and, taking up leſs uuidþ on þe page, also attains ðe ſtatus of a "green letter," as it requireþ leſs energy expenditure to produce and leſs paper to replicate! Eſpecially vſeful to þoſe writing about algæ or færies and, of course, ðe mediæval.

ITEM ij: ðe eth (Ð and ð). If you wish to write a voiced dental fricatiue, ðis letter is more ðan uſeful: it is abſolutely neceſsary and carries wiþ it a louely Old Engliſh atmosphere. It is also a green letter. One warning: þouȝ stifling any form of creatiuity is abhorrent, custom dictates that the eþ should neuer appear at ðe end of a word. But for þose willing to indulge in euen greater degrees of flexibility, it is interchangeable wiþ:

ITEM iij: ðe thorn (Þ and þ). Ideal for rendering all the þorny problems of life in þeir full alphabetic glory, ðis character haþ furþer uses for more modern, cutting-edge repreſentations of voiced and unuoiced dental fricatiues. Be not þin in its use, for it helps the enuironment! In a pinch, it can also ſubſtitute for:

ITEM iiij: ðe wyn. Ðis letter was brutally ſhoved aside by þe introduccioun of the Roman W (curse þose Classicizing habits!) and haþ been diſaduantaged furðer ſtill by the failure to grant it an ascii character code. But, adopting þe manner of ſome late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century ſcribes,* one can make use of a þorn in its place, or give it a nod þrouȝ þe alternatiue conuention of uuriting tuuo Us inſtead.

ITEM v: ðe yogh (Ȝ and ȝ). Ðe potential applications for þis character are hiȝ, as it can take þe place of "gh" of all flauors, as well as the "y" in "you," "it," and "year." Try it: Ȝou uuill like ȝit well enouȝ!

ITEM vj: u/v and i/j. Treat ðese letters as exchangeable, ðereby adding to ðe beauty and diuerſity of þe graphical repreſentacioun of Engliſche!

ITEM vij: ðe long s (ſ). Perfect for ðe ſtart of words, þis letterform may alſo lead to the enjoyment of many visual double entendres!

ETA: * I just had the idea that those scribes were inadvertently writing thorn/wyn slashfic. Hmm....

ETA2: I have since learned that one can write wens using unicode or html: yay for the advancing cause!

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humor

I am at the NYPL doing some dissertation work. The NYPL assigns numbers to every book request, evens only, by which you pick up the book when it arrives from the stacks. Today the book I requested was the 21st request of the day, and so the number I got was 42.

That's right! The book I requested is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything! A one-day special only, of course.

So, today, if you wish to know the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, you must consult . . .

*drumroll*

The Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales by Charles A. Owen, Jr.

I am certain that you will find it useful.

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books,
nyc

A few weeks ago, when basil started being sold locally in sufficiently sizable lots, I decided that I wanted to make pesto. I'd never actually eaten it, but I liked fresh basil (from those little $2 plastic containers) on pizza, and it seemed to me to be a plausible projection from there to pesto.

Attempt 1:
I bought some basil and put it in the fridge, planning to get to it later in the week. By the time I remember it a week and a half later, it had gone black and slimy. I pulled out maybe a quarter-cup of leaves and tried to blend them with my stick blender, since they were too few to put through the food processor. Attempt 1: fail.

Attempt 2:
I bought some more, and more of it, and put it in the fridge. I came back to it three days later: black and starting on sliminess. I rescued a few leaves and, having read that the traditional pesto-making method involved a mortar and pestle, pulled out mine (which is about the size of a teacup) and tried to make it that way. Attempt 2: fail!

