Category: Creative

For all creative projects done under Prof. Dalton’s courses.

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Panda

CREATIVE PROJECT BY JODY LIM (’25)

Panda
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY
FOLIO III

The panda, called bear-cat in Cathay, is closer to man than cat. It is a giant black and white beast with six-fingered hands. Instead of meat, it devours trees and its presence can be indicated by the crashes of falling trees. The panda gives birth to twin pure black cubs and must paint them white. When the mother panda runs out of paint, she leaves them black and white. She is impatient and has no foresight. She disgracefully tries to become what she is not. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10) Thus, her dissatisfaction will never be sated, for her and her cow-like spawn. As punishment, she sleeps but can never rest and her eyes grow larger and darker with fatigue.
Artist’s Remarks

I chose the panda as it was an Asian animal that medieval Europeans would have never seen. Indeed, knowledge of pandas was only introduced to Europeans when a Vincentian missionary, Armand David, came across panda furs in 18691. Thus, the panda was reminiscent of the bestiaries of real-life African animals like the elephant and crocodile. I wanted to try and reimagine the panda according to the traits that would stand out to a medieval European. I tried to make the description of such an animal seem mystical and uncanny.

The first sentence was an intentional way to set up the exploratory and mystical tone. The first sentence stated “The panda, called bear-cat in Cathay, is closer to man than cat.” First, I wanted to add an element of foreignness through the translation, which is usually from classical languages like Latin or Greek, as seen in the Ape, Elephant, and Tiger bestiary entries. Since the panda is from China, I decided to make use of its original name xiong mao (熊猫), which translates literally to bear-cat. For China, I decided to call it by its medieval name, Cathay2. However, I wanted to lean into a panda’s similarity to humans which this translation did not cater to. Thus, I also made a point of pulling away from the original translation and highlighting the panda’s perceived similarity to humans.

I described the panda as more human-like to break down the animal-human boundary, which is an element I particularly liked in the bestiaries we studied in class. I recently learnt about pandas’ opposable thumbs, which inspired me to focus on its hands3. I thought it might be interesting to think about an animal’s morphological similarities to us, such as the panda being able to pick up bamboo, while being startlingly different — having paws and the thumb being the sixth “finger”. Thus, I highlighted this in its description, referring to its paws as “hands”. I tried to be more intentional in the first illumination of the panda by recolouring a bestiary of a bear while adding on detailed six-fingered hands, with knuckles and fingernails. In the second illumination, I also depicted it holding a paintbrush while sitting down. This action was human-like and could very well be of a man painting as well. Thus, this illumination further served to interrogate what it means to be human. Overall, the panda was depicted as extremely close to humans, both in certain physical features and in behaviour.

Next, I tried to reinterpret bamboo as a food source for pandas. Bamboo would be a foreign plant to medieval Europe and I thought trees would be a good proxy for them. This is also interpreted in the illumination through the panda licking the tree stump.

Then, I included a short story about a mother panda and her painted cubs as the author’s primary method of distancing pandas from humans. Her cubs were born pure-black, giving them a visual difference from a white medieval European infant. The mother tried to make them more human-like through painting them white. However, she ran out of paint and the narrative denounced her as “impatient” and having “no foresight”. The emphasis on her bad character seemed to suggest that her negative traits are the ones keeping her and her young from this elevated pseudo-human state. Thus, humans were implicitly placed on the pedestal again even though they were born human. The illumination went one step further in highlighting the panda’s negative traits, and painting the mother panda as being neglectful. Abandoning and turned away from her half-painted cub, she started painting another. Thus, this depiction further condemned the panda.

Going further into the distancing tactics, I placed the Ephesians 2:10 bible quote for another angle of distancing the human from the animal, through reaffirming their biological difference. The panda was “disgraceful” in her attempts to uplift her offspring beyond their biological form and the narrative denounced them as “cow-like spawn”. This suggests that the panda should just be happy in her station in life.

However, a sense of unresolved dissonance was created through these paradoxical distancing techniques. On one hand, the mother panda was vilified for being unable to fully paint her children. On the other hand, the narrator believed one’s physical body to be unchangeable, while modifying the panda’s eyes as punishment. The very existence of the panda as a black and white animal, in fact, reflected a change of one’s physical form. To me, this description was motivated by the almost haphazard way that bestiary writers try to differentiate humanity and animals.

I was heavily inspired by the bestiary of a bear in both my text and my illumination. Firstly, my first illumination is a recoloured and modified version of the Aberdeen bear bestiary4. I kept to the colour scheme of the Aberdeen bestiaries of blues, browns, and golds. As such, the pandas were recoloured as dark blue despite being described as black. Next, the illumination of the bear focused on how the mother bear would lick its young into shape and I wanted to call back to that in my bestiary of a panda bear5. It would not be a stretch to imagine medieval Europeans taking similar inspiration from their knowledge of bears to make sense of a foreign animal like a panda.

FOOTNOTES

1 “Giant Panda,” Britannica, accessed February 13, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/animal/giant-panda#ref280131

2 “Cathay,” Britannica, accessed February 13, 2023https://www.britannica.com/place/Cathay-medieval-region-China

3 Britannica, “Giant Panda.”

4 “Gallery: Bear,” The Medieval Bestiary, accessed February 12, 2023, https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery171.htm

5 “Bear,” The Medieval Bestiary, accessed February 12, 2023, https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast171.htm

REFERENCES

Britannica. “Cathay.” https://www.britannica.com/place/Cathay-medieval-region-China. Accessed February 13, 2023.

Britannica. “Giant Panda.” https://www.britannica.com/animal/giant-panda#ref280131.

Accessed February 13, 2023.

The Medieval Bestiary. “Bear.” https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast171.htm. Accessed February 12, 2023.

The Medieval Bestiary. “Gallery: Bear.” https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery171.htm. Accessed February 12, 2023.

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Deer

CREATIVE PROJECT BY TAMANE HARATA (’24)

Deer
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY
FOLIO II

There is an animal that is called deer, known for its swiftness, the delicacy of its limbs, and especially its marvelous horns, for so the Greeks named it keraós. While it is commonly assumed that deer are fearful prey, they are extremely keen observers from both close and long distances. Deer can be found camouflaging themselves amongst the naked branches of autumn and winter, or even proudly making appearances in the middle of one’s backyard. Deer seem fearful, yet through both camouflage and public appearance, their gaze will be directed towards us, in other words, Mankind. 

No matter how well they hide themselves amongst the woods in one’s garden and no matter how far away they may be, Man feels exposed under those black eyes. Man might be tempted to draw the curtains to avoid their gaze, yet their appearances in his own territory fascinates him enough to forget such an option. The sight of their horns and delicate body provokes Man’s inexplicable desire to keep looking at them, while being tormented that he is under watch. The immense glass window of his living room separating his world from their fluctuating territory appears nonexistent in such turmoiled truth. This is especially a constant reminder for a Buddhist Man that no matter how well concealed his evil deeds seem, the Heavens are looking over what he does. 

