Blunt And Instructive
Words can be blunt and instructive,
but frequently they are destructive.
Far better perhaps to be Trappist
than savagely, hip-hoppy rappist,
but silence is no vow I’m able
to take, so I put up with Babel,
and hope you, also, dear reader,
accept like a Lebanon cedar
that destruction of forests cannot
be avoided when you have a lot
set aside for a temple. The same
applies to the words that we maim
when writing a poem, but silence
is, passive-aggressively, violence.
You have to destroy when instructive;
if not, you will be counterproductive.
Michael Kuczynski in Bryn Mawr Review reviews Sandy Bardsley’s “Venomous Tongues: Speech and Gender in Late Medieval England, “ Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,2006:
Speech, Chaucer explains in the House of Fame is only broken air. The definition is intended (however scientifically accurate) as
pedantic: it's spoken by a burlesque Dantean eagle, one of many instances in the poem of ironic understatement. Joking aside,
however, medieval poets, like such modern novelists as Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie, know that there's nothing soft about language. In satire, especially, it's often wielded as a weapon. And outside the literary ambit, in life, it can get even more unruly. Courts of law have to concern themselves constantly with the blunt and destructive social impact of words. How they do so, and the often self-serving aims behind their policing efforts, is in any age a complex cultural narrative.
Sandy Bardsley's fascinating new book is not so much interested in medieval satire (there is a brief interlude on literary texts, on
which see below) , but rather in historical fact, insofar as incomplete medieval records allow this to be reconstructed. She uses case
documents from medieval courts of law, both firsthand and by means of previous investigators' forays, to demonstrate how a particular kind of violent speech, scolding, became matter for jurisdiction in late medieval England. More specifically, she emphasizes a key cultural moment in post-plague England when women were losing access to an informal but respected means of drawing public attention to outrageous crimes, the 'hue and cry, ' while at the same time enduring demonstrable 'overrepresentation in the scolding category' (89) . Within this jurisdictional frame, Bardsley argues, scolding came to be associated primarily if not exclusively with women, although pre-plague it was an offense just as likely to be charged against men. Through careful analysis of patterns of litigation, she is able to show the extent to which male society, in the venues of both secular and church courts, worked to silence women's dissenting discourse by labeling it as mere nagging: a stereotypical rather than idiosyncratic vice. Her argument is richly supported with statistics drawn from more than 600 late medieval records and graphs that represent convincing patterns inferred from these numbers.
12/9/07
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Related quotes
It was then, I think, that I discovered that the best way of bringing a medieval subject home to my generation was not to be medieval in its treatment.
quote by Laurence Housman
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To me, adventure is a concept that applies only to those men and women of earlier historical times, like the medieval knights who traveled into the unknown. The concept has degenerated constantly since then... I absolutely loathe adventurers, and I particularly hate this old pseudo-adventurism where the mountain climb becomes about confronting the extremes of humanity.
quote by Werner Herzog
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Craft, Faith And Narrative
Craft, faith and narrative all fuse,
creating medieval art;
if you add the inspiration of the muse
you get the Bible. À la carte,
it serves you narratives and laws and psalms
created with both faith and craft,
but ultimately it’s the muses’ charms
that turn the inspiration’s draft
into a record of encounters made
with God by people searching for
a destiny that they cannot evade
by writing, their esprit de corps.
Its manuscript is not illum-
inated, since it comes from ages
that though dark became the wonderwomb
whose generations are its pages.
Roberta Smith writes about the renovation of the medieval galleries in the Metropolitan Museum (“Illuminating the Dark Ages, ” NYT, December 5,2008) :
Of the three great artistic histories that extend for many centuries, and galleries, from the Great Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Byzantine-Medieval epic is the most discreet. The Egyptian and the Greek and Roman wings are signaled by highly visible statues and tombs that start waving hello almost before you clear security. In contrast, the story of art starting in Bronze-Age Europe lies mostly out of sight in galleries that lie beside and behind the Grand Staircase…. As part of the Met’s original, central structure, the new Medieval Art gallery has always been a heavily trafficked intersection. It shouldn’t really work as a gallery of sacred art and yet it does. Its many small objects draw you close, away from the bustle, into a realm where craft, faith and narrative were
© 2008 Gershon Hepner 12/5/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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The medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge.
quote by Thomas Huxley
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The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book.
quote by John McGahern
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The medieval Church believed that the resurrection of Christ marked a new time for all of humanity.
quote by Timothy Radcliffe
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Egypt's New TV Channel
Colour television,
Black veil,
Modern technology,
Medieval jail.
poem by Vinod Sharma
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A Palindrome Dectina (Acrostic)
Prince
Had been
In Val-d'Oise
Louis King's first son.
In medieval time
Period, he married,
Once crowned to be a king, that
Elfin niece of Count of Flanders.
Philip, as King, went on Third Crusade.
Prince had been in Val-d'Oise Louis King's first son.
Prince had been in Val-d'Oise Louis King's first son.
Philip, as King, went on Third Crusade.
Elfin niece of Count of Flanders,
Once crowned to be a king that
Period, he married.
In medieval time,
Louis King's first son
In Val-d'Oise
Had been
Prince.