Attempt 3:
Having learned my lesson, I bought some more basil, intending to make pesto that very evening. And I bought some nice, freshly-grated Parmesan. Only I went to a party first and came back with insufficient appetite. I promised myself to make it the very next day and went to bed. The next day I pull out the carton of basil, which I'd put out of the way at the back of the fridge. . . . It had frozen. But I found enough fresh leaves to make the pesto anyway! Which was so easy to fix and smelled delicious and looked great on the pasta--up until I took the first bite, at which point I realized I hadn't been thorough enough in washing off sand. But this pesto was now verging on being costly, given how much I'd already invested in basil and cheese, so I thought I'd eat it anyway, and gritted my teeth (literally) through half a dozen bites. I stored the remainder carefully, drizzling olive oil atop it so that its color wouldn't dull. I came back to it yesterday and discovered that it, too, had frozen. Even though it was stored at the front of the fridge! Attempt 3: FAIL.

So, now I ask you: do I try it again? Or do I resign myself to buying pesto in a jar?

Also, I know I need to take the temp of the fridge down a notch.

Tags:

cooking,
food

In the form of a placeholder, I will note that I have been on a HP fanfic reading binge the past couple of days. Rather wonderfully, I discovered some new-to-me fics that have been very enjoyable; I will link them here in a bit.

More by way of intro, my interests include medieval literature, particularly 15th-c English, manuscript culture, and late medieval reading practices (my scholarly background); science fiction and fantasy; historical fiction and romance; board games (particularly those with a narrative component); and fanfiction and other transformative works (for fun and also for how they reflect on reading practices). With only a few exceptions, I tend to start with fanfic and often end there, not always or even reliably making it to the source media: this is mostly because I prefer reading to all other activities.

At the moment, I'm not particularly fixed on any specific fandom--I'm reading in a bunch simultaneously; this is a bit cyclical on my part as various interests come to the fore and others recede for a bit. Right now, cooking has caught my mind's eye (although not cooking fanfic! I'm sure there must be quite a lot out there, though).

I tend to read much more than I write.

Current Mood: cheerful

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I've been lingering over a lot of still life paintings recently (particularly of food), and I liked how this poem intersected with that. Looking back over the month, it's kind of apparent to me that I tend to favor poems with a twist at the end--this has just the smallest of twists--and a little bit of multiplicity--this has that in spades, I think, with each verse offering a different take on the pears, leading to a composite image by the end.

Study of Two Pears by Wallace Stevens

I
Opusculum paedagogum.
The pears are not viols,
Nudes or bottles.
They resemble nothing else.

II
They are yellow forms
Composed of curves
Bulging toward the base.
They are touched red.

III
They are not flat surfaces
Having curved outlines.
They are round
Tapering toward the top.

IV
In the way they are modelled
There are bits of blue.
A hard dry leaf hangs
From the stem.

V
The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.

VI
The shadows of the pears
Are blobs on the green cloth.
The pears are not seen
As the observer wills.

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npm,
poetry

"warty bliggens the toad" by don marquis

i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him

do not tell me
said warty bliggens
that there is not a purpose
in the universe
the thought is blasphemy

a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the centre of the said
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens

to what act of yours
do you impute
this interest on the part
of the creator
of the universe
i asked him
why is it that you
are so greatly favoured

ask rather
said warty bliggens
what the universe has done to deserve me

if i were a
human being i would
not laugh
too complacently
at poor warty bliggens
for similar
absurdities
have only too often
lodged in the crinkles
of the human cerebrum

archy

Tags:

npm,
poetry

I came across this poem while looking up the text of another for NPM; it was the first time I'd encountered "Bad News Blues." This poem irks me because it uses women to generate fear in an implicitly male reader. Frankly, I suspect that there is more violence perpetrated against men in an urban environment than women, although I haven't looked at numbers to verify that my impression. Nor do I want to go into the somewhat related rant about how crimes most often perpetrated against women get their own special class and penalties.

