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Micheline's Blog

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Monthly Archives: April 2013

Another Type: The Tail-Fisher

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Fables, Literature

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Aesop's Fables, Fable, Jean de La Fontaine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Le Renard ayant la queue coupée, Norwegian tale, Perry Index 17, Roman de Renart, Samivel, Type AT 2 the Tail-Fisher, Ysengrin loses his tail

Ysengrin sur la glace, Samivel

Ysengrin sur la glace (Ysengrin on the Ice), by Samivel

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
How the bear lost his tail. The tail-fisher
Aarne-Thompson: AT 2
Gutenberg [eBook # 25433], p. 36
 
 

Perry Index 17. The Fox without a Tail

  • Why the Bear Is Stumpy-Tailed. The tail-fisher (Norwegian, AT 2)[i]
  • Roman de Renart. The tail-fisher (AT 2)
  • Le Renard ayant la queue coupée (La Fontaine Vol. 1. Book V.5, 1668)
  • Du Renard qui a perdu sa queue (Æsop)
  • The Fox without a Tail (Æsop: Perry Index 17)
  • Reineke Fuchs EN (Goethe, 1794)[ii]

The tail-fisher

This motif is associated with Norwegian folktales (Aarne-Thompson 2) and also appears in Reynard the Fox (Aarne-Thompson 2).  Le Roman de Renart FR.  There are fables and folktales in which the fox, the bear, or the rabbit loses its tail, but these are not trickster stories.

The Norwegian Tale

The Norwegian tale resembles branche III of the Roman de Renart in that our Norwegian bear is fooled into fishing with his tail through a hole in the ice by a fox.  He is then attacked and loses his tail running away from probable predators.  The tail gets stuck in the hole through which the beat is tail-fishing.

The missing tail Type

The Roman de Renart

In the related Roman de Renart FR, the wolf Ysengrin plays the same role as the bear.  Ysengrin is fooled by the fox into fish with his tail.  This episode takes place in branche III of the Roman de Renart.

In Le Roman de Renart, the fishing-tail story unfolds as follows:

Smelling grilled eels, Ysengrin knocks at Renart’s door.  Renart tells him that he is entertaining monks.  “Would that I were a monk,” says Ysengrin!  Renart obliges by throwing boiling water at Ysengrin to shave off some of his fur and, thereby, make him look like a monk (la tonsure). (See Samivel’s illustration at the bottom of this post.)  He then leads Ysengrin to a hole in the ice of a frozen pond and tells him he will certainly catch fish.  Renart leaves a bucket behind attaching it to the wolf’s tail and tells his foe not to move while he is fishing.  The wolf’s tail gets stuck in the hole.  When morning comes, hunters pounce on the fox whose tail is mistakenly cut off.  Ysengrin runs away without asking that his tail be returned to him.

Renart ties a Bucket to Ysengrin's Tail

Renart ties a Bucket to Ysengrin’s Tail (Branche III) Bibliothèque nationale de France

Photo credit: Le Roman de Renart
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms fr.12584  
 

Jean de La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine’s Fox who has lost his tail, Le Renard ayant la queue coupée (Vol. 1. Book V.5), is based on a Æsopic fable entitled The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail (Perry Index 17).  In La Fontaine’s fable, the fox is not the trickster fox of the Roman de Renart.  In this fable, a fox who has lost his tail invites fellow foxes to have their tale removed.  However, they ask the fox to turn around so they can see his behind.  When le renard turns around, the other foxes start booing him.  The proposed trend stops at the sight of the fox’s rear end.

Le Renard ayant la queue coupée

Le Renard ayant la queue coupée

Du Renard qui a perdu sa queue

Du Renard qui a perdu sa queue

Photo Credit: Le Renard ayant la queue coupée (La Fontaine)
Photo Credit: Du Renard qui a perdu sa queue (Æsop)
 

The same fate awaits Æsop’s fox

The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail

A FOX caught in a trap escaped, but in so doing lost his tail.
Thereafter, feeling his life a burden from the shame and ridicule
to which he was exposed, he schemed to convince all the other
Foxes that being tailless was much more attractive, thus making
up for his own deprivation.  He assembled a good many Foxes and
publicly advised them to cut off their tails, saying that they
would not only look much better without them, but that they would
get rid of the weight of the brush, which was a very great
inconvenience.  One of them interrupting him said, “If you had
not yourself lost your tail, my friend, you would not thus
counsel us.”

Temporary Conclusion

There are many severed-tail stories based on Aarne-Thompson Type 2, The tail-fisher is a favorite type.  Moreover, there are short tail stories.  One of my former students told me there is a “why the rabbit’s tail is short” in Glooscap, Abenaki mythology.  But I have yet to find this particular version of “why the rabbit’s tail is short,” but it could be that my student’s testimonial suffices.  She has Amerindian ancestry.  A former and very well-educated Nova Scotia neighbor often used the following expression:  “There is always something to keep the rabbit’s tail short.”

I will pause here and discuss Winnie-the-Pooh in another post.

_____________________________
[i] Aarne-Thompson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_system
[ii] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2013 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/237027/Johann-Wolfgang-von-Goethe>.
 
List:
Folklore
How the Bear Lost his Tail (North American Lore)
The Legend of How the Bear lost its Tail (Native American)
 
A Related Tale (Myths of the Cherokees, by James Money)
Why the Possum’s Tale is Bare
 
Children’s Literature
In which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh (A. A. Milne, as of 1924)
Les Malheurs d’Ysengrin, Goupil (Samivel) (AT 2)
Rufus, the Fox (Margery Williams, 1937) (AT 2)
 
Reineke Fuchs pictures by Wilhelm von Kaulbach:
The most delectable history of Reynard the Fox; (1895)
by Joseph Jacobs and W. Frank Calderon
 
 
Tonsure d'Ysengrin, by Samivel

Tonsure d’Ysengrin, by Samivel

 
Reynard pours boiling water on Ysengrin, by Samivel
 
© Micheline Walker
29 April 2013
WordPress
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Quebec on my mind.2

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Canada, Quebec

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Bilingualism, Bill-14, Cegep, Claude Lorrain, Language Laws, Quebec, Right to study in English Cegeps, Sovereignty

 The Mill, by Claude Lorrain

Le Moulin by Claude Lorrain, 1631

Claude Lorrain (c. 1600 – 23 November 1682)

Photo credit: wikipaintings.org (Lorrain);
www.britannica.com (Sir George-Étienne Cartier)
 

Bill 14

Yesterday, I wrote a blog on the subject of Bill 14, now under discussion in the Quebec Legislature,[i] but did not post it.  I needed to “sleep on it” and did.  If enacted, Bill 14 would make Quebec communities where the percentage of English-speaking citizens falls below 50% into French-speaking communities, but it is more complex.  It would also put limits on the number of French-speaking Québécois who attend Quebec’s Cégep (grades 12 and 13).  After obtaining their DEC Diplôme d’études collégiales) or DCS (Diploma of College Studies), students may enter graduate programs, such as Law and Medicine.

