"fell ne flæsc: Flæsc and the Poetics of Visibility in the Exeter Book Riddles," ISAS, Madison, 2011. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Flodu in the franks casket’s whale poem: A fluvial meaning with regional implications
Philological Quarterly, 2019
Alcuin (ca. 735-804) frames his famous York Poem with references to the Roman-built seaport at York. 1 To reach that port, lying some fifty miles inland from the sea, ships traveled from the Humber Estuary up the river Ouse. The channeling effect of this complex waterway affects the height and speed of the tides as they flow inland and then out again, and a miscalculation about the rapid outflow of the tide in such a river channel as the Ouse could result in the stranding of a ship, or, as this essay suggests, in the imagined stranding of a whale, as on the rune-carved Franks Casket. The problematic runic letter representing-u at the end of the word flodu in the poem on the front of the casket is a long-standing crux that may be solved by attention to fluvial dynamics such as that of the river Ouse. The Franks Casket is a small Anglo-Saxon box made in the early-to-mid eighth century from the bone of a whale. On it are densely carved illustrations of six stories with associated inscriptions written mainly in runes in the Northumbrian dialect. 2 The runic inscriptions on the front and right side are in alliterative verse, small poems respectively two and three lines long; the rest are in prose, with some labels within the picture panels. In the two-line poem on the front, the subject of this article, the box tells a tale about its own construction. The poem begins at top left of that panel and circles around the panel to the right, framing it. The first line of the poem, alliterating on f, crosses along the top of the panel and ends on the right
Cambridge Companion to Literature and Animals, 2023
This chapter reads Hamlet in the light of debates in early modern animal studies, arguing that it is a play that responds to contemporary religious and philosophical questions about the distinction between humans and animals in its representation of flesh and of death. In particular, it focuses on ideas about the difference between human and animal death, and sees in Hamlet a challenge to the assumption of human immortality, reading human fleshiness – our edibility – as lying at the core of the play’s contemplations. In what is often regarded as Shakespeare’s key exploration of ‘the human’, the chapter argues that what can be found is a conception of our species that offers a challenge to the anthropocentrism of the early modern period, but also of our own.
“I would not Taste of Such a Banquet”: Ill-f(l)avoured Consumption in The Bloody Banquet
Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare
In an article on The Bloody Banquet, a play probably written by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker between 1600 and 1602 and printed for the first time in a quarto in 1639, Gary Taylor calls this revenge tragedy a display of "cozy domesticity and nauseating horror". 1 The Bloody Banquet is dominated by food and the idea of torturous feeding. In the tragedy, a young Queen is forced by her tyrant husband to eat the limbs of her lover, whom she has killed in her chamber to avoid suspicion of their illicit affair. Dominated by his jealousy, the husband orders the body to be butchered and the limbs to be hung up for public display. The Queen, confronted with the object of her former sexual appetite, "the flesh with a skull all bloody", is then ordered to eat the remains of her lover as a cannibalistic punishment for her adultery. As the death of further characters in the play through drinking poisoned wine confirms, the tragedy presents consumption of a nauseating domesticity and perverted table manners in various forms during an ill-f(l)avoured festive menu.
Raw Metaphors: Cannibal Poetics in Early Modern England
2018
ed anatomy trope and a fetid corpse on a slab. Starting with a comparison of the body to a building, Donne soon forsakes this figure for the more visceral metaphor of us being “brought to the jawes and teeth of death” ̶ a trope that progresses from cliché into a fully-fleshed nightmare as his sermon progresses (2). Defamiliarizing the conventional pairing of birth and death, he identifies both with predatory violence, rather than sleep. In the cosmos of Deaths Duell, we begin our lives as fetal vampires in the womb, where “wee are taught cruelty, by being fed with blood, and may be damned, though wee be never borne” (6). The grave is not much sweeter, for there “wee breed and feed, and then kill those wormes which wee our selves produc’d” (5-6). In the latter passage, worms seem to span the roles of the corpse’s lover and offspring throughout its life cycle; as if combining Hamlet’s worst fears, the grave becomes a bed of cannibalistic incest where fecund corpses spawn, devour, and ...
The flesh made speech: notes on poetic and phenomenological sensitivity
Kοινὴ. The Almanac of Philosophical Essays, 2022
In the present text, I explore the type of double sensitivity-to experience and to languagethat grounds both poetic and philosophical discourse. In this sense, both poetry and philosophy appear as discursive practices that are aware of their conditions of possibility and reflectively anchored in them, trying to find ways of exploring structures of experience and language and of expanding what is taken as given about them. In this process of exploration, structures of the affective flesh, of the intersubjectively disclosed world and of the political as inscribed in the body and newly disclosed world might be discovered, even if this project was not a part of the initial poetic agenda.
