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An Admonition For Readers

While working on my “Female as Shapeshifter” paper, I am beginning to look at some primary sources for inclusion. The first I wanted to work with is a piece from 1566, “The true discripcion of a childe with ruffes borne in the parish of Micheham in the cou[n]tie of Surrey in the yeere of our Lord. M.D.LXvi,” which is in two parts. The first part is a vignette describing the physical attributes of a baby girl born with malformations to her skin. The second part, however, is most interesting as it relies on popular portents that construed birth monstrosities as omens against sinfulness for others, as well as indications of the parents’ transgressions, specifically those of the mother.

Monsters in the medieval period were often thought of as the physical manifestations of sin, and if their purpose was correctly deciphered, could serve as warnings. Similarly, once their significance was understood, they illustrated the sin, fait accompli, which brought them into existence. In my example, the baby with ruffes, or ruffled skin, was the punishment brought upon the mother for her indecent, or immodest wearing of ruffles on her garments. Here is a snippet of the original poem (the entirety of which can be found here):

Pray we the Lord our hart{is} to turn, whilest we haue time and space:
Lest that our soules in hel doo burn, for voiding of his grace.

And ye O England whose womākinde, in ruffes doo walke to oft:
Parswade them stil to bere in minde, this Childe with ruffes so soft.

In fourme as they in nature so, a maid she is in déed:
God graunt vs grace how euer we go, for to repent with spéed.

Her supposed vanity while pregnant was transmitted to the child inside of her, physically shaping the baby in accordance to the mother. Thus this second section is an admonition to women everywhere, reminding them of their responsibilities not only to themselves but to society who entrusts them with the duty of creating future adults.

Just yesterday afternoon I lectured on Susan Sontag’s “A Woman’s Beauty” and in both my classes the discussion turned towards the great facility with which we split off the “inside” from the “outside” when defining beauty, namely in modern culture. There is a strong belief that the two are irreconcilable. It doesn’t help that Sontag attributes this distinction to a Christian era that she believes ostracized women for being attractive. Nevertheless she is not wrong, and this is the double edged sword of beauty – attention to physical appearance is admonished and reprimanded, yet anything less is a portent of a stain upon our hearts. So beauty is a representation of purity, but rejoicing in it is pride, and a sin. Thus in the Christian era Sontag cites, the inside and outside are not mutually exclusive, only reflections of each other.

The woman in my quoted passage, however, is not condemned for flaunting her God-given appearance, but rather for embellishing herself with ruffles (Ruffles!). She may well have been a great beauty, and was immodestly boasting by drawing further attention to herself. Or she may have been rather ordinary looking, or even unattractive, using ruffles to overcompensate for lack of beauty. This does not matter. I am going to completely ignore the insinuation that acquired traits which bear no genetic inheritance are used as an explanation for her baby’s appearance, and rather focus on the social implications that are transmitted by the work. Here pride is not only a punishable sin; pride is a particularly anxiety producing character trait because it reveals the extent to which female comport resides outside the boundaries of societal, and more importantly, male control. The baby inherits her mother’s flaws, genetic or otherwise, and fails to resemble the father, negating the demands of patrilineage. Further, this child does not even so much as resemble the mother but rather holds a mirror to her sinful behavior, providing a double offense to the father who has nothing to show for his role in the process of conception, and now must also suffer a reminder of his wife’s transgressions.

The female body during pregnancy becomes a locus of activity. Her body changes as she shapes and molds the baby inside of her according to her physical appearance, her thoughts, and her behavior. Consequently all of these facets of female existence then need to be controlled in order to ensure proper progeny. This resulted in an abundance of texts produced during the early modern period, specifically intended for women, that admonished unfavorable behaviors in an attempt to eradicate them. While a large portion of these were of course political, and help shed light on some of the controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the dispute between Puritans and the reforms of Charles I, these are of less concern to me than the regard for the female body during the period of gestation. And as I continue working on my paper I look forward to exploring several other texts as well.

Sources:

Crawford, Julie. Marvelous Protestantism: Monstrous Births in Post-Reformation England.

Crawford, Patricia. “The construction and experience of maternity in seventeenth century England.”

Purkiss, Diane. “Producing the voice, consuming the body: Women prophets of the seventeenth century.”

 

The Female As Shapeshifter – Bodily Boundaries of the Grotesque

I am excited to announce I have been accepted to another conference with my paper titled “The Female As Shapeshifter – Bodily Boundaries of the Grotesque.” This time I am operating a bit outside the boundaries of my time period and crossing into the early modern period. However, considering my paper will examine myriad crossings of borders, it may just be absolutely appropriate.

