Sibyl academic journal 2015

Sibyl

THE WOMEN’S COLLEGE ACADEMIC JOURNAL Volume 4 / 2015

EDITORIAL BOARD Dr Amanda Bell Dr Tiffany Donnelly Dr Rosemary Hancock Ms Gabrielle Kemmis Dr Tamson Pietsch Dr Chris Rudge Ms Elisabeth Tondl

CONTACT DETAILS The Women’s College The University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone: +61 2 9517 5000 Web: www.thewomenscollege.com.au Published by: The Women’s College within the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia 2016

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CONTENTS Introduction DR TIFFANY DONNELLY and DR TAMSON PIETSCH

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A vision of Together: The Women’s College within the University of Sydney DR TIFFANY DONNELLY vii

STUDENT ARTICLES Reading romance: Homer and Chaucer ERIN McFADYEN

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Vaccinating against preventable diseases CAMILLA CAMERON

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Death rituals and beliefs: An anthropological perspective FIONA ALAMYAR

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Sounding like emotions feel: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 81a (“Les Adieux”) JULIA DONNELLY

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The prioritisation of onset frequency, attentional pre-cueing and cognitive load effects on attentional capture by abrupt onsets MAKAELA BOWMAN

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Depictions of femininity and the female form in early modern Chinese visual art KATHERINE MILLER

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Introduction This is the fourth edition of the Women’s College academic journal, Sibyl, celebrating the achievements of our scholars by publishing the six best papers written in any discipline for academic assessment at the University of Sydney in 2015.

This year our selected essays show a remarkable breadth of intellectual scope across the spectrum of art history, English, psychology, public health, anthropology and musicology.

The opening paper by Vice Principal Dr Tiffany Donnelly positions these academic offerings by looking at the origins of the College motto. Taken from the Alfred Tennyson poem The Princess, first published in 1847, it is the only one of the six original residential colleges of the University of Sydney to have a non-Latin motto. Dr Donnelly’s essay contextualises the intellectual advancement of women within Tennyson’s vision of the evolution of the sexes towards greater equality and understanding, and shared labour, at a time when Women’s Colleges did not actually existed. In doing so, it also offers us ways of thinking about our own times.

Similarly, several student essays utilise modern or emerging concepts to deconstruct older texts. Erin McFadyen’s piece considers the ways in which two of Homer and Chaucer’s canonical texts align with the slippery category of romance in literature, at a time when the term was not yet fully articulated. Julia Donnelly’s paper, “Sounding like emotions feel,” attempts to identify instances of raw emotion literally between the lines of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 81.

Drawing on recent research in the study of emotions, Julia’s paper provides an artful musicological reading of this 19th century piece. Similarly, Katherine Miller deconstructs the gender assumptions implicit in Chinese art of the early modern period which depicts women. Beauty, she argues, carries a dangerous charge of questionable chastity or personal misfortune in these works of art.

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If these essays reflect the richness of Women’s College students’ work in the Humanities, the sciences are equally well represented. Fiona Alamyar’s piece on the death rituals of the Tallensi people of Norther Ghana and the Aboriginal people of Arnhem Land explains how such rituals are determined by anthropological factors within their living society such as totemism, kinship and cosmological beliefs.

Makaela Bowman tests psychological theories surrounding “abrupt onsets” in an understanding of how the brain selects relevant aspects of an image presented for identification and comprehension via the human visual system. And finally, Camilla Cameron looks at the threat to herd immunity in Australia as a result of recent falling vaccination rates, and argues for stronger incentive and disincentive-based programs to improve our faltering statistics.

Selecting these six papers for publication was no simple task. To qualify an essay must receive a high distinction mark (85+) when it was submitted for assessment in its given subject. Nineteen submissions were considered by our editorial panel, and we congratulate all of these students on attaining the very highest standard for written work at the University. Gathering reference materials and complex data, synthesising key concepts, answering creatively but precisely the questions posed by our academic mentors is a process of mastery that takes considerable dexterity and skill. We ask our students to do this while embedded in the complex social and cultural world of the university college. Quite simply, their success is inspiring.

Dr Tiffany Donnelly and Dr Tamson Pietsch Editors-in-Chief

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A vision of Together: The Women’s College within the University of Sydney DR TIFFANY DONNELLY, VICE PRINCIPAL

Alfred Tennyson published his long poem The Princess in 1847, at a time when The Woman Question was occupying the minds of Victorian public intellectuals as one of the great concerns of the day. The poem debates a conundrum: whether women should be educated in the same manner as men and what such a bold enterprise might mean for the future of marriage, of procreation, and of the exercise of social power. Tennyson plunges headlong into the debate and envisions for his readers an intellectual “oasis”—a women’s college in which men take no part, presided over by a beautiful princess who shuns marriage in favour of her books. Like all good nineteenth-century literary experiments concerning women, Tennyson’s women’s college is invariably doomed from the opening line. Why then, in 1894, did Louisa Macdonald, first Principal of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney, take as the motto for her visionary new institution a key word from Tennyson’s poem, memorialising forever that failed experiment?

The College Council Minutes do not record precisely how the Women’s College motto was chosen, but its connection to Tennyson’s poem has been an accepted fact. In April 1894 a small committee consisting of the Principal Louisa Macdonald, the Honorary Treasurer James Thomas Walker and the Secretary of the College Council George Edward Rich was entrusted with the task of preparing a plan for the College arms. The design, consisting of the open book and compass representing the dual pursuits of Arts and Science, the galley and the Southern Cross, seems to echo the sentiments of the University of Sydney’s motto Sidere mens

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eadem mutato.1 Hardy Brothers prepared the sketches for the design, which were given to the stone mason just days before the College was officially opened by the New South Wales’ Governor’s wife Lady Duff on 5 May 1894 (Edwards 12). Louisa Macdonald reported happily to her friend Eleanor Grove that during the opening ceremony, “the flag came off our carved stone with admirable promptitude at the first tug of the string” (qtd in Beaumont and Hole 54). The motto chosen for the College, Together, appears in a carved sandstone ribbon beneath the arms on the staircase at the entrance to Main Building.

It seems sensible to assume that Louisa Macdonald had a leading hand in the committee’s decision for taking Together as the motto for the Sydney Women’s College.2 Louisa had undertaken her Bachelor of Arts degree at London University, studying English in addition to maths, Greek and Latin and receiving first class honours and an MA in Classics (Beaumont and Hole 7, 8). Louisa was widely read and active in the establishment of the Women’s Literary Society in Sydney, acting as president from 1894. She was also founding president of the Sydney University Women’s Association (later Union) from 1893, which had reciprocal arrangements with the equivalent association at Melbourne University, the Princess Ida Club (Beaumont and Hole 81). Both women’s institutions therefore drew on Tennyson’s poem as inspiration.

The Princess The Princess is a tale within a tale. Three young men home from university for the summer compose a story in medley form for the amusement of friends at a picnic. The narrative of the tale is inspired by a comment made by one of the young women of the group, who expresses jealousy of the boys’ college stories, stating that if she were a “great princess”: “I would build/Far off from men a college like a man’s,/and I would teach [women] all that men are taught” [Prologue, 134-36]. By constructing an idealised women’s college from which men are completely excluded, the story sets out to explore one of the great questions of the day: whether with “equal husbandry/The woman were an equal to the man” [1, 129-30]. Tennyson 1

For a rough translation see http://sydney.edu.au/heraldry/coat_of_arms/motto.shtml

2

Of her fellow committee members, James Walker was a financier and businessman, and George Rich a Barrister and Challis lecturer in law at the University of Sydney (Annable 13).

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takes a lightly provocative tone in relaying the tale, but the poem mobilises the keys issues of the gender debate under discussion at the time, each of the characters taking a stance on women’s “proper” place and potential.

Betrothed from the age of seven, the Prince and Princess of the tale reach an age when they are due to marry, but Princess Ida has other ideas: she founds “an University/For maidens” [I, 149-50] in her father’s summer palace, decorating her “oasis” with female statuary and pursuing a curriculum similar to that taught to men at Oxford and Cambridge. Her betrothed concocts a plan to infiltrate the college by cross-dressing with two of his friends in an attempt to woo her back from this wayward path.

“Blue-eyed, and fair in face … With lengths of yellow ringlets, like a girl” [I, 1, 3], the Prince and his friends don academic robes over borrowed dresses and thus “woman-vested” [IV, 163] they are introduced to Princess Ida. As head of the college, Ida is a regal figure whose icy inaccessibility and militant virginity serve to heighten her allure. When the young wo/ men approach her she is seated at her desk, surrounded by books and paper and flanked by “two tame leopards.” Ida is “All beauty compass’d in a female form” [II, 20]:

… liker to the inhabitant

Of some clear planet close upon the Sun,

Than our man’s earth; such eyes were in her head,

And so much grace and power, breathing down

From over her arch’d brows … [II, 21-25]

Princess Ida lays the ground rules for her new fe/male protégées, telling them: “when we set our hand/To this great work, we purposed with ourself/ Never to wed” [II, 45-47]. She makes the recruits sign an oath:

Not for three years to correspond with home

Not for three years to cross the liberties

Not for three years to speak with any men.

[II, 56-58]

The Prince and his friends duly begin their education, attending lectures given with “flawless demonstration” by female professors and admitting that women “do all this as well as we” [II, 351, 367]. But the ruse is eventually uncovered by an indiscretion: one of the boys gets drunk at a picnic and makes a ribald comment, and the trio is exposed. Princess Ida

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has them expelled from the college by her personal henchwomen, “eight mighty daughters of the plough,” and spurns the Prince’s exhortations about their betrothal, saying “Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us:/I trample on your offers and on you” [IV, 524-25]. The lads return home to report their failure to the Prince’s father, and a war ensues between the two kingdoms to force Ida’s hand. Ida’s muscular brother Prince Arac is victorious, but not before Ida’s betrothed is struck a mortal blow in battle.

Called to the Prince’s bedside Ida softens, and a romantic resolution is reached, at the same time signalling the dissolution of Ida’s college, her “new-world Babel, woman-built” [IV, 466].

Reading The Princess: the evolutionary view On the surface of it the resolution of Tennyson’s poem is disappointing: noble ideals and serious intellectual pursuits give way to romantic sentiment, and women are propelled back into the domestic sphere in resounding defeat. Recent critic Laura Fasick argues, however, that Tennyson’s poem “deserves reconsideration” (26). While it has “long been subject to attack for allegedly treating the subject of female education with contempt” (26), Fasick notes that The Princess embodies a certain liberalism: a “heartfelt interest in moderation, reconciliation, and harmony.

Tennyson appears most deeply interested in what men and women have in common and he strongly suggests that improved education can deepen those commonalities” (28). Indeed, in looking closely at the text of the poem it is clear that Tennyson is presenting a view of femininity in flux: the older (male) generation is represented by Ida’s father King Gama, who espouses the traditional Victorian view of the sexes as properly existing in separate spheres:

Man for the field and woman for the hearth:

Man for the sword and for the needle she:

Man with the head and woman with the heart:

Man to command and woman to obey;

All else confusion.

[V, 437-41]

Ida clearly does not subscribe to this view, and nor, it turns out, does the Prince. Throughout the poem and at its resolution, alternative views are articulated by the younger generation which posit a move toward greater equality for the sexes, founded largely on the education of women. To give

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an example, Lady Psyche, one of the tutors at the College, predicts a future of total equality for men and women, in which there will be:

… everywhere

Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,

Two in the tangled business of the world,

Two in the liberal offices of life. [II, 155-58]

The precise reference which furnished the motto for the Women’s College within the University of Sydney is a statement uttered by the Prince, who pledges his promise to advance the cause for women—Tennyson’s poetic equivalent of a male champion of change:

Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know

The woman’s curse is man’s: they rise or sink

Together, dwarf’d or godlike, bond or free…

[VII, 242-44]

The poem carries a strong message that rather than heralding the end of marriage and childrearing, by educating women in total equality with men the sexes will reach a greater level of understanding and their differences will diminish, such that “upon the skirts of Time,” men and women will “Sit side by side, full-summ’d in all their powers” [VII, 270-71]. Read in this way, it is possible to see that “Tennyson’s primary metaphoric model for humanity generally and for men and women individually is evolutionary, with education as a key component in an evolutionary movement upward” (Fasick 28).

