Heather Rose Jones's Blog, page 100
May 11, 2018
Live-Blogging Kalamazoo: Friday 10:00 Dress and Textiles I: Representing Textiles and Dress
Kalamazoo
Dress and Textiles I: Representing Textiles and Dress
Sponsor: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion)
Organizer: Robin Netherton, DISTAFF
Presider: Robin Netherton
The Banners in Beowulf M. Wendy Hennequin, Tennessee State Univ.
Among the treasures described in detail in Beowulf are swords, but also three banners: Scyld’s funereal banner, Heorogar’s boarhead banner, the banner in the dragon hoard. Given the unusual detail given to them, banners clearly held a significant symbolic importance. Anglo-Saxon banners do not figure significantly in archaeological finds and are mentioned only in passing in studies of the Bayeaux Tapestry. Other banners are mentioned in Beowulf but without description and in passing. “Segn” or “segen” is the usual AS term for banner, glassed in Latin as vexilla, while “cumbor or “cumbol” is a more poetic reference. Another term not found in Beowulf is “thuf” indicating a feather-decorated banner, as well as “fana” or “fanu” (borrowing?). The variety of words is another indicator of cultural importance. A standard trope for the appearance of banners is for them to be “golden” and even shining. They are typically decorated and may have magical attributes. The “boar’s head banner” is part of a tradition of banners with animal motifs. Banners are consistently described as textiles, an interpretation supported by other textual sources. Banners in Beowulf are always associated with kings. [I have missed a little of the notes while I helped troubleshoot the computer projection.] I think there was something about references to banners in texts being a foreshadowing of victory in battle. We now get a slideshow of depictions of banners in AS art. 11th c MS with square, three-tailed banners with square motifs very similar to a banner shown in the Bayeaux tapestry (panel 68). The BT also shows animal/monster-motif banners that may relate to the textual references.
Meaningful Folds: Reading Christ’s Grave Cloths at the Visitatio Sepulchri Nancy Thebaut, Univ. of Chicago
Ca. 1000 ms from St. Gall shows the Holy Sepulcher, empty except for a draped cloth and a small cloth bundle. The Gospels describe two cloths in the context of this scene. The two cloths in the image are clearly meant to correspond to these two mentions but elaborate on them. This type-scene with grave cloths appears in a number of representations during a short-lived period around this time, in contrast with depictions of a plain empty tomb in other eras. These depictions may be related to a tradition of theatrical reenactments of the event as part of liturgical rituals. The author suggests that the artistic depictions of the cloths relate to the use of actual physical cloths in church rituals relating to the Eucharist. E.g., a description of how the ?host? should be wrapped in a cloth that “shows no beginning or end” matching the “bundled” cloth in the manuscript art. We are shown a variety of MS depictions of exactly this sort of wrapped cloth. The second cloth--the draped one--can be related to descriptions of the symbolic meaning of unfolded cloth as representing faith. In the images, though, the cloth is not a shape corresponding to any specific liturgical cloth. It often hands suspended in mid air, hollowed around a non-present form or body. Both the draped and the bundled cloths may appear in art individually as well as in paired depictions. The draped cloth speaks to the incarnate body of Christ in depicting a presence in absence, representing his humanity. The “endless” bundled cloth represents Christ’s eternal divinity.
The Prime Mover: Translated Textiles in the Architecture of the Global Middle Ages Mikael Muehlbauer, Columbia Univ.
Architecture and textiles are usually diametrically opposed: textile is portable and ephemeral while architecture is monumental and permanent. Islamic architectural ornamentation is characteristically related to textile decoration, while Western ornament more often used actual textiles as decoration. In Christian spaces, textiles represent revelation and transformation. [We are having a comedy of errors with the computer projection where the connection keeps blinking out requiring an assistant to re-set up the ppt display. ] Textile treasures were often a major part of church holdings, and the iconography is often reflected across the textile-architecture divide in both directions. [The AV tech has solved the display problem with a new cord.] We now move from the Hagia Sophia to an Ethiopian church in Tigray that he argues uses decoration drawn from Indian textiles traded along the Red Sea. Examples of other possible sources for Ethiopian architectural decoration in Armenian herringbone brickwork patterns, Indian flower/tree motifs. These designs demonstrate the integration of Ethiopia in extensive trade routes. Moving to a cathedral in Reims, France, we see examples of draped cloth depicted in carved stone. This use of draped cloth in decoration corresponded to other changes in church organization, including the introduction of the rood screen, including the use of textile curtains (actual ones) as part of the division of space.
Medieval Morality and the Paradigms of Redemption John Slefinger, Ohio State Univ.
