Botanical Sources of Early Medicines
By William S. Keezer, for Bios (1963)
This article is a discussion of some early botanists and herbalists, with examples of common toxic, medicinal and sacred herbs that concern them in their work.
Regarding plants mentioned in the Travels and other useful things:
-Keezer discusses RHUBARB and its history as a medicinal plant (185)
-He discusses Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny the Elder, Ebers Papynus, and Rig-Veda as classical sources of plant information
-He discusses herbals and herbalists, including Apuleius Platonicus, Ortus Sanitatis, Herboarius Moguntinus, Tycharde Banckes, Peter Trevens, Leonard Fuch and John Parkinson
-The last of these herbalists – John Parkinson – apparently had an image of a vegetable lamb on the cover of his 1629 text Parasisi in sole, Paradisus Terrestris
-About the vegetable lamb, Keezer cites the following: [Guthrie, Douglas. A History of Medicine, J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1946].
Monday, November 29, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
Spices in India (article)
Spices in India
By M. Ilyas, for Economic Botany (1976)
This article is, as the title suggests, a discourse on spices in India. Ilyas details some of the typical uses of spices: [1] “a condiment and for seasoning food” (273), [2] “preservation and seasoning of meat” (273), [3] used in "medicines, cosmetics and the tobacco industry" (273), and [4] “act as stimulants, carminatives and diuretics” (273).
Ilyas includes a long description of the methods used to propagate, cultivate, harvest and prepare different varieties of pepper. Nothing about serpents and lemons, but if I need a scientific point of view to balance out Mandeville’s pepper narrative, note to self: here it is.
By M. Ilyas, for Economic Botany (1976)
This article is, as the title suggests, a discourse on spices in India. Ilyas details some of the typical uses of spices: [1] “a condiment and for seasoning food” (273), [2] “preservation and seasoning of meat” (273), [3] used in "medicines, cosmetics and the tobacco industry" (273), and [4] “act as stimulants, carminatives and diuretics” (273).
Ilyas includes a long description of the methods used to propagate, cultivate, harvest and prepare different varieties of pepper. Nothing about serpents and lemons, but if I need a scientific point of view to balance out Mandeville’s pepper narrative, note to self: here it is.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The Date of [Composition of] Mandeville's Travels (articles)
The Date of Mandeville’s Travels
By J. D. Thomas, for Modern Language Notes (1957)
and
The Date of Composition of Mandeville’s Travels
By Arpad Steiner, for Speculum (1934)
The Thomas piece is a brief article of fairly tangential relevance (to me). In it, Thomas presents a summary of the thoughts of critics (up until that point) on when the Travels might have been composed.
For my purposes, it is simply useful to note:
The actual date likes lies between “1355, the earliest year of authorship stated by any version” (Thomas 165) and “1371, the scribal date given in the oldest datable manuscript” (Thomas 165). Hamelius gives 1362 as the terminus a quo, with his likely date (accepted by some but by no means universally) as 1366 (Thomas 166).
The Steiner article, also brief, does not disagree with the above beyond setting the terminus a quo a bit later. It, predating Thomas by two decades and more, simply gives some historical background on different episodes in the Travels that can assist in the dating. Says Steiner, “the date of composition of Mandeville’s Travels may easily have been 1366” (Steiner 147), but certainly “the Travels were composed between 1365 and the early part of 1371” (Steiner 147).
Well: should anyone ask me when the Travels was written, I now have something to cover my ass.
By J. D. Thomas, for Modern Language Notes (1957)
and
The Date of Composition of Mandeville’s Travels
By Arpad Steiner, for Speculum (1934)
The Thomas piece is a brief article of fairly tangential relevance (to me). In it, Thomas presents a summary of the thoughts of critics (up until that point) on when the Travels might have been composed.
For my purposes, it is simply useful to note:
The actual date likes lies between “1355, the earliest year of authorship stated by any version” (Thomas 165) and “1371, the scribal date given in the oldest datable manuscript” (Thomas 165). Hamelius gives 1362 as the terminus a quo, with his likely date (accepted by some but by no means universally) as 1366 (Thomas 166).
The Steiner article, also brief, does not disagree with the above beyond setting the terminus a quo a bit later. It, predating Thomas by two decades and more, simply gives some historical background on different episodes in the Travels that can assist in the dating. Says Steiner, “the date of composition of Mandeville’s Travels may easily have been 1366” (Steiner 147), but certainly “the Travels were composed between 1365 and the early part of 1371” (Steiner 147).
Well: should anyone ask me when the Travels was written, I now have something to cover my ass.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Travels with Margery (chapter)
Travels with Margery: pilgrimage in context
By Rosalynn Voaden, a chapter in Eastward Bound (ed. Rosamund Allen, 2004)
Voaden’s chapter is concerned with Margery Kempe and the literary experience of pilgrimage from a feminine point of view. For Margery, claims Voaden, “Her restless nature resisted both spiritual and geographical boundaries, and she was prepared to face risk and hardship to respond to ‘the allure of the beyond’” (177).
Voaden (through Victor and Edith Turner) constructs pilgrimage as “a liminal period, when the participants are removed from their accustomed physical and social states and where a new kind of communitas, a ‘social antistructure’, can develop” (181).
For Margery, this is possible because her travels revolve around her partners en route and her interactions with them. Though Mandeville, at different points, mentions intermittent travel partners, his narrative is never mitigated by their actions, thoughts or characters. The Book of Margery Kempe relies on travel partners to help Margery enact the scenarios and pseudo-martyrdom that construct her character as that of a self-styled saint. Without their presence and actions, she could not act out the humiliation and suffering that allow her to feel she is imitating Christ.
Arguably, though, one might claim that Mandeville’s communitas is broader and more abstract – his predecessors and contemporaries in the genre of medieval travel writers, and his relationship to the culture and audience that received his book so favourably.
Voaden’s description of the organization and content of Margery’s text and of her reasons for traveling open a useful space for comparison with Mandeville. As Voaden points out, Margery includes no extraneous details in her narrative; all her text is devoted to bland, standard descriptions of well-known pilgrimage sites and Biblical places, and indications of her personal and deeply emotional (read: irrational and histrionic) reactions to those places. “This pattern continues throughout all her pilgrimages, and has caused some critics to wonder if she even went to these places, so marked is her lack of interest in her physical whereabouts” (185). Mandeville, conversely, is so invested in place that his encyclopaedic depth of interest and description is apparently too well-researched to be plausible. Go figure.
Anyway, an important distinction must be drawn between curiosity (curiositas), wisdom (sapientia) and knowledge (scientia) in medieval thought. For a strictly Christian traveler, curiosity is not a valid reason to travel. In fact, to some, “it was categorised as a vice. Indulgence in curiositas, it was believed, was morally dangerous, excited the senses and signified an unstable attitude of mind” (185). A devout pilgrim traveled in search of wisdom and knowledge, and for Margery, that means bare, literal descriptions of place that will not interfere with her response to what they represent – signals of Christ’s suffering, and the path to salvation. Mandeville, on the other hand, is a much more secular traveler. While he does have a religious bent, he also states explicitly at two distinct places and implicitly through the drive of his narrative that his intent in writing is to indulge the appetite of his audience for marvels and exotic things. He strikes a balance between morals and marvels, of course, but his taste for the fantastic means no man could happily call him a compass of proper devotion.
Voaden speaks thus of Margery’s experience of travel: “Just as a telescope brings distant objects into focus so that they become part of the immediate environment and enrich one’s perception of the world, so, for Margery Kempe, pilgrimage and travel for spiritual ends brought into her world distant lives and different devotional practices, diverse forms of spirituality and new ways to suffer for Christ. Travel therefore provided the lens through which she came to understand herself and her life, and consequently was of paramount importance in shaping her presentation of herself in her text as a visionary and holy woman” (191). Travel, I think, means something entirely different to Mandeville, who constructs himself as nothing more than a gout-ridden wanderer with a penchant for gripping tales and the spark of the fantastical.
But then again: Saint John of the Vegetable Lamb? Patron saint of storytellers, drifters, and hybrid half-nothings? That has a much better ring to it than Saint Margery…
By Rosalynn Voaden, a chapter in Eastward Bound (ed. Rosamund Allen, 2004)
Voaden’s chapter is concerned with Margery Kempe and the literary experience of pilgrimage from a feminine point of view. For Margery, claims Voaden, “Her restless nature resisted both spiritual and geographical boundaries, and she was prepared to face risk and hardship to respond to ‘the allure of the beyond’” (177).
Voaden (through Victor and Edith Turner) constructs pilgrimage as “a liminal period, when the participants are removed from their accustomed physical and social states and where a new kind of communitas, a ‘social antistructure’, can develop” (181).
For Margery, this is possible because her travels revolve around her partners en route and her interactions with them. Though Mandeville, at different points, mentions intermittent travel partners, his narrative is never mitigated by their actions, thoughts or characters. The Book of Margery Kempe relies on travel partners to help Margery enact the scenarios and pseudo-martyrdom that construct her character as that of a self-styled saint. Without their presence and actions, she could not act out the humiliation and suffering that allow her to feel she is imitating Christ.
