Speaking in Other Voices: An Ethnography of Walloon Puppet Theaters (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series Editor: Andreas H. Jucker (Justus Liebig University, Giessen) Associate Editors: Jacob L. Mey (University of Southern Denmark) Herman Parret (Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp) Jef Verschueren (Belgian National Science Foundation, Univ. of Antwerp) Editorial Address: Justus Liebig University Giessen, English Department Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10, D-35394 Giessen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] Editorial Board: Shoshana Blum-Kulka (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Chris Butler (University College of Ripon and York); Jean Caron (Université de Poitiers) Robyn Carston (University College London); Bruce Fraser (Boston University) Thorstein Fretheim (University of Trondheim); John Heritage (University of California at Los Angeles) Susan Herring (University of Texas at Arlington); Masako K. Hiraga (St. Paul’s (Rikkyo) University) David Holdcroft (University of Leeds); Sachiko Ide (Japan Women’s University) Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (University of Lyon 2) Claudia de Lemos (University of Campinas, Brazil); Marina Sbisà (University of Trieste) Emanuel Schegloff (University of California at Los Angeles) Deborah Schiffrin (Georgetown Univ.); Paul O. Takahara (Kobe City Univ. of Foreign Studies) Sandra Thompson (University of California at Santa Barbara) Teun A. Van Dijk (University of Amsterdam); Richard J. Watts (University of Berne)

91 Joan Gross Speaking in Other Voices An ethnography of Walloon puppet theaters

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF WALLOON PUPPET THEATERS JOAN GROSS Oregon State University

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

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TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gross, Joan. Speaking in other voices : an ethnography of Walloon puppet theaters / Joan Gross. p. cm. -- (Pragmatics & beyond, ISSN 0922-842X ; new ser. 91) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Puppet theater--Belgium--Wallonia--History. 2. Puppet theater--Belgium--Liège-History. 3. Puppet plays, French--Belgium--Wallonia--History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series PN1978.B4 G76 2001 791.5’3’094934--dc21 2001035021 ISBN 90 272 5110 X (Eur.) / 1 58811 054 0 (US) (alk. paper) © 2001 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA

I dedicate this book to the following people: my father from whom I first heard stories of Belgium and with whom I uncovered the painful, hidden memories of war there. my mother who in numerous unconscious ways taught me the importance of interpersonal communication. David McMurray who has been my soul-mate since before I met my first Belgian puppeteer and who has always been my most critical reader. my sons, Charlie and Stan, who teach me everyday about heteroglossia and mimesis in cultural transmission. the puppeteers of Liège: past, present and future.

Table of Contents

List of Photographs List of Charts and excerpts from scripts, performances and Walloon literature Preface Acknowledgements Note on translations and transcriptions 1.

Introduction

2. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4.

Heteroglossia in Liège Language Change, Language Heterogeneity Linguistic Heterogeneity in Liège Prior to the Belgian State Metalinguistic Discourses in Belgium Contemporary Spoken Varieties along the French/Walloon Continuum Social Factors Triggering the Use of Walloon The Maintenance of Walloon in Verbal Art

2.5. 2.6. 3. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5.

Class and Culture in 19th century Liège and the Rise of the Puppet Theater Work and Leisure: Setting the Scene Early Accounts of Puppetry The Changing Material Conditions Bourgeois Discovery of the Puppet Theater Folklore and Nation

xi xiii xv xxv xxviii 1 11 12 14 18 26 34 39

43 44 46 51 55 63

TABLE OF CONTENTS

4. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4.

4.7.

Manipulations and Transformations Cultural Discourses Work and Leisure The Belgian Centennial Who Speaks for the Puppets?: Joseph Maurice Remouchamps, Rodolphe de Warsage and Thomas Talbot Battles of Representation Gaston Engels and Adrien Dufour: Speaking Through Puppets Across Time Changes in Form and Content

5. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5.

The Past in the Present and the Practice of Puppetry Speaking Through Puppets: Genre, Tradition, and Style Connection to the Past through Stories, Books and Puppets Voices of the Master, or Becoming a Puppeteer 1 Performance Settings Past and Present

99 99 106 121 135 141

6. 6.1. 6.2. 6.3. 6.4. 6.5.

Entextualization/Intertextuality Writing Scripts Script to Performance Refractions of the Nativity Li Naissance: Semantico-Referential Variations Framing Performance

143 144 150 159 163 173

7. 7.1. 7.2. 7.3.

Closing Intertextual Gaps Cultural Transmission Unscripted Continuity Rhythmic Continuity

181 181 188 196

8. 8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4

Embodying Identities 201 Puppet Bodies and Voices: Semiotic Insights The Sociolinguistics of Performance Social Indexes in the Puppet Theater Evaluating Puppet Voices

201 202 206 219 235

4.5. 4.6.

67 68 70 73 75 85 89 96

TABLE OF CONTENTS

9. 9.1. 9.2. 9.3. 9.4.

Religion and War Mimesis in Religion and War Religion and War in Official Discourse The Racial Other Religion, Race, and War in the Puppet Theater

237 237 243 246 250

10.

The World of Puppets, The World of Puppeteers: Politics in Performance Gender and Class Immigration and Work Language Politics Regional Language Politics in Performance National Language Politics in Performance

253 253 265 270 272 274

Conclusion

277

Notes

281

Appendix

295

List of Published References

297

Archival Sources

316

Index

319

10.1. 10.2. 10.3. 10.4. 10.5.

List of Photographs

The aftermath of a battle Puppets advertising lingerie The “last” Liège puppeteers Claudy Deletrez making a puppet Half-made puppet Old puppet head used as model Puppets hanging Puppets hanging Puppets invade the dining room buffet Jean Pinet performing Children and puppets on stage Tchantchès fighting Children backstage Itinerant theater at a school gym Itinerant theater at a fair Entry to a puppet theater in Outremeuse The Nativity Play Size/class differences in puppets Types of Puppets from Christian Deville’s theater Lower class characters Christian nobles Non Christian nobles and magicians Witches and a skeleton Devils Monsters Christian Deville and his Tchantchès Potale in Outremeuse Statues inside watching statues outside St. Pholien parish festival

3 74 76 112 113 114 115 116 118 122 132 132 133 134 134 137 173 204 207 207 208 208 209 209 210 240 241 242

List of charts and excerpts from scripts, performances and Walloon literature Mès deûs lingadjes (Nicolas Defrecheux) Variable Repertoires along the French/Walloon Continuum Interwar Puppeteer Questionnaires Old books marked by puppeteers Nativity Play script/performance (Adrien Dufour) – first page Nativity Play script-last page Nativity Play performance (Adrien Dufour) – Massacre of the Innocents Comparison of three performances of the Nativity Play (Adrien Dufour, Henri Libert, Jean Pinet) Gifts given at the manger Comparison of Herod’s speech Pinet’s Tchantchès introduction of the Nativity Play Dufour’s Tchantchès introduction of the Nativity Play Nativity Play script-entry of the Three Kings Performance Practice (Christian Deville, Adrien Dufour) Massacre of the Innocents comparison (Victor Verrées-1957, Joseph Ficarrotta-1987) Pitch contours and puppet noises in a Nativity speech Four sociolinguistic variables in L’enchanteur Ramanou (Gaston Engels) Four sociolinguistic variables in Valentin à Constantinople (Adrien Dufour) Four sociolinguistic variables in La Paix Brisée (Henri Libert) Four sociolinguistic variables in La Prise du Montfort (Jean Pinet) Four sociolinguistic variables in Geneviève de Brabant (Jacques Ancion) Comparison of the use of four sociolinguistic variables by five puppeteers Communicative use of sociolinguistic variables Excerpt from Tåtî l’Pèriquî (Edouard Remouchamps) Final consonant clusters as representative of social class in puppet plays Vocal fillers in Le Prince Volant (Christian Deville) Tu/Vous in a Nativity Performance (Henri Libert) Nativity speech (Henri Libert) Speech from La Mâle St. Martin script (Thomas Talbot)

20 35 81 146 151 153 154 164 169 172 174 175 185 185 189 199 212 212 212 213 213 214 214 220 221 222 225 251 260

Preface Positioning the Anthropologist

Puppetry and Anthropology Representing others is the occupation of both anthropologists and puppeteers, though their end results differ. Both observe human interaction and represent some version of it to an audience. The puppeteer’s representation takes the form of an orally presented puppet show while the anthropologist produces a written ethnography. At the base of the puppeteer’s oral presentation, however, are written texts while at the base of ethnographies are spoken words. As part of my social construction as an anthropologist in the field, I watched the social construction of puppeteers at a short-lived puppetry school. One of the tasks put to the students was to read a story and present a puppet show based on it. As the young puppeteers learned how to transpose text into performance, I struggled to transpose performance into text in the writing of field notes and the transcription of audio recordings. It was only after having left Belgium that I went through a similar process to that of the young puppeteers in preparing texts for publication which might be seen as written performances. As I wrote my representations, I struggled over the representation of voices. First of all, there was the problem with my own voice. It happened in the middle of a paradigm shift in anthropology; a humanistic turn in ethnographic writing that led anthropologists to deconstruct the role of “objective observer” and to analyze the importance of the subject position of the researcher. Then, there was the problem with representing other voices. There were puppeteers who had different ways of performing and of representing the tradition. There were other people with whom I spent time, filling out the communicative context of the puppet theater. Finally, there was the problem of puppet voices. When multiple voices are spoken by a single puppeteer, how

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can one distinguish these voices from one another without losing either the virtuosity of the puppeteer or the rootedness of linguistic varieties in society. Unlike anthropologists, puppeteers never claimed to be objective observers and never followed the single-voiced official model accepted by early ethnographers. Their performances have always been built on a heteroglossic model of society in which languages are mere abstractions of voices fractured by ideological accents. Puppet shows consist of multiple characters in dialogue and disagreement, but there is one puppet who embodies the voice of the puppeteer and he has shifted roles through time quite like the role of the anthropologist in an ethnography. In descriptions of early puppet shows in Liège, this puppet (who is called Tchantchès) stands outside of the dramatic action, merely introducing the show and commenting on it at the end. The impression given is that the story stands on its own, separate from the voice that animates Tchantchès. In later years, Tchantchès entered into the dramatic action delivering interpretive comments at strategic moments during the play, clearly leading the audience to his own interpretation. Increasingly, Tchantchès plays the leading role and the dramatic action revolves around him. Ethnographers are a bit like Tchantchès. They can present the facts as objective reality, rendering superfluous information about the ethnographer and the ethnographic encounter. (This style is still used in report writing even though it has virtually disappeared from ethnographic publications.) Ethnographers can make guest appearances in their own ethnographies, reminding us that that we are reading their interpretation of the story. Finally, the ethnographic setting can become the context in which the ethnographer presents her/himself through contact with the other. Whatever model one follows, representation confers power and control on representers (puppeteers or anthropologists) because they determine the voices of the other. Copied voices are inflected through the representer’s own voice, which indexes its own social construction in many ways. I don’t mean to imply that we have a single essential voice. Language is heterogeneous within the individual as well as within the speech community. In fact, mimicking various voices throughout our lifetime makes us who we are, and it rarely is a seamless whole. I only mean to point out that voices bleed into one another creating double-voiced utterances. An important facet of new ethnography is to draw the reader’s attention to places where bleed-through appears to be occurring. I try to follow this lead without being too present in the text. Gaston Engels who performed with puppets in the fairs of Wallonia for

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fifty years was concerned about what I would do for a living back in America after studying about puppetry in Liège. He told me that he didn’t see how I could put bread on the table by knowing about puppets, but he was living proof that one could live by putting on puppet shows. He suggested I follow this lead, but he had another idea as well. He had heard on the television that Americans didn’t know about leeks. (Leeks are so well-known in Belgium that the entire folklore society of the village of Tilff on the outskirts of Liège dresses as leeks during Carnival.) I could simply buy a few packets of seeds before leaving Belgium, he reasoned, and introduce this delicious vegetable to the United States. Gaston died in 1987, before I got a real job as an anthropologist. I wish I could have talked to him about how writing and teaching anthropology are like creating a puppet show. Certain characters are very close to me and others are distant, but they all speak through my voice, just as hundreds of puppets spoke through his. Notions of tradition and creativity affect me as they did him. Selffulfillment is an issue and so is “putting the bread on the table.” Today, as education becomes more and more market-driven, the ability to develop and hold an audience is an increasingly important skill for anthropologists as it has always been for puppeteers. Leeks are a different story. He was right that they were introduced in the United States and we can now purchase them in our local grocery store, but I didn’t catch that wave. The suggestion, however, can be taken metaphorically: What is normal to one culture, can be seen as unique and novel in another and being a translator/seller between cultures can be lucrative. Anthropology partakes in this process. The puppeteers of Liège also translate between cultures, but the difference is one of time, rather than space; medieval Europe is not Europe today. The fact that puppeteers often talked money did not subtract from their passion for puppetry. One can concede that the market economy invades every aspect of our lives, and still maintain human agency through symbolic creativity and human kindness.

Fieldwork and The Politics of Identity I arrived in Liège on a cold drizzly afternoon in early January, 1982 and the puppeteer Adrien Dufour picked me up at the train station. A year and a half had passed since our first meeting at the World Puppetry Festival in

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Washington, D.C., when, as part of a University of Texas/NEH documentation team, I had served as his guide/translator and began asking him about Liège puppetry. We had corresponded as I was writing my master’s thesis, and now I had a grant to go to Liège and do dissertation research. Mr. Dufour was a brusque man with a sense of importance and a certain energy about him. My being there was a reflection of his skill and fame and that pleased him. I began recording puppet shows at the Museum of Walloon Life the day after my arrival and within a few weeks I was recording in other theaters around the city. The puppeteers of Liège were used to having people interested in their performances and as professional mimics in the modern world, they were used to mimetic machinery, so I was able to avoid the long period of familiarization that most ethnographers have to go through in the field. I made my tape recorder into an extension of my body, mechanically capturing the artisanally-captured voices and the raw material for these voices. By the end of that year I had recorded 59 puppet performances by 13 puppeteers and approximately 80 hours of interviews and conversations in puppet theaters, at people’s homes, in cafes and at the market. Most Belgians who knew what anthropology was questioned why I was in Belgium and not in Africa, but the puppeteers had no such prejudices. After Mr. Dufour picked me up from the train station on my first day in Liège, he took me directly to a girls’ boarding school. Lights out at 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. wake up calls followed by a breakfast of chocolate bars did not fit my lifestyle needs, but I was willing to put up with it for several weeks. I got to know many of the young girls and even recorded them and their teachers. The school closed on the weekends, so Dufour arranged for me to stay with an old woman friend of his, Francine Lemaire. She was made a little nervous by the responsibility of making sure this foreign woman “who only looked 16” was not taken advantage of, but she seemed to enjoy the attention it brought to her. She introduced me to her circle of friends, many of whom participated in the various “folkloric” events organized in their neighborhood of Outremeuse. Everyone seemed to think that if I was studying puppets, that was where I should live. I came to see what they meant. Francine and her friends took my room hunting as a challenge and I let myself be guided by them. The room we settled on was located above a snack bar on Surlet Street in Outremeuse. Two younger female students, a retired coal miner, and the landlady lived in other rooms. There was a regular clientele at the snack bar and I grew familiar with their personal dramas. The house had

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no bathing facilities so I walked down the 200 yard Roture Street to get to the swimming pool where I took showers. I was already familiar with Roture Street as the home of four puppet theaters before World War I. Of course, Roture was no longer the home of large poor families whose children filled the street. It had become a chic bohemian restaurant street and housed young bourgeois people whose rent bills were often sent home to their parents. Despite areas of gentrification, Outremeuse was still recognized as being “Tchantchès’ neighborhood” and was permeated by images from the puppet theater. My room overlooked a statue of Tchantchès held by a coal miner girl. A few hundred yards down the street stood the Tchantchès Museum, headquarters of the Free Republic of Outremeuse (RLOM). The ministers of RLOM busied themselves organizing a yearly folkloric parade on August 15th and managing the Ex-Imperial Royal Puppet Theater which gave weekly performances from September to Easter. The museum part of the building consisted of miniature sets of clothing donated by various organizations for the wooden statue of Tchantchès. Café Tchantchès where old wooden puppets hung from the rafters was located around the corner from my room and puppets were frequently found in store window displays along Surlet Street. The importance of puppet theater images to a sense of local identity seemed quite odd to an American whose exposure to puppetry before graduate school had chiefly been gained sitting in front of a television set. Ethnography is a totalizing experience, but having a focus on the puppet theater allowed me to consider my time in puppet theaters and with puppeteers as more central to my research. Most of that work I did with men, but the time I regarded as more relaxing and less central to my research I spent mainly with women in the neighborhood. I cannot say that I was “off-duty” during these times. I listened closely to the way French and Walloon were used and wrote fieldnotes. Only occasionally did I meet with local academics and I was always struck by how clearly they spoke. Not only was every word understandable, but every idea was carefully completed. In Outremeuse, sentences were seldom finished because it was assumed that your interlocutor knew the ending. I acquired linguistic competence attending French diction and Walloon classes offered by the city, but I acquired communicative competence by hanging out with people in various situations. The observer’s paradox plagues researchers who study human behavior because we are never sure if the behavior we observe would occur if we were not observing. Researchers who focus on performances have an advantage in

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this respect. I do not believe that my presence much affected the puppet performances I recorded since they are bounded genres and were recorded in culturally appropriate contexts where I was only one of many spectators. This was not the case with less bounded genres of speech, where I was the primary interlocutor. However, the situation is not analogous to that of anthropologists in the (formerly) colonized world. As a young woman who was still a student, I never felt as if I was accorded an uncomfortably high status in Europe. Mr. Dufour treated me something like a daughter and something like his own personal bard or praise-singer. He shouted at me, often poking me in the middle of the chest as he did so and berated me for associating with certain people, sure that I would be led astray. He coached me on how to make the most of my limited funds and quizzed me about my diet to make sure I was eating enough red meat to keep healthy. When I became a target of back-stage teasing, I began to feel like “one of the gang.” My youth and probably my gender also made puppeteers from other theaters more open with information. People felt sorry for me for the most part, rather than threatened by me. I was a “poor young thing” away from my family. I was a student with no job waiting for me after graduation and with few worldly possessions, one of them just happened to be a tape recorder. The way in which anthropologists and the people they are studying react to one another is only one aspect of the politics of identity. I came to realize that it was not only my age, gender and perceived class status that influenced peoples’ relations with me, but also the political relations between my country and theirs. This should not have taken me so long to realize since my fieldwork was funded by the Belgian American Educational Foundation which grew out of The Commission for Relief in Belgium. This commission was formed during World War I to counteract the misery and starvation that beleaguered the Belgians and was led by Herbert Hoover. Then in 1920, it was decided that graduate fellowships should be created as a memorial to America’s aid to Belgium and for the continuation of close and friendly relations between the two countries (Torrey n.d.: 51). But there was another way in which BelgianAmerican relations affected me personally. Four days after I arrived in Liège, M. Dufour took me to a party for retired members of the socialist trade union. A young girl accompanied by her mother, sang a song in Walloon and then the whole crowd sang “The Internationale.” I shook hands with the socialist mayor who had announced in his speech how pleased they were to have a young American coming to study Walloon folklore and everyone applauded. Later Mr. Dufour brought me up to

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meet other members of the mayor’s cabinet. One of the mayor’s cabinet members could not believe that a young American woman would come to Liège to study Walloon and puppetry. “What was the real reason? Was your father here during World War II?” he questioned. “Well, in fact,” I said “he was.” The man looked satisfied, as if he had known all along the basis for my interest. I had discounted past actions of my countrymen and my father on my being in Belgium whereas he discounted my individual motivations. It made more sense to him that I would come to trace my father’s footsteps than because of my own academic interests in European folklore and regional languages. The man asked me what division my father had been in and I didn’t know, so he asked me what cities he had been in and I was able to say that he landed in Normandy and then spent time in the Ardennes and became very close with a family in Verviers. The man concluded excitedly that he was in the First Army and they probably knew each other. I was aware that my father had been in World War II mainly through other people. He did not talk about it much and when he did, it sounded more like a study abroad program to me. Rather than battles, I heard about conversations with local farmers which resulted in fresh eggs instead of K-rations. I also heard about the Hanquet family in Belgium: how my father had helped grandpa pull out a calf from its laboring mother and the English lessons he gave to the children. His voice was full of respect and tenderness when he spoke of Maman Hanquet, much like when he spoke of his own mother. My father wrote to them for years. My mother remembers sending them announcements of my sister’s birth in 1946, but eventually contact was broken. Before, I left for Belgium, my father sent me the name of the family and the city, just in case, but not really thinking anything would come of it. Information about my father spread around the retired socialists’ gathering which I found somewhat ironic since my father, having served in the Air Force throughout the Cold War, was anything but sympathetic to socialism. Soon someone approached me, saying that he had a friend who was going to open a new radio station in Verviers and if I had the name of the family my father knew, he would announce it on the air. I handed over the name and promptly forgot about it. My notion of residence is an impermanent one, having moved every two or three years for my entire life. I could not conceive of the same family living in the same place forty years later. A few months later, I got a letter in the mail from Clément Hanquet, the son of family which had befriended my father forty years before. Two days after-

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wards, he picked me up and took me to the old farmhouse in Grand Rechain, near Verviers where my father used to come and give him and his sisters English lessons. Clément’s mother told me that a new radio station just started up and they announced that the daughter of Stanley Gross was looking for the Hanquet family. They didn’t happen to be listening at the time, but their neighbor was and she ran down the road to tell them that Stanley’s daughter was looking for them. They phoned the station immediately and found out my address. They brought down the notebooks inscribed in my father’s meticulous handwriting, translating sentences from French to English. Next came the photographs of my father and even my uncle who was in Patton’s army and had been able to get permission to spend a weekend with my father in Belgium. We figured out during the course of the evening that he was 26 years old at the time, my exact age. They were curious about my interest in Walloon and said that they always used to switch to Walloon when they didn’t want my father to understand what they were saying. It was a strange feeling to have left my family to do something rather exotic in a foreign country as part of the anthropological enterprise and be handed old notebooks of my father’s. I would remember this feeling when puppeteers showed me old puppetry books that they inherited from their fathers. There was another way in which my father, unbeknownst to him, helped me understand Belgium and that concerns war and stories. My father and the Hanquet family began corresponding again and in 1985 when I was back in Belgium for the summer checking details on a rough draft of my dissertation, my parents paid a visit. We spent a week in Liège with the Hanquet family and visited various people I knew. I noticed that the mere presence of my father elicited war stories. Adrien Dufour spent an entire evening telling us about his experiences in the Resistance. Francine Lemaire told about jumping on trains and throwing sacks of sugar off and how she was caught and thrown in prison. Just as his presence drew war stories from others, the landscape brought war memories back to my father. The Hanquet family brought us to the American cemetery and the monument for the Battle of the Bulge. There my father discovered through reading the names inscribed on the monument that several people he went to flight school with in England never made it back to the U.S. It made a deep impression on him, because war is mostly about forgetting and he was no longer able to do so. He began to tell stories that he had buried long ago; stories in which people were scared and confused, not confident and heroic. Unlike, most civilian Americans, older Belgians have an intimate connec-

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tion with war. The Liège basin has been overrun by a variety of armies since the beginning of history. It made me wonder whether the perpetuation of heroic epics of war in the puppet theaters served a therapeutic function. If one has to remember war (and it is harder to forget when it is in your home) how much better to remember it as a heroic venture. Identities change over time and our perceptions change with them. I have spent periods of one week to 2 months in Liège four times over a period of 14 years. Each visit I have noticed that what interests me is intimately tied up with my social identity at the time. During my first year of fieldwork as a young linguistic anthropologist, I was focused on language use and how to formally describe puppet shows. When I returned as the daughter of an American soldier, I became interested in war and narrative. After two years of fieldwork on labor migration in Morocco with my husband, David McMurray, we returned in 1987 with our 9 month old baby. The Moroccan fieldwork had made me much more interested in issues of race and gender and my motherhood showed me the incredible benefits of the social welfare system. I returned two other times in 1995–96 while directing a study abroad program in France. The first time I went alone to do archival research on popular culture between the two world wars. I was treated as a foreign professor and clearly sensed the difference in how I was interpellated. The second time I went to take my two young sons to puppet shows and thought deeply about mimesis and cultural transmission. The book you are about to read is not the book I would have written after completing my first stint of fieldwork. I have felt guilty from time to time that it has taken me so long to write it. I never lost interest in the material, but other things in life seemed to take precedence. Insights over the years have increased my conviction that language is never separable from its context. We learn about the world through situated language use, and each utterance is shaped by the identities of the interlocutors and by generic patterns which link linguistic form with society and history. The processes of decontextualization, entextualization, and recontextualization allow culture to be transmitted and the stories we hear cause us to develop particular attitudes and ways of operating in the world. This books focuses on one particular genre of speaking in one place, in order to explore practices that affect all genres of speaking in all places.

Acknowledgements

There are many people to whom I am indebted in this endeavor. First of all, it would not have been written without the cooperation of the puppeteers of Liège who gave generously of their time and creativity. A special thanks to Adrien Dufour for the many hours he spent explaining puppetry to me and his networking skills in getting me places. He was larger than life and his voices live on in many ways. Gaston Engels was always interesting and I thank Christian Deville for arranging for him to come back and perform one more time because there’s nothing like a live performance. I thank Henri Libert for his kindness and judicious nature in a world of competition run amok. I think back happily on my many conversations with José Maquet, the bricoleur and Jean Pierre Babilone, the turbulent artist. My encounters with Françoise Ancion, Marcel Slangen, Robert Willé, Jean Decallais, Georges Vigneron, Stella Bocchino, Jules and Charles Van Mullem all helped fill out my interpretation of the Liège puppet theater. I even appreciate the méfiance of Jaques Ancion in retrospect. My deepest thanks and warmest wishes go to Claudy and Micheline Deletrez who embody hospitality and never deserved what fate dealt them. I wish the best of luck to the younger puppeteers who were just beginning to speak through puppets when I came on the scene and who have now developed their own styles: Christian Deville, Joseph Ficarotta and Michel Libert. Other people and organizations in Liège shed light on everyday life and the role of folklore within it. Francine Lemaire and her girlfriends offered me some female balance to the male world of puppeteers and told me about being poor and female and old. The Hanquet family made Belgium a real place in my childhood memories even before I met them and later welcomed me as the daughter of my father. The organic intellectual Jean Denys Boussart et Les Planquets d’Outremeuse et de St. Pholien made sure I was invited me to their

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activities. I would like to thank all those other people in Liège, some with whom I became friends and others with whom I simply exchanged fleeting words who gave me a feeling for the fabric of life. Etienne Hélin always showed interest in my studies. He will never know how often I think of him and Suzanne as models in the academic world, providing warmth and support in students’ intellectual endeavors. I also thank him for his excellent social history of the area and the wonderful students he has nurtured, notably René Leboutte and Carl Havalange. Roger Pinon shared with me his deep knowledge of folklore and Walloon folklore in particular. My fellow ethnographer of communication, Yves Winkin, informally supported my observations early in my fieldwork and has continued to lend a helping hand when asked. Marie Thérèse Bettonville-Counet has unselfishly provided assistance on Walloon linguistic matters. Frank Proschan brought puppets to my attention early in my graduate career and without him, I would have never ended up at the World Puppetry Festival in 1980. My professors, Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer, encouraged me in this project from the beginning and provided some of the tools I use to interpret this imagined reality. Other tools came from John Baugh, Greg Urban, Edgar Polomé, and especially my fellow graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin with whom I have continued to be in contact: Stephanie Kane, Kristin Koptiuch, Vera Mark, David McMurray and Ted Swedenburg. I want to also thank Andreas Jucker and my anonymous reviewer. Anthropological research requires more formal assistance as well. Bureaucrats in research institutions have often made life difficult for researchers and I am deeply thankful that this was not the case in the Museum of Walloon Life. The workers’ kindness and help made it more like a home. I would like to thank Nadine Maquet who even gave access to archives when she didn’t have to. I want to thank the agencies that have funded my work over the years: The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Belgian American Educational Foundation, The Wenner Gren Foundation and The American Institute of Maghrebi Studies. Even when the projects I conducted were not exactly this one, they all fed into it. At Oregon State University, I would like to thank the College of Liberal Arts, the Center for the Humanities, the Valley Library and the Research Council for various grants over the years and I would particularly

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like to thank my colleagues in the anthropology department for creating a good place to work. Claire Younger deserves special thanks for managing my evergrowing bibliographic files, Loretta Wardrip for her computer skills, Joseph Krause and Armelle Denis for being my French consultants on this side of the Atlantic. Book projects involve one’s family to a greater extent than they often want to be involved. Families might be helpful or not helpful, but they are never separate from the writing enterprise. I completed my first publication on the puppet theater in a series of budget motels traveling from Texas to New York with my parents. I wrote on the back of the mirror I took down to cover the sink, since only the bathrooms have sufficient light in those places. My parents obliged me by watching TV in the next room with the sound turned off. Dissertation writing followed in which I spent day after day reading and writing with few interruptions. I mistakenly thought that the rest of my life as an intellectual would be spent in similar uninterrupted contemplation. Instead, I discovered my future life to be more like the previous model of writing in Motel 6 bathrooms, only my own children have never been as quiet as my parents.

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Note on translations and transcriptions All translations were done by the author, though I usually had them checked by native speakers. I have followed three different strategies when presenting them. I have given the English translation only in the text when the form of the language is not what is being discussed. When the original language is important to the discussion or helps to give us a picture of what the language of puppeteers is like, I transcribe the original language and put the English translation in {} brackets below. When I want to focus your attention on the form of the language and not the content, I only transcribe the original language. Sometimes in these cases, I translate parts of the passage when discussing them in the text. I want to thank Marie-Thérèse Bettonville-Counet for help on the Walloon transcriptions. All transcriptions from recordings are in the Feller orthographical system. The written Walloon excerpts have been left in the form they appeared in, whether published or not. Written French has also been left in its original form, with no attempt to mark non-standard spellings. I have placed the Walloon in bold type to differentiate it from the French, but the lines are far from clear since they are related dialects. Orthographic conventions mask the fact that local pronunciations of certain words in French and Walloon can be identical.

Conventions used in transcriptions ( ) audience responses, puppet actions, backstage comments. / cut off speech [ ] phonetic transcription (?) incomprehensible ... short pause

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The master puppeteer and his two aides arrive about a half hour before the show is to begin. They greet each other in Walloon and talk about current affairs, the master leading the conversation. They are surrounded by rows of wooden puppets hanging from the rods used to animate them. A drum stands in the corner and the script lies open on a stand. The youngest aide busies himself finding all the characters for today’s performance and hanging them within reach behind the stage. The audience begins to arrive, paying their admission. Parents remove their children’s coats, damp from the rain, and direct them to the benches up front, while taking their own seats in the back. The excited chatter of the children fills the small room. One father makes his way backstage and tells the puppeteer that his daughter, Céline, is not eating well. “Could you have Tchantchès say something to her?” The puppeteer nods and the man leaves. The puppeteer inspects the puppets that the aide has arranged. He switches one minor character for another, examines a loose joint, a face that needs repainting. When the spectators have all found their seats, one of the aides grabs a wooden handle pounding it on the stage in the recognizable pattern that opens many French theater productions. The other aide turns the theater lights off and the stage lights on. He opens the red velvet curtains. A sound comes from off stage as if someone is clumsily running. A character then emerges wearing a blue smock reminiscent of 19th century worker/peasant dress. With a friendly demeanor and a nose too large for the rest of his face, he greets the audience heartily in Walloon, repeating the greeting in French. He banters with them, testing their knowledge of local affairs and customs. He stresses the importance of eating well in order to keep up one’s strength. “Isn’t that right Céline? You know you’ll never grow up to be strong if you keep sneaking candy and not eating your meat at dinner!” says the puppet in the smock. Céline stares in shocked amazement while the children around her titter with delight.

