Criterion Volume 34, 2016

Contents

3.

5.

Note From the Editor

The Greatest Gift and Honor

Megan Brown

Megan Brown

51.

66.

Drums from the Other World

The Quest and the Hunt Bryan Rollofson

Jaimie Maier

117.

127.

Language as Military Assault in Friel’s Translation

“Me Love You Long Time”

Michael Robinson

Jessica Aquino

20.

36.

Confucianism’s Influence on Gender Roles in East Asian Literature

Catalyst for Change Lauren Mejia

Elise Cimino

82.

101.

The Ambiguous Identity

Deeply Rooted

Claire Goodman

Kyla Rhynes

145.

A Disregarded Poem Adrianna Frazier

Letter from the Editor Megan Brown | Senior Editor

Dear Reader, Welcome to the 34th edition of Criterion, Loyola Marymount University’s premier literary criticism journal! You hold in your hand a ticket to ancient China, the Viking Age, Arthurian England; a chance to explore humanity’s preoccupation with those nebulous concepts of identity and immortality; and, most importantly, a concrete inimitable and original insights. It’s an intensive trip, but it’s sure to be an eyeopening experience!

You may notice that many of our editors’ very own pieces were selected to be included in this year’s edition. That so many got chosen despite the blind selection process speaks not only to their dedication to their craft, but to the high-level of academic competence with which these pieces were written.

Like a good (or bad, depending) Oscar’s speech, I have some people to thank before the music rolls— To our amazing faculty advisor, Dr. Aimee Ross-Kilroy, for her support of Criterion (and of my Hamilton musical obsession) throughout this process.

To our wonderful editorial staff, for dedicating their time, effort, and expertise.

To Shelby Albrecht, our graphic designer, for crafting a lovely journal from scratch, and to faculty director Garland Fitzpatrick for his support and guidance.

To Maria Jackson and the English Department, without whom this journal would not exist.

this journey with us. Alexander Hamilton (or the musical version) once asked, “What is a legacy?”

To the authors and readers: this is ours.

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Megan Brown Megan Brown grew up reading stories of wizards, lady knights, damsels who were not-so-in-distress—and knew before she entered high school that she was going to try her hand at writing a tale or two (or twelve) to add to their numbers. She’s currently studying English and Screenwriting as a fourth year student at Loyola Marymount University, and hopes to have one of those stories finished in the near future. Until then, she enjoys piña coladas, getting caught in the rain, and lazy days full of writing.

“The Greatest Gift and Honor”: Cultural Authenticity and The Ballad of Mulan

Introduction Imagine the world of Mulan—that is, the original world, not colored by talking dragons, interfering ancestors, or tales of impossible love. Imagine the world of the Northern Wei, when China was a kingdom split in half, threatened by “barbarians,” and Confucianism reigned above all. Imagine, in this climate, a young girl riding to war to save her father. Now—take her away from that original context. Place her on a studio lot in Burbank, or in the computer of a Seattle writer. The same young girl, now colored by Western ideologies of self, by modernist readings, by the taboo of gender crossing,

America’s obsession with the fairytale has lead many adaptations of Mulan’s story to display these particularly Western themes—often at the cost of Chinese culture, which is ignored or diminished to make way for Western ideals. This is not to say that Mulan, in meaning all things to all people, is

coming to represent a Western version of Eastern ideals, she causes, as Tang writes in his article, “A Cross-Cultural Perspective,” “an Americanized index of ‘Chineseness’” (153). In this increasingly small, yet increasingly global world, such an index threatens cultural authenticity. One need only examine the original ballad in comparison with Disney’s 1998 Mulan and Cameron Dokey’s 2009 Wild Orchid to see this idea at work. In this way,

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mass market productions of Mulan’s story focus more on what will sell and what will work with Western audiences than what is true to the original tale. Thus, Mulan the folktale heroine is no more; gone the way of the seemingly inevitable globalization of culture, she becomes, instead, the ultimate fairytale princess.

The Ballad of Mulan: Filial Piety & Chinese Culture

her creation. The Ballad of Mulan, as Louise Edwards writes in her work, “Transformations of the Woman Warrior,” appeared, originally, in the year 568, and consisted of “62 lines” and “332 characters,” focusing on the dichotomy between duty to one’s country and duty to one’s family (179). As Hsieh and Matoush note in their article, “Filial Daughter, Woman Warrior, or IdentitySeeking Fairytale Princess,” Mulan appeared during a time when the kingdom “was divided into Northern and Southern Dynasties,” coming from a tradition of Northern ballads—“straightforward narratives” which were “dramatic in nature” and included “references to social norms” (like the hardy strength of Northern women) (215). Further, it was crafted during a period in which the ideals of

played “a dominant theme in Chinese folktales” (Hsieh and Matoush 216).

Filial piety is, arguably, the main theme of The Ballad of Mulan; the poem is structured in such a way that it spends almost half its focus taking the titular heroine away from her family (performing her role as dutiful daughter looking out for her father), and half of its focus returning her to her family. As Edwards notes, “The poem makes no mention of Mulan’s enthusiasm to defend

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of obedience, not devotion” (180, emphasis mine). Mulan begins this focus by addressing the audience, stating that she wishes “‘to buy a saddle and a horse, / To take [her] father’s place and join the army’” (Anonymous 15-16). The depth of her devotion to her father—not, here, obedience quote is looked at in relation to the preceding stanza, in which she sighs three times (“A sigh, a sigh, and then again a sigh”). Sighing is often associated with lovesick women, yet here she is not sighing from romantic love, for there is “no boy who occupied her thoughts” (Anonymous 1-8). Rather, these sighs stem from a platonic love, a familial love, the thought that her father has no “grownup son” to do his duty and take his place—and so she must step in (Anonymous 13).

Indeed, the original work places much more emphasis on the separation of Mulan from her nuclear family than on Mulan “saving China,” which is given applause in later adaptations. After saying goodbye to her “dear parents,” she travels far. The lines interspersed between “She did not hear her parents’ voices, calling for their daughter” (which is repeated twice), can be seen as the author’s attempt to represent her journey further and further away from her home (Anonymous 23, 27). She rests by the “Yellow River,” the “Black Mountain”; comes to the “Crimson Mountain”; and still, the echo of her parents’ calls echo in the minds of the reader (Anonymous 22-28). Indeed, the actual of the ballad takes roughly 6 lines—and is over so quickly that the reader anything by the ruling Khan, she asks only for a “‘racer good for a thousand miles, / to take me back again to my old hometown,’” wanting nothing more than to return to the family she left

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behind so many lines previous (Anonymous 41-42).

Disney’s Mulan: From Folktale to Fairytale Disney—the name synonymous with bringing the stories of Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel to the big screen—plucks Mulan from this original context and inserts her story into the norms of the traditional fairytale (the

than the movie’s beginning to see this. Firstly, as Jun Tang notes in his article, “A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Production and Reception of Disney’s Mulan,”

of other historical periods” (152). This includes the Great Wall (Qin Dynasty, 248-206 BC); Shan-Yu (202 BC-220 AD); the Imperial City (est. 1420); and the Tung Shao Pass, “whose name comes from a combination of the ‘Tong Pass’ and the ‘Xiao Pass’, two of the most famous fortresses in Chinese history” (Tang 152). In this way, Disney crafts its own fairy tale space—but because Disney “reorgani[zes] distinctive Chinese cultural traits and historical facts to construct creative venture on, but not faithful adaptation of, the original tale (Tang 152).

Beyond this obvious Westernization, several other key features of the

distinctive of modern Anglo-American countries” (Tang 150). This includes scrub brushes, shower slippers, and the Pulp Fiction dance. “There are,” as Tang also points out, “several cultural habits and facts which are referred to in

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of these occurs when Mulan hugs the Emperor, “since Chinese culture generally discourages open displays of affection and suggests avoiding body contact between acquaintances of different genders” (Tang 151). This can be seen, however, as a typically Western gesture.

subtitles retranslated into English, as seen on page 158 of Tang’s article: English

Chinese

Fai Li and others: A girl can bring her

Fai Li and others: If you want to bring

family great honor in one way—by

honor to your family, you must be

striking a good match, and this could

elegant. A lustrous beauty.

be the day!

Dresser 1: Be calm and educated.

Dresser 1: Men want girls, with good taste.

Dresser 1: Be eager to shoulder

Dresser 2: Calm.

domestic responsibilities.

Fai Li: Obedient.

Dresser 1: Who work fast-paced.

The English version focuses itself on the male/female relationship, the

based on a male-centric view of ancient Chinese society” (Tang 158). However,

harkening back to the original tale, and the original Confucian values that the English version has chosen to ignore (in favor of a more modernist reading).

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impress the matchmaker who wished to strike a good match for her” (Tang 150).

In doing so, the story becomes more about Mulan “discovering herself” than familial duty (Hsieh and Matoush 219). “‘Finding oneself,’” as the same authors

perspectives regarding the more communal nature of the self” (219). Here,

in the same centering way. She certainly wishes to please her parents; but when the matchmaker cries, “You are a disgrace! You may look like a bride, but you will never bring your family honor!”, she becomes someone wishing to be like the other girls in order to do so. In becoming a “disgrace,” Mulan is made the

who will need to change and grow for Mulan’s sake, not her family’s.

cultural origin,” as Lan Dong writes in his article, “Writing Chinese America into Words and Images” (228). A team working on the animated feature traveled around China, to “‘discover’ what Mulan’s life may have been like” (228). This is rather problematic, seeing as Mulan “is more a legendary than historical

substitute for actual historical research (Dong 228). Instead, “[t]he values that

as Wang and Yeh discuss in their article “Globalization and hybridization

recognition of one’s identity and the celebration of the triumph of will and the victory of the underdog” (182). This does not mean there is anything wrong

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with those values; there is some merit to the belief that the outsider can grow to become a hero, and a lot of merit to the idea that a woman can successfully navigate a supposedly “male” world. The problem with Disney’s adaptation is that, in turning Mulan into a fairy tale, they play with values “all too familiar in Hollywood blockbusters,” ignoring traditional doctrines that include “loyalty”

should her father be allowed to leave. But this decision, to cut her hair, take her father’s armor, and impersonate a soldier, follows on the heels of her failure at the matchmaker’s, and her subsequent “embarrassment” of the Fa name—her own inner turmoil.

“Father, you can’t go!” she cries in front of those who have come to gather men for the army, at which point she proceeds to address Chi Fu, a

“Silence! You will do well to teach your daughter to hold her tongue in a man’s presence,” Chi Fu replies.

“Mulan! You dishonor me,” her father, Fa Zhou, then says. The scene ends when he declares, “I know my place. It is time you learned yours.”

Clearly, the exchange shows she cares about her father; but much of her drive to take his place stems not

stand up to the system for what is right because she inherently does not belong in the system herself. Thus when she travels to the Moo-Shung Camp in place of her father, she is doing it just as much to prove herself “honorable” in his eyes as she is to protect him from his fate. She is a powerful role model to be sure,

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in its ignoring of “authentic” Chinese culture. As Wang and Yeh point out, “no

Indeed, they are not—they are, however, in the business of making money, and make money Mulan did. “In less than two months following its premiere at the Hollywood Bowl on 5 June 1998, Mulan passed the $100

reach more than “$300 million” altogether (Tang 150). Surprisingly, however,

annual ticket sales” (Tang 153). No doubt this stems from the fact that, despite attempts at cultural authenticity, Mulan is a Western take on an Eastern story.

Such are the problems that our next adaptation faces as well.

Cameron Dokey’s Wild Orchid: When Outsiders Write Inside Cameron Dokey, an American author currently living in Seattle, Washington, gives us her own take on Mulan in Wild Orchid, a retelling that came out in 2009 as part of the “Once Upon a Time” series of young adult novels, novels that sought to reinvent old fairytales for a new audience. Just like Disney’s version, this Mulan is pigeonholed by the conventions of a traditional western fairytale. Beyond this, however, comes the question of authorship; as Hsieh and Matoush bring up, “Authors and readers who are ‘insiders,’ or who

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were raised in a particular socio-cultural milieu, are able to contribute more nuanced language and a particular cultural knowledge to a text that may elude ‘outsiders’” (214). Quoting Mo and Shen, they go on to state “that ‘a cultural

casual expression from the characters easily betrays the author or artist as an outsider’” (Hsieh and Matoush 214). Such is the problem with Dokey’s work, which feels, if anything, more of a caricature of Eastern society than Disney’s own piece, playing with Mulan’s tale until it is almost completely unrecognizable.

This comes as a problem when misrepresentation is ripe in children’s literature concerning different cultures (as Hsieh and Matoush suggest on page 214).

A short summary of the work is needed as a diving board from which to spring. In Dokey’s tale, Mulan is a girl born to parents who married for love; when her mother dies in childbirth, her father immerses himself in the army,

arts from her best friend and neighbor, Li Po. When her father returns, he and Mulan start to develop a rapport, cut short when he meets a beautiful young noblewoman whom he marries. Her new stepmother is soon with child, and, to

stead, where she meets Prince Jian (with whom she eventually falls in love) and stops the Huns from invading China.

The premise has so twisted the tale’s original meaning that it should be condemned more for “its lack of historical and cultural authenticity” than Disney’s Mulan (Hsieh and Matoush 214). “I took great risks,” Mulan says at the story’s beginning, “but because I did, I also earned great rewards. I found the way to show my true face freely, without fear. Because of this, I found true

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love” (Dokey 2). These are the values that Dokey has chosen to focus on in her work—the same values, in many respects, as found in the Disney version, but

“great rewards,” Dokey presents Mulan as someone who is taking risks in hopes of gaining something new (a “reward”); how different this is from the Mulan of the original tale, who had no hopes of gaining anything—who only wished to be a dutiful daughter. Because she risks, she is able to “show [her] true face

the Disney piece), that Western value of “to thine own self be true” once again coming to the forefront. It is because of this that she is able to discover “true love,” which is a theme that plays itself out much more heavily in Dokey’s work than in the muted romance between Mulan and Captain Li Shang in the Disney

Further, Mulan very clearly rebels against the feminine. “I would be taught to weave, to sew, and to embroider,” Mulan says, as the story progresses.

“Worst of all was the fact that all these lessons would occur in the very last place I wanted to be: indoors” (Dokey 3). Mulan is shown to be

with her lot

in life; unlike the woman of the original ballad, who is at home indoors and out, this Mulan is of a much more American mindset—seeking to change her place in the world.

Beyond these obvious differences in characterization, Dokey also sets about crafting a similar “fairy tale space” to that which is found in Disney’s Mulan—here upping the exoticism through veiled references to prophecies that make it seem, once again, as if she is guessing at Eastern culture. “At this prince’s birth,” Mulan says, speaking of her soon-to-be-love Prince Jian, “the

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soothsayers had proclaimed many omens, none of them understood in their entirety, for that is the way of such prophecies. One thing, however, seemed as clear as glass: It was Prince Jian’s destiny to help determine the fate of China” (Dokey 7-8). With this, Dokey sets Prince Jian on an equal level with Mulan, indicating that both are important in the coming battle; it no longer is The Ballad of Mulan, then, but the ballad of these two characters—how they will come together and form a complete whole by seeing who the other one truly is. “As our

hearts. A kiss of true love” (Dokey 195). Thus, the story’s end brings the male and female together in a traditional fairy tale ending—true love’s kiss.

This idea of love, shown repeatedly throughout Dokey’s work, takes the place of the familial duty found in the original tale. “‘I am not like other girls, General Yuwen. I never have been, not from the day I was born. Min Xian says it’s because my parents loved each other’” (Dokey 59). Mulan’s strength of character is given almost supernatural importance—an idea that it comes not from within herself, but from this somewhat otherworldly “love” which her parents shared. That is why she is different, Dokey suggests. “‘Perhaps there

comes at all,’” Mulan’s father says. “‘Perhaps to love as strongly as your mother and I did was unnatural’” (Dokey 83). Calling the love “unnatural,” especially after Mulan has been so connected to it, further emphasizes the point that Mulan story’s end, she will need to reconcile her identity with society in some respect, who she is. “I would not watch my father ride away, and then stay behind to comfort my stepmother as she cried

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herself to sleep at night. I loved them both too much” (Dokey 106). There is that word again—love.

Love, eclipsing duty.

Conclusion: Globalization and What it Means for Cultural Authenticity The changing of The Ballad of Mulan is globalization at work—or, rather,

other” (176). This space “helps to release us from the boundaries of nation, community, ethnicity, or class, while presenting a ‘kaleidoscope of collective experience in motion’” (Wang and Yeh 176). But what, exactly, does this mean for something’s original culture?

Does it become, in effect, moot?

The Ballad of Mulan from Chinese literary history, Mulan has since captured Western imagination, Western instead of Eastern ideals. These roles hold no meaning in the original text. Wang and Yeh put it best: “Nowhere

the hybrid” (a form of globalization) “than in cultural products, as imitation, borrowing, appropriation, extraction, mutual learning and representation erode all possibilities for cultural authenticity” (177, emphasis mine).

What is happening with Mulan is a “localization of global products” (Wang and Yeh 177). In this, “producers borrow ideas to enlighten an established story model or to make content adjustments to cater to the needs of a different audience,” thus making a product “more appealing to different

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view groups” (Wang and Yeh 177). This is not to lessen the impact Mulan has, as a character, on young women (i.e. in showing them how to be strong in a world increasingly dominated by men). But, on the other hand—and as showcased most acutely by Dokey’s work—without cultural authenticity, and with the need to make money overshadowing all else, globalization has turned Mulan into what she should not be: a Western caricature of Eastern thought. Instead, we

ballad, and so learn to be a respectful adaptor— Unafraid to tell folktales instead of fairy ones.

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Works Cited Anonymous. “Poem of Mulan.” Handout.

Dokey, Cameron. Wild Orchid: A Retelling of “The Ballad of Mulan”. New York: Simon Pulse, 2009. Print.

Dong, Lan. “Writing Chinese America into Words and Images: Storytelling and Retelling in The Song of Mulan.” The Lion and the Unicorn 30.2 (2006): 218-33. PDF. Edwards, Louise. “Transformations of the Woman Warrior Hua Mulan: From Defender of the Family to Servant of the State.” Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in China 12.2 (2010): 175-214. PDF. Hsieh, Ivy Haoyin & Marylou M. Matoush. “Filial Daughter, Woman Warrior, or Identity-Seeking Fairytale Princess: Fostering Critical Awareness through Mulan.” Children’s Literature in Education: An International Quarterly 43 (2012): 213-22. PDF. Mulan. Dir. Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. Disney, 1998. DVD. Tang, Jun. “A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Production and Reception of Disney’s Mulan though its Chinese Subtitles.” European Journal of English Studies 12.2 (2008): 149-62. PDF.

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Wang, Goergette and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh. “Globalization and hybridization in cultural products: The cases of Mulan and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 8.2 (2005): 175-93. PDF.

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Elise Cimino Elise Cimino is a senior English major, Art History minor. Upon graduation, she looks forward to a happy life filled with good

Confucianism’s Inf luence on Gender Roles in East Asian Literature

Acknowledgment and acceptance of one’s social status is a key characteristic of Confucianism as an ideology. Once this acceptance has been found, it is then up to the individual to excel in that line of work, no matter how interested—or disinterested—they may be in that field.

This compliance applies not only to the men in the social sphere, but the concept also bleeds into the domestic sphere where women reside.

