tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post2602163354265315284..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Soy, Masculinity, Warriors, and Monks: Again, with the MeatCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-31359441451724589022006-12-22T11:07:00.000-05:002006-12-22T11:07:00.000-05:00ADM:
Ha! No, I haven't seen that. Is it in Tannah...ADM:<br /><br />Ha! No, I haven't seen that. Is it in Tannahil's <i>Food in History</i>? (unfortunately, a search of google books, capybara AND jesuit, gets me nothing useful)<br /><br />I <i>do</i> know of a letter of English Rabbis to their brethren on the Continent concerning the Barnacle Goose. The Barnacle goose, as readers of Gerald of Wales' anti-Judaic natural history on this bird know (if only he knew about <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/20/uk.komodo.reut/index.html">komodo dragons</a>), was so called because it was thought to hatch from barnacles. Because of this, some Christians argued that the goose was a fish, not a bird, and so suitable eating for Lent (I have a case in my notes from the 15th-century Norwich heresy trials in which someone is accused of Lollardy, which is an English heresy, for eating a barnacle goose on Friday: hardly seems fair). English Jews numbered among the people confounded by this disingenuous taxonomy: could they eat the goose, since it was a shellfish? I seem to remember, as well, some French Jews wondering if they had to slaughter the goose properly, since it wasn't 'really' a bird but perhaps some kind of fruit. You know, like the agnus scythicus, a kind of sheep that hatched from melons. <br /><br />The answer, from Jacobs, Joseph ed. and trans. <i>The Jews of Angevin England: Documents and Sources. English History by Contemporary Writers.</i> 1893. Israel: Gregg International Publishers, 1969.<br />Resp. R. Meir of Rothenburg, “Of the question whether geese ‘growing on trees; may be eaten by Jews. My teacher, the Lion [Sir Leon of Paris] told me that he had heard from his father, R. Isaac, that R. Tam [R. Jacob ben Meir, grandson of Rashi, d. 1171] directed that they should be slaughtered after Jewish fashion, and sent this decision to the sons of Angleterre” (54)-while R. Tam allowed them to be eaten.<br /><br />For more on this fascinating subject (I mean it: I love this stuff. It's a major reason I'm a medievalist), see <br />Lugt, Maaike van der. "Animal légendaire et discours savant médiéval: la barnacle dans tous ses etats." <i>Micrologus</i> 8 (2000) :351-93.<br /><br />Oh, there's also this, from Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. The Art of Falconry (De Arte Venandi cum Avibus). Trans. and ed. Casey A. Wood and F. Marjorie Fyfe. 1943. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1961:<br /><br />I.23F. "There is, also, a small species known as the barnacle goose, arrayed in motley plumage (it has certain parts white and in others black, circular markings), of whose nesting haunts we have no certain knowledge. There is, however, a curious popular tradition that they spring from dead trees. It is said that in the far north old ships are said to be found in whose rotting hulls a worm is born that develops into the barnacle goose. This goose hangs from the dead wood by its beak until it is old and strong enough to fly. We have made prolonged research into the origin and truth of this legend and even sent special envoys to the North with orders to bring back specimens of those mythical timbers for our investigation. When we examined them we did observe shell-like formations clinging to the rotten wood, but these bore no resemblance to any avian body. We therefore doubt the truth of this legend in the absence of corroborating evidence. In our opinion this superstition arose from the fact that barnacle geese breed in such remote latitudes that men, in ignorance of their real nesting places, invented this explanation" (51-52).Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-60827675708845098612006-12-22T08:57:00.000-05:002006-12-22T08:57:00.000-05:00Karl, in case you see this -- I seem to remember ...Karl, in case you see this -- I seem to remember that the (Jesuit?) missionaries in South America wrote to the pope asking for (and receiving) a dispensation to eat a newly-discovered fish ... the capybara!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-37482582851676758742006-12-19T16:12:00.000-05:002006-12-19T16:12:00.000-05:00Sandy: be my guest. I'd be honored.Sandy: be my guest. I'd be honored.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-20074808478813048362006-12-19T14:46:00.000-05:002006-12-19T14:46:00.000-05:00I'd like to feature this in tomorrow's Carnival of...I'd like to feature this in tomorrow's Carnival of Feminists http://feministcarnival.blogspot.com/Sandy D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/08650640470141210550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-83859313846382254242006-12-17T21:32:00.000-05:002006-12-17T21:32:00.000-05:00EJ: there's a picture somewhere of me covered in n...EJ: there's a picture somewhere of me covered in nephews. I'll make it available at some point because it <i>really is that vivid.</i> <br /><br />JJC: thanks so much for your responses, which I'm now able to read at leisure. I think you've cleared up a lot of muck in my mind.<br /><br />Gabriele: thanks for the other nice detail. Your reading sounds like it works.