Together in solidarity In 1847 when Tennyson composed The Princess the experiment of a university college for women hadn’t yet been enacted. Almost fifty years later, when the Sydney Women’s College unveiled its foundation stone, history had already taken great strides forward. Girton and Newnham College were founded at Cambridge University in 1869 and 1871 and London University, Louisa Macdonald’s own alma mater, was the first in the United Kingdom to admit women to degrees in 1878. On the other side of the Atlantic, the movement for the seven sister colleges was strongly underway by the second half of the century, and in Australia, the Universities of Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney all admitted women

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to degrees in the early 1880s. Women’s higher education and women’s colleges were no longer a hypothetical concept. Louisa Macdonald could afford to ignore the substance of Tennyson’s poetic resolution and instead embrace its evolutionary spirit. As the flag came off the stone at the opening ceremony of the Women’s College, Louisa knew she was laying a foundation for women in the future. As she stated in her speech at the opening:

[Women’s colleges] have given back to women students the joys of life as well as of learning, and they have created centres of solidarity, forces that make for union in an age of disintegration.

The old ties of society are loosening, perhaps more than others, the traditional bonds of family unity and parental authority.

Surely it is as well that the women of the future should be trained to know what true union means, and to feel the privileges and responsibilities of being members of a corporate body. (Qtd Beaumont and Hole 57)

Louisa knew there was great work to do for women to reach equality with men, and she knew the important role her Women’s College would play in this evolutionary, even revolutionary process. Her choice for the College motto was self-consciously prophetic, and by remaining true to its origins the College continues steadfast on this path today.

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WORKS CITED Rosemary Annable (editor). Biographical Register: The Women’s College within the University of Sydney, Volume 1: 1892-1939. The Women’s College Council, 1995.

Jeanette Beaumont and W. Vere Hole. Letters from Louisa. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996.

Zeny Edwards. The Women’s College, An Architectural History 1894-2001. The Women’s College 2001.

Laura Fasick, “The Reform of Women’s Education in Tennyson’s The Princess and Gilbert and Sullivan’s Princess Ida” in Gender and Victorian Reform, ed. Anita Rose. Cambridge Scholars 2009, 26-43.

Alfred Tennyson. The Princess. In Alfred Tennyson: A Critical edition of the Major Works.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

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Reading romance: Homer and Chaucer ERIN MCFADYEN Arts 1st year Romance texts form such a heterogeneous corpus that we may reasonably ask how they can be considered a unified group. The paradigms which define romance differ from one contextual period to another, and many critical works on romance include the very admission that the genre is malleable and illusory.1 Homer’s The Odyssey and Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest’s Tale are significant romance texts from disparate contexts, and epitomise the heterogeneity of romance when read together. Considering the different ways in which they satisfy the fluid conventions of the genre, the challenges that these texts pose to romance expectations also become apparent. This essay aims to analyse the ways in which these two texts meet and challenge romantic conventions as they change over time.

The continuity between romance texts is accompanied by the constant redevelopment of the genre through challenge to established conventions.

Fundamental Romance: Reading The Odyssey as Romantic Text The Odyssey is often considered to be ‘the fountainhead of Greek romance.’2 Is it right to consider it the blueprint for romance as a genre?

The validity of The Odyssey as a romantic text is dependent on the criteria that define the genre. These criteria have undergone a metamorphosis over the history of enquiry into romance. In ancient Greek society, ‘romance’ 1

See, for example, Kevin Whetter, Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), and Yin Liu, ‘Middle English Romance as Prototype Genre’, The Chaucer Review 40 (2006): 335-353.

2

Bryan Reardon, The Form of Greek Romance, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 6.

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was a nonexistent concept. Homer’s intention cannot have been to create an explicitly ‘romantic’ text, nor would his audience have understood it as such.3 Earlier romance theorists associate the genre with texts written in vernacular (non-Latin) language.4 Initially, these texts were in French, with the tradition of vernacular composition coming to England around 1300. However, modern theorists of romance work a broader definition of the genre based on thematic and structural elements.5 Even the language used to designate the romance genre has evolved, with ‘roman’ in French now referring to any work of fiction in general.6 Such destabilisation of earlier concepts of romance has allowed The Odyssey to be associated with the genre, even though it was not written in a vernacular language. After all, in what language could Homer have possibly composed The Odyssey other than Greek? The Odyssey’s use of romance paradigms such as delay and the hero are enough for critics to consider it not only an example of romance, but also, a ‘fountainhead’ of the genre.7 Narrative delay is a fundamental characteristic of romance as it is understood by modern romance theorists.8 Even for Jameson, for whom romance is an exploration of the tension between good and evil, the concept of delay is an integral element of the genre.9 In the first chapter of The Odyssey, the narrator acknowledges Odysseus’ delayed return to Ithaca, elaborating that ‘when there came… the year that the gods had set for his journey home to Ithaca, not even then was he past his troubles’.10

3 Reardon, Greek Romance, 24.

4

See Christine Lee, ‘The Meanings of Romance: Rethinking Early modern Fiction’, Modern Philology 112 (2014): 287-311, and Robert Burlin, ‘Middle English Romance: The Structure of Genre’, The Chaucer Review 30 (1995); 1-14.

5

See, for example, Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), and Sheila Fisher, ‘Women and Men in Late Medieval Romance’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed.

Roberta Kreuger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 150-164.

6

Lee, ‘Meanings of Romance’, 295.

7

Reardon, Greek Romance.

8

See, for example, Barbara Fuchs, Romance: A New Critical Idiom, (New York: Routledge, 2004), and David Duff, Modern Genre Theory, (London: Longman, 2000).

9

Frederic Jameson, ‘Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre’, New Literary History 7 (1975): 135-163.

10

Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Walter Shrewing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 10.

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Odysseus is detained by Calypso, who ‘kept him captive within her arching caverns’, deferred by Circe, and threatened by the Cyclops, amongst a number of other episodes.11 The delay caused by such events is amplified by their chronological displacement within the narrative. In Book 9, Odysseus begins to retell his previous adventures to the Phaecians. In retelling his long chain of challenges and chance encounters, Odysseus takes the audience back through time to an earlier point than that at which The Odyssey began. Here, we make reverse progress in time and narrative progression through a narrative structure which epitomises the concept of delay.12 The Odyssey demonstrates key traits that define romance as a genre, but it challenges some generic conventions as well. Its treatment of gender both conforms to and challenges what have come to be regarded as romantic conventions. Modern critics identify differences between ‘types’ of romance texts associated with different time periods. ‘Greek’ romance differs from ‘chivalric’ romance, and so on.13 In Greek romance, female characters are seen either as agents of delay, or protagonists of their own subplots, who use cunning to overcome their lack of strength.14 Females in The Odyssey satisfy both of these criteria. The antagonising figures of Circe and Calypso represent two significant sources of delay for Odysseus.

Elsewhere, Penelope utilises cunning to defer the progress of her unwanted suitors, who ‘had regard for no man, good or bad’.15 Penelope also provides some narrative delay upon Odysseus’ return, ‘putting her husband to the test’ by challenging his knowledge of the marriage bed that has stood in the house since before his departure to Troy.16 Athena, conversely, is problematic for this assessment of female figures in Greek romance.

Rather than being a source of delay, Athena catalyses progress in the plot.

She announces that she ‘will go to Ithaca to rouse (Odysseus’) son and put

11 Homer, The Odyssey.

12 See Lee, ‘Meanings of Romance’, and Fuchs, Romance, and Jon Whitman, ‘Thinking backward and forward: narra-tive order and the beginnings of romance,’ Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 4 (2006), 131-150.

13

Lee, ‘Meanings of Romance’, 304.

14 Frye, Secular Scripture, 56.

15 Homer, The Odyssey, 228.

16 Homer, The Odyssey, 232.

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fresh eagerness in his heart…’17 Athena’s role as a cause of progression in the plot is antithetical to the critical conception of the female in Greek romance. Such challenges to generic conventions contribute to perceptions of romance as ‘loose and ill-defined.’18 Romance Convention and Continuity Between Homer and Chaucer Given critics’ changing definitions of romance, it is surprising that continuity can be found in The Odyssey and The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Some characteristics shared by the two works allow them both to be considered romance texts. Both Homer and Chaucer utilise an array of perspectives to tell their narratives. From the start of The Odyssey, Athena describes the character of Odysseus in her dialogue with the other gods. She proclaims Odysseus to be ‘so subtle a man and so ill-starred’, and recounts some of his misadventures.19 We then experience Odysseus’ own perspective of himself and his adventures as he narrates the events that lead him to the Phaecians. This plurality of perspectives leads to an emphasis on the individual protagonist’s identity and the ways it is understood and revealed.20 The variety of perspectives from which the hero is viewed in the poem mirrors the malleable nature of the identity of ‘subtle Odysseus,’ who seems to reshape himself constantly.

Narrative voices also abound in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. The plurality of narrative voices reaches its zenith when a character within a tale which is recounted by Chauntecleer exclaims ‘O blisful God, that art so just and trewe…’21 Here, a character within a tale told by Chauntecleer, himself a character in the tale told by the Nun’s Priest, speaks. The Nun’s Priest, however, is only a character in a tale told by Chaucer the narrator, who is constructed by Chaucer the poet. Giving Chauntecleer a place in this line of narrative voices does allow a deeper understanding of the protagonist’s identity, as Odysseus’ narration does in Homer. However, the range of voices in the The Nun’s Priest’s Tale also ‘addresses the precise historical context out of which it emerges’, as it emphasises the growing range of 17

Homer, The Odyssey, 4.

18

Lee, ‘Meanings of Romance’, 287.

20

Gaunt, ‘Romance and Other Genres’, 47.

19 21

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Homer, The Odyssey, 5.

Chaucer, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, 256.

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social groups whose voices were present in Chaucer’s English court. The romance convention of utilising many narrative voices is demonstrated by these two texts. However, it is applied in varying ways, and to different effect. Romance as a genre has unifying characteristics, but is not a uniform set of standards met in the same way by each text considered to be ‘a romance’.

Change and Challenge: Parody and Generic Plurality in Chaucer Despite the persistence of some romance conventions across time, the paradigms which define each type of romance text frequently differ from one to the other.22 Chaucer’s treatment of gender and class demonstrates the diversity of approaches to this paradigm. In Greek romance, most important characters are members of the nobility.23 Chaucer’s Chauntecleer resembles the noble hero of both Greek and early French romance. The nobility of one whose ‘coomb was redder than the fyn coral’ is undeniable, particularly when his ‘coomb’ is likened to a ‘castel wall’, a symbol of nobility.24 However, Medieval English romance often treats class differently to Greek romance. Influenced by an English social context, in which the court was an environment ‘where individuals from a variety of social backgrounds met,’ Chaucer creates important characters from a variety of social groups.25 The Canterbury Tales are told by pilgrims of a variety of professions. Furthermore, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is set in the cottage of ‘a povre wydwe,’26 in a vivid depiction of contemporary English subsistence farming.27 Thus a specifically Medieval English tradition of romance is expressed in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale through the inclusion of characters from a range of social classes. The depiction of this impoverished character as a woman also aligns with typical gender roles in Medieval romance. These differed from Greek romance in persistently

22 23

Fuchs, Romance.

Frye, Secular Scripture, 35.

24 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 254.

25 Simon Gaunt, ‘Romance and other genres’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta Kreuger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 45-59.

26

Chaucer, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, 252.

27 Peter Travis, Disseminal Chaucer: Rereading The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 123.

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relating the lower class to the feminine.28 In this way the paradigms that define romance change over time, sometimes in response to specific contextual influences.