What I do appreciate about this poem is the final line--especially its image of violence, personified, letting himself in at the door. The skeleton key is so appropriate! Some of the other touches, I realized in rereading this, catch my attention now for how easily antiquated they seem: dialing direct, and even dialing collect or long distance, are largely experiences erased and forgotten as cell phones become ever more common as the default phone experience; it reminds me of those annual lists, "The Class of Year So-and-So" that itemize all the experiences matriculating freshmen in this year would not have had, or innovations new in our lifetimes that have always been part of their experience of the world.

Bad News Blues by A.E. Stallings

When Bad News comes to town, hold on to your heart.
When Bad News comes to town, the troubles start.
He’s a hit, marked with a bullet, climbing the chart.

His smile swings open like a pocketknife.
He smiles like he could slice right through a life.
Nobody’s daughter is safe. Nobody’s wife.

He plays the odds. He needs just half a chance.
Sooner or later he’ll ask you to dance.
He gets his own way like an ambulance.

He’s got your number, and he dials direct.
He’s calling you long distance and collect.
You gasp--something is wrong, somebody’s wrecked.

He’s standing outside your door. It’s quarter to three.
You know he’s out there, and it’s quarter to three.
There is no knock. He’s got the skeleton key.

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npm,
poetry

Here's another one of the poems I like for reasons of cultural dissonance. Unlike most of the poem's I've been selecting this month, it doesn't focus on the beautiful, but instead looks at the grotesque. A bit of its appeal is also to my inner six-year-old, who ran through the neighborhood singing, "Great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts." So the poem speaks to both distance and affinity, I guess.

A central question in Connie Willis' Doomsday Book is whether people of the Middle Ages (that monolithic period!) felt death as keenly and personally as modern people do, surrounded by it on a daily basis as they were (especially during the Plague). Willis' characters eventually conclude that yes, indeed, they do. Yet for all that similarity, approaches to death differ culturally and historically. This particular poem was written half-a-century before the ars moriendi, the art of dying well, gained cultural prominence in the wake of the Black Death. Like many memento mori practices, the poem emphasizes the physical transformation and decay of death, stopping short of discussing how such changes preclude the eternal life to come. And maybe that's also part of its appeal; it passesover the notion, "Death now with better to come later." Instead, it says, "Death now--and look! It's kind of weird, isn't it? The skin is rotting, eww! Let's watch what happens for a while." As I said, inner six-year-old here. But the poem rather effectively sets the stage for generating an emotional response, in this case disgust and regret, from its readers. At the same time, the first-person point of view urges its readers to keep in mind that, yes, this too will occur to them one day. Death is personal and direct, something one can take ownership of (my death, my body), even as it's shared in common with other living beings.

"All Too Late" ca. 1275-1300

Whenne mine eynen misteth        eynen] eyes
And mine eren sisseth             sisseth] ceaseth?
And my nose coldeth
And my tunge foldeth              foldeth] fails
And my rude slaketh               rude slaketh] color fades
And mine lippes blaketh
And my mouth grenneth
And my spotel renneth            spotel] spittle; renneth] runs
And myn her riseth                 her] hair
And myn herte griseth             griseth] quakes
And mine handen bivieth          bivieth] shake
And mine feet stivieth--            stivieth] stiffen
Al to late, al to late,
Whenne the bere is at the gate!     bere] bier
Thenne I shal flit
From bedde to flore,
From flore to here,                    here] hair-shroud
From here to bere,
From bere to pit,
And the pit fordit.                     fordit] shut
Thenne lith myn hous uppe myn nese:
Of al this world ne give iche a pese!   pese] pea

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npm,
poetry

This poem comes from a British Library manuscript, Arundel 292, a bestiary made around 1275-1300, with some supplementary material added around 1350. Bestiaries frequently presented not only what was known or believed about the natural history of an animal, but also related the animals' allegorical signification to a Christian audience. Thus we find out that the lion slept with its eyes open, its cubs are born sleeping but come to life on the third day when their father roars over them, and this last refers to how Jesus, crucified and dead, came back to life on the third day at the call of God.