With this emphasis on the betterment of the self and the male centricity of Chinese society combined, unrealistic expectations of perfection as wives are created for women. Confucianism’s tight grasp on East Asian society creates a social structure focused on the attainment of self-perfection through the cultivation of virtue. Due to the ideology’s patriarchal nature, there is a more tangible pressure on women than men to live up to and attain this virtue, which is reflected in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literature.

In order to understand the complex, interweaving ideological concepts and the real-life application of those philosophies in various countries in Eastern Asia, one must have a basic understanding of Confucianism and its teachings. Where did Confucianism begin, what 21

does it advocate, and how has it impacted society? The foundation for Confucianism initially began in China, ironically, many centuries before Confucius’s birth during Chinese antiquity. The ideology went through several reformations, as different dynasties came and went, becoming the Confucianism we understand today during the Neo-Confucian movement of the Song Dynasty. The school of thought spread through Chinese “cultural and political domination” of other East Asian communities, including Korea and Japan (Oldstone-Moore 11).

Confucianism places a great deal of emphasis on one’s place within society, the importance of work, and the relationships you cultivate.

In one of the most important Confucian texts, The Analects, Confucius outlines the five most important relationships: father and son, ruler and subject, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and friend and friend. Confucius specifically stressed that in order to have a properly functioning society and government, the primary relationship of parent and child must be in order. As Oldstone-Moore explains, “The parent-child relationship establishes the basic pattern for other relationships—thus, the virtue of filality (xiao) is the basic for social structure” (56).

The concept of xiao is best understood as filial piety—the honor, love, respect, and service between parent and child. Filial piety was an important virtue in early Confucianism and even critics of the tradition saw 22

the concept as “an unavoidable part of human life” (Chan 189). Donald Holzman explained, “the Chinese gave filial piety an extremely exalted position—treated it as something one might almost call an absolute, a metaphysical entity, something so exalted in their minds that it becomes difficult for us of another culture to appreciate it today” (185). As we attempt to understand the concept in modern times, we may look at examples within East Asian literature— such as The “Poem of Mulan” and The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong—that demonstrate filial piety and can help contextualize the concept for a modern audience.

Mulan, a young maiden, exemplifies the concept of xiao by taking her father’s place fighting in the military (Feng 233). She does this not because it is what is expected of her as a woman—the deception she employs by dressing up as a man and fighting in a war would certainly be frowned upon—but because she’s doing what she thinks is best for her father given that her father “has no grown up son” and she has “no adult brother” (“Poem of Mulan”). By taking her father’s place, she is upholding her father’s honor and proving her love for him in spite of the dangers of war and the repercussions she would face if she were caught.

When examining Mulan, one must wonder if filial piety is a gendered issue. By joining the army and disguising herself as a man, Mulan’s talents can flourish because she was not held back by her gender 23

role. Furthermore, she takes on the role of a heroic male and undermines gender roles by not fitting into the typical female mold. In fact, she’s so successful fighting in “the thick of battle” and “crossing the mountain passes as if flying” that she returns from fighting after ten years with the “bravest men” and receives an honorary ranking by the Emperor (“Poem of Mulan”). Mulan’s strength and tenacity is praised; however, this is still done under the guise of being a man, for it is not revealed that she is a woman until her army buddies come to see her at the end of the poem and are shocked by her appearance. It raises the question if she would have been praised in that same way if the Emperor knew she was a woman.

This leads to the discussion of her role as a woman, especially in relation to the ending of the poem. After everything that she has gone through, she voluntarily returns home to take back her female roll in the domestic sphere. Additionally, not only does she return to her parents’ home, but from her interactions with her army buddies, it’s alluded to the fact that Mulan is now seen as a desirable woman and will soon become a bride. Initially, it seems as though Mulan will break through the societal structures she is meant to conform to; however, in many ways, the tale ends where it began. Within the context of Mulan’s social role, nothing has changed, just as Confucius and Chinese society would want.

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The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong exhibits a similar pattern (or relationship between) of gendered roles and filial piety. Within the text, she speaks very explicitly about filial piety and her close relationship to her parents. Lady Hyegyong admits that her strong attachment—the foundation on which this filial piety would be built upon—to her mother and father came early in life. Lady Hyegyong explains that she “[found] it difficult to stay away” from her parents and she “could fall asleep only if [she] slept in the same room as them” because of the affection her parents showed her as a child (Hyegyong, 51). This gradual attachment continued on through the years and the evolution of her relationship with her parents can be seen when she explains, “Because I had received much love from him, when he was ill

This perspective of filial piety is not particularly unique, however, for there are multiple sources that confirm the conception of filial piety was instilled in women from a young age. What Lady Hyegyong does do differently is provide a fresh look at how a child sees a sense of familial piety in her ancestors. Besides their affection towards her, one of the things she focuses on when describing her parents is their own personal sense of filial piety. She uses phrases such as “exceptionally filial” to describe her father and says her mother was “outstanding in her virtuous conduct, her filial devotion and her sisterly love” (Hyegyong 52). It was 25

not only important for parents to instill this concept of filial piety in their children, but also be an example of filial piety that their children could take note of. Ironically, by describing her parent’s filial devotion, she’s in turn showing her own personal filial piety through their positive descriptions.

The depth in which filial piety is ingrained can be seen in both tales given the fact that both women are just as filial in different stages of life. It is also interesting to note that there is seemingly no difference between the classes when it comes to filial piety—both rich and poor were supposed to exemplify this virtue. While Mulan’s socio-economic status is not stated, we know that Lady Hyegyong is of royal standing. However, was filial piety supposed to be upheld equally by men and women?

From various texts, it becomes clear that while men can be filial, like Lady Hyegyong’s father, they’re not held up to the same standard as women. Because Chinese and Korean societies are so patriarchal, unmarried women were expected to remain with their parents until marriage—this was not the case for single men. While men were out taking examinations and establishing themselves in society, women were being groomed to successfully run and maintain a household. Scholar Yuet Keung Lo explains that in China, a chapter in the Book of Rites is specifically dedicated “to spelling out the rules and etiquette for girls and women of all ages” and discusses “everyday behavior in the inner quarters in service 26

of their parents and parents-in-law” (Chan, 76). There’s no such chapter dedicated on the same subject for men.

Another expectation of women included being chaste and faithful in the event that their husbands were absent. This was not the case for husbands, however, for men were not expected to remain faithful to their wives. In fact, the idea of having primary wife on top of other wives or lovers was not only common but socially acceptable as well. This pressure to remain chaste and virtuous often caused women emotional turmoil, which can be seen in The Tale of Genji and The Song of a Faithful Wife, Ch’unhyang.

In The Tale of Genji, Aoi is dissatisfied with her marriage to Genji.

In many ways, their marriage was doomed from the start as it is established in earlier chapters of the tale that the marriage between he and Aoi was purely political and in keeping with tradition. It is explicitly stated that the “match seemed unsuitable and embarrassing” and Genji himself admits that while Aoi “seems pretty and well bred” he doesn’t “really care for her” for no “woman could equal the Fujitsubo lady in beauty” (Shikibu 39).

Seeing as their marriage was not based on love, it is no surprise that later on in the tale they are described as being emotionally estranged from each other.

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Aoi’s dissatisfaction, however, is ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. While Genji may go off and have affairs with other women, she is not afforded that luxury because of the societal expectations placed upon her; as a woman, it is Aoi’s duty to remain faithful to Genji no matter how much her happiness may falter. It is important to note that this relationship dynamic breeds internalized misogyny within the women of the story.

Although Aoi doesn’t have the most loving relationship with Genji, jealousy does get the best of her when it comes to Genji’s other lovers, especially the Rokujo lady. The best example of this manifestation is in the festival scene when Aoi places her cart in front of the Rokujo lady’s out of spite, causing the Rokujo lady great public embarrassment. In this way, Aoi has failed in her feminine duty to maintain virtuous — as women were supposed to be devoid of jealousy.

Contrasted to Aoi there is Ch’unhyang, the daughter of a kisaeng, who is deeply in love with her husband. Despite the complications within their relationship—such as their marriage, which is not fully recognized throughout the majority of the story—she remains faithful to him during his ten-year absence. Her chastity to him is out of love rather than duty and her virtuousness is known throughout the community. In fact, she feels so strongly about this virtue that she’s willing to disobey the new governor who orders her to accompany him. Ch’unhyang refuses all his attempts 28

to seduce her and exemplifies Confucian womanly virtue by using the metaphor that a servant cannot serve two masters, a wife cannot serve two husbands to state her case.

This was a very bold move on the part of Ch’unhyang because legal repercussions, such as imprisonment, could come about through her disobedience of the new governor. This brings up the conflict of what women were supposed to do when two societal expectations conflicted.

On one hand, she is supposed to remember her place in the patriarchal society and obey the governor, on the other, she is meant to remain chaste and virtuous to her husband. Ultimately, she chooses to honor her personal relationship rather than social role. Eventually, everything works out for her because her husband returns and puts the new governor in his place, but that is not without some pain along the way—emotional and physical.

This discussion of married life within the two stories brings us to the Confucian emphasis on the husband and wife relationship, and Confucianism’s emphasis on chastity and virtue for women. Familial relationships in general, not just between parent and child, are very important, as seen in the Five Relationships of The Analects. The only one of these relationships that is explicitly stated as involving a female is the husband and wife relationship, another subtle reminder of the male-centric nature of Confucianism. The exclusion of women from the 29

other relationships puts pressure on them to fulfill the duty that they are mentioned in. Society’s response to the husband wife dynamic is interesting because while female virtue is praised, it is only done when men are not kept from achieving what they desire. The new governor in Ch’unhyang, for example, praises her womanly virtue before becoming infuriated with her for refusing him and threatening to imprison her.

Because she stopped him from getting what he wants, suddenly, she is criminalized for something she has been praised for by the community.

The condemnation of women for their relationships was especially bad for women who were not considered virtuous, such as Ying-ying in Yingying’s Story. In contrast to Ch’unhyang and Aoi, Ying-ying is condemned because she gives men what they desire. Her lover, Zhang, does not take her with him when he leaves to take the civil service examination and has no plans to marry her because she has given herself to him sexually.

Because of her lack of virtue, he is willing to suppress his feelings and marry someone else to maintain his social standing. The abandonment of Zhang was deeply hurtful to Ying-ying and her pain continued on for years to come—as seen at the end of the story. By emphasizing her suffering after the loss of her virtue, a social commentary about female sexuality can be made. She defies her “traditional moral upbringing and feminine chastity” and pays for it with emotional turmoil (Dong 75).

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The marriage between a man and a woman is, according to Confucius, the foundation of human society. Without a solid foundation, one cannot build a home of happiness and this is displayed in Ying-ying’s story. If she hadn’t given herself to Zhang before marriage, perhaps she would have lived happily with him rather than having to settle with a man she did not love out of a need to conform to society’s expectations of her, as she does in the end of the tale. This unhappy ending for Ying-ying was meant to perpetuate the idea that if women were not virtuous, they would be unhappy. The treatment of Ying-ying displays the hypocrisy of society in relation to women’s roles.

One of the key necessities within a society is interpersonal relationships. Without these positive relationships, a society could fall apart. One must play a certain role and stick to that role, leaving little room for individuality. This was especially true for women because of their submissive position within society. Deeply rooted Confucian ideologies, particularly about the behaviors and ideas women were expected to conform to and believe in, gripped East Asian societies for hundreds of years and are, arguably, still present today. Within “The Ballad of Mulan,” Tale of Genji, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong, The Song of a Faithful Wife, Ch’unhyang and Ying-ying’s Story, these varying levels of conformity to societal expectations and various degrees of severity in terms of the 31

implementation of Confucianism for women can be seen and unseen for men. Because while men are expected to live up to these expectations—— virtue and filial piety—to some extent, women must strictly follow all the ideas presented. Additionally, women face harsher criticism and repercussions if they fall short.

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Works Cited Anonymous. “Poem of Mulan.” Handout. Chan, Alan K.L., and Sorhoon Tan, eds. Filial piety in Chinese thought and history. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. Print.

Dong, Lorraine. “The Many Faces of Cui Ying-ying.” Historical Reflections 8.3 (1981): 75-98. JStor. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.

Feng, Lan. “The Female Individual and the Empire: A Historicist Approach to Mulan and Kingston’s Woman Warrior.”Comparative LIterature 55.3 (2003): 229-45. JStor. Web. 3 Apr. 2015.

Holzman, Donald. “The Place of Filial Piety in Ancient China.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 118.2 (1998).JStor. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Hyegyong, Lady. The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong. Trans. JaHyun Kim Haboush. Los Angeles:University of California Press, 2013. Print.

Oldstone-Moore, Jennifer. Confucianism: origins, beliefs, practices, holy texts, sacred places.New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Print.

Shikibu, Murasaki. Genji & Heike: Selections from The Tale of Genji and The Tale of Heike. Trans. Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Print.

Zhen, Yuan. “Ying-ying’s Story.” The Anthology of Chinese Literature . Ed. Stephen Owen. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1996. Print.

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Lauren Mejia Lauren is a senior English major with a concentration in Secondary Teaching and a minor in Spanish. “Catalyst for Change” was written for Judy Park’s Shakespeare and Politics class. She personally finds the roles that women are given in literary works often highlight society’s shortcomings. The women present in The Winter’s Tale draw attention to gender stereotypes.

She is an active member of Delta Delta Delta, and serves on the executive boards for Sigma Tau Delta, English Honors Society and the Spanish club. During her free time she enjoys reading (especially on cold, rainy days), re-watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and drinking coffee.

Her main goal as a future educator is to show her students that their writing is valuable and can be used to make social change. She will also be pursuing her masters in order to become a licensed counselor for K-12 students. It is her belief that through education, students will receive the tools necessary to live a successful life.

As an educator, Lauren wants to provide students with an environment where they can learn, grow, and explore the world around them. By giving them tools such as writing, the ability to revise, and the ability to discuss content, she will hopefully help her students to achieve these goals.

Catalyst for Change: Exploring How Women Affect the Political Realm throughout The Winter’s Tale

The Winter’s Tale uses women as a representation of the standing political climate between the two countries presented in the play, Sicilia and Bohemia. This is seen through the predicaments that the women experience within the play, and in how they react to them. The women are depicted as almost incorruptible, and it is ultimately through their virtues that the two countries and kings gain grace and redemption.

From a political perspective, The Winter’s Tale demonstrates not only the complex relationships between men and women, but expands the role of women within these relationships. These women, Hermione, Paulina, and Perdita are central to the action that occurs in the play, a trait that demonstrates their role in the political activities that take place.

Although the women are not necessarily accepted within the political sphere, their influence is seen through the patriarchal framework in which they reside. Women serve as a representation of the larger political issues that occur within The Winter’s Tale, which is seen in how the women in the play are regarded by males, especially in how their opinions are dealt with and in how their domestic influences ultimately become catalysts for change in the political atmosphere of the play.

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The conditions that women face within the play allow the reader to have a better understanding of the political climate of Sicilia and Bohemia.

This political climate in Sicilia is best represented through Hermione. Her relationship with her husband allows a glimpse at Leontes tyranny in both marital and political matters.

This can be seen when Leontes convicts Polixenes of having an affair with Hermione. Leontes refers to Hermione by stating, “My wife’s a hobbyhorse, deserves a name/ As rank as any flax-wrench that puts to/ Before her throthplight” (1.2. 275-277). Leontes refers to his wife as a “hobbyhorse” which is a metaphorical way of stating that she is a promiscuous person. His choice of language in describing his wife, the Queen of Sicilia, depict that he is being disrespectful towards his wife.

Leontes displays his anger at Hermione, and reveals that he believes she pursued an affair with Polixenes in the following lines: “Is whispering nothing? / Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses? /Kissing with inside lip?...My wife is nothing;” (1.2.335-345). Here Leontes is lashing out at Hermione and her actions, depicting his jealousy over the relationship Hermione and Polixenes might share. This jealousy represents the anxiety he feels over losing control over his wife and his social status. Even an implied relationship between Hermione and Polixenes would mean that Leontes lost control of his wife. Not only is it socially humiliating for a king’s 38

wife to have an affair, but it also signifies a weakness in Leontes. Due to their patriarchal society, this weakness is that Leontes is an unsuitable male since his wife chose to go against him and have an affair with another man. Politically, Leontes can be seen as an unsuitable ruler. A wife is someone who is supposed to demonstrate the most loyalty to a man, and the fact that Hermione (presumably) was not loyal to Leontes tells the kingdom that maybe he is not the right man to govern them.

The tyrannical patriarchal rule that Leontes assumes in his marriage can be seen in the lengths that he takes in order to assert his power over the situation. Not only does he publicly condemn his wife, but also he goes as far as to banish their newborn daughter and to kill their son.

Leontes’s public condemnation of his wife also brings attention to the way in which domestic concerns affect the politics in the play. The concept of privacy within the domestic sphere breaks when Leontes states “You, my lords, Look on her, mark her well/ ...You can say she’s honest. But be’t known,/ From him that has most cause to grieve it should be,/ She’s an adulteress” (2.1.65-66/77-78).

By publicly stating this, Leontes is demonstrating the patriarchal nature of his society. Instead of publicly revering his wife, Leontes condemns her and discredits her, regardless of her status as queen. When Hermione pleads that he stop being barbarous, and that he is mistaken, Leontes 39

calls upon his authority as a man and as king to assert his standpoint. This demonstrates that even the monarchy is not exempt from social constructs and ranks. Hermione’s pleas are not heard, nor really acknowledged.

Leontes’s public announcement of Hermione’s unfaithfulness makes the private domain of the married couple public. Privacy versus publicity is a dichotomy that is often discussed in politics, and just as Leontes has broken an important, tacit marital promise, so, too, does he break ties with Bohemia and Polixenes. Thus, this suggests Hermione’s indirect influence over her husband’s politics.

The oppressive view of women can also be seen through the character of Paulina, however the results of this interaction are extremely different from the way in which Hermione’s situation ended. In the case of Paulina, women are given more of a voice within the play. The first example of female speech within affairs of the state is when Paulina openly challenges Leontes’s actions to Hermione. She goes against the tyrannical rule that he has asserted over his wife and state in saying:

It is a heretic that makes the fire/ Not she which burns in’t. / I’ll not call you tyrant;/ But this most cruel usage of your queen,/ Not able to produce more accusation/ Than your own weak-hinged fancy, something savours/ Of 40

tyranny and will ignoble make you,/ Yea, scandalous to the world (2.3.145150).

Here Paulina does something that Leontes’s court does not. She challenges his rule. Paulina discloses that although Leontes is not a tyrant, his actions are tyrannical. His own insecurities cause him to deflect his feelings of anger onto his queen. Leontes and Paulina bicker back and forward until Paulina ends the conversation and leaves. The power dynamic between man and woman shifts. Paulina becomes in charge and takes power. Her identity as a woman shields her from political harm because she has nothing to loose. She is not of a high political rank, nor does she possess any real political power. Paulina’s identity as a woman frees her from the social construct that men on a court have. The loyalty and fear for their king can inhibit them from speaking out against him, which is what occurs during Hermione’s case. Paulina is not taken as seriously as a man, and at first her comments are seen as an emotional response to Hermione’s fate.

However, Paulina is able to use the dismissal of her opinions as a way of criticizing Leontes’s current decisions.

The significance of her speech demonstrates that the domestic sphere is stronger than that of the political, due to the fact that within a domestic relationship more issues can be address without fear of punishment, unlike the political realm where if a lord spoke that way to 41

Leontes, he immediately would be punished. Again, it can be seen that the predicament of women in this case represents the tyrannical rule in Sicilia in the sense that the lords cannot speak out against their king in the way that a woman can. The freedom in speech that Paulina feels she has is a paradigm for how women are seen as so inferior to their male counterparts, that their speech is not taken as seriously as that of a man’s. This social status that women hold at the beginning of the play shifts once Hermione dies.

