VL-IV role reversal in Vineland in a general sort of way

[Michael Bailey]

Mark Kohut wrote:
> So, taking off from these obs and thoughts in the way
> a book might "generalize", as metaphor, its themes and societal vision:
>
> Vineland America lost its 'maleness"..[controversial for discussion effect].
> Women became the either-or aggressive acceptors of the power structure?
>
> These characteristics ARE a kind of given, as MB says, wo what does OBA mean by that?
>

well, in accordance with the "ecclesiastical history read" flowering
from robin's comments about the theme of heresy -

I look to the Albigensian dispute (very similar philosophically to the
dispute in the 60s and 70s between Lennonist hippies who believed that
God was a concept by which we measure our pain, and those staunch
traditionalists who maintained that Eric Clapton was God, but invested
with a lot more aggro thanks to princes who saw a chance to grab land)
glancingly referred to in Chapter 9 by the mention of Tulle, just as
earlier in the book Zoyd's friend Trent is a veiled reference to the
Council of Trent (which followed the Diet of Worms, and entailed the
eventual ensuance of Garrison Keillor's brand of Lutheranism), for the
key to your question.

Although, as Wikipedia sez,
"...the writings of the Cathars [ie, the Albigensians] mostly hav[e]
been destroyed because of the doctrinal threat perceived by the
Papacy. For this reason it is likely, as with most heretical movements
of the period, that we have only a partial view of their beliefs.
Conclusions about Cathar ideology continue to be fiercely debated with
commentators regularly accusing their opponents of speculation,
distortion and bias....", the article goes on to cite various cultural
differences that made the heretics difficult for the Pope to govern,
and various political influences that led to their bloody suppression.

This in itself would be an interesting sidelight and corroboration of
the relevance of the Albigensians to _Vineland_, since it's (inter
alia) about what became of the Movement...and where the Movement came
from, for that matter...

but then we also have the mention in the Slow Learner preface of young
TRP's attraction to the troubadours, so I will now learnedly
copy/paste from the  Wikipedia article on troubadours, snipping
heavily to favor my thesis:

"(Crypto-)Cathar
According to this thesis, troubadour poetry is a reflection of Cathar
religious doctrine. While the theory is supported by the traditional
and near-universal account of the decline of the troubadours
coinciding with the suppression of Catharism during the Albigensian
Crusade (first half of the thirteenth century), support for it has
come in waves. The explicitly Catholic meaning of many early
troubadour works also works against the theory."

and (w/r/t a more active role for women):
"The trobairitz were the female troubadours, the first female
composers of secular music in the Western tradition. The word
trobairitz was first used in the thirteenth-century Romance of
Flamenca and its derivation is the same as that of trobaire but in
feminine form. There were also female counterparts to the joglars: the
joglaresas...."

"The trobairitz were in most respects as varied a lot as their male
counterparts..."

"The trobairitz came almost to a woman from Occitania. There are
representatives from the Auvergne, Provence, Languedoc..."

Languedoc being at or near the center of the Albigensian Movement...

and the troubadours fed into the courtly love tradition...which also
exalted women, though in a rather silly way (though who am I to
judge?)

-- 
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