Ben Parsons - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Ben Parsons
<b>Images Of Research 2018 Winners:</b> Martha Papadopoulou – 'One picture – two ... more <b>Images Of Research 2018 Winners:</b> Martha Papadopoulou – 'One picture – two worlds' - Judges' Prize Winner Mandi Jamalian Hamedani – 'In search for inner peace' - Katherine May People's Choice Winner Olga Yegorova – ' "Ni Una Menos, ni una muerta más!" fighting for the lives of Bolivian women' - Judges' Prize Runner-up Kate Gooch and Georgine Barkham-Perry – 'Finding Hope in a Hopeless Place' - People's Choice Runner-up <b>Images Of Research 2018 successful submissions:</b> Abbey Ellis – 'Something's Missing' Emily Castells – 'Fast-Paced Study in Respiratory Research' Andrew Blain – 'Inside the Dish' Aude Cumont – 'Army of Mushrooms, by Disinfection Mushrooms' Ben Parsons – 'Holey Prayers' Thomas Newman – 'Big Sky, Big Future' Diyana Kasimon – 'Unity in Diversity' Jan Vandeburie – 'Reading Between the Lines' Philip Evans – 'Andromeda's revenge' John Goodwin – 'Return to Winston Parva: Sex and Violence at the 'Regal'' Yogini Chudasama – 'Secrets to Living Longer' Eleni Ganiti – 'Contemporary Art?' Emily Richardson – 'Cellular Fireworks' Seth O'Neill – 'Achille's Heat' Padraig Donnelly – 'Peering into Jupiter's Atmosphere from Earth' Colin Hyde – 'In the midst of life we are in death' Georgina Lockton – 'Researching Vehicle Automation in 1960s Britain' Jan Oliver Ringert and José Miguel Rojas – 'DriverLeics' Amy Van Allen – 'Life in the Andes' Eva Krockow – 'Line Up and Take Note' Yewande Okuleye – 'Hemp Seeds in Safe Hands'Rod Moore - 'Vaping'
Medieval English theatre, 2012
The Chaucer Review, 2018
The Miller's links to festive discourse and popular celebration are well documented. Yet mill... more The Miller's links to festive discourse and popular celebration are well documented. Yet milling itself has often proven difficult to interpret in such terms: for most existing scholarship, the Miller's trade is the one detail in his portrait that cannot be accommodated into merrymaking. It has instead invited either political or social readings, being interpreted as a signal of active rebellion or as a confirmation of Robyn's peasant status. However, as this article seeks to demonstrate, the mill can be securely ranked among the festive meanings Chaucer evokes through Robyn. The mill frequently serves as a symbol of carnival across northern Europe, with a wide range of sources associating it with clowning, foolishness, and general revelry. This article reviews some of the points at which milling crosses into the practices and iconography of festivity and related discourses, highlighting the prominent role the mill played in medieval and early modern celebration.
The thesis explores the role of violence and wounding in English satire before the Reformation. F... more The thesis explores the role of violence and wounding in English satire before the Reformation. From the analysis of medieval commentary on Juvenal and Horace, and depictions of wounding in medieval culture, a new understanding of satiric aggression is derived. It is suggested that satire and mutilation are connected by their common sense of ambivalence. During the Middle Ages both were invested with two distinct functions: each could enforce a given system of standards and definitions, or be used to dissolve such a system. While this dualism makes disfigurement a natural emblem for satire, it also means that wounding invariably brings to light discrepancies when it is portrayed in satiric texts. Its flexibility serves to exacerbate the tensions present in the mode. The thesis thus treats injury not only as a central motif in satire, but as a point at which implicit conflicts emerge most clearly. Wounding is used as a means of distinguishing points of friction in the literature. The...
During the Middle Ages and early modern period, a dramatic culture of astonishing vitality develo... more During the Middle Ages and early modern period, a dramatic culture of astonishing vitality developed in the Low Countries. Owing to the activities of organisations known as rederijkerskamers, or "chambers of rhetoric", drama became a central aspect of public life in the cities of the Netherlands. The comedies produced by these groups are particularly interesting. Drawing their forms and narratives from folklore and popular ritual, and entertaining in their own right, they also bring together a range of important concerns; they respond directly to some of the key developments in the period, reflecting the political and religious turmoil of the Reformation and Dutch Revolt, the emergence of humanism, and the appearance of an early capitalist economy.
basjongenelen.nl
... RP Meijer,Literature of the Low Countries (The Hague, 1978), 52-3; also B. Jongenelen and B.P... more ... RP Meijer,Literature of the Low Countries (The Hague, 1978), 52-3; also B. Jongenelen and B.Parsons, 'Ten Poems from the Gruuthuse Songbook', Fifteenth-century Studies 34 (2009). 9 B. Ramakers, 'Between Aea and Golgotha: the education and scholarship of Matthij s de ...
