Barry Stephenson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199732753
- eISBN:
- 9780199777310
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732753.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity, Religion and Society
Each year, the town of Wittenberg hosts two Luther-themed festivals: Reformation Day and Luther’s Wedding. This chapter provides an introduction to the content and nature of the festivals and ...
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Each year, the town of Wittenberg hosts two Luther-themed festivals: Reformation Day and Luther’s Wedding. This chapter provides an introduction to the content and nature of the festivals and describes the historical origins and development of Luther-themed festivity and commemoration. An analytical approach to studying contemporary festivity in terms of cultural domains and number of key foci is presented.Less
Each year, the town of Wittenberg hosts two Luther-themed festivals: Reformation Day and Luther’s Wedding. This chapter provides an introduction to the content and nature of the festivals and describes the historical origins and development of Luther-themed festivity and commemoration. An analytical approach to studying contemporary festivity in terms of cultural domains and number of key foci is presented.
Mary Burke
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199566464
- eISBN:
- 9780191721670
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199566464.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The history of the Irish minority Traveller community is not analogous to that of the ‘tinker’, a Europe-wide underworld fantasy created by 16th-century British and continental Rogue Literature that ...
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The history of the Irish minority Traveller community is not analogous to that of the ‘tinker’, a Europe-wide underworld fantasy created by 16th-century British and continental Rogue Literature that came to be seen as an Irish character alone as English became dominant in Ireland. By the Revival, the tinker represented bohemian, pre-Celtic aboriginality, functioning as the cultural nationalist counter to the Victorian Gypsy mania. Long misunderstood as a portrayal of actual Travellers, J. M. Synge’s influential The Tinker’s Wedding was pivotal to this ‘Irishing’ of the tinker, even as it acknowledged that figure’s cosmopolitan textual roots. Synge’s empathetic depiction is closely examined, as are the many subsequent representations that looked to him as a model to subvert or emulate. In contrast to their Revival-era romanticization, post-Independence writing portrayed tinkers as alien interlopers, while contemporaneous Unionists labelled them a contaminant from the hostile South. However, after Travellers politicized in the 1960s, more even-handed depictions heralded a querying of the ‘tinker’ fantasy. Such change shapes contemporary screen and literary representations of Travellers and has prompted Traveller writers to transubstantiate Otherness into the empowering rhetoric of ethnic difference. Though its Irish equivalent has oscillated between idealization and demonization, US racial history facilitates the cinematic figuring of the Irish-American Travele as lovable ‘white trash’ rogue. This process is informed by the mythology of a population with whom Travelers are allied in the white American imagination, the Scots-Irish (Ulster-Scots). In short, the ‘tinker’ is much more central to Irish and even Irish-American identity than is currently recognized.Less
The history of the Irish minority Traveller community is not analogous to that of the ‘tinker’, a Europe-wide underworld fantasy created by 16th-century British and continental Rogue Literature that came to be seen as an Irish character alone as English became dominant in Ireland. By the Revival, the tinker represented bohemian, pre-Celtic aboriginality, functioning as the cultural nationalist counter to the Victorian Gypsy mania. Long misunderstood as a portrayal of actual Travellers, J. M. Synge’s influential The Tinker’s Wedding was pivotal to this ‘Irishing’ of the tinker, even as it acknowledged that figure’s cosmopolitan textual roots. Synge’s empathetic depiction is closely examined, as are the many subsequent representations that looked to him as a model to subvert or emulate. In contrast to their Revival-era romanticization, post-Independence writing portrayed tinkers as alien interlopers, while contemporaneous Unionists labelled them a contaminant from the hostile South. However, after Travellers politicized in the 1960s, more even-handed depictions heralded a querying of the ‘tinker’ fantasy. Such change shapes contemporary screen and literary representations of Travellers and has prompted Traveller writers to transubstantiate Otherness into the empowering rhetoric of ethnic difference. Though its Irish equivalent has oscillated between idealization and demonization, US racial history facilitates the cinematic figuring of the Irish-American Travele as lovable ‘white trash’ rogue. This process is informed by the mythology of a population with whom Travelers are allied in the white American imagination, the Scots-Irish (Ulster-Scots). In short, the ‘tinker’ is much more central to Irish and even Irish-American identity than is currently recognized.
Michael Peppard
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300213997
- eISBN:
- 9780300216516
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300213997.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
The eastern and northern walls of the baptistery feature the main artistic program, which is a procession of women. This chapter surveys and challenges the usual identification and interpretation of ...