2017
Lute sat dawn and began to unlace his boots. His f in-~ gets were stir. cold, and they fumbled stiffly with the laces. "You dust naw gettin' around to shav ing?" Daniel, laughed. "That's far Mary. " Lute's hands stopped. mov ing o He I ooked up. "You're not going to. to cut her, are you?" "Cut her ?" "Yeah. L~_ke you dial that old white-face caw that t~.me ?" Daniel sighed. "No, z d idn' t reckon an i. t. Hope not, anyway o But she ought to be shaved. " "You mean her o. her pussy? Hell, she can't shave it. Can't even see it wfth that belly. " Dan ie1 laughed aga~.n. "Boy, you don't know d fiddly, do you? She ain't gonna shave it. You are. " "Me : Oh, Dad , no. I c auldn' t do that. I mean , Jesus , what if 2 cut i t ? What if I sl ~ Aped. and cut it ?" He tugged furiously at the bootlaces o "Well , it ought to be shaved, " Dan~.el said. "It' 11 be cleaner and easier if we shave it. Not sa much chance of ~.nfection." "Maybe Mom could shave it. Maybe one of the girl s a " "Your maw never used a raz or ~ n her life. And. the girls are in town o Gat stranded at school when the bz i~~ard h~ t. You've got to d a i t. " up a g irl , and ~ hav e to keep you from running away. Now lE you want me to shave her privates and deliver your bastard for you. You don = t deserve a girl 1 ike that, `boy. " DanieZ was breathing hard. Sweat glistened. on his forehead and 1 ips o "You want are to knock her up for you next t it~e ~" Lute sprang from the chair, h j_s f ~_s t drawn back o Daniel sneered at hirn, his massive shoulders flexing under the straps of hj~s overalls. Lute ~.owered his f ~.st. Da.nie~. motioned. toward the dishpan o "Be a man, boy o Do what you have to da a " Lute sat down and pulled. off the other boot. He gat the shav ing mug f turn the cabinet over the sink, dipped s oroe water frorn~ the reservoir, and worked up a lather. He picked up the dishpan and walked to the bedroom. Daniel followed him, his face still grim o His mother had tu~.ed on all the lights in the roam. She had even brought a floor lamp f rots the living rood far added l fight o When Lute and his father entered , she was s i t-ting beside the bed , holding Mary's hand and talking to her. She paused and s m i 1 ed a t them. _ "Well , it won't be too lon no~~ o Pa~.ns are about ten g minutes apart o " She saw the basin and the shav ink, mug. "Going to shave her? Goad o Wish we'd a-known that when Ros fie and Mana was born. Makes it a 1 of neater o Course , they we.s no way we could've known until Lute. He was the f ~. rs t one barn ~ n the hosp ~. ta1, you know o " She patted ~~ Mary's small hand.. "So don't you worry, now, honey. Daniel ' s del. ivered two by his self. " Mary f arced a stile and squeezed .~ggie' s hand. Her face was white and d atop. Her eyes were frightened and plea+ ding when she 1 poked at Lute. He turned b~.ck the patchwork quilt that covered her. She was wearing one of his mother's flannel nj_ghtgowns o Under her buttocks and thighs, his mother had laid. a checkered oilcloth from the kitchen table and three bath towels , folded d aubl e. He pulled the nightgown up, exposing her ~ He blushed. a "Never thought Y' d hate to do that, "he said. Zt saun~ ded false, hollow. "LU.te, " his ~t3atheX" se.id, " don't talk s0. " Mary bent her knees and spread her legs. wide. Lute held the shaving brush ready, hesitated a ~aotrierit, then began to lather her. "N'ot too tYttxch," Daniel said. "You've got to gee What you' Z'E3 d' Oing. " Lute set the mug and the brush as id. e. He picked up the razor and dried it on one of the towels. Mary stared at i t. She gripped egg ie ' s hand tightly. Lute sat on the edge of the bed, resting his right elbo~ an the mattress 'between her 1 egs far support. Even s o , the razor t rer~bl ed in h~ ~ hand.. He held. ~ the blade above her. Sweat rolled dawn her belly and. mingled with the soap. He brought the 'cause she called me 'Harold. ' 'At the bank, ' I say. 'Don't 1 i.e to me , ' she says , ' I saw that dog. ' " They were both sobb~.ng now as they laughed. Nate held his aching sides , but he could not stop , F~.nally, when his laughter had subsided to silent chuckles and he had wiped the tears from his eyes, he saw that Lily had came in. Check had stopped wheezing, but he too was still shaking with chuckles, still squeaking the chair. "Were you telling him about the dog?" she said. "hod d a~nn : " Nate shouted. He twisted the d ie.~. viciously. The ,jazz station in Belton was safe .. They never played c aun try mus ~. c. He watched the 1 and roll by and. tr~.ed not to th~.nk. It was poor country, poor land , rocky and. dry. No trees. Cn1y scrubby ~esc~uite and scr~.ggy brawn grass. A n~onotonaus brawn o Frown d.:~rt, thin and pa~.e. brass burned brown under the broiling sup.. Even the sky was bo i 1 ing brown s arse t ime s when the wind bl e~~ in , carrying half of des t Teas with i t. But today the sky was blue and. cloudless , and the morning sun baked tho dry air and brown d-~. rt and the big red. car that ~u.rred d c~wn the road. , tearing wharfs of brawn d.us t f rocs the shoulder. Peg gave h~.m a ~.00k of snack amazement when he walked into the showroom. The d off; was stretched out ~.n a patch of sun~.~.ght beside the door o Peg straddled the dog as she d sew a c up of c of x"ee from the urn. "Hey, roadrunner, what ~ re you doing here an. Monday? And, my ~c~d, it's not even ~.uncht~.me. You won't get any goulash ar kolbase a•t ten in the marn~.ng. " Nate did not banter with her as he usu.al~.y did. "Is Check in the c~ff~.ce?" "lure, " the saf.d. Her va~.ce sounded a ~.:ittle hurt at his curtness, but Nate ignored it. Check's face broadened into that ~.op~ :t_ded grin when date wal ~ec~ fn .