Considering a formulaic morality plot: common man achieves success, becomes greedy, over-reaches, falls, and discovers redemption through simplicity. The paper looks at the representations of the stages of this plot in clothing in one particular morality play from East Anglia in the 15th century. How does the play’s costuming reflect the realities of common people’s access to various types of clothing in that time/place. The play emphasizes social hierarchy, including in how it addresses the audience. Characters representing vices wear flamboyant high-fashion clothing and torment the character of Mankind, representing an ordinary laborer. As Mankind succumbs to their temptation, his clothing becomes shorter and more fashionable. Reference to sumptuary laws that legislate against coats/jackets that aren’t long enough to cover the “privy members and buttocks.” There is an interplay between the class aspects of fashion and the general moral judgments applied to the clothing. In general high-fashion was only available to/used by the upper classes, but there was a middle ground of wealthy peasants who aspired to more fashionable styles. Thus, the “mankind” character in the play, even as he “falls”, is seen to rise in the social hierarchy through his clothing. How well would an anti-greed, anti-fashion message play to a crowd filled with merchants making their fortunes from the cloth and clothing trade? Furthermore, how would it play to the town leaders whose status was reflected in high fashion clothing? The region was undergoing an economic shift involving a labor shortage: low rents and high wages as landowners scrambled to shift to enclosed pasture rather than cultivated fields. Villages were being abandoned due to enclosures while town elites turned to foreign luxury clothing. This makes the character of the laborer Mankind in the play a bit more complicated. Returning to the quoted sumptuary rule about short clothing, it only applied to those below a certain rank. Therefore the accusation of immorality is not for the clothing itself, but for the claiming of status through clothing. Thus the characters of the Vices are not tempting Mankind to luxury and pride, but to social climbing--something that all ranks could be comfortable in mocking.
Major category: ConventionsTags: Kalamazoo
May 10, 2018
Live-Blogging Kalamazoo: Thursday 7:30 What’s in a Name? A Roundtable on Names, Nicknames and Identity in the Middle Ages
Kalamazoo
Had dinner at the usual favorite Indian place with a delightfully cozy group of just four. Dithered about whether to take in an evening session after that, but this roundtable about onomastics was impossible to resist.
What’s in a Name? A Roundtable on Names, Nicknames and Identity in the Middle Ages
Organizer: Elizabeth Archibald, Durham Univ.
Presider: Elizabeth Archibald
A roundtable discussion with Elizabeth P. Archibald [an entirely different Elizabeth Archibald than the organizer], Univ. of Pittsburgh; Katherine Travers, New York Univ.; Laurie Atkinson, Durham Univ.; Kathleen Ashley, Univ. of Southern Maine; and Michael J. Huxtable, Durham Univ.
The running joke of the introductions is that the two Elizabeth Archibalds not only studied the same topic at the same institution (though many years apart) but are sharing a dorm suite at the conference.
We begin with brief introductions on the speakers’ topics of interest
Elizabeth: Names and meanings were one of the first and key concepts of medieval linguistics. The distinction between proper and common nouns (and in Latin, “noun” and “name” are the same word) was a building block of exploring meaning. But there are contexts where the distinction between nouns and names is fuzzier. Examples are given from colloquies (textbooks in the form of a dialogue) where the speakers are identified with labels that are often both descriptive nouns and treated as personal names. The distinction of noun/name illustrates the general/specific contrast that is key in philosophy.
The presider points out that the two Elizabeths are the only two presenters in the conference program who have their affiliations appended to their personal names as a necessary distinction. Which goes nicely with the theme of the roundtable.
Katherine: Discusses women poets of 13th century Italy or at least poems presented in the voice of a woman, under pseudonyms that claim identities of location. This involves a verbal game between the voices of lovers where renaming/claiming names is part of the courtship.
Mike; The tension between sense and reference in the meaning/function of names. Looking at names via heraldic symbolism and its function in literature. Index, icon, and symbol as different modes of reference. Naming as an associative activity. In heraldic/chivalric writing there’s a clear distinction between type and token (category and specific instances). “Pseudo-heraldic names” in chivalric romances, such as “the Black Knight” shift between modes, being descriptive, individual, but also symbolic. As such, these would appear to break the boundaries of the usual categories.
Kathleen: The topic is patrons and name-saints in books of hours. There’s a lovely handout. The images of patrons paired with their patron saintly namesakes demonstrate a multi-faceted identification that goes beyond the link of the name. There are a number of relationships depicted in these images: saint as personal intercessor, as object of worship. But the object of worship can show a range of relationships from intimate to distanced.
Laurie: The fiction of authorship in dream-poetry. Naming the fictitious “author” of the dream-poem, internal to the text but not directly identified with the author of the actual text. This was a mechanism for both revealing and concealing the author’s relationship to the voice in his text. The focus for this discussion is the early Tudor poet Stephen Hawes. The narrator laments his hopeless love, falls asleep, and then interacts with a lady within the dream, explaining his troubles, and is eventually brought to his love (in the dream). It diverges from the usual formula in that within the dream, the author’s (Hawes’) actual book of poetry is brought up between the persona and his lady love. This creates a multilayered equation of the poet and persona, where it’s ambiguous whether the “real” text or only the allegorical in-story text is being discussed.