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The eastern and northern walls of the baptistery feature the main artistic program, which is a procession of women. This chapter surveys and challenges the usual identification and interpretation of these female figures. While the traditional interpretation of them as the women at the tomb of Christ on Easter morning has arguments to support it, the preponderance of evidence supports our recovering an old counter-proposal, which identifies them as virgins at a wedding. When biblical, artistic, and ritual sources are read with this in mind, the singular importance of marriage motifs in early Syrian Christianity becomes clear. The closest artistic comparanda from Syria render a biblical wedding procession—that of Jesus’ Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins—with the same iconography as the figures on Dura’s walls. In addition, the motif of spiritual marriage at initiation in a “bridal chamber” was very prominent in proximate textual traditions. That being said, ritual texts and homilies from the fourth century begin to show metaphorical interference between imagery of weddings and funerals, and so polysemic interpretations of this procession are certainly warranted. The marriage motif dominates, but does not completely subordinate, the notions of death and resurrection at initiation.Less
The eastern and northern walls of the baptistery feature the main artistic program, which is a procession of women. This chapter surveys and challenges the usual identification and interpretation of these female figures. While the traditional interpretation of them as the women at the tomb of Christ on Easter morning has arguments to support it, the preponderance of evidence supports our recovering an old counter-proposal, which identifies them as virgins at a wedding. When biblical, artistic, and ritual sources are read with this in mind, the singular importance of marriage motifs in early Syrian Christianity becomes clear. The closest artistic comparanda from Syria render a biblical wedding procession—that of Jesus’ Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins—with the same iconography as the figures on Dura’s walls. In addition, the motif of spiritual marriage at initiation in a “bridal chamber” was very prominent in proximate textual traditions. That being said, ritual texts and homilies from the fourth century begin to show metaphorical interference between imagery of weddings and funerals, and so polysemic interpretations of this procession are certainly warranted. The marriage motif dominates, but does not completely subordinate, the notions of death and resurrection at initiation.
Barry Stephenson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199812295
- eISBN:
- 9780199919390
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812295.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The chapter is based on fieldwork conducted in Lutherstadt Wittenberg from 2004-2006, during the city’s two annual Reformation festivals (Reformation Day and Luther’s Wedding). The theoretical ...
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The chapter is based on fieldwork conducted in Lutherstadt Wittenberg from 2004-2006, during the city’s two annual Reformation festivals (Reformation Day and Luther’s Wedding). The theoretical framework informing the chapter derives from ritual studies and performance theory; a broad assumption is that cultural performances are occasions of social-cultural reflexivity, negotiation, and even contest. The focus of the paper is on-the-ground tensions and implications surrounding the carnivalesque nature of Wittenberg’s contemporary Luther festivals. Carnival was virtually eliminated in Protestant Europe by 1800. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, Carnival has returned to European popular culture with a vengeance—and it has recently returned to Wittenberg, the heartland of German Protestantism—not as Carnival proper, but as festive celebration informed by the carnivalesque: costuming, satire, mockery, fools, masks, inversion, theatrical skits in the streets, folktales, dances, drum and pipe music. It is argued that contemporary carnivalesque festivity is a mimetic return to early modern and Renaissance era popular culture in order to critique official or high culture, process the dramatic social-cultural changes in the East in the wake of reunification, and inscribe popular values and sentiments into social life through public enactment.Less
The chapter is based on fieldwork conducted in Lutherstadt Wittenberg from 2004-2006, during the city’s two annual Reformation festivals (Reformation Day and Luther’s Wedding). The theoretical framework informing the chapter derives from ritual studies and performance theory; a broad assumption is that cultural performances are occasions of social-cultural reflexivity, negotiation, and even contest. The focus of the paper is on-the-ground tensions and implications surrounding the carnivalesque nature of Wittenberg’s contemporary Luther festivals. Carnival was virtually eliminated in Protestant Europe by 1800. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, Carnival has returned to European popular culture with a vengeance—and it has recently returned to Wittenberg, the heartland of German Protestantism—not as Carnival proper, but as festive celebration informed by the carnivalesque: costuming, satire, mockery, fools, masks, inversion, theatrical skits in the streets, folktales, dances, drum and pipe music. It is argued that contemporary carnivalesque festivity is a mimetic return to early modern and Renaissance era popular culture in order to critique official or high culture, process the dramatic social-cultural changes in the East in the wake of reunification, and inscribe popular values and sentiments into social life through public enactment.
Mary Burke
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199566464
- eISBN:
- 9780191721670
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199566464.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Chapter two suggests that the ‘tinker’ had become overwhelmingly entwined with Ireland and authentic Irishness by the Revival. Synge’s ‘Irishing’ of the ‘tinker’ is give especial attention, and it is ...
