Hamlet Garcia (Four Monologues) by Miguel Morillo

 Mujer.- Sé cómo funcionan estas cosas, podría ser su madre y no me pilla de nuevas, sé cómo funcionan estas cosas porque he estado en decenas de entrevistas como esta. Son las nueve y cuarto de la mañana, me he levantado a las siete en punto, me he vestido con la mejor ropa que tengo, me he maquillado lo mejor que sé para la ocasión, porque siempre lo hago así, estoy sentada delante del jefe de personal y dos psicólogos que me observan y toman notas, que se fijan en mí, que escudriñan cada centímetro de mí.

He llegado aquí a las nueve menos cuarto, y me he metido en un bar para hacer tiempo, y desde las ocho menos cuarto hasta las nueve y diez me he bebido siete sol y sombras. Estoy borracha, estoy completamente pedo oyendo al jefe de personal, oyendo lo que dice, pero sin escucharle. No bebo, no he bebido nunca, no me gusta el alcohol, pero me he tomado siete sol y sombras en veinticinco minutos porque he pasado por esto decenas de veces y ya me da igual, he bebido de forma consciente, me he emborrachado adrede, me he puesto completamente pedo para evadirme de esto, porque sé lo que es esto, y sé que no va a ninguna parte.

Estoy sonriendo porque estoy totalmente trompa, el jefe de personal piensa que estoy sonriendo porque estoy dándole la razón, piensa que estoy sonriendo porque estoy de acuerdo con toda la sarta de gilipolleces que me está diciendo. El jefe de personal se equivoca. Los psicólogos me observan, toman notas, me miran y no dejan de apuntar cosas en un papel, y yo les miro escribir y les sonrío, y ellos me miran sonreír y anotan, porque piensan que el hecho de que yo sonría es lo mismo que darle la razón al jefe de personal, porque piensan que si sonrío es porque estoy de acuerdo. Los psicólogos se equivocan. Sonrío porque estoy totalmente evadida de la conversación, sonrío porque me he tomado siete sol y sombras en veinticinco minutos y estoy totalmente pedo.

Me lo estoy imaginando desnudo al jefe de personal, mientras habla, totalmente desnudo, es guapo, es un chico joven y guapo, habla muy rápido, habla con energía y convicción. Me estoy imaginando al jefe de personal desnudo, moviendo la lengua con energía y convicción, haciéndome un buen cunilingus, haciéndome feliz. Yo he sido sincero con usted, le he explicado lo que espero de usted sin rodeos, sin tapujos. Ir siempre con la verdad por delante es indispensable, no sólo en esta empresa, sino también en la vida.

Se queda mirándome, ha terminado, espera que hable, que le conteste, espera que haga el paripé y santas pascuas, le voy a decir la verdad, le voy a decir que todo esto me da absolutamente igual y que lo que realmente me apetece es que me tire sobre la mesa y me coma el coño bien comido. Se lo voy a decir, claro que se lo voy a decir, porque me he tomado siete sol y sombras en el bar de abajo y esto me da absolutamente igual. Abro la boca convencida de lo que voy a decir, dispuesta a decirle que me haga feliz, pero no salen palabras. Abro la boca y no salen las palabras, sale un chorro de vómito, salen los siete sol y sombras y un café con magdalenas que tomé en casa. Los pongo perdidos, los lleno de vómito, lleno de vómito al jefe de personal, a los psicólogos, lleno de vómito los apuntes de los psicólogos, la mesa del jefe de personal, las paredes del despacho, el suelo, mi vestido, lo lleno todo de vómito. De acuerdo, digo, soy la persona que buscan.

Mujer madura.- Estoy sentada en un teatro, en la oscuridad de un teatro, viendo una de esas obras de ante y ensayo. Hay dos actores desnudos en mitad del escenario, y se están comiendo un pollo crudo mientras recitan pasajes de la Biblia con la boca llena de pollo crudo y yo les miro y pienso en lo que me gustaría fumarme un cigarrillo ahora mismo. Pero no se puede fumar en el teatro, se puede recitar la Biblia desnudo con la boca llena de pollo crudo, pero no se puede fumar. Tengo muchas ganas de fumar, quiero fumar, necesito fumar. Necesito un cigarro, porque hoy ha sido un día duro, porque hoy ha sido uno de esos días en los que no te pones de acuerdo con el mundo ni con la vida. Hoy ha sido uno de esos días en que todo va como el culo. Ha venido el del butano. A las ocho de la mañana, a dejarme la bombona de butano que le encargué ayer, pero se me olvidó sacar dinero ayer por la noche. No tengo dinero. No podía pagar el butano, no podía abrirle la puerta. Y el tipo se ha mosqueado y ha estado llamando al portero un cuarto de hora seguido, sin parar, y los perros de la vecina de al lado se han puesto a ladrar, y la vecina de abajo ha abierto la ventana y se ha puesto ha insultarme. A las ocho de la mañana.

He hecho café y me he vestido para ir al trabajo, y me he equivocado al ponerme el azúcar, no he mirado los frascos y he puesto sal en el café, y lo he echado todo. Sobre el traje de chaqueta que llevo siempre al trabajo. He tenido que cambiarme y he llegado tarde al trabajo.

Mi jefe estaba fuera de sí porque esta mañana alguien le ha vomitado encima mientras hacía una entrevista. Y lo ha pagado conmigo. Y me ha gritado todo lo que ha querido y más. Y me ha cargado de trabajo y he tenido que quedarme hasta tarde en la oficina, así que para conseguir llegar a casa y que me diese tiempo a comer algo, he cogido el coche y atajo por la calle Segovia, pero a algún gilipollas se le ha ocurrido saltar desde el viaducto en plena hora punta, y se ha estampado contra el número 65 de la empresa madrileña de transportes, que casualmente iba delante de mí, y se ha montado la de Dios, y he tenido que esperar una hora en el atasco y me he quedado sin comer, y he llegado tarde al trabajo otra vez, y mi jefe ha vuelto a pagarlo conmigo y me ha vuelto a cargar de trabajo y he salido otra vez tarde, y de vuelta a casa me he encontrado con otro atasco en la carretera, y después de media hora parados en el atasco un tipo con cara de tonto que habían en mitad de la autopista me ha hecho parar el coche y casi lo atropello, y el muy… me ha sacado del coche de un tirón, me ha cogido y me ha sacado del coche de un tirón, me ha cogido y me ha sacado por la ventanilla. Y me he quedado en mitad de la carretera como una boba. Luego la policía me ha tenido dos horas haciendo la declaración de los hechos porque el tipo que me había cogido el coche lo había destrozado contra otro un poco más adelante. He decidio9 olvidarme, evadirme de todo, así que he cogido un periódico y he puesto el dedo al azar en la cartelera y ha salido esta obra de teatro, y me he venido a verla. Por eso estoy aquí, en este teatro, pero no consigo evadirme, porque hay dos tíos en bolas comiéndose crudo el pollo, mientras recitan la Biblia, y eso no me hace evadirme.

