tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post9135705169346456843..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Burne-Jones, Chaucer, and the Slippage of EverythingCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-38475726136243254752014-09-26T14:37:10.150-04:002014-09-26T14:37:10.150-04:00Great post; thanks to Karl for linking and bringin...Great post; thanks to Karl for linking and bringing it to my attention seven year's after its initial appearance. I confess that I've never given this painting a close look before (which I'm kind of ashamed of because I once wrote a ginormous article-length paper about this), but I immediately noticed that the murderess' female accomplice is wearing green. <br /><br />This may be totally incidental (and thus totally irrelevant), but the story's folk ballad analogues always specify that the pure, innocent Christian boy is enticed to his death by an alluring Jewish girl wearing green. FJ Child collected twenty-one (count 'em) variants of the song in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and nearly all carry a whiff of sexual seduction missing from Chaucer's Tale. For instance, one version of “Sir Hugh, or The Jew’s Daughter" (Child #155) has:<br /><br />You toss your ball so high,<br />You toss your ball so low,<br />You toss your ball into the Jew’s garden,<br />Where the pretty flowers grow.<br /><br />Out came one of the Jew’s daughters,<br />Dressed all in green:<br /> ‘Come hither, pretty little dear,<br />And fetch your ball again.’<br /><br />She showed him a rosy-cheeked apple,<br />She showed him a gay gold ring,<br />She showed him a cherry as red as blood,<br />And that enticed him in.<br /> <br />She set him in a golden chair,<br />She gave him kisses sweet,<br />She threw him down a darksome well,<br />More than fifty feet deep.<br /><br />Another variant offers this salacious combo of seduction, blasphemy, and penetration:<br /><br />She took him by the lily-white hand,<br />And led him into the hall,<br />And laid him on a dresser-board,<br />And that was the worst of all.<br />She laid the Bible at his head,<br />The Testament at his feet,<br />The Catechise-Book in his own heart’s blood,<br />With a penknife stuck so deep<br /><br />And on and on. But wait! In Ulysses, when Dedalus sings "Little Harry Hughes" to Bloom in rather shitty repayment for being pulled OUT of the gutter, the latter listens as "Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew’s daughter, all dressed in green," because the ballad’s murderous girl recalls an earlier vision of his own daughter: “Milly Bloom, fair-haired, greenvested, slimsandalled..break[ing] from the arms of her lover," which reminds him of his adulterous wife, who wore green "that first night." Joyce complicates the seductress/seduced dynamic of the story's earlier versions by having the Jewish Bloom victimized by a Christian woman in green, yet their union produces a seductive half-Jewess, also in green.<br /><br />Anyway, I'm babbling here, but it just struck me as interesting that Burne-Jones appears to gesture towards the green-clad Jewess trope in the (tiny, blink-and-you'll-miss-it) part of his painting that alludes to the little clergeon's actual murder. Coincidence? Or something more?Desdemonahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12122782820360639368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-70000959577119090222008-01-23T10:37:00.000-05:002008-01-23T10:37:00.000-05:00The McCune Collection has a copy of the Kelmscott ...The McCune Collection has a copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer and has been highlighting it on its website: www.mccunecollection.orgAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-47477757233453494492007-05-03T07:44:00.000-04:002007-05-03T07:44:00.000-04:00The Prioress's Tale was one of the first works EBJ...The Prioress's Tale was one of the first works EBJ illustrated as well as one of the last (I think he tackled it 3-4 times altogether) - so it clearly mattered to him. He had turned down a career in the church to 'discover' himself as an artist. Maybe that is what he liked about the story - didn't he once say something about needing to re-make himself as a child again before he could progress in his new chosen profession? Perhaps he is more interested in the re-birth of the boy and the boy's talent - and the other stuff was TMI.N50https://www.blogger.com/profile/02927387227571782287noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-63583330498973676252007-05-01T09:05:00.000-04:002007-05-01T09:05:00.000-04:00EJ, I just turned up some more material on the occ...EJ, I just turned up some more material on the occlusion of antisemetism. From <A HREF="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3709/is_200510/ai_n15739686/pg_2" REL="nofollow">here,</A> Greg Wilsbacher, Lumiansky's Paradox: Ethics, Aesthetics and Chaucer's "Prioress's Tale" <I>College Literature.