There is a saying in Japanese Buddhist traditions, that when Man hides himself in the shade for a long time and hopes to remain in darkness forever, it is only a matter of time until the sun will eradicate the entirety of the shade and expose this Man to the world. This is because the Heavens see through the shade and know the right time to expose him. When one walks around an immense statue of the Buddha in Nara, he will realize the statue’s gaze always follows wherever he goes. The gaze of the deer resembles this. Whether Man encounters deer in a backyard, or within the peripheries of the Buddhist temples in Nara where they follow humans around, their silent gaze will reinforce Man’s awareness of being watched by the Heavens and of the consequences of his attempt to get away with whatever scheme he plans to do. That is perhaps the reason why Man feels tormented under the watch of those deer, becoming overly conscious of what he is doing even if it is not necessarily a bad deed. Man may sometimes wonder why he questions the judgements in the deer’s eyes, for they may only be blankly gazing at him without the knowledge of right and wrong. However, the Buddhist reminder and saying are so powerful that Man cannot make himself indifferent towards the deer looking at him, nor even prevent himself from looking at them in return.
Artist’s Remarks

This is a modern reimagination of a bestiary entry regarding deer from a 21st-century teenager’s perspective. It aims to follow the basic structure of the bestiary, starting from a very brief overview of the animal and the etymology of its name, then elaborating on certain possible tales involving the animal, and finally diving into the religious and moral implications of the animal’s characteristics that are in focus within the entry. In this entry, I chose to develop the underlying concept of the gaze from my own experience with deer. I often encountered them as a teenager inside the backyard garden of our house in Ithaca, New York, as well as in every corner of the city of Nara in Japan. The adolescent perspective of this bestiary entry derives not only from the fact that I was twelve or thirteen when making these observations about deer, but also because I wished to shrink the gap between medieval bestiary entries and my own by refraining from conceptualizing deer in a scientific manner, and instead elaborating on genuine observations the way medieval records seem to convey.

Here, because the most striking thing I noticed about deer in the garden and in Nara was the way they would intensely gaze at humans, I aimed to entangle Derrida’s notion of the “consciousness of being naked” and the knowledge of “[being] seen and seen naked, before even seeing [oneself] seen by [an animal]” (11) with Buddhist sayings about Buddha’s constant gaze. I specifically chose the Buddhist perspective mainly because my teenage self was a Buddhist and the deer found in Nara mostly spend their time inside the confines of Buddhist temples.  I have modified the nakedness portion of Derrida’s arguments into a more moral concept because I thought that the preoccupation with Buddha’s gaze strongly resembles the pattern of Derrida’s description of shame and preoccupation with being gazed at by an animal and seeing oneself being seen by that animal. As the latter resonates with “Man’s awareness of being watched by the Heavens” mentioned in my entry, I shall also point out that deer found in Nara’s temples tend to stare at and interact with passers-by very frequently. It is thus said that they serve Buddha in watching over the visitors’ deeds. With this connection between animal gaze (deer gaze) and Buddha’s gaze, I believed this seemed to fit the medieval bestiary entry’s pattern of elaborating on the religious and moral implications or symbolisms of the animal being described. This is where I decided to make a more contemporary entry and transcend European boundaries by shifting to the viewpoint of Buddhist morals rather than merely reiterating the religious and moral connotations of deer in a medieval European context.

For instance, I was able to relate with Derrida’s description of shame under an animal gaze: I felt ashamed to be seen by a deer when I was playing video games rather than doing homework and also ashamed of being ashamed. At that time, because I obviously had not read the Derrida piece, I connected this experience of shame with the Buddhist saying in my bestiary that my family often refers to (especially when I hide the fact that I was avoiding studying…).

As for the visual image, this photograph consists of a picture I took myself in the backyard from our home in Ithaca. Rather than drawing a deer, I chose to incorporate this photograph as I wanted to preserve the medium of photography that connotes a more modern approach to a bestiary entry. Moreover, I found that the deer’s brown color fuses especially well into the color of the branches and the dead leaves, so much so that its black eyes stand out quite strikingly and draw our attention straight towards those eyes. This led me to think of the line “Man’s inexplicable desire to keep looking at them” in my entry and the following paradox that had left me disturbed for a long time: despite the shame and awkwardness in being stared at so intensely for a prolonged period, their wildness and alterity still urge us to meet their gaze and find ourselves in wonder, as though calling forth Derrida’s questioning of “Who was born first, before the names? Which one saw the other come to this place, so long ago?” (18).

REFERENCES

Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I am. 2006

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Capricornus-Xuanwu

CREATIVE PROJECT BY TOH HONG JIN (’23)

Capricornus-Xuanwu
Visual Art / Literary Art
Creative Bestiary Entry
Real and Imagined Animals in Medieval Literature (YHU2330)
2023

THE MEDIEVAL KINGFISHER BESTIARY 
FOLIO I

The Capricornus-Xuanwu is a hybrid celestial beast of the northern summer skies and southern winter skies. Beheld in the west, it takes the shape of a goat with fish tail, coiling as a serpent round the form of a black monstrous turtle beheld in the east. The Xuanwu turtle is half-lion, half-dragon, half-snake, a fierce and mysterious guardian of the north with the power of water. The sea-goat shares this affinity, but it is also endowed with the abundance of earth, of which the infant Zeus once suckled upon through the horns. It is a confused creature at war with itself always, but alas, such is also the nature of the world.
Artist’s Remarks

Having encountered many fantastic creatures in various medieval manuscripts, I endeavoured to look beyond to the illusory beasts in the heavens for this creative bestiary entry. Completed with pencil and ink on Bristol paper, the Capricornus-Xuanwu is an imaginary composite creature comprised of the Capricorn from Mesopotamian and Western cultures, and the Xuanwu (玄武) from East Asian culture. The main reason for bringing these existing creatures together into one is their shared position in the night sky—both are represented as constellations with some common stars, and while the bestial forms which these stars have gone on to take may initially seem extremely different, a closer look at some of the tales and accounts of their traits and symbolism reveals surprising parallels between them. This is also an exercise after the medieval bestiary’s tradition of including animals and creatures from drastically distinct cultures and locales, including attempting to synthesise accounts from their place of origin with prevalent medieval beliefs and doctrines.

