30 days of babble, dec 7 - medieval lit
i am once again a day behind. >.< last night i made snowball cookies for my parents' hanukah party which is today, and i should've left them in the oven another minute or so. they're not raw in the middle or anything, but i pulled them out a little too soon. if i was supposed to bake them to well-done, say, or medium well, they're more medium. cooked through, but not thoroughly. and i didn't taste test one until i'd already covered them with powdered sugar, at which point it was too late to stick them back in the oven. *sigh* hopefully no one will mind.
anyway. dear-tiger asked for medieval lit, and instead i may or may not have fallen into an insmallpackages hole again. >.< this time the get post. which is kind of a reminder that i should maybe get with the granting myself....
*refocuses self* so ok, medieval lit. it's what i would've specialized in if i'd stayed in grad school. (and i would probably be unemployed right now, but whatever. i'd be really well educated in arcane shit. :D ) it's been so long since i read this stuff that i don't remember most of it. like, i know i read piers plowman - it's a major medieval poem, up there with the canterbury tales which i also read - but i don't remember it AT ALL. i remember some of the canterbury tales (i had to read the wife of bath's tale twice, so i'd hope i'd remember at least some of it) and some of sir gawain and the green knight (which i liked) plus a couple other poems by the same poet. which, also, i don't remember, other than i know i read them. (pearl and patience. the person who wrote them is known as the pearl poet.) i read a lot of stuff i don't remember very well. >.< i took a class on medieval women writers so we read a bunch of mystics, because pretty much the only outlet for permanent writing from medieval women was ecclesiastical, unless you were attached to a royal court in which case you get marie de france (altho no one knows who she really was) who wrote love poetry (adulterous affairs, lots of pining and angst, some death - cheerful stuff :D ) and christine de pizan who's considered the first european professional woman writer. she started writing when her husband died and she needed to support herself and her family. she wrote a ton of things but all i read is the book of the city of ladies, which is pretty much what it sounds like - it's a giant allegory about a city of women that was written to try and counteract prevailing medieval misogyny. she was kind of a protofeminist.
it was pretty much all allegory in the middle ages. well, chaucer wasn't totally, and some of the love poetry was probably more straightforward. i liked the troubadors, and i read the romance of the rose which was kind of a satire of courtly poetry and - surprise! - kind of allegorical. to be completely honest i'm not a fan of allegory, and i was planning on concentrating on women mystics, because a. some of them were kind of nuts, and b. it was a religious tradition i was completely unfamiliar with, and was thus completely fascinating. i liked margery kempe, who was a married woman who had a religious epiphany, started wearing white, stopped sleeping with her husband - altho she stayed married to him - and would argue with the bishop in public. (the bishop was less than pleased by this.) she couldn't write so she had to dictate her story. julian of norwich, whose work i don't remember specifically but who i do remember thinking sounded pretty rational in comparison to a lot of them. there was a christina who was a hermit who came across as just nuts, to the point i rationalized her work as hallucinations brought on by way too much fasting. (probably not the tack i would've taken if i'd gone on to study her more seriously.) there was a lot of christ-the-bridegroom and the mystic as bride of christ - these were religious, celibate women living in nunneries and convents with other women (or hermiting like christina) (i wish i could remember where she was from! because there was more than one christina) who had dedicated their lives to god, so to read about their deep and occasionally physical and erotically-charged love for christ was so odd to me but in a way made a lot of sense, and it was something i wanted to look more deeply at.
oh, and i read the letters of abelard and heloise, which were partly love letters and partly philosophical and religious correspondence. (he was older and her teacher - she was very smart and well educated - they fell in love, she got pregnant, they married in secret, her uncle found out and had abelard castrated, abelard went to an abbey, heloise went to a convent, eventually they became a great medieval love story. there's a tomb for them at pere lachaise cemetery in paris, but apparently there's a question as to whether or not they're both really buried there.)
now i'm feeling a vague desire to reread some of this stuff. i have julian of norwich and margery kempe and a book of women troubadors in my bedroom. i wouldn't even have to buy anything. :D
i have an hour to get dressed, go to the grocery store, go to the liquor store, and get to my parents' house. can i do it? i don't think so. but i'm going to try!
in the meantime, two picspams from insmallpackages:
hedgehogs in the wild and adorable lesbian couples. SO CUTE.
anyway. dear-tiger asked for medieval lit, and instead i may or may not have fallen into an insmallpackages hole again. >.< this time the get post. which is kind of a reminder that i should maybe get with the granting myself....
