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At the home of the world’s most authoritative dictionary, perhaps it is not inappropriate to play a word association game. If I say the word ‘modern’, what comes into your mind? The chances are, it will be some variation of ‘new’, ‘recent’, or ‘contemporary’.

The post The old age of the world appeared first on OUPblog.

One of the most original voices in contemporary stop motion talks about his work with us.

The post The Art of Animating Horror: An Interview with Robert Morgan appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The outspoken animation legend speaks with Cartoon Brew about his new film "The Last Days of Coney Island" and other topics.

By Andrew Zurcher

As Women’s History Month draws to a close in the United Kingdom, it is a good moment to reflect on the history of women’s writing in Oxford’s scholarly editions. In particular, as one of the two editors responsible for early modern writers in the sprawling collections of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO), I have been going through the edited texts of women writers included in the OSEO project, and thinking about how well even the most celebrated women writers from the period 1500 – 1700 are represented in this new digital format. In short, early modern English women writers have fared, perhaps predictably, badly.

The essayist, philosopher, and historian Francis Bacon has his place, in the Oxford Francis Bacon in fifteen volumes; but the philosopher and poet and essayist and dramatist and prose writer Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle, does not. Philip Sidney, famous for his pastoral poems, appeared in a stunningly erudite Oxford edition by William Ringler, Jr. in 1962, now like the Bacon edition a part of OSEO; Katherine Philips, also famous for her pastoral poetry, limps in to the Oxford fold in a 1905 text lightly edited by George Saintsbury, which also includes the minor Caroline poets Patrick Hannay, William Chamberlayne, and Edward Benlowes. Aphra Behn, one of the most prolific writers of the Restoration, hardly figures at all in OSEO, and the Oxford list does not include complete works for Isabella Whitney, Mary Herbert, Amelia Lanyer, or Mary Wroth.

Among those lyric poems and short works by women that are included in OSEO, many return to the silencing of a woman’s voice, the disabling of her love, and the banishment of her person. Typical is Mary Wroth’s “83 Song”, first published in Peter Davidson’s anthology, Poetry and Revolution: An Anthology of British and Irish Verse 1625-1660. Recognising that “the time is come to part” with her “deare”, the woman speaker of the poem gives up not only her own happiness, but his unhappiness. She goes to “woe”, while he goes to “more joy”:

Where still of mirth injoy thy fill,
One is enough to suffer ill:
My heart so well to sorrow us’d,
Can better be by new griefes bruis’d. (ll. 5-8)

The woman lover’s habituation to grief gives her a capacity for further bruising that, not without irony, she embraces as an ethical duty. Hers is a voice constructed for loss and for complaint, so much so that she cannot escape from this loss, and the woes that “charme” her, except by death – as the concluding stanza of the song suggests:

And yett when they their witchcrafts trye,
They only make me wish to dye:
But ere my faith in love they change,
In horrid darknesse will I range. (ll. 17-20)

For Wroth’s loving, jilted woman speaker, identity is constructed out of a wronged fidelity; the two options remaining to her are complaint and oblivion.

Complaint was still a powerful mode for women writers during the Restoration – certainly a mode that modern editors have much privileged in anthologies. A poem by Aphra Behn, “A Paraphrase on Oenone to Paris”, has slipped in to OSEO‘s corpus through its inclusion in John Kerrigan’s wonderful anthology, Motives of Woe: Shakespeare and ‘Female Complaint’: A Critical Anthology.

In this poem the shepherdess Oenone challenges the Trojan prince Paris, who had won her love while keeping flocks on the slopes of Mount Ida; afterward discovering his true birthright, Paris has abandoned her, and sails for Sparta, there to ravish Menelaus’ queen, Helen, and set in train the events that will lead to the Trojan War. Toward the end of Behn’s long poem of complaint, Oenone reprehends her lover for his faithlessness with an argument that seems to gesture at Behn’s own public reputation:

How much more happy are we Rural Maids,
Who know no other Palaces than Shades?
Who want no Titles to enslave the Croud,
Least they shou’d babble all our Crimes aloud;
No Arts our good to show, our Ills to hide,
Nor know to cover faults of Love with Pride.
I lov’d, and all Loves Dictates did persue,
And never thought it cou’d be Sin with you.
To Gods, and Men, I did my Love proclaim
For one soft hour with thee, my charming Swain,
Wou’d Recompence an Age to come of Shame,
Cou’d it as well but satisfie my Fame.
But oh! those tender hours are fled and lost,
And I no more of Fame, or Thee can boast!
‘Twas thou wert Honour, Glory, all to me:
Till Swains had learn’d the Vice of Perjury,
No yielding Maids were charg’d with Infamy.
‘Tis false and broken Vows make Love a Sin,
Hadst thou been true, We innocent had been. (ll. 265-83)

The “Titles” that Oenone disclaims are those of honour, the courtly ranks and degrees to which women might be raised by their paternity, or by their advantageous marriages; wanting titles, shepherdesses can sport in the shades of innocence, their sexual crimes unremarked and undisplayed. The shame and infamy that now await Oenone spring directly from Paris’ perjury, for the woman’s reputation for immodesty flows from the exposure accomplished by her jilting. To her way of thinking, a crime is no crime until it is published; this is a logic she has learned from men, who cover up their own crimes with “Pride”. But “Titles” may also be those of published books, and the “Arts” Oenone lacks may be just those powers of “Pride” that always enable men to abandon women – in a broad sense, the power to speak falsely. What women do, cries Behn’s Oenone, has been betrayed by what men say; what can a woman write, that will not collude in her own untitling?

Early modern women writers have not been much or widely published. There are many reasons, of course, for this history of omission and scant commission. But so long as we continue to anthologize selections from the works of women writers from this period, and to bundle them in mixed fardels, we collude in a history or pattern of dis-titling, of allowing early modern women poets to complain, but not to speak in their more diverse collected works. This pattern is changing: important new editions of Wroth and Behn have appeared in the last few decades, and – closer to home – the works of the translator and poet Lucy Hutchinson, in a meticulously edited text from David Norbrook and Reid Barbour, have recently joined the Oxford list and the OSEO fold. Other early modern women writers will surely follow. As Women’s History Month comes to an end, it’s high time we put a period to infamy, shame, oblivion, and bruising.

Andrew Zurcher is a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and a member of the Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) editorial board.

Scholarly editions are the cornerstones of humanities scholarship, and Oxford University Press’s list is unparalleled in breadth and quality. Now available online, Oxford Scholarly Editions Online provides an interlinked collection of these authoritative editions. Discover more by taking a tour of the site.

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Image Credit: Aphra Behn by Mary Beale. Image available on public domain via WikiCommons

The post Entitling early modern women writers appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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The nominees for the 2008 Turner Prize for art have just been announced. Every year the prize courts controversy, with many traditional art lovers saying that the pieces aren’t art at all. Previous winners of the prize have included Gilbert and George, Damien Hirst, and the transvestite potter Grayston Perry. Interpretating art, then, seems to be a minefield: one person’s trash is another person’s masterpiece. With this in mind, today I bring you an excerpt from Cynthia Freeland’s 2002 book But Is It Art?

Interpretation: a case study

Although no one interpretation is ‘true’ in an absolute sense, some interpretations of art seem better than others. Let’s consider an artist whose work inspires interpretive disputes, the prominent Irish–English expressionist painter, Francis Bacon (1909–1992). Bacon painted people who look tortured and despairing. His figures are distorted, their mouths screaming—observers said Bacon made humans look like slabs of raw meat. One gets this initial impression just from looking at the paintings.

For example, consider Bacon’s monumental Triptych of 1973. In the centre panel a male figure sits on a toilet, while beneath him oozes a bat-shaped puddle of ominous blackness. The images look dark and disturbing; they almost reek of death. But here, as in other canvases, formal features counteract the visceral emotional impact. The triptych format itself recalls religious icons and altarpieces. Pain is offset by the almost static composition and use of deep, unusual colours. Reviewer Mary Abbe comments on these tensions in Bacon’s work:

“[F]or all their nastiness and brutality, there is something undeniably beautiful, even serene in these paintings. . . . Bacon . . . achieved a kind of lyricism that makes even his most horrific subjects compatible with the drawing rooms in which many of them hung. Backgrounds of boudoir pink, persimmon, lilac and aqua combine with the calligraphic grace of his fleshy figures in images of stylized elegance.”