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Chapter two suggests that the ‘tinker’ had become overwhelmingly entwined with Ireland and authentic Irishness by the Revival. Synge’s ‘Irishing’ of the ‘tinker’ is give especial attention, and it is surmized that the dramatist’s heightened Hiberno-English dialogue was shaped by the rash of contemporaneous scholarship on Shelta, the ‘tinker’s tongue’. Though the tinker is doubtlessly celebrated as an aboriginal exotic in The Tinker’s Wedding, it is often misread as a quintessentially Irish portrayal of actual contemporary Traveller culture. In fact, Synge’s mastery of diverse languages and literatures ensured that he drew deeply from Irish, British, and European sources in creating his tinkers. By the late Victorian period, the earlier rhetoric of ‘Oriental Gypsies’ had given way to their elevation as the epitome of vanishing British rural colour by Gypsy Lore Society members, and an idealized tinker figure functioned as the Revival’s response to this British fetishization of Romanies.Less
Chapter two suggests that the ‘tinker’ had become overwhelmingly entwined with Ireland and authentic Irishness by the Revival. Synge’s ‘Irishing’ of the ‘tinker’ is give especial attention, and it is surmized that the dramatist’s heightened Hiberno-English dialogue was shaped by the rash of contemporaneous scholarship on Shelta, the ‘tinker’s tongue’. Though the tinker is doubtlessly celebrated as an aboriginal exotic in The Tinker’s Wedding, it is often misread as a quintessentially Irish portrayal of actual contemporary Traveller culture. In fact, Synge’s mastery of diverse languages and literatures ensured that he drew deeply from Irish, British, and European sources in creating his tinkers. By the late Victorian period, the earlier rhetoric of ‘Oriental Gypsies’ had given way to their elevation as the epitome of vanishing British rural colour by Gypsy Lore Society members, and an idealized tinker figure functioned as the Revival’s response to this British fetishization of Romanies.
Tyler D. Parry
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781469660868
- eISBN:
- 9781469660882
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In this definitive history of a unique tradition, Tyler D. Parry untangles the convoluted history of the "broomstick wedding." Popularly associated with African American culture, Parry traces the ...
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In this definitive history of a unique tradition, Tyler D. Parry untangles the convoluted history of the "broomstick wedding." Popularly associated with African American culture, Parry traces the ritual’s origins to marginalized groups in the British Isles and explores how it influenced the marriage traditions of different communities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. His surprising findings shed new light on the complexities of cultural exchange between peoples of African and European descent from the 1700s up to the twenty-first century. Drawing from the historical records of enslaved people in the United States, British Romani, Louisiana Cajuns, and many others, Parry discloses how marginalized people found dignity in the face of oppression by innovating and reimagining marriage rituals. Such innovations have an enduring impact on the descendants of the original practitioners. Parry reveals how and why the simple act of "jumping the broom" captivates so many people who, on the surface, appear to have little in common with each other.Less
In this definitive history of a unique tradition, Tyler D. Parry untangles the convoluted history of the "broomstick wedding." Popularly associated with African American culture, Parry traces the ritual’s origins to marginalized groups in the British Isles and explores how it influenced the marriage traditions of different communities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. His surprising findings shed new light on the complexities of cultural exchange between peoples of African and European descent from the 1700s up to the twenty-first century. Drawing from the historical records of enslaved people in the United States, British Romani, Louisiana Cajuns, and many others, Parry discloses how marginalized people found dignity in the face of oppression by innovating and reimagining marriage rituals. Such innovations have an enduring impact on the descendants of the original practitioners. Parry reveals how and why the simple act of "jumping the broom" captivates so many people who, on the surface, appear to have little in common with each other.
Sarah Gilbreath Ford
Harriet Pollack (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496826145
- eISBN:
- 9781496826190
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496826145.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding, and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon characters enter haunted houses seeking information only to be confronted on the stairs by ...
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In William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding, and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon characters enter haunted houses seeking information only to be confronted on the stairs by mysterious African American women. This essay explores what is at stake in the portrayals of African American specters standing on staircases and impeding other characters’ desire for knowledge. The gothic energy driving the repetition is the conflation of person and property that happens in slavery, causing these women not just to haunt the houses but to haunt as houses, as the status of property they were assigned because of their race. While this status renders the women in one sense powerless, each uses her situation as property to assert a different kind of possession, thereby becoming powerful specters. As property, the women testify to the horror of slavery. As specters, the women reveal how that horror haunts the present.Less
In William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding, and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon characters enter haunted houses seeking information only to be confronted on the stairs by mysterious African American women. This essay explores what is at stake in the portrayals of African American specters standing on staircases and impeding other characters’ desire for knowledge. The gothic energy driving the repetition is the conflation of person and property that happens in slavery, causing these women not just to haunt the houses but to haunt as houses, as the status of property they were assigned because of their race. While this status renders the women in one sense powerless, each uses her situation as property to assert a different kind of possession, thereby becoming powerful specters. As property, the women testify to the horror of slavery. As specters, the women reveal how that horror haunts the present.
