The Paramaterial Phantasy
Several months ago when I started making woodcuts and posting the results to Twitter and Facebook, some asked me to write a blog post explaining my process. I got sidetracked, first, by teaching myself how to make handmade rag paper and, second, by requests that I set up an Etsy shop to sell some of […]
In his poem “To His Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell’s speaker begins by imagining a scenario in which he and his lover have all the time in the world to love one another without a fear of death. During the course of his musings, the lover makes an odd metaphor for the growth of his love […]
Than who is he that will take pleasure in vayne apparell, which if it be worne but a while will fall to ragges, and if it be not worne, will soone rotte or els be eaten with mothes. –Anatomie of Abuses. Philip Stubbes. The past week I’ve been terribly sick, and while I was not […]
While I should have spent the past few days finishing my post on Othello’s “Arabian trees” that drop “medicinable gum,” I, instead, spent the last day or so working on a new late medieval/ early modern meme experiment. The “Harlem Shake” phenomenon’s coolness has dissipated in about the amount of time it takes to watch […]
When I started using Twitter regularly about a year ago, I was drawn to the fascinating Twitter Feeds of medievalists like @Erik_Kwakkel and @Sarah_Peverley, both of whom not only use their Twitter Feeds to discuss medieval art and literature but also post beautiful and oftentimes funny images taken of medieval manuscripts. I always looked forward […]
William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat remains shrouded in mystery. The bulk of the short fiction supposedly recreates an oration given by Gregory Streamer on December 28th of the preceding year. Streamer’s fantastic tale concerns an “experiment” he performed that allowed him to hear the language of cats. Streamer’s oration, split into three by the character […]
Going “coverless” for far too long on Facebook, I set out on my own ship of Google images foolery, finally landing upon a woodcut from the title page of Sebastian Brant’s 1498 edition of the Stultifera Navis, the “Navis Stultorum” [The Ship of Fools]. (A version of the original can be found at Images from […]