John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 192
September 24, 2011
Famous Last Words (1484)
"Jesus Christ! More trouble . . . "--last words of the poet Wm Collyngbourne(paraphrased)
So, about a decade ago I read R. M. Wilson's THE LOST LITERATURE OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND, a fascinating glimpse into works we know once existed that have now vanished beyond recall. One particular story, about the fate of a poet who annoyed Richard the Third, stuck in my mind. In any case, it's quite an interesting book, and eventually I bought my own copy, apparently during my only visit (so far) to the Bay Area, in August 2000.* But when I came to consult it some time later (probably when preparing my 2004 Blackwelder conference paper, 'And All the Days of Her Life are Forgotten'), I cdn't find the story I recalled anywhere. Eventually I discovered that there were two editions of the book, and it turns out that the passage I sought doesn't appear in the original [1952] edition I'd bought. I concluded it must be only in the later [1970] revised edition,** which must therefore be the one I read.
And so Tuesday [the 13th] when I visited Suzzallo-Allen, I not only found to my delight that the Smith Reading Room (with its stained glass windows and catherdral ceiling) is open again but was even able to sit at Senator Magnuson's desk. And while at the library I was able both to check a troubling reference in one of the PICTURING TOLKIEN essays I'd just read and to find both versions of Wilson's book. A quick check showed that the passage I remembered was indeed in the 1970 edition and not in the original.
Here's all the original [1952] version has to say about Collyngbourne [p. 199]:
". . . The well-known couplet
The Cat, the Rat, and Lovel our dogRule all England under a hog,***
was posted on the doors of St Paul's by William Collyngbourne.
And here's what Wilson adds in 1970:
". . . The well-known couplet
The Cat, the Rat, and Lovel our dogRule all England under a hog,
was posted on the doors of St Paul's by William Collyngbourne, and for this he was, in 1484,
put to the moost cruell deth at the Tower Hylle, where for hym were made a newe payer of galowes. Vpon the whiche, after he hadde hangyd a shorte season, he was cutte downe, beynge alyue, & his bowellys rypped out of his bely, and cast into the fyre there by hym, and lyued tyll the bowcher put his hande into the bulke of his body; insomuch that he sayd in the same instant, 'O Lorde Ihesu, yet more trowble,' & so dyed to the great compassion of moche people.
[p. 194]
This episode serves as a reminder that Richard III was not the kinder, gentler king that Josephine Tey & others wd have us think (he was after all a usurper responsible for the deaths of many members of his own family -- in which he was v. like his successor, Henry VII; one suspects the two men were pretty much peas in a pod). Most of England's kings and queens have been pretty brutal in their dealings with those who crossed them, and those with shaky claims to the throne (like Richard and Henry) even more so than most. It's also a reminder of the days when people took poetry seriously.****
Quite aside from this, though, I think what attracted me to this quote and made it stick in my memory is the slight hint of exasperation in poor Collyngbourne's final response to what was happening to him. First hanged, then cut down, then disembowled, then having his entrails (intestines) burned before his eyes, and only dying when they reached in and started to remove his heart and other vital organs is a particularly grisly way to go, specifically designed to inflict as much pain and torment as possible. Maybe that's why Collyngborne's last words are so memorable; it's easy to feel a kind of fellow feeling for someone in extremis who sums things up so well.
--John R.
[when first drafted this post]:current Kindle book: RENDER UNTO ROME by Jason Berry [2011]current audiobook: NATION by Terry Pratchett [2008]current project: "'A Fragment, Detatched': The Hobbit and The Silmarillion"
[now]:current Kindle book: THE ATTENBURY EMERALDS by Jill Paton Walshcurrent audiobook: The Learning Company: lectures on Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (on loan from Jeff)current project: ibid.
for future reading: since reading Wilson's book, I've learned from Doug Anderson that it was inspired by a series R. W. Chambers did back in the 1920s. Given how highly Tolkien admired Chambers as a scholar, I definitely need to track down those original articles at some point.
..........................*At least so I deduce from the fact that I've written in my name, 'Palo Alto', and the date (Friday August 4th '00) on the inside front cover, and a few pages in is a bookmark for Feldman's Books in Menlo Park.
**his preface to the latter notes that "the original work has been completely re-written, with numerous verbal changes, many additions, a few omissions, and some re-arrangement of the material . . ."
***an unflattering reference to Richard III's ministers, Wm Catesby (Speaker of the House), Sir Richard Ratcliffe (who seems to have been R.III's general assistant and factotum, & Lord Lovell (Lord Chamberlain), all of whom are familiar to generations of English students and play-goers from their villainy in Shakespeare's play RICHARD III (the 'hogge' is King Richard himself, whose personal emblem was a wild boar, just as Lovel's was a wolf). And of course 'Ratcliffe' is the only reasonably famous literary character known to me to bear a version of my own name.