A will to remain within Canadian Confederation

When Jacques Parizeau, a former premier of Quebec, lost the last referendum on sovereignty, held in 1995, he commented that the Parti Québécois had lost because of  “money and the ethnic vote.”  This cannot be altogether true.  Among the c. 51% of the population who voted against sovereignty, there were many French-speaking voters.  There are French-speaking Quebecers who wish to retain a close partnership with Ottawa.  In fact, this percentage has grown significantly since Madame Marois has become the Premier of Quebec.  She leads a minority government and has effected cutbacks and disappointed students.  I can state, therefore, that there is, among Québécois, a will to remain within Confederation, a closer bond than that which unites the United States.

French-Canadians Studying English

An excellent indication of this will is the large number of French-speaking Québécois who enrol in English-language Cégeps as well as institutions such as Bishop’s University, in the Eastern Townships, where I reside, with the purpose of learning English.  English-speaking Quebecers are willing to accept compromises and, among French-speaking Québécois, many wish to learn English.  Because of the operations I have undergone in the last five months or so (cataracts and bunions), I know that it is entirely possible in Sherbrooke, Quebec, to receive medical attention in Canada’s two official languages.  For instance I was provided with information on the removal of cataracts in a bilingual booklet.  As well, when my second bunion was removed, there were Anglophones waiting for surgery and they were addressed in fluent English and in a friendly, caring manner by French-Canadian doctors and the hospital’s staff.

Bilingualism

Bilingualism is not an evil.  On the contrary.  It is as a student at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, and Marianopolis College, in Westmount (Montreal), that I studied French systematically.  These were English-language institutions.  As a result, I know that in English one “makes a decision” and that in French one takes a decision  (prendre une décision).  In other words, although French is my mother tongue, I perfected my knowledge of both French and English taking courses intended for English-speaking students.  I studied French as a second-language.  Later, after finishing my PhD, I taught applied linguistics, or what is involved in the teaching and learning of second or third languages (second-language didactics), at McMaster University, in Ontario.  I love studying languages.

Opposing Bill 14

Now that Bill 14 is being discussed, I wish I could provide the Legislature with my personal testimonial.  I can do so in fluent and correct French.  Consequently, I am opposed to a Bill that would further limit access to the study of English to French-speaking Quebecers.  One has to be realistic.  If Québécois do not learn languages other than French, English in particular, they will be facing obstacles that have nothing to do with their being part of the Canadian Confederation.  They are citizens of the world.

I am also opposed to Bill 14 because it takes away from English-speaking Quebecers the rights I enjoyed in mostly English-language provinces of Canada.  The majority of French-speaking Canadians live in Quebec, but there are a great many French-speaking Canadians living outside Quebec.  They have their schools or they may enter a French-immersion program.  Canadian Parents for French  remains a strong lobby and several members of this association look upon French-immersion schools as the better public schools or private schools within the public system.

Sir George-Étienne Cartier

Sir George-Étienne Cartier

The French-Canadian Legacy

French-speaking Canadians outside Quebec can listen to French-language radio and watch French-language television networks from coast to coast and they are respected by English-speaking Canadians who have been flocking to French-immersion schools from the moment Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his Liberal Party implemented official bilingualism.  It is no longer possible for me to speak French at a restaurant table in Toronto or Vancouver expecting that no one will understand what I am saying.

In other words, the battle has been fought and won.  I have mentioned Pierre Elliott Trudeau‘s government, but he had predecessors who paved the way for a bilingual Canada. Among these leaders are Sir Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, KCMG (October 4, 1807 – February 26, 1864), Sir George-Étienne Cartier, 1st Baronet, PC (September 6, 1814 – May 20, 1873), a father of Confederation, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, GCMG, PC, KC, (20 November 1841 – 17 February 1919).  It’s time to cease and desist.  If not, more English-speaking Quebecers will leave their province as well as French-speaking Québécois many of whom had moved to Quebec from France, Belgium, and other war-torn countries.  A large number left in the 1970s.  They had fled strife.

Strife is what Lord Durham, John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, GCB, PC (12 April 1792 – 28 July 1840), observed and noted in the report he submitted after investigating the mostly misunderstood Rebellions of 1837-1838 (entry from the Canadian Encyclopedia).  Lord Durham commented that French-speaking Canadians were “without history and without literature” and recommended that they be assimilated, but this recommendation was never put into effect.  Sir Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, a French-Canadian, was Prime Minister from September 26, 1842 – November 27, 1843.  His term began a year after the Act of Union (1841), also recommended by Lord Durham, was proclaimed.  Responsible government became the more important objective, as would extending Canada from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

The Rebellions of 1837-1838

Québécois who study the history of Canada should be taught that the Rebellions of 1837-1838 occurred in both Canadas (see Upper Canada Rebellion, Wikipedia).  There were patriots in Toronto and rebels were hanged in the current Ontario (Toronto and London).  Recently, I met a lady who told me she did not know about the Upper Canada Rebellion and was sorry she had not been taught Canadian history in a more accurate manner.

Conclusion

It would be my opinion that souverainistes are now “fighting windmills” (Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes).  They are also harming all French-speaking Canadians living outside Quebec.  Above all, consider the benefits of living harmoniously and in prosperity.

Featured artist

My featured artist is Claude Lorrain, the byname of Claude Gellée (born 1600, Champagne, France—died Nov. 23, 1682, Rome [Italy]), whose landscapes may have been an inspiration to Whistler in that they are lyrical and an earlier expression of a degree of tonalism.[ii]     

RELATED ARTICLES

Upper Canada Rebellion (Wikipedia)
Upper and Lower Canada (michelinewalker.com)
The Rebellion in Upper Canada: Wikipedia’s Gallery (michelinewalker.com)
 

Upper Canada Rebels who died by hanging

Peter Matthews (1789 – April 12, 1838; by hanging [Toronto]) 
Samuel Lount (September 24, 1791 – April 12, 1838; by hanging [Toronto])
Joshua Gwillen Doan (1811 – February 6, 1839; by hanging [London, Ontario])  
 

REFERENCES

CTV News (François Legault)
CBC News  (Coalition Avenir Québec, François Legault)
CBC News (Dawson College, Cégep, priority to Anglophone students)
The Montreal Gazette Loss of identity)
 

Quebec’s main political parties and their leaders (le chef) are:

Le Parti Québécois (Pauline Marois, chef)
Coalition Avenir Québec (François Legault, chef)
Le Parti Libéral du Québec (Philippe Couillard, chef)
 
_______________________________
 
[i] Called “Assemblée nationale” by “indépendantistes” parties.
 