Tengo que fumar. Tengo que salir a fumar, así que me levanto y salgo, cruzo el patio de butacas con dirección a la puerta, y uno de los actores me tira lo que queda del pollo crudo a la cabeza. Viene hacia mí y me señala con el dedo y me dice que soy una escoria social, que me voy del teatro porque el mensaje que ellos transmiten es la verdad, y que la verdad me duele porque soy una alienada. Mira al público, me señala y les dice que soy un borrego alienado, y todos me miran y se ríen.

Tengo la seguridad de que hoy es un día duro, uno de esos días en los que te apetece no haberte levantado. Uno de esos días… uno de esos días en que no te pones de acuerdo ni con la vida ni con el mundo.

Me quedo mirando al tío, desnudo delante de mí, hablándome con la boca todavía llena de pollo, soltándome al hablar pequeños trozos de pollo crudo.

Por un momento no sé si reír o llorar. Por un momento todo lo que soy, todo en lo que creo está a punto de venirse abajo.

Miro al tipo.
Recapacito, pienso.
Tomo aire y respiro, lentamente, con total serenidad.
Vuelvo a mirar al tipo y vuelvo a tomar aire.
Tranquila, me digo, tranquila.
Soy una mujer fuerte.
Soy una mujer fuerte.
Soy una mujer fuerte.
Soy una mujer fuerte.
Soy una mujer fuerte.
Me repito interiormente.

Voy a mirar a los problemas cara a cara, voy a coger al toro por los cuernos. Voy a ponerme de pie después de la caída. Voy a mirar al frente y voy a seguir adelante. Con ánimo, con alegría, con entusiasmo.

Miro al actor, desnudo delante de mí, y le pego una patada en los huevos con todas mis fuerzas.
Descargo toda mi rabia, toda la rabia que he acumulado a lo largo del día.

Toda mi rabia contenida, dirigida hacia la punta de mi zapato y descargada sobre sus testículos indefensos.

Se cae al suelo y el dolor es tan profundo que ni siquiera puede quejarse, ni siquiera puede gritar.
Me doy la vuelta y miro al patio de butacas. Y vosotros podéis iros todos a tomar por el culo, grito, y salgo de la sala dando un portazo.

Dentro de la sala la gente empieza a aplaudir, se están dejando las manos, están aplaudiendo muy fuerte. Escucho los aplausos y pienso que les acabo de mandar a tomar por el culo…
Hoy es uno de esos días, Uno de esos días en que no te poner de acuerdo con la vida ni con el mundo. Uno de esos días en los que piensas que sería mejor no haberse levantado de la cama.

Hombre adulto.- Levantarse por la mañana y oler el café recién hecho, notar el agua caliente en la piel y luego el contacto con la cuchilla de afeitar, mirarse al espejo, el sabor del zumo de naranja, las tostadas, el primer cigarrillo de la mañana, abrir la ventana y notar el aire fresco, el sol, el calor del sol. Observar las cosas sencillas detenidamente, disfrutar de las cosas sencillas detenidamente. Hacerlo todo como si fuese la primera vez. Salir a la calle, mirar a un lado y al otro y notar que todo tiene sentido, que la cosa funciona. Sentirse afortunado.

Yo me siento afortunado porque he mirado detenidamente las cosas sencillas, he pensado, he discernido, he decidido sobre ellas y las he comprendido. Me he observado detenidamente a mí mismo mientras observaba detenidamente las cosas sencillas y me he dado cuenta de lo afortunado que soy pudiendo observar la sencillez de las cosas.

Observar las cosas, pensar sobre las cosas, decidir sobre las cosas, hacer o dejar de hacer las cosas. Sentirse vivo, tener conciencia de la propia existencia. Disfrutar de la existencia, disfrutar de la vida.

Me he quedado mirando una naranja, la hermosura, la compleja sencillez de una naranja, la he observado durante bastante tiempo. Una naranja nunca podrá disfrutar de la vida, una naranja está viva, pero nunca podrá disfrutar de la vida. Para poder disfrutar de la vida hay que tener conciencia de la propia existencia, tener la capacidad de observar las cosas. Una naranja está viva, pero una naranja no es consciente de su propia existencia, no puede disfrutar de su existencia, no puede disfrutar de la vida.

Yo soy consciente de mi existencia, por tanto puedo disfrutar de la vida, por eso me siento afortunado, por eso observo las cosas sencillas y me siento afortunado. Por eso me siento feliz.

Hombre joven.- Pasar desapercibido. Ser uno más, No destacar. No llamar la atención. Ser uno más. Ser el vecino que no saluda a nadie y al que nadie saluda. Ser el vecino en el que nadie se fija. Ser cualquiera de los que van en un autobús cualquiera a cualquier sitio. Pasar desapercibido. Ser uno más. No llamar la atención. Que nadie te señale con el dedo, que nadie te llame la atención, que nadie te pare por la calle y te pregunte si tienes un minuto o un cigarrillo, que nadie te pregunte la hora. Que nadie te llame por tu nombre, que nadie conozca tu nombre. Ser uno más, uno cualquiera, en una calle cualquiera, yendo hacia cualquier sitio.

Que te dejen tranquilo, que no te molesten. Ser uno más sin pena ni gloria, uno más. Que no suene el teléfono, que no te llame nadie, que nadie tenga tu número. Que te dejen tranquilo. Ser cero. Ser menos que cero. Ser un cero a la izquierda. Que nadie te eche de menos. Que nadie te llame un sábado por la noche para salir a cualquier sitio. Ser uno más de los que están aquí. Sentarse en la oscuridad de un teatro y que nadie se fije en tu cara al entrar o al salir. Ser uno más, pasar desapercibido.