For me as a modern reader, the moral exegesis of the whale seems completely random and amuses me for that reason; but I also value how the very oddity of the moral's derivation reminds me about the differences between the culture of then and today.

Cethegrande is a fis,
The moste that in water is.
That thu wuldes seien get,
Gef thu it soge wan it flet,
That it were a neilond
That sete one the se-sond.

   This fis that is unride,
Thanne him hungreth he gapeth wide;
Ut of his throte it smit an onde,
The swetteste thing that is o londe.
Therfore othre fisses to him dragen.
Wan he it felen he aren fagen.
He cumen and hoven in his muth;
Of his swike he am uncuth.
This cete thanne his chaveles luketh,
Thise fisses alle in suketh.
The smale he wile thus biswiken;
The grete maig he nogt bigripen.

   This fis wuneth with the se grund
And liveth ther evre heil and sund
Til it cumeth the time
That storm stireth al the se.
Thanne sumer and winter winnen
Ne mai it wunen therinne;
So drovi is to sees grund
Ne mai he wunen ther that stund,
Oc stireth up and hoveth stille
Wiles that weder is so ille.
The sipes that am on se fordriven--
Loth hem is ded and lef to liven--
Biloken hem and sen this fis;
A neilond he wenen it is.
Therof he aren swithe fagen,
And mid here migt tharto he dragen.
Sipes on festen
And alle up gangen,
Of ston mid stel in the tunder
Wel to brennen one this wunder;
Warmen hem wel and heten and drinken.
The fir he feleth and doth hem sinken:
For sone he diveth dun to grunde.
He drepeth hem alle withuten wunde.

Significacio
   This devel is mikel with wil and magt
So witches haven in here craft.
He doth men hungren and haven thrist
And mani other sinful list;
Tolleth men to him with his onde,
Whoso him folegeth he findeth sonde:
Tho am the little, in leve lage.
The mikle ne maig he to him dragen;
The mikle I mene the stedefast
In rigte leve mid fles and gast.
Whoso listneth develes lore
On lengthe it sal him rewen sore.
Whoso festeth hope on him
He sal him folgen to helle dim.

The whale (cethegrande literally means 'the big fish') is a fish,
The biggest that lives in the water;
Moreover, you would say,
If you saw it when it floated,
That it were an island
That sits on the sea-sand.

This fish that is so monstrously huge,
When he's hungry he gapes wide;
From his throat he emits a breath
That is the sweetest thing in the world.
Therefore other fishes are drawn to him;
When they smell it they are delighted:
They come and linger in his mouth;
Of his treachery they are ignorant.
This fish then snaps his jaws shut,
And sucks in all these fishes.
The small he will thus entrap,
The big he may not catch.

This fish lives by the sea-ground,
And lives there always safe and sound
Til it comes the time
That storms stir all the sea.
Then summer and winter so contend
That it may not live therein:
So disturbed is the sea-bottom
That he can't at all live there then.
Instead, he rises up and stays still
While the weather is so ill.
The ships that are storm-driven on the sea--
Death is hateful to them and life precious--
Look about them and see this fish;
They think he is an island.
They are very glad of this,
And with all their strength they draw near him,
Moor their ships to him,
And all go upon him,
With stone and steel in the tinder
To burn a fire on this wonder;
They warm themselves well, eat and drink.
He feels the fire and it makes him sink;
As soon as he dives down to the sea-bed,
He slays them all without a wound.

Signification
The devil is strong with guile and might,
Just as witches are in their craft:
He makes men hunger and thirst
And desire many other sinful things;
He entices men to him with his breath;
Whoso follows him, he finds ruin:
Those are the little ones, feeble in faith;
The strong he may not draw to him.
By strong, I mean the steadfast
In true faith with body and soul.
Whoever listens to the devil's lore,
In the end he shall repent it bitterly;
Whoso puts his trust in him,
He shall follow him to dark hell.

