tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/chaucer-16068/articles
Chaucer – The Conversation
2023-02-13T16:39:06Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199544
2023-02-13T16:39:06Z
2023-02-13T16:39:06Z
Valentine’s Day’s connection with love was probably invented by Chaucer and other 14th-century poets
<p>As an undergraduate, on a tour of Europe, I happened to step into the church where Saint Valentine’s head was kept. The tour guide told us a (likely fictitious) story about Saint Valentine performing forbidden marriages for persecuted Christians under the Roman emperor <a href="https://archive.org/stream/scriptoreshistor01camb/scriptoreshistor01camb_djvu.txt">Claudius Gothicus</a> (possibly 269-270 AD). Valentine was then imprisoned and beheaded in Rome. </p>
<p>His saint’s day has since become a celebration of romance. But earlier medieval accounts of Valentine’s life contain no mention of his association with love.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120112234436/http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/golden169.htm">The Golden Legend</a> (c. 1225) –- an enormously popular book, which is the main database of saints’ lives throughout the middle ages and beyond – I found no references to love or marriage in the story of Saint Valentine. </p>
<p>In The Golden Legend, Valentine of Rome manages to restore the sight of an official’s daughter. As a result of this miracle he converts many to Christianity and incurring the wrath of the emperor. Valentine refuses to sacrifice to Roman idols and is imprisoned and beheaded. There is no love and there are no lovers.</p>
<p>But to add further complication, there is yet another prominent Saint Valentine, this time of <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/2847741">Terni, Italy</a>. Often confused or conflated with Valentine of Rome, Valentine of Terni was a bishop and scholar. His reputation reached a man named Crato whose son had been crippled since he was three. Valentine agreed to try and cure the child on the condition that Crato converted to Christianity. </p>
<p>Valentine succeeded in curing the boy and converted Crato, his household and many others including the local magistrate. Upon hearing of this cure, the Roman senators demanded that Valentine prays to their gods. Valentine, refusing to do so, was beheaded becoming a saint as well.</p>
<p>The two Valentines are remarkably similar and while their cults were popular throughout Europe, it is difficult to distinguish one from another. What is intriguing about these stories is that neither connects Valentine with love. The statements of Saint Valentine conducting secret marriages seem unsupported by medieval texts.</p>
<p>So where do we get this association between Valentine and love? Well, one short <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Chaucer_and_the_Cult_of_Saint_Valentine/_bqdZbKPztMC?hl=en&gbpv=0">answer</a> is the medieval poet <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/2847741">Chaucer</a>, who is sometimes heralded as the father of English Literature. </p>
<h2>Chaucer and Saint Valentine</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A painting of many birds." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509779/original/file-20230213-448-9m08d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C4%2C1016%2C829&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509779/original/file-20230213-448-9m08d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509779/original/file-20230213-448-9m08d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509779/original/file-20230213-448-9m08d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509779/original/file-20230213-448-9m08d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509779/original/file-20230213-448-9m08d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509779/original/file-20230213-448-9m08d9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Parliament of Birds by Carl Wilhelm de Hamilton inspired by Chaucer’s poem of love.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlement_of_Foules#/media/File:Carl_Wilhelm_de_Hamilton_-_The_Parliament_of_Birds.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Chaucer’s <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-riverside-chaucer-9780199552092?lang=de&cc=lt">Parliament of Fowles</a> the birds gather in a meeting (or parliament) to choose their mate. And what date should they gather on, but Saint Valentine’s Day:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For this was on seynt Valentynes day,<br>
Whan every foul cometh there to chese his make’ (309-10)</p>
<p>For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day<br>
When every fowl comes to choose his mate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chaucer mentions four times that birds meet on Saint Valentine’s Day to choose their partner. The final reference reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Saynt Valentyne, that are ful hy on-lofte,<br>
Thus syngen smale foules for thy sake:<br>
Now welcome, somer…’ (683-85)</p>
<p>Saint Valentine, that are full lofty on high<br>
Thus small fowls (birds) sing for thy sake.<br>
Now welcome, summer…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chaucer mentions that birds sing for Saint Valentine and choose their spouse on his day. So we have a connection between Saint Valentine and love.</p>
<h2>The date of Saint Valentine’s day</h2>
<p>One question that scholars discuss is the exact date of Saint Valentine’s celebration in Chaucer. Is it in fact on Saint Valentine’s feast day on February 14? Do birds choose their mates this early in the year when it still feels like midwinter? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/2847741">One argument</a> is that according to traditional medieval calendars, spring began with the appearance of the Pisces star sign, which occurred on February 15. Other traditional calendars regard February as the <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/2847741">first month of spring</a>. Several medieval calendars state that birds begin to sing on <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/2847741">February 12</a>. </p>
<p>This year by February 6 in Durham, I noted the longer daylight. I have heard birdsong in the early morning and witnessed blackbirds quarrelling in a hedge (possibly over their choice of mate).</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/1865">another suggestion</a> is that the Valentine’s Day referred to by Chaucer belongs to a certain Saint Valentine of Genoa whose feast day was held on May 2. It is argued that Chaucer potentially knew of this bishop through <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/1865">his visits to Genoa</a> in 1372 and 1373. It is possible that Chaucer had in mind this Genoese Valentine whose feast day is in May. Throughout medieval literature, May is the month when <a href="https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/spring">birds sing and lovers pair off</a>.</p>
<p>Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles is one of the largest pieces of evidence that links Saint Valentine with courtly love. However, Chaucer was <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/1865">not alone among his 14th-century contemporaries</a> to do so. The English poet John Gower (d. 1408), the French poet Oton de Grandson (d. 1387) , and possibly the Valencian poet Pardo make references to Valentine’s Day and courtly love. </p>
<p>By 1415 the French Duke of Orleans, imprisoned in the Tower of London, called his wife “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14343/14343-h/14343-h.htm#p245"><em>Ma doulce Valentine gent</em></a>” (my sweet gentle Valentine).</p>
<p>It is possible that Chaucer began the trend of linking Saint Valentine with love and other poets copied him, but it is uncertain. What is interesting is that writers – including Chaucer and Gower – who were deeply interested in the concept of courtly love, make much of Saint Valentine’s Day. </p>
<p>This medieval connection between Valentine’s Day and love likely either reflects a notion that was popular in medieval society or that medieval poetry is responsible for propagating the connection. Thus courtly medieval literature has an important part to play with Saint Valentine and his romantic associations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Goodison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A poem about birds meeting in February to pick their mates is the first known example of Valentine’s day being connected with love.
Natalie Goodison, Teaching Fellow in Department of English Studies, Durham University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197446
2023-01-12T05:54:13Z
2023-01-12T05:54:13Z
How Chaucer’s medieval Wife of Bath was tamed and then liberated in the 21st century
<p>Chaucer’s Wife of Bath is one of the most famous characters in English literature. Since appearing in the Canterbury tales in 1387, her tale has been rewritten and adapted by authors from the <a href="http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/about-voltaire/link">French philosopher Voltaire</a> in the 18th century to the <a href="https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/the-wife-of-willesden/?gclid=CjwKCAiAk--dBhABEiwAchIwkRs0QIeFohcfDvdYWF7Zpu_NNvBphCzTGCP9yZaj41J2Ut-DTDWlbxoCIeUQAvD_BwE">contemporary author Zadie Smith</a> in 2021.</p>
<p>As I write in <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691206011/the-wife-of-bath">my book</a>, there is something about this fictional, five-times-married, medieval woman that has taken hold of so many writers’ imaginations.</p>
<p>Before the Wife of Bath (whose name is Alison), women in literature were princesses, damsels-in distress, nuns and queens – or whores, witches and evil old crones. The principal source for the Wife of Bath is an old prostitute. Chaucer’s character is a middle-aged, mercantile, sexually active woman, who gives us her point of view. While she is an extraordinary figure (for her time), she is also an ordinary woman.</p>
<p>Across time, readers have been fascinated – and often threatened – by her. From <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/659551/pdf">scribes who argued</a> against her in the margins of 15th-century manuscripts to censors who <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4172030.pdf">burnt ballads</a> about her in the 17th century, there are many examples of her provoking anxiety in readers.</p>
<p>Many modern writers have also been drawn to her. But most of them have not been interested in her (still relevant) concern with discussing rape, domestic abuse, ageism, and the silencing of women (lines 692-696). Nor have they been interested in her humour or her self-awareness. Rather, these aspects of her have caused extreme discomfort and most authors have wanted to punish, ridicule, reduce or tame her in their own adaptations.</p>
<h2>Sex, lies and videotapes</h2>
<p>In 1972, the Italian filmmaker <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001596/">Pier Paolo Pasolini</a> made a film of the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067647/">Canterbury Tales</a>. He focused on sex and the body, in a radically skewed interpretation of Chaucer that ignores the principle of variety that underpins the original text. For Pasolini, the Wife of Bath, as an older, sexually-active woman, is an abomination.</p>
<p>In his version, sex with her literally causes her fourth husband’s death. Her fifth husband is sexually uninterested in her. The episode ends with her biting his nose, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26301382#metadata_info_tab_contents">a symbol of castration</a>. </p>
<p>Out of all of the hundreds of responses to the Wife of Bath across time that I have come across, this one is perhaps the most disturbing, demonstrating extreme discomfort with the idea of a confident, middle-aged woman.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HSAKwwsjmZg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>In the same decade, the British author Vera Chapman also created a new version of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/683194.The_Wife_of_Bath">the Wife of Bath</a>. This female-authored version is notably sympathetic. In Chapman’s novel, Alison is kind and considerate, even refusing advantageous marriage offers if she thinks the man might regret it.</p>
<p>But in order to make the Wife of Bath sympathetic, Chapman also makes her far more conventional. She becomes a damsel in distress, twice saved from rape by the intervention of chivalrous men. Chapman also turns her into a loving mother, giving her several children. </p>
<p>These adaptations show that the kind of woman Chaucer wrote was not seen as a viable heroine in the 1970s – she had to be tamed and made to fit into disturbingly narrow stereotypes.</p>
<h2>From Molly Bloom to #Metoo</h2>
<p>Somewhat similarly, the poet Ted Hughes celebrates and reduces the Wife of Bath. In his poem, <a href="https://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/th2-chaucer.htm">Chaucer</a>, Hughes writes that the poet Sylvia Plath recites the Wife of Bath’s Prologue out of pure enjoyment and love of Chaucer. He tells us that the Wife is Plath’s “favourite character in all literature”.</p>
<p>Both women embody certain positive characteristics – they are articulate, desirable, and confident. However, they also talk endlessly, listened to only by cows. Ultimately, Plath and Alison need to be rescued by a strong man (Hughes himself) as she too becomes a damsel in distress, unable to look after herself, and reliant on male strength and decisiveness.</p>
<p>This desire to reduce the Wife of Bath to something more generic is also evident earlier in the century. </p>
<p>James Joyce’s Molly Bloom in Ulysses is a reincarnation of Alison of Bath, as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44871131#metadata_info_tab_contents">other critics</a> have noted. However, Joyce’s focus on women as “the flesh that always affirms’” runs counter to the Wife of Bath’s interrogation of the misogynist idea that women are unintellectual. The Wife of Bath’s knowledge of the Bible and skill at argument are not paralleled in Joyce’s version, as he creates a simpler, more stereotyped and essentialised version of womanhood. </p>
<p>In the 21st century, many women writers, including <a href="https://carolinebergvall.com/link">Caroline Bergvall</a>, <a href="https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/patience-agbabilink">Patience Agbabi</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiyKat1QzbQ">Jean “Binta” Breeze</a>, have taken on the Wife of Bath and embraced her complexities. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4TIp3vxKzDo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Zadie Smith’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/320466/the-wife-of-willesden-by-smith-zadie/9780241471968">Wife of Willesden</a> transports her to contemporary north-west London, where she becomes Alvita. Although the text is ostentatiously of the present moment, with its references to #MeToo, Jordan Peterson and Beyoncé, it closely follows Chaucer’s text. </p>
<p>Alvita, like Alison, is complex, neither monstrous nor blameless. Alison’s searing indictments of rape culture, of the power of hate-filled misogynist books, and of the structural silencing of women in her world are re-voiced as Smith emphasises their ongoing relevance in the 21st century.</p>
<p>The history of feminism is not straightforward – some things get worse over time, not better. It is only in very recent years that new adaptations are no longer less progressive than the original. Despite all the attempts to silence and humiliate her, nevertheless, the Wife of Bath persisted and her voice is now louder than ever before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197446/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span><a href="mailto:marion.turner@ell.ox.ac.uk">marion.turner@ell.ox.ac.uk</a> received funding from The Leverhulme Trust for her work on the Wife of Bath. </span></em></p>
How Chaucer’s medieval Wife of Bath continues to make her voice heard
Marion Turner, J.R.R Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/172210
2021-11-24T13:57:44Z
2021-11-24T13:57:44Z
Zadie Smith: how the Wife of Willesden brings to life Chaucer’s tale of sex and power
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433500/original/file-20211123-20-82ghqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1200%2C671&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">They call her The Wife of Willesden.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/the-wife-of-willesden/">Marc Brenner</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It could be easy to assume that <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-canterbury-tales-by-geoffrey-chaucer">The Canterbury Tales</a>, a collection of stories written in Middle English at the end of the 14th century, would not hold much relevance to contemporary debates about sexuality and empowerment. </p>
<p>But as Zadie Smith shows in her new adaption and her first play, this definitely isn’t the case. <a href="https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/the-wife-of-willesden/">The Wife of Willesden</a>, is a high-spirited take on Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath”, one of the 24 stories in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. </p>
<p>The Canterbury Tales tells the story of a group of 31 pilgrims who meet while travelling from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, South London, to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury, Kent. Chaucer’s pilgrims - including Alysoun, the Wife of Bath - take turns telling stories on their travels. </p>
<p>Smith’s tale takes place during a pub lock-in – with locals celebrating the Borough of Brent winning the <a href="https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/arts-and-culture/current-culture-projects/london-borough-culture/london-borough-culture-2020-brent">London Borough of Culture 2020</a>. It was this win that led to Smith (Brent’s most famous writer) being commissioned to write a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59307100">literary celebration of the borough</a>. This is what prompted her to recreate Chaucer’s Wife of Bath in a modern form.</p>
<p>In the original text, audacious Alysoun gives the longest prologue of all of Chaucer’s pilgrims, describing how she has been married five times. She tells her tale about a knight of Camelot who rapes a maiden. As a result, the knight is sentenced by Queen Guinevere to find out what women want most. </p>
<p>For a year he has no luck, but he finally meets an old hag who gives him the answer and in return, he promises to repay her as she wishes – a rash promise he’ll soon regret. The answer turns out to be that women desire “sovereignty” over their husbands, and the knight’s promise means he ends up forced to marry the hag. Luckily for him, she also has the magical capacity to be a beautiful maiden, provided he grants her autonomy to choose which form she takes.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/nov/21/the-wife-of-willesden-zadie-smith-kiln-review-rare-earth-mettle-royal-court">The Wife of Willesden</a>, Smith takes audiences from the medieval Southwark Tavern to the present-day Sir Colin Campbell pub on Kilburn High Street. And it is here we meet the red dress-clad, fake Jimmy-Choo sporting, cunnilingus-loving Alvita, played by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0673907/">Clare Perkins</a>. </p>
<p>The tale told by Alvita, a 21st-century Wife of Bath, moves the location from the court of King Arthur to 18th-century Jamaica. Smith weaves medieval, contemporary and colonial contexts together with fiercely lewd humour that echoes Chaucer’s own bawdiness.</p>
<h2>Shame and Choice</h2>
<p>The lesson of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath about female sovereignty is particularly poignant because Chaucer was <a href="http://www.umsl.edu/%7Egradyf/chaucer/cecily.htm">embroiled in a rape case</a> of his own. Not much is known about the case other than the fact that Chaucer was released in 1380 from a charge of “raptus” made by Cecily Champaigne, the daughter of a London baker. </p>
<p>“Raptus” in court documents could indicate sexual assault, but also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/07/document-casts-new-light-on-chaucer-rape-case">abduction</a> for an arranged marriage. But whether or not the Wife’s Tale held personal significance to Chaucer, he chose to add the crime of rape to the tale and had Alysoun tell a story about sexual violence and choice. In fact, the rape does not appear in any of the source texts he worked with when writing his version.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Opening page of The Wife of Bath's Prologue Tale, from the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433502/original/file-20211123-15-bc54ba.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Opening page of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue Tale, from the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wife-of-Bath-ms.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In many ways, Chaucer’s Alysoun is a woman well ahead of her time. She condemns biblical scripture and medieval writings about women’s “chaste” conduct in marriage, arguing that God gave people reproductive organs to use, and she will use hers for profit and pleasure. Alysoun rejects literature that advises women to dress to protect their modesty. Instead, she wears scarlet stockings and new shoes – and goes on pilgrimage to be seen and to potentially woo a new lover. </p>
<p>Alvita is an unashamedly sex-positive woman in her mid-50s. She, like Alysoun, has been married five times. And, in Smith’s rough iambic couplets that render Willesden’s multicultural London dialects into verse, Alvita explains how she refuses to be told, by society, the church, her husbands, how to behave or dress:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My thing is: you want to think you’re a saint?<br>
Fine. But don’t slut-shame me because I ain’t</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Women’s Voices</h2>
<p>In Chaucer’s time, Willesden was itself a place of pilgrimage, not least for what was thought to be a black Madonna shrine, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/virgin-mary-in-late-medieval-and-early-modern-english-literature-and-popular-culture/walsingham-or-falsingham-woolpit-or-foulpit-marian-shrines-and-pilgrimage-before-1538/0036FA1CFF1396B17C2043C40661CDA0">known as Our Lady of Willesden</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black Madonna and Child" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433491/original/file-20211123-21-28hxf3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Madonna and Child statue of Our Lady of Willesden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Our_Lady_of_Willesden_-_black_madonna.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Smith plays on this by taking Chaucer’s “gat-tothed” (gap-toothed) Alysoun, imagining her as Alvita: “gap-toothed like (pop-star) Madonna”, a smile which Alvita tells us, “suits us both; symbolises passion”. </p>
<p>The comparison with the singer is one of the many instances where Alvita pleads that her many spouses should not treat her like the virgin she assuredly isn’t, but rather as an empowered, independent and experienced partner. </p>
<p>As with Chaucer’s Alysoun, Alvita rated three of her five husbands as good, because they were old and she was able to manipulate them, while two were bad: younger men who cheated, lied and abused her. </p>
<p>Smith’s adaptation uses Chaucer’s references to sexual desire, domestic violence and freedom of choice to explore contemporary concerns such as the sex-positive movement, #MeToo, and incels culture or “<a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a20078774/what-are-incels/">involuntary celibates</a>”. Indeed, Alysoun’s arguments about clothing and sexuality become strikingly relatable to Alvita’s critiques of “slut-shaming” and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/men-sexual-assault-clothes-women-victim-blaming-rape-a8792591.html">victim-blaming</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman in red dress flirtatiously sits on man's knee in a pub." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433503/original/file-20211123-23-1nnfrnv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zadie Smith transports Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath to 21st-century northwest London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/the-wife-of-willesden/">Marc Brenner</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alvita is a thrilling (and perhaps troubling) reminder of the way that the concerns of Chaucer’s medieval characters are still relevant today. Though Smith’s more inclusive rendering gives a voice to those silent in the original text, like Alysoun’s “gossib” (close friend) who becomes Alvita’s outspoken “ride-and-die bitch”, Zaire. </p>
<p>Ultimately though, at a time when even famous women can struggle to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/59338205">tell their stories</a> against powerful men, such tales about female agency have never been more crucial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172210/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Hanna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Zadie Smith’s first play delivers on what women want.
