Liveblogging Kalamazoo (Friday Book Haul)

Scully, Terence. 2008. The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570). University of Toronto Press, Toronto. ISBN 978-0-8020-9624-1

Do I really need to explain why I would buy a copy of Scappi? Come on now.

Amer, Sahar. 2008. Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. ISBN 978-0-8122-4087-0

A collection of studies of texts featuring women’s relationships and especially erotic or romantic relationships in medieval literature, with the added angle that the author is tracing connections and contrasts between Arabic and French texts. There’s a growing body of literature in this general field and I tend to collect them. One of these days I mean to put together an on-line “sourcebook” of themes and motifs taken from both history and literature that could be useful or inspirational to modern authors writing fiction about lesbians in historic settings (or historic-inspired fantasy settings).

Also another book on reserve for me at Palgrave that I’ll blog about when I pick it up at the end of the conference.

Friday Evening Activities

I was going to go see the arms and armour demo put on by the Higgens Armory Museum, but it ended up being jam packed and instead I went off to catch the last 2/3 or so of Beowulf (the 2007 movie version). Afterwards, I enjoyed a nice critique session comparing various movie versions of Beowulf with the woman I’d been sitting next to (and exchanging snarky comments with) as we walked back to the dorms. I’m making it an early night tonight in anticipation of serious partying tomorrow evening.

ETA: And I've ended up sitting next to the same woman for the Sat morning session discussing the movie. More fun commentary.

Liveblogging Kalamazoo (Saturday 10-11:30 am)

Session 399: Matrons, Monsters, and Men: Beowulf (2007)

I find it amusing that, although the movie itself seems clearly aimed at a male viewership, both the panel and audience for this session are overwhelmingly female.

“Ond Hyre Seax Geteah Brad ond Brunecg”: Failing Swords and Angelina’s Heels in Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf (KellyAnn Fitzpatrick, Univ. at Albany)

Reviews the (rather overly blatant) equation the film makes between swords and penises: the tendency of Beowulf to drop/lose swords in the face of seductive female creatures, the sexlessness of Grendel (both in the absence of genitalia and the uselessness of swords to harm him, given sword=penis), to say nothing of all the various visual juxtapositions where the naked Beowulf’s crotch is conveniently screened by a random weapon in the foreground. The first “failing sword” is the inability of Grendel to be harmed with weapons, the second is Beowulf’s failure to harm Grendel’s Mom with weapons, both by the sword passing directly through her and by his later paralysis before her. In contrast with the poem’s portrayal of the conflict between Beowulf and G’s Mom as her being unable to attack him directly, in the movie she clearly chooses to attach him with seduction rather than force (a seduction that is, in some ways, grounded in the poem’s portrayal of the struggle as a wrestling match). The third failing sword comes in the battle with the dragon, when B’s sword is two short to reach the dragon’s heart and he must take drastic action to finish the fight. In the end, the feminine power of Grendels mother triumphs, not via the overt seduction, but because she is the (implied) means by which Beowulf gains his eternal fame.

The Water Dripped from Her like “Golden Chocolate”: Mother’s Feminine Threat in Beowulf (Michelle Kustarz, Wayne State Univ.)

Looks at the larger manuscript context of the Beowulf manuscript as “stories about monsters”, and with a general thread of relating monsters and women. One of the non-Beowulf stories involves Alexander destroying a group of monstrous women. In the earliest version, the reason given is “because of their greatness”, while in later versions this is shifted to “because of their uncleanness”. The story of Judith retells the Biblical story of Judith and Holofernes, with some interesting changes. The Biblical tale emphasizes Judith’s position as a chaste and faithful widow – a detail nearly invisible in the A.S. version, which characterizes her as a brave and fearless leader. (This is taken further in Cook’s (sp?) modern translation which chooses verbiage that characterizes her as a young maiden.) [me: I’m not sure where the “monster” motif is supposed to come in here, unless Holofernes is supposed to fill the role. Or maybe this is more generally about the “transformation” of female characters?] In the various Beowulf monster interactions various of the monsters are “transformed” either from nominally female creatures (such as Grendel’s mother) or asexual creatures (such as the sea monster) into highly sexualized female seductresses. [me: ok, here’s a parallel with the point she was making about Judith.] And yet, for the sake of a PG-13 rating, the naked seductress is visually asexual, with nipples and genitalia conveniently erased by the “dripping golden water”. Tying this back to the first story, here the monster displays no “uncleanness” – it has been erased by the “translation” just as it was introduced into the first story by a later re-write. And yet the means of her defeat of Beowulf is explicitly her wielding of devouring feminine sexual power. The dragon, she portrays as again representing a “feminine” monster as an embodiment of the vagina dentate. [me: I’m not sure I buy this entirely, given that the dragon is portrayed explicitly as a “son”, but I can see some arguments.] The dragon’s defeat by penetrating the one, small vulnerable spot with a sword/phallus reiterates its essential feminine nature.

Cyborg Masculinities in Zemeckis’s Beowulf (Laurie Dietz, DePaul Univ.)

