this is a production of Cornell
University
right I have the pleasure of introducing
Richard Rambuss who is presenting this
year's Gottschalk Memorial Lecture
an endowed lecture established in
memory of Paul Gottschalk
professor of English at Cornell and
a scholar of British Renaissance
literature and author of “The Meanings of
Hamlet” who died in 1977 at the age of 38
Richard Rambuss is currently Nicholas
Brown professor of oratory and Belles Lettres
and now chair of the department of English
you poor guy at Brown University has
previously taught at Emory and early in
his career at Tulane University about
which I will say more in short time he
is the author of “Closet Devotions”
which examines the issue of sacred
eroticism the literary or artistic
expression of devotional feelings in
erotic terms that has repeatedly
occurred over the centuries this work
has been a major contribution to the
study of sexuality and the religious
turn in literary studies his monograph
“Spenser’s Secret Career” is a path
breaking and really revelatory work on
Spenser's career his dark conceits and
his twin dedications to both concealment
and disclosure in his poetic work he is
editor of “The English Poems of Richard
Crashaw”
that weirdly wonderful 17th century poet
about whose devotional verses he has also
written he has a new book “Kubrick's Men”
forthcoming from Fordham University
Press
and he has current work in progress on
Milton and Mardi Gras Milton from which
today's lecture is taken as part of a
book project “Mardi Gras Milton: The
Golden Age of New Orleans Carnival and
English Renaissance Literature” this
current work I I now add revisits a much
earlier essay from “boundary 2” “Spenser
and Milton at Mardi Gras” an essay which
owes much to Rick’s years teaching at
Tulane where a former student of his
tells me getting seats in his classes
was like getting concert tickets
she added that when he had seminar
students over to his sweet home which
was painted yellow he explained that he
researched the kinds of colors of homes
in New Orleans that were used when his
house was built and chose them to paint
all the rooms at that time she said he
was beginning to explore the connections
between Milton and Mardi Gras through
the Comus Krewe that exploration
continues and today we will hear more
about it in his lecture “Milton Spenser
Shakespeare and Carnival New Orleans
Style” [Applause] Barbara I'm very grateful 
for that wonderfully kind and generous
introduction and its disclosure I'm also
very grateful to Lynn for all the
impeccable arrangements it's wonderful
it's a wonderful honor for me to deliver
this year's Paul Gottschalk Memorial
Lecture in this wonderfully historic
building I also want to thank all of you
for attending the paper that I'm going
to read represents something of a
departure for me in as much as it
approaches cultural studies but I also
think of it as a different way of doing
literary history here I'm specifically
interested in what literature meant and
to some respects still means to
certain Carnival organizations in New
Orleans known as krewes who put on the
theme parades that Carnival is
particularly known for there
it was reserved for the Crescent City to
mold the Carnival festivities into one
grand and comprehensive system and plan
for the enjoyment of the people without
fee or reward public spectacle and
pageants as splendidly brilliant and
beautiful as the genius and skill of man
and the lavish expenditure of money
could make them despite such a claim
charming in its civic chauvinism there
is of course no one grand and
comprehensive scheme or story to tell
about Carnival in New Orleans anyone
who's ever gone down there to be caught
up in these strange revelries knows as
much in New Orleans Carnival gives rise
to myriad put-on fantastical counter
kingdoms kingdoms I term them because
heraldry and courtly-ness chiefdom and
royalty are this Carnival’s principal
official trappings
this is a public bacchanal with a king
named after the latin Rex the formal
conclusion of the Mardi Gras celebration
is the meeting of the courts where Rex
and his queen leave their ball to visit
Comus and his Queen at Comus’ss ball
those in the know know that Comus is the
preeminent figure in this festive world
a masked Captain presiding over the
ostensible public king Rex whose Latin
motto was pro bono publico but there's
also Zulu a self-described quote social
and social aid and pleasure club of
African American New Orleanian
men who have been parading
parodically since 1909 in grass
skirts and blackface mixed with white
face Zulu not only puts forward its own
rival king of Carnival Louis Armstrong
Louie Armstrong most famous among them
Zulu also claims primacy of place by
parading like Rex on Mardi Gras morning
itself most mysterious of all are the
Mardi Gras Indians so named the story
goes as a homage to the indigenous
peoples of Louisiana
took in and protected runaway slaves the
unscheduled appearances of the Mardi
Gras Indians and their astonishing
hand-sewn dayglo feathered and beaded
beaded costumes mostly elude the
Carnival tourists chiefs of their own
inner-city neighborhood tribes they face
off against each other in song and dance
in the streets to determine who is in
their parlance the prettiest sometimes
these counter courts all seem to
constitute their own more or less
separate even rival evanescent festive
worlds at other times their members
and celebrant observers overlap and
promiscuously mix among their rivalries
some of these New Orleans culture New
Orleans Carnival counter courts have
underlying counterculture impulses here
I might refer you to the guerrilla-style
trippy Mardi Gras footage in the hippy
Road film Easy Rider which turned 50
this year
other Mardi Gras counter courts tend to
express quite the opposite
making for a Carnival of conservatism
even the politically reactionary or
worse the latter disposition has been
more emphasized in recent scholarship
and as you'll see this without this not
without good reason
but just as there's no single story that
can be told about Carnival in this
beguilingly strange American city there is
also I'd argue no wholly comprehensible
cultural politics to assign in advance
and across the board to what any of its
festive enactments official or
extemporized may mean much less how they
may feel in the moment and forms of
feeling are something that this essay
looks to be about Mardi Gras the
Mardi Gras I know best firsthand dating
back many years ago to when I lived
there and taught at Tulane is gay
recalling those days a touch wistfully
I confess brought me back to John
Rechy's ruminative memoirist debut
novel “City of Night” published in 1963
by the vanguard Grove Press this pre
stonewall male hustler narrative rose
from LA's Hollywood Boulevard to the
Castro in San Francisco to New York
Times Times Square New York Times
Square each site an urban touchstone in
the post-war formation of American male
homosexual identity especially the
sexual part the narrative which begins
in Rechy's own hometown of El Paso
winds up fascinatingly way down at the
bottom of the Mississippi in New Orleans
in the French Quarter this just in time
for the increasingly feverish week that
climaxes and exhausts itself with Fat
Tuesday with the clamor of this strange
invasion of masculine vagrants and the
queens writes Rechy New Orleans will
awaken from its feudal memories of
Romance to become the center of our
desperate Today a microcosmic arena of
the electric night world James Baldwin
praised “City of the Night” for its quote
beautiful recklessness those are apt
terms for Rechy’s swirling in the streets
and in the bars account of Carnival
itself the low and the high the
sanctioned and the happenstance but what
strikes me about Rechy's rendering of
Mardi Gras for all the booze pills
tricks and drama is how its Midnight
Cowboy protagonist keeps time plus some
wavering sense of equilibrium by the
richly scheduled hallucinatory
appearance of the old line Carnival
parades he starts with Thursday's Parade
of the Krewe of the Knights of Momus the
mocking spirit expelled from Olympus
whose floats will sweep the dirty
streets trailing gauze like ghost-wings
followed by Friday's Parade of Hermes
patron of wanderers ruling over the
restless flocks over the travelers from
America city's nightmare messenger night-
messenger bringing the news of the
approaching Friday [sic]
what a queer ritual calendar it is by
the way to have everything pointed
toward a climactic Tuesday but before
that comes
next slide but before that comes the
Parade of Iris Carnival’s oldest still
parading female Krewe with its rainbow
