Journal articles on the topic 'Greek Mother goddesses'

<p>This paper is concerned with the evolution of the goddess Artemis in Ancient Greek religion from prehistoric till late historic times. In the related studies, still there is no certainty as to the beginning of worship of Artemis in Ancient Greece and her original concept. Moreover, Artemis’ appearance in the early historic period with the features of the prehistoric Mountain-Mother-Goddess, the Mistress of Animals, the goddess of lakes, the goddess of trees, the goddess of birth and child-care, on the one hand, and as a virgin-huntress who presented rudimentary traits of bear-goddess and deer-goddess, on the other, raises questions whether Artemis originally had all these hypostases or acquired them gradually through assimilation with different goddesses. This paper argues that the concept of Artemis as attested during the historic period was the result of its long development, which consisted of two major phases. Originally, Artemis was a goddess of wild animals and herself was imagined as a bear and a doe. Perhaps, from the beginning, she was regarded as a guardian of sacred rules and a punisher for inappropriate religious behavior. Gradually, Artemis was identified with the old universal goddess of nature and received from her connection with mountain-tops and lakes, responsibility for plant growth and fertility in general, obligation to protect childbirth, etc.. In this paper, the evolution of the concept of Artemis is traced on the basis of her cults practiced in Arcadia, one of a few areas of Ancient Greece where ethno-cultural continuity remained unbroken from prehistoric to late historic times.</p>

The article tells about the transformation of a wandering ancient story about the passion of a mother to her stepson, shows how each era brings about changes in the depiction of the heroine, set in a boundary situation between happiness and duty. In the tragedy of Euripides &#34;Hippolytus&#34; the main character is the king&#180;s son, and Phaedra is a performer of the will of the goddess Cypris. Without knowing, Hippolytus violated ethics law that prescribed to honor equally all the gods and goddesses: he loved to worship the goddess of the hunt Artemis and didn&#180;t bring enough victims to Aphrodite. According to the mythological sources, the election of Phaedra as the instrument of revenge can be explained by the fact that Phaedra carries the burden of a tragic guilt for her grandfather, who told Hephaestus about the affair between Aphrodite and Ares. Euripides describes the suffering of Phaedra. His character brings her life as a gift to the children. The tragedy of the debt victory is displayed brighter by the Greek author than by the French one. But the image of Phaedra, made by Jean Racine, is nobler than it was made by Euripides. The heroine of Euripides sacrifices herself for the sake of duty and commits suicide, but makes a low act, leaving a note that slanders Hippolytus, but the queen by Racine, dying, emphasizes the innocence of her stepson. The stepson&#180;s attitude to the passion of his stepmother changes too. For Hippolytus by Euripides the passion of Phaedra is the evidence of low-lying nature of women, for Hippolytus by Jean Racine it is the touching continuation of conjugal love at first, and then, when Phaedra separates him in her mind from the father, and emphasizes that loves Hippolytus, it is a horrible discover, but not the reason for the generalization, reasoning and discrimination against all women. The continuation of the incarnation of vagrant story about Phaedra we see in the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva in the tragedy &#34;Phaedra&#34;. Tsvetaeva simplifies antique tragedy, removing the problem of choosing between happiness and duty, but in the poem she returns to the tragic beginning of it, highlighting the theme of the sublime punishments with passion that is emphasized in the interpretation ofR. Viktyuk, who created a cinema play &#34;Passion about Phaedra in four dreams of Roman Viktyuk&#34; on the basis ofTsvetayeva&#180;s texts.

Gordion, the principal city of Phrygia, was an important center for the worship of the major Phrygian divinity, the Great Mother of Anatolia, the Greek and Roman Cybele. Considerable evidence for the goddess's prominence there have come to light through excavations conducted at the site, first by Gustav and Alfred Körte and more recently by the continuing expedition sponsored by the University Museum in Philadelphia. These include sculptural representations of the goddess and numerous votive objects dedicated to her. The material pertinent to the goddess and her cult in Gordion during the most prominent period of Phrygian culture, the eighth and seventh centuries BC, is similar to that from other contemporary Phrygian centers. Even after the loss of Phrygian political independence in the seventh century, the cult of the goddess in Anatolia continued to flourish, and the older traditions of iconography and votive types were maintained. During the Hellenistic period, however, we see a different version of the goddess at Gordion. The earlier Phrygian forms of cult image and votive were gone, and in their stead are figurines and votive objects which are clearly of Greek inspiration. The Mother goddess was still at home in Gordion—several stone and terracotta representations of her from this period attest to that—but her visual image had become thoroughly Hellenized.

Cybele in Greece. The Arrival and Reception of the Mother of the Gods in the ancient Greek world.The following seminar-paper aims to show the arrival and reception of the phrygian Mother Goddess Matar in the greek world. It will first take a closer look at the early known sources, be it written or archaeological, of the Goddess Kybele. This article will further present, on the basis of these sources, the way the Mother of the Gods took from ancient Phrygia across Anatolia toAthens. Through her journey into the greek world Kybele had gone through an essential transformation to be accepted and worshipped as one of the primary Mother Goddess` of the ancient world.

AbstractThe cult of Kybele is well known from Greek and Roman sources and well-described in most modern literature on antique religions. The cult, however, is primarily known in its Roman version, which differs greatly from the cult in the ancient Phrygian homeland of Kybele. This article presents the latest research on this subject: iconography and roles, attendants relating to the goddess, cult places, rituals and worship, and transference of the cult from Phrygia to Greece. The Phrygian goddess, characterised by features of wild nature, was represented primarily by predatory birds, and she was worshipped in mountainous settings. Instead of portraying her as a typical Mother goddess associated with nature, fertility and procreation, new research has argued that her status as a Mother derives from her connection to the king, thus being the mother of the state and the throne. It is also maintained in the article that Attis is a late, Greek invention, and that the cult in Phrygia did not take the form of a mystery religion. In conclusion, it is suggested that the Black sea area played a role in the development and the dissemination of the cult.

AbstractThrough an approach that combines the academic study of religions with motherhood studies, this article examines rarely considered maternal aspects of Demeter, a goddess of the pantheon of ancient Greek religion. We first discuss theoretical input and concepts drawn from maternal theory that are relevant to uncover innovative lines of research on religious representations and practices in polytheistic systems of the past. In this way we also contribute to broader epistemological reflections in the history and study of religions. Then, considering theHomeric Hymnas well as key ritual elements of theThesmophoriafestival through the lenses of maternal theory, we examine the mother-daughter relationship and the role of the mother as maternal trainer. This concrete case study from the ancient Greek world demonstrates the relevance for historians of religions of considering past polytheistic systems while harnessing the fruitful interdisciplinary potential of maternal theory.

The paper covers the origin and functioning of ‘Mother India’ (Bharat Mata) – the goddess, who joined the ancient and vast Hindu pantheon only in the beginning of the XX century. ‘Mother India’ emerged as the embodiment of national territory, and the universal symbol of the country’s diverse communities. Paraded in various media, the new goddess swiftly changed her names (from the Spirit of Motherland through Banga Mata on to Bharat Mata) and appearances, incorporating the map shape of the subcontinent into the portrait of the original four-handed young woman.The new image reflected the nation’s patriotic trend of collective self-identification with Indian territory and the desire to surrender lives for its freedom. Exploiting the mutual entanglement of the cartographic and anthropomorphic images, Mother India is distinguished from from the other members of Hindu pantheon, which guarantees her unique status as the only embodiment and symbol of the national territory. The graphic integration of the woman and the map brought into existence the new phenomenon of ‘Geo-body’ to become yet another symbol of the Indian struggle for independence together with the saffron-white-green flag and ‘VandeMataram’ song. In addition to the traditional forms of devotion (statues and temples) across India, the image of Bharat Mata spread through mass media and became the first envoy of Hindu gods abroad.

AbstractThis paper focuses on two modern Turkish folktales being recounted in Afyonkarahisar (Western Anatolia). Both tales appear to have their roots in ancient Greek mythology, in which Meander is the main character. The story line is that Meander vows to the mother Goddess Cybele to sacrifice the first person coming to greet him, if she would grant him the victory in a decisive battle. The first person coming up to him after the battle turns out to be a close family member. He becomes mad with grief and kills himself by drowning in a nearby river, which is subsequently renamed in his honour. The tales bear a striking similarity to the biblical story of Jephthah (Book of Judges), which will be discussed in detail here together with other pecularities. Finally, this paper will also touch on the matter of classifying folktales: how should such stories be considered according to the definitions set by modern narratological theories, mere 'legends' (as implied by the Turkish term efsane) or rather 'myths'?

The Dong Cuong Temple is located in Dong Cuong village, Dong Cuong commune, Van Yen district, Yen Bai province, Vietnam. The Dong Cuong Mother has an important position in religious life in Vietnam. The Mother governs the mountains and forests, the ultimate power. The unique feature of the Mother worshiping custom in Dong Cuong is that it has harmonized the Vietnamese mother’s beliefs with the unique cultural features of the indigenous peoples. Mother Thuong ngan is the God who rules the green forest. Returning to the Mother Dong Cuong is to ask for Mother’s fortune, to pray for wealth such as a golden forest, to be prosperous, to be full, to trade smoothly, etc. In people’s minds, the Mother Thuong ngan has very lots of permission capacity. The power of Mother Dong Cuong is the sacred and miraculous power that the Holy Mother created to give people or punish them. This power is created from the people’s belief and desire for a prosperous, happy, and fair life and is expressed through the people’s customs and rituals of worshiping the Holy Mother, the legends of The model has been and is being handed down in folklore. The power of Mother Dong Cuong is authority, supernatural powers that cover both space and time, dominating people’s ideas. This power is created from the concept that the Mother is the expression for femininity, for the fertility of life. The Mother Thuong ngan is also considered as a deity. The belief in Mother Goddess worship is a cultural and spiritual landmark that unites ethnic groups in the Vietnamese ethnic community. In fact, the Mother Thuong ngan is the culmination of the culmination and distillation of the combination of Goddess worship and forest god worship, associated with the agricultural economy. The mother represents the mother god in the mountains, in harmony with the mundane, revered by the people and classified as a saint in the Four Palaces. The Mother worship is a folk belief in the cultural life of Vietnam. These tales contact mandarin arrive credit threshold worship Mother also very abundant.We use investigative methods; field method; ethnographic method; sociological investigation methods; interdisciplinary methods of history, toponymology, folklore, archeology, etc... to study this issue.In this article, we study the following issues: 1. Belief in worshiping the Mother of God Th??ng ngan in Vietnam; 2. Some tales related to the Mother Thuong ngan. The object of our research is the Mother Thuong ngan and the worship of Mother Thuong ngan in Vietnam. The scope of the study is the Mother Th??ng ngan in Dong Cuong commune, Van Yen district, Yen Bai province, Vietnam.Learning about the Mother Thuong ngan beliefs will contribute to helping ethnic minority communities in the province transmit and continue their traditional culture and literature. Since then, contributing to the implementation of the policy of preserving and promoting the traditional culture of the Party, State and Yen Bai province; especially practical contribution to the preservation of cultural heritage of Mother worship of ethnic minorities.This research will contribute to the education of Vietnamese traditional culture in general and Yen Bai province in particular; help people gradually consciously preserve and preserve the value of the heritage of worshiping the Mother of God; help people love their nation’s mother-worshiping heritage. From there, arousing national pride and self-respect, encouraging children to actively participate in studying and preserving the Mother-worshiping heritage of Yen Bai ethnic minorities.

