Blog

I suppose I'm cheating a little by including Naomi Novik's League of Dragons in this series, because technically the hardback was released in June. But the mass market paperback was a November book, so that's my excuse. And it isn't that Novok's Hugo-finalist series needs any extra publicity boost from me, but it's an opportunity to tell an amusing story about the power of the knowledgable independent bookseller. Back when the first book in the Temeraire series had been out for a little while, I wandered into my local SFF bookstore, The Other Change of Hobbit (now, alas, out of business) and while I was browsing the relatively new releases I idly remarked to Tom Whitmore that I was trying to remember the title of a new book that various friends thought I might like. He instantly handed me a copy of His Majesty's Dragon and I recognized it as the title people had been recommending. That was the extent of the clue: "a new book my friends thought I might like" and Tom's familiarity with my reading habits as a long-time customer. That's what we lose when we lose face-to-face independent booksellers. (P.S. They were all correct about me liking the book.) League of Dragons is the final volume in the Temeraire series.

Napoleon’s invasion of Russia has been roundly thwarted. But even as Capt. William Laurence and the dragon Temeraire pursue the retreating enemy through an unforgiving winter, Napoleon is raising a new force, and he’ll soon have enough men and dragons to resume the offensive. While the emperor regroups, the allies have an opportunity to strike first and defeat him once and for all—if internal struggles and petty squabbles don’t tear them apart.

Aware of his weakened position, Napoleon has promised the dragons of every country—and the ferals, loyal only to themselves—vast new rights and powers if they fight under his banner. It is an offer eagerly embraced from Asia to Africa—and even by England, whose dragons have long rankled at their disrespectful treatment.

But Laurence and his faithful dragon soon discover that the wily Napoleon has one more gambit at the ready—one that that may win him the war, and the world.

This blog series is all about recommending books, or at least featuring them (when I don't know enough about the specific work to recommend it). The fate of brick-and-mortar bookstores is not the only handicap that non-bestsellers face. While the rise of electronic self-publishing and small specialty presses has meant greater access of marginalized authors to publication, it has created a vast array of books that will never have shelf space in a physical bookstore. Other than the lost Other Change of Hobbit, and Laurel Bookstore in downtown Oakland, I have only once seen any of the Alpennia books on a physical bookstore shelf. (Though I have reports of sightings from readers.) This makes reader recommendations an invaluable resource. I am massively grateful to those readers who have enjoyed my books, including the most recent Mother of Souls, and who have shared that love with others.

The Great November Book Release Re-Boot is a blog series talking about November 2016 releases that may have been overshadowed by unfortunate political events.

Session 537 - Female Friendship in Medieval Literature II

• Sponsor: Medieval Studies Institute, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington
• Organizer: Usha Vishnuvajjala, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington
• Presider: Karma Lochrie, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington

Models of Female Friendship in the Lives of Saints - Andrea Boffa, York College, CUNY

A young widow escapes to the Poor Clares to avoid a second marriage, taking the name Clara, is retrieved by her family, then is allowed to enter a Dominican convent. Her new sisters were annoyed by her excessive humility, but some liked her enough to accompany her when she later established a new Dominican house. But this paper begins with a specific incident when she was participated in a group of female friends. A man is afflicted by a sudden and disgusting illness, and is cared for by a group of female friends. They are joined by the young woman who would later become Clara. This episode was used to illustrate her piety and humility, but the episode itself suggests that her activities were more to bond with the pious women and become part of their circle.

Clara is part of a proliferation of female saints in the 13-14th centuries in northern Italy, many of whom were “lay saints” never joining an order, or like Clara, who had experience in the world before entering a convent. Hagiographers grappled with how to present an independent, worldly woman as worthy of veneration. But for historians, these vitae provide useful evidence of the everyday lives of ordinary women. Female friendships are a notable theme within the texts, though in many variants.

Examples:

Margaret ran away as a teenager to live with her lover, with whom she had a son. When her lover was murdered, she was rejected by her family and taken in by a woman and her daughter. When Margaret wanted to take a Franciscan habit and was rejected, her female friends helped her establish herself as a midwife. Although she attempts to live a relatively solitary devotional life, her days are continually interrupted by women of the community who wish to interact with her socially.