The Capricornus, or Capricorn, is well-known as an earth-affiliated, cardinal zodiac sign in astrology and as a triangular-shaped constellation in astronomy since classical antiquity and is most represented as a sea-goat, or a goat and fish hybrid creature. The Babylonians saw it as a symbol of Enki (later known as Ea), the Sumerian god of water, knowledge, crafts, fertility, magic, and creation, who has been depicted with long-horned water buffaloes, a horned crown, and sometimes as a man covered with fish scales. In the Greek and Roman imagination of a sea-goat figure, Capricornus was sometimes confused with Amalthea, the female goat that suckled the infant Zeus after he was saved from his Titan father, and her horn was notably transformed into the cornucopia, or “horn of plenty”; the sea-goat was also sometimes identified as the Greek god Pan, a satyr-like figure that escaped the monster Typhon by diving into the river, causing the bottom half of his body to turn into a fish tail.

In this bestiary entry, the Capricornus is represented faithfully on the bottom left of the framed drawing, with a notable change only in the positioning of its tail. Instead of having it spiral downward and its tail emerge from the back (as seen in Fig. 1), I have decided to draw it such that the entire creature bears closer resemblance to the symbol that denotes it, which I have also included on the top left corner. The symbol has always looked like a pictogram of Capricornus to me, with its “V” shape resembling the sea-goat’s horns and the twirled “S”-like segment resembling its fish tail. The single major change to Capricornus in this depiction is in its tail, which does not end anywhere near its body, nor does its literal end look like a fish’s. Instead, I chose to conflate its scaly tail with the equally scaly body of a serpent, which extends and wraps around the Xuanwu turtle, tying the two creatures together, the reason for which I shall return to shortly. Following the tradition of the medieval bestiary’s inclusion of geometric shapes in their visuals, I have drawn some of the stars that make up the Capricornus constellation in the background. In addition, to emulate the medieval bestiary’s tendency to bring in both divine and strangely contradictory accounts, I have incorporated in the text Capricornus’ mistaken relation with Amalthea and located its astrological elemental affinity of earth in Amalthea’s cornucopia.

Fig. 1: Capricornus. Image taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The Xuanwu turtle, also known as Genbu in Japanese, Hyeon-mu in Korean, and Huyền Vũ in Vietnamese, is both a god in Chinese religion and, as Black Turtle / Tortoise, one of the Four Symbols of Chinese constellations. The Black Turtle is also one of the Four Auspicious Beasts in Chinese culture, alongside the Azure Dragon, Vermillion Bird, and White Tiger, and it represents the element of water, the cardinal direction north, and the season of winter. Its name literally translates into “Black / Dark / Mysterious Warrior”. The Xuanwu turtle is associated with longevity, as are many other turtle-like creatures in Chinese mythology that then blur together into a single entity, such as Ao—a giant turtle whose legs were used by the Chinese mother goddess Nüwa as pillars to support the skies, and Bixi—a dragon with a turtle shell that tends to be used a decorative plinth for commemorative and funeral steles. This figure is frequently depicted not just as the Black Turtle but also one entwined by a snake, both of which represent the god Xuanwu’s stomach and intestines respectively, which according to legend, were dug out by him to be washed free of sins. After Xuanwu became a deity, his stomach and intestines turned into the aforementioned creatures. These demonic beasts caused such widespread harm that the god Xuanwu had to subdue them, and upon doing so they turned into the god’s subordinates and in a way, his iconography as well.

In the bestiary entry, Xuanwu’s name in Chinese characters is included on the top left corner of the framed drawing as well, oriented from right to left and written in the style of the Chinese seal script. The creature itself is portrayed on the right portion of the frame, upright and interlocked with a serpent, now a part of the Capricornus’ fish tail. The reason for this is to highlight their common hybrid nature and elemental affinity. The Black Turtle itself is drawn with a great degree of artistic license, since it has often been a hybrid of the turtle with various monstrous animals like the dragon and snake. The choice of making it half-lion is in large part due to my being inspired by the lion turtle creature (see Fig. 2) in a popular animated series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was itself inspired by the Xuanwu and likely its physical proximity as a stone statue and guardian to the stone lions also found protecting ancient Chinese temples and palaces. The regal and divine fusion of the dragon, lion, snake, and turtle also seeks to invoke the distant but nonetheless interesting resemblance to the French mythological creature of Tarasque, said to have been tamed by Saint Martha, which would geographically draw the Xuanwu closer to the cultures that inspired its astronomical counterpart of Capricornus.

Fig. 2: Lion Turtle. Image taken from Avatar: The Last Airbender Wiki.

Overall, this bestiary entry manuscript page presents a juxtaposition of Western and Eastern cultures through their two fantastic beasts and associated legends and symbolisms, based upon how they gazed, imagined, and projected their values and beliefs onto the same part of the night sky. Yet this juxtaposition only reveals that the opposition between the West and East is in fact much more unstable than it seems, with many parallels and similarities amidst their apparent differences. This unsettling of binaries is also prominently invoked through the similar hybridity inherent to these beasts. They may ultimately just be illusory creatures, but taken as one, their boundary-transgressing natures very much highlight the limits and transience of human meaning-making and categorisations.

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Piers Plowman (/A Brechtian Reinterpretation)

CategoryText
FormPoetry
GenreAllegory, Alliterative Verse, Dream Vision
AuthorWilliam Langland
TimeLate 14th Century
LanguageMiddle English
Featured InDeath, Mourning and Memory in Medieval Literature (YHU3345)

Piers Plowman is the highly acclaimed Middle English allegorical poem by William Langland, written after the Black Death. The alliterative poem is divided into multiple sections or visions (termed “passus”). The narrator encounters various allegorical characters ranging from “Reason”, “Fortune”, “Wrath”, to rather unapologetically named ones such as  “Do-Just-So-Or-Your-Dame-Will-Beat-You” and “Suffer-Your-Sovereigns-To-Have-Their-Will-Condemn-Them-Not-For-If-You-Do-You’ll-Pay-A-Dear-Price-Let-God-Have-His-Way-With-All-Things-For-So-His-Word-Teaches”, all in effort to learn and understand how to live life as a good Christian.

REFLECTIONS AND ENGAGEMENT

As a theological and social allegory, Piers Plowman pushes its literary form to the limit, with its endless search for authority and meaning in a post-plague era of death and social upheaval. During the medieval period, it was widely read and proved to be an influential text, even being used as inspiration during the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. Given Piers Plowman’s social relevancy and popularity, my project hopes to re-imagine the text in a modern context while keeping its resonances as boundary-pushing social commentary. Moreover, just as Langland pushed against the didactic form of the allegory, my creative intervention attempts to move the theatrical form to the limits of realism, to comment on the crisis of society after a period of uncertainty, a reality we are still grappling with today.