This essay intends to stablish the myth of Aeneas as the reason of some dificulty that the elegiacs found to touch their very theme-love, as seen in the work of Sextus Propertius. Considering that his leaving Dido behind signifies the overcoming of Love’s vulnerability in the Roman civilization, it’s shown that once for all the higher designs of Jupiter are preferable and more important even when Love may come from a goddess, from so near a person to Aeneas as his mother Venus. Then it's shown that there’s a necessary link between the elegiac mode and peace as a atheme and as a manner of opposing to the epic war-like subjects. Naive as it may be, Love belongs to the divine sphere in which everything alive is preserved; this divinity, that the Romans received from the Greeks. Is what is most cared to by the elegiacs, in the person and figure of Venus, mother of Julia race.

If Hyperion centers on the contrasting fates of Hyperion and Apollo—gods associated with music, poetic inspiration, truth and prophecy—the primary themes of power, loss, struggle, and suffering can be read metaphorically as metapoetic allusions to the succession of literary generations, articulating the nature of poetry and writing. When rewriting his unfinished Greek fragments into a first-person narrative in 1819, John Keats conducts a major reassessment of Moneta’s role in the project, the Roman equivalent of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and the mother of the Muses. He redefines Moneta’s relation to the poet-narrator, the poem’s main protagonist who is engaged in an increasingly self-conscious quest for knowledge of his true self and merits and who eventually undergoes a radical transformation into a superior Olympian god of music and poetry, replacing his Titanic predecessor. The goddess of memory and oral culture embodies an alternative discourse surprisingly decentered and polyvocal in nature. The conventional assumption that writing is a product of the solitary genius is obscured now by an interwoven fabric of discussion, feedback, narrative interventions, negotiations, and textual instability. In so doing, the second-generation English Romantic refutes the assumption that poetic power is a product of a heroic mind and philosophical solipsism rather than a result of a dialogic quest for knowledge.

Огромная популярность изображений Горгоны Медузы (преимущественно горгонея) на различных артефактах, обнаруженных в курганах Скифии и Боспора, обычно объясняется апотропеическим значением её образа, которое было обусловлено влиянием греческой культуры на варваров. Однако находку золотого горгонея, который был главным объектом поклонения в одном из меотских святилищ у аула Уляп (Адыгея), таким образом интерпретировать невозможно. Сходство между Горгоной Медузой и древней чеченской и ингушской богиней-матерью Тушоли, которая почиталась в виде зловещей маски, позволяет предполагать, что в горгонее меоты видели образ одной из главных ипостасей Великой богини, которую почитали и другие местные племена Причерноморья. Кроме того, у варваров, которые практиковали ритуальное отсечение человеческой головы и окружали её религиозным почитанием, горгоней должен был ассоциироваться с этим культом The immense popularity of the images of the Gorgon Medusa (mainly the gorgoneus) on various artifacts found in the mounds of Scythia and the Bosporus is usually explained by the apotropaic significance of her image, which was due to the influence of Greek culture on the barbarians. However, the finding of the golden gorgoneus, which was the main object of worship in one of the Maeotian sanctuaries near the village of Ulyap (Adygea), cannot be interpreted in this way. The similarity between the Gorgon Medusa and the ancient Chechen and Ingush Mother goddess Tusholi, who was worshiped in the form of an ominous mask, suggests that the Maeotes saw in the gorgonea the image of one of the main hypostases of the Great Goddess, who was also worshiped by other local tribes of the Black Sea region. In addition, among the barbarians, who practiced the ritual cutting off of the human head and religiously revered it, the gorgoneus should have been associated with this cult.

This paper problematizes the subversive icon of pregnancy and offers a linear overview of its various iterations in juxtaposition to the culture of fear, starting with Vlasta Delimar, whose installation Pregnancy (Trudnoća, 1987), inscribes her in the feminist and women’s art history of the Yugoslav/Croatian context as the first domestic artist who employed photo-documentation, or photo-performance, to document her own pregnancy. She performed her pregnancy in the manner of a goddess, sexualizing it by means of the Baubo pose. Next, the paper addresses the interpretations of the subversion achieved by the pregnant belly in Sanja Iveković’s work Lady Rosa of Luxembourg (2001). The sequence is further contextualized by the distressing confessional of Martina Križanić, a younger generation artist, who visualized the subversive representation of motherhood (Changing Booths, installation, 2017) from her own perspective and without fear, in the first local exhibition about pregnancy Woman – Pregnant Woman – Mother: Green Spheres and Necropolitics (Žena – trudnica – majka: zelene sfere i nekropolitike, Vladimir Bužančić Gallery, Zagreb 2017, curated by Anita Zlomislić).

The concept of a Deborah number is widely used in the study of viscoelastic materials to represent the ratio of a material relaxation time to the time scale of observation and to demarcate transitions between predominantly viscous or elastic material responses. However, this construct does not help quantify the importance of long transients and nonmonotonic stress jumps that are often observed in more complex time-varying systems. Many of these nonintuitive effects are lumped collectively under the term thixotropy; however, no proper nouns are associated with the key phenomena observed in such materials. Thixotropy arises from the ability of a complex structured fluid to remember its prior deformation history, so it is natural to name the dimensionless group representing such behavior with respect to the ability to remember. In Greek mythology, Mnemosyne was the mother of the nine Muses and the goddess of memory. We, thus, propose the definition of a Mnemosyne number as the dimensionless product of the thixotropic time scale and the imposed rate of deformation. The Mnemosyne number is, thus, a measure of the flow strength compared to the thixotropic time scale. Since long transient responses are endemic to thixotropic materials, one also needs to consider the duration of flow. The relevant dimensionless measure of this duration can be represented in terms of a mutation number, which compares the time scale of experiment/observation to the thixotropic time scale. Collating the mutation number and the Mnemosyne number, we can construct a general two-dimensional map that helps understand thixotropic behavior. We quantify these ideas using several of the simplest canonical thixotropic models available in the literature.

Few mythic narratives of the ancient world are more famous than the story of the Colchian princess/sorceress who betrayed her father and family for love of a foreign adventurer and who, when abandoned for another woman, killed in revenge both her rival and her children. Many critics have observed the complexities and contradictions of the Medea figure—naive princess, knowing witch, faithless and devoted daughter, frightened exile, marginalised alien, displaced traitor to family and state, helper-maiden, abandoned wife, vengeful lover, caring and filicidal mother, loving and fratricidal sister, oriental ‘other’, barbarian saviour of Greece, rejuvenator of the bodies of animals and men, killer of kings and princesses, destroyer and restorer of kingdoms, poisonous stepmother, paradigm of beauty and horror, demi-goddess, subhuman monster, priestess of Hecate and granddaughter of the sun, bride of dead Achilles and ancestor of the Medes, rider of a serpent-drawn chariot in the sky—complexities reflected in her story's fragmented and fragmenting history. That history has been much examined, but, though there are distinguished recent exceptions, comparatively little attention has been devoted to the specifically ‘Roman’ Medea—the Medea of the Republican tragedians, of Cicero, Varro Atacinus, Ovid, the younger Seneca, Valerius Flaccus, Hosidius Geta and Dracontius, and, beyond the literary field, the Medea of Roman painting and Roman sculpture. Hence the present volume of Ramus, which aims to draw attention to the complex and fascinating use and abuse of this transcultural heroine in the Roman intellectual and visual world. The present introduction briefly outlines Medea's Greek history before examining in detail her journey through Republican Rome. It concludes with a survey of her imperial configurations and a preliminary framing of the studies which follow.

AbstractThe archaeological study of pre-Islamic Uzbekistan (Bactria, Sogdiana) has been intensified since. World War II and this survey presents the most important recent results of this work. Bronze Age sites show a process of cultural change in Bactria, particularly the settlement of the area by farmers and the emergence in proto-cities of new urban forms of social organisation and systems of belief. The Iron Age sees the assimilation of new ethnic groups into the region, the expansion of a strong (Achaemenid) state, the development of defended cities and administrative centres and the beginnings of specialised craft industries. In the Classical period the Macedonian conquest brought about the sharp decline of existing urban centres, but the centralised states that followed were able to establish (e.g. through irrigation projects) new cities in new agricultural zones. Excavation into the lower levels of medieval cities has revealed several previously unknown ancient cities, many of which seem to have been derelict in the period before or during the Arab conquest. Bactrian cities of the Classical period have been shown to be extensive in area, well defended by strong walls and a citadel, and to have performed administrative, economic, religious as well as military functions. Cult buildings discovered show the presence of Avestan religion (although not the orthodox Zoroastrianism of Iran), cults of the Great Mother Goddess, and Buddhism (though limited to a few remarkable centres), and in the North of Sarmatian totemic cults using zoomorphic representations, finds of art, sculpture and wall-painting reveal a process in Bactria in which a native substratum was synthesized with Hellenistic, Indian and Sako-Sarmatian elements to produce work of high quality and originality. Epigraphical finds include ostraca, graffiti, inscriptions, and even papyri, representing scripts and languages from Bactrian to Pahlavi, to Greek and Latin. Finds of coins, including Greco-Bactrian and Parthian, help to date archaeological layers and produce accurate chronologies. Scholars from Uzbekistan have also contributed to the "Great Silk Road" programme, which is showing that routes crossing the region were formed in the 1st mill. B.C. and constituted a dense branched network by the end of the Classical period.

The paper explores the origins, development and basic genre features of сommedia dell'arte. The first part of the paper deals with the archetypal comic elements of сommedia dell'arte. The historical significance of this type of comedy, as Pandolfi (1957) stresses, lies in the fact that it unequivocally confirms the autonomy of theatrical art by imposing the neverending quest for the freedom to critically examine all the aspects of social life without any dose of censorship or limitations. Its comic pattern has the roots in the grotesque and absurdity of real life, which allows for the actors to fully affirm their artistic aspirations. Shakespeare’s romantic and pastoral comedy focuses on the final reconciliation or conversion of the blocking characters rather than their punishment: the rival brothers Oliver and Orlando are reconciled; Duke Frederick is miraculously converted. This was also a theme present in the medieval tradition of the seasonal ritual play, as Frye notices and claims that “we may call it the drama of the green world, its plot being assimilated to the ritual theme of the triumph of life and love over the waste land...Thus the action of the comedy begins in a world represented as a normal world, moves into the green world, goes into metamorphosis there in which the comic resolution is achieved, and returns to the normal world” (Frye 1957, 182). The Forest of Arden in As You Like It represents an emanation of Frye’s “green world”, which is analogous to the dream world, the world of our desires. In this symbolical victory of summer over winter, we have an illustration of “the archetypal function of literature in visualizing the world of desire, not as an escape from ’reality’, but as the genuine form of the world that human life tries to imitate” (Frye 1957, 184). In addition, the marriage between Orlando and Rosalind takes place in the Forest of Arden not by a coincidence. This is Shakespeare’s vision of the final unity and healing only to be accomplished in the ‘Mother’ Forest, as Hughes terms it (1992, 110), which ultimately represents a symbol of totality of nature and men’s psychic completeness. In Frye’s reading of Shakespeare’s green world, an identical idea of the heroine as the lost soul is expressed: “In the rituals and myths the earth that produces the rebirth is generally a female figure, and the death and revival, or disappearance and withdrawal of human figures in romantic comedy generally involves the heroine” (Frye 1957, 183). Thus, Rosalind represents the epitome of the matriarchal earth goddess that revives the hero and at the same time brings about the comic resolution by disguising herself as a boy (for those members of the audience and/or readers who regard the play as an instance of Hughes’ passive ritual drama and thus primarily enjoy the process of the young lovers’ overcoming various impediments on the way to a desirable end of the play).