Elizabeth (the presider): A consideration of the multiple possible “Thomas Mallory”s and the general problem of identity in the context of name duplication. But this is a way of sliding into the Trojan characters in the legendary history of Britain, and the duplication of classical names (and even sets of relationships) transferred from the classical sources to characters in medieval romance. Sometimes this re-use seems almost random, not necessarily reproducing the key characteristics and even relationships of the original figures. When the primary characters of the story of Troy have their names given to secondary/minor characters in Arthurian legend, is this meant to indicate that Troy is now lesser than Britain? To what extent are attributes and stories carried over? Are all the Helen-variants in the Matter of Britain (e.g., Elaine of Astolat) bringing with them the attribute of women who cause trouble because of love? What of the Trojan characters who are borrowed and given a change of gender (as Hecuba who becomes a male knight in Arthuriana)? In general, how does this sort of “recycling” of names speak to the question of meaning/reference?
The session is now thrown open to general discussion. I’m not going to be able to identify speakers here. Connection made between the ambiguity of general/specific in colloquy speakers and the problem of naming women poets, possibly in the context of whether the female “persona” of a poem may or may not represent a female author? Relates to the identification question in the dream-poem. Real identities vs performative identities. In the book of hours portraits, we know these are real people, but they are also performing the role of pious person with artificial attributes brought into the picture for symbolic reasons. Examples of how re-naming with a saint’s name imbues the recipient with attributes of the saint. Discussion of the instability of the “meaningfulness” of names, depending on context or desired function. (It means something when you want it to, not when you don’t.) Relationship to coats of arms as “meaningful” versus arbitrarily referential. A consideration of shifts in the approach to medieval studies in general from the pursuit of a one-to-one correspondence of thing and meaning, to an acceptance of a greater multiplicity of meanings and associations. I asked a question about examples of “dynamic disambiguation” of otherwise identical names, sparked by the double name in the participants. (I mentioned a statistical study I did on name structure complexity in Welsh records tied to common name/patronym combinations.) But clearly not all cultures were concerned about this, e.g., the Pastons who often had multiple children in a generation with identical given names. The discussion is now becoming too wide-ranging to really summarize well.
Major category: ConventionsTags: KalamazooLive-Blogging Kalamazoo: Thursday 3:30 Living and Dying in Viking-Age Ireland
Kalamazoo
There weren’t any sessions that called strongly to me in the after lunch session, so I went to the book-room and browsed through a bit over half the publishers’ displays. I have another un-planned period Saturday morning when I can finish the shopping. I chose this session in part because I’ve been poking at my 10th century Viking/Welsh romance idea, and in part because of the textiles/clothing-themed paper.
Living and Dying in Viking-Age Ireland
Sponsor: American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS)
Organizer: Rachel E. Scott, DePaul Univ.
Presider: Vicky McAlister, Southeast Missouri State Univ.
“Gold and Fine Raiment”: Women’s Work and the Economy of Viking Dublin -Mary Valante, Appalachian State Univ.
Starts with a tongue-in-cheek slide about the “not like other girls” motif in historical fiction. “Without my needle, you would all be naked and dead. Excuse me, I have to go throw a party and negotiate a land deal.” Importance of high-quality textiles as part of Dublin’s trade network. Paper looks at circumstantial archaeological evidence for the importance of textile production in the Viking Dublin economy. We start with a brief survey of the scholarly literature on the topic, then looking at textual references to textile work. The focus will be on everyday textiles, especially wool and linen, though silk was also important. Discussion of various available dyestuffs. Note that actual textile survivals tend to be fragmentary and small: impressions on the back of metal accessories, etc. Other fragmentary scraps have been found in the excavations along Fishamble Street. A survey of the various head-coverings found in Dublin, which demonstrate a wide variety of styles and shapes, many in silk and dyed in colors. Despite the absence of larger clothing remains, some idea of clothing styles can be found in stone carvings. Agricultural evidence for the types of plant fibers used for textiles. Other than clothing, (woolen) sails were an important part of textile production. We are shown a survey of textile tools found in archaeological sites. A discussion of how Viking-era urban centers offer a wider variety of spindle whorls for spinning different types and weights of threads, while rural finds tend to be less varied. Universally: spinning, weaving, and sewing were considered “women’s work” and may have been differentiated with enslaved women doing the majority of the spinning and higher status women doing the weaving. Textile production might be done in specialized buildings with a sunken floor that included not only the loom, but facilities for washing, dying, and fulling. The sunken floor was in order to allow more height for the warp-weighted loom, where a greater working height was an advantage. (She seems to imply that through the 10th century, cloth on a warp-weighted loom couldn’t be longer than the height of the loom. Is this true?) The paper title comes from a description of three great markets in Dublin including “the market of the Greek foreigners where gold and fine raiment” could be bought. But presumably that wouldn’t refer to domestic textile production.
The paper is a bit of a “beginners introduction” survey rather than an in-depth focus on new analysis or data. The data is drawn from the larger Norse sphere in the British Isles, not just Dublin, and there is an emphasis on objects and reconstructions that can be displayed as illustrations.
Searching for an Archaeology of Care in Viking-Age Ireland - John Soderberg, Denison Univ.