CREATIVE PROJECT BY ASHLEY SIM SHUYI (’22)

Piers Plowman: A Brechtian Reinterpretation
Literary Art / Performing Art (Stage Play and Artistic Direction)
An Interpretation of Piers Plowman
Death, Mourning and Memory in Medieval Literature (YHU3345)
2021

Artist’s Remarks

My creative project will approach Piers Plowman from two directions – first as the writer of the Brechtian re-imagination of the text and secondly, as the artistic director commenting on the script with staging ideas. In this fictious production, I imagine that the play is put up by a very small team with aims to use art to generate some kind of social change, hence, the creative process between artistic collaborators is more transparent. As the writer, my re-interpretation of Piers Plowman focuses on picking out key moments in Passus V and VI and creating a montage-like sequence, one of the characteristics of Brechtian-inspired work. Moreover, as the script writer, I used the source text as the main inspiration, quoting the translation and the middle English to respect the socio-cultural world of the play, an important aspect of Brechtian work. Conversely, as the artistic director, I explain more fully what the staging could look like, while also removing more suspension of disbelief so the ‘audience’ (ie the reader of the script) can see behind the veil of the play’s staging, another Brechtian characteristic. This feature should also figure into the staging of the play as the set changes and costume changes happen in front of the audience. Overall, I want to construct a play, set during the time of Piers Plowman, that makes the audience confront the intellectual experiences of thinking about social issues rather than the feelings that heart-wrenching realism may invoke.

Compared to other medieval texts such as Dante’s Inferno or Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess, Langland does not invoke as many intertextual references to the literary canon, but rather, is interested in depicting social reality as a means to grapple with it. In a similar way, Brecht believed that “Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it”1, with his work often being tied to specific social contexts. Thus, I see a striking similarity between Brechtian theatre and Langland’s poem as both attempt to use art and culture to reflect deeply on society in a way that requires several layers of interpretation and understanding. Piers Plowman is not obviously didactic; however, it forces the reader to confront absurd scenarios that astound and confuse, much like how Brechtian theatre is staged. In my re-imagination of Piers Plowman, I have utilized many Brechtian techniques to reflect my initial process of encountering Piers Plowman for the first time. Some key Brechtian theories I have chosen to employ include Verfremdung (V-effect), a devising process that aims to make the familiar strange as a means for the audience to reach a deeper level of understanding by being forced to resolve surface contradictions and Gestus, a type of physicality that hopes to represent a character rather than embody it. Just as Langland’s poems alienate the modern reader, I hope to do the same in my theatrical re-interpretation. In the process of reconstituting Lamgland’s poem into a play, I looked into medieval morality plays such as Everyman to understand how medieval theatre incorporated allegory. I noticed that the practice of stating the didactic purpose of the morality play at the beginning fits in nicely with Brecht’s V-effect as this sort of declarative statement in modern day would serve to alienate, allowing for an interesting cross-pollination of medieval and modern theatrical practice.

Additionally, in my theatrical re-interpretation, I wanted to highlight the feelings of anxiety after the plague, which had pushed the world to the brink of disaster. Seen through Piers Plowman and the narrative itself, the text constantly grasps for meaning as the characters clamour to find ‘Truth’, a religious symbol of redemption. Thus, Piers Plowman becomes a vehicle to embark on this spiritual quest as he becomes a pseudo-Christ-like figure, who in the process of leading them to salvation, re-affirms strict social hierarchies where “wives and widows [should] spin wool and flax” (Langland 6.13) and the knight should “uphold [his] obligation” to “take care” (Langland 6.33) of the people. However, this spiritual quest underpins larger societal issues as individuals such as the “pickpocket”, “ape-trainer” and “cake-seller” (Langland 5.630 – 634), believe that they have “no kin” with Truth, speaking to the larger issue that only communities of aristocrats believed that they have access to spiritual redemption. Compounded by the historical context of peasants being forced to work under the Ordinance of Labourers of 1349, I wanted to explore this social commentary through my use of placards which have often been used to comment on the unseen in Brechtian plays. Another way that Langland has created boundary-pushing social commentary is through his allegory of Hunger, which is also tied to the labour crisis. The violence with which Hunger is used to control the Waster is striking, as Hunger “gripped [the Waster] so that his eyes gushed water” (Langland 6.175). While exhibiting cruel violence, Hunger is simultaneously shown to restore social order. I wanted to figure this duality of Hunger into my montage sequence, choosing to construct Hunger as a modern-day rock star – a symbol of both vice and virtue. To do this, I conceived of unique staging elements such as costuming and lighting to create a jarring quality, alienating the audience.

To me, this project is a creative exercise in relating modern theatrical practice to Langland’s unique use of form. It is interesting to see many resonances with how literature and art tends to move after a catastrophic event such as the plague, or the pandemic, as there is clearly a pattern of art moving towards more absurd, post-modern directions. Other artistic movements such as Dadaism or the rise of Zoom theatre reflects this human desire to construct meaning in chaos by pushing the limits of the known. Piers Plowman represents this human impulse to explain the inexpressible, in a constant struggle to find meaning in a world surrounded by death, and it is my hope that my Brechtian reimagination of the text pay homage to its enduring relevance in the 21st century.

FOOTNOTES

1 The source of this quote has been disputed greatly so it is difficult to find where it was originally quoted from. However, this quote is one of the most commonly-attributed quote to Brecht. 

IMAGE CREDITS

[Featured Image] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Plowman

CONTRIBUTED BY ASHLEY SIM SHUYI (’22)

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Mal Mariée: Dance as a Medium for Resistance

CREATIVE PROJECT BY CLAIRE ZHAI HUAN TING (’24)

Mal Mariée: Dance as a Medium for Resistance
Performing Art (Dance)
An Interpretation of “Laüstic“
Medieval Romance: Magic and the Supernatural (YHU2309)
2022

NOTE

Unfortunately, the quality of this video has been reduced due to site limitations on file size. To watch this video at a higher resolution, please click on the following link:

Mal Mariée: Dance as a Medium for Resistance – CLAIRE ZHAI HUAN TING (’24)

Artist’s Remarks

“Laüstic” is a poem that retells the experience of entrapment, encapsulated by the term Mal Mariée, a literary trope that appeared commonly in Medieval Romance. It refers to an unhappily married woman, under the constant surveillance and control of her husband. This piece of work seeks to pay tribute to the experiences of struggle of the female protagonist, and to explore dance as a medium for resistance, transposed to a modern setting. The definition of the body as a “complex, contradictory, and ever changing cultural site of ‘discursive intercourse’ which is constructed dialogically by the dancer and her audiences” (Reed, 519) equips movement with the tools to not only replicate experiences from the past, but also to inject new meaning into the endeavors and actions of characters. In this project, dance is examined as a channel for non-verbal communication, a physically situated activity that yields implicit meaning, and finally as a means for agency in the form of embodiment, therefore reflecting its capacity for resistance.

