Hayao Miyazaki Selects His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

in Books | April 19th, 2023

Once upon a time, books served as the de fac­to refuge of the “phys­i­cal­ly weak” child. For ani­ma­tion leg­end, Hayao Miyaza­ki, above, they offered an escape from the grim­mer real­i­ties of post-World War II Japan.

Many of the 50 favorites he select­ed for a 2010 exhi­bi­tion hon­or­ing pub­lish­er Iwana­mi Shoten’s “Boy’s Books” series are time-test­ed West­ern clas­sics.

Lon­ers and orphans–The Lit­tle Prince, The Secret Gar­den–fig­ure promi­nent­ly, as do talk­ing ani­mals (The Wind in the Wil­lows, Win­nie-the-Pooh, The Voy­ages of Doc­tor Dolit­tle).

And while it may be a com­mon­ly-held pub­lish­ing belief that boys won’t read sto­ries about girls, the young Miyaza­ki seemed to have no such bias, rank­ing Hei­di and Lau­ra Ingalls Wilder right along­side Tom Sawyer and Trea­sure Island’s pirates.

Sev­er­al of the titles that made the cut were ones he could only have encoun­tered as a grown up, includ­ing 1967’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweil­er and When Marnie Was There, the lat­ter even­tu­al­ly serv­ing as source mate­r­i­al for a Stu­dio Ghi­b­li movie, as did Miyazaki’s top pick, Mary Norton’s The Bor­row­ers.

We invite you to take a nos­tal­gic stroll through Miyazaki’s best-loved children’s books. Read­ers, how many have you read?

Hayao Miyazaki’s Top 50 Children’s Books

  1. The Bor­row­ers — Mary Nor­ton
  2. The Lit­tle Prince — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  3. Chil­dren of Noisy Vil­lage — Astrid Lind­gren
  4. When Marnie Was There — Joan G. Robin­son
  5. Swal­lows and Ama­zons — Arthur Ran­some
  6. The Fly­ing Class­room — Erich Käst­ner
  7. There Were Five of Us — Karel Poláček
  8. What the Neigh­bours Did, and Oth­er Sto­ries — Ann Philip­pa Pearce
  9. Hans Brinker, or The Sil­ver Skates — Mary Mapes Dodge
  10. The Secret Gar­den — Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett
  11. Eagle of The Ninth — Rose­mary Sut­cliff
  12. The Trea­sure of the Nibelungs — Gus­tav Schalk
  13. The Three Mus­ke­teers — Alexan­dre Dumas, père
  14. A Wiz­ard of Earth­sea — Ursu­la K. Le Guin
  15. Les Princes du Vent — Michel-Aime Bau­douy
  16. The Flam­bards Series — K. M. Pey­ton
  17. Sou­venirs ento­mologiques — Jean Hen­ri Fab­re
  18. The Long Win­ter — Lau­ra Ingalls Wilder
  19. A Nor­we­gian Farm — Marie Ham­sun
  20. Hei­di — Johan­na Spyri
  21. The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer — Mark Twain
  22. Lit­tle Lord Fauntleroy — Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett
  23. Tis­tou of the Green Thumbs — Mau­rice Druon
  24. The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle
  25. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweil­er — E. L. Konigs­burg
  26. The Otter­bury Inci­dent — Cecil Day-Lewis
  27. Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land — Lewis Car­roll
  28. The Lit­tle Book­room — Eleanor Far­jeon
  29. The For­est is Alive or Twelve Months — Samuil Yakovle­vich Mar­shak
  30. The Restau­rant of Many Orders — Ken­ji Miyaza­wa
  31. Win­nie-the-Pooh — A. A. Milne
  32. Nihon Ryōi­ki – Kyokai
  33. Strange Sto­ries from a Chi­nese Stu­dio — Pu Songling
  34. Nine Fairy Tales: And One More Thrown in For Good Mea­sure — Karel Čapek
  35. The Man Who Has Plant­ed Welsh Onions — Kim So-un
  36. Robin­son Cru­soe — Daniel Defoe
  37. The Hob­bit — J. R. R. Tolkien
  38. Jour­ney to the West — Wu Cheng’en
  39. Twen­ty Thou­sand Leagues Under the Sea — Jules Verne
  40. The Adven­tures of the Lit­tle Onion — Gian­ni Rodari
  41. Trea­sure Island — Robert Louis Steven­son
  42. The Ship that Flew — Hil­da Winifred Lewis
  43. The Wind in the Wil­lows — Ken­neth Gra­hame
  44. The Lit­tle Hump­backed Horse — Pyotr Pavlovich Yer­shov (Ershoff)
  45. The Lit­tle White Horse — Eliz­a­beth Goudge
  46. The Rose and the Ring — William Make­peace Thack­er­ay
  47. The Radi­um Woman — Eleanor Door­ly
  48. City Neigh­bor, The Sto­ry of Jane Addams — Clara Ingram Jud­son
  49. Ivan the Fool — Leo Tol­stoy
  50. The Voy­ages of Doc­tor Dolit­tle — Hugh Loft­ing