After her death, Leontes realizes the error of his ways and the importance that his wife held in his life. Due to this and to her strong political voice, Paulina’s importance as a political figure grows until she becomes a type of advisor to Leontes.

The tyrannical rule that was exerted in Sicilia ends due to the domestic influence that women hold within the play’s structure. The dynamic shifts so much that Leontes takes Paulina’s advice not to remarry.

He states, “Good Paulina, / who hast the memory of Hermione, / I know, in honor, oh, that ever I/ Had squared me to thy counsel!” (5.1.49-52). Instead of disregarding her opinion, or ordering her to stop talking, Leontes accepts what she has to say as a woman who has a strong voice. Following Paulina’s death, Leontes realizes how he was being blinded by jealousy and his insecurities. He acknowledges that Paulina’s advice was right and beings 42

to value her opinion as a person and woman. This shift that Leontes takes demonstrates how open-minded he is becoming in both political and social matters.

The shift can be compared to the kingdom of Bohemia, which is introduced into the play in the fourth act. Bohemia accepts women and gives them power based on their rank. In this kingdom, the representation of women is seen through the character of Perdita. The conditions in which she lives in are testament to the politics that reside in the different class rankings that are seen in Bohemia. Unknown to her or anyone else, she is of a higher rank since she is the daughter of a king. However, she lives her life as a shepherd’s daughter. Although the shepherd is wealthy, his class rank is still seen as low due to his occupation. His class rank is looked down upon, which is evident in Polixenes’s reaction to his son’s, Florizel, relationship with the shepherd’s believed daughter, Perdita. Before Perdita reveals that she is royalty, her relationship with Florizel is not looked upon favorably by Polixenes due to her social rank. Polixenes disapproves of their relationship so much that he tells Perdita that if she and Florizel ever see each other again, he will “devise a death as cruel for thee/ As thou art tender to’t” (4.4.420-421). The intense disdain Polixenes feels towards the situation between Florizel and Perdita suggests a prejudice between the different classes. As beautiful as Perdita is, her rank in Bohemia does 44

not allow her to marry someone of a higher rank. This emphasis on rank demonstrates how difficult it is for lower class women to prove their value in society or to move up the class ranks.

It is shown that Perdita does not have a significant value in this society in her response to Polixenes’s decree of death if she and Florizel marry. She states, “I was not much afeard; for once or twice/ I was about to speak and tell him plainly...” (4.4.423-424). She continues to say what she would have responded, but the importance that this line holds is she did not in fact respond. Perdita’s identity as a woman dictates her silence; she does not feel confident enough nor comfortable enough to challenge Polixenes’ order. Unlike Paulina, Perdita does not speak her mind. This comments on the condition of women in Bohemia as opposed to Sicilia. Although in Sicilia women (seen through Hermione) are subject to a tyrannical rule by men, they are still seen as an important part of society through their domestic role. After the shift in the way Leontes perceives women, Paulina is able to have a fairly prominent role within Leontes’s life and therefore in politics, since he is the representation of political life in Sicilia. However, in Bohemia, the only woman introduced is Perdita, and her speech is censored.

The majority of the interaction in Bohemia is between males, and when Perdita is present, she is not a prominent figure within the 45

discussions. In Bohemia, female speech is treated as secondary to the extent that the women are barely represented within this section of the play. Amidst this, Perdita still demonstrates the importance that women played within domestic matters and how this affects the politics within the play. This is seen in Florizel’s decision to run away with her to Sicilia in order to marry her. This is a mutual decision that marks a change from an oppressive rule of women to one of pastoral care. Florizel loves, cares, and wants the best for Perdita. It is this love that serves as a catalyst for the reconciliation of the two kings and by default, the two kingdoms of Sicilia and Bohemia.

The reconciliation between Leontes and Polixenes demonstrates how the space of the household is seen as a representation for the larger, political world. Once Perdita and Florizel go to Sicilia, all the political strife between Bohemia and Sicilia is resolved due to the domestic issues that are resolved. Here, it can be seen that domestic concerns affect the political atmosphere in a large way. The cause of the political strife was the domestic issue that Leontes and Polixenes had, and the resolution comes with their reconciliation. In addition, the strife is caused and ends with a woman. This is symbolic of the important role that women have in the lives of the men that they interact with. Although they are not necessarily seen as equals, they hold a great say on the emotional statuses of the men.

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Hermione was the cause behind Leontes anger, however under serving it may have been, just as Perdita was the cause to his atonement. The culmination of this is seen in the rising of Hermione’s statue. At first, this is representative of an acknowledgment of the old regime and life that the countries and its inhabitants experienced. However, once the statue comes to life, it also becomes a symbol for a new life or age for the women in the play. Hermione’s animated statue shows a change in the condition of women. It is through their virtue in staying true to their nature, and represents a change in the political atmosphere of Bohemia and Sicilia.

Since politics are mainly a place where males have domain, women are often excluded. However within the play, the characters of Hermione, Paulina, and Perdita demonstrate that women can still have an impact on politics through the domestic realm in which they reside. It is because of a woman that the conflict begins and ends, and throughout the entire situation, the voice of a woman (Paulina) serves as the guiding force behind the decisions that Leontes makes. This strife is ended through Perdita, who brings together Bohemia and Sicilia through her love for Florizel. Women play an important part within the political realm due to the part that they plan within the lives of the men that dominate this realm. They affect matters of the government through domestic matters. Furthermore, it is through their identity as women that they are able to pass judgments on 47

the men. Their speech, though not regarded with as much importance as a man’s, allows the men in the story to have changes of heart and make drastic changes to their lifestyles. The shift from a tyrannical view over women to one of a pastoral care demonstrates a change in the way in which each country is to be governed. Serving as a representation of the larger political issues within The Winter’s Tale, women are defined in the realm of their domestic spheres, however their speech and condition within this realm slowly make progressed from one of unimportance to one where their opinions are regarded higher than they had previously been seen.

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Works Cited Shakespeare, William, and Mario DiGangi. The Winter’s Tale: Texts and Contexts. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. Print.

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Jaime Maier Jaime Maier is a senior English major and German minor, with Journalism certificate. On campus she is co-Editor-in-Chief of Attic Salt, a writing tutor, a German teaching assistant, and a member of the LMU Honors Program. Originally hailing from Florida, she will continue her studies in LA at law school in the fall. During her undergraduate career she has studied abroad three times (England, Germany, and Denmark) and conducted independent research in Finland on a grant. In her spare time you’ll find her reading Captain America comics and obsessing over Scandinavia.

Jaime wrote the following essay during her summer study abroad (2015) in Copenhagen, Denmark, for a class on the history and literature of the Vikings, which included a week-long study tour to Iceland.

Drums from the Other World: Norse Shamanism in Relation to Shamanism of the Finno-Ugric Peoples

Accounts of the mystic and powerful art of Shamanism are found through the ages across an astoundingly wide variety of cultures.

These different cultures, while spreading from the “new” world of North America, across Siberia and Northern Europe, and into the Far East, have striking similarities in their practices and beliefs. Upon examination of a select few cultures in whose histories Shamanism can be found, the proximity and similarities between them suggest, at the very least, contact and knowledge shared. They also, however, hint at the possibility of a long-forgotten religion in common. The cultures referred to in this paper are the Viking Age Scandinavians and the Finno-Ugric peoples (specifically the Saami/Lapps and the Finns) to the Scandinavians’ north and east. In examining their practices and what documented accounts and tales can be found, several elements of these cultures’ Shamanic natures stand out as striking similarities: the use of seers and foreknowledge through trance, contact with spirits and animals, including shape-changing, and the belief in a World Tree and bridge of ascension between lower and upper worlds. There are also the indications of a potential shared religion that existed prior to the Viking 52

Age, to be explored later in this paper.

During the Viking Age, the practice of seeing was important in accessing hidden knowledge. Those with this power were named Seers/ Seeresses or Volvas (female), and they practiced seiðr, the way to “obtain knowledge and revelation of what was to come” (Davidson “Myths” 160).

Seiðr involved the seer going into a trance, which is a key element of Shamanism; a trance allows the Shaman to leave his or her body and enter the Other World (world of spirits) by means of spiritual travel. When the Shaman returns to his or her body, knowledge comes back with them.

Seiðr seiðr given in the sagas [has] awakened much interest because of their close resemblances to accounts of shamanistic ceremonies recorded in later times in northern Europe and Asia” (160). Also, in a Norwegian chronicle, two “diviners” (162) restore a woman to life by using drumming and dancing to achieve trance. They then journey in animal form to the Other World in an effort to retrieve her soul, and return to their own bodies with her soul in hand, to be put back into her body. This is extremely similar to accounts of Lappish Shamanistic séances, in which drum and dance is also key to achieving trance. Even the traditional Finnish laulajat features the drumming and singing that are characteristic of Shamanism (Giddings).

When journeying to the Other World, the Lappish Shamans communicate 53

with spirits of the dead, sometimes having to retrieve the spirit in question by means of force (Eliade 220). In both cases, the Norse and Lappish Shamans act as psychopomps, individuals able to travel between the worlds of the living and the dead. One special characteristic found in many references to Lappish and Finnish Shamans is their ability to fly, which was well-known by other cultures who were aware of them, and produced a special awe and respect for their powers. It is also suggested that the Lapps held their séances entirely naked, and perhaps achieved trance through a cataleptic state brought on by cold (224).

In both cultures, a trance is not enough for the Shaman to travel between worlds. A spirit guide is necessary, and therefore so is an ability to speak Spirit Language, or, interchangeably, Animal Language (93). This knowledge is common among nearly all Shamanic practices. Lapp Shaman accounts describe them as being able to transform into “wolves, bears, reindeer, [and] fish” (93), as well as birds. Birds are a common form of chief importance in Shamanism, representing an ability to travel between all worlds, and they are also the animal linked to being a psychopomp, which is the key role of a Shaman. Many Icelandic Sagas feature individuals with wolf-like attributes and imply shape-shifting into animal forms as well. This Shamanic form of an animal is a taking-possession of helping spirits, or can even be seen as a new identity for the Shaman. Becoming an animal 54

spirit allows the Shaman to speak the secret Animal Language, the tongue of Shamans, and, as found in accounts of Shamanism, yodeling and playing a drum mimics or speaks this language, as it mirrors the cries of birds and other animals. Forsaking a human form is a symbolic death of sorts, freeing the Shaman from the confines of a living body – and this is crucial in becoming a psychopomp (93).

While there may be less detail available in accounts of Norse Shamanism considering concrete facts of Viking and Norse religious practices have been lost, the chief god in Norse mythology, Odin, is a god with strong Shamanic characteristics, among other attributes. What is known about Norse mythology is one of the strongest insights into the way the Viking and Norse people may have practiced their religion. A god who sought knowledge across the globe, Odin actually learned the practice of seiðr from the Vanir goddess Freyja – a detail to be revisited – and became an authority on it himself (Davidson “Myths” 162). Odin also has the ability to change his shape, like a Shaman, and his faithful consorts include two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who are able to fly between worlds and bring him information and knowledge. This is in many ways representative of the Shaman gaining foreknowledge from the Other World by use of animal spirit guides. Odin also gave up one of his eyes to drink from Mimir’s well, the well of knowledge that exists in one of the worlds in Norse mythology.

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This eye remains where he gave it up, and therefore he has one eye looking in this world and one in the other, which allows him an arguably constant Shamanic state of travelling between worlds – the ultimate psychopomp.

His reign over Valhalla, a hall where he assembles the souls of great warriors, furthers his psychopomp status as he has much to do with one land of the dead, yet he lives and rules in Asgard, home of the living gods.

As mentioned before, he is a well-known wanderer, and his wanderings were in search of knowledge, so one could imagine that perhaps Odin picked up some of his more Shamanistic practices and powers during travels to the Finno-Ugric lands of the north and east.

After all, “medieval Europe was well-informed about the outstanding capabilities of Lapp wizards” (Pentikäinen 128), and “the cases of ruin brought about by the quiet and peace-loving Saami through cunning and magic [were] well-known” (130). Note again that the term “Saami” refers to the Lappish people. Closely related and often grouped together, the Finns were no strangers to Shamanism in their ancient religions either. Their national tale of the Kalevala, written down by Elias Lönnrot, features three key Shamans – Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen, and Ilmarinen – each with their own specialties in their powers (Giddings).

Väinämöinen is born of a typical Shamanic occurrence; his mother is impregnated by wind spirits. He holds the ability to travel between the 56

realms of the upper and lower worlds, including that of the dead, making him the traditional psychopomp. His successor, Lemminkäinen, encounters several animals throughout the tale, which are significant to an audience that understands Shamanic beliefs. He encounters a snake, revered by the Finnish people, as they are thought to be able to travel to the underworld.

He is also confronted by a Shaman’s bird, made half of sky and half of sea, which symbolizes the Shamans’ ability to travel all realms in this form. The “eagle [was] especially significant as the Shaman’s assistant in the spirit world, and the wheeling of eagles in the sky were interpreted as traveling Shamans, just as bears were” (Giddings). Both Väinämöinen and Lemminkäinen are traditional shape-changers as well, although their antecessor Ilmarinen is not.

Interestingly, the World Tree of Norse mythology, Yggdrasill, has an eagle perched on its top and a serpent that lives at its roots, perhaps significant of the Finns’ belief in a snake’s ability to visit the underworld, and the eagle’s ability to travel worlds, especially the upper. Yet, “not a single case occurs of the Finns having taken a myth bodily from their Scandinavian neighbours, or even having copied or modeled from them” (Giddings). Yggdrasill’s roots, branches, and top both hold and connect the nine worlds that exist in Norse mythology, and the rainbow bridge Bifröst allows travel between them to those who can access it, like the gods. “The 57

representation of Yggdrasill as the centre of the nine worlds brings in a fresh complication, that of the conception of a tree rising through a number of worlds which is found in northern Eurasia and forms part of the shamanic lore shared by many peoples of this region” (Davidson “Lost Beliefs” 69).

After all, it is the power to travel the bridge between the worlds, from upper to lower, that a Shaman must learn, and why speaking and understanding Animal Language is crucial in allowing them the necessary forms to travel.

A “scene from the Kalevala [that shows] the giant oak tree spreading, and covering the entire sky may have roots in the belief that the Shamanic world-tree formed the representation of human life on earth” (Giddings). If the Lappish and Finnish people held the Shamanic beliefs of a World Tree and a bridge between worlds, and most likely did not copy their beliefs from Norse culture, then perhaps there exists the chance that the Norse picked up a few details from them. Another possibility, however, is that all of these cultures were believers in a long-lost, shared religion.

While post-Christian sources from the Scandinavian countries don’t provide the most positive perspective on the Lappish people, what can be learned from Old Norse sources is interesting in exploring these peoples’ shared history. In the Old Norse language, men and women named with the root of “Finn” – for example, Finnr or Finni – were often Saami, though people from Finland were also referred to with the same 58

root, showing a grouping-together of the people to the east (Pentikäinen 113). Documented marriages between Saami women and Nordic men often resulted in children with the names mentioned above. Names with the root “Finn” were actually more common among royalty and well-born individuals, creating a positive reputation for Saami descendants. Some theorists use the mythological trope of the marriage between a giantess and a god resulting in the birth of a king, and see the god as a Norse man and the giantess as a Saami woman – after all, “the Saamis are often confused

associations as the names of the giants” (111). The behavior of the Saami women was often marked as longing to return home to the cold mountains from which they came, a trait of giants in Old Norse culture. The Saami were considered to be more powerful in their magical crafts than Norse Shamans and sorcerers, even though both were powerful and practiced in similar ways (112). The Old Norse sought the help of Saami Shamans, but feared them as well. An Old Norse word, finnvitka literally means to practice magic in the Saami way (112), which points to a strong familiarity with the magic of the Lapps and Finns.

Yet, the familiarity most definitely worked the other way around as well. Accounts from Old Norse sources describe the Saamis’ familiarity with the Norse gods; especially Freyr (113). What is particularly interesting 59

about Lappish and Finnish people being aware of Freyr is that this god is one of the Vanir, and is a fertility god, like his counterpart Freyja, who, as previously mentioned, is the Shamanic goddess who taught seiðr to Odin. The Vanir are noticeably different than the predominant Norse gods, the Æsir, and are quite possibly from an older, pre-Viking religion.

They could very well be “the old European Earth-based goddesses and gods who inherited most of the old Paleolithic and Neolithic beliefs and associations” (Turner). Freyja, like Odin, is a Shamanic goddess and “is very much still like the original Great Mother Goddess from the Neolithic Age” (Turner). A Great Goddess or Mother Goddess was common among ancient European cultures, including the Lapps and Finns. The Finns had an Earth Mother Goddess, Akka, who was also related to harvest and fertility, like Freyja, and the Lapps had a similar goddess as well, named Madderakka (Godchecker).

Therefore, the ancient Scandinavians and the Finns and Lapps worshipped this great Mother Goddess and were Shamanic, animaland nature- worshipping cultures as well. Freyja’s Shamanic and Mother Goddess qualities, as well as her being of the Vanir, point to her as a remnant from this older religion, which has remarkably similar characteristics to that of the Vikings’ eastern and northern neighbors.

What is also vexing about these similarities and potential for a once-shared 60

religion is that the Finno-Ugric people are not of Indo-European ancestry at all, which separates them biologically from the Scandinavians. Perhaps more pre-Christian accounts of the Old Norse and Lappish and Finnish peoples’ religions will be found, and a definitive explanation of the religions of the Viking and pre-Viking northern peoples will surface. Despite a lack of solid answers, though, one can simply look into the fragmented accounts and pasts of these Shamanic cultures, and be struck with awe by the power, mysticism, and relationship with nature that they all possessed.

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Works Cited “Akka” and “Madderakka.” Godchecker.com. Godchecker, 2014. Web. 26 July 2015.

Davidson, H. R. Ellis. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

--. Myths and symbols in pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic religions. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988. Print.

Eliade, Mircea. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Print.

Giddings, Robert. “Shamans of the Kalevala: A Cultural Analysis.” Sami Culture. University of Texas, nd. Web. 13 July 2015.

Høst, Annette. “The Legacy of Seiðr: History, Experiences, and the Path Ahead.” A Journal of Contemporary Shamanism. Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies, 2013. Web. 13 July 2015.

Pentikäinen, Juha, ed. Religion and Society: Shamanism and Northern Ecology. München: Walter de Gruyter, 2011. ProQuest Ebrary.

Web. 13 July 2015.

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Turner, Rhonda. “Freyja – Great Mother and Shaman Goddess of the Nordic People.” Goddess Inspired: Feminist Matristic Astrology, Tarot and Spirituality. Goddess Inspired, 2012. Web. 26 July 2015.

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Bryan Rollofson Bryan Rollofson is a senior English major with a Theological Studies minor. His interests include reading, writing, music, etc. He is not a people person, and continually assures himself that this is a gift, not a curse.

