Introduction

The historian Bo Stråth has argued that a central concern of European nation states in the nineteenth century ‘was to mobilise and monumentalise national and universal pasts in order to give legitimacy and meaning to the present and to outline the future culturally, politically, socially’ (2008: 26). Certainly states in this period were incredibly active in commissioning culture so as to embed their political projects and values into socially meaningful forms designed to help create/mobilize national publics. Illustrating something of the general argument of this book, architecture was central to the cultural self-understanding of nation states in this period, as it provided an opportunity for emerging states to give material form to their political power, while at the same representing one way in which the national community was presented as a continuous and ‘natural’ entity. In other words, architecture was a part of a broader historicist repertoire (that included flags, currency, anthems and art), which was mobilized to ‘invent’ national traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) in order to forge feelings of belonging.

The attempt to use culture to sustain the nation as ‘natural’ and ‘continuous’ raises interesting sociological questions about the political construction and mobilization of culture; approaching this question from a constructivist perspective – and drawing particularly on the work of Benedict Anderson and Michael Billig – architecture can be framed as part of a broader repertoire of cultural symbols that states have long mobilized to construct and maintain national identities. Not only were major national buildings objects used to this end, they also housed many of the institutional rituals crucial to such invented traditions (Vale 1992: 54). The politicized search for national architectural styles best to reflect a state's aims and aspirations opened up a lucrative market for those newly professionalizing architects able to materialize ‘appropriate’ values in the built environment. Which architectural styles architects and states aligned themselves with was in many circumstances a highly contested question, with the social meanings attached to particular historicist styles and buildings taking on a ‘moral’ dimension.

Introduction

States have long sought to embed their political-economic projects within socially meaningful forms, with the architectural field being mobilized to this end in a wide variety of socio-political contexts. As was discussed in the previous chapter, the desire to forge a sense of coherent national community with its roots in antiquity saw historical motifs and discourses as key frames for major British state-led architectural projects in the nineteenth century. But, quite aside from the mobilization of historicist architecture to stress lineage in this way, the latter half of the twentieth century saw nation states’ repertoires of architectural representation characterized by the dominance of rationalist, future-oriented and technologically driven modernist forms. Seeking to benefit from the ostensibly progressive promises implied by modern architecture's broader social programme and aesthetic, many states in the post-Second World War period sought to use architecture to signify a self-conscious rupture with the immediate past. In short, the promise of modernist architecture, unencumbered by tradition, was to play a central role in symbolic and material social reconstruction of societies. This chapter is focused on the major modernist architectural projects at the centre of large-scale, state-led festivals. The British sociologist Maurice Roche has argued (2000) that ‘mega-events’ such as the Olympic Games, World's Fairs and Expositions reflect a ‘performance complex’ inherent in modernity through which states have sought to integrate mass populations into their political projects and to make cultural statements of their place in the world to external audiences, including other states. Accordingly, the tensions surrounding representations of national cultural pasts and futures are often evidenced at such mega-events.

These events frequently centre on a piece of major landmark architecture. Such buildings can either house the festival itself or be those radical new spaces (often temporary structures such as pavilions) that are designed to offer a glimpse of possible futures, and the state's role therein.

Introduction

In his discussion of military architecture, the British sociologist Paul Hirst (2005) positions those buildings emerging from the architectural profession as being both configured by social power relations and a resource for their consolidation and legitimation. Framing architecture in this way is a useful starting point, as it expresses a sense of, first, the durable, structural relationship between architects and the powerful actors and institutions that commission buildings, and, second, the ways in which this relationship is normalized through practices within the architectural field. Pierre Bourdieu's work, broadly within the ‘sociology of culture’ research tradition, allows for development of this initial observation by providing a framework that facilitates analyses of architecture's relationship to commissioning elites while avoiding the reductionisms associated with economistic explanation on the one hand and overly culturalized approaches on the other.

Bourdieu researched widely on the links between culture and social values, which for him were never neutral or unproblematic but rather ways in which social reproduction and the legitimation of existing power relations were practised (1989a; 1989b; 1993; 1996; 2000). A major concern of Bourdieu's widely influential research is to reveal the ways in which culture maps onto social inequalities, all the time legitimating them as natural, fair and taken for granted. Within his broader project, and crucially for this context, Bourdieu attempts to clarify the role that state institutions have in constituting and reproducing the existing social order (see, for example, Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Bourdieu 1989a; 1993; 2003; Bourdieu and Wacquant 2000). As such, Bourdieu's work has become a crucial reference point for those concerned with the ways in which cultural discourses and hierarchies are mobilized by socially dominant institutions and individuals.