[ii] “Claude Lorrain.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 27 Apr. 2013.
 
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/120438/Claude-Lorrain>.  
 
art: Claude Lorrain
composer: Johann Pachelbel 
piece: Canon (Arr.: Louis Ablazzo, Ed. Mathun)
performers: Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra
conductor: Bemhard Giiller
 
trees
© Micheline Walker
27 April  2013
WordPress
 
Trees,
by Claude Lorrain,
1669
 
 
 
 
 
 

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James McNeill Whistler: a Subtler Art

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, United States

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Art for Art's Sake, Etching, Gustave Courbet, Henri Fantin-Latour, Impressionism, James McNeill Whistler, Japonisme, John Ruskin, Théophile Gauthier, Tonalism

the-north-sea 
 green-and-silver-the-bright-sea-dieppeblue-and-white-covered-urn 
 
 
The North Sea, 1883 (watercolour)
Green and Silver: The Bright Sea, Dieppe, 1883-85 (gouache and watercolour)
Blue and White Covered Urn (no date) 
 
 
Photo credit: Wikipaintings.org
The Athenæum
 

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (July 10, 1834 – July 17, 1903)

Biography

I do not know the name of the lady who sat for Whistler’s Head of a Young Woman (1890).  This portrait was painted at the height of Whistler’s career, two years after his marriage to Beatrix Birnie Philip, when the couple resided in Paris.

Interestingly, Whistler was not altogether wrong when he claimed he was born in Saint Petersburg.  He was in fact born in Lowell, Massachusetts, but he moved to Russia in 1843, a year after his father, George Washington Whistler, a prominent engineer, was hired to build a railroad connecting Saint Petersburg and Moscow.  He was 9 years old when he joined his father in Russia.  Those were formative years.  It could be said that Whistler was an “expat,” and one of the first American artists to settle in Europe, mingle with soul mates and enjoy both a bohemian lifestyle and the pleasures of a café society.

—ooo—

At the age of eleven, young James enrolled in Saint Petersburg‘s Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, where it was soon noticed that he was a gifted artist.  While his father was working in Russia, Whistler also visited England accompanied by his mother.  He met Francis Haden, a surgeon by profession, but also an artist.  Francis Haden married Whistler’s sister and would become the very distinguished Sir Francis Seymour Haden.  After his trip to England, James informed his father of his wish to pursue a career as an artist, writing “I hope, dear father, you will not object to my choice” (See James Abbot McNeill Whistler, Wikipedia).  However, James was about to lose his father to cholera.  George Washington Whistler died in Russia.

After James’ father passed away, the Whistler family was forced to return to the United States.  But they left Lowell, Massachusetts to settle in Pomfret, Connecticut, James’ mother’s hometown.  Whistler was therefore brought up in a more frugal manner than would otherwise have been the case.

Yet, despite his father’s untimely death, James would become an artist.  A career as a minister was Mrs Whistler’s first choice for her son.  However, James had no inclination for life as a member of the clergy, nor, for that matter, could he enter the military successfully.  He did attend West Point, failed an exam, misbehaved, and was dismissed by no less than Colonel Robert E. Lee.  He then worked as draftsman “mapping the entire U.S. coast for military and maritime purposes[,]” but drawing “sea serpents, mermaids, and whales on the margins of the maps, at which point he was transferred to the etching division of the U. S. Coast Survey.” (See James McNeill Whistler, Wikipedia.)

Whistler lasted two months as an etcher, but his training in this medium would be invaluable in the career he would embark upon after a stay with a wealthy friend, Tom Winans.  Winans, who lived in Baltimore, provided Whistler with a studio, pocket-money and, in 1855, with the funds that would allow Whistler to leave for Paris to perfect his skills as an artist.  Whistler never returned to the United States.  He is buried in Chiswick, near London.

symphony-in-grey-and-green-the-ocean-1872hb_17_3_159

 
 
Symphony in Grey and Green: The Ocean, 1866-1872 (oil)
Nocturne: The Thames at Battersea, 1878 (lithograph)
Nocturne in Black and Gold: the Falling Rocket, c. 1875 (oil, bottom of post)
 

Tonalism

When Whistler arrived in France, realism was all the rage.  He became a disciple of Gustave Courbet and befriended Henri Fantin-Latour. However, he was also influenced by the art for art’s sake movement, associated with writer Théophile Gauthier.  In the early 1860s, after he had settled in London, he visited Courbet and painted seascapes with him.  He also visited Brittany (1861) and the coast near Biarritz (1862).

But although his paintings reflect his exposure to realism and, to a certain extent, the Barbizon School (1830 through 1870), Whistler developed a rather personal style called tonalism.  Tonalism is also associated with George Inness and, to a certain extent, with the Russian mood landscapes of Aleksey Savrasov[ii] and Isaac Levitan.[iii]  It is perhaps best described as a “veiled” form of realism, a subtler art, except that Whistler’s use of colour reflects musical keys.  Whistler built a close relationship between his colours or tones, as though they were painted in a key, usually in one of the more plaintive minor keys.  Many of his paintings are called “Nocturnes,” à la Chopin, Symphonies, Harmonies and Notes.  Whistler’s paintings therefore herald Impressionism as do Édouard Manet’s.  However, printmakers practice a certain linearity, a technique not altogether compatible with imprecise Impressionism.  Whistler produced several etchings and lithographs.

Also evident in the art of James McNeill Whistler is the influence of Japonisme and Orientalisme (FR).  In this respect, Whistler is very much a contemporary of middle to late 19th-century French artists: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso.  Japonisme also permeates the emerging, yet soon to be the golden age of the poster: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Théophile Steinlen and Art Nouveau.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Whistler is known for his “his paintings of nocturnal London, for his striking and stylistically advanced full-length portraits, and for his brilliant etchings and lithographs.”  He is also known for his “congenial themes on the River Thames, and the etchings that he did of such subjects garnered praise from the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire when they were exhibited in Paris.”[iv]

However, when he showed Nocturne in Black and Gold: the Falling Rocket (shown at the bottom of this post), Whistler did not garner praise from eminent British critic John Ruskin.  On 2 July 1877, in his Fors Clavigera, John Ruskin wrote:

“For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay [founder of the Grosvenor Gallery] ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of willful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”  (quoted in James McNeill Whistler, Wikipedia)

Modernism was happening across the English Channel.  Yet, the jury returned a verdict in favour of James McNeill Whistler.

moreby-hall-1884

Moreby Hall, 1883–1884 (watercolour)


[i]  “Aleksey Kondratyevich Savrasov.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.            
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1773613/Aleksey-Kondratyevich-Savrasov>.
 