Arguably, though, one might claim that Mandeville’s communitas is broader and more abstract – his predecessors and contemporaries in the genre of medieval travel writers, and his relationship to the culture and audience that received his book so favourably.
Voaden’s description of the organization and content of Margery’s text and of her reasons for traveling open a useful space for comparison with Mandeville. As Voaden points out, Margery includes no extraneous details in her narrative; all her text is devoted to bland, standard descriptions of well-known pilgrimage sites and Biblical places, and indications of her personal and deeply emotional (read: irrational and histrionic) reactions to those places. “This pattern continues throughout all her pilgrimages, and has caused some critics to wonder if she even went to these places, so marked is her lack of interest in her physical whereabouts” (185). Mandeville, conversely, is so invested in place that his encyclopaedic depth of interest and description is apparently too well-researched to be plausible. Go figure.
Anyway, an important distinction must be drawn between curiosity (curiositas), wisdom (sapientia) and knowledge (scientia) in medieval thought. For a strictly Christian traveler, curiosity is not a valid reason to travel. In fact, to some, “it was categorised as a vice. Indulgence in curiositas, it was believed, was morally dangerous, excited the senses and signified an unstable attitude of mind” (185). A devout pilgrim traveled in search of wisdom and knowledge, and for Margery, that means bare, literal descriptions of place that will not interfere with her response to what they represent – signals of Christ’s suffering, and the path to salvation. Mandeville, on the other hand, is a much more secular traveler. While he does have a religious bent, he also states explicitly at two distinct places and implicitly through the drive of his narrative that his intent in writing is to indulge the appetite of his audience for marvels and exotic things. He strikes a balance between morals and marvels, of course, but his taste for the fantastic means no man could happily call him a compass of proper devotion.
Voaden speaks thus of Margery’s experience of travel: “Just as a telescope brings distant objects into focus so that they become part of the immediate environment and enrich one’s perception of the world, so, for Margery Kempe, pilgrimage and travel for spiritual ends brought into her world distant lives and different devotional practices, diverse forms of spirituality and new ways to suffer for Christ. Travel therefore provided the lens through which she came to understand herself and her life, and consequently was of paramount importance in shaping her presentation of herself in her text as a visionary and holy woman” (191). Travel, I think, means something entirely different to Mandeville, who constructs himself as nothing more than a gout-ridden wanderer with a penchant for gripping tales and the spark of the fantastical.
But then again: Saint John of the Vegetable Lamb? Patron saint of storytellers, drifters, and hybrid half-nothings? That has a much better ring to it than Saint Margery…
Friday, November 19, 2010
Provincializing Medieval Europe (article)
Provincializing Medieval Europe: Mandeville's Cosmopolitan Utopia
By Karma Lochrie, for PMLA (2009)
I've always liked Karma Lochrie.
This article is not of outstanding relevance to me, but it does make some interesting points that bear mentioning:
Lochrie suggests that the Travels are a work of cosmopolitan utopianism (rather than the typical insular utopianism) that performs the act of "provincializing Christian Europe" (594).
For Lochrie, "By pursuing middleness in his travels . . . Mandeville succeeds in provincializing Western Christianity and European culture" (595). And "Mandeville's twinning of Aristotle's ethical principle of middleness with a geography of middleness establishes the utopian function of his text: to seek out middleness in his travels by way of uncovering an ethical principle for encountering the world" (594). For Mandeville, "The provincializing of the Latin Christian West . . . is an intermittent and cumulative project made up of his geographic imaginary and ethnographic encounters" (594).
Lochrie also makes an interesting point on the space for marvels in the Travels: "Discourse of the marvelous depends on a center-periphery epistemology that, in turn, depends on a series of binary oppositions of natural/unnatural, knowledge/ignorance, and rational/irrational. This epistemology is undone through the 'en-marvelling' of Mandeville - that is, through the reversal of the marveling gaze and an expanding of the field of the marvelous" (597). As Lochrie points out, Mandeville seems to share Jaques de Vitry's thoughts on the tolerance of differences - after all, "the one-eyes Cyclopes view all two-eyed creatures as marvels" (597), right?
By Karma Lochrie, for PMLA (2009)
I've always liked Karma Lochrie.
This article is not of outstanding relevance to me, but it does make some interesting points that bear mentioning:
Lochrie suggests that the Travels are a work of cosmopolitan utopianism (rather than the typical insular utopianism) that performs the act of "provincializing Christian Europe" (594).
For Lochrie, "By pursuing middleness in his travels . . . Mandeville succeeds in provincializing Western Christianity and European culture" (595). And "Mandeville's twinning of Aristotle's ethical principle of middleness with a geography of middleness establishes the utopian function of his text: to seek out middleness in his travels by way of uncovering an ethical principle for encountering the world" (594). For Mandeville, "The provincializing of the Latin Christian West . . . is an intermittent and cumulative project made up of his geographic imaginary and ethnographic encounters" (594).
Lochrie also makes an interesting point on the space for marvels in the Travels: "Discourse of the marvelous depends on a center-periphery epistemology that, in turn, depends on a series of binary oppositions of natural/unnatural, knowledge/ignorance, and rational/irrational. This epistemology is undone through the 'en-marvelling' of Mandeville - that is, through the reversal of the marveling gaze and an expanding of the field of the marvelous" (597). As Lochrie points out, Mandeville seems to share Jaques de Vitry's thoughts on the tolerance of differences - after all, "the one-eyes Cyclopes view all two-eyed creatures as marvels" (597), right?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
The diversity of mankind (chapter)
The diversity of mankind in The Book of John Mandeville
By Suzanne Conklin Akbari, a chapter in Eastward Bound (ed. Rosamund Allen, 2004)
As with many of the articles I've read recently, this is only peripherally related to my interest in Mandeville, and then only in terms of Akbari's general observations about the Travels.
Still, I am glad to find one more person who lays this as the foundation of their work: what makes Mandeville important "is not the validity of the traveller's observations, but rather his readers' enthusiastic reception of this portrait of the world" (156). I am not super interested in the made-for-BBC mystery of Mandeville's true identity, or the scholarly catfight of trashing him as a plagiarist. Like Akbari, I'm interested in the text, and its "extraordinary popularity, which persisted well into the seventeenth century, illustrat[ing] the power of the text to capture the imagination and to intersect with a range of cultural currents: exploration, nationalism and even affective piety" (156).
Akbari is primarily interested in monsters, racial diversity and the use of Macrobius' concept of climatic zones to understand the appearance and character of different races in the medieval period.
In this system of thought, people located in the "frigid" zones (extreme upper and lower, yellow in this illustration) are large and healthy, though frigid and unable to conceive children easily; they are light-skinned, light-haired and their bodies reflect the bright, clear climate. People in the "torrid" zone (in the center of this illustration, represented in red) are black in colour and tend to be phlegmatic, with soft bodies and impaired digestion. They become intoxicated easily, and also conceive (and miscarry) easily. The heat and humidity make them sluggish and lazy. People in the "temperate" zones (the blue in this illustration) represent a balance of the elements in each extreme: heat and cold, moisture and dryness, and correspondingly, health and character.
Though this bears on some non-botanical aspects of Mandeville (he assesses some of the people he encounters according to this system) I don't find it particularly useful for my research. I just included it because I think it's cool, and because I wonder what medieval people would have made of us brown-skinned natives of questionable character at the east/west extreme of their virtuous "temperate zones".
In addition to the balancing of climates, "The wonders of the world are balanced as well: Mandeville describes an amazing fruit, found in farthest India. It looks like a melon, but when ripe, it opens to reveal a little lamb inside, so that people eat 'bothe the frut and the best'. But this marvel, far from being an anomaly uniquely found in the exotic Orient, is simply an example of the balanced diversity of nature: Mandeville tells his eastern guides about the barnacle geese, animals that grow on trees in the British Isles . . . Wonders are found at each end of the climatic extremes, balances in accord and harmony" (161).
Another general discussion by Akbari is of some interest to me: the distinction between mirabilia and miracula. This distinction is made elsewhere, of course, but since it's made here...I might as well write about it now. Says Akbari, "The medieval understanding of monstrosity is further illuminated by the distinction between 'mirabilia', things which cause wonder simply because they are not understood, and 'miracula', things which are actually contrary to or beyond nature" (167). And, "This . . . disctinction is crucial to The Book of John Mandeville, where the presence of a variety of monstrous races and marvellous phenomena generates in the narrator (and in the reader) a naive sense of wonder. That sense of wonder is widened by the discovery that a rule which should normally hold true appears to be violated in nature. Such discoveries extend beyond the experience of observing the monstrous races; they occur, for example, when the animal or plant life of a given location does not correspond to what that territory ought to produce, according to the predictions of the natural philosophers" (167).
Distinguishing between different categories of wonderment is always important in life and literature, huh? I'd rather be accurate than emphatic. The real encounter with the Other (and the experience of being received as Other in another culture) is a strange experience in its own right. And the incredible things one can experience beyond the bounds of what is known? Are marvelous, if you experience them right. No need to fabricate - just to pitch the perfect balance needed to communicate to people who can only experience vicariously through your words the sense of wonder and beauty captured in a moment, and in a place.