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter an Archive of 7,000 His­tor­i­cal Children’s Books, All Dig­i­tized & Free to Read Online

Clas­sic Children’s Books Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: Revis­it Vin­tage Works from the 19th & 20th Cen­turies

Clas­sic Children’s Books Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: Revis­it Vin­tage Works from the 19th & 20th Cen­turies

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll be appear­ing onstage in New York City this June as one of the clowns in Paul David Young’s Faust 3. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Discover the Medieval Illuminated Manuscript Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, “the World’s Most Beautiful Calendar” (1416)

in Art, Books, History | April 17th, 2023

We don’t hear the phrase “very rich hours” as much as we used to, back when it was occa­sion­al­ly employed in the head­lines of mag­a­zine arti­cles or the titles of nov­els. Today, it’s much to be doubt­ed whether even one in a hun­dred thou­sand of us could begin to iden­ti­fy its ref­er­ent — or at least it was much to be doubt­ed until an elab­o­rate New York Times online fea­ture appeared just last week. Writ­ten by art crit­ic Jason Fara­go, “Search­ing for Lost Time in the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Cal­en­dar” takes a close look at the Très Rich­es Heures du Duc de Berry, a late-medieval illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script cre­at­ed (between 1412 and 1416) for the bib­lio­philic John, Duke of Berry by a trio of Flem­ish artists known as the Lim­bourg broth­ers.

The word “hours” in the title refers not to units of time, exact­ly, but to the prayers that believ­ers must speak at cer­tain hours: this is a book of hours, a huge­ly pop­u­lar form of man­u­script in the Mid­dle Ages. But com­pared to most sur­viv­ing books of hours, Très Rich­es Heures du Duc de Berry is, well, very rich indeed.

Fara­go calls it “the finest sur­viv­ing man­u­script of the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, a mon­u­ment of Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic book arts. Real­ly, the thing is just stu­pe­fy­ing. Its pic­tures com­bine astound­ing detail with exu­ber­ant, some­times irra­tional spa­tial orga­ni­za­tion.” But “like every book of hours, it opens with a cal­en­dar. And here, on its first 12 spreads — with one full-page illus­tra­tion per month — the Lim­bourgs did their most painstak­ing work.”

Here we have just five of the images from the cal­en­dar at the head of the Très Rich­es Heures. You can see the rest at the site of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, which offers its “inti­mate North­ern vision of nature with Ital­ianate modes of fig­ur­al artic­u­la­tion” in down­load­able dig­i­tal form. These detailed images con­sti­tute a win­dow into not just medieval life (or at least an ide­al­ized ver­sion there­of), but also the medieval rela­tion­ship to time. “Time appears to be a cycle,” writes Fara­go. “It repeats year after year.” And “months rather than years were the meat of these cycles. Sea­sons. Har­vests. Feasts. Con­stel­la­tions.” All this “could be per­ceived with the sens­es. In snow­fall, in star signs. In the bright col­ors you wore in May, in the furs you wore in Decem­ber.”