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The blue-smocked Tchantchès introduces the show, announcing that it will be an episode of “The Song of Roland.” He catches the audience up on what has happened so far, then trips as he’s leaving the stage. The children chuckle and he turns to lightly chastise them for laughing at his expense. Now we hear a rhythmic clomping of wooden puppet on wooden stage as the knights emerge onstage one after another. They stand at least a head taller than the diminutive Tchantchès and their faces exhibit a mask-like, symmetrical beauty. As they reach their position, they are hung on the top of the backdrop of castle towers to stand immobile while awaiting the council meeting. The children “ooh” and “aah” at the rich velvet and brocade of their costumes and become much more reserved, sensing the seriousness of this noble conference. Then a slower, louder clomping from the other side alerts all to the arrival of a more august character. “My noble followers, counts, barons and knights, I have heard that King Marsile of Spain has gathered his troops and is preparing to lead his pagan armies northward to ravage our beautiful provinces. What news do you bring me?” asks in a theatrical variety of French the large, deepvoiced, finely costumed puppet occupying stage right. “Sire!” barks a soldier in clipped French as he bends forward at the waist. “I have come to report that the Saracens are at the foot of the Pyrenees, ready to invade.” The audience reacts immediately, registering its alarm with gasps and exclamations. “This cannot be!” intones the larger puppet. He turns to face the audience, his head moving jerkily from side to side as he speaks. He jumps slightly up and down to make clomping noises that punctuate his words, accentuating his angry response. “Christendom shall never be invaded as long as I, Charlemagne, have strength enough to lift this sword!” The plot thickens. Someone from the Mayence family has betrayed Charlemagne’s army. Soon, it is time for a battle. The drum roll begins and knights march in formation across the stage. Tchantchès brings up the rear with a decidedly arrhythmic step and urges the children to help him out in battle. They all know what this means. The moment they see him enter the fray, they joyfully scream, “Allez Tchantchès!” in unison. Handfuls of soldier puppets march in from opposite sides of the stage. The drumming becomes more frenzied as the two wooden armies swing back and forth in a stylized battle. Periodically a puppet is dropped

3

INTRODUCTION

The aftermath of a battle: Tchantchès announces an intermission, so that he can “bury the wounded and care for the dead” while Joseph Firacotta looks on from the sidelines.

onto the stage, symbolically put to death, until the stage is glutted with contorted wooden figures whose rods jut out into the empty air. Tchantchès enters the now quiet battle scene. “Well, I guess we showed them and I fought better than the rest of them. Still, when it comes to cleaning up the battlefield, they call ‘Tchantchès!’ Have you ever noticed that it’s always the same ones doing the work?” We’d better have an intermission, so that I can bury the wounded and care for the dead.” “No!” scream the children in the audience, “It’s the opposite!” “Okay” Tchantchès replies “I’ll care for the dead and bury the wounded.” The children yell at him until he gets it right and the curtain drops.1

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This book is an historically-based ethnography of performance which explores mimesis, metapragmatics, and heteroglossia in the puppet theaters of Liège, Belgium. Rod puppetry in Liège is an urban working-class performance tradition in which one man creates voices for an entire cast of characters. It provides fascinating terrain on which to examine ideologies of language and identity and the ways in which they inform linguistic practices and performance traditions. Puppetry is not often taken seriously by social scientists who consider reality as their subject and see mimesis as derivative. Yet it is through mimesis that reality is constructed. As children we imitate voices around us in the process of acquiring communicative competence. At first, these imitated accents and phrases are marked as “other” but eventually they may become our own. We become ourselves through taking on the voices of others and each one of us is unique in the variety of “others” we incorporate into our “selves.” This is but another way of posing the relation between the individual and society. Taussig explains the mimetic faculty as “the nature that culture uses to create second nature, the faculty to copy, imitate, make models, explore difference, yield into and become Other” (1993: xiii). Without this faculty, there would be no culture. Mimesis forms the base of the acquisition of language and culture and their transmission over time. The mimetic faculty grows weaker as we grow older. Nevertheless, we continue to engage a somewhat reduced mimetic faculty through adulthood as we acquire new ways of speaking and writing, modeling ourselves after those we choose as our teachers. Speaking for puppets is a mimetic speech genre, not so much in its faithful depiction of other voices, but as a representation of dialogue itself. In actuality, the puppeteer is his own interlocutor, but he must linguistically represent different identities by speaking in other voices. This genre of speaking incorporates other speech genres (such as traditional songs) and speech acts (such as jokes, praise, and laments) and the content is transmitted through a variety of speech styles ranging from Walloon through regional French to a version of theatrical French. No less important are voice qualities which index gender, class, and ethnicity, but also evil, goodness, fright, sadness, and indignity. Through the indexical qualities of the voice, distance or familiarity is established between the puppet characters and members of the audience, giving us insight into persistent stereotypes which plague contemporary Europe. Mimesis is central to the notion of “tradition,” or, more specifically, to the decontextualization, entextualization, and recontextualization that character-

INTRODUCTION

5

izes oral traditions like the puppet theater. The identities taken on through language by the puppeteer are not only those of puppet characters, but also those of past puppeteers. This book examines how metadiscursive entextualization of “the tradition” establishes the authority of puppeteers. The challenge of my research is to suture the “discourse” of linguistic anthropology and related disciplines (the situated use of language) to the “discourse” of post-structuralism (larger ideological structures which generate concepts of value in a society). In 1962, Hymes wrote that the relationship between language and culture would remain a mystery as long as we continue to “relate language, described largely as a formal isolate, to culture, described largely without reference to speaking”(1995:276). He called instead for analyses of communication in context. Sherzer (1987) added that discourse is the locus of the language-culture relationship and that the relationship comes into sharpest focus in discourse which heightens speech play and verbal art. Liège puppeteers have their own take on the language-culture relationship. We see it in the popular medieval epic, Orson and Valentine.2 Twin brothers separated at birth are raised in very different circumstances: Orson by bears in the forest and Valentine at the French court. Nurture being stronger than nature, Orson looks and acts like a bear and Valentine, like a prince. Valentine attempts to integrate the wild Orson into the cultured world by dressing him like a knight, but is unsuccessful. No one but Valentine can understand the grunts, sputters, and growls that emerge from Orson’s mouth. Yet, when the membrane under his tongue is clipped, Orson miraculously begins to speak in clear and eloquent French. He also begins behaving as a fully integrated member of human society. He is now a Christian knight; respectful of Christian kings and ruthless in his battles against the Moorish infidels. The metapragmatics of Orson and Valentine presents a view of the inextricability of language and culture not dissimilar to anthropological theory.3 The only way they could conceive of him being able to speak was if he was also a fully cultural being. Just as Orson is now responsible for correctly using the grammatical rules of his recently acquired language, he is also constrained by the behavioral patterns of his new society. Language without communicative competence is unimaginable. Through language he is instantaneously transformed into a subject within society and, as such, he is subjected to a whole set of normative social behaviors. Subjectivity is also at stake in the play, Le Prince Volant, but in this case, rather than showing language to be the key to culture, the puppeteer highlights

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heteroglossia.4 The play opens with a drunk Tchantchès singing in Walloon about how he likes to drink. He has just been fired from his job for this reason. Suddenly, a good magician appears and tells him that he can turn him into the richest man in the world by transforming him into a prince so that he can rescue a princess held captive by an evil witch. Tchantchès doubts that this is possible but decides to give it a try. The magician recites a magic spell over him, a harmonica sounds, and the puppeteer quickly pulls Tchantchès up as he lowers a prince puppet in his place. Tchantchès exclaims: È! Fât-st-aroubi! Qué bê costume qu’i m’a d’né, lu, ci-là lu! Ha! Ha! Pour moi, il a fait faire mon costume chez Volant ici en face, hein, parèt. Hah! Eh bien mon p’tit Pacolèt, je suis bien beau, tiens, moi, avec ce beau costume-là. {Wow! What a nice suit he gave me, that guy there. Haha! I think he had my suit made at Volant’s across the street there, right? Hah! Well my little Pacolet, I’m downright handsome, ya see, with this nice suit here.}

Tchantchès is quite pleased with his new clothes, but his new appearance has not altered his subjectivity in any way. He still speaks as the working-class Tchantchès; quickly with wide-ranging pitch and a plethora of vocal fillers and deictic references. He also inserts Walloon words into his French which follows regional instead of standard pronunciation patterns. The magician quickly realizes that clothes do not a prince make and that he must transform Tchantchès’ voice as well. After the voice transformation, Tchantchès exclaims in a much lower and slower voice, “Oh, mon dieu, Pacolet, qu’est-ce que cela signifie? J’ai à présent une voix de prince!” {Oh my goodness, Pacolet, what does this mean? At present, I have the voice of a prince!} From that point until he is transformed back into Tchantchès, he is indistinguishable from a prince. He hops on the magician’s flying horse and proceeds to free the princess. Despite the long tradition of normative grammars, Bakhtin stressed that the speaker does not see language as a system of normatively identical forms but as a changeable and adaptable sign imbued with an evaluative accent (Volos
inov 1973). We realize that no two people speak in exactly the same way and influences in their voices can come from multiple places simultaneously. Puppeteers demonstrate their understanding of the heteroglossic nature of language in society by self-consciously speaking in other voices. Societal heteroglossia forms a playground of voices waiting to submit to the puppeteer’s

INTRODUCTION

7

mimetic creations — the “second nature” described by Taussig (1993). Just as the puppeteer takes on other voices, Tchantchès (his working-class embodiment on stage) takes on an upper class voice in “Le Prince Volant” becoming even more like the puppeteer. The play’s title itself is a multiply layered pun. “Volant” is the present participle of both “to fly” and “to steal.” He does both; stealing the identity of a prince and flying to rescue the princess. “Volant” is also the name of the tailor across the street who Tchantchès credits with making his royal clothes, thus reminding the audience that they are, in fact, in a simple neighborhood of Liège and not transported to some Never Never Land. “Volant” ties the everyday world of the neighborhood to the magical world of flying princes by stealing a subject position through appropriating a different way of speaking. The puppeteer makes it clear that the world seen by Prince Tchantchès is not the same world seen by Pauper Tchantchès with different labels attached. It is a different reality and Prince Tchantchès is a different kind of subject. Volos
inov pointed out in 1930 [1973: 23] that the domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs, with language holding a privileged place within the domain of signs. Even though members of a community may speak the same language, differently oriented accents intersect in every ideological sign, making language itself an arena of the class struggle. In Le Prince Volant, puppeteers show their understanding of class inflections in language. Rather than language effecting the transformation from animal to human as it did in Orson and Valentine, we now see it effect the transformation from lower class to upper class. We are led to wonder about class mobility, and even communication, across such linguistic chasms. Questions of language and culture are central to puppeteers. These two plays tell us that humans have a genetic capacity for language, but that we become members of social groups by reproducing culturally specific ways of speaking. An investigation of Liège puppet theaters allows us to clearly see heteroglossia as the nature of language and mimesis as the cornerstone of cultural transmission. In daily life outside of performance frames, heteroglossia and mimesis are more subtle and dispersed, but in the puppet theater of Liège, they are condensed and exaggerated and show their devices to the world. Examining linguistic performances in Belgium is particularly enlightening since language issues are so central to the Belgian state and to the European Union. Discourse in the theater shows traces of linguistic battles, both at the regional level (where the puppet theater is one of the few places where the

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Walloon language is still in use) and at the national level (where code-choice between French and Dutch underlies every political decision made). Language issues are also explicitly discussed within puppet plays, providing a unique opportunity to investigate metalinguistics and metapragmatics in a multilingual setting. The analysis in this book moves between what occurs on stage and what happens in the lives of the puppeteers and in the society at large. In so doing, it addresses the inextricability of language, ideology, and political economy and links actual instances of language use with the more general processes by which social groups and institutions create, sustain, question, and revise the contours of social power (Briggs and Bauman 1992).5 This implies a historically contextualized approach which is the goal of chapters two, three and four. Language ideologies are rooted in history. They shape attitudes toward particular linguistic varieties and genres. We need to know this background in order to understand how these linguistic varieties are employed in the puppet theater. So, in chapter two, I focus on the relationship between French and Walloon through time. I describe different varieties along the French/Walloon continuum and then put them into context through metalinguistic and metapragmatic commentary and analysis of their usage in particular situations. The relationship between French and Walloon has been at least partially defined by the political struggles of Flemish/Dutch speakers, and this will be addressed too. In the chapter three, I look at the political economy of the early rod puppet tradition, integrating material from folklore, social history, and literary criticism. I pay close attention to the conditions of work and the growth of the leisure industry and examine how the puppet theater has been inflected by intellectual discourses popular in Belgium from the founding of the nationstate in 1830 up to World War I. Symbolism, nationalism, and regionalism all shaped how the puppet theater was seen and these discursive movements created new publics for the shows. With no linguistic unity or natural geographical borders, Belgian state-makers became especially interested in using history as a way to bind the nation together. Bourgeois attraction to regional traditions and dialects at a time of rapid industrialization offered one avenue for harnessing this potential power of the past. The puppet theater, in its portrayals of historical wars of religion and its use of Walloon, was seen as a perfect tool for imagining the new nation as antique. During the interwar years, discourse about folklore and regional languages

INTRODUCTION

9

was brought into the official realm. The puppet theater becomes commodified, the class base of the audience shifts, and eventually puppeteers are brought in to perform in museums. This turbulent period is the topic of chapter four. At the end of this chapter, I move from using published and archival sources to reconstruct the past to using the oral accounts of my oldest informants, puppeteers who lived and performed through this period. The following four chapters describe the contemporary puppet theater of Liège, with a focus on voice. In chapter five, I pay particular attention to the role of the past in both aural and visual communication. I examine how puppeteers establish authority, embellishing our understanding of genre, tradition, and style. These concerns of oral tradition research are investigated more thoroughly in chapters six and seven where I discuss entextualization, intertextuality and replication, using the popular Nativity play. In chapter six, I highlight multiple texts and performances of this play by different performer lineages. I shift the focus to a single performer lineage over an expanse of 38 years and three generations of puppeteers in chapter seven. There I examine the similarities and differences between the transmission of oral and written parts of plays. In addition to “authentic” performances, I also look at pedagogical performances, discussions, and the role of musicality in closing intertextual gaps. In chapter eight, I explore the semiotic relationship between the puppet theater and life outside the theater and then turn to methods from sociolinguistics and the ethnography of speaking to describe voices on the puppet stage. In the final two chapters, I turn my attention to several significant themes present in the puppet theater. In chapter nine, the focus is on religion and war: themes that were present in the chansons de geste material and which play into Belgian national discourse and Belgian folklore. In chapter ten, I shift to a more ethnographic approach and look at recurrent themes in discourse and other contextualized practices both on the puppet stage and in Walloon working-class culture. The topics I examine include the role of women in puppetry, social hierarchy and resistance, immigration, and language politics.

CHAPTER 2

Heteroglossia in Liège

Language by nature is heterogeneous, both when looked at from the vantage point of varieties within a society or varieties used by a single individual. Furthermore, the social and the individual are interrelated from the beginning with language as the interface between society and person. The first words uttered by a child are social and language does not exist apart from individuals using it. Becoming a competent member of society involves learning to produce and to recognize several different kinds of language and every utterance belongs to a specific genre or way of speaking which has been shaped by historical events, political maneuvers, economic and ideological systems.6 These genres inform and influence each other as people cross one another in their move from situation to situation. Bakhtin’s philosophy of dialogism grows from the idea that language is always shared and that deep within the self, we find the Other. Taking on the voices of others while speaking through puppets draws attention to this fundamental aspect of language. As a performative genre it is reflexive, but in addition to calling attention to itself, it calls attention to heteroglossia, the polyphony of linguistic varieties in society, each with its own formal markers and values. In its use of many voices and incorporated genres, puppet plays have much in common with Bakhtin’s analysis of the novel which arose, according to Bakhtin, when the internal diversity of language could no longer be ignored. He contrasts this with an earlier form of multilingualism when the places occupied by different languages were “fixed and indisputable.” People did not have to actively choose which language they were going to use (Bakhtin 1981: 295–296). Nationalism attempted to unify societies at the level of language, but in so doing made stylistic variation within the language more salient. Walloon and French are different languages, but as with many restricted local languages, Walloon has come to function as a stylistic variety in a unified linguistic market dominated by French (Bourdieu 1977).

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Local languages in Europe, called patois in the Francophone world, have a tendency to not stay in their place. Some people have tried to eradicate them for over a hundred years, while others have mourned their death for about the same period of time. Many of them have far fewer fluent speakers than a few generations ago, but anti-hegemonic voices speaking patois can still be heard. Often these voices are tinged with nostalgia, but increasingly they lay claim to modernity (Urla 1993). We have only to look at Breton and Basque rock and Occitan poetry and ragamuffin. Liège puppeteers use Walloon in the voices of common workers in society as they use it themselves in informal conversation with other Walloon speakers. One can hardly speak of clean switches from one language to the other, however. Rather the multiple varieties of the two codes blend into one another in dialogic fashion.7

2.1. Language Change, Language Heterogeneity Two fundamentally related linguistic premises form the foundation of heteroglossia. The first one is that language is historically situated and always changing. The second is that language and language use are heterogeneous in any speech community. Both of these premises fly in the face of standard languages which are monologic abstractions supported by national governments, not living languages. These abstractions, however, cannot be ignored because they constrain both language change and linguistic heterogeneity, though they are never completely successful. Standard languages are a prime ideological means to establish nationhood, allowing people to talk to fellow citizens as they rally around the flag (Balibar and Laporte 1974). But this face to face contact is far less usual than the imagined communities brought about through standardized print languages and described so well by Anderson (1983). Standard languages unite people, but they also oppress them by setting up a single model generated by the upper classes, to which all other dialects in the nation are then compared and deemed “incorrect.” In areas like Western Europe with sophisticated communication technologies, a strong educational system, and a high degree of loyalty to the nation state, standard languages continually exert their influence on all the less prestigious regional and social dialects, slowly leveling out the amount of formal variation (though slight formal variations continue to be impregnated with great symbolic significance).

HETEROGLOSSIA IN LIÈGE

13

Values of linguistic codes are established within a specific political economy that has been historically shaped and that continues to change. A major tool of homogenization is the public school system which disseminates a standardized language. Bourdieu points to the educational system as particularly important since it has a monopoly over the production of the mass of producers and consumers and therefore “over the reproduction of the market on which the value of linguistic competence depends” (Bourdieu 1977: 652). The official language indexes high status so that people cannot rise through the hierarchy of a particular state without mastering the standard variety and abandoning less prestigious languages.8 Talk about language, or metalinguistic discourse, solidifies the value of linguistic codes in peoples’ minds and helps shape public opinion about them. When one hegemonic language becomes the norm against which the values of the other modes of expression are defined, we have a unified linguistic community (Bourdieu 1977:652).9 When a language becomes non-dominant, its linguistic market is restricted and its speakers may eventually abandon it. However, the process of language shift is not a smooth downhill slope toward oblivion. Languages which are not chosen as official state languages continue to have value in people’s lives whether in domains described as informal, highly volatile, or in interactions where the unofficial language accrues “covert prestige” as a badge of solidarity (Trudgill 1972). These non-dominant languages often acquire symbolic value in sub-state national movements. Volos
inov (1973: 66) stated that to the historian of language “a synchronic system is not a real entity; it merely serves as a conventional scale on which to register the deviations occurring at every real instant in time.” Most languages change so slowly that speakers do not even realize change is occurring. Other times the change is more apparent, as when people adopt an entirely new language.10 Whether rapid or slow, language shift never takes place in a thorough fashion. The two languages are used simultaneously, opening new opportunities for expression. The old language lays its brand upon the new, and regional varieties of the new language develop. This is not accomplished evenly across all segments of society and the dialect which is most influenced by the old language usually becomes the least prestigious in the new system. Generally speaking, the lower classes and rural inhabitants do not have clear access to the new language. They perhaps also have little interest in learning it, preferring to remain within the groups in which they feel comfortable rather than attempting to change social status in an economic system that affords them little hope of

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success. Therefore, they continue using the old language for the longest period of time and, as they slowly shift to the new, they generally carry with them more traces of the old. Consequently, they are involved in a shift from a non prestigious language to a non prestigious form of the new prestigious language. The influence of the two languages is mutual and if the regional language survives, it, too, bears the marks of contact with the standard. This diachronic process is clearly illustrated in contemporary language use in Liège where several varieties of French and Walloon coexist. In other words, language change helps create linguistic diversity since not everyone has the same access to linguistic innovations; be they single pronunciation traits, entire styles, or even new languages. However, it can also be said that linguistic diversity at a single point in time gives rise to linguistic change over time because people, consciously or unconsciously, adopt linguistic traits belonging to the different varieties of language with which they come into contact. Present day language use cannot be divorced from past linguistic practices and the ideologies that informed these practices.

2.2. Linguistic Heterogeneity in Liège Prior to the Belgian State Liège lies just south and west of the present day border between Romance and Germanic dialects. Walloon, the language particular to this region, is a GalloRomance dialect with a fair amount of Germanic influence. Little is known about the languages spoken in the area before the Roman conquest since there are no written records, but there is evidence that a Celtic language was being spoken in what is present day Belgium in 54 B.C.E. when Julius Caesar conquered the region. During the next four centuries of Roman domination, the language spoken in Belgium became latinized. In the fourth and fifth centuries, however, the Franks invaded from the North speaking a Germanic language.11 The Frankish king, Clovis, converted to Christianity in 496 and this led to the evangelization of the Frankish nation and the spread of Latin through religious doctrine. The Latin spoken in this area was enriched with Germanic vocabulary used in war and construction. Scholars, perceiving the changes in vulgar Latin as a degeneration, strove to use the Latin described by the grammarians. This created a stable, learned language which by the ninth century was no longer understood by the commoners. Bishops had to translate their sermons into one of the Romance or Germanic dialects so that the people

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could understand what they were saying. (Riché 1983). The city of Liège, designated as a see in the seventh century, evolved into an important center of learning during the Middle Ages and attracted students speaking Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages. In the tenth century Liège became the seat of a large independent principality with prince-bishops supplied by German nobility. During the first centuries of the Principality of Liège, we can assume that the nobility predominantly spoke a Germanic dialect, while the commoners conversed most frequently in Old Walloon. Since it was also a city dominated by the Catholic Church, Latin was used in church, in institutes of higher learning and for official documentation. But, as early as 1200, Old French, particularly the Francien dialect, gained prestige and influence and slowly began squeezing Latin out of official affairs throughout the Gallo Romance area (Wolff 1970). Evidence of this process can be seen in Liège as early as 1233. Remacle (1948a) argued that this written language was not Walloon, but a regionalized version of Francien. In other words, a local variety of Francien was substituted for Latin in written documents while Walloon continued being used orally. We can suspect that a diglossic situation obtained, with Walloon serving as the low, unwritten language used for informal purposes and Francien (later French) used for more formal communication tied to writing. In fact, the oldest examples of written Walloon in Liège date only to the end of the sixteenth century and even then, it appears to have been used only as a mnemonic devices in support of oral literature (Piron 1978). With the advent of print capitalism, the Francien dialect, by this time known as French, rose to a position of clear domination. Febvre and Martin (1976) estimate that while 77% of the books printed before 1500 were in Latin, after 1575 the majority of them were in French. The standardization which takes place concomitantly with printing put French in a good position to be used as a national language. In the oral realm, as well, French was gaining prestige, linked as it was with court culture. Uvular /r/ spread out from Paris in the 1600s, leaping over rural francophone areas to land in urban centers which spoke quite different languages. Thus, it made its way into German, Danish and many varieties of Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian (Chambers and Trudgill 1980: 187–189). To this day, the Walloon of Liège is characterized by a uvular /r/ which sets it apart from the more rural varieties of Walloon.12 The Principality of Liège was one of the most highly productive regions in the world during the sixteenth century, largely due to the high concentration of coal in the region and its metallurgical tradition. The wars that ravaged Europe

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in the seventeenth century created an expanding market for weapons and ammunition from Liège. The principality’s neutral status allowed its merchants to supply both sides. We can assume that these merchants who were plugging Liège production into the international markets had a certain command of French, but Walloon was still their dominant language. Among the extant literature in Walloon from this century are four rhymed dialogues printed in leaflets and probably sold in the market places and public squares (Haust 1939). In political pamphlets, full of sarcasm and anger, peasants raised their voices against the injustices of the time (Havelange, Hélin, Leboutte 1994:264). In the early 1720s, coal-burning steam engines used for pumping ground water out of mines were installed in Liège. These machines greatly increased both operating costs and production, giving capitalism a strong boost in the Liège region. The conditions in Liège during this time period were closely connected to fluctuations of international trade. Both France and the Austrian Low Countries instituted customs duties to shield their own production from Liège’s competition. Liège’s well-trained manpower, on the other hand, was highly desired outside the principality and workers, reduced to starvation wages, left the principality in a steady stream to find better working conditions elsewhere. Pamphlets written in Walloon by angry workers during this period lashed out at the wealthy people who held the purse strings (Piron 1978). Even at this early date, it appears that Walloon is associated with the workers, rather than the new industrial bourgeoisie, who were quickly adopting French as the language of trade and commerce. Enlightenment ideas emanating from France also increased the stature of the French language. After 1750 Liège was particularly open to these ideas and became a publishing center for the Encyclopedists, reprinting their works and distributing cheap copies across the southern Netherlands (Blom and Lamberts 1999: 265). Parisian taste and fashion were glorified and the ability to express oneself in French was considered a mark of refinement. French replaced Latin as the language of diplomacy and accrued an ideology that presented it as a universal language of logic and beauty, unparalleled in its expressive clarity (Battye and Hintze 1992: 36–41). This ideology began in France and spread throughout Europe. In 1780 Le Gay wrote that the people of Liège, while excelling in many arts and crafts, have not distinguished themselves in French letters because they have conserved a barbarous tongue that impedes their progress in other languages (Piron 1978: 17). Soon afterward, the first Walloon-French dictionaries (Cambresier 1787; Villers 1793) appeared in

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order to correct and enrich the local French (Haust 1933:xix). The manufacturing crises of the eighteenth century led to a revolution which drove out the Prince Bishop in 1789. In 1793, the bitterly anticlerical Society of Friends of Liberty and Equality in Liège advocated the union of Liège with France. In 1795, their wish came true when the Principality of Liège, along with the former Austrian Netherlands and other independent territories in what is today Belgium, united with the French Republic. The old hereditary nobility and the guilds were abolished and French became the national language, further lowering the public opinion of Walloon. Thomassin’s memoir for which he began research in 1806 states that the population speaks different dialects of Walloon, “reste de notre ancienne langue romane, patois naïf, souvent énergique, mais presque toujours grossier et obscène” {the remainder of our ancient Roman language, a naive patois, often energetic, but almost always crude and obscene} (1879:206). To implement French as the national language in a country filled with Walloon and Flemish speakers may seem problematic to the reader unfamiliar with language planning, but the situation within today’s borders of France was not much different. By 1794 only three quarters of the population of France knew some French, sometimes not even enough to converse. As late as 1911, the folklorist Van Gennep wrote that the mother tongue of workers and peasants was patois, not French (quoted in Weber 1976: 73). These patois, which the French administration set out to ruthlessly destroy, included Romance dialects, Germanic dialects, Breton and Basque. The French policy of official monolingualism certainly influenced Belgium’s language policy after it gained independence. The major tool of destruction of other languages in the expanded French republic was the national education system where punishments were meted out for speaking languages other than French. Economic success was tied to educational success which was in turn based on one’s knowledge of French. Authoritarian incentive was unnecessary for the Belgian bourgeoisie who suddenly found themselves inserted into a new market of 40 million potential consumers at a time when industry had not yet revolutionized France (Hilden 1993: 18). The Francophone bourgeoisie grew ever stronger in Flemish as well as in Walloon areas and languages other than French became associated with the lower class. It seems reasonable to assume that lower class languages are often viewed as potentially subversive by the ruling class who do not, or have ceased to, understand them. These languages are combated on the ideological level by instilling the populace with a certain distaste for them, primarily

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accomplished through the educational system as dominant ideological state apparatus. The expressed reason, however, was not one of controlling the masses, but of making them politically equal. French was the language of the “Declaration of Rights” while the other languages were seen as both primitive and reactionary (Weber 1976: 67–94). Suspiciously, “progress toward equality” always involves the lower classes accommodating to ruling class norms and not vice versa. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna placed Belgium under the leadership of William I of Holland. In 1819 the king issued a resolution calling for the exclusive use of Dutch in official business within three years. This move was protested throughout the Dutch-speaking regions of Belgium (and especially in Brussels) where the upper levels of society now spoke French (Blom and Lamberts 1999: 307). The resolution did not apply to the predominantly French-speaking area of Liège which continued a pro-French stance. The Dutch language did not make many inroads there, except that it was taught as a second language and had to be learned by those who aspired to the national bureaucracy. Liège probably maintained a certain independence due to its strong economic position which only increased when the first coke-burning blast furnace on the European continent began operating there in 1823. Perhaps as a result of its new role in the world, an increasing awareness of the influence of Walloon on the regional French grew, and a greater effort was made to keep the two codes separate. “Wallonner” had already become a French lexical item which meant “to speak in a ‘heavy’ or ‘thick’ manner.” The 1823 French/Walloon dictionary of Remacle contains a prescriptive section at the end in which he translated how certain Walloon expressions should be said in “proper” French. By 1830, there is an entire book dedicated to the problem of Walloon interference in French (Poyart 1830). In this same year, as Louis Philippe was restored to the throne of France, Belgium revolted and won her independence from Holland.

2.3. Metalinguistic Discourses in Belgium At the time that the Belgian state was formed, citizens were more likely to cohere into groups based on their political philosophy than their language. However, language was soon to come to the forefront. The majority of the peo-

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ple in the north spoke varieties of Flemish while the majority in the south spoke dialects of Walloon. In both regions, the urban upper class spoke standard French as their vernacular (Zolberg 1974: 183). Constitutionally, the new Belgian government supported linguistic freedom, but in practice Flemish was banned from the army, schools, courtrooms, and governmental matters in general and French was established as the national language. University chairs in Dutch language and literature were even abolished (Murphy 1988: 59). Over half of the population who spoke Flemish dialects were forced into the role of second class citizens. Many Walloon speakers were in this same position, but through discourses of racial unity linked to the linguistic closeness of French and Walloon, they were more easily incorporated into the new vision of the nation even as their language was denied official status. Within 10 years, a nascent Flemish movement had begun which questioned the unity of the new state. Some date the beginning of the movement to the publication in 1838 of Hendrik Conscience’s De Leeuw van Vlaenderen (The Lion of Flanders) which describes the Flemish defeat of the French in 1302.13 It is important to point out again that the general population of Flemings and Wallons were not yet polarized. The Lion of Flanders was translated into French and appreciated in Wallonia as well as in Flanders, as a romanticized historical epic in which the weak defeat the powerful. In fact, up to World War I, it was frequently performed in the puppet theaters of Liège. At the Belgian meeting of the International Association of Workers in 1867, a resolution was adopted in favor of Walloon-Fleming solidarity. The left wing already perceived the danger of shifting opposition away from class divisions and onto linguistically-based ethnic ones. As a result of Flemish demands, in 1856 the government appointed a commission to investigate the most appropriate measures to assure the development of Flemish literature and to regulate the use of Flemish (Dutch) in relations with various parts of the public administration.14 In that same year the Société liégeoise de littérature wallonne (SLLW) was formed. This organization had no overt political agenda, they simply wanted to encourage literary production in Walloon. In that sense it mirrored the first task of the above mentioned commission, but not the second. By making no attempt to push for the use of Walloon in the public administration, the SLLW could be seen as setting up a clever analogy between Walloon and Flemish. The power of the analogy emanates from both the said and the unsaid. Just as Walloon literature was encouraged, so should Flemish literature be encouraged. Just as the use of

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Walloon in the public administration was not desired, so should the use of Flemish in the public administration not be desired. Literary production in Walloon increased considerably after the formation of the SLLW. Poetry was the first broad genre to flourish with the comic theater becoming popular in 1858.15 The Walloon bourgeoisie at this point in time was quite comfortable being bilingual in French and Walloon. Defrecheux’s 1861 poem, “My Two Languages” (reprinted in Delbouille 1950) illustrates quite neatly the functional differentiation of the two codes in Liège at that time. Mès deûs lingadjes

My Two Languages

Dj’èplôye po djåzer èt minme po tûzer deûs lingadjes apris d’ djônèsse. Onk si nome françès : todi dj’admeûr’rè si doûceûr èt sès ritchèsses. L’ôte, c’è-st-on walon rûde èt franc tot come nos péres ; c’-è-st-on vêrt djèton qui s’ sitind avå ‘ne lîbe tére. Å ! dji v’s-inme, lingadje di m’ patrèye! Vî walon, hossîz mès-orèyes dusqu’å dièrin djoû di m’ vèye !

I use to speak and even to think two languages learned from childhood One is named French: I will always admire its sweetness and its riches. The other, is Walloon rude and frank just like our fathers; it’s a green sprout that spreads in a free land. Oh! I love you, language of my country! Old Walloon, soothe my ears until the last day of my life!

2

Po’knohe li prumî, dji m’a-st-anoyî bin dès-eûres so l’ banc d’ li scole. Dj’èsteû toûrmèté, ca d’ mès lîbèrtés, on n’ m’aveût lèyî pus nole. Dj’a-st-apris l’ walon tot djouwant å campinêr, ås måyes, å dragon, dizos l’ bleû cîr, è plin-êr. Å ! dji v’s-inme…

To know the first, I was bored many hours on the school bench. I was tormented, for of my freedom, I was left nothing. I learned Walloon while playing with tops, with marbles, with kites, under the blue sky, in the open air. Oh! I love you…

3

Qwand, div’nou pus grand, fîr di mès vint-ans, dji cora lès bals, lès fièsses,

When I became older, proud of my twenty years, I frequented dances, parties,

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dj’a bon d’î sondjî : dj’oya gazouyî è françès m’ prumîre mintrèsse. Mins, di d’vant çoula, li vwès d’ine mére å coûr d’ôr è walon mi d’ha : « Mi-èfant, mi p’tit trézôr ! » A ! dji v’s-inme… 4

Li lingadje francès todi nos sièvrè : on l’ djåse avå l’ monde ètîr; gråce a lu dj’ dîrè qui lès peûpes si d’nèt li min po d’zeû lès frontîres. Mins, si conte nos dreûts si drèssîve on Tèmèrêre, nosse walon dîreût : Ås-armes ! Lîdje èt Sint-Lambêrt ! Å ! dji v’s-inme, lingadje di m’ patrèye ! Vî walon, hossîz mès-orèyes dusqu’å dièrin djoû di m’ vèye ! (1861)

21

it pleases me to imagine it: I heard babbling in French my first girlfriend. But, before that, the voice of a mother with a golden heart in Walloon said to me: “My child, my little treasure!” Oh! I love you… The French language will always serve us: We speak it with the entire world; Thanks to it I will say that people give one another their hand across the borders. But, if against our rights a Charles the Bold rises up, our Walloon would say: To arms! Liège and St. Lambert! Oh! I love you, language of my country! Old Walloon, soothe my ears until the last day of my life!

Again, an analogy could be made with Flemish. Defrecheux could well be interpreted as asking why the Flemish couldn’t feel the same way about their bilingualism: cherish Dutch/Flemish as an informal home language and artistic tool and use French for official activities and contact with the outside world. I have purposefully appended Dutch and Flemish because I think it was a strategy by the Walloon movement to lump the spoken languages and the written language together as Flemish while maintaining a clear separation between Walloon and French. In this manner, Walloon could be said to fill the same place in the model as Flemish. Seen in this light, the negative reaction of the SLLW to French admixture in Walloon and to Walloon admixture in French becomes slightly more important than a general concern with linguistic purity born of a conservative backlash by the upper classes against the natural hybridity that was happening as the general population became bilingual. But let us get back to the poem.

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The first verse fixes both languages equally in the mind of the poet. French is given the effete intellectual qualities of “sweetness” and “richness” while Walloon is admired for its earthiness and its link to the ancestors. In the second verse, the poet specifies how each language was learned. He evokes the misery of learning French as a second language at school and the joy of learning Walloon in informal play settings. In the third verse, the poet as a young adult finds his first girlfriend. Perhaps to show their education and politeness, the young lovers interacted in French.16 Nevertheless, the memory of the loving words he exchanged with his girlfriend is superseded by the memory of prior loving words said by his mother in Walloon. The poem describes a situation of broad diglossia where two different codes are used in variant contexts, one being learned informally at home and the other formally at school.17 In keeping with other descriptions of diglossia, Defrecheux imbues the school language with value as the code which is used to interface with people not of the immediate natal circle. In distinction from other descriptions of diglossia where the informally learned code is given very little value in the society, this poem sings the praises of Walloon, like other budding regionalist movements in Europe at the time.18 In the fourth and last verse the poet removes himself and takes on a distant voice stating how French is a world language which encourages international brotherhood. However, Belgium has seen more than its share of international brotherhood gone awry, so the author is compelled to add that if a foreign aggressor appears again, Liège’s battle cry would be in Walloon. This final image elaborates the one in the first verse where an organic metaphor describes Walloon as a plant spreading over a free land. The poet wants to make it clear that although French is highly valued, Walloons value their freedom even more and would take up arms in the name of their beloved city and its local Saint Lambert if their rights were threatened. The name of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy who, in 1468, gave the command to burn Liège to the ground (saving only the churches) has become part of the linguistic repertoire in Liège designating the quintessential foreign tyrant. While the Walloon author of this poem made reference to outside aggressors, for many Flemings, the Walloons were the aggressors who penetrated through linguistic means. The Flemish movement grew more strident in 1865, when two Flemings, unable to express themselves in French in the courtroom, were executed for a murder which, as was later discovered, they didn’t commit. In the 1870s the cry, “In Vlaanderen, Vlaams” (In Flanders, Flemish)

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came into being and in the next twenty years, they made several political gains, enlarging the official use of Dutch in educational, judicial, military and governmental contexts.19 It has been convincingly argued that the Flemish movement was principally class-based, targeting the francophone Flemish bourgeoisie (Clough 1930). Of course, only monolingual francophone Flemings were put at risk by the Flemish movement. The increasingly official status of Dutch did not only make it easier for the lower class monolingual masses in Flanders, but also for the bilingual middle-class Flemish bureaucrats who could argue that Belgian officials should know both French and Dutch. This made the Walloon middle class, and civil servants in particular, very nervous. Why should they have to learn a language that was of such restricted use in the world at large? Since all the Flemings they had personal contact with spoke French, Walloons saw it as a political maneuver meant to give Flemings a clear employment advantage. The Walloon ruling class saw its hold on the country loosening and reacted. In 1890, the first Walloon congress was held to “open peoples’ eyes to the dangers of the Flemish movement” (Godefroid 1996).20 Both the Flemish and the Walloon movements were affected by Romanticism which placed a high value on language as the source of true nationhood. States which could pass themselves off as monolingual had used Romanticism’s endorsement of linguistic nationalism to their advantage, but Belgian statemakers could ill afford to extol the virtues of “the mother tongue” when it was so obviously plural within their borders. If language created such fundamental differences between people (as claimed by Herder) then it could not be used to define the soul of the nation in a multilingual state like Belgium. On the other hand, language came to be of utmost importance to those searching for souls which were specifically Flemish or Walloon. This essentialist searching recuperated Walloon from being seen only as the language of the poor (which spoken Walloon was rapidly becoming) and elevated it to the true mirror of the Walloon soul.21 The effort put into describing the Belgian soul emanated from the francophone bourgeoisie, but French was considered a tool of unification, not the essential mother tongue of Belgians. Not being able to use linguistic arguments, the Belgian soul as described by Edmond Picard in 1897 and reinforced by the historians Henri Pirenne in La Nation belge (1900) and Godefroid Kurth in La nationalité belge (1922 [1913]) was based on a shared history of continually throwing off foreign invaders. Soon another occasion to vanquish foreign

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tyrants arose when Germany invaded in 1914. Despite their united front, Belgium suffered great destruction and German occupying forces moved in. In 1917 the occupying government divided Belgium into two administrative districts: Flemish speakers to the north and French/Walloon speakers to the South. A Council of Flanders was formed and unanimously resolved on the independence of Flanders. The Court of Appeals in Brussels arrested two of the councilmen which resulted in the occupying forces arresting three of the four presidents of the Court and taking them to Germany. The German governor ordered the release of the councilmen and forbade criminal proceedings against them. In the following year, the Germans were forced to retreat, but this difficult period of Belgian history continued to color relations between Flemings and Walloons. Linguistic arguments became more heated after World War I and in 1923, the Flemish movement finally won their battle to switch the teaching and administration language of the University of Ghent from French to Dutch. This event caused an uproar in Wallonia that the earlier designation of Flemish districts in 1921 did not.22 A Dutch language university meant that, for the first time, Belgium could produce national elites who did not go through French education. This being the case, they could no longer maintain French as the only official language, but would have to admit Dutch as an elite public language in Belgium. The Walloons saw that the next step was to require bilingualism in these two languages for public office (and white collar jobs in general) which would greatly disadvantage them since most middle-class Flemings were bilingual anyway and most Walloons were not. In response to legal gains by the Flemish movement, the Walloon movement, which before simply encouraged literary endeavors in Walloon among people who were understood to be francophones, took a sudden interest in workers and peasants who were monolingual Walloon speakers. The time had come to verbalize the unspoken part of the analogy, only the terrain had changed. Now that Flemish had gained a status in the public administration, it was time to demand equal status for Walloon. Monolingual Walloon speakers were the counterpart to the monolingual Flemish speakers for whom the Flemish movement claimed to stand. In the newspaper, Franc-Tigneû of May 7, 1932, the lead article “Ceux qui parlent Wallon” chastised the Belgian government for forgetting about monolingual Walloon speakers (Denis 1932). The article stated that it was not enough to simply encourage Walloon literature and theater when the daily lives of workers and peasants are lived exclusively

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through Walloon. The Flemish had been able to require government workers in Flemish regions to speak Flemish, so government workers should have to speak Walloon in the Walloon regions of the country. In order to show that Walloon was already being used in an official capacity, the article then follows with statistics on the official use of Walloon in 100 Walloon communes. In 91, more than half used Walloon in their dealings with the central administration. In their own city council meetings, 23 used only Walloon and 33 used a mixture of French and Walloon. According to Piron (1978), this survey had been conducted in 1920 by J.M. Remouchamps. Franc-Tigneû neglected to report that the notes of these meetings were always in French, keeping with the unofficial-oral/official-written split that had existed for several centuries in Liège. This push for the use of Walloon in public administration came from a militant branch of the Walloon movement which did not reflect the common sentiments in Wallonia. Linguistic habits were changing at a more rapid pace during the interwar period as mass consumption began to flourish. Films and radio brought in voices from afar and none of them spoke Walloon. Compulsory education had become a reality and it taught that French was the language of “culture,” “politeness,” and “opportunity.” Several working-class people I met who were young during this period reported that Walloon was banished from their homes. From the beginning, the Walloon language was central to the project of the Museum of Walloon Life which opened its doors to the public during Belgium’s centennial year, 1930, under the directorship of the above mentioned J. M. Remouchamps. The founders were guided by the German folklore school “Wörter und Sachen” which called for careful linguistic documentation of objects collected. This philosophy guided Jean Haust’s excellent dictionary of the Liège dialect of Walloon published by the Museum of Walloon Life in 1933. J. M. Remouchamps was a strong supporter of teaching Walloon in the schools. One of his first steps was to back the creation of two chairs of Walloon Dialectology and History of Walloon Literature in 1920 at the University of Liège which formed the basis of the Institute of Walloon Dialectology, created in 1931. During that same year Remouchamps solicited Marcel Fabry’s “Walloon readings with commentary and translation. Essay on the introduction of Walloon in primary school as an element of the teaching of French” for the Museum’s research journal (Fabry 1933). (Note that the importance of French as primary language has not been altered.) Remouchamps said in his preface that most children in the Liège agglomeration know both French and

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Walloon “more or less.” But, many have Walloon as a native tongue and it is the only language they hear at home which creates linguistic confusions. Following the footsteps of the Provençal regionalist, Frédéric Mistral, he encouraged Walloon schools to adopt the Savinien method of presenting simple texts in Walloon with their translations. In this manner, he said that students would be able to correct their wallonismes in French, but would also learn that Walloon was “not a despicable jargon, but a brother dialect of French” and “the living heritage of those who preceded us” (Remouchamps 1933b: 18). Belgium was again occupied by Germany from 1940 to 1944. Familiar tales of Flemish collaboration and the differential treatment of Flemings and Walloons by the Germans circulated in Wallonia, further eroding relations between the two groups. After the war, increased mobility and mass media (especially television) facilitated the spread of French and the further retreat of Walloon. By the mid twentieth century, monolingual speakers of Walloon had all but disappeared (Bal 1954), a state pointed out by most researchers of language death as foreshadowing the demise of the language. Despite the general shift away from Walloon in the home, the working class continued speaking it in certain situations and mixing it with French, unconcerned with the “purity” of the dialect. At the same time a small percentage of non-working-class Walloons continued reading and writing Walloon literature, although they seldom spoke it. This resulted in a dialect split between Walloon authors and Walloon speakers. Ironically the authors who read and write Walloon, but do not use it in spoken communication, have been named the saviors of the language, while those who speak it are accused of bastardizing Walloon through admixture with French.23 Unfortunately, this viewpoint has been internalized by many working-class Walloon speakers who consider the people who studied Walloon in university as the ones who really know the language and they become very self conscious about speaking Walloon in front of these people.

2.4. Contemporary Spoken Varieties along the French/Walloon Continuum Belgium’s national language problems have received a good deal of international publicity, mainly by journalists, political scientists, educators, and sociologists of language. Most of these works deal with the legal rights of different

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standard languages and do not show that linguistic diversity penetrates much further than the northern half of Belgium speaking Dutch and the southern half speaking French, with a few German speakers along the eastern border. While French, Dutch and German are the offical state languages, there are also several unofficial dialects which continue to be spoken in many rural and workingclass homes. The relationship between Walloon and French in the South and between Flemish and Dutch in the North get very little written attention since they do not involve the ruling class and official culture. These struggles are between the more and less powerful within an ethnic group, whereas the struggle between French and Dutch is one between the power elites of two ethnic groups vying for control of the state. Struggles between power elites always receive more press coverage, but while every Belgian is aware of national language problems, what they live with every day is heteroglossia at the community level and this often involves more than one language as well as multiple varieties of the same language. So far, I have only mentioned what are considered the autochthonous languages of Belgium, but Belgium is also a country of immigration. Eastern Europeans filtered in over the years escaping sociopolitical changes in their own countries and large numbers of Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese immigrated to fill in the labor shortage after World War II. They were followed by Tamazight, Arab, Turkish, and Kurdish speakers. Central Africans made their way to Belgium, following back the route of colonialism, and Southeast Asian and South American refugees also have made it their home. All these languages have multiple varieties which I am not equipped to go into. I know that an Italian friend of mine said that you could hear almost every southern Italian dialect walking through the Sunday market on the Batte in Liège and a Spanish friend took me to a bar where everyone was speaking Asturian. She pointed out Andalucian and Basque bars on our way home. When I returned to Liège after two years in Morocco, I sometimes spoke in Moroccan Arabic to my butcher and Tarifit to my grocer. Dutch was required in high school in Liège, but few people I met were willing to speak it. High school students tended to mock it and were far more interested in English (the language of popular music) than Dutch (the language of their co-citizens).24 Leaving aside Dutch and recently imported tongues, the Gallo-Romance varieties of present day Liège commonly range between fluent Walloon and regional standard French. In the middle the continuum runs from Walloon heavily influenced by French, through different mixtures of French

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and Walloon vocabulary, to French which is heavily influenced by Walloon. I will talk about five points along the continuum. Keep in mind that these are not integral, isolated sets, but rather flow into one another. Likewise, although I have associated these points along the continuum with different social groups, this is not to say that each group always speaks a certain way. Everyone is able to style shift, though the ranges of different social groups may be wider or narrower and they may fall closer to one pole or the other. In the descriptions that follow, I often use standard French as the background upon which to compare the various Liège varieties. These varieties are not to be construed as “incorrect” deviations from the “correct” French model. I have only presented them in this manner assuming that many readers are already familiar with standard French pronunciation and in order to excuse myself from writing a complete linguistic description. 2.4.1. Standard Regional French The first variety I will discuss is the regional standard which I take to be the variety of French spoken by the natively educated who have completed university studies. This dialect is the closest to the standard French of France, although its speakers can still be picked out in France as Belgians. If you ask a French person what characterizes Belgian speech, he will probably point out the frequency with which Belgians interject “you know” (savez-vous, sais-tu) into everything they say. This is a widespread caricature of Belgian speech in France, even among those who have never actually heard it, due to the popularity of Belgian jokes. They may also know that Belgians say “septante” and “nonante” instead of the more cumbersome “soixante-dix” and “quatre-vingtdix” used in France. There are, of course, other more subtle differences. For instance, Liège academics I talked with were conscious of trying to speed up their speech when they were with French people at international conferences. There is also a tendency to insert semi-vowels between diphthongs and, among older people, an occasional aspirated [h] slips out or “ll” intervocalically is pronounced [lj] rather than [j]. I should point out that even though these regional traits still crop up occasionally in the speech of the highly educated and respected, there is considerable prestige attached, in certain circles, to speaking the standard of France “sans accent.” I enrolled in a diction class for those who were trying to get rid of their Liège accents. “Dégrossir” (de-vulgarize) was the term used by the professor.

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The class had in attendance some working-class people, but was filled mainly with members of the petite bourgeoisie. Some were taking the class for jobrelated purposes, while others were doing it for purely personal reasons. On the first day of class, the professor, who received his degree in Romance Language Studies at the University of Liège (but who said “soixante-dix” instead of “septante”), told his students that they would not see results in three months, but by the end of the year they should see a definite “improvement.” He suggested that they try to spend part of the summer in France to inculcate the good habits they would learn in class. In the meantime, he advised them to try to spend their time in a “privileged” environment. In two short sentences he acknowledged both the geographical and class affiliations of the variety he was going to teach them. No one questioned why a variety from a different geographical region should hold higher status than a local variety: why one should have to physically move horizontally in order to symbolically move vertically up the social scale. 2.4.2. Wallonized French The regional accent the diction class students were trying to rid themselves of is carefully described by Louis Remacle (1948b) in Orthophonie Française in terms of Walloon influence. To one familiar with standard French, the most highly marked features of this Walloon-influenced French variety can be partially explained by an articulatory setting which is less tense and less forward than standard French. From the prescriptive approach of the diction teacher, one can derive a rough description of this variety. Since diction teachers seldom tell you not to do something that you do not do, one can negatively derive a model of how people do talk from the diction teacher’s preferred model of how people should talk. Furthermore, by listening closely to how students performed the various targeted exercises, you could also get an idea of which sociolinguistic variables they were conscious of and which ones were still below the level of consciousness. The variables they were conscious of matched the traits pointed out by several junior high and high school language teachers with whom I talked: unclear, drawled vowels and denasalization of nasalized vowels. The teachers said that these traits show up mostly among the 12 year olds who come from small schools in the outlying (more workingclass) sections of Liège and that their accents are usually “gone” by age fourteen because they “come down on them hard at first.” School had not served

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this purpose for the 15 women and 3 men ranging from their 20s to their 60s in my diction class. Even for the younger generation, “gone” reflects a monologic view that people only speak in one way. Students who acquire the standard in school, do not necessarily lose their regional accents. I lived in a girls’ boarding school for the first month I was in Liège and heard many regional traits in the older teen-aged girls’ repertoires. They have simply learned to suppress regional traits in formal settings which takes a certain amount of maturity.25 Here were some of the exercises we did in diction class: 1. Pronounce “ville” in the front of your mouth as [vil] not [vl]. 2. Do not diphthongize oral and nasal vowels in final position (“passé” should be [pase] not [pasej]; “rue” should be [Ry] not [Ryw]; “maintenant” should be [mtnã] not [mtnãõ]). 3. Do not insert intrusive glides between two vowels (“intellectuelle” should be [tlktyl] not [tlktywl]; “réel” should be [Rel] not [Reyl]). 4. Nasalize your vowel before a nasalized consonant (“disons” is [dizõ] not [dizo]). While the people in my class recognized that they were guilty of the traits mentioned above in informal speech, they seemed to have no trouble correcting them in careful speech. For instance all the students were able to make the distinction when carefully reading contrastive lists between “rôt” and “rond,” “gras” and “grand,” “paix” and “pain,” even though they might not retain the distinction in other speech situations ([õ] seemed more difficult to retain than the others.) The following exercises were more challenging for my classmates. 4. When saying “Maurice et Laurent se sont présentés au restaurant,” make sure that “au” before “r” is pronounced [] not [o]. 5. When pronouncing an alveolar stop followed by a diphthong beginning with a high front vowel, keep the consonant distinct from the diphthong. Do not turn the combination into an affricate. Affrication transforms the sounds [tj] (in “laitier”) and [dj] (in “diable”) into [t] and [d ], two sounds which do not exist in standard French, but do in Walloon. We then had to repeat “Le laitier a apporté du lait entier pour les enfants du quartier.” This exercise was particularly difficult for my classmates and they were shocked at the ease with which I performed the task. It must have seemed particularly unfair to have a non native speaker perform “better” on an exercise. In fact, it was precisely because I was not a native of Liège that I did not have

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the affrication rule in my head, so I did not have to override it. 6. Do not devoice voiced consonants. “Possible” is [psibl] not [psip] and “diable” is [djabl] not [tap]. The name of the city itself received special attention in diction class with respect to devoicing and vowel clarity. In Walloon it is spelled “Lîdge” and pronounced [lid ] or [lit]. In French it is spelled “Liège” which in Standard French is pronounced [li ]. In local speech, however the second vowel is pronounced [e]. This was actually reflected in the spelling prior to World War II, when the French spelling was “Liége.” Locals also tend to devoice the final consonant turning [ ] to []. So in wallonized French “Liège” is pronounced [lie]. Another sentence we practiced which used rules 4, 5 and 6 was, “Au nord de Liège, Thierry découvre le Tiers à Liège.” 7. Never aspirate “h”. This Walloon phoneme does not exist in French which shares the grapheme, but never aspirates the sound (even when it is called “h aspiré”). 8. Do not drop the final consonant in word final consonant clusters. One puppeteer friend of mine, when explaining how tricky the French language was, started reciting groups of homonyms. Among these were “sainte” and “cintre.” The second word was pronounced [st], exactly like the first. While the [tR] cluster word finally may be reduced to [t] in rapid standard French, no speaker of standard French would pronounce these words alike, isolated in careful pronunciation. When the puppeteer’s wife heard him telling me this, she scoldingly pointed out that they were spelled differently. He shrugged his shoulders, giving preference to the spoken norm. Our diction teacher concentrated on phonology because it is so difficult to change, but he also mentioned some other grammatical traits which derived from Walloon, such as adjectives placed before nouns (e.g., “la rouge table”), “avoir” used instead of “être” as an auxiliary verb (e.g., “Il a venu,” or in the reflexive construction, “Il s’a mouillé”). There are other traits that distinguish this variety that never came up in class, such as Walloon vocabulary borrowings, in particular the verbum dicendi which will be discussed later. The variety of French which was sanctioned in diction class is common within the working-class and petite bourgeoisie who may not speak Walloon at all. At an earlier time of societal language shift, a variety like this marked a dominant Walloon speaker who was trying to put on airs, or to “fart higher than his ass” to translate a Walloon saying. This is delightfully demonstrated in

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the most famous piece of Walloon literature, the play Tåtî l’Pèriquî (Remouchamps 1934 [1885]). It tells a tale of class and language set in Liège but which has far more than just local appeal. In fact, it played even in Paris and London. In it, a petit bourgeois barber thinks he has won the lottery and one of the first things he does is to attempt to stop speaking Walloon and switch to French, but of course the French he utters is marked by Walloon in predictable ways. This type of language shift from regional to standard was familiar throughout Europe and therefore could be appreciated beyond Wallonia. It is also true, however, that there were substantial Walloon populations in Paris and London who would have been particularly pleased with the show and must have laughed the “laughter of recognition” as they saw characters from “home.”26 Other examples of linguistic mixtures appeared in the theater, but Liège had to wait until after the turn of the century to see a mixed code in a written genre meant to be read, not performed. From 1901 to 1906, a series of short stories in the Journal de Liège were written in regional French by Marcel Remy. While many people were scandalized that he could write French “so badly,” a local university professor called it “a little literary and linguistic monument of Wallonia” (Chalon 1996:619–620). 2.4.3. Code-Switching What I described above could be called code-mixing since the rules and vocabulary of one language have influenced another language, but the speakers consider that they are speaking a single language. In code-switching, there are perceivable breaks between the languages in a single speech act. In Liège this variety is used informally by some people who are Walloon dominant and others who are French dominant, but who aren’t concerned with the separation of the two codes. There is, of course, nothing even close to a standard. The percentage of one language or another depends firstly on the speakers’ competence in both languages. For near-balanced bilinguals, it depends more strongly on the people they are talking to, the subject and the genre. Code-switching is a common variety used among working-class people speaking informally. I have heard the language shifts take place between topics of conversation, genres, parts of genres (such as punchlines in jokes) or intrasententially. Sometimes it is impossible to classify the linguistic output as one language or the other because it belongs to both. Woolard refers to this as bivalency and

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notes how bivalent elements are often used as fulcrums for code-switching (1998: 8). Codes can also be switched to express and deny solidarity, as will be discussed below. 2.4.4. Frenchified Walloon: Hybrid or Literary The fourth and fifth points along the continuum are taken by Hybridized Walloon and Literary Walloon. Ironically, both of these varieties are called Frenchified Walloon by different segments of the population. Obviously, since these two languages have coexisted for over 700 years, there has been a considerable amount of influence — just as we noticed in regional French. One example of French influence on Walloon pointed out by both native speakers and scholars is the use of the familiar personal pronoun, “ti.” They say that “ti” is much more vulgar to use in Walloon than “tu” is in French.27 Regular speakers of the language, however, can be heard using “ti” in the same way that they use “tu” in French. I have noticed this a few times not long after the same speakers told me that they never use “ti.” The connotation of vulgarity does not extend paradigmatically to its object pronoun. I was told by one puppeteer that the Walloon, “twé ,” could be used like the French “toi” and was not vulgar like “ti.” Despite a certain amount of agreement by Walloon speakers and Walloon scholars about the nature of “ti,” in other ways their definitions of Frenchified Walloon vary greatly. The scholars of Walloon say that Walloon speakers are losing vocabulary and are translating French phrases word for word instead of looking for equivalent Walloon expressions or putting the French phrases into a Walloon grammatical pattern. The attempt to keep French and Walloon apart is apparent in the literature, as I mentioned above, from the beginning of the 19th century. At first, they worked on purging local French of Walloon interference, but after French became the dominant language, they began to fear that French was deforming Walloon. This is clearly stated in the preface to one of the better grammars designed for the teaching of Walloon (Bertrand and Duchesne n.d.). The authors comment on the progressive deterioration of literary style in Walloon, attributing it to the ignorance of Walloon syntax. They list several deformations of Walloon that come from the imposition of French grammatical structure onto Walloon. They go on to say that they have based their grammar on the writings of past Walloon authors. Once again, as in the case of Classical Latin, we see the beginnings of a standard language based on an older written variety and aimed at impeding language change.

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It is precisely this standardized variety of Walloon that native Walloon speakers called “Frenchified.” I could not get people to define this variety; rather, they said that Walloon learned in school doesn’t sound quite right. One reason for this is that teachers of Walloon might revive an archaic term in order to avoid using a French, or French-sounding, one. This is not considered to be more “Walloon” by native speakers, but only strange or, perhaps if they remember grandparents using it, more old-fashioned or peasant-like.28 Unlike the scholars, a native speaker’s knowledge of Walloon is not based on a standard model, but on speaking it with friends. A lot of native speaker discomfort with the language taught in school comes from their discomfort with the people who speak it. “Frenchified” in this sense does not refer to particular linguistic traits which are more French-like as opposed to Walloon-like, but to the complex of non-working-class interactional patterns which they choose to label “Frenchified.” To the native speaker, Walloon is a living language — not something to be artificially preserved. It is also overwhelmingly a spoken language. Most Walloon speakers would still prefer to write in French since writing itself belongs to that world of formality in which French is dominant. Even people who feel very comfortable speaking hybridized Walloon might feel reluctant to write it. One puppeteer submitted a Walloon script to a Walloon scholar for inspection. He later told me, “He corrects my mistakes in Walloon, but I’ve never heard him speak it.” Nevertheless, the years of denigrating hybridized Walloon by the scholars of the language have taken their toll and there are several native speakers of Walloon who believe that their own knowledge of spoken Walloon is insufficient. The only people who speak Walloon correctly, they believe, are those who have studied it in school. This has led to the paradox that the people who speak Walloon natively, fluently and frequently are accused of bringing about its demise, while the people who study it in school and write in it are considered its saviors.29

2.5. Social Factors Triggering the Use of Walloon Now that the reader has some sense of the different varieties of French and Walloon in Liège, I must again stress that no one speaks only a single dialect, but instead has command over a range of varieties. Some people have a wider range than others, largely depending on the people with whom they regularly

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interact. For most people this range is composed of contiguous varieties along the spectrum. It is also possible, however, to have a split range. In the chart below I offer an impressionistic schematic rendering of three types of linguistic repertoires in Liège in 1982. I based these repertoires on production, rather than reception, since people can always understand linguistic varieties that they do not produce. The continuum ranges from literary Walloon to standard regional French. In the working-class group represented on line A, older people had a range closer to the left side of the continuum and the range of younger people fell farther to the right. Line B represents the small group of middle and upper class adults who learned Walloon in school. Line C represents the majority of middle and upper class adults who did not learn Walloon in school. Lit. Walloon HybridWalloon Code Switching Wallonized French French A B C

***************************************************** *************** ************** **********

As noted above, the Walloon scholars represented on Line B in the chart often feel a distaste for the varieties closer to the center of the spectrum, considering them impure degenerations. Interestingly, the absolute center, the code-switching variety, is actually more tolerated than the others since it does not pretend to be either code and has a strong correlation with humor. It is commonly used, for instance, in regional comic skits. Walloonized French and Hybrid Walloon, on the other hand are considered to be degraded forms which threaten the standard “proper” languages of French and Walloon. It is no surprise that these are the varieties spoken by lower class citizens of Liège. Age, class, and gender seem to be the most significant demographic variables when considering who uses Walloon. The unmarked speaker of Walloon is an old working-class male. During my fieldwork in 1982 Walloon was the mother tongue of a substantial number of people over age 65 and it was still common to hear groups of old people conversing in Walloon. The topic of conversation did not seem to matter much: inflation and unemployment were discussed as often as memories of bygone days. Some young people who learned Walloon sought out older people with whom they could practice. Old people were pleased when they found younger people who could understand Walloon

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and even more pleased when these youths could carry on a conversation. Many old Walloon speakers frequented businesses where they could interact in Walloon, lending an economic dimension to the knowledge of this language for merchants in certain neighborhoods. The “certain” neighborhoods were working-class neighborhoods. It was the aristocracy followed by the bourgeoisie who opted for French, while spoken Walloon was left to peasants and workers. In this milieu, it became a language of class solidarity. In fact, I never saw groups of upper class older people, as I did working-class ones, conversing in Walloon or code-switching, but then they did not spend much time with their friends in public places where they could be observed. In the European relational class system, the association of Walloon with working-class life meant that eventually it picked up an aura of vulgarity. European women are more sensitive to accusations of vulgarity since they are more dependent on perceived status in the job and marriage market and they are also primarily responsible for the reproduction of the next generation.30 This doesn’t mean that working-class women do not speak Walloon, only that they are more careful about whom they speak it with. One old woman I know well speaks Walloon regularly with both male and female friends, but once faulted a younger woman she knew for being vulgar and speaking Walloon to men she didn’t know. In an attempt to shield one’s family from accusations of vulgarity, many Walloon women banished Walloon from the home. At this point, Walloon, rather than the language of the working-class, became the predominantly male language of the work place. This is illustrated by the life of puppeteer, Gaston Engels who told me that his mother insisted on using French at home and that he only learned Walloon when he went to work in the mines at age fourteen. Coal mining, an important part of the Liège economy in past years, was dominated by the Walloon language. In fact, the one area where Walloon has made a significant impact on Standard French is in coal-related terms. “Houille,” meaning “coal” entered French as early as 1615. “Bure” (mine shaft) and “hercher” (to push mineral laden wagons in the mines) with its derivations “Herche” and “hercheur/euse” were 18th century borrowings as was “escarbille” (incompletely burned coal). “Borin” and “borinage” meaning “a group of coal miners” and “extraction work” respectively were 19th century additions along with “gailletin” or “middle grade coal.” Walloon remained the language of use in the mines until the last one closed down in the 1970s. While I never

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had a chance to visit a working coal mine, several people told me that Walloon was used and I have some interesting evidence that supports this. Two older southern Italian men with whom I became acquainted came to work in the mines of Liège. Their contact with Belgians was largely restricted to the workplace, since there was already a fairly large Italian community and the language at home remained Italian or a southern Italian dialect. In their old age, these men spoke a mixed Italian/Gallo-Romance dialect to Belgians which had equal, if not more, Walloon input as French input. It could be argued that these people, to whom Walloon and French were equally foreign tongues and who were more sealed off from the negative opinions of Walloon, more accurately reflected the language of the workplace because it was the only Gallo-Romance variety they were exposed to for any length of time. If age, gender, and class are significant demographic variables when considering who speaks Walloon, other variables are necessary to predict when Walloon will be spoken. The opposition of status, power, prestige, and dominance on one hand to solidarity, intimacy, or covert prestige on the other has proven a useful tool in the study of code-switching, language maintenance and language shift and the association of Walloon with the second half of this opposition is quite clear.31 Walloon is used with people to whom one feels close. Many young people learned what they know of the language from their grandparents. Babies and lovers may often be called Walloon pet names, even by those who know very little Walloon. Beyond using Walloon with one’s friends, the solidarity produced by speaking this tongue can be extended to any fellow Walloon speaker in certain situations, for example, when Walloons meet outside of Wallonia or in another non Walloon environment. For instance, I was told that young Walloon men doing their military service will often form groups of Walloon speakers in the army cafeteria and I personally watched a group of Walloon school teachers converse in Walloon while admiring a church in France. On the contrary, seldom did I hear people speaking Walloon with someone they strongly disliked. One time I was sitting out on the sidewalk with two elderly women who were conversing in the code-switching variety of Walloon and French. An old man came down the steps complaining about a mutual neighbor in the same code. One of the women answered him in her most formal French, basically reminding him of his own faults as a neighbor. She then turned to her friend and paraphrased her own speech in Walloon. In this incident, the use of Walloon as an instrument of solidarity and French as an instru-

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ment of distance is laid bare. There is no other way to account for the switch of varieties since all parties present understood both French and Walloon and the same subject was spoken about in both varieties. Having heard both women converse in the code-switching variety with men on previous occasions, I doubt that the gender difference was not a factor. Just as speaking Walloon with someone implies solidarity, the refusal to speak it often implies a lack of solidarity. This also helps explains why two Walloon speakers of different social classes generally converse in French. It is clearly apparent that being native speakers of the same minority language does not determine code use. Every speech community is fraught with tensions and people choose their voices accordingly. Being aware of the solidarity that speaking Walloon with someone implies leaves it open for manipulation. After asking one middle aged man on what occasions he would use Walloon, he answered that if he were stopped by a policeman for a traffic violation, he would plead his case right then and there in Walloon, appealing to their shared identity as Walloon speakers. Professional pleaders know this trick as well as I found out when reading a newspaper account of a trial of an inmate who escaped from prison. The article begins: “Michel Paulus pleaded for Robert Gillon alternating between seriousness and familiarity, sometimes using Walloon to substantiate his own surprise at the accusations.”32 Another example of how this code can be manipulated came in a letter I received from a city politician who must have secured my name and address from the list of people signed up to take Walloon courses offered by the City of Liège. The letter was in Walloon and the author — after affirming that he himself was raised in Walloon, won prizes in Walloon at school, and is on the side of those battling to keep Walloon alive — urged me to vote for those who defend Liège, the Socialist Party of Wallonia, and not for those people in the government who want to “squash us.” In the same vein, the close indexical relationship of Walloon with the working class and its solidarity potential is not overlooked by the trade unionists. At a street festival, I was handed a sheet of paper informing the population of Liège about a workers’ struggle in a particular factory. The notice told how the company planned to restructure its production process by firing one third of the workers and making the rest work longer hours for less pay. It was printed in Walloon on one side and French on the other. It seemed to be a modern day extension of the peasant dialogues and other tracts written in Walloon by the lower classes in past centuries and distributed in the streets. All of this literature protests unfair

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practices of a class nature in society. Only today, a French translation must be included since Walloon comprehension is no longer guaranteed, even among the working class.

2.6. The Maintenance of Walloon in Verbal Art The use of Walloon can function to mark various social groups and relationships between interlocutors but, it cannot be reduced to such functions since it does not occur evenly across all genres of language within these social situations, and it extends beyond these situations in certain genres. In addition to the sociological factors noted above, Walloon in Liège society hangs on in verbally artistic genres, both in writing and in speaking. In this type of language which exhibits a set toward the poetic function, formal characteristics have utmost importance. It stands to reason that a focus on the form of the message would accompany language revival movements and lead to production of verbal art in the minority language. Furthermore, verbal art which has been created in the minority language would resist translation more than language in which the referential function was dominant. Writing Walloon poems in some way resisted the increasingly common view of Walloon as a crude and ugly way of speaking. It was an aesthetic, not a political battle. There was never an equal effort to promote Walloon in textbooks or in other official written domains. As we saw above, even when meetings were held in Walloon, minutes were taken in French. Following Bakhtin, I see no great theoretical gulf between written and spoken genres, though I do recognize that Walloon has evolved differently within the two realms. As in writing, Walloon is more present in spoken utterances which show a concern with form. Rhymes and songs clearly must be uttered as they were heard, or else one compromises the rhythm. Because of such paralinguistic qualities as rhythm and melody, songs remain in peoples’ memories longer than other verbally artistic forms. One of Liège’s most famous native sons, the detective story writer Georges Simenon, remarked during a videotaped interview that, although he had lived in France for many years, Walloon songs still ran through his mind on occasion. Walloon songs were popular fare on certain radio stations, at festivals, and in a singing café called “Aux Olivettes,” located on a side street near the Pont des Arches. The café had a working-class/bohemian clientele whose average

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age hovered around 65. An extremely thin and frail old woman called “Miss Mary” sat at the piano and banged out tunes with scotch-tape-bound fingers. One by one audience members would mount the stage and belt out a song. The performers (who were all amateurs) generally took on the identity of their favorite singer and would only sing their songs. They were known as Edith Piaf, Tino Rossi, etc. World War II songs were common and someone always sang a song or two in Walloon. This represented quite a different setting than the occasional Walloon folksong contest where songs had to be in Walloon in order to qualify. Newly composed nostalgic songs were common fare at the contests, whereas the songs at “Aux Olivettes” were old songs which evoked nostalgia through memories of what one was doing when that song was popular (for the older set), or hearing it sung by older loved ones (for the younger set). The Prague school functional model goes a certain way toward explaining the retention of minority languages in certain verbal genres, but the Bakhtinian notion of reported speech adds to our understanding of Walloon usage. Reported speech ranges from ready-made utterances passed down by numerous people through time to the words of a particular person uttered at a particular time. The first category of ready-made utterances, many people tend to regard as folklore and Walloon’s identification with the ancestors gives it a certain cachet in traditional utterances. Of course, not all traditional utterances are understood as being traditional. The most widespread usage of Walloon across all classes occurs in cursing and exclamations. One liégeois professor told me that his children were not even aware that he knew Walloon until he bought a car and began driving in the city. As his anger at the foolish driving antics of others welled up, the curses poured out in Walloon. Even teen-agers and young adults who do not really speak Walloon appear to curse in Walloon more often than they do in French. They also regularly use the Walloon forms of “no” and “yes” for emphasis. “Nèni” could be translated as “no way!” and “siya” as something like, “it sure is” after someone has stated that it wasn’t. Many of the transformations of the common exclamation, “Name of God!” are in Walloon. Like curses and the other emotion-laden exclamations discussed above, proverbs are ready-made utterances that sum up a person’s thoughts on a subject, but while curses index a loss of control, proverbs exude folk wisdom. Walloon is rich in these words of wisdom and knowledge of them is promoted both by grandparents who teach about life and by school teachers who teach about the Walloon language. Consequently, they are frequently called on to sum up a situation. One of the earliest collections of Walloon folklore, first

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published in 1861 by Joseph Dejardin (1891) contained over 3000 Walloon proverbs with cross dialectal comparisons. Proverbs formed a basic part of the Walloon course offered by the city in which I enrolled. Ones I heard in context outside of class include “You don’t have to teach an old monkey how to make faces” said about someone who knows his way around and “The young of cats scratch” referring to how bad qualities run in families. Jokes, anecdotes, and gossip in Walloon are also very common, though they are more class and age restricted than cursing and proverbs. Shifting into Walloon often marks a breakthrough into performance. These genres are considered to be less traditional, but they still are dependent on reported speech. Rather than being passed down through the centuries, they are more likely to be seen as the reported speech of a particular person at a particular time. Jokes, anecdotes and gossip may be relayed completely or partially in Walloon. Punchlines of jokes and direct quotes (the places where formal constraints are the greatest) are the parts most likely to be said in Walloon. The importance of Walloon as a marker of reported speech is underlined by the fact that even when speaking French, people often use the Walloon form of the verbum dicendi, “dist-i” and “dist-èle.” All of the genres and types of utterances mentioned above occur within the theater where language has that once-removed quality of being a sign of a sign, rather than a sign of a thing (Bogatyrev 1976: 33). One might say that language within the theater represents extended reported speech, since actors do not pronounce their own words on stage. Not only are there two theaters in Liège which regularly stage Walloon productions, but there are also weekly Walloon dramas on the television, put on by various theater groups from around Wallonia. The biggest fans of these dramas are the elderly. I attended one Walloon and two code-switching productions in Liège and each time I was one of about ten people under sixty years old in audiences ranging in number from about 50 to over 150. One of the standard questions I asked everyone I met in Liège was how they learned the Walloon they knew. I began to get an idea of the importance of Wallon theater when I heard some young people credit their ability to comprehend Walloon to the theatrical productions (both live and puppet) to which they were regularly taken by older relatives who provided commentary when necessary. To a certain extent, three modes of learning corresponded to age groups with the oldest people having learned it in the family, the next oldest having learned it at work, and the youngest having learned what they knew of

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it at the theater. But, the Walloon theater plays an important role in the language production and retention of the two older groups as well. One man in his seventies credited the high standard of his Walloon to his grandfather who was an actor in the Walloon theater and corrected him everytime he made a mistake. I point this out to show the centrality of verbal art in the maintenance of this minority language, as well as the aestheticization of a language which has undergone generic restriction over time.