I'm pretending to be philosophical because dinner is ready (for once I didn't have to cook) and I don't have anything critical to say about this text. I'm not gonna lie, I like Akbari, but I'm past the point of being able to feign cogency and academic rigour. I'll try again later.
By Suzanne Conklin Akbari, a chapter in Eastward Bound (ed. Rosamund Allen, 2004)
As with many of the articles I've read recently, this is only peripherally related to my interest in Mandeville, and then only in terms of Akbari's general observations about the Travels.
Still, I am glad to find one more person who lays this as the foundation of their work: what makes Mandeville important "is not the validity of the traveller's observations, but rather his readers' enthusiastic reception of this portrait of the world" (156). I am not super interested in the made-for-BBC mystery of Mandeville's true identity, or the scholarly catfight of trashing him as a plagiarist. Like Akbari, I'm interested in the text, and its "extraordinary popularity, which persisted well into the seventeenth century, illustrat[ing] the power of the text to capture the imagination and to intersect with a range of cultural currents: exploration, nationalism and even affective piety" (156).
Akbari is primarily interested in monsters, racial diversity and the use of Macrobius' concept of climatic zones to understand the appearance and character of different races in the medieval period.
In this system of thought, people located in the "frigid" zones (extreme upper and lower, yellow in this illustration) are large and healthy, though frigid and unable to conceive children easily; they are light-skinned, light-haired and their bodies reflect the bright, clear climate. People in the "torrid" zone (in the center of this illustration, represented in red) are black in colour and tend to be phlegmatic, with soft bodies and impaired digestion. They become intoxicated easily, and also conceive (and miscarry) easily. The heat and humidity make them sluggish and lazy. People in the "temperate" zones (the blue in this illustration) represent a balance of the elements in each extreme: heat and cold, moisture and dryness, and correspondingly, health and character.
Though this bears on some non-botanical aspects of Mandeville (he assesses some of the people he encounters according to this system) I don't find it particularly useful for my research. I just included it because I think it's cool, and because I wonder what medieval people would have made of us brown-skinned natives of questionable character at the east/west extreme of their virtuous "temperate zones".
In addition to the balancing of climates, "The wonders of the world are balanced as well: Mandeville describes an amazing fruit, found in farthest India. It looks like a melon, but when ripe, it opens to reveal a little lamb inside, so that people eat 'bothe the frut and the best'. But this marvel, far from being an anomaly uniquely found in the exotic Orient, is simply an example of the balanced diversity of nature: Mandeville tells his eastern guides about the barnacle geese, animals that grow on trees in the British Isles . . . Wonders are found at each end of the climatic extremes, balances in accord and harmony" (161).
Another general discussion by Akbari is of some interest to me: the distinction between mirabilia and miracula. This distinction is made elsewhere, of course, but since it's made here...I might as well write about it now. Says Akbari, "The medieval understanding of monstrosity is further illuminated by the distinction between 'mirabilia', things which cause wonder simply because they are not understood, and 'miracula', things which are actually contrary to or beyond nature" (167). And, "This . . . disctinction is crucial to The Book of John Mandeville, where the presence of a variety of monstrous races and marvellous phenomena generates in the narrator (and in the reader) a naive sense of wonder. That sense of wonder is widened by the discovery that a rule which should normally hold true appears to be violated in nature. Such discoveries extend beyond the experience of observing the monstrous races; they occur, for example, when the animal or plant life of a given location does not correspond to what that territory ought to produce, according to the predictions of the natural philosophers" (167).
Distinguishing between different categories of wonderment is always important in life and literature, huh? I'd rather be accurate than emphatic. The real encounter with the Other (and the experience of being received as Other in another culture) is a strange experience in its own right. And the incredible things one can experience beyond the bounds of what is known? Are marvelous, if you experience them right. No need to fabricate - just to pitch the perfect balance needed to communicate to people who can only experience vicariously through your words the sense of wonder and beauty captured in a moment, and in a place.
I'm pretending to be philosophical because dinner is ready (for once I didn't have to cook) and I don't have anything critical to say about this text. I'm not gonna lie, I like Akbari, but I'm past the point of being able to feign cogency and academic rigour. I'll try again later.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Craft and Idolatry (chapter)
Craft and Idolatry: “Sotylle” Devices in Mandeville’s Travels
By Scott Lightsey, from Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature (2007)
Lightsey’s interest in this chapter lies in the man-made mechanical marvels present in the Travels, namely the two golden birds in the episodes with the Old Man of the Mountain and in the court of the Great Chan of Cathay. Although I am not so interested in ornithology or machines, I think the arguments made by Lightsey here still speak broadly to the concept and understanding of nature and man’s relationship to it. Also, I share some of his sentiments about Mandeville’s authority and authenticity.
As Lightsey opens his chapter, he refers to SJM’s “spotty critical history with regard to his reputation for truth-telling” (137), but points out that “in the fourteenth century, his reputation for cataloguing the marvels and wonders of the east was unparalleled, and in both England and France his Travels was considered a worthy book of natural science and an unparalleled register of mirabilia” (136).
(Side note: I’ve noticed an astonishing number of scholars that don’t seem to care a whit about how repetitive they are. Really? You couldn’t think of any other adjective than “unparalleled”, and you absolutely had to use it twice in one sentence? Don’t tell me it’s stylistic, or for emphasis. You’re being lazy. Everything we do is art – don’t forget it.)
Lightsey continues, “Despite Mandeville’s dubious reputation among modern scholars, who find in his judicious compilation of source material a confabulated east never visited by the narrator, the popularity of his story was such that it proliferated in less than two decades into most major European languages, eclipsing the tales of Marco Polo and eventually finding its way, by the end of the Middle Ages, into the hands of Christopher Columbus. The text’s marvels are so choice, its descriptions so rich, that its pastiche rang more true than Rusticello’s story of the Polos’ actual voyages” (138).
But the marvels it contains are not mere embellishment. “These marvels are far more than static objects or window-dressing for the narrator’s fantastic journey; they are thematically integral to the structure and moral concerns underlying Mandeville’s work” (139).
The style of the writing points to one of its cleverest functions: “The author employs a first-person narrator to describe the wonders of his eastward journey, synthesizing varied source material into a seamless narrative apparently depicting personal experience. This style is calculated to invite reader participation in Mandeville’s journey of discovery” (140). However, while Lightsey intimates that readers are invited to participate primarily in a journey toward and through “Christian salvation history” (140), I don’t totally buy it. I think the comrades-in-the-journey tone calculated here speaks to a different moment in European history, when travel had become a more secularized experience and travel writers were expected to answer a taste for the simple exotic.
However, I agree with Lightsey’s argument that marvels in the Travels are “the token, the symbol, or term of exchange” (140) in the separation of east and west. And “What Mandeville’s journey offers, through his reports and observations of mirabilia, is a comparative look at the state of the author’s world” (140). It is through Mandeville that we can ably realize that “Marvels rehearsed in travel narratives and wonder-books were the intellectual currency of medieval European interest in the east . . . [and] contributed to the European taste for the exotic” (140). For the Travels in particular, “The exotic characters and geographies that so often draw critical attention . . . reflect the ways western audiences perceived the notion of travel or encounters with the unknown; in fact, it is through his mirabilia that one may find interesting avenues of access to medieval ways of thinking” (140).
In short, in reading the Travels, we receive not only a geography of marvels that maps the east, but also a “social geography” (142) that gives us incredible insight into the cultural imagination of the historical moment in which the text was popularized.
Interestingly, Lightsey also argues that “Mandeville’s wonder-filled journey eastward becomes a figural return to an earlier place and time, where European Christian values could be imagined preserved among the mirabilia of far lands. The terrestrial garden lying at the end of the journey signals hope for reform at home, and his portrayal of the false garden highlights the contrast between western life and eastern spirituality” (142-3).
I am going to skip over Lightsey’s extensive discussion of the mechanical birds in the Great Chan’s court, and look at some of his points around the “false paradise” Mandeville encounters. Lightsey’s purpose in looking at this false garden is mainly in examining the manmade marvels within it, but he does speak a bit to what it represents on a larger scale.
“Unlike the terrestrial garden formed by God to nurture prelapsarian humanity, this garden is an artificial paradise, contrived by the Old Man to pervert the wills of men to his murderous ends” (152). Within the Travels, this false paradise is also “the symbolic moral opposite of Prester John’s land” (152). Lightsey draws our attention to the “narratorial distance” (153) employed by Mandeville in this section, who foregoes his professed interest in strange wonders to give a quite perfunctory summary of the marvels in the false garden. Here, he lacks the curiosity displayed in the Chan’s court – whereas, there, he had an interest in understanding the means by which the marvels were created, in the false paradise the inherent evil of the artifice (designed not to titillate but manipulate) he shows no such inclination to examine and understand.
Lightsey makes two other brief points toward his conclusion that interest me:
-First, regarding the apple of Justinian in the statue at Constantinople: “This image [of the fallen apple] is understood as a token of Justinian’s, and by extension Christianity’s, loss of dominion over the territories of the earth” (156), but “the apple is also a dual symbol: its shape betokens the ‘world that is round’ about which Mandeville is concerned, and the apple is a symbolic reference to the Fall and the postlapsarian condition of mankind” (156). I like Lightsey’s reference to Justinian as “a sort of medieval Ozymandias” (156).