On top of this pal­pa­bly cycli­cal expe­ri­ence of time, monothe­is­tic reli­gions intro­duced the notion that “time pro­gressed onward,” and indeed “offered a one-way tick­et to the end of days.” Coex­ist­ing in the medieval mind, these two con­trast­ing modes of per­cep­tion gave rise to the sort of cal­en­dars cre­at­ed and used in that era. No fin­er exam­ple exists than the Très Rich­es Heures, cre­at­ed as it was not long — at least in his­tor­i­cal time — before the approach of moder­ni­ty, with its ever more fine­ly divid­ed and rig­or­ous­ly cal­i­brat­ed chrono­met­ric regimes. Our hours are much more clear­ly demar­cat­ed than the Duke of Berry’s; whether they’re rich­er is anoth­er ques­tion entire­ly.

Vis­it the New York Times’ fea­ture on the beau­ti­ful medieval man­u­script here. If you’re inter­est­ed in delv­ing deep­er, also see the free book (cour­tesy of the Met Muse­um) The Art of Illu­mi­na­tion: The Lim­bourg Broth­ers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece the Book of Kells Has Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Dis­cov­er the Sara­je­vo Hag­gadah, the Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script That Sur­vived the Inqui­si­tion, Holo­caust & Yugoslav Wars

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Man­u­script in the World

Why Butt Trum­pets & Oth­er Bizarre Images Appeared in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Horrifying 1906 Illustrations of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds

in Art, Books | April 14th, 2023

War1

H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds has ter­ri­fied and fas­ci­nat­ed read­ers and writ­ers for decades since its 1898 pub­li­ca­tion and has inspired numer­ous adap­ta­tions. The most noto­ri­ous use of Wells’ book was by Orson Welles, whom the author called “my lit­tle name­sake,” and whose 1938 War of the Worlds Hal­loween radio play caused pub­lic alarm (though not actu­al­ly a nation­al pan­ic). After the occur­rence, reports Phil Klass, the actor remarked, “I’m extreme­ly sur­prised to learn that a sto­ry, which has become famil­iar to chil­dren through the medi­um of com­ic strips and many suc­ceed­ing and adven­ture sto­ries, should have had such an imme­di­ate and pro­found effect upon radio lis­ten­ers.”

War5

Sure­ly Welles knew that is pre­cise­ly why the broad­cast had the effect it did, espe­cial­ly in such an anx­ious pre-war cli­mate. The 1898 nov­el also star­tled its first read­ers with its verisimil­i­tude, play­ing on a late Vic­to­ri­an sense of apoc­a­lyp­tic doom as the turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry approached.

But what con­tem­po­rary cir­cum­stances eight years lat­er, we might won­der, fueled the imag­i­na­tion of Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa, whose 1906 illus­tra­tions of the nov­el you can see here? Wells him­self approved of these incred­i­ble draw­ings, prais­ing them before their pub­li­ca­tion and say­ing, “Alvim Cor­rêa did more for my work with his brush than I with my pen.”

War3

Indeed they cap­ture the nov­el­’s uncan­ny dread. Mar­t­ian tripods loom, ghast­ly and car­toon­ish, above blast­ed real­ist land­scapes and scenes of pan­ic. In one illus­tra­tion, a grotesque, ten­ta­cled Mar­t­ian rav­ish­es a nude woman. In a sur­re­al­ist draw­ing of an aban­doned Lon­don above, eyes pro­trude from the build­ings, and a skele­tal head appears above them. The alien tech­nol­o­gy often appears clum­sy and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed, which con­tributes to the gen­er­al­ly ter­ri­fy­ing absur­di­ty that emanates from these fine­ly ren­dered plates.