Looking at the roles of the church in (medical) care, esp. in the period after the turn of the millennium when the concept of the hospital was being invented. Social shifts created the need for new models of care, as well as creating new means of supporting and endowing those models. As an example, the development of leper hospitals in the 12th century in Winchester, England. The early leprosariums are difficult to distinguish from ordinary secular settlements, rather than being clearly clerical in nature. But certain aspects of care were not reflected in these sites, including a lack of cemeteries. The emerging field of bioarchaeology looks at the evidences for how communities provided and accommodated the care of impaired community members. Looking at the processes of care and how they are organized and integrated within the community. We’re getting a lot of theoretical background on the field and techniques of bioarchaeology of care (with “care” being taken in a very broad sense, not narrowly in the sense of medical care).
We now turn to examples of what archaeological evidence of care looks like in Viking-era Ireland. We have examples of sheep metacarpals with traces of infection, horse foot-bones with evidence of degenerative changes, bit-wear on horse dentition. Examples of implements that cover tending to human bodies from the cosmetic to the medical. We now move on to the archaeology of two monastic settlements. Raystown, started as 5th century burial site, by ca. the 9th century burial is no longer a central element. Interior enclosure with some additional exterior enclosures, lots of evidence of craft working and a multiplicity of mills. All this leads to a narrative of centralization, commercialization and exchange, but the narrative tends to erase the question of non-productive activities and human interactions. Clonfad: the archaeological emphasis is on metalworking activities and crafts, but again the focus distracts from questions of how people gathered and interacted there. We end with a plea to pay more attention to this concept of “archaeologies of care” and what the evidence is for human interactions around the artifacts and sites.
On Vikings and Violence: The Human Skeletal Evidence from Early Medieval Ireland - Rachel E. Scott
Looking at statistical data for skeletons in early medieval Ireland and struck by the low prevalence of signs of trauma. Wanted to do a comparison with Viking era data to see if there is an association of greater traumatic death associated with Vikings. Following the Viking settlement in the 9th and 10th centuries, they became fully integrated into Irish culture and royal politics. Historic Irish chronicles point fingers at the Vikings as being notoriously violent and aggressive, but this image does not hold up. Irish forces, in fact, won more battles against the Vikings than they lost. Skeletal evidence offers a neutral measure of the prevalence of violent trauma. This would include weapon wounds (whether on the skull or elsewhere) or facial injuries (including healed breaks). The data analysis can look at frequency among the population and distribution among different demographics, as well as distinctions in the type and extent of trauma or evidence of post-death mutilation.
We get a large data table from a dozen or so sites from early medieval Ireland. Some conclusions: Insufficient adolescents to draw age-based conclusions. Men are more commonly victims of violent death than women are, with a 3.9% overall level of violent trauma. When compared to a broad survey of skeletal trauma rates across time and space, “pervasive violence” correlates with trauma rates of 20-30%. Early medieval Irish warfare characteristically involved things like cattle raids and did not typically involve direct human conflict. So how does this compare with Viking-era trauma rates? Looking at the Viking burials in Ireland: gender is identified by grave goods and the skeletal remains are rarely preserved, with only 20 skeletons (out of maybe 180 total graves), all adult males. None of these 20 show any evidence of trauma leading to death. Now we look at skeletal remains from Viking towns in Ireland (which may involve individuals of various cultural origins). These skeletons are not necessarily found in cemeteries and may involve unusual circumstances, such as a collection of adult male skulls that all show violent trauma and evidence of having been mounted on spikes. Another collection of 13 remains has 2 individuals with evidence of violent death, but the numbers are too small for useful analysis. So can we compare Irish cemeteries from the Viking era for useful comparison? The problem is that we can’t clearly date the individual burials to pre- and post-Viking groups. Looking back at the (pre-Viking) early medieval Irish burials, two specific sites did have high trauma rates of ca. 22%, though one is based on only 9 individuals. The other site, Owenbristy, had a larger data set and the cumulative analysis of trauma shows “severe trauma” (including one individual with over a hundred individual cuts). Relative position of the bones in the grave indicates he was decapitated and quartered. However this site is very well dated, and the majority of the severe trauma victims pre-dated the Viking era (including the heavily mutilated one). Overall conclusions: there isn’t really enough clear skeletal trauma evidence to say anything about relative violence during the Viking incursions compared to pre-Viking Ireland.
Major category: ConventionsTags: KalamazooLive-Blogging Kalamazoo: Thursday 10:00 Networks of Knowledge in Late Medieval Iberia
Kalamazoo
NOTE: I'm sorry about the formatting. I'm having some sort of weird interaction with the website display which isn't giving me any control over fonts or formatting. I'll fix it later, but for now, it's a wall-o-text. UPDATE: OK, evidently I have to handcode everything in source code.
Yes, it's that time of year again! When thousands of international medievalists throw me a birthday party in Kalamazoo! As usual, I'll be blogging the (somewhat eclectic assortment of) sessions I attend, as well as listing my book purchases. I may be handicapped by some peculiar things that have happened to my website interface, probably relating to the arcane WMU wifi system and I don't have my font controls. If things look wonky, I'll edit them later. I picked this session in large part because of the second paper on magical manuscripts. (Alpennia research, don't you know.) It does point out one hazard of having broad interests, because the papers often assume a highly specialized audience who not only have close familiarity with the literary and historic texts being discussed, but with the historic languages of the sources.