Medium Ævum
This paper examines the relationship between anticlerical satire and violence in Piers Plowman. I... more This paper examines the relationship between anticlerical satire and violence in Piers Plowman. It identifies a clear reluctance to involve aggression in complaints against the church: despite the prevalence of images of assault and injury in the poem, these are never extended to the priesthood, even though physical attack is often central in other medieval works satirising the clergy. The implications of this aversion are considered, both in terms of Langland's stance as a satirist, and in terms of his conception of the church and its role in society. It is suggested that Langland's hesitance at once marks the limits of his satire and underscores its radicalism, indicating dissatisfaction with mere localised attack; it is also argued that Langland's separation of the church from violence might imply a stronger commitment to peace-making than many recent critics have allowed. In her study of patristic influence on Piers Plowman, Margaret Goldsmith raises a suggestive point about its author's attitude towards the church. 1 She writes: 'We cannot doubt that William Langland was an angry man. One part of him would certainly like to take a stick to cheats, spongers and corrupters, and double-dealers of all kind-especially if they walk under the protection of a tonsure and a habit'. 2 As this statement makes clear, Goldsmith sees a firm connection between Langland's anticlerical satire and corporeal violence. She sees in his text a clear desire to bruise, break or otherwise damage the bodies of ecclesiastics, as they attract his hostility above any other target. Beneath his critiques, in other words, is a wish to inflict actual injury on priests, as Langland's denunciations seem to be underpinned by aggression, or even motivated by it. What makes this comment valuable is not that it is necessarily correct or wellfounded, but the fact that it articulates an assumption which echoes throughout Piers Plowman scholarship. The link Goldsmith posits between Langland's criticism of the clergy and aggression pervades commentary on the poem. Barbara Johnson, for instance, finds similar beliefs among the poem's early readers, noting that 'the Lollards and English reformers' saw Piers as a 'prophet ploughing for Christian truth by the violent action of attacking thorns and briars', while the idea that Langland 'lashed the vices of the clergy...with savage energy' attains the level of a cliché among nineteenth-century scholars. 3 The same conviction appears in the work of
Dutch Crossing, 2016
The Bruges rederijker Anthonis de Roovere has long been acknowledged as one the most important po... more The Bruges rederijker Anthonis de Roovere has long been acknowledged as one the most important poets of the late fifteenth century. He is not only a key figure in the development of Dutch-language poetry and drama, as his work did much to formalise the characteristic poetics of the rederijkerskamers, but he attained an impressive level of recognition within his own lifetime. This article focuses on an aspect of his achievements that is often overlooked, examining the ways in which his position as stadsdichter impacted on his work, especially on the intensely public voice he often cultivated. It finds that his work not only memorialised key events within the community of Bruges but aimed to publicise and reinforce its shared values, in either case drawing traditional ecclesiastic functions into secular hands. In particular, it judges the ways in which these concerns are brought into focus by De Roovere's four rondelen, offering a close reading of these colourful texts in terms of the priorities they articulate and the posture they assume.
... The meat and material of The Aesthetics of Antichrist begins in Chapter 1--The Typological Im... more ... The meat and material of The Aesthetics of Antichrist begins in Chapter 1--The Typological Image: "Typos means literally an impression ... austere Pope Innocent and the enigmatic Bacon ("...the unlikeliest of bedfellows"), but explains that the wide avenue for fraudulence in these ...
