On bad art - play, puns, and the shortcomings of artificial intelligence

But when she parted hence, she left her groome
An yron man, which did on her attend
Alwayes, to execute her stedfast doome,
And willed him with Artegall to wend,
And doe what euer thing he did intend.
His name was Talus, made of yron mould,
Immoueable, resistlesse, without end.
Who in his hand an yron flale did hould,
With which he thresht out falshood, and did truth vnfould 

- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (Book 5, Canto 1, Verse 12)

As the hype concerning generative artificial intelligence is rising and increasingly affecting various parts of society, I have found myself reflecting on the frustrating discussion about its use for the creation of images and novels. Several claims have been made regarding the possibility of using AI for writing novels, and most of these - as far as I know - fail to acknowledge that what is produced is assembled from stolen bits and pieces from existing novels, and require unethical amounts of energy to produce. Another significant point here is that images and texts assembled through generative AI are also bad - not only of a bad quality, but bad because they have no meaning to them. These products are bad art because the badness has no other element to it than badness.  

What I am writing here might at first seem both hermetic and obtuse, yet I do want to distinguish between between art that can be considered bad in terms of its quality, and art that is bad because it has no meaning. These thoughts have been offset by watching episodes of the animated TV series Batfink, a Batman parody that first aired in 1966-67, and my examples are taken from some of these episodes. My main point, however, is that no matter how one evaluates the series Batfink as art, it will always be better than anything produced through the use of generative AI. The reason for this is that the badness of Batfink - to be presented in more detail shortly - has a meaning to it, and that meaning is due to the series being created by human beings. 

 

 

Screenshot from Batfink, episode 77, The Trojan Horse Thief

Batfink was an animated series that parodied the Batman TV series that ran from 1966 to 1968, and might arguably have been intended to benefit from some of the popularity of the Batman franchise. The protagonist is an anthropomorphic bat (with features that also resemble both a cat and a mouse), who fights against various criminals together with his servant Karate, a human sidekick who follows a well-established trope of being both ethnically other and less intelligent (such as Mandrake the Magician's sidekick Lothar, for instance). The series ran for 100 episodes of around 5 minutes each, and is notable for its ludicrous plots, its pompous dialogue, its myriad of over-the-top supervillain antagonists. Moreover, the series relied heavily on recycled animation. Although this is common in a lot of animation, the Batfink series recycled its scenes with such frequency as to appear as a deliberate lampooning of the practice. When considering what animators were capable of producing in the 1960s, the Batfink series is definitely cheaply produced, and it might also be called bad due to its cheap production. 

However, even if we accept the label bad for the series, Batfink also reminds us that badness - here meaning low quality - is not without depth, and not without creativity. Because of this depth and because of this creativity, a series such as Batfink has a kind of cultural merit that can never be attained by anything produced by artificial intelligence. First of all, the dialogue, the plots, and, perhaps above all, the implausibly lucky escapes from deadly situations, are all part of a satirical tone that serves as a loadbearing beam for the series - it parodies and mocks the superhero genre, something that can only be done with intent, with deliberation. 

Secondly, the series contains a plethora of puns and references to various cultural products and to elements specific to its own period. These are deliberate details aimed at an audience expected to catch them, to understand them, and to appreciate them. While most episodes are full of these, a few examples will suffice here.  

One case in point is episode 77, The Trojan Horse Thief. Immediately, the title points to the central reference, namely the story of the wooden horse by which the city of Troy was captured, as recounted in the epic poem The Iliad, attributed to Homer. In the cartoon episode, the horse is a vehicle used by the recurring supervillain Hugo A-go-go to perform robberies. The animated horse is very different from its legendary reference point, in that it is not disguised as a sculpture, it is not given as a present, and it is not brought into a walled city in order to open its gates from the inside. Instead, the mechanical horse is used as a battering ram to break into bank vaults in broad daylight, and although it does contain a human being inside it, that human is its driver, not a contingent of soldiers. If human creativity had not deliberately parodied the legend of the Trojan horse, the appearance of a mechanical horse in an animated series would have no depth to it. Instead, there is a play on a very famous legendary episode.  

  

Screenshot from Batfink, episode 77, The Trojan Horse Thief

A second example is from episode 9, Nuts of the Round Table, where the aforementioned Hugo A-go-go uses robot knights on horseback - living horses this time - to rob banks. Once again, the title indicates the cultural reference that has inspired the plot, namely the legend of King Arthur's knights of the round table. Moreover, the pun on nuts - as in nuts and bolts - is a nod to the robotic nature of these knights. The pun and the reference are both outcomes of human creativity, and they are made deliberately and easily recognisable. 

In addition, it is worth noting that there are two further elements that might also point to topoi from the literary repository to which the stories of King Arthur belong. First of all, the horse - as seen in the screenshot below - is white, a classical image ultimately drawn from Revelation 19:11-16, where the rider on the white horse is a Christlike figure. (Importantly, this is not one of the four horsemen mentioned in Revelation 6.) The white horse is a feature of numerous medieval legends, and has remained a symbol of chivalry in modern cultural parlance. Perhaps the white colour of the animated horse is a nod to this tradition? Moreover, the automaton knight also features in various old stories, be it Talos of Greek legend (mentioned, for instance, in Argonautica), or its early modern version Talus from book 5 of Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene, used in this blogpost's epigraph. I do not know whether the animators and script writers of Batfink were familiar with this topos, and I do not know whether the automaton knight is a nod to this literary element. Importantly, however, because the automaton knight was created by human creativity, there is a possibility that we are dealing with a cultural reference. Had this episode been produced by artificial intelligence, however, the question would have been moot, because artificial intelligence does not have intent and can therefore not make use of literary topoi beyond what it copies and cannibalises from other cultural products. 