Natalie Hanna, Lecturer in English, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/149945
2021-01-06T13:13:29Z
2021-01-06T13:13:29Z
The fascinating story of placebos – and why doctors should use them more often
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375475/original/file-20201216-13-19t3fri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C374%2C282&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">By - https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/emotions/self.html , , Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1684469</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cebocap.jpg">Elaine and Arthur Shapiro/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Plato’s <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0176%3Atext%3DCharm.%3Asection%3D155e">cure for headaches</a> involved:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a certain leaf, but there was a charm to go with the remedy; and if one uttered the charm at the moment of its application, the remedy made one perfectly well; but without the charm there was no efficacy in the leaf.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We would now call Plato’s “charm” a placebo. Placebos have been around for thousands of years and are the most widely studied treatments in the history of medicine. Every time your doctor tells you that the drug you take has been proved to work, they mean that it has been <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781444342673">proved to work better than a placebo</a>. Every tax or insurance dollar that goes towards a treatment that is “proved” to work is proved to work because it is (supposed to be) better than a placebo. </p>
<p>Despite their importance, doctors are not allowed to use placebos to help patients (at least, officially), and there are debates about whether we still need them in clinical trials. Yet the science of placebos has evolved to the point where our views should – but have not – changed our prejudice against placebos in practice and the privileged position of placebo controls in clinical trials. </p>
<p>In this whistle-stop tour of the history of placebos, I will show what progress has been made and suggest where knowledge of placebos might go in the near future.</p>
<h2>From pleasing prayers to pleasing treatments</h2>
<p>The word “placebo”, as it is used in medicine, was introduced in Saint Jerome’s fourth-century translation of the Bible into Latin. Verse 9 of Psalm 114 became: <a href="https://www.biblestudytools.com/vul/psalms/114-9.html"><em>placebo Domino in regione vivorum</em></a>. “Placebo” means “I will please”, and the verse was then: “I will please the Lord in the land of the living.” </p>
<p>Historians are keen to point out that his translation isn’t quite correct. The Hebrew transliteration is <em>iset’halekh liphnay Adonai b’artzot hakhayim</em>, which means, “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” I think historians are making much ado about not much: why would the Lord want to walk with anyone who wasn’t pleasing? Still, arguments about what placebos <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/HOWTRO-24">“really” are continue</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting of Saint Jerome by Caravaggio." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375451/original/file-20201216-17-1wmk2um.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375451/original/file-20201216-17-1wmk2um.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375451/original/file-20201216-17-1wmk2um.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375451/original/file-20201216-17-1wmk2um.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375451/original/file-20201216-17-1wmk2um.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375451/original/file-20201216-17-1wmk2um.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375451/original/file-20201216-17-1wmk2um.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Saint Jerome by Caravaggio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48395984">Caravaggio/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At that time, and even today, the mourning family provided a feast for those who attended the funeral. Because of the free feast, distant relatives, and – this is the important point – people who pretended to be relatives attended the funeral singing “placebo”, just to get the food. This deceptive practice led <a href="http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/%7Echaucer/teachslf/parst-tran.htm">Chaucer to write</a>, “Flatterers are the Devil’s chaplains, always singing Placebo.”</p>
<p>Chaucer also named one of the characters in The Merchant’s Tale, Placebo. The protagonist of the tale is Januarie. Januarie was a wealthy old knight who desired recreational sex with a younger woman called May. To legitimise his desire, he considers marrying her. Before making his decision, he consults his two friends Placebo and Justinius. </p>
<p>Placebo is keen to gain favour with the knight and approves of Januarie’s plans to marry May. Justinius is more cautious, citing Seneca and Cato, who preached virtue and caution in selecting a wife. </p>
<p>After listening to them both, Januarie tells Justinius that he didn’t give a damn about Seneca: he marries May. The theme of deception arises here, too, because Januarie is blind and does not catch May cheating on him.</p>
<p>In the 18th century, the term “placebo” moved into the medical realm when it was used to describe a doctor. In his 1763 book, Dr Pierce describes a visit to his friend, a Lady who was ill in bed. He finds <a href="https://www.jameslindlibrary.org/quoted-in-sutherland-a-attempts-to-revive-ancient-medical-doctrines/">“Dr. Placebo” sitting at her bedside</a>. </p>
<p>Dr Placebo had impressive long curly hair, he was fashionable and he carefully prepared his medicine at the patient’s bedside. When Dr Pierce asks his friend how she was doing, she replies: “Pure and well, my old friend the Doctor has been just treating me with some of his good drops.” Pierce seems to imply that any positive effect Dr Placebo had was due to his great bedside manner, rather than the actual contents of the drops.</p>
<p>Eventually, the word “placebo” started being used to describe treatments. The Scottish obstetrician William Smellie (in 1752) is the first person I’m aware of who <a href="https://www.jameslindlibrary.org/smellie-w-1752/">uses the term “placebo” to describe a medical treatment</a>. He wrote: “it will be convenient to prescribe some innocent Placemus, that she may take between whiles, to beguile the time and please her imagination”. (“Placemus” is another form of the word “placebo”.)</p>
<h2>Placebos in clinical trials</h2>
<p>Placebos were first used in clinical trials in the 18th century to debunk so-called quack cures. Which is paradoxical because the so-called “non-quack” cures at the time included bloodletting and feeding patients the undigested material from the intestines of an oriental goat. These were considered to be so effective that no trials were needed.</p>
<p>The earliest example I’m aware of where a placebo control was used is in a trial of “Perkins tractors”. In the late 18th century, an American doctor called Elisha Perkins developed two metal rods he claimed conducted what he called pathogenic “electric” fluid away from the body. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cartoon of a quack treating a patient with Perkins Patent Tractors." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375465/original/file-20201216-15-1rwftf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375465/original/file-20201216-15-1rwftf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375465/original/file-20201216-15-1rwftf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375465/original/file-20201216-15-1rwftf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375465/original/file-20201216-15-1rwftf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375465/original/file-20201216-15-1rwftf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375465/original/file-20201216-15-1rwftf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A quack treating a patient with Perkins Patent Tractors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36346200">James Gillray/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He received the first medical patent issued under the Constitution of the United States for his device in 1796. The tractors were very popular, and even <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2601307/pdf/yjbm00545-0050.pdf">George Washington is said to have bought a set</a>. </p>
<p>They reached Britain in 1799 and became popular in Bath, which was already a hub for healing because of its <a href="https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/1981/AP/AP9811800002#!divAbstract">natural mineral waters and associated spa, which have been used since Roman times</a>. Dr John Haygarth, however, thought tractors were bunk and proposed to <a href="https://www.jameslindlibrary.org/haygarth-j-1800/">test their effects in a trial</a>. To do this, Haygarth made wooden tractors that were painted to appear identical to Perkins’ metal tractors. But because they were made of wood, they could not conduct electricity. </p>
<p>In a series of ten patients (five treated with real, and five with fake tractors), the “placebo” tractors worked as well as the real ones. Haygarth concluded that tractors didn’t work. Interestingly, the trial did not show that the tractors did not benefit people, but merely that they did not produce their benefit via electricity. Haygarth himself admitted that the fake tractors worked very well. He attributed this to faith.</p>
<p>Other early examples of placebo controls tested the effects of homeopathy tablets compared with bread pills. One of these early trials revealed that doing nothing was better than both <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/014107680609900726">homeopathy and allopathic (standard) medicine</a>. </p>
<p>By the middle of the 20th century, placebo-controlled trials were prevalent enough for Henry Knowles Beecher to produce one of the earliest examples of a “systematic review” that estimated how powerful placebo were. Beecher served in the United States Army during the second world war. Working on the front line in southern Italy, supplies of morphine were running out, and Beecher reportedly saw something that surprised him. A nurse injected a wounded soldier with saltwater instead of morphine before an operation. The soldier thought it was real morphine and didn’t appear to feel any pain.</p>
<p>After the war, Beecher reviewed 15 placebo-controlled trials of treatments for pain and a number of other ailments. The studies had 1,082 participants and found that, overall, 35% of the patients’ symptoms were relieved by placebo alone. In 1955, he published his study in his famous article <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/303530">The Powerful Placebo</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1990s, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0895435697002035">researchers questioned Beecher’s estimates</a>, based on the fact that the people who got better after taking the placebos might have recovered even if they had not taken the placebo. In philosophy-speak the possibly mistaken inference that the placebo caused the cure is called the <em>post hoc ergo propter hoc</em> (after, therefore because of) fallacy. </p>
<p>To test whether placebos really make people better, we have to compare people who take placebos with people who take no treatment at all. Danish medical researchers Asbjørn Hróbjartsson and Peter Gøtzsche did just that. They looked at three-armed trials that included active treatment, placebo control, and untreated groups. Then they checked to see whether the placebo was better than doing nothing. They found a tiny placebo effect that they said could have been an artefact of bias. They concluded that “there is little evidence that placebos, in general, have powerful clinical effects”, and published their results in an article called <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm200105243442106">Is the placebo powerless?</a>, which contrasted directly with the title of Beecher’s paper.</p>
<p>However, Hróbjartsson and Gøtzsche corrected Beecher’s mistake only to introduce one of their own. They included anything labelled as a placebo in a trial for any condition. Such a comparison of apples and oranges is not legitimate. If we looked at the effect of any treatment for any condition and found a tiny average effect, we could not conclude that treatments were not effective. I <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23690944/">exposed this error in a systematic review</a>, and now it is widely accepted that just as some treatments are effective for some things but not everything, some placebos are effective for some things – especially pain.</p>
<h2>Placebo surgery</h2>
<p>Recently, placebo-controlled surgery trials have been used. In perhaps the most famous of these, American surgeon Bruce Moseley found 180 patients who had such severe knee pain that even the best drugs had failed to work. He gave <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa013259">half of them real arthroscopy and the other half placebo arthroscopy</a>. </p>
<p>Patients in the placebo arthroscopy group were given anaesthetics and a small incision was made in their knees, but there was no arthroscope, no repairing of damaged cartilage, and no cleaning out of loose fragments of bone. </p>
<p>To keep the patients ignorant about which group they were in, the doctors and nurses talked through a real procedure even if they were performing the placebo procedure. </p>
<p>The fake surgery worked as well as the “real” surgery. A review of over 50 placebo-controlled surgery trials found that placebo surgery was as good as the real surgery in more than half the trials.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Surgeon operating on a patient's knee." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375489/original/file-20201216-21-15cumi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375489/original/file-20201216-21-15cumi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375489/original/file-20201216-21-15cumi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375489/original/file-20201216-21-15cumi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375489/original/file-20201216-21-15cumi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375489/original/file-20201216-21-15cumi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375489/original/file-20201216-21-15cumi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Placebo knee surgery works as well as the real thing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/arthroscope-surgery-463356068">Samrith Na Lumpoon/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Honest placebos</h2>
<p>A placebo can work even if a patient does not believe it is a “real” treatment. </p>
<p>In the first of the studies of open-label placebos (placebos that patients know are placebos) I know of, two Baltimore doctors by the names of Lee Park and Uno Covi <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14258363/">gave open-label placebos to 15 neurotic patients</a>. They presented the placebo pills to the patients and said: “Many people with your kind of condition have been helped by what are sometimes called sugar pills and we feel that a so-called sugar pill may help you, too.” </p>
<p>The patients took the placebos, and many of them got better after having the placebo – even though they knew it was a placebo. However, the patients were neurotic and a bit paranoid so they didn’t believe the doctors. After the placebo made them better, they thought the doctors had lied and actually given them the real drug. </p>
<p>More recently, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28452193/">several higher-quality studies confirm that open-label placebos can work</a>. These “honest” placebos may work because patients have a conditioned response to an encounter with their doctor. Just like an arachnophobe’s body can react negatively to a spider even if they know it’s not poisonous, someone can react positively to treatment from a doctor even if they know the doctor is giving them a sugar pill.</p>
<h2>The history of learning how placebos work</h2>
<p>An early study investigating the inner pharmacology of placebo mechanisms is Jon Levine and Newton Gordon’s 1978 <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/80579/">study of 51 patients</a> who had impacted molars extracted. All 51 patients had received a painkiller called mepivacaine for the surgical procedure. Then, at three and four hours after the surgery, the patients were given either morphine, a placebo or naloxone. The patients didn’t know which one they had received.</p>
<p>Naloxone is an opioid antagonist, which means that it stops drugs such as morphine and endorphins from producing their effects. It literally blocks the cell receptors, so it stops morphine (or endorphins) from docking onto those receptors. It’s used to treat morphine overdose. </p>
<p>The researchers found that naloxone blocked the painkilling effect of placebos. This shows that placebos cause the release of painkilling endorphins. Since then, many experiments have confirmed these results. Hundreds of others have shown that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/placebo-effects-9780198705086?cc=us&lang=en&">placebo treatments affect the brain and body</a> in several ways.</p>
<p>The main mechanisms by which placebos are believed to work are expectancy and conditioning.</p>
<p>In a comprehensive study published in 1999 of conditioning and expectancy mechanisms, Martina Amanzio and Fabrizio Benedetti <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9870976/">divided 229 participants into 12 groups</a>. The groups were given a variety of drugs, were conditioned in a number of ways and were given different messages (to induce high or low expectancy). The study found that placebo effects were caused by both expectancy and conditioning.</p>
<p>Despite the progress, some researchers argue – and I agree – that there is something mysterious about how placebos work. In a personal communication, Dan Moerman, a medical anthropologist and ethnobotanist, explained it better than I can:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We know from all the MRI people that it’s easy enough to see what happens inside to the amygdala, or whatever other bit might be involved, but what moved the amygdala, well, that takes some work.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>History of placebo ethics</h2>
<p>The accepted view in clinical practice is that placebos are not ethical because they require deception. This view has not yet fully accounted for the evidence that we don’t need deception for placebos to work.</p>
<p>The history of the ethics of placebo controls is more complex. Now that we have many effective treatments, we can compare new treatments with proven therapies. Why would a patient agree to enrol in a trial comparing a new treatment with a placebo when they could enrol in a trial of a new treatment compared with a proven one?</p>
<p>Doctors who take part in such trials may be violating their ethical duty to help and avoid harm. The World Medical Association <a href="https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/">initially banned</a> placebo-controlled trials where a proven therapy was available. Yet in 2010, they reversed this position and said we sometimes needed placebo-controlled trials, even if there is a proven therapy. They claimed there were “scientific” reasons for doing this.</p>
<p>These so-called scientific reasons have been presented using <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15265160903090041">obscure (to most people) concepts such as “assay sensitivity” and “absolute effect size”</a>. In plain English, they boil down to two (mistaken) claims:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They say we can only trust placebo controls. This was true in the past. Historically, treatments like bloodletting and cocaine were used to treat a number of ailments yet were often harmful. Say we’d done a trial comparing bloodletting with cocaine for anxiety, and it turned out bloodletting was better than cocaine. We couldn’t infer that bloodletting was effective: it could have been worse than a placebo or doing nothing. In these historical cases, it would have been better to compare those treatments against a placebo. But now, we have effective treatments that can be used as benchmarks. So if a new drug came along for treating anxiety, we could compare it with the proven effective treatment. If the new treatment proved to be at least as good as the old one, we could say it is effective.</p></li>
<li><p>They say only placebo controls provide a constant baseline. This is based on the mistaken view that placebo treatments are “inert” and therefore have constant, invariable effects. This, too, is mistaken. In a systematic review of placebo pills in ulcer trials, the <a href="https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1525/maq.2000.14.1.51">placebo response ranged from 0% (not having any effect) to 100%</a> (complete cure).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>As the arguments supporting placebo-controlled trials are being questioned, there is now a movement urging the World Medical Association needs to do <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15265160903090041">another U-turn</a>, back to its original position.</p>
<h2>Whither placebo?</h2>
<p>For centuries, the word “placebo” was closely linked to deception and pleasing people. Recent studies of open-label placebos show that they need not be deceptive to work. Contrariwise, studies of placebos show that they are not inert or invariable and the basis for the current World Medical Association position has been undermined. The recent history of placebos seems to pave the way for more placebo treatments in clinical practice and fewer in clinical trials.</p>
<p><em>I acknowledge the James Lind Library, the writing of Ted Kaptchuk, Jeffrey Aronson, and the mentorship of Dan Moerman.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Howick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A whistle-stop tour of the history of placebos.