[ii] “Isaak Ilyich Levitan.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.            
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/337990/Isaak-Ilyich-Levitan>.
 
[iii] “James McNeill Whistler”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/641961/James-McNeill-Whistler>.
 
composer: Edvard Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907)
Morgenstimmung 
 
 
451px-Whistler-Nocturne_in_black_and_gold (1)© Micheline Walker
14 April 2013
WordPress
 
 
  • RELATED ARTICLE
  • James McNeill Whistler: Women (micheline.walker.com)

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James McNeill Whistler: Women

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, United States

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Édouard Manet, Freer Gallery of Art, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, London, Maud Franklin, Musée d'Orsay, National Gallery of Art, Whistler

??????
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
294px-Whistler.white.393pix220px-Whistler_James_Arrangement_in_White_and_Black_1876
 
 
 5150-004-540FAA4Bharmony-in-red-lamplight_jpg!Blog
 
 

 

Head of a Young Woman, ca. 1890
Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, 1862 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.)
Arrangement in White and Black, 1876 (Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
Harmony in Red Lamplight, 1886
Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1: The Artist’s Mother, 1871–72 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)
Photo credit: Wikipaintings.org
The Athenæum
 

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (July 10, 1834 – July 17, 1903)

There is more to say about Reynard and motifs, but all I can send my readers today are pictures of the women in the life of American-born London-based artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (July 10, 1834 – July 17, 1903).  I have been sick with migraine for the last two days.  The second part of my blog will be posted later.

Three Women: jO, Maud and Beatrice

The two loves of Whistler’s life were Joanna “Jo” Hiffernan (ca. 1843 – after 1903) and Maud Franklin (9 January 1857 – ca. 1941).  Joanna had been Whistler’s model and helped him raise his son Charles James Whistler Hanson (1870–1935) the result of an affair with a parlour maid, Louisa Fanny Hanson.  Whistler’s mother never learned about her grandson.

Whistler painted a portrait of Joanna which he showed at the 1863 Paris Salon des Refusés (the Exhibition of Rejects [non Academic works]) at the same time as  Édouard Manet‘s showed his Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862-1863).  Manet’s painting caused a scandal, but Whistler’s Symphony in White, No. 1, a work in the manner of the Pre-Raphaelites, did not go unnoticed.  On the contrary.   We also have a painting of Maud, Arrangement in White and Black, 1876.

In 1888, Whistler married Beatrice (“Trixie”) Godwin (née Beatrix Birnie Philip).  She had been his pupil and model.  She was the former wife of architect Edward William Godwin.  They first lived in Paris but returned to England when she was diagnosed with cancer.  “Trixie” posed for Harmony in Red Lamplight, 1886.  They lived in the Savoy Hotel until her death in 1896.  Trixie was 39 at the moment of her death.  Whistler himself died seven years later.

Whistler’s Mother

However the woman who dominates Whistler’s life is his mother, born Anna Mathilda McNeill (September 27, 1804 – January 3, 1881). James’ mother had Southern roots.  Whistler enjoyed looking upon himself as an “impoverished Southern aristocrat.”  James did not want to have been born in Lowell, Massachusetts.  Later in life, when he sued John Ruskin for libel, he insisted he was born in Saint Petersburg.

After Whistler settled in England, in the 1860s, she joined him.  She did not like her son’s bohemian lifestyle, so accommodations had to be found for “Jo.”  Yet, the most famous of Whistler’s painting is the now iconic Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1: The Artist’s Mother (1871–72), a portrait of Whistler’s mother.  When she died, he added her name, McNeill, to his.

I will pause here…

Whistler by William Merritt Chase, 1885
292px-Chase_William_Merritt_James_Abbott_McNeill_Whistler_1885

Micheline Walker©
April 23, 2013
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Another Motif: Playing Dead

20 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Beast Literature, Literature

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Franklin Edgerton, Jill Mann, Laura Gibbs, Middle Ages, Panchatantra, playing-dead motif, Reynard, Roman de Renart

Renart and Tiécelin, the Crow

Renart and Tiécelin the Crow (BnF, Roman de Renart)

  *Photo credit: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Le Roman de Renart

In branch III of the Roman de Renart, the goupil — foxes used to be called goupils — Renart is hungry and goes in search of food.  When he gets to the road, he sees a cart loaded with fish and quickly lies across the road making believe he has died.  The merchant stops his cart and investigates.  He looks at Renart’s magnificent fur and as a merchant he wonders if there isn’t money to be made from the sale of the fur.  He throws Renart at the back of the cart, which is precisely what Renart wanted him to do.  Our trickster fox therefore feasts on the herrings (les harengs).  Having satisfied his hunger, Renart wraps himself into a coat made of eels and jumps off the cart.  As he runs away, he shouts “bless you” to the merchant, “there I am with plenty of eels to eat, you can keep the rest!”

Renart et les anguilles (eels) is one of the best known of Renart’s tricks, except that this time he doesn’t take advantage of the wolf Ysengrin (French spelling), the chief character in Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus (c. 1149).  Besides, the fox is not speaking Latin but Roman (le roman).

Renart et les anguilles

Renart et les anguilles (the eels) (BnF, Roman de Renart)

The Theft of Fish

Renart et les anguilles (br. III) is classified as motif 1 in the Aarne Thompson (AT) motif index,[i] where it is listed as The theft of fish. The getting-stuck-in-a-hole is motif 50 in the Aarne-Thompson Classification and is called Curing a sick lion. The bear and the honey is motif 49 except that the Roman de Renart’s Brun (Bruin) the bear gets stuck (coincé) in a log and not in a hole.[ii]

the Fox Who Played Dead: Æsop, Abstemius and Renart the Fox

Dr Laura Gibbs[iii] tells us about a fable entitled The Dog and the Fox who Played Dead by Æsop, but based on Abstemius (149). A fox played dead so he could catch birds. The fox “rolled in the mud and stretched out in a field.” However, a dog comes by and mangles the fox, which puts an end to the otherwise deadly ruse.

In the Roman de Renart, the fox entices Tiécelin, the corbeau (the crow), to sing and thus lose the cheese he has stolen. However, before taking the cheese, the fox makes believe he is wounded and when he tries to eat Tiécelin, all he succeeds in grabbing are a few feathers. Both stories are identical except for the presence of a dog in Æsop and Abstemius.

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So, in Æsop the make-believe is stopped by a dog, but the in the Roman de Renart, the make-believe is not carried out to the point of playing dead. However, Tiécelin has a name which suggests that he is a human in disguise, the chief device of animals in literature. In both fables, the fox says he fully deserves to have lost the bird, and the cheese. In Laura Gibbs’ version of The Dog and the Fox who Played Dead, the fox says “This is just what I deserve: while I was trying to catch the birds using my tricks, someone else has caught me.” The same is true of Renart. One has the impression that the fox knows how clever he is and that he can therefore afford to lose.

In the Medieval Bestiary, we read that

“the fox is a crafty and deceitful animal that never runs in a straight line, but only in circles. When it wants to catch birds to eat, the fox rolls in red mud so that it appears to be covered in blood. It then lies apparently lifeless; birds, deceived by the appearance of blood and thinking the fox to be dead, land on it and are immediately devoured.The most famous fox of the Middle Ages was Reynard, the trickster hero of the Romance of Reynard the Fox.”

In fact,

[t]he fox represents the devil, who pretends to be dead to those who retain their worldly ways, and only reveals himself when he has them in his jaws. To those with perfect faith, the devil is truly dead.

Playing dead (faire le mort) is a common ruse illustrated here using two examples from the Roman de Renart and a closely related example from Æsop. If we were to trace back Renart’s ruses, they would take us to the Pañcatantra. The structure of the Roman de Renart is a frame story, stories within a story, which is also the case with the Sanskrit Pañcatantraand its Arabic rendition, Ibn al Muqaffa’s Kalīlah wa-Dimnah.

However, the Roman de Renart is a fabliau.  The Pañcatantra and Kalīlah wa-Dimnah do not possess the scurrilous and at times scatological aspect of French fabliaux.[iv]  Moreover, if ancient beast epics and fables are used in the education of the prince, it would seem our ancient prince did not live in the albeit comical but ruthless world, the various European countries Reynard the Fox inhabits. We accept his cruel misdeeds because his tricks do not seem to hurt.One is reminded of the comic strips steamroller flattening a cat who always fluffs up again. I am using a comparison taken from Jill Mann[v] in Kenneth Varty,[vi] ed. Introduction, Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2000).

Conclusion

The comic text is a “self-redeeming” (the term is mine) by virtue of a powerful convention, the “all’s well that ends well.” But beast epics and fables are also a nītiśāstra. In other words, they are, by vocation and convention, cushioned advice for the “wise” conduct of a prince’s life. According to Franklin Edgerton (1924), “[t]he so-called ‘morals’ of the stories have no bearing on morality; they are unmoral, and often immoral. They glorify shrewdness and practical wisdom, in the affairs of life, and especially of politics, of government.”[vii] As I indicated in an earlier post, Edgerton may be a little severe regarding the morality of the Panchatantra, but, were we to apply his comments to Reynard the Fox, they would not be altogether inappropriate. Renart is a scoundrel.

In closing, I will also point out that the playing-dead motif is particularly important in that playing dead is a real-life option. This particular motif is very much about the “wise” conduct of a prince. For instance, laying low while the country regrouped probably came to the mind of American leaders on 9/11.

Fortunately, when all is said and done, a fox is a fox is a fox.

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Reynard the Fox, the Itinerant (michelinewalker.com)
  • “To Inform or Delight” (michelinewalker.com)
  • A Motif: Getting Stuck in a Hole (michelinewalker.com)
_________________________
[i] Aarne-Thompson Motif-Index
http://scandinavian.wisc.edu/mellor/taleballad/pdf_files/motif_types.pdf
[ii] Also see: Aarne-Thompson Classification System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_system#Animal_tales
and Flokloristics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkloristics
[iii] Laura Gibbs is the author of Aesop’s Fables, Aesop’s Fables in Latin, Mille Fabulae et Una, Latin Via Proverbs, Vulgate Verses, and Roman Sudoku.
[iv] With respect to fabliaux, you may wish to look at the Geoffrey Chaucer site.
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/litsubs/fabliaux/
Also see: Jill Mann, Feminizing Chaucer, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2002.
[v] Jill Mann, The Satiric Fiction of the Ysengrimus, in Varty, p. 1.  Jill Mann has translated into English Nivardus of Ghent’s entire Ysengrimus.
[vi] Kenneth Varty, ed. Introduction, Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2000).
[vii] (George Allen and Unwin, London 1965 [1924]) p. 13.  Edgerton’s edition and translation of the Panchatantra is an “Edition for the General Reader.” (Quoted in Wikipedia’s Panchatantra entry.)
Reineke Fuchs

Reineke Fuchs

© Micheline Walker
19 April 2013
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On the Boston Bombings

18 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Boston Marathon, Frédéric Chopin, Pablo Picasso, Tragedy, United States, Victims

Combat Paix, by Picasso, 1962
Combat Paix, by Picasso, 1962

How can one understand senseless tragedies such as the one that has forever blemished the face of the Boston Marathon.  Yet, they keep happening.  We kill and we maim.  We have a very bad reputation.

When someone is the victim of a needless tragedy, I want to trade places with the aggrieved individual.  Send me to the gas chamber, but spare my neighbour.  It’s a silly reaction, but it’s my first reaction.

Second, I hear myself say: “I’m so sorry.  I’m so very sorry.  How can I help?”  But I’m alone.  No one can hear me and there is very little I can do.

Third, I’m indignant.  “How dare you?  Isn’t life hard enough?  Why make matters worse?”

There are so many things we cannot change.  We do our best to predict earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, devastating hurricanes.  Yet they happen.  We fight diseases, epidemics, pandemics, but all too often these defeat us.  There are so many ways in which we are powerless.

But tragedies such as the Boston bombings need not happen.  They are man-made tragedies.  So this we can change.  This we must change, if we really want to…

There are so many ways in which we are powerful.

But, at the moment, I simply want to say that I feel very sorry for the victims of Monday’s bombings and for their families and friends. I would like to be with them and comfort them.