In a setting where communication between the lovers was restricted, and eventually denied, dance as a form of non-verbal communication evades surveillance, and subverts the mal-mariée trope. In the poem, the lovers’ opportunity for communication is constrained to talking at the lady’s bedroom window (“Laüstic”, 40). The fact that it is the only time where “she speaks to him and he to her”, shows the fleeting nature of their mutual companionship, heightened by the reciprocal phrasing of the line (“Laüstic“, 42). Despite the short physical distance between the lovers given that “he lived close by” (“Laüstic“, 28), the absoluteness of the obstacle they faced in communication became a defining feature of the relationship. This barrier in communication is evoked through movements that explore the idea of distance – tracing the length from one shoulder to the end of the arm, measuring distance within the space of two palms, gauging height from body to ground, closing the space between two elbows etc. As love relationships are characterized by “loving speech” and proclamations of love, the lack of freedom to interact intimately with each other as lovers takes on symbolic significance (“Laüstic”, 56). Furthermore, the “great care and secrecy” with which the lovers had to approach their relationship is represented by the cautious steps and instability of movement (“Laüstic”, 30), connoting the precarious quality of their communication, almost like trying to navigate around the “nets”, “snares” and “traps” meant to capture the nightingale (“Laüstic”, 96). The moment that the dancer loses balance and falls to the ground mimics the moment that the nightingale gets caught in the trap (“Laüstic”, 96), the suddenness of the movement mirroring the rupture in the secrecy of communication between the lovers. Yet, at the same time, the dance conveys the agony of the lovers in trying to establish a private space to connect with each other, baring open the challenges of distance and surveillance faced. In doing so, it serves as a “system of signs that expresses ideas”, where the “evolutionary value of dance lies in its effectiveness as a mode of nonverbal communication” (Blacking, 89-91). By perceiving dance as “dynamically embodied action” and a form of “talk from the body” (Warburton, 68), it can be argued that the denial of communication between the lovers is restored by movement that seeks to remember and communicate their suffering, thereby doing their torment justice. 

In accompaniment to the dance, it is also important to recognize the space in which the movement is presented, where in this poem, it calls attention to the tension between containment and release. Dance does not occur in a vacuum, but is a “situated activity” that “takes place in the context of a real-world environment” (Warburton, 67). Such an understanding is particularly key to this interpretation of “Laüstic”. In one scene, the background of concrete and stone represents the “great high wall of dark-hued stone” (“Laüstic”, 38), where the harshness of the material, the angular lines that it creates, and the small space that it delineates visualizes the insurmountable confines that the lady is subject to. The unforgiving material leaves the dancers’ revolt in vain, where merely fists and mental will prove insufficient to overcome physical imprisonment. Yet, the dancer’s movements of pushing against stone with the weight of her body, falling and catching herself, attempts to draw her own space with her limbs, and at times sharp movements, reflects the desire of the lady to assert her command and independence against the control of her husband. As the dancer emerges from the shadows and progresses towards the brightness, we see the motion of reaching towards the light source and the yearning to escape the feeling of being stranded and rooted to continued misery. Here, the fluidity of the movements is contrasted to the roughness and disrepair of the peeling wall, showing a silent resistance in the face of rugged and unrelenting forces. 

The tension between containment and release is further expressed through the contrast between the idyllic setting of summer, and the inability of the lovers to consummate their love. Despite the merriment and carefree nature of the surroundings, where weather had made the “fields and forests green”,  and “gardens, orchards, bloom again”, the lovers remained subject to the control and fury of the husband (“Laüstic”, 58-62 & 92). This is represented by the shifting locations from within walls to nature without artificial confines, reflecting the transient quality of freedom as each state is impermanent. In one particular scene, the melding of concrete and brick flooring with the greenery and open skies encapsulates the lady’s predicament – the sustained narrative of entrapment as opposed to the brief moments of respite at nighttime where she is able to reunite with her lover (“Laüstic”, 68). It depicts the experience of being tempted with freedom while never really having that option and perpetually being circumscribed within the unyielding confines of the Mal Mariée trope. These instances reflect that “space is not an inert backdrop for movement, but is integral to it, often providing fundamental orientation and meaning” (Reed, 523). In line with the intentions of this work, space informs movement by making the subject conscious of the implications of her movement quality, not in isolation, but in tandem and association with the surroundings that it inhabits. 

Finally, this work examines the embodiment of resistance in dance, a way of remembering the weight that the story of “Laüstic” holds. By perceiving dance as “an expression and practice of relations of power and protest, resistance and complicity” (Reed, 505), we may recognize how movement is not one-dimensional and simply replicative in nature, but complex and “simultaneously productive and reproductive” (Reed, 521). Such a view is outlined by John Blacking, who argued that although “ritual may be enacted in the service of conservative and even oppressive institutions”, “the experience of performing the nonberbal movements and sounds may ultimately liberate the actors” (Reed, 521). This agency is already evident in the verbs connoting the lady’s intentions to “act now” and “make known to him this vicious tale”, rather than simply submitting to her fate (“Laüstic”, 132-134). The legacy of her message is ultimately symbolized by the reliquary, where it takes on not only figurative significance, but also physical embodiment of the seizure of freedom, carried by the weight of the nightingale’s body and the stones within the reliquary (“Laüstic”, 149-152). Here, the “reflection and resistance of cultural values” is situated in the nightingale and reliquary as an embodiment of both the acquiescence of the eventual failure to secure the liberty to love (Reed, 521), and the resilience of the protagonist in demanding that her story be told and remembered for its tragedy. The dancer’s leveled lifting of the reliquary (represented by the glass jar) carries a sense of reverence for a story that has survived time and space (“Laüstic”, 156-160), where the trail of falling sand and the tracks left on the ground mirror the memory and imprint left behind by “Laüstic”. At the very end of the film, the movement of the clasped hands, and the final release is reminiscent of the message of resistance exemplified by the nightingale being set free, despite its corporeal death. Hence, we may see dance “not as a retreat but rather as a means of remembering” (Reed, 526), explored through its channels for embodiment and thus resistance.

REFERENCES

Blacking, John. 1982. “Movement and Meaning: Dance in Social Anthropological Perspective.” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 1, no. 1 (April): 89-99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1290805

Reed, Susan A. 1998. “The Politics and Poetics of Dance.” Annual Review of Anthropology 27:503-532. https://www.jstor.org/stable/223381

Warburton, Edward C. 2011. “Of Meanings and Movements: Re-Languaging Embodiment in Dance Phenomenology and Cognition.” Dance Research Journal 43, no. 2 (Winter): 65-83. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23266966

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Hamlet in Bukit Brown: A Creative Exploration

CREATIVE PROJECT BY SIMONE TAM (’22)

Hamlet in Bukit Brown: A Creative Exploration
Performing Art (Proposed Directorial Vision)
An Interpretation of Hamlet
Death, Mourning and Memory in Medieval Literature (YHU3345)
2021

I. INTRODUCTION

The oft quoted “To be, or not to be – that is the question”1 in Shakespeare’s canonical text, Hamlet, is a solemn meditation on existence. It is a reflective grappling with states of life and death, a vacillation between doubt and certainty, and a question that is suspended within the intermedial throes of madness and sanity. Such a general utterance invites three potential interpretations on what “the question” in this context could be, moving from macro to micro spheres of agentic discourse: (a) whether life is worth living, (b) whether he should take his own life, and (c) whether he should act against the King.

