December 17, 2006
Carnivalesque #22
On the table
Natalie Bennett writes about the Cooke sisters, learned women of the Renaissance, and reviews CJ Samson's Sovereign, the third Master Shardlake detective novel set in the age of Henry VIII.
Alan Baumler presents fascinating material in Keeping Halal in the Ming dynasty.
Confused about tipping? Raminagrobis's Straight Tip to All Cross Coves may not help you work out the correct percentage, but it does offer some interesting etymologies.
Really stretching the limits of the "early modern": Mary Mark Ockerbloom alerts us to Diplomatic Difficulties, a new selection of texts at A Celebration of Women Writers which focuses on "women who were first-hand observers or direct participants in the diplomatic process."
Conrad H. Roth translates and comments on a poem by Ausonius about an adulterous woman who poisons her husband but then worries that the poison was not strong enough.
Mark A. Rayner presents The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Pope Leo X Edition) at the skwib.
Across the table
T. Bridges justifies a madman, specifically, William Dowsing, at The Conventicle.
Gavin Robinson discusses shock tactics during the English Civil War at Investigations of a Dog, and explodes some myths about early-modern cavalry charges.
Abu Sahajj suggests that the work of modern American intellectuals "reflects a greater self-absorption than that of 18th century imperialist scholars" in An Occidental-Muslim's Criticism of Empires and Orthodoxies.
On periodization: Longer Than I Don't Remember: Idiosyncratic Periodization for Fun and Profit by Scott Eric Kaufman (host of the most recent History Carnival).
The Long Eighteenth just finished their second collaborative reading, of The Triumph of Augustan Poetics: English Literary Culture from Butler to Johnson by Blanford Parker (the first was of Michael McKeon's The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge).
At the table
After several weeks of posts on foie gras, Carolyn Smith-Kizer posts a recipe for Goose Pye at 18thC Cuisine.
And, given the season, recipes for Marchpane.
Books, art, and book art
Jem Webster goes museum hopping and offers Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's Four Figures on a Step (ca. 1655-60) for the reader's perusal.
Sharon points toward Joe Miller's Jests: or, The Wits Vade-Mecum (1739) at staggernation (also home of John Ashton's Modern Street Ballads (1888)).
Mister Aitch offers selections from A Catalogue of Engraved and Etched English Title Pages down to the death of William Faithorne, 1691, at Giornale Nuovo. An earlier post offers images from The Naming of Names by Anna Pavord, "an absorbing history of the study, classification and illustration of plants."
More? Visit Heidelberg Schlossgarten at BibliOdyssey. And linger for images from Fasiculus Rariorum, the Comic History of Rome, and, just today, Stilt Walkers.
Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie always has lots to look at. And don't forget to check the item of the day at the 18th-Century Reading Room.
Onstage
Jem Webster posts about how Daniel O'Quinn's Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800 has affected his teaching.
Tim Abbott discovers an ancestor in the circus.
And — too good! — Hieronimo imagines — and begins — a Shakespearean history cycle about the Bush family. It's funny because it's true.
My graduate course, Women Onstage in the Long Eighteenth Century, just ended. I blogged; the students blogged; and we made forays into Wikipedia. Speaking of which …
Around the web
The latest in Random Wiki-Testing at Blogging the Renaissance. Hieronimo says this is not a meme, but it looks like fun. Might I add, as a suggestion, that people who do engage in this non-meme might want to consider making some edits if they don't like what they find?
The next Carnivalesque will be an ancient/medieval edition at Memorabilia Antonina on or about 25 January. Want to join the carnival? Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnivalesque using the quick and painless submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the index page. And please check out the Carnivalesque site.
Thanks to all who submitted links.
October 23, 2006
Some cool links
from my students:
There is a new graphic novel version of Jane Eyre. For real, as the Jinker Boy would say. Via Andrea. According to Ann Hulbert at Slate, it's for goth girls.
And, a brief history of chocolate in 18th-century England from Brenna. It would seem that Nestle's and Cadbury's versions differ. Huh!
October 11, 2006
Old words
Koran, Hambourg, 1694
Some of these links have been hanging fire some time, and others are fresher:
On handwriting: How to Read 18th Century British-American Writing and The Manuscripts of George de Benneville and Abraham Wagner (via Jim Chevalier on C18-L).
Images of books: Torah, Bible, Koran: Books of the Word Exhibit: texte en Français (also via Jim Chevalier on C18-L).
Letters: Electronic Enlightenment: "a new and exciting academic resource providing full critical editions of complete correspondences of major and minor figures of the 18th century."
Beautiful images of Ireland and cooking, in two amazing posts at BibliOdyssey.
