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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 53 (previously 22b) - Interview with Jeannelle M. Ferreira - Transcript

(Originally aired 2018/05/12 - listen here)

Heather Rose Jones: Today, The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast is excited to host Jeannelle M. Ferreira. Now, you have to know that I'm enormous fan of Regency romances, I think there's only one of Georgette Heyer's books so far that I've failed to track down and buy, and the genre was one of the major inspirations for my own Alpennia series. So, when a friend on Twitter posted a link to Jeannelle's new book, The Covert Captain: Or, a Marriage of Equals, I was on it as fast as the proverbial duck on a junebug. And even before I'd got my hands on the book, I'd signed her up to be a guest on this podcast. Welcome, Jeannelle.

Jeannelle M. Ferreira: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here, this is my first podcast. [laughing]

H: Why don't we begin with you giving a synopsis of the book and talking a little bit about how you came to write it.

J: Okay. The Covert Captain takes place in 1822 when the Napoleonic wars are good and over, and everyone's wondering what to do with their lives. Captain Nathaniel Fleming is a guest at his Major's country house and there he meets the Major's sister, Harriet. So he's got the background of long friendship with the Major that he shared many campaigns with, and he meets this new person. Harriet is 28 and is not really keen on male guests and has some secrets of her own, and some fun hobbies. And so the book is… I would say the first half is Harriet and Captain Nathaniel's romance and then spoiler! The second half of the book is that Nathaniel is actually Nora. Nora has managed to hide her gender through campaign, which is actually pretty plausible… more plausible than you'd think. They fall in love, a big secret is revealed, they do get a happily ever after because it's a Regency romance and that's important.

H: Yes, truth in advertising as it were.

J: Yes, I wrote the book, because at the time I started writing it, which is not the time it was published, there wasn't a lot of female-female historical romance and I just really wanted to read it, so I wrote it.

H: That's how so many books get started. [Jeannelle laughs] Why the Regency in particular?

J: I love Georgette Heyer. I had a very convalescent sort of childhood and early young adulthood, and I read lots and lots of books. I was essentially raised by 19th century England for good or ill. So, I got through all of those. Then also, what's being written as far as het Regency romance, there wasn't any of me. And I didn't get these swashbuckles and these cotillions. I wanted something that my wife and I could read. Yeah, I know the Regency is just a favorite because they're such confections. They're such confections, I wanted one, too.

H: Yep. I was poking around in your Amazon and Goodreads listing and this is not your first book. I turned up two other items that were listed there. One is A Verse from Babylon, which is set in a Jewish community in Lithuania in World War II. That one looks like it has some queer content as well.

J: It really does. I can't avoid queer content, it always turns up when I write. It is the story of the Repertory Theatre Company of the Vilna ghetto during the Holocaust. It is the thing that I have spent the most research time on because these people are not super-fictional. They're fictionalized but they're based on real people and they weren't around to tell their own stories because of course they were murdered. I went to Lithuania when I was younger and did a lot of research there. One of my degrees is actually in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. The book was partly creating the ability for me to act as a psychopomp for some of these people whose stories were never resolved and so in my mind weren't at peace, although that's just me being silly. And partly, I had this degree and I might as well go flex it. [laughs]

H: We should probably make sure that our listeners know that that one, given the setting, is not a happy ending. [chuckles]

J: No. People are still surprised by that, though. And my wife was actually mortally offended, because we were dating when I wrote it, and she read the first draft and she said, "Everybody dies in this book!" And I said, "But I said that in the introduction. Rocks fall, everybody dies." [laughs] Not rocks, Nazis, but say…

H: Yeah. I picked up from your Twitter feed that you are Jewish yourself, that you have this background.

J: I am. Used to be super Jewy and then I found out that I like girls and pants pretty much at the same time in my life in high school. I knew there was something a little bit different about me and I wasn't quite happy with my life the way it was. And then in high school it was pointed out to me that—and this was in the early 90s, so we've come a long way even since then—but it was pointed out to me that you could like girls. And I got very excited and I've had a girlfriend ever since [laughter]. And I like wearing jeans and I like praying in public. So, I'm a much happier person. There's a Jewish expression, 'to be on the derekh,' which means to be on the path. It's used in the sense mostly of religious orthodoxy, but I like to say that I am sort of balancing on an odd little derekh of my own because now I have a wife and a child and a career. It both is and isn't the proper life and the life I had imagined but it is exactly my life and I'm very pleased with it.