Screenshot from Batfink, episode 09, Nuts of the Round Table

A final example to be mentioned here is period-specific references. These are elements that only make sense because the intended audiences are familiar with them from their own contemporary frame of reference. Once such case is found in episode 11, Fatman Strikes Again (another pun which points to the very franchise that Batfink lampoons). The plot concerns a man in a fat suit who robs the safes of fat men clubs. Such clubs were once a well-known, if perhaps not widely common, feature of American social life, where fatness could be connected to status and wealth. In the twenty-first century, this reference is antiquated as such clubs are no longer a prominent part of the contemporary discourse - I do not even know if any such clubs still exist. Such period-specific references only carry meaning because there is an intent in them, they are meant for the audiences to recognise. 

Screenshot from Batfink, episode 11, Fatman Strikes Again

These examples are not many, but hopefully enough to illustrate my main point, namely that even art that is mass-produced, cheaply made, and that has rather limited entertainment value has more depth than anything produced through generative artificial intelligence, simply because the human-made art in question has intent, is deliberately bad, and contains elements that are included on purpose, and not because the elements in question just happened to be part of the trove which was plundered for parts when assembling a product through generative artificial intellgience. TV series such as Batfink might be bad art, but the badness is playful, subversive, deliberate, parodic, and there is entertainment to be had in this. This intent is what makes the series art, however bad it might be deemed to be. If the series had been created through generative artificial intelligence, however, it would not be art, but a simulacrum of art, and it would be bad because of was just that, a simulacrum without any depth, meaning or intent whatsoever. 

Torquato the badger-poet

In a previous blogpost I had a closer look at some adaptations of William Shakespeare in Italian comic book stories from the Disney universe. Since the beginning of the Italian production of comics about Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse in the 1950s, a wide range of works from world literature have been adapted into stories from the world of Duckburg, in Italian Paperopoli. A range of these adaptations have been collected in a book series issued by Corriere della Sera which is called I classici della letteratura, the classics of literature, presenting these adaptations with information both about the stories themselves and their authors. I am very fond of these adaptations since I grew up with them in Norwegian translations, and they will feature in many blogposts to come. This time I will look briefly at one very charming aspect of an adaptation of Torquato Tasso's (1544-95) epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata, the deliverance of Jerusalem, which was completed in 1575.

Front page of vol.14 in the second edition of I Classici della Letteratura

In 1565 Torquato Tasso settled in Ferrara and became attached to the house of d'Este, and during his time there he wrote a number of plays and poems in addition to his magnum opus. Gerusalemme Liberata is an epic chivalric poem, and in composition Tasso borrowed from that blend of classical epic and chivalric romance which had been made famous by Ludovico Ariosto in the early part of the century. The narrative of the poem is set during the First Crusade and recounts the capture of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre led by Godfrey de Bouillon in 1099, but also heavily interspersed with digressions, love stories and fantastical episodes.

Gerusalemme Liberata has had a great impact on Western culture. For instance, Edmund Spenser was very much inspired by Tasso's poem in the writing his own epic, The Faerie Queene, which he began composing in 1590.  Also John Milton relied on Tasso's imagery for parts of Paradise Lost, and a wide range of operas, songs and paintings have sought to elaborate or focus on elements from Tasso's epic, and in the twentieth century the poem was adapted into a Disney comic.

Opening page of Paperopoli Liberata

The comic book adaptation, Paperopoli Liberata or Duckburg Delivered, was written by Guido Martina and drawn by Giovan Battista Carpi. It was first published in the Italian Topolino magazine (Mickey Mouse) in vols. 598 and 599, respectively issued on 14th and 21st of May, 1967. The epic, medievalesque tone of the adaptation is set already on the opening page where we see a painting of Donald and Scrooge fighting Beagle Boys in stereotypical Saracen armour (note the pointed helmets) and armed with revolvers and machine guns, highlighting the blend of old and new, and perhaps preparing the reader for the fact that the adaptation is set in modern-time Duckburg.

The first lines of the comic book story are adaptations from the opening of Gerusalemme Liberata. In the new rendition the text begins like this (translations from Italian are my own):

Canto l'armi Furiose e il capitano / Chamato Paperino

"I sing of furious arms and the captain / who is called Donald Duck"


While Tasso's poem opens in this way:

Canto l'arme pietose e 'l capitano
che 'l gran sepolcro liberò di Cristo

"I sing of pious arms and the captain
who liberated the great Sepulchre of Christ"


Guido Martina has retained the tone of the epic and necessarily secularised the content, but although the Paperino story is set in a fictional part of America rather than in late-eleventh-century Jerusalem, some elements are still retained and employed in a game of intertextuality. One example of this can be seen below, as a sign tells us that this is the camp of Donald Duck and his nephew, bringing to mind - as is pointed out in the introduction to this volume - the camp of the crusaders in Tasso's epic.

(Note, for instance, that Martina applies "Furiose" with a capital f instead of Tasso's "pietose". This is of course to remove the religious dimension of the poem, but it might also be a nod to Tasso's debt to Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and perhaps also to Martina's own possible debt to Luciano Bottaro who had composed his adaptation of Ariosto's poem, Paperin Furioso, the year before.)

The story begins with the breaking of the camp and the departure for Paperopoli, and this sequence contains one of the most charming tools of intertextuality I can think of. As the nephews are taking down the tent, they notice that their new friend, a little badger, is saddened by their imminent leaving. The nephews then suggest that he come with them back to Paperopoli, and this makes the badger happy. But how is this intertextuality? Well, simply because this badger is a representation of Torquato Tasso himself, as his surname means "badger" in Italian. This is made crystal clear on the following page, where the little badger turns to the reader and says:

"It is not that I lack speech, it is that I, Torquato the badger, speak in the language of the badgers!"

Torquato the badger is then put in the car and as he departs he looks forward to whatever will transpire next, saying "what a wonderful adventure! I will tell this to my children, and to my children's children". Torquato Tasso is thus in a way reincarnated as Torquato the badger, and he will become the badger-poet who renders in proper verse the story which is about to unfold in Paperopoli.