Alchemy, the alphabet, and allegory, all at Giornale Nuovo.
Celebrating Women Writers!: "a website that lists information about and books by women authors. As part of The Celebration of Women Writers, I publish online editions of out-of-copyright books by women authors. This blog is used to announce new online editions of books being published by The Celebration of Women Writers."
Schreber's Fantastic Beasts: "In 1774 Johann Christian Dan Schreber authored a multivolume set of books entitled Die Saugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen. Focusing on mammals of the world, these books were lavishly illustrated with 755 hand-colored plates. There was a slight problem though: in most instances the artists had never seen the animals they were rendering onto paper. Explorers would return from their travels and describe the animals in question to the artists. The end result was that some of the drawings, though representing real animals, looked more like they had come from someone's nightmares." (Via Plep).
August 5, 2006
Texts
Domesday Book online (via Cronaca):
As of today, Domesday Book, the oldest public record held at The National Archives, is brought into the 21st century through Domesday Online, the organisation´s latest digitisation project.
The website, provided by The National Archives' DocumentsOnline service, also contains useful information about the history of this 920-year-old document. It was commissioned in 1085 by William I who conquered England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Sobering thought for the day: two per cent of those surveyed in a Guardian poll thought that the Domesday Book was Dan Brown's latest novel (via Shopiere).
Classic Illustrated Zoologies and Related Works, 1550-1900 at the NYPL Digital Gallery, and images from Il Bestiario Barocco: The Feather Book by Dionisio Minaggio, digitalised by McGill (via Plep).
Joan of Arc Primary Sources posted online by the Historical Academy for Joan of Arc Studies. But don't visit just yet; this was posted on Metafilter and with all the hits they must be getting, their bandwidth is maxed out.
I WRITE in praise of miscellaneity, and in particular of assortment and variousness in books; of motley volumes; of mixed-up, impure works which nevertheless accord with the mess & disorder of nature, of life.
Unedited version of On the Road to be published (via random Walks). Geez, I thought the one I read was the unedited version.
July 20, 2006
The Book of Ballads by Charles Vess
Charles Vess originally published The Book of Ballads with Greenman Press; it was reissued by Tor Books (who need to redo their website from the ground up, or at least add a search function and full catalogue) with additional material.
The book is a series of the old ballads, retold by various luminaries such as Charles de Lint, Sharyn McCrumb, and Neil Gaiman, and all illustrated by Charles Vess.
The book is beautifully produced, and the artwork to swoon for. The females are all statuesque and scantily clad, but there are enough strapping men to balance the scales a little. And it is delightful to see the old ballads given fresh life in a new medium, in this case graphic stories. In fact, I am inclined to think that the value of this exposure supercedes any quibbles.
But, we live to quibble.
Part of the interest of the traditional ballads is their sparsity. The narratives are streamlined, polished like stones over the centuries to the point where the elisions make their own poetry. Characters' motives are rarely explained; narratives are in the third person; dialogue is minimal. Time and space collapse down to the essence. Much is unexplained, perhaps lost; perhaps it was never there. Then there are the multiple versions of even the more obscure ballads, complicating any single reading.
Much ink has been spilt over these issues, and the academic in me would dearly like to have known why a particular version was chosen over another. But in fact the question may hardly be relevant as none of the retellings stay true to any original. Of course each version is a retelling and each performance is a recreation, and these writers are certainly not obligated to stick to a set text, particularly with such a mutable form. But I do wonder why they all, to a writer, felt the need to fill in various bits of backstory or explanation. The haunting questions posed by these narratives are part of their appeal; to have someone nail down any one of the many possibilities, no matter how imaginative, is to risk making them prosaic.
Another interesting tendency of these writers is their apparent need to justify or explain the actions of the characters. Traditional ballad characters are capable of breathtaking acts of violence and cruelty, seemingly as a matter of course; many seem amoral. Barbara Allen spurns a young man because she can, yet in this retelling she is softened. The identity of the False Knight upon the Road is unexplained, yet here it is hinted at. No doubt the writers wanted to make the ballads more accessible, less inexplicable, and that no doubt suits many contemporary readers, particularly those unfamiliar with the form. But I missed the glorious unconcern, the proud lack of any impulse to explain or justify, that is so common in these narratives.
All of which is not to say this is a failure, because it is not. I enjoyed it immensely and think that there is much here for any fan of graphic novels or the fantastic. And there is certainly much here for any lover of the old ballads. These stories may not be how I might have retold these narratives, but they are all valid visions in a genre in which there are no single sources or versions. And they are proof that ballads are still a vibrant form after all this time.