<br /><br />Anon: I've run across that 7-legged deer from you, from JKW, from, probably, digg and fark (guilty and guiltier pleasures), but you (and JKW) get my thanks. I love the last line ("And by the way, I did eat it," Lisko said. "It was tasty."). It says so much. Although the deer may be weird, breaking all laws of gender and quadrupedality, at least it's still edible. Taxonomic excess finally gives way to slaughter, the great leveler, the end to which most animal flesh is heir, and because of which, is merely <i>animal</i> flesh. <br /><br />I wonder if JJC or others can help me out with edible monsters? I know there's Leviathan, whose flesh, according to some Jewish eschatology, would be one day served at a banquet. Rabbis avered that this was fine: Leviathan had scales and fins.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-11503046310929388702006-12-16T17:51:00.000-05:002006-12-16T17:51:00.000-05:00I wondered if Karl had seen this:
http://hosted.a...I wondered if Karl had seen this:<br /><br />http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SEVEN_LEGGED_DEER?SITE=SCCOL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT<br /><br />Check out that last sentence!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-63220995859449606422006-12-16T09:44:00.000-05:002006-12-16T09:44:00.000-05:00"Covered in nephews"? That could be a whole other ..."Covered in nephews"? That could be a whole other post. Great post, Karl.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-34193458571369244932006-12-15T13:01:00.000-05:002006-12-15T13:01:00.000-05:00The Henry II example makes me think about the stre...The Henry II example makes me think about the stress some Roman sources put on the fact that Arminius (the Roman-trained German auxiliary officer) often dined with Varus (the Roman governor in Germania) before he started his rebellion and annihilated three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest. I've wondered why the dinners were such a matter, but if one reads it as symbolic act - the no longer barbarian German eating with the Roman and still being able to 'betray' him and his own Romanization, it adds a layer.Gabriele Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17205770868139083575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-445149968521205082006-12-15T10:06:00.000-05:002006-12-15T10:06:00.000-05:00Thanks for your kind comments, JJC. Here's what I'...Thanks for your kind comments, JJC. Here's what I'm afraid I did: I just scattered the word 'masculinities' around without much thought to make my meat stuff relevant to the soy maniac's silly notion about feminizing tofu. So, there's gestures, but not anywhere near the analysis I need yet.<br /><br />More later, I hope, but right now I'm covered in nephews.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-391497227995911072006-12-15T09:38:00.000-05:002006-12-15T09:38:00.000-05:00PS Here is a little piece from HIMIMB:ODM on eatin...PS Here is a little piece from HIMIMB:ODM on eating and identity. The last pargraph, on forcing Irish chieftains to eat crane ("Let them eat crane!" declared Henry) really does seem like a case in which your use of gender categories to think about food consumption would have worked well, Karl.<br /><br />-------------<br />For writers like William of Malmesbury and Gerald of Wales, civilized peoples ate elaborately prepared foods; savages did not. Although Ireland was more ancient in its Christianity than England, and although Ireland in the twelfth century was possessed of stunning artistic and cultural achievements, Gerald depicted the island as a primitive place in order to justify its ongoing colonization. In one particularly vivid passage he writes of hide-clad pagans living on an island in the sea of Connacht. Sailors blown off course by a storm arrive near their home, and two men sail out to greet them. These natives speak the Irish language and wear their hair long. They are also overawed by their first encounter with cheese and bread. Such labor-intensive staples of advanced civilizations are as unknown to them as Christianity. When last seen the ignorant pagans are gratefully departing with a loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese to bring to their people as a wonder. It is unclear if they will devour these foods or worship them (History and Topography of Ireland 3.103). <br /><br />... Gerald of Wales relates that a demon in Italy once confessed that he liked inhabiting the bodies of heathens and Jews because they do not eat pork, rendering that ubiquitous Christian food a strange metonymy for the Eucharist (Jewel of the Church 1.18) ... Jewish minorities were set apart from the Christians among whom they dwelled by their nonparticipation in the alimentary rhythms that structured majority life. They fasted at strange times; they ate meat during Lent; they rejected certain foods (cheese, wine, meat) not prepared in accordance with their own ritual requirements; they did not celebrate the holy days that anchored the Christian calendar and gave occasional license to communal feasting and intoxication.<br /><br />In 1171 Henry II arrived in Ireland to receive the submission of the princes of the north of the country. He arranged an extravagant feast prepared Anglicane mense – a terminology that nicely draws attention to the fact that the Irish did not, like the English, eat at tables. The formal dinner was an act of aggression, meant to overawe the Irish royals by the copiousness of the food as well as its elegant presentation. The Irish were forcibly anglicized in the process, not just because to sit at Henry's English table was to acknowledge the superiority of his court but also because the chieftains had to eat the foreign dishes served. Among these was the flesh of crane (carne gruina), a bird the Irish loathed as a food. Crane in their bellies and a new taste implanted on their tongues, the princes make their submission both verbally and gustatorily, exiting the repast with a little bit of Henry's England incorporated into their Irish flesh.