The Ducks behold Paperopoli, as the crusaders beheld Jerusalem

For similar blogposts, see:


On adaptations of Shakespeare

On an episode from Orlando Furioso

On a painting on a knight errant

Elegy for Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser's cruel panther

This month has been a very busy month, which is reflected in the lack of posts for July. I have made a point to keep up a minimum of four posts each month, so in such busy times I turn to a never-failing source for material: poetry. As regulars will have noted, I usually go to a handfull of my favourite poets for these filler-pieces, mostly because I know these poets well, but sometimes because I find works unfamiliar to me which compel me to share them.

In this case, I have chosen one of the possibly lesser-known sonnets from Edmund Spenser's cycle Amoretti, little love songs. This sequence comprises 89 sonnets in the Spenserian stanza - a scheme far superior to the Elizabethan sonnet in my opinion - and they portray Spenser's courtship of his bride-to-be Elizabeth Boyle in the course of 1594. The sonnets shift in tone throughout and give the impression of being written day by day in the course of the courtship, as if it were a lover's diary, although this might be a mere fiction constructed by Spenser.

Like many of the poems, Sonnet LIII employs animal imagery to describe Elizabeth Boyle's responses to Spenser's courship, and in many cases - such as here - Elizabeth seems indeed to be the active, courting part, while the courted poet finds himself subject to forces beyond his mastery. The idea of the panther as a beast capable of attracting animals goes back long into the Middle Ages, whose bestiaries explained the panther as an allegory of Christ. Like Christ, the panther's sweet voice drew animals from the desert, as can be seen in the illumination below. Spenser's panther is different - some might say more modern, although that should be said carefully - and a seducer with evil intention. Moreover, in Sonnet LIII, the attraction of the panther is its spotted hide, not its mellifluous voice.

The text is taken from this website.

Amoretti LIII

The panther, knowing that his spotted hyde

Doth please all beasts, but that his looks them fray,

Within a bush his dreadful head doth hide,

To let them gaze, whylst he on them may pray.

Right so my cruell fayre with me doth play;

For with the goodly semblance of her hew

She doth allure me to mine owne decay,

And then no mercy will unto me shew.

Great shame it is, thing so divine in view,

Made for to be the worlds most ornament,

To make the bayte her gazers to embrew:

Good shames to be to ill an instrument!

But mercy doth with beautie best agree,

As in theyr Maker ye them best may see.

Panther leading the animals 

Chalon-sur-Saône - BM - ms. 0014, f.088v, bestiary, Northern France, c.1280 

Courtesy of Enluminures

Norwegian history as it never happened - or, A Lesson in Norwegian Particularism

I'm a medievalist, and I'm often reminded of why the study of history is important. To me it's about challenging grand narratives and comprehending human diversity, to unlock the vast complexity of human experience and to remind both myself and those around me that the past is not easily grasped and that we see history through a glass darkly. Historians are not here to bring comfort to those content with a simplistic view of times past and the historical progress. Historians are not here to sustain grand narratives, but to challenge them, to complicate them and, to the needful extent, to falsify them. That this is important is to me quite evident and I don't question this importance - nor do I need to, because I'm very often reminded why such constant revisionism is necessary.

To illustrate this necessity of historical studies in the manner of medieval didacticism, I want to present a very recent exemplum of historical misunderstanding. This took place on a Facebook page dedicated to my home place, a small village in the Western Norwegian fjords. There was an on-going discussion about the history of one of the place names, and during this discussion some very strange remarks about Norwegian history came to light, uttered by one of my fellow townspeople (henceforth called Mister G). His comprehension of the Middle Ages in Norway was wildly erroneous, and serves as a good example of the kind of historical misunderstanding that one can find when history is marked by a certain grand narrative. 

Olav Haraldsson's death at Stiklestad by Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831-92)

This is one of the most important events in the old Norwegian grand narrative

From Wikimedia

The purpose of this blogpost is to present the way in which Mister G misunderstood Norwegian history, and to illustrate how much it is possible to be wrong about a historical period. In order to do so, I will first give a brief overview of twelfth-century Norway with a focus on the key points of the discussion I had with Mister G. Then I will present his version of Norway in the Middle Ages. The discussion took place on a Norwegian public forum, but I don't wish to mention names or to quote at great length, especially because the man in question will probably not be aware of this blogpost and can therefore not answer. The few quotes I translate, will only serve to emphasise a point of importance. 

Olav Tryggvasson is made king of Norway by Peter Nicolai Arbo

Olav Tryggvasson is another iconic figure in the old Norwegian grand narrative

From Wikimedia

Overview of twelfth-century Norway

By the beginning of the twelfth century, Norway was a unified kingdom under its own kings. Ecclesiastically it was a part of the archbishopric of Lund together with Sweden and Denmark, which had been fairly recently separated from the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. This was the case until 1152/53 when the the churches of Norway and Sweden were loosened from the archbishopric of Lund and organised under their own archbishops, respectively situated in Nidaros (modern-day Trondheim) and Uppsala.

Up until this time we know very little of the literary production in Norway. Sagas of Norwegian kings were being written in Iceland, although these are now lost to us. These works were written in Old Norse, then commonly referred to as the Danish tongue, with the Latin alphabet brought to Scandinavia by missionaries at some uncertain time. Runes were also used for shorter messages, and these were common all over the Norse world, including parts of England where Norse influence was strong.

The first Norwegian literature has been conjecturally dated to the early 1150s, and the first work is believed to be a Latin hagiographical account of Olaf Haraldsson, the saint-king who died at Stiklestad and who was the patron saint of Norway. Shortly after, probably in the 1160s, the first Norwegian Latin chronicle was written, Historia Norwegie, and towards the end of the century we also find books in Old Norse written in Norway. One of these is a history of Norwegian kings called Ágrip or Extracts by modern scholars, which is likely composed c.1190. Another one - often referred to as our oldest book - is the Old Norwegian Homily Book, written c.1200, containing a number of homilies, most of which appear to be translations of Latin texts. Although these texts were written in the vernacular, there were only small differences - so-called Norwegianisms - that made them distinguishable from texts produced in Iceland or Denmark, for instance.

