Liveblogging Kalamazoo (Thursday 10-11:30 am)

Yes, it's the return of my method for focusing my attention more sharply on the details of the papers ... liveblogging! (Fortunately, WMU solved the glitch with getting visitors on the wireless network this morning.) A lot of this is likely to be stream-of-consciousness, so don't look for coherent summary and analysis.

Session 40: Medieval Food Practices: Cultures and Commodities

“Rostyd” Myth: Culinary Signification and “Sociogenesis” at Two Lancastrian
Coronation Feasts (Ken Fullam, Blue Ridge Community College)

Formal feasting as a means of creating and enforcing social systems and means of symbolizing the nature and legitimacy of the presiding structures. Touches on humoral theory of foods, symbolic use of red colorings in food connected to Lancastrian colors. Detailed discussion of the symbolic meaning of specific food animals, both domestic and wild. (me: I question, though, whether the food animals were chosen primarily for their symbolic qualities, or whether their symbolic qualities were attributed due to their place in the diet.) On the other hand, roast peacock is a good argument for the “symbol-primary” interpretation, at least for that dish. (me: Maybe it’s just his wording, but it feels like he’s using a lot of culinary terminology in ways that suggest unfamiliarity with the meaning – for example, apparently referring to “eyroun” as a type of egg, but that may be me misunderstanding his writing style.) “Roasting” as a signifier of stability, due to the lesser amount of change in the foodstuff (compared, for example, with pottages)? Summary: coronation feasts were forms of medieval theater conveying non-written messages.

Aspects of the Culture of Fasting in the Middle Ages: Food Practices among
Premonstratensian Regular Canons (Noor De Salazar, Independent Scholar) – Not presented.

The Service of Food and Drink: A Function of Bedroom Chambers (Kevin Wolf, Univ. of California–Davis)

Specifically focuses on depictions in German minstrel epics. 8 regularly depicted functions of bedrooms. Brief background on function of food and drink in noble courts/halls in general, e.g., part of reception of visitors according to their status, creating social bonds, display of conspicuous consumption, a place to receive messages or news. Food/drink service in private bedrooms parallel these on a smaller, more personal scale but generally using the same foodstuffs and dishes. Absence of “correct” food service, even in a private space, represents a breach in courtesy and hospitality.

“Ðe best and ryallest vyand of alle”: Local Ecology as an Element of Conspicuous Consumption at Fifteenth-Century English Banquets (Ryan Whibbs, York Univ.) – Not presented.

Last-minute addition by session presider (Alex Wolfe, Univ. of Chicago?) on luxury foods, specifically sugar, comparing English and Mongol cuisines.

In the medieval period, English aristocratic culture eagerly indulged in imported luxury foods, especially as symbolized by sugar use. This change was initially driven by exposure during the Crusades. In contrast, by 1400 Mongol culture was returning to traditional foods after previously embracing the cuisines of their conquered lands. Medieval medical discourse (both Arabic and European) discusses sugar as a universally beneficial item and an ameliorative ingredient to be combined with other medicines. When sugar shifted to a culinary item, it was classed with spices, both in terms of amounts used and storage conditions. Used fairly generally, although with adjustments for humoral balance and local usage. In contrast, Mongol culinary discussions of sugar are more particular about approved combinations and discourages the use of sugar with a variety of specific foodstuffs, whether for reasons of culinary balance or symbolic contradiction (e.g., no sugar with bamboo shoots – possibly because of similarity of plant?) European “luxury” foods shift heavily to imports rather than local products: e.g., almonds vs. hazelnuts, wine vs. mead.