H: The other story that I turned up, it looks like it's maybe a short story, a novelette called Dramatis Personae?

J:  It is, it's a novelette. 'Novelette' is the word that the cool kids are using now and I really like it, it used to just be a novella. It is about two mask makers who live in a city that is sort of Chicago and sort of out-of-all Chicago, it's in slightly to the right or left. It's my first foray into speculative fiction because these people make masks, they wear masks. So I was also trying to play a lot with the concept of bodies and gender and who we love, and it was also just a chance for me to get some historical nerdery and across a bunch of eras. One of the mask makers is originally from Elizabethan England and one is from ancient Egypt. It's definitely escapist and I had a great time writing it.

H: When researching historically-set fiction, what are some of the biggest challenges that you found? Let's get back to The Covert Captain. I mean, obviously, anybody writing Regency romances can pick up a lot of the superficial history just from reading the genre, but where did you go to really ground your story in the history for this particular story?

J: For this particular story, I definitely wanted to look at all the places where queer, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people weren't. Transgender is tricky too because everybody sort of was living their own life and sexual mores were very different, and all these people are dead and so you don't want to assign anybody an identity they may not have had, which comes up with Fleming who dresses the man and has a male career. But I think she would think of herself as a lesbian, she's into the girls. So I researched Molly houses and different aspects of the queer community around St James's Park in England—which coincidentally is also near where all the Jewish people lived. In Aldgate. So, you had all these interesting social elements in one place, and I wish I had written down better cited sources but one of them is… The National Trust in the UK has a whole website on queer history and they cite their sources unlike me—bad scholar! There are pages and pages about people's identity and Molly houses and the Ladies of Llangollen. Yes, I had to look up how to say that. I wasn't going to do a podcast with a linguistics expert [Heather laughs] and not say Llangollen properly. It's all there in the ways that we're not there, and I'm actually going to use a weird example. Not weird. I'm going to use an example from my childhood: one of the most English books of all time, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. There are two tutors in this book, Dr. Jakes and Dr. Smith, and they are both women. And they live together as boarders in a large house in the Cromwell road. It took me until I was about nine having owned this copy and love it to death of this book since I was about four... "Oh, Dr. Jakes and Dr. Smith! I get— Oh. Oh." And so, this was the first time I learned to pick us out of the text even if it wasn't explicitly stated. And that's sort of a direct line for me to Anne Lister, and thankfully Anne Lister's diary has just semi-recently come out translated so I didn't have to learn ancient Greek. So, you got Anne Lister who hung out with the Ladies of Llangollen, which was another reason that it was a Regency. That if I do a second book, they're totally all going to cameo at the most interesting dinner party of all time.

H: Yeah, but it would have to be in Llangollen because they never left. You know?

J: It's true. But they had dogs! There was companionship. I'll get them there somehow.

H: Yeah.

J: I also did a lot of research on early medicine, particularly what was effective about early medicine which was so often in the purview of women essentially, or biology. But there are a lot of tinctures and mixtures and selves and ointments that came directly from women's kitchens but actually work quite well. So for that, I did some research basically in NIH and The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia... and just poked around what people did to feel better and survive in areas where, you know? There were nasty things in the dirt and there were nasty smells in the air that were making you sick, obviously. [laughing]

H: Speaking of medicine, one of the things I really liked how you handled in The Covert Captain—essentially we'll call it PTSD—was the way that the returning soldiers were dealing with the horrors of the war and the things that they had had to do, and the way it would hang over your life and affect your relationships.

J: It's true. They called it nostalgia around the Crimean War. I don't know if they had a name for it when they came back from the Napoleonic Wars but they knew that something was going on. But the thing is, I don't think they cared, except I think that it was very much a badge of manhood as it was probably up through World War One, to just get over yourself and get on. But that didn't really lead to functional relationships, and it led to a lot of drinking and a lot of semi-honourably shooting oneself. I wanted to address it because as confectionary as Regency romances are, you can't bring someone back from a war and have them functionally fall in love with someone. There are a ton of diaries from Waterloo, and I think the ones I looked at most were Paget, who lost his leg. The one who said, "Oh my god, sir, I've lost my leg." And his superior looked across at him and said, "Oh my god, sir, so you have!" Which is sort of the attitude to war injuries in a nutshell that you find in that time period.

H: Yeah.

J: He came home with that leg and I found out that some of his family too were missing hands, and they got on with it. But I was really intrigued by what you bring back from the war.