did I was that on the other screen sorry
but before that comes Saturday’s
Parade of Iris Carnival’s
oldest still parading all-female crew
with its rainbow floats weirdly
illuminated passing in papier-mâchéd
splendor a surreal New Orleans snowfall
that year cancels the Sunday parades and
then all of a sudden it's Monday and the
Parade of Proteus who can assume any
shape any form white-robed mummers
ghosts of ghosts and at midnight Mardi
Gras begins in the morning Rex king of
Mardi Gras rolls with its floats passing
vividly beyond their bare physical
reality when night falls appears the
Parade of Comus the last parade of Mardi
Gras a gaudy funeral New Orleans a ghost
city for Rechy shape-shifts into his
ultimate city of night haunted and
fearsome but also alluring Carnival and
New Orleans is also where the adamantly
butch narrator’s own throwback trade
notions about masculinity and male sex
are most shaken and come closest to
being ecstatically abandoned but that's
another story for a somewhat different
paper
Rechy's incantation of these mythic
names Comus Momus Proteus Hermes Iris
and their otherworldly ritual pageantry
brings me to my chief subject which is
classic New Orleans Mardi Gras Carnival
I mean that designation in two ways
classic in the sense of the 19th century
origins of the groups responsible for
the city's Carnival culture of weeks of
themed public parades and invitation-only
society balls leading up to Fat Tuesday
I also mean classic in the sense of how
the themes for those public parades and
private balls were originally derived
from classical and early period
literature especially Renaissance poetry
and drama that story begins however not
with Shakespeare as some might expect
given his national popularity but with
Milton the signal event in this story of
classic New Orleans Carnival is the
formation in 1857 of the city's first
secret society Carnival organization the
group was all male Anglo American and
Protestant I emphasize these
demographics in view of how the divided
city how divided the city of New Orleans
was at that time politically culturally
and geographically with a francophone
French Quarter and an English-speaking
uptown or American sector this new
groups aim was no less than to take
charge in one luminous nighttime strike
of all the city’s of the city’s Carnival
traditions and celebrations aspects of
which these Mardi Gras reformers found
to be distasteful and decadent they
called themselves the Mistick Krewe of
Comus explicitly after Milton's masque
their understanding seems to have been
this courtly dramatic form that is of
the masque more schematic and 
allegorical than the plot-driven stage 
play was an apt genre for Carnivalization
given the mass emphasis on spectacle
symbolism music and dance though let me
emphasize here that this was not about
any masque but rather the masque of Milton
Milton that monumental Protestant
author serving as the Mistick Krewes
means for rewriting the civic
celebration of what was a Catholic
festival the Carnival theme of the
Mistick Krewe of Comus debut in 1857 was
likewise Miltonic though it blended the
dramatic and the epic Milton in a
stunning nocturnal procession titled “The
Demon Actors of Paradise Lost” lit by
torches and set to music it featured two
horse-drawn floats on the first rode the
Krewe’s masked captain in the guise of
Comus himself brandishing instead of a
sceptre his enchanted golden cup with
its metamorphic metamorphic magic powers
the second float depicted Milton’s
glittery Satan as he appears at his most
ascendant in book 5 of “Paradise Lost”
quote high on a hill far blazing as a
mount on him as a mount raised on a
mount with pyramids and towers from
diamond quarries hewn and rocks of gold
then on foot came a troop of 100
infernals also fetched from “Paradise
Lost”
just picture this there was Beelzebub
Belial Mammon and Moloch as well as the
mother-son allegorical duo of sin and
death from book 2 the seven deadly sins
were also part of the procession along
with the Furies the harpies Medusa and
the Gorgons you'll note the many
opportunities this subject afforded for
Carnivalesque cross-dressing for 19th
century fright drag here's your Dora
Welty's French Quarter photograph of a
later date Mardi Gras Medusa and death
all these impersonations from Comus’ss 1857
highly literary Hades were identified by
illuminated transparencies for the
instruction of the amazed spectators
lining the streets the pedagogical
aspect of this spectacle is as I see it
crucial no images of that first parade
survive but this illustration of the
next year’s likewise highly literary
pageant titled “The Classic Pantheon”
gives us some sense of what that
originary Milton procession may have
looked like Comus’ss Miltonic misrule on
parade these demon actors of “Paradise
Lost” wound up at the Gaiety theatre
where Comus held its first private ball
there the Mistick Krewe the only
attendees allowed to mask and that's
still the tradition so the krewe members
will mask at the ball but none of their
guests they stage in succession four
tableaux vivant
also drawn right from “Paradise Lost”
including a spectacular final 100 figure
tableau of “Pandemonium” which is to say
all of Milton's demon actors each scene
the English-language newspaper the “Daily
Crescent” reported approvingly the next
day was quote arranged in accordance
with the description of Milton's
immortal poem and acted out in a matter
which reflected the poetic taste and
judgment of the gentlemen comprising the
Mistick Krewe of Comus after the
that last tableau the lights dimmed one
more time and then quote again from the
newspaper a great arch of gas jets
displaying in letters of fire the words
viva la danse as masque-like theatre gave
way to dancing this Milton Carnival
extravaganza cost the princely sum
then of $10,000 its sheer signifying
expense another Renaissance masque-like
feature of Comus’ss Mardi Gras pageantry
propounding a cast status for its
founders then somewhere between
aspiration and actuality a commemorative
booklet issued by the Mistick Krewe in
1947 from which I cited earlier explains
that quote as the members of Comus were
socially important this meant that their
celebrations of Mardi Gras was orderly
educational and cultural end quote in
accordance with those imperatives the
booklet instructs the Comus’s name in
Greek signifies revelry in that he is
quote the god of festive mirth sprung
from the love of Bacchus and Circe
writers of seventeen of the writers of
the seventeenth century developed the
fame of
Comus our literature lesson here
continues the Mistick Krewe’s Comus
however is specified to be Milton's
Comus again I'm quoting a quote more
refined creation than the God of the
bouncing belly who appears in Ben
Jonson's masque “Pleasure Reconciled to
Virtue” so this is something I’m really
interested in if in my limited
imagination if I wanted to come up with
this I would have thought let's name
this Krewe the Krewe of Bacchus Bacchus is
perfect this god of celebration but
Comus always wants something more erudite
something more elite something more
mysterious something that it can teach
us about so they go for something that
you know wasn't especially known even it
had to be specified as different from
Ben Jonson who has a Comus as well and
of course then when you think of it how
perfect an avatar the God of the son of
Bacchus the kind of God of revelry and
then Circe the shape-shifting God so
it's really um it’s you wanna give them
credit for this this is just ingenious
and very erudite it's in these terms
then that this group of quote socially
minded quote forward-looking men as the
booklet characterizes the Krewe’s
founders presented their own take on
Carnival as the world temporarily turned
upside down
Comus’s erudite instructional Miltonic
public parade and private ball elevated
the low literally the lowest the most
infernal and made ascendant for one Mardi
Gras night the leading denizens of an
epic underworld these demon actors of
“Paradise Lost” yet the low of Comus was
itself culturally elevate their masque 
gushed another English-language newspaper
the next day quote displayed every
fantastic idea every fantastic ideal 
of the fearful whilst their effect 
was softened by the richness of the 
costumes I love this line in the 
eminent decorum of the devils 
inside [Laughter] as put on by Comus’s
decorous devils Miltonic pandemonium
became an inversion of Carnivalesque
inversion an assertion of a 
pronouncedly Anglo American Anglo 
Protestant literary cultural order 
counter to the city's multicultural 
euro afro Caribbean and Catholic Mardi 
Gras traditions the Mistick Krewe