Liveblogging Kalamazoo (Thursday 1:30-3:00 pm)

Session 73: Dress and Textiles I: Threads and Fibers

Evidence for Roundels in Viking Age Embroidery from Bjerringhøj, Mammen Parish, Denmark (Raven Alexandra Fagelson, Independent Scholar)

The paper looks at the Mammen embroideries with a focus on a compositional analysis of the geometry of the motifs to try to reconstruct their possible original layout. All the acanthus motifs occur in a curved arc, as does one line of small “face” motifs. In two cases (one acanthus, one small-face) then two fragmentary arcs occur on the same textile. Examples of other embroideries with arrangements of roundels occur in a similar time-frame (early medieval) in a number of different contexts (cloaks, altar cloths) with dizes ranging from small (Maasik embroidery) to very large (cloak of ?Henry II? with essentially one large roundel taking up the majority of the back. Acanthus and other foliate borders of roundels are demonstrated from a variety of sources. By mathematical calculation, the acanthus arcs could be part of a 22 cm diameter circle and the small faces to a ca. 35 cm diameter circle. Roundel motifs on textiles normally have “contents” and the leopard, bird, and quadruped motifs occur in conjunction with acanthus/face arc fragments. Roundels often occur in lines or arrays and often are conjoined where they approach, and some of the acanthus motifs appear to approach each other in this fashion, although the geometry is somewhat off.

Fur, Feathers, Skin, Fiber, Wood: Representational Techniques in the Bayeux Tapestry (Gale R. Owen-Crocker)

The embroidery depicts a wide variety of natural and man-made textures. Only two stitch types are used: stem stitch and laid-and-couched, and only 10 colors. The types of stitches chosen may be determined by the scope and speed of the work. The background fabric is left blank – there’s a similar embroidery in silk but with a blank linen background (in Italy?) Texture of fur or feathers are rare, there’sa quadrupen with “tags” on a plain background, and a peacock with the tail depicted in individual feathers, and one other bird, but otherwise broad areas of animals are plain L&C with outlines. Bodies, as of birds, are divided into parts by stem-stitch lines (e.g., beaks, wings, wing-pinions and tail feathers) similarly to the outlined sections of clothing. Lines of couching in both animals and clothing often follow the general contour of the segment, rather than being absolute. Although the general rule is that stem stitch is always outlines and couching for fills, there are some small areas of fill done in stem stitch, e.g., a bird’s pinions. Often this happens in long narrow spaces, e.g., bird legs. Some use of stem for texture, e.g., a horse’s mane, but this is inconsistant. Human skin is left as the ground cloth (a technique also used in manuscripts where only outlines of features are indicated with skin left as the plain parchment). In crowd scenes, the outlines of faces/hands and blocks of hair often seem artificially varied, simply for visual interest (also done for clothing, but less artificial there). Individualization of horses both by position and color of both horse and equipment. A few failures of this distinction, possibly due to poor planning by multiple workers, changed in mid-project to maintain a contrast between adjacent figures.

Flax and Linen in Medieval Novgorod (Heidi M. Sherman, Univ. of Wisconsin–Green Bay)

Archaeology important for history of trade in Russia due to scarcity of written sources. Soviet Union sponsored massive numbers of excavations providing a wealth of research material. Scholars agree that Novgorod had important flax trade but not much previous work done on the topic. Work on wooden artifacts includes lots of flax processing tools. (Digression into political dynamics of the day.) Types of relevant finds: scutches, breakers, combs, hackles, spindles & whorls, distaffs, parts of looms (although these last three are not flax-specific), also flax seeds and seed-pods. Some arguments over whether the toothed wooden “hackles” might instead be fish-scalers – much larger number of these hackles in comparison to scotches which might suggest another interpretation. (me: These aren’t the iron-toothed hackles that look similar to wool combs but look more like a short weaving-sword with a series of shallow notches along one edge of variable size.) Households typically had scutches and spinning equipment but not typically the “hackles”. In contrast, a different style of hackle is a narrow long-toothed comb that looks more like a “paintbrush” shape (i.e., a housepainting paintbrush).

Distaff, Whorl, and Wheel: Medieval Views of Spinning (Janilee Plummer, Ball State Univ.)