H:  Yeah. And it's tricky to portray that sort of thing, both in historical context where the modern reader can recognize it and engage with it, but where you aren't bringing those modern attitudes into the story itself. And that leads nicely into the portrayal of sexuality. What were your challenges in creating these characters in a way that both connects with the modern reader and is true to their own time?

J: I really tried hard not to give anybody an identity that I would understand but they wouldn't. Farah Mendelssohn's regency is actually great at this. You have a lot of really intense female friendships because social interaction was so stratified by binary gender at the time. So nobody really thought weirdly of you if you were a female-bodied person kissing your female-bodied friend unless you were married in which case, do it in your boudoir or just not at the ball. I think the biggest challenge was not using terminology or attitudes that I know are mine from my own gender and sexuality research, and also just making it okay that Fleming gets the ladies. Like, Captain Fleming has a girl in every port until she meets Harry and settles down. And I think the tactic I went with was just don't have anybody feel that it's remarkable that this person always has somebody ‘cause they're talented and cute and they're on a horse. [Heather laughs] Horses count for a lot.

H: They do.

J: And with Harry—Harriet—one of my friends came up with this amazing phrase and she said, "I really liked that you pointed out, really subtly, that it wasn't Harry's first time on the merry-go-round. She said it in-print, "It's m a r y mary-go-round." [Heather laughs] And I'm like, "A, you're a sick person and B, that's hilarious." [laughs]

H: I really liked that point. I don't think we're giving away any spoilers to say that of course the two characters end up in a sexual relationship, but there was a point early on where I'm thinking, "Where did Harry learn how to do this?" And then you answered the question, and that really was a nice point.

J: Yeah. People are getting up to stuff all the time. In my first book, people were like, "People are having sex during the Holocaust?" And I'm like, "Well, if I was under duress, I would have a lot of sex." You know? [laughs] It's part escapism and part human nature. And so you've got a soldier who comes back from the war in The Covert Captain who literally can't sleep at night and has a lot of trouble being in her own skin. And as soon as she finds somebody to share a space comfortably with, I think that she is going to try to make that connection.

H: —and then deal with the consequences.

J: Yes, big consequences but they do get dealt with.

H: Have you always been interested in history and historical research? Well, given you mentioned what your academic research was, and so I guess the answer is yes, but talk about your background and just being a history fanatic.

J: Like I said, I was raised by 19th century England and then—whenever you read The Secret Garden, I became aware of the Raj and then sort of had to delve into… You read The Children of Green Knowe and where does Ping come from? Ping is a refugee child. Where do the attitudes about Ping come from and where do Frances Hodgson Burnett's attitudes about the Raj come from? So my childhood reading became my high school and college deep dive into British Empire and colonialism and how everybody was related to everybody over many continents. Then I sort of became passionately interested in the fact that every war is a knock-on from some white guy's decisions in the last war. I just could not put the history down. I ended up with a degree in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies pretty much up through the creation of modern Israel. Then I sort of tailed off. But also, one of my degrees is in creative writing. I have many superfluous degrees, I'm sorry.

H: [laughs] Well you're talking to somebody who got a bachelor's in zoology and then a PhD in linguistics, so I can understand the scattershot thing.

J: Yeah. And then I was interested in medicine for a hot second there until I realized that my frail physical encasing couldn't handle the rigors. So, history of medicine is also a big deal for me. But no, I just never stopped reading. And the more you read historical fiction, for me, the more I want to understand the underpinnings and the motivations.

H: Yeah. I mean for the Regency setting, there's that whole issue of why is it such a big draw for fiction? What is it about the Regency? And in part, it's several very impressive authors who have popularized it. But what is it about that historic nexus that makes it such a rich setting for stories? And of course that's true of many other times and places as well.

J: For me, I think the Regency is so great because it really depends what you love. You have slightly close to modern cuisine at your parties, you have recognizable clothing it still looks fancy and refined, and you have the beginnings of modern plumbing. [Heather laughs] It's why I think there aren't that many romances—there are some—there aren't that many romances set around the time of the Norman Conquest because—

H: Okay, that's not true because there's an entire genre of Norman-Saxon historic romances, just because of the culture clash thing. [laughs]

J: I hadn't thought of that, I was totally down with the—well, they had toothpicks, but I'm not sure what else they had. [laughter] I was like, "I don't know whether I want to kiss someone in Norman England." So yeah, I think the Regency is the first time it can all come together and literally be tied with a velvet bow. And I think we just can't get enough of that. Plus horses.