He is currently working on a short story collection, a play, and, in his spare time, an extensive reading list. Most of his sanity has not survived these efforts. While he usually focuses on creative writing, he also appreciates the importance of literary criticism, especially when it crosses over into his areas of interest, such as mythology. This piece was originally written for Dr. Matt Dillon’s Classical Mythology course. Bryan wishes to thank Dr. Dillon for teaching an excellent course, and the Criterion editing board for all their work

The Quest and the Hunt: An Examination of the Pursuit of Immortality in Myth

Since the earliest days of civilization, humanity has had a strange preoccupation with death. Countless poets from William Shakespeare to Emily Dickinson have pondered the question of death and what comes after. In an earlier time, however, mankind’s obsession with death took a slightly different form: earlier civilizations, from Gilgamesh to the Greeks, desired the key to defeating death, though their ideas of doing so, and of gaining immortality, varied. No matter the type of immortality they sought, the task was never an easy one, which explains why these adventures often took the form of a great and perilous quest. Over time, this idea of an epic quest in search of immortality transformed into the initiation rite of the hunt in ancient Greek society, though the ultimate goal, however slightly shifted, remained the same.

One of our earliest examples of the hunt, and of the quest for immortality, comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is described as a great hero who sometimes acts unjustly because he is without equal. However, his initial rival and eventual close friend, Enkidu, quickly shows him the error of his ways, and the two endeavor to achieve 66

greatness together. One of their attempts to achieve this greatness is in the form of a mission to kill Humbaba and build a monument to the gods.

As Gilgamesh declares to his people before he departs, “‘I will conquer [Humbaba] in his cedar wood and show the strength of the sons of Uruk, all the world shall know of it. I am committed to this enterprise: to...leave behind me an enduring name’” (Sandars, p. 73). In spite of the arguments of his counselors not to do this, Gilgamesh is committed; he must do this great deed and achieve everlasting fame.

Gilgamesh understands his own mortality, and it is for this reason that he feels compelled to undertake this quest that others have deemed impossible. Earlier in the epic, Enkidu interpreted a dream for Gilgamesh, and the dream indicated that “‘The father of the gods has given you kingship, such is your destiny, everlasting life is not your destiny’” (Sandars, p. 70). Gilgamesh himself acknowledges his acceptance of his eventual death; after all, “Where is the man who can clamber to heaven? Only the gods live for ever with glorious Shamash, but as for us men, our days are numbered, our occupations are a breath of wind” (Sandars, p. 70). This sentiment will later be echoed by other great heroes, especially Achilles, who will choose a short and glorious life over a long and boring one.

Gilgamesh does not fear death in his quest to kill Humbaba because he will achieve fame in either the success or the mere attempt of the mission.

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Gilgamesh thus embarks on his quest to defeat Humbaba, an inhuman beast believed by many to be unkillable, and this can explain his overwhelming desire to kill the beast. As Jared Christman observes in his essay on what he calls the “Gilgamesh Complex”, “The zoocidal mode of death defiance has a relatively simple objective: the transfer of vitality from the animal to the human domain” (Christman, p. 298). Essentially, Gilgamesh believes on a subconscious level that killing that which is believed to be unkillable will allow him to transcend his own mortality. This idea of the transferral of an animal’s life force into a human exists in a more tangible form in the consideration of one of the earliest survival skills developed by mankind: the hunter-gatherer society, and thus, the hunt.

Therefore, Gilgamesh’s quest to kill Humbaba is, in fact, simultaneously the earliest example of the quest for fame, the hunt, and the pursuit of the transcendence of one’s mortality.

Gilgamesh later goes on a more direct quest in search of immortality after the death of his friend Enkidu, a quest that goes against his earlier assertions about the inevitable mortality of man. The reality of death sets in for him, and this revelation shakes him to his core. As Christman notes, “Of the fears that pervade human existence, thanatophobia—the fear of death—is the most fundamental” (Christman, p. 297). Whereas Gilgamesh earlier ignored the real possibility of his 68

own demise, he is now consumed with thoughts of it; after Enkidu’s burial, Gilgamesh despairs, “‘What my brother is now, that shall I be when I am dead. Because I am afraid of death I will go as best I can to find Utnapishtim...for he has entered the assembly of the gods’” (Sandars, p. 97). Thus begins Gilgamesh’s quest for more tangible immortality, everlasting life, a quest that will lead him to the one man to ever be granted that gift. However, Gilgamesh fails in his quest, and he eventually dies, though he lives a full life and lives on through his story even to the present day. In this sense, his hunt was not entirely in vain.

The quest and the hunt have many striking parallels regardless of the form they take. First, their goals are essentially the same; both attempt to stave off one’s impending death, though in decidedly different senses.

The hunt, in the traditional sense, provides sustenance and prevents death from starvation and the elements. The quest attempts to subvert death in an abstract, and more permanent, sense. Both involve going off into the wilderness, either alone or with others, depending on the situation and the culture. The task of both can be extremely dangerous, and even life-threatening, by their nature. These are not easily achieved goals; even Gilgamesh cannot succeed in his quest for immortality, though he does live on in the fame of his story.

Long after the events of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Greeks 69

continued the tradition of the hunt, though its central purpose shifted. In ancient Greek society, “the purpose of the hunt was to obtain meat or destroy savage animals.” Although the nature of the hunt had changed somewhat, the dangers of the ancient past remained a constant possibility; “In the dangerous wild where the hunt took place, the hunter sometimes became the hunted” (Powell, p. 514). Because of the potential dangers and necessary advantages of the hunt, ancient Greeks often saw the activity as an initiation rite of sorts. Organizing a hunt, particularly of a specific dangerous animal, was a matter of great importance, and the process of choosing companions for a hunt bears some striking similarities to the process of choosing companions for a quest, such as in the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Interestingly, one hunting myth, closely tied to one of the Argonauts, exemplifies the importance of choosing one’s hunting partners wisely.

The Calydonian Boar Hunt, a minor myth involving Meleager, one of the Argonauts, provides an excellent example of a hunting myth and of the potential consequences of ignoring proper cultural expectations. Because of an earlier offense against Artemis, goddess of the hunt, by Meleager’s father Oeneus, she unleashed a giant boar on the Calydonian countryside which proceeded to cause general mayhem on whatever happened to cross its path. In order to put an end to the boar’s rampage and restore order to 70

the land, Oeneus gathered many of the great heroes of the day together to form a hunting party; Meleager and many of his comrades from the Argonauts were among them. The most noteworthy member of the hunting party, however, was a woman named Atalanta, whose involvement would bring doom to many other hunters that day.

Atalanta, to use Judith Barringer’s phrase, “exemplifies the outsider, the ambiguous female who behaves as both male and female, and who participates in the definitive male (insider) experience” (Barringer, p. 61). Exposed as a baby and saved by a she-bear, who nursed her, and a group of hunters, who raised her, Atalanta cares only for hunting, a preoccupation that puts her in direct contrast with Greek cultural expectations of the day. Women were expected to marry, bear children, and take care of the household; there were few occasions for women to be outside of the home at all, much less to participate in hunting activities. For this reason, Atalanta embodies the idea of the outsider, the subversion of the Greek patriarchal society, and it is also for this reason that she is often characterized as an Amazon.

The Amazons were a race of warrior women who, like Atalanta, dedicated their lives to war and the hunt. Their interest in the hunt also made them devotees of Artemis, like Atalanta, though this connection will be considered in more detail later. Barringer considers Atalanta’s 71

connection with the Amazons in her observations of what they represented to the Greeks. She writes, The Amazons represented alterity for the Greeks, with their inverted society in which women behaved as men and men either took on feminine roles or were excluded altogether...Scholars have noted that the Amazons offer a negative image of what might happen if women were in control, or provide a model of those who refuse marriage and therefore refuse culture. (Barringer, p. 60) This connection, along with the idea that the Amazons act as a model for those subverting their male-dominated culture, plays a central role in the understanding of Atalanta and her motivations in the hunt.

Atalanta, as a devotee of Artemis, models herself after the goddess of the hunt, and this imitation seems to reveal the equal nature of thanatophobia among males and females. Artemis, as a goddess, is immortal, and she represents everything that Atalanta idealizes in herself.

Atalanta’s constant mimicking of the goddess, therefore, could be seen as her attempt to transcend her mortality by taking the form of Artemis. In much the same way as an actor on the stage may come to identify with their character in a more tangible sense, Atalanta may be attempting, on some level, to actually become Artemis, that is, to become immortal through her modeling of the goddess. Her involvement and prowess in the hunt may 72

therefore be read as her attempt to prove herself worthy of the goddess’s identity.

Atalanta’s inclusion in the Calydonian Boar Hunt upsets many of the men present for the hunt for fairly obvious reasons, especially in terms of her gender. As a woman in a patriarchal society, she does not have a right to insert herself into the hunting party, regardless of how skilled she may be as a hunter. Additionally, a woman on a hunt was considered a bad omen because of the nature of the hunt as a male rite of passage. For this reason, they believe the hunt will go badly if she is present. Powell notes that Atalanta was rejected from the Argonauts for similar reasons (Powell, p. 511). Atalanta’s inclusion in the hunt is the result of only one determining factor: Meleager’s infatuation with her. As Barringer notes, “Atalanta challenges men in a man’s world and therefore presents a threat to the male order, but she is also the object of male desire and subject to male influence and dominance” (Barringer, p. 50).

In spite of Atalanta’s presence and the men’s objections, the boar hunt goes well enough at first, though early casualties serve as a reminder of the dangers of the hunt and the pursuit of fame. Many die both from the boar and from poorly aimed spears, but the boar eventually falls. Some versions of the story attribute the first strike to Atalanta, who blinded the beast with an arrow, and in this version, Meleager, who killed 73

the boar and skinned it, offers her the spoils of the hunt for this reason, though his infatuation serves as a greater influence. Upon hearing this, Meleager’s uncles are enraged, and in the resulting brawl, they are killed by their nephew. Meleager himself then dies when his mother kills him with the words of a prophecy made at the time of his birth by throwing a particular log on the fire. Atalanta is one of the few to emerge from the hunt unscathed, her own fame increased by the bloodshed that seems to surround her.

The Calydonian Boar Hunt is a classic example of the hunt as an attempt to gain fame, and there are multiple instances within the myth where this is especially clear. Atalanta’s inclusion in the hunt is supposedly the result of her famed skill as a hunter, though Meleager just wants to use the opportunity to bolster his own fame in her eyes in spite of the fact that he is married and has a child. The presence of many heroes on the hunt indicates that this is an exceptionally dangerous task, a task where the one who is seen as successful will be remembered for his exploits in the face of such dangerous odds. Meleager’s offering of this fame to Atalanta upsets his uncles, who either desire the fame for themselves, or simply wish to deny such fame to a woman, which would upset the cultural balance as it existed in ancient Greece. One could even argue that they wish for Meleager to keep the fame for himself, seeing as it is rightfully his and he 74

is the prince of the land. This idea of the royal right to fame could then be seen as a precursor to any number of royal privileges that develop in later societies, including the deification of the Roman emperors and the British concept of divine right to rule. These ideas, stemming from the attempt to transcend mortality, all originate in the setting of the hunt and the quest.

Before considering the ultimate repercussions of a society where the pursuit of immortality is at its highest heroic ideal, one might benefit from examining one last example of a quest to achieve immortality through fame: the return of Odysseus from the Trojan War. As we have already established through the story of Gilgamesh, a hero’s quest typically involves the achievement of immortality, either in a literal or figurative sense via fame. Odysseus’s story is different, however; in order to illustrate why, we will examine two stories from Odysseus’s adventure: the encounter with Polyphemus, and Odysseus’s time with Calypso, both of which offer insight into what kind of immortality Odysseus is interested in.

After leaving the land of the Lotus Eaters, who consume a drug that makes them content to remain on the island forever, Odysseus and company arrive in the land of the Cyclopes and become prisoners of Polyphemus. Thanks to Odysseus’s trickery, they are able to blind Polyphemus and eventually escape back to their ship. Once aboard and safely underway, Odysseus calls back to his former captor and tells him 75

“‘Cyclops, if ever a human asks you how you came by your blindness, / or who it was that disfigured your eye, just give him the answer: / ‘Odysseus put out my eye, Odysseus, sacker of cities, / the son of Laërtes, who dwells in Ithaca, lord of its palace’” (Powell, p. 590). As it turns out, this is not a wise decision, for Polyphemus calls out to his father, Poseidon, lord of the sea, who causes all sorts of trouble for Odysseus and his soldiers throughout their adventures.

The astute reader obviously questions Odysseus’s judgment, and sanity, when he gloats of his victory over Polyphemus, but an understanding of his motivation makes his actions slightly more understandable. Admittedly, Odysseus already knows that Poseidon is the father of his captor, and he is certainly familiar enough with the power of curses to see the folly in goading his defeated enemy. This logic, however, seems to temporarily vacate his mind in favor of a different sort of cultural logic: the need to have an enemy know who it is that has bested them.

Victory, whether in battle or in wits, is only valuable if the opponent knows who they have been defeated by, and this is why he calls back to his enemy and incurs the wrath of the gods. Without that final insult, Odysseus cannot earn the fame he is entitled to by his trickery. In spite of the heavy cost his action will bring, he feels that he must do what he does, no matter how foolish it may seem to us. This fame seems to be worth more to him than 76

his own life or the lives of his men.

The other story concerning Odysseus’s desire for fame involves Odysseus’s time with Calypso, a nymph who falls in love with him. Odysseus, now the only survivor of all his men, washes up on the shore of Calypso’s island, Ogygia, where he will spend the next seven years (Powell, p. 594).

Odysseus spends his nights with Calypso, but he spends his days looking out to sea, waiting for the day he can return home at last. Eventually, Athena arranges with Zeus to allow Odysseus to finally return home, but before that, Calypso makes Odysseus a generous offer: marry her, and he will have eternal life. Odysseus, in what can be read as the act of a faithful husband who wishes only to go home to see his wife again, refuses her offer, and she eventually aids him in his quest to return to Ithaca.

Odysseus is offered eternal life, unburdened by worry or fear, and the love of a beautiful woman in exchange for his agreement to marry her, and he decides to pass. While this could arguably be seen as the act of a good man and a good husband, such an argument must overlook the fact that Odysseus is still sleeping with Calypso while he is staying with her. One could argue that he feels the need to return home, where he belongs, but if he marries Calypso, the island will become his home, everyone on Ithaca will continue to assume he is dead, and life will go on as before. Odysseus has the opportunity to live an eternal life free from the hardships of the 77

world of his past, but there must be another reason for his refusal. One possibility revolves around Odysseus’s already demonstrated desire for great fame, no matter the cost.

Let us assume for a moment that Odysseus accepts Calypso’s proposal and lives an eternal life on the island in the middle of nowhere. If he does so, there will not be anyone to tell his story to his countrymen, who have all perished on the voyage home. The journey, and therefore the quest, will have been for naught, and Odysseus’s dream of eternal fame will never be fulfilled. Like Gilgamesh and Achilles, Odysseus cannot settle for a long, boring life free from the burdens of fame; he is far too heroic to accept such a fate. Odysseus’s desire for his story to be known and remembered prevents him from doing so, and so Odysseus passes up actual immortality in exchange for figurative immortality.

Odysseus’s refusal of actual immortality illustrates the ultimate truth about the heroic quest and the hunt: it is better to live a life worth remembering than to live forever. If a member of a hunting party were overly cautious and never took a risk in pursuit of fame, he may as well not have been there at all. Such men serve a purpose in heroic myth, of course, but only to further illustrate the fundamental difference between such men and the heroes the stories are written about. Even in contemporary society, many believe fame is worth risking everything for, even if it kills them. From 78

the hunts and quests of the ancient Greeks to contemporary Hollywood, in the mind of the right person, fame is just worth hunting for. It seems to be this idea, this essential flaw of the human condition, that allows mythology to remain popular centuries after the civilization it came from has all but disappeared. As a species, we reach back into the past in hopes of discovering common ground with our predecessors, and in the quest and hunt myths, we find the common thread of the search for immortality, the drive to win fame that will keep one’s memory alive long after death. In the stories we tell, the endeavors we pursue, and the lives we live, we continue to follow in their footsteps.

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Works Cited Barringer, Judith M. “Atalanta As Model: The Hunter And The Hunted.”

Classical Antiquity 15.1 (1996): 48. Academic Search Complete.

Web. 4 Apr. 2015 Christman, Jared. “The Gilgamesh Complex: The Quest For Death Transcendence And The Killing Of Animals.” Society & Animals 16.4 (2008): 297-315. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Apr. 2015 Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Print.

Powell, Barry B. Classical Myth. 8th ed. San Francisco: Pearson Education, Inc., 2015. Print.

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Ed. N.K. Sandars. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1972. Print

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Claire Goodman Claire Goodman is a senior English major and, prior to LMU, attended the University of Oregon. Her piece is indicative of her self-chosen concentration over the past four years: intersectionality and cultural implications within certain types of American literature, whether it be Native American, Chicano/a, or Asian American. “The Ambiguous Identity” was written as a final project for Dr. Rodriguez y Gibson’s “Chicana & American Indian Literature” course. For this project, students were asked to consider the greater cultural readings and knowledge that comes from a comparative analysis of Chicano/a and American Indian literature. Claire found this essay to be a culmination of her work for the course, allowing her to think critically about cultural diversity through the lens of literary theory.

The Ambiguous Identity

According to Gloria Anzaldua, “rigidity means death,” therefore in order to survive one must be flexible (101). In her book Borderlands/ La Frontera, Anzaldua discusses her concept of the “new mestiza,” the mixed woman who has a tolerance for ambiguity. Ambiguity, although indefinite, can be a powerful tool. According to Anzaldua, being tolerant of ambiguity is a sign that women are acting and not reacting, which leaves them with numerous possibilities. The new mestiza discovers that “she can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries” (Anzaldua 101). Rather, she must shift and change. She must be tolerant of that which is vague because she, the new mestiza, holds an identity that is not necessarily clear and definite, but ambiguous. She lives in two worlds, but she survives by transcending those two worlds. She survives by creating a new consciousness–the mestiza consciousness (Anzaldua 102). While Chicana literature has the figure of the mestiza, Native American literature has the trickster, a figure that also functions between two worlds: the real and the surreal, the ethical and the profane.

In Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, the trickster is a “mystic figure that has to bring the balance and mutual respect in two totally opposite worlds”(Petkova 11). The ambiguous nature of the trickster means that he too transcends. He defies categorization. By failing to 82

be categorized, similarly to the new mestiza, neither of these figures fit into a colonial binary; rather, they present a decolonial identity. While the new mestiza and the trickster both hold an ambiguous nature, there are elements of difference between the two. The new mestiza embraces ambiguity in order to create a new identity and perspective. Embracing mestizaje is a way for the new mestiza to negotiate racist heteropatriarchy; however, the trickster is a cultural figure that has always been ambiguous.

Trickster is a mediator between worlds, a marginal figure, but ultimately a mythic figure. His indestructible nature and his survival beyond the boundaries of time are the creation of a culture (Blaeser 51). Comparative analyses of Chicana and Native American literature offer the idea that ambiguity is a decolonial strategy of identification. However, the way in which that identity is reached and cultivated depends on the real or mythical application of ambiguity as a means of survival. Defiance against boundaries and rigidity can mean different things for the identity crisis of both Chicana/o and Native American people.

First and foremost, it is important to understand what Anzaldua means by the “new mestiza” and how this figure is meant to combat the Chicana identity crisis. Anzaldua’s new mestiza is her understanding of how the mestiza, the woman who “faces the dilemma of the mixed breed,” can deal with and make sense of her “multiple personality [which] is plagued 83

by psychic restlessness” (100). The Chicana identity crisis stems from the struggle to know whether one belongs to the Mexican world or the white world. In some cases, Anzaldua makes mention of the mestiza straddling three cultures and she argues that both Mexican and white culture attack the beliefs of the indigenous culture (100). Nevertheless, what is the mestiza to do? How can she perfectly fit into three worlds, or even manage to straddle all three when each tries to keep her separate from the other?