of Comus by means of Milton
aspired to make New Orleans Carnival a
more orderly disorder this is Carnival
itself rendered upside-down which is to
say from Comus’s vantage right side up
over the years Comus would also come to
query history mythology religion
orientalism and opera as sources for its
fanciful but also well-versed Mardi Gras
cultural appropriations but poetry and
then drama remained particularly
important to Comus throughout what's
termed the Golden Age of Carnival the
Krewe made an elaborate public parade and
private ball out of “Spenser's Faerie
Queene” in 1871 in 1872 they did “Dreams
of Homer” in 1878 Scenes from the
Metamorphosis of Ovid these poets all
reappear in Comus’s 1890 auto-
anthological parade The Plangenesis 
of the Mistick Krewe this parade’s
“Paradise Lost” float depicts book war 
book sixes war in heaven not the most 
popular part of the poem [Laughter] this 
may seem like a curious choice for the 
theme of a Mardi Gras float but of course 
it refers back to the Mistick Krewe’s
devilish debut in 1857 the parade's
Faerie Queene float is also interesting
in as much as it puts on display what
Spenser's poem itself never actually
unveils namely the Faerie Queene herself
one wonders what krewesman had the honor
of dressing up as her the Mistick Krewe
celebrated its golden jubilee in 1906
continuing its work of self
memorialization with an extensive
erudite 20 float presentation of the
actual “Masque of Comus” a text it hadn't
yet depicted this theme returned the
Krewe to its Miltonic origins recall the
Krewe’s culturally Reformatory intentions
which may seem at odds with their
namesake himself Comus being both a
seducer sorcerer and an aristocratic
leader of a crew of intemperate revelers
the 1906 anniversary parade acknowledged
that by presenting two Comus’s the
wanton Comus of the anti-masque of
Milton's masque and the Krewe’s own
culturally elevate reappropriation of
him Richard Halpern has argued that
Milton's masque
serves as a reproof of both the lowest
and the highest forms of festive excess
of the debauchery of both the court and
the rural laboring class the Mistick
Krewe found in Milton's masque a text
whose cultural work could be seen as
mirroring its own designs with respect
to New Orleans Carnival that is both
Milton's masque and the Milton the Mistick
Krewe’s Miltonic Mardi Gras pageantry
sought to reform holiday festivity and
frolic by critiquing and curb and
curbing their excesses and improprieties
Milton's strategy as Halperin sees it
entails the promotion of middle-class
moderation is a median
between lowborn and aristocratic
wantonness the Mistick Krewe however
reversed that strategy which is to say
that the middle-class membership of
Comus affected the reformation and
reorganization of Mardi Gras by
promoting itself in these markedly
literary terms as the new aristocracy of
Carnival the next year's Comus parade
was “Tennyson” it then put on “Tales from
Chaucer” in 1914 and “Jewels of Byron” in
1931 along with these single-author
parades Comus also presented more
anthological fare such as “Familiar
Quotations” in 1911 and “Picturesque
Passages from the Poets” in 1940 the
literary miscellany or commonplace book
on parade was a particular specialty of
the Rex organization which goes by the 
designation The School of Design rather than
krewe Rex mounted “Illustrations from
Literature” in 1894 “Quotations from
Literature” at eight sorry in 1902
“Visions of Poets” in 1916 and
“History of Drama” in 1931 the last
parade featured floats for Greek and
Roman drama medieval miracle and
morality plays restoration comedy and of
course Shakespeare you may have been
wondering where Shakespeare comes into
this story in 1898 for the edification
and the entertainment of record crowds
that poured into the city for now Mardi
Gras was a national tourist destination
the Mistick Krewe presented a 20 float
“Scenes from Shakespeare” parade again
Comus himself rode on the first float
the parade's title card came next you'll
see that it crowned Shakespeare king of
both page and stage the float that
follows each the floats that followed
each depicts a single play notably the
one that comes first is “A Midsummer
Night's Dream” here what I've given you
is the beautiful art nouveau watercolor
design for the float by Jennie Wilde
festooned with these giant papier-mâché 
flora so some of these I'll be showing you
newspaper renderings and then others the
actual float design the artistry that
went into all these productions is just
absolutely astonishing and it's such a
thrill to go down to New Orleans to work
in the archives there and write down a
parade say Mistick Krewe of Comus 1898
and just be given these beautiful
watercolors and dance cards and party
favors it's like kind of a material
culture that I don't otherwise have
access to so I just really thrill to
this stuff of this stuff and just the
sheer artistry and beauty and it's also
very interesting a kind of gender
texture of all this I've been
emphasizing these original Carnival
krewes were all-male secret society
organizations but among the most
important artists of Carnival are 
these just an array of female
artists Jennie Wilde being one of the most
important so that's another interesting
texture here as well I love this slide
okay you can also see 
the riders drawn in on it yep
some of them too will be really
interesting down here not on this one will
be pencil marks saying eight riders on
the one side and five riders on the
other side really it's is really
interesting stuff that might come up in
some of the other slides you can see the
riders drawn in and one a crew member is
Titania atop a mushroom cap thrown and
the others is her fairy attendants and
again just the imagination that went
into like depicting these scenes and
probably having some relation to perhaps
stage productions but I also think
people like Jennie Wilde kind of
channeling their own reading and
envisioning of the plays is just just
extraordinary to me
the design’s most prominent feature is
the outsized garland grinning donkey
head in Milton's masque those who drink
from Comus’s cup are changed into this
that stock figure of Carnival the human-
animal there they become carousing bipeds 
with the face here I’m quoting Milton
of wolf or bear or ounce [lynx] or tiger
hog or bearded goat or in Shakespeare's
version of it ass the translated ass-
headed Bottom turns out to be I found a
figurehead for classic New Orleans
Carnival Carnival following Bakhtin is
bottoms up but again in this Carnival
Comus’s literary Carnival that means
Shakespeare's Bottom allow me to diverge
here a bit from the Renaissance to
illustrate something that the density of
cultural illusion characteristic of New
Orleans Carnival in 1883 the Phunny Phorty
Phellows a krewe known for its spoofs and
satire put on “Visions of the Stage” among
its notable impersonations was “Horsecar
Wilde” or as they called him at the same
time an “Ass-thetic Bray” [Laughter]
as the world's then most famous athlete
is here ribbed the year before Oscar
Wilde had gone on an extensive
cross-country American speaking tour
which included an appearance at the New
Orleans Grand Opera House which was also
the site of many Comus balls “Horsecar”
first shows up on the artfully designed
fold-out invitation for the Phunny
Phorty Phellows ball in an ass's head and
a dandy suit frilly lace collar a black
velvet coat knee breeches and black
leather pumps he's brandishing a
sunflower which you may know as a design
motif with the aesthetic movement this
queer creature rode in the Phellow's
parade on a float titled quote “To
Utterly Utter for Anything” [Laughter] a tag taken
from a roundelay by Robert Coote that
pokes fun at the aesthetic movement the
float itself represents Gilbert and
Sullivan's 1881 satiric Opera “Patience”
whose main character named Bunthorne is
a bachelor poet aesthete not everyone
agrees that Bunthorne is modeled on Wilde
but the funny phorto funny I can never
say it Phorty Phunny Phellows saw it that
way I also detect “A Midsummer Night's
Dream” intertext here that refracts the
Phellow’s spoof of Horsecar Wilde through
that play by Shakespeare who I'll go
back to the slide you'll note appears at
the top of the invitation glaring down
from on high on such ridiculousness
all this relates the Phellows Carnivalized
“Ass-thetic Bray” to Bottom “A
Midsummer Night's Dream” ass-headed acting
animal who you'll recall wants all the
roles in the play within the play for
himself
actor aesthete ass Bottom Bunthorne
behind too utterly preposterous the
translated translatable Bottom is the
festive figure of which New Orleans