Critics assemble interpretations using diverse approaches. Some people downplay emotion and pursuit of meaning and focus only on compositional beauty. The formalist critic David Sylvester, an early defender, emphasized Bacon’s use of abstraction in the face of many objections to the canvases’ harrowing contents. Especially when first exhibited, Bacon’s work (like Serrano’s Piss Christ) overwhelmed viewers; so it was necessary to point out how these paintings really did manifest form. Sylvester went too far, though, by de-emphasizing the visceral emotional qualities of Bacon’s work. Sylvester saw Bacon’s ‘screaming bloody mouths . . . simply as harmless studies in pink, white, and red’. I would call Sylvester’s early criticisms inadequate, then, as an interpretation of Bacon.

To correct Sylvester’s overly formalist approach, some critics go to the opposite extreme and provide a psychobiographical interpretation. Because Francis Bacon had a horrendous relationship with his father, who whipped and kicked him out as a child for his homosexuality, he is ripe for Freudian theorizing. Perhaps other aspects of Bacon’s life are reflected in his art. His horrific imagery may reflect his experiences in cleaning corpses out of bombed-out buildings in London during World War II. Bacon led an unusually wild life of heavy drinking, gambling, and constant S&M sexual escapades.

Bacon himself rejected readings of his work in terms of either his personal obsessions or the supposed angst of the twentieth century. He claimed his work was only about painting. He was obsessed with other painters, especially Velázquez, Picasso, and Van Gogh. Since Bacon recreated some of their famous works in his own distinctive style, it seems that his works are indeed about how to paint in a new and different era. Still, I don’t quite believe Bacon completely, nor would I rule out his biography altogether; it somehow provides background context for the raw urgency and harrowing content of the paintings.

Another critic, John Russell, helps us see that the blurred figures in Bacon’s works had sources in the animal movement studies done by photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The earlier artist’s time-lapse photos gave rise to Bacon’s images of running dogs and wrestling men. Russell explains that Bacon sought to blur the boundaries between representation and abstraction. In a sort of competition with abstract artists like Jackson Pollock, he used photography in a new way—almost as if denying the upstart medium’s challenge to painting as the medium of realistic depiction.

Critical disagreement about the meaning of Bacon’s work is typical of debates in the artworld. I do not think that such conflicts are insoluble. Critics help us see more in the artist’s work and understand it better. Interpretations are superior if they explain more aspects of the artist’s work. The best interpretations pay attention both to Bacon’s formal style and to his content. In interpreting Bacon, I would not ‘reduce’ his art to his biography, but some facts about his life seem to reveal things about how he painted people. For example, biographers explain that the image we have been considering, Triptych of 1973, was ‘about’ a particular death: it was both exorcism and commemoration of the suicide of Bacon’s former lover, George Dyer, who died in their hotel bathroom in Paris just before the opening of a major exhibit of Bacon’s paintings. Knowing this, one looks at the work differently—it still seems horrifying (perhaps more so), but is an even more impressive achievement of artistic transformation. But content is not everything, either. Bacon’s forms, compositions, and artistic sources are also relevant.

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Hey, everyone, it's Carl. Lookee here! We have two, yes, two interviews with real honest-to-goodness authors, Eric Kimmel and Tony Abbott! Both of them were at our Novello festival and both are great people. Our first interview is with Eric Kimmel! (Eric is on the right; Tony Abbott is on the left The other two are Jeff Smith of Bone graphic novels and james Ramsome, the illustrator)

Why do you think it's cool for boys to read?

What a question! That’s like asking if it’s cool for boys to breathe. To me, reading
is the same as breathing. If you don’t breathe, your body is dead. If you don’t
read, your mind is dead. Reading is more important than just being cool. It’s
essential. Show me a leader in any field in any field who doesn’t read. I can’t
think of any. Knowledge is power. Plug into the power of your mind. Open a
book.