Change in the defining paradigms which define romance is not only affected by contextual specificities, but by the challenges that individual texts pose to established conventions. The interaction of many genres in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale challenges romantic paradigms within the text. Key characteristics of the beast fable are evident in the work: the protagonist is an animal whose tale is moralising to a human audience. Beast fables lend themselves to parody, and help to make light of serious thematic concerns, as well as literary traditions.29 The satire that The Nun’s Priest’s Tale offers is particularly pertinent given that the Nun’s Priest’s brief for the story is to ‘telle (the pilgrims) which thyng as may (their) heartes glade.’30 This call for light-heartedness is met by the mélange of genres making up ‘one of Chaucer’s most … artistically complex tales.’31 The tale includes such genres as debate, as Chauntecleer and Pertelote argue over the significance of dreams. A sense of the debate genre is heightened by Chauntecleer’s legal language, as he proclaims ‘so moot I thee.’32 A digression into a saint’s life aggregates the count of genres, as for some few lines Chauntecleer retells events from the life of ‘Seint Kenelm.’33 Romance does figure in the complex generic equation of the tale. Certain romantic conventions are parodied in the tale, including the figure of the hero. Chaucer hyperbolises the heroic character of Chauntecleer, describing him as having ‘hadde in his governaunce seven hennes for to doon al his plesaunce.’34 The element of beast fable, where the hyperbolised heroic figure is not a noble man but a simple cock, mocks the literary conventions of the romance genre. Thus, the many genres Chaucer uses in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale provide a both parody and a development of romance conventions.

28 Susan Crane, Gender and Romance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 93.

29 30

John Finlayson, ‘Reading Chaucer’s Nuns Priest’s Tale: Mixed Genres and Multi-Layered Worlds of Illusion’, English Studies 86 (2005): 483-510.

Chaucer, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, 252.

31

Finlayson, ‘Mixed Genres and Multi-Layered Worlds’, 484.

33

Chaucer, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, 261.

32 34

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Chaucer, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, 257.

Chaucer, ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, 253.

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Is it useful to consider romance a unified genre, given that both continuity and change are evident in the corpus of romance texts? Romance is not a set of ‘contracts between reader and writer’35 that are set in stone, rather it is ‘constantly transformed through textual production as new texts add new features.’36 The mélange of romance with other genres, exemplified by Chaucer, demonstrates a key way in which romance develops over time.

Through playing on the expectations of other genres, romance is able to expand its own horizons, as, for example, the protagonist is developed from Homer’s heroic Odysseus to Chaucer’s satirical Chauntecleer.37 Another possible consideration, given the fluidity of romance, is romance as a mode that is utilised within a range of genres.38 Fuchs considers romance to be ‘one aspect of a text, rather than simply the category into which the whole will fit.’39 Romance as a mode is characterised by aspects previously identified with the romance genre. As modal aspects, these characteristics can be used more fluidly in conjunction with many other genres, as exemplified by Chaucer. This helps to explain the incredible variety amongst texts with which the term ‘romance’ is associated, and to account for the process of evolution that has occurred within romance as a genre.

Romance is a heterogeneous category. While the critical understandings of romance as a genre have evolved over time, so too have the very characteristics of texts considered to fall under the wide umbrella of romance. As both Homer’s The Odyssey and Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest’s Tale exploit romantic strategies, they do so in varying ways. Often, this can be explained by the malleability of romance to specific contextual conditions of its composition. However, the great flexibility of romance may lead us to consider it a genre which by definition is constantly evolving through challenge to its own conventions. We may not even consider it a unified genre at all, but a mode employed within a wide range of texts.

35

Jameson, ‘Magical Narratives’, 135.

36

Gaunt, ‘Romance and other Genres’, 58.

38

Fuchs, Romance, and Patricia Parker, Inescapable romance: studies in the poetics of a mode, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

37

Gaunt, ‘Romance and Other Genres’, 50.

39 Fuchs, Romance, 7.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Burlin, Robert. ‘Middle English Romance: The Structure of Genre’. In The Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 1-14.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. In The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry Benson, 252-261. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Crane, Susan. Gender and Romance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Duff, David. Modern Genre Theory. London: Longman, 2000.

Finlayson, John. ‘Reading Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale: Mixed Genres and Multi-Layered Worlds of Illusion’. In English Studies 86 (2005): 483-510.

Fisher, Sheila. ‘Women and Men in Medieval Romance.’ In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, edited by Roberta Kreuger, 150-164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Frye, Northrop. The Secular Scripture: The Structure of Romance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Fuchs, Barbara. Romance: A New Critical Idiom. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Gaunt, Simon. ‘Romance and Other Genres’. In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, edited by Roberta Kreuger, 45-59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Walter Shrewing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Jameson, Frederic. ‘Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre’. In New Literary History 7 (1975):135-163.

Lee, Christine. ‘The Meanings of Romance: Rethinking Early Modern Fiction.’ In Modern Philology 112 (2014): 287-311.

Liu, Yin. ‘Middle English Romance as Prototype Genre’. The Chaucer Review 40 (2006): 335353.

Parker, Patricia. Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Travis, Peter. Disseminal Chaucer: Rereading The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.

Reardon, Bryan. The Form of Greek Romance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Whetter, Kevin. Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance. Aldershot: Ashgate 2008.

Whitman, Jon. ‘Thinking Backward and Forward: Narrative Order and the Beginnings of Romance’. In Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 4 (2006): 131-150.

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Vaccinating against preventable diseases CAMILLA CAMERON Masters of Public Health Australia has a long history of a strong vaccination program that has effectively eradicated or significantly reduced the prevalence of many preventable diseases. This has been achieved through a thorough immunisation schedule, which has vaccinations listed for children from when they are born, and throughout childhood a school-based intervention program (DOH 2015, ‘National Immunisation Program Schedule’). As Ward et al. (2013, p.

1413) have found, vaccinating against preventable diseases has significantly reduced the burden of disease on the Australian health system by providing greater immunity to vaccinated individuals. This immunity has also been beneficial to those who are unable to be immunised, as they are protected from diseases through herd immunity (because the people with whom they come into contact are protected from diseases and unable to transfer to an unvaccinated individual) (Anderson & May, 1990, p. 642).

In recent years however, Australia’s herd immunity has come under threat with an ever-increasing anti-vaccination campaign, and generally rising numbers of unvaccinated individuals. The reduction in vaccination is leaving the nation vulnerable to contracting previously eradicated preventable diseases, as was observed in the 2012 outbreak of measles in NSW (Lauder, 2013). The anti-vaccination movement has grown from the fear that vaccination leads to autism in children, an association arising from a 1998 article by Wakefield et al. (1998) that presented a link between the measles vaccination and autism. Although this article has since been retracted and research been conducted debunking this theory, it has remained powerful in the memories of many people (Taylor, Swerdfeger & Eslick, 2014).

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In 2013, NSW had the highest number of parents objecting to vaccinating their children in Australia, with 9625 of the 36320 national total (DOH, 2015, ‘ACIR – National Vaccine Objection’; Jennings-Edquist, 2015). The highest rates of anti-vaccination came from the northern coast of NSW, with Byron Bay having only 66.7% of children under five fully vaccinated (National Health Performance Authority, 2014, p. 35). The national number of unvaccinated children with a conscientious objection recorded has risen from 0.23% in 1999 to 1.77% in 2014 (DOH, 2015, ‘ACIR – National Vaccine Objection’). The increasing number of parents objecting to vaccinating their children has compelled the government to enact tough new legislation in an attempt to re-instate Australia’s high vaccination rates. However other strategies must also be embraced to counter the anti-vaccination campaign.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott proposed a series of disincentives targeted at those not vaccinating their children. He suggested that parents who do not vaccinate their children would be ineligible for the childcare rebate, which has become increasingly relied upon by parents due to the rising prices of childcare (Lusted & Greene, 2015). In a media release on April 12, 2015, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, presented their ‘No Jab – No Play and No Pay for Child Care’ media release that stated that ‘from 1 January 2016, conscientious objection will be removed as an exemption category for child care payments’ and that religious objection will be tightened, with only those who are members of a government approved religious body allowed continued exemption. The aim of this policy is to force parents to vaccinate their children in order to access the often much-needed rebate, thus raising immunisation rates.

A diverse and strong strategy must be implemented to solve the rising antivaccination movement in order to re-establish Australia’s high immunisation rate. Disincentives could extend beyond withholding childcare rebates, and could go further into taxation or an increase in health insurance premiums, so that the burden of disease prevention would be more equitably shared throughout the population. In the United States, monetary disincentives such as fines, limitations on what schools children can attend and a reduction in the number of food vouchers allocated to families, have been used successfully against families who do not adhere to the recommended childhood vaccinations (Bernheim, Childress, Melnick & Bonnie, 2013, p. 36).

Disincentives such as these could be effective in increasing the vaccination rate. However there are concerns that disincentive policies run against the

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rights of parents to make decisions for their children and will not have a positive effect on altering the perspective of anti-vaccination advocates.

An Australian anti-vaccination group has compared forced vaccination to rape, presenting a black and white image of a man with his hand over a woman’s face, and text reading ‘FORCED PENETRATION Really – no big deal, if it’s just a vaccination needle, and he’s a doctor. Do you really “need” control over your own choices?’ (SBS, 2015). Although this image has since been retracted from the Facebook page on which it appeared, the sentiment that mandating a medical procedure is against the rights of Australian citizens still remains within the anti-vaccination community. It is these staunch antivaccine advocates that will be the most difficult to counter. This problem must be countered with new approaches. Kristine Macartney, an associate professor in paediatrics and child health, has argued that punishment and punitive measures may backfire, as this will not alter the opinion of firm antivaccinators, and has the potential to put low socio-economic families in a negative financial position, potentially limiting their access to other medical resources (Macartney, 2015).

Children whose parents are strongly opposed to vaccinations account for less than half of children who are not vaccinated in Australia (Macartney, 2015.) Here, incentives, education and awareness surrounding the benefits of vaccination, but also the necessity of herd immunity will be necessary to create a shift in perceptions and actions (Ward et al., 2012, p. 371). A collaboration between families who have been impacted by preventable diseases, (such as that of Perth baby Riley Hughes who died at one month old due to pertussis) and the community would be an effective strategy to instigate change within the anti-vaccination community, as it is directed by individuals rather than the government, and aims to educate and bring the detrimental effects of not vaccinating to light (Light for Riley, 2015). Parents who are opposed to vaccinations will need to connect with the information that they are receiving, and not feel coerced into changing their position. This has been slowly occurring as more families are experiencing preventable diseases in their children, and realising the importance of herd immunity and vaccination. Many online blog posts are appearing in which parents speak of their previous mistrust of the medical profession and decisions to not vaccinate, and their change of mind when their children develop preventable diseases. Tara Hills (2015) whose seven unvaccinated children developed pertussis has blogged about her experiences going from ‘#AntiVaxx to

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Science’ in an attempt to educate and encourage other anti-vaccination parents to vaccinate. Using emotive stories such as this, and engaging anti-vaccinators on a personal level is a strategy that could successfully be employed to increase vaccination against preventable diseases.

Research has shown that over 50% of Australian children who are not vaccinated have experienced financial or geographical barriers to medical access, and so it is important to develop programs to vaccinate these children as well (Macartney, 2015). Geographical barriers could be overcome by supporting and expanding existing mobile vaccination services, such as that operating in Wodonga, Victoria, and using this model to establish more mobile services to travel to remote areas of Australia (City of Wodonga, 2015, ‘Mobile Immunisation’). Although the initial upfront cost of a program such as this would be high, the long term health benefits and reduction of burden of disease would outweigh this initial cost. Increasing parents’ knowledge of the vaccination schedule and reminding them when their child is overdue for a vaccination would also have a significant impact on increasing vaccination rates. Ward, Chow, King and Leask (2012, p. 371) found that more than 50% of children whose vaccinations were overdue would become vaccinated if their parents were reminded about the schedule. A simple strategy such as an automated text message reminder encouraging parents to adhere to the immunisation schedule would help to increase vaccination against preventable diseases. This type of strategy would also be low in cost, yet produce a significant long-term health gain.

Reducing the costs associated with vaccination could also be successful in vaccinating the children whose parents are not contentiously objecting, but rather unable to access health services easily. This could be achieved by encouraging more general practitioners to bulk bill children’s vaccinations, as vaccinations on the National Immunisation Schedule are already free for eligible groups (DOH, 2015). Currently there are State-based immunisation programs operating within schools that have been successful in vaccinating school-aged children against many preventable diseases as well as administering ‘booster’ vaccinations to those they received as younger children. This program has been effective in keeping immunisation rates high in Australia. Because the vaccines are free there has been no costs for families, and they are administered at the child’s school in order to reduce barriers to access. These programs remind parents of the vaccination schedule and create a community-based intervention (Ward, Menzies, Quinn

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& Campbell-Lloyd, 2010). A similar program could be created targeting younger children through day cares centres in order to address accessibility, costs and reminders. A program for younger children, however, would require parents to be present at the time of vaccination, unlike the schoolaged program. This could create slight inefficiencies, but a program such as this would still be effective in increasing compliance to the vaccination schedule for younger children.