Gabriel Laverdière
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474435499
- eISBN:
- 9781474481076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474435499.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
New technologies have deeply informed the ways to think about cinema, film and video. If digital cinema is often understood as a break with past film aesthetics, this chapter rather sees continuity. ...
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New technologies have deeply informed the ways to think about cinema, film and video. If digital cinema is often understood as a break with past film aesthetics, this chapter rather sees continuity. Digital culture also preserves and prolongs video culture. This chapter examines the use of video and digital images in the context of minor national cinemas, and takes the view that digital filmmaking is a continuation not only of argentic cinema but also of video aesthetics. It suggests that certain Polish films use analogue and digital video cameras in ways that can be considered as strategies of unveilment, which assist the critical discourse that these works engage in regarding the social reality they depict.Less
New technologies have deeply informed the ways to think about cinema, film and video. If digital cinema is often understood as a break with past film aesthetics, this chapter rather sees continuity. Digital culture also preserves and prolongs video culture. This chapter examines the use of video and digital images in the context of minor national cinemas, and takes the view that digital filmmaking is a continuation not only of argentic cinema but also of video aesthetics. It suggests that certain Polish films use analogue and digital video cameras in ways that can be considered as strategies of unveilment, which assist the critical discourse that these works engage in regarding the social reality they depict.
Sarah Gilbreath Ford
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781496829696
- eISBN:
- 9781496829740
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496829696.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter examines parallel scenes in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding (1946), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977), where a character rushes into a ...
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This chapter examines parallel scenes in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding (1946), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977), where a character rushes into a haunted house seeking to climb the stairs only to be thwarted by a seemingly supernatural African American woman. These scenes signify the women’s contradictory roles as powerless property and powerful specters. Treated as property, the women do not just haunt the houses, they haunt as houses; they are conflated with the legal property of white families, even after the end of slavery. The women’s status as housekeepers, however, allows them a “keeping,” or possession of property, that provides them the power as specters to block the outsiders, who want to transgress the boundary of time to travel back into the past. Legal possession established by property rights confronts spectral possession signified by haunting.Less
This chapter examines parallel scenes in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding (1946), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977), where a character rushes into a haunted house seeking to climb the stairs only to be thwarted by a seemingly supernatural African American woman. These scenes signify the women’s contradictory roles as powerless property and powerful specters. Treated as property, the women do not just haunt the houses, they haunt as houses; they are conflated with the legal property of white families, even after the end of slavery. The women’s status as housekeepers, however, allows them a “keeping,” or possession of property, that provides them the power as specters to block the outsiders, who want to transgress the boundary of time to travel back into the past. Legal possession established by property rights confronts spectral possession signified by haunting.
Tyler D. Parry
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781469660868
- eISBN:
- 9781469660882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter examines how the broomstick wedding’s cultural importance skyrocketed by the 1990s. Not only were African Americans actively embracing the custom, some entrepreneurs established ...
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This chapter examines how the broomstick wedding’s cultural importance skyrocketed by the 1990s. Not only were African Americans actively embracing the custom, some entrepreneurs established businesses that manufactured, crafted, and designed matrimonial broomsticks for Black couples using heritage weddings. The ritual’s popularity coincided with a variety of cultural moments that helped garner more interest in ancestral traditions, including Afrocentrism, genealogy, a rising Black middle class, and a rapidly growing and financially robust wedding industry. Holding few resources about the custom’s origins, its rising popularity prompted various authors to promote mythical histories surrounding its origins. Due to its association with Black Americans and its wide documentation among enslaved people, some prominent writers claimed it originated in West Africa. Though their theory did not go uncontested, it gained significant traction among many Black couples seeking a connection with their African past, even if there was little evidence to bolster the claim.Less
This chapter examines how the broomstick wedding’s cultural importance skyrocketed by the 1990s. Not only were African Americans actively embracing the custom, some entrepreneurs established businesses that manufactured, crafted, and designed matrimonial broomsticks for Black couples using heritage weddings. The ritual’s popularity coincided with a variety of cultural moments that helped garner more interest in ancestral traditions, including Afrocentrism, genealogy, a rising Black middle class, and a rapidly growing and financially robust wedding industry. Holding few resources about the custom’s origins, its rising popularity prompted various authors to promote mythical histories surrounding its origins. Due to its association with Black Americans and its wide documentation among enslaved people, some prominent writers claimed it originated in West Africa. Though their theory did not go uncontested, it gained significant traction among many Black couples seeking a connection with their African past, even if there was little evidence to bolster the claim.