Analysis of 10-15th c. images of spinners primarily from Western Europe.
Categories:
Religious: Eve, Virgin Mary, other femail saints, annunciation of the shepherds, other
Daily chores: spinning while tending sheep, while doing other everyday activities
Defense: e.g., using a distaff as a weapon
Ephemera: marginal illustrations unrelated to story, grotesques, animals
Men: unmanly men (hesitant to go to war, being laughed at or abuse), but also professional spinners e.g., of rope or hunting equipment

Eve depicted spinning as a symbol of physical labor as punshment for the Fall. But then Mary is depicted spinning as a symbol of being a “virtuous woman”. Hmm. The distaff-weapon isn’t only in inter-gender violence – image of Sarah beating Hagar with a distaff, a woman beating off a fox from her geese (me: but this follows an image of a fox-bishop preaching to the geese, so there may be other symbolic layers here). Tacuinum Sanitatis shows women spinning with a distaff while walking for other purposes. All sorts of marginal animals depicted spinning (ape, pig) in parallel with other types of activities. Male spinners: depicted as objects of derision or as a symbol of the unwarlike or unmanned man (e.g., Hercules forced to spin). The exception is for non-textile spinning, e.g., men in the Hunt Book of Phoebus Gaston depicted spinning rope for hunting nets. (Also unusual in that the spinning process involves two people – one turning the wheel (with a crank?) the other drafting the thread.

Liveblogging Kalamazoo (Friday 3:30-5 pm)

Session 130: Dress and Textiles II: Inside and outside the Church

Mary’s Pregnancy as Birth Amulet: Evidence from Early Byzantine Textiles (Andrea K. Olsen, Johns Hopkins Univ.)

Specifically this is on textiles depicting Mary’s pregnancy. Paper opens with a quote from Proclus of Constantinople metaphorically comparing Mary to the loom on which God wove Jesus (heavily paraphrased). Examples presented of a ring and a medallion with images of Chirst and/or Mary blessing a married couple. 4th c. commentary on people wearing clothing depicting scenes from the Gospels believing this to be “pleasing to God”. Examples of Egyptian tapestry-woven decorated tunics with NT scenes. Similarly the Byzantine silk-embroidered probably tunic decorations with Annunciation and birth of Jesus scenes. Main focus of paper is a group of draw-loom textiles with roundels showing the Visitation. The overall argument is that: A) these are secular (or at least privately-owned) textiles; B) that the repetition of Visitation motifs on them indicates an intent to “intensify” a magical effect; C) and that it makes sense to see these as pregnancy charms. (me: I think there’s a lot of circular reasoning involved here. That is, the overall concept makes sense, but I’m hesitant to move from “makes sense” to “has been demonstrated”.)

Anglo-Saxon Textile Workshops, Religious and Secular: The Textual Evidence (Maren Clegg Hyer, Valdosta State Univ.)

Spinning equipment tends to be distributed through living spaces, but weaving equipment often centered in special “weaving huts”, sometimes found in clusters. Mentions of slaves specializing in textile production. OEng glosses on Latin terms for textile workshops (e.g., “weaving-house”) although these could be translations of foreign concepts. References, e.g., in Carolingian France to English textile exports (suggesting a higher level of production than individual households). References to lay communities supplying textiles for monastic communities in an organized fashion. Evidence even stronger for embroidery workshops. The simple scope of the work (and some known time-frames for production, as for the Bayeaux embroidery) require multi-person production, possibly even multiple separate workshops (given the separate panels involved). Extensive evidence for ecclesiastical embroidery workshops, less continuous evidence for workshops producing hangings for secular buildings. Admonition of nuns not to waste their time in decorating their clothing with vain needlework.

The Early Fifteenth-Century O’Dea Miter and Crosier, and Other Treasures of Irish Artistry from Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Elizabeth Wincott Heckett, Univ. College Cork)

Miter has jeweled metal bands (silver gilt plates hinged together) attached to a leather backing, forming the main decorative bands (i.e., those often manifested as woven trim) with a “base fabric” (i.e., showing in the triangular panels between the bands) with foliage designs worked in river pearls. (It isn’t clear exactly how they’re attached – the “base fabric” is a thin gold foil over some base, but she wasn’t able to examine it closely enough to work out mechanisms.) But the current design in which the pearls are worked is not the original. The hanging bands were also re-done relatively recently, in the 18th c based on some manuscript pages used as internal stiffening. There’s an 18th c. drawing showing the original – or at least an earlier – arrangement of the pearl motifs. The earlier pattern is a relatively simple stem with paired leaves while the current one is an almost art-nouveau-ish swirl of stems and leaves and has at least a couple clearly trefoil (shamrock?) designs. Comparative examples of 14-16th c. pearled miters are presented from across Western Europe.