Another woman, unhappily married, became sanctified by living as a recluse in a tower provided by her family. But during her unhappy marriage, she was supported by friendship with her sister-in-law. During an episode when the devil tempted her by showing her false images of her family being dead, she rejects all as illusions. The illusions are in increasing order of importance and closeness, moving from family, to children, to the Virgin Mary, but ending with her dear female friend, thus demonstrating the supreme emotional importance to her of this relationship.

A woman (Clare of Rimini?) was accused of undermining male authority via her support of and influence over female friends. She increasingly gathered a circle of like-minded women who eventually established a women’s community when a neighbor offered to sell her his house for the purpose.

The hagiographers who wrote of these women and their lives may not have intended to focus on the importance of female friendship in their lives, but the theme shows through. Furthermore, their vitae support the acceptance that women living holy but non-regulated lives as part of a community of lay women could be considered to be models of a holy life just as much as those within a convent.

Love and Friendship in the Twelfth Century - Stella Wang, Harvard Univ.

Looks at female friendship themes in three French texts: the romances of Le Fresne and Guildeluëc and Guilliadun and Aelred of Rievaulx’s Spiritual Friendship. The common theme is that friendships between women transcend the conventions of courtly love. That the exclusive heterosexual love motif that pits women as rivals is here undermined by the supportive bonds the women make.

In Le Fresne, two women become pregnant at the same time, when the first to give birth has twins, the other woman slanders her with the trope that twins must have had different fathers. So when the second women herself has twins, she vows to murder one of the girls to save her reputation, but the girl is instead taken away into anonymity. These two sisters later find themselves attached to the same man leading to reconciliation with the mother because of the bond of friendship between the sisters. (I think I may have lost the thread and this may not be entirely accurate, but I’m bringing in recollections of the tale from previous sources.)

Aelred’s text on friendship notes that love can exist without friendship, but friendship can’t exist without love, and that love can proceed from nature, duty, reason, or affection, or a combination of these.

G&G also focuses on the consequences of two women whose friendship is challenged by their romantic attachment to the same man: one as wife, one as mistress. The wife finds that she so loves and admires the mistress (who is struck down by grief at finding her lover married) that she determines to set her husband free and take the veil so the lovers can have each other. (Note that the introduction to the tale notes that it was originally named after the male lead, but was renamed after the female characters because it turned out to be their story.)

These romantic triangles subvert the expectation of women as inherent rivals.

Aelred further comments on spiritual friendship that “carnal friendship” is considered normal among the young and should be tolerated if not dishonorable in hopes that it will evolve into a more spiritual friendship that will in turn naturally lead the experiencer to a love and affection for God.

Sisters, Eroticism, and the Red Cat: Homosocial Female Bonds in Troubadour Poetry - Leslie Anderson, Tulane Univ.

Troubadour poetry is known for its overt and sometimes explicit descriptions of sexuality, often focusing on women as the source of both pleasure and (romantic/erotic) pain. The poem in question involves what the speaker humorously characterizes as “a kinky threesome” and plans to explore the relationship between the two women in the episode, not just their relationship to the man.

Little detail is provided in the poem directly about the two women, other than their names, but much can be read between the lines. What was clearly originally a context of homosocial female bonding becomes “queer” by the introduction of the man.

The narrator, traveling through France in pilgrim’s garb. He fakes being a foreigner who can’t speak the local language when encountering two local women. The women at first are pleased that he “can’t tell our secrets” but then test him with their “red cat” (a whip) to make sure he’s truly not able to understand/speak their language.

The narrator puts up with being stripped naked and whipped in order to have a chance to have sex with both women. The narrator ends telling of his success and how he later wrote a letter to the two ladies (clearly indicating his language facility) thanking them and asking them to kill the cat. But what is overlooked in this male perception of triumph is that the episode was clearly driven by the women’s desire for the encounter.

There is a discussion of differences between male homosocial bonding and female homosocial bonding in this era, where male bonds require rejection of homosexual potential, while female bonds allow for the possibility. Expanded to an erotic triangle, two men with a woman can only be rivals, but two women with a man can be collaborators, accepting an erotic relationship with each other in order to create a relationship with the man.

There is a discussion of Adrienne Rich’s The Lesbian Continuum and other theoretical considerations of the range of female homoerotic experience that can overlay and intersect with superficially heterosexual scenarios.