Daniela Berghahn
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748642908
- eISBN:
- 9780748689088
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642908.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Why do weddings proliferate in diasporic family films and what it is about the big fat diasporic wedding that captures the imagination of diverse audiences? After providing a succinct survey of the ...
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Why do weddings proliferate in diasporic family films and what it is about the big fat diasporic wedding that captures the imagination of diverse audiences? After providing a succinct survey of the wedding theme in its many variations, ranging from films about arranged marriage, sham weddings and interethnic romance, the chapter explores diasporic wedding films in terms of their generic characteristics. Wedding films emerged during the 1990s as an identifiable strand of the romantic comedy in mainstream cinema in the West and, as a variation of the romantic family drama, in Bollywood. Four Weddings and a Funeral and Hum Aapke Hain Koun (Can You Name Our Relationship?) are widely cited as the foundational texts, while My Big Fat Greek Wedding established the generic paradigm of the diasporic wedding film. The overriding concern of this chapter is how Evet, I Do!, (Evet, ich will!), Monsoon Wedding and Bride and Prejudice hybridise the genres of melodrama, romantic comedy and the wedding film through a distinctive diasporic aesthetics.Less
Why do weddings proliferate in diasporic family films and what it is about the big fat diasporic wedding that captures the imagination of diverse audiences? After providing a succinct survey of the wedding theme in its many variations, ranging from films about arranged marriage, sham weddings and interethnic romance, the chapter explores diasporic wedding films in terms of their generic characteristics. Wedding films emerged during the 1990s as an identifiable strand of the romantic comedy in mainstream cinema in the West and, as a variation of the romantic family drama, in Bollywood. Four Weddings and a Funeral and Hum Aapke Hain Koun (Can You Name Our Relationship?) are widely cited as the foundational texts, while My Big Fat Greek Wedding established the generic paradigm of the diasporic wedding film. The overriding concern of this chapter is how Evet, I Do!, (Evet, ich will!), Monsoon Wedding and Bride and Prejudice hybridise the genres of melodrama, romantic comedy and the wedding film through a distinctive diasporic aesthetics.
Laurel Kendall
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520201989
- eISBN:
- 9780520916784
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520201989.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter describes the wedding of Pak Yŏnghŭi and Yi Chongil held at the Rose Wedding Hall in Righteous Town, Korea in July 1983, explaining that the wedding, like all new-style weddings, ...
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This chapter describes the wedding of Pak Yŏnghŭi and Yi Chongil held at the Rose Wedding Hall in Righteous Town, Korea in July 1983, explaining that the wedding, like all new-style weddings, unfolded against a recognized masterscript of wedding rituals as packaged and marketed by commercial wedding halls. It discusses the author's observation that even the individually authored churye's speech had a formulaic quality readily susceptible to parody. The chapter argues that the Korean wedding draws its legitimacy and power from the replication of textually ordained gestures and movement, and that the ceremony abides in an esteemed domain of cultural practice associated with written texts and learned transmission.Less
This chapter describes the wedding of Pak Yŏnghŭi and Yi Chongil held at the Rose Wedding Hall in Righteous Town, Korea in July 1983, explaining that the wedding, like all new-style weddings, unfolded against a recognized masterscript of wedding rituals as packaged and marketed by commercial wedding halls. It discusses the author's observation that even the individually authored churye's speech had a formulaic quality readily susceptible to parody. The chapter argues that the Korean wedding draws its legitimacy and power from the replication of textually ordained gestures and movement, and that the ceremony abides in an esteemed domain of cultural practice associated with written texts and learned transmission.
Sarah Gilbreath Ford
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496814531
- eISBN:
- 9781496814579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496814531.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This essay explores the challenge of teaching Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding because of its experimental form, subtle allusions, and seeming lack of plot. Given that students are typically adept at ...
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This essay explores the challenge of teaching Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding because of its experimental form, subtle allusions, and seeming lack of plot. Given that students are typically adept at reading for character, the essay describes a technique of assigning every student a character in the novel to follow. Though rather simple in execution, this strategy has had very positive results. Students became experts on their characters, allowing them a feeling of mastery even on a first reading of the text. When engaging in discussion, the students reenacted and then understood the novel’s experiment in deploying multiple perspectives through free indirect discourse. This technique also works well in other Welty works, such as The Golden Apples.Less
This essay explores the challenge of teaching Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding because of its experimental form, subtle allusions, and seeming lack of plot. Given that students are typically adept at reading for character, the essay describes a technique of assigning every student a character in the novel to follow. Though rather simple in execution, this strategy has had very positive results. Students became experts on their characters, allowing them a feeling of mastery even on a first reading of the text. When engaging in discussion, the students reenacted and then understood the novel’s experiment in deploying multiple perspectives through free indirect discourse. This technique also works well in other Welty works, such as The Golden Apples.
