By the way, I just presented a few drawings maybe others interested in this topic could add other ones? And thoughts? Indeed I didn’t merge it there because this one is kind of far-reaching at least in what regards the large quantity and motives of drawings. If some of the following pictures may look like comical, nevertheless in my opinion these colorful draws by those medieval artists capture a deep aspect of our history and soul -though some may indeed have aimed amusing who knows?Īnd this is why I ended up creating this thread, though in a hesitant way since also occurred to me that this post seems to fit well in the "Creative Acts" section, as well as in the “Alton Towers” thread, which brings notable notices to those pursuing the Work. And it’s not always knights, anyway.In the next post I have done mostly a synthesis while adding excerpts of some brief articles on this singular snail-topic- also added, should I say, a little bit of original research. If you ask me, to the extent that the motif can be “a critique of knightly standards for masculinity” at all, I don’t think it criticises the standards themselves (frankly I don’t think the monks were smart enough had the cognitive tools for that), only the failure of real life knights, some or most or all, to live up to them. – Marian Bleeke, “Modern Knights, Medieval Snails, and Naughty Nuns”, in Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments from An Ill-used Past (Fordham University Press, 2019) To extend this visual analogy, if the knight’s armor is like a snail’s shell, then his body inside of that armor must be like the snail itself: soft and vulnerable.” Finally, the knights’ armor is subtly related to the snails’ shells through their coloring and details. Their shields, in turn, are braver than they are, as the shields’ faces directly confront the snails, while the men themselves shrink behind them. Instead of being raised up by horses, these warriors are minimized through juxtaposition with the normally diminutive snails. In these images, the knight’s dependency on equipment is turned against him. However, those purported virtues are largely a product of his equipment: the horse that elevates him, the shield and armor that allow him to block blows from others, and the sword that allows him to counterattack. The knight as an ideal male is supposed to be brave rather than cowardly, as well as powerful and strong. That interpretation can be extended by understanding the knight-snail motif as a critique of knightly standards for masculinity. “The apparent defeat of the knight by the snail in these and other images has been interpreted most convincingly as a representation of cowardice. If we’re looking for an explanation, other than the PERFECTLY plausible “a humorous depiction of cowardice and/or ineptitude, with the common at the time theme of monde reversé – a topsy-turvy world, where everything’s absurd – and with no ambitions whatsoever for deeper critique”, may I offer the simpler view that the illustrators were just making fun of knights, in general, using imagery which originated (or at least became popular) from a saying about Lombards. I can’t be sure, we’re far from definitive answers here. Or perhaps there isn’t any because we’re not, in fact, meant to identify them as Lombards. Perhaps further identification was unnecessary. But I want to point out there’s nothing indicating that they’re specifically Lombards, no insignia or armour or clothing links back to them. And between 12, a similar motif appears in the margins of manuscripts (12 French, 10 Flemish, and 7 English), in the form of people, usually knights, fighting oversized snails and failing to win – if they’re not actually cowering or praying. There was quite a lot of beef with the Lombards. Randall, 1962) points out that the “Man vs Snail” trope appears in French literary sources, in the form of “these Lombards are such cowards they literally flee from snails!”. Said singular source ( “The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare” by Lilian M. Sorry but the linked article is rubbish, and understands very poorly its singular source. Specifically, the Lombards* are being ridiculed for cowardice (not for sloth) by the French (mostly). No no no, the Italians are being made fun of.
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