tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post1739668232304211631..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Yet Another SEMA Paper: Eros and Event in Malory's "Tale of Balyn and Balan"Cord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-87126824379153050302008-10-14T09:07:00.000-04:002008-10-14T09:07:00.000-04:00That Alf S. book looks wonderful.My main caution w...That Alf S. book looks wonderful.<BR/><BR/>My main caution with ANY forest book (barring William Perry Marvin. Hunting Law and Ritual in Medieval English Literature. D. S. Brewer, 2006) is that most of them don't emphasize, or don't sufficiently emphasize, the forest as a <I>legal</I> space (rather than, or as much as, a space comprising a certain kind of flora). I do think it's important to keep the two kinds of forests separate. Think SGGK: scary outside forest is what he moves through on the way to meet Bertilak; legally bounded forest is what Bertilak hunts in.<BR/><BR/>It strikes me, however, that Balyn's encounter with the forest IS an encounter with the OUTSIDE, which means that Vance's analysis (e.g.) will work well.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-91107851146786512812008-10-12T14:30:00.000-04:002008-10-12T14:30:00.000-04:00On forests and the wild, can I also add Corinne Sa...On forests and the wild, can I also add Corinne Saunder's excellent The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande, Arden. <A HREF="http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=0230606644" REL="nofollow">This book</A> by Alf Siewers will be field-defining when it is published.<BR/><BR/>OK, that's a drive-by comment but I do promise to engage with the actual substance of your paper Eileen and have more to say soon.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-72773333453368656912008-10-11T11:57:00.000-04:002008-10-11T11:57:00.000-04:00Karl: thank you so much for giving me so much to c...Karl: thank you so much for giving me so much to chew over here and for the reading references. Since this is just a small bit culled from a larger book chapter draft [for our "humanisms" book], these suggestions are perfect and they don't necessarily pull me in a different direction since, both here and also in my Guthlac project, I am, indeed, trying to work out the violence [what, following Adorno and also Butler, I am calling the "ethical violence"] of these texts/created worlds. I have yet to read Badiou and have been meaning to. As to your help here with the realm of the forest itself: wow--thanks so much for that; it's like a gift to the chapter.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-66774368688316073402008-10-09T09:50:00.000-04:002008-10-09T09:50:00.000-04:00Great paper, Eileen, and greatly moving. I love it...Great paper, Eileen, and greatly moving. I love its productive interchange with Kruger's final plenary paragraphs, although I can't articulate just now <I>how</I> that interchange works. <BR/><BR/>One small question for now. Given the bellicose sanguineous material you're analyzing, your list of philosophers of The Event--Derrida, Caputo, Deleuze--seems to require philosophers of the <I>violence</I> of the event (or the act? are they interchangeable? I don't know): Badiou (I think? know him only second hand) and Zizek and, yeah, Benjamin's Critique of Violence. Here is where <A HREF="http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2008/08/violence-and-it.html" REL="nofollow">Jodi Dean</A> might help us. <BR/><BR/>I direct this suggestion, however, only at the middle chunk of the paper, since you take us, with Balyn's gaze into the forest someplace entirely new. If you want to keep pushing at the 'outsideness' of the forest, maybe think in terms of what I believe medieval etymology liked to think, that forest came from <I>deforis,</I> outside, and MAYBE someone even linked it to <I>fors,</I> chance or luck. Also see, while being VERY suspicious of the neatness of their structural analysis, Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992 and Eugene Vance, From Topic to Tale: Logic and Narrativity in the Middle Ages. Theory and the History of Literature 47. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987, Chapter 5, where he discusses the forest.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.com