H: [laughs] Yeah. I have to say that when I think about writing in lesbian historical romances, I always want to end up with one of the women in a riding habit because…horses, riding habits. There's something about riding habits that is just so incredibly sexy, I have to say.

J: It's so true. And the swords! You know this, you literally have a swordswoman character. And what's better than that? You're going to jump off this horse and defend me with this skill that you learned at great personal physical expense, and it's going to look hot. [Heather laughs] That was slightly shallow. [laughs]

H: We both write historical romance, I think that's the definition of shallow in some ways but hey. So, how about some upcoming projects that you want to let the listeners know about? I hear a rumor that you might be writing in the Regency again.

J: It is true, I am working on the sequel. It is set in 1824 so, Harriet and Nora have been married for a minute. Harriet is now the Lady of Fleming slightly dilapidating manor in Yorkshire which is based on Ridley Castle, which looks like a fascinating pile of stone by the way. They have some changes in their life and right now, they're having their Burns supper and there are some interesting guests at this Burns supper. And I particularly wanted to approach, in the sequel, someone eccentric enough by the standards of those times to be in a relationship with a Jewish woman. And I wanted to address in the sequel some of the realities, but also the fun and pleasant and lovely parts of being a Jewish person in Regency England because we were there, not in great number but we were. I'm also working on a short story about Kit Marlowe where Kit Marlowe just might be a lesbian. Because Kit Marlowe is one of the most irresistible figures in the historic record and basically, the fiction writes itself.

H: How does that work for Kit Marlowe because he was notoriously interested in boys?

J: It's true. This is why the short story is not finished. I don't want to do any discredit to the dashing Kit of the historical record. I haven't quite figured out how to work it but it's one of the things I have in the drawer. Did I say the thing about the World War One flying ace?

H: No, you never mentioned that.

J: These are all short stories. I never learned to write a proper transition, so I work a lot in short stories. I'm working on it though. I want to write a story if I can plausibly get them recruited into the army of a World War One flying ace. And I also want to do lesbian pirates because I feel like lesbian pirates is a high-water benchmark to which I want to aspire as an adult writer.

H: Okay, there's certainly a flourishing sub-genre of lesbian pirates. So Jeannelle, if your fans and readers wanted to find you on social media, where should they look?

J: I'm on Twitter and WordPress at the same handle, @JeannelleWrites. It's @JeannelleWrites on Twitter and jeannellewrites.wordpress.com.

H: Okay, Facebook?

J: I don't have a Facebook author page yet because as you can tell from my backlist, I took several years off to have a kid and parent that kid. So the explosion of social media is still a surprise to me, but I'm working on it [laughs].

H: I noticed from your previous publications that it looks like they're a little bit obscure to find currently.

J: Currently, yes. I'm working on rights management and Kindle editions, and again all the sorts of things that happened in the seven to 10 years I wasn't writing that were kind of a surprise.

H: Okay. Keep us updated when those are more easily accessible for people to track down.

J: Oh, totally. Working on it.

H: I'll add links to all these social media and all of the books that got mentioned in the show to the show notes. Thank you again for joining us at The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast.

J: Thank you!

Show Notes

A series of interviews with authors of historically-based fiction featuring queer women.

In this episode we talk about:

• The attractions of the Regency romance
• Jeannelle’s earlier works, especially a novel set in the Vilna ghetto during WWII
• Jewish influences in her writing
• Jeannelle’s background as a student of history
• Sexuality and PTSD in the Regency era
• The National Trust’s website on queer history in the UK
• Finding queer-coded characters in childhood favorite books
• Researching war in Waterloo diaries of British soldiers
• The path through British historical YA fiction that leads to a study of imperial and colonial history
• Horses and swords--it always comes back to horses and swords
• Future projects: more about Nora and Harriet, gender-bending Kit Marlowe, World War I flying aces, and lesbian pirates
• Books mentioned
  • The Covert Captain: Or, A Marriage of Equals by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
  • A Verse from Babylon by Jeannelle M. Ferreira (out of print)
  • Dramatis Personae by Jeannelle M. Ferreira (novelette, out of print)
  • Spring Flowering by Farah Mendlesohn

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to Jeannelle M. Ferreira Online

• Website: Jeannelle Writes
• Twitter: @JeannelleWrites

Dress and Textiles II: Metaphor and Materiality

Sponsor: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion); Pearl-Poet Society<?p>

Organizer: Robin Netherton, DISTAFF<?p>

Presider: Monica L. Wright, Univ. of Louisiana–Lafayette

Seeing Beyond the Color: The Green Knight’s Attire Kimberly Jack, Athens State Univ.