Ser un número más en las estadísticas, como cualquiera. Un número más. Sin cara, sin nombre, un número más. Que el de la tienda de al lado no sepa quien eres ni lo que sueles comprar. Que las únicas cartas que aparezcan en el buzón sean recibos enviados por un ordenador. Que no aparezca tu nombre en el buzón. Ser un número, sólo un número, ser un número más. Ser cero, ser menos que cero. Pasar desapercibido. No llamar la atención, que nadie te llame la atención. Ser uno más. Ver la televisión sin que los demás te vean a ti, sin que los demás se fijen en ti, sin que nadie te moleste.

No depender de nadie, que nadie dependa de ti, estar en casa, tranquilo, viendo la televisión, sin molestar a nadie y sin que nadie te moleste a ti. Ser uno más. Pasar desapercibido, no llamar la atención. Ver la pantalla, las caras que aparecen en la pantalla sin que ellas te vean a ti.

http://cal-reservorio.blogspot.com/2007/08/hamlet-garca-miguel-morillo.html

Norming the Female Body: Discourses of Sexuality in Charles Swinburne (Third Part) by Lai Sai Acon Chan

Kristevan semiotics, asserts Toril Moi, “emphasizes the marginal and the heterogenous as that which can subvert the central structures of traditional linguistics” (161).  In this sense, Swinburne’s poetry can be said to manifest marginal types of discourse, especially in “Dolores” and in “Anactoria.”  His portrayal of a sadomasochistic unchaste virgin and of a lesbian with destructive-creative impulses typify Julia Kristeva’s process of signification and Hélène Cixous’ writing the body, both processes that aim at deconstructing the linear, goal-oriented language of patriarchy .  Dolores is the embodiment of goddess and demoness.  As a virgin, she is certainly an unorthodox one.  Rather than a more joyful or pious type of virgin, the mystic and somber Dolores is Our Lady of Pain, a cruel patroness.  Her physical description is utterly disturbing and points at the destruction and pain she is capable of inflicting:  cold eyelids, heavy white limbs, hard eyes, cruel red mouth, lips full of lust and laughter, fangs, ravenous teeth.  However, the effect she has on an acolyte is actually soothing as he urges her to “press with new lips where [she] pressed.  For [his] heart too springs up at the pressure” (28-29), so that he could be filled with pleasure.  By calling her Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs, Swinburne mocks the authority of the Christian faith and shakes one of the pillars of patriarchal Western thought, the church.  Dark, pagan, overtly-sexualized goddesses like Dolores, Astarte, and Venus, not God, become the object of worship of fervent followers of a semiotic cult verbalized in what in Kristevan terms is “the discourse of the illogic, the unconscious, the impulsive, the repressed, the transverbal, the atemporal” [my translation] (Macaya 87).  This discourse that usually manifests itself in the gaps and inconsistencies of the linear, rational language of patriarchy, surfaces in “Dolores” and in “Anactoria” as a language of the female body, that is, as what Cixousian critics have termed “écriture feminine”[1].

To Cixous, writing that is said to be feminine comes from the eroticization of the body.  “Almost everything is yet to be written by women about femininity:  about their sexuality, that is, its infinite and mobile complexity, about their eroticization, sudden turn-ons of a certain miniscule-immense area of their bodies [. . .].  A woman’s body with its thousand and one thresholds of ardor [. . .] will make the old single-grooved mother tongue reverberate with more than one language” (885) .  In this sense, Dolores’ is a sexuality that celebrates transgression while it functions as a type of bodily, erotic discourse.  Constant references to her body’s transformative powers render it a site of “jouissance.”  One can imagine her “lips full of lust and of laughter” (25) curb in a sardonic smile as she blows, bends, and breaks the bodies of those willing to follow her to her “house of unquenchable fire” (23) and writhe but in ecstatic pangs:  “Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure,/ Ere pain come in turn” (31-32).  Like female sexuality, writing said to be feminine is “a multiple and inexhaustible course with millions of encounters and transformations of the same into the other and into the in-between, from which woman takes her forms” (Cixous 883), that is multiple instead of single, diffuse instead of focused, oriented toward process instead of goal-oriented.  Indeed, the structure of the poem is more diffuse and process-oriented, and the signs are multivalent.  Unlike more readable types of poems such as ballads and narrative poetry, Swinburne’s “Dolores” does not tell a story with a discernible beginning and a clear-cut end.  On the contrary, the poem concentrates on extricating the different possible meanings of Dolores’ body:  “splendid and sterile” (71), “bitter and tender” (87), “sanguine and subtle” (103), “fierce and luxurious” (135), “my sister, my spouse, and my mother” (151), “sleepless and deadly” (215), “a goddess new-born” (336), “a mortal, a maiden/ A queen over death and the dead” (347-48), “Most fruitful and virginal, holy” (351).  Instead of telling a linear, logical story about Dolores, those sets of contradictory meanings render her as a process of endless signification rather than as a Manichean type of ambiguity that is solved from the start.  Finally, by stressing the multiple values of the female body, Swinburne writes and rewrites the body of Dolores giving it a different meaning each time anew.  Thus, she has “cold eyelids” but they “hide like a jewel” (1).  In the same way, hers are “Hard eyes,” yet they “grow soft for an hour” (2); hers is the “bosom [that] no fasts could emaciate,/ No hunger compel to complain/ Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate” (261). “The white wealth of [her] body [is] made whiter/ By the blushes of amorous blows” (267-68) because Dolores is “fed with eternal breath/ And alive after infinite changes” (58-59).  Since this is a language that mimics the subversive laugh of an ultimately abnormal woman (in allusion to Cixous’ groundbreaking homonym article, “The Laugh of the Medusa”) it is intended to “wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes” (886).