These three possible interpretations suggest that while the play seems to centre around avenging his father’s death, Hamlet is essentially about identity and existence, as explored through the different proxies of politics, family, and romance/friendship – with the formation (and/or fragmentation) of the self taking on expressions of loyalty, duty, and love. This idea of identity and existence is not only embodied in the titular character, Hamlet, and in the relationships that he has, but also in the Ghost that appears and adds supernatural spice to what would be, otherwise, a plot without precedent.

In this way, Hamlet is a story that seems to be about a man’s search for “heimlich” (homecoming; belonging), wherein the themes of death, mourning, and memory are relevant to that struggle. The sense of “heimlich” is motivated by the presence of the Ghost, which is the interpretive crux to Hamlet’s character and the device that moves the plot of the play. The Ghost’s roaming and existence is also possibly a lack of eschatological “heimlich”, which surfaces an interesting cultural debate about the existence of Purgatory and theologically sanctioned practices of remembrance.

This creative exploration thus aims to reimagine how Hamlet participates in the debate about Purgatory and memorialising the dead through a proposed directorial vision of the play – an exploration of site-specific theatre, set in Bukit Brown Cemetery. This vision is inspired by itinerant cinema practices that have screened films in cemeteries for the dead (a cinema night for spirits), and commedia dell’arte as one of the first recognised theatre practices to perform in non-conventional production spaces.

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In Memoriam

CREATIVE PROJECT BY MANISHA SAIGAL (’24)

In Memoriam
Performing Art (Instrumental Piece)
An Interpretation of “Laüstic“
Medieval Romance: Magic and the Supernatural (YHU2309)
2022

Artist’s Remarks

Music, to me, is a universal storyteller that evokes powerful emotions which words cannot describe. Similarly, love is a nebulous and subjective concept, often also indescribable. The Lais by Marie de France is a collection of poems that explore different forms and boundaries of love and suffering. “Laüstic”, in particular, connects love and music in the form of birdsong; the song of a nightingale represents the connection between two distant lovers. I thus decided to reimagine “Laüstic” from The Lais as a 3-minute orchestral piece. I chose to write it as an orchestral piece to allow for more fluidity, conventional flexibility and elaborate nuances which enhance the emotion and imagery exhibited by the music. This piece is titled In Memoriam as it is written in memory of the life and death of the nightingale in the poem, and concomitantly, the love it represents. Initially, the nightingale flies freely albeit in the distance, then it gets trapped and murdered, yet is remembered forever after. The stages of the nightingale’s life in the music parallel stages of the relationships between characters in the poem. The structure of the piece also mimics the poem’s, as it moves from describing love in the private sphere to the invasion of the public sphere into the private to quash that love. The emotion of the piece hence intensifies suddenly after a calmer beginning to reflect the tragic narrative of the poem. The piece is written in the key of A minor to communicate tragedy, predominantly using the harmonic minor scale, where the seventh scale degree is raised to create a stronger pull towards the tonic or root note. This strong pull is intended to evoke the emotion of unfulfilled desire and longing exhibited throughout the poem.

In Memoriam begins with a light flute melody accompanied by subtle undertones of strings to introduce the nightingale. The high tones of the flute are intended to form an image of a bird flying high in the distance. This section has a three-beat rhythm (3/4) indicating movement and wavering stability. It also establishes the distant yet dynamic relationship between the married woman and her neighbour, the knight. From 00:00 to 00:07 of the piece, I played an ascending, then descending flute melody, reminiscent of a bridge going over an obstacle. This was to reflect how the lovers manage to somewhat overcome the “great high wall of dark-hued stone” (38) between them. The increased ambience and reverberation effects imitate the sound of a large hall, thus exacerbating the feeling of distance. These first few seconds establish the secret and distant connection between the lovers that the free-flying nightingale represents. The overall sombre melody also foreshadows the tragic turn of future events.

The next section is introduced by bar chimes that create a transition into an enchanted, magical and dream-like space, mirroring the poem’s description of summer. This section exhibits the lovers’ time together with a syncopated and playful rhythm played by the harp to evoke the joyful emotion of their love. The soft and peaceful tones of the harp are also evocative of a lullaby, as the lovers saw each other at night as they listened to the nightingale’s song. The undertones from the synth are intended to create an ethereal and dream-like soundscape to reflect the magical and otherworldly quality when the “moon shone” as the lovers met (69). The effect of the background synth strings is a feeling of simultaneous distance and immersion, similar to how their love is physically distant, yet intimate and secret from the public. This is coupled with nature sounds I recorded from a forest to reflect the natural descriptions of summer and birdsong in the poem, and the association of nature with love and desire. The chord progression of this section is Am, G, F, G. This simple palindromic progression is intended to reflect the reciprocative relationship of the lovers as they “could toss tokens to each other, throw little gifts, lover to lover” (43-44). This section also has a 4-beat rhythm (4/4) unlike the first section. I wanted to create a sense of irony that their fleeting time together has the most stable time signature of the song. This is to parallel how Marie criticises the constructs of courtly love and the jealous husband trope in the poem. The tone of the poem seems to support the secret and unlawful relationship between the wedded woman and her bachelor neighbour, while painting her husband as the villain despite being legally in the right. The husband is referred to as a “spiteful boor” (116) while the neighbour is directly contrasted as “not a boor” (148). Hence, the sweet and short interactions between the lovers imply that their relationship is more stable and healthy than that of the woman and her husband, as he controls and guards her. Yet, this idyllic and enchanting relationship is only a transient fantasy. The changing time signature shows that events are ever-changing, and warns against getting comfortable with a false sense of secret stability. True enough, the end of this private fantasy is signified by the sound of descending bar chimes.

The middle section leading up to the climax of the piece encapsulates entrapment. The combination of percussion and random, spasmodic and dissonant strings is intended to portray the nightingale flapping its wings desperately trying to escape being trapped. I used tritones, also known as the devil’s interval, to create the dissonant and unsettling atmosphere. This feeling of entrapment and being stuck reflects how the lovers are also trapped – they never meet physically and will never do so. The jealousy and selfishness of the husband has also trapped the wife. The sudden, loud cracking  sound created by several drums played consecutively imitates the violent and sickening snapping of the bird’s neck by the husband. The former bass drum beats resemble a heartbeat, which stops suddenly at the snap to symbolise the death of the nightingale and coinciding heartbreak of the wife. This heartbreak is a reimagination of the visual image of literal heartbreak in the poem when the dead nightingale “bloodied her breast” (119).