Jeremy Howick, Director of the Oxford Empathy Programme, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/150159
2020-12-28T21:42:24Z
2020-12-28T21:42:24Z
Hit the road, Jack: 5 epic literary road trips that are not by Kerouac
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374145/original/file-20201210-17-e4luii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C46%2C5129%2C3399&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/uploads/14114186770621924b36f/3a8bd6d2?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=MXwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHw%3D&auto=format&fit=crop&w=2700&q=80">Unsplash/Juan Di Nella</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Summer is the time for holidays and travel. But as we weakly wave goodbye (we hope) to the horrors of 2020, international travel is off the table and even domestic travel is <a href="https://www.interstatequarantine.org.au/state-and-territory-border-closures/">still restricted</a>. </p>
<p>A book is still your most faithful companion on summer journeys, even if that trip is limited to the journey between the kitchen and a sun lounge in the backyard. </p>
<p>Curated here is a mix tape of great literary road trips. There is one oldie but goodie, some 21st-century hits and shout-outs to the authors who mapped the way. Buckle up — or curl up — and enjoy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-alice-pung-how-reading-changed-my-life-147442">Friday essay: Alice Pung — how reading changed my life</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>1. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (c. 1400)</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374125/original/file-20201210-19-wpgypx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover: The Canterbury Tales" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374125/original/file-20201210-19-wpgypx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374125/original/file-20201210-19-wpgypx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374125/original/file-20201210-19-wpgypx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374125/original/file-20201210-19-wpgypx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374125/original/file-20201210-19-wpgypx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374125/original/file-20201210-19-wpgypx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374125/original/file-20201210-19-wpgypx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1261208589l/2696.jpg">Goodreads</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our journey begins with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2696.The_Canterbury_Tales">The Canterbury Tales</a>, one of literature’s earliest road trip narratives, although Chaucer’s work takes its lead from <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51799.The_Decameron">Giovanni Bocaccio’s Decameron</a> (c. 1353). </p>
<p>A series of stories told by a group of travellers, in Chaucer’s Middle English, takes readers on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket in Canterbury. Indeed, the pilgrimage can be seen as the earliest form of today’s holiday (a “<a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/holiday">holy day</a>”), in which the faithful would journey for days or even weeks to visit a holy site. The physical demands of the travel itself contributed to the pilgrim’s spiritual growth. </p>
<p>Each pilgrim of The Canterbury Tales represents a different class or social position — the knight, the priest, the merchant, and so on. Additionally, each story not only represents a particular and symbolic genre — the low humour of the miller’s fabliaux, or the knight’s idealisation of the courtly love poem — but when taken together signify the interactions between people and experiences of the period. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chaucers-great-poem-troilus-and-criseyde-perfect-reading-while-under-siege-from-a-virus-142662">Chaucer’s great poem Troilus and Criseyde: perfect reading while under siege from a virus</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>If you enjoy The Canterbury Tales, you might also like Homer’s epic poem <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1381.The_Odyssey">The Odyssey</a> (8th C BCE) — a heroic adventure on the high seas. Likewise: Jules Verne’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33507.Twenty_Thousand_Leagues_Under_the_Sea?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=h3fzmEAVMe&rank=3">Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54479.Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Days?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=h3fzmEAVMe&rank=4">Around the World in Eighty Days</a> (both first published in English in 1872), or Jonathan Swift’s satirical masterpiece, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7733.Gulliver_s_Travels?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=imkyfzZafI&rank=1">Gulliver’s Travels</a> (1726).</p>
<h2>2. Cheryl Strayed, Wild (2012)</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374127/original/file-20201210-19-rj0ck9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover: Wild (a hiking boot)" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374127/original/file-20201210-19-rj0ck9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374127/original/file-20201210-19-rj0ck9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374127/original/file-20201210-19-rj0ck9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374127/original/file-20201210-19-rj0ck9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374127/original/file-20201210-19-rj0ck9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374127/original/file-20201210-19-rj0ck9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374127/original/file-20201210-19-rj0ck9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1453189881l/12262741._SY475_.jpg">Goodreads</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps best known for the image of Reese Witherspoon tossing her hiking boots into a canyon in the 2014 film adaptation, Cheryl Strayed’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12262741-wild?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ofk2TrGaTA&rank=1">memoir</a> of her solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail is an epic pilgrimage in its own right. </p>
<p>Just as the archetypes of The Canterbury Tales undertake both a physical and a spiritual journey, so too Strayed commits to the trail as a trip of transformation and discovery: “a world I thought would both make me into the woman I knew I could become and turn me back into the girl I’d once been. A world that measured two feet wide and 2,663 miles long”. </p>
<p>Wild constitutes a modern, even feminist, reimagining of the American frontier narrative — a lone journey into the “wild west”, stripped of the markers of civilisation to truly find a self-made paradise. The book echoes and subverts the classic road trip novel, Jack Kerouac’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/70401.On_the_Road?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=tR92ecrppd&rank=1">On the Road</a> (1957) — a compulsory addition to any literary road trip list. It also hearkens back to Mark Twain’s boyhood novel, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2956.The_Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=PnG1mYJGSq&rank=1">The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</a> (1885), or even Vladimir Nabokov’s twisted trip in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7604.Lolita?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=r6Y4bhIa4Q&rank=1">Lolita</a> (1955).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mythbusting-ancient-rome-did-all-roads-actually-lead-there-81746">Mythbusting Ancient Rome -- did all roads actually lead there?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. John Green’s Paper Towns (2008)</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374132/original/file-20201210-16-fvgjmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover: paper towns (poster pin in map)" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374132/original/file-20201210-16-fvgjmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374132/original/file-20201210-16-fvgjmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374132/original/file-20201210-16-fvgjmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374132/original/file-20201210-16-fvgjmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374132/original/file-20201210-16-fvgjmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374132/original/file-20201210-16-fvgjmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374132/original/file-20201210-16-fvgjmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6442769-paper-towns?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=aF0YE7GHjk&rank=1">Goodreads</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That the road trip is frequently used as a symbolic journey of understanding the self makes it ripe for the contemporary <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bildungsroman">bildungsroman</a> form — a novel of development — in the Young Adult genre. Author John Green has plumbed this trope a number of times, perhaps most successfully in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6442769-paper-towns?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=aF0YE7GHjk&rank=1">Paper Towns</a>. The acclaimed <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7664334-amy-roger-s-epic-detour?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=vhZ4qn3Rjv&rank=1">Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour</a> by Morgan Matson (2010), or the more recent <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40864798-i-wanna-be-where-you-are?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=evWo6a49jG&rank=1">I Wanna Be Where You Are</a> by Kristina Forest (2019) both also fall within this category. </p>
<p>Poised on the precarious cusp of adulthood and searching for their adventurous friend Margot, the teenaged protagonists of Paper Towns set off on a road trip through the night, determined to “right a lot of wrongs … wrong some rights … (and) radically reshape the world”. It is thus a moral journey, an effort to imprint the emerging self on a world not yet acknowledging its presence. The travellers want to make decisions about their lives, rather than be swept down a predetermined road. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-kids-are-alright-young-adult-post-disaster-novels-can-teach-us-about-trauma-and-survival-140849">The kids are alright: young adult post-disaster novels can teach us about trauma and survival</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4. Tara June Winch’s Swallow the Air (2006)</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374137/original/file-20201210-17-1j1z9wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover: Swallow the Air" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374137/original/file-20201210-17-1j1z9wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374137/original/file-20201210-17-1j1z9wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374137/original/file-20201210-17-1j1z9wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374137/original/file-20201210-17-1j1z9wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374137/original/file-20201210-17-1j1z9wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374137/original/file-20201210-17-1j1z9wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374137/original/file-20201210-17-1j1z9wh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27882034-swallow-the-air?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=q1Q2834cWL&rank=1">Goodreads</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australian road trip narratives are more often described by fear than <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10417949109372836">frontierism</a>, as in Kenneth Cook’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1533656.Wake_in_Fright?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=4qzoc4GXml&rank=1">Wake in Fright</a> (1961) or cinema’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416315/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Wolf Creek</a> (2005). Similarly, Ari’s drug-fuelled trip around inner Melbourne in Christos Tsiolkas’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1208928.Loaded?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=2nFbx25oMr&rank=1">Loaded</a> (1995) tracks the urban intersections of individual, national and multicultural identity. </p>
<p>2020 has been a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-10/tara-june-winch-omar-sakr-win-at-prime-ministers-literary-awards/12969246">triumphant year</a> for Tara June Winch. Her earlier short story cycle, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27882034-swallow-the-air?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=q1Q2834cWL&rank=1">Swallow the Air</a> won the David Unaipon Award.</p>
<p>With a nod to the structure of The Canterbury Tales, Winch’s stories follow the cross country journey of a young Indigenous girl, May. She is determined to escape and change the cycles of violence and misery to which her family has been subjected. Like Tony Birch’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12928972-blood?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=bRoEKzldHe&rank=1">Blood</a> (2012), it adopts the road trip as a means of going back to Country, providing not only a specifically cultural innovation in the genre, but a different understanding of self-discovery.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-yield-wins-the-miles-franklin-a-powerful-story-of-violence-and-forms-of-resistance-142284">The Yield wins the Miles Franklin: a powerful story of violence and forms of resistance</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>5. Joe Hill’s N0S4A2 (2013)</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374142/original/file-20201210-13-ch7gut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover: N0S4A2 (number plate)" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374142/original/file-20201210-13-ch7gut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374142/original/file-20201210-13-ch7gut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374142/original/file-20201210-13-ch7gut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374142/original/file-20201210-13-ch7gut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374142/original/file-20201210-13-ch7gut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374142/original/file-20201210-13-ch7gut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374142/original/file-20201210-13-ch7gut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1369591617l/15729539.jpg">Goodreads</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Not all road trips constitute journeys into the self. Instead, a psychological voyage might constitute a plunge into the depths of the nightmarish unconscious. </p>
<p>Joe Hill, son of that most famous horror writer Stephen King, offers up a road trip we might prefer not to take, although it does have a festive theme. In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15729539-nos4a2?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=DlL4vBqfCy&rank=1">N0S4A2</a>, Christmasland is the horrific and fantastic destination for the child victims of a phantom vehicle and its deranged driver. </p>
<p>Hill offers the chilling prophesy that “sooner or later a black car came for everyone”, pointing out the horrific inevitability of one final road trip. It’s a journey in the tradition of the monstrous vehicle, as in King’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10629.Christine?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=NU6NN6sH7L&rank=1">Christine</a> (1983), as well as the apocalyptic father-son walk in Cormac McCarthy’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6288.The_Road?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=JLG8xJCjFJ&rank=1">The Road </a>(2006), Josh Malerman’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18498558-bird-box?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=v1KR4W9LwJ&rank=1">Bird Box</a> (2014), King’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149267.The_Stand?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=BdMmxlvtoz&rank=1">The Stand</a> (1978) and (as Richard Bachman) <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9014.The_Long_Walk?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=92yd490KrK&rank=1">The Long Walk</a> (1979).</p>
<p>After the year we’ve all had, I hope your road trip is less nightmarish.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Gildersleeve does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Summer is the time for road trips — and books that can take you on a journey of discovery.
Jessica Gildersleeve, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Southern Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/142662
2020-08-03T05:05:31Z
2020-08-03T05:05:31Z
Chaucer’s great poem Troilus and Criseyde: perfect reading while under siege from a virus
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350107/original/file-20200729-31-yu15l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C4%2C926%2C1194&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chaucer at the Court of Edward III by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/ford-madox-brown/chaucer-at-the-court-of-edward-iii-1851">Wikiart</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Art+for+trying+times">Art for Trying Times</a>, authors nominate a work they turn to for solace or perspective during this pandemic.</em></p>
<p>The Greeks are at the gates, and the city of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Siege-of-Troy-1250-BCE">Troy is under siege</a>.</p>
<p>Every day, the Trojans ride out to do battle with Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax and the aggrieved husband Menelaus, whose wife Helen has been abducted by the Trojan prince Paris. But despite this crisis, the Trojan leisured classes carry on with their lives.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fall-of-troy-the-legend-and-the-facts-92625">Fall of Troy: the legend and the facts</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>One joyful spring morning, when the sun is shining and the meadows are filled with flowers, a beautiful young widow, Criseyde, sits in her palace, in a paved parlour with two other ladies, while a young maiden reads to them the story of another siege, that of the Greek city of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thebes,_Greece">Thebes</a>. </p>
<p>This pleasant scene is interrupted by Criseyde’s uncle Pandarus, who is bringing the astonishing news that Paris’s younger brother Troilus has fallen in love with her. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Geoffrey_Chaucer/">Geoffrey Chaucer</a> wrote his great romance <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Troilus-Criseyde-Penguin-Classics-Geoffrey/dp/0140424210/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1595565343&refinements=p_27%3ABarry+Windeatt&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Barry+Windeatt">Troilus and Criseyde</a> around 1386. I teach this text every year in my honours class. It is long and difficult, and we normally spend half the semester working through the poem. Even then we don’t read it all in detail. </p>
<p>This year, the global pandemic brings a new context for reading this poem about a passionate but doomed love affair between two Trojans, conducted under siege conditions, in addition to all the constraints Chaucer’s very medieval lovers place around themselves.</p>
<h2>A secret affair</h2>
<p>Chaucer’s language in this text is rich and ornate, and the poem is written in a rhyming stanza whose syntax ranges from elegant to knotty. The narrative is both leisurely and intense. </p>
<p>It offers philosophical digressions about the nature of free will and predestination; but it is also full of intricate private meditations, and absorbing, intense conversations between the three main characters. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350115/original/file-20200729-17-14pfivp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover: medieval painting of couple" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350115/original/file-20200729-17-14pfivp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350115/original/file-20200729-17-14pfivp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350115/original/file-20200729-17-14pfivp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350115/original/file-20200729-17-14pfivp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350115/original/file-20200729-17-14pfivp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350115/original/file-20200729-17-14pfivp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350115/original/file-20200729-17-14pfivp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.amazon.com/Troilus-Criseyde-Penguin-Classics-Geoffrey/dp/0140424210/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1595565343&refinements=p_27%3ABarry+Windeatt&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Barry+Windeatt">Penguin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nothing in the brutal rough and tumble of Shakespeare’s later play <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-plays/troilus-and-cressida/">Troilus and Cressida</a> can prepare you for the lyric drama of this poem.</p>
<p>Criseyde’s father has abandoned Troy and gone over to the Greek camp. She has been allowed to remain in Troy, but she is very vulnerable and fearful. The love affair must remain secret to protect her honour; Troilus and Criseyde cannot marry because he is a prince and she is the daughter of a traitor; and nor can they leave Troy and abandon their city. </p>
<p>They are also both overcome by shyness, dread, and reluctance to speak to each other. Indeed, the lovers do not exchange a single word until the beginning of the third book, and by the beginning of the fifth and final book they have parted, never to meet again. </p>
<p>Every year my students bring fresh insights to this poem’s emotional and cultural drama. Although I am on long service leave this semester, I am still conducting my annual reading of the poem on Zoom with a group of friends and colleagues. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/ancient-medieval-and-early-modern-studies/seminars-reading-groups/middle-english">Middle English Reading Group</a> is made up of staff, present and former students, and members of a thriving community of scholars and lovers of medieval and early modern culture. </p>
<p>This year, reading together through Zoom offers a powerful contrast with Chaucer’s scene of medieval women’s communal reading. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o0j2ifNeZvM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Leisurely yet intense language fills rhyming stanza – all seven hours of them.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/say-what-how-to-improve-virtual-catch-ups-book-groups-and-wine-nights-134655">Say what? How to improve virtual catch-ups, book groups and wine nights</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Reading aloud</h2>
<p>When Pandarus enters Criseyde’s paved parlour, where the maiden is reading from the book about the siege of Thebes, she greets him warmly and brings him to sit next to her. Hoping to turn her mood to thoughts of love, he asks what they are reading: is it a book about love? Is there anything he can learn?</p>
<p>Criseyde teases her uncle and when they have finished laughing she tells him where they are up to. She points to “thise lettres rede,” the <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/rubricated">rubricated</a> or decoratively coloured chapter heading that introduces the next section.</p>
<p>Pandarus replies that he knows all about that sorrowful story but insists they should turn their thoughts to spring, as a prelude to introducing his news about Troilus. He invites her to dance but Criseyde recoils in horror. As a widow, she says, it would be better for her to live in a cave, to pray, and read the lives of the saints. </p>
<p>In typical Chaucerian fashion, this passage shows a female character’s awareness of what she might do, and perhaps should do, but does not. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">Guide to the classics: Homer's Iliad</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Unhappy endings</h2>
<p>The domestic charms of this safe interior space, Pandarus’ fearful invitation, and the pleasures of reading and talking about familiar books distract us from the dreadful history lesson in the book they are reading. For just as Thebes was destroyed under siege, so too will Troy be. </p>
<p>Chaucer’s readers knew this; we know it; and even Criseyde’s father, a soothsayer, knows it: he has already abandoned Troy and gone over to the Greek camp, leaving her unprotected except for her uncle who is about to embroil her in the complexities of Trojan court politics.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350105/original/file-20200729-35-ejdhzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover: writer Chaucer" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350105/original/file-20200729-35-ejdhzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350105/original/file-20200729-35-ejdhzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350105/original/file-20200729-35-ejdhzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350105/original/file-20200729-35-ejdhzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350105/original/file-20200729-35-ejdhzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350105/original/file-20200729-35-ejdhzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350105/original/file-20200729-35-ejdhzf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/30+Great+Myths+about+Chaucer-p-9781119194057">Wiley</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We know that this love story will turn out badly. In the very first stanza, Chaucer has told us the ending of the story: that Troilus will win Criseyde, but that she will forsake him. </p>
<p>Knowing the ending doesn’t affect our pleasure in this text. And so we read on, absorbed by Chaucer’s capacity to conjure the lives of others as they balance distress with hope, and external disaster with private joy. </p>
<p>Like the Trojans, we may not be able to learn from the past so as to avoid disaster. But Chaucer is forgiving, and offers us the seductive pleasures of reading and rereading, and the comfort of repetition.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/missing-your-friends-rereading-harry-potter-might-be-the-next-best-thing-136236">Missing your friends? Rereading Harry Potter might be the next best thing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142662/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Trigg receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p>
When we feel under siege, Chaucer’s doomed love story during the battle for Troy might be just the distraction we need.