Thanks to its application into a number of empirical studies by scholars working in the tradition, Bourdieu's work has also contributed greatly to our understanding of how power functions in the architectural field itself and also of how architectural production is implicated in wider social relations.

Lewis Carroll's imaginative approach to the misericords of Ripon Cathedral may at first appear to have little bearing upon the readings that have been posited throughout the present volume. However, just as Carroll could appropriate these images for his own creative purposes within a few years of Wildridge's assertion concerning their near neighbours in Beverley Minster that they are ‘the most important and instructive of [medieval ecclesiastical] ornaments’ – and, indeed, contemporary creative writers may use choir stall carvings as a stimulus at the same time as medievalists assay their original signification – so it is perhaps unwise to assume a singularity of meaning for the original audience. We have seen throughout that the carvings on misericords – whether of naturalistic flora or fanciful fauna, of devout piety or brazen sexuality – belong to a complex web of symbol and allusion that threads its way throughout late medieval culture, both connecting and, at the same time, blurring the distinctions between the sacred and the profane. The literature of popular entertainment, from heroic romances of Alexander to the amoral wiles of Reynard (or Russell) could be employed in order to make serious points concerning pride or resistance to temptation, just as Caesarius of Heisterbach could focus flagging attention by invoking King Arthur before moving on to serious matters of devotion. Likewise, the bawdy physicality that we expect from the fabliau could be employed in order to figure the ‘natural’ order of masculine ecclesiastical superiority as well as to provide an admonishment against the temptations of the flesh. This latter can be further articulated by the seductive hybrid of the mermaid, whilst other hybrids may signify anything from the infinite variety of God's creation to the ‘secret and distant freaks’ in which nature indulges herself in the remote areas of the Christian world. And, as we saw in chapter 3, without clear explanation and close supervision, misinterpretation was a very real possibility even during the late medieval period in which the carvings were made.

When the modern scholar looks to the margins, there is a temptation to view them solely as the habitation of ‘ejected forms’, a refuge for that which is cast out from the centre – a centre which in the later Middle Ages was explicitly Christian.

In the previous chapter, we explored the ways in which the scenes of everyday activities which abound on medieval misericords can be seen to have carried a spiritual message for a specifically clerical audience which was attuned to their iconographic significance and by whom, after all, they were commissioned. Without the barrier of such unacknowledged symbolism to distract us, we may expect images which address devotional and doctrinal matters more explicitly to communicate directly with the viewer and, in consequence, to be in some ways more readily understandable to a modern audience no longer steeped in the subtleties of the Christian visual culture of England in the later Middle Ages. Whilst this is often the case, we shall see in the present chapter that even symbols at the heart of Christianity may, depending on the contexts in which they appear, create perplexing puzzles for the viewer. Images, after all, have always had the potential to create disagreements. Writing around the middle of the fifteenth century, Bishop Reginald Pecock was moved to defend the use of images in churches from Lollard criticism in what are essentially commonplace terms:

In discussing the standard of workmanship found on English choir stalls, M. D. Anderson laments the absence of detailed records, both of the process by which such work was commissioned and of the craftsmen who were responsible for undertaking the work, before reflecting that,

This discrepancy between the high quality of workmanship displayed in surviving sets of stalls and the level of craftsmanship a modern viewer may perhaps expect in a small village church is, however, resolved when we consider the nature of crafts needs in the medieval period. ‘Local labour resources were not sufficient for a large project such as an abbey or cathedral,’ notes Patricia Basing,

There is, as we shall see, much evidence to suggest a fruitful exchange of ideas across different areas of the country and beyond – sometimes apparently even involving some movement of craftsmen – but it is important to remember that craftsmanship in wood was necessary for all communities, however small, in an era in which it was the primary material for construction. It is no surprise, then, that within the relatively small number of tradesmen and craftsmen who are depicted on misericords, carvers are amongst those who appear most frequently, with half a dozen images surviving, including one in Beverley Minster which we shall look at more closely later in this chapter. Certainly, all the surviving material evidence suggests that those who commissioned the stalls wanted the best possible work from the anonymous local carvers who they paid by the day, for, as we saw in the introduction, when stalls were being planned considerations of decoration and display appear to have figured prominently alongside considerations relating to comfort and the primary liturgical function of the furniture.