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-83075509936197136282006-12-15T09:32:00.000-05:002006-12-15T09:32:00.000-05:00Well, here is that Tofurky post, for folks who mig...Well, <a href="http://jjcohen.blogspot.com/2006/11/few-loose-thoughts-on-rainy-wednesday.html">here</a> is that Tofurky post, for folks who might have missed it.<br /><br />Karl, your post raises so many issues that is hard to know where to begin. Dietary choice is so fundamental to community: "I won't eat that" is a refusal that can really sting, and draws such a public line. Yet I wonder if food can be well read in terms that foreground gender ("does eating meat masculinize or feminize?") without reference to other components of belonging (you start to get at that point with your foregrounding of elite identity and warrior identity). In your wonderful example of the steward and the travelling bishop, for example, the alimentary demarcation is drawn as a racial line (Saracen or Jew) more than a gender one [though of course those lines always blur/overlap].<br /><br />If masculine is a synonym for powerful in your parsing of martial versus monastic ways of eating/being, then you also have to factor in how denial itself is empowering: the ascetic as warrior is such a familiar trope. Saints like Columba and Cuthbert exert their power over others by controlling consumption: not just fasting, but madndating that other monks shall not fast more than they do, or that other monks must eat rather than fast.<br /><br />Compound all of this with the fact that denial is its own pleasure and you can see how complicated food is in its relation to gender.<br /><br />I like the post a lot, Karl, and elarned quite a bit from it. I really admire your thinking here.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-63234966682084264482006-12-15T08:55:00.000-05:002006-12-15T08:55:00.000-05:00Why do I get the feeling this post is related to m...<i>Why do I get the feeling this post is related to my disparagement of Tofurkey?</i><br /><br />Because it is. Should've linked to it.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-4291081574486517222006-12-15T06:43:00.000-05:002006-12-15T06:43:00.000-05:00Why do I get the feeling this post is related to m...Why do I get the feeling this post is related to my disparagement of Tofurkey?<br /><br />More later.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-35085267510697701592006-12-14T16:16:00.000-05:002006-12-14T16:16:00.000-05:00Karl, I admit I'm not that well acquainted with re...Karl, I admit I'm not that well acquainted with religious Mediaeval literature and don't remember to have seen the comparison in the literature about <i>Ogier li Danois</I> I read some years ago. But it is a possibility. <br /><br />Should dig out the stuff and work a bit on the French epics again, besides my Roman Empire novels. Somehow, the academic writing fell behind the moment I took my fiction seriously. <br /><br />Oh, and when it comes to eating lots of meat, don't forget Obelix. *grin*Gabriele Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17205770868139083575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-756947327280524212006-12-14T08:59:00.000-05:002006-12-14T08:59:00.000-05:00Gabriele, that's a lovely example. Isn't there a b...Gabriele, that's a lovely example. Isn't there a bit in the Passion of Perpetua where she feeds her imprisoned aged father with her own milk? I wonder how much mileage we'd get from seeing the Ogier bit as a secular example of this story. we'd probably get more than we needed.<br /><br />HD: that's not unrelated at all. That whole marketing of meat to men thing is exactly the sort of thing that interests me.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-21663075542550519332006-12-14T08:25:00.000-05:002006-12-14T08:25:00.000-05:00whoops, that link is:
www.aperfectworld.org/e02.ht...whoops, that link is:<br />www.aperfectworld.org/e02.htmAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-38293584992419988052006-12-14T08:22:00.000-05:002006-12-14T08:22:00.000-05:00this is a somewhat unrelated comment, but karl's p...this is a somewhat unrelated comment, but karl's post made me recall the fun my bff and I had in high school, giggling over her mom's betty crocker recipe collection from the sixties, which had a segment of recipes called "man-pleasing favorites." they all involved ground beef. or, drinking beef broth: http://www.aperfectworld.org/e02.htmAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-83370367591959208202006-12-13T20:32:00.000-05:002006-12-13T20:32:00.000-05:00There's another fine example from the chansons de ...There's another fine example from the <i>chansons de geste</i>, the roast ox meat Turpin keeps sneaking into the dungeon where Ogier li Danois is kept prisoner and condemned to starve to death. So when there's another host of Saracens threatening Charlemagne's realm, Ogier is fit to fight the lot. :)Gabriele Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17205770868139083575noreply@blogger.com