Given the increasing number of unvaccinated children, strong strategies to increase vaccination rates must be re-established. These strategies should aim to educate and alter the opinion of anti-vaccinators, as well as to encourage those who are behind on the immunisation schedule or have limited access to medical facilities to vaccinate their children. This can be achieved through both incentives and disincentives, and a multi-faceted campaign using many strategies, resources and programs that specifically target certain groups within the community will have the greatest success.

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REFERENCES Abbott, T., Morrison, S. (2015, April 12). Media Release: No Jab – No Play and no Pay for Child Care. Accessed April 15, retrieved from http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2015/04/12/no-jabno-play-and-no-pay-child-care.

Anderson, R, M., May, R, M. (1990). Modern Vaccines: Immunisation and Herd Immunity. The Lancet. 335(8690). 641-645.

Bernheim, R, G., Childress, J, F., Melnick, A, M., Bonnie, R, J. (2013). Essentials of Public Health Ethics. Burlington, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

City of Wodonga. (2015). Mobile Immunisation. Accessed April 24, retrieved from http://www. wodonga.vic.gov.au/community-services/children-families/immunisation.asp#mobsess.

Department of Health. (2014). Measles – Elimination Achieved in Australia. Accessed April 11, retrieved from http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ohp-measles-elimannounce-2014.htm.

Department of Health. (2015) Immunise Australia Program: National Immunisation Schedule.

Accessed April 11, retrieved from http://www.immunise.health.gov.au/internet/immunise/ publishing.nsf/Content/nips.

Department of Health. (2015) Immunise Australia Program: ACIR – National Vaccine Objection (Conscientious Objection) Data. Accessed April 11, retrieved from http://www.immunise.health. gov.au/internet/immunise/publishing.nsf/Content/acir-cons-object-hist.htm.

Hills, T. (2015, April 8). Learning the Hard Way: My Journey from #AntiVacc to Science. [Web log post]. Accessed April 26, retrieved from http://thescientificparent.org/learning-the-hard-way-myjourney-from-antivaxx-to-science/.

Jennings-Edquist, G. (2015). The most popular anti-vaxxer hot spots in Australia. Do you live in one? [Web log post] Accessed April 24, retrieved from http://www.mamamia.com.au/news/ vaccinations-for-children-in-australia/.

Lauder, S. (2013, March 20). Anti-vaccination campaigns threaten measles-free status. ABC News: The World Today. Accessed 8 April, retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-20/antivaccination-campaigns-threaten-measles-free-status/4584514.

Light for Riley—continuing the fight against vaccine preventable diseases (2015). [Facebook page].

Accessed April 24, retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/lightforriley/timeline.

Lusted, P., Greene, A. (2015, April 12). Childcare rebates could be denied to anti-vaccination parents under new Federal Government laws. News ABC. Accessed April 15, retrieved from http:// www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-12/parents-who-refuse-to-vaccinate-to-miss-out-on-childcarerebates/6386448.

Macartney, K. (2015, March 4). Support, not punishment, the best way to boost vaccination. The University of Sydney: News. Accessed April 20, retrieved from http://sydney.edu.au/news/84. html?newsstoryid=14653.

National Health Performance Authority (2014). Healthy Communities: Immunisation Rates for Children in 2012-13. Sydney: Australia.

SBS (2015, April 23). An Australian anti-vaccination group has pulled an image likening immunisation to rape after widespread outrage on social media, saying the image ‘should not have been posted’. SBS News. Accessed April 25, retrieved from http://www.sbs.com.au/news/ article/2015/04/23/anti-vax-group-pulls-facebook-image-comparing-vaccination-rape.

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Taylor, L, E., Swerdfeger, A, L., Eslick, G, D. (2014). Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-based meta-analysis of case-controlled and cohort studies. Vaccine 32(29), 3623-3629.

Ward, K., Dey, A., Hull, B., Quinn, H., Macartney, K., Menzies, R. (2013). Evaluation of Australia’s varicella vaccination program for children and adolescents. Elsevier. 31, 1413-1419.

Ward, K., Chow, M, Y, K., King, C., Leask, J. (2012). Strategies to improve vaccination uptake in Australia, a systematic review of types and effectiveness. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. 36(4). 369-377.

Ward, K, F., Menzies, R, I., Quinn, H, E., Campbell-Lloyd, S. (2010). School Based Vaccination in NSW. NSW Pubic Health Bulletin 21(9-10), 237-242.

Wakefield, A, J., Murch, S, H., Anthony, A., Linnell, J., Casson, D, M., Malik, M., Walker-Smith, J, A. (1998). Ileal-lymphold-nodular hyperplasla, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. The Lancet. 351. 637-641.

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Death rituals and beliefs: An anthropological perspective FIONA ALAMYAR Arts Law 2nd year

Despite its universality as an intrinsic aspect of human existence, death is experienced and understood in a plethora of ways by different peoples.

Spirituality acts as one of the principal forces determining how death is reacted to, spoken about and characterised by a given society. As an anthropologist, analysing a people’s beliefs and rituals surrounding death can reveal a great deal about how they comprehend their lives. They highlight how people understand their world and their place within it. Links with one’s surrounding environment, relationships with other individuals and connections with spiritual beings are all reflected in customs and beliefs regarding death. Funerals merely comprise a singular aspect of how death is ritually recognised. Ritual acts as a means of connecting beings from dissimilar worlds whilst also enabling a transition from one state of being to another (Macdonald 2014:7). Diversity in practice and thinking about death is embodied by the rituals for ancestral spirits performed by the Tallensi of Northern Ghana and mourning rituals of Aboriginal Australians from northeast Arnhem Land. The beliefs and practices of these two peoples affirm the importance of kinship, religion and nature in coping with death and also carrying out the functions of life. Thus, due to the fact that death is intrinsic to life, the same values and forces influencing the ways in which people live their lives will shape the manner in which they regard death.

The mourning rituals of Aboriginal Australians in northeast Arnhem Land expound the function of a classificatory kinship system in determining the roles and responsibilities that individuals have to others. These distinctive relationships are clearly evident during funeral ceremonies when members of particular clans must carry out certain tasks during the proceedings.

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This is illustrated in the film Madarrpa funeral at Gurka’wuy (1978), which records the funeral ceremony of a four-month-old boy belonging to the Madarrpa clan who died unexpectedly at the Marrakulu clan homeland centre of Gurka’wuy in 1976. People from different clans who possess specific kinship links with the boy are called to Gurka’wuy to carry out specific tasks during the ceremony. For example, members of the Dhalwangu (the child’s mother’s mother’s) clan are required to paint the coffin with sacred ancestral designs while only members of the Gumatj (the child’s mother’s) clan are permitted to touch the baby’s body. Thus, adherence to these rules is a reflection of the kinship-oriented nature of Aboriginal Australian society and the way in which they understand their lives, and subsequently deaths, to be governed by this system of social placement.

Similarly, the centrality of kinship is evident in Tallensi religious beliefs regarding ancestral spirits. This is revealed through Meyer Fortes’ analysis of Tallensi religion in which he stresses that the key to understanding their so-called “ancestor cult” (Fortes 1959:13 in Morris 1994:125) exists in their family and kinship system (Morris 1994:125). Ancestral spirits are thought to permeate every aspect of Tallensi life and are constantly exercising their power over living individuals, for example by inflicting misfortunes or slaying their descendants (Morris 1994:125). These spirits demand compliance with basic kinship norms and obligations, and consequently, transgressions of these laws are punishable by death (Morris 1994:125). Therefore, explanations of such deaths emphasise the importance of kinship in shaping how an individual must carry out their daily life.

Tallensi beliefs and rituals regarding their ancestors also reveal the manner in which they regard personhood. This is the focus of Fortes (1987) who moves beyond the limitations of the structural-functionalist paradigm in which he works by using elements of psychoanalysis. He attempts to reconcile social structure with abstract ideas relating to the individual and psychology to great insightful effect (Morris 1994:124). Drawing on the Maussian concept of personhood, Fortes explains how a process of mutual regulation exists between the individual and society (1987:250).

Tallensi religious beliefs regarding the connection between personhood and the way in which somebody dies can be viewed as a result of this dynamic interplay. According to Tallensi thought, an individual can only

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achieve full personhood under certain circumstances (Morris 1994:128).

Personhood is intrinsically linked with the attainment of ancestorhood, as well as politico-ritual offices such as chief and custodian of the earth (Morris 1994:128). Upon death, only a male person who has male descendants in the patrilineal line can be transposed into an ancestor, thereby validating his full person status (Morris 1994:128). A significant implication of being precluded from attaining full personhood is that women and the mentally ill are regarded as being less important in Tallensi society (Morris 1994:128).

After his father’s death, a son is considered a mature man for the purposes of ritual and must make sacrifices to the ancestors, especially his own father (Macdonald 2014a:11). These rituals emphasise the centrality of religion within Tallensi culture and mediate linkages between the Tallensi and the ancestral spirits who exist in complementary opposition and share the same moral universe (Morris 1994:125).

The funerary rites of sacred crocodiles also provide a useful means by which to understand the Tallensi notion of personhood. These crocodiles are distinct from their wild counterparts and are housed in sacred pools within villages (Fortes 1987:248-49). In Tallensi society, sacred crocodiles are considered to be the incarnation or “living shrines” (Fortes 1987:256) of important clan ancestors. Therefore, there is no clear delineation between the human and non-human worlds. Sacred crocodiles are considered persons, but importantly not in the same sense as humans, to a particular group of Tallensi (Fortes 1987:254). This is evidenced in the fact that upon death these sacred crocodiles are buried and given a symbolic funeral in the same manner as humans (Fortes 1987:254). A need to keep the ancestors and nature in perfect tandem permeates this ritual practice.

A similar cosmological view of the world is also apparent in the mourning rituals of Aboriginal Australians from northeast Arnhem Land. The funeral ceremony in Madarppa funeral at Gurka’wuy (1978) highlights the intrinsic link that exists between Aboriginal people and nature as dictated by spiritual beliefs. The entire funeral ceremony is conducted outside, during which time songs are sung by individuals from different clans about a number of ancestral spirits. For example, at the beginning of the funeral, songs relating to the cockatoo are sung to express the Madarrpa child’s connection to his mother’s clan. Other songs relating to the heron and fresh water fish are also used to convey links with other clans. These songs reflect the centrality of clan totemism within Aboriginal life. Peterson

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(1972:29) most effectively explains the idea of clan totemism as a way in which relations between individuals and their world can be connected in terms of sentiment. Whilst working within a structuralist framework, Peterson draws on aspects of psychology in a similar manner to Fortes (1987). Place is isolated as a key unifying focus of the human tendency to form sentimental attachments (Peterson 1972:13). Totemism thus serves as a unifying mechanism that connects Aboriginal sentiments and beliefs regarding people and their environment, thereby itself becoming a focus of such sentiments (Peterson 1987:29).

Arising from the notion of totemism is a strong sense of moral custodianship and responsibility to the land, which governs the way in which Aboriginal people live their lives (Bodley 2000:25-6). In Madarppa funeral at Gurka’wuy (1978) this spiritual connection is evident in the prominent role that the physical environment plays in mourning rituals.

During the Gumatj clan’s yellow ochre ceremony, the white caps of the surrounding waves connect with the white paint of the dancers. The raising and lowering of the deceased child’s body symbolises the movement of the flooding Garingarin river waters. The river serves as a symbol of the interconnections from one country to another and on a deeper level is an object of the Yarritja moiety. A key limitation of the ethnography conveyed in Madarrpa funeral at Gurka’wuy (1978) is the fact that only some meanings are revealed to the audience due to their sacred nature in Aboriginal culture. Whilst this can be problematic for an anthropologist utilising the technique of “collage” (Kapferer 2000:188) or engaging in the re-analysis of ethnographic materials, the producer’s need to be culturally sensitive and guard against ethnocentrism is of the utmost importance.

The strong sense of place evident in Aboriginal mourning rituals reflects the Aboriginal belief in country as the mediator between the Tjukurrpa domain and the human world (Macdonald 2014b:4). Thus, these aspects of Aboriginal mourning rituals are testament to the way in which Aboriginal Australians understand their own lives to be intrinsically linked with the natural world around them.