literary Carnival can't get enough and
here he is reimagined by the gay male
Krewe of Petronius as a gay butch
Bottom who has taken for himself
Comus’s golden cup but now back now to
Comus’s 1898 “Scenes from Shakespeare”
parade this is the newspaper souvenir
fold-out parade bulletin depicting each
float in the order of appearance so this
would come in the morning newspaper of
the day of the parade this huge fold-out
thing I was actually able to find one of
these at auction so it's almost like
kind of cliff notes for the parade
that's going to unfold so you could see
pictures of the of the floats as they
come in each order and know what you
were seeing which would be very helpful
but even better than that and again this
is a way I think you're getting at how
instructional the context is meant to be
here on the flip side of this would be a
set of notes on each play and what's
depicted on the float so you really would 
be instructed in all this which I think 
is really interesting the flip side 
as I said provides commentary on the plays
likewise in turn a guide to Comus’s
outdoor Carnival classroom remember I
said “A Midsummer Night's Dream” comes
first
“Othello” followed “Midsummer” in a canny
cross-genre comedy tragedy sequencing of
plays about willful daughters and
accusations of magic the Othello float
is about storytelling its marine
decorations evoke the Moors exotic
overseas travelers tale “Othello” a krewe
member seemingly though it's hard to say
for sure in blackface is shown relating
his adventures to the captivated drag
Desdemona and her father
according to theater historian Joseph
Ropollo “Othello” was the first
Shakespeare play to be performed
professionally in New Orleans this was
back in 1817 and “Othello” was put on
there many times afterward throughout
the century “The Merchant of Venice”
Shakespeare's other play set in that
city known for its own Carnival was also
popular then on the New Orleans stage
this crowded float features Portia
though
here in her male guise during the famous
trial scene where Balthazar gets Antonio
off the hook the backside of the parade
bulletin explains that quote she pleased
with graceful mien the case she so
wittily wins a scene that emphasizes the
oratorical Shakespeare that is
Shakespeare as a model for speaking
another of his central
nineteenth-century meanings “Richard the
Third” “Hamlet” “Romeo and Juliet” “Macbeth”
were also then frequently performed in
New Orleans and they are also
represented in Comus’s 1898 “Scenes from
Shakespeare” here's the watercolor
design for the Macbeth float this
might be hard to see but it has numbers
here at the bottom for the number of
riders and where they might be and what 
was interesting to me about this float is 
it depicts as you can see two scenes
Macbeth with the witches and then Lady
Macbeth later in the play sleepwalking
and that kind of sorry that kind of
blending and juxtaposition that kind of 
atemporality I think is interesting
Comus also included three of the
romances I thought this was interesting
too so it put on “Pericles and Cymbeline”
maybe not what everyone would immediately 
expect [Laughter] would be popular
but it seems they have a taste for the
romances so there's um “Pericles and
Cymbeline” and as the final float “The
Tempest” Carnival season begins in New
Orleans with the Feast of the Epiphany
Twelfth Night so it's fitting that that
play is here also the “Merry Wives of Windsor”
gets a float no doubt for Falstaff who
seems to me second only to Bottom among
classic Carnival Shakespeare favorites
indeed for a time this festive minion of
the moon had his very own crew the
Falstaffian's founded in 1900 they
mounted their own single play “Merry
Wives” parade in 1914 so you can imagine 
just a Mardi Gras parade devoted to “Merry 
Wives of Windsor” and that's that's the
presentation rounding out the floats in
Comus’s 1898 Shakespeare parade are “Henry 
the Eighth” also an interesting choice “As 
You Like It” followed by “King Lear” to 
my mind another knowing
comedy-tragedy juxtaposition having to
do with exile and the pastoral “Much Ado
About Nothing” and “The Comedy of Errors”
and “Antony and Cleopatra”
among the notable omissions are “The
Winter's Tale” “The Taming of the Shrew”
and “Julius Caesar” it's always just
interesting to know like what the
Shakespeare is of the time and sometimes
it lines up with what still extant and
current and other times it's very
different as interesting as what plays
are here included or not included is why
Shakespeare had to wait so long however
for his own Mardi Gras pageant this
coming some 40 years after Comus’s
Miltonic debut in 1857 and more than 20
years after Spenser got his own parade
in 1871
perhaps the markedly Protestant epics of
Spenser and Milton were also then taken
to be more English than Shakespeare's
plays many of which have non-English
settings Anglo-centrism was an
especially prominent feature indeed I
think meaning of Comus’s Carnival
productions in the early decades take
the theme of its third Mardi Gras
presentation 1859s “The English Holidays”
or the parade put on by another old line
krewe the Twelfth Night Revelers in 1872
titled “English Humor” which presented
comic scenes and characters from Chaucer
Shakespeare Johnson Gay Swift Goldsmith
Dickens and on and on and on where is
all this ultra-Englishness heading one
answer it has to be said is Comus’s
1877 “The Aryan Race” parade and ball a
Carnival production that heralds what
the krewes proffered as the progressive
historical and cultural achievements of
white civilization going all the way
back to the ancient world to Egypt
Greece and Rome then to the Crusades
then to the Reformation and so on in all
ages it's printed program states the
Aryans have been the devotees of luxury
and from the earliest period of
existence as a distinct race they have
been dictators
of fashion that's certainly a bizarre
Carnivalization of Aryanism in any case
such discourse and displays make it hard
to argue with Jennifer Vaught when in
her fine study of Comus Momus and
especially the Twelfth Night Revelers
when she simply treats them as white
supremacists I'd like to approach this
dimension of Comus’s Reconstruction era
legacy through the question of
literature specifically literary genre
on that account it's interesting as I
just noted that Shakespeare had to wait
so long for his own parade one reason
for that I suggested may have been that
Spenser and Milton were then regarded as
more pronouncedly English another
speculation I have is that their epic
poems were then seen to be culturally
loftier than Shakespeare's popular
stage plays and Comus was all about such
elitism in any case the Mistick Krewe
appears to have been drawn to epic as a
literary source for what I think of as
its statement parades starting with its
own at once brash and august Miltonic
debut in 1857 there in one grand gesture
the Anglo-American Comus sought the
upper hand over the city's pre-existing
Creole Carnival culture Comus’s
thirteenth float “Faerie Queene” parade in
1871 this is the only thing I've been
able to find looking for years from that
apart from just a dance card “Faerie Queene”
float in 1871 was also a statement
parade the context however was now no
longer the city's Anglo Creole divide
and rivalry rather its reconstruction as
I've argued elsewhere in the essay that
Barbara referred to Comus’s Carnival 
presentation of what it termed 
Spenser's quote gorgeous romaunt 
[romance] of chivalry with all its 
Knights and tournaments and quests 
spectacularized a deep nostalgia for a bygone
societal order then on the verge of
being lost except to memory and
preserved only in the imagination
specifically here the literary
imagination the antiquated romance
glamour of “The Faerie Queen” served as
Comus’s poetic retort to the innovations
of Reconstruction and also the
perceived vulgarity of the carpetbagger
it's fabulous chivalric pageantry
included material drawn from all six
books of Spenser's epic as well as “The
Mutabilitie Cantos” again just imagine
that the whole “Faerie Queene” and “The
Mutabilitie Cantos” put on display 
and also rendered in the Carnival 
bulletin with you know paragraphs
on each of these it's just really
remarkable just in and of itself and then
of course there's the cultural work it's
being put to “The Faerie Queen” ostensible
project which had been which Spenser
announces in the letter to Raleigh of
fashioning a gentleman was also stressed
in the Krewe’s program materials that
endeavor declared the next day's issue
of “The Daily Picayune” newspaper
retained quote all the force today that