Stephanie Trigg, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of English Literature, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130514
2020-01-24T12:18:27Z
2020-01-24T12:18:27Z
Terry Jones: professional comic, amateur historian, accomplished human being
<p>In 2013, Terry Jones said that he wanted to be remembered not for the Life of Brian or the Meaning of Life, but as a children’s book writer and for his “academic stuff”, saying that “those are my best bits”.</p>
<p>As well as being a member of the Monty Python team, Jones – who has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jan/22/terry-jones-obituary">died at the age of 77</a> – wrote books and articles on Geoffrey Chaucer, attended conferences and made TV shows about medieval life. In 2015, I was lucky enough to share a stage with him in a discussion about Chaucerian biography. Jones’s scholarly work was characterised by his witty questioning of established positions and authority. He wrote from the edges, from a position of irreverence – rather like Chaucer himself.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311796/original/file-20200124-81395-4bghw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311796/original/file-20200124-81395-4bghw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311796/original/file-20200124-81395-4bghw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311796/original/file-20200124-81395-4bghw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311796/original/file-20200124-81395-4bghw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311796/original/file-20200124-81395-4bghw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311796/original/file-20200124-81395-4bghw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jones’ first major historical work, published in 1980.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jones’s two books on Chaucer both offered revisionary accounts, the first of Chaucer’s texts, the second of his life. <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n07/gabriel-josipovici/imperfect-knight">Chaucer’s Knight: A Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary</a> turned established ideas about the highest-class Canterbury pilgrim and the first and longest Canterbury Tale on their heads. Far from being an ideal character, the Knight was, in Jones’s impassioned and influential argument, a mercenary, a cynical thug, out for hire, willing to fight for all the most disreputable causes in Europe. </p>
<p>More recently, the brilliantly titled <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/15/classics.highereducation">Who Murdered Chaucer?</a> speculated that Chaucer’s political dealings involved him in conspiracy and that he was ultimately the victim of a Lancastrian plot, an argument that fills in some of the blanks of Chaucer’s last years.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311797/original/file-20200124-81341-14fj0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311797/original/file-20200124-81341-14fj0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311797/original/file-20200124-81341-14fj0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311797/original/file-20200124-81341-14fj0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311797/original/file-20200124-81341-14fj0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1172&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311797/original/file-20200124-81341-14fj0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1172&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311797/original/file-20200124-81341-14fj0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1172&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hailed by historian Peter Ackroyd as ‘a refreshing and engaging book’. Published in 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chaucer’s Knight is an important book in the way that it challenges critical orthodoxies. Jones made many critics move away from conservative positions that had long been relatively unexamined. It shifted the discourse around the Knight, and – 40 years after publication – it remains required reading for anyone interested in the Canterbury Tales.</p>
<p>Jones’s approach was historicist. Rather than assuming that the Knight’s battling was praiseworthy, he investigated contemporary accounts of the battles in which the Knight was involved (such as the notorious <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25094410">Battle of Alexandria in 1365)</a>, and explored the nature of the garments that he wore and of the knights that Chaucer knew. </p>
<p>He read Chaucer’s sources and, for a later edition, he used new technology to examine the <a href="https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7">Ellesmere manuscript</a> microscopically to see how the Knight’s portrait had been altered – or censored. He suggested that changes had been made to minimise the Knight’s resemblance to Sir John Hawkwood, a notorious mercenary who worked for the Visconti tyrants of Milan.</p>
<h2>His own grail was knowledge</h2>
<p>In both books, one of the things that Jones is interested in is medieval warfare, chivalry and the romance genre itself, the genre of the knight on horseback going on quests and rescuing women. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/15/monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-review-rerelease">Monty Python and the Holy Grail</a>, which Jones directed, the fabled bravery of knights is parodied when the Black Knight, having had his arm chopped off, declares that it is just a scratch and that he has “had worse”.</p>
<p>While this is a sort-of parody, it is not, in fact, markedly different from what actually happens in medieval romances. In Thomas Malory’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/englit/malory/">Le Morte Darthur</a>, for instance, Lancelot fights with one hand tied behind his back.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZmInkxbvlCs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The comedy of Jones’s approach to the middle ages in this film lay partly in deliberate anachronism, but also in the juxtaposition of fantasy and realism. The political debate in Monty Python and the Holy Grail between the king and the Marxist peasant is a good example, culminating in the peasant’s declaration that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government … you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ‘cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course the articulate peasant’s mastery of political discourse is part of the joke. But peasants in the middle ages did rebel against government, question the divine right of kings and think about who should wield power. The joke is less about anachronism than about genre, the juxtaposition of Arthurian fantasy and “real life”. And part of the joke is about how modern readers sometimes take literature too literally, blurring the boundaries between history and fiction, assuming that medieval people actually lived like the characters in Malory’s texts.</p>
<p>One of Jones’ great gifts to scholars of the medieval period, was that he used his fame to dispel myths and to rehabilitate the middle ages. He emphasised that medieval people did not think the Earth was flat and that they were capable of individual self-consciousness and radical innovation. He wrote, in an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/feb/08/highereducation.news">editorial for The Guardian’s education section</a>, that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the medieval world wasn’t a time of stagnation or ignorance. A lot of what we assume to be medieval ignorance is, in fact, our own ignorance about the medieval world.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Beloved amateur</h2>
<p>Jones was not a professional literary critic or historian, but many students and scholars have gained more pleasure and knowledge from his books than they have from the works of “professionals”. He was an amateur in the best sense – not a dilettante, but someone who read and thought about texts because he loved to do so (the word amateur comes from the Latin <em>amare</em> – to love).</p>
<p>He once said that he was glad he had gone to Oxford, because if he had not: “I wouldn’t have met either Mike Palin or Geoffrey Chaucer — and without those two meetings the rest of my life would have been quite different.” Chaucer remained an inspiration for his entire adult life.</p>
<p>Terry Jones cared about history, and many of us know more about history and literature because of his writings. But the fact that he cared is almost as important as his scholarship itself. He showed many people that you can revel in medieval history and literature, that to think about the poetry of the past is the stuff of life itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130514/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marion Turner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Monty Python star was also a highly respected author on Chaucer and the writer of a series of children’s history books.
Marion Turner, Associate Professor of English and Tutorial Fellow of Jesus College, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/90518
2018-02-13T11:45:51Z
2018-02-13T11:45:51Z
The ‘real’ St. Valentine was no patron of love
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205774/original/file-20180209-51703-10w4gt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Relics of St. Valentine of Terni at the basilica of Saint Mary in Cosmedin.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rom,_Santa_Maria_in_Cosmedin,_Reliquien_des_Hl._Valentin_von_Terni.jpg">Dnalor 01 (Own work) </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Feb. 14, sweethearts of all ages will exchange cards, flowers, candy, and more lavish gifts in the name of St. Valentine. But as a <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/bitel-homepage/">historian of Christianity</a>, I can tell you that at the root of our modern holiday is a beautiful fiction. St. Valentine was no lover or patron of love. </p>
<p>Valentine’s Day, in fact, originated as a liturgical feast to celebrate the decapitation of a third-century Christian martyr, or perhaps two. So, how did we get from beheading to betrothing on Valentine’s Day?</p>
<h2>Early origins of St. Valentine</h2>
<p>Ancient sources reveal that there were several St. Valentines who died on Feb. 14. Two of them were executed during the reign of <a href="https://archive.org/stream/scriptoreshistor01camb/scriptoreshistor01camb_djvu.txt">Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus</a> in 269-270 A.D., at a time when persecution of Christians was common. </p>
<p>How do we know this? Because, an order of Belgian monks spent three centuries collecting evidence for the lives of saints from manuscript archives around the known world. </p>
<p>They were called <a href="http://www.bollandistes.org/thebollandists-hist0.php?pg=hist00">Bollandists</a> after Jean Bolland, a Jesuit scholar who began publishing the massive 68-folio volumes of <a href="http://acta.chadwyck.co.uk/">“Acta Sanctorum,”</a> or “Lives of the Saints,” beginning in 1643.</p>
<p>Since then, successive generations of monks continued the work until the last volume was published in 1940. The Brothers dug up every scrap of information about every saint on the liturgical calendar and printed the texts arranged according to the <a href="http://saintscatholic.blogspot.com/p/saint-of-day.html">saint’s feast day</a>. </p>
<h2>The Valentine martyrs</h2>
<p>The volume encompassing Feb. 14 contains the stories of a handful of “Valentini,” including the earliest three of whom died in the third century. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205776/original/file-20180209-51727-39e8g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Valentine blessing an epileptic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Valentine_blessing_an_epileptic._Coloured_etching._Wellcome_V0016605.jpg">Wellcome Images</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The earliest Valentinus is said to have died in Africa, along with 24 soldiers. Unfortunately, even the Bollandists could not find any more information about him. As the monks knew, sometimes all that the saints left behind was <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/762/mode/2up/search/valentinus">a name and day of death</a>.</p>
<p>We know only a little more about the other two Valentines. </p>
<p>According to a late medieval legend reprinted in the “Acta,” which was accompanied by Bollandist critique about its historical value, a Roman priest named Valentinus was arrested during the reign of Emperor Gothicus and put into the custody of an aristocrat named Asterius. </p>
<p>As the story goes, Asterius made the mistake of letting the preacher talk. Father Valentinus went on and on about <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/754/mode/2up/search/valentinus">Christ leading pagans</a> out of the shadow of darkness and into the light of truth and salvation. Asterius made a bargain with Valentinus: If the Christian could cure Asterius’s foster-daughter of blindness, he would convert. Valentinus put his hands over the girl’s eyes and <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/754/mode/2up/search/valentinus">chanted</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Lord Jesus Christ, en-lighten your handmaid, because you are God, the True Light.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Easy as that. The child could see, according to the medieval legend. Asterius and his whole family were baptized. Unfortunately, when Emperor Gothicus heard the news, he ordered them all to be executed. But Valentinus was the only one to be beheaded. A pious widow, though, made off with his body and <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/754/mode/2up/search/valentinus">had it buried at the site</a> of his martyrdom on the <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/Topics/Engineering/roads/Flaminia/home.html">Via Flaminia</a>, the ancient highway stretching from Rome to present-day Rimini. Later, a chapel was built over the saint’s remains.</p>
<h2>St. Valentine was not a romantic</h2>
<p>The third third-century Valentinus was a bishop of Terni in the province of Umbria, Italy. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205777/original/file-20180209-51716-1s7zkex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Valentine kneeling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St-Valentine-Kneeling-In-Supplication.jpg">David Teniers III</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to his equally <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/754/mode/2up/search/valentinus">dodgy legend</a>, Terni’s bishop got into a situation like the other Valentinus by debating a potential convert and afterward healing his son. The rest of story is quite similar as well: He too, was beheaded on the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15254a.htm">orders of Emperor Gothicus</a> and his body buried along the Via Flaminia. </p>
<p>It is likely, as the Bollandists suggested, that there weren’t actually two decapitated Valentines, but that two different versions of one saint’s legend appeared in both Rome and Terni.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, African, Roman or Umbrian, none of the Valentines seems to have been a romantic. </p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/st-valentine-patron-saint-of-love-124544">medieval legends, repeated in modern media</a>, had St. Valentine performing Christian marriage rituals or passing notes between Christian lovers jailed by Gothicus. Still other stories romantically involved him with the blind girl whom he allegedly healed. Yet none of these medieval tales had any basis in third-century history, as the Bollandists pointed out.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205780/original/file-20180209-51731-kj12iz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Valentine baptizing St. Lucilla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St-valentine-baptizing-st-lucilla-jacopo-bassano.jpg">Jacopo Bassano (Jacopo da Ponte)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In any case, historical veracity did not count for much with medieval Christians. What they cared about were stories of miracles and martyrdoms, and the physical remains or relics of the saint. To be sure, many different churches and monasteries around medieval Europe claimed to have bits of a <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/758/mode/2up/search/valentinus">St. Valentinus’ skull</a> in their treasuries. </p>
<p>Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, for example, still displays a whole skull. According to the Bollandists, other churches across Europe also claim to own slivers and bits of one or the other St. Valentinus’ body: For example, San Anton Church in Madrid, Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin, the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Prague, Saint Mary’s Assumption in Chelmno, Poland, as well as churches in Malta, Birmingham, Glasgow, and on the Greek isle of Lesbos, among others. </p>
<p>For believers, relics of the martyrs signified the saints’ continuing their invisible presence among communities of pious Christians. In 11th-century Brittany, for instance, one bishop <a href="https://archive.org/stream/actasanctorum05unse#page/760/mode/2up/search/valentinus">used what was purported to be Valentine’s head</a> to halt fires, prevent epidemics, and cure all sorts of illnesses, including demonic possession. </p>
<p>As far as we know, though, the saint’s bones did nothing special for lovers.</p>
<h2>Unlikely pagan origins</h2>
<p>Many scholars have deconstructed Valentine and his day in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_bqdZbKPztMC">books</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2847741">articles</a> and <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/morford/article/Whip-My-Roman-Sex-Gods-You-want-the-true-2634133.php">blog postings</a>. Some suggest that the modern holiday is a Christian cover-up of the more ancient Roman celebration of Lupercalia in mid-February. </p>
<p>Lupercalia originated as a ritual in a rural masculine cult involving the sacrifice of goats and dogs and evolved later into an urban carnival. During the festivities <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/lives/caesar*.html">half-naked young men ran</a> through the streets of Rome, streaking people with thongs cut from the skins of newly killed goats. Pregnant women thought it brought them healthy babies. In 496 A.D., however, Pope Gelasius supposedly <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/CP/26/1/Lupercalia*.html#ref9">denounced the rowdy festival</a>. </p>
<p>Still, there is no evidence that the pope purposely replaced Lupercalia with the more sedate cult of the martyred St. Valentine or any other Christian celebration. </p>
<h2>Chaucer and the love birds</h2>
<p>The love connection probably appeared more than a thousand years after the martyrs’ death, when Geoffrey Chaucer, author of “The Canterbury Tales” decreed the February feast of St. Valentinus to the mating of birds. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6bggAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=seynt+Volantynys+day&source=bl&ots=RazATk9FPU&sig=P18rLlniPQEToUWVCL8jD9lv-gI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf9c6v2ZXZAhWS-VQKHQuuCCIQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=seynt%20Volantynys%20day&f=false">He wrote</a> in his “Parlement of Foules”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“For this was on seynt Volantynys day.
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It seems that, in Chaucer’s day, English birds paired off to produce eggs in February. Soon, nature-minded European nobility began sending love notes during bird-mating season. For example, the French Duke of Orléans, who spent some years as a prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote to his wife in February 1415 that he was “already sick of love” (by which he meant lovesick.) And he called her his <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14343/14343-h/14343-h.htm#p245">“very gentle Valentine.”</a> </p>
<p>English audiences embraced the idea of February mating. Shakespeare’s lovestruck Ophelia spoke of herself as <a href="http://shakespeare-navigators.com/hamlet/H45.html">Hamlet’s Valentine.</a> </p>
<p>In the following centuries, Englishmen and women began using Feb. 14 as an excuse to pen verses to their love objects. Industrialization made it easier with mass-produced illustrated cards adorned with smarmy poetry. Then along came Cadbury, Hershey’s, and other <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-chocolate-and-valentines-day-mated-life-180954228/">chocolate manufacturers</a> marketing sweets for one’s sweetheart on Valentine’s Day.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205779/original/file-20180209-51719-1jvif9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Valentine’s Day chocolates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chocolates-box-red-love-heart-shaped-123648574?src=keC4YCiCasMhWRf-oQMMDQ-1-20">GillianVann/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, shops everywhere in England and the U.S. decorate their windows with hearts and banners proclaiming the annual Day of Love. <a href="https://www.dealnews.com/features/What-to-Expect-from-Valentines-Day-Deals/967905.html">Merchants stock their shelves</a> with candy, jewelry and Cupid-related trinkets begging “Be My Valentine.” For most lovers, this request does not require beheading.</p>
<h2>Invisible Valentines</h2>
<p>It seems that the erstwhile saint behind the holiday of love remains as elusive as love itself. Still, as St. Augustine, the great fifth-century theologian and philosopher argued in his treatise on <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1305.htm">“Faith in Invisible Things,”</a> someone does not have to be standing before our eyes for us to love them. </p>
<p>And much like love itself, St. Valentine and his reputation as the patron saint of love are not matters of verifiable history, but of faith.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Bitel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Valentine’s Day originated as a feast to celebrate the decapitation of a third-century Christian martyr, or perhaps two. It took a gruesome path to becoming a romantic holiday.