The two women in the poem deliberately seek out sexual relations with a stranger while their husbands are absent, but they share the desire and the action as partners and conspirators with each other, demonstrating autonomy and sexual experience to which their male lover is incidental. The exact nature of their relationship cannot be determined (despite one passing reference between them as “sisters”) other than as partners in sexual adventures. The “red cat” is referred to as “theirs” in common, both are familiar with it, both know where it is. Their actions are all done in tandem with the narrator left in the position of passive acted-on object. Whether this can be considered to represent a homoerotic partnership between the women, or simply an attack on the primacy of male agency with regard to erotic relations (and thus indirectly an attack on heteronormativity and patriarchy), it is clear that the homosocial bond between them undermines the characterization of the episode as merely a tale of male sexual adventure.

Final Notes

Just for those who have been paying attention to the session numbering: There were 574 numbered sessions in this year’s Congress, not counting a variety of gatherings, workshops, and displays that were not part of the numbered system. Just think of all the sessions I couldn't attend because they conflicted with those I chose!

The themes in the sessions I attend each year emerge from the intersection of my immediate and long-term interests with the fashions in topics and the ebb and flow of particular subjects. This year those intersections included the history of magic, especially including magic and mysticism in the Islamic world; feminist topics and women’s friendships/communities; dress and textiles; and the application of historical research to the writing of historically-based genre fiction.

There will be one more post in this year’s Kalamazoo series: the book intake post. I may have time to post it while hanging out at the airport later.

Session 515 - Islamic Magic: Texts and/as Objects

• Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence; Societas Magica
• Organizer: Liana Saif, Univ. catholique de Louvain
• Presider: Liana Saif

Books as Robots: Authorship and Agency in Islamicate Alchemical Manuscripts - Nicholas G. Harris, Univ. of Pennsylvania

Books are an object that, while not possessing sentience, may act on their own and in some cases outwit their owner/reader. When books speak of books, it’s as if they talk among themselves. (paraphrase from Umberto Eco) The presenter has been studying al-Jildaki, a 14th c. Arabic alchemist working in Alexandria, Cairo, Damascus, and Sefad. 16 books attributed to him.

Story of how his search for the authorship of one of the books he collected raises the confusion between authorship and ownership. Can a book stand in for its author in a sort of substitution? Discussion of a book distinguishes the compiler, the scribe (who set it down), and its composer.

Compilation derives from the specificity of knowledge while composing is more general. Compiling is bringing forth knowledge while composer brings together the speech of others and does not create the words. But how can compilation be more original than composition?

Arabic lexicographers use “compose” to indicate a physical bringing together, to bring into harmony, a reconciling. (I can’t manage to transcribe all the Arabic.) Book composition is to bring together words and text in a grammatically acceptable meaning. “Compile” means to distinguish something from another, to arrange into categories. Thus books are compiled when the contents are arranged into a meaningful organization. From linguistic texts “books of differences” discuss the semantic nuances of words that appear to have similar meanings. But even with all this, the Arabic terms don’t make sense for al-Jildaki’s insistance on a particular book’s writer as a compiler rather than a mere composer.

From a book on jurisprudence, we see a distinction that the compiler adds interpretation to another’s speech, while a composer simply records it. Thus Al-Jildaki “defends the authorial originality and integrity of an anonymous author”.

(We now get an abstract diagram comparing book creation with particle physics. This is intended humorously.) In this era, authors begin to drop the word “kitab” (book) from their books’ titles and start titling them metaphorically as “keys” or “lamps”. The books are attributed agency of a sort, but an agency that still requires humans (readers) to operate. An interesting feature of alchemical literature is the reluctance of alchemists to take ownership of their own textual creations. Side by side with this is the repeated admonishment that one shouldn’t learn only from books, but should have a human teacher. Al-Jildaki straddles this by suggesting that one could learn alchemy solely from his book.

Approaching Shams al-maʿārif al-kubrá through Early Manuscripts: MSS Arabe 2650–51 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France - Edgar Francis, IV, Univ. of Wisconsin–Stevens Point

The book’s 13th century author is known for grimoires and books of knowledge. The titular work will be referred to simply as the Kubra (the “big one”). This paper will be a brief introduction to this work and a discussion of what the speaker has learned from it. There is no scholarly published edition of it.

The Kubra is attibuted to al-Buni but as in the previous paper, the question of “authorship” is tricky. Textual study of the cited manuscript of the Kubra indicates it could be composed (compiled?) no earlier than the 16th c while the attributed author is 3 centuries earlier. Study of the work is made difficult by the many variant texts, meaning that differences in interpretation between scholars may reflect differences in the acutal text versions they’re working with. It exists in at least 53 manuscripts and has been greatly popularized in printed form.