Scholarship on the Green Knight’s appearance tends to focus solely on the color itself. This paper looks at other descriptions of the knight’s appearance, clothing, and horse. (This paper and the following one work together to look at this topic.) There is a conventional head-to-toe description when the knight enters the hall, focusing on physique, clothing, hair, horse, and then a “negative’ description or armor, focusing on what he doesn’t wear. At first the description focuses on the knight’s immensity, but then backs off an clearly identifies him as a man. Not disfigured but well-formed. The only “monstrous” aspect is the green color. Then we get the clothing description: a tailored cote, well-fitted hose (all of green). This is high fashion, tight and fitted tot he body and revealing the legs. A fur-lined mantle and hood, Gold spurs on silk, richly barred (unclear if striped or with metal bars), and “shoeless” not meaning with no shoes at all, but not wearing boots, indicating peaceful intention. A barred belt with rich stones. His array on himself and his saddle was worked and embroidered with birds and (butter)flies of green and gold. Butterflies are a symbol of distraction, aimless wandering, and unimportance. The horse’s equipment include pendants, green enamel work on his bridle and stirrups. The horse is green and is enormous like his rider, perfectly suited to him. Now we move to hair, both of the rider and horse. Their hair match: fair, fanned locks over his shoulders, his beard like a bush, both trimmed to just above his elbows. But this is not the description of a wild man: there is an emphasis on how it is well-trimmed and luxurious, falling like a royal “capados” (hood/mail coif). The horse’s mane is then compared back to the knight’s hair, curled, combed and adorned with green bands with precious stones, his docked tail is similarly adorned. Then we have a description of absent armor: no helm, hauberk, plate, spear, nor shield. This is used to emphasize his peaceful intention. All he carries is a holly branch and an ax adorned with ornaments. We now move on to Part 2.

Greening the Knight: Costumes and Defying Social Context in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Kara Larson Maloney, Canisius College

She refers to a previous paper in which she looked at how Gawain’s disrobing depicted the removal of his virtues. Now she looks at the humanity of the Green Knight, while the green color frees him from ordinary limits of humanity. The Knight is also Sir Bertilak who is the tool of Morgaine in a ruse against Guinevere. The Green Knight is not himself a transformer, but has been chosen by Morgaine for her purpose. Green symbolized a variety of perilous concepts. We get a catalog of various supernatural green characters such as the greenman, the holly king, etc. etc. But again the Green Knight does not have the features of a “wild man”, diverging from the usual greenman representation. In this bridging function, he defies the usual rules of representation and exists in a liminal space between the court and the wild. This ties in with the use of the embroidered birds and butterflies. The extended elaborate description scenes overwhelm the senses with contradictory input., not only for the reader, but for Gawain within the narrative, who also represents a dual world of court and wild. We now get a catalog of various theories of what the Green Knight may be intended to symbolize in this context. Much of it contradictory. But overall the knight is meant to be a rebuke to Arthur’s court. There is a digression into the relationship between silk work and prostitutes, that may have some connection with the featured embroidery on the Knight’s garb? Or more neutrally, embroidery as women’s work and women’s authorship (relating tack to Morgaine’s authorship of the Green Knight’s adventure). Many pop culture digressions on green figures.

The Clothing of the Uncorruptible: Examining the Wardrobe of the Pearl-Poet Jessica Troy, Univ. of New Mexico

The various purposes and symbolism of clothing (vs nakedness). Example from Bisclavret wehre clothing is the essence of humanity for the werewolf. In the Pearl, Green Knight, and Erkenwald clothing is used strategically to communicate a variety of characteristics about the characters. Color had symbolic, economic, and personal meaning. Clothing situates the wearer within society. The most outstanding property of the Green Knight is his ability to stay alive after being decapitated, tying in with the symbolism of green for rebirth, life, etc. The green girdle given to Gawain is meant to be a symbol of the same property, except for Gawain’s behavioral failure. Clothing is supposed to match inner reality. St. Erkenwald involves the incorruptible corpse of a pagan judge discovered during building. The corpse animates and tells his tale. Before St. Erkenwald gets involved, we get a description of the corpse: beautiful rich gold, with pearls and gold, a mantle trimmed with miniver, a crown and scepter, his clothes were clean and spotless with no mold or moth holes, the colors are bright as if just dyed and his flesh is still fine and ruddy. St. Erkenwald elicits from him his life showing a just and pure (incorruptible) life, despite being a pagan. This is reflected in the incorruptible state of his body and clothing. But he is in limbo as he died without knowing Christ. St. Erkenwald baptizes him and hi turns to dust, along with his clothing. The clothing would now “hinder him” from moving on to life everlasting. The figure of the pearl maiden in The Pearl is another example of clothing instantiating inner truth, with all the pearls reflecting her purity. But here we have a conflict between earthly rich clothing representing purity of the soul also representing worldliness.