The paper takes as its theme, the explicit severing of the poem-story from the movie-story and the ways in which the movie uses the “idea” of Beowulf to comment on masculinity. Further it looks at the “cyborg” nature of motion-capture film technology to extract “essentials” of the performance that are then interpreted more freely by the director. The cyborg represents the erasure of traditional social categories, such as gender and race, to create a myth of unity. In theory, this would suggest that motion-capture performance would resist the maintenance of traditional gender categories, or at least present that as a possibility. But the actual realization in Beowulf fails to pursue this possibility, instead embodying an orgy of hypermasculinity. The motion-capture process does clearly divorce the result from the limitations of the natural, but also from the consistency of the natural (e.g., the variable hairiness of Beowulf’s chest). The topic jumps a little here, but she makes an interesting point about the movie’s Unferth representing the anti-heroic “academic” who is concerned with truth and origins and dismissive of (or unable to achieve via) traditional masculine activities and concerns.

Liveblogging Kalamazoo: Saturday 1:30-3 pm

And it’s queer studies afternoon!

Session 435: Queer Friendship

Glittery Things: The Rhetoric of Sanctity and Female Homoaffective Desire in Hali Meidenhad and The Passion of Saint Margaret (Adin Lears, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Graduate Center, CUNY)

Purity is linked to the beauty and purity of precious stones. Holy people are described as being like gemstones and objects venerated as sacred were deemed less worthy if not adorned with gems. Books such as Hali Meidenhad were “sales pitches” to women for a cloistered life, with the attractions including homoaffective relationships that were both passionate and – technically – chaste. It helps to distinguish between “erotic” and “sexual” concepts, where the former does not necessarily impinge on chasteness. Women are encouraged to meditate on female figures whose physical beauty is presented as reflecting inner sanctity, contrasted with the effects of a worldly life, in the form of pregnancy, which is presented as detracting from attractiveness. The virgin bodies presented in texts such as S. Margaret can be viewed as women’s gift to women readers, creating homosocial relationships in parallel with the worldly gift-economy. These virgins also take on male characteristics such as agency (Margaret’s freeing herself from the dragon by the sign of the cross, a magico-religious act traditionally reserved for male figures) and impenetrability.

The Queer Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry (Jennifer N. Brown, Univ. of Hartford)

In the text, a priest (probably a disguised form of the author Jacques de Vitry himself) takes the hand of the holy woman Marie d’Oignies in a gesture of spiritual friendship that turns, in the moment, to an erotic stimulus, re-framing their relationship from priest-penitent and follower-holy woman to man-woman. The author then goes on to blame the episode on Marie for being so naïve and pious that she didn’t understand what effect she might have. He describes her metaphorically as a skin (drum-head?) stretched so tight between two crosses that she was dried out of fleshly feelings. A divine voice intervenes saying, “Do not touch me” which Marie disavows understanding of, but Jacques obeys. Thereafter he withdrew from her in order to control his response. [me: I’m still waiting for the queer content here … ah, ok] The “perversion” here is the desire of chaste for chaste and the erotic triangle between Jacques’ desire, Christ’s jealousy, and Marie as passive and unwitting object between them. [me: hmm, still doesn’t sound that far outside traditional heterosexual narrative structures] We get a flashback to Marie’s life as a new bride (who would rather have led an ascetic religious life) mortifying her body as penitence for not having control over that body (in the marriage bed). Jacques, as her confessor, had access to these intimate details of her life, helping set up the conflicting ways in which their relationship was framed. But while praising the holiness of her life (in his writings) as a model for all women, he simultaneously cautioned other women off from emulating the specifics of her practices.

Transitioning from Transvestite Relationship to Transgender Friendship: Expanding and Re-reading Lives of the Cross-Dressed Saints Using the Lens of Transgender and Friendship (E. James Chambers, Ball State Univ.)

There are 80 cross-dressing female saints recorded across medieval Europe. Discussion of the relative appropriateness of “cross-dressing” vs. “transvestite” vs. “transgender”, depending on whether the term imply an erotic purpose to the action or the degree to which the identify or simply the outward appearance of the other gender is taken on. [me: he’s making some broad-brush generalizations about the personal fulfillment opportunities for women in various social roles that are beginning to annoy me] The motivations behind the female cross-dressing in the saints’ lives are broad, from avoidance of female sexual vulnerability to her parents’ desire for maintaining control of economic resources (if only sons are allowed to inherit). One common theme in the stories is the dilemma of the cross-dressing women as inducing an apparently opposite-gender desire in women they come in contact with. Conversely, the CD woman, if operating in an all-male environment (e.g., monastery) may engender unwanted same-sex desire in the men around her. In both cases, the emphasis seems to be on desire itself as unwanted rather than on the specific genders involved. Another dilemma comes when the CD women are offered male authority roles (e.g., abbot of a monastery) and are torn between self-doubt regarding taking authority over men and the hazards of “outing” herself as a woman. Transitioning back to a female life often (although not invariably) results in an Unfortunate End. [me: I kind of lost the overarching thrust of the paper in the details of the examples. Bad listener! Bad!]

Liveblogging Kalamazoo (Saturday 3:30-5 pm)

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