gave it meaning in the restless times of
the author in her book “Sensible Ecstasy”
which I'm using in my graduate seminar
this semester on poetry and ecstasy Amy
Hollywood briefly discusses how Bataille
Sartre Camus Picasso Beauvoir among
other French intellectuals put on a
series of what are called fiestas in
early 1944 during the final months of
the war when they sensed the possibility
of Allied victory describing these
drunken Carnivalesque nights in her 1960
memoir “The Prime of Life” Beauvoir
theorized that quote the festival is
before all else the festival is before
all else an ardent apotheosis of the
present in the face of inquietude
concerning the future according to
Hollywood Beauvoir inhabits the festival
as a historic event in as much as it's a
making present of a desired future the
Carnival that Comus and the other
old line krewes preside over again tends
to reverse this apotheosizing
whatever [Laughter] 
let's let it go
of the past we'll work on that
the past in the face practice at home 
[Laughter] of the past in the face of a
refused present that come through Comus’s
“Faerie Queene” parade deviated from
the tradition of being headed by Comus
himself this parade was instead led by
the Mistick Krewe’s masked captain in the
guise of Spenser's Prince Arthur on a
white charger a sign was carried behind
him announcing the quote characters who
require a firm will and strong arm like
Arthur's to subdue them were to follow
end quote then came four floats presenting
assorted allegorical figurations of
vice corruption duplicity and scandal
Comus’s Prince Arthur thus appeared as
both a romantic hero for this cavalier
south and a guardian of a past society
order under threat of change and upheaval
or as the Krewe’s own historian Perry
Young puts it quote Comus in spite of
Reconstruction was yet the monarch of
his own phantom realm Comus’s
engagement with Shakespeare in 1898
seems to me to operate in a different
register than it's more politically
interventionist early Milt earlier
Milton and Spenser parades Shakespeare's
presented here as I've been suggesting
as the master storyteller comic and
tragic his works are also a handbook for
effective oratory and moral
lessons too Mardi Gras Shakespeare stands
for education entertainment and good
taste even goodness itself the final
passage on the foldout Carnival bulletin
for the “Scenes from Shakespeare” parade
rhapsodizes that beautiful as a dream
gradually falls away the closing scene
in Comus’s masque of Shakespeare never to
return but long to be remembered as one
of the most instructive and brilliant as
well as well as one of the most familiar
pageants that his jovial majesty that is
Comus has ever presented to his people for
their entertainment note how once again
the Mistick Krewe of Comus circles back
to its origins in Milton's masque by
making a masque out of Shakespeare also
note the invocation of 
familiarity this notion may also set
Comus’s “Scene from Shakespeare” “Scenes
from Shakespeare” apart from its Milton
and Spenser Carnival productions
Shakespeare has come to represent the
familiar the familiar in which
paradoxically one is ever still to be
lessoned entertaining education in what
is old what is familiar what is
established this in the hands of the old-
line krewes becomes a Mardi Gras trope
recall for instance Comus’s 1911 parade
“Familiar Quotations” and it's 1940
“Picturesque Passages from the Poets”
which was billed as quote familiar
incidences from great poems in my
remaining time I'd like to run through
more Mardi Gras Shakespeare focusing in
particular on that Carnival favorite “A
Midsummer Night's Dream” earlier I
brought up Comus’s 1859 anglophilic
“The English Holidays” which was the first
of its parades to head right into the
French Quarter so again picture that as
as a gesture we're going to go into
the quarter for the first time and our
parade is “The English Holidays” it's
“Midsummer Eve” float melded Shakespeare
Titania Bottom Puck with Spenser St.
George and the dragon “A Midsummer
Night's Dream” also represents
Shakespeare in Momus’ 1878 “Realm of
Fancy” this float the rare Carnival
depiction of that play without Bottom
Shakespeare is featured in Rex's 1895
“Chronicles of Fairyland” 1908 “Classics of
Childhood” that's another thing too that
I haven't really worked up enough but
Mardi Gras is very much about culture
it's also again this is the Comus
version of it and and then everyone
taking their cues from that it's about
culture but it's also about commerce and
it's also about childhood and fantasy so
this notion of
Spenser for children Milton for children
especially Shakespeare for children
there seems to be more work to be done
on that so you have a “Classics of
Childhood” in which Shakespeare appears
and then in 1916 this is still Rex
“Visions of the Poets” the Shakespeare
float in all these Mardi Gras
productions is “A Midsummer Night's Dream”
the float accorded to Shakespeare in
Rex's 1931 “The Story of Drama” depicts
three plays “Hamlet” “Romeo and Juliet” and “A
Midsummer” which is as you see
represented by Bottom with his ass head
in 1892 Hermes presented “Dream on a
Midsummer Night” while the non-parading
Krewe of Kolossos titled its 1908 ball
“Shakespeare and His Creations”
with sets composed of real trees flowers
and moss its two-part tableau form “The
Dreamer” and “What the Forest Says” seems
key to “A Midsummer Night's Dream” in 1948
the Krewe of Osiris put on an entire
“Midsummer Night's Dream” parade and ball
while Hermes did “Tales from Shakespeare”
the following year “A Midsummer Night's
Dream” got its own krewe in 1895 with the
debut of the Elves of Oberon naturally
their first presentation was that very
play the Elves did “Midsummer” again in
1923 and again in 1970 for the 75th
anniversary a newspaper account of the
latter describes in keeping with the
times quote punk Puck
accompanying the tableau action with
slides projections of a somewhat hippy
version of the play’s dialogue the
same year in 1970 Proteus presented
“Tales of Tiny Folk” Shakespeare's Ariel
gets a float so does Robin Goodfellow
and this is that figure’s second
float as Puck and here's the Shakespeare
float for the 1993 Rex parade titled
“Royal British Scribes” which is almost
like the Norton anthology of British
literature [Laughter]parading through
the streets it's interesting though they
call them not authors here but scribes
I think that has to do with the particular
context that we might talk about later
the irreverent uptown neighborhood
marching club called the Krewe of OAK
which stands for outrageous and kinky
celebrates a midsummer Mardi Gras in
August it's August 27th 2005 parade has
a distinction of the last held in the
city before Katrina Hermes which keeps
alive Carnival’s literary orientation
presented Shakespeare's Tempest in 2016
a text that here takes on new meanings
post-Katrina Milton may have been to
engage Nigel Smith's provocation quote
better than Shakespeare for the Mistick
Krewe’s foundational purposes and perhaps
also for its polemical ones but
Shakespeare was a presence in classical
New Orleans Mardi Gras from early on and
then enduringly so indeed he may eclipse
Milton as Carnival’s canonical favorite
and “A Midsummer Night's Dream”
Shakespeare's most liminal per liminal
play with all its strange hybrid
ontologies and all its threshold spaces
and in between states has been Marty
Gras favorite parade this you've seen
includes gay Carnival as further
evidenced by the gay Krewe of Arminius’s
1973 “Revelries of Titania’s Court”
whose subtitle wily promises an evening
with the faeries beautiful and fanciful
and learned often transported and
sometimes politically reprehensible
classic New Orleans Carnival is a
compelling complex archive of the
performative American afterlife of
English Renaissance literature yet
there's only one reference to New
Orleans in the recent library of America
anthology “Shakespeare in America” and
nothing exerted in it concerning
Shakespeare and Mardi Gras this absence
can also be observed in such critical
works as Frances Teague's
“Shakespeare in the American Popular
Stage” Kim Sturgess’s “Shakespeare in
the American Nation”
and Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason
Vaughan's “Shakespeare in America” as well
as many other fine studies of the
subject when it comes to American
cultural history of Shakespeare not to
say of Milton or Spenser the setting
tends to be too narrowly regional the
work that I presented today about the
meanings and uses of Milton Spenser and
Shakespeare aims to help redress that
narrowness by looking to the gulf south
in New Orleans which as Robert D.