The Spinner in the Macclesfield Psalter Paula Mae Carns, Univ. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign

The key image is a female spinner with a spindle in a foliated initial in the border of the Macclesfield Psalter. This paper looks at why she is there and what she represents. She might simply represent a common craft. Even after weaving shifted to a male-dominated craft, women still dominated spinning. Other stages in textile production are also represented. Saints are among those depicted producing thread, including the Virgin and St. Margaret. This suggests a possible interpretation of a lone female spinner as a symbol of virtue. Eve is also commonly shown spinning. And spinning can also have negative resonances (as with Eve). But Eve’s spinning is interpreted in multiple ways. Spinning also shows up in images representing sloth, when the spindle is idle. The larger context of the Macclesfield spinner involves the text of the “gradual psalms”. In this MS the psalms often have an elaborate pictorial presentation. Many of the images in this sequence involve musicians including King David, dancers, but also an image of a naked man backward on a donkey, which was used as a punishment for certain crimes or offences including adultery or cuckoldry. We get another example of an ivory writing tablet with courtly images showing a seduction and then a cuckolded man riding backwards while his wife and her lover watch. Going back to the Macclesfield images, there is a woman dressed in red (like the spinner) in several other images, possibly illustrating a narrative of the attempted seduction of the woman, in a musical and dancing scene, but she is turning away from the seducer and toward a well-dressed woman. So perhaps the spinner represents a virtuous woman, the rejects the seducer, but her husband is the one who strays and is punished for adultery with the backwards ride. In later psalms, the illustrations are more generic courtly scenes, but often show women rejecting the temptations of lust. Overall, these women may be intended to speak to a female owner/viewer to encourage her in virtue. Speculation on the commissioning of the book by Isabel Despenser for her son Edmund Fitzalan. Isabel had personal reasons for warning against the dangers of lust and seduction. The spinner may have been intended as a representation of Isabel herself as symbol of the virtuous woman.

Had dinner at the usual favorite Indian place with a delightfully cozy group of just four. Dithered about whether to take in an evening session after that, but this roundtable about onomastics was impossible to resist.

What’s in a Name? A Roundtable on Names, Nicknames and Identity in the Middle Ages

Organizer: Elizabeth Archibald, Durham Univ.

Presider: Elizabeth Archibald

A roundtable discussion with Elizabeth P. Archibald [an entirely different Elizabeth Archibald than the organizer], Univ. of Pittsburgh; Katherine Travers, New York Univ.; Laurie Atkinson, Durham Univ.; Kathleen Ashley, Univ. of Southern Maine; and Michael J. Huxtable, Durham Univ.

The running joke of the introductions is that the two Elizabeth Archibalds not only studied the same topic at the same institution (though many years apart) but are sharing a dorm suite at the conference.

We begin with brief introductions on the speakers’ topics of interest

Elizabeth: Names and meanings were one of the first and key concepts of medieval linguistics. The distinction between proper and common nouns (and in Latin, “noun” and “name” are the same word) was a building block of exploring meaning. But there are contexts where the distinction between nouns and names is fuzzier. Examples are given from colloquies (textbooks in the form of a dialogue) where the speakers are identified with labels that are often both descriptive nouns and treated as personal names. The distinction of noun/name illustrates the general/specific contrast that is key in philosophy.

The presider points out that the two Elizabeths are the only two presenters in the conference program who have their affiliations appended to their personal names as a necessary distinction. Which goes nicely with the theme of the roundtable.

Katherine: Discusses women poets of 13th century Italy or at least poems presented in the voice of a woman, under pseudonyms that claim identities of location. This involves a verbal game between the voices of lovers where renaming/claiming names is part of the courtship.

Mike; The tension between sense and reference in the meaning/function of names. Looking at names via heraldic symbolism and its function in literature. Index, icon, and symbol as different modes of reference. Naming as an associative activity. In heraldic/chivalric writing there’s a clear distinction between type and token (category and specific instances). “Pseudo-heraldic names” in chivalric romances, such as “the Black Knight” shift between modes, being descriptive, individual, but also symbolic. As such, these would appear to break the boundaries of the usual categories.