Tags:

npm,
poetry

This was in a collection entitled Love Songs of Syon; Syon was one of the richest religious houses in England at the time of the Dissolution, with one of the better libraries (it had two: one for men and one for women). A couple texts associated with Syon are relevant to one of my dissertation chapters, and a couple manuscripts once at Syon intersect with the Always Ongoing Bookmarks Project. So Syon has been on my mind a bit recently and is the reason this anthology caught my attention. But the specific lyric, which the anthology locates in Richard Hill's commonplace book (a Balliol manuscript circa 1520), is one I first read years before. I can't remember precisely where or when I read it; it appears in tons of anthologies, so one of those may have been my source, or (more likely, I suspect) a novel. It is aggravating to try but fail to cite one's sources!

Anyway, there are apparently a couple versions of this carol, one for Christmas and one, this one, for the feast of Corpus Christi. I like the poem's gradual closing in of focus, from the bird's view of orchard and hall, to indoors, to a private room, to a bed, and so forth. (My brother wrote an illustrated story of this type when he was in preschool; it began, "In a dark, dark forest there was a dark, dark wood.") It shares a perspective seen often in late medieval art, with the same event at multiple moments or from multiple perspectives depicted in a single visual field. And one of the other neat things about it, to my mind, is the transformation of its religious theme into secular chivalric imagery (with castles and hunting and knights and maidens and beautiful furnishings and so forth). That's not uncommon, but works with particular vividness here.

"The Falcon"

Lully, lulley, lully, lulley.
The fawcon hath borne my mak away.           mak] mate

He bare him up, he bare him down,
He bare him in to an orchard brown.
Lully, lulley, lully, lulley--
The fawcon hath borne my mak away.
In that orchard ther was an hall,
That was hangid with purpill and pall.
And in that hall ther was a bede;                 bede] bed
It was hanged with gold so rede.
And in that bed ther lyeth a knyght,
His wowndes bledyng day and nyght.
By that bedes side ther kneleth a may,     may] maiden
And she wepeth both nyght and day.
And by that beddes side ther stondith a stone,
Corpus Christi wretyn thereon.

The manuscript from which this version was taken has images online; the poem is on fol. 165v. Aggravatingly, the Oxford website paginates the images rather than foliates them, so I haven't actually taken the time to convert and factor in or out the prefatory pages, or examine some of the images to see if the manuscript itself is foliated, to find the exact image myself. Folio 165v is also p. 352.

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Look what I came across today!

( Rats Away! A Middle English blessing )

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poetry

This is the third part of a short lyric poem by Chaucer called, by modern editors, "Merciles Beaute." In the first part, Chaucer confesses his love to a fine-eyed woman; in the second part, he has been rejected, and complains that her beauty has driven away her ability to pity or show mercy to her lovers; in this, the third part, Chaucer expresses relief at his escape from Cupid's clutches.

These three parts form a roundel, which could have been sung in succession, but could also have been sung simultaneoulsy. If sung simultaneously, there's less of a linear narrative and more of multiple perspectives on love, more polytextuality as one critic put it (without a sense of irony, sadly). In this view, the third part here may not respond to the situation of the second, but independently presents the perspective of a relieved lover. I like the narrative possibilities of a linear roundel, but I also find the idea that the work presents three different faces of a lover interesting as well, the Lover, the Scored, and the Scorner, perhaps.

I also like how the situation in this part involves mutual strikethroughs. And beans.

Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,              Sin] Since
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;
Sin I am free, I counte him not a bene.

He may answere, and seye this and that;
I do no fors, I speke right as I mene.       I do no fors] I don't care

       Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat
       I never thenk to ben in his prison lene.

Love hath my name ystrike out of his slat,
And he is strike out of my bokes clene
For evermo; [ther] is non other mene.       mene] course

       Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,
       I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;
       Sin I am free, I counte him not a bene.

You can read the other two parts online here.