-Second, in reference to the small story about Seth traveling to paradise (near the narrative point where Mandeville is discussing the True Cross), Lightsey draws a parallel between Seth and Mandeville. Both seek terrestrial paradise – both are denied. And in their narratives, we find dual themes of loss and redemption.
By Scott Lightsey, from Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature (2007)
Lightsey’s interest in this chapter lies in the man-made mechanical marvels present in the Travels, namely the two golden birds in the episodes with the Old Man of the Mountain and in the court of the Great Chan of Cathay. Although I am not so interested in ornithology or machines, I think the arguments made by Lightsey here still speak broadly to the concept and understanding of nature and man’s relationship to it. Also, I share some of his sentiments about Mandeville’s authority and authenticity.
As Lightsey opens his chapter, he refers to SJM’s “spotty critical history with regard to his reputation for truth-telling” (137), but points out that “in the fourteenth century, his reputation for cataloguing the marvels and wonders of the east was unparalleled, and in both England and France his Travels was considered a worthy book of natural science and an unparalleled register of mirabilia” (136).
(Side note: I’ve noticed an astonishing number of scholars that don’t seem to care a whit about how repetitive they are. Really? You couldn’t think of any other adjective than “unparalleled”, and you absolutely had to use it twice in one sentence? Don’t tell me it’s stylistic, or for emphasis. You’re being lazy. Everything we do is art – don’t forget it.)
Lightsey continues, “Despite Mandeville’s dubious reputation among modern scholars, who find in his judicious compilation of source material a confabulated east never visited by the narrator, the popularity of his story was such that it proliferated in less than two decades into most major European languages, eclipsing the tales of Marco Polo and eventually finding its way, by the end of the Middle Ages, into the hands of Christopher Columbus. The text’s marvels are so choice, its descriptions so rich, that its pastiche rang more true than Rusticello’s story of the Polos’ actual voyages” (138).
But the marvels it contains are not mere embellishment. “These marvels are far more than static objects or window-dressing for the narrator’s fantastic journey; they are thematically integral to the structure and moral concerns underlying Mandeville’s work” (139).
The style of the writing points to one of its cleverest functions: “The author employs a first-person narrator to describe the wonders of his eastward journey, synthesizing varied source material into a seamless narrative apparently depicting personal experience. This style is calculated to invite reader participation in Mandeville’s journey of discovery” (140). However, while Lightsey intimates that readers are invited to participate primarily in a journey toward and through “Christian salvation history” (140), I don’t totally buy it. I think the comrades-in-the-journey tone calculated here speaks to a different moment in European history, when travel had become a more secularized experience and travel writers were expected to answer a taste for the simple exotic.
However, I agree with Lightsey’s argument that marvels in the Travels are “the token, the symbol, or term of exchange” (140) in the separation of east and west. And “What Mandeville’s journey offers, through his reports and observations of mirabilia, is a comparative look at the state of the author’s world” (140). It is through Mandeville that we can ably realize that “Marvels rehearsed in travel narratives and wonder-books were the intellectual currency of medieval European interest in the east . . . [and] contributed to the European taste for the exotic” (140). For the Travels in particular, “The exotic characters and geographies that so often draw critical attention . . . reflect the ways western audiences perceived the notion of travel or encounters with the unknown; in fact, it is through his mirabilia that one may find interesting avenues of access to medieval ways of thinking” (140).
In short, in reading the Travels, we receive not only a geography of marvels that maps the east, but also a “social geography” (142) that gives us incredible insight into the cultural imagination of the historical moment in which the text was popularized.
Interestingly, Lightsey also argues that “Mandeville’s wonder-filled journey eastward becomes a figural return to an earlier place and time, where European Christian values could be imagined preserved among the mirabilia of far lands. The terrestrial garden lying at the end of the journey signals hope for reform at home, and his portrayal of the false garden highlights the contrast between western life and eastern spirituality” (142-3).
I am going to skip over Lightsey’s extensive discussion of the mechanical birds in the Great Chan’s court, and look at some of his points around the “false paradise” Mandeville encounters. Lightsey’s purpose in looking at this false garden is mainly in examining the manmade marvels within it, but he does speak a bit to what it represents on a larger scale.
“Unlike the terrestrial garden formed by God to nurture prelapsarian humanity, this garden is an artificial paradise, contrived by the Old Man to pervert the wills of men to his murderous ends” (152). Within the Travels, this false paradise is also “the symbolic moral opposite of Prester John’s land” (152). Lightsey draws our attention to the “narratorial distance” (153) employed by Mandeville in this section, who foregoes his professed interest in strange wonders to give a quite perfunctory summary of the marvels in the false garden. Here, he lacks the curiosity displayed in the Chan’s court – whereas, there, he had an interest in understanding the means by which the marvels were created, in the false paradise the inherent evil of the artifice (designed not to titillate but manipulate) he shows no such inclination to examine and understand.
Lightsey makes two other brief points toward his conclusion that interest me:
-First, regarding the apple of Justinian in the statue at Constantinople: “This image [of the fallen apple] is understood as a token of Justinian’s, and by extension Christianity’s, loss of dominion over the territories of the earth” (156), but “the apple is also a dual symbol: its shape betokens the ‘world that is round’ about which Mandeville is concerned, and the apple is a symbolic reference to the Fall and the postlapsarian condition of mankind” (156). I like Lightsey’s reference to Justinian as “a sort of medieval Ozymandias” (156).
-Second, in reference to the small story about Seth traveling to paradise (near the narrative point where Mandeville is discussing the True Cross), Lightsey draws a parallel between Seth and Mandeville. Both seek terrestrial paradise – both are denied. And in their narratives, we find dual themes of loss and redemption.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Pliny and Roman Botany (article)
Pliny and Roman Botany
By Jerry Stannard, for Isis (1965)
First of all, can I just say that the practice of scholars embedding childish digs at their peers within published articles is clearly just part of the rich continuum that has culminated in whining, vicious teenage blogging?
This article seems to be one aspect of Stannard’s quest to rehabilitate the good name of Pliny: “. . . if Theophrastus was the Father of Botany, to Pliny belongs the honorific Father of the History of Botany” (423). Stannard admits Pliny’s errors: “He was gullible and uncritical, he lacked great originality, and he was not possessed of sufficient training always to understand the details of the scientific and technical problems he discussed” (420). However, he states that “. . . a study of the botanical portions of his writings, long overdue, will reveal not only that Pliny is an invaluable source for tracing the development of early botany, but also that he made important contributions of his own” (420).
In sum:
-Pliny makes liberal use of other sources of information, at times inheriting their errors, and at other times embellishing them with important details for which history has not credited him
-The personal, eyewitness investigations and observations he includes in his accounts point to a rigour and credibility not necessarily shared with his armchair-botanist compatriots
-His accounts include the first literary mentions of a number of plants, the prototypical modern physic garden, lost works hitherto unknown to the field, and a wealth of information on contemporary practices that are rarely recorded by others but provide important context for the study of botany
-Stannard also points to Pliny’s influence on modern botanical vocabulary through his place at the root of the encyclopaedic tradition
I’m not going to go very far with this article, because it’s only tangentially related at best. For my purposes, it’s simply weight behind the claim that Pliny was, in the time the Travels were composed, a botanical authority whose works were well-known throughout Europe and who may arguably have influenced both Mandeville’s text and the botanical imagination of the culture that received it.
By Jerry Stannard, for Isis (1965)
First of all, can I just say that the practice of scholars embedding childish digs at their peers within published articles is clearly just part of the rich continuum that has culminated in whining, vicious teenage blogging?
This article seems to be one aspect of Stannard’s quest to rehabilitate the good name of Pliny: “. . . if Theophrastus was the Father of Botany, to Pliny belongs the honorific Father of the History of Botany” (423). Stannard admits Pliny’s errors: “He was gullible and uncritical, he lacked great originality, and he was not possessed of sufficient training always to understand the details of the scientific and technical problems he discussed” (420). However, he states that “. . . a study of the botanical portions of his writings, long overdue, will reveal not only that Pliny is an invaluable source for tracing the development of early botany, but also that he made important contributions of his own” (420).
In sum:
-Pliny makes liberal use of other sources of information, at times inheriting their errors, and at other times embellishing them with important details for which history has not credited him
-The personal, eyewitness investigations and observations he includes in his accounts point to a rigour and credibility not necessarily shared with his armchair-botanist compatriots
-His accounts include the first literary mentions of a number of plants, the prototypical modern physic garden, lost works hitherto unknown to the field, and a wealth of information on contemporary practices that are rarely recorded by others but provide important context for the study of botany
-Stannard also points to Pliny’s influence on modern botanical vocabulary through his place at the root of the encyclopaedic tradition
I’m not going to go very far with this article, because it’s only tangentially related at best. For my purposes, it’s simply weight behind the claim that Pliny was, in the time the Travels were composed, a botanical authority whose works were well-known throughout Europe and who may arguably have influenced both Mandeville’s text and the botanical imagination of the culture that received it.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Of smelly seas and ashen apples (chapter)
Of smelly seas and ashen apples: two German pilgrims’ view of the East
By Anne Simon, a chapter from Eastward Bound (ed. Rosamund Allen, 2004)
In this chapter, Simon follows two German travelers – Ludolf von Suchem (1350) and Hans Tucher (roughly 150 years later) through their pilgrimages to the east. As the chapter title indicates, both pilgrims write of the ashen apple that appears in Mandeville.