Pablo Picasso (photo credit: Wikipedia)

composer:  Frédéric Chopin
Nocturne in B Flat Minor Op.9 No.1
performer: Sviatoslav Richter

Blue Nude
Blue Nude
Micheline Walker©
April 18, 2013
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Motif: Getting Stuck in a Hole

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Literature

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Antti Aarne, Dom Juan, George Fyler Townsend, Gutenberg Project, La Fontaine, Roman de Renart, Stith Thompson, Vladimir Propp, Wikipedia

Le Belette entrée dans un grenier

La Belette entrée dans un grenier by Calvet-Rogniat c. 1950 (Photo credit: Wikipedia )

 

Classification

Type & Motif

In 1910, Antti Aarne (1875-1925) published a catalogue of motifs in folktales (fairy tales and related stories, including fables) entitled Verzeichnis der Märchentypen.  His catalogue was enlarged by Stith Thompson (1885–1976) in 1928 and again in 1961.  It has since been the Aarne–Thompson tale type index, a multi-volume catalogue.[1]

Narreme

The manner in which folktales were classified by Aarne-Thompson has been questioned.  In his Morphology of the Folktale, published in Russia in 1928, Bulgaria-born Vladimir Propp classifies stories according to their narrative.  Narremes or narratemes are the “simplest irreducible narrative elements” in a tale.  “After the initial situation is depicted, the tale takes the following sequence of 31 functions.”  For instance, the 7th of these 31 functions is: the “Victim deceived.”  Vladimir Propp’s (29 April 1895 – 22 August 1970) catalogue remained a Soviet mystery until it was translated in 1958.  (See Valdimir Propp [31 functions], Wikipedia)

Archetype

Archetypes are also used to classify folktales and other works of literature.  The pater familias of comedy is an archetype as is the pharmakos, the person who is blamed for opposing the scheduled marriage, whether or not he is innocent or guilty.  He is a scapegoat.  Northrop Frye‘s Anatomy of Criticism (1957) brought archetypes to the foreground.

The stock characters of the commedia dell’arte are archetypes.  Wikipedia has a long list of stock characters.  (See Stock Characters, Wikipedia.)  They include damsels in distress, femmes fatales, nerds, mad scientists, noble savages, professors and possibly the rest of humanity: a cast of thousands.

The above classifications are not mutually exclusive.  However, recurrence is a sine qua non of classification.

weasel-in-granary_72-212x300

The Weasel in the Granary by Percy J. Billinghurst

Today I will write about what I would call a motif.  Getting-stuck-in-a-hole is the motif I have chosen.  Usually, it is found in narratives where a silly but famished animal finds its way to an abundant supply of food, overeats and is therefore too swollen to get out using the opening through which it entered the cache.  In most, but not all cases, this motif could also be called the swollen belly.  If such is the case, the moral of the stories is that one should consider the possible consequences of his or her actions, which is the “Look before you leap” of the Fox and Goat.  However, it is possible to get caught in a hole for reasons other than overeating.

We will therefore look at five stories: two, where a fox (2) gets caught in a hole, one where a weasel (1) is trapped in a granary and one, where the victim is a bear (1), and one where the wolf’s wife (1), Hersent, gets stuck in an opening.  This last story is part of most Reynard the Fox narratives and, particularly in the Roman de Renart‘s.  Renart, the trickster, was born Reinardus in Nivardus of Ghent’s Latin Ysengrimus (1149).  The poem runs to 6,574 lines of elegiac couplets.   It migrated and became, in France, the Roman de Renart (beginning in the end of the 12th century and flourishing in the 13th century (c. 1170 – 1250).  It was written in octosyllabic verse in the vernacular (langue romane), by various authors (Pierre de Saint-Cloud and others).

Getting Stuck in a Hole: Greece

  • Greece: A Fox and a Fox

In a Greek version of the getting stuck in a hole motif, a famished Fox enters a hole in a tree where shepherds have left food and eats so much that he cannot get out.  Another fox comes by and tells the trapped fox that he must return to his former famished self in order to get out.  This version of our motif was not known to other European countries until the revival of Greek learning in the Renaissance.

George Fyler Townsend and the Gutenberg project:  A Fox and Fox

  • The Greek version is the one used in George Fyler Townsend‘s retelling of the swollen belly and it is also the version used by the Gutenberg Project.

“A very hungry fox, seeing some bread and meat left by shepherds in the hollow of an oak, crept into the hole and made a hearty meal. When he finished, he was so full that he was not able to get out, and began to groan and lament his fate. Another Fox passing by heard his cries, and coming up, inquired the cause of his complaining. On learning what had happened, he said to him, “Ah, you will have to remain there, my friend, until you become such as you were when you crept in, and then you will easily get out.”

Getting stuck in a hole: Rome & Æsop

  • In Rome: A Fox and a Weasel

In one of Horace‘s (8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC) poetical epistles to Maecenas (I.7, lines 29-35), Horace features a fox who eats too much as is told by a weasel that he must lose weight to get out of “a narrow chink into a bin a corn:”

“Once it chanced that a pinched little fox had crept through a narrow chink into a bin of corn and, when well fed, was trying with stuffed stomach to get out again, but in vain. To him quoth a weasel hard by: “If you wish to escape from there, you must go back lean through the narrow gap which you entered when lean.”

  • Æsop features a fox facing the same predicament. Æsop’s fable is entitled The Fox and Weasel and is catalogued as number 24 in the Perry Index where it is classified as The Fox with the Swollen Belly.

Getting Stuck in a hole:  La Fontaine

  • In La Fontaine: A Weasel and a Rat

However, although motifs remain the cast can change. By the time La Fontaine wrote his The Weazel in the Granary, the fox had fully matured into his foxy self, which means that he would not get stuck inside a tree, or a bin, or a granary, of all places! Alternately, the fox would get stuck accidentally, not foolishly, and would have fooled someone into freeing him leaving his good Samaritan in the predicament he, the fox, was in. In short, the fox is now a weasel and the animal who tells her (la belette) that “[w]ith an emptier belly; You enter’d lean, and lean must sally” is a rat.

Un Rat, qui la voyait en peine,
Lui dit : “Vous aviez lors la panse (belly) un peu moins pleine (emptier).
Vous êtes maigre (lean) entrée, il faut maigre sortir (sally).”
 

Click on La Belette entrée dans un grenier  (III.17) (French)
Click on The Weazel in the Granary  (III.17) (English translation) 

 

Getting stuck in a Hole: Winnie-the-Pooh

In A. A. Milne‘s (18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) Winnie-the-Pooh, the animal who gets stuck in a hole is Pooh bear himself.  Once again, the motif remains but the cast changes.

Under its entry The Fox and the Weasel, Wikipedia tells us that:

“In England the story was adapted by A. A. Milne as the second chapter in his Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ‘in which Pooh goes visiting and gets into a tight place’.  In this case, the bear overindulges in honey and condensed milk while visiting Rabbit and becomes stuck when trying to exit the burrow.  It takes a week of starvation before he can be extricated.”

Illumination from a manuscript of the Roman de Renart, end of the 13th century

Illumination from a manuscript of the Roman de Renart, end of the 13th century.

*Illuminated manuscripts (miniscules, probably Gothic?)
Photo credit: Wikipedia
 

Le Roman de Renart

As for Reynard or let us see, first, how clever he can be.  The following fable is entitled The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox and all Reynard stories are rooted in this one Æsopic fable which is probably rooted in much earlier tales.