</I> Fellow named Lumiansky published prose translations of the CT after WWII, but chose to include only a summary of the Prioress's Tale. Understandable, given the Shoah, but look at the summary:<BR/><BR/><I>The Prioress tells a tale which belongs to a large body of religious stories called "Miracles of Our Lady." A little choirboy is murdered, but through the action of the Virgin he is enabled to speak and to make known the facts concerning his death. This miracle makes a great impression upon the people of the vicinity, who bury the little boy in holy fashion. (Lumiansky 1948, 248)</I><BR/><BR/>!!! (now, Lumiansky's introduction explains why he, a Jewish veteran, refused to include the PrT: "For most of us, "The Prioress's Tale" is ruined by the similarity between this sort of story and some of the anti-Semitic propaganda which was current in Nazi Germany, and which is still in operation, not only in numerous foreign countries but also here at home")<BR/><BR/>Oh hell, read the article. I am, right now, while writing this post, before I dive it's today's ("Kzoo!" "Bless you!") work.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-65006529711445305162007-05-01T03:46:00.000-04:002007-05-01T03:46:00.000-04:00My thoughts on the Tale are up at The Valve, and o...My thoughts on the Tale are up at The Valve, and over at my place (see link below). My thought on the <I>painting</I> is that it must be at least partially conscious of its own erasures; look at the way the partial occlusion of Mary's body, by her robes, is echoed in the partial occlusion of the scenes and even the arches behind her. Whether the beautiful, unsullied foreground was, in Burne-Jones's vision, a deliberate irony, or a celebration of beauty triumphant (emerging from, and replacing, harsher realities), is hard to say.Joseph Kugelmasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18119217349621472543noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-25644621780873796842007-04-30T23:08:00.000-04:002007-04-30T23:08:00.000-04:00you had me at the scare quotes around 'referencing...you had me at the scare quotes around 'referencing'!Another Damned Medievalisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05231085915472400163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-27130687753198504142007-04-30T13:52:00.000-04:002007-04-30T13:52:00.000-04:00even those flowers tend to anglicize and contempor...<I>even those flowers tend to anglicize and contemporize the scene</I><BR/><BR/>Right: and the flowers. Like so many other victims of ritual murder, he should be in a pit full of human shit, not in a nice field of flowers. Good lord.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-36239781872403930532007-04-30T13:46:00.000-04:002007-04-30T13:46:00.000-04:00Two women killing the little clerk?Here's an origi...<I>Two women</I> killing the little clerk?<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-old?id=Cha2Can&images=images/modeng&data=/lv1/Archive/mideng-parsed&tag=public&part=36&division=div1" REL="nofollow">Here's</A> an original:<BR/><BR/>"And homycide therto han they hyred, <BR/>That in an aleye hadde a privee place; <BR/>And as the child gan forby for to pace, <BR/>This cursed jew hym hente, and heeld hym faste, <BR/>And kitte his throute, and in a pit hym caste. <BR/>I seye that in a wardrobe they hym threwe <BR/>Where as thise jewes purgen hire entraille."<BR/><BR/>I don't have my Riverside on hand right now, so I don't know the authority for switching from a single professional assassin who disposes of the body in a pit to the Prioress's revision of her own record (if that is how we should here "I seye") to the Jews collectively throwing the body into a privy. Regardless of whether it's one assassin or the Jews as a whole, there's no evidence that it's two women responsible. Why the change? <BR/><BR/>Here's a stretch at an explanation. Perhaps in giving us female murderers, Burne-Jones, inspired by the Prioress's allusion at her tales' end, is drawing from the folk song Hugh of Lincoln in which a woman (albeit only one) is responsible? From my notes on <BR/>#155 "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter." Francis James Child. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 vols. New York, 1956. III:233-54; IV: 497; V:241, where one version runs in a key stanza:<BR/><BR/>She led him in through ae dark door,<BR/>And saw has she thro nine;<BR/>She's laid him on a dressing-table,<BR/>And stickit him like a swine <BR/><BR/>==<BR/>BTW: am I surprised by the Curators' screw up with this painting? Nope. Distressed: absolutely. Good catch EJ.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-34877736359847610122007-04-30T13:26:00.000-04:002007-04-30T13:26:00.000-04:00It's interesting that Burne-Jones paid so little a...It's interesting that Burne-Jones paid so little attention to the setting as described by the text -- no public latrine, no constricted street, no Asian milieu (looks vaguely Roman; look at that victory pillar!), no sense that the Christians are a minority sect ... even those flowers tend to anglicize and contemporize the scene.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-19318007593192678922007-04-30T13:01:00.000-04:002007-04-30T13:01:00.000-04:00I forgot to say that much of the wall plaque and i...I forgot to say that much of the wall plaque and iPod commentary on the painting had mainly to do with explicating the symbolism of the flowers in the foreground of the painting. The flowers, my friends. The flowers!Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.com