“Anactoria” is Swinburne’s celebration of homoerotic love and still another attempt at developing marginal discourses springing from the female body.  It is through a boundless, more often than not, violent ardor that Sappho’s and Anactoria’s bodies are able to go past the lily/rose constraint.  As lesbians, neither one can fit into the conventional roles as mothers, wives or femme fatales that originate in biological circumstances. Thus, they stand in direct opposition to normalcy and, to a certain extent, represent what Cixous called the third body.  The constant references to seemingly destructive actions like blinding, burning, dividing, severing, crushing, bruising, scourging, and consuming among many others in the lesbian sexual act, would point to an utterly destructive kind of love and a canceling out of each other; however, in accordance with Cixousian thought they actually “offer the gift of alterity, producing rather than reducing difference” (Bray 63).  In “Anactoria,” Sappho starts by urging the object of her love to see what the effects of that love have caused: 

                        My life is bitter with thy love:  thine eyes

Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs

Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound,

And my blood strengthens, and my veins abound.

I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath;

Let life burn down, and dream it is not death. (1-6)

A love like Anactoria’s is so irreverent in the patriarchal world that it has the power to erase all traces of convention, and rather than in the logical language of the Father, this love is expressed in the transverbal language of the Mother.  The great love between the women is then expressed through pulsations coming from the body.   But in the process a strong clash between the bodies of Sappho and Anactoria must necessarily occur:  “”I feel thy blood against my blood: my pain/ Pains thee. And lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein” (11-12).  And so does the third body emerge, as “that which is created through the exchange, the flow, of desire” (Bray 64), but also as an unlawful entity that exists in “Anactoria” only as the product of the consummation of two female bodies rather than as the more conventional union of a male body and a female body.  

            Like the dark and diseased pre-New Woman figure that Christina Rossetti sketched in some of her literary works, Swinburne’s primordial women and terrible women offer a third possibility for the nineteenth century women within the limits of the dominant sexual politics of the time.  His marginal discourses, ambiguity, and never-ending signification are an expression of what Allison Pease calls the aesthetics of obscenity.  Pease argues that the nineteenth century “inherited the oppositions between pornography and aesthetics that were created in the eighteenth century” (38).  It is not until the sexual body is elevated to the status of art and included in the realm of legitimate culture that marginal, ambiguous, open-ended discourses like Swinburne’s are normed.  In stylizing “panting bodies typically associated with pornography,” “sexually enumerated” bodies through “sexually suggestive quotes” (64-65) that, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti once worried, would “make a few not even particular hairs stand on end, to say nothing of other erections equally obvious” (qtd in Pease 38) , Swinburne blurs the line between low and high culture, the erotically perverse and the properly decent, the aesthetically obscene and the distastefully lewd.  In the process, his poetry (just like C.G. Rossetti’s literary production) “represents what Raymond Williams calls residual and emergent culture, either of which stands outside of the dominant culture and must in some way be incorporated lest they continue to pose a threat” (Pease 64).  Once again, abnormal discourses on sexuality get caught in an endless game of normalizing the unstable, the aberrant, the eccentric.  The marginal illusively moves to the center, but is actually incorporated and blended into a “new” center and, thus, an essentializing hegemonic discourse on sexuality belies it.  

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[1]    Cixous has always refused to refer to feminine writing or masculine writing.  She prefers to make a distinction between writing said to be feminine or writing said to be masculine.  Interview with Verena Andermatt Conley in Hélène Cixous:  Writing the Feminine.

Norming the Female Body: Discourses of Sexuality in Dante Gabriel Rossetti (First Part) by Lai Sai Acon Chan

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s rendering of the fallen woman is the product of faithfully adhering to the tenets of the nineteenth-century ideology of literary creation. In the fashion of a “proudly masculine cosmic Author”—in the words of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar—Rossetti poured the patriarchal ink into the passive female body, the blank page, patiently waiting to be shaped as either an angel or a monster. And in so doing, Rossetti was merely reproducing a normative view about sex. In fact, his sonnet sequence, The House of Life, can be interpreted as a metaphor of a dichotomous female body fatefully caught between the two poles of feminine behavior imposed by patriarchy. On one hand, Rossetti depicts sensuous and captivating women who only live to fulfill respectable roles as brides, wives, or mothers. These are the kind of women who know what it means “To be a sweetness more desired than Spring; / A bodily beauty more acceptable” (“True Woman”). The descriptions of the women in the sonnets are indicative of the gender norms of the era, “High grace,” “sweet simplicity,” “thrilling pallor of cheeks,” “a mouth whose passionate forms imply / All music and all silence held thereby,” “soft-stirred feet” (“Her Gifts”), “Sweet dimness of her loosened hair,” “sweet hands,” tremulous smiles,” “murmuring sighs,” “The confident heart’s still fervour,” “the swift beat/ And soft subsidence of the spirit’s wing” (“Love-Sweetness”). However, the women’s intellectual traits are never praised. To give the women the illusion that they are the ones with power in the relationship, the male speakers resort to royal treatment: “My lady’s absolute queendom” (“The Moonstar”), “lady, beams thy sovereign grace,/ When the drear soul desires thee” (“Gracious Moonlight”). On the other hand, a fallen woman like Lilith represents the darker side of the mid-Victorian woman. And yet, she has this irresistible power to allure men, which rather than threatening the ideological apparatus supports it. In “Body’s Beauty” Lilith’s sexuality can be described as mature and intoxicating, but sweet and, therefore, desirable to Adam. She does not destabilize normative sexual practices but embodies male fantasies of women who sensuously take over their bodies with a “sweet tongue [that] could deceive” and “strangling golden hair” (3,14). Adam’s weakness lies not in her power to emasculate him, but in his own willingness to let her engulf him with her wealth of hair and enrapture him to the point of ecstasy. So The House of Life is Rossetti’s figurative rendering of the female body regulated by the dominant, mid-Victorian sexual politics; it is also a metaphor of the repressive house that encloses that body.

The lily is the ideal type of woman who submits to every patriarchal whim and never replies impertinently or belligerently. In this respect, Gilbert and Gubar point out that, “There is a long and crowded road from The Booke of Curtesye (1477) to the columns of ‘Dear Abby,’ but social historians have fully explored [the conduct book’s] part in the creation of those ‘eternal feminine’ virtues of modesty, gracefulness, purity, delicacy, civility, compliancy, reticence, chastity, affability, politeness [. . .] (23). Rossetti certainly has a penchant for representations of demure women. Thus, one of the techniques he employs in his poems is that of imposing the male speaker’s thoughts and feelings on the women’s, that is, imposing phallocentric language on the women. In “The Blessed Damozel,” the lover is described as an omniscient being, while the damozel has a limited apprehension of her world. While he seems to know her every thought and movement, what she wears and what she says, she spends her time in heaven longing for her beloved and wondering when he will be able to join her. Like the proverbial angel in the house (Coventry Patmore’s “Angel in the House”), she is restricted to the domestic sphere—heaven—and patiently awaits his arrival as a dutiful wife would wait for her husband’s. In the meantime, she smiles, looks sweet and innocent with her lilies in her hand, the stars in her hair, and makes endless plans for their life together in paradise. This, however, is the lover’s version since the damozel is represented in the poem as he pictures her in heaven.

In Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s artistic works, the rose is, on the other hand, the type of woman who refuses those traditionally submissive roles but still pleases men with her deviant sexuality, a perverse sexuality that can only pertain to the fallen woman. The overt sexuality of women like Jenny, the woman in “The Orchard Pit,” and Lilith is not abhorred, but rather desired by men. Although a fallen woman, Jenny is akin to the angel in the house. She embodies the perfect mix of lily and rose, which is even more attractive than the devout angel in the house. With her “wealth of loosened hair,” “silk ungirdled and unlac’d” and “warm sweets open to the waist,” Jenny represents an all-but-innocent and virginal woman; but rather than adopting an overly forward attitude that one would expect from a harlot, she submissively puts her head on the male speaker’s knees. To further romanticize the fallen woman figure, like the sexual politics of his time dictated, Rossetti devotes a whole stanza to soften, even condone, Jenny’s profession. She is then compared to “a rose shut in a book / In which pure women may not look” (253-254), and to a “rose / Puddled with shameful knowledge” whose blood “flows / Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose” (264-66). Both images evoke an inner beauty that cannot be tarnished by such a shameful practice since the rose “still keeps such faded show / Of when t’was gathered long ago, / That the crushed petals’ lovely grain, / The sweetness of the sanguine stain” (267-270).

Norming the Female Body: Discourses of Sexuality in Christina Rossetti (Second Part) by Lai Sai Acon Chan

Christina Rossetti’s representations of the mid-Victorian female body challenge the normative notions about sexuality embodied by her brother’s angels and monsters.  She transforms the dominant definition of the Victorian fallen woman in her depictions of a woman who, dis-eased with her biological circumstances, provides the seed for the 1890s New Woman, someone akin to the madwoman who thinks for herself, has a career and a story to tell, seeks internal enlightenment, challenges accepted ideas, and creates artistic works (Moi 58).  Actually, in The Madwoman in the Attic Gilbert and Gubar contend that the literature of the nineteenth century portrays female characters and reveals female authors who apparently develop illnesses on purpose to purge their guilt, denounce their anger, find an outlet for their desires, or express their self-worth.  In Bloomian terms, women writers in particular suffer from a kind of anxiety of influence, which when transposed to the realm of female creativity causes women an anxiety of authorship, “an anxiety built from complex and often only barely conscious fears of that authority which seems to the female artist to be by definition inappropriate to her sex” (Gilbert 51).  Many of these groundbreaking women becoming precursors in fields traditionally dominated by men, put such a strain on them that their bodies, circumscribed by the “regulatory ideal,” produced diseases such as claustrophobia, agoraphobia, amnesia, aphasia, madness, and eating disorders, to further constrain them and keep them in their proper place.  However, in many cases, argue Gilbert and Gubar, the female bodies reappropriated those maladies and turned them into dis-eases, that is, ways to signal nonconformity to sexual norms of the time.

In her attempts to transcend pre-fixed, essentialist labels, Rossetti portrays the female body as agonizingly trying to reshape itself, particularly through supernatural means.  Her use of the preternatural in works such as “Goblin Market,” some of her ghost poems, some of her death poems, and stories like “Maude,” “Nick,” “The Lost Titian,” and “Hero” put in evidence the female body’s desire to escape the patriarchal prison of the flesh.   Maude is a heroine trying to escape the prison of her body, indulges herself in dreams of rematerialization and provides a model for the New Woman.  Torn between socially acceptable roles such as marriage and seclusion in a convent, Maude cannot avoid feeling guilty of the chosen path.  She is burdened by a gift to write poetry that is rarely bestowed on other young women of her generation:  “people thought her clever, and that her little copies of verses were handed about and admired.  Touching these same verses, it was the amazement of everyone what could make her poetry so broken-hearted as was mostly the case” (“Maude” 253).   Overwhelmed by the constant attention to her verse, she envies the simplicity and happiness of her cousins and friends, destined to fulfill patriarchal expectations.   She constantly looks pale, “languid and preoccupied to a painful degree” (253) as a typically ill woman from the nineteenth century—in particular a female creator—must have looked like.  She seems to use her malady to project the anxieties of being trapped in a normative woman’s body.  Unlike Laura and Lizzie, she is not destined to fulfill the role of her cousin Mary nor does she hear the call of God, like her acquaintance Magdalen.  Neither embroidery nor prayer is in Maude’s mind, but writing.  However, writing is not a source of pleasure and tranquility, but something that reminds her of her abnormalcy in the eyes of Victorian patriarchy:  “You cannot mean for the present that you will indulge in vanity and display; that you will court admiration and applause; that you will take your fill of pleasure until sickness” [. . .] (267).  And yet, unlike her successor, the literary New Woman, Maude does not flaunt convention, ruin her honor, upset her family, or refuse to repent for alleged sins.  The accident that keeps Maude bedridden is a symbol of her wish to escape from her prison:  “she had been overturned; and, though no limb was broken, had neither stirred nor spoken since” (270).   She develops both agoraphobia and aphasia in her unconscious attempt to confront the realization that she was moving away from the normative.  Since she cannot cope with the guilt of being both so talented a poet and a woman, she gradually withers away until she breaks free from the constraints of the regulatory ideal and free from labels, even from the future New Woman label.  While  Maude’s anxieties are not a supernatural way of transcending patriarchal labels, they might reveal why Christina Rossetti had a proclivity for poems about ghosts and death and tales of transmutation.