CHAPTER 3

Class and Culture in 19th Century Liège and the Rise of the Puppet Theater 33

Just as Walloon became a topic of concern at different points in history, so it was with the puppet theater. Both symbolized “the people” and were brought into ideological service when needed and both were declaimed as “disappearing” by the time the upper classes began writing about them. There is a certain frustration inherent in doing historical research on popular culture because the people who participate in it are seldom the ones who write about it. Histories have to be gleaned from occasional comments, reading texts against the grain, and wondering about absences. I have looked at a variety of texts to try to reconstruct why the rod puppet theater became popular when it did and how it changed over time. In so doing, I realized that a tension must be maintained between a productionist approach and a receptionist approach. Being a business, one story of its rise and fall could be told from the point of view of puppeteers struggling to make a living through shifting patterns of wage labor and cost of living and the growing entertainment industry. A receptionist point of view, however, shifts the emphasis to an ideological plane where intellectual currents like nationalism and symbolism shape the entertainment tastes of the audience and bring the puppet theater into and out of fashion for different social classes at different times. A history of the rod puppet theater in Liège is necessarily a history about relations between different social classes. Popular or non dominant culture is in constant tension with dominant culture. Hall states that dominant culture constantly struggles to “reorganize popular culture; to enclose and confine its definitions and forms within a more inclusive range of dominant forms” (1981: 223). When the puppet theater enters intellectual discourse we can detect the process of selection and reshaping. Certainly popular cultural forms are reorganized through the intervention of dominant classes, but what draws their attention to a particular popular cultural form is not always the desire to

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reform it, but the desire to momentarily become the Other. Stallybrass and White (1986) explore how the bourgeoisie constructed themselves as a class in opposition to the carnivalesque life of the streets. The popular culture negated in their rational life loomed large in symbolic significance. For this reason, it was often tapped by the avant garde who rebelled against bourgeois propriety.

3.1. Work and Leisure: Setting the Scene Mass poverty marked Liège in the first half of the nineteenth century. Early industrialization at the end of the eighteenth century along with the Revolution of 1789–1795 left the Belgian countryside impoverished. Several disastrous agricultural years only hastened the exodus from the farms into the cities as people flocked in to compete for the few jobs available in textiles, coal mining and metallurgy.34 But, even those who found work discovered that their wages could not keep up with ever-rising prices. A good number of country people in the city stayed alive by begging while others joined armed bands of military deserters and robbed for their living (Thomassin 1879).35 In 1817 31.77% of the population of Liège was presumed to be indigent (Haesenne-Peremans 1981:476). Living several to a room in unsanitary alleys of the city, these starving masses, first an object of compassion, became an object of disdain and eventually of fear. The growing number of poor was gradually segregated from the wealthier citizens through shifting residence patterns. Whereas before rich and poor people might live in the same apartment house, eventually they each lived in their own neighborhoods.36 Laws were passed during the French and Dutch regimes (1795–1830) that allowed the arrest of beggars and vagabonds who were not properly documented. Other poor families avoided begging by sending their children off to work as soon as they were able. Only with every family member healthy and working was the household able to subsist meagerly from day to day (Leboutte 1996). Social historians in recent years have made available eye-witness accounts of popular life in Liège over the centuries which puts meat on the bones of more statistically oriented studies. The illiteracy of the poorest prevented them from leaving testimony in their own voices, but we can have glimpses of how their life appeared to outsiders as in the report of M. Lepeintre who visited Liège in September 1828 and had the following to say:

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Coal, continued M.R., has made the working class of Liège degenerate prodigiously. What one calls the people, the laboring group, in Liège, is numerous and growing, while living very badly. The suburbs of Paris show us nothing that approaches what one sees here. You could see here two households, each having four children, living in the same room. How could all of them live? One would have trouble guessing. It’s a subject of conjecture; but one thinks that they feed themselves with coarse black bread and bad chicory coffee mixed with a few drops of milk. Three quarters of working families, in the city as in the country, send their children from an early age to look for their food in the coal mines which are found in great number, vast cemeteries of living men. The poor little ones go there to bury themselves from the age of seven to earn their living; when they don’t die there, they come out stunted: and can this be otherwise, since they grow and develop only in an atmosphere filled with deleterious gases? The air is very bad in Liège because it is filled almost the whole year with an impalpable black dust that escapes from the coal mines, and that in bad weather fills the narrow roads with a swampy ink. This city whose streets, roofs and houses are perpetually blackish, is filled with hunchbacks, people afflicted with rickets and chest problems and hypochondriacs. Almost all the inhabitants have a black complexion, and even you, after a few months, will perceive that a black crust which nothing can root out has formed in your hair (reprinted in Havelange, Hélin and Leboutte 1994: 121–122).37

The shift from agricultural to industrial worker undermined the seasonal rhythm of life, substituting the work week for the oscillation of production and consumption which structured the year. Leboutte (1996) described how poor industrial workers alternated between long periods of privation (living on black bread, potatoes and coffee) and short moments of over consumption.38 Richer citizens repeatedly noted how much money the poor spent on alcohol in the numerous cabarets (1 per 47 people in the province of Liège in 1830 according to official statistics printed in [Haesenne-Peremans 1981: 401]) and on lotteries and other games of chance. Cock fights, skittles, pigeon racing, and finch singing contests were some of the other entertainment activities noted. Parish festivals were always enjoyed by the masses. Accompanied by excessive drinking and wild carnivalesque behavior, these festivals were disliked by both the clergy and the bourgeoisie (Lefèvre 1977:265). The poor gathered at each others’ houses to save on heat and light and keep each other company. These gatherings appear to be continuations of the

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veillées held throughout the countryside where men mended tools, women spun and wove, and other cooperative work was done. Stories were told during these gatherings: some were oral tales that had been told for generations, some were about contemporary events, and some were read by one of the literate neighbors from the Bible, almanac, or from cheap, flimsy books (Mandrou 1964: 18,64; Davis 1975: 201).39 These books, called the Bibliotheque bleue, were first published in Troyes, Champagne, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and expanded with literacy around the western world.40 In the nineteenth century the town of Epinal in the Vosges had taken the lead in producing popular images and by 1842 the firm of Pellerin in Epinal turned out 875,000 prints a year (Weber 1976: 457). They included lives of saints, astrological charts, and medieval epics. The stories told at the veillées and specially the updated chansons de geste eventually formed the base of the rod puppet theater repertoire.

3.2. Early Accounts of Puppetry Poor people could always enjoy street performances. Martiny (1887) tells us that the first official authorization for the performance of secular theater in Liège dates from August 5, 1735, when a lumberman, Pirotte, received permission to erect a booth where he could perform comedies on the Batte, the quay along the Meuse where Sunday markets are still held. There, he and an actress friend performed Italian farces and sold remedies. Two years later the Italian Gamba Curta received permission from the prince-bishop to exercise his science, promoting and selling his remedies. The Balm of Gamba Curta became quite famous and Curta ended his days as a prosperous gentleman (Havelange, Hélin and Leboutte 1994: 232). The booth in which he played Italian farces on the Batte was taken over in about 1740 by two other lumbermen, Leroy and Defresne. Shows were frequently interrupted by shouting, quarreling spectators which led the prince-bishop, Georges Louis, to proclaim on December 3, 1742, that spectators would be fined and punished for interrupting a show and servants were not allowed to attend unless accompanied by their masters or mistresses (Martiny 1887). Like the prescriptive grammar offered in French diction class, we can assume that numerous servants were attending without their masters and mistresses in order for the law to be called for. Theater and medicine were closely intertwined in Europe as elsewhere.

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Italians with their long theatrical tradition and lumbermen with their contact with herbs of the forest shared the 18th century popular stages of Liège. It is quite likely that through these same channels the character, Pulcinella, made his way to Liège. This character from the sixteenth century Commedia dell’Arte was already established in France in his role of stooge to a quack doctor by the mid seventeenth century (Speaight 1955: 17). Medicine men must have realized that instead of a live person, they could just as easily use a puppet and not have to split their earnings. Pulcinello became Polichinelle, the marionette. Official records exist of the puppeteers Borguet (1736), Gon (1772), Blanzy (1775), and Perico (1776) who performed in Liège (Piron 1950: 18; Archives de l’Etat a Liège 1772) though little is known about the kind of material or the type of puppets they used. The hand puppet Punch (the English version of Pulcinello) was already well entrenched by this time (Leach 1985), but the eighteenth century was also the age of transforming string marionettes: hoop-skirted puppets turned inside out and sailed away as balloons, skeletons came apart and reassembled, men turned into women and vice versa. The circus had begun to draw crowds and contortionists, jugglers, and other characters were imitated in puppet form. Some of the itinerant puppeteers also traveled with different sorts of peep shows (optiques), mechanical dolls, and Chinese shadow puppets which were in vogue at that time. There was a great interest in new forms of mimesis. An illustration of Liège from around 1845 shows a hand puppet booth set up on a public square. The two puppets sporting slapsticks are being watched by a wide range of social types: men in smocks and caps next to soldiers and men in top hats. Women and children are also represented. Boussart (1979) discovered that Remy Victor Boudoux, born in Ghent in 1793, was widely known for having performed the story of Polichinelle (or Poûrichinele, as the character was known in Liège) and Jacqueline for forty years in the public squares of Liège. His wife provided musical accompaniment and passed the hat. When she went blind, he stopped performing and died a few years afterwards in 1867 (Boussart 1979). In 1860 there was an interesting reference to puppetry in a Walloon account of the festival of St. Véronique: And right here well…this is something else, you know it…it makes you shiver a high pitched voice that you would think you’re hearing a jawharp…Come on if I’m not mistaken it’s Conti’s marionette show…there

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where the Kings are knocked down with wads of tobacco and watery cooked pears (Legros 1954).41

It is hard to tell from these few lines, what kind of a puppet show it was. It appears that there is some sort of a voice modifier in use, like the sifflet pratique or swazzle used to make Guignol’s and Punch’s high-pitched voices in the hand puppet tradition. But the detail of kings being pelted with wads of tobacco and cooked pears is in keeping with later descriptions of rod puppet theaters. What makes this report important is the mention of the puppeteer’s name, Conti, for it reappears a few decades later in the first lengthy account of the rod puppet theater by Dieudonné Salme in 1888. Salme devotes chapter six of his book, Li Houlo, subtitled “scènes de la vie, us et coutumes et transformations du Quartier d’ Meuse,” to a description of the Passion Play at Conti’s theater. The setting of the book begins in 1836, the actual year in which Salme was born, but the popular culture evoked extends from this time to the time of writing, over fifty years later (Piron 1973: 334). Piron has identified the puppeteer in these two documents as Alexandre Ferdinand Pompée Conti, born in Castelvecchio in Tuscany in 1830. He arrived in Liège in December, 1854 and worked moulding plaster figures. He married a colporteur from the region in 1857. While we cannot be sure of the kinds of things his wife peddled, popular literature was almost certainly among her wares which would give the family access to a wide range of stories. Salme mentions that Geneviève de Brabant, Le traître Don Juan, Orson et Valentin and Les Quatre Fils Aymon (all of which were popular in the Bibliothèque bleue) were performed in Conti’s theater. Conti’s other job of making plaster figures would have provided good training for the fabrication of puppets. The puppets in Conti’s theater, operated from above by cords, were roughly hewn out of wood and had bodies stuffed with rags. Their movement does not appear to have been very intricate, though Salme does talk of puppets raising their hands and doing other simple movements which today’s puppets cannot perform. Before and after each major play, Conti performed comic skits with Polichinelle, Cacafougna and le Bon Buveur. These puppets were much more intricate string puppets which could perform such actions as removing a hat, juggling and spitting on the audience. Salme mentions the association of Conti with a Frenchman named Talbot. Piron in 1940, while collecting oral accounts of this time period, learned from

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Eugene Polain (born in 1864) that a Talbot from Toulouse was a strong man at the Fair and broke a leg while performing on the Batte. Lame from this accident, he began sharpening knives and performing hand puppet shows. The characters he used included Cacafougna (a devilish imp), le Bon Buveur, Poûrichinele and le Commissaire (Piron 1973: 340). All but the last named are mentioned in Salme’s account, only they are operated from above rather than from below. Piron’s interviews with older citizens of Liège revealed that Conti’s theater was the first of that type that they were aware of. However, it is deceptive to think of Conti as importing the tradition single-handedly from his native Italy. He was, undoubtedly a very talented performer who arrived on the scene at the right time and was able to draw a wide audience, but the vogue for puppet theaters in working-class homes was quickly spreading around the urban centers of northern France and Belgium. On the first page of Salme’s account, he mentions that almost as soon as Conti and the lame Talbot agreed to open a puppet theater, two other men in the neighborhood opened similar theaters.42 Léonard Terry’s notebooks dated 1868 list several puppet theaters in Liège. By 1899 the Liégeois lawyer and puppet aficionado, Rodolphe de Warsage reported that it was impossible to take one step in the working-class neighborhoods of St. Marguerite or St. Léonard without running into a puppet theater. He counted 50 puppet theaters in the city. Four were on the 200 yard long street of Roture in Outremeuse and three of these put on daily shows (de Warsage 1905). Liège was not alone. An Antwerp lawyer mentioned that there were over 40 puppet theaters in his city as early as 1839 (Thijs 1977). Vandenbroucke (1931) claims 19th century Ghent had 31 such theaters and Botsford (1980) found official documentation for 22 in Brussels in 1892 and believes that unofficial theaters were numerous. In Lille there were 50 of these theaters in 1900 and 40 in Roubaix (Carton 1980). David (1906) mentioned a dozen theaters in Amiens in 1876. Mons, Tourcoing, Tournai, and Valenciennes also had puppet theaters. The numbers of puppet theaters reported quite likely fall far under the actual number since they were located in people’s houses in the poorest neighborhoods where people who wrote about such things seldom ventured. Throughout Northern France and both French and Dutch-speaking Belgium, the theaters were related through their formal characteristics, content, and performance context. This area was united under the French state from 1795 to 1815 and even in later times there was considerable movement across linguistic and national borders. The migration of puppeteer families

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from city to city reinforced the similarity of this popular cultural form across the French/Belgian national border and the French-Dutch linguistic border. One of the early puppeteers of Brussels claimed that his family originated in Liège, while several of the most famous puppeteers of Lille and Roubaix immigrated from cities in Belgian Flanders (Botsford 1980; Delannoy 1983; Soulier 1969). The potato blight and subsequent famine of 1845–1850 in combination with the crisis in the Flemish flax industry caused many Flemings to move to Wallonia and Northern France. So great was this migration that in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century roughly half the population of Roubaix was of Belgian origin (Hilaire 1984).43 From what we can piece together, early puppeteers in this region were working-class men who earned their living in factories, mines, or small trades, often trades like furniture making that brought them into contact with wood sculpture that served as a basis for puppet carving. They began putting on puppets shows in their homes after work for working-class friends and neighbors (both children and adults) to supplement their low wages. Family members usually assisted: children helped with the manipulation of the puppets and wives sold refreshments and policed the room for unruly children. Backstage there were from two to six people, with the master puppeteer taking on the voices of several puppet characters. The large, finely dressed puppets, carved in wood or molded of papier maché, were manipulated from above by rods or by rods and strings. Shows were performed several times a week, usually as serial episodes of a long historical play taken from popular literature, though comic skits on more contemporary themes were also common.44 There were one or more common characters who spoke in the local dialect and generally stood much shorter in stature than the elite, historic characters. The popular hero was always a lower class character (a peasant, servant, or other worker) who made the audience laugh. Some of these puppets are Jacques in Lille, Lafleur in Amiens, de Neus in Antwerp, Woltje in Brussels and Langenarm in Ghent. In Liège this character came to be known as Tchantchès. His name became synonymous with the puppet theater after World War I, but Piron, who did an extensive study of Tchantchès, could not find any mention of him prior to 1885 (Piron 1950:29). This form of home-based puppetry represented an early commercialized leisure time activity for the working class, since entrance fees were required and refreshments were sold. Salme even mentions that Conti’s wife became enraged when a boy passed her a false coin. Unlike itinerant hand puppetry and

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fair puppetry which was performed in public for a mixed class audience, rod puppetry performed in the home was almost exclusively working-class. The home was turned into a place of business. In Salme’s account not only had the stage and spectator benches invaded the living room, but people even paid extra to watch the show from the puppeteer’s very own bed.45 The exchange of money and the more elaborately framed performance separated the rod puppet theater from the earlier veillées. We have no accounts of this transformation but we can imagine that the romantic prints of knights and ladies illustrating the chapbook legends in combination with their reported speech in the text came alive for certain individuals who carved these images into pieces of wood. They artisanally produced three-dimensional figures of the mass printed illustrations and then they put these figures into motion. For the puppeteer, it must have generated a comforting sense of power to create and animate a world of puppets after working all day as someone else’s puppet. For the audience, it must have provided an escape from the harsh realities of everyday life. Yet, everyday life had its echoes in the shows. In the two earliest accounts of the Liège puppet theater, reference is made to class inequality and struggle, whether it is fleetingly glimpsed in the image of the emperors being knocked down by projectiles thrown from the audience, or explicitly stated in the class conscious opening words of the Passion Play described by Salme in which Jesus is called “a liar who claims that the wealth of the rich belongs to the poor.” The social solidarity and psychological gratification provided by the puppet theater must have been largely responsible for its tremendous success in this society marked by miserable poverty and the rise of the industrial rich.

3.3. The Changing Material Conditions People writing around the turn of the century were already commenting on the demise of the small puppet theaters.46 By the outbreak of World War I, the number of rod puppet theaters in Northern France and Belgium had dramatically declined. No puppet theaters remained in Lille, Amiens, and Roubaix. Liège was left with only five after the war. World War I is often cited as giving the death blow to popular traditions in Europe by causing great physical destruction and heralding a new way of life. In fact, the forces which caused this decline were well in place by the outbreak of the war. Leboutte (1996) describes the time from 1860 to 1900 as a transition

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between a traditional society of mass poverty to a society of mass consumption. Real incomes of working-class families rose considerably in the second half of the 19th century. Using two surveys of Belgian working family budgets from 1853 and 1891, George Alter (1984) finds that in the earlier census, not only did wives and children work outside the home, but there was a widespread pattern of secondary occupations and part-time businesses often conducted from inside the home. While puppet theaters must have been popular forms of secondary income for working-class families around the middle of the nineteenth century, the family could not have subsisted on that income alone because the working public was not wealthy enough to regularly consume an amount that would assure the puppeteer’s family a living. In the 1880s this began to change. The Parti Ouvrier Belge was formed in 1885 and began militating for better working conditions. Liège erupted in riots in 1886 and 20,000 marched on Brussels calling for universal suffrage after major coal mining strikes. In 1887 the truck system (in which employers paid workers with vouchers they could only use in the company store) was abolished.47 Wages rose 80% between 1870 and 1910 according to Knapp (1976: 148)) and food prices went down as transportation was improved (Tannenbaum 1976). Better conditions offered working families the chance to purchase an increased amount and a greater variety of goods. They consumed with gusto, finally acquiring a few of the goods which were previously only within the reach of the bourgeoisie. These goods were impregnated with symbolic significance (Leboutte 1996). It must have been during this period that noble puppets began being dressed in velvets and brocades. By the time of the 1891 census, many working families had the choice of dropping their part-time businesses or expanding them into full-time ones (Alter 1984). Leisure time also increased. In 1889 legislation was passed limiting work to twelve hours a day, six days a week. Before this, sixteen hour days were not uncommon and days of rest were nobody’s right. In 1905 Sunday was imposed as a day of rest and in 1909 the coal miner’s day was limited to nine hours. The rise in wages and reduction of work hours allowed workers more time to themselves and also paved the road for a new industry built around the use of that time. Since, as Goldman (1984) points out, the hours of work were considerably reduced during the first decades of the twentieth century, and yet the output in the production of goods continued to increase, a solution had to be found to the problem of social control over leisure time as well as overproduction of goods.

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The solution was consumerism. Goldman explains how the market tended to orient people toward individualist and passive approaches to their leisure. Under such circumstances, the occupational community, the neighborhood, and the family each lost much of its recreational self-sufficiency and it was no longer ensured “that all leisure experiences would be mediated by exclusively working-class experiences.” Organized sports, newspapers, music halls and later, films, all marked a new way of life and a different organization of leisure time based on the capitalist model. All these forms created new imagined communities that stretched beyond “the local.” Anderson (1983) argues that mass literacy is the major route toward imagining yourself as belonging to non-local communities. Though compulsory, cost-free education did not arrive in Belgium until 1914 and was not successfully implemented until after the war, illiteracy steadily decreased during the previous century. Lesthaeghe’s (1977) statistics for the percentage of the total population between ages 15 and 55 in Liège who were literate show that the rate went from 74.2% in 1880 to 81.5% in 1890 and from 87.9% in 1900 to 92.7% in 1910. Of course, the ability to sign your name, does not imply that one can read and write fluently and many working-class people remained only minimally literate even after World War I. Nevertheless, the newspaper industry continued to expand with the development of organized sports and the heightened interest in sports results. Between 1894 and 1914, a host of new dailies appeared in Belgium as new printing and distributing techniques were developed. While organized sports were considered a healthy pass-time, the cabaret represented the epitome of working-class corruption according to the ruling class. This is the unmistakable message in Philodeme’s L’Ennemi de l’Ouvrier: Le Cabaret published in Liège in 1890. The number of cabarets in Belgium increased from 50,000 in 1850, to 170,000 in 1890 and 210,000 in 1907 (Polet 1979). Music halls began as extensions of café cabarets and incorporated both puppetry and short films in their programs. Like the puppet theater, Jones (1983: 225) points out that the music hall was “both escapist and yet strongly rooted in the realities of working class life,” since both the audience and the performers of this entertainment form were predominantly members of the local working class. Little by little the local working-class bonds were broken as performers traveled farther and more of the acts centered on mechanized images. Cinema is truly an industrial art form which is aimed at attracting multiple audiences in multiple contexts. It does not employ face to face performance

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and so it removed opportunities for improvisation, further eroding the control that working-class audiences had on live performers. People of different traditions were gradually exposed to an entertainment form distributed throughout the Western world. Elite entertainment when it first appeared, the cinema had to await two innovations before it could take its place as the most popular form of mass entertainment. First, the transition had to be made from very short to longer films which told a complete story. This happened during 1902 and 1903 but did not become dominant until 1906. Secondly, the establishment of new methods of film distribution had to be developed. In the early years, a distributor had to buy the film outright and, in order to make money, had to go on the road showing the film. Some itinerant puppeteers took on this role. In 1904, a film-renting agency was set up in France and the establishment of theaters devoted primarily to the showing of motion pictures became economically feasible (North 1973 [1949]). The increasing popularity of the music hall and the cinema is the explanation given by folklorists and puppeteers alike for the fall of the rod puppet theater. As Dietz begins his article on the puppet theater of Liège in 1911: Our good old puppet theaters are beginning to decline, the smallest ones close due to lack of spectators and the others, suffering from their declining vogue, decrease the number of their shows. What is happening? What are the causes of this dethronement?… Some directly influence the audience: the forever growing invasion of music-halls and cinematographs (Dietz 1911: 357).

Dietz adds that the adults go to the music-hall and have no more time or money to hear the caprices of Tchantchès, while the children, for their part, spend their money at the cinema. He goes on to say that two or three years earlier these other activities were fewer in number and quite expensive. Therefore, they did not really affect the puppet theater. One puppeteer told Dietz that he had an instant return of his Monday night audience when the police closed down dance halls on that evening. Soon, however, a music-hall and a cinema opened close by and the public again departed. The puppeteer also commented on the bad behavior of the children in his audiences, who used to fight with each other imitating Nick Carter or the Apaches that they saw at the “accursed movies.”48 Higher wages reduced the economic need to run puppet theaters and other part-time businesses in one’s home and, in combination with shorter working hours, laid the groundwork for a leisure industry.49 Consequently, at the end of

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the nineteenth century there were fewer puppet theaters, and those left were bigger and more like the newer entertainment forms than like older communal gatherings. While working-class people flocked to the new forms of entertainment, puppeteers began to see new unfamiliar faces in their audiences.

3.4. Bourgeois Discovery of the Puppet Theater Well suited as theater of the poor, puppets have attracted the attention of dominant classes at periods in history when there is a reaction against rationalism and realism.50 The early repertoire of the puppet theater was steeped in romanticism. The German romantic Goethe drew his ideas for Faust from the numerous traditional versions of this play he saw at German puppet theaters at the end of the 18th century. This book was translated into French in 1808 and republished in 1828 with illustrations by the great French romantic painter, Delacroix. The great Flemish romantic, Hendrik Conscience, attended the puppet theater in Antwerp as a child and later his writings became very popular in the puppet theater (de Schuyter 1943: 38). By the 1880s romanticism had evolved into the symbolist movement in Belgium. Symbolism opposed materialist and realist modes of presentation and looked instead to the hidden symbols which revealed the uniqueness of people. The puppet theater captured the imagination of these writers. Maurice Maeterlinck, the most famous of this group, wrote three dramas for puppets in 1894 which are still played today in the Brussels puppet theater. The poet and francophile, Albert Mockel, published the symbolist journal La Wallonie in Liège from 1886–1892. His search for the soul of the Walloon people led him straight to the working-class puppet theaters in Liège. Soon they were calling the popular puppet character, Tchantchès, the “incarnation of the Walloon soul.” The working-class puppet theater had crossed over and began to be the object of bourgeois desire. Piron (1950) states that university students began attending puppet theaters in the working-class quarter of Outremeuse in 1885. Announcements of certain shows were even recorded in the student newspaper. Boussart (1971: 6) points out the proximity of the hospital in Outremeuse to the small streets where puppet theaters flourished as having been the impetus for bands of medical students to start frequenting shows. Leopold Leloup (1856–1912), who had his theater on Rue Roture, was especially popular with the students and

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even began organizing special shows for “Messieurs les étudiants” at night. The vogue for the puppet theater spread out from the student and literary crowd to the bourgeoisie. In 1897 Paul de Glines noted that the puppet theaters of Brussels were beginning to attract “la bonne société.” In 1898 the journal Wallonia (6:181) mentioned that over the past two or three years marionnettes had literally invaded the doll stands as it neared Christmas. It became a bourgeois tradition to go to the puppet theater to see the Nativity Play on Christmas Eve. Their presence in the poor neighborhoods of Liège on this night presented a rather strange contrast. A resident of St. Pholien, Elise Michaux (1875–1963), wrote down her memories of a late nineteenth century Christmas Eve at “Le Trou Botin,” a theater run by Felix Elias. You had to see the extravagant cars with their lackeys and the beautiful ladies, decked out in all their finery, that came out of them to wait in line in front of the theater. There was a crowd until four o’clock in the morning. Let me tell you, the room was barely larger than a box of salt (reprinted in Boussart 1971: 11).

A visit to a puppet theater is described by Albert Mockel (under the pseudonym of L. Hemma). The piece is undated but probably was written around 1887. It is an interesting illustration because the author and his friends (who were all members of the symbolist group called “La Wallonie,” like the journal) are very present in the text. They are all given pseudonyms in the story which Piron had decoded for us (Piron 1950:77–79). Mockel first describes the room, the smoke, the crowd, the crude benches. Then he describes their entrance: This entire mob of people and of things abruptly swung around: the halfopened door had allowed entrance to a disdainful caballero, followed by the whole ‘Walloon Movement,‘ a crowd of young and foolish heads, with blond and brown beards; many hairless chins shone in the crowd of new arrivals, but they hid ashamed. There were some puzzling gestures of interrogation among the spectators, a back wash of arms and legs; and eyes obstinately scrutinized the new faces. ‘Have they finished eyeing me from head to foot, these apostles?’ grumbled the contra-mi of the Spaniard Pekin. ‘For God’s sake, shut up,‘ stammered Quelvocable, almost recovered from his previous emotion. ‘Silence’ screeched the door keeper in a smock shaking his long rod. ‘Flusspferd!’ retorted Mortembouche.

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‘You, if you don’t shut up you’ll get a slap in the face.’ ‘I beg you, do not respond,‘ said Quelvocable. Austerin trembled in a corner, leaning on Letournant. Little by little, the calm was reestablished. Letribun moved his large arms. Mortembouche played with his shoulders, Pekin unfurled his cape. O’Chanvre adjusted his monicle and Frederic Loiseau looked at his feet. In the face of this determined attitude, the hostility of the crowd ceased. They made room for them on some benches, and the interrupted show began again peaceably (reprinted in Piron 1950: 77–78).

This group, which calls itself the “Walloon Movement,” acts surprised to find that a puppet show is in progress and asks the people around them to fill them in on the action. Next comes a scene in which Charlemagne makes a decision that the crowd is not happy with and the workers, who make up the majority of the audience, voice their displeasure. Members of the “Walloon Future,” as the author now calls the group, comment to each other in words dripping with sarcasm which undoubtedly served only to differentiate themselves from the rest of the audience by their knowledge of esoteric vocabulary: ‘suave and subtle, isn’t that so, my little Paris.’ ‘Prodigious, alarming, ingenious.’ ‘Phosphorescent,‘ corrected Verseau (reprinted in Piron 1950:79). Another member has fallen asleep and refuses to be awoken until Tchantchès comes on the scene and speaks in Walloon, at which point, all the members are transported with joy. While the author’s agenda in this text is certainly not to describe the interaction between the regular working-class audience and the university educated Wallingants, there are clear indications of conflict. The young bourgeois, lacking in the common courtesy they would likely afford members of their own class, arrive late and interrupt the show. They point out the physical differences between themselves (each member overendowed with a sense of self-importance and individuality) and the undifferentiated “mob.” When the usher (or keeper of the peace) yells at them to be quiet, one snaps back with a German exclamation. The fact that it is in German is more important than its meaning of “hippopotamus.” Just as later esoteric exclamations, it only serves to differentiate the learned from the toiling masses. The keeper of the peace, not impressed by this display, threatens him with physical violence. Frightened, the group ceases its banter. After all, the working classes were considered dangerous and

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wasn’t it partially to experience a sense of danger that these young bourgeois men ventured into this dark crowded quarter in the first place? Oddly enough, even though the possessors of this art form, puppeteers and audience alike, are not treated with any respect, their native tongue, Walloon, elicits feelings of joy and contentment among this regionalist group devoted to the elevation of Walloon culture. Both the language and its speaker, Tchantchès (whom they describe as a Liège coal miner, in other words, non bourgeois and uneducated), are detached from their proper sociohistorical context and abstracted into generalized symbols of regional identity. It is worth noting in this context that the only quoted working-class French in the text consists of two short lines and in these, three misuses of liaisons are pointed out in the orthography: “l’avaient pris prisonnier-z-a la Tour de Babel en Babylone” and “occis-t-et pendu-z-a des fourches patibulaires.” These samples alongside the elevated and esoteric vocabulary employed by the members of La Wallonie index a clear recognition of the social class varieties of French. Walloon, on the other hand, appears to be undistinguished in the minds of these young regionalists. This new audience did not come into the performance with the same cultural baggage as the working-class puppeteers and their neighborhood audiences. First of all, they laughed in the wrong places. Deviations from standard grammar and pronunciation drew laughter even when the intent of the speech was serious. Furthermore, although the puppet theater was good for a laugh a few times a year, this new audience was not interested in pursuing episodes of a melodramatic story night after night. Eventually, long serial plays were compacted into one-night shows for them. Performative arts are created anew during each performance. If the performance setting is altered, the performance changes with it. It is not surprising then that the new audience of the puppet theater changed the object it was observing. They had no direct control over the way the puppet theater changed, but their presence effected a movement toward bourgeois norms in pronunciation, construction of narratives, and even in the content of the plays. It seems the puppeteers grew tired of being laughed at and began accommodating their new spectators. Some became more serious, eliminating the numerous anachronisms in their historical plays so that their audiences would not laugh in the wrong place. Others enhanced whatever made the audience laugh. The bourgeois discovery of the puppet theaters is documented in other cities of the region as well. The Lille puppeteer, Charles-Emile Nassez raised

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his prices and put on special shows for the students, bringing criticism from other puppeteers like Gustave de Budt who contended that this new audience was being allowed to make fun of the puppet theater, destroying its very nature (Leroux and Gullemin 1984: 64). Lode Krinkels called the Antwerp puppet theater of 1912 a caricature of what he considered the “traditional” theater of forty years before (Thijs 1977). In Liège the change was noted by Celestin Demblon in 1893. Demblon, another member of La Wallonie, provides us with a later account of the group attending a puppet show in Outremeuse. This text, in distinction to the text by Mockel, focuses on the show to the exclusion of the members of the regionalist group. However, the author does warn us at the beginning: Artists are not going to harvest gaiety in our tiny popular theaters everyday. Certain “directors” have made improvements in the realm of backdrops and diction these past few years which unfortunately take everything away from their shows that make them savory: a confusion of tongues that clearly explains the miracle of the tower of Babel and that of the descent of the Holy Ghost on the apostles; and what ineffable anachronisms! (reprinted in Piron 1950: 80).