Abrams puts it has quote provided
alternative ways of thinking about
almost everything in American life I
began by asserting that there could be
no one story to tell about Carnival in
New Orleans the aspect of the story
I've been recovering that makes me
nostalgic is how literature once
served there as a valuable at times the
most valuable cultural capital for
such civic pageantry and on the
question of cultural politics it's
important to register that the
conservative Carnival counter discourse
of Comus and the other long old line
krewes I've been discussing also gave
rise to other kinds of Carnival
organizations I've already mentioned
the African American organization
Zulu and the all-female crew of Isis
sorry of Iris which celebrated its
centennial this year there are also
I've signaled here and there throughout
this talk a number of gay krewes
dating back to the 50s beginning
with a slightly anarchic royal Krewe
of Yuga or more slyly known as just KY
yes that KY [Laughter] which was founded to
mimic and Mock the grandiosity of the
old line Carnival krewes even those old
line parades themselves may serve as
both setting and stimulus for
experiences and enactments of Carnival
unbound from any official agenda here we
can return in closing to Rechy’s
“City of Night” and its
decadent account of the Mistick Krewe’s
parade which I read as a queer return of
classic Carnival’s originary demon
actors white-robed mummers from the
parade spears plumed helmets catch the
light devils dance with
angels tinseled bodies sequined faces
the city that care forgot New Orleans
the Parade of Comus the last parade of
Mardi Gras a gaudy funeral suddenly the
devil leapt toward me in red with long
black horns he opens his arms to embrace
me in his batwing cape and I lunge
toward him anxious to be claimed and he
enclosed the flapping wings about me
devils danced with angels I don't think
one could come up with a more ecstatic
Mardi Gras dictum than that so I'll end
with it here devils danced with angels
[Applause]
thank you very much
[Indecipherable audience commentary]
that's a wonderful comment and a set of
interrelated questions and issues I
think maybe one way just for me to take
a stab at all that would be just to go
back to Comus itself meaning Milton's
masque and I really I agree with what you
said about the kind of tension between
the spectacularization and then the
Protestant stuff and in a certain
respect it's all peculiar only in a
certain respect it’s very peculiar Milton
never even wrote a masque because so much
of what Milton seems to be about and
Halperin talks a little bit about this
seems to be so masque=like this maybe
veers off topic a little bit but T. S.
Eliot said I think this is really
something he said Milton's Comus is the
death of the masque so there's like a way
in which Milton writing this masque writes
a masque against itself as an aristocratic
form also as a form if you know the masque
it's very oriented towards the senses
and a hierarchy of senses and and this
is an uncanny way given Milton's own
biography eventually going blind in the
form of a masque plus so much
skepticism about the sight and the sight
is where blear enchantments enter what
the lady does is she listens and she
says my ear is a better guide this is like
a remarkable statement in a masque it’s
all about just again to use that word
the spectacularization the allegoric
spectacularization and instead to put an
emphasis on on sound and listening the
ear how perfect for the poet of course
who would right eventually
go blind and write “Paradise
Lost” which he would say you know would
come to him in a dream and then he would
speak aloud the poem so again I
really appreciate your comments and
questions because it allows me to push
to the fore something whatever else we
think about all the kind of complicated
stuff around Comus and the other old
line Krewes just how erudite and smart
they were and like this project has
shown me never to condescend to them
or condescend to popular cultural
adaptations and tapping into high
literary culture I mean they really just
found the perfect thing around Milton
and the masque to kind of work this this
whole thing
I just want to follow up on that a
little bit but your talk made me
think about what brilliant readers
of Milton they are in that Milton is
actually containing drama
[that’s a really bold point]
in both “Comus” and “Paradise Lost”
[yes, nice]
I wanted to follow up on something
about Milton’s “Comus” which is that
it makes its major figure at the
end of the masque a lady and could you
say a little bit about the women in the
floats are these women in the floats
or are these men dressed as women
thank you for asking that
so I can clarify it's remarkable
they’re krewe members dressed as women and
as I was saying like it almost seems
like they go out of their way to find
subject matter where they can put on
drag you know there's another Comus
production I can't remember what year it
is maybe the 30s or 40s that I left out of
my talk because there was enough stuff
there where they do something like
famous women of history so they put on a
pageantry in which I think in fact there
aren't any male characters in it
whatsoever everyone in the krewe gets to
do drag but it's like fabulous drag
someone’s Cleopatra someone's Lady
Macbeth someone's on Mary Queen of Scots
someone's Ann Boleyn and so on and so forth
so all those female roles were drag
roles and again they seem smart too
like Shakespeare's really great there's
almost like you know understanding
especially when they put on the “Merchant
of Venice” or “Twelfth Night” when they
have the characters who are boy actors
you know who go into drag
and so on and so forth they’re just
kind of tapping in to all of that
does that feel like a part of the
agenda or is it I mean in your mind
I’m just sort of curious about in your
mind whether it’s of a piece with the
interest and sort of cleaning up of
the Carnival or elevating it or is
it something counter to that purpose
yeah hey thank you for it I want to
think some more about that I like like
cleaning up and dignifying and I wasn't
thinking of that particularly under that
kind of heading the drag stuff I think
of it as like very very Renaissance-y
and almost you know it's like a recovery
of earlier traditions of Shakespeare and
and so on and so forth that way’s one way
I think about it then the other way just
given I guess my own predilections and
interest there always seems to be some
kind of queer overlap or that's an
available meaning for there too even if
they're I don't know making everything
male there seems to be some spillover
another thing I left out of the talk
because again it was already too long I
found this letter just recently in an
archive in New Orleans about a father
in one of the krewes probably Comus
writing a letter to his teenage son in
advance of Carnival to remember that the
krewemen would be masked this is this a
secret but he wrote a letter and he said
you know son I just want to let you know
that your dad has the prettiest dress
for tonight and I forgot what character he’s
gonna play and and and father says to the
son and if you if you're paying
attention and you can figure out who I
am that beautiful Queen and the most
fabulous robes and scarves is going to
give her favorite little boy a beautiful
bauble this is like the most remarkable
father-to-son letter I’ve ever read so
[Laughter] I guess my larger point is 
on whatever they seem to be doing though
maybe it's the Carnival culture maybe
it's New Orleans which is just
alternative and other and weird there's
always this like overlap this kind of
queerness to it that I want to kind of
pull out of it as well I don't know if I
did a good job with your with your really
interesting comment 
I wanted to ask about the []
of instruction and how I just would
love to hear you talk I don’t know that
this is answerable how honestly meant
that is and if the instruction is just
actually this pretext to dominate this
space you know the one pageant that
went into the French Quarter for
example you know just seems sort of
like a takeover and instruction is
always kind of about domination right
yeah yeah
but I’m wondering how seriously the
instruction and that kind of that this
will be transformative in a kind of
edifying way is a real intention of
this production or if it’s really to win
that yeah that's interesting I'll think
some more about into that way my first
inclination is to take it pretty
seriously and the closest I came so when
I lived in New Orleans was a long time
ago and I went to a parade I think it
was 1995 or 96 my last year in New
Orleans and it was the the krewes that
I've been mentioning we could call them
old line krewes and then there are these
this other group of krewes called super
krewes which are probably more famous
this is like Endymion these are just
like these monster parades that couldn't
go anywhere near the French Quarter
because the floats are too big and the
crowds are too big so they're in what's
called uptown New Orleans and they tend
to have celebrity grand marshals like I
don't know when John Goodman was filming
in New Orleans Britney Spears was one
time Kiss were grand marshals [Laughter]
a whole range of people my point being like
very quickly about the krewes the story
I'm interested in the old line krewes is
more about literature and culture and
refinement and opera and mythology and
history and then the super krewes are
much more popularized in every way
but even this was Endymion which is I
highly recommend seeing Endymion this
super krewe it's very fun it's an
interesting experience they had a parade
and I think it was 95 96 that I saw
called “Master Storytellers” and it was a
mixture of kind of popular storytellers
almost like some were actually cartoons
but there were Sherlock Holmes Conan
Doyle was there and then there was a
float dedicated to Frankenstein and it
was so interesting to me as a kind of
snapshot of this instructional thing
so it's great float very fun
I think identifiable for all ages from
like kids who knew that was Frankenstein
I'll come back to that to people who may
have read the novel but the the
instructional tab placard that came
before it specified Mary Shelley's
“Frankenstein” [Laughter]
and I thought that was just so telling
because you know like I'm a first
generation college kid my parents
haven't read Mary Shelley's “Frankenstein”
but they know Frankenstein from the
movies and from popular culture but
there was this very specific educational
instructional actor we want you to know
pay attention this is Mary Shelley's
“Frankenstein” and that was all the way
into 1995 so my tech my hunch is
and I like what you're saying too I
think there's an overlap I mean it's
it's a gesture of domination I think
that the people who made up the Mistick
Krewe of Comus had this incredibly
powerful and quite right insight that to
control the city in New Orleans you
control the party if you control the
party you're gonna control the city
politically culturally civically
business-wise commerce-wise and so
there's certainly that but on top of it
and certainly interrelated is I think
this notion to be instructional if only
in fact like to say this is what we know
but then there's also this other
noblesse oblige texture too if you’ve
been to Carnival or seen it you might
remember that the maskers on the floats
or on horseback are throwing doubloons
and beads and trinkets so there's this
idea of like you know gifts from them
from these put-on noblemen yes
so lovely to see you again
so wonderful to see you too
and I still vividly remember the last
time you were at Cornell and you gave
a talk then that was really important
for my work for many years after 
oh you're so sweet 
and I feel like I'm sort of 
commenting on that as well but I
feel a little bit like a [indecipherable]
for bringing this up I want
to talk a little bit about the white
supremacy stuff and partly that's
because I’m in a field medieval studies
yeah where there's certainly a whole lot
of controversy about how we are using
the heritage of European British
literature as a sometimes as a
stick to beat other people with
and this seems
in Catholic multicultural
New Orleans like the Krewe of Comus was
also doing that while also being
generous and the thing I'm thinking of
from your last talk actually is the ways
in which sometimes when you do queer
theory you don't need the queers to be
all good all the time
oh yeah which is something I’ve really
been thinking about you and so it's it's
possible to say that this all-male Krewe
is in fact excluding women in the
interest of constituting a queer
sociality whether it's you know gay
sociality or not is totally beside the
point
is constituting a queer sociality that
is also a white supremacist and
wealthy it sounds like sociality
eventually not at the beginning 
yeah okay I was asking if these would
also be sort of the pillars of the
society which could also be the KKK members
can I interrupt yes and
and to make that even more specific
Joe Roach Joseph Roach who's a dear
friend and a great mentor and just so
important for me for this project in
certain ways he's the inspiration for it
I recommend if people are interested more
reading his amazing book “Cities of the
Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance” and Joe
when he was doing that very much to your
point found that the four old old old
line krewes Momus Comus Proteus and Rex
the membership of those krewes overlapped
it wasn't with the Klan it was with the
White League but you know really
a version of the same thing so at that
moment not at every moment at that
moment it really was just like that just
what you're wondering about 
and then I think my real question is
is this connection in fact a
necessary one and that I think is
the really hard and painful question
because it seems that the white
supremacy goes hand in hand with the
mission to educate goes hand in hand with
the Protestant anglo-american love of
Anglo stuff like at that moment in
history those things are bundled
together and one hopes that we can
unbundle them I mean one hopes that
cause I still like teaching Chaucer
but one wants to 
unbundle that without killing off the
queer celebration that is also a part of
it all and that's a very messy thing
these things are put together and I
guess my question is at that time
in that place did they have to be
yeah 
and I think maybe they were and
I wanted to ask you to talk about it
yeah I'm gonna thank you for
that I'm gonna take one of your phrases
that you almost use refrain like and I
think very well at that time so one of
the things I'm not sure if this is
exactly answering that question but it
gives me an opportunity to be emphatic
about something that was at that time
and one of the things I'm interested in
the paper was how and in my research how the
deployments say of English Renaissance
literature which I'm particularly
interested in but as also as I mentioned
there's a whole Chaucer parade that you
might find really interesting and then
there's a Tennyson one and a Byron one
and so on and so forth but at that time
the Spenser parade in particular and
there's another one you could put it
this way even more horror-full even even as
it's like in its own wicked way
brilliant and creative and Joe Roach
writes about this extensively right
after the Spenser parade in 1872 Comus
did “The Missing Links” which is a parade
that I used this term very well a parade
that at once satirizes Darwin and
evolution which was a new thing and then
also Reconstruction and the missing link
turns out to be a minstrelized
animalized
African American figure there's actually
a drawing of it that survives so again
it's really at that time and one thing I
want to say about that is at that moment
what's going on around Comus and the
other old line krewes is about
reconstruction or holding on to their
their notions of the Old South and the
way things are supposed to be and it
isn't only them too I mean there's all
those myths about the Cavalier South and
so on and so forth in romance literature
I want to juxtapose at that time with
where the story begins where the
division wasn't that the division was
anglo-american New Orleans and Creole
New Orleans and so that was that was the
opposition if that's the right word for
it and then by that later at this point
in terms of reconstruction those krewes
and those parts of New Orleans culture
that were maybes a
little bit oppositional a little bit
adversarial banded together to fight
another enemy this time completely from
the outside but I think you know one of
the things we want to do is I'd be a
little careful in terms of like the
political work of everything of making
it monolithic that it starts off this
way it's essentially the same and
doesn't really change that's why I like
your phrase at that time and I
especially at that time this is very
much about white supremacy but earlier
it's about something else and to go back
to where it began when it was that Anglo
Americans they were that the the new
people in town the fellows who setup
Comus moved from Mobile which was
a rival to New Orleans and probably even
more powerful wealthy a little bigger
than New Orleans at the time they left
there and wanted to kind of set up
themselves in New Orleans and so they
were the the newer ones they were you
know they weren't the really ones in
power so so what I just want to like say
the story changes over time even though
certain things might be the same yeah
this is a comment not a question 
[indecipherable] but I wanted to
link together a couple of things that
you said going all the way back to
Comus’s emphasis on the dangers of sight
Milton’s emphasis on the danger of sight
and hearing as better in some sense
The Lady so I’m interested in the idea that
they're all men in these floats because
that's sort of Renaissance-y yeah
totally I agree but Comus was
performed in somebody’s house and
The Lady was peformed by a woman
yeah I know yeah
so the floaters are forgetting that
part of the Renaissance scene [indecipherable]
they’re very astute readers but they’re
also leading things I think there’s a
similar tension going on between the
seeing and hearing issue because they