Andrew Glazzard
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474431293
- eISBN:
- 9781474453769
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474431293.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The action of ‘The Noble Bachelor’ starts with Watson reading the day’s newspapers, and Holmes reading his correspondence. Both, coincidentally, find themselves reading about the same case. Holmes ...
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The action of ‘The Noble Bachelor’ starts with Watson reading the day’s newspapers, and Holmes reading his correspondence. Both, coincidentally, find themselves reading about the same case. Holmes has a letter requesting his services from Lord St Simon, the noble bachelor of the story’s title. Watson, meanwhile, reads aloud a story headlined ‘Singular Occurrence at a Fashionable Wedding’. We learn that Lord St Simon is a bachelor no more, having just married the American heiress Hatty Doran; however, the bridal party had barely sat down for the wedding breakfast when Hatty, claiming indisposition, left the table, and disappeared, causing Holmes to comment, ‘They often vanish before the ceremony, and occasionally during the honeymoon; but I cannot call to mind anything quite so prompt as this’ (Adventures, 225). Foul play is suspected, leading to the arrest of Flora Miller, one of Lord St Simon’s former lovers who tried to force her way into the wedding breakfast, ‘alleging that she had some claim upon Lord St Simon’ (225).Less
The action of ‘The Noble Bachelor’ starts with Watson reading the day’s newspapers, and Holmes reading his correspondence. Both, coincidentally, find themselves reading about the same case. Holmes has a letter requesting his services from Lord St Simon, the noble bachelor of the story’s title. Watson, meanwhile, reads aloud a story headlined ‘Singular Occurrence at a Fashionable Wedding’. We learn that Lord St Simon is a bachelor no more, having just married the American heiress Hatty Doran; however, the bridal party had barely sat down for the wedding breakfast when Hatty, claiming indisposition, left the table, and disappeared, causing Holmes to comment, ‘They often vanish before the ceremony, and occasionally during the honeymoon; but I cannot call to mind anything quite so prompt as this’ (Adventures, 225). Foul play is suspected, leading to the arrest of Flora Miller, one of Lord St Simon’s former lovers who tried to force her way into the wedding breakfast, ‘alleging that she had some claim upon Lord St Simon’ (225).
Jonathan Rayner
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623440
- eISBN:
- 9780748651115
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623440.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The musical biopic's complex articulation of the relationship between ‘life’ and ‘art’ raises issues also presented by the tradition of the rockumentary. Two notable Australian feature films of the ...
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The musical biopic's complex articulation of the relationship between ‘life’ and ‘art’ raises issues also presented by the tradition of the rockumentary. Two notable Australian feature films of the 1990s, Muriel's Wedding (1994) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), foreground the music of ABBA in self-conscious ways, connecting the films' narratives with the group's popularity. In particular, ABBA's significance to Australian popular culture is encapsulated in the feature film that centres on their tour of Australia in the 1970s: ABBA The Movie (1977). The ironic stance towards ABBA fandom in the 1990s was prefigured in the paradoxical attitude to stardom, and the fans' ownership of band, music and meaning, seen in ABBA The Movie. This chapter argues how ABBA The Movie (1977) helped to circulate star meanings attached to the band as well as being a way for the fans to have a form of access to their heroes. Its focus on the camp and ironic aspects to ABBA's Australian reception leads to a discussion of The Adventures of Priscilla and Muriel's Wedding.Less
The musical biopic's complex articulation of the relationship between ‘life’ and ‘art’ raises issues also presented by the tradition of the rockumentary. Two notable Australian feature films of the 1990s, Muriel's Wedding (1994) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), foreground the music of ABBA in self-conscious ways, connecting the films' narratives with the group's popularity. In particular, ABBA's significance to Australian popular culture is encapsulated in the feature film that centres on their tour of Australia in the 1970s: ABBA The Movie (1977). The ironic stance towards ABBA fandom in the 1990s was prefigured in the paradoxical attitude to stardom, and the fans' ownership of band, music and meaning, seen in ABBA The Movie. This chapter argues how ABBA The Movie (1977) helped to circulate star meanings attached to the band as well as being a way for the fans to have a form of access to their heroes. Its focus on the camp and ironic aspects to ABBA's Australian reception leads to a discussion of The Adventures of Priscilla and Muriel's Wedding.