The puppeteers would have been surprised that their “improvements” were criticized in certain bourgeois camps. It must have been hard to understand that the bourgeois spectators enjoyed the puppet theater for its difference. These people had access to classical theater and opera and what they wanted in the puppet theater was its dark simplicity, its “otherness.” Stallybrass and White explain how the bourgeoisie is perpetually rediscovering the carnivalesque as a radical source of transcendence… the act of rediscovery itself, in which the middle classes excitedly discover their own pleasures and desires under the sign of the Other, in the realm of the Other, is constitutive of the very formation of middle class identity. (1986:201). To quote further: The bourgeois subject continuously defined and re-defined itself through the exclusion of what it marked out as ‘low’ — as dirty, repulsive, noisy, contaminating. Yet that very act of exclusion was constitutive of its identity. The low was internalized under the sign of negation and disgust. But disgust always bears the imprint of desire. These low domains, apparently expelled as ‘Other’, return as the object of nostalgia, longing and fascination. The forest, the fair, the theatre, the slum, the circus, the seaside resort, the ‘savage’: all these, placed at the outer limit of civil life,

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become symbolic contents of bourgeois desire.” (Stallybrass and White 1986: 191).

In Belgium, the twin emotions of disgust and desire came through in turn of the century descriptions and images of the industrial working class. Hilden (1993) presents numerous examples of this tendency focusing on women coal miners and their various depictions as robust, hardworking girls and seductive whores. She also mentions that menu cards distributed at bourgeois banquets commonly described the luscious food to be eaten on one half, while the other offered an illustration of working-class people at work, “a miniature study of the stark separation of class in fin-de-siècle Belgium” (Hilden 1993:160). The mix of disgust and desire, fear and fascination is apparent in the early descriptions of rod puppet theaters. In the lawyer/folklorist de Warsage’s description of his search for puppet theaters he wrote “Il faut vous aventurer, la nuit venue, en des endroits d’une securité douteuse” {you must venture, once the night has fallen, into places of doubtful security} (de Warsage 1905: 20). Later he described where they are found in detail: Neither is it in the center of town that you rout them out, but in the surroundings of workers’ sections at alley crossroads and in constricted culde-sacs. Look on the winding Basse-Sauveniere street, between its low class cabarets in the Couronne cul-de-sac that pours out its somber inhabitants into Hors-Chateau street... in the narrow passages that vomit their floods of tattered beggars onto the clamoring thoroughfares that plow through St. Margaret’s parish near Place Delcour, refuge of rag sellers and by the Ecoliers barracks. That is where you will find them (de Warsage 1905: 48).51

The working-class neighborhoods were dangerous, and their inhabitants were undifferentiated mobs akin to foul-smelling bodily fluids, but they opened the doors of one’s imagination. As Paul de Glines wrote about Brussels in 1897, more and more members of the bourgeoisie: risking gibes and dangerous encounters venture into the dubious neighborhoods of the old city so as to dream and entertain themselves for two or three hours in the smoky and picturesque atmosphere of the Poesjenellen {Flemish rod puppets} cellar).52

Symbolism grew out of the bourgeois psyche. Symbolists were attracted to the night which presented a door to a dream world where the unconscious is liberated (Muylle 1995). In the unconscious of the bourgeoisie lie the servants who

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took care of them as children and who mediated between them and the world of the carnavalesque street.53 Several upper class men remembered that as children their parents would not allow them to attend the puppet theater. It was usually a servant who introduced them to this popular entertainment without the parents’ knowledge. Often the child’s parents would begin questioning them upon discovering lice in their hair. With the bourgeois connection to the working class made largely through the mediation of servants, it is not surprising that the most popular puppet character, Tchantchès, often plays the role of servant and mediates between the puppeteer and the audience. Tchantchès possessed the “Walloon soul” for this end of the century Walloon movement which saw themselves increasingly under fire by a growing Flemish movement. In an interesting case of ventriloquism they imagined that Tchantchès spoke with their voice, not the voice of the working-class puppeteer who animated him onstage. Through this character they “spoke their minds.” After 1895, “Tchantchès” was often adopted as a pseudonym by journalists when they wrote polemical articles, denounced misuses of power, or simply commented on everyday Walloon life (Piron 1950:43,44). In 1899, an illustrated satirical newspaper entitled Chanchet began publication. In the editorial of this paper, Chanchet (the editor) writes “It’s the pure Liège spirit that I incarnate. I am the frank tradition, the voice from Liège which tells it like it is.” Other puppet characters made their way into this weekly paper as well. Charlemagne, Amadis, Tatène (Tchantchès’ wife) and others had their names signed to articles critical of certain aspects of life in Liège. It could well be that many people of Liège were introduced to these typical puppet characters through the satirical press (Piron 1950: 44). The same practice of using the names of local popular puppet characters in the satirical press was employed in earlier years in London and Lyon where satirical journals with the names of Punch and Guignol respectively were in place by the middle of the 19th century.54 The end of the last century was ripe for caricature and the self important Belgian bourgeoisie was a perfect target. This official world could best be battled with laughter. As Bakhtin wrote: laughter remained outside official falsifications, which were coated with a layer of pathetic seriousness. Therefore all high and serious genres, all high forms of language and style, all mere set phrases and all linguistic norms were drenched in conventionality, hypocrisy and falsification. Laughter alone remained uninfected by lies. (Bakhtin 1981: 236)

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Here he is referring to medieval laughter, but its opposition to official culture continues. What changes according to Bakhtin is the connection of laughter to its “deep-rooted folkloric base.” We can still see medieval laughter in traditional puppet shows where the lower strata of the body is privileged and life and death are intertwined. The laughter provoked in the satirical press has weakened ties with folklore and with the “gross realities of life” (Bakhtin 1981: 237), even while drawing on characters from within the folk tradition. So, even though the bourgeoisie was interested in the laughter provoking antics of Tchantchès, in their hands he became something different. In a similar vein, Bakhtin describes how the Rabelesian matrix of death with laughter, food, drink and sexual indecencies continues to live on in romanticism and then in symbolism, but that the wholeness of a triumphant life that embraces death, laughter, food, drink and sex is lost. Life and death are perceived within the limits of the sealed-off individual life and transformed into sharp, static contrasts (Bakhtin 1981:198–199). Certainly the symbolists and their followers represented the avant-garde fraction of the bourgeoisie. Others preferred not to venture into dark neighborhoods and risk getting lice in working-class homes, but they, too wanted to taste “Walloon traditions.” So, on December 29, 1907 the Friends of Old Liège sponsored a puppet show in the fancy shopping arcade in downtown Liège. The puppet theater was getting more presentable, and eventually puppeteers began tailoring their shows to bourgeois children. The 1910 Christmas issue of the weekly magazine L’Actualité Illustrée presented a folkloric study by Pierre Stellan of puppet theaters in Liège containing two scripts: one chivalric tale and a Nativity play. The issue is dedicated to the Royal family and begins with their photo portraits. The images of well-groomed royal children on the palace steps contrast cleanly with the following photograph of ragged looking children emerging from a puppet theater on rue Roture. The puppet theater no longer merely attracted avant-garde symbolists, but was now almost a national symbol. Poetics are deeply embedded in politics. By focusing on what was underneath observable reality, symbolists could ignore the incredible material differences that marked the rich and the poor in Belgium. They could even reach underneath linguistic differences to find a common Belgian soul. The lawyer and writer Edmond Picard, who was sympathetic with the symbolist movement, first laid out the concept of the Belgian soul in 1897. He was reinforced by the historian Henri Pirenne in “La Nation belge” (1900). This nationalism, however, was quickly overlaid by regionalism (or sub-state nationalism) so

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that by 1898 Picard’s own young associate, Jules Destrée had already launched a newsletter of the Walloon movement entitled L’âme wallonne or The Walloon soul.

3.5. Folklore and Nation Weber (1976: 471) stated that the end of the century “saw the wholesale destruction of traditional ways” and “a great spurt of interest in folklore studies.” Folklore, along with language which was discussed in the previous chapter, has been an important ideological element in identity movements around the world and the Walloon movement was no exception. In 1888, the Wallon Folklore Society was founded and Le Bulletin du Folklore wallon arrived on the scene soon afterwards. In 1892/3, Wallonia began publication followed by Le Vieux Liège in 1895 and Jadis in 1898. The regionalist movement prompted early folklorists to gather as quickly as possible artifacts of the past which were in danger of disappearing. Folklore demonstrated rootedness in the land and contrasted with unrooted cosmopolitanism, a code word for anti-Semitism which infected both Picard and Destrée (Schreiber 1995). The puppet theater was not overlooked in this search for roots. In Félix Rousseau’s 1921 bibliography of Walloon folklore, there are already five works on puppetry in Liège dating from before World War I. When de Warsage expanded and republished his history of the Liège puppets in 1905, he added the subtitle, “a unique folkloric phenomenon, exclusively from the region of Liège.”55 He openly disagreed with Salme (1888) who places the first Liège puppet theaters in the mid nineteenth century and claimed instead that the origin probably goes back to the Middle Ages (de Warsage 1905: 44–45). He saw their performance of stories about Charlemagne as proof of an unbroken line back to the actual time of Charlemagne, who was, after all, born just outside of Liège. De Warsage took note of the naive sense of appreciation among the poor and alluded to their illiteracy and their propensity for violence. In his writing, the working-class performers and spectators became relics from the past along with their puppets. Projecting them into the past allowed him to cleanse the puppet theater of its class character. He equates Tchantchès with “Uncle Sam” — an invented figure of nationalism who never had a popular class affiliation (de Warsage 1905: 80).56 The puppet theater was a perfect folkloric instrument to emphasize

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Walloon identity because of how it articulated language, race, history and religion. It used French in a formal capacity and Walloon in an informal one to recount stories of historic local heroes. It portrayed medieval battles between white Christians and darker non-Christians. Charlemagne’s battles against the Angles and Saxons fade into oblivion as the Islamic Saracens become the quintessential enemy. “Good” and “bad” puppets are marked by the color of their faces and crosses or crescents carved into their armor. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how these battles mirrored contemporary colonial battles. In 1892 the Belgian King Leopold, who had also been king of the Independent state of the Congo for seven years, began a two year military campaign supposedly against Arab slave traders in the Congo. The discovery of the colonial Other, in conjunction with an increasingly mechanized world encouraged people to take an interest in non industrialized practices at home and drew interest to ethnographic displays. In fact, in 1891 the exposition “Ethnographie Congolaise” at the Conservatory in Liège made such an impression on the members of the Walloon Folklore Society that they began thinking about creating a museum of popular traditions in Wallonia (Krupa 1992: 7). In 1894 they created the Museum of Vieux-Liège. The people called this museum “Mûsèye dès vîs rahis’” which in Walloon means “the museum of old scraps” and its collections were eventually abandoned in a basement like other old scraps, but not before de Warsage organized an exposition of puppets there in 1902 which attracted 18,000 visitors in less than ten days (de Warsage 1905). Members of other Walloon groups did not abandon the idea of a more comprehensive museum of Walloon life and made this desire public at the Walloon Congress in 1905. This Congress coincided with the World’s Fair in Liège at which Liège puppets were on display. The Congress called for museums of popular and regional art in Wallonia like the one that had been created in Antwerp and they criticized historians for down playing Walloon history in Belgian history books. But this was not just a national ethnic struggle. The well known Provençal regionalist Frédéric Mistral commented in a letter to the Walloon writer George Willame in 1892 on “the general awakening of dialects in the diverse and antique nationalities of Europe” (Maquet 1996: 454). In finde-siècle France numerous folklore associations were founded and most of them backed the creation of local museums (Thiesse 1991:219). The idea for a Museum of Walloon Life was batted around in the different societies and congresses but the real impetus seemed to come with the victory

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of the Catholic Party in 1912. Wallonia, a stronghold of Liberalism and Socialism, felt the growing strength of conservative Catholic Flanders, so the Walloon Congress which met in Liège that year adopted a program of administrative separation. Jules Destrée stated in a letter to the King that there were no Belgians, only Flemings and Walloons. In that same year, the Society of Walloon Literature and the Liège section of the Friends of Walloon Art combined their efforts and formed a commission of 12 members. This commission worked in conjunction with members from the Liégeois Archeological Institute, the Art and History Society of the Liège Diocese and the Federation of Walloon Artists and laid the plans for a Museum of Walloon Life similar to the institutions which had been set up in Arles, Anvers, Quimper, Grenoble, Reims, Strasbourg and Nancy. Also in that year, the Walloon Assembly launched a search for a Walloon flag, coat of arms, festival and song and another exposition and contest of Liégeois marionettes was held. The first collecting for the eventual Museum of Walloon Life began on the eve of World War I (April 1914) supported by the national, provincial and city governments. In that same year they bought a series of puppets from Pierre Paul Pinet (1852–1917) including such figures as Artagnan, Aramis, J’Han le Flamind, les Quatre Fils Aymon, Marsile, Melusine, Ganelon, Turkish soldiers, Moorish soldiers and Saint Joseph. In 1916 in the middle of the war they acquired 13 of Pinet’s notebooks containing such plays as Borgia, La Cour des Miracles, Sire Coline, Lothaire le Traitre, Carmen, Histoire de Paladin Roland, le Chevalier Gabar, Une Femme sous-lieutenant, L’Homme des Bois ou Les Deux Frères, Orçon Tête de Fer and La Jeunesse de Duc Naymes. I list these characters and plays to show the great variety of material that was being performed in the puppet theaters prior to World War I. With the increasing influence of Walloon folklorists on the puppet theater, a tradition is defined which focuses on the medieval chivalric plays, the Nativity, and the Passion Play. During World War I in Belgium 100,000 buildings were destroyed or badly damaged; 9,300 factories ruined or pillaged; 80,000 hectares of farmland abandoned, 2400 km of railroad tracks and 1560 km of roads made unusable. The cultural patrimony did not escape either: 9,000 pieces of art work were disfigured (Dupont 1933: 18). 40,000 Belgian soldiers died and 6000 civilian deportees met the same fate. They estimate that one and a half million Belgians were displaced during the war (Kalken 1954). In the face of this massive destruction and upheaval, American popular culture in the form of movies, music and dance made its entry. World War I also sparked a more mili-

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tant Flemish movement. Flemish soldiers who had to take orders in French died in great numbers and the leaders of the movement used this tragedy to dig in their heels for linguistic rights. This case study of the puppet theater shows that popular culture cannot be adequately analyzed in isolation from the socioeconomic conditions that led to the creation of many small puppet theaters in the mid nineteenth century nor the rising wages and the growth of the entertainment industry that caused the number to decrease toward the end of the century. It should also be clear that popular culture is not cut off from dominant culture. While the Liège puppet theater has persisted from one period to another up to the present, the relations that puppeteers have with it and with dominant classes through it have not remained the same. From an exclusively working-class performance tradition it became the object of desire for symbolists toward the end of the century. In addition to the psychological process of bourgeois class construction through the suppression of the lower class which then looms large in the bourgeois unconscious, interest in folklore in Wallonia grew from three other aspects of the political economy. First, a deep-seated escapist nostalgia brought on by industrialization, technological advancement and later, the destruction of war. Second, a burgeoning interest in ethnography sparked by colonialism and third, cultural defensiveness brought on by growing Flemish nationalism.57 All these intellectual movements brought the attention of the Walloon dominant class to the working-class puppet theaters.

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The rod puppet theater entered the cultural discourses in Liège at the very moment that the context of work and leisure was changing. The decline of the puppet theater represented for the bourgeoisie the passing of a traditional, artisanal entertainment form which was an expression of the local culture: part of them, yet other. Their interest in this performance tradition soon redefined what the puppet theater was. Lebovics (1992: 136) wrote that it was between the two world wars that folklore studies, the prime field of the pursuit of national identity, emerged and took disciplinary form. Certainly the emergence of academic interest in folklore is more correctly situated in the 19th century, but during the interwar period the state becomes directly involved in the discipline of folklore studies.59 During this period in Liège, two museums got off the ground which preserved both puppets and puppetry performances, two monuments were built in honor of the local puppets and two organizations were formed to promote traditional puppetry. Three men, Joseph Maurice Remouchamps, Rodolphe de Warsage and Thomas Talbot, each in their own way attempted to “save” local puppetry as emblematic of Walloon folklore. In order to do so, the popular performances were reified and packaged for consumption. The contemporary shape of rod puppetry in Liège can be traced to interwar manipulations of the genre that grew out of particular cultural discourses. The three men mentioned above talked about puppetry more than they talked through puppets, but the cultural discourses in which they participated changed the playing field for all puppeteers. At the end of this chapter, I shift from archival research to the elicited histories of two puppeteers who began performing during the interwar period. Gaston Engels and Adrien Dufour helped bring about major transformations in the puppet theater and their voices still resonated in Liège puppet theaters in the 1980s.

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4.1. Cultural Discourses The interwar period was a tumultuous one of euphoria and struggle, self-consciousness and abandon, technological advancement and nostalgia. The Walloon movement emerged from the war in a less separatist guise (Tourret 1994: 67; Schreiber 1995: 251). However, the discourse about souls and whether they were collectively Belgian or separately Flemish and Walloon continued. Technological advancements had become popularized which marked the interwar period with a double desire to launch into the future on the wings of this new technology and to nostalgically preserve images of the past. Both new technology and ancient traditions became marketing devices aimed at a people ever ready to flex their buying power in order to fit into this new society. Folklorists and ethnographers were strategically placed between the old and the new. They plunged into scientific classification; using the new technology to film, record and photograph artisanal ways at the same time that artisans were beginning to use other technological advances in their own ways. But these modern accretions were kept out of the frame of the photo. The mimetically capacious machines served instead to fix traditions at a pristine moment in time. The first publication of the Museum of Walloon Life, a 32 page brochure consisting mainly of an ethnographic questionnaire, was distributed free in 1924. In the first few pages, Edmond Haraucourt is quoted saying, A museum should not be a necropolis of curiosities…but a hearth with warm ashes around which yesterday’s intimacies live again and where the people who work and who create meet themselves face to face, as in the sanctuary of their family religion. In spite of dissimilarities of aspect, the generations stay the same in their essence. The same hereditary soul determines their successive creations, between which can be discerned the link of common features that constitute the homogeneity of the race (Museum of Walloon Life1924: 4).

This passage emphasizes, with an air of mysticism, the passing on of cultural traits within a homogeneous racial group which is essentially the same for having inherited a common soul; a soul which determines their creations. The brochure goes on to mention events in Walloon history (as called for by the previous Walloon Congresses), adding that in the last few years a movement has arisen that “drinking from the living spring of a glorious past, will make the power and beauty of a radiant future (1924: 6).” The author then salutes the

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renaissance of Walloon Studies: authors, artists, publishers, and politicians “united in the same filial communion for a greater Wallonia.” So far this does not sound much different from fin-de-siècle cultural discourse but the author adds that this movement “from which we await the blossoming of essential properties of our race cannot be restricted to the elite.” The author insisted that it must win over the hearts and minds of the masses. This recognition of the masses as partners in the creation of culture rather than mere objects of disgust and desire represented a new twist. The Walloon movement was becoming democratized in order to survive. As discussed in Chapter Two, the Walloon language was central to the project of the Museum of Walloon Life. The Walloon dialectologist, Jean Haust, was the administrative president and the new museum developed close ties with the Walloon Dictionary Project. The museum’s questionnaire made a point of asking for Walloon terminology in each of the ethnographic categories. Puppetry was also an early interest as evidenced by the collection of P. P. Pinet’s scripts and puppets even before World War I. Language and puppetry come together in Fabry’s essay on teaching Walloon in primary school (Fabry 1933). In these Walloon texts, Fabry described scenes of everyday life in Liège before World War I. The fourth scene is “Going to the Puppet Theater around 1880.”60 In not more than one page, it describes the hot, smoke-filled, noisy room, the multi-aged audience, the way the puppets are made and manipulated, the age of the story and the two main characters: Charlemagne and Tchantchès. It is followed by definitions and illustrations of Walloon words and expressions taken from Haust’s dictionary and then translated into French. How interesting if Fabry would have included a contemporary script, like “Tchantchès va-t-à Gand” which was performed in protest of switching the major language of the University of Ghent to Flemish, but even while puppeteers were active in the contemporary scene, they were denied coevalness by the museum staff who fixed their repertoire in the past.61 The Museum of Walloon Life and the researchers it united, by today’s standards, can be accused of taking on the role of cultural savior and emphasizing old ways while singling out certain traditions over others. However, it must be mentioned that this museum was far more dynamic and synthetic than most museums of its kind. G. H. Rivière, after visiting ethnographic museums all over Europe, took it as a model when creating the Museum of Popular and Traditional Arts in Paris. He found it to be in his fourth stage of evolution of folklore museums; that of synthesis which, he claimed, was the only valid

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model for the masses since it allowed one to go through without a guide (Rivière 1936). The scholars affiliated with the Museum of Walloon Life were serious researchers who approached their task as scientists. Of course, by now we know that scientists, too, are guided by the cultural discourses that surround them. The Walloon folklore movement stood out among other European folklore movements with its focus on practices of the industrial working class while other folklore movements concentrated almost exclusively on rural peasant life. France, in fact, was debating whether the urban working class was even part of the ‘Volk’ (Lebovics 1992: 137). This debate never happened in Wallonia which was the first industrialized area on the continent and a highly urbanized one. When one thought of rural peasant life in Belgium, Flanders immediately came to mind, so restricting folklore to its rural aspect would have put Wallonia at a distinct disadvantage in its search for roots.62 Regional folklore movements in Europe, were often spearheaded by the landed nobility and the church and used to promote conservative issues. The Walloon folklore movement was urban and progressive and never tipped into the right wing extremism which infected many European ethnic identity movements of this period. In fact, the Walloon movement strongly opposed the Walloon right wing Rexist Party of Léon Degrelle which was formed in 1938 (Tourret 1994: 67). I think this is necessary to point out since the essentialist/racist tone of much Walloon writing of this period would not lead you to this conclusion.

4.2. Work and Leisure The activities of the labor movement continued to bear fruit after World War I. In 1919 universal male suffrage — one man, one vote — was voted in and further development of workers’ organizations, legislation and syndicalism occurred in the 1920s. A general euphoria pervaded while small industries ruined by the occupation thought that Germany would pay them for damages (Hélin and Pasleau 1994: 325). Wages rose rapidly between 1919 and 1922 and in 1921 the eight hour day was instituted (Julin 1936). This gave people more disposable income and spare time and led to discussion of how this extra money and time should be spent. Democracies need an educated citizenry and thought was given to how to educate working adults. Also in 1921, a law was

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passed permitting tax exempt status to non profit organizations. This resulted in the formation of thousands of common interest groups by working-class people and the bourgeoisie (Hélin and Pasleau 1994). Already in 1920, Liège had 11 socialist theater circles.63 Destrée, himself said that these cultural phenomena were as important as cooperatives. He called the daily fare at cafés and music halls poison while noting that the elite theater was inaccessible to the people. He advised the builders of this new socialist art to look to folk drama and puppet theater, even circuses and fairs in order to imbibe popular taste (Perin 1979: 35). From 1926 to 1934 Agit-Prop theater thrived in Belgium and troupes were invited to Paris by Aragon and accompanied Prévert and the October Group to Leningrad. In 1934 the different socialist theater groups in Wallonia formed a federation called “Red Theater.” Plays about unemployment and the Spanish Civil War were major topics at the Maisons du Peuple and sometimes they were performed by puppeteers. A battle between educational and escapist leisure time pursuits characterized the interwar period. The 1920 report of the commission to study leisure activities of the working class of the Province of Liege, pointed out that the cinema, if well used, could become an instrument of instruction capable of combatting the cabaret (Pecqueur 1920). In 1927 a workers’ education journal, L’Imprimerie à l’école, started in France and was read in Belgium. By 1928, this journal contained articles on the use of films in education and soon had a substantial list of documentary films which could be played in Maisons de la Culture. Of course, most films were not documentaries, but dramatic narratives and more workers were after the thrill and excitement offered by this new form of leisure rather than its educative value. By 1924 there were 8 companies in Liège related to the cinema and 25 movie houses holding from 400 to 2,600 spectators (n.a. 1924: 405–406).64 The puppeteer Adrien Dufour told me that you could go to 2 movies a day every day of the week in Liège and still not see them all. Not only was cinema seen as competing with more educational endeavors, but also as competing with traditional or popular arts. Lagauche made Tchantchès the lead character in a book he wrote in Walloon in 1935. In one part, Tchantchès is sick and the doctor finally decides that the cause of his illness is…the cinema (Lagauche 1935:205). Cinema was only one of the new societal elements that the folklorist Albert Marinus saw as contributing to the decline of popular arts. In 1935 the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation and the International Bureau of Work asked the various European countries to report on why popu-

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lar art was declining in contemporary life and whether it could be used for the leisure time activities of workers and if so, how. In other words, could workers be re-interested in the popular arts that folklorists found so interesting? Marinus wrote for the Belgian Commission of Popular Arts that “the man of the people... is absorbed by the machine and his family life is invaded by cheap products made in series which are practical and more stylish” (1935: 5). In spite of this, Marinus claimed that the Belgian worker still expressed himself artistically in song, music and dramatic arts. In particular he pointed out the richness of regional dialect theater in Belgium (p. 10).65 Marinus thought that these activities must be encouraged, but said that the way in which folklorists tried to reach the masses by expositions, museums and lectures was ineffective. Generally even if a worker came once, he would not return. Marinus concluded the Commission’s report by saying that they would support all efforts to make known popular arts, but declined to propagate their use in workers’ leisure activities due to a lack of knowledge in this area. He voiced his opposition to any intervention which might modify the traditional or spontaneous character of popular art. Marinus was standing up for traditional art forms as such and distanced himself both from movements to make them more educational and efforts to exploit them for their commercial value. Marinus deplored these manipulations of folklore.66 Interwar folklore theories did not sufficiently recognize that folklore is indivisible from its context. Nineteenth century forms did not fare well in the shift to the 20th century, but new technologies and new conditions of existence brought new forms of folklore. Interwar folklorists were so busy defending what they considered to be the “real” tradition, that they neglected to document all the various ways that folkloric forms were changing, except in an offhand, usually disgusted manner. The elite preoccupation with roots and souls in interwar Belgium brought support for those artistic products which were self-consciously Walloon, but must not have encouraged other creative souls. Talented Walloons migrated in droves to Paris and some of them even became creators of the very cinema accused of killing the popular arts back home. Georges Simenon who eventually signed a contract to write 6 novels a year for Gallimard was born and raised in Outremeuse. He ended up writing screen plays in France as did his fellow Belgian (and brother of the Prime minister) Charles Spaak. The wellknown director, Jacques Feyder, worked for a time for his uncle in Herstal, the industrial Liège neighborhood where Charlemagne’s father was born. He later

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renounced his nationality and became a famous “French” director, even doing a stint in Hollywood as such.67

4.3. The Belgian Centennial The interwar period continued the capitalist pattern of boom and bust. The first financial crisis after World War I occurred in 1921. Belgian currency was devalued in 1926 followed by a brief respite, but by 1929–30, the crisis had worsened. In 1930, amidst rising unemployment, Belgian mine workers took a 5% pay cut. Yet it was at this very time that the state had to load its ideological canons in celebration of the Belgian Centennial. By the time of its centennial in 1930, Belgium had realized the dream of Leopold II and had become an imperial nation, exploiting a colony 80 times the size of the mother country. Much was made of this during the Centennial year, the year before the Colonial Exposition in Paris. In a speech given in Liège in 1931 entitled “The Belgian Soul and the Colonial Project,” Robert Reisdorff, the minister of the colonies, praised the vibrancy of the Belgian soul which has been kept intact despite more than 20 centuries of domination, oppression, and conquest. He went on to say that the colonial effort represented an extension of the Belgian soul which had always desired to spread beyond its restrictive borders. Reisdorff agreed wholeheartedly with King Leopold II that Belgium needed a colony to secure “for our middle classes the revenue and jobs that they are looking for, for our army a little activity, and for Belgium as a whole, the occasion to prove to the world that she is also an imperial people capable of dominating and enlightening others” (quoted in Reisdorff 1931:8). This patriotism was not matched in other quarters. La Revue Nationale launched a questionnaire to find out if people thought there was a Belgian literature. They were quite pleased when two thirds of the people interviewed responded that there was. This prompted Les Nouvelles from Seraing to ask who they had interviewed, adding that if the poll had been done in Liège, probably only a quarter would have answered affirmatively. The Belgian Centennial fanned the fires of Walloon cultural discourses. The Walloon Congress of 1930 enumerated ways to promote Walloon culture. Three venues were to be encouraged: 1. a cult of heros, 2. parades, and 3. courses on Walloon history, art and politics. These three venues were played out in the puppet character Tchantchès. Within the next ten years, he became a

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Puppets advertising lingerie

culture hero, led parades, and was the subject of erudite presentations. Walloon groups were already legion. Charles Defrecheux was president of the Walloon Federation which during the centennial year regrouped 125 organizations in the Liège region with 75 in Hainaut, 60 in Brabant and 40 in Namur (Defrecheux 1931:703). Puppetry was not to be left out of the national celebration. Rodolphe de Warsage had arranged that the International Union of Marionettes (UNIMA) would hold their conference in Liège from the September 13th to 22nd. Running at the same time as the UNIMA conference was a new event called “The Great Two Weeks of Liège.” From the 13th to the 29th of September, the store owners

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of Outremeuse displayed scenes of Liège folklore in their windows. Tchantchès appeared on large posters advertising the event. On September 21st, the Free Republic of Outremeuse (an organization formed in 1927 by journalists and other fans of this “folkloric” neighborhood) put on a popular festival for the conference participants.68 At the UNIMA conference, an international assortment of puppet troupes performed daily as did Liège puppeteers in the theaters controlled by de Warsage. Liège gave a warm welcome to its distinguished visitors and Joseph Maurice Remouchamps offered them a tour of the new Museum of Walloon Life on September 20th, ten days before it opened up to the public. Thomas Talbot was able to attract international attention to Liège puppeteers who operated outside of de Warsage’s circle. The centennial year was a momentous one for puppetry in Liège, largely through the efforts of de Warsage, Remouchamps and Talbot who had been preparing the field for several years prior to this date.

4.4. Who Speaks for the Puppets: Joseph Maurice Remouchamps, Rodolphe de Warsage and Thomas Talbot These three men were at the heads of different organizations which took a special interest in puppetry and helped shape its various transformations during the interwar period. They all saw Liège puppetry as dying and needing to be saved. By following their activities, we see different ways in which Liège puppetry entered interwar cultural discourse. Remouchamps was a champion of scientific ethnography; de Warsage was a part time folklorist who enjoyed being the spokesman for Liège puppetry in other cities in Belgium and abroad and Talbot was a puppeteer who aimed to save Liège puppetry as a workingclass practice. All three of them died during this period, but left their imprint on puppetry in Liège. We can call their approaches the ethnographic, the folkloristic and the popular, but as we’ll see these three approaches sometimes overlap and borrow from each other. The first man, Joseph Maurice Remouchamps has already been mentioned as the flame behind and the first director of the Museum of Walloon Life. He was the lawyer son of the famous Walloon writer Edouard Remouchamps and had a keen interest in local traditions which he felt were on the brink of disappearing. He encouraged the use of the new technology of mimetically capa-

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The “last” Liège puppeteers in 1931: Danthinne, Boucha, Verrées, Lassaux, Bisscheroux and P.P. Pinet (Museum of Walloon Life cliché #24774)

cious machinery (still cameras, motion picture cameras and audio recorders) to preserve these images. The camera lens divided one class from another and when it didn’t other things did, such as Remouchamps’ three piece suit.69 Under his direction, documentary films were made of artisans in dying industries. Films of charcoal makers and blacksmiths were made and shown to the public after 1923. Remouchamps’ interest in mimetic machinery stemmed from his conviction that folkloristics is a science and the first step is accurate description.70 What better way to describe than to capture reality on film? This preoccupation with mechanical mimesis did not deter his interest from the artisanal mimesis offered by puppeteers. Under Remouchamps’ leadership the Museum of Walloon Life collected puppets, books and scripts from puppeteers in Wallonia. Photos were taken of the puppets and puppeteers and eventually films and recordings were made. A photograph Remouchamps had taken in 1931 is entitled, “The last Liège puppeteers.” A few months after this picture was taken and only one year after the Museum finally opened to the public, Remouchamps brought in puppeteers to

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put on regular shows in a theater bought from Laurent Pinet in 1928. This theater was set up in the same room where documentary films of vanishing forms of work were shown. The puppeteers, then, represented in real life what the films showed in replica: an art form on the brink of extinction. Between December 10th and 31st, 1,147 spectators came to see puppet shows at the museum (Museum of Walloon Life 1933: 127). Remouchamps seems to have had more than a purely scientific interest in puppetry. The accounting books indicate that during that same year, Remouchamps, himself, repaired a working puppet and later on the Remouchamps family hired private puppet plays done at their home.71 If Remouchamps is remembered for promoting scientific rigor in local ethnography, Rodolphe de Warsage is remembered more as a dilettante, but both were selected to serve on the National Commission of Belgian Folklore which was established by royal decree in 1937.72 Also from the wealthy class in Liège and from a literary family, Edmond Schoonbroodt kept his own name for his professional activities as a lawyer and took the pseudonym of Rodolphe de Warsage for his folklore and literary endeavors. He was first taken to the puppet theater by an employee of his father when he was a boy. This began a fascination which led to his writing of the first extended essay on the Liège puppets in 1899. In that same year, he organized the first exposition of Liège puppets. In 1905 he expanded his history of the Liège puppet theater, subtitling it “un phénomène folklorique unique propre au pays de Liège” {a unique folkloric phenomenon proper to the country of Liège}. He founded Friends of Liège Puppetry in 1925 and under this non profit organization bought Denis Bisscheroux’s puppets in January 1926 for 5000 francs.73 This collection became the basis for the Tchantchès Museum started by the Free Republic of Outremeuse after the war. De Warsage’s next step was to raise this money. Below I translate his appeal transposing original bold print into italics to show how he draws on his history promoting the puppets and his connections to government authorities: About twenty years ago when our president (de Warsage) organized on Feronstrée street, the first exposition of Liège puppets, it was officially opened by Mr. Gustave Kleyer, mayor of the city of Liège; Mr. Pety de Thosée, governor of the Province; the adjunct mayors; Mr. Dubois, judge at the court of appeals; the district director of the fortifications of Liège; Mr. François Crozier, French consul; Philippe Crozier, introducer of Ambassadors of the President of the French Republic; the director of the national academy of music in Paris, etc. These high authorities understood

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the importance of this folkloric phenomenon which is unique in the world. The renown of our theater became such, especially outside of the country, that foreign fans came here to buy puppets for their collections. It is like this that one day last year we realized that of our 68 theaters of old, only one remained. We bought it at the price of 5000 francs and to be able to pay this sum we formed our organization. At the head of the list the city of Liège wanted to subscribe for 500 francs annually for five consecutive years. We still need to raise about 3000 francs (taking into consideration advertising costs) that we will obtain thanks to the subscription fees of our members (Minimum subscription: 5 francs a year). What we are waiting for today from the present authorities, is the moral support that their predecessors gave so generously to us. We also want them to see with their own eyes the things we have bought which have become the patrimony of the city. It is with this goal in mind that we would like them to accompany us to Roture Street Wednesday, November 10 1926 at 8 p.m. In accepting to attend a private show which we offer to them, they will establish one more time in the eyes of the public, the importance of the folkloric phenomenon which we have been able to save from total disappearance. We have then the strong desire that you will want to respond to our urgent invitation and we thank you in advance from the bottom of the heart.74

Since this is an important invitation to officials in high places, de Warsage signs his real name, Edmond Schoonbroodt, under the designation “The President” followed by “Lawyer at the Court of Appeal.” The invitation begins with a demonstration of how high authorities in the past understood the importance of Liège puppetry. The second paragraph relates how the international reputation of Liège puppetry caused the material to be bought by foreigners, leaving Liège with only a single puppet theater. This was not true. The number of theaters had declined, but several were still playing in working-class neighborhoods. The class division, however, was so great that de Warsage knew that his bluff would not be called and his request for support would only be stronger. One would think that this “last” puppeteer would be somewhat of a celebrity, but his name is never mentioned. While de Warsage still needed to raise 3000 francs, he was not directly asking for monetary support, but for the “moral support” of the present author-

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ities. He wanted the leaders of the community to acknowledge the importance of local puppetry by attending a puppet show — not just any show, but an invitation-only gala performance. Not only did de Warsage promote puppetry at home, but he was its primary cheerleader outside of Liège. He travelled twice to Paris on November 16, 1927 and February 22, 1929 and once to Lyon on May 11, 1928 to put on performances of the Nativity and various chivalric tales. He joined UNIMA when it was founded in 1929 and hosted its conference the following year in Liège as explained above. In 1931 as president of the Friends of Tchantchès Puppet Theater, he presented a show to the Liège Walloon Circle of Brussels.75 He told the group that the Liège tradition dated from the Middle Ages and had not changed since then. Tchantchès, he said was the caricature of the old bourgeoisie of Liège before the Revolution. De Warsage might well have claimed Tchantchès as a member of the bourgeoisie because he was speaking in front of a bourgeois group at the time and he was more interested in effect than fact. In his own monograph on the puppet theater, he points out Tchantchès’ popular peasant roots. Maybe after taking on a noble particle in his pseudonym, he began to consider the bourgeoisie as the popular class. De Warsage with his money, social standing and connections controlled the image of Liège puppetry internationally, but his vision was not undisputed at home. A year before de Warsage created Friends of Liège Puppetry, a certain Thomas Talbot began a non profit organization called Friends of Popular Art.76 Its goals were “to love, propagate and immortalize all art that comes from the people.” Talbot did not run in the same circles as de Warsage and Remouchamps. While they were attending fancy galas, he was organizing tramwayman strikes. They were part of the liberal bourgeoisie and he was a socialist. Yet, they were all interested in preserving Liège puppetry. Whereas the Remouchamps and de Warsage saw themselves as saving the puppets from disappearing, by preserving them in museums, Talbot took on the job of saving the puppets from museums where they were no longer manipulated. In other words, he was trying to save puppeteers, not puppets and with this goal he strongly encouraged old puppeteers to pass their materials to younger ones. Eventually working puppet theaters were incorporated into the museums started by both de Warsage and Remouchamps and it is quite likely that the peoplecentered discourse propagated by Talbot influenced these decisions. Talbot also tried to unite the remaining puppeteers into an organization.