The death of the nightingale and the lovers’ relationship invite mourning. The high E note sustained by the strings creates a ringing effect to hold the tension and prolong the discomfort. The multi-layered amplification of the dead nightingale, created by the elaborate wrapping in lines 135-137, is represented by the several layers of strings that follow. The use of a “reliquary” (149) to carry the nightingale’s corpse suggests a religious significance much more precious than before. The added volume from all the strings being played simultaneously and the descending bassline create a dramatic, yet grand and reverent sound that intensifies. The dissonant E7/#9 chord, played at 2:07, also includes a tritone and reminds listeners of the previous horrific violence that the wife still has to live on with despite the grand new significance of the bird’s memorial.

The last part of the song is a repeat of the melody of the flying nightingale played at the beginning. However, it is played an octave lower using a flute organ to mimic the mourning at a funeral or memorial. The muted tone of the flute organ emphasises concealment, as the nightingale is now inaccessible, like their private love. At the end, the flute organ fades out and slows down to create the sense of eternal continuity, as the knight “carried it with him everywhere” (156). Although “the vessel [was] sealed” (155), symbolising a closed chapter of unattainable love, this love remains a literal and emotional burden he will always bear. The nightingale will be remembered forever, and with it, the love that never took flight.

Poetry and song in “Laüstic” glorify relationships in an unrealistic way, as the nightingale’s song romanticises the lovers’ unconsummated love. The Nightingale represents an idyllic fantasy that gets destroyed by reality and the public sphere. In Memoriam encapsulates the message that secret relationships in the private sphere do not last, and that idyllic fantasies are unsustainable. Yet, because this love ended so tragically, memories of it transformed to take on a newly elevated, greater significance. The memory of a relationship with a loved one, alongside the heavy burden of its loss, is carried forever.

IMAGE CREDITS

[FeaturedImage] https://64.media.tumblr.com/4580bbe96ee78d2eee347e382dda43fb/tumblr_ol0lp6SH1a1u7lrveo1_1280.pnj

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The Ripple Effects of Hamlet’s Murder

CREATIVE PROJECT BY SIDHARTH PRAVEEN (’21)

The Ripple Effects of Hamlet’s Murder
Animation
An Interpretation of Hamlet
Death, Mourning and Memory in Medieval Literature (YHU3345)
2021

Artist’s Remarks

Breakdown of Animation: Scene 1 of my animation begins with Yorick’s skull in frame. The skull then splits into several pieces which recombine to form a knife. Prince Hamlet’s hand then comes into frame as he grabs the knife and plunges it into Polonius’s heart in Scene 2. The heart starts bleeding in an explosive fashion as the camera pans upwards to show Polonius’s shellshocked face. The blood pouring out of the heart then fills up Ophelia’s gown in Scene 3. The camera zooms out and Ophelia’s face pops into the scene with her person being enclosed within Hamlet’s eyes. Hamlet cries in blood as his tears drown Ophelia. The wave of blood then transforms into Hamlet’s eyeballs as his mouth appears uttering the lines:

“Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander
returneth to dust, the dust is earth” (Shakespeare, 5.1.205-215)

The camera, then, pans downwards onto Scene 4 to reveal the cup of poison that kills Gertrude. A tree grows out from the cup and extends out of frame. The camera, for the last time, pans upwards to reveal Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet all impaled by the tree.

The animation ends with the camera zooming in on Hamlet’s face as his own soliloquy about Alexander the Great’s remnants being part of the soil plays in the background.

Commentary: My visuals and the lines spoken in this animation contradict each other. While the soliloquys I have chosen as the audio suggest that Hamlet is a meditative spirit who understands how intangible, feeble, and pathetic human greed, emotions, and desires are, my visuals – that depict him committing murder and the ripple effects of his murder – suggest otherwise. They suggest that he is an impulsive creature who is so swayed by the happenings in his environment that he possesses no understanding of the ramifications his actions might have.

These soliloquys suggest that human might, wealth, greed, or, in the case of Yorick, even idiosyncratic traits that a person is remembered the most by, hold no weight over the all-levelling nature of death. Yet, Hamlet is constantly propelled by his emotions and swayed by his propensities. For example, upon seeing a player become so overwhelmed by emotion while acting The Aeneid out, Hamlet wonders why he was not as consumed by emotion when it came to enacting revenge on his uncle. (Shakespeare, 2.2.530-605) Similarly, he is once again spurred into a vengeful state when he hears about all the Poles and the Norwegians dying over plots of land. (Shakespeare, 4.4.60) But if he were to apply the essence of his soliloquys onto these thoughts, he would know that there are no emotions or goals worth pursuing when you think of them in a wider timeframe.

My Scene 1 punctures these soliloquys by having Yorick’s skull, a symbol of this meditative aspect of Hamlet, being torn apart and put back together as a knife – a tool that symbolises death. Hamlet’s act of murdering Polonius thinking it might be his uncle goes to show how propelled by tendencies he is. There was nothing calculative at all about his actions and therefore, just like Yorick’s skull, so do his ruminations on death break apart.

I begin to show the ripple effect of Hamlet’s murder by having the blood pouring out of Polonius’s heart drench Ophelia’s clothes in Scene 3. I also wanted to capture Gertrude’s expression about the river drenching Ophelia’s clothes and carrying her away. (Shakespeare, 4.7.181) This expression reduces Ophelia’s culpability in her own death: it was not just suicide but the river also played a role in killing her. Similarly, since Ophelia’s psyche shows a clear deterioration following Polonius’s death, (Shakespeare, 4.5.30) I wanted to put Hamlet partly at fault for her death. This is why I had her drown inside his eyes with her clothes drenched from Polonius’s blood: she is the first victim of Hamlet’s propensities. Ophelia’s site of death turns into Hamlet’s eyeballs and his talking mouth takes over the scene. I wanted to show Hamlet’s short-sightedness and ego through this scene. He does not think about Ophelia at all when he finds out that he had accidentally killed Polonius. His indifference is to be blamed when we are talking about Ophelia’s death.

Similarly, I animated a tree in Scene 4 because it was a good visual representation of the branching effect of Hamlet’s actions. Claudius and Laertes wishes to kill Hamlet because of his involvement in the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia. The glass of poison and the sword laced with the poison become all of their undoing as one thing leads to another and they all die by the end of the events of the play.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Audio Recording obtained from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ilZn_1MPrE&t=473s.