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poetry

"Yak" is not "yak" in any modern sense, I know (it's "ache"), but sometimes I nevertheless find amusement in the idea of a head yakking, which I envision as just kind of spontaneously spewing one's brains onto the floor; or Yak-ing, in which a yak springs forth from one's brow a la Athena.

But this poem is really about the painful difficulties of trying to write, and I can always sympathize with that!

"My Heid did 3ak Yester Nicht" by William Dunbar (late 15th c.)

My heid did 3ak 3ester nicht,                        3ak] ache; 3ester] yesterday
This day to mak that I na micht.                    mak] write poetry
So sair the magryme does me men3ie,          magryme] megrim, migraine; men3ie] hurt
Persing my brow as ony gan3ie                     gan3ie] arrow
That scant I luik may on the licht.

And now, schir, laitlie, efter mes,         schir] sir; mes] mass
To dyt thocht I begowthe to dres,         dyt] write; dres] address myself
The sentence lay full evill till find,          till] to
Unsleipit in my heid behind,
Dullit in dulnes and distres.

Full oft at morrow I upryse,
Quhen that my curage sleiping lyis,      Quhen] When; lyis] lies
For mirth, for menstrallie and play,
For din nor danceing nor deray,            deray] revelry
It will nocht walkin me no wise.            walkin] waken

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I love that this is a riddling poem.

"I Have a Yong Suster"

I have a yong suster
Fer biyonde the see;       Fer] Far
Manye be the druries       druries] gifts
That she sente me.

She sente me the cherye
Withouten any stoon,       stoon] stone
And so she dide the dove
Withouten any boon.        boon] bone

She sente me the brere      brere] briar
Withouten any rinde;         rinde] bark
She bad me love my lemman
Withoute longinge.

How sholde any cherye
Be withoute stoon?
And how sholde any dove
Be withoute boon?

How sholde any brere
Be withoute rinde?
How sholde I love my lemman     lemman] sweetheart
Withoute longinge?

( The answers below )

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This is a seduction poem that intriguingly--and amusingly, given the reveal at the end--figures the male speaker's body as a garden, his cock as a pear-tree, and himself as integral to the production of fruit. I like it for that; it's a change from the more common description of women as composed of various bits of nature. Plus: drunken seduction with the woman in charge! I think we're supposed to be outraged (as well as amused) at the end, but I feel that the woman was, instead, being rather clever given the restrictions of her society.

"I have a newe garden" (early 15th c.)

I have a newe garden,
And newe is begunne;
Swich another garden              Swich] Such
Know I not under sunne.

In the middes of my garden
Is a peryr set,                         peryr ] pear
And it wille non per bern
But a per Jenet.

The fairest maide of this town
Preyed me
For to griffen her a grif              To graft her a shoot
Of mine pery tree.

Whan I hadde hem griffed,         hem] them
Alle at her wille,
The win and the ale                  win] wine
She ded in fille.                        ded in fille] did fill me up

And I griffed her
Right up in her home:
And by that day twenty wowkes       wowkes] weeks
It was quik in her womb.

That day twelfus month
That maide I met:
She seid it was a per Robert
But non per Jonet!

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Burnt Every Morning

(with 41 gallons of books and a symphony of meat and cheese)

Yuletide letter

Friends Only

Hi there!

Old Spice Chaucer -- full sequence

Country Life Novels?

A Proposal

PSA: Life, the Universe, and Everything!

How Pesto Thwarted Me Thrice

Placeholding, with reading

[NPM] "Study of Two Pears" by Wallace Stevens

[NPM] "warty bliggens the toad"

[NPM] "Bad News Blues

[NPM] "All Too Late"

[NPM] "The Whale"

[NPM] "The Falcon"

For ladybird97, a Blessing Against Rats

[NPM] "Merciles Beaute," part 3

[NPM] "My Heid Did Yak Yester Nicht"

[NPM] "I Have a Young Sister"

[NPM] "I have a new garden"

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