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Nov 18, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Irina Dumitrescu |Mary Wellesley
If you’re looking for advice on sustaining a marriage, or robbing a grave, or performing liver surgery, then a series of self-help stories by a 14th-century Spanish prince is a good place to start. Tales of Count Lucanor, written between 1328 and 1335 by Prince Juan Manuel of Villena, is one of the earliest works of Castilian prose. The tales follow the familiar shape of many medieval stories, presented as a kind of medicine to improve the lives of its readers by example.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Mary Wellesley |Irina Dumitrescu
Mary and Irina resume their discussion of Boccaccio’s Decameron, focusing on three stories of female agency, deception and desire. Alibech, an aspiring hermitess, is tricked into indulging her powerful sexual urges; Petronella combines business and pleasure at the expense of her husband and lover; while Lydia demonstrates her devotion by killing hawks and pulling teeth.
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Sep 2, 2024 | 
apollo-magazine.com | Mary Wellesley
From the September 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. Elisabeth Frink said that her sculptures are ‘about what a human being or animal feels like, not what they necessarily look like’. This quotation appears on the wall of a new exhibition of her work in the Weston Gallery of Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In the centre of the room are four monumental heads that dominate the space, but when I visited my eye was drawn to a small cluster of her earlier works from the 1950s and ’60s.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Mary Wellesley |Irina Dumitrescu
The character of Gawain, one of King Arthur’s leading knights, recurs throughout medieval literature, but the way he’s presented underwent a curious development during the period, moving closer and closer to an impossible and perhaps comical ideal of chivalric perfection. In 'Sir Gawain and the Greene Knight', his most well-known incarnation, Gawain faces a series of peculiar tests and apparently fails them all.
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Jul 18, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Mary Wellesley |Irina Dumitrescu
The foul-mouthed, mean-spirited peasant Marcolf was one of the most well-known literary characters in late medieval Europe. He appears in many poetic works from the 9th century onwards, but it’s in this dialogue with Solomon, printed in Antwerp in 1492, that we find him at his irreverent and scatological best as they engage in a battle of proverbial wisdom.
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Jun 18, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Irina Dumitrescu |Mary Wellesley
In their quest for the medieval sense of humour Mary and Irina come to The Second Shepherds’ Pageant, a 15th-century reimagining of the nativity as domestic comedy that’s less about the birth of Jesus and more about sheep rustling, taxes, the weather and the frustrations of daily life. The pageant was part of a mystery cycle, a collection of plays that revealed religious mysteries through performances of the Christian story and were a central part of community life.
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May 29, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Mary Wellesley
We walked in the darkness beneath beeches and hornbeams until, suddenly, we heard the sound of birdsong, an ethereal noise, a sound associated with daytime. What bird would sing the song of day two hours after dusk? Only a creature of myth, a night-singer, the nihtegala – from the Old English nihte and galan, to sing, call, enchant. For thousands of years this night-singer’s song has been thought of as a mourner’s lament.
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Apr 18, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Mary Wellesley |Irina Dumitrescu
Fabliaux were short, witty tales originating in northern France between the 12th and 14th centuries, often featuring crafty characters in rustic settings and overwhelmingly concerned with money and sex. In this episode Irina and Mary look at two of these comic verses, both containing surprisingly explicit sexual language, and consider the ways in which they influenced Boccaccio, Chaucer and others.
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Apr 3, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Mary Wellesley |Thomas Jones
Your browser does not support the audio element. Modern English speakers struggle to find sexual terms that aren’t either obscene or scientific, but that wasn’t always the case. In a recent review of Jenni Nuttall’s Mother Tongue, Mary Wellesley connects our linguistic squeamishness to changing ideas about women and sexuality. She joins Tom to discuss the changing language of women’s anatomy, work and lives.
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Mar 27, 2024 | 
lrb.co.uk | Jenni Nuttall |Mary Wellesley
When my daughter began to talk about her body and the bodies of others, I wondered what word we should use for female genitals. I had been taught the term ‘front-bottom’ as a child. Very little needs to be said here about how stupid this is. My husband and I opted instead for ‘vulva’. It’s functional, but it does sound strange in certain contexts. My daughter recently asked me if the Beatrix Potter frog, Jeremy Fisher, had a tail or a bottom. I wasn’t sure and opted for bottom.
