Post-Modern Pilgrimage

"And thou shalt kisse the relikes everychon / Ye, for a grote! Unbokele anon thy purs" (944-945).

Yep, you guessed it. As evidenced by the Middle English, this is The Canterbury Post. I think every nerdy English major who has ever been to England must have written or thought about his/her trip in terms of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Let me jump on the literary tradition, then.

My day went a little something like this. First, in the morning, I auditioned for Little Shop of Horrors. More on that if I get the part. If I don't, then just forget I mentioned it. After the audition, I met Hayley and Danielle at the train station, and we took the 11:31 to London-Paddington. From Paddington Station, we took the Underground to Victoria Station, and from there we caught a train to East Canterbury. The trip took about 3.5 hours, which is considerably faster than the pilgrimages of the Middle Ages.

The most predominate sight in Canterbury is the cathedral, and as we stepped out of the station, the spire greeted us is the English misty-rainy afternoon. We were so excited walking up the street towards the cathedral, making nerdy jokes about my favorite character in the Tales, The Pardoner, and saying to each other, "Kiss my relics!" See, Chaucer's Pardoner is kind of a bad buy (which is kind of an understatement). He preaches sermons about greed and cursing, especially emphasizing the physical suffering of Christ caused by the congregation's sins, in order to swindle the laity; he scares them into buying Papal pardons, indulgences, and relics. The opening quotation comes at the end of The Pardoner's Tale as he tries to dupe the Host of the pilgrimage, basically saying, "Kiss my relics!" It's like "Kiss my grits," only not. "Kiss my relics," has kind of been my Middle English anthem. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

Finally, I have some pictures to show! First, here is the cathedral from outside.


Pretty, yeah? I'm a fan of the flying buttresses. Anyway, the cathedral is where the Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in 1170. Rumors about miracles occurring at the site of his murder prompted a canonization. Ta-da, we have St. Thomas Becket, and we used to have a nifty little shrine for St. Thomas, but Henry VIII tore it down. But there's a candle burning on the spot to signify the shrine.


Since I cannot turn off my brain, I was thinking how the architecture and iconography in the cathedral relates to the literature of the age. More specifically, since I'm fascinated with the Medieval fascination of the body (oh yeah, lots of fascination going around), I looked at how martyrdom, saints' relics, and physical suffering tied in with lay piety and affective devotion. Very briefly, affective devotion is a form of worship which became very popular in the 14th and 15th Centuries, and it is rooted in the emotional connections between the uneducated laity and Christ's corporeal self. Christ became human and thereby, in his human body, he is connected to the worshipers. Medieval Christians were called to ruminate on Christ's suffering body, especially at the Crucifixion--one of the moments which insist most heavily on his humanity. One of the drawbacks is that the laity, in only engaging with the pathos fail to contemplate higher spiritual matters and are vulnerable to the abuses of the Church. For instance, Chaucer's Pardoner loads his sermon with images of Christ's physical body being torn apart on the cross--very vivid stuff--in order to rob the congregation.

In the cathedral's crypt (where unfortunately picture were not allowed), I noticed a theme of beautifying the bloody body. Lots of affective devotional texts concerning the Crucifixion drew close attention to Christ's wounds in his hands, feet, and side. One writer in The Doctrine of the Heart describes Christ's death as a form of barbecue where he is like meat being roasted upon a spit. It's kind of disturbing. Anyway, as fascinated with Christ's wounds as Medieval writers/worshipers are, there is a need to wipe the blood away when it becomes too much. The sarcophagi in the crypt have the figures of the martyrs on the top of them, statues of the dead. The martyrs are depicted with stigmata, blessed with the same wounds as Christ, connecting their physical suffering to his. But instead of bloody holes in their hands, the wounds become roses, thereby anesthetizing the brutality. So, as much as the clergy and writers emphasized the physical suffering of Christ, there is a contradictory need to hide it when the pain becomes too much.

In keeping with the theme of the body of Christ, pilgrims who made their way to Canterbury Cathedral would have been surrounded by the Eucharist, the literal Body of Christ transubstantiation in the Mass. Central to the pilgrimage was the church,and central to the church was the Eucharist, so pilgrims subjected their bodies to long travels and other exhausting feats in order to connect to the body of Christ. I found an interesting stained glass image which I hope you can see. The sun was setting outside, so it was hard to get a good shot, but here it is:


And one more to really show the lower image:


Got it? So, there is a man vomiting and, more importantly, a priest holding the Eucharist over a bed-ridden man, most likely giving him Last Unction. The Body of Christ is present, even in death. It is absolutely central to the Medieval psyche. And pilgrims who made their way to Canterbury to worship in the church would have seen these images of both physical suffering (the man all throw-upy) and of Christ's body on Earth (the Eucharist). Well, I think that's about it for my Canterbury post. I am so glad I went to all of those Medieval Lit lectures this term; they have really shaped the way I read both texts and images of the Middle Ages. I hope I didn't bore you too much. I just get really excited over bodies in Medieval literature. But, hey, cathedral pretty, right? Thanks for sticking with me this long, and I'll post soon about the other show I went to see in London. Have a great day, and remember, don't get suckered in by every man in a robe yelling, "Kiss my relics!"