Lisa Bitel, Professor of History & Religion, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/90275
2018-02-05T09:07:46Z
2018-02-05T09:07:46Z
Fifty Shades and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale have a lot in common – here’s why
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204443/original/file-20180201-123852-robq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal/YouTube</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The release of Fifty Shades Freed, the final instalment of the Fifty Shades film trilogy, will no doubt see a resurgence in the debate that has surrounded the series since the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011. Fans see the story as an erotic romance about the heroine’s sexual awakening and the redemptive powers of love, while its critics describe it as harmful in its glorification of an abusive relationship and its inaccurate portrayal of BDSM. </p>
<p>Yet the popularity of the books and films cannot be easily dismissed – clearly, for some, these stories fulfil a need, whatever that need might be. The ongoing dispute surrounding the books and the films raises an age-old question: what do women really want in their relationships?</p>
<p>This question lies at the centre of Chaucer’s <a href="http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/wife.htm">Wife of Bath’s Tale</a>, one of the many stories included in his Canterbury Tales. A veteran of five marriages, the Wife of Bath fills her prologue with tales of her relationships with her different husbands and her effort to assert herself in spite of the misogyny prevalent at the time.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nJCc5HRPxYA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Her tale, however, is perhaps not what we might expect: a knight of King Arthur’s court commits a rape and is sentenced to death, but Queen Guinevere and her ladies plead for his release, on the condition that he can find the answer to the question of what women most desire. </p>
<p>He struggles to find a suitable response until he meets a loathsome old woman – “fouler than any man might conceive” –- who promises to help him, but he must promise to do whatever she asks. He agrees and she gives him the answer: that all women want sovereignty over their husbands. This saves his life, but in return she demands that he marry her. He is dismayed but has no choice. </p>
<p>On his wedding night, the bride offers her unhappy groom a choice: she can be beautiful but fickle – or “loathly” and loyal. The knight, after much consideration, tells her that the choice must be hers. Instantly she is transformed into a beautiful woman, and she assures him, in recognition of his humble response, that she will also be faithful.</p>
<h2>What women want</h2>
<p>Readers of the tale cannot reach a consensus of how it should be interpreted. Has the knight truly been reformed? If he has learned the lesson that the quest was meant to teach him, the importance of female desire, then surely he will never repeat his crime. But there are those who think he is unfairly rewarded – and there’s nothing about what happens to the victim, who disappears from the story. So why would the Wife of Bath tell this tale?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204444/original/file-20180201-123840-11xahsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204444/original/file-20180201-123840-11xahsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204444/original/file-20180201-123840-11xahsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204444/original/file-20180201-123840-11xahsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204444/original/file-20180201-123840-11xahsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204444/original/file-20180201-123840-11xahsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204444/original/file-20180201-123840-11xahsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chaucer’s pilgrims assemble (the Wife of Bath is mounted, in the middle of the group). From Chaucer for Children. A golden key, by Mrs H. R. Haweis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11119556254">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other versions of the story seem to have been in circulation in Chaucer’s day, but these usually involve a knight undertaking the quest to find out what women want on behalf of King Arthur. Only in Chaucer’s version is the knight being punished for the crime of rape. Moreover, in other versions of the story, the “loathly lady” is a beautiful young woman under an enchantment who is released by the knight breaking the spell. The Wife of Bath never reveals who or what this woman really is or what she wants, and her identity and motivations remain unclear. Yet Chaucer presumably chose this version of the story, even if he did not add these new elements himself.</p>
<h2>Prince Charming?</h2>
<p>The Fifty Shades trilogy and the Wife of Bath’s tale have a certain amount in common. Both involve a troubling (or troubled) protagonist whose past relationships with women are not entirely above reproach who finds redemption and eventually marriage in another relationship that has –- perhaps -– transformed him into a loving and respectful husband. </p>
<p>But both of these stories are fantasies – so cannot be seen as an accurate representation of relationships between men and women. But do these fantasies have the power to harm those who consume them by influencing their perceptions of their relationships in reality? And who gets to decide? In the end, only audiences can decide how they choose to read or interpret stories. Romance, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. </p>
<p>So what do women really want? As Roxane Gay writes in <a href="http://therumpus.net/2012/05/the-trouble-with-prince-charming-or-he-who-trespassed-against-us/">The Trouble with Prince Charming</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whenever women do something in significant numbers, the media immediately becomes frenzied as they try to understand this new mystery of womanhood.<</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps the real danger lies not in these stories themselves, but in thinking that any individual, whether it is E L James, one of her critics, Chaucer, the Wife of Bath – or even the mysterious loathly lady – can answer this question for all women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marta Cobb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
E L James’ BDSM fantasies and Chaucer’s 14th-century story raise the same age-old questions.
Marta Cobb, Teaching Fellow in Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84804
2017-10-12T10:29:30Z
2017-10-12T10:29:30Z
From Chaucer to Trump, sexist banter has been defended as entertainment for 600 years
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189356/original/file-20171009-6947-1iqo1rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US President Donald Trump.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/donald-trump-rally-midland-theater-kansas-717753004?src=4H7cDR7j7hS7i5NslYovMw-1-9">Mark Reinstein/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As we approach the end of 2017, one might expect language and attitudes to be very different to those of the Middle Ages. And yet, there are some very prominent figures who seem to be stuck in the past.</p>
<p>Donald Trump, the US president, has once again <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/remysmidt/trump-again-dismisses-grab-them-by-the-pussy-comments?utm_term=.yanamNd4x#.nhQdNx2Bv">dismissed</a> his own infamous “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html?postshare=2491475870527101&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.6464fe84a0be">grab them by the pussy</a>” comments, one year after the 2005 Access Hollywood tape that revealed them came to light. </p>
<p>When his words <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-women-are-harmed-by-calling-sexual-assault-locker-room-talk-67422">first came to public attention</a>, Trump then brushed them off as “locker room banter”, insisting that the public should focus instead on war and terrorism that were making the world “<a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/09/trump_responds_to_2005_tape_its_just_words_folks_just_words.html">like medieval times</a>”. </p>
<p>Numerous athletes came forward at the time to say that these <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/10/donald-trump-locker-room-banter-athletes-reaction">are not the type of conversations</a> that take place in their locker rooms. The debate continues to this day, with some <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/boxing/floyd-mayweather-donald-trump-grab-em-access-hollywood-boxer-real-man-us-president-a7947796.html">supporting</a> Trump’s comments, while women’s rights campaign groups refuse to let him brush it “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-women/u-s-womens-group-plays-trumps-grab-them-tape-on-washington-mall-idUSKBN1CB2EL">under the rug</a>”.</p>
<p>Though Trump tried to deflect attention onto historical horrors of war, this dispute has far more in common with medieval times than he might think. This very dispute mirrors the quarrel of the <a href="http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2016/07/metaphors-misogyny-and-courtly-love.html">Roman de la Rose</a>, which happened in the 15th Century – in which a female writer fought vehemently against depictions of sexual assault and “loose” women in entertainment. </p>
<h2>Medieval attitudes</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189284/original/file-20171007-973-1kec848.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189284/original/file-20171007-973-1kec848.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189284/original/file-20171007-973-1kec848.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189284/original/file-20171007-973-1kec848.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189284/original/file-20171007-973-1kec848.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189284/original/file-20171007-973-1kec848.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189284/original/file-20171007-973-1kec848.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189284/original/file-20171007-973-1kec848.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A hermit lewdly embraces a miller’s wife.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=29284">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In medieval literature, women were commonly depicted as “easy”, particularly in the context of bawdy satire. Take, for example, Geoffrey Chaucer’s poems <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/CT/1:1.4?rgn=div2;view=fulltext">The Miller’s Tale</a> and <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/CT/1:1.6?rgn=div2;view=fulltext">The Reeve’s Tale</a>. In both of these texts women are depicted as enjoying, or easily recovering from sexual assault. </p>
<p>In The Miller’s Tale, when a clerk, Nicholas, decides he wants to have sex with his host’s wife Alison he grabs her “by the queynte [crotch]” and holds her hard “by the haunchebones [thighs]”. Although Alison initially tells Nicholas to get his hands off her, within three lines she has been won round and begins to conspire with her new lover against her husband. </p>
<p>In The Reeve’s Tale, two clerks take revenge upon a miller, who has duped them out of their money’s worth of flour, by raping his daughter and his wife. But by the end of the poem it is the miller who is battered and humiliated, while the women are not depicted as particularly bothered at being raped. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189285/original/file-20171007-25775-1a01xnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189285/original/file-20171007-25775-1a01xnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189285/original/file-20171007-25775-1a01xnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189285/original/file-20171007-25775-1a01xnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189285/original/file-20171007-25775-1a01xnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189285/original/file-20171007-25775-1a01xnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189285/original/file-20171007-25775-1a01xnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189285/original/file-20171007-25775-1a01xnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A jealous husband beats his wife in a manuscript of Le Roman de la Rose.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=28553">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most popular poems of the medieval period was Jean de Meun’s satirical, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/roman-de-la-rose">Le Roman de la Rose</a>, which took a cynical view of the pursuit of love. In one scene a “jealous husband” gives an in-depth account of the vices of loose women: “Toutes estes, serés, ou futes, / De fait ou de volenté putes!” (All you women are, will be, and have been whores in deed or desire!). The poem was championed by many influential men of the period, and writers such as Chaucer drew upon it time and again in their own works.</p>
<p>However, just as Trump’s comments have prompted protest today, back then it was down to Christine de Pizan – possibly the <a href="http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/06/christine-de-pizan-and-the-book-of-the-queen.html">first European woman</a> to make a living from writing, composing poetry and prose works in the late 1300s/early 1400s – to fight the patriarchy.</p>
<h2>Fighting back</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188084/original/file-20170928-1483-dwh0xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188084/original/file-20170928-1483-dwh0xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188084/original/file-20170928-1483-dwh0xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188084/original/file-20170928-1483-dwh0xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188084/original/file-20170928-1483-dwh0xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188084/original/file-20170928-1483-dwh0xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188084/original/file-20170928-1483-dwh0xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188084/original/file-20170928-1483-dwh0xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christine de Pizan in her study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=28575">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Born in Italy, De Pizan moved to France as a child when her father Thomas took up an appointment as the astrologer of King Charles V. De Pizan made use of the library available to her at the court, teaching herself to read and write in many languages. When she was suddenly widowed at the age of 24 she turned to writing as a way to make money to support her family. This was exceptional for a medieval woman, but the court paid her because they enjoyed her writing and the novelty of a woman’s works. </p>
<p>De Pizan’s writings were unique in providing a public voice for women at a time when they were not allowed to have one. She argued against the established tradition of women as “frail, unserious, and easily influenced” in medieval texts. She was a force to be reckoned with, and took particular objection to Le Roman de la Rose and its presentation of women. </p>
<p>In her campaign against the poem, De Pizan wrote letters to Jean de Montreuil (Provost of Lille) and Gontier Col (secretary to King Charles V), who publicly supported the poem. Detailing her concerns, she told them “I cannot remain silent”. They, however, dismissed her as a “femme passionée” – an emotional woman – who didn’t understand satire. De Pizan had a point, though. Even if words are not meant to be taken seriously, perpetuating negative stereotypes and normalising them as entertainment is harmful.</p>
<p>De Pizan did not remain silent. Her response was to compose literature that countered the male tradition, defending women and their place in society. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/mar/14/whatimreadingthebookofth">The Book of the City of Ladies</a>, she wrote that she is “troubled and grieved” with men’s depictions of women as enjoying rape or not being bothered by rape even when they verbally object. And she makes further references to the visibility of domestic violence in her own neighbourhood. </p>
<p>In doing so, De Pizan brought to light the problem of trivialising abuse that was, and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-ministers-plans-to-transform-the-way-we-tackle-domestic-violence-and-abuse">still is</a>, prevalent in our society, and she encouraged early discussions of gender equality.</p>
<p>Six hundred years on, however, and women are still striving against the likes of Trump to leave sexist banter in the past. Until it is, it won’t be brushed under the rug.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84804/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Hanna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Old habits die hard.
Natalie Hanna, Lecturer in English, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80128
2017-07-05T22:55:04Z
2017-07-05T22:55:04Z
Millennial bashing in medieval times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175736/original/file-20170626-29085-1kzq3gv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Sir Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur,' a character complains that young people are too sexually promiscuous.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_59678_f035r">The British Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a millennial and a teacher of millennials, I’m growing weary of think pieces blaming my generation for messing everything up. </p>
<p>The list of ideas, things and industries that millennials have ruined or are presently ruining is very long: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/23/this-is-the-height-of-laziness/?utm_term=.7efc1ed750f9">cereal</a>, <a href="https://fortune.com/2017/02/21/department-stores-future-macys-sears/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE">department stores</a>, <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/12/29/millennials-are-killing-the-dinner-date/">the dinner date</a>, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/sin-city-bust/story?id=46773399">gambling</a>, <a href="http://time.com/4718281/fewer-young-people-want-gender-equality-at-home/">gender equality</a>, <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/08/06/millennials-are-ditching-golf-because-its-too-hard-and-boring/">golf</a>, <a href="http://fortune.com/video/2017/03/28/millennials-are-killing-lunch/">lunch</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-04/young-americans-are-killing-marriage">marriage</a>, <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/04/15/millennials-are-killing-the-movie-business/">movies</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-hate-napkins-2016-3">napkins</a>, <a href="https://business.facebook.com/MicMedia/videos/725397040932799/">soap</a>, <a href="http://newbostonpost.com/blogs/millennials-killed-the-suit-but-created-a-culture/">the suit</a> and <a href="http://nypost.com/video/millennials-need-to-stop-torturing-their-wedding-parties-with-this-trend/">weddings</a>. In true millennial fashion, compiling lists like this has already become a <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/ahmedaliakbar/millennial-murder-spree?utm_term=.ouWxQxnBR#.jjJpOper5">meme</a>.</p>
<p>A common thread in these hit pieces is the idea that millennials are lazy, shallow and disruptive. When I think of my friends, many of whom were born in the 1980s, and my undergraduate students, most of whom were born in the 1990s, I see something different. The millennials I know are driven and politically engaged. We came of age after the Iraq War, the Great Recession and the bank bailout – three bipartisan political disasters. These events were formative, to an extent that those who remember the Vietnam War might not realize.</p>
<p>The idea that young people are ruining society is nothing new. I teach medieval English literature, which gives ample opportunity to observe how far back the urge to blame younger generations goes.</p>
<p>The most famous medieval English author, Geoffrey Chaucer, lived and worked in London in the 1380s. His poetry could be deeply critical of the changing times. In the dream vision poem “<a href="http://mcllibrary.org/Houseoffame/">The House of Fame</a>,” he depicts a massive failure to communicate, a kind of 14th-century Twitter in which truths and falsehoods circulate indiscriminately in a whirling wicker house. The house is – among other things – a representation of <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/chaucer-and-the-city-hb.html">medieval London</a>, which was growing in size and political complexity at a then-astounding rate.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176936/original/file-20170705-30047-144ku3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176936/original/file-20170705-30047-144ku3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176936/original/file-20170705-30047-144ku3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176936/original/file-20170705-30047-144ku3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176936/original/file-20170705-30047-144ku3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176936/original/file-20170705-30047-144ku3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176936/original/file-20170705-30047-144ku3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176936/original/file-20170705-30047-144ku3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Geoffrey Chaucer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geoffrey_Chaucer_after_Unknown_artist.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a different poem, “<a href="http://mcllibrary.org/Troilus/">Troilus and Criseyde</a>,” Chaucer worries that future generations will “miscopy” and “mismeter” his poetry because of language change. Millennials might be bankrupting the napkin industry, but Chaucer was concerned that younger readers would ruin language itself.</p>
<p>“<a href="http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/ginsberg-wynnere-and-wastoure">Winner and Waster</a>,” an English alliterative poem probably composed in the 1350s, expresses similar anxieties. The poet complains that beardless young minstrels who never “put three words together” get praised. No one appreciates old-fashioned storytelling any more. Gone are the days when “there were lords in the land who in their hearts loved / To hear poets of mirth who could invent stories.”</p>
<p>William Langland, the elusive author of “<a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cme;idno=PPlLan">Piers Plowman</a>,” also believed that younger poets weren’t up to snuff. “Piers Plowman” is a psychedelic religious and political poem of the 1370s. At one point, Langland has a personification named Free Will describe the sorry state of contemporary education. Nowadays, says Free Will, the study of grammar confuses children, and there is no one left “who can make fine metered poetry” or “readily interpret what poets made.” Masters of divinity who should know the seven liberal arts inside and out “fail in philosophy,” and Free Will worries that hasty priests will “overleap” the text of the mass.</p>
<p>On a larger scale, people in 14th-century England began worrying that a new bureaucratic class was destroying the idea of truth itself. In his book “<a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/746.html">A Crisis of Truth</a>,” literary scholar Richard Firth Green argues that the centralization of the English government changed truth from a person-to-person transaction to an objective reality located in documents. </p>
<p>Today we might see this shift as a natural evolution. But literary and legal records from the time reveal the loss of social cohesion felt by everyday people. They could no longer rely on verbal promises. These had to be checked against authoritative written documents. (Chaucer himself was part of the new bureaucracy in his roles as clerk of the king’s works and forester of North Petherton.)</p>
<p>In medieval England, young people were also ruining sex. Late in the 15th century, Thomas Malory compiled the “<a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cme;idno=MaloryWks2">Morte d'Arthur</a>,” an amalgam of stories about King Arthur and the Round Table. In one tale, Malory complains that young lovers are too quick to jump into bed. </p>
<p>“But the old love was not so,” he writes wistfully. </p>
<p>If these late medieval anxieties seem ridiculous now, it’s only because so much human accomplishment (we flatter ourselves) lies between us and them. Can you imagine the author of “Winner and Waster” wagging a finger at Chaucer, who was born into the next generation? The Middle Ages are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/5-myths-about-the-middle-ages/2016/09/22/e56c4150-7f50-11e6-9070-5c4905bf40dc_story.html?utm_term=.6c33c9a2c22f">misremembered</a> as a dark age of torture and religious fanaticism. But for Chaucer, Langland and their contemporaries, it was the modern future that represented catastrophe.</p>
<p>These 14th- and 15th-century texts hold a lesson for the 21st century. Anxieties about “kids these days” are misguided, not because nothing changes, but because historical change cannot be predicted. Chaucer envisioned a linear decay of language and poetry stretching into the future, and Malory yearned to restore a (make-believe) past of courtly love. </p>
<p>But that’s not how history works. The status quo, for better or worse, is a moving target. What’s unthinkable to one era becomes so ubiquitous it’s invisible in the next.</p>
<p>Millennial bashers are responding to real tectonic shifts in culture. But their response is just a symptom of the changes they claim to diagnose. As millennials achieve more representation in the workforce, in politics and in media, the world will change in ways we can’t anticipate.</p>
<p>By then, there will be new problems and a new generation to take the blame for them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Weiskott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The anxiety that young people are messing things up goes back centuries.