Sponsor: Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
The Cancionero de obras de burla and Its Valencian Public (Frank A. Dominguez, Univ. of North Carolina–Chapel Hill)
The first presenter is video-conferencing in as he couldn’t attend in person. We’re discussing a hot best-seller of the 15-16th century in Spain (which it seems everyone else is familiar with, as we aren’t given a summary of the nature of the text). It’s a collection of poetry. There is a discussion of the dating of the contents and their possible relation to the relevant reigns in which they were written, in particular relating to Queen Isabella. We are now discussing various networks of family influence intersecting secular politics and the Spanish church at the time. There is a summary of an allegorical poem of over 60 stanzas about a court case regarding a naked woman and a cloak that evidently was considered supremely filthy at the time, and which references prominent political events. (The general context here is shifts in contents of the collection of poems across various reprintings that reflect new material relating to events of the time.) So how do the nature of the poems relate to the work’s startling popularity in Valencia? We move on to issues around the Inquisition, the expulsion and forced conversion of Spanish Jews, and resistance to that conversion including a major secret synagogue. Some of the poems relate to these events, but I’m not quite following the nature and orientation of the poems. Now there is a poem about north African pirates and Spanish anxieties about being captured by (Muslim) pirates. A brief discussion of various minor themes in the poems, generally about various enjoyments/sins but also including localized references relevant to Valencia.
Unprinted: Spiritual and Magic Manuscript Cultures (Heather Bamford, George Washington Univ.)
16-17th c Spanish magical manuscripts found new outlets and uses. This included private networks of distribution, and included the use of manuscripts in talismanic ways as objects, as well as for their contents. Meaning came not only through the words themselves, but through behavioral interactions and rituals. This includes collection practices and marginalia--more traditional interactions--but magical mss also provoked less “rational” uses, such as literal consumption (eating). The acquisition of autograph texts of holy writers are treated as relics with magical powers. Beliefs that actually reading the text on an amulet “uses up” the magic in it. Relates to the use of protective inscriptions on buildings where familiarity with the contents is not necessary for effectiveness. Effectiveness comes from belief of the user, not the inherent virtue of the text. Magical texts were produced in manuscript, not printing, now only due to control by the Inquisition over publishing, but also because of the inherent power of the act of writing. Discussion of the contents of some personal magical manuscripts. Much is focused on healing and on interpersonal relationships, as well as protection against various dangers. Such collections often contain a mix of unrelated contents in several languages, not all of which would have been accessible to the writer. Among Moriscos, Koranic inscriptions often featured among other contents. Example: a spell against a storm that includes a careful pronunciation guide to nonsense words that must be repeated. Spells often involve detailed instructions for actions and behaviors that must be performed along with the linguistic elements. Talismanic texts must be used in physical form, e.g., placed with a deceased person in the grave.
Relegitimizing Trotaconventos (Gregory S. Hutcheson, Univ. of Louisville)
Discussion of the “alcahueta”, a women who acted not simply as a procuress but as a go-between, who appears in courtly love literature (ca. 13-14th century), specifically the Libro del Buen Amor, and derives from an Arabic term found in “adab” literature. This relates to the character referenced in the paper title (Trotaconventos) which, as often happens, the audience is assumed to be completely familiar with. The Arabic term (qawwad) means variously “pimp, procurer, broker, guide, conductor, guard.” It always carries some sort of negative sense in the Arabic-speaking world. But when it first appears in Spanish in the 13th century, it’s clear that this negative sense has carried over. An example is given from 1250 of an alcahueta who provides her house as the location for a tryst, with no need to explain the word or provide context. In a list of “low-life” persons who can’t legally testify, the alcahueta is included among thieves, cross-dressers, hermaphrodites, etc. Additional legal texts supply different angles on how the term was understood and introduces the masculine “alcahuete”, giving five categories of men who fall in this category. (The five categories are presented in Spanish, assuming that the audience will, of course, all be fluent.) The activities that make a man an alcahuete were different from what made a woman an alcahueta but still focused on the exploitation of women sexually. Despite this male version, the texts discussing the female alcahueta was far more widely disseminated in the law codes. (The Siete Partidas.) These legal texts map out the criminalization of the occupation/identity in the 14-15th century. I think we’re now talking about La Celestina (a text by Fermando de Rojas about a bawd that gets mentioned in some of my LHMP material due to homoerotic interactions). I’m not sure what text the figure of Trotaconventos comes from (I think the Libro del Buen Amor) but evidently she is taking part in activities that skirt the edges of the definition of the alcahueta. The speaker suggests that modern academics are the ones identifying Trotaconventus as an alcahueta and thereby “accusing” her of a crime that the original text does not. She acts as a go-between, a mediator, a messenger, a problem-solver, but is not named as an alcahueta.
Major category: ConventionsTags: KalamazooMay 7, 2018
For Whose Gaze? Cultural Differences in Cross-Dressing
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
There is an unexamined thread in the inclusion of cross-dressing as one of the continuing motifs in the material I cover for the Project. As I've discussed on several occasions, I've included studies on cross-dressing in history and literature both because it provided a context in western literature for the experience or recognition of same-sex attraction, and because it is a popular theme in modern lesbian historical fiction (so it's useful to understand the phenomenon in the historical context). But at its heart, the homoerotic aspects of cross-dressing focus on a specific subset of erotic attraction and experience. Within the context of female homoeroticism, cross-dressing highlights a "difference" model of attraction. The "opposites attract" idea, if you will. It suggests that when a femme woman is attracted to another woman, it will be through the medium of masculine performance and appearance.