I am currently in the stages of research, but have not yet began earnestly writing my paper, so to better give everyone a sense of what I am working on, here is the verbatim proposal I originally sent in to the “Performing Women’s Roles: 1500-1700 England” panel:

Attempting to define women’s roles from 1500-1700, or during any time period for that matter, will quickly evince the superfluity of such a category. The multifaceted nature of women’s roles necessitates a narrowing approach where a single aspect of female existence is reexamined. Currently there is a desideratum for research that examines traditional understandings of women as child bearers, and this paper will attempt to alleviate the paucity of scholarship that explores this role within disparate texts which regard the female body during that necessary but perilous period as grotesque.

Feminine social roles have long been delineated by physical boundaries ranging from venues women were not allowed to enter, to constrictions placed upon their bodies which women negotiated at various stages in their lives. Pregnancy is a stage ripe with liminality as it thrusts the female body into a position where it continuously redefines itself.

Mikhail Bakhin, in his description of Kerch terracotta figurines representing pregnant hags, permeates past initial repulsion at the depiction of decaying flesh bringing forth life, and brings to question a more universal reaction to the pregnant body that aligns it with a disturbing otherness.

The pregnant body is no longer a singular entity, yet cannot quite be counted as two. In this ever changing position the woman’s role becomes that of shapeshifter not only of herself, but through molding and essentially continuously reshaping the baby inside of her. And the idea that a woman has such power, to forge life outside the boundaries of male influence, renders the female body even more monstrous.

Thus the woman’s role during this period becomes one of performance of perceived proper conduct where she must watch herself and keep in line with popular beliefs reserved for pregnant women, regardless of how outlandish and contrary to common sense they might seem. Such prescriptions came in various forms and via diverse mediums ranging in examples from “The True Description of a Childe with Ruffes” (1566), “The Lamenting Lady” (1620?) and “The Mother’s Blessings” (1616), to consider only a few.

In short, this paper aims to look at women’s roles in the early modern period through a nuanced lens that analyzes the friction between the pregnant woman as giver of life, yet grotesque entity, an abjection, in need of constant regulation for society to not only regain control over her body, but supervise the development of the life inside of her.

I was restricted by word limits (that I had already gone over), so my proposal at this point sounds a bit vague, but I do have an idea of where I want this to go. There are numerous texts that explore decorum during the gestation period and I want to configure a unified image of the role women played during this precarious stage in their lives. While I am aware that the early modern period depictions of women do not serve as a terminus a quo to pregnancy and labor, the notions outlined at that point I feel resonate much more with future centuries leading all the way up to the twentieth century than previously thought. So, while I am examining various texts and delving into territories beyond my normal ken, I hope to uncover gems of literature that have resonated with women over the centuries and which may still ring true today.

In the meantime, should anyone have any suggestions for texts I should be looking at, please let me know – I will be glad for any advice.

“Fin ioi me don’ alegranssa” – The Comtessa’s Joy

Beatriz_de_Dia_-_BN_MS12473

(Comtessa de Dia – Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale MS fr. 12473)

After finishing out a long semester, I just turned in grades, and completed all those other tasks “to maken vertu of necessitee,” so now I get to once again turn towards a project I have been dabbling in and very much enjoy working on – the trobairitz and their cansos. Last time I looked to their pieces I translated and analyzed the last of Castelloza’s, and I will now return to the Comtessa de Dia.

So much has already been written about Comtessa de Dia’s life and history, this post will focus solely on the content of one of her four cansos’s “Fin ioi me don’ alegranssa” which remains consistent with the tradition of naming the piece after the first line of the canso. Here is my translation followed by a brief analysis:

Fin ioi me don’ alegranssa
Per qu’eu chan plus gaiamen,
E no m’o teing a pensanssa,
Ni a negun penssamen,
Car sai que son a mon dan
Fals lausengier e truan,
E lor mals diz non m’esglaia:
Anz en son dos tanz plus gaia.

En mi non an ges fianssa
Li lauzengier mal dizen,
C’om non pot aver honranssa
Qu’a ab els acordamen;
Qu’ist son d’altrestal semblan
Com la niouls que s’espan
Qe.l solels en pert sa raia,
Per qu’eu non am gent savaia

E vos, gelos mal parlan,
No.s cuges que m’an tarzan,
Que iois e iovenz no.m plaia,
Per tal que dols vos deschaia.

Fine joy gives me great happiness
Which makes me sing more gaily,
And it weighs me not to think
Nor have any dark thoughts
For fear of the harm
False gossipers may bring,
Their bad words don’t slay me:
They only make me twice as gay.

In me they will find no alliance
Those bad worded gossipers,
As no one can have honor
Who works in accordance to them;
They resemble well
Like the clouds that span
The sun to lose its rays,
For of one like that I want no knowledge

And you, jealous ill speaking one,
Don’t believe that I will tarry
With joy and youth myself to please
If for only to undo you.

