We should therefore be wary of any modern appeals to medieval traditions that oppose male to female or equate flesh with sexuality. We should also understand that there is little basis in late medieval art or devotion for treating body as entrapment rather than opportunity, suffering as evil to be eschewed rather than promise to be redeemed. My argument then is not titillating antiquarianism. It is rather a challenge to us to think more deeply about what our basic symbols... Read more

I’M TOO LAZY TO LOOK UP PICTURES ON FACEBOOK so here are two quizzy things I liked. Five things you can reach from where you’re sitting: Saints: A Year in Faith and Art; a corkscrew (and a Bible Literacy Project mug filled with white wine); sea salt; amoxicillin (last day!); a 1982 Pizza Hut collectible glass, etched with a picture of E.T. and the slogan, “Be Good.” Five things you loved when you were little: pictures of unicorns; Eugene Debs... Read more

ALIEN SHE: I’m loving Fragmentation and Redemption, but the first essay does have one premise I’d like to challenge a bit. Bynum writes, “If one looks with women rather than at women, women’s lives are not liminal to women–but neither, except in a very partial way, are male roles or male experiences.” That might be entirely true of the medieval women’s narratives she’s discussing. I certainly don’t know enough to challenge her there! But she does seem to be implying... Read more

OH, HOW THE GHOST OF YOU CLINGS!: So, five favorite smells? This is hard. Tentative list: tulip trees, blue ditto ink, lilacs, honeysuckle, cigarettes. (I don’t smoke. There should probably be a sub-entry for “cigarettes mixed with Pert Plus,” for reasons largely explained by the heading of this entry.) If I could add five more: salt water + suntan lotion, the vents of laundries (you know, where the fluff collects), old blankets, fresh basil, hamburgers on the grill. Read more

The eucharist, albeit a recapitulation of Christ’s execution, was not therefore a symbol of death but of life, birth and nursing. As I have argued elsewhere, it stood for Christ’s humanness and therefore for ours. By eating it and, in that eating, fusing with Christ’s hideous physical suffering, the Christian not so much escaped as became the human.–Caroline Walker Bynum, “Women’s Stories, Women’s Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner’s Theory of Liminality,” in Fragmentation and Redemption eta: Oops! “Hideious” was... Read more

“THANKS FOR YOUR HEART, BART.” I loved Barton Fink from the very first shot, where the yellow(ed) wallpaper becomes the site of horror. Here are some thoughts on why this movie completely works for me in every moment (whereas The Big Lebowski, for example, is smarter and perhaps more essential, yet sloppier–they’re both totally awesome). First of all, Sean Collins is right as usual in saying that this is a horror movie. In fact, it’s very close to an exercise... Read more

“‘KISS’? WHAT IS ‘KISS’?”: So today, for the second time in a couple weeks, I came across that definition of postmodernism (Lyotard’s?) where it’s defined as the rejection of metanarratives. Here’s why I think that’s unhelpful. These thoughts are even more fragmentary than usual, which I suppose is appropriate…. I’m no more interested in a “definition” of postmodernism than I am in a definition of conservatism; both terms seem to imply more a tradition of discourse than an orthodoxy. And... Read more

SAINT JOB: I think Sunday trumps, but if it doesn’t, this is his feast day. Read more

RESOLVED: THE CONSERVATIVE CANNOT BE A PHILOSOPHER. So how many of the posts at Secular Right really boil down to rejections of philosophy as such? Surely it is possible to be conservative, in love with Sophia, and–at least for a while!–atheist. I mean, lots of my friends are in that position, and I’m going to tentatively say that if something exists then that thing must be possible. So where are their allies? Read more

Any incident is comic that calls our attention to the physical in a person, when it is the moral side that is concerned.–Henri Bergson, “Laughter,” quoted in (a footnote to) Caroline Walker Bynum, “In Praise of Fragments: History in the Comic Mode”–introduction to Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion I already have two epigraphs for the novel-in-progress (working title: New Wineskins), and three seems pretentious… but if I need a spare, this one’s... Read more