****a little online research shows that Collingbourne also plotted with Henry Tudor against Richard's reign, but the specific charges upon which he was condemned to gruesome death were (a) conspiracy AND (b) writing those verses.
So, about a decade ago I read R. M. Wilson's THE LOST LITERATURE OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND, a fascinating glimpse into works we know once existed that have now vanished beyond recall. One particular story, about the fate of a poet who annoyed Richard the Third, stuck in my mind. In any case, it's quite an interesting book, and eventually I bought my own copy, apparently during my only visit (so far) to the Bay Area, in August 2000.* But when I came to consult it some time later (probably when preparing my 2004 Blackwelder conference paper, 'And All the Days of Her Life are Forgotten'), I cdn't find the story I recalled anywhere. Eventually I discovered that there were two editions of the book, and it turns out that the passage I sought doesn't appear in the original [1952] edition I'd bought. I concluded it must be only in the later [1970] revised edition,** which must therefore be the one I read.
And so Tuesday [the 13th] when I visited Suzzallo-Allen, I not only found to my delight that the Smith Reading Room (with its stained glass windows and catherdral ceiling) is open again but was even able to sit at Senator Magnuson's desk. And while at the library I was able both to check a troubling reference in one of the PICTURING TOLKIEN essays I'd just read and to find both versions of Wilson's book. A quick check showed that the passage I remembered was indeed in the 1970 edition and not in the original.
Here's all the original [1952] version has to say about Collyngbourne [p. 199]:
". . . The well-known couplet
The Cat, the Rat, and Lovel our dogRule all England under a hog,***
was posted on the doors of St Paul's by William Collyngbourne.
And here's what Wilson adds in 1970:
". . . The well-known couplet
The Cat, the Rat, and Lovel our dogRule all England under a hog,
was posted on the doors of St Paul's by William Collyngbourne, and for this he was, in 1484,
put to the moost cruell deth at the Tower Hylle, where for hym were made a newe payer of galowes. Vpon the whiche, after he hadde hangyd a shorte season, he was cutte downe, beynge alyue, & his bowellys rypped out of his bely, and cast into the fyre there by hym, and lyued tyll the bowcher put his hande into the bulke of his body; insomuch that he sayd in the same instant, 'O Lorde Ihesu, yet more trowble,' & so dyed to the great compassion of moche people.
[p. 194]
This episode serves as a reminder that Richard III was not the kinder, gentler king that Josephine Tey & others wd have us think (he was after all a usurper responsible for the deaths of many members of his own family -- in which he was v. like his successor, Henry VII; one suspects the two men were pretty much peas in a pod). Most of England's kings and queens have been pretty brutal in their dealings with those who crossed them, and those with shaky claims to the throne (like Richard and Henry) even more so than most. It's also a reminder of the days when people took poetry seriously.****
Quite aside from this, though, I think what attracted me to this quote and made it stick in my memory is the slight hint of exasperation in poor Collyngbourne's final response to what was happening to him. First hanged, then cut down, then disembowled, then having his entrails (intestines) burned before his eyes, and only dying when they reached in and started to remove his heart and other vital organs is a particularly grisly way to go, specifically designed to inflict as much pain and torment as possible. Maybe that's why Collyngborne's last words are so memorable; it's easy to feel a kind of fellow feeling for someone in extremis who sums things up so well.
--John R.
[when first drafted this post]:current Kindle book: RENDER UNTO ROME by Jason Berry [2011]current audiobook: NATION by Terry Pratchett [2008]current project: "'A Fragment, Detatched': The Hobbit and The Silmarillion"
[now]:current Kindle book: THE ATTENBURY EMERALDS by Jill Paton Walshcurrent audiobook: The Learning Company: lectures on Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (on loan from Jeff)current project: ibid.
for future reading: since reading Wilson's book, I've learned from Doug Anderson that it was inspired by a series R. W. Chambers did back in the 1920s. Given how highly Tolkien admired Chambers as a scholar, I definitely need to track down those original articles at some point.
..........................*At least so I deduce from the fact that I've written in my name, 'Palo Alto', and the date (Friday August 4th '00) on the inside front cover, and a few pages in is a bookmark for Feldman's Books in Menlo Park.
**his preface to the latter notes that "the original work has been completely re-written, with numerous verbal changes, many additions, a few omissions, and some re-arrangement of the material . . ."