This is the struggle of borders that Anzaldua refers to. It is because of this struggle and this conflict with rigidness that she suggests what the “new mestiza” would look like and how she should think. She writes, The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality; she operates in a pluralistic mode- nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns ambivalence into something else (101).

This new woman, the new mestiza, is a coping mechanism. She is something to strive to, and to become. She juggles cultures in order for her identity to survive. She embraces everything, and she is the ultimate 84

contradiction. But what is it that she is contradicting? She is contradicting the idea that people have one culture and one personality. She contradicts the idea that someone cannot be both Native American and Mexican while simultaneously having an Anglo point of view. This belief in singularity is part of the colonial episteme. Therefore, the answer to their problem, this crisis of identity, is to create an identity that thinks based off a decolonial episteme and not a colonial one. The answer is to not look as the world as a set of binaries, constantly basing what something is off what it isn’t.

Anzaldua argues that “the answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts” (102). Thinking ambiguously, rather than thinking dualistically, is part of a healing process. It is a way for Chicana/o people to identify themselves by not rejecting something simply because they choose to embrace something. The colonial binary places whites on one side and people of color on the other, meaning that a Chicana cannot embrace a white heritage and a Mexican heritage. What ambiguity proposes is to do away with clarity, certainty, and definitive answers. Rather, one must embrace a lack of these elements. Anzaldua tells her readers that in order to embrace a mestiza consciousness, one must change their behavior as well as their perceptions of reality and behavior. One must also do away 85

with the binary (102). The new mestiza is ambiguity, and it is a decolonial strategy of identification. It is a way of identifying the Chicana woman on her own terms, not the terms of white men or white culture.

Not only is Anzaldua’s new mestiza breaking away from the restrictions of the binary, but it is also rejecting the idea that people who associate themselves with an indigenous or Mexican heritage cannot be associated with the privilege of whiteness. Whiteness comes with a privilege because with each binary there is an assumed “superiority,” just as men rank higher than women within the gender binary. However, what the new mestiza does is she claims her own privilege. She claims the privilege of assuming both sides of the binary as a signifier of power. The Chicana will not be confined to a restricted identity that forces her to choose. Why should she have to? As Anzaldua explains, the mestiza is like corn, both indigenous and a product of crossbreeding (103). By not juggling cultures and straddling worlds, the new mestiza would be rejecting her whole self and, therefore, rejecting the privilege she assumes. Her privilege is her ambiguity. Her privilege comes from having to reject nothing.

Anzaldua writes, “Soy un amasamiento, I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings” (103). In her book, she continually 86

embraces both her Mexican and her white identity by code switching. Her insertion of Spanish into her writing is a way of saying, ‘I will not reject a part of me.’ Her writing embraces the mestiza consciousness–it blends and mixes. Her writing is the product of crossbreeding languages. In this quote though, she points out the functioning binary: light and dark, but quickly points out that this separation only creates an opportunity for a third party.

She has cultivated her Mexican identity and her white identity, but her true identity is a blending of the two. Her true identity, as a new mestiza, is as a woman who questions both of these identities and strives to give them a new meaning. This new meaning is where her creation of the new mestiza comes in. The new mestiza questions the binary as well as the colonial production of knowledge that strives on separation. By uniting and joining both sides of her identity and by becoming this questioning-being, she has assumed a privilege that may be hard to navigate. Anzaldua’s new mestiza can also be explained as an identity that is based on an embrace of both the colonized and the colonizers. Anzaldua writes that she must embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly but this may be easier said than done.

Can someone who identifies with the colonized ever fully identify with the colonizer? It is for this reason that the realistic application of ambiguity as a strategy of identification presents a much more complicated problem.

In order to better articulate the importance of ambiguity, and the 87

colonial restrictions that have permeated societal rules, Anzaldua situates herself in a metaphorical borderland that she is trying to escape from. This borderland is “a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (3). Erika Aigner-Varoz, author of “Metaphors of a Mestiza Consciousness,” explains that these borderlands include: “the ‘psychological,’ ‘sexual,’ and ‘spiritual’ borderlands. These are spaces where the inhabitants, ‘the prohibited and forbidden,’ live in a state of discomfort as they negotiate between conflicting forces in such margins”(Aigner-Varoz 49). Continuing the metaphor, Anzaldua has the dark-skinned people casted out by the white border patrol, which is, “reinforcing the institutionalized binary metaphors that fashion racism” (50). By creating these metaphorical borderlands, which are both confining and harshly controlled, Anzaldua sets herself up to present her solution.

She knows how to liberate Chicana/o people from the borders, and it is by doing away with them. The border patrol wouldn’t exist if there were no borders to control. No one would be kept in or left out if there were no borders. Borders are rigid, and borders, like the borders on a map, are a production of colonial knowledge. The map is a colonial tool that was used to enforce the control and ownership of land. Borders were the exact tools that the colonizers used to confine Indians to reservations. The border between Mexico and the United States creates a clear, definite line 88

between two countries, and more importantly two national identities. So what would happen if we had no borders? Chaos would most likely be the assumed answer, considering the modern world now relies on the use of borders. Chaos would only emerge, however, because modernity functions off of clarity. To be ambiguous is to be unclear, and that is why it is a way for Anzaldua, a Chicana, to identify herself. The new mestiza creates an ambiguous identity. It is not just that she lives between worlds, it is that she wants to fully embrace all three parts (Mexican, white, and Native American) and function in her own world without borders and binaries.

Anzaldua thinks this is the answer to the Chicana identity crisis. Don’t be

Being the new mestiza is the best way of surviving, and it is the best way to combat the colonial pressure to just be one thing, one identity.

For Native American literature, the trickster figure embraces and embodies ambiguity. The new mestiza liberates identity through ambiguity and the trickster liberates the imagination. Gerald Vizenor, a professor of Native American Literature at UC Berkeley, argues in “Trickster Discourse”

trickster must represent imagination as the real, nothing more than that” (70). Tricksters embody imagination, and they are a creation of imagination.

The ambiguous nature of tricksters is only possible because native people 89

have imagined them. Native myths and stories have imagined a figure that has no definition or classification. The language of the stories allows Trickster to exist, and it is Trickster’s use of language that liberates the mind. It sets the mind free by being unbeatable and indefinable. Trickster is the ultimate survivor. Vizenor writes, “Tricksters are the kind of thought that raises hope, that heals, that cures, that cannot be traced. The power of the trickster would be diminished, even abolished, by human representations” (70). Their power also comes from the imagination of myths and not reality.

This is where Trickster and the new mestiza differ. Anzaldua believes that this ambiguous identity can exist in the real world and in a real setting.

However, Trickster can only exist in stories. Trying to find or create a human representation of trickster would only take away the healing and curing powers of this figure. Coyote, the trickster character in Green Grass, Running Water, is known to be a trickster god. This association with gods is important because it automatically associates Coyote with the surreal.

However, the special thing about Coyote is that he can operate in both realms that exist in the novel- reality/modern day and the surreal/native myth. Therefore, Coyote’s role as a trickster is to act as a bridge between worlds. He is the “mythic survivor” that can change shape, enjoy the earthly realm and the spiritual realm, and at the end of the day can never fully be described (Blaeser 54). His ability to survive is the result of his ambiguity.

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He has no limitations, no borders.

In Green Grass, Running Water, Coyote actively jumps across story lines and, consequently, across worlds. Veneta Petkova explains

opposite worlds- one of the European invaders and the other of the Native population- into piece with one another, while fixing up the world” (11).

These two worlds that Petkova speaks is functioning off of the binary of white people versus people of color. However, by having the task of uniting the two worlds, Coyote also has the task of destroying the binary. Coyote’s ability to enter into both worlds and play active roles in them signifies his ability to blur and disrupt the colonial concept of duality. Coyote wants to fix up the world, he wants to get the story right, yet he is mischievous, can’t sit still, and almost never wants to listen. Trickster’s sacred function is as a healer, but a healer of what? He heals by simply existing (Smith 531). He heals by providing evidence that something or someone can unite the modern world and the native, mythical world. Carlton Smith writes in his article in the American Indian Quarterly that one of trickster’s other functions is, “as a disruptive semiotic element that resists colonial representations and stories of containment” (531). Trickster resists coloniality, and he resists being contained. Stories about tricksters are freeing and this is how they liberate the mind and the imagination. They 91

resist being contained, they resist being defined by their usefulness, and they resist a utilitarian function. Coyote’s ambiguity is what makes him colonially resistant. His ability to have an effect on the human world is what could be found alarming to some and comforting to others. Thomas King uses Coyote as a means of empowering Native American culture. He uses Coyote, a Native American mythical figure, to show that both worlds can be combined and that culture and myth can still survive in contemporary society. Native origin stories remain important and it is necessary to affirm them. King’s novel “mediates between cultures and belief systems while simultaneously privileging cultures and belief systems historically marginalized by the invading culture’s exclusive and dominative discourses” (Cox 219). By creating a narrative dialogue that places Coyote in discussion with both the authorial native and the four old Indians, King privileges native culture. By spending his entire novel relaying creation stories, which are disguised in a modern day context, King elevates the importance of a Native identity. It is important to know how things began, how things started. It is important to know that there is more than one story and more than one way to tell it. Therefore, he is also insinuating that the Christian way, the colonial way, is not the only way. As the book points out, at the beginning there was water–no people, no boundaries, no systems–just water. Interestingly enough, just as water is indestructible, so is Trickster.

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Trickster is representative of Native culture, and therefore his infinite survival relays to their culture. Trickster serves as a means of cultural survival.

Even though the trickster figure from King’s Green Grass, Running Water does exemplify a blurring and breaking of the colonial binary as he goes from world to world, not all trickster stories contain such an element.

Then again, the only thing that all trickster stories have in common is a trickster, and Trickster’s overly ambiguous nature. Even when he is a Coyote, he represents so much more than just a mischievous animal.

Native identity, specifically native people’s decolonial identity, can be found through the telling of trickster stories. These stories can portray an identity that claims a native perspective, and a native version of reality.

Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories considers the “Coyote and the Ducks” story in which Coyote is obsessed with the long, beautiful feathers of the duck. Coyote wants to claim the feathers for himself so he tricks the ducks into giving them to him. Coyote blames humans, saying that they are the ones who really want the feathers and that he is simply protecting the ducks by taking their feathers. However, this is revealed to be a lie. King ends his description of the story by writing, Now, I could finish this story but you already know what’s going to happen, don’t you? The Ducks are going to keep giving up their 93

beautiful long feathers. Coyote is going to make a mess of things.

The world is going to change. And no one is going to be particularly happy (127).

King is tricky in his writing, because this isn’t really a story about ducks, but rather a story about Indians. Coyote represents the colonizers, and the ducks are the Indians. Coyote is the mythical native figure that represents survival, yet he embodies the exploitative, selfish actions of colonizers.

Once again, the trickster is representative of a multitude of things. He is neither solely good nor solely evil. However, what this story does is it captures the feelings and emotions of a people who know they were tricked.

It is representative of a decolonial native identity, one that recognizes the trauma and loss experienced by Native Americans. This story presents their perspective and it shows that even though all the duck’s feathers were gone, they weren’t gone. King writes, “One of the interesting things about Indians is that we’re still here. After some five hundred years of vigorous encouragement to assimilate and disappear, we’re still here”(128). The decolonial identity operates off the fact that Indians are still here and they don’t reject their culture. They have resisted colonial pressures and the Trickster embodies that unwillingness to conform. Blaeser writes in her article about tricksters, “these tales serve the individual and societal needs of tribal people and contribute to cultural survival, acting as teaching 94

tools, tools of liberation, and repositories of tribal history and tradition” (55). In the case of this Coyote story, it serves the societal needs of tribal people. It serves the need to recognize that, no matter what colonial pressures have been imposed on them, they are still here. Trickster stories embrace both myth and oral tradition. The ambiguity of Trickster alone signifies that native tradition does not need to be subjected to a colonial episteme. Trickster, as a figure, embraces ambiguity and it is this ambiguity that allows Native people to realize that their identity does not need to be subjected to boundaries or limitations. Just as Trickster can remain undefined, so can the decolonial identity of native people. Being native or claiming indignity in a country where you are subjugated and designated as Other is not a simple identity to navigate. Just as being a mestiza is complicated, so is being a modern day Native American. Native people struggle with the binary of assimilation or authenticity, but again, why conform to fit within the binary? Ambiguity allows for a pluralistic perspective rather than just a dualistic one. The world doesn’t have to function in twos.

The figure of the new mestiza and the trickster both embrace plurality and, therefore, ambiguity. However, they are not necessarily the same. They are both uneasily defined. One is meant to function in reality and one is, in fact, a creation of myth. A significant element of reading 95

these works comparatively and focusing on the use of ambiguous figures is the discovery that their relationships with identity differ. Each work shows the usefulness of ambiguity as a strategy of identification, but what about the specifics of that strategy? Anzaldua writes about the new mestiza and the new mestiza consciousness as a way to combat the Chicano identity crisis. She wants Chicanas to embrace this new ambiguous identity as singular. The new mestiza doesn’t just juggle or straddle, but it takes each world and unites them together in reality. In an every day setting, the new mestiza embraces all aspects of her heritage, and she forgets what it means to be confined to a binary. Gloria Anzaldua, a lesbian Chicana, is the new mestiza. She is proof that this ambiguous identity can exist. She is a woman with her own pluralistic identity, a decolonial identity that she was forced to create in order to navigate her connection to multiple cultural identities. On the other hand, the trickster figure only exists in stories.

He is an imagined creation that may be able to enter the realm of reality in stories, but in stories nonetheless. The ambiguity of Trickster cannot actually exist in reality. Gerald Vizenor would say, “We are what we imagine.

Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves,” and that is exactly the point (67). Native people can be what they imagine. They can be survivors and they exist between worlds, between cultures. The trickster figure then, unlike the new mestiza, is a coping mechanism. Trickster is a 96

tool. The endless possibilities and stories that Trickster presents are what provide hope and healing. Trickster helps deal with and navigate a crisis of identity; whereas, the new mestiza offers a solution. Both rely on ambiguity, but they function differently.

Anzaldua definitively provides ambiguity as the answer to Chicana identity, but King doesn’t necessarily provide an answer. Rather, King’s use of Coyote in Green Grass, Running Water is effective much more in its subtleties and implications. By having a character that can co-exist and comanage both cultures/worlds, King implies that it can be done. Even though tricksters are imagined characters, who cannot manifest themselves in the human world, they provide opportunity. They provide a moment of reflection for anyone hearing the story to wonder what it would be like to not be confined by any kind of categorization, boundary, or classification. Although Anzaldua does make room for reflection and wonder, the importance of ambiguity is explicitly explained in the text. She makes it very clear that a tolerance for ambiguity is the answer. The explicit and definitive nature of Anzaldua’s text may have to do with Chicano/a nationalism and the strong desire to claim identity, to have some understanding of what it means to be mestizaje, to be Chicano/a. She wants to know what her decolonial identity looks like; however, Native American literature doesn’t seem as concerned with having the answer. After reading King’s text, as well as Sherman 97

Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the employment of the Trickster or aspects of the trickster figure are more indicative of an ongoing navigation of what it means to have a decolonial identity. The use of a character, rather than a strict discussion of identity, offers an experience rather than a discovery.

Ultimately, these similarly ambiguous figures differ in their existence. The new mestiza is in fact new. It is the creation of a Chicana feminist who argues for the importance of a pluralistic identity, free of binaries and confinements. The trickster, though, is a long-standing figure that has always transcended far beyond a binary, or a definition. The trickster figure is simply utilized for its ambiguity. The figure’s ambiguity allows it to be seen as a decolonial strategy of identification. Therefore, one figure is a product of a new way of thinking, and the other uses an old way of thinking in order to look at identity and possibility in a new way.

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Works Cited Aigner-Varoz, Erika. “Metaphors of a Mestiza Consciousness: Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera.” Melus: Multi-Ethnic Literature Of The United States 25.2 (2000): [47]-62. Chicano Database. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. 4 ed. Print.

Blaeser, Kimberly. “Trickster: A Compendium.” Buried Roots and Indestructible Seeds: The Survival of American Indian Life in Story, History, and Spirit. Madison. 47-66. Print.

Cox, James H. “All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something: Thomas King’s Revisions of Narratives of Domination and Conquest in Green Grass, Running Water.” American Indian Quarterly. Berkeley: 2000. 24.2. 219-247. Print.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Print.

Petkova, Veneta. “How Thomas King Uses Coyote in his Novel Green Grass, Running Water.” Haskoli Islands: 2011.

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Smith, Carlton. “Coyote, Contingency, and Community: Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water and Postmodern Trickster.” American Indian Quarterly.

Berkeley: 1997. 515-535. Print.

Vizenor, Gerald. “Trickster Discourse: Comic and Tragic Themes in Native American Literature.” Buried Roots and Indestructible Seeds: The Survival of American Indian Life in Story, History, and Spirit.

Madison. 67-83. Print.

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Kyla Rhynes Kyla Rhynes was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and is a sophomore currently studying English and Marketing here at LMU. She wrote her piece “Deeply Rooted: A Look at Smilla Jaspersen and Claudia Macteer’s Racial Preservation” last semester in one of her very first English classes, Genres: Fiction, taught by Dr. Travis Tanner. To learn about a number of literary devices and writing styles, the class read a variety of different novels and analyzed their tone, structure, and language.

However, the two books that really stood out to Kyla were Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Peter Hoeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow. After reading both novels, she could not help but notice how similar the two protagonists were. They were both females, living in societies where their race and gender were social disadvantages, and struggling to preserve — even love — their identities in spite of this oppression. As a woman of color, she considers their struggles very impactful to her, but also feels these stories hold universal value. With this research paper, she took the opportunity to not only make the connections between Smilla and Claudia clear to other readers, but also to illustrate how relevant their issues are to 21st century Americans.