War2

Alvim Cor­rêa was a Brazil­ian artist liv­ing in Brus­sels and strug­gling for recog­ni­tion in the Euro­pean art world. His break seemed to come when the War of the Worlds illus­tra­tions were print­ed in a large-for­mat, lim­it­ed French edi­tion of the book, with each of the 500 copies signed by the artist him­self.

wells illustrated

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Cor­rêa’s tuber­cu­lo­sis killed him four years lat­er. His War of the Worlds draw­ings did not bring him fame in his life­time or after, but his work has been cher­ished since by a devot­ed cult fol­low­ing. The orig­i­nal prints you see here remained with the artist’s fam­i­ly until a sale of 31 of them in 1990. (They went up for sale again recent­ly, it seems.) You can see many more, as well as scans from the book and a poster announc­ing the pub­li­ca­tion, at Mon­ster Brains and the British Library site.

War4

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Very First Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897)

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

The War of the Worlds: Orson Welles’ 1938 Radio Dra­ma That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Turning the Pages of an Illuminated Medieval Manuscript: An ASMR Museum Experience

in Books, History, Museums, Neuroscience | February 20th, 2023

Page turn­ing is to ASMR as the elec­tric bass is to rock.

The Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um’s pop­u­lar Autonomous Sen­so­ry Merid­i­an Response video series (find it here) has seen episodes devot­ed to icon­ic Sec­ond Wave fem­i­nist mag­a­zines and a cou­ple of late 20th-cen­tu­ry pop up artist’s books, but the parch­ment pages of this medieval antiphonary — or choir­book — make for some tru­ly leg­endary sounds.

Audio design­er and per­for­mance-mak­er Julie Rose Bow­er deserves a por­tion of the cred­it for height­en­ing the aur­al expe­ri­ence for her use of the ambison­ics for­mat.

Kudos too to Nation­al Art Library Spe­cial Col­lec­tions cura­tor Cather­ine Yvard…if she ever wants a break from medieval man­u­script illu­mi­na­tion and Goth­ic ivory sculp­ture, she could spe­cial­ize in extreme­ly sooth­ing voiceover nar­ra­tion.

It’s rare to find such plea­sur­ably tingly ASMR sen­sa­tions paired with allu­sions to the some­what bar­barous process of mak­ing parch­ment from ani­mal skins, but that’s what illu­mi­na­tor Francesco dai Lib­ri, and his son Giro­lamo were work­ing with in 1492 Verona.

Our ears may not be able to detect much dif­fer­ence between the skin sides and flesh sides of these remark­ably well pre­served pages, but Bow­er does due dili­gence, as Yvard slow­ly drags her fin­gers across them.

No need to fear that Yvard’s bare hands could cause harm to this 530-year-old object.

Experts at the British Library have decreed that the mod­ern prac­tice of don­ning white gloves to han­dle antique man­u­scripts decreas­es man­u­al dex­ter­i­ty, while height­en­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of trans­ferred dirt or dis­lodged pig­ments.

The stur­dy parch­ment of this par­tic­u­lar antiphonary has seen far worse than the care­ful hands of a pro­fes­sion­al cura­tor.

Pages 7, 8, 9 have been singed along the bot­tom mar­gins, and else­where, the goth­ic hand let­ter­ing has been scraped away, pre­sum­ably with a knife, in prepa­ra­tion for a litur­gi­cal update that nev­er got entered.

If your brain is cry­ing out for more after spend­ing 15 and a half inti­mate min­utes with these medieval pages, we leave you with the snap crack­le and pop of oth­er items in the V&A’s col­lec­tion:

Treat your ears to Vic­to­ria and Albert’s full ASMR at the Muse­um playlist here.