Eric Weiskott, Assistant Professor of English, Boston College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77836
2017-06-19T11:45:33Z
2017-06-19T11:45:33Z
13 Reasons Why follows a long literary (and misogynistic) tradition of rape and suicide
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170594/original/file-20170523-5763-161mnda.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>13 Reasons Why is a misnomer. There is only one reason in this “whydunnit” from Netflix. The miseries borne by its protagonist, Hannah Baker, and chronicled over the course of the narrative – bullying, <a href="https://theconversation.com/13-reasons-why-when-a-tv-series-sheds-light-on-gender-violence-and-harassment-at-school-77061">slut-shaming</a>, stalking, loneliness and gossip – are nothing when compared to the rape that “breaks her soul”. It is the reason for her suicide. </p>
<p>Or at least, it is the reason as presented by a show that seems more interested in how it tells its story, than in its psychological realism. As has already been <a href="theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/apr/26/netflix-13-reasons-why-suicide">pointed out</a>, one of the show’s most problematic features is that it presents suicide as a rational, if extreme, response to <a href="https://theconversation.com/popular-netflix-drama-13-reasons-why-sends-out-worrying-messages-about-suicide-78008">external forces</a>, rather than as a product of acute mental distress. </p>
<p>Each episode is structured around a side of a cassette tape recorded by Hannah before her death. Each tape is addressed to a different person, with the now heavily <a href="http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/04/what-is-the-welcome-to-your-tape-meme-from-13-reasons-why.html">parodied</a>: “Welcome to your tape”, launching an explanation of the harm the addressee caused Hannah. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170589/original/file-20170523-5790-ips5t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170589/original/file-20170523-5790-ips5t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170589/original/file-20170523-5790-ips5t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170589/original/file-20170523-5790-ips5t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170589/original/file-20170523-5790-ips5t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170589/original/file-20170523-5790-ips5t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170589/original/file-20170523-5790-ips5t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Katherine Langford as Hannah Baker in a scene from the Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Beth Dubber/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the cumulative force of these injuries – and the implication that her suicide was a result of “one thing on top of another” – is belied by the rape in episode 12 (or “Tape 6, Side B”). “In that moment”, as Hannah said on the tape, she “had felt like” she “was already” dead. Indeed, it is previously suggested that her other hardships are all things that she might have lived with.</p>
<p>We have heard this story before. The twinning of rape and suicide – and further, of rape with a death that anticipates bodily destruction – is a classic scenario. </p>
<h2>Lucretia</h2>
<p>It is a pattern followed by one of the most famous rape victims of antiquity: Lucretia. Her story, recounted in Livy’s compendious Roman History (c.25BC), tells of how Sextus Tarquin, son of the Roman king, tries to seduce Lucretia. Finding her unwilling, Tarquin threatens to kill her and a male slave, swearing to place their bodies together so that it will look like Lucretia had committed adultery. Livy writes that rather than endure this “dreadful prospect”, Lucretia’s “resolute modesty was overcome” by Tarquin’s forceful and “victorious lust”. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170516/original/file-20170523-8905-zqjazu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170516/original/file-20170523-8905-zqjazu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170516/original/file-20170523-8905-zqjazu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170516/original/file-20170523-8905-zqjazu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170516/original/file-20170523-8905-zqjazu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170516/original/file-20170523-8905-zqjazu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170516/original/file-20170523-8905-zqjazu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lucretia, 1664, Rembrandt van Rijn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Minneapolis Institute of Arts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The next day Lucretia explains to her father and husband what had befallen her and, after imploring the men to avenge her, stabs herself to death. In the tale, her family carries Lucretia’s body through the streets until the citizens, enraged by the sight of her, rebel against the Tarquins and banish the king, founding the Roman republic. </p>
<p>Another early account, Ovid’s Fasti (c.8AD), describes how Lucretia’s male relatives returned to find her preparing her funeral. This detail, memorably recalled in Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women (c.1386) when Lucretia is asked by her attendants for whom she is in mourning, serves to reinforce the idea that Lucretia is, in effect, already dead – her suicide is a formality. </p>
<p>This impression is made explicit in Shakespeare’s narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece (1594), when the matron declares her soul to be polluted and chained with “wretchedness” after Tarquin’s attack – her suicide is presented as a means of preventing the spread of this contamination. Shakespeare was to return to this theme in Titus Andronicus and Measure for Measure.</p>
<p>In the mid-18th century Samuel Richardson’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-clarissa-by-samuel-richardson-6288595.html">Clarissa</a> (1748) used the Lucretia story to analogise its heroine and her evocatively named rapist, Lovelace. After the rape that forms the novel’s central action, Clarissa, too, declares her soul to be divided and warring within her before making a welcome, even willing, embrace of death.</p>
<h2>Victim shaming</h2>
<p>The overwhelming impression in each of these narratives is of rape as a violence that attacks the mind or spirit as well as the body, and of suicide as an inevitable – even logical – response to this violation. </p>
<p>But part of what is so insidious – and so disturbing – about this pattern is the culture of the victims’ shame, rather than the attacker’s guilt that seems to drive these actions. It is they, and not their rapists, who are dishonoured by the violence.</p>
<p>We see this misogyny firmly on display in the 21st-century in 13 Reasons Why. It is the reason why the counsellor Hannah consults hours before her suicide tells the teenager to “move on”. It is the reason her rapist declares that “every girl in the school wants to be raped”. It is the reason that reports of the sexual assault of a young woman at Stanford University in 2016 regularly referred to her attacker’s swim times as some kind of mitigating evidence, repeatedly <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/to-the-swimmer-who-raped-a-girl-at-stanford-im-sorry-we-have-failed-you-by-giving-you-an-inadequate-a7069111.html">calling him a swimmer</a> rather than a rapist. </p>
<p>For Hannah, if this culture is not going to change, she’d “better get on with it”. Determining that “no one would ever hurt” her again, she hurts herself. Her suicide is, on the face of it, an act of revenge, a call to arms that highlights the leniency of a malignant culture that is detrimental to the physical and emotional well-being of any person who might in any way inhibit it. </p>
<p>But, in marking her rape as the turning point on her road to suicide, in presenting her death as the actualisation of a murder that has already taken place, the show does more to uphold the misogyny it purports to revile than repudiate it. Hannah neither outlives nor survives rape. Like Lucretia, her rape becomes a story presided over and disseminated by men. There should be no reason for any of this.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Samaritans can be contacted in the UK on 116 123. Papyrus is contactable on 0800 068 41 41 or by texting 07786 209 697 or emailing <a href="pat@papyrus-uk.org">pat@papyrus-uk.org</a>. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found <a href="http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77836/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Georgie Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.</span></em></p>
The series has divided critics: many have praised its sensitive depiction of rape and suicide, others have said it romantises taking one’s own life.
Georgina Lucas, Associate Lecturer, Bath Spa University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68527
2016-12-02T09:47:16Z
2016-12-02T09:47:16Z
After years of scandal, Philip Larkin finally has a spot in Poets’ Corner
<p>Philip Larkin, one of English poetry’s most recognisable voices, has been memorialised in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner.</p>
<p>His ledger stone was unveiled on Friday December 2 alongside tombs and memorials commemorating some of the finest writers in English literary history, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and T S Eliot. The ceremony took place 31 years to the day since Larkin’s death. </p>
<p>This is an occasion foreseen by Larkin himself, whose place in Poets’ Corner would probably have been guaranteed had he accepted the Poet Laureateship in 1984. Larkin was touted for this role as early as 1972; on that occasion it went to John Betjeman, a poet he admired. When Betjeman died in 1984, Larkin was the obvious choice. He didn’t share the public’s enthusiasm, but was reflective about his place in literary history: “I think there will be a space for me,” he told his mother. </p>
<p>Although a household name – a rare thing in poetry – Larkin had spent three decades dodging attention. Reports of the so-called Hermit of Hull’s reclusiveness were exaggerated, but it’s true that he largely avoided public roles – and what role in British poetry is more public, more bardic, than the laureateship? Larkin wasn’t joking when he told one acquaintance: “I just couldn’t face the 50 letters a day, TV show, representing British Poetry in the ’poetry conference at Belgrade’ side of it all.” To Andrew Motion, a later Laureate, he wrote: “Think of the stamps! Think of the stamps!”</p>
<p>Having politely declined, Larkin knew he had gifted Ted Hughes – a poetic rival – a spot in Westminster Abbey. But when Larkin died the year after, he was already known as Britain’s “unofficial Laureate”. One obituary <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%E2%80%9Cthe+funniest+and+most+intelligent+English+writer+of+the+day%2C+and+the+greatest+living+poet+in+our+language%E2%80%9D+peter+levi&oq=%E2%80%9Cthe+funniest+and+most+intelligent+English+writer+of+the+day%2C+and+the+greatest+living+poet+in+our+language%E2%80%9D+peter+levi&aqs=chrome..69i57.2835j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">hailed him</a> as “the funniest and most intelligent English writer of the day, and the greatest living poet in our language”. Perhaps the spot unveiled in the Abbey was always his. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148270/original/image-20161201-25663-dbzz7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poets’ Corner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Posthumous scandal</h2>
<p>But this outcome wasn’t always so certain. Scandal in the 1990s threatened to obliterate Larkin’s reputation. The publication of a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books-mr-miseryguts-philip-larkins-letters-show-all-the-grim-humour-that-was-a-hallmark-of-his-great-1558190.html">Selected Letters</a> in 1992, containing foul-mouthed tirades against women, ethnic minorities, and the working-class, was swiftly followed by Motion’s 1993 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/05/poetry.highereducation">biography</a>, which revealed Larkin’s heavy drinking, pornographic habits, and multiple infidelities.</p>
<p>Influential cultural critics rushed to denounce Larkin. Lisa Jardine <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/27/philip-larkin-love-hate-women">lambasted</a> his “Little Englandism”, boasting “we don’t tend to teach Larkin much now in my department of English”. Tom Paulin spoke of Larkin’s “quasi-fascism”, and the “distressing and in many ways revolting compilation which imperfectly reveals and conceals the sewer under the national monument Larkin became”. </p>
<p>This was a troubling and hysterical reaction to biographical disclosures. However regrettable, Larkin’s bigotry was performative and insincere; much of his behaviour was also judged against puritanical moral standards. More pernicious was the reinterpretation of his work in the light of these new perceptions of his life. Bizarrely, poems hitherto loved for their humanity were suddenly dismissed as the eruptions of a bitterly prejudiced man. </p>
<p>Assessments today <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/27/philip-larkin-love-hate-women">tend to be less extreme</a>, but the way we think about Larkin is still jammed somewhere between celebratory and condemnatory impulses. The Philip Larkin Society has campaigned over many years for a Poets’ Corner memorial, but the previous dean rejected this on the grounds of Larkin’s agnosticism, and an unofficial policy requiring writers to be dead for 20 years. </p>
<p>As neither criterion prevented Hughes from being commemorated in 2011, it’s not unreasonable to wonder whether other anxieties were at play. The current dean expressed a different view: “I have no doubt that his work and memory will live on as long as the English language continues to be understood.” His sentiment wisely refocuses attention on what matters most: the poetry.</p>
<h2>Poets’ Corner</h2>
<p>Poets’ Corner is one of the most famous areas of Westminster Abbey. The tradition of burying or commemorating the nation’s best writers there began in the 16th century, when a tomb was erected for Chaucer, buried in the abbey 250 years earlier.</p>
<p>English literary history is extraordinarily diverse, and scholars have subjected its canon – as both a concept and a holding place – to extensive critique since at least the 1980s. But as a reflection of literary history, Poets’ Corner is selective and partial, and it may be a long time before the south transept becomes less male and less white.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148399/original/image-20161202-25685-1fhlg5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chaucer: commemorated because of his day job. Stained glass by Burne Jones, V&A, London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John W. Schulze/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But then it was never “designed”, and chance has played its part in the erratic evolution of this collective memorial as much as cultural conservatism. Chaucer, for example, was buried there because of his day job as clerk of works to the Palace of Westminster; that he wrote The Canterbury Tales had nothing to do with it. And while 2016 has been a year of Shakespearean saturation marking 400 years since The Bard’s death, 124 years went by before the most famous name in English literature entered Poets’ Corner. Larkin’s 31 years isn’t much compared to that. </p>
<p>Larkin’s emotionally ambivalent attitude to Christianity is surely not unique these days. In Church Going, one of his most magnificent works, the narrator finds himself “at a loss”, unable to accept religious “superstition”, or even explain why he visits the church. But something pulls him there nonetheless – perhaps because “so many dead lie round”. Larkin keenly felt his own relation to the poetic dead; a stone bearing his name now lies close to at least two writers he worshipped, Thomas Hardy and D H Lawrence. There is much in Larkin’s work to suggest he would have been moved by this act of “awkward reverence”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Underwood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
One of English poetry’s most recognisable voices has been memorialised in Westminster Abbey.
James Underwood, Research Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Literature, University of Huddersfield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/66965
2016-10-13T15:37:52Z
2016-10-13T15:37:52Z
Five f***ing fascinating facts about swearing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141603/original/image-20161013-31319-y2lvrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">&$$@&&&!!!!</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-150536339/stock-photo-insubordinate-man-with-zipped-mouth.html?src=hqyA4i7lmV_GD4aQQTZL-A-1-0">Nomad_Soul</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Where once the use of profanities would appal right-thinking members of society, nowadays words like fuck, shit and bollocks are practically mother’s milk to many of us. A <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/29/viewers-happy-with-more-swearing-on-tv-says-ofcom-but-which-offe/">recent study</a> in the UK found that people are more comfortable with swearing on television than they used to be, for example. And research in the US <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-10/eff-millennials-this-generation-is-most-likely-to-swear-at-work">indicates that</a> people are increasingly likely to use bad language at work. </p>
<p>So in honour of our wonderfully creative and filthy lexicon, here are some fascinating facts about swearing – and, yes, this article contains lots of explicit references.</p>
<h2>1) Some swearers are smarter than others</h2>
<p>A <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/people-who-swear-most-cleverer-7011464">popular “fact”</a> doing the rounds is that people who swear are more intelligent and have larger vocabularies. Sadly, this is not quite accurate. It misreads <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/12/11/being-fluent-at-swearing-is-a-sign-of-healthy-verbal-ability/">a study</a> that demonstrated that people who performed well on tests of verbal fluency – such as “name as many words as you can starting with the letter ‘s’” – also tended to do well when asked how many swear words they could name. </p>
<p>The conclusion was that although many a teacher and parent have argued that swearing is indicative of a lesser vocabulary, the ability to be creative with your swearing is actually another measure of verbal fluency. Crucially, however, it’s not how much you swear but how creatively you swear that counts. </p>
<p>So if you are a fucking person who fucking says the fucking word fuck between every fucking word, your vocabulary is probably quite limited because you’re relying on the same word over and over. If you are the type of person who variably refers to someone they don’t like as a cock-munch or a piss-ass twat-wank, your general verbal fluency is probably good even though you are really quite rude. </p>
<h2>2) Who you swear at counts</h2>
<p>Swearing <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jplr.2008.4.issue-2/jplr.2008.013/jplr.2008.013.xml">is also considered</a> more offensive the wider the gap in status between speaker and listener. If an entry-level employee was to swear at their chief executive, or if Michael Gove was to swear at Theresa May, that would be viewed as worse than if two students swore at each other. </p>
<p>This can also be used to positive effect, however, promoting social cohesion by signalling that the swearer does not believe the difference in status to be that large. My line manager has yet to address me as “Dr fucking Nordmann” but if it ever happens I’ve decided to take it as a sign that I’m on the right track.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141607/original/image-20161013-31310-12e05dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141607/original/image-20161013-31310-12e05dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141607/original/image-20161013-31310-12e05dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141607/original/image-20161013-31310-12e05dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141607/original/image-20161013-31310-12e05dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141607/original/image-20161013-31310-12e05dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141607/original/image-20161013-31310-12e05dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141607/original/image-20161013-31310-12e05dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Here’s your effing banana’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/57466809@N07/5607861762/in/photolist-9xxKVL-cbnpq-bcFHHZ-78fxfA-8wtzMc-q6rgTg-aKPuND-9Mfkip-5AFLsw-8fxsPP-6VgZfZ-4z9NVY-4z5xaM-4z9LTQ-nE45oj-4w4Q2z-6pa2cY-4fTfrX-9f7Yx8-6mC6Px-4z5wrn-8fAHFm-6kAjMZ-pHZ4Sd-7PUfhv-tnHLj-pvqoxK-6eyjrb-bzm9Sh-56dRWh-rRvyMH-4HTtxg-4xbCBU-5ZXb9S-5oVTJ-4z9Kkf-5aiHUy-8fxsPt-Tk4Nm-tVqkz-7LRQgD-8fAHDA-aN95y-H8sxJJ-5c3D7a-nEwgyE-ca35EQ-cWhwUw-pUgoLC-dKnyJS">Lucy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3) Swear words sound sweary</h2>
<p>It is <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/41449227">sometimes said</a> that “proper” languages are arbitrary, meaning there should be no relationship between the sound of the words and their meanings. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25092667">Yet</a> the sounds we use turn out to be a lot less arbitrary than we used to think. Lots of words in English that refer to “light” start with “gl”, such as “glitter”, “glimmer” and “gloss”. This is known as sound symbolism. </p>
<p>Not only do these patterns exist but we’re very good at picking up on them even if we’re not aware of it – children <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027708001807">are faster</a> to learn new words if they’re symbolic and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25092667">tend to learn</a> them at a younger age. </p>
<p>The bad news for parents trying to keep their kids’ mouths clean is that swear words exhibit sound symbolism. They tend to have harsh aggressive sounds to match their harsh aggressive meanings. This means we don’t actually have to know the meaning of a word to know it’s “bad”. </p>
<p>Sound symbolism also provides one explanation for why some swear words don’t survive. In <a href="http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/%7Echaucer/language.htm">Chaucerian English</a>, “swyve” was a crass term meaning “to copulate with”. <a href="http://www.librarius.com/canttran/reevtale/reevtale314-344.htm">To quote</a> The Canterbury Tales, for instance, “If that I may, yon wenche wil I swyve”. One reason why “swyve” lost its place in our dirty lexicon is likely to be that “give it a good swyve” sounds like something Mary Berry would ask you to do on the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013pqnm">Great British Bake Off</a>. </p>
<h2>4) Men’s mouths are pottier</h2>
<p>Women <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145041?journalCode=psych">swear less</a> than men and when they do swear they use milder swear words. Since many swear words refer to sex and sexuality, it is <a href="http://stevenpinker.com/publications/stuff-thought">suggested that</a> women use these words less than men because if they use words that refer to sex casually, it implies they think the act of sex is a casual matter. </p>
<p>If so, the asymmetry of expectation for men and women for the act of having sex has spread to our use of language and the vocabulary we have available. The clearest example is that there is no male equivalent for the word “slut”.</p>
<h2>5) Princes swear less than paupers … sort of</h2>
<p>Social class is predictive of the frequency of swearing. An <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Swearing_in_English.html?id=iKbvbEwNjugC&redir_esc=y">investigation</a> of the <a href="http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk">British National Corpus</a>, a massive collection of written and spoken English from a wide range of sources, found that lower working class speakers swore significantly more than speakers from higher social classes. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:224208/FULLTEXT01.pdf">later study</a> added nuance to this, however. Although “bloody”, “bugger” and “fuck” are used approximately twice as often by those from the lowest social class – the upper middle class, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/10/radio-4-jeremy-hunt-gaff-jim-naughtie-rory-morrison">famously led by BBC radio journalist Jim Naughtie</a>, are the most common users of the profane word for female genitalia that rhymes with Jeremy Hunt –– yes, cunt. Thankfully, they only rarely use it during live radio broadcasts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Nordmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
What research tells us about the ripest Anglo Saxon. Parental Advisory: explicit content.