Deeply Rooted: A Look at Smilla Jasperson and Claudia Macteer’s Racial Preservation

In 2015, Mariano Zaro, host of the online interview series Poetry L.A., sat down with poet and former Yellow Power activist Amy Uyematsu to discuss her greatest works and career achievements. During the interview, one of the most interesting questions that Zaro posed to the Japanese-American writer was whether or not she believed the Japanese language existed in the substratum of her poetic voice. Her memorable response to the question was that it was not the Japanese language that influenced her poetry, but something she claimed to have “concocted” herself: racial memory. For the California native, racial memory was what allowed her to have a certain sensibility and appreciation for Japanese aesthetics despite having never stepped foot on Japanese soil, spoken the language, or been raised to know what constitutes Japanese culture (Uyematsu). As bizarre as Uyematsu’s idea sounds, the concept of “racial memory” is not a new idea at all. In fact, in “Racial Memory and Literary History,” literary critic Stephen Greenblatt writes about an occasion at the 1996 International Shakespeare Association Meeting where speaker, Janet Suzman, described calling upon an actor’s “racial memory” as a way to help ease him into character. The actor, John Kani, was a black South African starring in a mid-1970’s production of Shakespeare’s 102

Othello, and in the heat of the apartheid climate, the representation of interracial marriage through this play caused a violent stir. Participating forced Kani to subject himself to “a nightmarish landscape of oppression and bloodshed and submit to humiliating questions and searches” (Greenblatt, 54). The frustration that this provoked in Kani negatively impacted his ability to perform. When other attempts to get him to clear his mind had failed, Suzman relied on a different strategy: she asked Kani to “awaken in himself his racial memories of nights in the kraal under the starry African sky” (55). This strategy worked. Kani was somehow able to use this newfound tranquility to his favor, though he had spent his entire life in urban Johannesburg. How? Suzman asserts he did this, not by recalling his own personal experiences, but by accessing his “racial memories” (55). But what exactly is racial memory? Is it solely the ability to harbor a connection with one’s ancestors, to be able to recall minute details of the lives of one’s progenitors, or can it manifest itself in different ways? Evidently, many people have taken this idea and re-defined its meaning. To me, racial memory is simply a term that seeks to name that indescribable thing that makes people hold on steadfastly to the bit of their culture that remains; the thing that people rely on to conjure an identity for themselves; the thing that causes even those descendants of colonized — including enslaved— peoples to reject normalized ideas that go against 103

that estranged or severed part of who they are. My interpretation of this concept is derived from my own personal experiences and attempts to reconnect with a distant culture, and it is an interpretation that helped me to understand the deeply complex characters in Toni Morrison’s and Peter Hoeg’s novels. In Peter Hoeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, we encounter two characters, Smilla Jasperson and Claudia Macteer, who struggle to preserve or come to terms with their identities while living in societies that have literally taught them that they are inferior on the basis of their racial and ethnic backgrounds. Separated by time, place, and experience, Smilla and Claudia differ in various ways; but ultimately, they both actively resist the values enforced by their hegemonic oppressors, and this resistance reveals itself in their relationships with their friends, Isaiah and Pecola, respectively. In this paper, I will explore the ways that Smilla and Claudia are both affected by forms of colonization, how their resistance to white and European supremacy helps readers understand their relationships with Isaiah and Pecola, and how my personal interpretation of racial memory justifies the urgency and importance of this resistance. Finally, I will conclude by examining how the challenges these two characters face are relevant in today’s society.

Modern colonization of Greenland by the Danes began in the 1720s, and like most instances of imperialism, the Europeans had 104

established themselves and their way of life as being superior to the native inhabitants of the territory, forcing upon them their own values, language, and government (Peterson, 119). Although Smilla lives in the 20th century, the effects of colonization are still felt by her and her generation. She recalls moving from her village school to a school in another town, where the teachers did not speak, nor wish to learn Greenlandic, saying, “They told us that, for those who excelled, there would be an admission ticket to Denmark and a degree and a way out of the Arctic misery. This golden ascent would take place in Danish” (Hoeg, 118). For the Inuit people, there is a definite implication that success requires assimilation — the adoption of the hegemonic power’s language and way of life, and the removal of their own, to achieve recognition in society. Even Smilla’s former teachers’ use of “Arctic Misery” to refer to Greenland shows their perception of the country, and their supposed “burden” of saving and civilizing the native people. But despite the effects of colonization threatening to erase the ties she has with her home country, Smilla Jaspersen actively fights to preserve her identity as a native Greenlander. When she goes to meet a curator to decipher an aged tape — one of her young neighbor’s prized possessions that she believes might be a clue to his mysterious death — she thinks back to the deterioration of her own native language. This process of being pushed to learn the Danish language and communicate exclusively in it 105

caused her to lose the ability to speak her mother tongue, though she never dreamed of forgetting it. In such a seemingly short time, she finds that her Greenlandic “can be picked apart with a fingernail” (119). Denmark’s effort to make Greenland an extension of their country and essentially make the Inuits full Danish citizens, meant forcing them to discard the things that made them distinctly Inuit. But still, Smilla tries to hold on to what remains of her Inuit identity, saying “Later, when I’ve gone back, I’ve tried to learn [the language] again. As with so many other things, I haven’t exactly succeeded, or failed either” (119). She makes an effort to reconnect with what she has lost, clearly wanting to reestablish who she is as an Inuit woman. Even as a young girl under her father’s supervision, she yearned to return to Greenland, pulled by some indescribable thing to remain linked to her home, her culture, her heritage.

Smilla’s relationship with fellow Greenlander Isaiah is due in part to this desire to cling to her Greenlandic identity. Isaiah is her neighbor’s child who she gradually becomes very fond of; she takes care of him when his substance-abusive mother is unfit to do so, and they have a bond that is unlike any other. One reason why Smilla feels tied to Isaiah is because they are very much alike, and these similarities are what connects them. When she meets him for the very first time, she realizes this, saying, “At that moment I see two things in him that somehow link us together. I see that he 106

is alone. The way someone in exile will always be. And I see that he is not afraid of solitude” (14). These similarities arise from their biggest, and most important similarity: the fact that they are both native Greenlanders a long way from home. On one particular occasion, Smilla takes Isaiah out to visit the museum and after looking at the seals, he asks her if they can go back to Greenland. She responds candidly that they cannot, and he resolves by saying that they can read about Greenland instead (47). It is evident that they both have this lingering desire to go back to where they were born, a desire that continues to haunt them, even after being forced to leave that part of who they are behind. But Smilla is attached to Isaiah because of this connection they have, and his ability to awaken in her who she is as a Greenlandic woman, a fact that is demonstrated when she says, “There aren’t many Danes who can tell by looking at me. They think there’s a trace of something Asian, especially when I put a shadow under my cheekbones.

But the boy on the stairs looks right at me with a gaze that cuts straight through to what he and I have in common” (Hoeg, 14). Here, Smilla is speaking on the fact that her ethnicity is often questioned by others, more than likely due to the fact that she’s half Danish. Her biracial identity causes people to mistake her for something else entirely. But somehow, Isaiah is able to instantly recognize that they both have Greenland in common, and for someone who dreams of returning to Greenland, where 107

the memories of her mother and her late brother reside, this is certainly comforting. Isaiah is able to confirm what Smilla feared she was in danger of losing forever: her Inuit identity.

Unlike Smilla Jaspersen, Claudia Macteer has no real connection or knowledge of her heritage or ancestry, a consequence of the 18th century transatlantic slave trade and the hostility of slavery, segregation, and racism in America. For African-American people, growing up and living in early 1940’s America, there existed no curriculum, television show, or widely accessible literature to provide them with an accurate depiction of their home continent, or individual African culture. In fact, American society felt more inclined to diminish and demean their racial identity. When Morrison began writing The Bluest Eye in the early 1960’s (Morrison, xi), the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education had already occurred. One of the most convincing pieces of evidence that helped convince the court of the detriments of segregation in schools was an experiment conducted by psychologist Kenneth Clark and his wife, known as the Doll Tests. In the experiment, they provided a brown doll and a white doll and asked African-American children a series of questions to which they responded by pointing to either the brown doll or the white doll. These questions included “which doll was the good one and which the bad, which doll they wanted to play with, and which doll looked most like 108

him or her” (Bergner, 299). While the African-American children identified the brown doll as resembling themselves the most, they overwhelmingly named the white doll as being the “nice” doll, the best one to play with, and the one with “the nice color” (299). This particular test is so significant because it shows how young children were learning to hate themselves and internalize racism. At the time that Claudia Macteer was an adolescent, the most vulnerable time in a person’s life, young children were especially susceptible to absorbing this idea that “white” was superior in all ways.

But where did black children get these ideas from? How can someone be so thoroughly convinced, at such a young age, that they are inferior and worthless? Partly, by lack of representation.

One way that Morrison alludes to this reality is through her use of the famous Dick and Jane readers as chapter headings. The Dick and Jane readers are credited with “teaching the baby boomer generation to read”; by the 1950’s, 80 percent of American first-graders were using Dick and Jane books as learning tools (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 134) But there are other things that the famous books passed along to their consumers. Dick and Jane’s family represented the “perfect” family: a white mom and white dad, a dog and a cat, and of course, Dick and Jane themselves. The family lived in suburbia; the father left for work each day, and the mother stayed home to take care of the house and kids. They’re 109

described as living in a “Father Knows Best kind of world where a major crisis was a skinned knee” (134). This white, heteronormative narrative excluded many people, and by creating this fictional idea of what a “good” family was, children who read the books were no doubt conscious of the ways that their families were different, and therefore imperfect. Along with other things, like perpetuating patriarchy and gender roles, the Dick and Jane readers established this lifestyle that only white people could live as being the epitome of success and happiness in America. Morrison also makes mention of Shirley Temple, famed child actress who was a box-office star during the events of the book. For Claudia’s sister, Frieda, and the girl they are tasked to watch over, Pecola, Shirley Temple is an object of much admiration. She’s talented, well-loved, and the girls have entire conversations about how cute she is. But Claudia is not as easily convinced as her counterparts. When her sister and friend partake in these conversations, she sits out, saying, “I couldn’t join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley. Not because she was cute, but because she danced with Bojangles, who was my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who ought to have been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me” (Morrison, 19). Unlike Frieda and Pecola, Claudia is aware of how problematic and exclusive media is; thus, early on in her life, she questions why Shirley Temple is so loved, why everyone is so fond of someone who looks nothing 110

like themselves. Whiteness has dominated all facets of American culture, and this image of Shirley Temple dancing with Bojangles seems to suggest that it has even gained access to those more personal and intimate familial relationships that young black children should also have access to. Claudia feels excluded and hurt by this, which causes her to feel so passionately about Shirley Temple. While her family and friends embrace her with open arms, Claudia refuses to believe that she represents all that is good.

Claudia’s resistance to white supremacy also shows itself through her treatment of her dolls. Every Christmas, “the special, the loving” gift she receives is a blue eyed, blonde haired doll. While her family views these toys as something beautiful to be bestowed only upon the most worthy little girls, Claudia cannot bring herself to love them. As strong as the brainwashing effect of white supremacy is on the minds of young children of color, Claudia refuses to buy into these ideals handed to her. She’s even more aware of how her society perpetuates these exclusive ideas than her own parents: “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs — all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed yellow-haired, pinkskinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (Morrison, 20). But Claudia herself cannot understand this adoration. In fact, she dismembers these dolls aggressively in an attempt to understand what about it causes people to elicit such affection, saying “I could examine it so see what it was that 111

all the world said was lovable” (Morrison, 21). At a time when young girls begin to understand their own identities, and come to terms with who they are and their place in society, Claudia is unwilling and unable to see why whiteness is glorified. Without truly understanding why, she resists these ideas that have been normalized, somehow subconsciously aware that they do not align with her own identity and her natural desire to love herself. The ripping and tearing up of her dolls symbolizes her rejection to white beauty ideals and also serves as a pointed disagreement to the responses in the Doll Tests.

Claudia’s resistance to white beauty standards helps readers to comprehend her relationship with societal reject, Pecola Breedlove.

Pecola Breedlove and her family are described as being poor and ugly. The man of the house, Cholly Breedlove, is a drunk, and he and his wife, Mrs. Breedlove, often engage in violent domestic altercations. Adults in town, and the children at Pecola’s school, all whisper about the Breedloves, their ugliness, and their indecency, giving Pecola a reputation that she cannot escape. Yet, as widespread as the belief that the Breedloves are troubled, trashy people, Claudia does not feel disgust, but pity and sympathy for her young friend. On one occasion, while walking home from school, Claudia and her sister spot Pecola surrounded by a group of chanting boys. Perhaps from hearing grown-ups talk, the boys have come up with a chant to shame 112

Pecola regarding her father’s improper behavior, saying, “Black e mo, black e mo, yadaddsleepsnekked” (Morrison, 65). But Frieda and Claudia immediately step in, threatening the boys and forcing them to stop and back off. Furthermore, when Pecola is sexually abused by her father, the adults in the neighborhood essentially engage in victim blaming. They question why Pecola did not fight back, blame her “foolishness”, and even suggest that her mother take her out of school (189). This kind of reaction to the horrendous incident that took place baffles Claudia. She “listened for the one who would say ‘Poor little girl,’ or ‘Poor baby,’ but there was only head wagging where those words should have been” (190). Claudia sympathizes with Pecola, even when the rest of the town uses her looks and her broken family as an excuse to belittle and demean her, and this comes from her refusal to buy into this fabricated standard for beauty.

Claudia seems to have an understanding that exceeds that of her parents and the other adults in her life, and that is that looks and social status do not determine one’s worth and value, despite what the racist climate of the period suggested. While the grown ups gossip about Pecola, Claudia and her sister make sacrifices to save Pecola’s unborn child by giving up their money, their bicycle, and planting seeds so that God will see their sincerity and step in to help. In this way, Claudia projects her resistance to normalized, Eurocentric beauty standards to her relationship with Pecola; 113

she sympathizes and seeks to care for her, despite society somehow deeming Pecola and her family as worthless.

Claudia MacTeer and Smilla Jasperson both speak to the lasting effect of colonization on the descendants of the colonized. By establishing what is ideal in terms of physical features, language, and other characteristics, the colonizers separated the colonized from those very elements that made them African, or made them Greenlandic. Coupled with their literal removal from their home country, people like Smilla and Claudia are especially separated from the foundation of their ethnic and racial identities. Today, one might think that the introduction of the internet, easier transportation, policy amendments, and more information in historical textbooks, makes the pressure to be like the hegemonic power disappear. But centuries of racial oppression and white supremacy take more than just a few decades to erase. Eurocentric beauty standards, and the pressure to assimilate in order to be successful, are prevalent in our society, even now. Immigrants from nations of color are urged to learn English and use it exclusively to be recognized as valuable citizens; African-American women are discouraged from wearing their hair natural in schools with strict codes, and jobs in the professional field; and some Muslim women even feel pressured to remove their hijab for fear of unwarranted violence, job discrimination, or not being recognized as citizens of America. But religion, language, and 114

even traditional hairstyles are important parts of one’s identity, and even in times of oppression — when a dominant group asserts that they are superior and persecutes others for being different — some people refuse to relinquish their culture. And perhaps this is the greatest effect of racial memory: the unapologetic refusal to be anything other than oneself, even when in doing so, one places themselves at odds with the majority. After all, it is this kind of person who leads the fight for independence and equal rights for all, and eventually succeeds.

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Works Cited Bergner, Gwen. “Black Children, White Preference: Brown v. Board, the Doll Tests, and the Politics of Self-Esteem.” American Quarterly 61.2 (2009): 299-332. Web. Greenblatt, Stephen. “Racial Memory and Literary History.” PMLA 116.1 (2009): 48-63. Web. Hoeg, Peter. Smilla’s Sense of Snow. New York: Dell Publishing, 1993.

Print.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage Books, 1998. Print.

Petersen, Robert. “Colonialism as Seen from a Former Colonized Area.”

Arctic Anthropology. 32.2 (1995): 118–126. Web. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. “Awakening from Dick and Jane’s American Dream.” Rev. of Growing Up with Dick and Jane: Learning and Living the AmericanDream, by Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 14 (1996): 134–135. Web. Uyematsu, Amy. Interview with Mariano Zaro. Poetry L.A. Poetry L.A., 2015. Web. 9 Dec. 2015.

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Michael Robinson Michael Robinson is a second-year graduate student majoring in English literature. “Language as Military Assault on Identity and Memory in Friel’s ‘Translations’” was originally presented as a paper at the 31st Annual American Conference for Irish Studies, Western Region, Forgetting & Refusing: Contemporary Irish Literature, Ireland: Memory and Monument in October 2015 and is based on work done under Professor Molly Youngkin.

Language as Military Assault in Friel’s Translation

For Brian Friel, it is pen-to-map that is mightier than the sword in his play, Translations.

Human speech conceals far more than it confides; it blurs much more than it defines; it distances more than it connects – George Steiner, After Babel (Richtarik 555)

Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings—Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (Said 7) The playwright was “indebted” to literary critic and philosopher George Steiner’s After Babel for his application of language in the play. I would argue, however, that the characters of his play are also dramatizations of Said’s idea that no one is “outside or beyond geography,” that linguistic struggles over place-names are also geographic struggles that fall under the shadow of military concern. The enforcement of borders on a political map, after all, implies a military dimension. The systematic renaming of places on a map—changing, Bun no hab hann to Burnfoot, for instance—therefore, becomes a

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deconstruction of language—the Irish language—and a nuanced military strategy—one which moves beyond psychological warfare into cultural warfare.

In Friel’s play, English military engineers, “sappers”1 they are called—arrive in County Donegal to do, by order of His Majesty (quote)“the

is undiplomatically proclaimed in English by Captain Lancey, an (quote)“

effrontery of his remarks is lost upon those he renames “foreign civilians,”, thanks to the language barrier. Friel spares the theatre audience that barrier by granting it a “lingual omniscience” which he sets up in the first scene.

Manus, eldest son of the local school master, encourages the character Sarah to say her name. As Friel establishes in the stage

life she has been considered locally to be dumb and she has accepted this: when she wishes to communicate, she grunts and makes unintelligible

1 Military engineer. The name is derived from the French wordsappe (“trench”), which became connected with military engineering in the 17th century, when attackers dug covered trenches to approach the walls of a besieged fort and also undermined the walls by tunneling beneath them. In modern armies, sappers provide tactical support by carrying out construction, including

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nasal sounds” (Friel 256). In a real way, Sarah represents, how the English military objectifies the Irish and their language: they are “dumb,” because they won’t master (or be mastered by) English; and, “unintelligible” in their native tongue for it seems to them to be mere “grunts” and “sounds.”

Friel wrote the play in English. In performance, therefore, Translations, effectively, ”translates” the Irish into “intelligible” English, lending the audience off-stage the means denied those onstage, to follow the fractures between English and Irish.

Latin and Greek,” who is reading Homer aloud, distracting Manus’ teaching (Friel 256-7). Jimmy provides, mildly, the play’s rare emotional/ intellectual sense of discomfort at being shut-out from the conversation—except, of course, for those audience members fluent, as Jimmy is, in Latin and Greek.

Jimmy also, with the other students, contradicts the English assumption of the Irish being un-educable. Friel, in the economy of a scene, corrects the incorrect English “translation” equating Irish with stupidity.

We are soon introduced to Owen, Manus’ younger brother, returning home in the employ of the English engineers as a translator/consultant, his multilingualism lending him currency in the English world. He, principally,

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correct spelling of those names”2 (Friel 273) for the new English map

information on every corner of this part of the Empire”(Friel 276).

Owen in translating Captain Lancey’s words minimizes the patronizing elements of his vocabulary—his translation softening matters to “the job is being done by soldiers because they are skilled in this work” (Friel 276).

Manus, though, confronts him: Manus: What sort of a translation was that, Owen?

Owen: Did I make a mess of it?

Manus: You weren’t saying what Lancey was saying!

Owen: ‘Uncertainty in meaning is incipient poetry’ - who said that?

Manus: There was nothing uncertain about what Lancey said: it’s a bloody military operation, Owen…!

This clarity of vision is lost on Owen—he will later claim that there is nothing “sinister” in what the English are doing. Still, his creative translation of Lancey’ remarks acknowledges that his employer’s words necessitate softpeddling to the townsfolk.

Again, an English-literate theatre audience (and Manus, on-

several young mountaineers of the writer’s acquaintance, whose knowledge and taste in the Latin poets, might put to the blush many who have all the advantages of established schools [from the memoirs Rev. Alexander Ross, Rector, Dungiven, Co. Derry. 1814 ]” (Field Day Theatre Company 541)

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stage) can pick up on the dichotomy between Lancey’s English speak and Owen’s Irish soft-sell. Manus becomes the voice of the audience as the conversation moves to a debate on renaming, an enterprise that, it will come out, seems to have begun with their translator: Manus: …What’s ‘incorrect’ about the place-names we have here?