So writes William Langland in his late fourteenth-century allegory Piers Plowman. Falling asleep one May morning on the Malvern Hills, Langland's narrator, Will, finds himself in an unknown wilderness, separated from the world yet able to look upon it from a privileged vantage point. He is distant from all that he sees but, in consequence, he is able to see clearly the intricate workings of society – the winners and wasters, the pious and pernicious – bounded on one side by the finely wrought tower of Heaven, on the other by the dreadful defile of Hell. Will's position may in some respects be likened to that of the modern viewer of misericords, party to a rich spectrum of flourishing medieval life which is consciously balanced between salvation and damnation, yet nonetheless separated from that life. Like Will, as we survey these scenes we may frequently find ourselves asking, ‘what may this be to mene?’ And, again like Will, it is to Holy Church that we must turn in order to find the answers to our perplexed questions. Before we engage with the matter of how meaning may be illuminated by Holy Church, however, it will be useful first to find our bearings by surveying the range of everyday activities, pastimes, trades and occupations to be found carved on misericords, ‘[o]f alle manere of men, the meene and the riche, / Werchynge and wandrynge as the world asketh’. Later in this chapter we shall focus upon the ploughman as a particularly striking example of the significance of representations of labour, but we shall begin by looking at depictions of more leisurely activities.

In surveying the types of subjects and activities represented on English misericord carvings, Francis Bond refers to ‘a large and interesting class in which there is no ulterior intent other than to portray faithfully the daily life of humble folk’. Such is the way in which we may perceive these lively scenes which depict the work and play undertaken by, in general, the less elevated classes of late medieval society.

Early in the twentieth century, Francis Bond devoted the first of his volumes on English ecclesiastical wood carvings to misericords, recognising their value in illuminating ‘a History of Social Life in England in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as it was lived by common folk’. Whilst, as we shall see in the course of the present volume, this is one valuable aspect of misericord carvings for the modern viewer, Bond's analysis – seminal though it is for subsequent studies – is restricted by the then current view of misericords which placed them very much in the category of ‘folk art’. In consequence, Bond's chapter dealing with the symbolism to be found on misericord carvings begins with the assertion that ‘[s]ymbolism is conspicuously rare on the misericords; they were carved by simple folk for simple folk’, and concludes its discussion a mere twenty-one lines later. This view has gradually been superseded, particularly in the past twenty years. Books by Michael Camille, Christa Grössinger and Malcolm Jones, along with the journal Profane Arts of the Middle Ages, have been supplemented by a growing number of essay collections and discrete articles to reveal the rich symbolism to be found on choir stalls and, indeed, across the marginal arts of the later Middle Ages. The present book inevitably owes an immense debt to these studies. Where this study differs, however, is that rather than seeing the vigorous carvings to be found populating the shadowy underside of choir stalls largely as sites of profane exuberance, it places these lively, sometimes surprising (or even shocking) scenes more firmly within the doctrinal and devotional culture of the period. This is not to suggest that recent authors have not taken this into account: far from it. Nonetheless, the contention at the heart of my discussion will be that English late medieval Christianity should provide the primary lens through which we view even the more ‘marginal’ ecclesiastical arts of the period. After all, in late medieval western thought, the variety of worldly existence – sacred or profane, perfect or monstrous – was primarily held to be evidence of the infinite variety of God's creation.In addition to this we must remember that these objects were commissioned by the clergy for installation in the devotional heart of the church, where they would be viewed by an exclusively clerical audience.

The importance of the choir stalls at Ripon Minster – dated to the closing years of the fifteenth century – has long been acknowledged, in terms of the arrangement of elements, the vigour and variety of misericord carving and, as we saw in the last chapter, their influence upon subsequent work in a number of significant churches in the north of England: Beverley Minster, Manchester Cathedral, All Saints, Wensley, and the stalls now located in Bishop Tunstall's Chapel in Durham Castle.However, when faced with such a bewildering iconographic richness as the Ripon stalls display, it is not uncommon for both the scholar and the more casual visitor to be unsure of where to start to explore the symbolic significance of the carvings. In order to avoid the many tempting distractions offered beneath the choir stalls, then, it is perhaps advisable to begin this chapter by focusing in the first instance upon just one small detail of the Ripon carving which is frequently overlooked by both guides and academics, but which nonetheless provides a useful stimulus to initiate a discussion of the visual demonstration of masculinity and power in the late medieval English Church, a topic which, as we shall see, was of particular concern in the pre-Reformation period. A curious visitor, captivated by the misericords and, indeed, by the fine carving throughout the choir as a whole, is very likely to miss this particular image unless it is pointed out to them by someone ‘in the know’. In my case, this was done by a group of giggling choristers, a circumstance which I suspect may have been repeated on countless occasions throughout the past five centuries. For, partially obscured in one of the spandrels of the elaborate north return stall canopies – very likely one of the earliest sections of the choir woodwork to be carved – the keen eye may spot a relief carving depicting the figure of a standing cleric who gleefully raises his garments in order to expose his private parts to those who sit below (fig. 19). Although he is not the only human figure to be depicted in the canopies, he is nonetheless the only one who confronts the viewer in such a forthright manner.