Emily Nordmann, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Aberdeen
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/54198
2016-02-12T12:33:32Z
2016-02-12T12:33:32Z
Some top tips for Valentine’s day … from Medieval lovers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110836/original/image-20160209-12616-15vi37q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lovebirds in the 14th-century Codex Manesse (Cod. Pal. germ. 848, f. 249v).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg848/0494">Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’d asked someone to be your Valentine before the 14th century, they’d probably have looked at you as if you were mad. And checked you weren’t holding an axe.</p>
<p>There were two saints by the name of Valentine who were venerated on February 14 during the Middle Ages. Both Valentines were supposedly Christian priests who fell foul of Roman officials keen on decapitation. But there’s little in the early legends of either saint to suggest a highly successful posthumous career as assistant Cupid. So I wouldn’t go to them for tips.</p>
<p>It was probably Geoffrey Chaucer who got the Valentine’s ball rolling. In his <a href="http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/English/Fowls.htm">Parliament of Fowls</a>, Chaucer imagined the goddess Nature pairing off all the birds for the year to come on “Seint Valentynes day”.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/English/Fowls.htm">First up</a> is the queenly eagle. She’s wooed at great length by noble birds-of-prey, much to the annoyance of the ducks and cuckoos and other low-ranking birds (eager to get on with getting it on):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Come on!’ they cried, ‘Alas, you us offend!<br>
When will your cursed pleading have an end?’ </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110848/original/image-20160209-12577-1p5xyso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110848/original/image-20160209-12577-1p5xyso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110848/original/image-20160209-12577-1p5xyso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110848/original/image-20160209-12577-1p5xyso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110848/original/image-20160209-12577-1p5xyso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110848/original/image-20160209-12577-1p5xyso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110848/original/image-20160209-12577-1p5xyso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s lurve.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rick Carey/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Amid impatient squawks rivalling our very own <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/parliament-government-and-politics/parliament/prime-ministers-questions/">Prime Minister’s Questions</a> (“Kek kek! kokkow! quek quek!”), the she-eagle can’t decide which suitor most deserves her love. So she resolves to keep ’em keen till the following year.</p>
<p>But why on earth did Chaucer pick a date in February for his avian assembly? England’s birds aren’t exactly in full voice at this time of year, even with global warming. Perhaps he was thinking of an obscure St Valentine celebrated in Genoa in the month of May. But the Valentines fêted on February 14 were better-known, and that was the date that stuck. Of course, when it comes to matters of the heart, we can hardly expect reason to triumph.</p>
<h2>Fiction to fact</h2>
<p>Murky origins didn’t matter for too long, however. By the turn of the 15th century, fictional lovebirds weren’t the only ones singing their hearts out on Valentine’s day. </p>
<p>According to its <a href="http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k16039n/f605.item">founding charter</a>, a society known as the “Court of Love” was set up in France in 1400 as a distraction from a particularly nasty bout of plague. This curious document stipulates that every February 14: “when the little birds resume their sweet song” (sure about that, guys?), members should meet in Paris for a splendid supper. Male guests were to bring a love song of their own composition, to be judged by an all-female panel. More effort than Tinder demands, then. But if you want to make an effort…</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110636/original/image-20160208-2589-73fm2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110636/original/image-20160208-2589-73fm2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110636/original/image-20160208-2589-73fm2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110636/original/image-20160208-2589-73fm2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110636/original/image-20160208-2589-73fm2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110636/original/image-20160208-2589-73fm2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110636/original/image-20160208-2589-73fm2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of a 15th-century miniature depicting an allegorical court of love (Royal 16 F II, f. 1)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s no evidence that the Court of Love convened as often as planned (its charter provided for monthly meetings in addition to February 14 festivities). But nor does it seem to have been pure poetic fiction. Eventually totalling 950 or so, participants represented quite a cross-section of society, from the king of France to the <em>petite bourgeoisie</em>. Valentine’s day romance was no longer just for the eagles.</p>
<p>Today’s February 14 love-fest, then, is perhaps the result of a group of medieval men and women making life imitate art. If so, their mimicry wasn’t necessarily naïve. By staging the most poetic of avian courtship rituals, Chaucer’s <a href="http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/English/Fowls.htm">Parliament of Fowls</a> prompts its audiences to ponder the differences between their “artistic” courtship and the birds’ “natural” one. Texts like this one helped medieval audiences understand their identities as the product of cultural artefacts. And in this regard they can still help us today.</p>
<h2>Four medieval tips</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110631/original/image-20160208-2637-wf8bv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110631/original/image-20160208-2637-wf8bv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110631/original/image-20160208-2637-wf8bv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110631/original/image-20160208-2637-wf8bv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110631/original/image-20160208-2637-wf8bv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1343&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110631/original/image-20160208-2637-wf8bv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110631/original/image-20160208-2637-wf8bv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1343&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On this 14th-century coffret, a man surrenders his heart to Lady Love.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.metmuseum.org">The Metropolitan Museum of Art (www.metmuseum.org)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On a more practical note, medieval literature can be of assistance if you’re yet to find a gift for a special someone this Valentine’s day. Forget about flashy jewellery; here are some love tokens suitable for every budget:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Looking to reignite that spark in your relationship? In his 12th-century <a href="http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/%7Echaucer/special/authors/andreas/de_amore.html">Art of Courtly Love</a> Andreas Capellanus suggests buying your partner a washbasin. Who needs expensive perfume when a good wash may do the trick?</p></li>
<li><p>How about personalising some of your beloved’s clothes? Add fasteners only you know how to undo and you’ve got yourself an instant chastity belt. (See the <a href="http://www.aupress.ca/books/120228/ebook/99Z_Slavitt_2013-The_Lays_of_Marie_de_France.pdf">12th-century tales</a> by Marie de France for examples of suitable garments.)</p></li>
<li><p>Alternatively, upcycle one of your lover’s old shirts by sewing strands of your hair into it. To judge by Alexander’s reaction in the 12th-century romance of <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2414/2414-h/2414-h.htm">Cligés</a> by Chrétien de Troyes, they’ll never want to wear anything else. (Hand-wash only.)</p></li>
<li><p>And if the above just don’t seem heartfelt enough, you could always take a leaf out of Le Chastelain de Couci’s book, who (according to his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JHUNAAAAIAAJ&pg=PP11#v=onepage&q&f=false">13th-century biography</a>) <em>literally</em> gave his heart to his lover. (Beware unwanted side effects.)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Top tip: provide a little literary and historical context with the above gifts and there’s even a chance your Valentine won’t look at you as if you’re holding an axe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54198/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Grange does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
How about some fowl play this Medieval Valentine’s day?
Huw Grange, Junior Research Fellow in French, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41211
2015-08-17T09:42:35Z
2015-08-17T09:42:35Z
From the Sumerians to Shakespeare to Twain: Why fart jokes never get old
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91925/original/image-20150814-2595-1u5fadw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">English caricaturist Richard Newton's 1798 cartoon depicts John Bull farting on the face of King George III. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Newton_Bull_farts_G3.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Farting is a universal human experience, as routine as eating, breathing and sleeping. And it seems to be a cross-cultural and trans-historical fact that passing gas, at least in most social contexts, is rude and offensive. </p>
<p>There’s also the fundamental truth pertaining to the topic: farts are funny. But why is this the case? They’re often a source of discomfort and embarrassment, so why do they double as an inspiration for humor, even literary beauty?</p>
<h2>Literary giants let it rip</h2>
<p>Every culture in recorded history has had its preferred forms of humor relating to bodily functions, but none have been more reliable in stirring a reaction than fart jokes. In fact, according to British academic and poet Paul MacDonald, the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/07/31/us-joke-odd-idUSKUA14785120080731">oldest joke in recorded history</a> – which dates back to the Sumerians in 1900 BC – was a fart joke: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” </p>
<p>Fart jokes have also found their way into some of the classics of Western literature. One of the most well-known appears in Chaucer’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Canterbury_Tales.html?id=Ek_-lNfzGUcC">Canterbury Tales</a>. In the Miller’s Tale, Nicholas and Absalom are vying for the same girl, and Nicholas decides to humiliate his rival. So he waits at the window for Absalom to beckon the girl. And just when he does, Nicholas’ rear protrudes to “let fly a fart with a noise as great as a clap of thunder, so that Absalom was almost overcome by the force of it.” </p>
<p>Even the great Bard of Avon himself, William Shakespeare, resorted to a flatulence pun in his play The Comedy of Errors, where Dromio of Ephesus <a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/comedy_errors/full.html">declares</a>, “A man may break a word with you, sir; and words are but wind; Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.” </p>
<p>Less surprisingly, the irreverent Mark Twain’s spoof entitled <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3190/3190-h/3190-h.htm">1601</a> features the flatus. In this imagined conversation between Queen Elizabeth’s court and a few renowned writers, someone among the company passes gas: “In ye heat of ye talk it befel yt one did breake wind, yielding an exceding mightie and distresfull stink, whereat all did laugh full sore.” </p>
<p>The queen inquires as to the source, and one Lady Alice declares her innocence: “Nay, ‘tis not I yt have broughte forth this rich o'ermastering fog, this fragrant gloom, so pray you seeke ye further.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91988/original/image-20150816-5098-yg2zxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91988/original/image-20150816-5098-yg2zxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91988/original/image-20150816-5098-yg2zxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91988/original/image-20150816-5098-yg2zxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91988/original/image-20150816-5098-yg2zxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91988/original/image-20150816-5098-yg2zxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91988/original/image-20150816-5098-yg2zxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jonathan Swift, otherwise known as Don Fartinando Puff-Indorst, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Jonathan_Swift_by_Francis_Bindon.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Jonathan Swift, the author of the classic Gulliver’s Travels, devoted an entire <em>book</em> to the subject with <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sKdrMwAACAAJ&source=gbs_book_similarbooks">The Benefit of Farting Explained</a>. (Swift published it under the pseudonym “Don Fartinando Puff-Indorst, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow.”) The title page asserts that the essay was “translated into English at the Request and for the Use of the Lady Damp-Fart, of Her-fart-shire” by “Obadiah Fizzle, Groom of the Stool to the Princess of Arse-Mini in Sardinia.” And an opening poetic ode refers to the flatus as “Cure of cholick, cure of gripes, tuneful drone of lower pipes.” </p>
<p>Swift then goes on to subject the fart to a detailed analysis – carefully describing its legal, social and scientific dimensions – before concluding that there are multiple species of fart, including “the sonorous and full-toned or rousing fart,” “the double fart,” “the soft fizzing fart,” “the wet fart” and “the sullen wind-bound fart.” </p>
<h2>The philosophy of fart jokes</h2>
<p>Clearly, as these examples show, flatulence humor is timeless. But <em>why</em> are farts universally funny? </p>
<p>We might begin by asking what makes anything funny. Historically, there have been <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/">three major philosophical theories</a> about laughter. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>The <a href="http://www.richardwiseman.com/LaughLab/super.html">superiority theory</a> says that we laugh when we feel “sudden glory,” as Thomas Hobbes put it – a sudden sense of superiority over a person, especially someone to whom we ordinarily feel inferior. Cases of slapstick humor, such as the pie-in-the-face or someone slipping on a banana peel, fall into this category.</p></li>
<li><p>Kant and Schopenhauer argued on behalf of the <a href="http://www.richardwiseman.com/LaughLab/incon.html">incongruity theory</a>, which says we laugh at the juxtaposition of things that don’t ordinarily go together, such as a talking dog or a bearded woman. </p></li>
<li><p>And <a href="http://projects.eightron.net/laughter/theory3.php">relief theorists</a> like <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spencer/">Spencer</a> and <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/">Freud</a> maintain that laughter is how we relieve nervous tension regarding subjects or situations that are socially taboo or inappropriate. This explains the popular appeal of jokes based on sex, ethnicity and religion.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>But must we regard these theories as mutually exclusive? I suspect they are compatible explanations for different contexts of humor. </p>
<p>Philosopher John Morreall defends <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-820-taking-laughter-seriously.aspx">a theory</a> that invites such a view. Morreall proposes that the common core to anything that prompts laughter is a “pleasant psychological shift.” If we apply this theory to flatulence, it becomes clear why farts are universally funny. It’s because they are capable of producing this effect in <em>all</em> of the ways identified by the three theories of humor. </p>
<p>And events that satisfy the criteria for all three forms of humor tend to be especially funny. For example, a few years ago, a YouTube post was made of Fox News anchor <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rt6vqki_eE">Megyn Kelly passing gas</a> repeatedly on a live broadcast (to date, this clip has nearly 12 million views).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gdMrmgRFPVI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A moment of release for Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whether or not this actually happened, Kelly’s gaseous outburst certainly prompts a sudden sense of superiority in viewers, and it’s obviously incongruous with the formal context of a news broadcast. Moreover, the laughter this elicits (as it did even on the set of the broadcast) helps to relieve the nervous tension created by this social taboo.</p>
<p>But even where farts only satisfy one of the criteria for producing the “pleasant psychological shift” they are still humorous. And in most social contexts, they do at least this much. </p>
<p>This account of the universality of flatulence humor is, of course, a matter of debate. But one thing is beyond dispute: farts are funny. They always have been. And, it appears, they always will be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41211/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Spiegel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
They’re rude, crude and uncouth. So what makes farts so funny?