Among John Lydgate’s various tributes to Chaucer, one of the most puzzling is his reference to th... more Among John Lydgate’s various tributes to Chaucer, one of the most puzzling is his reference to the Book of the Duchess in the Fall of Princes (c.1438). In the prologue of this lengthy retelling of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, Lydgate introduces an extensive homage to ‘my maistir Chaucer’, which lists several of Chaucer’s literary accomplishments: it opens with stanzas on ‘Troilus & Cresseide’, ‘Boeces book, The Consolacioun’, and ‘a tretis, ful noble & off gret pris/ Vpon thastlabre’ (Lydgate 1924-27, 1:8-9). About midway through this catalogue, Lydgate turns to Chaucer’s elegy for Blanche of Lancaster:
<b>Images Of Research 2018 Winners:</b> Martha Papadopoulou – 'One picture – two ... more <b>Images Of Research 2018 Winners:</b> Martha Papadopoulou – 'One picture – two worlds' - Judges' Prize Winner Mandi Jamalian Hamedani – 'In search for inner peace' - Katherine May People's Choice Winner Olga Yegorova – ' "Ni Una Menos, ni una muerta más!" fighting for the lives of Bolivian women' - Judges' Prize Runner-up Kate Gooch and Georgine Barkham-Perry – 'Finding Hope in a Hopeless Place' - People's Choice Runner-up <b>Images Of Research 2018 successful submissions:</b> Abbey Ellis – 'Something's Missing' Emily Castells – 'Fast-Paced Study in Respiratory Research' Andrew Blain – 'Inside the Dish' Aude Cumont – 'Army of Mushrooms, by Disinfection Mushrooms' Ben Parsons – 'Holey Prayers' Thomas Newman – 'Big Sky, Big Future' Diyana Kasimon – 'Unity in Diversity' Jan Vandeburie – 'Reading Between the Lines' Philip Evans – 'Andromeda's revenge' John Goodwin – 'Return to Winston Parva: Sex and Violence at the 'Regal'' Yogini Chudasama – 'Secrets to Living Longer' Eleni Ganiti – 'Contemporary Art?' Emily Richardson – 'Cellular Fireworks' Seth O'Neill – 'Achille's Heat' Padraig Donnelly – 'Peering into Jupiter's Atmosphere from Earth' Colin Hyde – 'In the midst of life we are in death' Georgina Lockton – 'Researching Vehicle Automation in 1960s Britain' Jan Oliver Ringert and José Miguel Rojas – 'DriverLeics' Amy Van Allen – 'Life in the Andes' Eva Krockow – 'Line Up and Take Note' Yewande Okuleye – 'Hemp Seeds in Safe Hands'Rod Moore - 'Vaping'
Medieval English theatre, 2012
The Chaucer Review, 2018
The Miller's links to festive discourse and popular celebration are well documented. Yet mill... more The Miller's links to festive discourse and popular celebration are well documented. Yet milling itself has often proven difficult to interpret in such terms: for most existing scholarship, the Miller's trade is the one detail in his portrait that cannot be accommodated into merrymaking. It has instead invited either political or social readings, being interpreted as a signal of active rebellion or as a confirmation of Robyn's peasant status. However, as this article seeks to demonstrate, the mill can be securely ranked among the festive meanings Chaucer evokes through Robyn. The mill frequently serves as a symbol of carnival across northern Europe, with a wide range of sources associating it with clowning, foolishness, and general revelry. This article reviews some of the points at which milling crosses into the practices and iconography of festivity and related discourses, highlighting the prominent role the mill played in medieval and early modern celebration.
The thesis explores the role of violence and wounding in English satire before the Reformation. F... more The thesis explores the role of violence and wounding in English satire before the Reformation. From the analysis of medieval commentary on Juvenal and Horace, and depictions of wounding in medieval culture, a new understanding of satiric aggression is derived. It is suggested that satire and mutilation are connected by their common sense of ambivalence. During the Middle Ages both were invested with two distinct functions: each could enforce a given system of standards and definitions, or be used to dissolve such a system. While this dualism makes disfigurement a natural emblem for satire, it also means that wounding invariably brings to light discrepancies when it is portrayed in satiric texts. Its flexibility serves to exacerbate the tensions present in the mode. The thesis thus treats injury not only as a central motif in satire, but as a point at which implicit conflicts emerge most clearly. Wounding is used as a means of distinguishing points of friction in the literature. The...
During the Middle Ages and early modern period, a dramatic culture of astonishing vitality develo... more During the Middle Ages and early modern period, a dramatic culture of astonishing vitality developed in the Low Countries. Owing to the activities of organisations known as rederijkerskamers, or "chambers of rhetoric", drama became a central aspect of public life in the cities of the Netherlands. The comedies produced by these groups are particularly interesting. Drawing their forms and narratives from folklore and popular ritual, and entertaining in their own right, they also bring together a range of important concerns; they respond directly to some of the key developments in the period, reflecting the political and religious turmoil of the Reformation and Dutch Revolt, the emergence of humanism, and the appearance of an early capitalist economy.
basjongenelen.nl
... RP Meijer,Literature of the Low Countries (The Hague, 1978), 52-3; also B. Jongenelen and B.P... more ... RP Meijer,Literature of the Low Countries (The Hague, 1978), 52-3; also B. Jongenelen and B.Parsons, 'Ten Poems from the Gruuthuse Songbook', Fifteenth-century Studies 34 (2009). 9 B. Ramakers, 'Between Aea and Golgotha: the education and scholarship of Matthij s de ...