While this is one clear recurring theme across the ages--especially in contexts when a "similarity" model of attraction is less available--it is far from universal and is always understood within its specific cultural context. This means that we need to be hesitant about concluding that the female performance of masculinity will automatically result in female homoerotic possibilities. The current article is a good reminder of the complexities of social performance.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #194 Rowson 2003 Gender Irregularity as Entertainment: Institutionalized Transvestism at the Caliphal Court in Medieval Baghdad
Full citation:
Rowson, Everett K. 2003. “Gender Irregularity as Entertainment: Institutionalized Transvestism at the Caliphal Court in Medieval Baghdad” in Farmer, Sharon & Carol Braun Pasternack (eds). Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. ISBN 0-8166-3893-4
One of the features of medieval Islamic societies, at least among the urban elite, was a strict segregation of the sexes. This might imply a clear distinction in gender roles however the approach to sexuality in these cultures--in particular regarding male homoeroticism--resulted in some approaches to gender roles that contrast sharply to those of Christian cultures. These approaches included significant allowance for specific classes of persons to transgress the accepted forms of gender expression within certain limits. In fact, institutionalized forms of both male and female cross-dressing can be traced in certain times and places. A closer examination of these two phenomena, however, reveals significant asymmetries in their motivation and treatment that revolve around the primacy of the sexual desires of elite men.
The article surveys some more recent ethnographic studies of cross/trans-gender roles in the Islamicate world, including the khanīths of contemporary Oman (men presenting as feminine who work as homosexual prostitutes) and male dancers in 19th century Cairo with feminine presentation. Similar medieval roles are less studied and the focus of this article is something of a catalog of specific identifiable roles.
The male cross-gender role of mukhannath, which can be traced at least as far back as the time of the Prophet (7th century) in Medina, functioned primarily as musicians. After a brief period of government suppression in the early 8th century ending with the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, they re-emerged as court entertainers in Baghdad in the late 8th century.
Moving into the 9th century, there are also references to a female cross-gender role of ghulāmīyāt. Although female cross-dressers can be found in passing mentions earlier, this is the earliest known reference to an established and named role that emerged under the `Abbāsid caliphate. The motivation for the ghulāmīyāt role is given as a strategy of the mother of one caliph, known for his sexual preference for male eunuchs, who presented him with women in male dress and hair styles to entice him to produce heirs. The word ghulāmīyāt means “boy-like” but the aesthetic that developed for the ghulāmīyāt aimed for the transition from boyhood to adulthood, including painting on false moustaches among other cosmetic idiosyncrasies like writing poetic verses on their cheeks.
In general, institutionalized cross-gender roles for both men and women did not aim for “passing” but for a blending of gender signifiers. For a ghulāmīyā, this included license to behave in masculine-coded ways, in addition to the visual presentation, as indicated in praise poetry addressed to them which mentions intellectual, musical, and sporting pursuits more usually associated with men.
Ghulāmīyāt were almost always slaves attached to the court or the aristocracy, though there are rare mentions of free ghulāmīyāt. This means that the role was normally an imposed one, rather than a personal gender expression, and it should not be confused with accounts of “masculine” free women who adopted male attire and pursued martial exploits (a category not associated with same-sex interests), or with accounts of female same-sex behavior (most typically mentioned in connection with enslaved women). There are no references to the ghulāmīyāt being associated with lesbian behavior.
The author now moves on to the male role of lūṭī, a man whose sexual preference is for penetrative sex with adolescent boys, discussing how the existence of this orientation created the impetus for the ghulāmīyāt phenomenon. That is, ghulāmīyāt were associated with same-sex desire but with male same-sex desire, not female same-sex desire. There follows a discussion of the sexuality of eunuchs and how it fit into medieval Islamicate sexual categories.
This leads into a consideration of the male feminine-performing mukhannath, which seems to have represented both a professional and personal expression in some cases. Mukhannathūn seem to have worn a mixture of female and male clothing styles, with feminine jewelry, and were treated as falling outside the category of “male” with regard to gender-segregated spaces. In addition to their traditional profession of musician, where they were associated with specific musical styles and instruments, they commonly functioned as marriage go-betweens.
Although mukhannathūn were assumed to have no sexual interest in women, they were not assumed to take a passive homosexual role. And their relationship to women was sometimes looked askance. Some were married to women, and some authority figures challenged their access to women-only spaces. One caliph during the period of their suppression ordered all mukhannathūn in Medina to be castrated. The class eventually rebounded from this persecution and re-emerged under a new dynasty in their traditional roles as musicians and entertainers. The period of suppression seems to have coincided with the emergence of a public culture of male homosexuality, and the shift back to acceptance under the Umayyads was noted as being surprisingly abrupt even at the time.
The article goes into a great deal of detail about mukhannathūn, their status, and attitudes toward them, which is not relevant to the purposes of this Project. The conclusion of the article reiterates the parallels and contrasts between mukhannathūn and ghulāmīyāt in being entertainers and being defined in reference to fashions in elite male sexual interests, but with differences in the consequence to personal reputation relating to differential gender expectations and voluntary versus non-voluntary membership in the respective categories.
Time period: 7th c8th cPlace: IslamicateIraqMiddle EastMisc tags: cross-dressingcross-gender roles/behaviorprostitutes
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May 6, 2018
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 23c - Book Appreciation with Lise MacTague
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 23c - Book Appreciation with Lise MacTague - (no transcript available)
(Originally aired 2018/06/16 - listen here)
In the Book Appreciation segments, our featured authors (or your host) will talk about one or more favorite books with queer female characters in a historic setting.
In this episode Lise MacTague recommends some favorite queer historical novels:
Alpennia Series by Heather Rose Jones
Romancing the Inventor by Gail Carriger
See also Carriger’s other works
Branded Ann by Merry Shannon
Raven, Fire, and Ice by Nita Round
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (no lesbian content)
The Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik (no lesbian content)
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 23b - Interview with Lise MacTague
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 23b - Interview with Lise MacTague - (no transcript available)
(Originally aired 2018/06/09 - listen here)
A series of interviews with authors of historically-based fiction featuring queer women.
In this episode we talk about
The world-building of Demon in the Machine
The Industrial Revolution and bargains with the devil
Why Lise did not become a medieval historian and what sparked her interest in historical settings
Steampunk inspirations
Researching demons and steam-powered carriages
Publications mentioned:
Demon in the Machine by Lise MacTague
Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series
More info
Website:
https://lisemactague.com
Twitter:
@LiseMacTague
https://www.facebook.com/lise.mactague
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13846936.Lise_MacTague
Podcast
Lez Geek Out - queer/feminist pop culture discussions
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast
The Woman Warrior in Arabic Epic Literature
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project
In following up on references to gender transgression in medieval Arabic literature, I’ve been struck by the way certain motifs align differently from what we see in the literature of Christian cultures. In European romances, “Amazonian” characters who dress and act as men are often a context for accidental homoeroticism. Cross-dressing in general also provides this opportunity. But as we saw in Rowson’s article on categories of cross-dressed entertainers in medieval Baghdad, the social signals and assumptions around gender-crossing were different in the Islamicate world, in part because of the greater normalization (if not actual approval) of male homosexuality. I chose Kruk’s article to cover to illustrate some of these differences even though it touches on female homoeroticism only very tangentially.
There is a long history in western culture of projecting female homosexuality onto the Other, and especially onto an Orientalist fantasy of harems and odalisques. Lesbian historical fiction is not immune to this projection. That makes it all the more important to familiarize ourselves with how issues of homoeroticism and gender performance were understood within the cultures we may consider as fictional settings. The "woman warrior" motif was popular in medieval Arabic epics, but she represented different things from the woman warrior of European chivalric romance, and the gender dynamics of these stories are very different. Historical fiction that wants to use motifs like these as a jumping off place either needs to engage with those differences or risk being nothing more than yet another Orientalist fantasy.
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP
LHMP #196 Kruk 1998 The Bold and the Beautiful: Women and ‘fitna’ in the Sīrat Dhāt al-Himma
Full citation:
Kruk, Remke. 1998. “The Bold and the Beautiful: Women and ‘fitna’ in the Sīrat Dhāt al-Himma: The Story of Nūrā” in Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety, ed. Gavin R. G. Hambly. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 0-312-21057-4
Scholarship on medieval Arabic literature has tended to focus on scholarly works or on the specific set of stories that has come to western attention as the Thousand and One Nights. Only recently has the enormous corpus of traditional popular epics begun to receive more attention and analysis. This article looks at one specific episode in a longer epic that illustrates the popular motif of the warrior woman, and how she becomes a force either for disruption or stability.
The role of women in the popular epic tradition is very different from how they are depicted in the more literary traditions. Female warriors are a popular stock figure in the epics (not only in Arabic language traditions, but also in Persian and Turkish). Female characters are typically portrayed as clever and resourceful. Sometimes the female warrior will be a close relative of the male hero and serve as a counterpart, sometimes she will begin as an antagonist and eventually be incorporated into the social structure through marriage. Often she is a link to “outside” cultures. There is a common motif (as in the story discussed here) of female Christian warrrior figures being brought into Islamic society not only through marriage but through conversion.
Kruk is interested in examining how the image of women in epic literature differs from the image of men, but in the present paper is only examining one specific example to explore the different roles women may play. The specific figure in question is the Princess Nūrā, a Byzantine princess who figures within a story cycle about conflict between Muslim forces, led by a woman, Dhāt al-Himma, and her son, against seven Byzantine castles. The superficial male focus of the epic is belied by the way the story revolves around how desire for Nūrā disrupts the social stability of the Muslim forces and the struggle between Dhāt al-Himma and Nūrā to neutralize her effect by means of pairing her off to one of the men.