Owen: Nothing at all. They’re just going to be standardized.

Manus: You mean changed into English?

Owen: Where’s there’s ambiguity, they’ll be Anglicized.

Manus: And they call you Roland…!

Owen: Shhhh. Isn’t it ridiculous…?

Manus: But they...

Owen: Easy, man, easy. Owen - Roland - what the hell. It’s only a name. It’s the same me, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?

Manus: Indeed it is. It’s the same Owen.

(Friel 277).

The final two lines above ask Manus to “translate” Owen. Given the text of his former self (which the audience doesn’t know) and the text of his life on the stage (which the audience is getting to know), Manus renders a translation which the audience must, itself, interpret/translate. Is Manus, for instance, being ironic when he answers Owen’s “It’s the same me, isn’t it?” with an “Indeed it is”—suggesting that Owen has, indeed, changed? Or 122

is Manus’ answer disparaging—a confirmation that the Owen we see as an audience is the same Owen that Manus has always known?

Friel previously counters Owen’s trivializing of “it’s only a name” with an earlier, exuberant exclamation by the mostly silent Sarah when she finally says “My name is Sarah!” and then, counterpoints that embracement of her name with Sarah’s later tragic inability to give voice to it upon Lancey’s demand (Friel 303); the violence of his request—requiring no translation—stripping her of not only her name but of her identity as well.

Like the renaming of places strips them of their Irish character and history.

Owen asks Yolland if what they do is “sinister,” if changing quote “placenames that are riddled with confusion unquote” matters. Tellingly, Yolland replies, “Who’s confused?” (Friel 286).

Friel, in the end, extends the military translation (obliteration) of Ireland in three ways. First, there is the the simple act of changing placenames previously noted. Second, is the playwright’s use of the “sweet smell,” the feared harbinger of the potato blight, twice reported by the character of Bridget (Friel 265, 303). This smell is associated in both instances (translated) with the English soldiers’ presence. Third, the headmaster position at the national school—read education system coopted by the English—that the school master Hugh, Manus and Owen’s father, expected to be offered to him, falls to someone else, one with whom 123

the English can collaborate. Hugh is clearly not that man.

Bridget notes that the national schools teach everything in English (Friel 266-7), making Hugh, who voices negative views about teaching English to another character earlier in the play (Friel 270), a bad fit. His negativity about the language—language being the conduit of culture and the character of that culture—makes him ill-suited to translate the doubtless colonial intention of an English-only curriculum.

Hugh, a classicist, views English, as a vernacular—vulgar and common. Late to teaching his class, he tells his students of a chance meeting with Captain Lancey, who complained to him that quote “two of his horses have strayed and some of his equipment seems to be mislaid. unquote” Hugh tells of offering his regrets to the officer and continued in his telling of the story that he:

matters. He then Greek? Not a syllable. He speaks—on his own is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and imaginings.

At the end of the play, Hugh recites a story—reflective of Ireland and England—from the Latin Aeneid, foretelling the doom of Lybia by Aeneas. As he begins his recitation, he stumbles, has to start over. The Irish are story-tellers and yet, Hugh stumbles, as though the coming of the 124

English, with their language, Anglicizing and Empire have overthrown not just the Irish tongue, but the ancient, classical tongues that make for a happier conjugation with Irish-ness.

Perhaps Friel was expanding upon Steiner: Human translation conceals far more than it confides; it blurs much more than it defines; it distances more than it connects (Field Day Theatre Company 541).

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Works Cited Field Day Theatre Company. “Program Notes for Translation.” Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. John P Harrington. 2nd. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009. 540-3.

Friel, Brian. “Translations.” Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. John P Harrington. 2nd. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009. 255-308.

Richtarik, Marilynn J. “Translations: On the Page and On the Stage.”

Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama: A Norton Critical Edition.

Ed. John P Harrington. 2nd. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009.

554-8.

Said, Edward W. “Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories: Empire, Geography and Culture.” Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism.

1st. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. 7.

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Jessica Aquino Jessica “Jo” P. Aquino is a junior Biology major and English minor at Loyola Marymount University. As much as she loves the sciences, she has always adored the magic of fiction for almost half her life and plans to continue for the rest of it. “Me Love You Long Time” was written for Maria Valenzuela’s course “Race and Representations” in the spring of 2015. As a Filipino woman, the discussion of hypersexualized Asian/Asian-American women is highly pertinent.

“Me Love You Long Time”: An Examination of the Hypersexualization of Asian and AsianAmerican Women

Dragon lady, eager-for-sex nymph, and academic nerd are just a few of the common stereotypes of Asian and Asian-American women in contemporary media. The stereotyping of Asian and Asian-American women in media, including in literature and postcards, is rooted in some of the history of Geishas, Asian prostitutes, and “comfort women” who served American soldiers during World War II. Geishas are artists in Japan, mostly female, who provide non-sexual, subservient acts for males who visit the teahouses. These acts include serving tea, singing, dancing, and playing traditional Japanese instruments such as the three-stringed instrument, the shamisen. This history of Geishas has created the idealized notion of Asian women as inherent nurturers. Many racialized stereotypes have taken hold in regards to Asian women as a result, depicting them as nurturing, submissive women who defer to the men they care for and perhaps love. Prostitutes and “comfort women,” however, depict the darker side of these stereotypes. These women willingly performed sexual acts for American soldiers during World War II. There were two main causes for this behavior: firstly, prostitutes were trying to make a living, and so would rarely object to doing their job; 128

secondly, and in stark contrast to the first, “comfort women” were sexual slaves. These “comfort women” had no choice but to submit themselves to these sexual acts. Prostitutes and “comfort women” were the most common encounters Americans had with Asian women, creating a narrow generalized view of all Asian women. This stereotype gave rise to the idea that the “good” Asian woman should be silent and eager for sex (Hagedorn 397). The Werner Von Boltenstern Collection postcard, “The Four Tu Wu Sisters”, and David Henry Hwang’s play, M. Butterfly, both depict Asian women as the ultimate Caucasian male fantasy. These perceptions of subservience and sexual prowess were most prominently spread through exoticized images of Asian women on postcards and in plays.

Through these idealized stereotypes, the Asian woman becomes little more than a sexual object made for the pleasure of Caucasian males.

Stereotypes made popular by the media and movies only exacerbate the problem by focusing on images of Asian women in situations that cause them to appear either demure and accommodating or lustful and tantalizing. This undermines the human characteristics of the person and replaces them with an unrealistic and one-dimensional character. These

those traits, exaggerate and simplify them, and fix them without change or development to eternity’” (Merskin 188). Asian and Asian American 129

women are reduced to those stereotypes, effectively causing their images as “Asian” to be equivalent to “exotic”, “nurturing”, “accommodating” rather than as an individual. Instead of “Asian”-ness being one part of her identity, it defines who she is at a glance. Idealized stereotypes such as these reveal the hegemonic fantasy of Asian women as a dichotomy. These stereotypes can be seen in different media, one being more insidious than one might initially believe: the postcard.

Postcards themselves can be innocent pieces of paper, but the images on the postcards themselves can be incredibly harmful. Moreover, these hegemonic images are spread globally, causing these images to be normalized among different groups of people. During the 1950s in America, many of these postcards depicted racialized images and stereotypes of Asian women. One postcard, titled “The Four Tu Wu Sisters,” postmarked in the year 1953, is a depiction of the fictional Tu Wu sisters. Their names each correspond to an illustration of a female figure. The four sisters are “Tu Yung,” “Tu Dum,” “No Yen,” and “Sum Fun,” phonetically creating English phrases and demonstrating the different yet limited depictions of Asian/ Asian-American women.

Each sister on the postcard represents a type of Asian trope. Tu Yung represents the trope of Asian women who are too young to woo. She appears to be a young child, holding a finger to her mouth in innocence 130

while also holding a baby bottle. Tu Dum represents the trope of those who are too dumb to woo, portrayed with bucked teeth and a blank expression, and desexualized to a point that she is hardly recognizable as a “woman”.

No Yen exemplifies the trope of those who cannot be bought because she is too focused on her intellect. She holds two very large books and wears round glasses to indicate that she is the stereotypical Asian who cares more about her studies than anything else and lacks sexual characteristics.

Lastly Sum Fun depicts the trope of those who are “some fun” to woo.

Among the four sisters, Sum Fun is the only one who exhibits feminine features such as full lips, an hourglass figure, and a short dress. Sum Fun sits in a provocative position in a short cheongsam, a traditional Chinese dress, while she smokes a cigarette. The expression on her face is that of mystery and intrigue, characteristic of a temptress (Minjeong 72). Her appearance is similar to that of actress Nancy Kwan’s character Suzie Wong in The World of Suzie Wong (1960). The character of Suzie Wong is a captivating and mysterious prostitute who falls in love with an American man, Robert Lomax, and devotes her life to him. Lomax initially finds Suzie attractive and worthy of love because of how exotic and sexy she appears to be, even after discovering that she is a prostitute. Her mysterious nature and sexualized actions, such as when she is dancing, are examples of the exoticism of Asian women (Minjeong 73). Sum Fun Tu Wu exhibits similar 131

qualities of mysteriousness and hypersexualization. The exoticism of Asian women causes them to seem more appealing based on appearance and lack of individual personality. Sum Fun Tu Wu particularly represents the exoticism of Asian women in which Asian culture is “portrayed as exotic or unusual, and sometimes romanticized” (Prasso 9). There is nothing in the image that displays a particular Asian culture other than the cheongsamlike dresses that the sisters wear, rendering the image devoid of a true portrayal of any culture. Despite this, Sum Fun Tu Wu comes across as exciting and sexy simply because of her apparel, strange-sounding unAmerican name and ambiguous Asian ethnicity. Her vague “Asian”-ness is what is exotic about her, and nothing else (Minjeong 79). This can be identified as the Asian mystique, the notion that the remote affiliations with Asian culture, such as Sum Fun’s cheongsam, instantly becomes romanticized as mysterious and exotic.

Sum Fun Tu Wu has characteristics that are the trademark of some of the stereotypes of Asian women seen in movies, such as seeming mysterious and dangerous (Hagedorn 396). The cigarette implies that she is not a typical, demure woman who cannot fend for herself, and that she may have deadly skills hidden up her sleeves. The “dragon lady” stereotype, for example, is characterized by the character’s overt sexual and physical aggression, untrustworthiness, and mysteriousness, all traits that can be 132

seen in the caricature of Sum Fun Tu Wu. Sum Fun’s provocative pose also hints that she is a sexual deviant. Having her name double as an innuendo in the English language implies that her services are for an American man, reducing her to nothing but “some fun” for a man to have. Sum Fun also embodies the stereotype of the eager-for-sex nymph (Hagedorn 400). This stereotype is characterized by an eagerness to sexually please, mysteriousness, and a willingness to trade sexual favors in exchange for money or other benefits. This image reinforces the stereotype that an Asian woman who is not branded a nurturer must be a nymph and a temptress who is more than willing to accommodate through sexual pleasure. These

of racialized heteronormative beliefs and values” (Merskin 188). When an image is repeatedly shown to the masses, it becomes a stereotype that is widely seen and often accepted at face value. Both negative and positive stereotypes exist, but even the latter can do harm. All stereotypes are limiting and leave little to no room for individuality or variation. As a result, the pairing of Asian women’s bodies with the American male’s fantasyprojections results in the Asian woman as a “naturalized sexual subject” (Shimizu 136). She is perceived as nothing more than her body and what purpose she serves, based simply on the way she looks, regardless of her 133

personality. This identity theft is further explored and challenged in M. Butterfly.

David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly presents the trope of Asian women as nurturing and completely devoted to the white man, but ultimately destroying him. M. Butterfly tells the story of Rene Gallimard, a French diplomat, who carries on an affair with Song Liling, a Chinese opera singer, for twenty years, only to discover she was actually a man working as a Communist agent. M. Butterfly contrasts Rene Gallimard with Pinkerton, the male protagonist in Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly (produced 1904). At a soirée in Beijing, Gallimard meets Song Liling, who performs Madame Butterfly’s death scene. As a newcomer to the East, his exposure to Puccini’s Madame Butterfly reinforces Gallimard’s stereotype of Oriental women as beautiful, submissive, self-sacrificing, and hankering after white men. Watching Song’s performance, Gallimard immediately becomes entranced with her, unable to disentangle the performer from the role.

Imagining himself as Pinkerton, Gallimard feels lucky to have the affection of Song Liling, but Liling is “fully aware that Gallimard is not interested in a reciprocal relationship with a person of the opposite sex.

Rather, he wants to fulfill his fantasy of having an affair with a subservient mysterious woman” (Zamora 42). Gallimard wishes to live out his exotic 134

fantasy of having an affair with a foreign woman whom he envisions will be his “butterfly”. He is not concerned about the details of the affair itself, but in embodying Pinkerton and finding an Asian woman who would be willing to sacrifice her own life for his sake. He is not searching for mutual love and trust, but for an invented ideal of a relationship based on fiction. In this vein, it becomes unimportant that Song “be biologically female” but that “s/he validate the perception of gender though performance” (42). Her appearance, even if it is a façade, overrides her physical sex. Gallimard is more concerned about the outward interaction between butterfly and Westerner that results in a validation of his masculinity, rendering her own femininity as nothing more than a given. His supposed validation of masculinity ironically invalidates the necessity of Song’s femininity.

On multiple occasions, Gallimard calls Song his beautiful Oriental butterfly even though he knows she hates the imperialistic connotation behind the term. In calling her his butterfly, he insults her twice over; firstly through calling her a term she despises and ignoring her feelings completely, and secondly through the term itself, which is an equivalent to “slave.” He does not simply use the word as a term of endearment, but as a true name for her; he believes that as his “butterfly”, Song owes him all of herself. Although he knows her culture revolves around modesty, he demands to see her naked (Hwang 2.6.188). As his “butterfly,” she 135

must prove her undying loyalty and selfless devotion through what he considers to be this ultimate act of vulnerability. Seeing her naked would symbolize her denunciation of self, making her completely and irrevocably his. Song believes that his obsession with making her his “butterfly” is due to his Western fantasy about self-sacrificial Asian women. She reveals Gallimard’s Western male egotism by posing the opposite scenario to him: Consider it this way: what would you say if a blond homecoming queen fell in love with a short Japanese businessman? He treats her cruelly, then goes home for three years, during which time she prays to his picture and turns down marriage from a young Kennedy.

Then, when she learns he has remarried, she kills herself. Now, I believe you would consider this girl to be a deranged idiot, correct?

But because it’s an Oriental who kills herself for a Westerner—ah!— you find it beautiful. (1.6.51-58) Song is demonstrating the highly imperialistic ideals that Gallimard had through this fictitious narrative that is based in truth. Her point is that the girl in this scenario is considered idiotic if she is “blond” and presumably Caucasian; however, if the girl is Oriental, such as in the opera Madame Butterfly, it is seen as romantic. Gallimard then realizes that his notions may be imperialistic, but he carries on in his fantasy with Song Liling as his Oriental butterfly. Similarly, the word “Oriental” embodies the 136

exoticized, imperialistic view of the East as the female counterpart of the masculine West. Song Liling points out to the court that the West has an international rape mentality. Song puts it plainly that “The West thinks itself as masculine—big guns, big industry, big money—so the East is

no, but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated—because a woman can’t think for herself” (3.1.76-82).

Since the West believes itself masculine, the East automatically becomes feminine. The West believes that the East wishes to be conquered and Westernized because it supposedly cannot think for itself and therefore does not know what is best for its well-being. The imperialistic notions then permeate to that of notions of “Oriental” women as well. Asian women are stripped of their ability to choose and think on their own because the common mentality is that they all want to be dominated by Caucasian males.

During one of his discussions with an Embassy representative, Gallimard discusses his affair. French ambassador M. Toulon mentions the “lotus blossom fantasy” multiple times, revealing that it is reinforced by the colonial mind. What becomes apparent here is that “this lotus blossom fantasy is neither private or personal but an open secret that is passed down in time from one colonial bureaucrat to another, from 137

one colonial administration to the next” (Chow 289). Instead of a single person having these original predilections, it is this shared fantasy that is passed down in a funnel that spreads the fantasy rather than concentrates it. This hive-mind type of thinking about Asian women causes Gallimard, as well as many other Western men, to believe in his

who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. Who are born and raised to be the perfect women. Who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally” (Hwang 3.3.9-13).

These women, without any idea of who they could be or could want, are automatically expected to be self-sacrificing, groomed from birth to be subservient and resilient to any and all cruelty. These “Oriental” women are not being viewed as human beings with emotions and free will, but as possessions and idealized fantasies. This exoticized image reinforces “the Asian Mystique...the fantasy of the exotic, indulging, decadent, sensual Oriental who will indulge [a man]...as no woman of [his] own culture could” (Prasso 5). The Asian woman is exoticized again, but as nothing more than a servant. She is only worth as much as the quality of her service for her Caucasian male. She is expected to be totally compliant and submissive; her defiance would likely be met with punishment of some kind, such as Gallimard’s demands of disrobement from Song.

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After the two are put on trial for their espionage, the court is incredulous that, throughout twenty years of intimacy, Gallimard never realized Song’s true sex. Song attributes this gullibility to Gallimard’s—and all Western men’s—romanticized Oriental fantasies about Asian women (Hwang 3.1.112-114). In order to preserve his fantasy, Gallimard had fooled himself into believing her façade, that his lover was without a doubt a devoted Oriental woman. He remains blind to the truth even after it has been revealed in the court, so Song strips completely in order to shatter Gallimard’s fantasy (3.2.217-231). In doing so, Song offsets a role-reversal between himself and Gallimard. Gallimard is so invested in his vision of the submissive Orient and the dominant Westerner that when he learns the truth, Gallimard willingly takes the position of the “other” in hopes of upholding the structural integrity of his fantasy. Song becomes the dominant masculine figure, wearing Armani suits, while Gallimard becomes the submissive feminine figure, donning Song’s wig and kimono. He transforms himself into the “butterfly” figure that he so desperately wanted Song to be by committing suicide. Ironically, he does so in the same manner as Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.

M. Butterfly demonstrates the dangers inherent in living a life satisfied with shallow stereotypes and misconceptions. Gallimard’s singular desire for a submissive Oriental woman was fulfilled only in his mind because 139

no human person could fulfill his fantasy. This stereotype, as well as those seen in the postcard of the Tu Wu sisters, reinforces the hegemonic values entrenched in Western culture regarding Asian and Asian-American women. The depiction of Sum Fun Tu Wu in the postcard “The Four Tu Wu Sisters” represents the exoticism of Asian women as hypersexualized and mysterious. This exoticism causes their worth to be based on their sexuality and lack of individual personality but as Asian/Asian-American.

Stereotypes such as the “Oriental butterfly,” the “eager-for-sex” nymph and the “dragon lady” all create false fantasies and hurt both sides involved in the fantasy. Through these idealized stereotypes depicted in both M. Butterfly and the postcard “The Four Tu Wu Sisters,” the Asian woman is just a sexual object meant to please Caucasian males. The pairing of Asian women’s bodies with the American male’s fantasy-projections results in the Asian woman as a “naturalized sexual subject”. She is perceived as nothing more than her body and what purpose she serves, based simply on the way she looks, regardless of her personality. According to Hwang’s M. Butterfly, because the West believes that the East wishes to be conquered, they believe that “Oriental” women also share these characteristics. Through the exoticized images of Asian/Asian-American women in postcards and idealized depictions in M. Butterfly, Asian women have been idealized as the perfect women who are both submissive and silent as well as sexual 140

deviants, robbing them of individual identity and the right to their own desires and bodies.