In declining health, Louis VII had him (Philip) crowned and anointed at Rheims by the Archbishop William Whitehands on 1 November in 1179. He was married on 28 April 1180 to Isabelle of Hainaut, who brought the County of Artois as her dowry..Isabella was crowned Queen of France at Saint Denis on 28 May 1180.-wikipedia
poem by Marieta Maglas
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Medieval justice was a quaint thing.
quote by Frederick Pollock
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The medieval hall house was very primitive when it became the characteristic form of dwelling of the landowner of the Middle Ages.
quote by Stephen Gardiner
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That is a Medieval way of drawing history, in which they do not respect the law and want the rest of the world to respect the law. That's not possible.
quote by Emir Kusturica
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Our horizon is the creation of a noble society to which, like the medieval builder of those glorious cathedrals, you will have added your conception, your artful piece of stone.
quote by Adrienne Clarkson
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Maimed but still magnificent... Europe's mightiest medieval cathedral.
quote by R.W. Apple, Jr.
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Oxford: Michaelmas
Christ Church meadow
is awash with driving rain
and a wind which bites the skin
and chills the blood within.
Its paths are sticky, yellow mud.
And the Cherwell, brown and dull,
slips ever higher.
Ducks, moorhens, squirrels
endure it.
As they endure frost and ice
and the teeth of pike,
the ill-will of dogs
and the harrassment of herons.
I retreat to Merton,
and the medieval silence
of its Tower.
Greeted by the bell,
I stand quite still in the chapel
and look to the east
through glass which escaped Thomas Cromwell's
iconoclastic rampages
and still permits a medieval vision.
The Tower grew
out of 15th century wealth,
at the high-tide mark
of a millenium of Christian culture.
Forty years later,
Coumbus set sail,
carrying this Christian culture and began
the destruction of the culture
of the New World
(Man's inhumanity to Man) ,
inaugurating five hundred years
of poverty and misery
for its survivors.
Here. Now. The peace is palpable,
the chapel empty.
A patient fountain
round which thirsty crowds swirl and turbulate
in the December cold.
They wander along St. Aldates and Merton Lane,
through Magpie Lane and eastward up the High,
trying to appease an undiagnosed,
spiritual ache
by scratching
where
it does not itch.
poem by Brian Taylor
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But no, I don't think I'm particularly drawn to the period roles or the medieval roles.
quote by Hugh Dancy
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Back To The Facts
From minds the chains are gone.
From minds the chains are gone.
From minds the chains are gone.
From minds the chains are gone.
And it's...
Back to the facts.
Back to unpack those facts,
Packed.
Back to the facts!
To dust them off and stack them tall.
Back to the facts...
To unwrap and stack.
Medieval evils,
No longer can be forced on people.
Walls are falling.
And used as steps for those who crawl.
To see life without limits,
With a higher consciousness.
And it's...
Back to the facts.
Back to unpack those facts,
Packed.
Back to the facts!
To dust them off and stack them tall.
Back to the facts...
To unwrap and stack.
Medieval evils,
From minds the chains are gone...
To keep the people,
From a...
Bouncing off the walls.
Medieval evils,
From minds the chains are gone...
To keep the people,
From a...
Bouncing off the walls.
And it's...
Back to the facts.
Back to unpack those facts,
Packed.
Back to the facts!
To dust them off and stack them tall.
Back to the facts...
To unwrap and stack.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.
quote by Vince Lombardi
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Thank goodness we don't live in medieval times, when people fought wars over ideas.
quote by Wojciech Jaruzelski
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~ Rupturing Hymen [A.K.A. Defloration] ~
Candle light oscillating
Luxing like amoeba
Silenced to actuate
Jus Primae Noctis
Poor just married Dona
Lying like log to
Endure engulf forced
Somatic n' psychic
Defloration harpooning
It's bonking by law. [Shame]
>>==========)) - ((^))
Mod day's scoundrels'
Anti-social virile DNA
Actively augmented by
Vile androgenic vaccine
As it's still necessary
For lustful male flocks
Law books read
Its rape unlawful [Odium]
>>==========)) - ((^))
Psychic and somatic
Hymen stay traumatized
Galvanized stigma
Guaranteed to Dona to
Bear blaster blister rest of life.
>>==========))) - ((^))
Has 21st century civilization
Progressed a pico centimeter
From maleficent medieval
Septicemic scenario?
>>==========)) - ((^))
What next __niv guesses
For sure atavistic retrograde
Evolution [read civilization] to
Medieval malevolency.
>>==========))) - ((^))
Hi men for hymen assault
niv spits on cruddy civilization
Hey all join in mass spitting
Kicking whapping bashing on
Twin balls [OO] of live carnal cadaver
As Poet Taslima Nasrin* did
On this de-civilized society
>>==========))) - ((^))
===
Glossary: Humbly given for what I tried to express: ~
[1] Jus Primae Noctis [Latin]: Right of first night [It refers to the medieval belief that the Lord of the manor had the right to have sex].
[2] Bonking: [Brit] Have sexual intercourse
[3] Odium: Hate coupled with disgust.
[4] Pico: One trillionth.
[5] Atavistic: Characteristic of an atavist [An organism that has the characteristics of a more primitive type of that organism].
[6] Cruddy: Characterized by obscenity.
[7] Whapping: Hit hard
[8] Carnal: Marked by the appetites and passions of the body.
~~~~~~~~
*Poet Taslima Nasrin: Exiled Female Poet from Bangladesh
+++
Copyright reserved by author.
poem by Ms. Nivedita Bagchi Spc. Uk.
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We can appreciate but not really understand the medieval town. We cannot comprehend its compactness, the contiguity of all its buildings as a single uninterrupted whole.
quote by Arthur Erickson
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