Poems like “Chilly Night,” “The Hour and the Ghost,” “The Ghost’s Petition,” “A Nightmare,” and “At Home” are the type of poems that deal with spirits that transcended their prisons of flesh, while poems like “Death Before Dead,” “After Death,” “Remember,” “Song,” and “Sleeping at Last” deal with human beings who are only too glad to leave their bodies behind.  Perhaps because they are narrative poems, the ghost poems do not seem to offer clues about those spirits’ former lives that made them glad they were finally set free, but it might be said that Rossetti’s inclination to write about them seems to indicate that fleeting to the realm of ghosts is just one possibility to transcend the lily/rose dichotomy. Then, like the New Woman or the madwoman in the attic, these ghosts demonstrate that even those who slipped into oblivion have a story to tell, unsavory opinions, or are willing to defy conventions.  Some of the ghosts come back from the afterlife to disturb those they once knew. Yet, others make themselves visible to mortal eyes because they are more disturbed than when they were among the living. “The Ghost’s Petition” is the story of Robin, a spirit who, ailed by his former wife’s pain, pleads her not to grieve for him anymore:  “I could not rest if you would not moan / Hour after hour; I have no power to shut my ears where I lie alone” (46-48) laments the ghost.     In “The Hour and the Ghost,” a spirit comes back from the afterlife to exact a woman’s promise on her wedding day, despite her reluctance and revulsion:  

Come with me, fair and false,

To our home, come home,

It is my voice that calls:

Once thou wast not afraid

When I woo’d, and said,

‘Come our nest is newly made’— 

Now cross the tossing foam. (11-17)

Unlike this outspoken ghost, the ghost of the speaker’s mother in “A Chilly Night” speaks without a voice and stares without seeing, a sad reminder that for the friendless speaker, “Living had failed and dead had failed/And [she/he] was indeed alone” (49-50).  The ghost “At Home” returns to her/his old house only to discover her/his friends in lively gatherings:  “’Tomorrow,’ said they, strong with hope,/And dwelt upon the pleasant way,/’Tomorrow,’ cried they one and all,/While no one spoke of yesterday” (17-20).  That is, the former self of the ghost was forgotten and was “Like the remembrance of a guest/That tarried but a day” (31-2). Like the troubling, yet equally troubled New Woman, the deceased people’s new state in the ghost poems is sometimes welcomed. Other times the new state is despised or rejected (and by extension the New Woman), and even makes some spirits long for their previous existence.

 

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

 PART IV

A VOYAGE TO THE HOUYHNHNMS

From CHAPTER I

Upon the ninth day of May, 1711, one James Welch came down to my cabin; and said he had orders from the Captain to set me ashore. I expostulated with him but in vain; neither would he so much as tell me who their new Captain was. They forced me into the longboat, letting me put on my best suit of clothes, which were as good as new, and a small bundle of linen, but no arms except my hanger; and they were so civil as not to search my pockets, into which I conveyed what money I had, with some other little necessaries. They rowed about a league, and then set me down on a strand. I desired them to tell me what country it was. They all swore they knew no more than myself, but said that the Captain (as they called him) was resolved, after they had sold the lading, to get rid of me in the first place where they could discover land. They pushed off immediately, advising me to make haste, for fear of being overtaken by the tide, and so bade me farewell.
       In this desolate condition I advanced forward, and soon got upon ground, where I sat down on a bank to rest myself, and consider what I had best do. When I was a little refreshed I went up into the country, resolving to deliver myself to the first savages I should meet, and purchase my life from them by some bracelets, glass rings, and other toys which sailors usually provide themselves with in those voyages, and whereof I had some about me. The land was divided by long rows of trees, not regularly planted, but naturally growing; there was plenty of grass, and several fields of oats. I walked very circumspectly for fear of being surprised, or suddenly shot with an arrow from behind or on either side. I fell into a beaten road, where I saw many tracks of human feet, and some of cows, but most of horses. At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed, which a little discomposed me, so that I lay down behind a thicket to observe them better. Some of them coming forward near the place where I lay, gave me an opportunity of distinctly marking their form. Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled and others lank; they had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs and the foreparts of their legs and feet, but the rest of their bodies were bare, so that I might see their skins, which were of a brown buff color. They had no tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus; which, I presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sat on the ground; for this posture they used, as well as lying down and often stood on their hind feet. They climbed high trees, as nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, terminating in sharp points, and hooked. They would often spring and bound and leap with prodigious agility. The females were not so large as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor anything more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies, except about the anus, and pudenda. Their dugs hung between their forefeet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked. The hair of both sexes was of several colors, brown, red, black, and yellow. Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, nor one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy. So that thinking I had seen enough, full of contempt and aversion, I got up and pursued the beaten road, hoping it might direct me to the cabin of some Indian. I had not got far when I met one of these creatures full in my way, and coming up directly to me. The ugly monster, when he saw me, distorted several ways every feature of his visage, and stared as at an object he had never seen before; then approaching nearer, lifted up his forepaw, whether out of curiosity or mischief, I could not tell. But I drew my hanger, and gave him a good blow with the flat side of it, for I dare not strike him with the edge, fearing the inhabitants might be provoked against me, if they should come to know that I had killed or maimed any of their cattle. When the beast felt the smart, he drew back, and roared so loud that a herd of at least forty came flocking about me from the next field, howling and making odious faces; but I ran to the body of a tree, and leaning my back against it, kept them off by waving my hanger. Several of this cursed brood getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, from where they began to discharge their excrements on my head; however, I escaped pretty well, by sticking close to the stem of the tree, but was almost stifled with the filth, which fell about me on every side.
       In the midst of this distress, I observed them all to run away of a sudden as fast as they could, at which I ventured to leave the tree, and pursue the road, wondering what it was that could put them into this fright. But looking on my left hand, I saw a horse walking softly in the field; which my persecutors having sooner discovered, was the cause of their flight. The horse started a little when he came near me, but soon recovering himself, looked full in my face with manifest tokens of wonder; he viewed my hands and feet, walking round me several times. I would have pursued my journey, but he placed himself directly in the way, yet looking with a very mild aspect, never offering the least violence. We stood gazing at each other for some time; at last I took the boldness to reach my hand towards his neck, with a design to stroke it, using the common style and whistle of jockeys when they are going to handle a strange horse. But this animal seeming to receive my civilities with disdain, shook his head, and bent his brows, softly raising up his right forefoot to remove my hand. Then he neighed three or four times, but in so different a cadence, that I almost began to think he was speaking to himself in some language of his own.
       While he and I were thus employed, another horse came up; who applying himself to the first in a very formal manner, they gently struck each other's right hoof before, neighing several times by turns, and varying the sound, which seemed to be almost articulate. They went some paces off, as if it were to confer together, walking side by side, backward and forward, like persons deliberating upon some affair of weight, but often turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that I might not escape. I was amazed to see such actions and behavior in brute beasts, and concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants of this country were endued with a proportionable degree of reason, they must needs be the wisest people upon earth. This thought gave me so much comfort, that I resolved to go forward until I could discover some house or village, or meet with any of the natives, leaving the two horses to discourse together as they pleased. But the first, who was a dapple gray, observing me to steal off, neighed after me in so expressive a tone, that I fancied myself to understand what he meant; whereupon I turned back, and came near him, to expect his farther commands, but concealing my fear as much as I could, for I began to be in some pain, how this adventure might terminate; and the reader will easily believe I did not much like my present situation.
       The two horses came up close to me, looking with great earnestness upon my face and hands. The gray steed rubbed my hat all round with his right forehoof, and discomposed it so much that I was forced to adjust it better, by taking it off, and settling it again; whereat both he and his companion (who was a brown bay) appeared to be much surprised; the latter felt the lappet of my coat, and finding it to hang loose about me, they both looked with new signs of wonder. He stroked my right hand, seeming to admire the softness and color; but he squeezed it so hard between his hoof and his pastern, that I was forced to roar; after which they both touched me with all possible tenderness. They were under great perplexity about my shoes and stockings, which they felt very often, neighing to each other, and using various gestures, not unlike those of a philosopher, when he would attempt to solve some new and difficult phenomenon.
       Upon the whole, the behavior of these animals was so orderly and rational, so acute and judicious, that I at last concluded they must needs be magicians, who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some design, and seeing a stranger the way, were resolved to divert themselves with him; or perhaps were really amazed at the sight of a man so very different in habit, feature, and complexion from those who might probably live so remote a climate. Upon the strength of this reasoning, I ventured to address them in the following manner: Gentlemen, if you be conjurers, as I have good cause to believe, you can understand any language; therefore I make bold to let your worships know that I am a poor distressed Englishman, driven by his misfortunes upon your coast, and I entreat one of you, to let me ride upon his back, as if he were a real horse, to some house or village where I can be relieved. In return of which favor I will make you a present of this knife and bracelet (taking them out of my pocket). The two creatures stood silent while I spoke, seeming to listen with great attention; and when I had ended, they neighed frequently towards each other, as if they were engaged in serious conversation. I plainly observed, that their language expressed the passions very well, and the words might with little pains be resolved into an alphabet more easily than the Chinese.
       I could frequently distinguish the word Yahoo, which was repeated by each of them several times; and although it was impossible for me to conjecture what it meant, yet while the two horses were busy in conversation, I endeavored to practice this word upon my tongue; and as soon as they were silent, I boldly pronounced Yahoo in a loud voice, imitating, at the same time, as near as I could, the neighing of a horse; at which they were both visibly surprised, and the gray repeated the same word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right accent, wherein I spoke after him as well as I could, and found myself perceivably to improve every time, though very far from any degree of perfection. Then the bay tried me with a second word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing it to the English orthography, may be spelt thus, Houyhnhnm. I did not succeed in this so well as the former, but after two or three farther trials, I had better fortune; and they both appeared amazed at my capacity.
       After some further discourse, which I then conjectured might relate to me, the two friends took their leave, with the same compliment of striking each other's hoof; and the gray made me signs that I should walk before him, wherein I thought it prudent to comply, till I could find a better director. When I offered to slacken my pace, he would cry Hhuun, Hhuun; I guessed his meaning, and gave him to understand as well as I could, that I was weary, and not able to walk faster; upon which he would stand a while to let me rest. 