***an unflattering reference to Richard III's ministers, Wm Catesby (Speaker of the House), Sir Richard Ratcliffe (who seems to have been R.III's general assistant and factotum, & Lord Lovell (Lord Chamberlain), all of whom are familiar to generations of English students and play-goers from their villainy in Shakespeare's play RICHARD III (the 'hogge' is King Richard himself, whose personal emblem was a wild boar, just as Lovel's was a wolf). And of course 'Ratcliffe' is the only reasonably famous literary character known to me to bear a version of my own name.
****a little online research shows that Collingbourne also plotted with Henry Tudor against Richard's reign, but the specific charges upon which he was condemned to gruesome death were (a) conspiracy AND (b) writing those verses.
September 12, 2011
Steig Larsson and Tolkien
So, having now reached about the mid-point in the audiobook of Steig Larsson's fascinating if occasionally unpleasant novel THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (published posthumously in 2005, tr. 2008), I was surprised to find so far not one but two Tolkien references.
The first comes when the main character, disgraced reporter Mikael Blomkvist, takes time off from his latest assignment to go see a movie for a change of pace:
In the evening he went to the cinema to see The Lord of the Rings, which he had never before had time to see. He thought that orcs, unlike human beings, were simple and uncomplicated creatures.--Chapter 11, page 169
This seems just part of the contemporary grounding of the novel, which is full of references to current events. However, the next goes a bit beyond that. At one point Blomkvist is suddenly confronted by one of his new neighbors, an unpleasant hermit, whose advent is described, apparently from Blomkvist's point of view, thusly:
Gollum had emerged from his cage.--Chapter 17, page 247
That's the lot so far (I'll add an update at the bottom of this post if I come across any more): another indication of Tolkien's penetration not just into our (American/English/New Zealand/English-language) culture but indeed well beyond it.
--John R.
The first comes when the main character, disgraced reporter Mikael Blomkvist, takes time off from his latest assignment to go see a movie for a change of pace:
In the evening he went to the cinema to see The Lord of the Rings, which he had never before had time to see. He thought that orcs, unlike human beings, were simple and uncomplicated creatures.--Chapter 11, page 169
This seems just part of the contemporary grounding of the novel, which is full of references to current events. However, the next goes a bit beyond that. At one point Blomkvist is suddenly confronted by one of his new neighbors, an unpleasant hermit, whose advent is described, apparently from Blomkvist's point of view, thusly:
Gollum had emerged from his cage.--Chapter 17, page 247
That's the lot so far (I'll add an update at the bottom of this post if I come across any more): another indication of Tolkien's penetration not just into our (American/English/New Zealand/English-language) culture but indeed well beyond it.
--John R.
Taum Santoski XVIII
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
18. The schema of fantasy and mythological epic is not only a matter of gods, demi-gods and supernatural happenstances. Gods alone do not a myth make, and rhymes do not make a poet. What is at stake when a author chooses fantasy or mythological epic over some other form such as novel or poetry?
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
September 10, 2011
The Tea Tree Blooms
So, Thursday I discovered that the tea plant (a gift a year or two ago from Anne & Sig) had two little flowers on it. I know Anne and Sig's tea plant had bloomed earlier this year, and had assumed ours didn't because it was still struggling.
No longer the case, I think. There were two tiny blossoms, more like an apple blossom than a camellia: white petals with a yellow center, and what looked like a third blossom on the way. I took some photos and will try to figure out how to upload them, in which case I'll add them as an update at the end of this post. Just in case I don't succeed, as seems likely, here as the next best thing is a painting of a tea tree blossom:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/dosankodebbie/art/5808718-tea-blossom-camellia-sinensis
--John R.current audiobook: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOOcurrent reading: PICTURING TOLKIEN (last essay!), RENDER UNTO ROME, GILGAMESH.
No longer the case, I think. There were two tiny blossoms, more like an apple blossom than a camellia: white petals with a yellow center, and what looked like a third blossom on the way. I took some photos and will try to figure out how to upload them, in which case I'll add them as an update at the end of this post. Just in case I don't succeed, as seems likely, here as the next best thing is a painting of a tea tree blossom:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/dosankodebbie/art/5808718-tea-blossom-camellia-sinensis
--John R.current audiobook: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOOcurrent reading: PICTURING TOLKIEN (last essay!), RENDER UNTO ROME, GILGAMESH.
September 9, 2011
Taum Santoski XVII
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy' 
17. When CJRT exhausts his father's writing Middle-earth may become mothballed, standing like the empty hulk of a ship in dock filled with inert gap for preservation There are no real inscriptions, sarcophagi, coins, gems, or other remains at hand to give more information save what Tolkien has written and reported.