Is it cool for boys to write/draw? Why?

Stop worrying about being cool. Stop looking at what everybody else is doing to
figure out if it’s okay to do what you want to do. Truly cool people do what they
want and don’t care what other people think. Leaders lead. You can’t be a leader
if you’re always trying to figure out where everybody else is going. Think for
yourself. That’s the only way to be really cool.
If you want to write, write! If you want to draw, dance, paint, play an instrument,
then go ahead and do it. If you like to read or just daydream, you don’t have to
make apologize or ask anyone’s permission.
Your real friends will always support you. The people who matter will encourage
you. As for the rest, they’re just a bunch of dogs barking. Let ‘em bark. Who
cares?

Who was your favorite comic book character when you were a boy? Do you have
a favorite character now?

My favorite comic book character was Superman. I can still recite the whole
opening of the old TV show. “Faster than a speeding bullet…” I don’t read comic
books anymore. I’m too old for graphic novels. There’s one I really thought was
stupendous. Check out Art Spiegel’s Maus (vol. 1 & 2)

What is your favorite sport?

I wasn’t any good at sports. I hated baseball. Still do. That’s because all my
experiences were negative. I couldn’t catch, couldn’t hit, couldn’t field. I spent a
lot of time standing in the outfield doing nothing and at bat doing nothing. They
told me not to swing. Maybe the pitcher would walk me. One day I brought a
book to the game, sat down in the outfield and read it. Nobody paid the slightest
attention and it didn’t affect the outcome of the game one bit.
That doesn’t mean I’m inactive. I enjoyed tennis until my knee went. I love riding
horses and my bicycle. In the summer I go on 40-50 mile rides in the Oregon
countryside.
I don’t mean to put you down if you enjoy sports. Just remember this. The best
sports are the ones you play yourself. Don’t turn into the kind of person who sits
on the couch, watching others play. Don’t be a couch potato. If you’re going to sit
on the couch, at least make sure you’re reading a book. Then, at least, your brain
will be getting some exercise.

What do you like to do for fun?

Other than my bike and horses, I love to play my banjo. I love bluegrass. I can
happily spend a whole day at a bluegrass festival just listening to music and
hanging out with the banjo pickers. I’m a voracious reader. I go through 5-10 fat
history books a week. I enjoy cooking, especially baking bread. I love fiber arts.
I’m an excellent knitter. I know how to spin and I’m just starting to get into
weaving.

What is the favorite book you have written?

My two favorites would be Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock and Hershel and
the Hanukkah Goblins.

Which do you like better--cheeseburgers or pizza? What do you like on them?

Are you kidding? Pizza! It wins hands down. I ‘ll eat pizza with anything on it,
except sweet stuff like pineapple. Ugh! My favorite topping is anchovies. If you
don’t want them, save them for me. If you really love pizza, you have to go to
Italy. Pizza there is completely different there. The indredients are fresh, so the
taste is out of this world.
Guess what else I love to eat. Barbecue! I’m partial to the Texas style, but did
you know that North Carolina barbecue is famous? Folks in your state use more
vinegar than the Texans. North Carolina pulled pork—my, oh, my! That’s good!!
I guess that’s the end of the questions. Thanks for giving me a chance to
respond. I loved my time in Charlotte and I love your library. There’s nothing like
it in the world!

Happy Holidays!
Eric A. Kimmel

Thanks, Eric! Next time you're in town, try the food at Bubba's Barbecue. Yum, yum! Let me tell you about those two books he mentioned. Both of them are picture books but don't let that put you off--these are great stories and fun for any age. The first is Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock. Anansi is a spider who lives in Africa and loves to play tricks. One day he spots a strange-looking moss-covered rock. It turns out that it's a magic rock that makes people pass out. Anansi soon figures a way to use this rock to trick the other animals out of their food. Can anyone outsmart him before he steals every last bit of food? The answer is really funny. I love this book and never get tired of it. There are lots of books with Anansi stories, but this one (and the others that he and the wonderful illustrator Janet Stevens have done) are far and away the best.

