MATRIX, by Lauren Groff | Book Review
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 сер 2024
- #laurengroff #matrix #mariedefrance
A book review of Lauren Groff's "Matrix" (Riverhead Book, 2021). I may have strayed a bit too far from a review of the book and into a discussion about the historical Marie de France, so here are some general timestamps if you prefer not to hear about the medieval Marie:
0:00 Introduction
1:38 The opening of Matrix
6:01 The historical Marie de France
13:07 Marie's lais in Matrix and in history
23:43 Marie's Abbey in Matrix
28:58 Conclusions
Books mentioned/ further reading:
Lais of Marie de France (Claire M. Waters ed. and trans., "The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Translation" (Broadview, 2018) (this is probably the best edition of Marie's Lais in English - there is an edition published by Penguin by Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby, but the translations are in prose, which takes away too much of the original musicality and wit, in my opinion.)
Fables of Marie de France
Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain
Howard Bloch, "The Anonymous Marie de France" (University of Chicago Press, 2003)
Sharon Kinoshita and Peggy McCracken, "Marie de France: A Critical Companion" (D.S. Brewer, 2014)
Logan E. Whalen, "Marie de France and the Poetics of Memory" (The Catholic University of America Press, 2008)
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland
/ travelstoriesyt
Thank you for providing a wonderful level of background for this beautiful novel. Now that I have Groff's fictional portrayal and your incisive commentary under my literary belt, I will, as a poetry lover, read the Lais of Marie with interest.
Love you channel, Sean. So academic but down to earth at the same time. I enjoy your content immensely!
Thanks man! I really appreciate the kind words.
Great stuff, thanks for the video ❤
This is so fantastic! I had no idea about this stuff, was just blown away by the book and so all of this additional context is excellent.
Thank you! Glad you found it useful. Marie de France is one of my all time favorites, but I do like Groff's reimagining of Marie quite a bit.
@@travelthroughstories yeah, absolutely! I’m thinking now in my video when I looked to the back of Matrix to cite the correct character name, I cited the wrong person didn’t I lol I insinuated that the book was about Aquitaine would was sent off to the abbey lmao
Wow, I’m so glad I found your channel through this review of what is an early front runner of my best books of 2022. I so appreciate how academic, but accessible, this review of yours is on this novel and its larger world’s history and literature. Your students are lucky to have such an enthusiastic and scholarly professor and I think I would love taking a class with you. Have you watched Groff’s talk at Notre Dame that is here on UA-cam, it was excellent and helped me understand this world more fully as your video has too?
I’m am interested in a few things you might be able to answer since you did such a deep dive. First, in the novel she builds an actual physical labyrinth and on what one imagines quite a huge scale as a barrier from all these possible invading forces. My thoughts initially go to Chartres Cathedral and it’s inlaid floor, or some of the garden labyrinths, but did actual labyrinths on that physical scale actually exist in Medieval times and it’s just that all of them are lost to time? Are their recorded mentions of ones such as these and where might they have been located?
Similarly about loss, there was a Science News article that appeared last week where the author, Bruce Bower, wrote about using ecological mathematical models to determine what amount of Medieval legends and romance writings still exist and have survived to present times. He positions the number at only about 9% and says places like Ireland and Iceland had higher survival rates over most continental European works. I wonder as someone who is well read in this literature if you agree or disagree? Nonetheless it’s a fascinating use of interdisciplinary frameworks from science to look at a humanities field and shed new light. But thinking about a loss rate of 91% of that literature is disheartening. The Ancient world yes, but that seems devastating high for a more recent time period.
My last question is probably harder to know, but I’m wondering if Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz would have known about and had access to Marie de France’s writings? She had the largest library of the New World, but I don’t have any idea if Marie’s works would have been published and translated and available to her at that time. And I’m guessing it would have had have been in Latin, Sor Juana most likely wouldn’t have known that English/French dialect in Mexico? I think she did know of and maybe read works by Hildegard Von Bingen, at least through her music, but I think Sor Juana and Marie would have been very like minded souls. And I like the idea of Sor Juana, isolated on the other side of the world taking consolation and inspiration through Marie de France’s writings, and maybe even having a little crush on her across the centuries.