*refocuses self* so ok, medieval lit. it's what i would've specialized in if i'd stayed in grad school. (and i would probably be unemployed right now, but whatever. i'd be really well educated in arcane shit. :D ) it's been so long since i read this stuff that i don't remember most of it. like, i know i read piers plowman - it's a major medieval poem, up there with the canterbury tales which i also read - but i don't remember it AT ALL. i remember some of the canterbury tales (i had to read the wife of bath's tale twice, so i'd hope i'd remember at least some of it) and some of sir gawain and the green knight (which i liked) plus a couple other poems by the same poet. which, also, i don't remember, other than i know i read them. (pearl and patience. the person who wrote them is known as the pearl poet.) i read a lot of stuff i don't remember very well. >.< i took a class on medieval women writers so we read a bunch of mystics, because pretty much the only outlet for permanent writing from medieval women was ecclesiastical, unless you were attached to a royal court in which case you get marie de france (altho no one knows who she really was) who wrote love poetry (adulterous affairs, lots of pining and angst, some death - cheerful stuff :D ) and christine de pizan who's considered the first european professional woman writer. she started writing when her husband died and she needed to support herself and her family. she wrote a ton of things but all i read is the book of the city of ladies, which is pretty much what it sounds like - it's a giant allegory about a city of women that was written to try and counteract prevailing medieval misogyny. she was kind of a protofeminist.
it was pretty much all allegory in the middle ages. well, chaucer wasn't totally, and some of the love poetry was probably more straightforward. i liked the troubadors, and i read the romance of the rose which was kind of a satire of courtly poetry and - surprise! - kind of allegorical. to be completely honest i'm not a fan of allegory, and i was planning on concentrating on women mystics, because a. some of them were kind of nuts, and b. it was a religious tradition i was completely unfamiliar with, and was thus completely fascinating. i liked margery kempe, who was a married woman who had a religious epiphany, started wearing white, stopped sleeping with her husband - altho she stayed married to him - and would argue with the bishop in public. (the bishop was less than pleased by this.) she couldn't write so she had to dictate her story. julian of norwich, whose work i don't remember specifically but who i do remember thinking sounded pretty rational in comparison to a lot of them. there was a christina who was a hermit who came across as just nuts, to the point i rationalized her work as hallucinations brought on by way too much fasting. (probably not the tack i would've taken if i'd gone on to study her more seriously.) there was a lot of christ-the-bridegroom and the mystic as bride of christ - these were religious, celibate women living in nunneries and convents with other women (or hermiting like christina) (i wish i could remember where she was from! because there was more than one christina) who had dedicated their lives to god, so to read about their deep and occasionally physical and erotically-charged love for christ was so odd to me but in a way made a lot of sense, and it was something i wanted to look more deeply at.
oh, and i read the letters of abelard and heloise, which were partly love letters and partly philosophical and religious correspondence. (he was older and her teacher - she was very smart and well educated - they fell in love, she got pregnant, they married in secret, her uncle found out and had abelard castrated, abelard went to an abbey, heloise went to a convent, eventually they became a great medieval love story. there's a tomb for them at pere lachaise cemetery in paris, but apparently there's a question as to whether or not they're both really buried there.)
now i'm feeling a vague desire to reread some of this stuff. i have julian of norwich and margery kempe and a book of women troubadors in my bedroom. i wouldn't even have to buy anything. :D
i have an hour to get dressed, go to the grocery store, go to the liquor store, and get to my parents' house. can i do it? i don't think so. but i'm going to try!
in the meantime, two picspams from insmallpackages:
hedgehogs in the wild and adorable lesbian couples. SO CUTE.