http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/swift/gulliver4.html

Dissection of a Coquette's Heart

 

The Spectator 281

no. 281

1711-01-22

Joseph Addison

Pectoribus inhians spirantia consulit exta.-Virg.(*)

Virg. Æn. iv. 64.

Anxious the reeking entrails he consults.

HAVING already given an Account of the Dissection of a Beau's Head, with the several Discoveries made on that Occasion; I shall here, according to my Promise, enter upon the Dissection of a Coquet's Heart, and communicate to the Public such Particularities as we observed in that curious Piece of Anatomy.

I should perhaps have waved this Undertaking, had not I been put in mind of my Promise by several of my unknown Correspondents, who are very importunate with me to make an Example of the Coquet, as I have already done of the Beau. It is therefore in Compliance with the Request of Friends, that I have looked over the Minutes of my former Dream, in order to give the Publick an exact Relation to it, which I shall enter upon without further Preface.

Our Operator, before he engaged in this Visionary Dissection, told us, that there was nothing in his Art more difficult than to lay open the Heart of a Coquet, by reason of the many Labyrinths and Recesses which are to be found in it, and which do not appear in the Heart of any other Animal.

He desired us first of all to observe the Pericardium, or outward Case of the Heart, which we did very attentively; and by the help of our Glasses discern'd in it Millions of little Scars, which seem'd to have been occasioned by the Points of innumerable Darts and Arrows, that from time to time had glanced upon the outward Coat; though we could not discover the smallest Orifice, by which any of them had entered and pierced the inward Substance.

Every Smatterer in Anatomy knows that this Pericardium, or Case of the Heart, contains in it a thin reddish Liquor, supposed to be bred from the Vapours which exhale out of the Heart, and, being stopt here, are condensed into this watry Substance. Upon examining this Liquor, we found that it had in it all the Qualities of that Spirit which is made use of in the Thermometer, to shew the Change of Weather.

Nor must I here omit an Experiment one of the Company assured us he himself had made with this Liquor, which he found in great Quantity about the Heart of a Coquet whom he had formerly dissected. He affirmed to us, that he had actually inclosed it in a small Tube made after the manner of a Weather Glass; but that instead of acquainting him with the Variations; of the Atmosphere, it shewed him the Qualities of those Persons who entered the Room where it stood. He affirmed also, that it rose at the Approach of a Plume of Feathers, an embroidered Coat, or a Pair of fringed Gloves; and that it fell as soon as an ill-shaped Perriwig, a clumsy Pair of Shoes, or an unfashionable Coat came into his House: Nay, he proceeded so far as to assure us that upon his Laughing aloud when he stood by it, the Liquor mounted very sensibly, and immediately sunk again upon his looking serious. In short, he told us, that he knew very well by this Invention whenever he had a Man of Sense or a Coxcomb in his Room.