Also evident in these ritual practices is the Aboriginal idea of human life comprising one aspect of an individual’s spiritual existence. In Madarppa funeral at Gurka’wuy (1978) the deceased child’s body is buried at the sacred crocodile nest at Blue Mud Bay. This sacred site holds significance for the Madarrpa and Gumatj clans as the baru (crocodile) serves as one

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of their ancestral beings. Once the boy’s body is safe, it is said to journey back to the Madarrpa clan lands as a spirit child where he will wait to be born again. The child is thus returned to the Tjukurrpa through this funeral ceremony (Macdonald 2014b:4). This illustrates the way in which Aboriginal people understand their mortal lives to be part of a much broader cycle of spiritual renewal that is driven by a single life force.

Rituals and beliefs relating to death are intrinsically connected to the values that shape the way in which we live our lives. The thinking and practices of people such as Aboriginal Australians and the Tallensi of Northern Ghana highlight the roles of kinship, religion and land in defining their cultural worlds. All three of these notions constitute threads that connect individuals to each other, to spiritual worlds and to the physical world around them. Thus death serves as a useful means to provide anthropologists with insights into how people understand the nature of life.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bodley, J. H. 2000. Australian Aborigines: mobile foragers for 50,000 Years. In Cultural Anthropology, pp. 25-39. London: Mayfield.

Fortes, M. 1959. Oedipus and Job in west African religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fortes, M. 1987. The concept of the person. In Religion, morality and the person: Essays on Tallensi religion, pp. 247-256. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kapferer, B. 2000. Star wars: about anthropology, culture and globalisation. Australian Journal of Anthropology 11(2): 174-198.

Launay, R. n.d. Idea of the person: the anthropology of the person since Mauss. Accessed 25/01/2011, http://science.jrank.org/pages/10633/Person-Idea-Anthropology-Person-since-Mauss.html Madarrpa funeral at Gurka-wuy 1978, DVD, Film Australia, Sydney, Australia. Directed by Ian Dunlop.

Macdonald, G. 2014a. Lecture Notes, Week 6. ANTH1001. University of Sydney.

Macdonald, G. 2014b. Lecture Notes, Week 7-8. ANTH1001. University of Sydney.

Morris, C. 1994. Tallensi. In Anthropology of the self, pp. 123-130. London: Pluto Press.

Peterson, N. 1972. Totemism yesterday: sentiment and local organisation among the Australian Aborigines. Man (New Series) 7: 12-32.

Strehlow, T. G. H. 1978. Life on earth and The individual and his totem. In Central Australian religion, pp. 14-26. Bedford Park: AASR.

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Sounding like emotions feel: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 81a (“Les Adieux”) JULIA DONNELLY Musicology 2nd year

History is a complex field of study. However we decide to subdivide time, it will always be a reflection of our own personal views; it can never be proven. Adding the concept of ‘emotion’ to this field, with the subjectivity created by the fact that we can only ever experience our own emotions, therefore seems like a formula for intellectual mayhem. However, the history of the emotions has flourished since the mid-twentieth century.

Psychological, biological, historical and cultural studies of emotion have consistently been produced in an effort to understand the impact of feeling on perceptions and experiences of the world.1 It is notable that every discipline focusing on the history of emotion identifies the period from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century as an important time of change. Musically, this change is almost invariably traced back to the works of Ludwig van Beethoven, as his “…emotional life, his nonmusical intellectual interests, and his musical pursuits…[formed] an ultimate unity in the creative process…”2 in a way that was unique at the time. Beethoven was not the first composer to include elements of emotion in his music. However it can be seen from the Op. 81a piano sonata (“Les Adieux”, 1809-10) that Beethoven’s music paralleled the emotional shift taking place during his lifetime.

1 2

Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1-2

Glen Stanley, “Beethoven at work: musical activist and thinker,” in The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, ed. Glen Stanley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 31

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While the nature of the change in the view of emotions is contentious, broadly, this shift moves from what cultural historians such as William Reddy describe as eighteenth-century “sentimentalism”, or seeing the emotions as useful for moral judgement, to one of restraint in the nineteenth century, where the emotions were seen as conflicting with reason and rational decision making; a change many historians such as Reddy attribute to the impact of the French Revolution and Reign of Terror.3 This more generalised shift had dramatic implications for the role of the arts in society. Where previously the arts were a medium for portraying the sentiments, they now became a method of experiencing emotion for a public that saw emotion as having no role in everyday life or rational thought.4 The arts, in other words, “…were not intended to improve one’s morality, they were intended to open one up to an otherwise hidden world of meaning, strife, feeling and endeavour…”5 Concurrently, instrumental music was undergoing an aesthetic change as it became “… the paradigm case for music…by the middle of the nineteenth century[,]”6 where opera had dominated during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.7 While opera did not lose significance, instrumental music came to be considered of equal or greater value, with early nineteenth century music commentators, such as E.T.A. Hoffman, expressing the view that “…[instrumental] music’s power lay precisely in its ability to transcend the conditions of ordinary existence.”8 As such, it is clear that this was not only a time of important cultural change, but also that this cultural change was inextricably tied to a change in the role and reception of music in society.

3 4 5 6

William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: a framework for the history of emotions, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 216-8, accessed 26 April 2015, Google Books

Barbara Rosenwein, review of “The Navigation of Feeling: a framework for the history of emotions” by William Reddy, The American Historical Review 107, no. 4 (October 2002): 1182, accessed 25 April 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/532671 William M. Reddy, “Historical Research on the Self and Emotions,” Emotion Review 1 no. 4 (October 2009): 309, accessed 25 April 2015, doi: 10.1177/1754073909338306 Nicholas Cook and Nicola Dibben, “Musicological approaches to emotion,” in Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, ed. Patrik N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 47

7 ibid.

8

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ibid., 48

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Beethoven’s Op. 81a piano sonata is temporally situated at the heart of this change (1809-10) but can also be seen as conceptually bridging the eighteenth and nineteenth-century concepts of emotion; as it presents remnants of an eighteenth-century operatic aesthetic where words and a unity of character were considered essential to emotional expression,9 as well as demonstrating the values of inwardness and self-expression that were increasingly important in the nineteenth-century emotional role of the arts.10 While certainly not the first, or only, Beethoven work demonstrating these qualities, it does present them with a distinctive clarity.

Understanding how this piece reflects the shift in emotional views that occurring in the late eighteenth century contributes to an understanding of the specific aspects of music that paralleled this change, providing a wider perspective on the role of music in the ever-developing field of emotion history.

It is almost anachronistic to talk of ‘emotion’ prior to the nineteenth century, as the word, though used earlier by philosophers such as Descartes to refer to more spiritual concepts of the ‘passions’ or ‘sentiments’, was not used exclusively to describe “…an autonomous physical or mental state characterized by vivid feeling and physical agitation…”11 until the midnineteenth century.12 However, viewing emotion for the moment somewhat incorrectly as being analogous to the affections, it can be understood that the primary medium for expressing the emotions musically during the eighteenth century was through opera.13 The development of opera had provided a medium for the representation of the emotions in music, a development that aligned with the eighteenth-century view of emotions as moral instrument.14 The idea that music required text to express emotion truly was unyielding even following Haydn’s success of as a composer of

9 10 11

12

Carl Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to his Music, trans. Mary Whittall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 140 Reddy, “Historical Research on the Self and Emotions,” 309 Dixon, 18

ibid., 4-5, 18

13 Penelope Gouk and Helen Hills, “Towards Histories of Emotions,” in Representing Emotions: New Connections in the Histories of Art, Music and Medicine, ed. Penelope Gouk and Helen Hills (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 26-7 14

Cook and Dibben, 46-48

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instrumental music.15 Indeed when Immanuel Kant published his Critique of Judgement in 1790 he contended that “...[music] speaks through nothing but sensations without concepts, so that unlike poetry it leaves us with nothing to meditate about”,16 placing poetry above music in its value and its ability to express emotion.17 Even at this late point in the eighteenth century, Kant dismisses music’s emotional capacity.

This view of words as essential to the expression of the emotions is made very clear in Beethoven’s Op. 81a through the inclusion of a ‘lyric’ in the ‘Lebewohl’ motif. During 1809, a French invasion forced the Austrian royal family to flee Vienna, among them Beethoven’s patron, friend and student, Archduke Rudolph. Op. 81a, otherwise known as the Les Adieux or Lebewohl sonata, was dedicated to the Archduke and is understood to be a programmatic description of his departure, absence and return, with each movement titled accordingly.18 A distinctive feature of this sonata is the inclusion of the word ‘Lebewohl’ (‘farewell’)19 spread over the first three chords of the sonata, as if to be sung (Example 1.)

Example 1: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, opus 81a, (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1811; repr., London: Tecla Editions, 1989), 2. Movement 1, b. 1-2, The Lebewohl motif

15 Peter Kivy, Introduction to a Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 51-2

16 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987), 198 17

ibid., 196-9

19

Literally, ‘live-well’

18 Joseph Kerman, et al., “Beethoven, Ludwig van.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, accessed April 17, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/ grove/music/40026pg7.

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The inclusion of this word over the chords, where no inclusion was necessary, demonstrates that Beethoven is not only composing this work with reference to the Archduke’s departure and his personal emotional response to it, but also providing his audience with some access to that emotion; the audience for Beethoven’s piano sonatas entirely consisting of those who purchased the score following its publication.20 When a performer or listener following the score sees the word over this motif, they would automatically associate the motif, whenever it occurs, with the word. As the importance of words in expression has already been established, the inclusion of this word in the score can be seen as an effort

by Beethoven to provide the expression he feels for this work in the context of the eighteenth-century view of musical emotional expression. In other words, while instrumental music was gaining importance as a ground for emotional expression,21 Beethoven may still have believed that true emotional meaning required verbalisation.

The Lebewohl motif serves as further evidence of the influence of eighteenth-century aesthetics on the Lebewohl sonata as it provides a framework for the first movement. Carl Dahlhaus refers to the use of the ‘Lebewohl’ motif as creating “…an inner integrity which can be understood as the musical consequence of the unity of affect or character postulated in eighteenth century aesthetic theory”,22 by which he is referring to the aesthetic theory of opera. The idea of unifying music in affection was also present in some eighteenth-century theories pertaining to instrumental music, such as in the writings of Johannes Mattheson who, in his encyclopedia Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739), advocated for the emotional importance of melody and, in particular, motivic development.23 Thus, motivic emotional unity can be seen as a distinctively eighteenthcentury concept. This unity is created in the first movement of Beethoven’s work, and, I would argue, to some extent in the second, by the use of the 20 Charles Rosen, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 5 21 ibid.

22

Dahlhaus, 208

Joel Lester, “Mattheson and the Study of Melody,” in Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 162-3, accessed 11 May 2015, http://hdl.handle.net.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/2027/heb.06339.0001.001

23

Alan Maddox, email to author, 8 May 2015

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motif to construct the major themes of the piece regardless of the surface emotion they portray.

The motif can be seen in the transition section (Example 2) during which it is chromatically altered, providing a more tense sound.24 It later forms the uppermost layer of the second theme in Bb Major (Example 3) which at the faster tempo sounds almost identical to the opening few bars of the adagio. Here, however, it contains a completely different sound as created by much more textural activity underneath it.

Example 2: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, opus 81a, 3. b. 3338, Recurrence of the Lebewohl motif during the transition section

Example 3: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, opus 81a, 4.

Movement 1, b. 45-56, The Lebewohl motif as the secondary theme

Suspense is created and maintained in the development of the motif as it is presented as a single line for two bars before the last note of the motif confirms a new key area (Example 4).25 24 Ludwig van Beethoven, The Beethoven-Willems Collection CD8, Gerard Willems, (ABC Classics 481-0464, 2013)

25 Donald Francis Tovey, A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas (London: The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 1931), 192

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Example 4: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, opus 81a, 5. b. 7085, The Lebewohl motif propels the development.

Finally, it is consistently referred to in the coda, in a receding manner that many scholars such as Theodor Adorno align with the physical event of the departure of the Archduke (Example 5).26

Example 5: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, opus 81a, 11. Movement 1, b. 223-240, The Lebewohl motif fades into the background of the coda

While the motif is confined to the first movement in terms of direct portrayal, I would also argue that it was alluded to somewhat in the second movement (Example 6) as even though there appears to be much more activity in the harmony during this movement, the slower tempo allows for the reminiscence of this descending three note pattern to resonate.