Other 15th c. treasures at the cathedral include the only misericords surviving in Ireland. Two are shown depicting prosperous burghers of Limerick, wearing houpelande and chaperon. Also early 17th c. marble tomb effigy, 12th c. floral-decorated coffin lid.

General Discussion

The topic was thrown out for practical discussion: what are the practical issues with multiple people working on a single embroidered piece? (I guess it turned out to be a question for contemplation -- no open discussion ensued.)

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Session 183: New Work by Young Celtic Studies Scholars

Ornament and Incarnation in Insular Art (Ben C. Tilghman, Walters Art Museum)

The title was typoed in the schedule as “Ornament and Incantation …” which sounded quite intriguing. Discusses the use of artistic style for the dating of artifacts, e.g., cross-comparing jewelry and manuscripts with similar ornamental styles to localize one or the other. This is a preface to his main theme about the use of ornament to express the incarnation of God. Examples taken from the Gospels of the Book of Durrow, relating the relationship of the symbols of the evangelists to their framing ornamental motifs to symbolic values of either the evangelists themselves or their symbolic function in relation to Christ. (Don’t try too hard to unpack that.) Switching to the Book of Kells, the “unfinished” ornament at the beginning of Matthew leads the eye further in with gradual elaboration from page to page. He suggests this is a deliberate technique (rather than an unfinished project) with the progression then being “incarnated” with the explosion of ornament of the major decorated pages. It goes on into more and more minute detail. I feel like I’m listening to a theological exegesis rather than an art history critique, in part because if feels like faith is a key part of receiving the interpretation. Maybe sometimes the lack of ornament really is an unfinished artwork?

Diminutive Expressions in Middle Welsh (Karolina Rosiak, Adam Mickiewicz Univ.)

This is the paper I really came to the session for – who could resist Welsh linguistics? Her paper is part of a larger exploration of mode and how diminutives relate to mode. (I assume I’ll find out what she means by “mode” somewhere in here.) Diminutives can be snthetic, i.e. indicated by grammatical form such as sound-symbolism (“tiny” vs. “teeny”), by grammatical displacement, e.g., referring to the addressee in the 3rd person. But they can also be formed by word-formation processes, e.g., compounding, suffixing, reduplication. Another method is by analyitc diminutives, i.e., where the overt semantic form indicates diminutive size, e.g., in Welsh the use of “bach” (small) as an endearment. The diminutive process can create a change in the denotational meaning (e.g., the Welsh conversion of unitary plurals, such as “pryf” insects, worms, to singulars “pryfyn” (insect, worm). Or diminutives can change the connotation meaning, e.g., endearments. But some change connotational meaning negatively. Pragmatic usage of diminutives can depend on the nature and relationship of the interlocutors (when not simply denotational), such as adult to child.

We now get a survey of different analytic methods of forming diminutives in all Celtic languages. And a survey of the Welsh sources used for her study. Earliest examples come from place-names, which don’t speak to the pragmatics of interpersonal use. Examples use “-ig”, “-yn”, “-an”. Some personal name evidence, esp. for the “-an” suffix.

Catalog of suffixes:

-an from Late Brit. –agn-; retains grammatical gender of root word, may occur interchangeably with other suffixes such as “-ig” with similar meaning

-yn (m), -en (f); different gendered forms, suffixed form retains gender of root, this is the suffix used to form singulatives of plural roots

-ig < Brit. –iko-; primarily forms feminine diminutives, but this can be overridded by the semantics of the root in the case of animate (esp. human) references

-ach < Brit. –akkos; usually conveys derogatory meaning, forms mostly masculine nouns

-os; neutrally diminutive

-ell; rare
-cyn (m), -cen (f); only attested at later period (me: I’ve always interpreted this one as a borrowing of English “-kin”, I mentioned this in the Q&A and it turns out other opinions concurr)

Compounds, e.g., “man” (small) prefixed to form close compound

What Is This Meat Product? What’s at Stake in Translating “Aislinge meic
Conglinne” (Lahney Preston-Matto, Adelphi Univ.) -- Paper was moved earlier in the day … good thing I wasn’t counting on hearing this one.