James Spiegel, Professor of Philosophy & Religion, Taylor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42981
2015-06-16T09:44:50Z
2015-06-16T09:44:50Z
Modern day Canterbury Tales refreshes Chaucer to tell the lost stories of refugees
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85204/original/image-20150616-5835-eji472.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Canterbury Tales mural (1939), Library of Congress.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, his unfinished account of a 13th-century pilgrimage, the host, in his cheerful and accommodating manner, suggests that as they walk the pilgrims should tell tales. Not their own tales, which might be the modern way, but the tales of other people. It becomes clear too that the tales themselves are largely the result of other journeys.</p>
<p>In so structuring the work, Chaucer inscribes into the language (which he was helping to create) a deep connection between poetry and human movement. And so a disparate group of fellow travellers bind themselves through the telling of other people’s stories. </p>
<p>It is for these reasons that The Canterbury Tales is the perfect model for <a href="http://www.refugeetales.org">Refugee Tales</a>, an extraordinary project in which I am currently involved. Conceived a year ago by the <a href="http://www.gdwg.org.uk">Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group</a>, the aim is to tell some of the stories of refugees and detainees during a walk from Dover to Crawley (home to Gatwick Airport), two key points of entry into the UK. Following the route of the old Pilgrim’s Way across the North Downs (not the route Chaucer’s pilgrims actually took but one their contemporaries would have recognised), our nine day, 80-mile walk started on June 13 in Dover’s Market Square. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85071/original/image-20150615-5812-py3w0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85071/original/image-20150615-5812-py3w0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85071/original/image-20150615-5812-py3w0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85071/original/image-20150615-5812-py3w0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85071/original/image-20150615-5812-py3w0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85071/original/image-20150615-5812-py3w0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85071/original/image-20150615-5812-py3w0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The group setting out from the launch in Dover Market Square.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Chris Orange</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Setting out to celebrate the contributions migrants make to the UK, while symbolically recognising the journeys they have made, the key demand of the project is an end to indefinite immigration detention. As I write, we have reached the village of Chilham, having stopped in Shepherdswell and Canterbury en route – and, as we go, more walkers join us every step of the way. The reason they are joining us, as they tell us with a sense of relief, is that they want to participate in this spectacle of welcome. </p>
<p>The key similarity between our project and Chaucer’s poem is that at every stopping point writers help to tell other people’s tales: The Migrant’s Tale, The Unaccompanied Minor’s Tale, The Lawyer’s Tale, The Detainee’s Tale, among others. In each case, a novelist or poet has collaborated with the person whose tale is being told to help communicate the experience of coming to or living in the UK. The tales are clear in their articulation of the journeys undertaken, of the deeply damaging effects of indefinite immigration detention and also of the bare life that follows detention that is the experience of tens of thousands of people currently living in the UK.</p>
<h2>Telling others’ stories</h2>
<p>There are multiple echoes of Chaucer’s project in The Refugee Tales. One such echo is the simple fact that the tales are being told by other people. This approach is not without its difficulties, as the organisers of the project are acutely aware. But one crucial consideration for all concerned is that while the people whose tales are being presented badly want them to be told, they often do not want to be seen or to be heard telling them. This is principally because having been detained they fear the prospect of being re-detained, a <a href="http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/cjm/article/immigration-detention-destitution">dismayingly common occurrence</a>.</p>
<p>The fear and secrecy that surrounds immigration detention is well understood by those who work with detainees. What we didn’t fully anticipate was the effect of the collaboration itself. A number of the writers involved in the project have reported on the effect that the process has had on their thinking about writing. Each of the tales takes its own form, from Patience Agbabi’s heroic crown of sonnets, to Ali Smith’s narrative, to Dragan Todorovic’s dialogue with Chaucer – but in each case the language is clearly marked by the demand of presenting another person’s story, by the ethical and aesthetic considerations of helping to shape another person’s account.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85072/original/image-20150615-5812-1xvc6zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85072/original/image-20150615-5812-1xvc6zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85072/original/image-20150615-5812-1xvc6zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85072/original/image-20150615-5812-1xvc6zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85072/original/image-20150615-5812-1xvc6zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85072/original/image-20150615-5812-1xvc6zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85072/original/image-20150615-5812-1xvc6zw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inua Ellams telling the true story of refugees who have travelled by boat to escape their countries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Chris Orange</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As things stand, the realities of immigration detention and the post-detention regime are not often talked about. This is perhaps starting to change, thanks to a growing pressure from detainees and activists. But as I have <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/view-dover">discussed elsewhere</a>, arbitrary and confusing as the immigration and asylum process appears to the person at the receiving end of its tortuous delays and decision-making, one thing that holds the apparatus together is the systematic exclusion of the utterance of the person detained. </p>
<p>This is most apparent in the detention bail hearing, the occasion when the detainee seeks release. On those occasions, the detainee is not permitted to attend, but is mediated by a video link from the detention centre which, as well as being frequently faulty, fundamentally impedes any effect of actual human presence. Additionally, the proceedings of the hearing are <a href="http://bailobs.org">not written down</a>. This part of the story, like just about all aspects of the detainee’s story, is kept from the record. Just as when Chaucer wrote his sequence, so the purpose of The Refugee Tales has been to re-open the language to the facts of human movement, to put the stories of people seeking asylum in the UK on the record. </p>
<h2>The tales</h2>
<p>The sequence of The Refugee Tales (16 in total, with two performed each night of the walk) is constructed so as to trace the trajectory from arrival to final decision. “The Migrant’s Tale” tells the story of a person who left Syria on his second attempt, smuggled in a lorry from Turkey to the UK, hidden behind packing cases while suffering the pain of kidney stones. When he arrived: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was put in a detention centre, at Gatwick. It was as bad as in Syria. I was very ill … it took them a hundred days to let me go.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then there’s “The Unaccompanied Minor’s Tale”, which starts “under a jeep in a car park in Khartoum” with the young girl trying to stifle “the laughter which is as ripe as fruit in her mouth”. The tale traces a journey through the desert and then across the Mediterranean where the unaccompanied children see dolphins and “the water-drenched flesh of refugees”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85073/original/image-20150615-5846-1eje2yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85073/original/image-20150615-5846-1eje2yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85073/original/image-20150615-5846-1eje2yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85073/original/image-20150615-5846-1eje2yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85073/original/image-20150615-5846-1eje2yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85073/original/image-20150615-5846-1eje2yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85073/original/image-20150615-5846-1eje2yu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pause for reflection in Canterbury Cathedral crypt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Chris Orange</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The Appellant’s Tale” tells the story of a man who arrived in the UK in 1984, recruited in his home country to work for the BBC World Service. After 28 years of entirely legal work he was picked up on the basis of a tip-off by the UK Border Agency and plunged in to the Kafka-esque world of the British detention system. As he tells it, describing the sheer impossibility of making himself heard from within detention: “the way it looks, you are a nobody. It means you have no story”.</p>
<p>“The Arriver’s Tale” is the story of a man who has been in the UK for eight years, having left his country of origin when he objected to FGM. Since arriving in the UK he has been detained, has been unable to work and has been relocated each time he started to establish a community. This, he explains patiently, is the definition of limbo.</p>
<p>As writers on The Refugee Tales have observed, what one finds on going back to The Canterbury Tales is a political geography we can recognise, as in “The Man of Law’s Tale”, for instance, with its account of a deeply troubled journey from Rome to Syria, and then from Syria to the north of England where a young refugee, Constance, finds herself falsely accused.</p>
<p>More fundamentally, by appropriating Chaucer for a project aimed at communicating the accounts of people who have experienced immigration detention, Refugee Tales looks to help re-open language to the realities of human movement, and to share and circulate stories that have been scandalously silenced.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Herd is a co-organiser of Refugees Tales.</span></em></p>
The Refugee Tales is a modern reconstruction of Chaucer’s classic pilgrimage – this time, telling the largely unspoken realities of immigration detention.
David Herd, Professor in English, University of Kent
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41562
2015-05-28T10:06:55Z
2015-05-28T10:06:55Z
How do you haha? LOL through the ages
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82867/original/image-20150525-32548-gh8cjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">From "Ha!" to "LOL," laughter in text can take on a number of forms and meanings. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-203426440/stock-vector-cartoon-illustration-of-a-couple-sharing-a-laugh-or-laughing-together.html?src=lO4_uaXnI1fO3wHwZPYDzA-1-1">'Laughter' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Laughter is uniquely human. Sometimes deliberate, sometimes uncontrollable, we laugh out loud to signal our reaction to a range of occurrences, whether it’s a response to a joke we hear, an awkward encounter or an anxious situation. The way we laugh is, according to anthropologist <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/30028087">Munro S Edmonson</a>, a “signal of individuality.” </p>
<p>And an outburst of laughter is an important enough part of communication that we represent it in text. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/hahaha-vs-hehehe">2015 The New Yorker article</a>, Sarah Larson wrote about laughter in internet-based communication – the use of <em>hahaha</em> and <em>hehehe</em>, even the jovial <em>hohoho</em>. </p>
<p>Larson writes, “The terms of e-laughter – ‘ha ha,’ ‘ho ho,’ ‘hee hee,’ ‘heh’ – are implicitly understood by just about everybody. But, in recent years, there’s been an increasingly popular newcomer: ‘hehe.’”</p>
<p>However, even before texting and online chatting, textual representations of laughter – most of which have onomatopoeic forms – have appeared in writing since Chaucer’s time.</p>
<p>Like all language, it has merely evolved with our culture and adapted to new technology, becoming in the process far more nuanced – much like the true “spoken” laughter it’s intended to represent. </p>
<h2>A brief history of laughter</h2>
<p>In her 2011 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Variationist-Sociolinguistics-Change-Observation-Interpretation/dp/1405135913/">Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation</a>, linguist Sali Tagliamonte shares three historical examples of laughter in literature.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=130&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=130&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=163&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=163&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81469/original/image-20150512-25060-c8z64r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=163&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Page 340 from Variationist Sociolinguistics (click to zoom).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Tagliamonte shows, <em>hehe</em> is not exactly a new invention: it appears in a Latin grammar book written by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86lfric_of_Eynsham">Ælfric of Eynsham</a> in about 1000 AD. <em>Haha</em> appears in Chaucer 300 years later, while <em>ha, ha, he</em> can be found in the works of Shakespeare. </p>
<p>Using Google’s Ngram Viewer, which allows users to search for words and phrases in all of the books that Google has scanned, it is evident that <em>hehe</em> – along with <em>haha</em> and <em>hoho</em> – <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=haha%2Chehe%2Choho&year_start=1720&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chaha%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chehe%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Choho%3B%2Cc0">has been in use for quite some time</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82864/original/image-20150525-32551-1urpzym.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Google Ngram graph depicts the prevalence of laughter in text through the centuries (click to zoom).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you look closely at the examples from this search, you’ll see a number of misreads of the text by the search function (for example, <em>hehe</em> is often confused with the name of the Greek goddess <em>Hebe</em>). However, you’ll also see texts from plays and scripts, along with dialogue in novels and even dictionaries of other spoken languages. All of these representations of laughter are connected to words being spoken out loud. </p>
<h2>The evolution of LOL</h2>
<p>Words like <em>haha</em> and <em>hehe</em> have traditionally been used to represent <em>actual</em> laughter in text, whether in response to a joke or to indicate nervousness or awkwardness. </p>
<p>Only in recent years have various acronyms arisen to represent laughter in text. From <em>ROFL</em> (Rolls On Floor Laughing) to <em>LMAO</em> (Laughing My Ass Off) – and, of course, <em>LOL</em> – these acronyms have become increasingly popular as internet and online conversation has proliferated. </p>
<p>LOL is perhaps the most ubiquitous of these acronyms. <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/153504/net_shorthand_origins.html">According to linguist Ben Zimmer</a>, the first recorded use of LOL is from the May 1989 edition of the FidoNews Newsletter (though some <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/05/23/lol_s_25th_anniversary_origins_of_still_popular_internet_abbreviation_trace.html">have disputed</a> this). </p>
<p>Almost everyone who has typed these acronyms knows that don’t always represent physical laughter. As linguist David Crystal <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=cnhnO0AO45AC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=david+crystal+language+and+the+internet+lol&source=bl&ots=amOOOwawiX&sig=Q3cEcWaxgKVHc_ASTCObAUUWgmM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q_x-U7XYJsjJ8wHamICwCA&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=lol&f=false">asked</a> in his 2006 book <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Language_and_the_Internet.html?id=cnhnO0AO45AC">Language and the Internet</a>, “How many people are actually ‘laughing out loud’ when they send LOL?” </p>
<p>Not many. In one <a href="http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/content/83/1/3.full.pdf">study of online teen language</a>, researchers found that LOL is “used by our participants in the flow of conversation as a signal of interlocutor involvement, just as one might say mm-hm in the course of a conversation.” </p>
<p>And another linguist, John McWhorter, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/30/opinion/mcwhorter-lol/">pointed out</a> that LOL has changed from indicating real laughter to a signal of “basic empathy between testers” – in other words, a sign that you have read and acknowledged the message. It’s also a way to interject a bit of a casual flair to a conversation, much in the same way we might use a short laugh or a nod in face-to-face conversation. </p>
<p>So LOL – just like some of the basic laughs that it represents – doesn’t really mean any one thing in particular, but rather displays the speaker’s (or typer’s) attitude. In a sense, LOL works <a href="https://theconversation.com/emoticons-and-symbols-arent-ruining-language-theyre-revolutionizing-it-38408">much in the same way emoticons and emoji do</a>: when people send a smiley face, they may not actually be smiling; they simply want to convey that they’re <em>feeling</em> happy. </p>
<p>Just like the many variations of emoticons and emojis, so too are there many flavors of lol: the emphatic <em>lololol</em>, the sarcastic <em>lolz</em> and even <a href="http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3168/3115"><em>lulz</em>-seeking internet trolls</a>. </p>
<h2>Laughter signals individuality in text, too</h2>
<p>What about <em>haha</em>, <em>hehe</em>, and <em>hoho</em> in our e-language? Returning to the online teen language study, researchers found that <em>haha</em> was the most widely used representation of laughter after <em>LOL</em> on instant message.</p>
<p><em>Hehe</em> was the third most widely used form – and this one, they say, represented giggling. But what may be new are the connotations that <em>hehe</em> has taken on to differentiate itself from its competitors, <em>haha</em> and <em>hoho</em>. </p>
<p>For example, the users of <em>hehe</em> interviewed in The New Yorker article agree on the giggling aspect of <em>hehe</em>, but vary in whether they view it as friendly or conspiratorial: it all depends on how many <em>E</em>‘s the word has. </p>
<p>Clearly, the connotations associated with each form seem to be as unique as the people using them. These variations give all the more support to Edmonson’s assertion from 1987 that our laughter is a sign of our individuality – even in text.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren B. Collister does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Shakespeare didn’t ‘lol,’ but he did ‘ha, ha, he.’
Lauren B. Collister, Scholarly Communications Librarian, University of Pittsburgh
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/39633
2015-04-14T20:22:19Z
2015-04-14T20:22:19Z
Why do we recycle the same old texts in our English curriculum?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77849/original/image-20150414-24336-1rd02qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens: are there no new books to compare? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/benleto/3485066591">Ben Leto/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you look at the texts you studied at school, you’ll probably find they were quite similar to those being studied by your kids and perhaps even those studied by your parents. </p>
<p>For decades <a href="https://anu-au.academia.edu/MelissaJogie">the same English texts have been recycled</a> on prescribed lists. Newer texts are hardly ever added to the curriculum. Is this because there is just nothing new to compare to Shakespeare, Chaucer and Dickens, or is there something else behind the choice?</p>
<h2>Text selection in Australia and the UK</h2>
<p>I looked into the text selection practices in Australia and England and found two patterns. </p>
<p>Firstly, the texts are not really chosen with the students in mind, so engaging students does not seem to be of highest priority for curriculum boards. </p>
<p>Secondly, in both systems it was well known that the current texts are constantly repeated or reshuffled from other areas of the curriculum into different English sections or study units. </p>
<p>This means that not only were there texts that did not engage current students in English, but fewer recently published texts were being added to the curriculum for teachers to consider when planning lessons.</p>
<p>Both case studies in Australia (New South Wales, Board of Studies Higher School Certificate HSC) and England (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) A-Level) show that older or traditional texts in both curricula have been on the prescribed reading list for decades. This means that the well-known texts published pre-1900 to 2000 far outnumber the texts published from 2000 onwards.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77851/original/image-20150414-24286-fs9kts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How many of you studied this old biddy?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/srgblog/762689357">srgpicker/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one section of the NSW English curriculum I found that in 14 years 16% of the texts were published up until 1900, 47% of the texts were published from 1900 to 2000, and only 37% of texts were from 2000 onwards. </p>
<p>Even the texts from 2000 onwards were choices that were repeated or reshuffled; they were not newer options. I found some texts have been on the curriculum for over 50 years, such as Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. </p>
<p>Even if the argument is made that Great Expectations is a great text and undoubtedly a shorter text to teach, it is further limited because it is a choice of one in five texts that teachers can pick from in the curriculum. </p>
<p>So text choices are even further limited not only in the variety or types of texts and their publication dates, but also in the quantity of texts teachers are able to choose from when selecting from available options.</p>
<p>Similarly in England, over eight years for a contemporary English unit of study, 81% of the texts listed were published from 1900-2000, 19% of texts were published from 2000 to present. Even after their most recent education reform, only one new text - The Help - was added to the list scheduled to be taught from 2015-2017. </p>
<p>This means only one new text would have been added to the prescribed list, which was published in 2000 and is intended to be taught until 2017. This evidence suggests that after major education changes in the UK, the English curriculum seems to include even more well-known, traditional texts (published prior to 2000) rather than a wider range of modern choices. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77852/original/image-20150414-24322-1dcn8lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">…and this one?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/liampye/16833879721">Liam Pye/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is interesting given the public appeal by a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/michael-gove-axes-to-kill-a-mockingbird-and-other-american-classics-from-english-literature-gcse-syllabus-9432818.html">former education secretary, Michael Gove</a>, to reduce the number of American classical texts on the current English curriculum to accommodate more contemporary British options.</p>
<h2>Why are there few new options?</h2>
<p>When the curriculum boards (NSW Board of Studies; AQA) were questioned about text selection practices, they said texts were repeated or reshuffled because of the lack of resources and limited skills of teachers to manage newer texts. They also said teachers were the ones who often repeated texts and did not make use of the newer choices that were added to the prescribed lists. </p>
<p>However, 80% of all 48 teachers interviewed for this research argued that this was not the case.</p>
<p>Teachers, in both case studies, argued that text selection was a burdensome process for them. They felt the main issue was not being able to select texts that were most appropriate for their students and their learning abilities.</p>
<p>Teachers agreed that most times texts were repeatedly taught because of the lack of resources at the school, or the limited time available to design new lessons.</p>
<p>However, they voiced that the current lists of prescribed texts were often boring to teach, felt like texts were forcibly used to address aims in the curriculum and that, to an extent, the current selection even disengaged students who once did enjoy English literature.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789460917059">Research into text selection</a> argues that if students enjoy the texts they study at school, the meaning becomes reinforced and the curriculum aims are better achieved. </p>
<p>This isn’t to say we should reduce the number of texts or well-known favourites in the curriculum. But we do need to select texts that engage our contemporary and culturally diverse students, while also achieving the learning goals set out in the curriculum.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Melissa will be on hand for an author Q&A between 3 and 4 pm AEST on Wednesday April 15. Post your questions in the comments section below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Jogie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Do English texts stay the same over the decades because there are no good modern books? Or because the process of selecting new books is just too hard?
Melissa Jogie, PhD Candidate, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.