One of the most important subjects that the ancient Greeks wondered and wanted to learn was the creation of the world. For them, the formation process of earth, sky, sea, water, light, air, night, day, gods and humans had always been important. When we look at this process of formation, at the beginning of the world there was chaos, the infinity. From this infinity, first mother earth, then the deepest place of the world of the dead, then the underground darkness and the darkness of the earth, Night (Nyks) were born. Mother earth herself united with sky, sea, and mountains, and then with her own children, giving birth to divine beings. Again in this process, the Night (Nyks) shapes other intangible beings with various duties and responsibilities in the world, which continue to be created by the method of virginal generation (parthenogenesis). In our study, these virginally generated beings by Night are discussed.

This manuscript pairs Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Marsh Languages’ with Luce Irigaray’s recent philosophical text In the Beginning She Was. By doing so, an important conceptual resonance emerges between the two texts on the status of the loss of a maternal language and more broadly of the founding Mother at the origins of Western thought. Advancing a feminist poetics and ethics of the maternal, with its roots in nature, Atwood and Irigaray’s works are at odds with the enlightened language of our western masculine time, which seeks to disinherit its roots or to uproot itself. Atwood’s appeal in her poem ‘Marsh Languages’ reverberates with Luce Irigaray’s argument in In the Beginning She Was, which is that it is necessary for western philosophy to return to the marshes, so to speak, to return to the Presocratic philosopher-poets in order to discern how the logic of Western truth (via the male master-disciple) formed, and consequently discredited and covered over, a ‘she – nature, woman, Goddess’. Engaging with Greek myth (Hesiod’s Muses, Plato’s cave and mother-daughter duo Persephone-Demeter), Atwood as poet and Irigaray as philosopher interrogate and contest our western patriarchal tradition, for its erasure of ‘she – nature, woman, Goddess’, and suggest that the ethical implications of this silencing and forgetting have led to corrupt, destructive crisis-level relations, e.g. between humans, between humans and gods and between humans and nature.

Sinopse: A ecoespiritualidade é uma forma de religiosidade que visa romper com os paradigmas ocidentais da relação entre ser humano e natureza, aproximando ambos. É praticada por diferentes grupos religiosos urbanos, principalmente no interior de movimentos alternativos. Os neopagãos, por exemplo, frequentemente ocupam áreas verdes das cidades nos finais de semana para a realização de rituais nos quais chamam pelas suas divindades de culto, geralmente ligadas aos diversos aspectos da natureza. O Neopaganismo é um fenômeno constituído de diferentes religiões que buscam resgatar aspectos da religiosidade de antigas civilizações, anteriores ao período de ascensão do cristianismo. Se por um lado na era pré-cristã essas práticas se davam no meio rural, por outro, seu reavivamento na modernidade emergiu em grandes centros urbanos, estando atrelado a estilos de vida cosmopolitas específicos do contexto moderno. Nas cidades, as religiões que fazem parte do corpus do Neopaganismo não possuem templos propriamente ditos, daí a importância que espaços como praças, parques e bosques desempenham para as práticas religiosas e de sociabilidade desses indivíduos. Frequentemente, nessas religiões, a natureza é personificada na figura da Mãe Terra. Trata-se de uma atribuição feminina, pois acredita-se que a natureza possui características como geradora, nutridora, acolhedora. A Mãe Terra, por sua vez, é uma divindade imanente, não estando em posição transcendente com relação à realidade metaempírica. Mais do que isso, a noção de sagrado imanente remete a uma “identidade de substância que perpassa todas as esferas do real: os seres humanos, a paisagem natural, os animais, os mortos e o cosmos” (OLIVEIRA, 2010, p.31). A forma pela qual a Mãe Terra é cultuada possui diferentes contornos nas várias sendas do movimento neopagão. Se na Wicca ela corresponde a divindade central do culto em uma dimensão impessoal (Grande Deusa, Grande Mãe) ou nominada através de uma das diversas deusas ligadas à terra encontradas em diferentes culturas (Gaia, Pachamama), em religiões como o Druidismo tal figura é vista através da deusa Dannu, uma das divindades que compõem o panteão dos povos célticos. Independente da realidade cultural em que essa religião é praticada, os druidas modernos prestam reverências à Terra, isto é, à deusa Dannu. O ensaio fotográfico propõe um olhar sobre a ecoespiritualidade praticada no contexto urbano, a partir do caso etnográfico de um grupo neopagão paraense, mais especificamente druidista, denominado Clann an Samamúma. O olhar específico será lançado sobre uma celebração realizada em um dos jardins botânicos da cidade, o Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, na ocasião do Dia da Terra de 2016. O evento aconteceu debaixo de uma das samaumeiras que existem no local, considerada a “matrona” do grupo, e consistiu em uma roda de cânticos, meditações, tambores e danças circulares. Todas as atividades foram feitas em “honra” à Mãe Terra, representada em um altar montado no centro da roda. Um dos cânticos entoados dizia que “a terra é nossa mãe, devemos cuidar dela/ seu solo é sagrado e sobre ele andamos/ unidos, minha gente, somos um”, remetendo à ideia presente no Druidismo de que todos estão interligados pela sacralidade da terra. Synopsis: Ecospirituality is a form of religiosity that aims to break with western paradigms of the relationship between human and nature, approaching both. It is practiced by different urban religious groups, especially in the interior of alternative movements. Neo-pagans, for example, often occupy green areas of the city on weekends to perform rituals in which they call for their worshiped deities, usually attached to the various aspects of nature. Neo-Paganism is a phenomenon made up of different religions who seek to rescue aspects of the religion of ancient civilizations, before the rise of Christianity period. On the one hand in the pre-Christian era these practices was given in rural areas, on the other, its revival in modernity emerged in large urban centers, and is tied to specific cosmopolitan lifestyles of the modern context. In the cities, religions that are part of the Neo-Paganism’s corpus do not have proper temples, hence the importance of spaces such as squares, parks and urban forests plays in religious practices and sociability of these individuals. Frequently in these religions nature is personified in the figure of Mother Earth. It is a female attribute, as it is believed that nature has features such as generating, nurturing, welcoming. Mother Earth, in turn, is an immanent divinity, not being in transcendent position regarding metaphysics reality. More than that, the notion of immanent sacred refers to a "substance identity that runs through all real spheres: humans, the natural landscape, the animals, the dead and the cosmos" (OLIVEIRA, 2010, p.31 ). The way Mother Earth is worshiped has different contours in different ways of the neopagan movement. If in Wicca it matches the main deity of the cult in an impersonal dimension (Great Goddess, Great Mother) or nominated by one of several earth-goddesses found in different cultures (Gaia, Pachamama) in religions such as Druidry this figure is view through the goddess Dannu, one of the deities that make up the pantheon of celtic peoples. Regardless of the cultural reality in which this religion is practiced, modern druids pay obeisance to the Earth, that is, the goddess Dannu. This photo essay offers a glimpse into the ecospirituality practiced in the urban context, from the ethnographic case of a paraense neopagan, specifically druidist, group called Clann an Samamúma. The specific look will be released on a celebration held in one of the botanical gardens of the city, the Goeldi Museum, on Earth Day occasion in 2016. The event took place under one of samaumeiras that are in location, considered the group's "matron", and consisted of a circle of chanting, meditation, drums and circle dances. All activities were done in "honor" to Mother Earth, represented on an altar set up in the center of the wheel. One of the sung songs said that "the earth is our mother, we must take care of her / its soil is sacred and on he walked / united, my people, we are one", referring to this idea in Druidry that all are interconnected by the sacredness of the Earth. Palavras-chave: ecoespiritualidade, grupos urbanos, sociabilidade, neopaganismo. Key-words: ecospirituality, urban groups, sociability, neo-paganism. Ficha técnica: Autora: Dannyel Teles de Castro Fotografias:Dannyel Teles de Castro Direção, Edição de Imagem e Texto:Dannyel Teles de Castro Credits: Author: Dannyel Teles de Castro Photographs: Dannyel Teles de Castro Direction, image editing and text:Dannyel Teles de Castro

Topic: polymorphic iconography in Egyptian religious iconography - special and separate types of mixed, theriomorphic and combined images / icons / forms, always with animal heads, double pairs of wings, phallus, and other magical symbols. Archaeological evidence: images appear on small size flat amulets, papyri fragments (also serving as amulets), bronze statuettes and magical healing statues. Textual evidence: lack of distinctive proper names Place: Egypt, without special area of provenance Date: Late Period (7th – 4th centuries BC), Ptolemaic and Roman Periods (from 4th century BC) Important terms:Pantheistic as an idea of all-embracing god (Pantheos)ba as an emanation / form / manifestation of a god, significantly associated with the image of the god. The animals were ba of gods.bau - strength, power, good and bad at the same time, affecting the whole world, and humans in particular. With the help of magic bau can be manipulated, to ensure people health and success. DeitesBes – Egyptian god – demon, present in magical context, protector of maternity, life, music, safety, with strong solar interpretation, often depicted as a dwarfTutu (Tithoes) – popular especially as Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt deity; main role was to repel negative powers and to protect people in danger; depicted as sphinx with mixed animal and magical attributesLamashtu – female Mesopotamian goddess / demon, who preys on mothers and children, depicted in magical context with animal elementsPazuzu – male Babylonian and Assyrian demonic god with rather beneficent, magical role, depicted with animal elementsNine–Shaped (Enneamorfos) – figure present in written Greek Magical Papyri, defined as composed of nine forms, especially of animal origin with magic function and Egyptian genesis Key problem: distribution of polymorphic iconography in other cultures, parallels, influences on the visual level (codification of symbols) and also on the ideological level (magical activity hidden / symbolised in a representation) Question of the talk: to define potential influences in the Near Eastern perspective - is the polymorphic idea specific to one culture or common to all ancient religious thinking about deities?