Nicholas Tromans
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625208
- eISBN:
- 9780748651313
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625208.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter is concerned with David Wilkie's representation of the human body, face and mind, and also addresses the expressions in Wilkie's pictures, which were often considered the bedrock of his ...
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This chapter is concerned with David Wilkie's representation of the human body, face and mind, and also addresses the expressions in Wilkie's pictures, which were often considered the bedrock of his realism. For Wilkie, the role of vision in social life was what was at stake, and this led him to more sophisticated interpretations of the mind–body problem than conventional art theory allowed. It is noted that, as a very young artist in Edinburgh, Wilkie had explored what expression might be, painting contorted faces which did not necessarily express any sustained passion, and basing a key work on the blush, the quintessential non-muscular facial expression. The chapter then explores some of the common features of Village Holiday, Wardrobe Ransacked, Blind-Man's Buff, Rabbit on the Wall: a candle-light amusement and the Penny Wedding.Less
This chapter is concerned with David Wilkie's representation of the human body, face and mind, and also addresses the expressions in Wilkie's pictures, which were often considered the bedrock of his realism. For Wilkie, the role of vision in social life was what was at stake, and this led him to more sophisticated interpretations of the mind–body problem than conventional art theory allowed. It is noted that, as a very young artist in Edinburgh, Wilkie had explored what expression might be, painting contorted faces which did not necessarily express any sustained passion, and basing a key work on the blush, the quintessential non-muscular facial expression. The chapter then explores some of the common features of Village Holiday, Wardrobe Ransacked, Blind-Man's Buff, Rabbit on the Wall: a candle-light amusement and the Penny Wedding.
Regina Grol
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781904113058
- eISBN:
- 9781800342613
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781904113058.003.0017
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter begins with the wedding of poet Lucjan Rydel and Jadwiga Mikołajczyk at St Mary's Church in Kraków. It details how their wedding was considered a transgressive act that violated ...
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This chapter begins with the wedding of poet Lucjan Rydel and Jadwiga Mikołajczyk at St Mary's Church in Kraków. It details how their wedding was considered a transgressive act that violated established conventions wherein an artist, a patrician, a member of the intelligentsia married a simple, uneducated peasant girl. It also mentions Stanisław Wyspianski, who wrote a play about Rydel and Mikołajczyk's wedding in February 1901, which he entitled The Wedding (Wesele) and based most of his characters on participants in the wedding. The chapter recounts the uproar after the premiere of The Wedding on 16 March 1901 that was caused by the gossip and curiosity about the characters, the innovative dramatic form and inclusion of phantasmagoric figures, and the political messages and implications of the play. It dwells on Józefa (Perel) Singer, a guest at Rydel and Mikołajczyk's wedding that inspired the character of Rachela in The Wedding.Less
This chapter begins with the wedding of poet Lucjan Rydel and Jadwiga Mikołajczyk at St Mary's Church in Kraków. It details how their wedding was considered a transgressive act that violated established conventions wherein an artist, a patrician, a member of the intelligentsia married a simple, uneducated peasant girl. It also mentions Stanisław Wyspianski, who wrote a play about Rydel and Mikołajczyk's wedding in February 1901, which he entitled The Wedding (Wesele) and based most of his characters on participants in the wedding. The chapter recounts the uproar after the premiere of The Wedding on 16 March 1901 that was caused by the gossip and curiosity about the characters, the innovative dramatic form and inclusion of phantasmagoric figures, and the political messages and implications of the play. It dwells on Józefa (Perel) Singer, a guest at Rydel and Mikołajczyk's wedding that inspired the character of Rachela in The Wedding.
Janice Ross
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780300207637
- eISBN:
- 9780300210644
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300207637.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This chapter examines ballet in the Soviet Union after World War II. Russia had sustained great losses during the war. Minority groups such as the Jews had felt the force of oppression as well. Art ...
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This chapter examines ballet in the Soviet Union after World War II. Russia had sustained great losses during the war. Minority groups such as the Jews had felt the force of oppression as well. Art institutions including the Bolshoi Theater were to be purified from Jewish influences. Ballets were subjected to preliminary censorship. This was achieved through the requirement of a written plan or libretto. This process started an ideological battle in the Soviet arts. “Jewish Wedding” is an example of a ballet by Yakobson which highlighted the experiences of Jews in the Soviet Union using iconography, kinesthetic images, gestures, and rhythms.Less
This chapter examines ballet in the Soviet Union after World War II. Russia had sustained great losses during the war. Minority groups such as the Jews had felt the force of oppression as well. Art institutions including the Bolshoi Theater were to be purified from Jewish influences. Ballets were subjected to preliminary censorship. This was achieved through the requirement of a written plan or libretto. This process started an ideological battle in the Soviet arts. “Jewish Wedding” is an example of a ballet by Yakobson which highlighted the experiences of Jews in the Soviet Union using iconography, kinesthetic images, gestures, and rhythms.