Says LvS, “. . . all the country round about is full of trees and great fruits, exceeding fair to see; but when these fruits are plucked and broken open, they are full of dust and ashes within, and for three days the hands of him who plucked them cannot be rid of a vile stench; for even all the country round about it is full of God’s curse” (196).
He’s writing of the land around the Dead See, of which HT writes similarly: “The stench by the Dead Sea is vile, yet many pretty trees are to be found there which bear fruit that is large, attractive and appealing, just like nice apples. However, when you pick them, on the inside these fruit are full of dust and emit an evil smell” (196).
Of course, the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah bordered the Dead Sea, and “Both authors explicitly connect the overwhelming stench of the Dead Sea and its inability to support life to the evil practiced in these cities” (196).
Simon offers the following interpretation of the moralized nature presented to us by LvS, HT and Mandeville, among others: “Apples recall Original Sin and the Fall of Man, or which the vice that led ultimately to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was but one manifestation. Given their deceptive appeal, they may also symbolise the vanity of all earthly appearances, especially in comparison with the eternal truths to which pilgrimage bear witness” (196).
What does Mandeville have to say on the matter? Quoting from the Penguin modern:
“By the side of this sea grow trees that bear apples of fine colour and delightful to look at; but when they are broken or cut, only ashes and dust and cinders are found inside, as a token of the vengeance that God took on those five cities and the countryside roundabout, burning them with the fires of Hell” (90).
Like other travelers, he includes this piece of information – whether as a means of moralizing, as a simple observation, or more likely because it had already become a standard feature in travel narratives mentioning the Dead Sea to which M. was compelled to conform. In any event, he is clear and vehement in his connection of the phenomenon to the fires of Hell. It is an interest token of moral nature that is of clear importance to European travelers. It does not concern Simon (her article is not actually about Sodom apples) but I am also interested in the real plant that medieval travelers likely understood to be an “apple of ash”, and on the prevailing use of the Sodom apple as a symbol in modern queer literature. If connecting Mandeville with Colm Toibin isn’t bizarre, I don’t know what is.
What Simon does is take us briefly through the travel narratives composed by each of these German travelers. This provides lots of interesting insight into the idea of travel writing and pilgrimage, the conception of audience, and the impetus for writing and communicating the experience of travel.
In no particular order:
-Simon mentions at a certain point, in relation to LvS, that he intentionally omitted details about things in exotic places that were commonplace there. That is, even if they are unknown to home audiences, the quality of being commonplace in their indigenous contexts struck down the worthiness of these objects in LvS’s narrative. So, in Famagusta, LvS states “I say nothing about spices, for they are as common there as bread is here” (200). I think that Mandeville is not so discerning, but it is interesting to reflect on the extent to which the personal qualities and prejudices of the author limit or mitigate the information received by the audience.
-Of the distinctly religious discourse in pilgrimage narratives from the Holy Land: “. . . missing from this and indeed many other pilgrimage reports is any explicit expression of personal piety or jubilation on finally seeing the places of Christ’s ministry so familiar from the Bible” (202). I think this is true of Mandeville and many other authors, any might be attributed to a desire to make it simple for the audience to experience the travel vicariously without feeling inhibited by the author’s own specific personal, emotional or spiritual investment. But I guess it depends on your purpose in writing. When I think back (with a small shudder) on Margery Kempe, I seem to remember nothing BUT passionate weeping at the firsthand experience of Biblical places. Then again, she was basically a self-styled saint who probably expected her readers to want to mimic and assume HER experience just as she mimicked and assumed that of Christ.
-Simon mentions LvS’s relative tolerance toward people of other religions (204). This is largely true of Mandeville but not, apparently, universally amongst medieval travel writers. (Is anything ever universally true?)
-LvS writes of the Bedouins in almost the exact same language as Mandeville. (Shit, is he a source used by Mandeville and I’m just forgetting? That would be embarrassing. Jessie: “Wow, these are super similar!” Committee: “Well, Jessie, that’s because ONE IS PLAGIARISING THE OTHER.”) Anyway, the point is made that they are swarthy, uncouth nomads who neither sow nor reap, and are therefore EVIL. (TruFacts: The proper term for this is “Disney Logic”. Or should be, anyway.) Says Simon, “Even if the characteristics singled out for description reflect the facts, swarthiness and ugliness are signs of the diabolic with which the genuinely strange and threatening are associated. Bedouins live outside regulated urban communities, dress differently, and enjoy a way of life that must have been completely incomprehensible to pilgrims” (205). I’d like to take this one step further and look at how their values regarding and interactions with the natural world are also read as an indication of their spiritual state.
-LvS apparently mentions barnacle geese in his narrative, at least according to Simon, and perhaps the vegetable lamb as well (though I’d think she’d have mentioned). But Simon has a fairly pithy summary of why the fantastical cannot be dismissed, even if we don’t find it plausible: “The for-us-unlikely is not questioned, possibly because in God’s Creation, everything is possible. The Bible itself bears witness to the existence of giants (Genesis 6:4); fantastic creatures were documented in classical and oriental travel literature and depicted on the margins of medieval mappaemundi. Besides this, the exotic was essential to the poetics of the Other, especially of the Orient” (206).
-On the practice of incorporating existing material into personal travel writing, Simon upholds Hans Tucher as evidence that it is not an unusual method – he had a particular “skill in integrating into the narrative material from other sources, including legendaries, chronicles, mythology, other pilgrimage reports, oral traditions and information passed on by monks, guides and local inhabitants” (209). Further, his sources are not acknowledged. So why does Mandeville get such a bad rap for doing the same, huh? Huh? Okay, there’s probably a good reason why that I’m just too tired to think of.
So, in sum: a useful commentary on some of the conventions of medieval travel writing with examples from outside of England/France that still show important commonalities with the texts I stare at balefully every day.
By Anne Simon, a chapter from Eastward Bound (ed. Rosamund Allen, 2004)
In this chapter, Simon follows two German travelers – Ludolf von Suchem (1350) and Hans Tucher (roughly 150 years later) through their pilgrimages to the east. As the chapter title indicates, both pilgrims write of the ashen apple that appears in Mandeville.
Says LvS, “. . . all the country round about is full of trees and great fruits, exceeding fair to see; but when these fruits are plucked and broken open, they are full of dust and ashes within, and for three days the hands of him who plucked them cannot be rid of a vile stench; for even all the country round about it is full of God’s curse” (196).
He’s writing of the land around the Dead See, of which HT writes similarly: “The stench by the Dead Sea is vile, yet many pretty trees are to be found there which bear fruit that is large, attractive and appealing, just like nice apples. However, when you pick them, on the inside these fruit are full of dust and emit an evil smell” (196).
Of course, the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah bordered the Dead Sea, and “Both authors explicitly connect the overwhelming stench of the Dead Sea and its inability to support life to the evil practiced in these cities” (196).
Simon offers the following interpretation of the moralized nature presented to us by LvS, HT and Mandeville, among others: “Apples recall Original Sin and the Fall of Man, or which the vice that led ultimately to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was but one manifestation. Given their deceptive appeal, they may also symbolise the vanity of all earthly appearances, especially in comparison with the eternal truths to which pilgrimage bear witness” (196).
What does Mandeville have to say on the matter? Quoting from the Penguin modern:
“By the side of this sea grow trees that bear apples of fine colour and delightful to look at; but when they are broken or cut, only ashes and dust and cinders are found inside, as a token of the vengeance that God took on those five cities and the countryside roundabout, burning them with the fires of Hell” (90).
Like other travelers, he includes this piece of information – whether as a means of moralizing, as a simple observation, or more likely because it had already become a standard feature in travel narratives mentioning the Dead Sea to which M. was compelled to conform. In any event, he is clear and vehement in his connection of the phenomenon to the fires of Hell. It is an interest token of moral nature that is of clear importance to European travelers. It does not concern Simon (her article is not actually about Sodom apples) but I am also interested in the real plant that medieval travelers likely understood to be an “apple of ash”, and on the prevailing use of the Sodom apple as a symbol in modern queer literature. If connecting Mandeville with Colm Toibin isn’t bizarre, I don’t know what is.
What Simon does is take us briefly through the travel narratives composed by each of these German travelers. This provides lots of interesting insight into the idea of travel writing and pilgrimage, the conception of audience, and the impetus for writing and communicating the experience of travel.
In no particular order:
-Simon mentions at a certain point, in relation to LvS, that he intentionally omitted details about things in exotic places that were commonplace there. That is, even if they are unknown to home audiences, the quality of being commonplace in their indigenous contexts struck down the worthiness of these objects in LvS’s narrative. So, in Famagusta, LvS states “I say nothing about spices, for they are as common there as bread is here” (200). I think that Mandeville is not so discerning, but it is interesting to reflect on the extent to which the personal qualities and prejudices of the author limit or mitigate the information received by the audience.
-Of the distinctly religious discourse in pilgrimage narratives from the Holy Land: “. . . missing from this and indeed many other pilgrimage reports is any explicit expression of personal piety or jubilation on finally seeing the places of Christ’s ministry so familiar from the Bible” (202). I think this is true of Mandeville and many other authors, any might be attributed to a desire to make it simple for the audience to experience the travel vicariously without feeling inhibited by the author’s own specific personal, emotional or spiritual investment. But I guess it depends on your purpose in writing. When I think back (with a small shudder) on Margery Kempe, I seem to remember nothing BUT passionate weeping at the firsthand experience of Biblical places. Then again, she was basically a self-styled saint who probably expected her readers to want to mimic and assume HER experience just as she mimicked and assumed that of Christ.
-Simon mentions LvS’s relative tolerance toward people of other religions (204). This is largely true of Mandeville but not, apparently, universally amongst medieval travel writers. (Is anything ever universally true?)
-LvS writes of the Bedouins in almost the exact same language as Mandeville. (Shit, is he a source used by Mandeville and I’m just forgetting? That would be embarrassing. Jessie: “Wow, these are super similar!” Committee: “Well, Jessie, that’s because ONE IS PLAGIARISING THE OTHER.”) Anyway, the point is made that they are swarthy, uncouth nomads who neither sow nor reap, and are therefore EVIL. (TruFacts: The proper term for this is “Disney Logic”. Or should be, anyway.) Says Simon, “Even if the characteristics singled out for description reflect the facts, swarthiness and ugliness are signs of the diabolic with which the genuinely strange and threatening are associated. Bedouins live outside regulated urban communities, dress differently, and enjoy a way of life that must have been completely incomprehensible to pilgrims” (205). I’d like to take this one step further and look at how their values regarding and interactions with the natural world are also read as an indication of their spiritual state.
-LvS apparently mentions barnacle geese in his narrative, at least according to Simon, and perhaps the vegetable lamb as well (though I’d think she’d have mentioned). But Simon has a fairly pithy summary of why the fantastical cannot be dismissed, even if we don’t find it plausible: “The for-us-unlikely is not questioned, possibly because in God’s Creation, everything is possible. The Bible itself bears witness to the existence of giants (Genesis 6:4); fantastic creatures were documented in classical and oriental travel literature and depicted on the margins of medieval mappaemundi. Besides this, the exotic was essential to the poetics of the Other, especially of the Orient” (206).
-On the practice of incorporating existing material into personal travel writing, Simon upholds Hans Tucher as evidence that it is not an unusual method – he had a particular “skill in integrating into the narrative material from other sources, including legendaries, chronicles, mythology, other pilgrimage reports, oral traditions and information passed on by monks, guides and local inhabitants” (209). Further, his sources are not acknowledged. So why does Mandeville get such a bad rap for doing the same, huh? Huh? Okay, there’s probably a good reason why that I’m just too tired to think of.
So, in sum: a useful commentary on some of the conventions of medieval travel writing with examples from outside of England/France that still show important commonalities with the texts I stare at balefully every day.
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Story of Pinna and the Syrian Lamb (article)
The Story of Pinna and the Syrian Lamb
By Berthold Laufer, for The Journal of American Folklore (1915)
Every time I read an article by Berthold Laufer, I feel like I've been schooled.
Anyway:
Laufer's article begins with an assessment of the legends concerning pinna, named in some Chinese myths (in the Later Han Dynasty, for example, AD 25-220) as "water-sheep" (103). The pinna is a type of mollusc, rooted to a particular spot on the sea bed by threadlike filaments called byssi. The molluscs were a source of pearls and meat, and the byssi were spun into a fine golden cloth of surpassing beauty.
The pinna's importance is well-documented, and its function in the production of textiles has Hellenistic roots.
Aristotle mentions the pinna in a discourse on the hierarchy of the living world: though he places plants below animals in the spectrum of living things, within the realm of plants there is a hierarchy too. Some plants are closer than others to the rank of animals - particularly those living in the sea which exhibit animal characteristics (106). To show the occasional difficulty in discerning between plant and animal, Aristotle points to the pinna: "devoid of motion, [the pinna] is rooted like a plant to a fixed spot, and must perish when detached from its intrenchment." Tricky thing: it exhibits both plant and animal characteristics.
The pinna has a strong presence in early literature, mentioned by Aristotle, Theophrastus, Pliny, Aelian and others. It also has a strong presence in Chinese and Arabic legends. For Laufer, the transformation in legend to a terrestrial vegetable lamb simply "represents a metamorphosis of the biological condition of the" pinna" (117). His foundation for discussing the terrestrial vegetable lamb is sound, and bears repeating:
"I propose to examine this curious legend without any bias toward speculations which have previously been advanced" (116). And, "The student of folk-lore and the trained observer will be conscious of two points, - first that the germ of a fact or observation relative to natural history underlies the legend; and, second, that, as not all its constituents can satisfactorily be explained from natural events, it must have been construed with a certain end in view, which may have an allegorical purport or religious cause" (116).
Religious cause, hoo boy, just wait until he kicks off his discussion of some Talmudic texts and Syrian Christian symbolism. Anyway! Before we get there...
Now, Laufer first does a neat little pirouette and discusses the wide range of Chinese and other texts that discuss the vegetable lamb. Beyond the early legend of the water-sheep (pinna), and serving as a "continuation or further development of it" (115), we have a tradition in the Annals of the T'ang Dynasty (618-906). Here, "There are lambs engendered in the soil. The inhabitants wait till they are going to sprout, and then build enclosures around as a preventative measure for wild beasts that might rush in from outside to devour them" (115). These lambs are attached to the ground by an umbilical cord which, if forcibly severed, will kill the lamb. However, if the lambs separate themselves naturally from their "stalk", they become free animals. But it's key that the separation is instigated by the lamb itself.
Thus, when the men are ready for the lambs to be separated, in some versions of the legend they storm the pens on horseback bearing swords and shouting to frighten the lambs into severing their umbilical cords in order to flee. And interestingly, some Arabic stories around the marine sheep - the pinna - have a neat parallel. They claim that a crustacean predates the pinna, frightening the mollusk into "dropping" its byssi (threads). The crustacean consumes the mollusk, and the threads drift ashore, where they are collected by people and woven into textiles. In this Arabic tradition, the horsemen and the crustaceans, bearing their swords and pincers, serve much the same function.
Through this sort of metamorphoses of legends from sea-lamb to terrestrial zoophyte, Laufer also connects the pinna and the land-based vegetable lamb to a figure found in the Talmud that takes the form of a man that is connected to the ground by a stalk and stem. Where he takes it next breaks my brain:
The Talmudic text (the Mishna Kilaim, VIII, 5) refers to adne sadeh (translated by Laufer as "lords of the field"). In a commentary on this passage, Rabbi Simeon (d. 1235) claims this creature is "the man of the mountain", which "draws its food out of the soil by means of the umbilical cord: if its navel be cut, it cannot live" (120). Further, one Rabbi Meir claims there is an animal that "issues from the earth like the stem of a plant, just as a gourd. In all respects . . . [it] has a human form" (120), and "As far as the stem (or umbilical cord) stretches, it devours the herbage all around. Whoever is intent on capturing this animal must not approach it, but tear at the cord until it is ruptured, whereupon the animal soon dies" (120).
How do we interpret this? Says Laufer, speaking of symbolism in the Syrian Christian tradition, this Talmudic "man of the mountain" figure "unquestionably represents an illusion to the 'Divine Lamb standing on Mount Sion'" (121). However, "It is inconceivable that Christ should have been conceived as a lamb immovably rooting in the soil" (121).
Rather, ". . . it was the faithful who were thus depicted, either as the retinue of the Good Pastor, or enjoying the delights of Paradise after their Salvation. Essentially, the "lambs" are devotees, and the "umbilical cord" represents their attachment to earthly pleasures. The "lambs" are threatened by "beasts" (temptations) and can be protected by a "shepherd" (Christ) only to a point: they must ultimately save themselves by cutting the tether of their own umbilical cord (an act that cannot be performed on their behalf without killing them, as we see in the vegetable lamb/pinna legend). The "mounted horsemen" that frighten the "lambs" into freeing themselves actually represent the Last Judgment, and the severance of the "umbilical cord" frees them for redemption into Heaven.
Heavy shit.
However, as Laufer points out, the spiritual drift of the sacred Syrian allegory had long sunk into oblivion" (125) by the time Odoric and Mandeville were writing about the vegetable lamb. As both medieval travelers locate their vegetable lambs in Asia and offer a "worthy counterpart" (125) to the contemporaneous Chinese version, Laufer draws a connection between the two that has Odoric and Mandeville merely modifying an existing Oriental legend.
Interestingly, Laufer is quite vehement in his disgracing of Henry Lee (author of The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: a Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant). The main points of his attack are (1) the fact that cotton production was well-known in Asia and Europe and an unlikely thing for people to widely mistake, and (2) his assessment takes into account only European legends and not the wealth of Asian ones. Still, he credits Lee with undoing the fable that the source of the vegetable lamb legend is in the manipulated rhizomes of a fern tree.