Much of Norway's history in the twelfth century was marked by civil strife as various pretenders to the royal throne fought each other. Towards the end of the century, Sverre Sigurdsson reigned the kingdom after the defeat of King Magnus Erlingsson in Nidaros. King Magnus had been supported by Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson (governed from 1161 to 1188), and because of this there were periods of conflicts between Sverre and the ecclesiastical powers. This resulted in Eystein's exile in England (1180-83) and the exile of his successor Eirik in Lund (1190-1202). For this policy, Sverre was excommunicated by the pope.

This very brief survey covers the main points about which Mister G harboured a severe misunderstanding. His own version of events follows suit.

King Sverre crossing the Voss mountains

Peter Nicolai Arbo

From Wikimedia

Norwegian history as it never happened

The underlying concern that sustained Mister G's version of Norwegian medieval history, was Norway's exceptional place in the history of Scandinavia. His first historical claim in the debate was that Norway had its own written language around 1120, "200 years before Sweden and Denmark". He went on to say that all people of knowledge - presumably about the written word - and all the writings disappeared during the Black Death.

This is, as we can see from the survey above, spectacularly wrong, and I challenged him on these points, pointing out that Norway shared a written language with the rest of Scandinavia, and that we had a Latin literature. I did not, however, press him on the particularism evident in his remark that Norway was two centuries ahead of our neighbouring countries.

His reply to my comment on the written language, was a slight but very minute modification of his claim. He said that "it was beyond doubt" that Norway had its own written language c.1150, and he added that this "was many years before Sweden and Denmark". The support for this claim was that under the reign of Sverre Norway parted ways with the Catholic church and its Latin mass. Instead, we "went over to" the English church which unlike the Catholic one held mass in the vernacular. He went on to say that this was a process that had been going on since 1066 when King Olav Kyrre made an agreement with William the Conqueror not to attack England. The impossibility of this agreement can be seen in the fact that Olav Kyrre became king in 1069. However, this impossible agreement resulted over hundred years later - if I understand his timeline correctly - that Norway joined the English church. He furthermore said that this was something Sweden and Denmark did not like to hear about after having ruled over Norway in various periods, and the underlying claim seems to be that Sweden and Denmark are envious of Norway's ecclesiastical liberation from Rome at a time when they themselves were still Catholic.

So, in short: In the 1100s, Norway got its own written language, and this took place two hundred years before Sweden and Denmark. By the end of the century, Norway split with the Catholic church and went to the English instead, as a result of a process that had been going on since 1066, following an agreement between William the Conqueror and a king who would not be king for three years. This particular position was something of which both Sweden and Denmark are very envious.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge by Peter Nicolai Arbo

Three years before Olav Kyrre became king of Norway

From Wikimedia

There is very much at play here. The most glaring issue is perhaps the repeated insistence on Norwegian particularism, that our history is so widely different - and even centuries ahead - to the histories of Denmark and Sweden. This is an idea that burgeons from a deep-rooted current of historical interpretation in Norway, and it comes from the fact that for centuries - ever since 1397 - Norway has been ruled by kings from Sweden or Denmark. This lack of historical independence put its mark on Norwegian historiography in the 19th century. This was a century during most of which we were governed by the Swedish king after having been handed over from Denmark in 1814 following the outcome of the Napoleonic wars. Norway's secondary role in the politics of the kingdom led some historians to seek comfort in the past, and the perhaps most spectacular result of this was the claim by Ernst Sars that Sweden and Denmark had been populated from Norway in prehistoric times. Mister G draws from this ideological current in his insistence on Norway's exceptional role in the twelfth century, and although the political milieu that gave force to this current in the 1800s now is gone, Mister G is swayed by the very same little-brother-complex that haunted some of Norway's historians in the 19th century.

There is also another current feeding the ideas of Mister G, namely the Protestant distaste of anything that smacks of Papism. After Norway's reformation in 1536/37, Norwegian Lutherans eventually adopted the historical interpretation moulded and sustained by Protestant anti-papist propaganda. This interpretation of history was very strong and ubiquitous in Protestant countries, and perhaps most accessibly found in the great English epics of Edmund Spenser and John Milton. This current remained strong through centuries, and in the first draft of the Norwegian constitution in 1814, Jesuits were, along with the Jews, denied access to the kingdom. These restrictions were revoked later, and from the 1860s and onwards Catholic missionary work no longer needed to be clandestine, resulting in the first modern Catholic churches to be built at the turn of the 19th century. Nonetheless, despite the gradual acceptance of Catholics, the historical understanding on which Mister G relies has marked Catholicism as something negative. This is why Mister G is so adamant in his insistence on Norway not being Catholic after the twelfth century, and which is why he claims Sweden and Denmark appears to be ashamed of their prolonged Catholic past. 

Håkon the Good and the farmers at the yuletide offerings at Mære

Peter Nicolai Arbo

From Wikimedia

The Cost of Historical Blindness

In the grand scheme of things, Mister G's excessively erroneous interpretation of Norwegian history is fairly innocuous. His belief in Norwegian particularism is unlikely to cause harm to anyone, and it has not found a violent incarnation in him. However, the belief itself is thoroughly disturbing and potentially damaging if it is adopted by younger people, or people who exert some kind of influence in political or social matters. I don't for a second believe that it will have nationwide ramifications on a grand scale, the Norwegian public consciousness is too tolerant for that to happen. But it might instil in some people a sense of entitlement, a sense of pride that can lead them on to a path towards increased nationalism and make them dismiss the needs of those from other countries. In a globalised world where millions of people are in dire need of help, and where Western countries have a moral duty to receive refugees, it is necessary to counter ideas of particularism and to fight chauvinism that might prevent people from obtaining a life in safety on the grounds that they don't belong to a country's particular, exceptional historical journey towards the fulfillment of its destiny. The kind of historical misunderstanding embraced by Mister G, is the same kind of historical interpretation that creates a gap between one country and the rest of the world, and in a time of perverse consumerism and increased selfishness throughout the west, we can't morally afford that kind of particularism. No country is alone in the world, and a historical understanding that leads people to think this is the case, is a historical understanding that must be challenged, countered and falsified.