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Vintage Book & Record Covers Come to Life in a Mesmerizing Animated Video

in Animation, Books, Music | February 7th, 2023

Back in April 2020, ani­ma­tor Hen­ning M. Led­er­er launched his “Books & Sleeves” project where he turns abstract geo­met­ric pat­terns, all fea­tured on vin­tage book and record cov­ers, into mes­mer­iz­ing mov­ing images. Above, you can watch the sec­ond install­ment of the project, which does­n’t dis­ap­point.

In the past, we’ve also fea­tured more of Lederer’s cre­ative work–from his ani­ma­tions of mid-cen­tu­ry min­i­mal­ist book cov­ers and vin­tage psy­chol­o­gy and phi­los­o­phy books, to his ani­ma­tion of a 1926 lith­o­graph that famous­ly por­trays the human body as a mod­ern fac­to­ry. Be sure to give them all a watch.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

Vin­tage Book & Record Cov­ers Brought to Life in a Mes­mer­iz­ing Ani­mat­ed Video

“Man as Indus­tri­al Palace,” the 1926 Lith­o­graph Depict­ing the Human Body as a Mod­ern Fac­to­ry, Comes to Life in a New Ani­ma­tion

55 Cov­ers of Vin­tage Phi­los­o­phy, Psy­chol­o­gy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Short Ani­ma­tion

 

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The Brooklyn Public Library Gives Every Teenager in the U.S. Free Access to Censored Books

in Books, Current Affairs | January 31st, 2023

We have cov­ered it before: school dis­tricts across the Unit­ed States are increas­ing­ly cen­sor­ing books that don’t align with con­ser­v­a­tive, white-washed visions of the world. Art Spiegel­man’s Maus, The Illus­trat­ed Diary of Anne Frank, Alice Walk­er’s The Col­or Pur­ple, Toni Mor­rison’s The Bluest Eye, and Harp­er Lee’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird–these are some of the many books get­ting pulled from library shelves in Amer­i­can schools. In response to this con­cern­ing trend, the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library has made a bold move: For a lim­it­ed time, the library will offer a free eCard to any per­son aged 13 to 21 across the Unit­ed States, allow­ing them free access to 500,000 dig­i­tal books, includ­ing many cen­sored books. The Chief Librar­i­an for the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library, Nick Hig­gins said:

A pub­lic library rep­re­sents all of us in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety we exist with oth­er peo­ple, with oth­er ideas, oth­er view­points and per­spec­tives and that’s what makes a healthy democ­ra­cy — not shut­ting down access to those points of view or silenc­ing voic­es that we don’t agree with, but expand­ing access to those voic­es and hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions and ideas that we agree with and ideas that we don’t agree with.

And he added:

This is an intel­lec­tu­al free­dom to read ini­tia­tive by the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library. You know, we’ve been pay­ing atten­tion to a lot of the book chal­lenges and bans that have been tak­ing place, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last year in many places across the coun­try. We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly expe­ri­ence a whole lot of that here in Brook­lyn, but we know that there are library patrons and library staff who are fac­ing these and we want­ed to fig­ure out a way to step in and help, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young peo­ple who are see­ing, some books in their library col­lec­tions that may rep­re­sent them, but they’re being tak­en off the shelves.

As for how to get the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library’s free eCard, their Books Unbanned web­site offers the fol­low­ing instruc­tions: “indi­vid­u­als ages 13–21 can apply for a free BPL eCard, pro­vid­ing access to our full eBook col­lec­tion as well as our learn­ing data­bas­es. To apply, email bo***********@**********ry.org.” In short, send them an email.

You can find a list of Amer­i­ca’s most fre­quent­ly banned books at the web­site of the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion.

Note: We first post­ed about this ini­tia­tive dur­ing the dog days of last August. But it seemed worth men­tion­ing this pro­gram while school’s in full swing. Hence why we’re flag­ging Books Unbanned again.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Texas School Board Bans Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of The Diary of Anne Frank

Ten­nessee School Board Bans Maus, the Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Graph­ic Nov­el on the Holo­caust; the Book Becomes #1 Best­seller on Ama­zon

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

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Medieval Mixed-Gender Fight Club: Behold Images from a 15th-Century Fighting Manual

in Art, Books, Gender, History, Sports | January 30th, 2023

Wel­come to Medieval Mixed-Gen­der Fight Club.

