tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post741556562704529610..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Vagrant SubjectsCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-15179782275183264362009-02-23T22:02:00.000-05:002009-02-23T22:02:00.000-05:00not not it might be possible to theorize certain s...<I>not not it might be possible to theorize certain structures of vagrancy, itinerant mobility, unsettled aesthetics, and "low" subjectivity in certain Old English texts, such as Guthlac A and B </I><BR/><BR/>For more on vagrant subjects, I highly recommend the portrait of Davus from Matthew of Vendôme's 12th-century rhetorical treatise, <A HREF="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7793860&referer=brief_results" REL="nofollow"><I>The Art of the Versemaker.</I></A> <BR/><BR/>Davus (pp 33 ff) is a "scurilous vagrant...an outcast...the world's refuse." And it just gets better. Hideous, gluttonous, cowardly, a sodomite, he's a perfect storm for inciting heterosexual panic.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-40938344293917625852009-02-19T18:43:00.000-05:002009-02-19T18:43:00.000-05:00First thing that comes to mind for me, well, first...First thing that comes to mind for me, well, first TWO things, are the 14th-c. English postplague anti-vagrant elements in the Statutes of Laborers (see the first part of Barry Dobson's 1381 Documents Collection). SECOND thing is the friars imagined as great buzzing hordes, an disordered order of excess filling all available space (see the opening to Wife of Bath's Tale and probably something in the TEAM anthology by Dean, Six Ecclesiastical Satires, probably Jack Upland, and also see, I imagine, Penn Szittya's great book on anti-fraternal tradition from Wm. of St. Amour on).Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-30365205779167599252009-02-19T15:32:00.000-05:002009-02-19T15:32:00.000-05:00It's funny, when I think of vagrancy the first thi...It's funny, when I think of vagrancy the first thing that comes to mind for me is kingship (remember those itinerant Mercian courts? Elizabeth's making the rounds as a giant mobile household that could impoverish those aristocrats with whom she stayed?) and travelers (Mandeville, or Walter Ralegh). This new issue of EMC looks great.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-15512539986606390212009-02-19T13:22:00.000-05:002009-02-19T13:22:00.000-05:00Karma: thanks for such rich comments for reflectio...Karma: thanks for such rich comments for reflection here. In relation to these, I would urge you [and everyone, really] to read George Packer's recent essay in The New Yorker, "The Ponzi State: Florida's Foreclosure Disaster" [9 & 16 Feb. 2009 issue]. I felt, while reading this essay, that it was about some place that couldn't possibly be the United States, or that it was even a kind of post-apocalyptic fiction [reminded me of Walker Percy's "Love in the Ruins," actually]. It's eerie and frightening and reminds me how close so many of us are to complete abject poverty/homelessness because of the recession, debt crisis, and housing crises [emphasis on the plural].Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-37814425237751457392009-02-18T21:30:00.000-05:002009-02-18T21:30:00.000-05:00Thanks for this - I didn't know about this journal...Thanks for this - I didn't know about this journal, and I'll have to check it out.<BR/><BR/>These are great questions for me on a more personal note, too - I grew up on, and then moved back to, the Gulf Coast, an hour from New Orleans, and living in a long-term 'disaster zone' really does change your thinking about how issues of poverty, transience, and even lifestyle choices intersect (I have friends that stayed in N.O. because they had no cars, friends that had trouble finishing their theses at Tulane and ended up with Cornell library cards, friends making "outsider art" out of hurricane debris and selling it on ebay, and friends that moved back because they are musicians who couldn't envision living and playing anywhere else, for instance). I was back over the summer and there are still people living in tents under the highway overpass -- some of them people who used to drive their kids to soccer games in minivans, some of them who traded one patch of grass for another.<BR/><BR/>I went to a conference a few years ago on Tim O'Brien, and a presenter there was talking about how she used _The Things They Carried_ in her writing classes, to get students thinking and writing about objects, signification, memory, temporary communities and communities that "seem" more permanent, what sorts of things you would have to carry on your back to make a living if you had to flee Katrina, or a Stephen King plague scenario. She said that issues of class kept coming up in these discussions, issues that were hard for her students to find the vocabulary to even articulate. I look forward to reading this journal with some of these questions in mind.Karmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09651110371762568682noreply@blogger.com