Results: Many texts have circulated under this name, so is this actually the Kubra? The text has the appropriate length in pages and chapters. There are some differences in phrasing and order of the chapter headings but it generally matches the printed version. The colophon indicates it was written in 1648 CE. As a side note: the text is now available free online from the BnF manuscript site.

There are aspects of the book the online (b&w) version can’t show. Color is important in the text, not simply for ornamentation, but for picking out key names and elements, as well as disambiguating when words are written across each other. There are further examples of aspects of the book that are not available from the online facsimile, such as the writing across the edges of the pages, the paper watermarks.

The paper’s conclusions are about the importance of the original object, even just in photographic facsimile, but better in person, for detailed interpretation.

Legible Signs? Cyphers, Talismans, and the Theologies of Early Islamic Sacred Writing - Travis Zadeh, Yale Univ.

(Presented by a reader for the absent author)

The title has been amended to “...Cyphers, Talismans, & Islamic Technologies of Writing.” Focuses on the power of writing, not simply for transmission of information, but as a powerful act in itself. Books had a mixed attitude toward the occult: supernatural, magic, trickery, etc. Critiques included a focus on physical practices such as cyphers and talismans, arguing for removal of an understanding of supernatural power. Talismans, incantations, charms, etc. could include incomprehensible text. Text should convey usefulness from meaning, not from the influence of meaningless performance.

(There’s a lot of detail on what various people said on various topics and I’m having a hard time abstracting it.) We’re now talking about “animal magnetism” and “mesmerism” so I’m not sure what era we’re in. OK, 19th century, but this must be talking generally about Islamic traditions of commentary on occult practices. These 19th century writers are talking about medieval texts, so there’s the connection. In this context, charms and incantations stimulate the power of “animal magnetism” to achieve their ends.

Western explorations of mesmerism used colonial spaces such as India as an experimental context for “scientific” studies of mesmeric influence for things such as painless surgery. But these western “scientific” experiments were contrasted with “native fakirs” which were deemed to use mere superstition. (It is promised we’ll get back to textual stuff.) Western publications were then translated back, e.g., into Urdu under the rubric of “licit magic” with the authority of western colonialist structures.

These also included traditional textual forms, such as horoscopes, talismans, and lettrism, but also alongside an interest in western typography and engineering. Thus we have a (fairly traditional style of) compilation of various fields on inquiry, combining Arabic material filtered through western interpretation along with traditional Arabic material and purely western material.

There is general discussion of the political uses of occult texts, concepts, and practices, as well as Islamicized versions of western sciences. Archival curation of historic Arabic texts have been affected by these issues, as the past is sifted and either presented or concealed according to attitudes regarding the validity and acceptability of the contents. (This is all about modern interactions with historic texts and sources.)

Respondent: Noah D. Gardiner, Univ. of South Carolina–Columbia

(Mostly fairly specific questions about the choice of subject matter and research direction.)

I should have noted earlier in this process that my notes must be understood as a quick-and-dirty attempt to summarize. All mistakes of interpretation, typos, and mis-transcribed data are my own fault. (With a plea for forgiveness due to the speed and not having time for close proofreading.)

Session 355: Reading Magic West to East

• Sponsor: Societas Magica
• Organizer: Jason Roberts, Univ. of Texas–Austin
• Presider: Claire Fanger, Rice Univ.

Eastern Magic in a Western Home: The Influence of Iberian Translated Ghāyat al-Hakīm on a Fictional Necromancer - Veronica Menaldi, Univ. of Minnesota–Twin Cities

(Got my time mixed up and missed this one.)

East to West to East: Reading the Arabic Alchemical Tradition in Late Medieval Cracow [revised to “The Problem of Alchemical Travel”] - Agnieszka Rec, Chemical Heritage Foundation

The problem of tracing alchemical treatises is that it’s hard to track individual strands as most were compilations of multiple sources and traditions. This will focus on the alchemical text/collection of a particular individual Leonard of Narperg(sp?), which is also a bit of a travelogue. Preserved in a single manuscript copy, ?early 16th c? (trying to keep up and it isn’t on the slide). He’s primarily concerned with the transmutation of metals rather than the medical topics also popular at the time.