Aprill full of lustyhed

In the Cantos of Mutabilitie, the only known excerpts from Edmund Spenser's seventh book of The Faerie Queene, there is a procession of all the months, in which each month is depicted in accordance with its typical attributes. In this blogpost, even though this is the very last day of the month, I present to you Spenser's depiction of April in this procession.

Taurus
From MS. Arundel 60, English psalter from 3rd quarter of the 11th century
Courtesy of British Library

Next came fresh Aprill full of lustyhed,
And wanton as a Kid whose horne new buds:
Vpon a Bull he rode, the same which led
Europa floting through th' Argolick fluds:
His hornes were gilden all with golden studs
And garnished with garlonds goodly dight
Of all the fairest flowres and freshest buds
Which th'earth brings forth, and wet he deem'd in sight
With waues, through which he waded for his loues delight.
- Mutabilitie, Canto VII, 33

The Rose both white and rede

The Tudor rose, detail from a 1572 portrait of Elizabeth I
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Today I read for the first time John Skelton's (c.1460–1529) poem A lawd and prayse made for our souereigne lord the kyng, a panegyric written for the accession of the eighteeen-year-old Henry VIII, 22 April, 1509. According to Henry Woudhuysen in his notes to The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659, this is the only known autograph poem by Skelton. Curiously enough, the title is not written in Skelton's hand.

John Skelton was a poet and teacher of the future Henry VIII. His ability for verse crafting earned him a favourable reputation, and in a latter to Prince Henry from 1499, Erasmus of Rotterdam referred to him as "a light and glory of English letters". Skelton was awarded the title "poet laureate" by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge - 1490 and 1493 respectively - and is said to have used this title in reference to himself.

Skelton's corpus offer a wide variety of subject-matter and show a proficient versatility in both form and content, encompassing satires, praises, comic verse and a morality play. His most famous poem is perhaps the complaint Colin Clout,  made famous by Edmund Spenser's adoption of the name in his poetry collection The Shepheardes Calender from 1579. Here Colin Clout is a shepherd, often believed to be Spenser's poetic persona, and it is noted in the glosses that Colin Clout "is a name not greatly vsed, and yet haue I sene a Poesie of M. Skeltons vnder that title". Spenser's Colin is a mournful shepherd and piper, while Skelton's figure is a vagabond poet.

The text of Skelton's panegyric to the new king is taken from poemhunter. All pictures are from Wikimedia Commons.

The young Henry VIII, portrait from 1509 by an unknown artist

The Rose both white and Rede
In one rose now dothe grow:
Thus thorow every stede
Thereof the fame dothe blow:
Grace the sede did sow.
England now gaddir flowris
Exclude now all dolowrs

Noble Henry the eight
Thy loving souereine lorde
Of kingis line moost streight
His titille dothe Recorde:
In whome dothe wele Acorde
Alexis yonge of Age
Adrastus wise and sage:

Astrea Iustice hight
That from the starry sky
Shall now com and do Right:
This hunderd yere scantly
A man kowd not Aspy
That Right dwelt vs Among
And that was the more wrong.

Right shall the foxis chare
The wolvis the beris also
That wrowght have moche care
And browght Englond in wo
They shall wirry no mo
Nor wrote the Rosary
By extort Trechery.

Of this our noble king
The law they shall not breke
They shall com to Rekening
No man for them wil speke:
The pepil durst not creke
Theire grevis to complaine
They browght them in soche paine.

Therfor nomore they shall
The commouns overbace
That wont wer overall
Both lorde and knight to face:
For now the yeris of grace
And welthe ar com Agayne
That maketh England faine.

Adonis of Freshe colour
Of yowthe the godely flour
Our prince of hih honour
Our paves our succour
Our king our Emperour
Our Priamus of Troy
Our welth our worldly Ioy.

Vpon vs he doth Reigne
That makith our hartis glad
As king moost souereine
That ever Englond had
Demure sober and sad
And Martis lusty knight
God save him in his Right:

Amen

The Tudor rose, detail from Hans Holbein's portrait of Thomas More, 1527

Bibliography

McCabe, Richard (ed.), Edmund Spenser - The Shorter Poems, Penguin, 1999

Ferguson, Margaret, Salter, Mary Jo and Stallworthy, Jon (eds.), The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Norton, 1996

Scattergood, John, ‘Skelton, John (c.1460–1529)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

Woudhuysen, H. R., The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659, Penguin, 2005

Et in Arcadia ego

in Arcadia there were born

A shepherd

- The Faithful Shepherd, Giambattista Guarini (translated by Richard Fanshawe)

Les Bergers d'Arcadie, Nicholas Poussin (1637-38)

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

In my previous blogpost I gave a brief introduction to the development of the vanitas motif in art, and this blogposts examines another step in this evolution, namely the motif of death in Arcadia, collectively known as Et in Arcadia ego. This artistic genre draws on a long legacy of bucolic writing reaching back into Greek and Roman literature, with Vergilius' Bucolica and Georgica, pastoral eclogues detailing the idyllic life of shepherds, as perhaps the most important works. They retained their popularity throughout the Middle Ages, and Vergilius' position in the eyes of the medieval learned is perfectly exemplified by his role as Dante's guide through Hell and Purgatory.

In the 16th century pastoral poetry gained increased momentum with the critical debates concerning Aristotle's Poetics, which had been translated into Latin late in the preceding century. Aristotle's rules of drama gave rise to the modern theatre, and also caused a lot of controversy among literary theorists who sought to reconcile the Poetics with Horatius' Ars Poetica, and some of the key points of tension were whether the satyr play and the shepherd play were the same, and whether either could be seen as a genre of its own on par with the tragedy and the comedy. As these definitions were tried and experimented with, a significant body of pastoral literature arose. This occurred primarily in Italy, but several important works were also written in England. These pastoral works were often composed for the court, and frequently contrasted the deceits of courtly life with the simplicity of the pastoral scene, often represented by Arcadia, a region in Greece that had become synonymous with The Pastoral Idyll.