The other one is Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. This book (illustrated by the fantastic Trina Schart Hyman) is another story about Hershel of Ostropol, which means it's another laugh-out-loud story about another trickster. This time Hershel wanders into a village on a cold, snowy night. He doesn't worry about going hungry because it's the first night of Hanukkah and everyone will be willling to share--or so he thinks! This village doesn't celebrate Hanukkah anymore because the goblins have taken over the synagogue and blow out the candles whenever anyone lights the menorah. The only way to drive them off is to stay in the old, desrted, creepy synagogue, light the candles each night, and, finally, get the king of the goblins to light them hismself on the last night. No problem for Hershel of Ostopol! He can outwit any goblin. Or can he? Wait until you see the king of the goblins. He's scary! This book made me laugh and shiver and I bet you will too! (Check out our October 25 post, "Hooray for Eric Kimmel!" to see more about Hershel) If you want to visit Eric's website, click here.

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. Have you hung your dreidels by the chimney with care?




A Confused Hanukkah by Jon Koons. Illustrated by S.D. Schindler. Dutton, 2004 (0-525-46969-9)$16.99

I'm thrilled to be seeing some children's literature backlash against the Christmasfication of Hanukkah in books like The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming. This "original folktale" makes similar points, with gentler irony and perhaps more accessibility to younger readers.

Set in the traditional Jewish town-of-fools, Chelm, the story begins with the villagers unable to remember how to celebrate Hanukkah while their Rabbi is away. A man named Yossel sets out for a nearby town "to find out what must be done," but naturally, being from Chelm, he goes the wrong way and winds up in the Big City, where he gets some very odd information about "the coming holiday." His fellow villagers are a bit surprised--"Trees? Fat men? I don't remember any of that!"--but conclude these must be the latest modern customs, so they proceed to chop down a tree, decorate it with matzo balls, wooden dreidels and shiny menorahs, and dress the fattest man in town in a fancy suit, calling him "Hanukkah Hershel."

Yet somehow, nothing seems right. "They had never seen Hanukkah Hershel before. And surely, if they had decorated a tree like this in the past, someone would have remembered. But Yossel had told them that other people did these things. And why shouldn't they celebrate the way others did? Still, now it seemed like this wasn't Hanukkah at all."

Luckily, just then the Rabbi arrives home, to tell them the story of Hanukkah and remind them of their true traditions. And "From that day forward it was said that the people of Chelm always remembered how to keep Hanukkah."

Koons doesn't hit us in the face with his point, leaving the silliness of the story to speak for itself about the ridiculousness of mixing up two things that have very little relationship to each other. I would like to have seen a note on the history of Chelm in Jewish folklore and humor, and it would also have strengthened the the book to say more about the significance of the Hanukkah customs--eating foods fried in oil in memory of the oil lamp, for example.

This should go over well at storytimes, especially with a reader who's good with dialogue, which is lively and plentiful. Pen & ink and watercolor illustrations in a slightly caricatured style highlight both the foolishness and the generally goodhearted nature of the people of Chelm, adding to the humor and warmth of the story. (4 & up)

There’s often a ritual involved in getting families into the holiday spirit: tree trimming and baking treats for some; candle lighting and telling family stories by the fireplace for others… A family I know, for instance, gathers around the tree on Christmas to hear the Christmas Eve chapter of Wind in the Willows, “Dulce Domum.”

For many families storytelling plays an important role in adding extra meaning and warmth to the holidays, whether they read books together; have a tradition of book giving; or listen to the stories of older relatives and how they celebrated the holidays as a child, way back when. In addition to helping kids understand the real meaning of the holidays, stories from books and/or from family members and friends provide a way for children to learn that different people celebrate different holidays, and that one same holiday can be celebrated differently in different families and cultures (did you know that Ecuadorians’ tradition of welcoming the new year involves making a scarecrow?…I, for one, didn’t, until recently.)