want you to read something very
particular in their floats they want to
educate you about which Frankenstein
[indecipherable] it’s that one but the
floats are people speaking on these floats
no yeah so they're they have masks on 
they’re just something you see right
so I guess it’s possible they could but it's
unlikely that you’d really hear very much of it
right right so its bout sight
yeah yeah
but not hearing I’m thinking about
Milton’s other play which is [indecipherable]
that you just read if you read
things and then are imagining things
and saying that sight is dangerous
what is the tension between sight
and hearing there and is that part
of the educational component
I like what you're saying too about their
in a sense they're forgetting that in
a way in terms of their canon of drama
Milton's “A Masque” kind of stands out
because as you said The Lady is played
by you know Alice and then there’s Sabrina
as well but at the same time that's like
the version I was saying they also run into
a little bit of trouble when they're
gonna do the masque itself because then
they have to confront what Milton's
Comus really is and so that's why you
get like this doubled Comus effect which
I think is really interesting there's
the Comus of the Mistick Krewe of Comus
and then there's the the enchanter who's
rendered it where all his wiles on
various floats with The Lady manacled in
the chair the carpe diem and all that
as well yeah so it's it's never I
mean it's always it's appropriated it
goes through revisions it’s not
necessarily consistent it’s pliable
it’s used in certain ways
yeah and it’s like the popular culture
version of “Frankenstein” you don’t have
to be able to read to be able to be educated
by these floats that seems to be a layer too
Yes
So I was wondering with the krewes
that sort of rose up in response to
the old line krewes or the krewes
that had a different sort of cultural
profile from the old line krewes was
there a sense that they were responding
to and or reading and were interpreting
the texts or the tropes or figures that
the old line krewes were using and were
they also using the same texts in their
own ways like was there an attempt to
sort of do appropriative work
yeah that's a great question
I really appreciate that so as you
know the Mistick Krewe of Comus comes
first and when they debut I had
mentioned in my talk I gave you some
fee-- some reviews the very next day in
the English language newspapers again
these are the old days that I'm nostalgic
for where there are many newspapers now
there in fact isn't even a print
newspaper in New Orleans the Times-
Picayune has been absorbed into
something else and the French or the
francophone press on the whole mostly
ignored the Mistick Krewe of Comus and
then a little bit later a couple days
later there was a very satiric review
about it and in fact in a canny way they
picked up on Comus’s faux archaism the
way it spells its name and all the
alliteration and so on and so forth but
very quickly I think there was a sense
that this is a new way of Carnival and
these Mistick Krewe of Comus
presentations are spectacular and
riveting and everyone's talking about
them and those are the balls they want
to go to so then after the Mistick Krewe
of Comus was founded Proteus appears in
Proteus is Creole gentleman
and they put on where as Comus and these
are generalizations but they mostly hold
where as Comus is putting on the kind of
high Anglo canon Milton Spenser
Shakespeare etc with some Homer thrown
in Proteus puts on Ariosto Ovid Virgil
continental classics and they're even
more fabulous there's still something
kind of maybe you could say Miltonic so
Puritan about Comus even in its
elaborateness but Proteus the
Creole crew is just utterly spectacular
I should say too by the time that Comus
is doing to give you some more texture
to all this by the time Comus is doing
the Spenser parade in 1871 they're having
their costumes designed in the workshops
of the Paris Opera sending off the
designs a whole year in advance having
them fabricated there and then sent back
to New Orleans
but again as fabulous as all that is
nothing could touch Proteus and its
continental stuff and then there's
Momus which comes along and Momus is
just if your sensing like meanness
in Comus Momus is like
no-holds-barred it can just be like
outrageously satiric outrageously
political in fact sometimes even
brushing in a way which is remarkable in
the annals of Mardi Gras where in some
ways almost anything goes but not really
Momus runs into trouble with
censorship a couple times because it's
just so outrageous in what it's doing
and then comes Rex and Rex is for
the public good Rex doesn't wear a mask
some gentleman in New Orleans would be
named Rex
to this day that's probably one of the
greatest civic honors in terms of a
particular culture of New Orleans that
could be stowed upon a man so then
there's Rex who's like the king of Mardi
Gras and it's for the good of the public
Rex was the first crew to allow a Jewish
member when I lived in New Orleans I
don't want to go on too much we could
talk afterwards about this at the
reception was a heated moment in
Carnival
culture history because the New Orleans
City Council said even though the
Carnival organizations are private
organizations they function publicly in
terms of putting on these parades and
you know they're accompanied by the
police and cleanup crews and so on and
so forth and New Orleans had just enacted
civil rights ordinances that said it's
wrong to discriminate not only based on
gender not only based on race not only
based on religion but also based on
sexual orientation and it produced
several I think like months and months
of public hearings a lot of acrimony and
ultimately the decision was even though
they're private they function publicly
and they have to uphold civic ordinances
of non-discrimination so Comus Momus
and Proteus those three all said fine we
will not integrate in any way at all
we'll keep our membership just the way
we want and they no longer paraded so
they just said that was their gesture
and we're taking this away we’re taking
this gift away from the city but Rex
because it's for the good of the public
Rex is a special thing Rex brokered a
deal with the city that said we'll abide
by this but we'll only abide by it in
terms of I don't think at that point
religion was so salient we’ll only abide
by the non-discrimination in terms of
race but we won't do in terms of gender
there will be no women and there'll be
no gays no openly gay people but Rex
extended offers of membership I might
have the details a little bit wrong but
I think to four African American men in
New Orleans and one or two or three of
them accepted and then they put on that
parade that I mentioned “Royal British
Scribes” which was also very oriented
that parade was very much a response to
the civic ordinance and the trial so for
instance one of the floats and again
even even if you find this devilish
wicked someone's even told me you know
evil that there there's a there's
thinking going on there that's at least
fascinating thinking through literature
working with literature so one “Royal
British Scribes” parade float there
every member was dressed up as
Thomas More [Laughter] and it was all
about remaining loyal even to the point
of martyrdom there was another one they
put on a Dickens float but it was Miss
Havisham with everything going up in
flame [Laughter] you know like you know
this is what you've done you've torched
Carnival it was Spenser
it was Milton you know it was so on and
so it's really really interesting so
that's another another part of that
really interesting story so Rex
continues to parade sometimes Comus
has popped up now and again they
say I don't live in New Orleans so I
wouldn’t know but I think mostly they
don't and I think Momus will parade
now every year or so just just doing
whatever it wanted no one seems to be
putting any pressure on them so again
there was so much in your wonderful
question and comment I think some of
the newer krewes are trope-ing on
responding to critiquing to things
sometimes they're going into another
archive all together sometimes as you
see the Krewe of Yuga they're making
fun of what's already there there's even
a krewe one of my favorite krewes is the
Krewe of Barkus
there's a super krewe called Bacchus but
there's a Krewe of Barkus and that's for
dogs and that goes through the quarter
so it's again like another part of it
going back to you know the hard
questions that you were raising Carnival
too is just like so many things and as
Carnival it's not really containable and
even with something like Comus you've
got Rushdie going down there and having
a completely different experience of
even old line cruise and in working
literature out of that as well so I just
wanted to kind of like you know there's
really not just one story even with the
old line krewes even if they want to
present that there's just one story and
it's more than just queerness it's
just like other kinds of things as well
Please join us in the rooms next door…
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