Tyler D. Parry
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781469660868
- eISBN:
- 9781469660882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The book’s third chapter examines the politics of marriage for formerly enslaved African Americans following the Civil War, in which they gained legal recognition for their domestic relationships. In ...
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The book’s third chapter examines the politics of marriage for formerly enslaved African Americans following the Civil War, in which they gained legal recognition for their domestic relationships. In reviewing the testimonies of formerly enslaved people, one finds a stark divide between those who claimed the custom was as authentic as any other ceremony, against those who, for reasons of self-protection, downplayed the significance or denied the existence of broomstick weddings on their own plantation. Consequently, jumping the broom largely faded from popularity in the postbellum era, but the chapter shows how its memory survived among certain sections of the descendant community. Under unique circumstances, some African Americans continued to practice it throughout the rural South, and other sources reveal that many formerly enslaved people refused to marry using legally-recognized protocols, as they considered the broomstick wedding as legitimate. In certain cases, this caused some couples to reject governmental requirements to remarry. But even for those who rejected it, the colloquial expression “jump the broom” remained in the parlance of Black southerners into the twentieth century. The colloquial expression was important for retaining memories of the ancestral past, and it would help spur its revival during the late-twentieth century.Less
The book’s third chapter examines the politics of marriage for formerly enslaved African Americans following the Civil War, in which they gained legal recognition for their domestic relationships. In reviewing the testimonies of formerly enslaved people, one finds a stark divide between those who claimed the custom was as authentic as any other ceremony, against those who, for reasons of self-protection, downplayed the significance or denied the existence of broomstick weddings on their own plantation. Consequently, jumping the broom largely faded from popularity in the postbellum era, but the chapter shows how its memory survived among certain sections of the descendant community. Under unique circumstances, some African Americans continued to practice it throughout the rural South, and other sources reveal that many formerly enslaved people refused to marry using legally-recognized protocols, as they considered the broomstick wedding as legitimate. In certain cases, this caused some couples to reject governmental requirements to remarry. But even for those who rejected it, the colloquial expression “jump the broom” remained in the parlance of Black southerners into the twentieth century. The colloquial expression was important for retaining memories of the ancestral past, and it would help spur its revival during the late-twentieth century.
Tyler D. Parry
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781469660868
- eISBN:
- 9781469660882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The conclusion is structured around a few cultural moments that resonate with current discussions of the ritual’s modern and historical relevance, including two audiovisual depictions of the ceremony ...
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The conclusion is structured around a few cultural moments that resonate with current discussions of the ritual’s modern and historical relevance, including two audiovisual depictions of the ceremony found in the feature film Jumping the Broom (2011) and the remake of the miniseries Roots (2016); alongside its appearance in discussions surrounding the Royal Wedding between Prince Harry, a British Royal, and Meghan Markle, an African American actress. I explore how “jumping the broom” was imbedded in many of the cultural, social, and political discussions that commenced prior to their union in 2018, and how the discourse revealed a continued misunderstanding about the broomstick ceremony’s transatlantic, multicultural roots. Importantly, the conclusion explores a few theoretical questions that remain imbedded within the public discourse: Who has the “right” to claim the custom when it holds such a deep history in so many cultures? Can those hold no ancestral claim to the ceremony still use it, or are they guilty of cultural appropriation? And in considering the evolving attitudes toward marriage, it asks whether the broomstick wedding, in its current state, will survive subsequent generations, or if it will drift away as it did previously.Less
The conclusion is structured around a few cultural moments that resonate with current discussions of the ritual’s modern and historical relevance, including two audiovisual depictions of the ceremony found in the feature film Jumping the Broom (2011) and the remake of the miniseries Roots (2016); alongside its appearance in discussions surrounding the Royal Wedding between Prince Harry, a British Royal, and Meghan Markle, an African American actress. I explore how “jumping the broom” was imbedded in many of the cultural, social, and political discussions that commenced prior to their union in 2018, and how the discourse revealed a continued misunderstanding about the broomstick ceremony’s transatlantic, multicultural roots. Importantly, the conclusion explores a few theoretical questions that remain imbedded within the public discourse: Who has the “right” to claim the custom when it holds such a deep history in so many cultures? Can those hold no ancestral claim to the ceremony still use it, or are they guilty of cultural appropriation? And in considering the evolving attitudes toward marriage, it asks whether the broomstick wedding, in its current state, will survive subsequent generations, or if it will drift away as it did previously.
