Her disclaimer, one would think, need only be made once, yet it is reiterated and reaffirmed often enough to suggest her awareness of possible incompatibilities between the two main populations this book attracts: Precisely because the etiological story of the dropped garter is irrecoverable, it exceeds the category of the factual to become archetypal, thus neutralizing vexed distinctions between cause and consequence, event and interpretation. As for the baseness of those origins, Trigg mines this rich seam throughout the book.
This august company, now nearer seven centuries old than six, and having only recently tipped its membership into four figures, is scarcely a major player in the public rites that fashion citizenly subjects and build nations, yet in enacting its own trivial origins in underwear, the Order performs the work of ritual as a sovereign transforms an ordinary object into a political sign.
Trigg — Shame and Honor [TMR]
Chapter 2 tackles the documentary problem of origins, which is where most "straight histories" of the Order begin. The earliest copy of the Order's statutes dates from , leaving a large gap in the records for the fourteenth century. One wonders, however, even if the lack were remedied with some juicy source, whether it or anything else can offer definitive access to "how it really was," to quote Leopold von Ranke. Trigg does not fully confront the question, yet in speaking of the "undecidability" of the Order's origins she hints at the suspicion that positive evidence will never definitively provide that "final click of certainty" 50, Whatever Edward's particular reasons for founding the Order of the Garter, the contemporaneous founding of the Order of the Round Table shows him well able to put political spin on romance and myth, exercising his own brand of medieval medievalism.
The dropped garter is only the most well known of a number of alternative theories for its adoption, which range in plausibility from the garter bestowed on the king as a sexual favor to the Virgin's vagina as inspiration.
Claire Sponsler, Shame and Honor: A Vulgar History of the Order of the Garter - PhilPapers
Emboldened by this last one, I shall hazard another. The Golden Legend narrates that after the Virgin had ascended bodily into heaven, she lets her girdle fall on top of Doubting Thomas who had queried the veracity of her assumption. The details change in some versions for example, the Assumption account in the Auchinleck Manuscript , but always at their center stands the Virgin's dropped girdle, so--given that the Order was dedicated to her as well as St.
George and that it had "strong religious affiliations" 53 --I wonder, admittedly as an ignota about Garter origins, why this story is nowhere considered as a contender, if only to be discounted. Chapter 3 takes the Garter story to the early modern period, the critical point at which garter historiography gets "critical" in the pejorative sense, and explicitly registers the embarrassment that Trigg tracks. It also yields that distainful epithet "vulgar," which she playfully reclaims in the book's subtitle as she folds into her method the ironic simultaneous distance and proximity characteristic of medievalism.
In the Garter's sartorial leap from lady's leg to royal gam, this fraternity never shakes off the "fear of effeminacy" Having noted how "weird" and "curious" its temporalities are, Trigg concludes from its homosocial anxiety that "it is almost impossible to maintain a purely 'straight' reading of the Garter's origins" Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus.
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Shame and Honor: A Vulgar History of the Order of the Garter
Studies in the Age of Chaucer. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Project MUSE Mission Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide.
Contact Contact Us Help. The Roman Catholic Church, an Oxbridge college, or the monarchy itself all adapt themselves to their current times, while trying to be true to what they see as their core ideals. Edward VI could simply have abolished the society, as his regime did with most other confraternities, but he wanted to keep it going and enjoy its cachet. And of course the Order will focus more attention on honour than on shame. To have to degrade a member is indeed shameful to the Order as well as to the individual member, it is therefore perfectly understandable for the Order to pass over such incidents with as little comment as possible.
A university might expel a student for cheating, but the fact that a cheater had been a student in the first place does not make the university look good.
Shame and Honor - a Vulgar History of the Order of the Garter
That the incident will not receive front-page treatment in the alumni magazine should surprise no one. One thinks of similar mythical stories like Newton and the apple or Washington and the cherry tree. But just as it is possible to write a history of Newton or Washington without ever mentioning these things, so also it is possible to write a history of the Garter without having to mention, and then dismiss, the myth.
But what if those histories are right?
Much of what Trigg writes would then become moot. Edward III was exceptionally image-conscious, and sometimes the simplest explanation is the best one: Medieval people had access to common sense, and their literature was often the equivalent of our action movies or romantic comedies — fun, but no blueprint for real life.
This leads to another concern of Shame and Honor , that of medievalism. But the intense desire to define the medieval as against the modern seems misplaced most recent example: But, as mentioned, these are the observations of an historian. Literary criticism and cultural studies have different concerns, different methodologies, and a different argot.