Sometimes ... we don’t want to feel like a post-modern, post-feminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake (Nigella Lawson, How to be a Domestic Goddess vii). IntroductionFor today’s female readers, the idea of trailing “nutmeggy fumes” of home-baked pie through their kitchens could be as much a source of gender-stereotyping outrage as one of desire or longing. Regardless of personal response, there seems little doubt that the image Lawson’s words create prevails even in the 21st century: an apron-clad, kitchen-bound woman, cooking for others as an expression of love and communication. This is particularly true of contemporary cookbooks written by and aimed at women. Two examples are Sophie Dahl’s Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights (2010) and Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess (2000). This paper explores how Dahl and Lawson use three narrative strategies—sequence, description and voice—to frame their recipes; it also analyses how these narrative strategies encourage readers to embrace traditional constructs of domestic femininity, albeit in a contemporary and celebratory light. The authors’ use of these strategies also makes their cookbooks more than simply instruction manuals—instead, they become engaging and pleasurable texts that use memoir, humour and nostalgia to convey their recipes and create distinct authorial personas and cultural ideas about food and femininity. While primary purpose of cookbooks is to instruct, what makes them distinctive—and, arguably, so popular—is their mix of pleasure and utility. The stories they tell, both cultural and personal, are what make us continue to buy and read them, despite bookshelves that may already bend beneath the weight of three hundred different versions of chicken risotto and chocolate cake; as Anne Bower notes, many women read cookbooks for escapism and enjoyment. This concept of escapism and enjoyment is closely tied to the role of narrative. Cognitive narratology, a more recent strand of narrative theory, emphasises what readers bring to a text, and how narrative allows readers to frame and understand texts and the world around them. Therefore, cookbooks that situate their recipes among personal anecdotes and familiar cultural ideals or myths—such as the woman in the kitchen—appeal to our experiences and emotions. Cookbooks thus become engaging and resonant on personal and sociocultural levels: Gvion argues that cookbooks are “social texts” (54), which seems appropriate when considering the meanings we ascribe to food—it remains a fundamental part of our culture and identity (Lupton). Certain cookbooks—those that emphasise the social and emotional aspects of what we consume—can be regarded as a reflection of how we attach meanings to foods in particular contexts (Mintz). The books discussed in this paper combine the societal and personal aspects of this process: their authors blend familiar cultural tropes with their own engaging autobiographical anecdotes using sequence, description and voice. Narrative theory has traditionally been applied to fiction, and cookbooks obviously lack fictional elements such as plot and character. However, cognitivist narratology, which directs its focus to humans’ cognitive understanding and perception of various actions and events (Fludernik, Histories), makes it applicable to a range of texts. Cookbooks’ use of sequence, description, and voice create “storyworlds” for readers, which “can be viewed as [a] global mental representation enabling interpreters to draw inferences about items and occurrences either explicitly or implicitly included in a narrative” (Herman 9). Cookbook authors use memories, anecdotes and imagery to conjure scenes to which readers can aspire or relate, perhaps prompting responses similar to those experienced when reading fiction.Prince characterises narrative as a “representation of events in a time sequence” (82). The sequence of information and anecdotes in a cookbook—its introduction, chapter structure and recipe structure—positions readers to read and interpret the text in a particular way; it is both part of how the texts authors construct a sense of self and of how they encourage readers to construct their own meanings in response. Dahl, for example, arranges her recipes according to season, since she places great importance on seasonal eating. Description is the cornerstone of any successful cookbook, since it becomes impossible to successfully replicate a dish if you cannot make sense of the instructions. However, in a narrative sense, description operates as part of a narrator’s “rhetorical strategy” (Bal 36); it helps construct their narrative persona and enables them to reinforce the associations between food, culture and identity in evocative language. Voice is the final piece of the narrative puzzle. These cookbooks are all “narrated” by their authors, who offer selected anecdotes and stories to support their authorial intentions and position readers to interpret their texts in a particular way. Feminist narratologist Susan Lanser regards voice as the “intersection of social identity and textual form” (14), a definition that recognises the broader social and cultural significance of cookbooks. Since they tend to be narrated “directly” from author to readers, authorial voice serves not only to engage readers, but also to establish authors’ culinary authority. The two cookbooks analysed here are written by—and, arguably, primarily aimed at—women, and this paper contends that their authors use narrative to reclaim a powerful sense of feminine ownership. While they are just two of many contemporary cookbooks that arguably strive to achieve similar ends (Tessa Kiros’s 2010 Apples for Jam, and Monica Trapaga’s 2010 She’s Leaving Home, are two recent Australian examples), Dahl’s and Lawson’s texts are apt case studies: both are commercially successful and their authors occupy a significant space in the public imagination, particularly where women’s identity is concerned. Dahl is a former plus-size model who lost weight “rather publicly” (Dahl xi) and whose book charts the evolution of her complex relationship with food; Lawson’s books and cooking programs have seen her variously characterised as “prefeminist housewife … antifeminist Stepford wife … the saviour of downshifting middle-class career women and as both the negative and positive product of postfeminism” (Hollows 180). Dahl and Lawson narrate the knowledge and skill of their recipes in a context of experiences and memories related to their lives as mothers and/or partners and food professionals, which underscores the weight of their kitchen authority as women while still maintaining that rather mythic connection between the feminine and domestic. Sequence The introductory pages and internal structure of each book reflects both its author’s intentions, and the persona they construct within the text that speaks directly to readers. It also foregrounds the link between women and food. The link between this domesticity and feminine identity is explicit in both texts. Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights is a food memoir as well as a cookbook, and Dahl’s use of narrative sequence makes this clear: in her introduction, she reveals that “the second word I ever spoke was ‘crunch,’ muddled baby-speak for fudge” (viii). Interspersed between the book’s four sections (Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer) are essays that chart Dahl’s evolving relationship with food and cooking, framed particularly in terms of her female identity: they detail her progression from a plump-cheeked teenager unhappy about carrying a few extra pounds to a woman at ease with her body and appetite who cannot “get away from the siren call of the kitchen” (15). Dahl often introduces her recipes with reference to their personal significance, particularly in relation to cooking as an act of love or communication—“Musician’s Breakfast,” for example, is so named because it is a favourite of her boyfriend, jazz musician Jamie Cullum (152). Lawson’s book is ostensibly more practical—her chapters are arranged according to types of dish, such cakes or biscuits. She also explicitly summons the familiar vision of the woman at home in the kitchen. Although she draws on the clichéd image of the domestic goddess, her preface seems aimed at making female readers feel at ease. For example, she writes that she does not want her audience to think of baking as a “land you do not inhabit” or to “confine you to kitchen quarters” (vii); rather, her aim is to make them “feel” (vii) like a domestic goddess rather than be one, an act that might be interpreted as an attempt to put a more contemporary spin on a dated archetype.Nonetheless, throughout Lawson’s book, the prose that introduces her recipes draws on those associations between baking and homely comfort: cake-baking “implies effort and domestic prowess,” (2) but is easy in practice, and baking loaf cakes makes one feel “humble and worthy and brimming with good things” (5). Again, Lawson’s own experience—particularly as a busy mother and career woman—shapes the introductory words for each recipe and establishes a sense of her authorial persona in relation to broader social constructs of food and the feminine. Description Vivid, evocative descriptions of food and food-related memories and experiences are an integral part of what makes these texts narratively engaging, and how they continue to enforce and idealise that connection between the feminine and the domestic. Both authors frequently describe food in terms that create concepts of cosy domesticity: Lawson describes baking as a metaphor for “familial warmth” (vii), and for Dahl, roast chicken “is Sunday ... there’s something about that smell wafting through the house” (53). A distinct sense of nostalgia is at play here; as Linda Hutcheon observes, one can “look and reject” or “look and linger longingly” (online), and this apparent yearning to return to simpler times summons a “mythical past of comfort and stability” (Duruz 57), seemingly embodied in images of wholesome foods cooked for us by mothers or wives. This idea of food as emotionally nourishing is frequently related in terms of the author’s duties as domestic providers and as women who occasionally—and by choice—inhabit traditional female roles. However, Lawson and Dahl reveal the tensions between past and present: while they embrace the pleasures of old-fashioned domesticity, they do not—and cannot—wholly recreate it. Instead, they must balance it with other priorities, making space for a more liberated and contemporary female home cook who can choose to occupy a place at the stove. Of course, the title of Lawson’s book—and the wording of its preface, quoted at the start of this paper—refers explicitly to the old-fashioned idea of the domestic goddess. But Lawson aims to update or demystify the concept for today’s busy women: she expresses the view that many have become “alienated” from the domestic sphere, but that “it can actually make us feel better to claim back some of that space, make it comforting rather than frightening” (vii). While she summons very traditional images—for example, “a pie is just what we all know should be emanating from the kitchen of a domestic goddess” (81)—she also puts a new spin on them, perhaps in an attempt to make them seem less patronising or intimidating while still enforcing how satisfying it can be to feel like a domestic goddess without slaving in the kitchen. She frequently emphasises the simplicity of her recipes and describes food in terms of the pleasure it brings the cook as well as those for whom she is cooking: while baking bread brings “crucial satisfaction, that warm feeling of homespun achievement,” she also notes that “my way of baking bread is designed to fit more easily into the sort of lives we lead” (291). As Hollows notes, the “Nigella cooking philosophy” is that “cooking should be pleasurable and should start from the desire to eat” (182), a concept far removed from the traditional construct of women as “providers of food for others” who have difficulty “experiencing food as pleasurable themselves, particularly in a domestic context” (184). Dahl also emphasises pleasure, ease and practicality, and describes food in terms of its nostalgic and emotional associations, particularly in relation to her female relatives. As a child, Dahl attended boarding school, and on the last night of her holidays—before she returned to terrible school food, with its “gristly stew, grey Scotch eggs and collapsed beetroot” (7)—her mother would cook her a special dinner, and she remembers feasting on “roast chicken wrapped in bacon with tarragon creeping wistfully over its breast, potatoes golden and gloriously crispy on the outside and flaking softly from within” (7). Although Dahl’s mother taught her the importance of “cooking for your man,” this very old-fashioned idea is presented in a tongue-in-cheek way, with the caveat, “woe betide any man who doesn’t appreciate it” (73). Again, the act of cooking is described as something that brings intense domestic satisfaction, and represents a conscious choice to relive the past in a contemporary, and perhaps slightly ironic (albeit still enjoyable), context: making tawny granola “makes one feel very fifties housewife, because as it bakes the house is bathed in a warm cinnamon-y glow” (25). Such descriptions of food and cooking are both evocative and romantic, even while they emphasise convenience and practicality. This perhaps reflects the realities of modern life for busy modern women juggling work and family commitments; it emphasises that tension between the ideal of the past and the reality of the present. While Lawson and Dahl still idealise the correlation between women, food and the domestic, drawing on familiar and perhaps comforting associations, they nonetheless manage to make their cookbooks both narratively engaging and culturally revealing: as Susan Leonardi points out, recipes are an exchange between reader and writer, and they require “a recommendation, a context ... a reason to be” (340). Descriptions of memories, emotions and sensations in relation to cooking and women’s identity help to create a particular narrative “storyworld” (Herman 9) or familiar context; the authors here describe experiences that are likely to resonate with female readers to enforce that connection between women and their kitchens. Since they draw so heavily on their authors’ lives, these cookbooks are almost forms of life narrative; by drawing on their own recollections to appeal to readers and share recipes, their narrators are “performing several rhetorical acts, justifying their own perceptions, conveying cultural information” (Smith and Watson 10). This is a fundamental aspect of narrative voice: who “speaks” in the text (Genette 185). Voice Both authors use their identity as women and home cooks to enforce the feminine/domestic connection and relate to their audience. They each create a distinct narrating voice or authorial persona that speaks directly to readers and aims to win their trust and sympathy. Lawson positions herself as a busy mother and wife; Dahl focuses on her evolving relationship with food, particularly in the context of her former career as a plus-size model and her subsequent weight loss. Both women share cooking anecdotes, and often, significantly, their kitchen failures—Dahl’s recipe for asparagus soup reveals that one of her attempts at trialling the recipe resulted in soup spurting from her blender, “covering me, the walls and floor in a thick slick of green” (168). Both women write as passionate home cooks: what seems most important is a love of food and what it represents, the joy of cooking as much as the culinary skill it may require. Lanser writes that “the authority of a given voice or text is produced from a conjunction of social and rhetorical properties” (6), and both Dahl’s and Lawson’s authority comes from their domestic experience and their roles as women who cook for themselves and for the pleasure it brings them as much as for their families. Although they advocate this sense of enjoyment over duty, there remains in each text a distinctly romantic idea of what it means to cook; specifically, to be a female home cook. This is most explicit in how Dahl and Lawson narrate their texts, particularly in terms of the confidences they share. Both confess their shortcomings in relaxed and informal tones: Lawson writes about an occasion when she found herself in “dire straits” when trying to make marzipan (6), and confesses to being a “negligent mother” because all she does with her children is cook with them (209); Dahl says that she “would plant tarragon in my garden in London, but the neighbour’s cat is partial to peeing on every herb I have” (58). Both imbue their actual recipes, as well as the prose that surrounds them, with a very personal tone, offering tips and advice drawn from their own experience: Dahl advises readers to “go by instinct and taste, adding or taking away as you want” (52) and Lawson suggests leaving “a decent amount of uncooked cake batter in the bowl for scraping-out purposes” (183). Conclusion Pasupathi’s work on constructing identity in storytelling, and how recounting stories becomes a way of establishing a sense of self, is particularly relevant here; a similar concept is evident in cookbooks. Lawson and Dahl choose familiar life stories and situations that readers, (particularly female), might recognise and engage with. As Fludernik observes, narrators are integral to narrative texts, since they help to establish narrative meaning and interest (An Introduction to Narratology). The narrating voices of Dahl’s and Lawson’s cookbooks foreground their identity as women and home cooks to highlight experiences and issues relevant to women. All three of the narrative strategies discussed in this paper contribute to this. Both texts do, to a degree, enforce cultural stereotypes—most obviously, the idea of a woman’s kitchen as a kind of natural habitat—but they also emphasise the pleasures of cooking. Despite the clichéd imagery and heavy nostalgia, Dahl’s and Lawson’s appropriation of the domestic goddess image exposes and reconfigures the contradictions between the idealised past and more liberated present; offering female readers and cooks “beguiling possibilities … for re-enactment” (Duruz 57). Lawson and Dahl’s use of narrative strategies not only makes their texts more engaging to read, but reflects the social and cultural relevance of cookbooks, and how they can embody and reshape our engrained values and ideas. In their own way, they seek to affirm the female domestic experience and position it as something celebratory rather than oppressive. Perhaps no one puts it so aptly as Lawson: “I know the idea of being in the kitchen faffing around with bottles and jars and hot pans might seem confining to many, but honestly, I have found it liberating. The sense of connectedness you get, with your kitchen, your home, your food, is the very opposite of constraint” (334). This seems an apt reflection of cookbooks’ narrative power and ability to explore fundamental social and cultural ideas; they engage us, inspire us and entertain us. References Bal, Mieke. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997. Bower, Anne. “Romanced by Cookbooks.” Gastronomica 4.2 (2004): 35–42. Dahl, Sophie. Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights. London: HarperCollins, 2009. Duruz, Jean. “Haunted Kitchens: Cooking and Remembering.” Gastronomica 4.1 (2004): 57–68. Fludernik, Monica. An Introduction to Narratology. New York: Routledge, 2009. Fludernik, Monica. “Histories of Narrative (II): From Structuralism to the Present.” A Companion to Narrative Theory. Eds. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Hoboken: Blackwell, 2005. Blackwell Reference Online. 4 Apr. 2013. Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. New York: Cornell UP, 1980. Gvion, Liora. “What’s Cooking in America? Cookbooks Narrate Ethnicity: 1850–1990.” Food, Culture, and Society 7.1 (2004): 53–76. Herman, David. Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Hollows, Joanne. “Feeling Like a Domestic Goddess: Postfeminism and Cooking.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 6.2 (2003): 179–202. Hutcheon, Linda. “Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern.” U of Toronto English Library, 1998. 21 Oct. 2010. ‹http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/criticism/hutchinp.html›. Lanser, Susan. Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. New York: Cornell UP, 1992. Lawson, Nigella. How to be a Domestic Goddess. London: Chatto & Windus, 2000. Leonardi, Susan. “Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster á la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie.” Modern Language Association 104.3 (1989): 340–47. Lupton, Deborah. “Food and Emotion.” The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Oxford: Berg, 2005. 317–24. Mintz, Sidney. “Sweetness and Meaning.” The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Oxford: Berg, 2005. 110–22. Pasupathi, Monisha. “Silk from Sow’s Ears: Collaborative Construction of Everyday Selves in Everyday Stories.” Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative. Ed. Dan P. McAdams, Ruthellen Josselson, and Amia Lieblich. Vol. 4. Washington, DC: APA, 2006. 129–50. Prince, Gerald. Narratology: The Form and Function of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton, 1982. Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide to Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001.

