response

Connie and Carla, a comedy from 2004, exemplifies a modern day embodiment of male and female role reversals. I am posting the trailer to the movie, that tells the story of two women pretending to be men pretending to be women.  In this double twist, I find it compariable to the shift of power between man and woman, in the Adam and Eve literugical play.  While Eve does not pretend to be a man, being hypnotized by the serpent and her aggressive demands (in a sense a disguise) to Adam, changes the power dynamic.

http://content.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,37872715001_1920991,00...
 
Unfortunately this video cannot be embedded, so please click on the link to see it! I chose a video of Burning Man, since this is one of the biggest celebrations (of more than 60,000 people) in the world. The burning of the man is akin to a carnival. While the giant sculpture of the man burns, fire dancers and other performers celebrate around the spectacle. 

While medieval liturgical plays and troubadour songs share similarities in origin, structure, and music, they also differ markedly, as they are prepared and performed with a different intended effect on the audience. First, the plays, as opposed to the songs originated from religious source material, meant to educate an audience on piety and morality.  The troubadours, literate and of whom most were theologically schooled, mostly dealt with courtly love, often satirically or erotically coded.  Where the cantos celebrate refined love, the plays ignore it.

I’m interested primarily at looking at the performance of Eve as a reversal of the domna figure. Eve is the character closest to the domna; but in the Ordo Repraesentationis Adae, Eve is actually represented and speaks herself, instead of being depicted by a troubadour lover. However, she is not presented as a figure of power, but rather in the typical biblical position of feminine subservience to the two figures of male dominance, God and then Adam. There is no initial resistance to their authority and there is a marked performance to her bold statements of submissiveness.

Thanks a lot for your comments on the vidas. I am making a general post/comment because I wanted to include this picture of the cover of Jim Morrison's biography. I think that the picturesque elements are very important in the vidas and it makes them function as portraits, or even icons of the performers. You all pointed out the materiality of the sentences, the crucial role of memory and the paradoxical factual/fictional style. Each sentence constitutes one particular trait of a figure that has to be remembered.

The vidas of Bernart de Ventadour reads almost as a novella. The fairytale-like plot and drama of de Ventadour’s life lends a performativity that transcends the sparse factual format of the prose. Even though the events are written, as Gaunt and Kay explain, as “biographical and geographical data to produce and inculcate a form of cultural memory”, there is most definitely a storytellers intent behind the world. For instance it is written that Bernart “was a son of a servant who was a baker, and who heated the oven to bake the bread of the castle”.

When reading Bertran de Born, I found his sirvente to be especially striking. The beginning, in which he speaks to his fallen king, read to me sort of like many of the cansos directed to women written by other troubadors. Referring to him as "the greatest king," and showering him with praise, Bertran really displays his affection for the king in a canso-like way. However, there is a different underlying theme to his declaration of love for the king. Stating, "I never saw a man so brave, so warlike..." Bertran shows his first inklings of being war-loving and obsessed.

After our discussion last class on the coded nature of troubadour verse and the highly performative life of Occitan courts, it was interesting to read Gaunt’s statement on “the matter of good behaviour in the households of the nobility, and how cortesia, was becoming an art form”. I am particularly fascinated with the multi-layering of the performance concept; Both within the fabric of courtly life and within a genuine staged performance.

I chose to analyze the Arab influence on troubadours and Occitan culture. Through an analysis of the historical ties between Arab Spain and Occitania, similarities in themes, song mechanics and rhythm, the extent to which the interaction of Arab and Occitan culture impacted the troubadours’ song and performance is clearly visible. While there was a culture exchange due to, in particular, trade and commerce between Arab Spain and Occitania, there was still a language barrier, as the troubadours did not speak Arabic.

In Cantiga 50, Alfonso explains the motivations behind the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary, beginning with “This is in praise of Holy Mary, and reveals why Our Lord became incarnate in Her”. The diction used here (and almost all writings about Jesus’ birth) clearly states that the birth of Christ is a materialization of the power of God. By taking physical form in flesh and blood, he brings spirituality to a material level, where humans can more easily comprehend and relate.