Thank you so much for all the kind words! I have not seen Groff's talk at Notre Dame, but I'll be sure to check it out. Lots of interesting questions here and I'll try my best to answer them:
On medieval labyrinths: as far as I know, nothing of the sort that is depicted in the novel existed in western Europe in the middle ages, however, the idea of a labyrinth was really important for religious, learned, and cultural reasons, most of which go back to the Greek Labyrinth. There is something to be said about the influence of the labyrinth on cathedral and castle architecture though -- I remember reading some papers on castles being structured as labyrinthine in order to make visitors feel lost once they eventually got to the lord. I'm honestly not too familiar with medieval architecture to give a proper answer though. There are plenty of drawings of labyrinths in medieval manuscripts, but again, I don't think any proper labyrinths were built outside of using the design in gardens and generally using the idea in building castles and cathedrals. A lot of people also read many labyrinthine elements in many of the medieval Romances, though I can't off the top of my head think of a specific example.
As for the survival rates for medieval literature, I don't have a specific number, but that theory sounds about right. I spoke about this a bit in my review on Judith Schalansky's An Inventory of Losses. It varies greatly depending on the specific time and place - for instance, when it comes to Anglo-Saxon England, we know that VERY little has survived. And what has survived has barely survived (see Cotton Library Fire of 1731). The very fact that almost everything that survives for the early medieval period is sui generis indicates that a lot was lost. What may inflate the number, though, is that we think of texts differently in the modern era - that is, we have *a version* of a lot of different texts, but who knows how many other versions of that story existed? That is, we have one manuscript of Beowulf, but 55 manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. This is a problem in medieval Iceland, for instance, as it's clear through variations in manuscripts that we often has a version of a saga that may or may not be the "original" version, if such a thing even exists (the variations in the manuscripts of Fóstbræðra saga comes to mind).
For Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz knowing Marie de France - this is a really intriguing question, but one that I have no idea. If I had to take a guess, I'd probably say that it's less likely that she would have had a manuscript containing Marie's Lais or her Fables, but it's entirely probably that she had access to some sort of translation or adaptation of Marie's work, whether she knew it or not. That is, Marie's Lais and Fables were highly influential and were quickly translated into all these different medieval languages, but when we talk about medieval translations, what we're really talking about is adaptations. For example, there's a ~15th century Icelandic saga called Tiódels saga which is, without question, based on Marie de France's Lais Bisclavret, but it makes no mention of Marie or the "original" poem. Marie was immensely influential, so even if she didn't read Marie specifically, she certainly read stories that were directly influenced by Marie.
I hope some of this provided some answers! Thanks for your interesting questions!
Also…near the end of this video, I was was reminded of the general Buddhistic conceit that we are all a mother.
Really interesting connection! I'm not really familiar with the idea in Buddhism, but I do vaguely remember reading an article that compared the religious mysticism of Julian of Norwich with a 5th or 6th century Chinese Buddhist monk... I may have to follow up on your connection!
I watched this again! It’s just too fascinating and illuminated an topic I knew nothing about. Thank you .$
That's some dedication! Marie de France really is an incredible poet that I could talk about a lot more...Further, the court of Henry and Eleanor is just really interesting from both a historical and a literary perspective.
@@travelthroughstories Yes! I can see that, and despite coursework in European history, I had no idea. This was pretty eye opening.
Great review Book sounds really good!
Thanks so much! It's a really compelling read based on super interesting history.
Dude you are really messing up my reading schedule = every book is SOOO enticing but alas I am still completely obsessed with Pynchon and I am also going back to Franz Werfel who we read a bit in German High School. HIGHLY recommend "Class Reunion" btw. Ok, back to reading!
Haha - I'm glad to be adding books to your tbr! Pynchon is an author I need to read more of. The two books I read by him didn't really jive with me, but I'm looking forward to digging into a few of his longer works at some point. I haven't heard of Franz Werfel. I'll check out "Class Reunion" though! Thanks for the recommendation!
@@travelthroughstories Franz Werfel is one of the greatest writers in German (he was Bohemian of origin), incredible biography with Alma Mahler, then fled the Nazis to LA, lived among that enclave with Thomas Mann etc