The first rule of Medieval Mixed-Gen­der Fight Club is: you do not talk about Medieval Mixed-Gen­der Fight Club.

The sec­ond rule of Medieval Mixed-Gen­der Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Medieval Mixed-Gen­der Fight Club!

Why?

The Pub­lic Domain Review’s man­ag­ing edi­tor, Hunter Dukes, wise­ly argues that it’s because we have so lit­tle to go on, beyond these star­tling images of “judi­cial duels” between men and women in Ger­man fenc­ing mas­ter Hans Tal­hof­fer’s illus­trat­ed 15th-cen­tu­ry “fight books.”

The male com­bat­ant, armed with a wood­en mace, starts out in a waist-deep hole.

The female, armed with a rock wrapped in a length of cloth, stands above, feet plant­ed to the ground.

Their match­ing uni­sex gar­ments wouldn’t look out of place at the Met Gala, and pro­vide for max­i­mum move­ment as evi­denced by the acro­bat­ic, and seri­ous­ly painful-look­ing paces Tal­hof­fer puts them through.

Dukes is not alone in won­der­ing what’s going on here, and he doesn’t mince words when call­ing bull­shit on those respon­si­ble for “hasti­ly researched arti­cles” eager­ly pro­nounc­ing them to be action shots of divorce-by-com­bat.

Such bru­tal meth­ods of for­mal uncou­pling had been ren­dered obso­lete cen­turies before Tal­hof­fer began work on his instruc­tion­al man­u­als. 

In a 1985 arti­cle in Source: Notes in the His­to­ry of Art, Alli­son Coud­ert,  a pro­fes­sor of Reli­gious Stud­ies at UC Davis, posits that Tal­hof­fer might have been draw­ing on the past in these pages:

I would sug­gest that no records of judi­cial duels between hus­bands and wives exists after 1200 because of both changes in the real­i­ty and the ide­al of what a woman could be and do. Before 1200, women may well have bat­tled their hus­bands. Women under­stood and defend­ed the impor­tance of their eco­nom­ic and admin­is­tra­tive roles in the house­hold. After the twelfth cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, law, cus­tom and reli­gion made mar­i­tal duels all but unthink­able.

Why would Tal­hof­fer both­er includ­ing archa­ic mate­r­i­al if the focus of his Fecht­buchs was giv­ing less expe­ri­enced fight­ers con­crete infor­ma­tion for their bet­ter­ment?

We like the notion that he might have been seek­ing to inject his man­u­scripts with a bit of an erot­ic charge, but con­cede that schol­ars like Coud­ert, who have PhDs, research chops, and actu­al exper­tise in the sub­ject, are prob­a­bly warmer when reck­on­ing that he was just cov­er­ing his his­tor­i­cal bases.

For now, let us enjoy these images as art, and pos­si­ble sources of inspi­ra­tion for avant-garde cir­cus acts, Hal­loween cou­ples cos­tumes, and Valen­tines.

 

Explore more images from the 15th-cen­tu­ry Fecht­buchs of Hans Tal­hof­fer here and here.

via the Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What It’s Like to Actu­al­ly Fight in Medieval Armor

How to Get Dressed & Fight in 14th Cen­tu­ry Armor: A Reen­act­ment

Watch Accu­rate Recre­ations of Medieval Ital­ian Longsword Fight­ing Tech­niques, All Based on a Man­u­script from 1404

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Contribute a Song to WNYC’s Public Song Project & Use Your Creativity to Explore the Public Domain

in Books, Film, Literature, Music | January 20th, 2023

We rec­og­nize that Open Cul­ture read­ers are a cre­ative bunch.