Nūrā is introduced as the daughter of the king of one of the Byzantine fortresses. She and her female companions live in a monastery apart from the fortress where they engage in all sorts of revelry including wrestling matches, at which Nūrā excels. They are listening to tales about the wars between the Arabs and Byzantines and especially about one particularly heroic Arabic warrior. Nūrā expresses a desire to meet the warrior (the summary notes “even though until now she has only been interested in women”--take that as you will) and by strange coincidence he’s been spying on them and makes himself known. He immediately falls in love with Nūrā. In fact, pretty much every many in the story falls in love with Nūrā--Muslim and Byzantine alike, which provides much of the conflict. Eventually (and it’s a very long, drawn-out eventually) Nūrā is married to this Arabic hero, converts to Islam, and continues to play a major role in the epic as a warrior.
The article takes a detailed look at two repeating themes during the adventures that form that “eventually”: the ways in which men lose all responsibility, dignity, and judgement when driven by obsessive desire for Nūrā, and the relationship between Nūrā and Dhāt al-Himma as the latter attempts to control the disruption caused by the former. Although Dhāt al-Himma expresses admiration and sympathy for Nūrā, her primary concern is to maintain social stability.
There is a continuing theme throughout the epic of how Nūrā is considered an existential danger (her prospective husband is so terrified of her on their wedding night that he orders her to be tied up and drugged), and Nūrā’s willingness to use this as one of her weapons in battle, including uncovering her face or breasts to distract her opponents and defeat them. Many of the adventures involve captures and escapes and competition among various men for the right to Nūrā. If Nūrā isn’t exactly given a choice in these matters, her resistance to being married off against her will shapes a great deal of the narrative.
While much of the interactions between Nūrā and Dhāt al-Himma have a flavor of shared exasperation at the antics of the men, there are indications that Dhāt al-Himma is not entirely immune to Nūrā’s attraction. We can overlook one episode where the matriarch participates in a combat over who will “get” Nūrā as being intended to keep the princess still in play, but there are other episodes where Nūrā seems to appeal to a sense of female solidarity that transcends other loyalties, and some where Dhāt al-Himma herself experiences the force of Nūrā’s sexual attractions, as in one case where they embrace and kiss when Dhāt al-Himma is in disguise and al-Himma expresses at least a hypothetical desire for her.
Within the epic, the existence of female warriors and their normalization on both sides of the combat is taken for granted. Nūrā and Dhāt al-Himma first meet when the latter is besieging the Byzantine fortress and both women express a specific interest in meeting each other in combat. When Nūrā is first captured by the Arabic forces, it is by Dhāt al-Himma herself, who then thinks to herself that she understands why the girl causes so much disruption: “if this girl had been a man, I would have lost my head.”
But in the end, Dhāt al-Himma’s primary concern is to neutralize Nūrā’s disruptive potential, which is done by enforcing her marriage to the designated hero by a disturbing use of overwhelming force. Even so, the hazard Nūrā represents continues until she is “domesticated” by her hatred turning into love, by her conversion to Islam, and by the production of children, although she still continues her martial activities throughout the remainder of the epic.
Time period: Medieval (general)Place: ArabicIslamicateMisc tags: martial activityliterary heroinemarriage resistance
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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 22c - Book Appreciation with Jeannelle M. Ferreira
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 22c - Book Appreciation with Jeannelle M. Ferreira - (no transcript available)
(Originally aired 2018/05/19 - listen here)
In the Book Appreciation segments, our featured authors (or your host) will talk about one or more favorite books with queer female characters in a historic setting.
In this episode Jeannelle M. Ferreira recommends some favorite queer historical novels:
Spring Flowering by Farah Mendlesohn
Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue
Room by Emma Donoghue (non-queer)
Passions Between Women by Emma Donoghue (non-fiction)
We Are Michael Field by Emma Donoghue (biography)
Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones
Backwards to Oregon by Jae
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein (series, historical-ish feel, queer-coded)
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 22b - Interview with Jeannelle M. Ferreira
The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 22b - Interview with Jeannelle M. Ferreira - (transcript not available)
(Originally aired 2018/05/12 - listen here)
A series of interviews with authors of historically-based fiction featuring queer women.
In this episode we talk about
The attractions of the Regency romance
Jeannelle’s earlier works, especially a novel set in the Vilna ghetto during WWII
Jewish influences in her writing
Jeannelle’s background as a student of history
Sexuality and PTSD in the Regency era
The National Trust’s website on queer history in the UK
Finding queer-coded characters in childhood favorite books
Researching war in Waterloo diaries of British soldiers
The path through British historical YA fiction that leads to a study of imperial and colonial history
Horses and swords--it always comes back to horses and swords
Future projects: more about Nora and Harriet, gender-bending Kit Marlowe, World War I flying aces, and lesbian pirates
Publications mentioned:
The Covert Captain: Or, A Marriage of Equals by Jeannelle M. Ferreira (non-Kindle versions coming soon
A Verse from Babylon by Jeannelle M. Ferreira (out of print)
Dramatis Personae by Jeannelle M. Ferreira (novelette, out of print)
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
Spring Flowering by Farah Mendlesohn
More info
Website:
https://jeannellewrites.wordpress.com
Twitter:
@JeannelleWrites
Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast
