Thank you, Pene. I am interested in what is being taught at universities in 2013, especially about the history of women. This will probably be a unpopular note, but my computer is on the way to hospital, so will not reveal responses for a while. The talk by David Hopkin, as summarized, seems riddled with assumptions! He is promoting a book. Please remember that men's brains are not wired the same as women's. This is not the 19th C (or even the first half of the 20th C.), but 2013! We all are familiar with folk songs, may sing them, but probably they are not relevant to our lives any more than popular "music" of our time. Humans sing. Written accounts of the past were usually kept if written by men, and were not kept if written by women. Men tried to diminish women, and some are still doing so. Women actually wrote under pen names. They chose to use an initial, or to use a male name completely unrelated to them. Their private diaries were not kept to the same extent as men's writing. Men's writing became the history we were forced to learn in school. I own some books published by prestigious universities that are full of inaccuracies, and appear to have never been proofread. The people who wrote them received university degrees. I'm not saying this about Professor Hopkin's writings, but do have some reservations about his objective. Do you suppose he has ever made lace? Can he imagine sitting still and making lace day-after-day, for a lifetime, in silence?? Yes, it was done in the convents. But, in some other centers of lace making it would seem normal to sing. We know that sometimes there was a reader to relieve the monotony. The brief story of the song about St. Alexis reminded me of young "lost souls" of every century. The following award-winning book was reviewed in 2003, and I recommend it again: "The Prospect Before Her - A History of Women in Western Europe 1500-1800" by Olwen Hufton. 638 pg. 1995 paperback from Random House (Vintage Press) ISBN 0-679-76818-1, $18. By a woman, best read in small doses. Jeri Ames in Maine USA Lace and Embroidery Resource Center --------------------------------------------------------- In a message dated 4/16/2013 4:16:40 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, p...@eggo.org writes:
His lecture was based on the 6th chapter of his book titled "Voices of the People in Nineteenth-Century France". This chapter tells about the 18th Century songs that had been collected & recorded, from the lacemakers of Vellave (Le Puy-en-Valey) while they made lace in their homes. At the end he told us of the popularity of the song about St. Alexis which many of us hadn't heard about: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=388 His hypothesis is that lacemakers considered it acceptable in the eyes of the church & the patriarchal society to remain single & work for the benefit of the poor by teaching & making lace. He thought that the songs were not sung to help the workers concentrate while working. - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