Woodcut from second eclogue of Spenser's Shepheardes Calender, 1579

Courtesy of this website

Among the most important literary works to shape the late medieval and early modern pastoral were the plays Aminta (1573) by Torquato Tasso and The Faithful Shepherd (1590) by Giambattista Guarini. These were not only texts to be performed, but statements in the ongoing debate on genre, where the views of the playwright were put to paper and then executed on stage. The Arcadian scene was already a long-standing feature in Italian literature, from Jacopo Sannazzaro's very influential poem Arcadia from 1504 and onwards. This tradition also influenced English writers of the times, and among the foremost are Edmund Spenser, who wrote his Shepheardes Calender in 1579 in imitation of Vergilius, and Sir Philip Sidney, whose The Duchess of Pembroke's Arcadia drew on Sannazzaro's poem, among others.

In the 17th century, this pastoral tradition was merged with the contemporary vanitas motif in art, and resulted in some beautiful and deeply unsettling paintings, where the pastoral idyll was disrupted by the discovery of death's presence, even in the blissful Arcadia. The first example of this sub-genre, that I know of, is a painting by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri executed in the the period 1618-22. Barbieri, also known as Guercino, or the Squinter, here depicts two shepherds discovering a human skull, the proof that death also lurks in the blessed Arcadia. This sinister composition is given extra gravity when compared with another of Guercino's paintings, Apollo and Marsyas, where the same shepherds are witness to Marsyas' penalty, as seen below.

Et in Arcadia Ego, Guercino (1618-22)

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Apollon and Marsyas, Guercino (1618)

Courtesy of Wikigallery

The most famous rendition of death in Arcadia was painted by Nicholas Poussin in 1637-38 and titled Les Bergers d'Arcadie, The Shepherds of Arcadia, as seen above. This iconic painting of shepherds examining a tomb was, however, a later variation of the theme, and the first painting was finished in 1627 with a slightly different composition as seen below.

Les Bergers d'Arcadie, Nicholas Poussin (1627)

These doleful meditations on death's omnipresence are a very beautiful confluence of the vanitas motif and the literary pastoral, evoking the mythological register of Arcadia while playing on the symbolism of the vanitas in a manner worthy of the rising Baroque of the first half of the 17th century, giving a contemporary touch to elements of a rich and long-standing history.

Bibliography

Hagen, Margareth, 1500 - poetikk, intertekst og sjanger i italiensk 1500-tallslitteratur, 2013

Hayward, Malcolm, introduction to Torquato Tasso's Aminta, 1997: http://www.english.iup.edu/mhayward/aminta.htm

Penman, Bruce, Five Italian Renaissance Comedies, Penguin Classics, 1978

Vanity of vanities

vanity of vanitites; all is vanity

- Ecclesiastes 1:2

No state in erd here standis siccar;

As with the wind wavis the wicker,
So wavis this warldis vanitie
- Lament for the makaris, William Dunbar

Why then doth Flesh, a Bubble-glass of Breath,
Hunt after Honour and Advauncement vain,
And rear a Trophee for devouring Death,
With so great Labour and long-lasting Pain,
As if his Days for ever should remain?
Sith all that in this World is great or gay,
Doth as a Vapour vanish and decay.
- The Ruines of Time, Edmund Spenser

One of the most prevalent and, to my mind, fascinating themes in 16th- and 17th-century culture is the vanitas, the meditation on human transience and the inherent futility in any human endeavour when faced with the brevity of life. This theme relies of course on the great philosophical heritage of the Judeo-Christian tradition (with Ecclesiastes as the most immediate and influential source) and also the Latin tradition as exemplified by the stoicism of Seneca. However, that this should burgeon into a category of its own in art and poetry in the 16th century, can only be explained by various meditations on death in late-medieval culture that appeared after the Black Plague, and in a way one might consider the vanitas to be the natural conclusion to and the apex of a cultural current that began in the 14th century, where the potential imminence of death and its ubiquity served as a reminder that one should keep one's life in order and not stray from the narrow path, a memento mori keeping the fickle nature of mankind in check in the expectation of God's final judgement. This evolved into the cultural expression of vado mori, I go to die, which had as its core the idea that as you lived, so would you also die, and the trick was to live a good, Christian life lest one should fare very badly.

From the Hours of Eleonora Gonzaga della Rovere

MS Yates Thompson 7, Central Italy, c.1480

Courtesy of British Library

From the Hours of Rene d'Anjou

MS Egerton 1070, France, c.1410

Courtesy of British Library

In the 16th century this mode of thought grew into a coherent, pronounced theme which was called vanitas, which often was presented through a collection of symbols with connotations of transience and brevity, such as the flickering or extinguished candle or lamp, the skull, the fading flower, the empty glass and so on. In some cases also the cultural or political pursuits of mankind were represented, either through musical instruments, a globe or political paraphernalia. Very frequently this was expressed in still lives, but could also be executed in more dramatic paintings, as seen below in Juan de Valdés Leal's (1622–1690) In ictu oculi from 1672. The title comes from 1 Corinthians 15:52 and means "in the blink of an eye".

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Pieter Claesz, 1630

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The vanitas genre also had a sub-genre known collectively as homo bulla est, man is a bubble, where one single metaphor was expressed in various ways, often with a putto blowing bubbles, showing painfully well the fragile nature of life. One of the most well-known and emblematic renditions of this sub-genre can be seen below, made by Hendrik Goltzius around 1594.

Courtesy of this website

These paintings are just a few examples of this wide-spread and long-lasting genre of art, and there are many other beautiful renditions of the theme to be found. I find it very interesting that this mode of thought should be expressed through a medium that is of itself a symbol of man's transience and futility along with so many other human pursuits like music or poetry. The painters must have been aware of this, and this reflection can also be found in literature as well. Remember that this is the time when Edmund Spenser had his Colin Clout break his pipe and Shakespeare made Prospero bury his books "deeper than did ever plummet sound", both of which have been interpreted as renunciations of the poetic pursuit.