Susheel Kumar Sharma’s Unwinding Self: A Collection of Poems. Cuttack: Vishvanatha Kaviraj Institute, 2020, ISBN: 978-81-943450-3-9, Paperback, pp. viii + 152. Like his earlier collection, The Door is Half Open, Susheel Kumar Sharma’s Unwinding Self: A Collection of Poems has three sections consisting of forty-two poems of varied length and style, a detailed Glossary mainly on the proper nouns from Indian culture and tradition and seven Afterwords from the pens of the trained readers from different countries of four continents. The structure of the book is circular. The first poem “Snapshots” indicates fifteen kaleidoscopic patterns of different moods of life in about fifteen words each. It seems to be a rumination on the variegated images of everyday experiences ranging from individual concerns to spiritual values. Art-wise, they can be called mini-micro-poems as is the last poem of the book. While the character limit in a micro poem is generally 140 (the character limit on Twitter) Susheel has used just around 65 in each of these poems. Naturally, imagery, symbolism and cinematic technique play a great role in this case. In “The End of the Road” the poet depicts his individual experiences particularly changing scenario of the world. He seems to be worried about his eyesight getting weak with the passage of time, simultaneously he contrasts the weakness of his eyesight with the hypocrisy permeating the human life. He compares his diminishing eyesight to Milton and shows his fear as if he will get blind. He changes his spectacles six times to clear his vision and see the plurality of a reality in human life. It is an irony on the changing aspects of human life causing miseries to the humanity. At the end of the poem, the poet admits the huge changes based on the sham principles: “The world has lost its original colour” (4). The concluding lines of the poem make a mockery of the people who are not able to recognise reality in the right perspective. The poem “Durga Puja in 2013” deals with the celebration of the festival “Durga Puja” popular in the Hindu religion. The poet’s urge to be with Ma Durga shows his dedication towards the Goddess Durga, whom he addresses with different names like ‘Mai’, ‘Ma’ and ‘Mother’. He worships her power and expresses deep reverence for annihilating the evil-spirits. The festival Durga Puja also reminds people of victory of the goddess on the elusive demons in the battlefield. “Chasing a Dream on the Ganges” is another poem having spiritual overtones. Similarly, the poem “Akshya Tritya” has religious and spiritual connotations. It reflects curiosity of people for celebration of “Akshya Tritya” with enthusiasm. But the political and economic overtones cannot be ignored as the poem ends with the remarkable comments: The GDP may go up on this day; Even, Budia is able to Eat to his fill; Panditji can blow his Conch shell with full might. Outside, somebody is asking for votes; Somebody is urging others to vote. I shall vote for Akshya Tritya. (65-66) “On Reading Langston Hughes’ ‘Theme for English B’” is a long poem in the collection. In this poem, the poet reveals a learner’s craving for learning, perhaps who comes from an extremely poor background to pursue his dreams of higher education. The poet considers the learner’s plights of early childhood, school education and evolutionary spirit. He associates it with Dronacharya and Eklavya to describe the mythical system of education. He does not want to be burdened with the self-guilt by denying the student to be his ‘guru’ therefore, he accepts the challenge to change his life. Finally, he shows his sympathy towards the learner and decides to be the ‘guru’: “It is better to face/A challenge and change/Than to be burden with a life/Of self-guilt. /I put my signatures on his form willy-nilly” (11). The poem “The Destitute” is an ironical presentation of the modern ways of living seeking pleasure in the exotic locations all over the world. It portrays the life of a person who has to leave his motherland for earning his livelihood, and has to face an irreparable loss affecting moral virtues, lifestyle, health and sometimes resulting in deaths. The poem “The Black Experience” deals with the suppression of the Africans by the white people. The poem “Me, A Black Doxy”, perhaps points out the dilemma of a black woman whether she should prostitute herself or not, to earn her livelihood. Perhaps, her deep consciousness about her self-esteem does not allow her to indulge in it but she thinks that she is not alone in objectifying herself for money in the street. Her voice resonates repeatedly with the guilt of her indulgence on the filthy streets: At the dining time Me not alone? In the crowded street Me not alone? They ’ave white, grey, pink hair Me ’ave black hair – me not alone There’s a crowd with black hair. Me ’ave no black money Me not alone? (14) The poem “Thus Spake a Woman” is structured in five sections having expressions of the different aspects of a woman’s love designs. It depicts a woman’s dreams and her attraction towards her lover. The auditory images like “strings of a violin”, “music of the violin” and “clinch in my fist” multiply intensity of her feelings. With development of the poem, her dreams seem to be shattered and sadness know the doors of her dreamland. Finally, she is confronted with sadness and is taken back to the past memories reminding her of the difficult situations she had faced. Replete with poetic irony, “Bubli Poems” presents the journey of a female, who, from the formative years of her life to womanhood, experienced gender stereotypes, biased sociocultural practices, and ephemeral happiness on the faces of other girls around her. The poem showcases the transformation of a village girl into a New Woman, who dreams her existence in all types of luxurious belongings rather than identifying her independent existence and finding out her own ways of living. Her dreams lead her to social mobility through education, friendships, and the freedom that she gains from her parents, family, society and culture. She attempts her luck in the different walks of human life, particularly singing and dancing and imagines her social status and wide popularity similar to those of the famous Indian actresses viz. Katrina and Madhuri Dixit: “One day Bubli was standing before the mirror/Putting on a jeans and jacket and shaking her hips/She was trying to be a local Katrina” (41). She readily bears the freakish behaviour of the rustic/uncultured lads, derogatory comments, and physical assaults in order to fulfil her expectations and achieves her individual freedom. Having enjoyed all the worldly happiness and fashionable life, ultimately, she is confronted with the evils designs around her which make her worried, as if she is ignorant of the world replete with the evils and agonies: “Bubli was ignorant of her agony and the lost calm” (42). The examples of direct poetic irony and ironic expressions of the socio-cultural evils, and the different governing bodies globally, are explicit in this poem: “Bubli is a leader/What though if a cheerleader./The news makes her family happy.”(40), “Others were blaming the Vice-Chancellor/ Some others the system;/ Some the freedom given to girls;”(45), and “Some blame poverty; some the IMF;/ Some the UN; some the environment;/ Some the arms race; some the crony’s lust;/ Some the US’s craving for power;/Some the UK’s greed. (46-47). Finally, Bubli finds that her imaginative world is fragile. She gives up her corporeal dreams which have taken the peace of her mind away. She yearns for shelter in the temples and churches and surrenders herself before deities praying for her liberation: “Jai Kali,/ Jai Mahakali, Jai Ma, Jai Jagaddhatri,/ Save me, save the world.” (47). In the poem “The Unlucky”, the poet jibes at those who are lethargic in reading. He identifies four kinds of readers and places himself in the fourth category by rating himself a ‘poor’ reader. The first three categories remind the readers of William Shakespeare’s statement “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” At the end of the poem, the poet questions himself for being a poet and teacher. The question itself reflects on his ironic presentation of himself as a poor reader because a poet’s wisdom is compared with that of the philosopher and everybody worships and bows before a teacher, a “guru”, in the Indian tradition. The poet is considered the embodiment of both. The poet’s unfulfilled wish to have been born in Prayagraj is indexed with compunction when the poem ends with the question “Why was I not born in Prayagraj?” (52). Ending with a question mark, the last line of the poem expresses his desire for perfection. The next poem, “Saying Goodbye”, is elegiac in tone and has an allusion to Thomas Gray’s “The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” in the line “When the curfew tolls the knell of the parting day”; it ends with a question mark. The poem seems to be a depiction of the essence and immortality of ‘time’. Reflecting on the poet’s consideration of the power and beauty of ‘time’, Pradeep Kumar Patra rightly points out, “It is such a phenomena that nobody can turn away from it. The moment is both beautiful as well as ferocious. It beautifies and showcases everything and at the same time pulls everything down when necessary” (146). Apparently, the poem “The Kerala Flood 2018”is an expression of emotions at the disaster caused by the flood in 2018. By reminding of Gandhi’s tenets to be followed by people for the sake of morality and humankind, the poet makes an implicit criticism of the pretentions, and violation of pledges made by people to care of other beings, particularly, cow that is worshiped as “mother” and is considered to be a symbol of fertility, peace and holiness in Hinduism as well as the Buddhist culture. The poet also denigrates people who deliberately ignore the sanctity of the human life in Hinduism and slaughter the animal cow to satisfy their appetites. In the poem, the carnivorous are criticized explicitly, but those who pretend to be herbivorous are decried as shams: If a cow is sacrosanct And people eat beef One has to take a side. Some of the friends chose to Side with cow and others With the beef-eaters. Some were more human They chose both. (55) The poet infuses positivity into the minds of the Indian people. Perhaps, he thinks that, for