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Works Cited Chow, Esther N. “The Development of Feminist Consciousness Among Asian American Women.” Gender and Society 1.3 (1987): 284-99.

JSTOR. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.

Hagedorn, Jessica. “Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck.” Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Signs of Life in the USA 7 (2012): 396404. Project Muse. Web. 1 Apr. 2015.

Hwang, David H. M. Butterfly. New York: Dramatist Play Service, 1988.

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Merskin, Debra. “How Many More Indians? An Argument for a Representational Ethics of Native Americans.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 38.3 (2014): 184-203. Business Source Complete. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.

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Adrianna Frazier Adrianna Frazier is a current Loyola Marymount senior studying English Literature and Dance. She is passionately involved in LMU’s chapters of the Delta Delta Delta Women’s Fraternity and the Delta Kappa Alpha Cinematic Arts Fraternity. Her interests include ballet, reading novels, watching the cartoons of her childhood, and the glory of film making. Adrianna hopes to pursue a career in either Publishing or Film Development as they both allow her to help others in their storytelling process. Her dream is to assist in the creation of stories that will inspire imagination internationally.

A Disregarded Poem: Arthurian Criticism and Reformist Views in the Awntyrs off Arthure

Part I One of the greatest compliments an author can receive is that their work is memorable and has the longevity to be read for centuries.

However, is the compliment lessened if one were to tell an author that their work would be overlooked and underappreciated for several hundred years before leading up to its renewed popularity? It seems that would depend on the nature of the author. Sadly, nothing is known about the author of tale of this nature– The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne. This unique poem could certainly be described as underappreciated, research wise, in comparison to other Arthurian romances, but the fact that it survives in four transcribed manuscripts seemingly all underivative of each other suggests at its well-spread popularity at one time.

Each collection the Awntyrs survives in has its own unique story that contributes to the personality of the text. The poem exists in the famous Lincoln Thornton Manuscript, the Lambeth Palace Library MS 491 also in London, the Bodleian Library MS Douce 324 at Oxford, and the Ireland Blackburn MS within the Robert H. Taylor Collection 146

at Princeton University which was owned by the Ireland-Blackburn family of Lancashire– hence the manuscript’s name. Seeing as the Ireland Blackburn Manuscript was family owned, it is also interesting to remark that –of the four– three of the manuscripts were used mainly for private use and –of these three– two were passed exclusively through family generations. According to Thomas Hahn in his introduction to the Awntyrs published in Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales, “[t]he number and pattern of surviving copies constitute material evidence that Awntyrs enjoyed a remarkable popularity outside (and also presumably within) the region in which it originated” (Hahn). The distance between the locations of each manuscript’s discovery is worth evaluating in terms of how well read the Awntyrs was near the time of its initial publication.

The text that will be considered and analyzed within part II of this document is a publication of the Awntyrs that was largely based off the Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 324. Without a physical visit and scholarly access to Bodleian Library catalogs, there is no available description of the condition or contents of the manuscript that I can supply at this time. However, the Awntyrs provided in the collection entitled Middle English Romances is an emended reading that uses all four manuscripts to fill in the missing, damaged, or non sequitur lines of the work. Of the four manuscripts, only two copies are considered most notable in terms of 147

critical intrigue over purely historical interest.

The first of the two manuscripts would be the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 91). The fame of the manuscript is reliant on it containing the sole copy of the Alliterative Morte Arthure in Middle English; listed as fourth in the manuscripts contents. The manuscript is titled “The Thornton Romances” on its spine and was last rebound in 1975 by S.R.Cockerell. Its previous rebinding was sometime around 1830 by Sir Frederick Madden. Its original binding is assumed to have been from the 15th century and is said to have been “a dilapidated one of ‘thick oaken boards, covered with white leather, and fastened with a clasp’”(Thomson 65). Its current binding was necessitated as “the removal of the manuscript from its binding and the cleaning of the leaves provided ideal conditions for the photography necessary to prepare the facsimile published by the Scholar Press of London in 1975 and reissued, with revisions, in 1977” (Keiser 189). It is presumed that there was originally 340 pages that were numbered sometime in the 19th century, but only 322 paper leaves remain– many of which are heavily damaged.

As for the history of the manuscript, “[t]he volume appears to have been a family book, and to have belonged to several persons of the name Thornton.” (Keiser 181). The scribe for the manuscript is identified as Robert Thornton of East Newton. Newton was a landowner and member of 148

the gentry, therefore was an amateur scribe. Another manuscript attributed to his hand is the London Thornton Manuscript (London, British Library Add MS 31042) which contains an assortment of British poems and romances.

This particular manuscript also contains an English Charlemagne Romance titled the Siege of Melayne. According the British Library’s online catalog for the manuscript, an investigator remarks that “[t]he poem is apparently unique, and seems to form an introduction to “Roland and Otuel.””, which is another romance sharing similar characters (Collection). This suggests Robert Thornton’s awareness of both Arthurian and Charlemagne romance proving him to be a well-read scribe familiar with the similar themes and tropes within the literature of both.

The second manuscript worthy of detailed recognition is the Lambeth Palace Manuscript (Lambeth Palace Library MS 491). It’s unceremoniously titled as the “Brut Chronicle in English. Poems.” and is likely two manuscripts that were bound into one for the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft. According to its Lambeth Palace Library online catalog, “[t]here are many scribbles on margins [...] The book was evidently made for private use and is soiled and thumbed. Many leaves are torn and edges cut off”, so it is clear that the manuscript was used solely for personal use by the Archbishop (Records). The first part of the manuscript is written in a single hand with a dialect localized to Rayleigh 149

area of Essex and it is in this section that the Awntyrs is found. The first part of the manuscript is composed of vellum and paper, and is separated into five sections. Part two of the manuscript is in seven sections on paper and is composed of a mixture of Latin and Middle English miscellaneous religious text in multiple scribal hands.

The scribe of part one has been identified as the same scribe as the Huntington Library MS HM 114, which contains the three texts: Piers Plowman, Troilus and Criseyde, Mandeville’s Travels. The scribal hand is described as such: [T]he script is considerably less formal than the comparatively calligraphic writing in Huntington Library MS. HM 114, with rounded lobes and loops- although in both manuscripts, the writer is consistent in copying minums in a characteristically secretary fashion (without feet). (Records) This connection between manuscripts could be looked at as scribal alone, or with the implication that there is significance in the fact that the scribe was familiar with both the Awntyrs and Piers Plowman. All and all, it can be concluded that a possible cross reading between works within the two previously mentioned manuscripts containing The Awntrys off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne suggests that the work attracted those sympathetic to, or at least interested in, themes of a reformist nature along with a pessimistic view of King Arthur’s Round Table.

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Part II The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne reflects themes of religious reform, colonialism, and a highly critical view on the Arthurian chivalric court. The text is interestingly similar to Langland’s Piers Plowman in its dedication to re-associative thinking so much that the entire poem serves as a critically pessimistic version of an Arthurian tale. Also, while the poem is a classically Arthurian Romance it simultaneously adapts two very different non-Arthurian works: the “Trental of Saint Gregory” and the tale of “Roland and Otuel”. Together these two works possess strong religious themes and themes of colonialism; specifically regarding the salvation of the non-Christian, and the assimilation of the “other”. The complexity and fluidity of these themes within the poem is matched only by the complexity of the poem’s versification.

The Awntyrs is a unique and intriguing work due to the complexity of its form as a Middle English text. The sophisticated thirteen line alliterative stanzas are made more challenging by the author’s choice of iteration within the first and last line of every stanza. The form of each stanza is comprised of nine lines in an ababababc rhyme scheme followed by a four lined “wheel” with a dddc rhyme scheme. The versification of the two tales of the poem is so complex and detailed that it suggests the poem was written by a very well-read and intentional author.

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The Awntyrs off Arthutre at the Terne Wathelyne is composed of very two distinct stories where the first of those tales is focused on the characters of Lady Guenevere, or Gaynour as she is referred to in the text, and Sir Gawain. The tale begins with Lady Guenevere and Gawian being separated from the Arthurian court during a hunt, where a grotesque ghost appears to them over a lake. The intensely detailed description of the ghost is meant to evoke a popular tradition at the time called momento mori– a reminder that all humans eventually die. The tradition also evokes interesting religious themes that continuously remind the reader that a life without Christian salvation will result in dire consequences. Following the ghost’s detailed description, she reveals herself as Guenevere’s mother and begins to describe her grotesque appearance as the punishment for her sins. She also asks Guenevere to perform thirty trentals for her soul to ascend to heaven. Guenevere offers instead “a myllion of masses to make [thy] mynnyng”; excessively over promising her mother (227, line 236).

Essentially the story of the appearance of Guenevere’s mother as ghost is almost identical to the “Trental of St.Gregory”. Many variations and adaptations of the “Trental of St.Gregory” follow the basic plotline of a ghost –in both cases the ghost is the character’s mother doomed to an afterlife in purgatory– who asks for a trental of requiem masses to be said for the sake of her salvation. The major difference in the adaptation set 152

in the Awntyrs is that it doesn’t follow the traditional trental conclusion.

In an article entitled “Heathenic’ Catechesis And The Source Of Awntyrs B”, Stephen H.A. Shepherd argues, in reference to Guenevere’s “myllion of masses”, that “[a]s if to stress the perils of this misapprehension, and contrary to the source tradition reflected in the Trental of St Gregory and its analogues, we are not told whether the singing of the masses was successful in relieving the mother’s soul” (3). The significance of this change further suggests the text’s lenience toward a reformist religious view because of its lack of assured resolution through an essentially mnemonic religious prayer.

The reformist themes of the first part of the poem harken similarities to John Langland’s Piers Plowman in that the text leans toward a reassociation of catechistic mnemonic devices and the intermingling of sin. In Stephen H.A. Shepherd’s article “Langland’s Romances”, he argues that “[..] the ghost of the Awntyrs is a ‘virtuous pagan’, and yet, as a contrite yet infernal harbinger of wisdom-however jumbled- she does share in that unsettling displacement from the certainties of christian lore[...]”(Shepherd Langland, 77). It is the displacement of certainty in Christian lore that associative thinking would encourage in order to force people into actually thinking about religion as more than just a “means to an end” or their ticket straight to heaven. That is the ultimate goal of Langland’s Piers Plowman 153

and what appears to be hinted at in the Awntyrs. An example of this in the text is Guenevere’s concerns with which prayers are needed to lead to her salvation. However, the ghost replies that actions, not prayers, are what lead to one’s soul being saved. This again alludes to the importance of human action and depth of thought over routine memorization as a vehicle to salvation. Jon Whitman argues is his article entitled “Envisioning The End: History And Consciousness In Medieval English Arthurian Romance” that: [i]f the Awntyrs, more explicitly than the Alliterative Morte, attributes that civilization’s misfortune to human failure, by the same token it suggests that human reform can temper the misfortune. A view of this kind seems to inform the very structure of the poem, which situates an expansive account of the Arthurian present after the account of the Arthurian future. (89) Whitman speaks here about the ghost’s prophecy on the demise of Arthur, but his argument about the text’s implications is also applicable to the ghost’s suggestion that religious action can affect one’s future. The Awntyrs’ display of a complex sense of history in that the poem’s plot is assumed to take place chronologically before specific plot elements of the Alliterative Morte Arthure, though the poem clearly prophesizes based off the Morte Arthure as the Awntrys was written years later. This cyclical 154

structure of storytelling is also reflected in the cyclical nature of the poem’s structure, which further emphasizes the deep intention within the text.

Another theme addressed in the poem is colonialism, specifically Arthur’s rampant colonization of Britain and his ambitions of expansion.

Gawain is surprisingly the first to mention this in the Awntyrs. In his question that he poses to the ghost, he addresses the problematic nature of salvation among knights. He questions all Arthurian conquests by asking “How shal we fare,’ quod the freke, ‘that fonden to fight/ And thus defoulen the folke on fele kinges londes,/ And riches over reymes withouten eny right,/ Wynnen worshipp in werre thorgh wightnesse of hondes?” (228, lines 261-64). The knight’s question is packed with truths that are not addressed in other Arthurian Romances. His questions are concerned with the humanity that is stole from the “other”, depicting that he recognizes the damage that is inflicted to those they conquer. A recent article by Raluca Radelescu entitled “Liminality and Gender in Middle English Arthurian Romance” argues that “[i]n this text, Gawain acknowledges violence as the foundation of knightly enterprise, aligning his presentation of the lived experience of knighthood with late medieval perceptions and representations of knightly violence” (Radulescu). This recognition of violence resonates more so with the previous Anglo Saxon view of glorious battle, rather than the popular chivalric knight who recognizes his flaws and 155

looks for adventure and love. It is interesting that “[n]one of the idealism so frequently encountered in romances is present here, nor does Gawain display any enthusiasm for or defense of the knightly way of life that he describes” (Radulescu). The poem’s need to mention this colonizing aspect at all shows a despondent and crestfallen image of the Arthurian tales. The idealized image of the great King Arthur is belittled to yet another ambitious warlord in constant need of conquest.

The second part of the poem continues with the theme of colonialism by exploring the salvation of the non-Christian and in turn assimilating the outsider. When Sir Gawain and Lady Guenevere rejoin the court it seems as if they recover quickly from the gravity of the information they just received from the ghost. The poem goes on to talk of a particular knight and his lady that join the court at dinner. The plot of the second half then begins with this knight, Sir Galeron, challenging the Round Table. He claims that Sir Gawain wrongfully own lands that were once his. As the knights duel against one another, it becomes clear after a long and vicious battle that Gawain may be the victor. Only when Sir Galeron’s lady pleads that they end the match does Lady Guenevere also protest, causing Sir Galeron to surrender his challenge. Sir Gawian is then awarded new lands

by King Arthur. It is only when Gawain choses to give his lands back to Sir Galeron that he is assimilated into the Arthurian court. Gawain says “[h]ere 156

I gif Sir Galeron,’ quod Gawayn,/ ‘withouten any gile,/ Al the londes and the lithes fro Laner to Layre”(241-42, lines 677-678). The theme of colonization applies to this because it is made known in the poem that Sir Galeron is an outsider because he is a Scottish knight– as opposed to the English knights of the Round Table.

As previously mentioned in part one of this document, part two of the Awntyrs draws on an English Charlemagne Romance titled “Roland and Otuel”; which is also a derivative story of French versions of the tales.

In this work, a Saracen knight goes to a crusader to deliver a message from the sultan saying he must forsake Christianity. Otuel, the victorious Saracen knight challenges the Christian knight after he is told that he should convert to Christianity instead. In preparations for the duel, the Christian Knight’s daughter readies Otuel and he sees a dove land on his helmet. He takes this as a sign from heaven, converts to christianity, and rewarded with marriage to a the Christian knight’s daughter.

In this comparison, “[...]Galerón, as a challenger to the court of one of the Nine Worthies, and as one who ends up in a duel with the nephew of that Worthy, is a type of Otuel” (Shepherd Heathenic 6). This reflection of the “other” character is critical to the pessimistic view of the Arthurian court because its colonial theme tarnishes the facade that is chivalry. As tales of Otuel address issues on the salvation of the non-christian, the 157

Awntyrs addresses that of the outsider affected by Arthurian colonialism.

In each tale the knight is rewarded for his surrender with material wealth and inclusion into the society that attempted to colonize, or convert, their native land.

Lastly, returning to the complex versification of the poem, the Awntrys’ cyclical nature suggests the author’s pessimistic view of King Arthur. The poem in its entirety is reflective of the Boethian Wheel of Fortune depicting the fate of King Arthur. The very first and last lines of the poem read almost the same with variants in spelling but clearly meant to be the same line. The start of the poem reads “In the tyme of Arthur an aunter bytydde” and the last two lines are “in the tyme of Arthore/ this anter betide” (219 and 243; line 1, 714-15). Keeping with the wheel structure, the centerline of the poem depicts the middle of the wheel at a standstill which is Arthur at the height of his glory. Line 358 of the poem says, “He was the soveraynest of al, sitting in sete”(231). Though the wheel depicts Arthur at a standstill in the height of his glory, its presence in the poem is representative of the opposite.

The implication of Arthur’s demise is explicitly addressed in part one of the poem with the ghost’s prophecy and her condemnation of his court. Her prophecy warns Gawain and Guenevere “[y]our King is to covetous, I warne the, sir knight:/ May no man stry him with strength while 158

his whele stondes;/ Whane he is in his mageste, moost in his might,/ He shal light ful lowe on the se-sondes” (228, lines 265-268). The ghost’s prophecy clearly takes reference from the Alliterative Morte Arthure when she alludes to his demise at sea; Mordred’s first battle against Arthur was mentioned to be at sea. The ghost also directly addresses his current position on the wheel saying that no man may defeat him while his wheel stands still. The stanza later goes on to mention the presence of Fortune and the goddess’ ability to shift the wheel. The form of the poem is extremely impactful as Fortune’s wheel is first mentioned during the wheel section of the stanza. The four lines state: “[False Fortune] in fight,/ [That] wonderfull [whelewryghte,]/ Shall make lordes [lowe] to light;/ Take witnesse by Fraunce” (228-29, lines 270-273). This wheel is a warning about the Wheel of Fortune and the goddess Fortune; to be aware that one’s wheel doesn’t stand still forever. This cynical view of the idealized chivalric King Arthur is reinforced tenfold by the intricate structure of the poem.

Ultimately, it can be argued that The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne criticizes several Arthurian and religious tropes within the text in order to reassociate the ideology at the time. Perhaps it was to promote change like the attempts of Langland’s Piers Plowman, or maybe it is was to humanize an idealized figure for the sake of realism; the author 159

and his intentions remain unknown. The only thing irrefutable about this argument is that the Middle English poem The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne is a complex and well written work that will intrigue scholars for many years to come.

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Works Cited “The Awntyrs off Arthur: Introduction.” Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales. Ed. Thomas Hahn. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995. N. pag.

TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. University of Rochester. Web. “Collection of English Poems and Romances, Written in the Northern Dialect by Robert Thorton Add MS 31042.” Explore Archive and Manuscripts. British Library, n.d. Web. Keiser, George R. “The Nineteenth-Century Discovery Of The Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral Library MS. 91).” Papers Of The Bibliographical Society Of America 77.2 (1983): 167-190. JSTOR. Web. Radulescu, Raluca. “Liminality and Gender in Middle English Arthurian Romance.” Medieval English Literature. Ed. Beatrice Fannon. N.p.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. N. pag. Google Books. Google. Web.

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“Records MS 491.” Database of Manuscripts and Archives. Lambeth Palace Library/ Church of England Record Centre, n.d. Web. Dec. 2015.

Shepherd, Stephen H. A. “’Heathenic’ Catechesis And The Source Of Awntyrs B.” Medium Ævum 81.1 (2012): 1-17. MLA International Bibliography. Web. Shepherd, Stephen H. A. “Langland’s Romances.” William Langland’s Piers Plowman: A Book of Essays. Ed. Kathleen Hewett-Smith. 69-81. New York, NY: Routledge, 2001. Web. Shepherd, Stephen H. A.”The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne”.

Middle English Romances. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. Print.

Thomson, Rodney M. Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library. 1st ed. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1989.

Print.

Whitman, Jon. “Envisioning The End: History And Consciousness In Medieval English Arthurian Romance.” Arthuriana 23.3 (2013): 79-103. MLA International Bibliography. Web.

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