The fact that each of these variations of the simple motif from the first two bars of the first movement recurs in a context that is musically and 26 Theodor W. Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans.

Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 175

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characteristically different demonstrates that it is being used in a way that maintains the emotional unity of the piece. While it may be tempting to read this as an early example of the thematic unity that would go on to characterise programmatic music,27 based on the ideas of Dahlhaus, I believe it is more a reflection of the eighteenth-century ideal of emotionally unified music as was naturally present in an operatic storyline.28 By manipulating this motif as if it were a ‘character’ moving through a variety of emotional states, the value of the portrayal of emotions, as opposed to the experience of them, is still being emphasised.

Example 6: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, opus 81a, 13. Movement 2, b.2033, A potential allusion to the Lebewohl motif in the second movement (Abwehenseit)

While this sonata presents elements of an eighteenth-century concept of emotion, it is also clear through its well-defined biographical intentions and its tendency to move rapidly through emotional states that it demonstrates ideas more suited to the nineteenth-century concept of emotion; where inwardness and self expression on the part of the composer were valued for their ability to provide emotional experience to an otherwise rational public.

The idea of self-expression as part of the necessary role of the performer developed with C.P.E. Bach’s ‘Empfindsamkeit’ age Essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments. However, by the early nineteenthcentury this idea was often extended to the role of the composer.29 Later in 27 Roger Scruton, “Programme Music,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, accessed 22 April 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/22394 28 29

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Dahlhaus, 146-8

Cook and Dibben, 47, 49

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his life the concept of ‘inwardness’ or ‘privacy’ would become extremely important in Beethoven’s composition, and the intimacy of expression through composition would go on to provide the emotional foundation of the Romantic era.30 This concept is most evident in the Opus 81a sonata in Beethoven’s use of a distinctively autobiographical programme to guide the structure of his work. The use of autobiographical themes in eighteenth-century music was not ‘revolutionary’, but Charles Rosen describes open autobiographical expression in music as “…unthinkable before 1790 if not presented playfully…”31 The Lebewohl sonata is a programmatic description of the departure of a friend, not at all playful in intent. Emotional intention can be established from Beethoven’s private sketches of this sonata, where there is an entry stating that this work is to be titled “The absence—on the 4th of May—dedicated and written from the heart to Your Imperial Highness”,32 and in a letter to Breitkopf and Härtel, his publishers, in October of 1811, following the publication of the work, in which Beethoven expressed his dismay at the publication of a French edition (Les Adieux) as separate to the German edition (Lebewohl) saying that “[…Lebewohl] is what one says sincerely, alone, [Les Adieux] is said to whole gatherings or cities…”33 From these additional contextual pieces of information it can be seen that this piece was written not only to portray Beethoven’s physical experience of the Archduke’s departure, but also his emotional one. In his earlier 30 Richard Taruskin, “Chapter 12 The First Romantics,” In Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, n.d.), Accessed 22 April 2015, http://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au/view/Volume2/actrade9780195384826-div1-12008.xml 31

32

Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, New ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), 385

“Der Abschied – am 4ten Mai – gewidmet und aus dem Herzen geschrieben S. K. H. [Seiner Kaiserlicher Hoherheit.]”

Susan Kagan, Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven’s Patron, Pupil and Friend: His Life and Music, (New York: Pendragon Press, 1988), 15, accessed April 24, Google Books

33 “…das erstere sagt man nur einem Herzlich allein, das andere einer ganzen Versammlung ganzen städten.”

Ludwig van Beethoven, Brief An Breitkopf & Härtel In Leipzig, Wien, 9. Oktober 1811, Autograph, 1811, Letter. Sammlung H. C. Bodmer, Beethoven-Haus Digital Archive, Bonn, accessed 24 April 2015, http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail. php?id=15384&template=dokseite_digitales_archiv_en&_eid=1507&_ug=Publishers&_ dokid=b330&_mid=Written%20documents%20by%20Ludwig%20van%20Beethoven%20 and%20other%20people&suchparameter=&_seite=1

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work, the Pastoral Symphony (1808) (also considered programmatic) Beethoven indicated that it was to be “…more the expression of feeling than [mood] painting”,34 demonstrating that a year prior to the composition of Op. 81a he was already considering that music could be expressive.

Since the Lebewohl sonata was biographical, it follows that the ‘expression of feeling’ he had already attempted to convey in this previous work had been translated to an expression of the self, aligning with what was to become the nineteenth-century emotional norm.

The final element of this piece that demonstrates the nineteenth-century view of emotion is the rapid movement through emotional states, which contrasts with the previously held view of the passions or sentiments.

During the seventeenth century the passions were considered to be states that acted on the soul, while during the eighteenth century the discipline of psychology as a science emerged, reaching maturity in the mid-nineteenth century as the emotions came to be viewed as more rapid, bodily changes.35 While it could be argued that musically this idea existed during the eighteenth century, it did not reach maturity until the emotions ceased to be seen as movements of the soul and began to be seen as movements of the body.36 It can also be noted that in 1810, the same year Op. 81a was composed, E.T.A. Hoffman was hailing Beethoven’s 5th Symphony as essentially creating an emotional world that laid the foundations for romanticism.37 The value of passionate, hasty emotional change can be seen as new to nineteenth-century audiences and therefore clearly belonging to the era to come. This meant not simply portraying varying emotions within the context of one piece as Pergolesi and Mozart had done before, but seamlessly transitioning between them in short periods of time, in the manner in which they were experienced.38 These changes can be observed in a larger sense of the Op. 81a sonata in the transition between

34 Scruton, “Programme Music,” Grove Music Online, accessed 22 April 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/22394 35

Dixon, 18, 98-101

36 Daniel M. Gross, The Secret History of Emotions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 161-2 37 Robin Wallace, Beethoven’s Critics: Aesthetic Dilemmas and Resolutions During the Composer’s Lifetime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 20-25 38

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J. Peter Burkholder et. al., A History of Western Music (New York: Norton, 2014), 475, 569

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the second (Abwehenseit) and third (Das Wiedersehen) movements, which are without temporal separation (Example 7).

Example 7: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, opus 81a, 14.

Movement 2, b.39-42, movement 3, b. 1, The division between the 2nd and 3rd movements where there is no break in performance, the 3rd movement entering immediately following the last note of the 2nd.

Again, while certainly not the only piece in existence to employ this technique of moving seamlessly between two movements with a rapid change in tempo, it does demonstrate the quick change in emotion from the nostalgic, absence movement to the lively joy of the return. This is reflective of the more contemporary view of emotions where they acted on the body, as the physical act of surprise at the first chord of the third movement quickly shifts the listener into a new emotional state.

The rapidity of emotional change can also be observed in a closer sense in the first movement, during which fast changes of character occur in small fragments of time. Taking as a model a table developed by Patrik N. Juslin of typically experienced emotions39, it is possible to see three distinctive emotional categories as being expressed in the short period of these 10 bars.

39 “…listeners typically agree on which emotions are expressed by a particular piece…” {Patrik N. Juslin and Erik Lindström, “Musical Expression of Emotions: Modelling Listeners’ Judgements of Composed and Performed Features,” Music Analysis 29 1/3 (2010): 334, accessed 25 April, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2249.2011.00323.x}

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Table 1: Patrik N. Juslin, “music (emotional effects)” in The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, ed. David Sander and Klaus R. Scherer, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 270

Bars 13-15 make use of a slow tempo, a falling chromatic line in the bass a generally low tessitura and, in performance, slow attacks on the last two chords as emphasised by the rests.40 These are all qualities that, according to Juslin could be associated with the general emotion of ‘sadness’. In bars 16-18, this rapidly turns to the general emotion of ‘anger’ as the tempo suddenly increases and dissonant intervals (such as the augmented 4th on the first beat of bar 16) are emphasised. Finally, from bars 18-21 a different emotional character is portrayed, here generalised as happiness,41 by the sudden emphasis of the E-flat major tonality (bar 20), the simplicity of the harmony and the variation between the legato articulation of bars 18-19 and the staccato of 20-21. While more than six emotions certainly exist, taking these as generalised examples and showing how the sonata moves very quickly between distinctively different characters demonstrates how the emotions are present as active forces within this sonata. Thus it can be seen that the emotional quality of the sonata is conforming to a nineteenthcentury conceptualisation of the emotions.

40 Beethoven, The Beethoven Willems Collection CD8 41

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Although personally I would characterise it with a word with less positive connotation

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In understanding how both eighteenth and nineteenth-century emotional views are portrayed within this one sonata, it is possible to understand further the dichotomy between these two views and the role of music in this important historical change. The Lebewohl sonata demonstrates elements of eighteenth-century operatic ideas of the importance of text and emotional unity as well as the nineteenth-century ideas of selfexpression and smooth transitions between emotional qualities. Therefore, it can be seen as bridging the concept of emotions as moral ‘sentiments’ and the concept of artistic emotion that provided an outlet of experience for a rational nineteenth-century audience. While it is frequently underexamined in discussions of the development of Beethoven’s personal emotional style, and is commonly seen as worthy of discussion only for its programmatic nature, it is clear that the Op. 81a sonata is capable of contributing valuably to the discussion in the ever-expanding field of the cultural history of the emotions.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Adorno, Theodor W. Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann, translated by Edmund Jephcott. Cambridge: Polity, 1998.

Beard, David and Kenneth Gloag. Musicology: The Key Concepts. London: Routlege, 2005.

Beethoven, Ludwig van. Brief An Breitkopf & Härtel In Leipzig, Wien, 9. Oktober 1811, Autograph. 1811. Letter. Sammlung H. C. Bodmer, Beethoven-Haus Digital Archive, Bonn. Accessed 24 April 2015, http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=15384&template=dokseite_ digitales_archiv_en&_eid=1507&_ug=Publishers&_dokid=b330&_mid=Written%20documents%20 by%20Ludwig%20van%20Beethoven%20and%20other%20people&suchparameter=&_seite=1 Beethoven, Ludwig van. Piano Sonata, opus 81a. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1811. Reprint, London: Tecla Editions, 1989.

Beethoven, Ludwig van. The Beethoven-Willems Collection CD8, Gerard Willems. ABC Classics 4810464. 2013.

Burkholder, J. Peter et. al. A History of Western Music. New York: Norton, 2014.

Cook, Nicholas, and Nicola Dibben. “Musicological Approaches to Emotion.” In Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, edited by Patrik N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda, 45-70. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Dahlhaus, Carl. Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to his Music, translated by Mary Whittall. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Davies, Stephen. “Philosophical Perspectives on Music’s Expressiveness.” In Music and Emotion: Theory and Research, edited by Patrik N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda, 23-44. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Dixon, Thomas. From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Hatten, Robert S. Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation and Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Gouk, Penelope and Helen Hills, “Towards Histories of Emotions.” In Representing Emotions: New Connections in the Histories of Art, Music and Medicine, edited by Penelope Gouk and Helen Hills, 15-34 Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005.

Gross, Daniel M. The Secret History of Emotions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Juslin, Patrik N. “Music (emotional effects).” In The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, edited by David Sander and Klaus R. Scherer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Juslin, Patrik N. and Erik Lindström. “Musical Expression of Emotions: Modelling Listeners’ Judgements of Composed and Performed Features.” Music Analysis 29 1/3 (2010): 334-364. Accessed 25 April, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2249.2011.00323.x Kagan, Susan. Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven’s Patron, Pupil and Friend: His Life and Music. New York: Pendragon Press, 1988. Accessed April 24, Google Books.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement, translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987.

Kerman, Joseph et al. “Beethoven, Ludwig van.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Accessed April 17, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/40026pg7.

Kivy, Peter. Introduction to a Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

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Le Huray, Peter and James Day. Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

1981. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Lester, Joel. “Mattheson and the Study of Melody.” In Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992, 158-74. Accessed 11 May 2015, http://hdl.handle. net.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/2027/heb.06339.0001.001 Lockwood, Lewis. Beethoven: The Music and the Life. New York: Norton, 2003.

November, Nancy. “Magnificent landscapes: new Beethoven recordings and the musical sublime.”