July 2, 2006
Candide by Voltaire
Reading Theo Cuffe's very good translation of Candide. Worth it for Chris Ware's cover alone.
Not sure what to make of the following information on Amazon:
Customers who bought this item also bought
• The Portable Dorothy Parker
• Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
• Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Because Candide is witty, fantastic, satiric, socially aware, and pragmatic? Or are these lists just Dada, or chicken guts?
Anyway, a deft translation and a beautiful edition. Two thumbs up, if the Inquisition and its thumbscrews don't get here first.
April 12, 2006
Coupla things using a wedding motif
in honour of the most recent episode of The Sopranos (which I am going to use in a Gender Studies class sometime, for sure):
Something old: Scanned Images, Engravings and Pictures From Old Books (via The Painted Bookcase);
something new: Michael Allen of Grumpy Old Bookman has published a new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous, and it is available for download as a PDF file;
two things borrowed: Flash Memory Barbie (heads up from Mr. Kong) and the trailer for an animated version of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly (Reactions are mixed but I think it looks cool. And Keanu Reeves finally seems to have found his metier);
and something blue (the page design, that is): there is still time to submit a proposal for "When Genres Collide," the Science Fiction Research Assn. 37th Annual Conference, to be held in White Plains, NY, June 22-25, 2006.
September 4, 2005
Beautiful books
Click for larger image.
Some time ago I posted a link about the decorated edges of books; here is another, via moleskinerie, to the collection at Princeton U Library.
Here, from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library, via RaShOmoN, is a collection of scanned old illustrated botany books: 30,203 pages and 3,360 botanical illustrations currently online.
Saducismus Triumphatus: or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions in Two Parts. The First treating of their Possibility; The Second of their Real Existence at Giornale Nuovo.
Images from Medieval & Renaissance Manuscript (via Metafilter).
Wonder Bound: Rare Books on Early Museums (via Plep).
Renaissance Festival Books (also via Plep).
Altered Books (via Shopiere):
The Idea: Cut the bindings off of books found at a used book store. Find poems in the pages by the process of obliteration. Put pages in the mail and send them all around the world. Lather, rinse, repeat. This site is a chronicle of a very specific set of collaborations between [a group of] artists ... working on [specific] titles ....
Reminds me of Tom Phillips' work.
"It's 70 years since the first Penguin book was published. To mark the anniversary the Victoria and Albert Museum has a display of some 500 iconic book covers from the Penguin archives." Read more at Cronaca.
August 14, 2005
Book art
Kurt Stübers Online Library - A collection of historic and modern biology books: wonderful illustrations (from Bibi).
The Karl Bodmer Aquatint Collection: American Plains Indians in the 19thc, as seen by a German naturalist (via Plep).
Women illustrators of children's books (also via Plep).
Piles of great links to every fairy tale you ever read, heard of, or even thought of, at The Daily Pick (heads up, again, from Bibi).
Hans Christian Andersen at the British Library (via Shopiere).
Children's Literature of the Early Soviet Era: online exhibition from McGill (also via Shopiere).
Giovanni Battista Bracelli’s fascinating Bizzarie di Varie Figure at Giornale Nuovo, of course.
Vintage hobby books at Flickr (via I like [07/08/05]).
July 12, 2005
War of the Worlds
"Five of the machines had been seen moving towards the Thames." By Warwick Goble, from Pearson's Magazine, 1897
Despite futzing around trying to decide whether or not to go and see Tom "I'm straight and I'm lovin' every squishy minute of it!" Cruise, or perhaps because of it, today I bought an omnibus edition of H.G. Wells' sf texts, reproduced from their original printings, complete with illustrations: H.G. Wells: Collector's Book of Science Fiction. Great stuff. (We looked at his story "The Star" [1897] in the sf course, almost in passing, for the first class, but it is one of the most powerful texts we're reading. Lyric and sweeping, both.)
For more Martian goodness, check out Exclamation Mark for links to War of the Worlds book covers (very nice), illustrations, and other links.
July 8, 2005
London
London of the Mid-Seventeenth Century: engravings
London, ca. 1676: an interactive map
Seventeenth Century Spectacles: the ones you wear
Eighteenth Century London: images from the Museum of London
Cries of London Playing Cards, c.1754
Greenwood's Map of London 1827
Map of John Snow's London in 1859
Maps of London: lots of historical maps
A Gustave Doré Gallery: Images from London
London Characters and the Humorous Side of London Life
London : A pilgrimage, by Gustave Dore and Blanchard Jerrold, 1872
John Johnson Collection Exhibition 2001: Cries, Itinerants and Services
The Osborne Collection: The Cries of London