All in all, a long, frighteningly rigorous article. To read Laufer with Lee is to get a more balanced idea of how the legend grew in Asia and Europe respectively, and how the legends were received, modified and embellished as cultural objects. I'll write about Lee's booklet soon.
By Berthold Laufer, for The Journal of American Folklore (1915)
Every time I read an article by Berthold Laufer, I feel like I've been schooled.
Anyway:
Laufer's article begins with an assessment of the legends concerning pinna, named in some Chinese myths (in the Later Han Dynasty, for example, AD 25-220) as "water-sheep" (103). The pinna is a type of mollusc, rooted to a particular spot on the sea bed by threadlike filaments called byssi. The molluscs were a source of pearls and meat, and the byssi were spun into a fine golden cloth of surpassing beauty.
The pinna's importance is well-documented, and its function in the production of textiles has Hellenistic roots.
Aristotle mentions the pinna in a discourse on the hierarchy of the living world: though he places plants below animals in the spectrum of living things, within the realm of plants there is a hierarchy too. Some plants are closer than others to the rank of animals - particularly those living in the sea which exhibit animal characteristics (106). To show the occasional difficulty in discerning between plant and animal, Aristotle points to the pinna: "devoid of motion, [the pinna] is rooted like a plant to a fixed spot, and must perish when detached from its intrenchment." Tricky thing: it exhibits both plant and animal characteristics.
The pinna has a strong presence in early literature, mentioned by Aristotle, Theophrastus, Pliny, Aelian and others. It also has a strong presence in Chinese and Arabic legends. For Laufer, the transformation in legend to a terrestrial vegetable lamb simply "represents a metamorphosis of the biological condition of the" pinna" (117). His foundation for discussing the terrestrial vegetable lamb is sound, and bears repeating:
"I propose to examine this curious legend without any bias toward speculations which have previously been advanced" (116). And, "The student of folk-lore and the trained observer will be conscious of two points, - first that the germ of a fact or observation relative to natural history underlies the legend; and, second, that, as not all its constituents can satisfactorily be explained from natural events, it must have been construed with a certain end in view, which may have an allegorical purport or religious cause" (116).
Religious cause, hoo boy, just wait until he kicks off his discussion of some Talmudic texts and Syrian Christian symbolism. Anyway! Before we get there...
Now, Laufer first does a neat little pirouette and discusses the wide range of Chinese and other texts that discuss the vegetable lamb. Beyond the early legend of the water-sheep (pinna), and serving as a "continuation or further development of it" (115), we have a tradition in the Annals of the T'ang Dynasty (618-906). Here, "There are lambs engendered in the soil. The inhabitants wait till they are going to sprout, and then build enclosures around as a preventative measure for wild beasts that might rush in from outside to devour them" (115). These lambs are attached to the ground by an umbilical cord which, if forcibly severed, will kill the lamb. However, if the lambs separate themselves naturally from their "stalk", they become free animals. But it's key that the separation is instigated by the lamb itself.
Thus, when the men are ready for the lambs to be separated, in some versions of the legend they storm the pens on horseback bearing swords and shouting to frighten the lambs into severing their umbilical cords in order to flee. And interestingly, some Arabic stories around the marine sheep - the pinna - have a neat parallel. They claim that a crustacean predates the pinna, frightening the mollusk into "dropping" its byssi (threads). The crustacean consumes the mollusk, and the threads drift ashore, where they are collected by people and woven into textiles. In this Arabic tradition, the horsemen and the crustaceans, bearing their swords and pincers, serve much the same function.
Through this sort of metamorphoses of legends from sea-lamb to terrestrial zoophyte, Laufer also connects the pinna and the land-based vegetable lamb to a figure found in the Talmud that takes the form of a man that is connected to the ground by a stalk and stem. Where he takes it next breaks my brain:
The Talmudic text (the Mishna Kilaim, VIII, 5) refers to adne sadeh (translated by Laufer as "lords of the field"). In a commentary on this passage, Rabbi Simeon (d. 1235) claims this creature is "the man of the mountain", which "draws its food out of the soil by means of the umbilical cord: if its navel be cut, it cannot live" (120). Further, one Rabbi Meir claims there is an animal that "issues from the earth like the stem of a plant, just as a gourd. In all respects . . . [it] has a human form" (120), and "As far as the stem (or umbilical cord) stretches, it devours the herbage all around. Whoever is intent on capturing this animal must not approach it, but tear at the cord until it is ruptured, whereupon the animal soon dies" (120).
How do we interpret this? Says Laufer, speaking of symbolism in the Syrian Christian tradition, this Talmudic "man of the mountain" figure "unquestionably represents an illusion to the 'Divine Lamb standing on Mount Sion'" (121). However, "It is inconceivable that Christ should have been conceived as a lamb immovably rooting in the soil" (121).
Rather, ". . . it was the faithful who were thus depicted, either as the retinue of the Good Pastor, or enjoying the delights of Paradise after their Salvation. Essentially, the "lambs" are devotees, and the "umbilical cord" represents their attachment to earthly pleasures. The "lambs" are threatened by "beasts" (temptations) and can be protected by a "shepherd" (Christ) only to a point: they must ultimately save themselves by cutting the tether of their own umbilical cord (an act that cannot be performed on their behalf without killing them, as we see in the vegetable lamb/pinna legend). The "mounted horsemen" that frighten the "lambs" into freeing themselves actually represent the Last Judgment, and the severance of the "umbilical cord" frees them for redemption into Heaven.
Heavy shit.
However, as Laufer points out, the spiritual drift of the sacred Syrian allegory had long sunk into oblivion" (125) by the time Odoric and Mandeville were writing about the vegetable lamb. As both medieval travelers locate their vegetable lambs in Asia and offer a "worthy counterpart" (125) to the contemporaneous Chinese version, Laufer draws a connection between the two that has Odoric and Mandeville merely modifying an existing Oriental legend.
Interestingly, Laufer is quite vehement in his disgracing of Henry Lee (author of The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: a Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant). The main points of his attack are (1) the fact that cotton production was well-known in Asia and Europe and an unlikely thing for people to widely mistake, and (2) his assessment takes into account only European legends and not the wealth of Asian ones. Still, he credits Lee with undoing the fable that the source of the vegetable lamb legend is in the manipulated rhizomes of a fern tree.
All in all, a long, frighteningly rigorous article. To read Laufer with Lee is to get a more balanced idea of how the legend grew in Asia and Europe respectively, and how the legends were received, modified and embellished as cultural objects. I'll write about Lee's booklet soon.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Engelbert Kaempfer and the Myth of the Scythian Lamb (article)
Engelbert Kaempfer and the Myth of the Scythian Lamb
By Robert W. Carrubba, for The Classical World (1993)
This article opens with a substantial (for an article) biography of Engelbert Kaempfer, a German scholar and physician whose travels (1683-93) gave him the opportunity to personally research and report on the origin of the vegetable lamb myth.
Carrubba points to Kaempfer's extensive training, his firm grounding in both Humanities and Sciences, his belief in "the primacy of reason and scientific methodology" (41) and other qualities that make him a reliable reporter on the V.L. In addition, he seems to have composed works on Persian and Japanese botany.
Carrubba includes a nice, concise summary of the lamb myth, which I'll include here in case I need to write one some day and find it's more prudent to copy and credit:
"In common form, the myth has it that the Scythian Lamb is a zoophyte (plant-animal or vegetable lamb) which grows from the ground on a stem attached to its navel. In all other respects the creature looks like a real lamb of flesh and blood with four legs and a sizeable tail. The Lamb of Scythia or Tartary feeds on the grass about it and is a prey for wolves, though not for other carnivores." (43)
In discussing Kaempfer's report on the vegetable lamb, Carrubba first summarizes its organization:
"Kaempfer's report o nthe Scythian Lamb is organized as follows: (1) credulity and misunderstanding of terms created the fable; (2) the conventional description of the creature; (3) etymology of the word Borometz (Borametz); (4) description of a real breed of Scythian Lamb; (5) extraction of the lamb fetus; (6) preparation of the skins; (7) debunking of the myth, based on eyewitness investigation; (8) ascription of the origin of the myth to ignorance, inattentiveness, and the human inclination to believe in wonders." (44)
I won't get too far into Carrubba's rehashing of Kaempfer's arguments. Why? Because a couple of centuries after Kaempfer and before Carrubba, Henry Lee sat down and penned a great little booklet that explains everything in great detail, from the possible roots of the myth through all the major attempts to explain and understand it. The men and their peers ultimately reached different conclusions -
(1) that the origin was based in folk art made from manipulated fern tree rhizomes,
(2) that it was rooted in a misunderstanding/mistranslation of cotton, and
(3) that it could be traced to the practice of removing fetal lambs from the womb for their soft skins, resulting in misleading "scientific specimens"
What is perhaps most reassuring about Kaempfer is the fact that his report is based on eyewitness investigation. That lends him a credibility that is lacking in some other folks who discuss the zoophytic phenomenon.