Early Music 43 no. 2 (April 2015): 360-362. Accessed 11 May 2015. doi: 10.1093/em/cav025 Reddy, William M. “Historical Research on the Self and Emotions.” Emotion Review 1 no. 4 (October 2009): 309. Accessed 25 April 2015. doi: 10.1177/1754073909338306 Reddy, William M. The Navigation of Feeling: a framework for the history of emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Accessed 26 April 2015, Google Books.

Rosen, Charles. Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Rosen, Charles. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, New ed. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.

Rosenwein, Barbara. Review of “The Navigation of Feeling: a framework for the history of emotions”

by William Reddy. The American Historical Review 107, no. 4 (October 2002): 1182. Accessed 25 April 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/532671 Scruton, Roger. “Programme Music.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Accessed 22 April 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/22394 Stanley, Glen. “Beethoven at work: musical activist and thinker.” In The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, edited by Glen Stanley, 14-31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Taruskin, Richard. “Chapter 12 The First Romantics.” In Music In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries. New York: Oxford University Press, n.d. Accessed 22 April 2015, http://www. oxfordwesternmusic.com.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au/view/Volume2/actrade-9780195384826div1-12008.xml Tovey, Donald Francis. A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas. London: The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 1931.

Wallace, Robin. Beethoven’s Critics: Aesthetic Dilemmas and Resolutions During the Composer’s Lifetime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

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The prioritisation of onset frequency, attentional precueing and cognitive load effects on attentional capture by abrupt onsets MAKAELA BOWMAN Psychology 1st year

The visual system relies on the brain to select relevant aspects of an image for identification and comprehension (Yantis 1993). Goal-driven selection is characterised by top-down endogenous control dependent on information regarding expectations (Yantis 1993). Accordingly, visual-search tasks requiring participants to find a pre-specified target are goal-driven (Lavie & Tsal 1994). In contrast, stimulus-driven attentional capture is controlled exogenously via bottom-up processing of salient yet irrelevant information (Yantis 1993). Attention captured by an abrupt onset is therefore stimulus driven (Yantis & Jonides 1990). Previous research suggests exogenous and endogenous processes compete to select relevant information when abrupt onsets are used as visual search distractors (Cosman & Vecera 2010).

Furthermore, the dominance of one system over the other appears to be manipulated by onset frequency (Neo & Chua 2006), pre-cueing targets (Yantis & Jonides 1990) and cognitive load (Cosman & Vecera 2010).

Yantis & Jonides (1990) found pre-cueing attention in a visual-search task reduced attentional capture. They compared diffused-attention, frequently cued and always-cued targets to conclude that the dominance of bottom-up processing in capture can be overcome by the top-down control of a cue (Yantis & Jonides 1990). Furthermore, Neo & Chua (2006) by comparing

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high and low frequency onsets found capture could be modulated by onset frequency, with low-frequency onsets always having a capture effect. Load theory states that perceptual processing always functions at maximum capacity and, accordingly, irrelevant distractors only capture attention in low-load conditions because spare capacity is available (Lavie & Tsal 1994). This was supported in Cosman & Vecera’s 2010 study, which tested the effects of both frequency and load on onset attentional capture. As well as finding that capture occurs more in low over high-load conditions, they proposed, based on attentional capture under high cognitive load, lowfrequency onset, that the effect of frequency supersedes the effect of load (Cosman & Vecera 2010).

Need for future research.

While empirically frequency, pre-cueing and cognitive load modulated attentional capture to show the competition of endogenous and exogenous systems, the interaction of these effects was unknown. Therefore, our experiment combined low and high frequency onsets, comparable to Neo & Chua’s (2006) frequencies, with not cued, 100% validly cued, and sameposition-targets. Like Yantis & Jonides (1990), we operationalised abrupt onsets as abruptly appearing letters and inferred attentional capture through reaction time delay. Thus, methodically our experiment was identical to Yantis & Jonides (1990). Participants were required to identify a target letter amongst three other distractor letters, one of which, depending on the condition, had a sudden onset. Like Cosman & Vecera (2010) we defined cognitive load in relation to perceptual processing required, and thus no cue condition as highest load because of highest uncertainty. Highload conditions therefore essentially tested the same effects as Cosman & Vecera 2010 but via a different method. Their study did not, however, combine low-load with frequency and therefore our experiment extended this by testing their assumptions.

It is from Cosman & Vecera’s (2010) results, including these assumptions, that our hypothesis was based. In their experiment, they showed that the effect of frequency on abrupt onset attentional capture overrides the effect of load. Based on this, we hypothesised the effect of frequency to be greater than the effect of load or pre-cueing; that is, that attentional capture would occur for all low-frequency sudden onsets, regardless of load or cue. We reasoned that pre-cueing is related to cognitive load in that the

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presence of a cue reduces uncertainty i.e. load, while cue absence increases it. Hence if frequency takes precedence over load, we hypothesised it to take precedence over cueing as well.

Results When there was no informative central cue and a sudden onset was rare, a significant difference in reaction times between distractor sudden-onsets present versus absent was obtained (P = 0.003). When a central cue always pointed to the location of target and sudden onset was rare, the difference was again significant (P= 0.002). When the target was always in the same location and a sudden onset was present on all trials, difference was significant (P=0.029). When the target was always in the same location and a sudden onset was rare, difference was significant (P=0.034). All other conditions did not reach significance with P-values greater than 0.05.

Figure 1. Mean magnitude of difference between distractor sudden-onset present vs. absent reaction times (in ms) for each condition.

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Discussion As expected, attentional capture by abrupt onsets was found for all lowfrequency onsets. Where there was no attentional cue and thus high cognitive load, only low-frequency onset captured attention. Similarly where there was a 100% valid cue, attentional capture only occurred for low-frequency onsets. However, in conditions where the target was consistently positioned, that is, minimal cognitive load, attentional capture occurred for both frequencies.

Hence, because attentional capture occurred in all low-frequency conditions, regardless of load or cue, our hypothesis was confirmed. Despite a different methodology to Neo & Chua (2006) and Cosman & Vecera (2010), our results confirmed their findings that low-frequency onsets always capture attention, and that the frequency effect supersedes that of load. Furthermore, our results added to this, finding that frequency supersedes the effect of pre-cueing because capture was found when targets were 100% validly pre-cued or consistently positioned. According to Yantis & Jonides’ 1990 results, a valid pre-cue should have prevented capture by onsets, and thus because capture occurred in low-frequency conditions, our results suggest the effect of frequency overrides pre-cueing, just as it overrides load. This account can be extended to explain no attentional capture under cue absent, high-frequency onset. Again Yantis & Jonides’ 1990 results predicted attentional capture because attention was not focused prior, however, as our results and previous research (above) demonstrates, high-frequency onsets do not capture attention. Load theory further explains this, because with no cue there is high cognitive load and thus no spare attentional capacity to process onsets.

Surprisingly, however, when the target was consistently positioned, attention was captured by frequent abrupt onsets. Cosman & Vecera’s (2010) conclusions did not predict this because frequency was supposed to dominate the effect of load. Their experiment however, only tested frequency in high-load conditions. They assumed the same prioritisation would occur in low-load conditions. However, unlike our experiment, they did not test. Load theory predicts attentional capture for consistently positioned targets, because no uncertainty means minimal-load with spare attentional capacity. Hence in minimal-load conditions, the results are potentially explained by the load effect taking priority over frequency. This

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is not necessarily in contradiction with the results above possibly because in high-load conditions the effect of frequency has primacy, while in lowload conditions the effect of cognitive load is prioritised. The frequency effect of low-frequency capture in the same-position-target condition can be equally explained by load. Hence explanations are not mutually exclusive, but indicate low-load with high/low frequency onsets needs to be tested further.

Previous research demonstrated that attentional capture by abrupt onsets is effected by onset frequency, pre-cueing, and cognitive load (Cosman and Vecera 2010, Yantis 1993). Based on these results it was concluded that attentional capture is not completely automatic, and therefore visualsearch tasks involve competing endogenous and exogenous systems. The prioritisation of above effects on this process had not been substantially investigated. Our experiment did this by combining rare and frequent onsets with low and high-load conditions determined by the respective presence or absence of cues. Our results confirmed previous findings that frequency effects are prioritised in high-load conditions. Furthermore they demonstrated frequency effects override pre-cueing, and importantly that frequency may not dominate in minimal-load conditions. Hence our results indicate the possibility of different effect dominance for different loads. It is possible however that our experiment was not a true test of cognitive load in that high-load conditions did not require dual-task processing.

Future testing of this prioritisation process should involve conditions which operationalise cognitive load via the number of processing tasks required, to investigate our low-load, high-frequency result.

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REFERENCES Cosman, J., & Vecera, S. (2010), Attentional capture under high perceptual load, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 17 (6), 815-820.

Lavie, N., & Tsal, Y. (1994), Perceptual load as a major determinant of the locus of selection in visual attention. Perception & Psychophysics, 56 (2), 183-197.

Neo, G., & Chua, F. (2006). Capturing focused attention. Perception & Psychophysics, 68 (8), 12861296.

Yantis, S. (1993), Stimulus-driven attentional capture. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2 (5), 156-161.

Yantis, S., & Jonides, J. (1990). Abrupt visual onsets and selective attention: voluntary versus automatic allocation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 16 (1), 121-134.

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Depictions of femininity and the female form in early modern Chinese visual art KATHERINE MILLER Arts 4th year

From the very beginning of Chinese pictorial art, the female was represented not as a real person but as a product of male construction, depending on the gender ideology of the time, but rooted in the patriarchal ethos of the Confucian age.1 Representations of the female form and femininity in East Asian visual art of the early modern period (best described as 1600-1850) highlighted societal norms and conventions, and served to provide an historical record of the points of similarity and divergence in states such as Japan and China at the time. In China, Confucian ideals were integral in establishing gender norms and consequently notions of femininity, with the emergence of norms such as the importance of premarital and postmarital female chastity.2 As Murray noted, ‘a key tenet of the Confucian social system was hierarchical subordination: minister to ruler, son to father, younger brother to older brother, and, categorically, woman to man’.3 As such, the female in art was often an anonymous figure of beauty, a part of the work but not its subject.4 Differing constructions of women pervaded Chinese visual arts 1

Mary H. Fong, ‘Images of Women in Traditional Chinese Painting,’ Woman’s Art Journal 17:1

2 Louise Edwards ‘Women in Honglou meng: Prescriptions of Purity in the Femininity of Qing Dynasty China,’ Modern China 16:4 (Oct., 1990): 421.

3 4

Julia K. Murray, ‘Didactic Art for Women: the Ladies’ Classic of Filial Piety,’ in Flowering in the shadows: women in the history of Chinese and Japanese painting, ed. Marsha Smith Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990): 27.

Fong, ‘Images of Women in Traditional Chinese Painting,’ 26.

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of the period including varying notions of ‘beauty’, beautiful women as bearers of misfortune, and the woman as courtesan. These did not so much change over time as interact with one another. This essay focuses on these key themes in analysing the depiction of women in Chinese art in the early modern period, specifically the late Ming dynasty in the 1600s and the Qing dynasty from 1644 onwards. It is important to analyse the period within the confines of the culture and period itself, and the paper attempts to avoid a presentist, liberal Feminist view when analysing the cultural productions of the early modern period. Through the examination of three works of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties; Yin Qi’s mid-nineteenth century album of erotic paintings, ‘After Bathing in the Huaqing Pool’ by Kang Tao, ‘Portrait of Madame Ho-tung’ by Wu Cho and Leng Mei’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’, an examination of how the female form was depicted in Chinese art of the early modern period is illustrated, and the way such constructions of femininity changed over time is considered. What emerged in the early modern period in China was a complex and at times contradictory depiction of the female form and notions of femininity.

The depiction of women in Chinese art of the early modern period sought to convey the female form as a predominantly anonymous object of beauty, an object of the male gaze.5 While there were common elements considered beautiful during the late Ming and early Qing periods, such as the emergence of double eyelids as a desired trait in the Ming period, the notion of ‘beauty’ was characterised less by the physical body but more by the qualities espoused by society as important.6 The concept of the ‘exemplary woman’ meant: a woman of integrity and chastity. Thus, individuals taken up under this category are originally irrelevant to what their appearances are.