REFERENCES

William, Shakespeare. Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare.

Boyle, Danny. Trainspotting. PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. 1996.

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The Green Knight: The Limitations of Human Capacity

CREATIVE PROJECT BY OSHEA REDDY (’24)

The Green Knight: The Limitations of Human Capacity
Sculpture
An Interpretation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Medieval Romance: Magic and the Supernatural (YHU2309)
2022

Artist’s Remarks

In ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,’ the Green Knight taunts the Arthurian court by using his grandeur to emphasize their shortcomings and haunts Sir Gawain, who comes to fear his mortality at the Green Knight’s hands. As I carried the Pearl poet’s Green Knight in my mind across the weeks, I realized that his existence is a direct challenge to the limitations of human capacity. I hoped to capture this aspect of the Green Knight’s existence in physical recreation. I have created a model out of crushed papers, fallen leaves, and green plastic bags in my creative interpretation. His armor is made of leaves painted over in green to cast them as “evergreen,” and as per the description in the text, the Green Knight remains shoeless. He is beheaded, holding his head – wrapped in green plastic – by his side. He has a red braid around his waist and decapitated head. My creative decisions in making this model (whom I affectionately call “man”) are products of much deliberation. As this essay proves, my decisions document the dilemmas I faced as I worked within my own human capacity limitations. 

From the introduction of the Green Knight, he is set apart from the knights of the Arthurian court in how massive his stature is. The first descriptions of the Knight depict him as “a mountain of a man, immeasurably high, / a hulk of a human” (lines 137-138), placing him (literally) a head and shoulders above the other knights. To attempt to capture this “most massive man” (line 141), I set out to create a model as large and sturdy as I could make it. The model is big – I was indeed questioned by passersby, who noticed I was carrying a rather large (and green) model of a man back and forth from the Art Studio. However, I admit he is not as large as I would have liked him to be. Running into issues of storage, transportation, and resource shortages pointed me to the limitations of my own capacity. I also planned to make this model out of wood to give him the bulk and durability that his title as the “mightiest of mortals” (line 141) commands. However, a lack of resources and expertise led me to use crushed papers to construct the base – unfortunately, making my model extremely flimsy. Again, I faced limitations in what I was capable of creating. In this trial-and-error process, I realized that these were uniquely human problems that curtailed how large and sturdy I could make the model I created with my own hands. I doubt nature runs into such issues in creating features of the natural world. Thus, in this failed venture of recreating the physicality of the Green Knight, I paralleled the Arthurian knights in my realization that I could not recreate his build in the same way the knights could not match the Green Knight’s stature. 

The otherworldliness of the Green Knight lies in the striking feature of his greenness. This sets him distinctly apart from the other knights as the green hue demarcates him as a being not of the human realm but instead of natural earthen powers beyond human imaginaries. I used leaves in my model of the Knight’s armor to embody his extraordinary abilities. These leaves browned over the time I created the model, presenting me with a dilemma. Browning is normal for leaves, but in my pursuit to recreate the Green Knight in all his glory, I was left unsure of what to do. Was I to leave the browning leaves and lose the unique greenness of the character I was trying to bring to life? Or was I to paint over the leaves in green to honor his greenness and compromise my desire to incorporate wholly natural elements into my model? Leaving the leaves untouched and unpainted betrays the “entirely emerald green” (line 150) depiction of the Green Knight, but it would represent the strength of nature over man’s will. Human desire has to adjust around the state of nature: I could not alter the state of the leaves naturally unless I were to obtain evergreen leaves (another limitation of my capacities). This particular scenario seemed to parallel the absolute power the Green Knight yields by being a representation of the natural forces of the earth – the “force of [his] fist would be a thunderbolt” (line 201). I, however, chose to paint over the leaves, believing that not recreating the green tint of the Green Knight would be a higher opportunity cost. This desire to stay true to the Green Knight’s tint allowed me to find an answer to the question the Pearl poet poses: “what did it mean that human could develop this hue?” (line 234). The greenness is such a marvelous characteristic that it indeed acts as a distinguisher from the other humans of the Arthurian court for the Green Knight to have developed it. 

Unsettlingly, despite the features that make the Green Knight distinctly not human, his existence as the ‘knight’ who is ‘green’ portrays him as a human. This makes his existence paradoxical – he is a symbol of elemental forces, yet only ever referred to as a man or human. He might be a “mountain” but is still a “man”; a “hulk” but still a “human.” This paradox seems uncomfortable in that his supposed humanity exacerbates Gawain and the other Arthurian knights’ shortcomings in comparison to him. By being a human and still yielding such power in his immortality despite being beheaded, the limitations of the human condition are further exposed. I hoped to capture this disturbing dichotomy by using leaves to depict the “veritably verdant” (line 161) quality of the knight while using pieces of a green plastic bag as the model’s sleeves and pants. Plastic waste is a human creation that serves to destroy wildlife and natural habitats. Even placing the plastic beside the leaves seemed strange – I was juxtaposing an emblem of nature beside a token of the destruction that humanity is capable of. Meditating on this, I realized I wanted to nuance this dichotomy further. I took artistic liberty to include a braided red chain around the model’s waist to depict the holly sprig the Green Knight holds as a symbol of eternal life. The model is also headless – his head lies attached to his hand, wrapped in green plastic with the same red string tied around it. I particularly enjoyed the irony in this image: the plastic seems to be suffocating the knight’s head, mirroring dark and gruesome images of modern-day murders, in much the same manner that humanity is destroying the environment. The shoelessness of the model – the only depiction of vulnerability the Green Knight bears in the story – adds to the sense of hopelessness and fragility of the human condition. However, the red strings symbolize the eternal life of the Green Knight. Understanding his immortality against his portrayal as a human being allows for a deeper appreciation of his otherworldly powers far beyond human capacity. Creating these layers of paradoxes to emphasize the Green Knight’s powers above that of humanity proved to be a humbling parallel to Gawain’s fear in facing his mortality in his challenge with the Green Knight.

Ultimately, I believe this reflection has become a record of the questions I grappled with in trying to create this knight. There was a lot I wanted to do but could not end up doing, or I had to choose to do something over another. Mostly, it was out of my capacity to bring to life my ideas precisely as I envisioned them. At the end of this project, I now realize that this, in itself, is a lesson I’ve learned from the Green Knight. Embarking on this project led me to deep meditation on the limits of human capacity. In the same way that the Green Knight epitomized the shortcomings of Sir Gawain by constantly reminding him – taunting him even – of his mortality as a human, I now see that creating this model has taunted me with my own limitations as a human attempting to recreate the true essence of the mystical being of the natural world that is the Green Knight. 

REFERENCES

Armitage, Simon, trans. (2009) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. W.W. Norton & Company.