This is, as stated, merely an introduction to this cultural phenomenon, and maybe I'll put up a few more in time. In any case, in a year when the word "selfie" as become Oxford Dictionary's word of the year, and when exhibitionism appears to be more or less unbridled, it is sometimes nice or at least useful to cast one's eyes a bit wider than the immediate moment.

He was an errant knight

Mylde answer made: he was an errant knight
- The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser

A few days back I was roaming the Internet for Pre-Raphaelite paintings, when I happened to come across this beautiful piece by John Everett Millais (1829-96) from 1870 titled "Painting the Knight Errant". The title is a little misleading since, at least to the modern mind, it implies a meta-dimension, but this is not the case. The painting is a lovely composition and showcases the enthusiastic and fertile medievalism embraced by the Pre-Raphaelites.

Millais has chosen has his subject the errant knight, an important figure from medieval romance and renaissance epic. The most famous examples from English literature are found in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, modelled to a significant extent on the great 16th-century Italian epics like Orlando Furioso by Ariosto (1474-1533) and Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso (1544-95). Spenser's well-wrought allegory features several of these knights errants, who were armed soldiers roaming the world for quests and challenges, but not all of them are honourable or protagonists. What defines a good errant knight appears to be the nobility of the quests he agrees to undertake, and sometimes the grand, overarching quest which leads him through the world, such as The Redcrosse Knight's quest to liberate the Faerie Queene from a monstrous dragon.

The notion that the errant knight could have a potential for evil was also picked up by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his Idylls of the King, where he notes that before Arthur gained proper control of the land, many an errant knight could be found throughout it, and Tennyson uses them as one of the symbols of anarchy and chaos preceding the golden age of Arthur. The errant knights of Idylls of the King are markedly different from Arthur's knight in that they leave Camelot first when they have a quest, rather than sauntering throughout the world on the prowl for one. It is also emblematic that Geraint, after he has fallen prey of jealousy and succumbed to the intrinsic darkness, takes his wife Enid and wanders aimlessly about just like an errant knight.

In medieval romance and in renaissance epics, the trope of the errant knight is a brilliant pretext for action and an excellent way of making the adventure move from one location to another, and this was exuberantly taken advantage of by the epic poets of the 16th cenutry.

Then came faire May

Woodcut for Ægloga Quinta of The Shepheardes Calender (1579), image from luminarium

The month of May is synonymous with merriment and joy in the Western European consciousness, and this association has a long tradition in folklore. In this blogpost I will present how my favourite poet, Edmund Spenser, presents the month of May in two of his most important works, The Shepheardes Calender and The Faerie Queene. Regular readers will recognise my love for Spenser's poetry, as this has been a subject for several blogposts, which can be found here, here and here.

First up is an extract from Spenser's poetic debut, The Shepheardes Calender, which studiously emulates Virgil's Eclogues, but in a completely modern manner. The deceptive simplicity and straightforwardness of the twelve-part poem hides a political acuteness which I will not get into here, and this was a key aspect of pastoral poetry. In the poem's fifth eclogue - or conversation - the two shepherds Piers and Palinode allegorically debate the religious division in England at that time. Piers is the spiritual part of the conversation, modelled on William Langland's Piers Plowman. Palinode is his worldly counterpart. Since this is a blogpost about May, however, I will only give you an excerpt pertinent to the topic, while the rest of the poem can be read here.

IS not thilke the mery moneth of May,
When loue lads masken in fresh aray?
How falles it then, we no merrier bene,
Ylike as others, girt in gawdy greene?
Our bloncket liueryes bene all to sadde,
For thilke same season, when all is ycladd
With pleasaunce: the grownd with grasse, the Wods
With greene leaues, the bushes with bloosming Buds.
Yougthes folke now flocken in euery where,
To gather may bus-kets and smelling brere:
And home they hasten the postes to dight,
And all the Kirke pillours eare day light,
With Hawthorne buds, and swete Eglantine,
And girlonds of roses and Sopps in wine.
Such merimake holy Saints doth queme,
But we here sytten as drownd in a dreme.


The next excerpt is from the Cantos of Mvtabilitie, which were most likely intended as a part of Spenser's epic Faerie Queene, and they are sometimes referred to as the seventh book. This excerpt comes from canto VI, which can be read in its entirety here.

Then came faire May, the fayrest mayd on ground,
Deckt all with dainties of her seasons pryde,
And throwing flowres out of her lap around:
Vpon two brethrens shoulders she did ride,
The twinnes of Leda; which on eyther side
Supported her like to their soueraine Queene.
Lord! how all creatures laught, when her they spide,
And leapt and daunc't as they had rauisht beene!
And Cupid selfe about her fluttred all in greene.



References
For the information included above, I have used the following editions:

Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene, edited by Thomas P. Roche Jr., Penguin, 1987

Spenser, Edmund, The Shorter Poems, edited by Richard McCabe, Penguin, 1999

November Poetry - part III

While still labouring in the talons of post-thesis ennui I have been unable to summon sufficient strength of will to embark on a lengthy and scholarly blogpost, and as a consequence I present now the third installment in the series of November poetry. This time I give you an excerpt from Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender, which was his debut in the literary world. This cycle of twelve poems, one for each month, is modelled after Virgil's Eclogues and is exquisitely pastoral, each poem being a conversation between shepherds on subjects such as love, worldiness and death. The Shepheardes Calender is remarkable for its poetic range, encompassing a number of various rhyme scheme and verse forms.

The protagonist of the cycle is Colin Clout, a character taken from a poem by John Skelton (c.1460-1529), and he is widely agreed to serve as Edmund Spenser's persona. He also makes an appearance in the epic The Faerie Queene. In the 11th eclogue, the subject for Colin's mourning is a woman called Dido, and the eclogue itself is fashioned after a poem by Jean Marot (c.1450-c.1526). Since the poem is rather long, a present here only an excerpt from Colin's lament for Dido.