Kathleen: The topic is patrons and name-saints in books of hours. There’s a lovely handout. The images of patrons paired with their patron saintly namesakes demonstrate a multi-faceted identification that goes beyond the link of the name. There are a number of relationships depicted in these images: saint as personal intercessor, as object of worship. But the object of worship can show a range of relationships from intimate to distanced.

Laurie: The fiction of authorship in dream-poetry. Naming the fictitious “author” of the dream-poem, internal to the text but not directly identified with the author of the actual text. This was a mechanism for both revealing and concealing the author’s relationship to the voice in his text. The focus for this discussion is the early Tudor poet Stephen Hawes. The narrator laments his hopeless love, falls asleep, and then interacts with a lady within the dream, explaining his troubles, and is eventually brought to his love (in the dream). It diverges from the usual formula in that within the dream, the author’s (Hawes’) actual book of poetry is brought up between the persona and his lady love. This creates a multilayered equation of the poet and persona, where it’s ambiguous whether the “real” text or only the allegorical in-story text is being discussed.

Elizabeth (the presider): A consideration of the multiple possible “Thomas Mallory”s and the general problem of identity in the context of name duplication. But this is a way of sliding into the Trojan characters in the legendary history of Britain, and the duplication of classical names (and even sets of relationships) transferred from the classical sources to characters in medieval romance. Sometimes this re-use seems almost random, not necessarily reproducing the key characteristics and even relationships of the original figures. When the primary characters of the story of Troy have their names given to secondary/minor characters in Arthurian legend, is this meant to indicate that Troy is now lesser than Britain? To what extent are attributes and stories carried over? Are all the Helen-variants in the Matter of Britain (e.g., Elaine of Astolat) bringing with them the attribute of women who cause trouble because of love? What of the Trojan characters who are borrowed and given a change of gender (as Hecuba who becomes a male knight in Arthuriana)? In general, how does this sort of “recycling” of names speak to the question of meaning/reference?

The session is now thrown open to general discussion. I’m not going to be able to identify speakers here. Connection made between the ambiguity of general/specific in colloquy speakers and the problem of naming women poets, possibly in the context of whether the female “persona” of a poem may or may not represent a female author? Relates to the identification question in the dream-poem. Real identities vs performative identities. In the book of hours portraits, we know these are real people, but they are also performing the role of pious person with artificial attributes brought into the picture for symbolic reasons. Examples of how re-naming with a saint’s name imbues the recipient with attributes of the saint. Discussion of the instability of the “meaningfulness” of names, depending on context or desired function. (It means something when you want it to, not when you don’t.) Relationship to coats of arms as “meaningful” versus arbitrarily referential. A consideration of shifts in the approach to medieval studies in general from the pursuit of a one-to-one correspondence of thing and meaning, to an acceptance of a greater multiplicity of meanings and associations. I asked a question about examples of “dynamic disambiguation” of otherwise identical names, sparked by the double name in the participants. (I mentioned a statistical study I did on name structure complexity in Welsh records tied to common name/patronym combinations.) But clearly not all cultures were concerned about this, e.g., the Pastons who often had multiple children in a generation with identical given names. The discussion is now becoming too wide-ranging to really summarize well.

NOTE: I'm sorry about the formatting. I'm having some sort of weird interaction with the website display which isn't giving me any control over fonts or formatting. I'll fix it later, but for now, it's a wall-o-text. UPDATE: OK, evidently I have to handcode everything in source code.

Yes, it's that time of year again! When thousands of international medievalists throw me a birthday party in Kalamazoo! As usual, I'll be blogging the (somewhat eclectic assortment of) sessions I attend, as well as listing my book purchases. I may be handicapped by some peculiar things that have happened to my website interface, probably relating to the arcane WMU wifi system and I don't have my font controls. If things look wonky, I'll edit them later. I picked this session in large part because of the second paper on magical manuscripts. (Alpennia research, don't you know.) It does point out one hazard of having broad interests, because the papers often assume a highly specialized audience who not only have close familiarity with the literary and historic texts being discussed, but with the historic languages of the sources.