However, in biographies of ‘exemplary women’ in history books, physical beauty continues to be portrayed in negative terms.7 Such women were depicted in images as wives and caregivers, yet in this domestic arena too, were slight hostilities to the female, given they ‘posed 5

Fong, ‘Images of Women in Traditional Chinese Painting,’ 26.

7

Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 54.

6 Cho Kyo, and Kyoko Iriye Selden (trans.). The Search for the Beautiful Woman: A Cultural History of Japanese and Chinese Beauty (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012), http://USYD.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1108263 (accessed October 22, 2014), 102

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an implicit danger to the long-term stability of the family structure. They were limited or marginal members who were constantly violating family boundaries: entering or exiting as brides’.8 Furthermore, the notion of chastity was integral to society and ‘at the height of the Qing Empire’s fluorescence, the chastity ethos permeated the processes and institutions of imperial state building and the dynamics of family and community life to an unprecedented degree’.9 As such, images of women during the period were largely characterised by anonymous figures, and there was little desire to depict a sitter accurately but rather convey the stereotypical figure of beauty of the era.10 Despite this high value placed on premarital chastity, there exist a plethora of erotic images in the Qing period which seemingly ignore the importance of chastity and the pure female, as seen in Yin Qi’s album of erotic paintings from the mid-nineteenth century.

Amongst images of the pursuit of sexual pleasure, there is an image of a man attended by a group of women, all fully clothed and admiring various objects, a scene not uncommon during the time given the presence of the imperial harem.11 Like many artworks of the period, the six female figures look almost identical in facial expression and shape, with the main form of differentiation between the women being their colourful and vibrant robes. Indeed greater attention seems to be paid to these details than to the individual traits of the women portrayed. It could be argued that it is these very details that display femininity, and not physical attributes. The portrayal of beauty during the late Ming and early Qing periods was thus complicated, and reflected both the contradictory norms within society that stressed the association between misfortune and beauty, as well as the desire for beautiful women in the visual culture of the time, whether through physical attractiveness or fidelity and the stereotypical, anonymous female figure.

The portrayal of beauty in Chinese art, unlike other cultures, referenced societal norms of beauty as heralding misfortune. In the early modern period beauty was thus found to be ill-omened, cruel and hapless.12 It was 8 9 10 11

12

Susan Mann.’Widows in the kinship, class and community structures of Qing dynasty China.’ Journal of Asian Studies 46:1 (February, 1987): 44.

Janet M. Theiss, Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004): 4.

Fong, ‘Images of Women in Traditional Chinese Painting,’ 26.

Murray, ‘Didactic Art for Women,’ 41.

Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 42-69.

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perceived that women who were ‘beautiful’ were subject to bad luck and thus simple looks were preferred: Not only do beautiful women invite misfortune to their families and others, but their own lives are also unlucky. In China there is an expression, “crimson face, hapless fate,” meaning that a beauty is fated to lead an unfortunate life.13 Such sentiment was evident in the many popular narratives and images of the day, and in cultural products that influenced public opinion and helped prolong and seemingly verified the notion of beauty as unlucky.14 Indeed, Kang Tao’s ‘After Bathing in the Huaqing Pool’ exemplifies the popular notions of beauty representing misfortune. The painting depicts imperial consort Yang Guifei and aimed to portray the enduring narrative that she was an ‘evil woman who brought disaster to the nation’.15 It is assumed that this representation of an attractive figure sought to warn of the dangers of such beauty. The figure of Yang Guifei is highlighted in the work with the strong red of her robe, and the slight stature of her two attendants in their grey and blue clothing. Indeed the figure’s curved legs, seen through her transparent robes, may have been ‘drawn precisely because they suggested lasciviousness’ and thus only emphasised the link perceived in society between beauty and trouble.16 This perception of beauty leading to bad luck presented a contradictory image of such beauty in works of art during the period. While painters aimed to portray ‘beauty’ in artworks through the inclusion of and emphasis on certain commonly-held parts of the body (the ‘willowy torso and sloping shoulders are emblematic of feminine beauty’), there remained stigma toward those deemed beautiful, given the stories which perpetuated the historical idea that beauty was associated with misfortune and thus not a desirable trait.17 Depictions of courtesans were common in Chinese artwork of the early modern period, and served to highlight the links between the beautiful courtesan and the complicated notion of beauty as ill-omened; ‘even if born into a similarly poor house, a girl with plain looks did not suffer the woe 13 Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 55.

14

Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 55.

16

Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 92.

15 17

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Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 92.

Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 77, 52.

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of becoming a courtesan. Harsh reality made persuasive the common idea that beauty brought ill luck’.18 As has been noted, beauty was perceived during the early modern period as something distinctly undesired, given the cultural associations with beauty causing trouble and bringing misfortune to not only the woman who was beautiful but also those around her.19 Indeed, unlike the prospect of marriage for Japanese courtesans in the Edo period after they had worked for a certain number of years, ‘reality was far harsher in China. Once a woman became a courtesan, there was absolutely no possibility for respite’.20 Yet as Brownell and Vasserstrom discuss, there existed an atypical, hierarchical relationship between the prostitute and her client, something that seemed to challenge the Confucian ideals of male dominance.21 Contrary to Fong’s assertion that the female image became, in the early modern period ‘an anonymous visual metaphor’ of beauty, there is evidence to suggest that images emerged during this period which did, in fact, represent actual women such as Wu Cho’s ‘Portrait of Madame Hotung’.22 Indeed as Maeda has concurred, ‘poetic or artistic allusions were no longer deemed necessary to hide the true identity of their sitters’.23 A large figure maintaining most of the space in the hanging scroll, the subject appears relaxed reclining on a comfortable chair, seemingly in a dressing room or other indoor space. In Chinese art women tend to be depicted in enclosed, sheltered spaces which implies ‘a voyeuristic engagement with a world normally hidden from view… These paintings evoke the idea of “visual penetration” and erotic fantasies’.24 Such a technique of implying sexuality and desire is utilised in Cho’s image, only to be emphasised by a portrait’s subject. The image of Madame Ho-tung, a former singing girl who became a concubine of the scholar and official Ch’ien Ch’ien-i, highlights the social mobility during the period and the ease at which 18 Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 58.

19

Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 55.

21

Susan Brownell and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Chinese femininities, Chinese Masculinities: A Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002): 195.

20

22 23

Kyo and Selden, The Search for the Beautiful Woman, 58.

Fong, ‘Images of Women in Traditional Chinese Painting,’ 26.

Robert J. Maeda, ‘The Portrait of a Woman of the Late Ming: Early Ch’ing Period: Madame Ho-tung,’ Archives of Asian Art, 27 (1973/1974): 47.

24 James Cahill (1994) in Francesca Dal Lago, ‘How “Modern” was the Modern Woman?

Crossed Legs and Modernity in 1930s Shanghai Calendar Posters, Pictorial Magazines and Cartoons,’ in Visualising Beauty: Gender and Ideology in Modern East Asia, ed. Aida Yuen Wong. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012): 50.

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women could ascend class barriers.25 Maeda notes her pose could initially be linked to a long history of figurative painting and the relaxed stance of Bodhisattva figures, yet the erotic undertones mean ‘the pose retains none of its associations with the Buddhist images and identifies the sitter as a member of a lower class and of “immoral” character’.26 Given her direct gaze upon the spectator, the image of Madame Ho-tung differs greatly to the previous images, in a sense breaking the fourth wall and steering from the convention of a passive female conveyed in many works during the Qing period.

The direct gaze seen in the image of Madame Ho-tung was, however, not limited to images of courtesans. Leng Mei’s Qing painting, ‘Portrait of a Lady’, also features a female subject who gazes out of the composition into the viewer’s space, a noted change from other works of the period which featured more passive female figures who were engaged within the frame and did not break the fourth wall. In the work, Mei’s anonymous figure sits with one leg slightly bent, seen under the reading desk and covered in cloth, while a book rests under her left hand, something that appears to evoke literacy and intelligence.27 In contrast, Madame Ho-tung provokes eroticism with her left hand holding a fan while seemingly pulling away her dress to reveal a bare knee, something described as ‘unwelcome to “high-class” Chinese women, with traditional moral sense’.28 As Maeda concurred: the position may have been considered unfeminine and impolite… linked to female entertainers or women of ill repute. Certainly the fashion in which Mme. Ho-tung’s sharply angled right leg rests against the elbow cushion is more provocative than it might have been had the leg been more nearly horizontal.29 Seeking the attention of the opposite sex was taboo in the Qing period (suggesting ‘a lack of feminine virtue and modesty’), and the image of

25 Maeda, ‘The Portrait of a Woman of the Late Ming,’ 46.

26 27

Maeda, ‘The Portrait of a Woman of the Late Ming,’ 47, 50.

Maeda, ‘The Portrait of a Woman of the Late Ming,’ 50.

28 James Cahill, The Restless Landscape: Chinese Paintings of the Late Ming Period, (Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1971), 149.

29

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Maeda, ‘The Portrait of a Woman of the Late Ming,’ 50.

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Madame Ho-tung attests to the one type of woman who did openly, and without shame, court the male gaze: the courtesan.30 Despite both figures pictured in similar positions with their heads calmly resting on their right hands, and eyes staring out to the spectator, such a comparison of similarly composed works highlights the subtle varieties in seated positions and context – with one being identified as Madame Ho-tung and the other remaining anonymous. There is a noted difference in how each woman is perceived by the viewer. Given the importance of chastity and the suspicion placed on physical attractiveness, the image of Madame Ho-tung would have been received much more negatively than that of the anonymous ‘lady’. Indeed, the figure of Madame Ho-tung represents the beauty and eroticism associated with courtesans, but also draws on the popular notion that beauty was dangerous.

Depictions of women in late Ming and Qing China were predominantly divided into the category of the anonymous, stereotypical figure or that of courtesans and more identifiable images. Femininity and the concept of beauty was further complicated and contradictory given the popular belief that beauty heralded bad luck. While Yin Qi’s mid-nineteenth century album of erotic paintings exemplifies the presence of anonymous beauties in artworks of the time, and the emphasis on details of clothing rather than facial features, Cho’s ‘Portrait of Madame Ho-tung’ highlights the popular perception of the link between beauty and bad luck, since the way the female was painted conveyed erotic undertones. In essence, such constructions of the female and femininity did not change over the time but rather these very different images, those of the courtesan, or those of the more anonymous woman emerged side by side and did not change a great deal, with the exception of the more active portrayal of Mei’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’, which showed the educated ‘lady’ gazing directly out to and engaging the spectator.

30 Edwards, ‘Women in Honglou meng,’ 420.

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Follower of Leng Mei, Beautiful Woman in Her Boudoir, Traditionally said to be a portrait of Madame Hedong (1618-1664) by Wu Zhuo (active 17th century) Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Oriental Objects Fund, 1968.40

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Brownell, Susan, and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom. Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: A Reader.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Cahill, James. The Restless Landscape: Chinese Painting of the Late Ming Period. Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1971.

Dal Lago, Francesca. ‘How “Modern” was the Modern Woman? Crossed Legs and Modernity in 1930s Shanghai Calendar Posters, Pictorial Magazines and Cartoons.’ In Visualising Beauty: Gender and Ideology in Modern East Asia, edited by Aida Yuen Wong, 45-62. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012.

Edwards, Louise. ‘Women in Honglou meng: Prescriptions of Purity in the Femininity of Qing Dynasty China.’ Modern China 16:4 (Oct., 1990): 407-429.

Fong, Mary H. ‘Images of Women in Traditional Chinese Painting.’ Woman’s Art Journal 17:1 (Spring - Summer, 1996): 22-27.

Kyo, Cho; Selden, Kyoko Iriye (trans.). The Search for the Beautiful Woman : A Cultural History of Japanese and Chinese Beauty. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012. http://USYD.eblib. com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1108263 (accessed October 22, 2014) Maeda, Robert J. ‘The Portrait of a Woman of the Late Ming: Early Ch’ing Period: Madame Ho-tung.’

Archives of Asian Art, 27 (1973/1974): 46-52.

Mann, Susan. ‘Widows in the Kinship, Class and Community Structures of Qing Dynasty China,’ Journal of Asian Studies 46:1 (February, 1987): 37-55.

Murray, Julia K. ‘Didactic Art for Women: the Ladies’ Classic of Filial Piety.’ In Flowering in the shadows: women in the history of Chinese and Japanese painting, edited by Marsha Smith Weidner, 27-54. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990.

Theiss, Janet M. Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

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