The text includes the context of time, place, and people in which Leonard collected his recipes, then followed by the recipe itself. But each narrative is disjoint and not necessarily in chronological order. Often Leonard notes that, not having the money to purchase a recipe, he paid for it in labor for the recipe’s owner, which he details. Although the various source alchemists are typically mentioned by name, the references are typically brief and cryptic. Leonard’s references to people are given a great deal of context and detail. But detail doesn’t not guarantee reliability, as when he traces a recipe to Petrarch who was notoriously skeptical about alchemy.

Particularly interesting is a narrative section where he and Bartholomew of Prague set out on a journey. They hoped to meet Magister Demetrius in Krakow but find he has left. Demetrius (who appears to be Armenian) is not associated with a university circle, which is atypical for alchemists. The narrative indicates they follow him to Livonia (this appears to be an error for a location in Ukraine).

Demetrius gives them a recipe for silver (briefly sketched in the text) and for a recipe for gold directs them to a Greek school in [I missed the reference but the map shows them going to Jerusalem and then Tabriz(sp? on the Caspian Sea?).] The find the school, but the alchemists there decline to give them the recipe but give them enough money to return home. (Note that originally this was meant to be an eight day trip to Krakow.)

In this era, alchemical literature often include narratives of transmutation histories, where the author claims to describe the actual steps of the work. But travel narratives tend to be later and very local (i.e., visting various people in a town to trace down a recipe.)

Leonard’s route is entirely wrong for the path of Latin alchemy which spread from Iberia thorugh western Europe in the 14th century. Krakow was just barely doing Latin alchemy in the 16th century but parts further east were not and a place as distant as Tabriz(sp?) is implausible. (It’s possible that non-university alchemists may have been active in Krakow earlier?)

Why do we have this travel narrative? To lend credence to the recipes? To privide an elaborate genealogy for a recipe to increase confidence in its truth. The specfic route may be borrowed from general medieval travel narratives, but this sort of long-range journey is not at all normal or common in alchemical manuscripts.

“Let Them Desiste from Hellenic Devilries”: The Specter of Greek Paganism in the Anti-Magic Theology of the Russian Orthodox Stoglav - Jason Roberts

(Title modification, remove “the specter of paganism” which gives away one of his conclusions.)

The “Stoglav” (= “100 chapters/canons”) a council convened by Ivan the Terrible and the text they produced, which provides religious opinions beginning to diverge from Greek Orthodoxy. “Volkhvovania” is referenced (“wizardry, magic”, sort of, from an indigenous Slavic tradition). “Volkhv” is also used to refer to the Biblical Magi. This term is used to cover a larger category of religion+magic.

(The slide has a delightful picture of Baba Yaga riding out on a swine in combat against a figure who may be a Volkhv.)

The text somewhat conflates volkhvovania with “Hellenism” which refers to a subset of types of magic, though not all Hellenisms discussed are magical in nature. That is, there is an overlapping Venn diagram where Hellenisms and Volkhvovania overlap.

In academic and thoelogical discourse, “magic” is definedin relation to (efficatious) ritual. But Hellenisms are not defined in this way. For example, the celebration of certain festivals are Hellenisms. So is dancing, yodeling, “splashing”, and other obscure references.

But does this mean that “Hellenisms” were meant to be understood as “paganism”? (See the original paper title.) Some evidence that paganism did linger longer in the east due to encouraged conversion rather than required conversion.

To address Hellenism vs. magic, we must understand religion vs. magic in this context. There is no non-theological distinction that can be extracted that divides religion and magic. The (modern) academic use of the word “magic” as a distinction from religion is indistinguishable from Calvinist theology. For example, an emphasis on “efficacious ritual” would identify many Catholic practices as “magic”. Protestant/scholarly definition: Magic = any ritual. In Catholic discourse: Magic = illicit ritual. But in the Russian discourse here, magic = false religion, and Hellenisms = false religion, but Hellenisms =/= magic. There is no shared Christian definition of “magic” because it is defined in reference to approved religion, which is breaking up (Catholic/Orthodox, and now Greek/Russian Orthodox.)

The Russian definitions of “false religion” use language of impurity, filth, uncleanness. Magic is compared to fornication (not identical). The distinctions aren’t based on ritual or licitness, but on purity versus defilement (which can be magical or other).

Thus to understand the medieval Russion attitudes toward magic, one must avoid working from a Western (and especially Protestant) definition of magic. “Hellenism” is redundant with “false religion.” This difference in definitions may help explain the scarcity of learned magic in Russian culture because there is no structural allowance for a distinction between “licit and illicit” magic to be debated.