Indians, poverty, ignorance, dirt and mud are not taboos as if they are habitual to forbear evils by their instincts. They readily accept them and live their lives happily with pride considering their deity as the preserver of their lives. The poem “A Family by the Road” is an example of such beliefs, in which the poet lavishes most of his poetic depiction on the significance of the Lord Shiva, the preserver of people in Hinduism: Let me enjoy my freedom. I am proud of my poverty. I am proud of my ignorance. I am proud of my dirt. I have a home because of these. I am proud of my home. My future is writ on the walls Of your houses My family shall stay in the mud. After all, somebody is needed To clean the dirt as well. I am Shiva, Shivoham. (73) In the poem “Kabir’s Chadar”, the poet invokes several virtues to back up his faith in spirituality and simplicity. He draws a line of merit and virtue between Kabir’s Chadar which is ‘white’ and his own which is “thickly woven” and “Patterned with various beautiful designs/ In dark but shining colours” (50). The poet expresses his views on Kabir’s ‘white’ Chadar symbolically to inculcate the sense of purity, fortitude, spirituality, and righteousness among people. The purpose of his direct comparison between them is to refute artificiality, guilt and evil intents of humanity, and propagate spiritual purity, the stark simplicities of our old way of life, and follow the patience of a saint like Kabir. The poem “Distancing” is a statement of poetic irony on the city having two different names known as Bombay and Mumbai. The poet sneers at its existence in Atlas. Although the poet portraits the historical events jeering at the distancing between the two cities as if they are really different, yet the poet’s prophetic anticipation about the spread of the COVID-19 in India cannot be denied prima facie. The poet’s overwhelming opinions on the overcrowded city of Bombay warn humankind to rescue their lives. Even though the poem seems to have individual expressions of the poet, leaves a message of distancing to be understood by the people for their safety against the uneven things. The poem “Crowded Locals” seems to be a sequel to the poem “Distancing”. Although the poet’s purpose, and appeal to the commonplace for distancing cannot be affirmed by the readers yet his remarks on the overcrowded cities like in Mumbai (“Crowded Locals”), foresee some risk to the humankind. In the poem “Crowded Locals”, he details the mobility of people from one place to another, having dreams in their eyes and puzzles in their minds for their livelihood while feeling insecure especially, pickpockets, thieves and strangers. The poet also makes sneering comments on the body odour of people travelling in first class. However, these two poems have become a novel contribution for social distancing to fight against the COVID-19. In the poem “Buy Books, Not Diamonds” the poet makes an ironical interpretation of social anarchy, political upheaval, and threat of violence. In this poem, the poet vies attention of the readers towards the socio-cultural anarchy, especially, anarchy falls on the academic institutions in the western countries where capitalism, aristocracy, dictatorship have armed children not with books which inculcate human values but with rifles which create fear and cause violence resulting in deaths. The poet’s perplexed opinions find manifestation in such a way as if books have been replaced with diamonds and guns, therefore, human values are on the verge of collapse: “Nine radiant diamonds are no match/ To the redness of the queen of spades. . . . / … holding/ Rifles is a better option than/ Hawking groundnuts on the streets?” (67).The poet also decries the spread of austere religious practices and jihadist movement like Boko Haram, powerful personalities, regulatory bodies and religious persons: “Boko Haram has come/Obama has also come/The UN has come/Even John has come with/Various kinds of ointments” (67). The poem “Lost Childhood” seems to be a memoir in which the poet compares the early life of an orphan with the child who enjoys early years of their lives under the safety of their parents. Similarly, the theme of the poem “Hands” deals with the poet’s past experiences of the lifestyle and its comparison to the present generation. The poet’s deep reverence for his parents reveals his clear understanding of the ways of living and human values. He seems to be very grateful to his father as if he wants to make his life peaceful by reading the lines of his palms: “I need to read the lines in his palm” (70). In the poem “A Gush of Wind”, the poet deliberates on the role of Nature in our lives. The poem is divided into three sections, perhaps developing in three different forms of the wind viz. air, storm, and breeze respectively. It is structured around the significance of the Nature. In the first section, the poet lays emphasis on the air we breathe and keep ourselves fresh as if it is a panacea. The poet criticizes artificial and material things like AC. In the second section, he depicts the stormy nature of the wind scattering papers, making the bed sheets dusty affecting or breaking the different types of fragile and luxurious objects like Italian carpets and lamp shades with its strong blow entering the oriels and window panes of the houses. Apparently, the poem may be an individual expression, but it seems to be a caricature on the majesty of the rich people who ignore the use of eco-chic objects and disobey the Nature’s behest. In the third and the last section of the poem, the poet’s tone is critical towards Whitman, Pushkin and Ginsberg for their pseudoscientific philosophy of adherence to the Nature. Finally, he opens himself to enjoy the wind fearlessly. The poems like “A Voice” , “The New Year Dawn”, “The New Age”, “The World in Words in 2015”, “A Pond Nearby”, “Wearing the Scarlet Letter ‘A’”, “A Mock Drill”, “Strutting Around”, “Sahibs, Snobs, Sinners”, “Endless Wait”, “The Soul with a New Hat”, “Renewed Hope”, “Like Father, Unlike Son”, “Hands”, “Rechristening the City”, “Coffee”, “The Unborn Poem”, “The Fountain Square”, “Ram Setu”, and “Connaught Place” touch upon the different themes. These poems reveal poet’s creativity and unique features of his poetic arts and crafts. The last poem of the collection “Stories from the Mahabharata” is written in twenty-five stanzas consisting of three lines each. Each stanza either describes a scene or narrates a story from the Mahabharata, the source of the poem. Every stanza has an independent action verb to describe the actions of different characters drawn from the Mahabharata. Thus, each stanza is a complete miniscule poem in itself which seems to be a remarkable characteristic of the poem. It is an exquisite example of ‘Micro-poetry’ on paper, remarkable for its brevity, dexterity and intensity. The poet’s conscious and brilliant reframing of the stories in his poem sets an example of a new type of ‘Found Poetry’ for his readers. Although the poet’s use of various types images—natural, comic, tragic, childhood, horticultural, retains the attention of readers yet the abundant evidences of anaphora reflect redundancy and affect the readers’ concentration and diminishes their mental perception, for examples, pronouns ‘her’ and ‘we’ in a very small poem “Lost Childhood”, articles ‘the’ and ‘all’ in “Crowded Locals”, the phrase ‘I am proud of’ in “A Family by the Road” occur many times. Svitlana Buchatska’s concise but evaluative views in her Afterword to Unwinding Self help the readers to catch hold of the poet’s depiction of his emotions. She writes, “Being a keen observer of life he vividly depicts people’s life, traditions and emotions involving us into their rich spiritual world. His poems are the reflection on the Master’s world of values, love to his family, friends, students and what is more, to his beloved India. Thus, the author reveals all his beliefs, attitudes, myths and allusions which are the patterns used by the Indian poets” (150). W. H. Auden defines poetry as “the clear expression of mixed feelings.” It seems so true of Susheel Sharma’s Unwinding Self. It is a mixture of poems that touch upon the different aspects of human life. It can be averred that the collection consists of the poet’s seamless efforts to delve into the various domains of the human life and spot for the different places as well. It is a poetic revue in verse in which the poet instils energy, confidence, power and enthusiasm into minds of Indian people and touches upon all aspects of their lives. The poverty, ignorance, dirt, mud, daily struggle against liars, thieves, pickpockets, touts, politician and darkness have been depicted not as weaknesses of people in Indian culture but their strengths, because they have courage to overcome darkness and see the advent of a new era. The poems teach people morality, guide them to relive their pains and lead them to their salvation. Patricia Prime’s opinion is remarkable: “Sharma writes about his family, men and women, childhood, identity, roots and rootlessness, memory and loss, dreams and interactions with nature and place. His poised, articulate poems are remarkable for their wit, conversational tone and insight” (138). Through the poems in the collection, the poet dovetails the niceties of the Indian culture, and communicates its beauty and uniqueness meticulously. The language of the poem is lucid, elevated and eloquent. The poet’s use of diction seems to be very simple and colloquial like that of an inspiring teacher. On the whole the book is more than just a collection of poems as it teaches the readers a lot about the world around them through a detailed Glossary appended soon after the poems in the collection. It provides supplementary information about the terms used abundantly in Indian scriptures, myths, and other religious and academic writings. The Glossary, therefore, plays pivotal role in unfolding the layers of meaning and reaching the hearts of the global readers. The “Afterwords” appended at the end, enhances readability of poems and displays worldwide acceptability, intelligibility, and popularity of the poet. The Afterwords are a good example of authentic Formalistic criticism and New Criticism. They indirectly teach a formative reader and critic the importance of forming one’s opinion, direct reading and writing without any crutches of the critics.

