MDDM23: An Unforeseen Reversal ...

Tue Feb 26 02:26:51 CST 2002

"'I was the youngest of four brothers.  Each of us,
one by one, was well placed in life, until my turn
came,-- when, our father's Fortunes' having
experienc'd an unforeseen reversal, there remain'd
only money enough to send me to Paris and apprentice
me to the greatest chef in France,-- which is to say,
in the World.-- '
   "This is greeted with cries of, 'Really, Mounseer!'
'The world of Amphibia, perhaps,' and 'Here Frenchy,--
try a nice British Sausage Roll!'" (M&D, Ch. 37, p.
369)

"an unforeseen reversal"

>From Pierre-Yves Petillon, "A Re-Cognition of Her
Errand into the Wilderness," New Essays on The Crying
of Lot 49, Ed. Patrick O'Donnell (New York: Cambridge,
1991), pp. 127-70 ...

"... the whole concept of the Tristero seems to derive
linguistically from a reference in Eliot's The Waste
Land to 'le Prince d'Aquitaine a tour nobile' (line
430 [sic--try line 429]).  This line itself bears a
cryptic reference to Gerard de Nerval's poem 'El
Deschidado,' in which most of the major themes of the
Tristero are sounded (the exile into a shadowy,
marginal world; the former prince whose 'tower' has
been 'abolished'; the 'black sun of melancholia'). 
Nerval's poem, in turn, takes its titles from the
motto on the shield of the mysterious Disinherited
Knight who turns up at the beginning of Walter Scott's
Ivanhoe, and who will eventually represent both the
Saxons and the Jews evicted from their estates by
Norman chivalry...."

T.S. Eliot, The Waste-Land ...

http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/table/explore5.html

Gerard de Nerval, "El Deschidado" ...

http://eleves.mines.u-nancy.fr/~grangerf/huma/el%20deschidado.htm

http://cld.multimania.com/poesies_archives_nerval.htm

Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe ...

http://www.angelfire.com/ut/daikon/ivanhoetext.html

>From Charles Hollander, "Pynchon's Inferno," Cornell
Alumni News (Nov. 1978): 24-30 ...

   "In his apparent schema, paranoia should be
preceded by feelings of disinheritance. Actually
Pynchon does feel somewhat disinherited. Pynchon’s
family is a clan of bluebloods who were misguided
enough to align themselves with the wrong side during
not one, but two American Revolutions, one in the
eighteenth century and one in the twentieth century,
and who have suffered social and economic reversals as
a consequence."

http://www.itap.de/homes/otto/pynchon/inferno.htm

"The world of Amphibia"

"According to a history book called 'Holy Blood Holy
Grail' the earliest Frankish kings (Clovis I) used
both bees and frogs on their royal robes. Both have
been found in royal gravesites of Clovis and sons in
France. The reference seems to be to the royal line of
Frankish kings as frogs. They were the Long Haired
Kings who ruled in Gaul/France/Germany before the
Christianization of Charles."

http://web.archive.org/web/20001018173711/http://www.tbaytel.net/ccharron/frogs.htm

Baigent, Michael, Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh.
   Holy Blood, Holy Grail.  New York: Dell, 1982.

"According to some legends, it is known as that at the
time of the baptism of Clovis, king of the Francs, by
St-Remi, the frogs on the flag changed into
Fleur-de-Lis."

http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/frenchfrogs.html

See, however ...

"The origin of fleur-de-lis adopted as heraldic
emblems by the Kings of France is a problem that has
elicited much discussion. From the middle of the 14th
c, several works (mostly designed to legitimize the
Valois claims on the throne, against Edward III of
England), explain that the king of France 'bears arms
of three fleur-de-lis as sign of the blessed Trinity,
sent by God through His angel to Clovis, first
Christian king... telling him to erase the three
crescents he bore on his arms and replace them with
the fleur-de-lis.' This legend reappears at the end of
the 15th c, but this time the alleged arms born by
Clovis before his baptism are not azure, three
crescents or but azure, three toads or. Significantly,
at the end of the Middle Ages, Clovis' paganism is not
represented by a Muslim symbol (crescent) but a
demonic one (toad)...." 

http://www.heraldica.org/topics/fdl.htm

And see as well ...

http://www.fleurdelis.com/fleur.htm

http://www.fleurdelis.com/fleurs.htm

http://www.baronage.co.uk/bphtm-02/moa-15.html

http://www.prs.org/books/book340.htm

But we've touched on this before ... 

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0201&msg=64596&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9805&msg=27125&sort=date

So ...

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