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This is not easy to do with puppeteers who are outspoken individualists and competitors, but after several years of solicitations, he did put together the Fraternity of Liège Puppeteer Pals, just before the planned meeting of UNIMA in Liège. The fraternity included the puppeteers Jean Lassaux, Oscar Danthinne, Joseph Crits, Pierre Wislet, Hubert Strée and Thomas Talbot and none of the puppeteers who had been taken in by J.M. Remouchamps or Rodolphe de Warsage. This fraternity was inspired by the idea of socialist cooperatives, working against the spirit of individual competition which had developed among puppeteers. The plan was to get people to buy a season’s membership which allowed them free entry to any one of the participating theaters. Membership cards were printed up, but the system was never put into operation. A few weeks after the organization was formed, Joseph Crits died and he was followed by three other members over the next two seasons.77 Talbot was also a performing puppeteer, but one who, it seems, never had a permanent theater. Instead, he made the rounds of Maisons du Peuple and other public halls with an itinerant theater. Talbot won the sympathy of the socialist press. The newspaper, La wallonie on Oct. 9, 1925 announced de Warsage’s project to buy the last regularly performing puppet theater and as a post script added, “It’s a happy occasion for us to announce that c. Talbot of the Tramway men Union circulates our Maisons du Peuple with an admirable troupe of Liège puppets.78 Maybe there are elements of a regular theater for children of socialists here?” At this date the paper seems quite even-handed about the two puppetry related groups. By January 11, 1926, La wallonie seems to have taken sides. In this issue, they announce the death of André Hosmans who for over a quarter of a century independently entertained the children of his neighborhood. He played two chivalric shows a day and three on Sundays to crowds of over 100. The paper called him “an obscure artisan of popular art” and “too unknown for our folklorists,,” indicating that folklorists were either deficient or biased in their work. It added that with Hosmans death, the only puppet theater left giving regular shows is that of the mine worker Oscar Danthinne on rue Pierreuse. It does not include the Roture theater which it mentions was just sold to a private organization.79 Just as de Warsage claimed that the Roture theater was the last one, leaving out Danthinne and Hosmans, La wallonie played the same game and left out Bisscheroux. The final paragraph of the article comes down firmly on the side of Talbot, pointing out that the Friends of Popular Art, has, over the past two years, multiplied its efforts to bring back and immortalize Liège puppetry. “Its

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program of performances, conferences with slide projections, and expositions is included in the educational and recreational program of our Workers Education Center insuring that our Tchantchès will stay in the hearts of all who love everything that comes from the people” (La wallonie 1/11/26). In Talbot’s five year report for Friends of Popular Art which is preserved in the Museum of Walloon Life’s archives, he stated that he left de Warsage’s theater out of his organization, because his goal was to unite independent puppeteers who had been left in the shadow while “a thousand and one efforts” had been made to save the Roture theater, including subsidies from the city of Liège. Talbot’s goal was to obtain subsidies for independent puppeteers, but he only succeeded in obtaining exoneration from performance taxes for them. In Talbot’s correspondence having to do with Friends of Popular Art, you get a sense of his industry, determination, and empathy for puppeteers. When Talbot writes about Liège puppetry, specific names of puppeteers are written. When the puppeteer Joseph Crits died, Talbot read a speech at his funeral which he then sent to the family. This human side is rare in writings of de Warsage and Remouchamps who put the emphasis on the tradition itself, rather than the individual creators of tradition. Although Talbot presented himself as one of the gang, he had more education than most of the puppeteers he worked with and they treated him with a certain distance and respect. We can see this in his correspondence with different puppeteers in which they addressed him as “Sir” or “Mister Director” while he called them “Dear Citizen and Friend.” They also saw him as an intermediary with powers greater than theirs. Danthinne wrote complaining about taxes and Wislet asked him to intervene to get him a bigger theater in Seraing. Being a puppeteer himself, he understood their predicaments. Around 1926, he sent out questionnaires to puppeteers (even enclosing stamps). Only four returned questionnaires are preserved in the archives which I will summarize below. The forms, branded with unsteady handwriting and orality, testify to the different, yet not separate, world inhabited by the puppeteers. Oscar Danthinne born 1884 in Liège80 Profession: miner Theater: La Gaieté, 53 rue Pierreuse Puppets made by Crits Repertoire: Medieval Chivalric tales from La Bibliothèque bleue Plays daily with an act lasting 3/4 hour

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Audience: 4 to 12 year olds — 25 12 to 21 year olds — 15 older people — 5 of 40 children, about 25 are boys Admission: 15 centimes an act Taxes paid: 1921 2.50F a month; 1922 13F a month; 1923 6.52F a month; 1924 and 25 nothing François Decallais born 1889 Profession: miner Theater: Théâtre Liégeois Makes own puppets Repertoire: Medieval Chivalric tales from La Bibliothèque bleue and 17th C cloak and dagger plays of Zévaco or Dumas He notes that he’s not playing anymore and doesn’t fill out the second page of the questionnaire. Pierre Wislet born 1894 in Liège Profession: metal industry Theater: Les Anciens Cuirassiers, 170 Rue Vecquée, Lize-Seraing Puppets made by Crits Repertoire: Medieval Chivalric tales from La Bibliothèque bleue; 17th C cloak and dagger plays of Zévaco or Dumas and modern skits in French and Walloon Plays daily whenever he has clients with an act lasting one hour Audience: 4 to 12 year olds — 6–12 12 to 21 year olds — a few older people — 3 on Sundays more boys than girls but about the same Admission: 10, 15, or 25 centimes an act according to the age categories above He pays local, communal and national taxes, but doesn’t specify how much. Wislet adds to the bottom of his questionnaire “I should let you know that the place where I perform is too small and I can’t fit in many clients because it’s an entrance to a house and it takes guts to continue playing in such a place because as soon as there are a few more people than normal, it gets so hot that you can’t stay there with everybody sweating.”

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François Boucha born 1881 Profession: knife sharpener Theater: Le Renomée, 33 Derrière les Potiers Makes own puppets Repertoire: Medieval Chivalric tales from La Bibliothèque bleue; 17th C cloak and dagger plays of Zévaco or Dumas and modern skits in French and Walloon Plays daily with an act lasting one hour Audience: 4 to 12 year olds — 15–20 12 to 21 year olds — 5–8 older people — 3 on Sundays twice as many boys than girls Admission: 15 centimes He’s exonerated from paying taxes through Article 16

Talbot’s final question was that if they could obtain a subsidy of one franc for each day they performed, would that encourage them. Of the 3 puppeteers who responded to the second page, Danthinne and Wislet simply marked “yes.” Boucha said “no, it’s too little and doesn’t cover any expense.” He goes on to say that old puppeteers should get more than young puppeteers. However, his explanation makes one wonder if he understood the “for each day you perform” part, since the figures he cites are, in fact, less than Talbot’s suggested subsidy. Boucha adds that it is justice, not hatefulness, that leads him to ask for differences in subsidies since he is indisposed and not performing now anyway. While competing discourses were beginning to emerge in Liège, de Warsage maintained a monopoly on representations of Liège puppetry outside the city. Ironically, this changed around the time of the UNIMA conference in Liège. Talbot made contact with the French puppetry scholar, Paul Jeanne, during a trip he took to Liège (probably to check out the site of the upcoming UNIMA conference) and asked him to write the preface for a collection of puppet plays he was writing called “La Bibliothèque Tchantchès.”81 Jeanne sent the preface on April 3, 1930 and in it, he apologizes for having written mistakenly in his Bibliographie de Marionnettes that the Roture theater was the last one left in Liège. Following notes given to him by Talbot, he said that at least seven are still performing. He sings the praises of Talbot’s organization of puppeteers and urges the city of Liège to make subsidies available. Talbot wrote back immediately to thank him, make some corrections and ask him for the names and addresses of all the UNIMA delegates.

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Talbot’s association with Jeanne paid off because on the last day of the UNIMA conference several conference-goers climbed up Pierreuse street to see a “popular” Liège puppet show by Oscar Danthinne, that was not included in the UNIMA program organized by de Warsage. Soon thereafter, the Rosati, a northern regionalist literary group with which Jeanne was affiliated, invited Danthinne to Paris to give a show. Maury wrote about this in the Rosati’s monthly bulletin, La Revue Septrionale, January 1931. In this article he stated that there were two antagonistic groups of puppeteers in Liège. One was gathered around the Roture Theater and Rodolphe de Warsage and the other was a federation of Liège puppeteers. Up to this date, Maury said, France had only gotten to see performances directed by de Warsage, but with Danthinne’s performance on Dec. 26, 1930, they now know how puppetry is performed by “the people” (Maury 1931:6). Although, Talbot’s sympathies were with “the people,” he knew when to promote Tchantchès as representing the “the people” and when to refer to him as a classless regional character. He uses “folklore” and “soul” as copiously as de Warsage and Remouchamps in his writing, but outstrips them handsomely in his use of commercialism. In a folder called “Actions with Puppeteers 1925–28” there is a sheet of paper signed by Talbot who lists himself as “simultaneously representative, author, director and puppeteer.”82 The sheet is entitled “Tchantchès’ Crusade” and I translate below the three advertisements that follow, respecting capitalization from the original: Cute little children do not let Tchantchès and his puppets die. Give them a bigger place among your toys. Ask your father and your mother, your grandfather and your grandmother, your godfather and your godmother your uncle and your aunt, Santa Claus and St. Nicolas for the TCHANTCHES TOY-small puppets and theater. On sale everywhere. Walloons, keep in your hearts “the soul of the region.” Remind new generations that Tchantchès and his puppets charmed your past. To help you out, the TCHANTCHES LIBRARY recommends its publications to you which consist of brochures containing plays put together according to the traditional plays done in Liège puppet theaters in the 19th and 20th centuries. On sale in all bookstores. Men and Women who work with children, recreation, upbringing, education, folklore and of high morals; Directors of theaters, popular halls, clubs, associations, etc. Call the TCHANTCHES THEATER which with its well known puppets will amuse your members or esteemed clients. Unique folklore, enchanting, marvelous, heterogeneous, hilarious and moving.83

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These three advertisements show the three public branches of Les Amis de l’Art Populaire: miniature marionettes, puppet plays, and a performing travelling puppet theater. After these three ads, Talbot tells people to ask for their catalogues or to examine their collections and lists his address. Talbot, not having the class connections that could give him access to government subsidies had to rely on his success in the marketplace. Talbot died in 1930 and the organization continued for one more year under the leadership of Oscar Danthinne. This brings us to 1931 when Remouchamps photographed and then employed “the last Liège puppeteers.” We have to wonder whether Talbot’s efforts brought these practicing puppeteers to Remouchamps’ attention, perhaps at a moment when the socialist party itself became a powerful voice in cultural discourse.

4.5. Battles of Representation Today in Liège, a visitor might be surprised to see along with statues of Charlemagne and the famous composer, Grétry, two bronze replicas of Tchantchès, both of which were erected during the interwar period.84 On the left bank, not far from the Museum of Walloon Life, there is a bas-relief on a fountain which depicts Tchantchès in a slightly bowing position in front of a noble puppet character. If you cross the old Pont des Arches into Outremeuse on the right bank, there you’ll find at the head of rue Surlet another Tchantchès statue, but this one has him dangling from the outreached hand of a workingclass girl.85 Everyone understands that this represents the young girls who used to work in the coal mines. Children’s small size was a useful attribute in the narrow tunnels of the mines. Mining had also become the poster-child working-class occupation and strong connections were made between mining and puppetry. It became commonplace to hear that the first rod puppets in Liège were carved by coal miners who were given a piece of a log at night to burn for heating. The wood never found its way to the fire because the miner’s imagination took precedence over his physical comfort. As early as 1914, Isi Collin proposed that a statue of Tchantchès be erected in the neighborhood of Outremeuse (reprinted in Piron 1950: 103–105).86 He was on the administrative commission of the Museum of Walloon Life and another member of the commission, Georges Petit presented a design which was approved on July 2 of that year. However on Oct. 9, 1925 in La wallonie newspaper, Marcinel asks “By the way, where are we in the Tchantchès monu-

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ment project?” Is he referring to the Petit bas-relief accepted by the Museum of Walloon Life or to another project also claiming to follow the idea of Isi Collin launched by the Société le Vieux Liège in 1922? The latter group circulated a post card showing a draft of the Tchantchès statue by J. Zomers and E. Bernimolin. This seems to indicate that a controversy was brewing over how this extremely important symbol was to be represented. The Société le Vieux Liège was headed by Comhaire until he died in 1932 and then it was taken over by de Warsage. Comhaire became treasurer of the “Comité d’Action du Monument Tchantchès” and they began trying to raise money for the statue of the girl holding a Tchantchès puppet. Nineteen-twentyseven was a big year. On March 29 they had a contest which judged different images of Tchantchès. This was followed by a week at the Walloon theater, the Trocadero, during which a poem by Joseph Vrindts encouraging donations to the Tchantchès monument was read before each show (Piron 1950). On May 23 and 24, articles about the actions of this committee appeared in four Liège newspapers.87 They talked about selling Tchantchès insignias, fetishes and signs to advertise businesses. They also announced the postponement of the third Gala puppet show and mentioned a boxing match also used to raise funds. During this year Talbot’s organization joined the effort and Talbot himself performed several puppet shows to benefit the monument for Tchantchès, “the soul of the region.” After this frenzied year of fund-raising by the Vieux Liège and Friends of Popular Art groups, the Museum of Walloon Life swiftly and efficiently raised its own funds (thanks to subsidies from the national, provincial and city governments, as well as private donations) and erected its own statue, making sure to reference the Petit bas-relief before the war. In the research bulletin of 1928 Remouchamps recounts how they abandoned the project for awhile after the war and then began thinking about a place for it. They decided on a fountain in the Place du Marché (near the Museum of Walloon Life) because it is in the center of the city where the puppets should be honored, since they are from all over Liège. Remouchamps also praises Petit for not having the shortcoming of limiting interest in our puppet theater to Tchantchès. “Without forgetting this joyful friend, the artist first evoked the first two true roles: Charlemagne, whose figure dominates the entire repertoire of our tiny theaters, and Roland, the hero who personifies the chivalric spirit, in the eyes of the Liège public” (Museum of Walloon Life 1928:194). They had hoped to inaugurate this fountain in 1930, during the centennial

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year, but had to put it off till June 16, 1931. On this day “The Fountain of Tradition” was inaugurated in front of a crowd of 10,000 people. It embodied the words printed in the museum’s first publication, “drinking from the living spring of a glorious past, will make the power and beauty of a radiant future.” The “last six puppeteers” were specially invited and in the first speech of the afternoon Remouchamps recognized them as “fighting tenaciously to maintain their theaters which are one of the most remarkable manifestations of popular art” (Remouchamps 1933a:5). Our puppets… are not simply toys, with which the youth of our popular quarters amuse themselves. When the child becomes a man, he often continues to frequent the small rooms where on narrow stages prestigious epics unfold. The dramas that play there, are for the most part, taken from ancient chansons de geste. Honor, fidelity to the given word, respect for the law and bravery are the sentiments that one exalts there. If our puppet theaters didn’t give birth to this chivalric love of justice and loyalty that the people of Liège place above all, they have, nevertheless, contributed in a certain measure to affirm it, especially in the ranks of the most humble people (Remouchamps 1933a: 3).

Remouchamps’ speech was followed by those of the mayor of Liège, Xavier Neujean, and two Walloon authors, Joseph Vrindts and Louis Lagauche. The event ended with folkloric singing and dancing up to city hall; celebrating “the simple and healthy virtues of our race” and our “national soul” (Museum of Walloon Life 1933:13–14). Something happened between Isi Collin’s call for a statue of Tchantchès in Outremeuse and a statue commemorating puppetry in the center of the city. After losing their popular audience, remaining puppeteers had coalesced into two different styles depending on the tastes of the new audiences supporting them. The right bank puppeteers in Outremeuse and neighboring St. Pholien were the first ones to gain a bourgeois audience and they encouraged the use of Tchantchès to make them laugh. Tchantchès became famous and fame attracted money. To other puppeteers, like Talbot, this made commercial sense and it fit in with the socialist philosophy of elevating the common man, so they also highlighted Tchantchès. The ethnographers of the Museum of Walloon Life recoiled from the commercialism and looked to smaller puppet theaters outside of Outremeuse which they saw as more “authentic,” Consequently, they downplayed the role of Tchantchès. The statue inaugurated in 1931 was a statue to this style of puppetry which in a few short months would be performed

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within the museum. Talbot and Crits were dead by this time, but Danthinne began performing in the Museum until he had a disagreement with Remouchamps and left before the year was out. The right bank puppetry aficionados had to wait until 1936 to inaugurate the Outremeuse statue. By this time it had become the project of the Free Republic of Outremeuse which opened the Tchantchès Museum (with the puppets de Warsage bought) after World War II. If Tchantchès had a statue he must also have a life, so a legend was created about his miraculous birth in 760 in Outremeuse.88 After dying, it was said that he was buried at the place of his statue in Outremeuse . So, for a short time the imaginary tomb predated the imaginary life. Two styles of puppetry were solidified during the interwar period and became associated with the two sides of the Meuse River. On the left bank, dominated by the Museum of Walloon Life, Tchantchès’ role was restricted to one of presenter of chivalric tales and helper in battle. On the right bank, puppeteers in Outremeuse followed the star cult and increased his presence in all shows. After his role was amplified within the theater, he burst out of it in a disembodied image representing a (classless) Walloon soul. This, in turn, further increased Tchantchès’ appearances within the puppet theater. He became a star like Jean Gabin who you grew used to seeing in movie after movie in the interwar period.89 By the end of the interwar period, the Tchantchès which was carved and spoken into life by puppeteers was just one representation among many. He had become an advertising image and people wrote poems and books about him. One book was written as a biography of Tchantchès and begins with an interview with him about the project. The author tells Tchantchès that other books he has written have not sold well and Tchantchès responds that with his thousands of admirers in Wallonia, he would take care of the sales of this book (Delizée 1936: 9). From its humble origins in the puppet theater, Tchantchès’ image was converted into a money-making device for people outside of the puppet theater. Piron (1950) writes that a film was even made about Tchantchès, but he was not able to track it down and I’ve never been able to either. In 1939 Liège put on the International Water Exposition to showcase Walloon industry. It was seen as a good format to exhibit other cultural forms as well, and images of Tchantchès were in the forefront. As a puppet, Tchantchès appeared in a theater run by Joseph Elias and Dieudonné Requilé, a disciple of de Warsage, within the exposition grounds. They performed the

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chivalric tale, “Ogier le Danois,” but also a play called “Nanole” which satirized Hitlerian Germany.90 As an invoked romantic image, Tchantchès appeared twice in a reconstruction of Liège history in poetic form by Théo Fleischmann, the head of Radio Belgium. As a processional giant, Tchantchès led first folklore parade extravaganza of the Free Republic of Outremeuse on September 25. By all accounts the Water Exposition was a great success, however, it was cut short by the German invasion that very fall. A few months after the invasion, de Warsage died as Remouchamps had the year before and Talbot ten years before. The German occupying forces required that all plays be passed through censors. The Museum of Walloon Life preferred to close the theater, presenting no public puppet shows from 1940 to 1944. The young puppeteer, Henri Libert, was captured and sent off to a labor camp in Germany. He stuffed a Tchantchès puppet in his bag and performed irreverent shows for his fellow prisoners when the guards weren’t looking. Popular cultural forms must be understood in their context, but individual efforts cannot be denied. Puppetry in Liège would not be what it is today without the interwar efforts of Remouchamps, de Warsage, and Talbot. Remouchamps and de Warsage, having been able to access various levels of government subsidies left museums in their wake which continue giving puppet shows to this day. Talbot’s commercial techniques of selling miniature puppets and giving itinerant shows also has continued and his Bibliothèque Tchantchès can be bought at the Museum of Walloon Life. His dream of subsidies for independent puppeteers finally became a reality in 1970. These three men were shaped by and helped shape larger social movements and cultural discourses of their time. They all were concerned about identity and identified with the puppet theater as emanating from the Walloon soul. They all attempted to “save” this “ancient tradition” from dying out, each using a different approach.

4.6. Gaston Engels and Adrien Dufour: Speaking Through Puppets Across Time For the past two chapters I have been trying to reconstruct the social milieu from which the puppet theater emerged. The information was gathered from various types of written records which exist in libraries and archives in Belgium, France, and the United States. The next set of representations was gathered in more characteristically ethnographic settings: over coffee and pie

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or swigs of pèkèt (the local gin) in puppeteers’ houses and theaters. Two of the puppeteers with whom I worked in 1982 began performing during the interwar period and were instrumental in making major transformations in their performances which have now become styles within Liège puppetry. In what follows, I present brief life histories and relate some of these puppeteers’ most deeply held views about puppetry. Gaston Engels was born into a house full of puppets in 1905 in Liège. His parents spoke Walloon among themselves, but his mother insisted on speaking French to him, her only child. His father was a potter who managed to triple his income by performing two or three puppet shows a day in his home. Engels had a grandfather, uncle, and cousins who were also puppeteers. He was certain that members of his family were performing puppet shows as early as 1800, so he clearly did not believe that Conti was the first rod puppet operator in Liège: “He was an Italian immigrant who performed with puppets, but there have always been puppets in Liège.” According to Engels, Napoleon prohibited puppetry in Liège because Tchantchès was making fun of him, so obviously Liège puppetry arrived before 1860, in his opinion. Engels began playing the drum in his father’s puppet theater at age four. By the time he was fourteen, he was performing two puppet shows a day on his own before his father returned from work. When his father came home, he would perform two more shows. Gaston assisted him, both manipulating and doing the voices of princesses and young princes. These shows were read directly from popular books in episodic fashion night after night. Episodes of the historical epics were interspersed with comic sketches in Walloon. Occasionally, children brought Gaston illustrated story sheets from Epinal and he would produce a one hour show based on the images. While rod puppets were always used for the serious plays, hand and string puppets were frequently used for the interludes. The stage was converted to a hand puppet stage by lifting one of the floor boards into a verticle position. The puppeteer performed from a sitting position behind this board. Engels believed that the decline of the puppet theater was due to changes in work, but his interpretation was different from the academic version recounted earlier. He claimed that puppeteers lost their regular audience when factory managers changed the structure of work hours after World War I. In 1921, a law was passed restricting the work day to eight hours. Mangers adapted by moving to a three shift system with workers rotating between the different shifts. This meant that they could no longer go to the same puppet theater at

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the same time each day. Since the shows were given in a series, they would miss episodes of the ongoing story and eventually would lose the thread of the story, get frustrated, and stop coming. To put Engels’ views in other words, swing shifts disrupted the local habitus and created an openess to novel ways of passing time once old routines were broken. Engels married during this time period when the puppet business was faltering and there were few other jobs to be found. His authoritarian father had been so strict with him when teaching him the pottery trade that he wanted nothing to do with it. His new father-in-law suggested that he put together an itinerant theater and start performing at the various fairs and parish festivals. Engels took his advice and in 1927 began frequenting fairs around Wallonia with a portable theater and 150 of his father’s 600 puppets. His wife helped by collecting admission and controlling the crowd. Later, their only son became involved in the show, helping to mount and dismantle the theater as well as manipulate puppets. The son dressed as a clown and often performed with hand puppets out front to gather a crowd, but at age 17, he went to work in a factory and gave up the puppetry profession. The fairs in Wallonia ran from spring to fall. During the winter, Engels would get occasional engagements, especially around Christmas, while the rest of the time he spent repairing his equipment and puppets for the coming season. During his last year of work in 1977, he played 900 fifteen minute shows within the space of six weeks at various fairs around Liège. When his wife died, he lost the “taste” for performing and retired, living in a tiny bungalow behind the handsome, spacious home of his son, which Engels largely financed and helped build. He said he was able to do so only by having been extremely frugal, for as a puppeteer one lives as a common worker, not like a rich man. When Engels began performing at fairs, he combined the comedy of the Walloon sketches with some of the chivalric themes and came up with complete shows which excited the children and made them laugh. At the end of every show, he would get them to join him singing a jingle.91 Action centered around Tchantchès, as in the right bank theaters. Engels created a repertoire of close to four hundred improvised comic skits, alternating among his hundreds of self-carved puppets. He would simply write down the title which would give him the topic and improvise for fifteen minutes. He recognized the formulaic nature of this practice and portrayed it as being an easy task, while at the same time admitting that most people could not do it. He claimed that the skits were all pretty much the same, usually centered around Tchantchès saving a

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princess, but in saying that he underestimated how many scenes were drawn from the traditional repertoire. While Engels had stopped performing serial chivalric plays many years before I met him, other puppeteers in Liège respected how thoroughly familiar he was with nineteenth century popular literature and still consulted him. When explaining a story to me, the first step he took was always to place the main characters within their proper kinship networks. The next step was to tell where the story occurred, whether in Belgium, Brittany, France, or elsewhere. (He realized, of course, that countries did not have the same names in those days.) He pointed out that while the medieval period may be the most popular, it is history in general rather than one particular period which characterizes the tradition. Engels’ father also performed plays about pre-Carolingian heroes such as Ambiorix and Renaissance material about pirates and musketeers. Engels considered all of the historic shows performed by his father and other members of his family as traditional. He did not, however, include as traditional the comic material they performed, nor the skits that he himself put on at the fairs, even while recognizing that comic interludes had probably always accompanied the serious historical plays. Engels complained that young puppeteers did not know how to choose or perform their plays. Certain texts are nice to read, like “La Mort de Roland,” but Engels did not think they made good puppet show material. A puppet show must be gripping, but not overly serious. When the atmosphere is becoming too heavy and the spectators are about to cry, it is time to have Tchantchès deliver a line that will make them laugh. Engels said that a puppet play should portray a wide range of emotions. For this, a good puppeteer must enter into the skin of the puppet in order to present a believable representation. Engels worked for a short time in the Walloon theater and was proud of his ability to project emotions, peppering our conversations with examples. Engels felt that he played an important role in bringing puppets to the public’s attention and that later puppeteers benefited from this by receiving government subsidies after he retired. He criticized younger puppeteers who perform so seldom even with subsidies. He also said that puppeteers should be researching stories about knights in all the Belgian villages in order to increase interest in the theater. Engels realized that, even before city, provincial and national subsidies, he could have had a regular income, but it would have meant giving up his independence. This is one reason he turned down the offer to regularly perform in the Museum of Walloon Life puppet theater in the late

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1920s, but he also did not see the purpose of “upholding the tradition” for a handful of people in the museum when he was making good money at the fairs. Years later he was once offered a position in a school in the Ardennes, but he refused on the grounds that he did not want someone telling him where, when, and what to perform, and did not want to have to slip their propaganda into his shows. As for the politics of performance, Engels said, “the best politics for a puppeteer is his wallet.” From his own decisions, we can rule out an interpretation of this pithy statement which sells the show to the highest bidder. Engels was first and foremost an entertainer and he was proud that his wallet was filled by the number of people in his audience and not through playing up connections to politicians and institutions. Engels’ puppet career roughly falls into two periods: the first when he was performing serial episodes of historic material at home, and the second comprising the fifty years he spent performing in the fairs of Wallonia. For Engels, entertaining crowds with puppets was far more important than any “tradition.” He did, however, have a strong idea about what constituted the tradition. It consisted of permanent theaters and audiences that came back night after night to hear historic tales read from a book in a dramatic fashion, through the medium of puppets. He spoke very highly of this practice, but said it no longer existed. Contemporary puppeteers do not read directly from the book. They write their own scripts, condensing the stories into one or several complete shows because they no longer have audiences that return daily. “The tradition doesn’t work once a week,” claimed Engels, “and despite all the efforts that have been made, the public remains apathetic.” Engels was never interested in upholding an entertainment tradition that was no longer entertaining for the public (although it might have been for the puppeteer). When the permanent neighborhood audiences moved on, he moved on too, adapting his shows to the fair. Adrien Dufour was another puppeteer who experienced the decline of rod puppet theaters in working-class homes, but he took a different path than Engels during the interwar period and began working in the Museum of Walloon Life. In Dufour’s opinion, upholding the tradition was of utmost importance. Despite being an outspoken atheist, religious vocabulary peppered his speeches on the subject. It was a “sacrilege” to perform nontraditional shows in the puppet theater and a “heresy” to have Charlemagne speak to children in the audience. The image he had of traditional Liège puppetry merged linguistically with puppetry in general. His criticisms of what he considered nontraditional puppetry often took the form, “Ce n’est pas de la mari-

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onnette” {That’s not puppetry}. Likewise, his response to a traditional knight puppet he saw dressed as a present day Arab with scarves wrapped around his helmet was “Ce n’est plus une marionnette” {That’s no longer a puppet}. In his opinion, puppeteers who did not follow the tradition, ruined the tradition. Adrien Dufour was born in Liège in 1909 to a coal miner father and a mother who worked in a textile factory. Even though he had an uncle and a great uncle92 who were puppeteers, he trusted the written documentation which names Conti as the first rod puppeteer in Liège. Dufour grew up speaking Walloon for neither of his parents could speak French, although they could understand it. He learned French when he entered school. By age nine, he was helping out in two puppet theaters. One of these belonged to his uncle, Oscar Danthinne, the miner/puppeteer who became associated with Talbot and in 1930 represented Liège popular puppetry to the northern regionalist group in Paris. Dufour characterized his uncle as a skinflint with a nasty character. The other theater belonged to Victor Verrées, who performed in Dufour’s neighborhood, but was no relation to him. Dufour came to prefer Verrées’ style of performance. It was more “energetic” than all the others. Verrées had learned to perform from his father, also a miner, who was banned from the mines for being a left-wing agitator. The father consequently took up puppetry to feed his large family. When Dufour was a teenager, his uncle started traveling to give shows in different places and Dufour accompanied him as an aide. They soon realized that reading one hour segments of popular chivalric literature did not work very well when performing to different audiences each time. What was needed were complete one hour shows which covered the high points of the chivalric epics. Danthinne could read, but not write, so the task of writing scripts fell to Dufour. He considered himself to be the first person to have written out complete scripts. Dufour was still only an assistant which meant that he never performed any puppet voices. The opportunity that Engels had to perform high-pitched voices for his father while only a child did not arise in many puppet theaters where the master puppeteer jealously guarded the right to do all the voices. Soon after he wrote his first script, Dufour was in a small town outside of Liège helping his uncle do a puppet show. His uncle fell sick and asked Dufour if he could perform the voices, something he had never done before. Dufour accepted. He was very familiar with the play since he had written the script and even though he had never been allowed to perform the voices in his uncle’s theater, he had practiced since he was a child with his toy puppet theater at

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home. His first performance went well. Later that same year (1929) he helped Danthinne give a performances at the Museum of Walloon Life and they were asked to perform regularly in the museum’s new puppet theater which opened to the public the following year. Within the first year, Danthinne had a falling out with the director and left. Dufour decided to remain as an aide to Verrées. The Depression hit and Dufour was out of work so he was very glad when he was selected in 1934 to “jouer les marionnettes” (to perform the voices as opposed to “aider”) at the museum. At this time, Dufour worked a lathe in a local factory, though he soon became a civil servant for the city of Liège. He supplemented his income by playing the drum in various bands and occasionally giving drum lessons. Dufour believed that playing this instrument correctly instilled the proper walking rhythm of the puppets: slow and heavy for the pagans and light and quick for the Christians. He thought that the younger puppeteers beat on the drum any way they liked, and that their shows suffered as a consequence. “When I play, the puppets practically walk by themselves,” he said proudly. Dufour wrote about three hundred episodes, taken for the most part from Alfred Delvau’s Collection des romans de chevalerie and other chivalric epics. A story cycle is usually composed of seven to twelve episodes. In his later years, he added “Robin Hood,” “The Revolutionaries of 1830,” and several one hour performances which he refered to as “pièces d’actualité,” or “petites pièces.” When pushed, Dufour would admit that cloak and dagger episodes formed part of the traditional repertoire, but he generally talked only about the chivalric epics as traditional, along with the Nativity and Passion Plays. However, not all the chivalric stories are included in the tradition. Lancelot of the Lake, Tristan of Leonnois, and Genevieve of Brabant contain too many love scenes to be good puppet material, according to Dufour, who did not approve of any sort of sexual allusion on the puppet stage. Other well known stories from the popular literature (e.g., Blue Beard and The Seven Dwarves) he considered to be children’s stories and not part of the tradition which has to have an historical base. Traditional plays are serious and educational in his opinion. Younger children enjoy seeing the puppets, but they do not really become interested in the plots until about age nine when they study medieval heroes in history class. Dufour saw the puppet shows as supplementing their history lessons. Besides content, Dufour viewed the traditional puppet shows as having certain formal restrictions. For instance, each show must open with a council of nobles, have a battle, and be brought to an end. (There are stories of pup-

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peteers in previous times simply closing the book after they had played for an hour, no matter where they were.) Later, I found out that this syntactic pattern was dictated by J.M. Remouchamps to the puppeteers who were hired by the Museum of Walloon Life in order to give audiences who did not come regularly a complete show. Yet it is facile to say that Dufour was simply following the orders of his employer. Remouchamps was a keen observer of puppetry and might well have observed this pattern in puppet theaters, since puppeteers were also trying to figure out how to perform for irregular audiences. Other patterns, no doubt, existed but through Remouchamps’ choice, these came to be seen as “non traditional.” Following classical left bank style, the role of Tchantchès in Dufour’s concept of the tradition is predominantly that of master of ceremonies. He introduces and ends the play, but is only a minor character in the play itself. Before World War II, Tchantchès spoke in Walloon to the audience. Now, they cannot understand him so he speaks mostly French. It is neither the same French nor the same intonation pattern, however, as the noble puppets who have always spoken “pure” French. Dufour disapproved of puppeteers who had their noble characters converse with the audience. Kings and knights are not of this time period and are from a radically different social class than the people who attend puppet shows, so he found it illogical for them to speak to the audience. Dufour maintained that traditional plays were harder to perform than other plays. While he acknowledged that the tradition was not so popular among the children, it still held more interest than light comedies for the adults. Yet in order to please the children, who, after all, make up the majority of the audience, he started performing “petites pièces.” These were also based on older popular literature such as Robin Hood and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, but their story lines were simpler and there was more action. These plays did not form part of the classical traditional repertoire, according to Dufour. Even so, they were steeped in the tradition, and Dufour felt proud when he heard people say that even in his petites pièces you could feel the tradition.