I have maintained my almost pedantic desire for a translation true to form, and as often as it is possible without impeding readability I have preserved the archaic logic of language – the awkwardness of word order not only allows for a mot-a-mot mechanism for translation, but also provides a prosaic map after which the canso was modeled, outlining the continuity of thought that evidently bears greater importance over form. Even as the original has a rhyme scheme (ababccdd, ababccdd, ccdd), it was normal, and even expected, for those works created in the troubadour, and trobairitz, canso tradition to not rely on any conventional structure, and reinvent the canso form each time. This was terribly difficult and not always possible, and some, like Castelloza for example, had a signature style. In short, there is no “typical” form, and cansos are identified within the genre along the lines of content, more specifically subject.

The first line of “Fin ioi me don’ alegranssa” provides more than the title, and establishes the tone, beginning with the first word, “fine,” which can be read as refined, or elevated and serves as the beginning of the concept of fin’amor, courtly love. Here, however, there is only courtly joy. After discussing the problematic nature of fin’amor previously, in this instance the concept becomes simultaneously more complicated and yet simplified. Comtessa de Dia shrugs off the notion of ennobling love, with all that that actually entails, and blatantly asserts her greatest happiness is derived from joy (that perhaps also carries another connotation I have discussed elsewhere and will revisit shortly).

The joy she receives appears to be almost cathartic, where she smirks at the words of those who speak ill of her. She relies on this very gossip to lend her an air of superiority. She does not hide behind false veils of piety and renounce the gossipers, accusing them of bringing her low and ruining her goodly reputation. Instead, her power is ironically derived from their very words and her concession to them as she ends the canso with poise, assuring her husband, “gelos mal parlan” (jealous ill speaking one), of her intentions to continue forth with her activities. By not engaging or challenging the gossipers with negations, she gives them no power over her, and thus gains the upper hand.

On an unrelated, but interesting side note, I love the use of the word “lausengier” for gossiper. It bears resemblance to lozenge, or an elixir to ease the throat, implying that these gossipers soothe their throats through the very act of gossiping, essentially creating an unending cycle where the cure for a sore throat that arises from all that ill intended talk is more of it. I have not yet proven a concrete etymological connection, but I can’t help think it is more than just a coincidence.

The implied joi/jeu duality from the first line becomes perhaps the most apparent as it carries through to the end. Comtessa, much like Castelloza uses here cansos as a form of puppetry, mimicking male dominated troubadour traditions that use chansons to derive virtue for the speaker, while acting as a virtuoso pulling at the strings of both her lover and her audience in a game not unlike that of cat and mouse. Her je m’en fiche attitude recasts her joy outside the borders of sin, and places it squarely within a world where the crucial distinction between fin’amor and adultery collapse, further brining to question the perceived purity associated with fin’amor. Can this absolute state of innocent love also be so naïve as to condone and even legitimize carnal sin? Does fin’amor thus become debased as it is used towards ends and via means that remain ultimately unjustified? Obviously these are larger questions for an entire genre of works, and well outside my scope here, but they are inescapable in a conversation that centers around understanding compunction, or lack thereof.

As Comtessa closes her canso she tells the jealous one she wishes to preoccupy herself with joy and youth, directly contrasting these traits with her current arrangement that is presumably anything but, and therefore reversing blame, or at least ameliorating it. Even so, the audience is left with the troublesome knowledge that regardless of circumstances, she is nevertheless committing adultery. To better explain the ways in which she navigates this tricky situation I will argue that fin’amor does not become debased, but rather always already existed as a crutch for devising a method to superimpose divergent concepts such as love and lust while ignoring those places that display friction. The backdrop for such manipulation is a palimpsest ripe for erasure and recreation where the lover plays cartographer of human relationships and may reconfigure the relief to suit his or her own needs, regardless of the resulting distortion. In this imagined realm idealized love is no more real than the topography of emotions erected in ink that appear most real simply by virtue of being. Thus the disparity between the reality of an illicit relationship and the fabricated ideals of pure love becomes muddled and neglected as they combine into a single idea, and fin’amor is born ex nihilo as the concept to fill this gap in reasoning, all the while negating its ontological roots.

Withal, I would like to propose yet another interpretation for Comtessa’s usage of the concept that also defies logical explanation, but which needs none. Even as her very last line appears scornful and perhaps malicious, even as she relies on techniques of false love to make her argument, when the entirety of the piece is read as another strophe within a game, it mollifies the tone.

Thus in her game Comtessa elicits sympathy from her audience, all the while positioning her lover as it pleases her to stir gossipers for her own ends as she upends all those who judge her in a superb cycle of crafted emotions. In the end she does not undo her husband, but rather, by shedding light on the inherent fallacies of the larger system, she undoes the entire concept of fin’amor.

Sources:

Huchet, Jean-Charles. “Les femmes troubadours ou la voix critique.”

Paden, William. The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours.

Shapiro, Marianne. “The Provencal Trobairitz and the Limits of Courtly Love.”