MDDM23: Useful Prophecy or Bedlamite Entertainment

[Dave Monroe]

   "'Tis a brumal Night, for behold, it sweepeth by,'
announces Squire Haligast from the shadows, resuming
his silence as everyone falls silent to attend
thereupon,-- for the gnomic Squire, on the rare
occasions he speaks, does so with an intensity
suggesting, to more than one of the Guests, either
useful Prophecy or Bedlamite Entertainment.'" (M&D,
Ch. 36, p. 366)

Main Entry: bru·mal 
Pronunciation: 'brü-m&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin brumalis, from bruma winter
Date: 1513
archaic : indicative of or occurring in the winter

Cf. ...

"The rush of the Weather past the smooth outer Shell
..."  (M&D, Ch. 36, p. 359)

Main Entry: gno·mic 
Pronunciation: 'nO-mik
Function: adjective
Date: 1815
1 : characterized by aphorism <gnomic utterances>
2 : given to the composition of gnomic writing <a
gnomic poet>

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

haligast n. the Holy Ghost [OE häliî gäst]

http://www.hf.ntnu.no/engelsk/staff/johannesson/!oe/texts/imed/north/09_gls.htm

And see also ...

http://www2.dwc.doshisha.ac.jp/njteele/Sac.html

Main Entry: bed·lam 
Pronunciation: 'bed-l&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Bedlam, popular name for the Hospital of
Saint Mary of Bethlehem, London, an insane asylum,
from Middle English Bedlem Bethlehem
Date: 1522
1 obsolete : MADMAN, LUNATIC ...

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

"... it became the custom for the idle classes to
visit Bedlam and observe the antics of the insane
patients as a novel form of amusement. This was done
even by the nobility and their friends. One penny was
charged for admission into the hospital, and there is
a tradition that an annual income of four hundred
pounds was thus realized. This would mean that nearly
100,000 persons visited the hospital in the course of
a year. Hogarth's famous picture represents two
fashionable ladies visiting the hospital as a show
place, while his 'Rake,' at the end of the 'Progress,'
is being fettered by a keeper."

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02387b.htm

http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/bedlam.html

And see as well ...

http://www.museum-london.org.uk/MOLsite/exhibits/bedlam/f_bed.htm

http://www.museum-london.org.uk/MOLsite/exhibits/bedlam/b_rakes.htm

And from Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A
history of Insanity in the Age of Reason (trans.
Richard Howard, New York: Vintage, 1973 [1961]), Ch.
I, "'Stultifera Navis,'" pp. 3-37 ...

   "The classical experience of madness is born.... 
Madness has ceased to be--at the limits of th world,
of man and death--an eschatological figure; th
darkness has dispersed on which the eyes of madness
were fixed and out of which the forms of the
impossible were born.  Oblivion falls upon the world
navigated by the free slaves of the Ship of Fools. 
Madness will no longer proceed from a point within the
world to a point beyond, on its strange voyage; it
will never again be that ugitive an absolute limit. 
Behold it moored now, made fast among things and men. 
Retained and maintained.  No longer a ship but a
hospital.
   "Scarcely a century after the career of the mad
ships, we note the appearance of the theme of the
'Hospital of Madmen,' the 'Madhouse.'  Here every
empty head, fixed and classified according to the true
reason of men, utters contradiction and irony, the
double language of Wisdom .... frenzied and ranting
madness, symbolized by a fool astride a chair,
struggles beneath Minerva's gaze ...." (pp. 35-6)

"The owl of Minerva flies at dusk." 

G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) ...

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