As usual, no direct bearing on Mandeville, but the article points to the place the vegetable lamb had in the collective imagination of medieval and early modern Europe, and the whole spectrum of response (from Erasmus Darwin's airy-fairy poems to Kaempfer's rigorous scientific report) to an idea that Mandeville helped to solidify within the culture of the period.
By Robert W. Carrubba, for The Classical World (1993)
This article opens with a substantial (for an article) biography of Engelbert Kaempfer, a German scholar and physician whose travels (1683-93) gave him the opportunity to personally research and report on the origin of the vegetable lamb myth.
Carrubba points to Kaempfer's extensive training, his firm grounding in both Humanities and Sciences, his belief in "the primacy of reason and scientific methodology" (41) and other qualities that make him a reliable reporter on the V.L. In addition, he seems to have composed works on Persian and Japanese botany.
Carrubba includes a nice, concise summary of the lamb myth, which I'll include here in case I need to write one some day and find it's more prudent to copy and credit:
"In common form, the myth has it that the Scythian Lamb is a zoophyte (plant-animal or vegetable lamb) which grows from the ground on a stem attached to its navel. In all other respects the creature looks like a real lamb of flesh and blood with four legs and a sizeable tail. The Lamb of Scythia or Tartary feeds on the grass about it and is a prey for wolves, though not for other carnivores." (43)
In discussing Kaempfer's report on the vegetable lamb, Carrubba first summarizes its organization:
"Kaempfer's report o nthe Scythian Lamb is organized as follows: (1) credulity and misunderstanding of terms created the fable; (2) the conventional description of the creature; (3) etymology of the word Borometz (Borametz); (4) description of a real breed of Scythian Lamb; (5) extraction of the lamb fetus; (6) preparation of the skins; (7) debunking of the myth, based on eyewitness investigation; (8) ascription of the origin of the myth to ignorance, inattentiveness, and the human inclination to believe in wonders." (44)
I won't get too far into Carrubba's rehashing of Kaempfer's arguments. Why? Because a couple of centuries after Kaempfer and before Carrubba, Henry Lee sat down and penned a great little booklet that explains everything in great detail, from the possible roots of the myth through all the major attempts to explain and understand it. The men and their peers ultimately reached different conclusions -
(1) that the origin was based in folk art made from manipulated fern tree rhizomes,
(2) that it was rooted in a misunderstanding/mistranslation of cotton, and
(3) that it could be traced to the practice of removing fetal lambs from the womb for their soft skins, resulting in misleading "scientific specimens"
What is perhaps most reassuring about Kaempfer is the fact that his report is based on eyewitness investigation. That lends him a credibility that is lacking in some other folks who discuss the zoophytic phenomenon.
As usual, no direct bearing on Mandeville, but the article points to the place the vegetable lamb had in the collective imagination of medieval and early modern Europe, and the whole spectrum of response (from Erasmus Darwin's airy-fairy poems to Kaempfer's rigorous scientific report) to an idea that Mandeville helped to solidify within the culture of the period.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Medieval Landscape and the Encyclopedic Tradition (article)
Medieval Landscape and the Encyclopedic Tradition
By Walter Cahn, for Yale French Studies (1991)
This article is most irrelevant (though well-written). So I'm just going to include some quotes I found interesting.
"Scholars who from the nineteenth century onward sought to chart the history of a concern with landscape in art and literature were struck first and foremost by the silence of the Middle Ages on this score, by absence, in other words, or at any rate, by the apparent lack of a concrete expression in the medieval period of anything resembling a conception of the natural world in our sense of the term" (11).
I see.
"...when medieval artists turned to nature, their vision was transfixed by 'the icy winds of doctrine,' and flowers and trees lost their lively quality to become prototypes of the divine" (12).
I realize Cahn is speaking of art and not literature, but I think this bears in interesting ways on Mandeville's treatment of nature. Sometimes, he is concerned largely (or at least clearly) with the imprint of the divine, and only rarely does he mention nature for its own sake, but where he shines is in a middle ground in which nature is important for the way it reflects culture.
"...much encyclopedic writing about the natural world is mere enumeration and description, leavened by etymological word play, and conceived as an inventory of the Lord's creation, a more or less systematic supplement to the record of the divine work given in the opening verses of Genesis" (14).
See above. Then, Cahn goes on to discuss Marvels of the East, and the illustrations within (focusing on an illustration of a balm tree). He draws attention to the way the illustration evokes the innate qualities of the plant, and the importance of space in the composition.
Later in the article:
"...the rendering of nature in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages is often made by way of personifications, not only of winds, but of other entities like rivers, the earth and natura herself(17).
Which just leads me to think generally about figurative nature and the use of plants as anything (and everything) other than specific objects/scientific specimens in the Travels.
By Walter Cahn, for Yale French Studies (1991)
This article is most irrelevant (though well-written). So I'm just going to include some quotes I found interesting.
"Scholars who from the nineteenth century onward sought to chart the history of a concern with landscape in art and literature were struck first and foremost by the silence of the Middle Ages on this score, by absence, in other words, or at any rate, by the apparent lack of a concrete expression in the medieval period of anything resembling a conception of the natural world in our sense of the term" (11).
I see.
"...when medieval artists turned to nature, their vision was transfixed by 'the icy winds of doctrine,' and flowers and trees lost their lively quality to become prototypes of the divine" (12).
I realize Cahn is speaking of art and not literature, but I think this bears in interesting ways on Mandeville's treatment of nature. Sometimes, he is concerned largely (or at least clearly) with the imprint of the divine, and only rarely does he mention nature for its own sake, but where he shines is in a middle ground in which nature is important for the way it reflects culture.
"...much encyclopedic writing about the natural world is mere enumeration and description, leavened by etymological word play, and conceived as an inventory of the Lord's creation, a more or less systematic supplement to the record of the divine work given in the opening verses of Genesis" (14).
See above. Then, Cahn goes on to discuss Marvels of the East, and the illustrations within (focusing on an illustration of a balm tree). He draws attention to the way the illustration evokes the innate qualities of the plant, and the importance of space in the composition.
Later in the article:
"...the rendering of nature in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages is often made by way of personifications, not only of winds, but of other entities like rivers, the earth and natura herself(17).
Which just leads me to think generally about figurative nature and the use of plants as anything (and everything) other than specific objects/scientific specimens in the Travels.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Medicines and Spices (article)
Medicines and Spices, with Special Reference to Medieval Monastic Accounts
By Marjorie Jenkins, for Garden History (1976)
This article is very short but has a couple of interesting points. It is essentially a note on the importance and prevalence of spices in medieval monastic records. Marjorie Jenkins (based on notes from Nancy Jenkins) lists some common medieval spices in Europe, with reference to the Rule of St. Benedict. Then, she notes some evidence for the cultural importance of spices.
Interestingly, she points out the taxes that were levied on spices in the 1300s in order to raise funds for things like repairing London Bridge. That spices, along with known commodities of import, were subject to taxes points to their popularity and their increasingly consistent place in the medieval kitchen and apothecary.
Jenkins also points to the use of spices as a currency for things like the payment of rent: with standardized prices (which, per pound, could be easily converted to "sheep" or money) making them an acceptable form of payment. Lastly, she points to the place of spices in gifts and tribute to royalty and persons of import.
Brief though this article may be, it points to the use of monastic records as an indication of trafficking in spices in Europe - purchases by the Cellarer and Infirmarer reflect the popularity and trade of different spices/botanic commodities in the kitchen and infirmary.
What these accounts do not satisfactorily reflect is the cultivation and use of indigenous herbs in monastic gardens: says Jenkins, medicinal plants which are indigenous or easily cultivated in our climate are not mentioned in these accounts (48), and I suppose one (I) must look elsewhere for information on the popularity and use of indigenous plants.
By Marjorie Jenkins, for Garden History (1976)
This article is very short but has a couple of interesting points. It is essentially a note on the importance and prevalence of spices in medieval monastic records. Marjorie Jenkins (based on notes from Nancy Jenkins) lists some common medieval spices in Europe, with reference to the Rule of St. Benedict. Then, she notes some evidence for the cultural importance of spices.
Interestingly, she points out the taxes that were levied on spices in the 1300s in order to raise funds for things like repairing London Bridge. That spices, along with known commodities of import, were subject to taxes points to their popularity and their increasingly consistent place in the medieval kitchen and apothecary.
Jenkins also points to the use of spices as a currency for things like the payment of rent: with standardized prices (which, per pound, could be easily converted to "sheep" or money) making them an acceptable form of payment. Lastly, she points to the place of spices in gifts and tribute to royalty and persons of import.
Brief though this article may be, it points to the use of monastic records as an indication of trafficking in spices in Europe - purchases by the Cellarer and Infirmarer reflect the popularity and trade of different spices/botanic commodities in the kitchen and infirmary.
What these accounts do not satisfactorily reflect is the cultivation and use of indigenous herbs in monastic gardens: says Jenkins, medicinal plants which are indigenous or easily cultivated in our climate are not mentioned in these accounts (48), and I suppose one (I) must look elsewhere for information on the popularity and use of indigenous plants.
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