Sponsor: Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)

The Cancionero de obras de burla and Its Valencian Public (Frank A. Dominguez, Univ. of North Carolina–Chapel Hill)

The first presenter is video-conferencing in as he couldn’t attend in person. We’re discussing a hot best-seller of the 15-16th century in Spain (which it seems everyone else is familiar with, as we aren’t given a summary of the nature of the text). It’s a collection of poetry. There is a discussion of the dating of the contents and their possible relation to the relevant reigns in which they were written, in particular relating to Queen Isabella. We are now discussing various networks of family influence intersecting secular politics and the Spanish church at the time. There is a summary of an allegorical poem of over 60 stanzas about a court case regarding a naked woman and a cloak that evidently was considered supremely filthy at the time, and which references prominent political events. (The general context here is shifts in contents of the collection of poems across various reprintings that reflect new material relating to events of the time.) So how do the nature of the poems relate to the work’s startling popularity in Valencia? We move on to issues around the Inquisition, the expulsion and forced conversion of Spanish Jews, and resistance to that conversion including a major secret synagogue. Some of the poems relate to these events, but I’m not quite following the nature and orientation of the poems. Now there is a poem about north African pirates and Spanish anxieties about being captured by (Muslim) pirates. A brief discussion of various minor themes in the poems, generally about various enjoyments/sins but also including localized references relevant to Valencia.

Unprinted: Spiritual and Magic Manuscript Cultures (Heather Bamford, George Washington Univ.)

16-17th c Spanish magical manuscripts found new outlets and uses. This included private networks of distribution, and included the use of manuscripts in talismanic ways as objects, as well as for their contents. Meaning came not only through the words themselves, but through behavioral interactions and rituals. This includes collection practices and marginalia--more traditional interactions--but magical mss also provoked less “rational” uses, such as literal consumption (eating). The acquisition of autograph texts of holy writers are treated as relics with magical powers. Beliefs that actually reading the text on an amulet “uses up” the magic in it. Relates to the use of protective inscriptions on buildings where familiarity with the contents is not necessary for effectiveness. Effectiveness comes from belief of the user, not the inherent virtue of the text. Magical texts were produced in manuscript, not printing, now only due to control by the Inquisition over publishing, but also because of the inherent power of the act of writing. Discussion of the contents of some personal magical manuscripts. Much is focused on healing and on interpersonal relationships, as well as protection against various dangers. Such collections often contain a mix of unrelated contents in several languages, not all of which would have been accessible to the writer. Among Moriscos, Koranic inscriptions often featured among other contents. Example: a spell against a storm that includes a careful pronunciation guide to nonsense words that must be repeated. Spells often involve detailed instructions for actions and behaviors that must be performed along with the linguistic elements. Talismanic texts must be used in physical form, e.g., placed with a deceased person in the grave.

Relegitimizing Trotaconventos (Gregory S. Hutcheson, Univ. of Louisville)

Discussion of the “alcahueta”, a women who acted not simply as a procuress but as a go-between, who appears in courtly love literature (ca. 13-14th century), specifically the Libro del Buen Amor, and derives from an Arabic term found in “adab” literature. This relates to the character referenced in the paper title (Trotaconventos) which, as often happens, the audience is assumed to be completely familiar with. The Arabic term (qawwad) means variously “pimp, procurer, broker, guide, conductor, guard.” It always carries some sort of negative sense in the Arabic-speaking world. But when it first appears in Spanish in the 13th century, it’s clear that this negative sense has carried over. An example is given from 1250 of an alcahueta who provides her house as the location for a tryst, with no need to explain the word or provide context. In a list of “low-life” persons who can’t legally testify, the alcahueta is included among thieves, cross-dressers, hermaphrodites, etc. Additional legal texts supply different angles on how the term was understood and introduces the masculine “alcahuete”, giving five categories of men who fall in this category. (The five categories are presented in Spanish, assuming that the audience will, of course, all be fluent.) The activities that make a man an alcahuete were different from what made a woman an alcahueta but still focused on the exploitation of women sexually. Despite this male version, the texts discussing the female alcahueta was far more widely disseminated in the law codes. (The Siete Partidas.) These legal texts map out the criminalization of the occupation/identity in the 14-15th century. I think we’re now talking about La Celestina (a text by Fermando de Rojas about a bawd that gets mentioned in some of my LHMP material due to homoerotic interactions). I’m not sure what text the figure of Trotaconventos comes from (I think the Libro del Buen Amor) but evidently she is taking part in activities that skirt the edges of the definition of the alcahueta. The speaker suggests that modern academics are the ones identifying Trotaconventus as an alcahueta and thereby “accusing” her of a crime that the original text does not. She acts as a go-between, a mediator, a messenger, a problem-solver, but is not named as an alcahueta.