"A few centuries later, [Fulcher's narration of Christian cannibalism of Muslims] is revisited in Voltaire's Candide when the Old Lady suffers the loss of a buttock eaten by starving Moors. In this reversal of Christian and Muslim cannibals, we undoubtedly have here a vivid example of the principle of turning the other cheek" (footnote 6, p. 62)
(2) Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37.1 (2007), a special issue on "Mapping the Mediterranean." Many good essays here, and a stellar one by Sharon Kinoshita and Jason Jacobs called "Ports of Call: Boccaccio's Alatiel in the Medieval Mediterranean." This is what a transnational medieval studies looks like.
"...Sharon Kinoshita and Jason Jacobs ..."
ReplyDeleteBut I always thought that 'Jason Jacobs' was what the 'JJ' stood for in your name ...
We all know the JJ is short for John Jacob. I leave out the third J, for "Jinkelheimer."
ReplyDeletePS Nice Valve piece, Adam.
ReplyDeleteGosh. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteDon't have my database handy, nor can I determine readily, before running off to student conferences, whether or not Arthuriana gives itself up online, but I wonder if Hoffman's piece cites the following, from my notes to the years' old original draft of the chapter I'm finishing now:
ReplyDeleteAdemari Chronicon. III.55, p. 178, war against Saracens in Spain
Item Normanni, duce Rotgerio, ad occidendos paganos Hispanium profecti, innumeros Sarracenorum deleverunt, et civitates vel castella ad eis abstulere multa. Primo vero adventu suo Rotgerius, Sarracenis captis, unumquemque eorum per dies singulos, videntibus ceteris, quasi porcum per frusta dividens, in caldariis coctum eis apponebat pro epulis, et in alia domo simulabat se comedere cum suis reliqua medietatis membra. Postquam ita omnes percurrisset, novissimum de custodia quasi neglegens permittebat fugae, qui haec monstra Saracensis nunciaret. Qua de causa timore exanimati, vicinae Hispaniae Sarraceni cum rege suo Museto pacem a comitissa Barzelonensi Ermensende petunt, et anuum tributum persolvere spondent.
A Norman, Duke Rotgerio, going out against the Western pagans of Spain, utterly destroyed innumerable Saracens, and obtained many cities and castles for his people. When he first came, having captured Saracens, each one, on each day, in the sight of the others, he divided them up for food as if they were pigs, and after cooking them in hot water, he gave them to his captives for dinner, and in another house he simulated eating the remaining parts of the body with his retinue. After he had thus run through them all, he allowed the last one to flee his custody as if negligently, which monstrosity this fellow announced to the Saracens. They lost their spirit out of fear because of this, and the nearby Saracens in Spain with this King Museto sought peace with the Countess Baluze, and promised to pay a yearly tribute.
(I think I originally found a reference to this in either G. Heng or Nicola MacDonald, "‘Eating People and the Alimentary Logic of Richard Coeur de Lion’" in Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance (Manchester University Press, 2004) Translation might be mine (its clumsiness, which I'm not cleaning up just yet, suggests so), but I can't quite track it down just now).
No one can turn a buttock cannibalism joke like Don Hoffman.
ReplyDeleteOf interest only to me, but now with access to my db, it seems I found the Adamar chronicle through the commentary on Richard Coer de Lion in Laura Loomis's indispensable Mediæval Romance in England: a study of the sources and analogues of the non-cyclic metrical romances. London: Oxford University Press, 1924.
ReplyDelete