What's the Victory of a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Saturday night, I went off to London's West End to see a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. After missing the West End's production of A Streetcar Named Desire earlier this term, I was very excited to finally get my Southern Lit fix in England. This production of Cat did very well on Broadway, so naturally, it made it's way over to London. The cast included James Earl Jones as Big Daddy, Phylicia Rashad as Big Mama, Sanaa Lathan as Maggie, and Adrian Lester as Brick. I thought this was a brilliant move on the director's part. Williams' play centers around a crumbling Southern plantation, which means that historically the cast has been all white, except for the roles of the servants. The director, Debbie Allen, immediately breaks that tradition and opens up Williams' play to another layer of creative opportunity which is not limited by race. I love that concept! For more about the play, the cast, and the director, visit http://www.catwestend.com/

So, with the big stars, the possibility for a deconstruction of racial boundaries, the "Hey, I'm going to the West End" factor, I was really excited to see this show. I was a little disappointed at first. Sanaa Lathan, in her portrayal of Maggie, did not move me at all, which is strange because Maggie is one of my favorite Williams' characters. She has some great lines, but Lathan's "Southern accent" just distracted me from them. Maggie just faded into the background next to the powerful portrayals of Brick and Big Daddy. In fact, Adrian Lester as Brick was phenomenal. He made the show for me, especially when interacting with James Earl Jones. Those scenes where amazing! Brick's "charm of the defeated" (as Maggie calls it) really came through, and I was drawn into Lester's performance. Great job!

Most of the audience, however, did not quite get Lester's performance or Williams' writings as a whole. One of the conflicts in Cat revolves around Brick's excessive drinking as he tries to remove himself from other issues of death and sexuality. Whenever another character called Brick an alcoholic or when Brick went for another drink, the audience laughed and chuckled. Um, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is not a comedy. The other American students I went with found the laughter very disturbing as well, and I'm still not sure why the audience laughed away Brick's drinking. As far as I can tell, the social construction of alcoholism as a vice is lost on a British audience. Coming from an American background, especially Southern, alcohol is kind of a touchy subject; there were Constitutional Amendments about it after all. The British audience, however, didn't come to the show with the same cultural background, and thus, laughed off any drama over alcoholism. It was shocking. I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing the British culture, but since drinking is so common place and an integral part of social life, the term "alcoholic" does not carry the same cultural connotation. There's a discussion we could have here about perceptions of alcohol in the States and in the UK, but that would be another blog's worth. But maybe we should get into it. British students have said to me many times, "What do you feel about the drinking age back home? It's ridiculous. Kids never learn how to handle their alcohol. I think there's more binge drinking in the States because of the higher drinking age." But they say this to me while they are quite intoxicated themselves. Hi, yeah, Pot, meet Kettle. But in all fairness, they are partially right; when some American students enter college, they drink heavily. So, I'm not sure what to make of this cross-cultural disconnect. Regardless, visiting students doing this program should be aware of the cultural differences surrounding alcohol; I know two of the girls with me this year experienced culture shock because they were unaware. So, while the issues of race and sex kind of faded into the background, Allen's production of Cat certainly raised an interesting issue of alcoholism across the ocean. Sorry for maybe getting preachy and taboo! Please stay tuned for upcoming posts concerning...(the ellipses is for suspense) my pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral followed by a review of the West End's production of An Inspector Calls!

Mission Accomplished

Just a brief update--I'M DONE WITH MICHAELMAS TERM! Oh yeah, that's right, I survived my first term at Regents Park College, Oxford University! I'm pleased. And overall, it was a very productive term. I think I've engaged a lot with Medieval Lit on a deeper level than I would have at CSU because of the fascinating lectures coupled with the tutorials. Same with Oscar Wilde. It's not often that I can listen to the same critic who literally wrote the book on Wilde! At the end of the term, we get to see our reports of our performance in the tutes. Overall, my tutors had positive feedback, which made me happy. One tutor, however, labeled me as "imprecise" and "sprawling" at times. I laughed. She says that because I once turned in an 11 page paper which somehow upset her. Whatever. It doesn't really matter because I made A's in both tutorials. I am very happy with my marks, but more importantly, I'm happy with how much I've grown as a scholar. My Wilde tutor wants to pick me up next term for Modern Lit, and I already have a reading list for the vacation for both Modern and Renaissance. So, I've got plenty of reading to keep me occupied! Yay!

Trapped in a Chapel--It's a Trappel

OK, since I promised you this story in the last post, and since I finally have some time to spare, here is the tale about me, my friend Beth, and St. Mary the Virgin. Beth and I go to poetry readings most every Thursday nights with the OUPS. Two Thursdays ago (wow, I should really update this blog more often), we went to see a poet read in the upstairs of the Vaults and Garden, a little restaurant attached to the Cathedral of St. Mary the Virgin. Actually, if you look back to September 26th's post, Hayley and I are eating at the Vaults and Garden. Anyway, Beth and I arrived and were directed to take the hallway back and go up the stairs on our right. We start down the hallway with three other students behind us. We reach the end of the hall and there are three doors--one the left is a door to the kitchen, in front is a locked, bolted door, and on our right is an unmarked black door. "Well," I thought, "surely this is the stairs on our right that the people outside mentioned." We all walked through the door and into the dark, empty cathedral. The door slams shut behind us, and of course, it locks. There are no stairs. There is only us and the Lord. So, we start banging on all the doors we could find, and after 15 minutes of knocking and shouting, I decide to call my friend Sam to let us out. After the shock of hearing, "Sam, please, help, I'm trapped in a chapel," he told me he was on his way. After 10 more minutes of banging, a passer-by (not Sam, who arrived too late to save us) heard us and decided we weren't evil spirits haunting the church, and let us out. So, yes, make of this story what you will.