To members of the list,
I had thought the better of replying to the missive with the Henny Youngman joke because I thought Diana Wright said all that needed to be said, but alas, it looks like not.
I do hope that members of the list can refrain from posting jokes that demean any group, especially ones to which people who subscribe to the list belong. I supect the exception might be to call to our attention--for scholarly reasons-- to jokes of the Middle Ages that are germane to concerns of members of the list.
Maureen A. Tilley
Visiting Professor of Theology
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
New York, NY 10023
212-636-6369
-----medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture <[log in to unmask]> wrote: -----
To: [log in to unmask]
From: Christopher Crockett <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 12/04/2006 01:05PM
Subject: Re: [M-R] Recent titles
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: Diana Wright <[log in to unmask]>
> I presume such remarks are allowed on this list because they are so
exquisitely expressive of the general attitude toward women held by
medieval male religious.
yes.
yes, they are.
i neglected to make the obvious middlevil connection, in part because it
relates to my own personal experience.
my acquaintance with Henny Youngman ("King of the One Liners") began quite
late, in both our lives, with his cameo appearance in one of my All Time
Favorite Flicks, Martin Scorsese's _Goodfellas_
http://imdb.com/title/tt0099685/
he appears at the end of what is the Longest Single Shot in Cinema History, as
the main character and his girlfriend go to "The Copa" on a date, starting out
leaving their car in the street, entering the club through a back door, down
stairs, through passageways, through the kitchen, into the club itself, around
tables, etc., all without a cut.
There is Henny, doing his floorshow.
not all of Henny's jokes were about his wife (the famous: "Take my wife,
please. I take my wife everywhere, but she always finds her way home"), though
the best of them are.
some of them deal with other aflicted minority groups, like Doctors:
"Dr. Wilson is in the audience tonight. A great doctor. Gave a patient 6
months to live, fella couldn't pay his bill, gave him another 6 months."
but there's no meddlevil connection to that which even i can discover.
the subject of the film itself is the inner workings of a crew of small-time,
more or less psycotic mobsters in NYC over the decades from the '50s to the
'80s, and how they relate to the Larger World of Organised Crime. ("By 1970
there was a hundred million dollars worth of goods going through the airport
and we tried to steal *all* of it.")
as best i can make out, what is being described (in considerable detail) is a
system of organised criminal activity which resembles nothing quite so much as
that which we euphemistically call "The European Aristocracy" in the M.A.
perhaps the major difference, as DW implies, is that among the latter women
were treated, not so much as property, but as the vector of property transfer
and accumulation.
the women in Goodfellas don't have quite such a high status as that.
c
> Christopher Crockett wrote:
>
> >From: John Briggs <[log in to unmask]>
> >
> >
> >
> >>(Discussing this with one professor, I queried why anyone would do this
but
> >>
> >>
> >he said - apparently with feeling - "If I wanted to hide something from my
> >wife, I would put it in a book!")
> >
> >
> >puts me in mind of the "one-liner" by the regretted Henny Youngman
> >
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Youngman
> >
> >"My wife said to me, 'For our anniversary I want to go somewhere I've
never
> >been before.' I said, 'Try the kitchen!'"
> >
> >
> >c
> >
> >
>
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