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
Taum Santoski XVIII
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'
17. When CJRT exhausts his father's writing Middle-earth may become mothballed, standing like the empty hulk of a ship in dock filled with inert gap for preservation There are no real inscriptions, sarcophagi, coins, gems, or other remains at hand to give more information save what Tolkien has written and reported.
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
September 7, 2011
Taum Santoski XVI
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
16. Some might feel the study of myth, and especially the myth of Tolkien, is a path to the power and moral force of our ancestors who drew their life from belief and not knowledge. Although myth is one of the highest forms of abstract and imaginative thought, mathematics is higher, but it lacks the emotions.
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
Inklings for Sale
So, on a pretty regular basis abebooks.com sends out themed ads for various books available through their site. And today, their theme is Books by the Inklings:
http://www.abebooks.com/books/oxford-tolkien-cs-lewis-eagle-child-literature/inklings.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-h00-inklingVCA-_-01cta&abersp=1
One interesting aspect of this is just whom they consider to be Inklings -- Tolkien and Lewis, of course, as the co-founders and by far most famous members, with Williams and Cecil in the second tier (a lot of Inklings scholars forget how distinguished a scholar Lord David was*). Warnie and some books about the Inklings round out the list -- rather surprisingly there's no Wain here; perhaps they felt his work went too far afield and shd be grouped with the Angry Young Men instead.
Most interestingly of all, they include Roger Lancelyn Green among the Inklings' members, giving him equal billing with Wms and Cecil. I know Doug Anderson has argued that a good case can be made for RLG as an Inkling but I think this may be the first time I've seen it taken as a given. Interesting!
And, in a related note, ABEbooks.com likes to send out monthly announcements of which ten books sold on their site for the most during the previous month. Tolkien ranked on top a few months back; this month, he's #7 behind Fleurs du Mal and Dr. No and Edward Gorey, ahead of JFK and Huxley, with a set of the first-edition LotR:
http://www.abebooks.com/books/RareBooks/james-bond-edward-gorey/most-expensive-aug11.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-C110901-mostexAX-_-01cta&abersp=1
--John R.current book: PICTURING TOLKIENcurrent e-book: book five in the 'Royal Spyness' series by Rhys Bowencurrent audiobook: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES [2006] and THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (just started)
*there's a reason he got an Oxford professorship so early. Though he didn't deserve F. R. Leavis's elevation of him into the epitome of all that Leavis thought was wrong with English literature and academia (i.e., that too many people listened to Cecil rather than Leavis).
http://www.abebooks.com/books/oxford-tolkien-cs-lewis-eagle-child-literature/inklings.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-h00-inklingVCA-_-01cta&abersp=1
One interesting aspect of this is just whom they consider to be Inklings -- Tolkien and Lewis, of course, as the co-founders and by far most famous members, with Williams and Cecil in the second tier (a lot of Inklings scholars forget how distinguished a scholar Lord David was*). Warnie and some books about the Inklings round out the list -- rather surprisingly there's no Wain here; perhaps they felt his work went too far afield and shd be grouped with the Angry Young Men instead.
Most interestingly of all, they include Roger Lancelyn Green among the Inklings' members, giving him equal billing with Wms and Cecil. I know Doug Anderson has argued that a good case can be made for RLG as an Inkling but I think this may be the first time I've seen it taken as a given. Interesting!
And, in a related note, ABEbooks.com likes to send out monthly announcements of which ten books sold on their site for the most during the previous month. Tolkien ranked on top a few months back; this month, he's #7 behind Fleurs du Mal and Dr. No and Edward Gorey, ahead of JFK and Huxley, with a set of the first-edition LotR:
http://www.abebooks.com/books/RareBooks/james-bond-edward-gorey/most-expensive-aug11.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-C110901-mostexAX-_-01cta&abersp=1
--John R.current book: PICTURING TOLKIENcurrent e-book: book five in the 'Royal Spyness' series by Rhys Bowencurrent audiobook: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES [2006] and THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (just started)
*there's a reason he got an Oxford professorship so early. Though he didn't deserve F. R. Leavis's elevation of him into the epitome of all that Leavis thought was wrong with English literature and academia (i.e., that too many people listened to Cecil rather than Leavis).
September 6, 2011
Taum Santoski XV
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
15. The Peoples of Arda are the Ainur, the Valar, the Eldar and the Atani (of who all the Free Peoples are concerned).
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
September 5, 2011
Taum Santoski XIV
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy' 
14. The Music of the Ainur is Myth; Fate is mythologized history; Vision is the historicized myth; Free Will is history.
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
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