4.7. Changes in Form and Content During the interwar period different publics sought control over the puppet theater. Puppeteers organized for the first time and commercial interests competed with scientific and artistic ones. As Walloon culture was struggled over it

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became reified and authority of authenticity grew in importance.93 The Walloon movement, increasingly embattled by the Flemish movement, attempted to democratize and bring in the masses. Tchantchès was useful in this respect and he became monumentalized, miniaturized and aggrandized. People extolled his independent spirit which people of all classes in Liège felt represented them. Outside of the puppet theater, his image was necessarily more important than his voice. The audience for puppet shows grew younger and having lost a regular daily audience, puppeteers began performing complete shows rather than serial episodes. The content was also changing. The large variety of historical epics played in the puppet theaters prior to World War I became more restricted. Hendrik Conscience’s Le Lion de Flandre which was a favorite among puppeteers in Liège, was gradually dropped as it became a symbol of the Flemish nationalist struggle.94 The cloak and dagger serials, such as the Three Musketeers and the intrigues of the de Borgia family appeared less on the hand bills. An argument can be made that plays were dropped which did not have a direct relationship with Wallonia. Charlemagne and his family did and Carolingian plays were given a more prominent place. The puppet theater, then, followed the urgings of the Walloon Congresses. Puppeteers adapted to this new environment in different ways. Some took advantage of the the star cult, by emphasizing Tchantchès role within the theater. Many puppeteers smoothed out his more dissolute aspects. His steady girlfriend became his wife and his frequent drunkenness and inability to hold a job were soon overshadowed by his loyalty to Charlemagne. The class cultures lost some of their separateness and began feeding off one another. Bronze statues were made of Tchantchès, and puppeteers went to the bronze statue of Charlemagne to carve puppets in his image. Puppeteers were hired by the Museum of Walloon Life. Soon puppeteers would begin recounting legends of Tchantchès made up by journalists. It is also during this period that “traditions” were rigidified. Liège puppeteers who tried their hands at various types of hand and string puppets, and even included magic lanterns and other pre-cinematic imagery machines in imitation of music hall entertainment, began using rod puppetry exclusively. Only rod puppetry was deemed autochthonous by the local folklorists and in order to access new forms of government support, puppeteers had to appeal to an audience which was not interested in their flexibility and modernity, but their antique credentials and rigidity. Puppeteers began writing scripts and performing in museums.

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Gaston Engels and Adrien Dufour took different paths through the changing performance environment, but they both made considerable alterations to the style of the puppet theaters they both assisted in as children. Dufour came to embody what the folklorists described as traditional puppetry and was supported by the institutional structure of the museum. In so doing, he accepted certain formal constraints and attracted an audience that was interested in the maintenance of tradition. Engels privileged, instead, the traditional rapport between a performer and a popular audience and remodeled the rest of the performance to maintain that relationship. Over the past three chapters, I have explored the formation of public discourse concerning Walloon, on one hand and folklore, on the other. Both arenas come together in creating a new public for the puppet theater. Local historical knowledge feeds any contemporary ethnography, but it is particularly important when studying a self-conscious folkloric form like the puppet theater. The puppet theater cannot be detached from the discursive arenas that created new publics, ready to attend puppet shows and to evaluate them in different ways. Public discourses about language and cultural identity over the past century motivated and shaped the puppet theater. The material performed, the language used, the structure of performances, the way people think and talk about the puppet theater, all have deep roots in the past.

CHAPTER 5

Past Voices in the Present and the Practice of Puppetry

In older, textual based theories of folklore, the puppet theater would be seen as a “survival.” Yet, the notion of “survival,” as something that has no real function in the present cultural context, misses the point that both nostalgia and self-conscious deployment of the past are, indeed, functional in the present. Survivals might better be seen as symptomatic of a search for some attachment to the past. This is a common desire of identity movements, but it is also a very human desire and an important element in cultural transmission. Contemporary puppet shows are communicative events and the rest of the book uses different types of analysis to explore aspects of communication. Speech genres are units of analysis which bridge culture and language. In fact, Bakhtin called them “the drive belts from the history of society to the history of language” (1986: 65). They have been more recently defined as “historically specific conventions and ideals according to which authors compose discourse and audiences receive it” (Hanks 1987: 670). Yet in most genres of speaking, their own historical roots of construction are buried and unconscious. In the complex secondary genre of speaking that I call “speaking through puppets,” rootedness in the past is glorified and maintained through the process of mimesis. So while this chapter shifts to the present, it maintains a focus on connections to the past through the written word, the puppets, and especially, the voices of previous puppeteers. I begin the chapter looking at the concepts of genre, tradition, and style and end with a discussion of contemporary performance settings in Liège.

5.1. Speaking Through Puppets: Genre, Tradition, and Style The way we communicate with one another today is impregnated with voices of the past. Sometimes this takes the form of quotation (whether attributed or not,

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direct or indirect). Other times it is not the actual voice but the pattern of speaking which continues to structure speech. This patterning can exist at the level of openings and closings, register, voice quality and any other linguistic variable. These organized chunks of language, called genres, enter our experience and consciousness together according to Bakhtin and help us interpret messages and structure our reality.95 He adds that without the generic structuring of human language, communication would be almost impossible (Bakhtin 1986:78–79). “We learn to cast our speech in generic forms and when we hear others’ speech, we deduce its genre from the first words,” anticipating in advance a sense of the whole (Bakhtin quoted in Holquist 1990: 65). Within this generic view of language, there is no gulf separating written from oral language. This does not mean that there is no difference between written and oral language, only that the notion of genre is overarching. This idea is very important to an analysis of speaking through puppets since it is an oral tradition which has written texts at its core. Bakhtin stressed the extreme heterogeneity of speech genres which range from brief rejoinders in daily informal conversation, to business reports, to novels. Not all speech genres are equally recognizable. Clearly bounded genres of literature have attracted the most study, but not usually as part of the complex of speech genres, described by Bakhtin. Linguistic anthropologists whose interests lie in the broader picture of speech genres and their interrelationships, have had a difficult time fitting all speech into genres (Briggs and Bauman 1992: 132). Genres have a dialogic aspect that makes them resistant to classification into types, though when considering clearly bounded, highly formalized ways of speaking, such as puppet performances, the concept of genre is very useful. Ethnographers of speaking and folkorists of the performance school have long recognized the importance of formalized genres in cultural analysis because of their replicability over time and their ability to encapsulate ways of acting which hold a central place in culture (Bauman and Sherzer 1974; Bauman 1977). Their clear formal constraints allow them to be made into texts, or entextualized. In order to do this, they must be transportable out of their original context, or decontextualized. Later they can be repeated, or read in another context altogether, or recontextualized. This process is at the heart of cultural transmission.96 Speech genres incorporate visual cues as well as aural ones. Obviously, written genres must be read and they are presented on the page in different ways: a shopping list, a personal letter, a report, a novel. Oral genres delivered face-to-face are also accompanied by certain gestures and spatial relations that

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set up distinctive performance contexts. However, unlike the permanent visual aspect of written genres, most of the visual cues that accompany oral language are context dependent and, in that sense, more “contemporary” than written genres which are created with decontextualization in mind. Speaking through puppets, however, depends on the concomitant display of puppets which, like written language, were created to be decontextualized. Unlike most oral genres, the originator of the discourse is actually hidden from his interlocutors. The puppeteer moves the head of the puppet to whom he wants to attribute his words. Or, one might poetically say that the puppets are made to snatch fragments of discourse from the puppeteer’s own mouth. Speaking through puppets in Liège is an oral genre which is performed with the idea that it will be evaluated (Hymes 1974; Bauman 1977). It is evaluated on both the aural and visual plane and on how the two fit together. For example, if the head of the puppet who is talking is not moving, the audience may lose track of the dialogue. Different publics evaluate different aspects of the performance more or less harshly. Young children want lots of action and find it difficult to follow complex plots; older children like to banter with Tchantchès. Certainly, the beauty of the puppets and the backdrops and the feel of the theater play into an evaluation of the performance, and if one does not understand the language, the visual aspect becomes even more important. Focusing on the linguistic performance, some publics will judge the puppeteer on his knowledge of Walloon and Walloon traditions. Some will assess his knowledge of history, or the degree to which the text is respected. Others will evaluate him on his sense of comedic timing and ability to make fun of contemporary situations. Yet others will judge his ability to differentiate voices and to create remarkable voices for particular characters. Puppeteers gain authority according to these criteria. Their harshest critics are other puppeteers and when one visits another’s theater, the performer works particularly hard to put on a good show and is anxious for the evaluation of the puppeteer-spectator. Just as puppeteers gain authority for the production of this genre, they also gain authority as evaluators of the genre. However, they are not the ones that keep each other in business. In the past, the base of paying customers determined whether a puppeteer would continue performing or not. Customers still play an important role today, but as we saw in the last chapter, institutional support for puppeteers has become a new, important part of the equation. The evaluations of puppet performances made by institutions have shaped the way they are today. As part of this process, the social authority of the institution rubs off on the puppeteer.

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Speaking through puppets is not an easy-to-learn, everyday genre, but one whose production is restricted to a few experts in society. It is what Bakhtin termed a secondary genre since it contains primary genres within it. In fact, one could say that this particular genre voraciously consumes other ways of speaking. It is a very complex genre, through which a single person manipulates linguistic and paralinguistic variables in order to represent different social classes, time periods, genders, personality traits, ethnic and regional groups, etc. In so doing it provides an important instance of native metapragmatics, or a sort of native ethnography of speaking. Speaking through puppets is a highly reflexive genre: reflexive because it announces itself as a performed speech genre through clear framing mechanisms; because it talks about language; and because it consists almost entirely of reported speech. There is an element of reported speech in all oral traditions, but in speaking for puppets, the entire performance consists of dialogue between characters uttered by a single puppeteer. In addition to calling attention to itself (as does any linguistic performance), it calls attention to heteroglossia, the polyphonous multitude of languages in society, each with its own formal markers, values and presuppositions which have developed historically through particular social relations. Sociolinguists have long been interested in individual variation in language, but they have generally examined only a small range of that variability based on functional differentiation.97 Speaking through puppets represents one of the most exaggerated forms of individual variation with one person taking on the voices of a variety of characters in rapid succession, mapping linguistic varieties onto puppet characters of various social categories. One might say it is the quintessential dialogic form, since it is, itself, a mimetic representation of dialogue, showing the multiplicity of voices inherent in a single one. But, it would be a mistake to only view this dialogism synchronically, seeing puppeteers simply dramatize voices they hear around them. They do do this on occasion, but most of the voices are many times removed from original speakers having been passed along through time by storytellers, whether sung, written, told face to face, or told through puppets. The voice/character map is historically formed, as is characteristic of language ideology. In this sense, speaking through puppets is a dialogue with the past. This brings us to the notion of tradition which has occupied an important place in folklore studies. Folkloric traditions self-consciously establish past practice as the model against which present day practices are judged. If a particular speech genre remains at the unconscious level, then “tradition” simply

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becomes the development of the speech genre. But once people begin acknowledging the speech genre as a tradition, then it exerts a certain force against change. At this point, performers strategically recontextualize performances to minimize gaps between contemporary and earlier entextualizations. Performers gain authority through their connections with past performances and certain aspects of the performance become rigidified. This is the situation that shaped Liège puppetry. What used to be called in the 19th century “les spectacles de marionnettes” or “puppet shows” became known as “les marionnettes liégeoises.” The noun, “marionnettes” followed by the adjectival form of the city came to designate a certain type of puppetry seen by all as “a local tradition” passed down through generations of puppeteers. “Les marionnettes liégeoises” is an exclusive designation. Puppeteers using hand or string puppets in Liège would not be able to use this title. Other puppeteers, even while performing with rod puppets in Liège, exclude themselves from the designation, not wanting the weight of the tradition upon them. The tradition, for them, is the official, monologic word, and they prefer to avoid it. Puppeteers in Liège are very conscious of doing something old and sometimes see themselves as “bearers of tradition.” This very term presents a vision of folklore as a collective essence passed on through the ages. When you ask a puppeteer why he does something and he answers “C’est la tradition,” or even admits that he would like to change an element of his performance but has no right to do so because he would be departing from the tradition, then you can see how this vision of folklore has influenced puppeteers, who, rather than manipulating the tradition, feel manipulated by it. Yet it would be misleading to imply that puppeteers felt that the tradition was a pre-written, unchanging text to which they simply adhered. After the last three chapters, readers should recognize that puppeteers have a political and economic stake in maintaining what has been recognized as traditional Liège puppetry, but they are also quite active in defining just what the tradition is. Only a few things fall into everyone’s description of the traditional puppet theater of Liège. First of all, the form of the puppets — carved in wood, articulated at the neck, arms and legs, and dressed in cloth with only a single steel rod through their heads — is perhaps the most obvious marker of Liège puppetry. There are certainly recognizable styles of different puppet-makers, but even though some puppeteers hold that movable metal visors are better than wooden ones carved in place, or cloth arms give the puppet better action than wooden ones, or that the carving or painting on some puppets is far superior than that on

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others, no one would use these differences to disqualify certain puppets as Liège puppets. This method of making puppets is so ingrained in Liège that, even makers of nontraditional characters continue to do so in the traditional rod puppet style. (One puppeteer has a wonderful set of Disney’s seven dwarves constructed in the traditional Liège fashion.) Secondly, there are the traditional characters. Every Liège theater has a Tchantchès who mixes varying degrees of Walloon and French in his speech. There is also a Charlemagne plus several of his noble contemporaries who speak in French. Thirdly, there is the practice of having a single person perform all (or almost all) of the voices. I am relatively sure that these traits would be included in any Liège puppeteer’s description of “the tradition,” but apart from this, their portrayals diverge. After listening to puppeteers talk about “the tradition,” for a year, I came to see it not as a timeless collective product, but as an individual construction used for personal validation and as an important resource for performance. Whether claiming fidelity to “the tradition” or consciously distancing themselves from it, it is a resource to be manipulated as each puppeteer sees fit. The way in which a puppeteer learned the trade strongly influences his idea of what “the tradition” is and how he will establish his position vis à vis that tradition. “Tradition,” then, is not merely an essentialist notion used only by folklorists, but a concept used actively by the puppeteers themselves whose descriptions of the tradition — if they consider themselves to be traditional — turn out to conform quite closely to their own particular style of performing. For instance, Libert claimed that Tchantchès must always address Charlemagne with the familiar form of address as he does, but many puppeteers did not follow this practice. He also worked hard at having a large variety of very distinct voices, yet Pinet claimed that it was not customary for the puppeteer to change his voice so radically in the Liège tradition. Pinet claimed he only distinguished a few basic types of voices and concentrated on conveying the emotional coloring of the text. Dufour could not imagine a traditional show without an extended battle, but other puppeteers shortened their battles and some of the younger puppeteers consciously excluded battles from their plays. There was also debate about which stories belonged in the traditional repertoire. Should the major criterion be whether it dealt with the chivalric period of history, or whether it had been performed by old puppeteers? In puppeteers’ conversations about what a traditional Liège puppet show consists of, they included contextual and historical information that was not visible to the audience. According to the Pinet tradition, a man must be responsible

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for every part of the puppet show in order to consider himself a master puppeteer. He must make his own puppets (especially his own Tchantchès and Tchantchès’ wife, Nanèsse), paint backdrops, write scripts, manipulate the puppets, and talk for them.98 Dufour agreed with the last three criteria, but since he had always performed in other peoples’ theaters, he placed no importance on the construction of puppets, props, or theater. In addition to writing scripts, Dufour believed that a puppeteer should also be able to present any show unrehearsed, even if there was no script or if the script had just been handed to him. Ancion, however, practiced for weeks before presenting a show in public. Yet all three of these puppeteers consider themselves to be “traditional.” Using the term “style” allows us to reserve the value-laden term, “tradition,” for designating personal conceptions of the past model which influence individual puppeteers’ styles. As we saw in the last chapter, Engels and Dufour were both master puppeteers which means that they accepted responsibility for performing multiple voices in rapid succession while manipulating puppets from which the voices were presumed to emanate. We can consider both puppeteers to have performed a single genre of speaking, even though there are systematic differences between their performances: differences based on history, context, and personal choice. These variant patterns of performance represent different styles. One was conceived as a deviation from tradition and the other as a continuation of tradition even though both puppeteers innovated substantially to adapt to new publics. Even within the term “style,” a certain reification has occurred. When the post World War II folklorists began describing the puppet theater, they distinguished two styles within Liège puppetry tradition on different banks of the Meuse River. The story is that the right bank style originated at the end of the 19th century when the puppeteers on Roture Street began performing for the medical students from the nearby Bavière hospital. These puppeteers increased the role of Tchantchès and the humorous scenes within the plays for bourgeois spectators interested in having an occasional “good time” at the working-class puppet theater. Engels continued this style when he performed at the fairs. Today the Tchantchès Museum theater in Outremeuse is considered home of the right bank tradition. The puppeteers on the left bank of the river, dominated by the theaters on Pierreuse Street, maintained a more serious tenor to their productions. They continued to emphasize the historical aspects of the stories and kept Tchantchès’ interventions to a minimum. Dufour was trained in the left bank style which came to be associated with the Museum of Walloon Life.

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When the puppet theater entered public discourse (intellectual and commercial) it was discursively constructed as an “authentic Walloon tradition.” Folklorists and journalists, affiliated with the Museum of Walloon Life and the Tchantchès Museum respectively, described different styles of Liège puppetry which had been shaped by both individuals and social contexts. At this point, the institutions began shaping the future of these two puppetry styles and individual variations were held in check. This situation prevails when performers gain authority through authenticity. Whether the construction of authenticity begins within or outside of the performance tradition, it must take root in public discourse to be effective. Institutions such as museums and newspapers are better equipped in society to spread the word, than are individual performers. To summarize, one can think of genre as the system of conventions that lets the audience know that the speaker is speaking through puppets. These conventions might well have been altered over time and could change in the future. Style refers to distinct ways of speaking through puppets. A puppeteer’s style has very much to do with whose theater he regularly attended and worked in, so while it may be perceived as individual variation synchronically, it often comes about through targetting different models for mimesis, or cultural transmission. All forms of genre and style are historical products based on past voices, but it is generally not important for speakers to acknowledge this fact. The consciousness of and desire for persistence over time brings the historical background of particular genres to the forefront and the metapragmatic term “tradition” is used in reference to these genres. This describes the Liège puppet theater. As it became a local tradition, people ceased seeing it as a contemporary performance form and began to regard it as part of the cultural patrimony. Puppeteers, then, were forced to base their authority as performers on the knowledge of historical narratives, the possession of old performance materials, and their connections to past puppeteers.

5.2. Connection to the Past through Stories, Books and Puppets 5.2.1. Stories The past echoes through Liège puppetry in many ways. At the center of the tradition are old stories which have circulated orally over the generations. Their printed versions were read and cherished by puppeteers who carved the sto-

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ries’ characters into wooden puppets. These were stories about history. The inseparability of the past and narrative is implicitly conveyed in the French language where “history” and “story” have identical phonetic form. In my conversations with older traditional puppeteers in Liège, history emerged as series of events which allegedly happened to real people, presented in a narrativized linear fashion. A written text served as the ultimate authority. Truth, then, was considered an important element in the stories portrayed and knowledge of history was a resource for performance. With history forming the cornerstone of Liège puppetry, it should come as no surprise that some puppeteers blamed a growing ignorance of history for the decline of the theater. Since children were not being taught medieval history in school through these literary works anymore, they remained ignorant of many of the famous lineages. Engels and Dufour felt that when they first started performing, the audiences knew who was who in the Carolingian Age. They could place them in their proper kinship networks and knew what kinds of people they were. Nowadays, too much background information has to be given in order for the audience to understand. In spite of the emphasis on “true history,” speaking through puppets in Liège has become historical in its own right and when it is discovered that something traditionally portrayed in the puppet theater does not conform to the historical “facts,” some puppeteers do not feel that they can rightfully make the change. One puppeteer told me that he had been approached by history teachers when performing in schools who pointed out anachronisms in his plays. He also discovered a version of La Mort de Roland in France which differed from the version played in Liège. He suspected that the French version was “correct,” since France is older than Belgium. Nevertheless, whether he discovered a factual error or whether someone else in a position of authority pointed one out, he felt obligated to perform the stories as the older puppeteers used to perform them. However, he did feel free to have Tchantchès point out the error in the text. He saw this as staying within the tradition since Tchantchès’ lines are not written, but meant to be improvised and, therefore, contemporary. In 1982, the vast majority of puppet plays performed in Liège were biblical or chivalric legends.99 The three major permanent theaters all put on a Nativity play (some for an extended period of time) and two of them offered a Passion Play. Also performed were the chivalric plays Four Sons of Aymon, Orson and Valentine, Ogier le Danois, Geneviève de Brabant, Huon de

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Bordeaux, Robin Hood, an episode of Lancelot and two different theaters presented versions of the Song of Roland. In addition, some fairytales were arranged with a role for Tchantchès and one of the theaters presented the famous German puppet show of the Tragic History of Dr. Faust. The three major permanent theaters each presented a Walloon comedy for adults, but voices from the past were integral in these as well, not least through the association of Walloon with grandparents, but also in that Walloon skits of a more contemporary nature have long been a part of the traditional repertoire. Two more recent local history plays Les 600 Franchimontois and Les R’vinteus de 1830 were performed in 1982. Both events served as important images in Walloon identity formation and they are commemorated in place names around the city of Liège. The first one tells the story of the courageous men of Liège who fought to defend their freedom against the foreign tyrant, Charles le Téméraire, in 1468. Rottiers (1995) writes that this story comes from the memoirs of Phillippe de Commynes written at the end of the 15th century, and that it has been pressed into service when it has been important to affirm a common identity: right after the 1830 Revolution, during tense international relations (1851 and 1914); and during the awakening of a Walloon consciousness in the 1890s and the beginning of the 20th century. During the Walloon Congress of 1905, one delegate saw fit to point out that the Battle of the Golden Spurs in Flanders took up fifteen to twenty pages in a Belgian history text, while the account of the 600 Franchimontois was told in a mere 15 lines. In 1913, our own Rodolphe de Warsage wrote an historical novel entitled Les six cents Franchimontois, joining other novelists, playwrights, lyricists and poets who were inspired by the same event. I don’t know when it was first performed in the puppet theater, but it was common during the interwar period. In 1928, Thomas Talbot performed a version at the Grand Théâtre in Chênée in the outskirts of Liège. Just behind the Museum of Walloon Life where the play was performed, the 374 steps called locally “les sî cints grés” in honor of the six hundred heros climbed the de Bueren hill which was named after one of the leaders of the 1468 revolt. The second play, Les R’vinteus de 1830, tells of the heroism of the Belgian revolution. The revolution began at the opera house in Brussels during a presentation of Auber’s La Muette de Portici so it is fitting that it also be represented on stage.100 A Walloon stage is a more likely venue than a Flemish one because of the way this event has been manipulated through history. Stengers (1995) states that the Belgian Revolution was equally fought by

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Flemings, Walloons, Bruxellois and Luxembourgeois, but that by the beginning of the twentieth century, it came to be seen as a Walloon Revolution. He traces this to the Walloon assembly which met in Mons in 1913 and decided that Wallonia should have its own festival. They decided on the last Sunday of September to commemorate Walloons “already united by a soul and an identical language, (who) sacrifice(d) their lives to a common cause,” thus creating the Belgian state (quoted in Stengers 1995: 142). The Flemings who were beginning to see the revolution as a catastrophe for the Flemish language, gladly gave up their role in it and the revolution became amalgamated with the image of Charles Rogier racing to Brussels with his Liège volunteers to save the future state. One of the volunteers was known as Charlier Jambe de Bois or Charles Wooden Leg and the puppeteer who performed this play in 1982 lived on the street “Wooden Leg” commemorating this man. 5.2.2. Books Written texts provide the ultimate authority for the historical narratives performed by puppeteers and all the master puppeteers who consider themselves traditional have old books hidden away in their homes. The books are never as old as the stories they contain, but they are older than the puppeteers and their age is palpable. The visual age of written materials can affect our interpretive frame which is why so many of us who are in love with libraries do not want to see them supplanted by the internet. Holding an old book in your hands engages the emotions in a way that the same content strewn across a computer screen does not and as research shows, emotionally laden communication sticks in our memories. The emotional quotient is particularly high if you know who else has held the book and what the voices in the book sound like in performance. Many Liège puppeteers possess a highly prized collection of old popular books, marked in the margins with performance notes by puppeteers who are now dead. Most of this chapbook literature dates from the 19th and early 20th centuries and retells stories from medieval chansons de geste, but also later historic events. These stories were rewritten either from the oral tradition or from some written version of the chansons de geste which were themselves taken from the oral tradition generations earlier. The fact that the stories were rewritten was not always acknowledged by the puppeteers. Sometimes, older, less educated puppeteers even saw the text as dating from the time of the event it represented.

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Most of these books have long disappeared from circulation; many of them have ended up in the Museum of Walloon Life.101 Occasionally a puppeteer has discovered a dusty volume in a flea market, but for the most part, they acquired their stash from old puppeteers, proving their link to a lineage of performers. In fact, neither Engels nor Dufour thought it was possible to be a traditional Liège puppeteer without a collection of these old books. This virtually disqualifies all puppeteers who did not come up through a performer lineage. Puppets can always be carved anew, but access to the books is restricted. One of Dufour’s assistants, Jean Decallais, was the son of a puppeteer. He was in his seventies and had never become a master puppeteer, but enjoyed manipulating the puppets.102 Despite his background in puppetry, he seemed to lack the facility with language that master puppeteers possess. Back at home in the church basement where his wife was caretaker, he had a trunk full of old books that his father had left him. I saw this trunk as a time capsule and asked if I could catalogue its contents with a friend.103 Jean consented, asking only that we translate the roman numeral dates for him in exchange. He told me, “Je n’ai que ça dans mon coeur, que ces livres. Toutes les marionnettes sont parties” {I only have this in my heart, only the books. All the puppets have gone}. He felt that other puppeteers coveted these books and he had a certain amount of satisfaction that they belonged to him and not them. His father was François Decallais. From the survey he sent in to Thomas Talbot in 1926, we know that he was a miner who was born in 1889 and had a theater called “Théâtre Liégois.” He no longer operated the theater by the time of the survey, but continued making puppets and probably performed on occasion. Jean gave me an article from the communist newspaper, Germinal which featured his father. The journalist, Alice Closset (n.d.), wrote of a set of Decallais’ marionettes in Elizabethville in the ex-colony.104 Decallais told Talbot in the survey that he performed chivalric plays from the Bibliothèque bleue and 17th century cloak and dagger plays by Zévaco and Dumas. The Bibliothèque bleue material was evident in his collection, but there were no books by Zévaco or Dumas. Thirty well-used books were kept in the trunk. Many had been painstakingly taped or roped together, some had been covered with various pieces of cloth and wall paper found around the house. Roland Furieux was missing a final page, so someone had written the entire text out by hand and taped it in. Most of these books showed the tell-tale signs of having been used by a puppeteer. Dialogue had been marked off in the text and abbreviated character

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names written in the margins. Three of these books dated from the 18th century (1742 and 1782) and a fourth was from 1827. The earliest books were two volumes of Roland Amoureux by Boyardo which along with Roland Furieux (which Decallais possessed in a 1850 edition) constitute the backbone of the Italian rod puppet theater and were popular at an earlier time in Liège, but fell out of favor. The third book was a story about Henry the Great that I’d never heard puppeteers speak of. The fourth was the ever-popular Four Sons of Aymon. All these books were published before any written evidence that chivalric plays were being performed through puppets in Liège. The bulk of the books dated from 1849 to 1869 or right about the time when the rod puppet theater is thought to have gotten underway in Liège. These books included 9 dated books and at least 5 of the 8 which were not dated. Two of the books are collections of chivalric stories by Alfred Delvau (which is consulted to this day by Liège puppeteers) but neither were marked by puppeteers. The volume that contains The Four Sons of Aymon, Fier à Bras, Ogier le Danois and Huon de Bordeaux (all of which continue being played on Liège puppet stages today) was stamped with “Les Amis de l’Art Populaire. Marionnettes Liégeoises. Liège.” Perhaps after the organization disbanded, different members received a portion of Talbot’s collection, or maybe the book ended up in a second-hand book stall, where Decallais snatched it up. Decallais did state that he had ceased performing by the time he filled out the survey in 1926, so either he had begun performing again or continued collecting books for the sheer pleasure of it. Four books showed dates of 1880, 1889, 1896 just when the puppet theater began entering the discourse of the intelligensia. Decallais must have bought second-hand all of the books which date prior to the twentieth century, or more likely, received them from an older puppeteer. The first book he could have bought new is another version of the Four Sons of Aymon dated 1908 at which time Decallais would have been nineteen years old. This version of The Four Sons of Aymon was in paperback but placed inside a heavy cardboard folder sewn with thick black thread. The title page makes clear that it is a new version based on the text of 1480 by Jean d’Albignac. In the preface, the editor, Pierre Sales, goes on to recount the history of various manuscripts and printings of the story, criticizing all the later ones (including Decallais’ 1827 text) for taking creative license with the 1480 manuscript. He accuses these authors of making “flagrant inexactitudes” and of having done no research or analysis. He characterizes them as “opposed to truth” and as having “no scientific spirit.” This book

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Claudy Deletrez making a puppet

was completely marked to facilitate speaking through puppets. Interestingly, Decallais’ earlier version of The Four Sons of Aymon text had also been marked, but the markings had been erased and traces of the eraser remained in the book. I felt like a detective: Had Decallais refused to use the earlier book after reading Sales’ criticism? Was it normal to erase director’s markings once one ceased performing the work? (Two other books in the collection, Roland l’Amoureux and L’Héritage de Charlemagne, had also been marked and erased.) I’ll never know the answers to these questions, but I would also never have asked them if I hadn’t held in my hands these objects of history. The three remaining dated books were published in the 1920s. The first contained two stories of the Knights of the Round Table, the second was the

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Half-made puppet

207th edition of Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut and the third was Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered which had been hand covered in blue butcher paper. None of these books had been marked by the puppeteer. I commented earlier on the lack of cloak and dagger stories in the collection, but I also feel compelled to mention that fully seven of the books were by Hendrik Conscience. The earliest dated ones were 3 volumes published by Michel Lévy in 1867. Two of these are volumes one and two of Le Tribun de Gand and the third is an edition in a slightly larger format of volume one of the same book. It makes one wonder about the extraordinary popularity it must have had. Conscience was certainly a popular author with Decallais. In addition to these three, he had an 1896 edition of Conscience’s Le Lion de Flandre

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Old puppet head used as model

and three undated books of his La Guerre des Paysans (2 copies published in Paris by Michel Lévy in 1855 or 1857 and the third one in Tournai by Casterman). Of these seven books, the only ones that were marked for performance were the 1896 Le Lion de Flandre and the Casterman publication of La Guerre des Paysans.105 The most heavily marked books in the collection were plays that continued to be popular in the 1980s and 1990s: the 1908 version of The Four Sons of Aymon and the two undated Pellerin publications, Huon de Bordeaux and Histoire de Valentin et Orson. This last book (more like a pamphlet) had been placed in a hard covered folder with a shoe lace tie that had belonged to Denise Decallais whose name appeared on the inside. Embossed on the folder were

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Puppets hanging: Mary and Joseph in center separated by a tchantchès

the words from a fashion magazine, “Ce Que Vous Porterez Cet Eté 1932” but pasted at the top was “Histoire de Valentin et Orson” in purple pencil. Each ragged page had been carefully glued into a frame of heavier notebook paper to preserve it, and then hand-numbered on each of the 96 pages. 5.2.3. Puppets Not only has the content and language of these old books greatly affected the Liège puppet theater, but even the pictures have left their mark since puppets over the years have been carved in their image. Illustrations must have been a selling point from the beginning, since many of the chapbooks announce on the cover how many they contain. Puppeteers copied the designs of the illustrated armour and helmets when carving puppets. Rod puppets are considered the perfect instrument for the serious portrayal of historic characters and battles. This holds true in Italy and Northern France as well where rod puppeteers also portray romantic histories from popular literature. String and hand puppets are considered to be better suited for comedy and light drama, but Liège puppeteers felt that only rod puppets could represent armies in battle.