In Æsop’s The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox (Perry Index 258?), the Fox overhears the wolf (Isengrim) tell the sick Lion, King Noble, that the Fox has been remiss in not presenting himself at the sick Lion’s bedside.  There are several versions of this story.  In my favourite version, the Fox goes and gets a large supply of shoes, returns to the Lion’s den, shows him all the footwear he has worn out in search of a cure for the Lion’s illness and that he has found one.  The lion must be wrapped in the skin of wolf, the same age as Isengrim.  The Wolf therefore loses his skin, the Fox is avenged, against all expectations the Lion is cured, and we have a new motif: the flayed animal, from the villainous wolf in sheep’s clothing to Donkeyskin, Charles Perrault‘s Peau d’âne (Aarne-Thompson type 510B).

“A LION, growing old, lay sick in his cave.  All the beasts came to visit their king, except the Fox.  The Wolf therefore, thinking that he had a capital opportunity, accused the Fox to the Lion of not paying any respect to him who had the rule over them all and of not coming to visit him.  At that very moment the Fox came in and heard these last words of the Wolf.  The Lion roaring out in a rage against him, the Fox sought an opportunity to defend himself and said, “And who of all those who have come to you have benefited you so much as I, who have traveled from place to place in every direction, and have sought and learnt from the physicians the means of healing you?’  The Lion commanded him immediately to tell him the cure, when he replied, “You must flay a wolf alive and wrap his skin yet warm around you.”  The Wolf was at once taken and flayed; whereon the Fox, turning to him, said with a smile, “You should have moved your master not to ill, but to good, will.”

So let us end this post by telling how the Wolf’s wife, Hersent, gets stuck in a wall of her house and, for the second time, there is a brief romance, Renart takes advantage of her.  Needless to say there are children’s versions of the Roman de Renart, but the Roman de Renart was not written for children and Renart is the archetypal scoundrel-we-like.  I should mention that the Bibliothèque nationale de France has a fine site on Renart (see BnF).  The rape of Hersent takes place in Branch 2 (of 27) of the Roman de Renart.  In modern French, roman means novel, but roman as in the Roman de Renart means “in the vernacular” (en langue romane).  Foxes used to be called goupils, but Renart’s popularity was such that the goupil became a renard (‘d’ in modern French).

Renart will, of course, be brought to justice, but he will make believe he has become a devout animal who wants to go to the Crusades and will be freed.

(Please click on the small images to enlarge them.)

fr_1579_001fr_1630_060v

Roman de Renart, BnF, Paris; Ms fr.12584, folio 18v-19
Photo credit: BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France, including image at bottom of post)

_________________________

[1] ATU 49 (Aarne-Thompson-Uther) The Bear and the Honey

 

This is a 14th-century French virelai written by Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377).

fr_1581_019© Micheline Walker
16 April 2013
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Paul Cézanne: a Glimpse

12 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

Dutch Golden Age, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Henri Matisse, intimisme, Matisse, Paul Cézanne, Philip Scott Johnson, Still life, Wikipedia

Fruit

Fruit

Photo credit: Cézanne, the Complete Works

Dear Readers,

I had to undergo surgery this week.  Everything went very well, but I have not been able to write since the operation.  I hope to return to my normal activities as soon as possible.

CurtainsFarm at Montgerault

Curtains
Farm at Montgeroult
 

Here are a few paintings by Paul Cézanne (1839–1906).  I tend to associate Cézanne with apples or other fruit.  Cézanne painted lovely still lifes.  In fact, some of his still lifes feature skulls.  Your may remember that during the 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age, still lifes were called Vanitas and often showed a skull, an element depicting the brevity of life (See Pieter Claesz, Wikipedia.)

By and large, an artist’s main frame of reference is art itself, but whether or not Cézanne featured skulls intending to underline the brevity of life would be difficult to ascertain.  As a post-impressionist, however, he did attempt to catch the brief moment when the light touches an object, suddenly transforming it.  That evanescent moment also points to the brevity of life.

Cézanne also painted landscapes, interesting displays of houses, portraits, people playing cards, nudes, groups of nudes, and works, such as “Curtains,” that constitute a lovely example of intimisme,[i] a private space.  Intimisme is often associated with impressionism as an impression is by definition a personal and fleeting view.    

Cézanne was not very popular in his days, yet both Picasso and Matisse looked upon him “the father of us all.”  (See Cézanne, Wikipedia)

Sugarbowl, Pears and Tablecloth

Ginger Jar and Fruit on a Table

Sugarbowl, Pears and Tablecloth
Ginger Jar and Fruit on a Table
The House with Cracked Walls (foot of post)
 
_________________________

[i] “Intimism”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 11 Apr. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/291874/Intimism>.

Video by Philip Scott Johnson

ZXc

Micheline Walker©
April 12, 2013
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Filles du Roy, encore…

08 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, France

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

bonne faiseuse, cul de couvent, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, Filles du Roy, Heather Dale, King's Daughters, Louis XIV of France, Molière, New France, Paris, Pierre Goubert, W. H. Lewis

Filles du Roy

Jean Talon, Bishop François de Laval and several settlers welcome the King’s Daughters upon their arrival.  Painting by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale.

Filles du Roy

My colleague tkmorin has written about the Filles du Roy, the King’s Daughters, women who were sometimes considered filles de joy.  Between 1663 and 1763, some 500 to 900 women were sent to New France (Nouvelle-France) so men did not have to marry Amerindian women.  Doubt lingers about these women.  Some are considered filles de joy: filles du roy, filles de joie.  However, my colleague is right, these women came from convents and, once they arrived in New France, they were trained to be “good wives” to settlers by Ursuline sisters, in Quebec City, and sisters of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame, a Montreal religious order founded by Marguerite Bourgeoys.

Fille du Roy and Congrégation de Notre-Dame sisters

Fille du Roy

Allow me to add a note on this subject.

In seventeenth-century France, it was of the utmost importance for the nobility to be in Paris.  France was ruled not by Dukes, the highest rank among the nobility, and other aristocrats, but by chief ministers: Richelieu (9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642) and Mazarin (14 July 1602 – 9 March 1661).  Aristocrats therefore feared losing power.  Consequently, they lived close to court and they rebelled.  La Fronde (des nobles and des parlements) was a series of civil wars that took place in France between 1648 and 1653.

To be seen by the king

When Louis XIV ascended the throne, in 1661, after Mazarin death, aristocrats were further humiliated.  Louis refused to have a chief minister:  “L’État, c’est moy.” As for members of his Conseil d’en haut (FR), en haut meant upstairs at Versailles, they were not members of the aristocracy.  Louis’s closest advisors, le Conseil d’en haut, were members of the bourgeoisie.