Medium Ævum
This paper examines the relationship between anticlerical satire and violence in Piers Plowman. I... more This paper examines the relationship between anticlerical satire and violence in Piers Plowman. It identifies a clear reluctance to involve aggression in complaints against the church: despite the prevalence of images of assault and injury in the poem, these are never extended to the priesthood, even though physical attack is often central in other medieval works satirising the clergy. The implications of this aversion are considered, both in terms of Langland's stance as a satirist, and in terms of his conception of the church and its role in society. It is suggested that Langland's hesitance at once marks the limits of his satire and underscores its radicalism, indicating dissatisfaction with mere localised attack; it is also argued that Langland's separation of the church from violence might imply a stronger commitment to peace-making than many recent critics have allowed. In her study of patristic influence on Piers Plowman, Margaret Goldsmith raises a suggestive point about its author's attitude towards the church. 1 She writes: 'We cannot doubt that William Langland was an angry man. One part of him would certainly like to take a stick to cheats, spongers and corrupters, and double-dealers of all kind-especially if they walk under the protection of a tonsure and a habit'. 2 As this statement makes clear, Goldsmith sees a firm connection between Langland's anticlerical satire and corporeal violence. She sees in his text a clear desire to bruise, break or otherwise damage the bodies of ecclesiastics, as they attract his hostility above any other target. Beneath his critiques, in other words, is a wish to inflict actual injury on priests, as Langland's denunciations seem to be underpinned by aggression, or even motivated by it. What makes this comment valuable is not that it is necessarily correct or wellfounded, but the fact that it articulates an assumption which echoes throughout Piers Plowman scholarship. The link Goldsmith posits between Langland's criticism of the clergy and aggression pervades commentary on the poem. Barbara Johnson, for instance, finds similar beliefs among the poem's early readers, noting that 'the Lollards and English reformers' saw Piers as a 'prophet ploughing for Christian truth by the violent action of attacking thorns and briars', while the idea that Langland 'lashed the vices of the clergy...with savage energy' attains the level of a cliché among nineteenth-century scholars. 3 The same conviction appears in the work of
Dutch Crossing, 2016
The Bruges rederijker Anthonis de Roovere has long been acknowledged as one the most important po... more The Bruges rederijker Anthonis de Roovere has long been acknowledged as one the most important poets of the late fifteenth century. He is not only a key figure in the development of Dutch-language poetry and drama, as his work did much to formalise the characteristic poetics of the rederijkerskamers, but he attained an impressive level of recognition within his own lifetime. This article focuses on an aspect of his achievements that is often overlooked, examining the ways in which his position as stadsdichter impacted on his work, especially on the intensely public voice he often cultivated. It finds that his work not only memorialised key events within the community of Bruges but aimed to publicise and reinforce its shared values, in either case drawing traditional ecclesiastic functions into secular hands. In particular, it judges the ways in which these concerns are brought into focus by De Roovere's four rondelen, offering a close reading of these colourful texts in terms of the priorities they articulate and the posture they assume.
... The meat and material of The Aesthetics of Antichrist begins in Chapter 1--The Typological Im... more ... The meat and material of The Aesthetics of Antichrist begins in Chapter 1--The Typological Image: "Typos means literally an impression ... austere Pope Innocent and the enigmatic Bacon ("...the unlikeliest of bedfellows"), but explains that the wide avenue for fraudulence in these ...
Among John Lydgate’s various tributes to Chaucer, one of the most puzzling is his reference to th... more Among John Lydgate’s various tributes to Chaucer, one of the most puzzling is his reference to the Book of the Duchess in the Fall of Princes (c.1438). In the prologue of this lengthy retelling of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, Lydgate introduces an extensive homage to ‘my maistir Chaucer’, which lists several of Chaucer’s literary accomplishments: it opens with stanzas on ‘Troilus & Cresseide’, ‘Boeces book, The Consolacioun’, and ‘a tretis, ful noble & off gret pris/ Vpon thastlabre’ (Lydgate 1924-27, 1:8-9). About midway through this catalogue, Lydgate turns to Chaucer’s elegy for Blanche of Lancaster: