The Last Word

I've been home now for almost four days, and now I think its finally time to wrap up this blog. I'll be thinking about my time abroad for a long time, but all chronicles have to come to an end at some point, even if the adventures don't. There is one final episode I have not had the guts or the heart to write about yet, though I think it is the most meaningful and earth-shaking aspect of my experience at Oxford. So here goes. The big finale of my experience at Oxford.

About two weeks before the end of term, I got myself into an extra-curricular tiff with one of my favorite tutors. Its all a bit foggy how it began, but it somehow came about that this professor implicitly challenged my assertion that Harry Potter could play a useful role in the academic world. He maintained that it did not, which of course made me bristle, if you know anything about me and Harry Potter, you know that it informs my whole philosophy... or at least, I thought it did. Our casual disagreement finally came to a head when, after a lecture one day, I asked him if he would promise to read whatever scholarly Harry Potter literature I could come up with. I wanted him to see how wrong he was to slander a genre so dear to me, a series which I had informed the way I think since I started reading it in the fourth grade. I thought if I could just compile a bibliography impressive enough, I could wow him into admitting that he was being a pretentious, stubborn ivory tower scholar, and his refusal to acknowledge Potter's value in an academic setting was based on the trite assumption that anything popular is not worthy. He was very amused by my proposition, and promised to read anything I could come up with by the end of term. Full of righteousness and strengthened by the knowledge that I alone could redeem the underdog series in the eyes of the Oxford authorities, I set to work researching Harry Potter in academia in addition to the other work I had to do for classes. 

Despite a full blown inquiry at Blackwell's and several emails to a known Potter aficionado back at St. Olaf, I had an incredibly pathetic scholarly reading list to present to my tutor.  I compared my three sources with the three page lists he had given me to read up on Utopian literature earlier in the semester. It was laughable, and I was wrong. Ok, so HP hadn't made its grand entrance onto the academic scene yet. That's ok, I thought, it is still a new series, it just needs an opportunity- it needs an introduction, or else it will be scorned forever by the academic community as a worthless, popular series- the stuff of Warner Brothers, but not to be dragged into Oxfordian matters. That was when I decided to write the damn thing myself. If I couldn't find the right scholarly material I needed to impress my tutor, I would write it myself. It was probably the stupidest thing I have ever done, including the time I told Miss Morrie she was a bigoted condescending pig in front of the whole class and got sent to in-school detention for the rest of the day. So, with one week left in the semester, an exam, and a big paper looming on the near horizon, I decided to write an extra essay, an apologia pro Harry Potter.


I have never worked so hard on an essay. I thought about it when I wasn't writing it, and I edited it multiple times a day, deleting whole pages, and rewriting the same paragraph over and over. I included footnotes. I tried to frame the whole validation in the pastoral tradition, which I knew to be the tutor's pet subject. In some drafts, I even pulled lines from his very own lectures and inserted them in the footnotes to support my own points, but in the end I decided this was too insulting, and removed them (my favorite was from a lecture on Milton's Areopagitica in which he said, "scholars only mock the things they truly fear.") Anyway, at 4:00AM on my day of departure, I finally printed off a copy of my Apologia and put it in his mailbox with a shaking hand. I wanted it to be good. I wanted him not to laugh at it, and more than anything I wanted to prove that he was wrong, and Harry Potter had unmeasurable potential as an untapped source for moral ideologies, literary comparisons, and historical commentaries. By writing a 2600 word essay describing Potter's continuation of his own favorite literary tradition, I hoped to prove my point. 


Within 24 hours, he had written me an email response. It was three pages long. It will be impossible to describe exactly what was said, and with what tones, and how it affected me, even if I reproduced the whole Apologia and his comments for you to read, but when I was finally brave enough to read his response, I was shocked. He seemed to not only have read the Potter books (a fact which he had previously denied) but he thanked me honestly for starting this conversation with him. That was the good news. The bad news was that what he had to say threw me for the worst loop of my life. Again, I am unable to recreate the response for you, but the main gist was that Potter is ultimately escapist literature. Rowling's world might serve as a sort of Arcadia for my generation  (Gothic architecture and wizards serving the same purpose as pastures and shepherds in classical pastoralism) but it remains escapist. It does not address the problems of today, or if it does, it buries them too far beneath the scenery and smoke and mirrors of wizarding life. He seemed to appreciate my enthusiasm, but wished I had applied it elsewhere. He kindly forwarded a final reading list for me, which I feel I will have to complete before I ever show my face in Oxford again. I was utterly humbled, and am not quite sure what to think of myself or my favorite series. I guess, this is what academia is all about, and I just need to learn not to get so emotionally attached to my subjects.


So that's that. Oxford has left me with a lot to think about, Arcadias and the value of nostalgia/escapist literature not in the least. I've traveled to a lot of places in the past months that could almost be the Arcadian paradise man seeks. It all depends what interests you: Oxford could be an Arcadia for librarians, Rome is almost perfect for the historian in many ways, and Paris for lovers, among other things. There are spits of gardens and countryside in between everything, but none of these are large enough to serve as a true classical Arcadia these days. And Vermont, of course, my home, is a type of Arcadia itself, one of the last truly green places on earth, but now that I've come home and started reading up on global warming, I feel like even the Northeast Kingdom is sullied as an ideal landscape for men to play out an ideal life. The more I think about it (and I hope I'm about to think about it quite a lot more), the more I start to feel that the true Arcadia is not a place, but a connection between people. This has become apparent to me as I've stayed in touch with my family and friends through video chats, emails and letters these past months. What makes a place close to perfect is when I am with any one of them. As Theocritus and Spenser have Romanticized and longed for the pasture of a bygone  Golden Age, and as some 11-year olds have sought for their Hogwarts owl in the mail, I have found myself longing for my old company more than anything else this semester. I am not sure what that means yet, but if I ever figure it out, I will get back to you. For now, I am going to close the book on this blog, and start working on my next story: "Henry and Francois: how a jaded American scholar and a middle class Parisian cockroach were perfect for one another."


Thanks for reading everyone.

The City of Lights

Guilaine and I left our teeny tiny apartment in Rome just after dinner on Friday April 22, and hopped (as gracefully as any two ladies could ever hop with so much luggage) on a very crowded bus to the train station. From there, we caught a night train to Paris, City of Lights. I love night trains- the way they whisk you off to someplace new while you're sleeping, and how the jolt of the wheels on the rail eventually subsides into a rocking motion, and the sound of the whistle seems to be heard from farther and farther off as sleep overcomes you. Gui and I shared a compartment with a little French family. The mother and little daughter (about eight) were equally cool towards us - Mademoiselle laughed with as much derision as an eight year old can muster when I exhausted my French vocabulary asking her name, and if she'd had a good time in Rome. The first thing she said to me was "adieu" the next morning as she got off at Lyon. Her father was completely good-natured and used his scant and heavily accented English to make jokes about the Italians in the compartments on either side of us. He also nodded appreciatively and tried to encourage our pathetic attempts at French, even when Guilaine slipped into Italian (that was the last straw for Madame and Mademoiselle, who, from that point on, ruined their attempts to pretend we did not exist by shooting us dirty looks throughout the evening). We passed most of the evening in the dining car, sharing a little travel size bottle of wine and a ham sandwich made with bread so white, it probably shortened my life three or four days. When it got too dark outside to see the countryside whizzing by, we shifted our attention to making eyes at the bartender. He became more and more attractive as he proved conversant in English, Italian, French, and German throughout the night. I got another opportunity to feel ashamed for only speaking English.

The next morning I woke up because the train had come to a sudden, lurching halt. When I wandered back to the dining car, there was only one man there, who asked me in French why I was up so early. I liked him, he had a pair of twinkling, old world eyes that I found reassuring- he also was kind enough to ignore my heinous French. He was able to tell me that we were stopped  because something had been caught under the train - a piece of trash, no doubt, but I never found out. When I asked him where we were, he said, "a beautiful field just south of Lyon, and what better place to stop?" and then he left the car, presumably to twinkle at other world-weary people. The scene out the window moved me deeply, though I have no idea why: an endless field of fresh spring green waved from our track to the far distant horizon, which sloped up, and was crowned with a ridge of dark pines. A small herd of brown cows munched near the tracks, and looked at us as though train breakdowns on this track were the main component of the ennui they suffered. They were unlike Vermont cows, they had a sort of devil-may-care look about them. Without speaking, they seemed to say, "go ahead, tip me, see what happens" ... with a French accent of course. One dirt road ran perpendicular to the tracks, with a single farmhouse situated about halfway between us and the horizon. The whole scene was enveloped in early morning dew, and the fog was so thick it would have given British fog a run for its money. It made me think of WWII and phantoms of de Gaulle's Resistance fighters continued to flit across the landscape even after I shook my head and blinked. Some of them fell as they ran, cut down by Nazi bullets, and others ran on, vanishing into the mists, and still no one else came into the dining car. I was glad when we started up again. A  little later, the bar opened, and I could get a hot cocoa to help keep the phantoms away.

We arrived in Paris mid-morning, and met up with Dad at the train station. He had a huge throbbing wound on his hand, and explained with expert nonchalance, that he had been attacked by gypsies in a deserted subway station the previous night. Apparently they had trapped him on an escalator, hitting the emergency stop, and cutting him off at the top and bottom. When they went for his wallet he apparently karate-chopped at their neck, and was bitten. I can picture him him bellowing like a wounded rhinoceros at this, and I believed him when he said that he then put up such a fight that they quickly ran off, without his wallet. It really is a spectacular bite wound- all purple and infected-looking, complete with teeth marks. Luckily nothing else of that magnitude happened while we were in Paris. Gui and I allowed Dad to steer us around the city since he knows it so well already, and we benefited from his superior knowledge of good restaurants and fluent French. He was only mocked once for his Canadian accent. As in Rome, much of our time was spent wandering around and taking frequent rests at cafes, enjoying the human fauna. Highlights of Paris include the Louvre (huge line to see the Mona Lisa, but no one standing in front of the nearby Raphels- WHY?), the Garnier Opera House (box 5 has a little plaque on it that says "Reserved for the Phantom of the Opera"- awesome), some big famous Paris department stores (Gui and I got yelled at for trying on hats we were obviously not going to buy), a three hour meal at Dad's favorite restaurant, le Lyonnais (direct quote from Dad, "there is sex, there is paradise, and then, there is le Lyonnias"), and an afternoon at les Bagatelles gardens. We also joined what seemed like half of Paris at Easter mass at Notre Dame. This was a great moment for me, because I had studied the cathedral at Oxford for one of my tutorials, and I knew exactly what I was looking at- they just don't do early Gothic cathedrals like they used to. Of course, the best part of the trip was Dad's constant commentary- a mix of pure academic professorial lecturing and mildly inappropriate commentary on tourists and "grotesque" modern architecture. This is one thing I cannot recreate on a blog, not even if I had written down all that he said.

Paris was very beautiful, maybe my favorite big city of all time. The height limit on the buildings and the amount of open space make it seem more open, the air more free (despite the thick second hand cigarette smoke in the air). I loved the history and the cafe culture, and it was fun to partake of the many pretentions of that culture for the week... still, by the time I got on the plane back to Vermont, I was more than ready to breath the fresh air, and see the lake, and hug my mom and my dog- not to mention do a load of laundry. I found the City of Lights to be dazzling and refreshing at first, but stare at any light too long and its bound to become blinding. 

The Eternal City

Pictures of our adventures in the Eternal City may be found here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150158494564333.299236.796519332

Rome is definitely the closest thing we have to Minas Tirath, the White City. If I were going to be called home to the clear ringing of silver trumpets, surely this would be the place for it. Guilaine and I have been based in a teeny tiny apartment in the heart of the old city for four days now, and we have another three until we take an overnight train (read: adventure!) to Paris to meet up with Papa Andre. Four days is practically no time at all - on Rome's vast time line it is not even a perceptible blip, so you can imagine how we've been scurrying around trying to see as much as possible.

The very first thing we did on our first morning was go on a run to get a lay of the land. This run brought us west across the Tiber (so many important dead bodies have been dragged from its depths since ancient times!) to the base of an impossibly steep hill. We paused to look at each other doubtfully, and then charged ahead, breathing like fatally wounded rhinoceroses by the time we reached the top. The eastern view was breathtaking and well worth the trouble. We turned and continued at random (having long since ditched our map), going in more than one circle and dodging between the cobbles and many off-leash, city-sized dogs. Finally we found the Aurelian Wall, built in the late 3rd century, encircling the old city. It cast a long shadow in the mid morning sun, and our sweat chilled in its deep shade. It took us down the hills (one of the seven hills of Rome??),  past complacent moped-riders, splashing fountains and old grannies, and right into Saint Peter's square. We were a little shocked to find ourselves under the huge, recognizable dome - we had been so preoccupied we didn't even see it coming. We stopped running and walked reverently across the square, flooded with tourists in disorderly lines, all orbiting around the massive fountain, whose gentle splashing was lost amid the roar. No Pope sightings, but we will have another chance tomorrow when we take an official tour of Vatican City.

Runs have definitely been a highlight for us- it is a great way to see the city. We've also taken some walks of epic proportions with notable destinations: the Appian Way and the catacombs, for one. The Appian Way is an ancient Roman road on the outskirts of the city, still paved with cobbles as big as your head. The fields spread out from this artery, colored with poppies and wisteria growing off the trees in veils, but don't be fooled. Underneath is an expansive network of tunnels, the halls of the ancient dead. We went into the catacomb of St. Castillo, final resting place of popes, martyrs, saints and lots of normal dead Roman aristocrats.

Other highlights include the Forum and the Colosseum- both were worth wading through the humanity and patiently refusing to buy parasols and fans from pushy peddlers while we stood in the ticket lines. It was amazing to think about how long these ruins have survived, but also somewhat sobering to realize how much reconstruction and salvage work had been done on them- kind of like the existential question about the old, patched pair of trousers (if you eventually replace every inch of fabric with a patch, are they still the same trousers?)

We also went to a Roman bath, which Guilaine enjoyed as a spa experience, and I enjoyed as a historical experience. First you spend an hour alternating between room temperature and 100% humidity rooms, and they give you this nice soap that is supposed to open your pores. That part was nice, and the old men in barely-there swim suits gave me the double advantage of feeling very modest and also very authentically ancient (I think their topic of conversation might have even been authentically ancient Roman: politics and women). The second part of the bath involved getting scrubbed down with a brillo-pad sort of sponge by this very intense woman who looked like my middle school gym teacher (her necklace even looked like a whistle around her neck) and then plunging into a freezing pool. On the plus side, my skin was so raw (radiant?) when I came out that I managed to make sustained eye contact with a gorgeous Italian man getting off his moped- a flirtation method Molly Obrien has been trying to teach me since 8th grade.  Mi dispiace, non parlo Italiano Signore Moped (sorry, I don't speak Italian).


While all the main events are pretty exciting, the filler time is actually probably my favorite part of the experience so far. Guilaine and I have been keeping well-hydrated with cappucino and fresh blood-orange juice. They don't do take out coffee here in Italy, you just stand at the coffee bar and have a quick drink in a real cup. It is so much nicer that way! And allows for better human interaction. Gui's Italian is so good we usually get to participate in some pretty telling conversations about Americans:
"Ah, mama mia! These Americans are crawling all over the place! And none of them even try to speak the language!"
"Ah, I'm sorry..."
"Why should you be sorry, eh? How are the pastries? They are new today..."
"Very good, I like the cream ones"
"You should have had the marmalade, the marmalade ones are much better..."

This works as long as I don't open my mouth and blow our cover, Gui just has to explain what is going on in a whisper, and I just nod and beam at them all and say "grazie" very quietly, like I am to shy to talk. The food is really stellar, especially coming out of England -I repress a shudder when I compare the fresh pasta and sweet tomato sauce with the tin-can beans on dry toast. The ingredients here are very simple, but fresh. For dinner tonight I had pasta with cheese and pepper. It was so delicious I almost didn't have room for gelato (almost). The market is worth a mention too- there are probably many in Rome, but there is one in particular close to our apartment that takes up the whole piazza, full of flowers and fresh fruit and crazy-shaped pasta.... we got a little box of tiny strawberries after our run this morning. They were all no bigger than my thumbnail, and sweet sweet sweet, with the little white blossom petals still clinging to the stems around the top.

That is all I have time for right now, yet there is so much more to Rome than I've said here. It is a bustling, vivid place, full of traditions as strange and old as the pagans, but also sights as common as a policeman (carribiniere) flirting with a group of "lost" lady tourists. As vivid and lively as it is, I am still incredulous when I stop to think how this city thrives on decaying ruins, surrounded by miles of catacombs, where the ancient dead sit enthroned.

My Love Affair With the City of Oxford

The Carfax clock tower has just chimed 11:00. After the little introduction chime, it gets to the second stroke of the hour, and then the University Church clock tower begins its chorus, several pitches lower. The regularity of this idiosyncrasy is like a song, and I can cue the University Church clock like a conductor ever hour if I want. In about five minutes there will be a little rush of pedestrain traffic under my window as the pubs empty and people stumble home. And then all will be quiet for the night, until about 6:30am when the delivery trucks start parking and beeping and honking and crashing around in the alley beneath our windows. I have started recognizing some of the voices of the men who drive those trucks. For instance, I can now distinguish the thick accent of the 6:45 delivery truck man (who I imagine with a ruddy complexion) from the higher pitched, slightly fairer-spoken 7:00 delivery man. They yell things to their underlings, who shift boxes noisily at those ungodly hours, but do not speak loudly enough to carry up to my fifth floor windows.

At 7:30am exactly, the street-sweeper-mobile will drive down New Inn Hall Street going North, its rumbling fading away as it drives by. At 7:35 it comes rumbling back down the street, the sound growing like a wave, and then fading as it makes it way back South towards Queen Street. As soon as the night's trash has been swept away, it is finally safe for the city people to come out and start walking around importantly with their coffees. The lady at Morton's coffee house (right next to our building) doesn't know me yet; sometimes I run down for a cocoa during our half hour break between lectures... but she does know the man who arrives right after me. Every. Single. Day. He is bald and wears no cap, but has a very normal looking sort of sports jacket, and usually a newspaper. He is the type of person who blends into a crowd perfectly, but I think the Morton's barista lady has a little thing for him. She coos over him and calls him by name (Robert) and always gets his latte ready in advance. It must be nice to be a regular. There you are, some schmo in a nondescript sports jacket, and nobody notices you until you become a regular at this cafe....

And that is how it happens. One day, you're just an innocent bystander, a tourist, a visitor, a foreign student, blending in with the crowd. And then, the next day, you're a somebody. People recognize you, and you know street names. You're a regular customer at this hole in the wall cafe that nobody knows but you and your office mates. The barista has a crush on you, and calls you by your first name. You have a favorite table. You have certain cracks in the sidewalk you avoid stepping on, just out of superstition. You wait to go outside until 7:36 because you don't want to run into the street-sweeper-mobile as it blindly chugs North and South up your road. You can cue the church bells. It is easy to think that just because you know the city so well, it knows you back. It is so easy to convince yourself that because you plan your day around the movements within the city, it plans its day around you. A person could start feeling mighty important going on like this. A girl might start feeling like she's in love, and not know why, just because she can sing along with the clock chimes.

The first month of my time at Oxford was so vivid and confusing. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. I didn't know which pubs to try, or, when I looked into a boutique window if it was where snobby she-she people shopped, or if it was for environmentally minded hipsters. I couldn't tell you if Morton's cocoa was better than Cafe Nero (its not, its just cheaper), I couldn't tell you how to get to the bus stop, or when the libraries closed, or what streets to avoid at night. I was afraid of being in public places, I think, because I was just so unused to it all - none of it was mine, and Oxford was a cold, indifferent stranger, full of secrets that were too dear to be entrusted to the likes of me.  At Saint Olaf, I can sit on the low wall outside the chapel, and know that no one is going to reproach me. I can put my feet on the couches in fireside with confidence, and even go to the Buntrock bathroom in my socks (errr, that is... if I wanted to... not that I have...). At first, Oxford would never have allowed me such intimacies. But now, I feel like it trusts me a little more.

When I first came to Oxford, I used to see people sitting on the steps of the Bodelian, smoking, drinking coffees, laughing with their friends. I didn't have any friends, I was too scared to walk into a coffee place for weeks, and I certainly didn't feel any entitlement to my own personal perch on the steps of a 400 year old building. I am not sure if I do now, even... but I'm so close. Oxford has softened a little to me, and I'm not even sure when or how that happened. Its the little things that add up, I guess, but now,  with less than a week to go, I feel like this city might possibly love me. When you know someone so well, it is impossible for them to not know just as many things about you. When I sing along with the church bells, tolling the hour, its like finishing my friends' sentences. When I take a shortcut through a little pedestrian alley, its kind of like the city is sneaking me through one of its back doors, for VIP members only, no tourists allowed. When I go on runs in the 12th century fields, I know exactly where to turn into the seemingly impassable hedges. About twenty yards down, there'll be a gap in the underbrush, and a jump-able wooden fence leading into the next set of fields, though you'd never see if it you didn't know it was there. I equate this with going through my best friend's backpack and knowing exactly where they keep that tube of chapstick I'm sure I'm entitled to borrow... in the little tiny pocket, on the right hand side. The gargoyles and grotesques on the old buildings are all recognizable now that I've walked past them so many times. When I close my eyes I can see the west facade of the Old Bodelian, and I can see the crocodile grotesque, the dragonish waterspout gargoyle, and the little stone detail of the farmer with his sycle, all in a row. It is kind of like being able to close my eyes and see a familiar face, and know where every freckle is, and just where the dimples appear.

I don't know when this love affair started. All I know is that I will be very sad to leave this beautiful city. These things happen gradually. You feel so uncomfortable and lost and shy in a place, and then all of a sudden, it is almost your home. It is the same with new people. Oxford could be a home for me, I think. It is so beautiful, and has much character and personality.

But Oxford is a city, and not a person. Three and a half months may be enough time to learn a city plan and figure out where the good cafes are, but sadly, it has not been enough time to get to know my fellow students very well, a fact we have all sheepishly affirmed with each other in trailing off sentences and murmurs. Places are just empty stages, even if they are very beautiful and old, and rich with history. Even if they are so easy to personify, and you can almost convince yourself that an actual city loves you and takes care of you like a roommate. Oxford is just a stage. There are people running across it every which way, but they are not my people. I know the stage very well, but I keep mishearing the stage directions, and all the cues are being called out with such a thick accent, I haven't quite caught on yet. I don't know who is playing a character, and who is being their real self. This the cast and crew of Oxford, and if I had another semester, maybe I would come to know and love them as much as I love the cast of Olaf or Vermont. As it is, I leave Friday morning at 6:30 am, and I have to say, I am very eager to be meeting a familiar leading lady of my own cast- my sister will meet me in Rome at 3:00 when my plane lands, and it doesn't really matter that we're in a new setting, we'll be together. The same will happen in Vermont in May, and at Olaf in the fall, and the happy thought consoles me for the loss of the beautiful city of Oxford.

I am glad to be leaving so early on Friday morning. There will be fewer people out on the street, just the delivery men whose voices I am so used to hearing through my open window. It will be just me and the city, together one last time, for a fond farewell. Someday I'll come back, and we'll do things right, Oxford. I'll meet you're family, and you'll meet mine, and of course they'll love you as much as I do. Isn't that what all lovers say at their last meeting?

The Letter Writer

Now that the official Oxford term is over, I have been demoted from student to visitor status in the eyes of the omnipotent Bodelian bureaucracy. No more library access for the likes of me. This means I spend a lot of time reading books in Blackwell's, the largest bookstore in the galaxy. Luckily, there is a proportionately sized Cafe Nero on the second floor where I like to sit and drink delicious hot cocoa and read my little stack of unpurchased books (quite illegally). This was exactly where I was sitting a few days ago, in a nice patch of sun, reading Theocritus. As I read, a skinny, middle aged gentleman tottered over to an empty table across from me. He reminded me of a high school English teacher I had once, with a gray-streaked ponytail and fang earring and glasses. He had that helplessly dazed look characteristic of so many Oxford citizens who drink ideas instead of water and breath books instead of air. There was something else about him too, but I can't say what. His clothes were all black, and his face appeared to be disembodied, vivid and white above the black mass of indistinct coats and scarves. He sat down with a tiny little cappuccino and a glass of water (room temperature, no ice, like all beverages this side of the pond). He also had a greeting card, just purchased, and still wrapped in cellophane. The next 30 minutes of his life was spent doing something extremely ordinary, but with such intensity, I chose to use Theocritus as a prop to disguise the fact that  I was watching him rather than actually read it.

First, he arranged his drinks: the water went to his far left. After several moments, he seemed to decide that the best place for the cappuccino would be  the far right edge of the little, European-sized table. The still-wrapped card took center stage, while the receipt was hastily whisked away into a pocket, like a carpenter would brush wood shavings away from his finished masterpiece. He sat back, unsmiling, and considered the arrangement. He took a tiny sip of the right-hand beverage, and made a face of disgust. Next, he took three sugar packets and shook them down for an unnecessarily long time. Ten seconds, twelve seconds, fifteen... all the while staring ahead into the crowd of coffee drinkers, seeing something I could not see. After pouring two sugars into the water, and the third into his cappuccino, our man finally opened the cellophane wrapping of his card. This was done with a paper clip, (which had previously been serving as a tie clip), most expertly, in one swift, decisive movement I would not have believed possible from a man who had just spent two minutes arranging his drinks, and a whole quarter of a minute shaking down his sugar packets.

He moved quickly now, as though the card would become stale in the fresh air. He brought a black bic pen out from a nondescript bag under the table, and sent the cellophane wrapping down to join the rejected receipt in the inner recesses of his pocket (he was the sort of man who makes you want to know the contents of his pockets). He flashed the card open so fast, I never saw what was on the outside, although the inside was momentarily blank. I was sitting a mere three feet from him, so crammed are the Cafe Nero tables, and even though I had remembered my glasses that day, I could not make out anything other than tiny, nondescript dots of letters blossoming from his pen. Its better that way, no one should read other peoples' letters, but I would not have had the willpower to refrain. He stopped after the first page and drank off the cappuccino in one go, gagging. He continued to write as steadily and determinedly as he had shaken the sugar packets, and this time I am sure it was words in his ears that I could not hear rather than scenes ahead of him in the cafe that I could not see. He wrote all the way down to the bottom of the second half of the card without pausing to think of what to write next, or even to shake his pen, and I worried that he would burn holes in the card. Finally he put the pen down, and brought his eyes down to the table, rather than bringing the card up to his eyes. I watched his beady, nervous black eyes zoom left to right, left to right, and slowly down the page, and then up to the second half, finally stopping at the bottom right corner, as though they had come to rest on some unpleasant sight, like a corpse.

He blew on the ink, as though a bic pen would leave wet smudges like a quill, and then closed the card, and left if lying face down in front of him. He reached for the water now, and drank it off hastily (I should explain that water in Europe is served in almost shot-glass sized cups - it would not be strange to drink off a glass of water in one, shot-like motion). The next five minutes were spent staring at the empty back of the card. He traced the Hallmark logo with his finger, and then put his hands on the edge of the table, looking like he might push himself up out of his seat at any moment. He stayed like that for a long time, and his stillness was just as impressive to watch as though he had been performing gymnastics all around the room. I would have given my first born child to know the contents of the letter, but I feel confident in making such excessive claims because I know that I will never ever know what it said. After some minutes his hands began to shake, almost imperceptibly, and he smiled. I hadn't notice that he had been unsmiling until he finally did curl his lip. He had dimples, and a cracked tooth that suggested charisma. I would have offered up a second child to know why he smiled. Whatever the thought, it made him pick up the pen again, this time with utter ease and relaxation, contrasting maddeningly with the frenzied character in which he had thrown the pen down some minutes before.

The entire back of the card was soon filled with the same neat, minuscule script, and if he signed the card, his name blended in completely with the words preceding it. He blew on the words again, to dry the ink, and then read the entire thing over again. This time he was like a sea after a storm, his eyes drifting from left to right, top to bottom... still mechanically, but on their own time, not driven by some inner frenzy. His chest rose and fell like someone who sleeps in the morning after a long night of fever, and still he smiled. When he had finished reading (without making any editing marks, I might add), he blew on the words a third and final time, closed the card, and reinforced the crease by dragging a long, strong thumbnail down the spine of the card. And then, without his usual period of consideration, as though he had been planning on doing it all along, he took the three sugar wrappers (which had been resting on the cappuccino saucer) and added them to the envelope ahead of the card. I thought of the recipient opening the letter, and holding those packets in their hand, and knowing exactly what they meant- agh! and I will never know! Its like hearing one end of a whispered phone call. I could die from frustration.  He proceeded to lick the edge of the envelope with the expertise of a man who does nothing but lick envelopes all day. He used his otherwordly thumbnail again on the edges of the flaps, which were unquestionably sealed by the time he finished with them. The sighs began about half way through writing the address, and the shaking of the hands started up again when he opened up his wallet to take out a little book of stamps, and an air mail sticker. This preparedness made me wonder if he underwent this process every day. Surely its impossible. He would die from the emotional toll- one more letter like that would do him in, I am sure of it.

Once the letter was sealed, stamped and addressed, he moved with speed, perhaps knowing that it was too late to alter things now. In a flash he had put his bag back on his back, stood up, pushed the chair into the table, and tottered out with uneven strides, letter in hand. He paused only to push the two cups together on the table, the cappuccino and the water, as though he had separated them unfairly in their early lives, and was now facilitating a reconciliation. He left so quickly, I didn't even get to think about saying anything to him, although I am not sure what I would have said. I felt like I had just watched something intensely personal, like a birth, a bad breakup, or a reunion after a decade of exile.

It would be impossible to say whether the letter man had been traumatized that afternoon at the Blackwell's cafe, or if he had come to some sort of epiphany. He had smiled, but he had also shaken like a leaf, and drunk off his coffee with the desperation of a man who really wanted something stronger, but is too polite to drink hard liquor before a certain hour of the evening. As for the letter, I'll never know what it said, or who it was for, or what they wrote in response, or what the sugar packets meant. He left me with nothing but the vision of an empty water glass and cappuccino and saucer cup, sitting on an empty cafe table, staring at their reflections in the glossy, fake mahogany finish. The two dishes stood as monuments to the letter writer, the sloping sides of the water glass just barely touching the rounded lip of the saucer, the way that man's consciousness seemed just barely to kiss the reality around him as he wrote.

Scotland

The only photographic proof that I was in the Highlands- I forgot my camera at home this trip, don't worry I've already kicked myself.

Here at last is a slightly belated Scotland post- of course, so much has happened since returning from Scotland on Saturday morning (it is now Tuesday night) that I feel impatient to skip over it and rush on to the more immediate things, but I will be good and force myself to stay in one place long enough to remember that beautiful land- I know I will not regret it.

I arrived in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland with five of the coolest CMRS girls on a very wet Wednesday night. The city was all dark, and enclosed in curtains of rain, but shining forth like a beacon of history was the Edinburgh castle, high up on a tall, rocky crag. The stone walls were lit dramatically from underneath, but the highest ramparts stretched up beyond the reach of the floodlights, out of sight. We found the High Street, and then our little hostel, which was clean, warm and cheap, and therefore more than adequate (we did have some unexpected Portuguese bunk mates... of the male variety... but once we established an insurmountable language barrier, both parties were happy to ignore the other with all due politeness, and it worked out well). In the morning, we set out immediately for the castle, walking past dozens of touristy shops selling tartans and shortbread in kilt-shaped tins. The castle itself was amazing and formidable, and completely covered the hilltop. Even though it was pouring rain, I enjoyed spending the whole morning climbing over every inch of it, imagining what it would be like to live there (main conclusion: cold). Of all the medieval anomalies I witnessed that morning, the most memorable item for me was the old wooden door to the dungeon where they kept American POWs from the Revolutionary War (still unclear why they were being kept there... that was one placard I did not read close enough). The door was covered with really high quality graffiti: names, dates, beloveds, prayers, and even a detailed engraving of a ship bound west were all scratched in with care. I tried to imagine the men who lived there as I heard all about the gruel they ate, and felt the cold and the damp of the sunless dungeons.

The castle also houses Scotland's crown jewels: a rather normal looking crown, and a sword as big as me, and The Stone of Destiny. This last is worth googling if you have the time. As I learned in more detail on our three hour walking tour of the city, the Stone of Destiny has been used as a coronation throne for Scottish royalty since the 9th century. The king does not become king when he receives the sword or the crown, but only when his royal bum touches this neolithic stone. In 1296 King Edward the first of England gained control of Scotland and forcibly took the stone to Westminster where it has remained ever since to be used in English coronations. The Scots abided this injustice and act of English domination until the 1950's when a seedy little law student from Glasglow (Ian Hamilton) got a few buddies together, broke into Westiminster with a crowbar, and stole the stone back in a classic act of patriotism. The full story involves breaking the stone, repairing the stone, losing the keys to his getaway car, shredding his coat, burrying the stone hastily in a British field, coming back for it and making friends with gypsies, and finally, after reviving British patriotism and reminding the bloody English that the stone is really Scotland's, returned it to Westimnster. It is now in Edinburgh "on loan" and will need to be returned for the next English coronation. It was SUCH a good story, and our tour guide was downright fanatical about it. He was top notch in my book, actually, because he was able to talk at length about two of my chief interests: Scottish history, and Harry Potter. He took us to the cafe where JKR wrote the first of the Harry Potter books, and also to a creepy old graveyard where she took some of her characters' names off the tombstones (we saw McGonagall, Tom Riddle Jr and Senior, and also Mad Eye Moody).

The second day was less rainy- we took a little tour bus to the highlands. This part of Scotland is less easy to articulate. The slopes were steep and created tiny, narrow ravines which we drove along, craning our necks to look up the rich brown hills to the tops- so white with snow they disapeared completely in the clouds. Our bus driver was also very excited about history, especially about dispelling the Hollywood myth of Braveheart. Much to the chagrin of the French and Belgian tourists sitting in front of us, he spent the entire four hour drive home performing a dramatic monologue over the loudspeaker about the true history of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce- the real braveheart (Bruce was a national hero who actually requested that his heart be removed from his body and taken on crusade after his death. When the crusading party met an army of Moors that outnumbered them 10 to 1, the small casket with Bruce's heart was hurled ahead into the opposing army just before they clashed in battle, with the accompanying cry, "ride forth, brave heart!" This was about a quarter century after the gruesome murder of the real William Wallace... the bus driver described his English-style traitor's execution with shameless relish and detail). The tour ended at Loch Ness, which is beautiful, but also sad and lonely. I regret to say that although I saw some billy goats climbing the steep slopes, Nessie was too shy to come out. The bus ride home was long, and as I said, infused with a true Scotsman's account of Scotish history. We came back in the dark, and I saw the huge, full moon rising over the highlands. It was supernaturally enormous and bright, and I realized later that it was the equinox moon, but at the time, I was actually afraid that something weird and apocolyptic was going on.

I didn't get to spend nearly enough time in Scotland. I loved the city of Edinburgh, and the highlands were eerily beautiful and old, though I would never want to live there. This weekend my adventures continue with a day trip to Wales (800 year old monastery is on the list!) Hopefully before then I will have time to do a post on how I got myself into trouble with a (highly relevant and illuminating) Harry Potter reference during one of Dr. Crowe's lectures on John Milton. The fun just never stops.

End of Term and Friends in Rennes, France.

I haven't been able to post any updates lately due to the crushing end of term workload here at Oxford, but I have finally come out of the other end of the tunnel. I don't want to mock my academic experience here by inflating it or exaggerating, but that last week I spent working on that seminar paper was probably literally the most taxing week of my career at school. The interesting flip side of this is I know that I was the one who made it so, and not because I had a professor breathing down my neck, or I was really worried about a grade (I have yet to receive a single grade here, their absence is initially troubling, but then you get used to it and they start to become less of an incentive). Although my paper only ended up being 15 pages and 200 words over the suggested word count, in reality I wrote about twice that, and edited it down throughout the week. I chose my own topic, found my own books, and made my own thesis. No help was offered me, and the syllabus was more like a style guide with a big deadline at the bottom - very typical of the Oxford system. This independence was pretty terrifying at first, but as the term went on, I realized that this was my chance to study something I really wanted to study, something that I could actually use in my real life. I decided to write about the classical influence on chivlaric ties of friendship, and how the interaction of these two models might indicate why pure, unadulterated friendship is notoriously difficult to obtain between men and women. I was pleased with my findings- it gave me a lot to think about, and many more questions to stew over, but as with all of my Oxford academic endeavors, I was frustrated by the limitations of a 24 hour day, during which the libraries are only open for 12 hours or less.

This is me, welcoming death or at least a full night of dreamless sleep as I plow through my seminar paper. Note pathetic-ness.

One thing I really do appreciate here at Oxford is the way my tutors encourage learning for the sake of learning. At Olaf, I am frequently charged with defending my proposed topic and explaining why it is useful to study this particular aspect of history... at Oxford, my tutor stopped me almost as soon as I went into justification mode, and asked me what I was actually interested in studying, what is relevant to my life right now? This eventually led to a thesis that not only helped me synthesize everything I'd been reading about all term, but also made me feel like my own personal life was relevant in the grander scheme of history. That all made it worth it for me to stay up to ridiculous hours of the morning finding just the right wording, and just the right evidence to support my points. For the first time ever, I felt like my research was for myself and the friends I would share it with, and not for some higher authority with a red pen.

Even though I decided the research was all mine, the timeline was definitely not my idea, and by the time I got to Wednesday night, I could have slept standing up. I turned my paper in at 7:00pm, and then....slept? blacked out?... on my bed for a few hours, missing dinner. I'd had three consecutive nights of 4 hours of sleep or less, and hadn't gone on a run or played viola (therapeutic) in days. My brother Joe did come to visit me for the week, which had the contrasting effects of cheering me up immensly, and also adding to time constraints. I was very sad to see him leave on Wednesday night, but the sadness was eased by my almost immediate departure to France the next morning at 5:00. I'd been waiting for my France reunion for weeks, so I cheerfully shut my alarm at 4:50 am, took a bus, the underground, a train, a subway, and another train to Rennes, where I practically swooned into Erin Beaton's waiting arms on the train platform.

Later that evening I met Bjorn on the same platform when his train came in. It is so strange to wade through a thick crowd of strangers and then recognize just an elbow or a shoe through a chink in the mass. I enjoyed a second epic platform reunion, and then Bjorn and I made our way secretly to meet Carmen and Erin at a predetermined location- our Thursday arrival in Rennes was a surprise for Carmen's birthday; she thought we were coming on Friday. I was delighted to see her shocked face when we emerged out of the metro, but the happiness of being with my friends again didn't hit me until after our crazy night of birthday revelries on the town. Carmen led us back to her host mother's house late, and put me to bed almost immediately. I suddenly felt very fond of her old habit of mother goosing us, and gladly allowed her to tuck me in. I cannot even tell you how thrilling it was to be horizontal, under a nice blanket, moments away from sleep, in a house full of friends. I could hear Erin brushing her teeth an humming in the bathroom, and Bjorn was stumbling rather impressively through some Debussy on the piano downstairs. Eventually Carmen interrupted him to insist he take a bath- he smelled like hay and (more problematically) cows from his WWOOFing experience on French organic farms. 

Carmen and Bjorn at the piano.

The house was as drafty as all old French houses, and pretty cold outside the blankets, but as I lay there, listening to familiar voices, and music, and footsteps, I felt incredible warmth return to my weary, ink stained fingers, and the most distinct, specific sensation that a warm hand was brushing my forehead in a soothing way, although there was no one else in the room.
 

Our long weekend in Rennes was rejuvenating and educational in its own way. There are many things I hope I won't forget in a hurry: going on long walks through the medieval part of Old Rennes, and seeing the slanting 16th century houses and cobblestones; stopping under every flowered tree that overhung the sidewalk, and inhaling deeply; watching apparent members of a high school boy gang exchange the iconic French greeting, a "bise" I think its called, where they kiss each other on the cheeks; cooking a huge lasagna for the four of us;

Lasagna in the making.

pretending we liked wine and drinking a whole bottle just to prove to ourselves that we are grown ups; multiple trips to the boulangerie across the street; an amazing chocolate store which probably kept the dementors at bay in at least a 300 mile circumference; exchanging stories and pictures and playing chess;
walking through the beautiful and springy "jardin des plantes"; finding a dark window with bars on it, full of little yellow song birds, and wondering how they got to be there, and if they would ever be free. It was pretty idyllic to be able to live under the same roof with some of the truest friends I've got, and cook fabulous meals, and laugh a lot and have no immediate obligations.

Bjorn and Carmen, reluctant to move too much. 

Relaxation was a common motif that weekend....

I know I've alluded to this Moby Dick reference elsewhere on my blog, but the temporariness of our retreat in France made me think of when Ishmael is warm and cozy under the covers, smoking a pipe in utter contentedness with his new cannibal friend Queequeg, and he notes that it would not be nearly as comfortable if he did not have one minute zone of discomfort, such as a cold nose, or a toe that sticks out from the warmth of the blankets. My weekend in France was definitely surrounded by a kind of contrasting discomfort on either side. It is true that the upcoming integral section of my semseter is going to be less academically challenging, but there is never a dull moment while on study abroad, and I am sure as I go forward with my adventures, I will be glad to look back on my time with my friends as a fortifying reminder that there is always something or someone warm and good up ahead on the road, even if you still have a long trek in the rain to get there. Life is all about balance, I guess, and its strange that I should have to come all the way to England to figure that out.

No classes this week at Oxford, so I am off to Scotland. Stories and pictures to follow, I hope!

ANATHEMA

is the word that is stuck in my head- inexplicably- and preventing me from concentrating on my paper about whether the manor system was a stabilizing force in society or not (it was!). So while my brain is on an unauthorized and indefinite vacation, I might as well blog. It is good to deal with words in a nonthreatening way.

On the brink of week seven of eight. On the Friday of week eight, I will be speeding under water, over fields, and across other geographic obstacles to Rennes, France where I will join Carmen, Erin and Bjorn for an extended weekend. Before that, Joe is coming for a week (arriving this Saturday!). All of this is wonderful, except that it means I will be up to my eyeballs in it for the next five days. Despite the exciting reunions and relaxing break from work on my very immediate horizons, I can't get away from the feeling that the work I have to do right now is physically crushing me. I will refrain from listing assignments (for your sake as much as mine), but its a lot. Five papers left. And one is enormous. I have promised myself that I will wait to do an official post about the Oxford education system until I am a full week out, so I will stop short here, but just say that for now I am feeling oppressed and saddened that the system is cramping my style and curbing my enthusiasm for the subject with excessive doses of stress and deadlines.

In these times of unbearable academic pressures, I find myself thinking about Olaf more than usual, wishing I were there with my good friends, who make any amount of work seem manageable. In fact, I would even go so far to say that Cinderella is to the ball as I am to Olafia right now. One honest wish haunts me as I work indefinitely, in under an oppressive authority, feeling more and more like I will just simply never get where I want to be. I was thinking about this on Friday in a very small unoccupied corner of my brain... listening to Disney Cinderella soundtrack in the background while I closed up all the windows on my desktop. It had been ages since I shut my computer all the way down, usually I just leave all the word documents up, and the email tabs, and on top of that is itunes... but Friday I finally ex-ed out of them all for the first time in days. When I closed the very last document, I could finally see my desktop picture- the gang at Olaf, posing with their nerf guns. I admit that the picture made me succumb to despair, but only for a moment. I rallied, and checked my email.

There was one message in my inbox from a fellow Ole who I've seen around, but never really gotten to know well- I didn't know he was about to become my fairy godmother. Kaleb Sutherland had written me an email- he's studying in London! and visiting Oxford for the weekend. Would I like to meet up? Oh yes fairy godmother from Olafia! It was almost too good to be true. The prospect of seeing another Ole within 24 hours brought happiness back to my extremities. We set up a tea date for this afternoon (Sunday) and I am happy to tell you that we had a wonderful time at a tea place, thumbing our noses at the rain, and sharing an umbrella like the oldest friends. We dropped Olaf vocab left and right: "Cage" "Mellby" "El Con" "Cheruwatick" - it had a really fortifying effect. I love Oles. Even the ones I don't know very well. Its like- oh you're in a foreign country feeling lonely and overwhelmed? Here, let's set up a coffee date, I'll make you feel better and give you a hug, no questions asked. Kaleb even bought my groceries when Tesco refused my debit card. He is the best fairy godmother, and I would not trade him. With his good company, I feel like I will make it to the finish line (March 11th) alive. In fact,  I am feeling pretty good about making it to this Saturday and Joe's arrival with most of that big paper done... as soon as  I get the word "anathema" out of my head, that is.

A confused, yet exemplary stream of consciousness

608 words into this week's last paper, goal for the night is 800. So close! I think I can do this, survive the next 15 days, that is... one paper at a time. I wonder if I could get an I.V. for my tea, that way I wouldn't spill it all over my notes. But that doesn't matter. The main point of this post is to remind myself that when this is all over I need to sit down and write my novel, except with a Ciceronian relationship at its core, and not an Arthurian one... the soundtrack will have to be Rachmaninoff Symphony 2, not Wagner.... and I should definitely drink chamomile while I'm writing, not English Breakfast. If possible, elaborate on Gawain, and not Galahad, who is a boring swot.

I think it is ok if that statement wasn't very cohesive or intelligible. It makes perfect sense to me, which just goes to illustrate how my Oxford education seems to be making it more and more difficult to communicate on a functional level. Those are my insights for the day. That, and I miss you all at home, but don't worry, you're in my thoughts just as much as all the other random jumble of romances and pyramidal social models, and that is turning out to be a very good thing.

Academia

Ah, the Carfax clock tower outside my window is chiming quarter past five... the most awkward time of day. Post-run, yet pre-dinner, there is not quite enough time for a chapter of reading, nor for a proper viola session. As long as I continue to schedule my day poorly, I will usually have just the right amount of time for an afternoon blog. Today I am piggy backing off of the blogs of some of the Oles in France who find themselves immersed in a new language and culture. When I read their blogs, I get a little jealous, and kick myself for being too cowardly to do an immersion program. I am not sure if my recent thoughts on the matter have been self-justifying, or if there is any objective truth in them, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that my experience here really isonly library from which we can borrow), and most days I wake up, give myself a little shake, and pick up reading off my pillow exactly where I left off the night before. So I guess it makes sense that the dreams in between these events are of the same subject matter. a type of immersion. I think it was Carmen who told me she was dreaming in French these days; I've been having weird dreams too, not necessarily with British accents, but definitely related to the work I'm doing here. There is just so much to read and write about, I often fall asleep at night literally face first in a book (minus 10 if you drool in a CMRS library book, the


Here's a good example. When I get stressed out, my brain consistently reverts to pregnancy dreams. As if that weren't bad enough, last night, after reading about how third and fourth sons of aristocratic families were often offered up to God to be brought up as monks, I dreamed that I brought my newborn son to the steps of the Bodelian in the dead of night and left him there to be brought up as an Oxford scholar. Now, that is not a normal dream, if you ask me. I alluded to this in my last post, but I think its worth restating that scholasticism is like a mineral in the water, which you drink without tasting, or a visible vapor in the air. The history of learning pervades everything from the architecture to the law (I am not sure how they could possibly enforce this, but there is a law that forbids students from climbing towers or past second stories of buildings during exam periods. This after a rash of stress-induced suicides back in the day). Even the homeless man in the meadows bears the distinct symptoms of having lived in a place that is literally haunted by the ghosts of scholars and students.


According to the magnanimous and wise Professor Dumbledore, magic always leaves a trace (See book 6). I find this informed claim interesting in conjunction with the following observations of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola:


I have also proposed certain theses concerning magic, in which I have indicated that magic has two forms. One consists wholly in the operations and powers of demons and consequently this appears to me, as God is my witness, and execrable and monstrous thing. The other proves, when thoroughly investigated, to be nothing else but the highest realization of natural philosophy [read: learning] ...The first is the most deceitful of arts; the second, a higher and holier philosophy.  
-From Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)



I draw upon the ideas of these two gentlemen to illustrate my point: the academia of this place, of Oxford, is so old as to be almost magical. To the members of the 21st century, there is something intoxicating about Oxford's 13th century origins, which were anything but institutionalized. The ceremonies that go on here every day, the dead languages that are almost like supernatural incantations, and the peculiar taste of old paper, glue and ink that hangs around the center of town (yes, I could actually taste books when I walked into the Bodelian yesterday) all combine to give the ethereal atmosphere here a noticeably different density. People come from all over the world to study here because this culture is so thrilling and different and ancient. It is mysterious, and yet a human creation, and therefore familiar. In other words, Oxford's culture of learning is most certainly, as Pico suggests, a type of magic, or at least a type of old world power, which may be used for good or evil. Like Dumbledore says, no matter what you do, it will leave its mark on you, whether in dreams, in the way you think, or maybe even something more lasting. 


Consider Dr. Crowe M.A., Ph. D. and CMRS Academic Librarian and Senior Dean. At first he was a bit of a mystery to us. He introduced himself in the first week, and I used his horn-rimmed glasses and golden pocket watch to differentiate him from the other tutors in my mind. Dr. Crowe usually gives us a lecture every other week for our introduction to colloquium  (Renaissance and Enlightenment). The man is a walking encyclopedia. He will stand in front of us at the lectern for a solid hour and just- talk- with little or no interruption, and certainly no notes, checking his pocket watch every so often. When he brings his lectures to a close, you feel he is doing so not because he has run out of things to say, but rather that he is forcing himself to be punctual. His accent is crisp even for a British scholar, and his silk translucent socks shine forth from beneath his trouser hem like a status symbol. For all the brilliance he pours forth every fortnight, I almost never see him elsewhere. He enters and exits the lecture hall by a separate back door, giving the distinct impression of a mad scientist returning to his laboratory after a requisite fortnightly break.  He does indeed have a secret laboratory, or rather, the CMRS library, which is unofficially off limits to students. To request books, we fill out a slip of paper with the call number and our names, drop them in a small post box attached to the library door, and then wait for the book to magically appear in our PO box later in the day. 


Last week I got up the nerve to make an appointment for him to show me the rare book collection. I entered the library a little nervously to see Dr. Crowe enthroned at a desk piled high with books, smack dab in the middle of the entire library, like the whole room was his office. "Ah, yes, there you are" he said, but you have to say it to yourself with a British accent and more stress on the  aspirants than you would normally think. He then took me into the back corner, and showed me our moderate collection of rare, old books. Most of them were from the 17th century, publications of classical philosophers, standard texts, etc. There were some books of old music, an old journal in fancy handwriting, and then, finally, the jewel of our collection, a four-volume illuminated German Bible from 1481. Apparently certain of its pages would sell for tens of thousands of pounds, but he would sooner tear a limb off his child than detach a page from his Bible. 


Dr. Crowe has been tracing the origins of this Bible and finding out everything he can about it for the past five years, and it is true he handled it more like his child than a book. He knew which pages to turn delicately, and which ones were ok to handle a little more vigorously. He knew exactly where to go to show me such and such illumination technique, or how different hands had drawn in the marginalia over hundreds of years. His reverent soliloquy went on for over an hour, as he pointed out the personality of the illuminator, musing aloud to himself on how he probably wrote this capital towards the end of the day when he was hungry and eager to leave off for the night, or how this little curly-que is extraneous and probably indicated extreme boredom. Apparently there is a whole subculture of meanings and symbols in the little pictures of medieval illuminations, and illuminators had to follow guidebooks and style guides. Crowe was all about discovering the personality of the illuminator. He displayed the greatest tenderness towards the book, I wouldn't have thought he quite had it in him based on the crisp delivery of his lectures and formal emails, but he did, he caressed the pages, and smiled to himself, and got all excited as he pointed to random curly-ques and letters, as though he has never seen them before, when really he knew that book better than Tristan knew Isolde (sorry Carmen, read the 12th century Thomas manuscript and I think your appreciation for the story will soar). 


In fact, as I left over an hour later, that was what worried me the most. I was out in the sun again, topside, you might say, but Crowe was still back among the books, and would be there indefinitely, checking his pocket watch and tugging at his silk socks, but to what end? Pico's magic has left its mark on him, I can say that much with confidence. I worry, though, that it has not only marked him, but claimed him as well. Being a scholar of Crowe's level means you see things that other people don't see, like how Harry Potter can see platform 9 and 3/4 when muggles cannot. Dr. Crowe can see all sorts of things coming out of the woodwork. He looks at an illuminated Bible and sees the illuminator himself, as though he could conjure ghosts by his study. I wouldn't doubt that he is accompanied in his library by the real phantoms of 15th century. At times, during my personal tour, I got the distinct impression that he had forgotten I was there, and yet continued to talk in a low voice, as though he was used to murmuring to himself or some type of undead person lingering between the books on the shelf and his own mind. In other words, I am concerned that being able to see things that other people cannot see will make you yourself invisible- part of the woodwork, and someone will have to undergo a lifetime of Oxford study to learn enough magic to unlock your phantom from the hidden codes of your illumination, poetry, or symbolic language. 



In response to my complaints of loneliness here, a very brilliant man told me that to be a true scholar is to be alone. I think now I have to determine whether or not a lifetime of learning means I have no end of company and interesting historical people before me, or if I will ultimately come to a certain point in my life and find myself alone in a library, surrounded by phantoms which I, in my witchcraft, have unwittingly conjured to keep myself company.

Formal Hall

 It's been awhile since I've posted, but I have lots of good excuses, most of them having to do with libraries, late nights, and close deadlines. Fifth week is notoriously difficult at Oxford, but suffice for now to say that I survived, and intend to do a proper blog about the Oxford education system really soon. This past week has been a whirlwind not only because of the academic rigours, but also because of a really amazing experience of last night, which I guess falls more into the social category. It all started on Monday at lunch, when I sat down with a plate of unidentifiable gray vegetables and a hunk of bread (standard fare). I had the good fortune to sit next to one of my few St. Peters acquaintances, Henry. I only ever see him at meals sometimes, but he is a good talker, and has a nice mellowing effect which is a welcome change from my fellow Americans...we tend to bond by spazing out about homework together. Earlier in the term, I inducted Henry into the CMRS cult by a trial of fire, accosting him as a stranger one day and insisting he come to the Harry Potter read aloud at St. Michale's Hall. I was really surprised when he showed up that night with a friend, but we've had good chats at lunches ever since. He is very proper in a way that makes me feel bad about putting my elbows on the table. It is a shame he was too shy to read Harry Potter for us, because he has a lovely speaking voice, which is so soft I usually have difficulty hearing him over the buzz of the dining hall. It is very difficult not to like someone who is soft mannered and soft-spoken, especially when you are being bombarded with new things, hard work, and a constant mild case of homesickness, a lunch with Henry is often the best cure. Anyway, although I do enjoy the odd lunch with him, I hardly know him at all,  so I was very surprised when he invited me to Formal Hall for his birthday. I guess I should explain Formal Hall: every Thursday, St. Peters offers a fancy dinner for students after the normal gross dinner hour. You sign up for it early, and pay a little extra, but all in all it is a fantastic deal. The dining hall gets transformed into a beautiful dinner venue, with big white tablecloths, and nice china, and silver candelabras casting candlelight over the otherwise dark scene. It sounds like it would be really dark, especially with the wood paneling, but really the light shines off the white tablecloth, and sparkles off the silverware, and the overall effect is warmth and light. The big scary portraits of be-wigged founders hide up in the shadows of the upper walls, and don't bother us with their accusing stares.  Dinner is a three course meal, and students are encouraged to bring their own wine. Unfortunately, CMRS students are not allowed to go unless as a guest of a St. Peter's student, so I really felt VIP getting an invite. I met Henry and his friends at the St. Peter's bar at 7:00 (all the colleges have their own pubs, it is totally bizarre coming from St. Olaf). They were all wearing their black robes. Yes, students here really do have robes to wear at special occasions, although for undergrads, they are only short, billowing little vests with rather pathetic arm flaps. At some of the oldest and most traditional colleges, like Merton (where Tolkien taught) you have to wear your robes to every meal, but St. Peter's is rather new, so they get off easy.  Henry had on a full length robe over his Oxford button down. His friend James whispered to me that he got full robes because he's a Scholar with a capital "S," but I wasn't supposed to talk about it because he gets modest and apparently it is painful to watch him deny his brilliance, and we shouldn't make him endure the ordeal on his birthday. "Modest little swot" he added fondly. We had a drink, and then stopped at the laundry on our way to dinner, in a failed attempt to smuggle out a robe for me so I wouldn't stick out so much. The laundry lady was too smart for us, and wouldn't hear of our "borrowing" a robe, so I had to go without, but I thought the gesture was awfully nice of them.

We arrived at the dining hall at 7:30 with a mass of other people. It was all lit up and warm, just as I described before. I sat down next to Henry's friend James, who turned out to be a hoot. Before we could talk too much, however, someone hit a gavel at the high table, and all the students stopped talking immediately, and stood up stick straight. Americans would never have been able to manage it. I had no idea what was going on. As I stood there, looking wide eyed at Henry across the table for instructions, a line of tutors began to process in behind me, with the headmaster taking up the rear. They were all decked out in full robed splendour, very silent and austere. When they reached the table, I bent my knees to sit, but James elbowed me not to. In a moment, someone at the high table began to say a very loud and forceful prayer in Latin (I was later told that he had a strong Scottish accent on top of the Latin, but I would never have been able to pick it out) We said "Amen" and sat down, and then things got much more casual. They brought us out some delicious minted pea soup with bread and butter, and then some sort of white fish on top of lentils, and finally dessert and coffee. Everyone looked so pretty in the candlelight, and the gentle hum of voices reverberated around the room, sort of lulling me into a good mood. The wine was passed around freely, and I tried some really excellent white stuff from Tuscany. The main entertainment for my meal, at least, was James, my neighbor.  He reminded me of a combination of my Ole boys, only British: he is a maths major (Bjorn), and also an avid bird watcher (Ben). He was telling me how excited he was to spend he weekend in Jericho, the next town over, because there was some sort of rare pigeon there, that was supposed to have migrated to Japan, but flew West instead of East, and ended up in England. Apparently it has bird watchers all excited, he is going on a pilgrimage there tomorrow to see the rare pigeon in residence, I thought that was pretty remarkable. I told him he should come to our Harry Potter readings sometime, and he said he would love to, except that it clashed with his Bible study group (Pat). Despite all his dorkiness, he managed to be funny and unassuming (Hoiland).

James and the others also proved to be a very good sport when I made a horrible vocabulary slip-up half way through dinner. I was remarking on how fancy the whole affair seemed, and how I was glad I hadn't worn pants (I wore a dress). As soon as I said this, everyone in earshot burst out laughing, and when he had recovered a bit, Henry reminded me that in British, "pants"= underwear, "trousers"= pants. So basically, I had just said that I was relieved I hadn't worn underwear to such a fancy event. I guess my Ole friends in France aren't the only ones dealing with language barriers. My mortification was short-lived, as we quickly moved on to other such vocabulary differences. My other favorite was "pudding." This was the advertised third course, and I was so excited at the prospect of chocolate custard-y stuff we think of as pudding. Alas, in British, pudding is a blanket term for any dessert item at all, not necessarily custard. It turned out good anyway, a sort of pink raspberry creme thing... trust me, it was delicious. And then there was coffee, and the little cubes of sugar I love so much. The tutors processed out again before anyone else was allowed to leave, and then everyone filed out, full of good food (for once) and good conversation. It was really nice to hang out with real British people. I don't usually get a lot of exposure, since all the 25 students at CMRS are American, and we have a tendency to go out in large numbers, for safety. Henry and his friends were really easy to talk to, and there was something in their way of interacting with each other that was so laid back, and non-frantic, it was a nice change of pace. I guess they've been used to writing tutorial papers all the time and being stressed out all term, so they just kind of go with the flow, and take time to enjoy formal dinners when they come along.

If I can wrangle another invitation, I will definitely go back to Formal Hall. I can't believe that happens every week and most of us don't even know about it. I've been told that some of the bigger colleges offer Formal Hall every day. When the tutors and big deal scholars processed in, and everyone was wearing their robes, I felt like I had been transported to another planet. It is just another example of the overwhelming sense of tradition that comes with Oxford. I mean, Olaf is old, and has its own traditions, but Oxford has been around since the 13th century. There were real live knights in shining armour riding around at that time! True, it wasn't exactly their heyday, but still! These are more than just traditions, they are practically religions! The real scholars of Oxford are foreign to me not just as British people, but as a different type of creature altogether. The ennobling aspect of academia is palpable here, and sometimes I really get hit over the head with it, like at Formal Hall. Going to Formal Hall and holding my own with Oxford students, even without a robe, made me realize, with a thrill of... horror?... excitement...? ..... that I am in. I am one of them, in a sense. Now that I have been initiated into the tradition, I guess it is up to me to decide how I truly feel about that, about Oxford academia in general. But more on that later. For now, I'm off to bed to read a Aelred's treatise 'On Spiritual Friendship.'

It is almost like you're there...

This blog brought to you by photobooth and youtube. Do you like my shrewd macbook picture skills? Here is a rough idea of the Camera (note: any circular building is called a camera. I was confused at first too). This is just the dome...and  here is a bit of the music I was listening to today. If you listen and look at the picture and read Cicero's "On Friendship" all at the same time, you can sort of get a sensory idea of how I spent my afternoon!

Quest for the Holy Grail, anyone?

Alright, this is kind of a lazy, sucker post. I really want to post about being attacked by ghosts on Queen's Lane (an episode from a few weeks ago) but I won't have time at least until Wednesday. In the meantime, I feel I have finally written a paper that I am sort of proud of ... its my favorite topic so far, for my Romance tutorial:

'The Quest of the Holy Grail is pivoted on the doctrine of asceticism, its centre is a mystic vision of man and the world' - how far did the author of the Quest succeed in his attempt to bring this religious theme into the framework of the Arthurian Romance?


I'll just copy and paste the end result below, so you can get a sense of what a typical paper is like. For now I am off to the Radcliffe Camera (beautiful round reading room for undergrads, google image it, because I am not allowed to take pictures!) This time, I will remember to bring my headphones so I can listen to Biebl's Ave Maria sung by a St. Olaf men's choir from the 1990's. Its the perfect soundtrack for researching the Holy Grail in Oxford. 

A Saint Among Knights

            While the Arthurian romances has always maintained a symbiotic relationship with Christianity, The Quest of the Holy Grail, the third romance of the Vulgate Cycle, comes closer to melding the two worlds than any other of the Grail romances. The anonymous author uses the Arthurian legend as a framework for his depiction of various aspects of the Christian tradition, with a focus on asceticism and the beatific vision. R.S. Loomis is just one of many critics who support this reading over one that glorifies secular knighthood. He states that the author’s goal is to depict ideal Christian life under the guise of a quest with chivalric characteristics.[1] While many critics have succeeded in expounding the Christian symbolism which pervades the text, the effect the one genre has on the other remains largely unexplored. The Arthurian romance is necessarily fraught with Christian influences and structured according to the Christian culture of the 12^th century, yet it remains a strictly secular genre, set on depicting the virtues of those who fight, not those who pray.  Even when those who fight are glorified for their piety and Christian virtue, they still belong to the secular world, and usually are not judged by the same yardstick used to measure a monk. That said, the author of the Quest projects Christian means (asceticism) and ends (mystic visions) onto the typical chivalric journey, totally changing the rules and altering the romantic framing device. The similarities between the callings of the secular knight and the celestial monk are unquestioned and even made interchangeable; whether or not the Christian content of the Quest warps or fortifies the framework of the typical Arthurian romance is yet to be determined.
            There is much to commend the romance as the most likely candidate to play host to such strong Christian themes. The quest of the generic romance is fundamentally similar to the spiritual pilgrimage described by many religious authors and mystics. The doctrines of Bernard of Clairvaux offer a particularly illustrative example; according to St. Bernard, any pilgrim aspiring to a mystical union with God must go through a series of purifying rituals. Likewise, a knight aspiring to reach the pinnacle of knighthood must prove his worthiness with adventures. In these adventure, the knight usually ascends from brutish to refined, learning to love and serve first the self, and then others. The clergy would be familiar with this Platonic pattern; religious men are usually described on a spectrum ranging from those who are earth-bound in their love to those who sacrifice themselves completely for the love of God.  In this Christian to chivalric parallel, a beatific goal of the mystics is obtained by a series of steps that is very similar to a knight’s coming of age. 
            Likewise, the stages of chivalric quests are episodic trials meant to test and strengthen the chivalric values, as though in a fire. Further comparison yields even more parallels; the crucial lord and vassal relationship  and even the devotional element of courtly love translate well from a secular, chivalric setting to one in which God is the ultimate overlord, or the ultimate beloved. The mystic is driven to submit himself to God, while the knight shows the same self-surrender, but for the sake of serving secular lords; God may be his inspiration, but it is almost always a secular authority who completes the knighting ceremony, thereby deserving the knight’s primary allegiance. These basic likenesses are intensified by their adherence to a Platonic structure, in which piety and knighthood can exist on different levels. These links between the two traditions make the romance a likely nest for a deeply Biblical thesis.
            Although there is a clear natural compatibility between Christian traditions and romances in general,  Matarasso states that the Quest is unique in that it is the only romance that calls for direct comparison with the Bible. It is true that the Quest borrows plots, themes, and even characters from the Bible more openly than any of the romances. The asceticism of the three Grail knights is unlike the physical rigors secular knights undertake; the Grail knights must prove themselves spiritually in a distinctly Christian way that differs from the vague nobility of spirit enveloping the secular knight; the goals of their quest are not earthly goals, but celestial ones.  Barber was correct when he stated that the Quest leaves behind the orthodox world of romance.[2] The question now is whether the Arthurian romance is not warped by its manipulation for such extreme uses. The knight may be comparable to the mystic, but does Galahad’s role as a Christ figure undermine the secular duties of a knight? Is the romance’s adventure of self-realization compromised by the Christian way of learning, in which all meaning is explained matter-of-factly by omniscient hermits? And finally, does the mystical love of God humiliate the romance’s major element, courtly love? The Quest  itself offers many illustrations of the Christian message’s effect on the role of the knight, the nature of chivalric adventure, and the nobility of courtly love. 
            When examining the transformation of the knight’s role in the Quest, the most obvious character to analyze is Sir Galahad. Although Galahad is almost universally viewed as some sort of Christ figure, the detailed readings of his character are varied. Matarasso sees two distinct threads in his character, one of a Christ figure, totally incompatible  with the role of a typical knight, but also a model of any terrestrial-bound soul’s journey to God.[3] Other critics are less flexible with their classifications, and have amassed a large volume of examples to support Galahad’s role as more of a paragon of Christianity rather than of chivalry. Although Matarasso warns against excessive allegorizing of this text, which normally expounds itself quite efficiently by way of hermits and recluses, she is the first to offer a list of parallels between Galahad and Christ, or his worldly ancestors.[4] Galahad’s physical and personality traits mirror those of the boy King David; his rejection of arms at Arthur’s court is a metaphorical statement against the Old Law. Parallels are even drawn between the mysterious man who leads him into Arthur’s court and John the Baptist.[5] Loomis offers even more comparisons, including Galahad’s predestined arrival, messianic function, and his liberation of the Castle of Maidens.[6] These are just a portion of the list of similarities that have been drawn up between Galahad and Christ. Even his name compares him to the redeemer. In many ways, it is Galahad’s character in the Quest that forever changes the role of the knight from an unquestioned hero to a self-doubting pilgrim on a horse.
            Although there are many episodes in which Galahad overcomes some darkness or liberates some land from the unfaithful, none of these endeavors are undertaken for the sake of proving himself. He was proven almost immediately after he was knighted, just by fact that his coming was predestined. The Seat of Danger and the test of the sword in the stone both show that he is already the best knight by worldly standards. These instances are in addition to the maiden who arrives after Galahad draws the sword from the stone to proclaim point blank that Galahad has usurped Lancelot’s worldly title. Barber makes the excellent point that Galahad is already a finished product almost the moment he walks onto the scene. He has no place in the world of chivalry, because knighthood implies a spiritual coming of age; the knighthood of the romantic epic is a journey that ends with adulthood. Although he is young in years, Galahad is already fully mature in all the necessary respects. In his comparison with the other Grail knights, Barber concludes that Percival, Lancelot and Bors are more sympathetic and relatable, and therefore more accurately illustrate the true knight, even though they technically rank beneath Galahad.[7]
             While Galahad can be classified as a chevalerie celestiel, the others are incapable of rising to his level, and must remain chevalerie terriene.[8] This is not necessarily any fault of their own; after all, they were not predestined to be messianic figures. Their names were not written on the Seat of Danger. That is why the Quest’s glorification of Galahad is so distorting; other knights may be expected to achieve the same spiritual worthiness as Galahad, yet this is impossible, mostly because of the incompatibility of the two designations, best chevalerie terriene  and chevalerie celestiel. They are exclusive titles. Galahad’s predetermined perfection makes it unnecessary for him to undertake the typical quests of self-realization, while the other knight’s flaws necessitate that they complete that same type of quest. Without Galahad’s natural (or unnatural) lack of sin, however, they literally can never supersede him in this mystical/chivalric hierarchy. In this case, Galahad and the others champion two different types of knighthood, (it may be debated whether Glahad’s type of knighthood is really knighthood or mysticism masquerading). Barber astutely suggests that Galahad is the only member of Arthur’s court to actually seek the Grail; Lancelot, Bors, and Percival are actually just seeking to be like Galahad.[9]
            The different goals of the chevalerie celestiel and the chevalerie terriene imply that they have different types of adventures as well. In her notes on the text, Matarasso spins out the concept of the Arthurian “adventure” in an effort to show how the author of The Quest alters the basic pattern:

In a general way the adventure represents the random, the gratuitous, the unpredictable element in life; often it is the challenge which causes a man to measure himself against standards more than human, to gamble life for honor or both for love. To this the author of the Quest adds a further dimension. For him the adventure is above all God working and manifesting Himself in the physical world. To accept an adventure is to accept an encounter with a force which is in the proper sense of the word supernatural , an encounter which is always perilous for the sinner or the man of little faith and much presumption.[10]

Matarasso’s distinction between normal romantic adventures and those presented in the Quest is an important one, as it completely alters the dynamic of the Arthurian romance. In the Quest, we see that Galahad does undertake many adventures, knowing that they were manifestations of Providence. Although he has a lot at stake in case of his failure, there is little doubt of his ever failing. His adventures are not so much adventures in the Arthurian sense, but chores that he alone can perform due to his singular status as the messianic knight. Strangely, it is the other knights whose Christian-flavored adventures are more intensive tests of spiritual fortitude. This can be seen with  Perceval’s grappling with lust and the devil on a lonely island. Lancelot’s constant struggle with his great sin with the Queen, and Bors’ choice between saving his brother’s life and a maiden’s virginity are other prime examples of the tests of faith for the non-Galahads of the round table; they meet with mixed success, and none come close to being worthy of Galahad’s eventual mystic vision of the Grail. As much as Galahad is exalted as the ultimate knight of Christ, his adventures are painless when compared to those of the other Grail knights: claiming swords and shields that have been destined for him for generations sounds more like running errands than achieving chivalric or especially pious deeds. By normal romance standards, Galahad, as one who cannot fail, takes few risks. It is the other knights who give the Grail quest the good Arthurian-effort, and yet are frustrated by their irredeemably fallen state.  In this way, the unrealistic role model of Galahad diminishes the self-esteem and honor usually earned by the Arthurian adventure.
            Just as courtly love lies at the center of each good Arthurian romance, so the love of God is at the heart of the Quest. The disparity between these two types of love is perhaps the most problematic tension in the transition from Arthurian romance to Christian romance. Matarasso discusses how the tension between the sin of lust and the virtue of virginity had become a hot topic in the romances of Tristan and Isolde, and also in the earlier Lancelot and Guinevere stories. The authors of these romances and their continuations had worked hard to reconcile adultery, courtly life, and the need to preserve the knight’s virtue in his amorous affairs. The general solution was to elevate the adulterous affair to a quasi-sacramental status, proving that the love between couples such as Lancelot and Guinevere was so strong as to supersede the sin it naturally implied. In these most recent romances, the love between courtly lovers was so passionate, so sacrosanct, that it would have been mystical had the beloved been the Godhead, and not a mortal woman. According to the latest trends of romance, adulterous courtly love could indeed be ennobling, and in fact, it could be argued that Lancelot’s love for Guinevere enabled and inspired him to achieve his former status as the best knight in the world. Matarasso argues that the highly Christianized standards presented by the Quest not only change these rules, but humiliate the efforts of previous authors to validate adulterous affairs.[11] Galahad is the central figure in this humiliation process, first by his indifference to amorous relationships with women, and second by setting the example of loving God before all else. These practices seem peevish not because Arthur’s knights are irredeemably lustful scoundrels, quite the contrary! Like Galahad, Lancelot and Tristan offer models for how to love God to the best of one’s ability, with the limitation that their model is restricted by their acceptance of man’s fallen status in the cosmos. In the courtly world, it is almost taken for granted that knights are fallen, and will inevitably fall again to sin by lust. Tristan and Lancelot’s stories have actually taken this fact and worked to make the sin of lust as inoffensive to God as possible. This is achieved through the intricate emotional and moral understandings of courtly love in literature; a carnal affair can reach sacramental status, like the love between Tristan and Isolde in Gottfried von Strassburg’s version of the story. Galahad’s purity makes them all look like self-justifying fools in comparison, especially Lancelot who went from being the best knight in the world to a failure almost overnight. This can be the only expected result of placing a saint in the midst of emotionally-tame warriors, which is basically the role of the knight up until the Quest.
            After considering the success of the Quest on an Arthurian scale, it would seem that the potential for a great relationship between knighthood and sainthood is ruined by the attempt to actualize the marriage of the two value systems. What we see from a comparison between Galahad and the other knights is that even the very best of the secular knights are reduced to secondary hero status by the introduction of a messianic knight. In many ways, it is unfair of the author of the Quest to compare the heroes of a single genre to a type of world-saviour. Other romances and criticisms have demonstrated that the  courtly world is as far removed from reality as heaven. The Quest attempts to fill the mold of the Arthurian world with Christian ideals, but the effect is only to warp the shell, and forever humiliate the genre as inferior to one which would be better set in the celestial world, not the Arthurian one.

---

[1] Roger Sherman Loomis, The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 179.

[2] Richard W. Barber, The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 111.

[3] Pauline Matarasso, A Redemption of Chivalry: A Study of the ‘Quest del Saint Graal’ (Geneva: Droz, 1979), 38.

[4] Perhaps it is only fair to note that one of  Matarasso’s stated goal is to show that allegory is in the eye of the beholder, not necessarily that all allegory is worthless. If she offers a long list of allegories found in The Quest, some of which are sketchy at best, she is merely being thorough with her evidence. See Matarasso, preface and 41-43.

[5] Matarasso, 38-50.

[6] Loomis, 177.

[7] Barber, 111.

[8] For chevalerie terriene and celestiel, see Matarasso, 43.

[9]  Ibid.

[10] See The Quest for the Holy Grail, translated by Pauline Matarasso, Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), endnote #44.

[11] Matarasso, 145-147. See also Loomis, 177.