Having cleared away the Pericardium, or the Case and Liquor above-mentioned, we came to the Heart itself: The outward Surface of it was extremely slippery, and the Mucro, or Point, so very cold withal, that, upon endeavouring to take hold of it it glided through the Fingers like a smooth Piece of Ice.

The Fibres were turned and twisted in a more intricate and perplexed manner than they are usually found in other Hearts; insomuch that the whole Heart was wound up together in a Gordian Knot, and must have had very irregular and unequal Motions, whilst it was employed in its Vital Function.

One thing we thought very observable, namely, that, upon examining all the Vessels which came into it or issued out of it, we could not discover any Communication that it had with the Tongue.

We could not but take Notice likewise, that several of those little Nerves in the Heart which are affected by the Sentiments of Love, Hatred, and other Passions, did not descend to this before us from the Brain, but from the Muscles which lit about the Eye.

Upon weighing the Heart in my Hand, I found it to be extreamly light, and consequently very hollow, which I did not wonder at, when upon looking into the Inside of it, I saw Multitudes of Cells and Cavities running one within another, as our Historians describe the Apartments of Rosamond's Bower. Several of these little Hollows were stuffed with innumerable sorts of Trifles, which I shall forbear giving any particular Account of, and shall therefore only take Notice of what lay first and uppermost, which, upon our unfolding it and applying our Microscopes to it, appeared to be a Flame-coloured Hood.

We were informed that the Lady of this Heart, when living, received the Addresses of several who made Love to her, and did not only give each of them Encouragement, but made everyone she conversed with believe that she regarded him with an Eye of Kindness; for which Reason we expected to have seen the Impression of Multitudes of Faces among the several Plaits and Foldings of the Heart; but to our great Surprize not a single Print of this nature discovered it self till we came into the very Core and Center of it. We there observed a little Figure, which, upon applying our Glasses to it, appeared dressed in a very fantastick manner. The more I looked upon it, the more I thought I had seen the Face before, but could not possibly recollect either the Place or Time; when, at length, one of the Company, who had examined this Figure more nicely than the rest; shew'd us plainly by the Make of its Face, and the several Turns of its Features, that the little Idol which was thus lodged in the very Middle of the Heart was the deceased Beau, whose Head I gave some Account of in my last Tuesday's Paper.

As soon as we had finished our Dissection, we resolved to make an Experiment of the Heart, not being able to determine among our selves the Nature of its Substance; which differ'd in so many Particulars from that of the Heart in other Females. Accordingly we laid it into a Pan of burning Coals, when we observed in it a certain Salamandrine Quality, that made it capable of living in the midst of Fire and Flame, without being consumed, or so much as singed.

As we were admiring this strange Phenomenon, and standing round the Heart in a Circle, it gave a most prodigious Sigh or rather Crack, and dispersed all at once in Smoke and Vapour. This imaginary Noise, which methought was louder than the burst of a Cannon, produced such a violent Shake in my Brian, that it dissipated the Fumes of Sleep, and left me in an Instant broad awake.

http://meta.montclair.edu/spectator/text/1712/january/spectator281.xml

Of Love, An Essay by Francis Bacon

THE stage is more beholding to love, than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief; sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury. You may observe, that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent) there is not one, that hath been transported to the mad degree of love: which shows that great spirits, and great business, do keep out this weak passion. You must except, nevertheless, Marcus Antonius, the half partner of the empire of Rome, and Appius Claudius, the decemvir and lawgiver; whereof the former was indeed a voluptuous man, and inordinate; but the latter was an austere and wise man: and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor saying of Epicurus, Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus; as if man, made for the contemplation of heaven, and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, and make himself a subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye; which was given him for higher purposes. It is a strange thing, to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature, and value of things, by this; that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole, is comely in nothing but in love. Neither is it merely in the phrase; for whereas it hath been well said, that the arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man’s self; certainly the lover is more. For there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise. Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and not to the party loved; but to the loved most of all, except the love be reciproque. For it is a true rule, that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque, or with an inward and secret contempt. By how much the more, men ought to beware of this passion, which loseth not only other things, but itself! As for the other losses, the poet’s relation doth well figure them: that he that preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas. For whosoever esteemeth too much of amorous affection, quitteth both riches and wisdom. This passion hath his floods, in very times of weakness; which are great prosperity, and great adversity; though this latter hath been less observed: both which times kindle love, and make it more fervent, and therefore show it to be the child of folly. They do best, who if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarters; and sever it wholly from their serious affairs, and actions, of life; for if it check once with business, it troubleth men’s fortunes, and maketh men, that they can no ways be true to their own ends. I know not how, but martial men are given to love: I think, it is but as they are given to wine; for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures. There is in man’s nature, a secret inclination and motion, towards love of others, which if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable; as it is seen sometime in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth, and embaseth it.

Medieval Theatre

Kennings

This is the place where you post your kennings. 

In literature, a kenning is a magic poetic phrase, a figure of speech, substituted for the usual name of a person or thing. Kennings work in much the same way as epithets and verbal formulae, and were commonly inserted into Old English poetic lines.

Medieval Ballads

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later North America, Australia and North Africa. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century it took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and the term is now often used as synonymous with any love song, particularly the pop or rock power ballad.

The Husband's Message

 

The Husband's Message is an anonymous Old English poem, 54 lines long and found only on folio 123 of the Exeter Book. The poem is cast as the private address of an unknown first-person speaker to a wife, challenging to reader to discover the speaker's identity and the nature of the conversation, the mystery of which is enhanced by a burn-hole at the beginning of the poem.

Anglo Saxon Riddles

 

The Anglo-Saxons loved riddles. They told each other riddles as well as listening to poems at their feasts.  The riddles in this selection come from the Exeter Book.  The “Exeter Book” (Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3501) is the name conventionally given to one of the major collections of Old English poetry. The contents, which are both secular and religious, provide a remarkable survey of later Anglo-Saxon poetic culture, and include several of the best-known anthology pieces (The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife’s Lament), as well as other texts.