When I use a word,’ says Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's fantasy world of White Rabbits, Gryphons and other curious hybrids, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean.’ As modern viewers of misericords, as much as we may identify with Langland's constantly questioning Will, we may equally find ourselves in the position of Carroll's dream-narrative protagonist, Alice, asking questions of strange figures, always curious though sometimes sceptical of the answers as they appear to invent their own rules of meaning. As we have seen throughout our investigations, these figures, occupying that curious space which paradoxically draws attention to itself through its partial obscurity, act as enigmatic intermediaries between the devotional culture of the late Middle Ages and the present, with a frequently obtuse, Humpty-like self-confidence which we must negotiate. Carroll's own response to the misericords of Ripon Cathedral, to which he was a regular visitor when his father was a cathedral canon during the 1850s and 1860s, was to create the irascible White Rabbit who leads us into ever more baffling conundrums and the obtuse Gryphon who offers answers which clarify nothing at all, a situation which neatly mirrors the mix of intrigue and frustration which often faces us today. Whilst this interpretative challenge is always present, it is perhaps most acute when we look to those fantastic creatures of the imagination – the legendary beasts, hybrids and semi-humans who populate the margins of the imagined medieval world with seemingly little differentiation from the people and beasts who could be encountered daily in town, village or, indeed, monastic life. It is to these we shall now turn, before addressing their place in the one part of the British Isles which we have not yet visited, a geographically and ideologically ‘marginal’ place in the Middle Ages, in which England and its influence was arguably most contentiously felt: Ireland.

In chapter 4 we have already seen how widespread the motif of the seductive bird/fish-woman hybrid is, yet an even more commonly represented fantastic creature on misericords is the Wild Man, otherwise known as a wodehouse or wodewose, whose human form is covered in coarse, shaggy hair. A popular motif of both ecclesiastical and domestic medieval art throughout Europe, more than forty Wild Men survive on English misericords, where they are often depicted alongside – and sometimes fighting – dragons or lions.

As Terry O'Connor has noted, ‘people's attitudes to animal bodies go right to the heart of the business of being human’. To human society, animals may be workers or entertainers, pets or pests; the source of food, clothing or tools; objects of fear or comfort, revulsion or reverence. Consequently, our relationships with other species are immensely complex in a practical sense and, concomitantly, in a symbolic sense. Even today in the west, when dogs and cats are popular pets, to call someone a dog or describe them as catty is an insult, whilst a dogged determination or feline grace may be considered commendable. To consider these animals in the same class as cows or sheep – as sources for food and skins – provokes outrage. These attitudes are, as O'Connor goes on to explain,

It is specifically to the ‘highly conceptualised and culture-specific’ aspect of man's relationship with animals that we shall now turn.

We have already encountered a number of animals and their symbolic status in our consideration of the doctrinal matters represented in misericord carvings, yet the menagerie which occupies the underside of choir stalls is far more extensive, ranging from the domestic to the exotic, the mundane to the mythical. We will consider this latter category of strange beasts more closely in the next chapter, but the current chapter shall focus upon the former category which includes the domestic dog and cat, farm animals such as pigs, sheep and cattle, the hunter's prey of hare and deer, and everyday pests such as rats and mice. Of course, this does not preclude first-hand observation of less common beasts. An unusual instance of locally observed fauna, for example, is the series of carvings in Beverley Minster which show the hunt, capture and display of a bear (fig. 15). As Malcolm Jones has suggested, it is surely more than mere coincidence that the construction of the stalls in 1520 coincides with the visit of one John Grene and his tame bears to the town in the same year. Whilst these animals are closely and carefully observed, other beasts of imported entertainment – those which are more exotic and less frequently seen – are rather less accurately rendered.