At the end of the episode “Crowd Pleasers,” from her television series Nigella Feasts, we see British food writer and television cook Nigella Lawson in her nightgown opening her fridge in the dark. The fridge light reveals the remnant dishes of chili con carne that she prepared earlier on in the programme. She scoops up a dollop of soured cream and chili onto a spoon and shovels it into her mouth, nods approvingly and then picks up the entire chili dish. She eats another mouthful, utters a satisfied “umm” sound, closes the fridge door and walks away, taking the dish of chili with her. This recurring scenario at the end of Nigella’s programmes is paradoxically constructed as a private moment to be witnessed by many viewers. It resembles acts of secret eating, personal food habits and offers a glimpse of the performed self, adding to Nigella’s persona. Throughout Nigella’s programmes there is a conscious tension between the private and public. This tension is confounded by Nigella’s acknowledgement of, and direct address to, the viewers, characterised by the knowing look she gives to the camera when she tastes her food, licks her fingers as she cooks, or reveals her secret chocolate stash in her store cupboard; the overt performance of supposedly surreptitious gestures. Through her look-back at the camera Nigella performs both sin and confession, communicating her guilty-pleasure as she self-consciously reveals this pleasure to the viewers. At the start of her performance Table Occasions (2000), solo artist Bobby Baker explains that there are strict rules that she must follow, the most important being that she must not walk on the floor. Baker then hosts a dinner party (for imaginary guests), balancing on top of the table and chairs wearing high-heeled shoes. When the ‘meal’ is finished Baker breaks her rule; she gets down from the table and walks freely across the performance space, giving the audience a knowing look of mock-surprise, as if everyone was seduced into believing in the compulsory nature of her rule (Table Occasions).In this performance Baker confesses her anxiety and discomfort in the act of playing the host. By breaking rules of common etiquette as well as her own abstract rules, she performatively constructs her “sins” and her “confessions.” Baker’s look-back at the audience reveals her self-conscious “confessing self.” Confessing the SelfAs a practitioner-researcher working in the field of autobiography, developing from artists such as Baker, my practice attempts to articulate the impact that popular cultural performances of food may have upon current notions of food, identity and the self. I seek to use food as a vehicle for investigating and revealing multiple versions of self. The “confessing subject” in contemporary performance practice has been discussed extensively by Deirdre Heddon, particularly as a means of “questioning the subject of confession” (Daily 230). This paper is concerned with acts of disclosure (and confession) that occur through food in popular culture and performance practice. My particular focus will be my durational performance work If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake, commissioned by the Alsager Arts Centre Gallery, as part of the Curating Knowledge Residency Programme initiated by gallery curator Jane Linden. I will explore strategies of performative disclosure through food in both live and mediated contexts, in order to investigate Heddon’s distinction between “confessional performance art” and “the gamut of currently available mass-mediated confessional opportunities” (Daily 232). My aim is to explore a current cultural relationship between food, confession and autobiography through the lens of performance. My concern lies in the performance of self and the ways in which the self is disclosed through food and I use Nigella’s and Baker’s performances, as confessional/autobiographical material, to develop my argument. Although operating in different mediums, Baker (as performance artist), and Nigella (as media personality), both use food to perform the self and employ autobiographical strategies to reveal aspects of their personal domestic lives to their audience.It is necessary to acknowledge that Nigella is first and foremost a commodity and her programmes function as part mediation of her cooking brand, along with her cookbooks and cookware. Intentionality aside, I am interested in the ways in which Nigella engages her viewers, which is culturally indicative of the wider phenomenon of the celebrity chef and strategies of performative disclosure operating through food. My argument rests on the premise that Nigella’s strategies are similar to those used by Baker resulting in a slippage in Nigella’s position between Heddon’s opposing categories. Nigella not only adopts a confessional, intimate and personal mode of address but also uses it to construct her persona, lifestyle and perform a version of her autobiography. Gabrielle Helms, in analysing reality TV programmes such as Big Brother, observes that Through the use of direct camera address, the confession creates the sense of immediacy and urgency needed to establish a special ‘live’ relationship between speaker and audience, one that remains unattainable in written confession (53).Nigella also establishes a “live” relationship with her audience through her personal and direct camera address. Yet Nigella’s programmes are only reflective of her supposed actual domestic life. We witness fragmented images of her pampering in her bedroom, carefully choosing vegetables from a market stall and taking her children to school. The seamless flow of these constructed “life” images perform a mock-autobiography of Nigella’s life. Baker’s practice is rooted in the domestic and through her use of food in performance she communicates her ‘everyday’ experiences as a wife, mother and artist. Baker’s work belongs to a field of resistant arts practice through which she discloses her often painful and difficult relationship to femininity and the domestic. Baker has stated “food is like my own language” (Iball 75), and it is a highly visceral, visual language that she uses to communicate her autobiographical material. Lucy Baldwin describes that Baker’s “taboos collect around the visceral qualities of food: its proximity to the body and to emotions, and its ability to represent what we would rather forget” (37). Baker often uses foods in ways that invoke the internal body. In Drawing on a Mother’s Experience, she narrates personal stories of motherhood whilst marking foodstuffs onto a sheet to map out her memories and experiences. In Baker’s final moment she rolls herself up in the sheet, The foodstuffs begin to bleed through the second skin of the sheet. Gradually, this seepage takes on the appearance of internal organs-a mapping of capillaries and veins, a tacit revelation of interior matters (Baldwyn 51). The blending of both food and memories marked onto Baker’s body discloses a fluid, unstable identity. As Claire MacDonald states Baker “allows the self to operate as a site where the meanings of identity can be contested” (191). By nature, autobiographical performance problematises notions of identity and self and there is always a tension between the real and the fictional. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson have stated that:Autobiographical acts[…]cannot be understood as individualist acts of a sovereign subject, whole and entire unto itself. And the representation produced cannot be taken as a guarantee of a ‘true self’, authentic, coherent, and fixed (11). Baker’s construction of “self” is multi-faceted, sitting in between the fictional and the “real.” Using food, Baker layers together the pieces of “Bobby,” past and present, onto her live body and unites her “self” with her other “selves” in an intimate and ‘real’ shared experience with a live audience; the weaving of a complex, engaging and moving autobiography. My interest is to further explore how food can be used to disclose and contest identity. Food ExposuresFood is inherent in social and public events, in meal times and celebrations, yet food is also kept behind closed doors and inside domestic kitchens constituting the stuff of private lives. Crossing the realms of private and public, food has become a vehicle for spectacle and entertainment in media culture and is used to reveal identities, subjectivities and personal histories. Cooking programmes belong to the hybrid reality TV genre, frequently termed “infotainment.” Signe Hansen has usefully observed that “when we watch shows like Big Brother, Survivor or Temptation Island, our position as consumers is exactly that of watching Jamie Oliver [or] Nigella Lawson” (55). Helms has also argued that reality TV shows “focus on auto/biographical performance,” and asks, “are the lives represented on these shows, and the ways they are represented, reflections of contemporary understandings of self and identity?” (46). In this vein, I propose that the lives represented in food media such as Nigella’s are also constructed through the autobiographical, and Nigella’s particular relationship with food furthers a trend of self-disclosure that capitulates into abject voyeurism. Television chefs each have their own unique, “hypertrophied personality” (Govan and Rebellato 36). Nigella’s persona is characterised through her personal and casual address, which bridges the gap between “food expert” (performer) and “novice” (viewer) previously circumscribed by food experts like Delia Smith. Hansen fittingly observes that “the experience of befriending, of coming to ‘know,’ the person behind the persona is one of the particularities of today’s media climate” (55). Nigella allows us to “know” her better by revealing her greed, laziness, messiness and lack of self-control. She reveals her personal relationship to recipes, such as those originating from her grandmother, or cooking utensils that hold sentimental value, like her mother’s wooden spoon. The glimpses of self that Nigella exposes through food are framed as confession and privilege her viewers with “inside knowledge.” Although the fictional/real tension prevails, it is the performance of autobiography that is significant here. The mock-autobiographical address entices viewers and transforms what is essentially an advertisement into a particular practice of visual engagement, one that is founded upon the pleasures of witnessing and consuming disclosures. In the case of reality TV an element of guilty pleasure remains on the part of the viewer, who is learning about someone’s private life without having to reciprocate[…]By observing others from a position of omniscience, viewers can live vicariously and can engage without having to take responsibility[…]they can move between attraction and revulsion without consequences for themselves (Helms 55).Both Nigella and Baker embody “attraction and revulsion” to different ends—in Kitchen show (1991), Baker performs thirteen actions that each result in a “mark” being left on her body. Baker’s sixth action is opening a fresh tub of margarine, confessing her delight in the “satisfying nipple peak in the centre.” Baker then subverts her desire, smearing the margarine onto her face, crossing between “attraction” and “revulsion.” Baker’s marks “defamiliarize the ordinary and everyday to provoke new […] disturbing insights” (Blumberg 197).In contrast to the sanitised aesthetic trope of cooking programmes, in which ingredients are pre-prepared and separated into glass bowls, “the hallucination of hygiene” (Govan and Rebellato 37), Nigella gets her hands dirty and heightens moments when her body comes into contact with food. In her “Comfort Food” episode from Nigella Bites, she aggressively pierces the insides of the lemon declaring, “I quite like this ritual disembowelling of the lemon.” Her fingertips often disappear into her mouth as she licks and tastes the food that she “disembowels.” Using Kristeva’s theory of abjection, Emma Govan and Dan Rebellato acknowledge the precariousness of the boundaries of the body, stating that “the passages into and out of the body are always dangerous sites for the self” (33). Nigella crosses the boundaries of etiquette and hygiene and exposes an open, wanting body that is both “repulsive” and “attractive”. Her persona is also characterised through the trope of consumer seduction, in terms of her adopting a flirtatious manner and playful aligning of cooking acts with sexual pleasure. She seductively describes the “wonderful primrose emulsion” colour of the lemon sauce, which matches her own yellow T-shirt, thus presenting her self as food, becoming both desirable and consumable. However, Nigella’s sexualised gluttony borders on the grotesque; risotto made, Nigella confesses that, “in theory, this would be enough supper for two, in practice, I rather feel, one”. She eats it immediately, standing in the kitchen eagerly taking in large spoonfuls whilst glancing knowingly at the camera. Bakhtin’s notion of the “grotesque body,” Bob Ashley, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones and Ben Taylor point out “is frequently associated with food. It is a devouring body, a body in the process of over-indulging, eating, drinking, vomiting and defecating” (43) and Nigella renders her own body grotesque. However, in contrast to Baker, the grotesque in this context functions to seduce a consumer audience and perpetuate the voyeuristic gaze. Nigella is part of a culture in which the abject (improper) body and taboo eating habits are fetishised through media constructions of self. Self DisclosuresElspeth Probyn draws attention to the trend of media food disclosures, “listen carefully to the new generation of television chefs, and one will hear them tiptoeing along a fine line that threatens to collapse into terrifying public intimacy” (20). This rather unnerving concern resonates with Heddon’s observation of a current “cultural omnipresence of autobiography” (Autobiography 161). Heddon suggests that “if we were confessing animals in the 1970s, we have by now surely mutated into monsters” (Autobiography 160) and questions the implications for performance, asking if “a resistant autobiographical practice is even any longer a possibility?” (Autobiography 161). Heddon posits Irene Gammel’s term “confessional interventions” as a potential self-conscious, subversion strategy that autobiographical