As proof, we point to your Get­ty Muse­um Chal­lenge entries and the fact that one of your num­ber won Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press’s Kaf­ka Cap­tion Con­test.

We’ve iden­ti­fied anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to show off your cre­ative streak, com­pli­ments of All Of It with Ali­son Stew­art, a dai­ly live cul­ture pro­gram on WNYC, New York City’s pub­lic radio sta­tion.

You have until Feb­ru­ary 13 to write and record an orig­i­nal song inspired by a work in the pub­lic domain, and sub­mit it to The All Of It Pub­lic Song Project.

Ama­teurs are wel­come to take a crack at it and any genre is crick­et, includ­ing rap, spo­ken word, and instru­men­tals.

Even if you lim­it your­self to the works that entered the pub­lic domain on Jan­u­ary 1 of this year, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are almost end­less.

Should you be inclined toward a faith­ful cov­er, we encour­age you to con­sid­er one of 1927’s deep cuts, like Fats Waller’s “Sooth­in’ Syrup Stomp” or Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton’s “Hye­na Stomp,” though we under­stand the attrac­tion of Irv­ing Berlin’s endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar “Puttin’ on the Ritz”.

Apolo­gies to Emi­ly Joy, the accom­plished young clas­si­cal pianist, above — par­tic­i­pa­tion is lim­it­ed to entrants aged 18 or old­er.

The rest of us are free to invent new lyrics for an exist­ing com­po­si­tion, or a brand new tune for exist­ing lyrics.

You might musi­cal­ize a poem or speech, some dia­logue from a film, or a page from a book.

A blue­grass spin on Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, per­haps?

A death met­al re-envi­sion­ing of But­ter­cup Days from A.A. Milne’s Now We Are Six?

How about a sis­sy bounce take on these lines from “The Adven­ture of the Mazarin Stone,” the first short sto­ry in Arthur Conan Doyle’s col­lec­tion, The Case-Book of Sher­lock Holmes:

“Bil­ly, you will see a large and ugly gen­tle­man out­side the front door. Ask him to come up.”

“If he won’t come, sir?”

“No vio­lence, Bil­ly. Don’t be rough with him. If you tell him that Count Sylvius wants him he will cer­tain­ly come.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked the Count as Bil­ly dis­ap­peared.

“My friend Wat­son was with me just now. I told him that I had a shark and a gud­geon in my net; now I am draw­ing the net and up they come togeth­er.”

The Count had risen from his chair, and his hand was behind his back. Holmes held some­thing half pro­trud­ing from the pock­et of his dress­ing-gown.

“You won’t die in your bed, Holmes.”

Okay, we’re being sil­ly, but only because we don’t want to put ideas in your head!

You could even con­coct some­thing entire­ly new — per­haps a bal­lad from the POV of To the Light­house’s young James Ram­say, or a dit­ty apol­o­giz­ing to Vir­ginia Woolf for read­ing the Cliffs Notes instead of the actu­al nov­el when it was assigned in your col­lege Women’s Lit­er­a­ture class.

…we’re doing it again, aren’t we?

All right, we’ll leave you to it, with a reminder that any­thing out­side of your pub­lic domain source mate­r­i­al must be whol­ly orig­i­nal — no bor­row­ing a catchy tune from Lennon and McCart­ney, capis­ci?

Win­ners will get a chance to dis­cuss their works on WNYC and all qual­i­fy­ing entries will be post­ed at contest’s end for the public’s lis­ten­ing plea­sure.

Con­test rules and infor­ma­tion on how to sub­mit to The All Of It Pub­lic Song Project can be found here.

Good luck! We can’t wait to hear what you come up with.

Relat­ed Con­tent

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2023: Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, Vir­ginia Woolf’s To the Light­house, Franz Kafka’s Ameri­ka & More

A Search Engine for Find­ing Free, Pub­lic Domain Images from World-Class Muse­ums

400,000+ Sound Record­ings Made Before 1923 Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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