Aristocrats therefore made sure they had a home in Paris as well as a carriage and fine horses.  They wore clothes that had been purchased from the “bonne faiseuse,” (designer clothes or the right brand of clothes [faiseur; faiseuse: maker]) so they would be allowed at court.  The term “bonne faiseuse” is used in Molière’s Précieuses ridicules (18 November 1659).  Louis XIV lived publicly and according to a protocol.  It was a privilege for courtiers to be present when Louis got up in the morning, le petit lever et le grand lever, and when he went to bed: the petit coucher, le grand coucher.

Impoverishment of France’s aristocracy

Therefore, as mentioned in an earlier article, the seventeenth century saw a gradual impoverishment of France’s aristocracy, which made it increasingly difficult for the nobility to provide dowries for several daughters.  Moreover, there were affluent bourgeois who wanted a daughter to marry an aristocrat so they would leave the bourgeoisie, but could not afford to endow more than one daughter.  Impoverished aristocrats marrying middle-class women did so in order to live in a style befitting their rank.  In fact, marrying the right bourgeois could also be very expensive.  Many were rich and some, very rich.

Social Climbing

Molière’s Bourgeois gentilhomme, The Middle-Class Aristocrat (10 October 1670), provides a fine example of a bourgeois, monsieur Jourdain, who wants his daughter to marry an aristocrat so he will be an aristocrat.  In order to marry Lucille, Jourdain’s daughter who loves him, Cléonte has to stage a turquerie, a play-within-a-play designed to fool monsieur Jourdain into believing his daughter is marrying the son of the Sultan of Turkey.  We already know about turqueries.

For many of these young women, relegated to a cul de couvent, the hellhole of a convent,[i] going to New France was their chance to live a normal life.  So far from being filles de joie, some filles du roy were almost literally filles du roy.  Others were the daughters of a bourgeois who had paid so dearly for marrying a daughter to an aristocrat or an affluent bourgeois that other daughters had to enter a convent or marry “sans dot,” without a dowry, a husband who may not have been of their choosing.  Moreover, there were poor bourgeois and orphaned or illegimate daughters who also had to be given an inexpensive roof: a convent.

Conclusion

So the Filles du Roy were not filles de joie.  They came from convents.  What they did not know is that they would live a difficult life in New France as would, two hundred years later, English-Canadian Susannah Moodie (6 December 1803 – 8 April 1885).  When I first read Margaret Atwood‘s Journals of Susannah Moodie, I thought of the filles du roy.

Sources

  • Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV et vingt millions de Français [Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen] (Paris: Fayard, coll. Pluriel, 2010 [1966])
  • W. H. Lewis, The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957 [1953]). 

_________________________

[i] The term is used in Molière’s L’École des femmes (1662).

Fille Du Roy by Heather Dale & French-Language video

 
Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV of France

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Me, Myself & I

06 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in United States

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

barackobama, Republican Congress, taxation, United States

ART11740

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ligozzi, Jacopo (c. 1547-1632)
Parrot
Photo credit: Wikipedia 
 

TAxation

Let’s discuss taxation.  It’s that time of year.  Canadians who live outside Quebec might get some money back, but Quebeckers who pay taxes to two levels of government, the federal and the provincial, and who, as of now, must also send Madame Marois approximately $400.00, whatever their income, are not expecting a refund.

As for my neighbours to the south, their well-being is threatened because the rich will not pay their fair share of taxes, which will force the Obama administration to make cuts in social programs.  Please read carefully, it’s: will have to make cuts in social programs.

Obstructionism and Scapegoating

Last night, I was very much offended when a citizen of the US threw stones at President Obama for proposing cutbacks in social programs.  President Obama did not wage two unnecessary wars, thus fleecing Americans to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars, sending thousands to their death and taking their future away from thousands more.

However, as a realistic head of state, President Obama knows that he has to make ends meet and, by now, he also knows that whatever budget he proposes will be opposed by a mainly Republican Congress, which is obstructionism.  Moreover, he is being blamed for ills that are not of his making, which is scapegoating.

One cannot give that which one does not possess.  If people do not pay their taxes and make it difficult for the current administration to spend money on job creation, there cannot possibly be enough money in the public purse to implement social programs and create jobs.

More of the same…

President Obama is probably the best president the US has had since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he has to contend

  • with the naysayers in Congress;
  • with those rich, but irresponsible, citizens who do not pay their fair share of taxes; and
  • with individuals who criticize him without first analyzing the situation.

So the second term is very much like the first term.  President Obama has to deal with an obstructionist Congress and is then being made to look responsible for problems he has not created.

Me, myself and I

The debt could be paid off and jobs created quickly if the “me-myself-and-I” members of Congress, Republicans, agreed to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes and, at last, begin to do something to help repair the harm inflicted on the nation by a previous Republican administration.  I am not saying that Republicans should be punished.  Not at all.  But I am saying, and very loudly, that the time has come for the rich to stop depositing their money in offshore accounts and to start paying their fair share of taxes.  Do they not realize that they are part of a collectivity and must, at the very least, pay their dues?

Those who pay

Taxation may feel like an evil, but it is a necessary evil.  Taxes are the “freedom we surrender” (Hobbes) to be protected by a government or, otherwise put, to live safely under the “rule of law.”  However, if the rich will not pay their fair share of taxes there will not be enough money in the public purse, and those who will suffer are the sick, the disabled, the elderly, the veterans, and individuals, mostly members of the middle-class, who cannot avoid paying taxes as they never see their tax dollar.  It is deducted from their pay cheque.

It’s not only greed, it’s fraud

Do not blame the President.  Blame so-called “citizens” who are not only greedy, but actually defraud the government.  It would indeed be my opinion that their behaviour is well nigh if not outright fraudulent.  Also blame those who manipulate citizens into electing into office persons, Republicans, whose only goal is to make sure their rich constituents do not pay taxes and who systematically oppose what the Democrats propose.

Conclusion

Fully expect cutbacks galore and unemployment to match if there isn’t money in the above-mentioned public purse to sustain social programs and create jobs.  The Obama administration has to operate with the hand it was dealt: debts and too many Republicans in Congress.

The more I look, the more I see a dysfunctional society.  I see individuals who do not realize they are members of a collectivity: me, myself and I.  These individuals should consider learning Mandarin Chinese as this is the tongue in which they may have to communicate, sooner than later.

Dear readers,
I removed my last sentence.  It was too pessimistic.
       My kindest regards to all of you,
       Micheline
 
 
composer: Jean-Philippe Rameau (25 September 1683 – 12 September 1764)
piece: Pièces de Clavecin en Concert, Premier concert for violin, viola da gamba, and obbligato harpsichord in C Minor
performers: Trevor Pinnock, harpsichord and Rachel Podger, violin
 
nature2Micheline Walker©
April 6, 2013
WordPress
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ligozzi, Jacopo  
Gerbil
Photo credit: Wikipedia
 
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