performance practice can adopt. For Heddon, Baker “refuses the voyeuristic gaze” by only confessing “the mundane” and never allowing us access to one true version of self,Baker’s ‘secrets’ are not only moments of refusal, or moments of ‘privacy in public’, they also perform spaces in which I, in the role of spectator, can bring myself into (the) ‘play’ as I fill in her gaps with my own stories. Who then is the confessing subject here? (Autobiography 164).In my practice I am seeking to use autobiography to “strategically play with the mode of confession” (Autobiography 163) and pass comment on the ways that food functions in popular culture as a vehicle for disclosure, and perpetuates the voyeuristic gaze. My interventionist strategy then, is to investigate how notions of the self can be represented through performative acts of disclosure, in which versions of the self are manipulated, revisited and retold. All performance is citational and I would argue that a deliberate, self-conscious acknowledgement of that citation is a useful means to problematise the mock confessional, whilst maintaining an autobiographical mode of address. Heddon has also acknowledged that,In the performance of autobiography, the always already fictional nature of the autobiographical mode is made explicit. Such an acceptance and revelation of the constructed nature of the autobiography is vital in its connection to the constructed nature of ‘identity’ and the ‘self’ (Glory 2).This strategy is evident in both Nigella’s and Baker’s performances if we return once again to their knowing look-back at the audience/camera. Their looks re-play their own citational context and communicate a “knowingness” that they are ‘playing’ themselves, and in doing so they refuse the very possibility of an ‘autobiography’. If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a CakeMy performance work investigated how cakes and baking could be used to create and perform a version of my autobiography. The work existed both as a performative durational process and an artwork that communicated through predominantly non-verbal means. Using cake decorating techniques I designed a large cake sculpture consisting of a number of cakes that were representative of significant occasions, relationships and memories throughout my life. The sculpture was baked, decorated and assembled over five days in the gallery and spectators were invited to witness each stage of my process. The sculpture featured cakes from my past, such as memorable birthday cakes. Other cakes were newly created to represent memories in which there was no cake present to that occasion, such as saying farewell to my family home. All of the cakes were used in new ways to disclose a version of my autobiography. The work simultaneously constituted and represented a number of autobiographical processes. Firstly, prior to the project I underwent cake decorating tuition over a period of ten weeks and the performance acted as documentation of this learning process; secondly, through the act of baking and decorating I engaged in processes of revisiting and remembering personal experiences; and finally the cake sculpture became a living autobiography of my durational time in the gallery and the physical experience of creating the artwork. As a keen baker my interest in cakes has developed into my artistic practice. Here I want to briefly propose the significance of cakes (in British culture) as mediators and markers of identities and relationships. Cakes are used to signify and commemorate occasions and social rituals. Cakes function as rewards and treats, and they mark the pivotal moment of a meal or end of a celebration. Cakes are shared between friends and they are present in the personal and particular experience of those individuals. A cake is not just a cake; as a symbol a cake can hold associations, memories and feelings and act as mediators for social interaction. Probyn raises an idea introduced by Nigella that “baking equates with the ‘ability to be part of life’” (5) and from my own experiences I can recall how cakes somehow enabled me to feel part of life, as a child baking in the kitchen, thinking, doing, creating, making decisions and mistakes, that impacted upon my relationships and connection to time and place. My performance investigated how cakes could be used to perform versions of self and here, I will unpick the strategies of performative disclosure (as a means of “confessional intervention”) that were used to construct multiple representations of the self and explore the dialogic relationship between them. In doing so I will disclose my own intentions, experiences and discoveries in order to problematise my role as both subject and creator of the work. Baking My AutobiographyProgramme notes were displayed at the entrance to the gallery and provided a map of the space outlining the function of each room. These notes were written as if addressing the spectators directly and contextualised the work through confessing my deliberate re-appropriation of Nigella’s “domestic goddess” persona: Hello, my name is Jenny and I want to be a Domestic Goddess. Welcome to my world of cakes and baking. Here in the gallery I am attempting to bake my autobiography. I have designed a large cake-sculpture that I will be baking and creating during the week. Every part of my cake has been individually constructed using memories and experiences from my past. Each area of the gallery is devoted to a particular part of my process… The entrance to the gallery opened up into a small corridor space that I titled “The Domestic Goddess Hall of Fame.” Hanging on the wall in chronological order were five portrait photographs of historical British female food personalities including, Mrs Beeton, Fanny Craddock, Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson. The fifth and last photograph was of me. I deliberately wrote “myself” into a visual narrative of significant female cooks, with their own cooking styles. From the outset I attempted to situate my autobiography within a culture of self-referentiality (see fig. 1). Figure 1. Image: Rory Francis. “The Domestic Goddess Hall of Fame”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. The other areas in the gallery included a kitchen where I baked the cakes; a cake cooling room, where the finished cakes cooled, assisted by portable fans; a cake decorating corner where I conducted the sugar craft and exhibited an array of equipment and materials; and a display room, in which the finished cakes were arranged into the final sculpture. The audience were invited to participate in various activities, such as licking the bowl, assisting me with simple baking tasks and receiving a decorating demonstration. On the final day the finished cake sculpture was cut-up and offered to the audience who shared in the communal eating of my-life-in-cake (see fig. 2 and fig.3).Figure 2. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “The Cake Cooling Room and The Sugar Craft Corner”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. Figure 3. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson.” The Kitchen”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. The isolating and displaying of each process revealed the mechanics behind both the artwork and the experiences of cake decorating. Yet the unveiling of these processes in the citational space of a gallery was intended to point up the construction of “personal” domestic space. Although I welcomed the audience into “my kitchen” and lived and breathed the duration of the project, there was no mistaking that this space was a gallery and bore no “real” resemblance to my (domestic) self or my autobiography, in the same way that Nigella’s domestic mise-en-scene, constitutes both her kitchen and her studio. In keeping with Heddon’s advocated “confessional intervention” the spectators were not presented with a clear autobiographical narrative. Rather, the cakes were used alongside structuring devices to present a collection of experiences that could be revisited, manipulated and retold; devices I devised in accordance with Daniel Schachter’s notion that,Memories are records of how we have experienced events, not replicas of the events themselves […] we construct our autobiographies from fragments of experience that change over time (qtd. in Smith and Watson 9). The durational nature of the project meant that audience members witnessed my cakes at varying stages of development and on the first morning there were no completed cakes present in the display room. However, three diagrammatic drawings were displayed on the walls depicting different versions of what the final sculpture may look like; technical drawings of top and side projections and a more personal mapping of fragmented stories and memories (see fig. 4). Figure 4. Image: Rory Francis. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “Side Projection Scale 1:4.5”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. Twenty-two nametags were carefully positioned on the display table indicating where the finished cakes would eventually be placed. The names of each cake were indicative of an event or memory such as, “The Big Pink Sofa” or “Failed Mother’s Day” and performatively framed each cake within a personal narrative. Each cake had its own song, which the audience could play out loud on an Ipod at any point during the process, whether they were looking at the finished cake or just its nametag and a blank space. The songs were designed to locate my memories within a shared cultural frame of reference that although specific to my memory, would evoke associations personal to the viewers allowing the possibility of other self-narratives to arise from the work. The audience were also invited to take part in the continual documenting of my process. A plasma TV screen in the corner of the gallery that I titled “Cake Moments,” displayed a continual loop of photographs of past cakes from my life. The audience were instructed to take photographs of any interesting “cake moments” they encountered during their stay and at the end of each day these were added to the display. Like the cake sculpture, this collection of photographs built up over the five days. Many visitors chose to photograph themselves interacting in some way with the cakes and baking materials, thus becoming part of my autobiography. The photographs looped in random order and blurred together personal life shots with the constructed shots from the gallery, fictionalising the audience participation and potentially disrupting any singular notion of self (see fig. 5).These interactive features performatively disclosed fragments of personal memory and served to involve the audience in the self-conscious authoring of my autobiography. Whatever the stage of the process, the audience were encouraged to fill in the gaps with their own self-narratives. To return to Heddon’s question, “Who then is the confessing subject here?” (164). I find a possible answer lies inside my cakes. The UndisclosableMy memories, like a cake, were beaten and mixed together and like the icing, bled into each other to create a fluid yet fragmented autobiography. The finished cake sculpture combined an array of colours, textures, tastes, shapes and images. Some cakes were inscribed with photographs, personal texts, quirky features (a tower of custard cream biscuits) and disturbing details (a red gash cutting through a cake’s surface or a deliberately burnt black “Failed Mother’s Day” heart) (see fig. 6) Figure 5. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “Cake Sculpture”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. As an artistic tool I found the layered form of a cake enabled me to represent multiple versions of memories and disclose complex feelings (albeit highly subjective) through a visually expressive and creative art form. In keeping with Bakhtinian dialogism, in which the self is only constructed through the interrelationship with the other, I performatively disclosed a version of my autobiography that was not located somewhere inside me, but somewhere in between both mine and the audience’s subjectivities. As Michael Holquist has expounded from Bakhtin:In order to see ourselves, we must appropriate the vision of others[…]the Bakhtinian just-so story of subjectivity is the tale of how I get my self from the other: it is only the other’s categories that will let me be an object for my own perception. (28)This inter-relationship between “self” and “other” was epitomised through the act of communal ingestion and the spirit of event-ness that comes with the territory of food. Once cut up, dismembered and eaten the cakes revealed all, in the same way that my process had exposed in its duration and excess the mess, my exhaustion, the remnants of congealed icing and the smudges and stains on my aprons. Yet in concealing nothing, the work inherently refused to disclose. Once the cakes passed through the mouth of the “other” they gave way to that “other”, that “self”, revealing only cake and sugar. The mouth machine is central to the articulation of different orders that go beyond the division of public and private: the tongue sticks out, draws in food, objects and people. In eating we constantly take in and spit out things, people, selves. (Probyn 21)In giving my cakes and “myself” to the spectators, I relinquished ownership of both my cakes and the artwork. I looked on as my cakes were eaten and destroyed, redirecting the voyeuristic gaze towards the audience and the private, personal, undisclosable experience of ingestion (see fig. 7)I started out baking myself, but I ended up baking you, and then together we ate each other. Figure 6. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “Cake and Sugar”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. ReferencesAshley, Bob, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones, and Ben Taylor, eds. Food and Cultural Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.Baldwyn, Lucy. “Blending In: The Immaterial Art of Bobby Baker’s Culinary Events.” The Drama Review 40.4 (1996): 37–55.Blumberg, Marcia. “Domestic Place as Contestatory Space: The Kitchen as Catalyst and Crucible.” New Theatre Quarterly 55.33 (1998): 195–201. Govan, Emma, and Dan Rebellato. “Foodscares!” Performance Research: On Cooking 4.1 (1999): 31–40. 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