A meaningful glimpse of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa traditions can be gleaned from the following children’s books: in The Legend of the Ponsettia, Tomie de Paola retells the Mexican legend of how the ponsettia flower came to be, through the story of a little girl who fears she won’t have a gift for baby Jesus in time for the Christmas parade; in Angela Shelf Medearis’Seven Spools of Thread seven brothers highlight the seven principles of Kwanzaa in the process of making gold out of spools of thread; in Linda Glaser’s The Borrowed Hanukkah Latkes, a young girl devices a clever way to make her old, lonely neighbor join in her family’s Hanukkah’s celebrations, in spite of his numerous refusals. And for those of us enjoying cold, dark nights under the covers, Anna Grossnickle Hines’ Winter Lights: A Season in Poems and Quilts helps us warm up by bringing the brightness and meaning of Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa’s lights to life.

About.com offers good tips on how to wade our way through all the 2007 holiday titles

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SHOW NOTES:

This episode marks the 2nd year anniversary of The Book of Life! In this show, we celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah.

> Illustrator Ann Koffsky describes her snowflake "Jerusalem of Peace," created for Robert's Snow for Cancer's Cure. We also learn about her illustrations for My Cousin Tamar Lives in Israel by Michelle Shapiro Abraham, and her new Joyfully Jewish 2008 calendar.

> Author Sarah Marwil Lamstein and illustrator Neil Waldman discuss their picture book Letter on the Wind: A Chanukah Tale.

> Kenny Ellis, cantor and performer, riffs on his CD Hanukkah Swings! You can also check out Kenny's MySpace page, and download "Swingin' Dreidel" as a ringtone.

> Author Barbara Bietz talks about her chapter book Like a Maccabee, as well as her kidlit blog and her new position on the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee, where she'll help choose the best Judaic children's books of the year.

NEWS:

Here is a special Hanukkah treat for you: a complete online version of the holiday classic, Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric A. Kimmel, provided by Lookybook. To hear from Eric himself about the inspiration for Hershel, you can read this post from my Library Blogathon or you can listen to the very first episode of The Book of Life from December 2005, when Eric was a featured guest. Enjoy!

Chanukah Lights Everywhere by Michael J. Rosen. Illustrated by Melissa Iwai. 2001; Voyager, 2006 (0-15-205675-0) $6.00 pb

On each of the eight nights of Chanukah, a little boy counts lights for the number of candles his family lights. On the first night, "the skinny moon beams like a proud candle flame against the dark sky." On the sixth night, he counts six other menorahs in windows during a walk. On the seventh night, he visits a friend who celebrates Christmas and counts seven lights burning in his windows. And on the eighth night, he finds "all seven stars in the Big Dipper, plus the famous North Star above us, as though God, too, were lighting his own menorah in the sky. Even when Chanukah is over, he sees lights that remind him of their menorah and "I think about Chanukah and about being Jewish in such a wide world of so many other lights."

A sincere, earnest book with sincere, earnest illustrations, Chanukah Lights Everywhere explores themes also seen in Rosen's previous books like Elijah's Angel: respect and appreciation amongst people of different religions. This time it comes across as more messagey than heartwarming, however. There are some playful moments, with lots of cats popping up--one peers out between the narrator's legs in a busy family scene--and the glow of bright lights amid sparkling blue skies in the many night illustrations is warm and satisfying.

Barbara Bietz, kidlit blogger, incoming member of the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee, and author of Like a Maccabee, interviewed me for her blog! Click here to read the interview.

Turn about is fair play, so I'll be interviewing Barbara for the December 2007 episode of The Book of Life. Her entertaining chapter book is about Hanukkah, family... and soccer. (Who knew?)

Keep up with Barbara Bietz at http://www.barbarabietz.com/ or at barbarabbookblog.blogspot.com.

A note of warning: Hanukkah comes really early this year! December 5th by my calendar, which may or may not have it right.

I haven't yet seen Lemony Snicket's new book, The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming, but from what Evan tells me, it is both hysterically funny and a book whose time has more than come. Check it out.

And a few reviews of more traditional Hanukkah books. (Okay, there are some odd ones too.)