Shepheards, that by your flocks on Kentish downes abyde,
Waile ye this wofull waste of natures warke:
Wail we the wight, whose presence was our pryde:
Waile we the wight, whose absence is our carke.
The sonnne of all the world is dimme and darke:
The earth now lacks her wonted light,
And all we dwell in deadly night,
O heauie herse.
Breake we our pypes, that shrild as lowde as Larke,
O carefull verse.

November Poetry - part II

Today's November poem is a strophe from Spenser's alleged unfinished book of The Faerie Queene commonly known as The Cantos of Mvtabilitie, in which there is a pageant of the months riding, bearing or accompanied by emblems of the zodiac. November is described accordingly:


Next was Nouember, he full grosse and fat,
As fed with lard, and that right well might seeme;
For, he had been a fatting hogs of late,
That yet his browes with sweat, did reek and steem,
And yet the season was full sharp and breem;
In planting eeke he took no small delight:
Whereon he rode, not easie was to deeme;
For it a dreadfull Centaure was in sight,
The seed of Saturne, and faire Nais, Chiron hight

The Faerie Queene can be found here.

Unbridled Imagination

There is much unbridled imagination - much fine, free drawing, and much good colouring, in this singular sketch. Such scenes are not, however, of this world, nor for people who are in it, and where one will feel the poetry of the work, a thousand will reckon it ridiculous.

- Review of "Destroying Angels and Daemons inflicting Divine Vengeance on the Wicked and Intemperate" in The Athenaeum 2 June 1832

And so I would not Etty be,

To shock my Prince's modesty.

- A Painter's Wish, Paul Pindar, published in Punch and Judy vol. 8, 1845

As the above quotes illustrate William Etty (1787-1849) was a prominent public figure, subject to praise and panegyrics alike and not afraid to cause controversy. His paintings featured nude figures, male and female, inspired by the works of Titian and Peter Paul Rubens and attempting to bring their subject-matter into an age whose inhabitants were not always quite ready to appreciate it. It was not, however, the mere nudity itself that evoked censure from the critics, for, as stated in the previous blogpost, he received, from time to time, lavish praise for his works and several aspects of his compositions were treated very cordially by critics. The problem was in most cases how the nudes eyed the audience or other figures on the canvas, how licentious their postures were and how strong were the sexual overtones. It was this that enraged his contemporaries and a prime example is his rendition of the Lydian king Candaules who, according to Herodotus, allowed his minister Gyges to watch his queen undress, a subject so frivolous in its very nature that it shocked the sensitivity of art-lovers.

 

We reprobate both the subject and the execution of this production.

- From The Morning Post, 1 June 1830

On other occasions his portrayal of females and perhaps particularly female virility - to indulge in an oxymoronic pun - met with applause, as when he illustrated a scene from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. The image of the female knight Britomart salvaging the fair Amoret from the vicious wizard Busirane extracted the following panegyric from a critic of the Literary Gazette, 11 May 1833:

Grace and beauty in the female form, spirited action in the knight, and the fiend-like expression in the magician, unite with the splendid depth of effect produced by the architecture to render this, nothwithstanding a slight tendency to blackness in some of the half-tints, one of Mr. Etty's "gem's of art".

Ne liuing wight she saw in all that roome,

Saue that same woefull Ladie, both whose hands

Were bounden fast, that did her ill become,

And her small wast girt round with yron bands,

Vnto a brasen pillour, by the which she stands.

- The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser

William Etty moved to London in his twenties to pursue his vocation as a painter but he retained a strong affection for his native city of York. Thanks to his energic campaign he saved much of York's architectural heritage, including the city walls and particularly York Minster which might, had it not been for Etty, have been radically altered in its design during the restoration after two fires in 1829 and 1840 respectively.

  York Minster seen from the very walls Etty saved from demolition.

The City of York from very early on cherished their prodigal and already in 1829 Etty was made an honorary member of Yorkshire Philosophical Society in gratitude of his endeavours. He was persuaded by the Society to give a public address concerning the education of artists in 1838 and as a consequence the York School of Design opened in 1842.

Upon his retirement to York in 1848 William Etty settled in a house on Coney Street next to St. Martin's Church, today the location of York City Screen. According to himself he relished his new situation thoroughly, but he was only to enjoy it for less than a year and a half as he died in November 1849.

St. Martin's Church.

 View towards the Ouse, a spectacle William Etty was very fond of.

William Etty's dying wish was to be buried in York Minster, the church he so dearly loved and whose Medieval design he had saved from contemporary whims. Sadly the proper funds could not be raised for this to be arranged, a sad irony considering Etty's own fundraising for the rebuilding of the Minster. Instead his body was carried in a hearse from Coney Street to Galmanho where he was interred at St. Olave's Church and the city mourned its loss. Today there is a stained glass window in St. Olave's portraying William Etty.

Wonderful! Wonderful! This death!

- William Etty's dying words, November 13 1849

The City of York has not forgotten William Etty and this year he is honoured by an exhibition at York Art Gallery. Outside the gallery a statue of Etty is situated, looking towards Bootham Bar and York Minster beyond it. At his right leg is a miniature of Bootham Bar, an unostentatious homage to Etty's endeavour to save it. 

The statue was made by George Milburn, a local sculptor, and presented to the public in 1911, the same year as an exhibition of Etty's work.

A less opulent memorial of Etty's life and work is found at the place where it started, at No. 20 Feasegate where young William would draw figures on the floor tiles of his father's bakery. The memorial in question is a little plaque in the Bhs shop currently occupying the space, but I was myself unable to find it.

Although William Etty was greatly influenced by Venetian masters, Peter Paul Rubens, the lectures of John Opie and Henry Fuseli, he certainly had his debt to growing up in York as well and Etty knew it. He spoke of York Minster as his bride and already as a child he would stand outside the bookshop of No. 35 Stonegate, "entranced" by the prints behind the window and sketch them, nurturing his unbridled imagination that would in ages thence split public opinion and harvest praise and protest alike.

John Todd's bookshop, one of William Etty's muses.