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Puppets hanging: Orson with a group of tchantchès and Nanèsse

Books were not the only source of inspiration for puppet design. In the 1896 version of L’Héritage de Charlemagne, Decallais kept a magazine photograph of the statue of Charlemagne (inaugurated in 1868) which sits on the Boulevard d’Avroy in Liège. It is well known among puppeteer circles that Denis Bisscheroux used this statue as a model for his Charlemagne which is probably considered the most beautiful puppet of all. I was told that Bisscheroux wanted to sell it to Edouard Remouchamps for 15,000 BF and Remouchamps refused.106 My interlocutor said that Remouchamps regretted his decision since the puppet went into private collections and now is “untouchable.” Puppeteers also shop flea markets and second-hand shops for

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old puppets which they restore and use as models. Thanks to the efforts of Rodolphe de Warsage, one set of puppets carved by Bisscheroux performs at the Tchantchès Museum and is admired by one and all. Yet in the eyes of some puppeteers, a warrior can be too beautiful and these puppeteers prefer the more rugged beauty of Crits’ puppets.107 Two of the four puppeteers who answered Talbot’s 1926 questionnaire performed with puppets made by Joseph Crits. Today, his puppets are found in practically every puppet theater in Liège, but no one is more taken with them than his grandson, Robert Willé. Willé was already retired and in his sixties when I met him in 1982, but he still dreamed of turning his puppet-filled workshop into a puppet theater someday. He remembered going to his grandfather’s shows as a boy, but Crits died when he was only nine and his grandmother sold all the puppets, much to his dismay. Willé said that he could still close his eyes and see his grandfather’s puppets hanging in the theater. As he grew up, he slowly began re-creating his grandfather’s puppet characters, becoming a wellrespected craftsman in the process. Engels said that he learned about puppet making from Crits, though his father, grandfather and uncle all made puppets too. He began making them for toys when he was nine. By age twelve, he was already pretty accomplished and starting to sell some of his puppets. Later he made big ones for himself. He used alder, birch, or linden. “Linden works like butter” he told me, “You use it to make women’s faces, but it’s not hard enough for a knight’s head. It will get crushed in battle.” I once asked him why Corsuble and Caraheu had different helmets and he answered “Oh ma chère, écoute bien. Ce sont les vieux de la vieille qui ont fait des casques comme ça et on les voit dans les livres des marionnettes. Ça fait qu’il faut, il faut les faire pareil, hein.” {Oh my dear, listen well. It’s the old timers who made helmets like that and you can see them in the puppet books. So you must, you must make them the same, right} In other words, both the illustrations in the books and the practices of past puppeteers are brought to bear on contemporary puppet carving. A puppet is commonly referred to as a combination of his role and his maker as in, “le Charlemagne de Crits.” Even when puppet theater aficionados cannot name the puppet-maker, they can often pick out famous puppet characters and classify the others as Christian or “Pagan,” good or bad. All the traitors have turned up moustaches like the old Germans, according to Engels.108 Charlemagne has a crown with a cross on top and usually a white beard. Roland has a lion’s head helmet. Ideally, a puppeter has a puppet for each role,

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Puppets invade the dining room buffet

but realistically, there are a few who play multiple roles. Engels said that to play Amadis de Gaule in its entirety requires about 600 puppets, so instead they used to wait 4 or 5 episodes until people had forgotten about one character and then they brought him on as someone else. Sometimes, they would recombine different heads and bodies to create new characters. In every theater there are puppets who play more than one role. Since the Nativity Play is only performed a few times a year and the characters do not reappear in any other stories, some puppeteers use obscure medieval kings to play the roles of Herod and the Wise Men. I was surprised to see Charlemagne filling the role of Herod in Dufour’s theater. Unlike the familiar tchantchès characters who one grows

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used to seeing in all types of plays, the most popular historic characters crystallize into a specific role in history and it is jarring to see them removed from their regular context. Not only do we see the patterns of one role per puppet and multiple roles per puppet, but there are also examples of multiple puppets playing the same role. This is a standard practice in the puppet theater when characters have to change their expression which is hard to do with a wooden face. In Liège, the most common example of multiple puppets per role is the custom of having one lighter Charlemagne which can take the blows in battles, and another heavier, more elaborate one that they use for council scenes. Engels told me he had ten Charlemagnes, but later informed me that any Christan king could be called a charlemagne, or any traitor a ganelon, just as any commoner could be called a tchantchès. Whereas books are hidden away in trunks and drawers, puppets hang by the hundreds backstage in permanent theaters and in basements and trailers of those with itinerant theaters. They also are moved into the main living area of the house decorating bed posts, china closets and mantle pieces. Dufour was not a puppet-maker so he only had a small collection of puppets in his office, but he remembered that his uncle, Oscar Danthinne, had puppets hanging everywhere in his house. The younger puppeteers/puppet-makers are no different. Deletrez’s house always had different groups of puppets hanging from the doors and Ficarrotta’s house was beginning to look the same. Puppet-makers today make sketches out of books and their imaginations like many of the older puppet-makers, but they also use older puppets as models, just as they model their voices after those of older puppeteers. Dufour remembered that his uncle possessed “la plus belle Bradamant de Bisscheroux.”109 He inherited his uncle’s Tchantchès and a couple other puppets and his cousin, Danthinne’s daughter, kept a nice collection, but many more were simply dispersed. Puppeteers sometimes wonder where all the old puppets have disappeared to. They suspect that many are “falling into dust” in the attic of the Museum of Walloon Life and they know of a couple people in town who collect and restore puppets, but many that were known by both their character and maker’s name have disappeared. I was often told of puppets being packed off by American soldiers during the war. People asked me if I had seen any of these puppets in the United States and seemed diasappointed when I said I hadn’t. Taussig (1993) wrote that sympathetic magic lies at the core of mimesis.110

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This is something to be explored in the relationships that puppets as performing objects have with the humans who create them, with those who animate them and with those who watch them. Imitating qualities of a person imbues the model with some of the powers of that person. When Charlemagne in his velvet finery emerges from behind the curtain, people “ooh” and “ah” in the audience. They are very respectful of him and sometimes puppeteers will even insist on the audience standing and greeting him properly, which they do. Liège puppets are attributed life even before human features are carved in the wood. A puppeteer told me that Liège puppets have hearts like humans because they are made of logs which were living trees. The core of the tree remains the heart of the puppet. This rapprochement is easily handled in French where the same word “coeur” is used to refer to both the center of the tree and the human heart. The iconic conformity of the words led people to sympathetically transfer qualities from one so-named object to the other. The heart is not simply a human organ, but one which is used to describe a whole range of human emotions. When you know what’s in someone’s heart, you know their innermost feelings.111 There is a bit of contagious magic evident in puppet making too. A puppetmaker once told me that he carved himself into his puppets. He did not imitate his own features, but through the act of carving, he transferred a part of himself into the puppets he made. When he sold them or gave them away, he said he felt like he himself went away. As long as the puppet was performing, he didn’t mind, but he did harbor regrets that some of his puppets were stuck in cabinets as if a part of him had been locked away. This identification between puppeteer and puppet appears in other ways as well. Puppeteers may refuse to leave the puppets they feel closest to in the theater and they will often ask to be buried with a specific puppet. The mimetic facets of puppet bodies, movement, and voice reach the public through performance. Crudely speaking, in a puppet show spectators are the receiver side of the communication model and puppeteers are the senders, but the actual process is more complex. Through mimesis, puppeteers project themselves into the puppets while animating them through voice and movement. Spectators also participate in the mimesis when they lose the frame of performance and perceive the puppets as agents in their own world and not wooden actors on stage.112

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5.3. Voices of the Masters, or Becoming a Puppeteer All puppeteers agree that the very first condition for becoming a puppeteer is to love puppets. Everyone started as a spectator and had a favorite performer. The classic model starts with an eight or nine year old boy who has been “bitten” by the puppet shows he attends regularly. He puts together a toy puppet theater at home and begins putting on shows for friends. He eventually is recognized by the puppeteer (who may or may not be a relative) and is invited backstage. Often he begins by playing the drums during battles, later he hands the puppets to the manipulators, and then begins to manipulate puppets himself. Gradually the apprentice learns all the intricacies of running a theater. He is helped out in this by other puppeteer assistants who are not interested in becoming master puppeteers. These people play an important role of passing along information and serving as mediators. The apprentice stays with the older puppeteer until he steps down at which point the apprentice begins speaking through puppets in public and becomes a master puppeteer. As with all classic models, this one has many variations as we will see below, but the key element in becoming a puppeteer is to bring puppets to life through the manipulation of one’s voice. The voices a puppeteer uses resemble the ones he heard himself as a child spectator. Speaking through puppets is a way of speaking that is learned primarily through mimetically capturing the voices of one’s teacher. Puppeteers establish their authority through prolonged contact with past puppeteers, which enables younger puppeteers to reproduce the voices of older puppeteers in performance. It is common for puppet fans to comment on this. “Quand on l’entend, on a l’impression que tous les vieux montreurs de Pierreuse parlent.” {When you hear him, you have the impression that all the puppeteers of Pierreuse are talking.}113 This early description of Adrien Dufour was echoed in comments by Engels and Pinet who both told me, on separate occasions, that when you heard them, it was as if you were listening to their fathers. Before, it was only through attending someone’s shows that one incorporated the sounds of the voices. After World War II, this began to change as mimetically capacious machinery decontextualized these voices from the theaters. François Pinet recorded weekly radio shows in 1948 and 49 and the Museum of Walloon Life began recording puppet shows by Victor Verrées, Adrien Dufour, François Pinet, Gaston Engels and François Boucha. Someone sent them a recording of Denis Bisscheroux done in 1956. The radio shows are

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Jean Pinet performing

inaccessible, but I got copies of the Museum’s recordings when I returned to Liège in 1987. Deville and Ficarrotta were extremely interested in hearing the recordings in their own performer lineages. Deville’s eyes grew wide, his hair stood up on his neck, and goose bumps appeared on his arms upon hearing the voice of the recently deceased Gaston Engels. Ficarrotta was very anxious to hear Verrées who died before he was born, so I gave him a copy of the tape. Later, his wife informed me how interesting it was to hear Victor Verrées for the first time, but that Joseph played it so often that she got sick of it. Both these examples show the emotional impact of puppeteers’ voices which induce younger puppeteers to mimetically reproduce those voices. One might say that the importance of old age in written materials and in

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puppets also applies to puppeteers. From a slightly different point of view, older puppeteers mirror the dominance that older dukes and kings enjoy within the chivalric puppet plays, with Charlemagne (whose white beard is a distinguishing feature) being the oldest and most powerful among kings. After hearing/reading so often that the puppeteer uses his “own” voice to animate the lower class character Tchantchès, I was surprised to find out that both Danthinne and Lassaux chose to be buried with their Charlemagne puppets, not their Tchantchès. It is true that the class position of Liège puppeteers in Belgian society puts them in a similar role to Tchantchès and they don’t seem to reject being called “Tchantchès” by some members of the public. However, within the world of puppet theaters, they are much more like Charlemagne, ruling over vast numbers of wooden subjects and molding younger apprentices: granting favors to ones they feel are worthy and excluding those they don’t. Most younger puppeteers have a special relationship with an older puppeteer whom they have watched and listened to for many years. Again, like the staged world of medieval characters who recite their lineages to prove they are worthy opponents, puppeteers are apt to mention their performer genealogies when talking to people about puppetry. This lineage does not have to be a genetic one, although it sometimes is. The Pinet family boasts puppeteers all the way back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Engels had a father, grandfather and uncle in the business and Dufour started out working with his uncle who, himself, had a puppeteer uncle. Despite his genetic links to puppeteers, Dufour traced his genealogy through Victor Verrées who learned from his father who had seen Conti perform in Pierreuse. Jules Van Mullem’s father and brothers assisted in Verrées’ theater and later in Dufour’s, but only Jules began speaking for puppets. Coming from a puppeteering family is very advantageous if you desire to become a puppeteer because a lot of money is tied up in a puppet theater and capital is not easily handed over. A fully equipped theater may have 100 to 500 puppets which cost about a hundred dollars apiece in the 1980s, or take 100 to 200 hours to make. To this must be added the theater and backdrops and, nowadays, a sound system. Even within the same nuclear family, something often goes awry in the transfer of goods from one generation to the next. Puppets and materials in working-class families often have to be sold to offset costs after the loss of a breadwinner. If a puppeteer does not have an interested son, he is unlikely to hand it all over to his apprentice, and even if that were his desire, it would be held in check by the desires of his remaining family mem-

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bers. In Liège, only the Pinet family has managed to keep puppeteering in the family from father to son for five generations and even so, materials have had to be sold. Jean Pinet performs wearing a T-shirt on which is printed “The Pinet Dynasty.” According to his family folklore, puppetry started in the Pinet family as early as 1835 in the neighborhood of St. Pholien, when Mathieu Pinet (Jean’s great great grandfather) was eleven years old and performed on the street. Mathieu’s son Pierre-Paul Pinet opened a puppet theater in 1870 in nearby Bressoux when he was only 18. He gained a reputation as a Walloon author and dramatist and was also recognized at the puppet exposition put on by Vieux Liège in 1902. He was the only Pinet to have made a living solely from these creative activities. His male relatives usually did puppetry after a day’s work in the mines, tanning, or house-painting. His brother, Laurent, later opened a puppet theater in St. Pholien. Laurent’s son, Bartholomé, took it over in 1905, but by 1928 the competition was so strong from the cinema that he was forced to sell it to the Museum of Walloon Life. Bartholomé eventually went to work in his old theater under this new ownership and was succeeded by his son, François, in 1938. Jean, who is still performing, took over when his father, François, died a few years before I arrived in 1982. Jean Pinet inherited 350 beautiful puppets (including a tchantchès thought to be over 150 years old) and close to 300 scripts. He has managed to obtain government subsidies in order to maintain his collection. He also makes his own puppets and has begun writing his own scripts, for he believes that in order to be a real puppeteer, you must be able to do everything. No one should be called a puppeteer unless he knows how to paint and sculpt and has created his own Tchantchès and Nanèsse. This is the Pinet tradition. Jean Pinet places a lot of value on the traditional style of rod puppet and the traditional repertoire. As the only child in the Pinet family, he feels obliged to continue the family tradition. This desire is so strong that he told me that he makes a point of not even attending other traditional puppet shows for fear of being influenced by them. He wants to keep his family tradition “pure.” In keeping with this, Pinet’s assistants are usually family members — mostly in-laws since he is an only child — or close friends. In 1982, his son was just reaching the age where he could be of help backstage. Not all puppeteers come from puppeteering families, but in order to make a solid claim on the tradition, you must have an attachment to an older puppeteer, built up through years of apprenticeship. Older puppeteers carry a mystique

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since they lived in a time when puppetry had a different relationship to society than what it has today. They saw it when serial episodes were enjoyed by a largely working-class, neighborhood audience and before it went into the museums. Apprentices love to hear stories about the puppet theater in the old days. Christian Deville and Joseph Ficarrotta were taken in by Gaston Engels and Adrien Dufour respectively at the classic age of eight or nine. Deville became fascinated with Engels’s fair performances at an even younger age and received his first play puppet theater for Christmas when he was eight years old in the early 1950s. The next year he started playing the drum and helping Engels at the fair. When he grew older, he worked in a steel mill during the day and a café at night in order to buy a set of puppets from Engels. He insisted that Engels make him a Tchantchès exactly like his own. In 1973, Deville gave his first show and by 1982 he had 170 puppets and performed in various fairs and schools around Wallonia, aided by his wife and son. This was only something he did in his spare time when he was not working on the road crew for the city of Liège. Just as Deville attached himself to Engel’s theater, Ficarrotta attached himself to Dufour’s. Nadine Maquet, a staff member of the Museum of Walloon Life, remembers seeing him during show times sitting on the steps outside the theater where he could hear the voices. One day she asked why he didn’t go inside and he said he didn’t have the money. She took him backstage to Dufour and asked if there wasn’t something he could do for him and his apprenticeship began. Ficarrotta is the son of Sicilian immigrants who held fond memories of the large rod puppets of the opera dei pupi they attended in their youth. Sicilian puppets are articulated more fully than Liège puppets, which made for some disagreements in the Ficarrotta family. When Joseph began to make his own puppets, his father, whose life as a miner had left him with black lung disease, kept encouraging him to add a string to the right arm like they had in his native region in Sicily, but the son steadfastly refused to depart from Liège tradition, as embodied by Adrien Dufour. You cannot anonymously attend a puppet theater, read books about traditional puppetry, and practice the traditional repertoire on your own and claim to be a “traditional puppeteer”. One puppeteer who did this, felt compelled to invent an apprenticeship in order to circumvent the unwritten rule that traditional puppeteers emerge from known performer lineages. He peppered his talk with references to Gaston Engels and hung his picture in the theater. Engels said he talked to him a few times and sold him some puppets, but did

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not see him as a successor. By this time, Engels was retired and out of circulation and the younger puppeteer concentrated on developing a network outside of the traditional puppetry circles of Liège where the “rules of the game” were not known. Henri Libert did not call himself a traditional puppeteer, recognizing that he was too independent in his trajectory, but over the years he won a lot of respect among Liège puppeteers. He is from a village just outside of Liège where he was born in 1922, the son of a printing press worker. He became fascinated with puppetry at a very young age and insisted on going to the puppet theater at the Museum of Walloon Life when his family came to town, but he did not have the opportunity to apprentice himself to an older puppeteer as a child. This did not stop his creative explorations in puppetry. By the time he was twelve, he had a little puppet theater at home where he put on shows for his friends, using the scripts of Thomas Talbot. Libert first started performing for adults when he was sent to a labor camp in Germany from 1942 to 1945. He entertained his fellow inmates with puppet shows in which Mussolini and Hitler suffered the wrath of Tchantchès. When he came back to Belgium in his mid twenties, he started creating the materials for a complete show. He carved and painted each puppet character which he then gave to his wife who dressed them. In 1957, with two or three friends and 50–60 puppets, he began playing at various carnivals and celebrations around Liège (this, in addition to his regular job as housepainter). Parodies which appealed to an adult audience were his preferred fare. Some ministers of the Free Republic of Outremeuse (RLOM) attended his shows and began asking him to perform at the Tchantchès Museum every Christmas Eve and Assumption Day. A few years later, after Bisscheroux had died and his puppets became the property of the RLOM, Libert suggested that they be put into performance instead of hanging immobile in a window. The RLOM offered him the task and in 1965 he began performing regularly at the Tchantchès museum with Bisscheroux’s puppets. Other puppeteers in town actually tried to attach themselves to an older puppeteer, to no avail. These people have painful memories of being rejected by Liège puppeteers when they were young. Jean-Pierre Babilone made his way to Czechoslovakia where he studied puppetry and was eventually employed doing puppet shows by the multinational company, Sunkist. Another, José Maquet, taught himself, like Libert. Maquet claimed a number of circus performers in his family and some puppeteers in the distant past, but

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no one who could mentor him in traditional puppetry. He began performing as a child with only four puppets and a piece of linoleum for a backdrop which he would paint with water colors and then wash and repaint during intermission. Since he was not accepted by established Liège puppeteers, he rejected, in turn, the name “les marionnettes liégeoises” and called his puppets after a particular neighborhood in Liège, instead. To help his newly widowed mother with the bills, he set up a puppet theater in their garage at age fourteen. Then in 1948 he constructed a string puppet theater which was light enough to tow behind his motorcycle. He traveled around Wallonia for the next nine years doing shows at various celebrations and in the Maisons du Peuple. In 1958, he bought a small truck and could finally travel with the heavier rod puppet show. Maquet completed the construction of the theater behind the house where he presently lives in 1978, but he still performs using one of his portable theaters on alternate weekends. The stories of Libert and Maquet deviate from the classic model in that they highlight experimentation and multiple levels of performance on the way to becoming a master puppeteer. In the classic model, the apprentice is transformed into a master puppeteer in a moment of crisis. The story I recounted at the end of the last chapter of when Danthinne fell ill and asked Dufour to take on the voices just before the performance is not only common among puppeteers who have been apprentices in Liège, but is a variation on stories told by traditional puppeteers all over the world. There are many traditions in which only the master puppeteer does the voices and assistants work for years in silence, awaiting that day when laryngitis strikes. When this happens, the assistant takes over, showing talent that no one knew he had. It is a very emotional moment when the teacher hears his own voice through that of his student. Jean Pinet recounted the day it happened to his father and how his grandfather cried and then embraced Jean’s father at the end of the show. Typically the practicing in private and the snatches of voices performed outside of the frame of the public puppet show do not enter the story because that would take away from the miraculous nature of the transformation. In this, too, life mirrors art. Miracles and transformations abound in the puppet repertoire. Puppets are, in fact, perfect instruments of transformation as we saw in both the plays outlined in the Introduction. Orson is changed from a beast to a man and Tchantchès from a commoner to a knight. The major element in these transformations is linguistic. So, it follows that an apprentice is transformed into a master puppeteer through the taking on of the master’s voices.

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To take a less miraculous tone, a linguistic anthropologist like myself sees the underlying model as one which credits years of listening with laying down the structures and rhythms needed for active performance. Master puppeteers are not much interested in dissecting their performance into teachable segments. Instead, the apprentice silently absorbs the master’s performance style. This latent ability can eventually be called forth in the hour of need. But how “latent” is this ability? All the puppeteers tell of playing with toy puppet theaters at home, but this story is never combined with the transformation story. In the classic model, the active processes of teaching and practicing are denied and their work is subsumed under co-presence and unconscious absorption. Over time, an apprentice “captures” the voices of the master. A master puppeteer is never faulted for being a poor teacher, or credited with being a good one. They simply perform and if their performances are appreciated, they will be imitated by talented young people. One might say that while the metapragmatic loading internal to the genre is abnormally high, the metapragmatic loading concerning the cultural transmission of the genre is abnormally low. By the time I arrived in 1982, the classic model of years of apprenticeship resulting in a sudden and miraculous transformation into a master puppeteer had already begun to be overthrown by one which shifted the emphasis onto teaching. Older puppeteers recognized that young people didn’t want to spend years of their life as apprentices. They wanted quick results. Cultural administrators became interested in who would become the next generation of puppeteers. Just before I arrived there was a flurry of activity as three different venues appeared for outsiders who were interested in learning to be puppeteers. Not so surprisingly, the first official effort was made by the self-taught and entrepreneurial José Maquet. In about 1980, he convinced the cultural arm of the Province of Liège to support his teaching the construction of traditional Liège puppets. He even wrote a small book on the subject (Maquet 1982). Some of these students were interested in starting their own puppet theaters and Maquet brought them into his own theater, lent them puppets and materials and gave them cassettes of his past shows to study and perform. He said that eventually they would develop a more personal style, but that copying successful shows was a good way to start. Maquet made a special effort to be helpful, not wanting to replicate the treatment he had had from Liège puppeteers. Also unusual for the milieu was Maquet’s strong support of a single mother who wanted to set up a theater in her barn. In most theaters, women who showed an interest in puppetry were not taken seriously.

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Dufour soon began giving puppetry classes as well at the Museum of Walloon Life. Six people enrolled, though three dropped out (including one woman) after a few months, leaving Ficarrotta, Deville, the young son of the Museum curator, and the un-enrolled anthropologist. I did not present myself as someone wanting to become a puppeteer, but somehow it was easier for Dufour to group me with his other students. Ficarrotta was a 19 year old punk rocker at the time. After Dufour had gone home, he sometimes asked me to translate the lyrics of Sex Pistol songs for him. His love of punk music did not detract from his love for traditional puppetry. Deville (who preferred Simon and Garfunkel) felt perfectly comfortable by this time, performing in the style of Engels at the fairs, but wanted to expand his repertoire to include performing longer chivalric legends in the traditional manner. Eventually he hoped to develop his own personal style that would not be a direct imitation of either teacher, but while he was in Dufour’s class, personal flourishes were not appreciated. Deville, having spent so much time in the theater of another master puppeteer, understood this.114 Dufour often suspected that Deville was only there to get his scripts and was much freer giving them to Ficarrotta than he was to Deville. Dufour appreciated the vocal abilities of Deville, but doubted his ability to write scripts. The museum curator’s 16 year old son, Didier, on the other hand, had no trouble reading books and transforming them into scripts. Unlike all the others, he came from a bourgeois family where literacy skills were prioritized. However, he did not continue as a student after the year was over. Dufour also prioritized literacy skills, putting script production at the center of his lessons. He encouraged everyone to write scripts at home and turn them in to him, but only Didier did so. He gave students one of his scripts to study at home and then had them perform it, using exactly the same voices, intonations, etc., as he used. During these practice performances, he sat as an audience of one and shouted out corrections, frequently admonishing his working-class assistants for using Walloon-sounding French when speaking for the noble puppets. Another exercise was to transcribe Dufour’s words as he orally composed puppet plays from the Bibliothèque bleue. I was included in this exercise, but excluded from the ones that involved taking on voices. Dufour claimed that no woman ever spoke through puppets in Liège.115 Furthermore, he felt that women were too weak to be good puppeteers and often talked about the physical labor involved in performing a battle scene. In 1981, the committee members of the Free Republic of Outremeuse became concerned about securing an eventual successor to Henri Libert when he

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retired. His two assistants were officers in the RLOM of about his same age and had no desire to speak through puppets. Libert’s son, Michel, had taken over his father’s portable theater (made out of the metal frame of a plastic armoire) in the 1980s, but had no interest in reproducing the kinds of plays his father performed at the museum. He was an elementary school teacher and wanted to promote less violent children’s stories. He had reduced the importance of Tchantchès, using him mostly as a presenter, which would never do in the Tchantchès Museum. He also didn’t want to be tied to the museum every Sunday. Michel’s father and mother were very encouraging of and helpful in their son’s activities, and never tried to force him to perform in a particular way. The RLOM put out the word that they were looking for people interested in becoming puppeteers and two young men came forth. One of these, Georges Vetters, was an unemployed tour guide who loved folk dance, folk music, and other traditions of Wallonia. The other, Robert Collard, worked as a bank clerk and spent his spare time creating miniature models of historic battles. Both of these men had frequented the puppet theater prior to becoming apprentices. Libert soon had them doing the voices for one or two characters during a show to get them used to performing. He then asked them to write their own shows and submit them to him for corrections. He stressed that they should develop their own styles and not copy his. Collard wanted to emphasize Charlemagne’s wars with the Saxons while Vetters opted for gentler fairy tales. Within a few months of beginning, the two were performing their own shows in front of substantial audiences at the Tchantchès Museum. Interestingly, neither one felt that he could use the Tchantchès puppet, since this character was too closely associated with Libert. They told me that they would not use his Tchantchès (though they may eventually pick another popular character to play his role) until Libert had passed away or vowed not to perform again.116 The quasi-medieval system of a master craftsman taking on an interested apprentice who receives very little money while learning the craft over many years survived in the puppet theater long after it ceased being part of the mainstream economic system. The shift began during the interwar period when the Museum of Walloon Life began making puppeteers pass an examination before they were recognized as official puppeteers for the museum and when Thomas Talbot got the idea of publishing puppet show scripts. The first action mirrored the educational system of a modern state by transferring the final credentialing to an outside official body, rather than the master puppeteer. The second action made scripts available to young puppet fans and made it easier

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to bypass the apprenticeship system. The introduction in the 1980s of puppetry classes and calls for puppeteer replacements is a clear break with the previous style of cultural transmission. If we examine the three newer venues for learning how to become a puppeteer in Liège in the early 1980s, we see that the two self-taught master puppeteers were far more interested in encouraging creativity among their students. They were also anxious for their students to perform in public as quickly as possible. Dufour, on the other hand, could not completely break with the older apprenticeship model and the two “students” who stuck with his “classes” had already invested themselves as apprentices, accepting the long process of gaining access to “the tradition.” Other students were repelled by the narrowness of Dufour’s model of traditional Liège puppetry and the lack of interest he had in creativity. Ficarrotta and Deville are both master puppeteers in their own right today. One would expect to hear the voices of both Engels and Dufour in Deville’s performance due to his double apprenticeship and this is certainly true. A little more surprising is to hear some of Engels voices echoing through Ficarrotta’s in performance. He admitted it, saying that he, too, attended some of Engels’ shows as a child. Far more likely is that he picked up these voices from performing with Deville and perhaps even from listening to the recording of Engels that I released into the hands of the young puppeteers in 1987. At the time of my most recent trip to Liège in 1996, Ficarrotta had taken Dufour’s place at the Museum of Walloon Life and Vetters had taken Libert’s. Collard had dropped out. Maquet’s student, Georges Vigneron, was still performing in the suburbs. During my first stay in Liège, Deville had begun learning how to make puppets from Claudy Deletrez. Deletrez, who dropped out of school at age 12 to work in a factory, frequented Pierre Wislet’s theater as a child. After Wislet’s death, Claudy and his father ran a theater in the same style for seven years, but when his father died, his mother sold all the puppets. Over the years, Claudy had become one of the most well-respected puppet-makers and restorers in Liège. He told me in 1982 that he had forty puppets and by working on new ones three to four hours every day after work, he should have enough to open a theater in fifteen years. This timeline was shortened when he and Deville decided to open a theater together in Deletrez’ native suburb of Seraing in 1994. Almost all the performing puppeteers today have sons, but it is too early to tell whether they will continue speaking through puppets. The puppeteers are aware that they should not pressure them into it, though helping out with

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Children and puppets on José Maquet’s stage

Tchantchès fighting at the Museum of Walloon Life as children shout “Allez, Tchantchès!”

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Children come backstage to see the puppets while Christian Deville arranges an army

shows and puppets are considered household chores in a puppeteer’s house. Ficarrotta’s son, Anthony, at seven years old was still too young to be helping out with the chores, but he was already “bitten” by the puppet theater and performed little shows for his friends, while his father corrected any language he thought was too vulgar. His first grade teacher had all the children draw a picture of their classroom and in Anthony’s picture the children were shrunk, while the two tiny marionettes partially hidden in the back cupboard were enlarged to gargantuan proportions and loomed over the classroom.

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Jules Van Mullem’s itinerant theater at a school gym

Christian Deville’s itinerant theater at the Huy fair

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5.4. Performance Settings The genre of speaking through puppets is indeed steeped in the past, but its performance is a contemporary speech event which occurs in a particular context. It includes more than what goes on backstage, because puppeteers communicate with their audience through the puppets. In this section I describe some of the similarities and differences between the various puppet theaters in Liège which shape the performance of speaking through puppets. In all the theaters, spectators sit on flat wooden benches and only the very youngest children sit with the adults they came with. It is customary for children to sit in the front rows and the adults in the back. The Tchantchès Museum had a person who pointed out where people should sit, but the spectators in the other theaters seemed trained to do it on their own.117 This arrangement means that the children are in the performance frame of the adults and their interaction with the puppets becomes part of the performance for the adults. Many of the parents and grandparents who take children to the theater have strong memories of attending when they were young. While some bring children only for the excuse to see the puppet shows themselves, others claim to not enjoy the shows, but come for the sake of their children who do. All of the Liège puppeteers foster dialogue with the people in the audience. Some puppeteers restrict this dialogue to the beginning and the end of the show and to screaming during the battles. Other puppeteers interject questions to the audience throughout the show. The most common interlocutor of the audience is Tchantchès, but occasionally other characters will engage them in conversation. During the first show of the season at the Tchantchès Museum, Charlemagne made all the children rise and greet him in unison. At the puppet theater, children learn the importance of their voices. The puppeteers can’t see them, so the facial gestures and childish poses that often elicit interaction from adults do not work in the puppet theater. They must speak in order to interact. Children are given a sense of importance and empowerment in the puppet theater. The characters speak to them and listen to them. Their screams of encouragement are interpreted as helping out in battle and they are thanked for helping the good guys win. It is always very clear who is good and who is evil and the children are always brought in on the side of the good guys, led by their favorite character, Tchantchès.118 In most theaters, not only are the good guys empathetic with the children, but the evil characters are rude to them and may even threaten them.

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The aspects described above refer to both permanent and itinerant theaters, but there are differences between these two major types. A permanent theater allows one to develop a regular weekly audience by showing consecutive episodes of a longer epic. An itinerant puppeteer can perform the same shows over and over because his audience changes. The time he saves on preparing new and more complex shows, is spent setting up and taking down the theater. Traditionally, the itinerant puppeteer had to independently contact organizers of festivals and events to set up performance engagements. This meant knowing the festival calendar of the surrounding region, getting permission to set up one’s theater, and posting a family member to collect entrance fees. Nowadays, it is more common for puppeteers to be paid by the organizers to give free shows to the public. The organizers may well have found out about the puppeteer through a booklet published by the Ministry of Culture. By choosing one of these “approved” performances, the organizers only have to pay a small percentage of the performance fees and various government agencies pick up the rest. Van Mullem was hired on a permanent basis by the cultural affairs office of the city of Liège where he performed several puppet shows a week in Liège schools. Most puppeteers who have permanent theaters, also have portable theaters listed in the Ministry’s booklet, so that they can travel to perform at special events and supplement their income. In the 1980s five Liège puppeteers with itinerant theaters were listed by the Ministry of French Culture as eligible for subsidies, but I believe that all of them benefited from some sort of government support. Pinet explained to me that he submitted three scripts accompanied by advertisements to be inspected by the Ministry of French Culture. Once approved, his advertisements became available to cultural and youth organizations, schools, etc., that wanted entertainment for a special occasion. The Ministry gave Pinet a yearly fee for upkeep of the theater in addition to a sum for each performance organized through them. Half of the performance fee was paid by the State, a quarter by the province, and a quarter by the organization which engaged him. Organizers of an event who were not eligible for subsidies, simply called Pinet and together they decided what show he should perform and how much it cost. In 1982, there were five permanent puppet theaters in Liège, three within a fifteen minute walk of Place St. Lambert in the center of town, and two others in the suburbs; one run by José Maquet and the other by his student, Georges Vigneron. Vigneron set up a puppet theater in his garage in one of the newer suburbs of Liège with only five puppets of his own. Maquet loaned him several

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Entry to a puppet theater in Outremeuse (Note the “Djåsans Walon” {Let’s speak Walloon} sign to the right of the door)

more (in addition to the theater and the bar) with the understanding that if he decided to continue after a year, he would buy the material. The structure of the performance was identical to Maquet’s since he was at the stage of memorizing from cassettes the shows that Maquet presented the year before. Maquet performed his shows twice a month from September to Easter in two improvised parts of 25 to 30 minutes each. He employed many lighting and sound techniques in his performances, like talking into a large copper plate to create an echoed voice and setting up his microphones and speakers in unique ways. He also frequently used recordings of popular songs on the radio and the children sang along. As mentioned above, José Maquet does not see himself as a traditional puppeteer and the content of his plays certainly reflect-

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ed that. Penguins danced around three dimensional icicles, space monsters paraded next to Milky Way soldiers with milk bottle heads, and even the Ayatollah Khomeini had his own wooden image. Maquet’s audience, on the other hand, continued the nineteenth century puppet theater tradition of serving a single working-class neighborhood. All the other permanent theaters drew from a wider variety both spatially and socially. At Maquet’s theater, parents drank pèkèt and other alcoholic and non alcoholic libations at the bar, while the children enjoyed the show. Sometimes the adults got too loud and the puppeteer had to have Tchantchès tell them to quiet down. Bars are attached to four of the five permanent theaters. Only the Museum of Walloon Life decided not to reconstruct this part of the traditional puppet theaters. Many older people in Liège remembered the candied apples, cooked pears, pigs’ feet and a type of prepared organ meat called kip kap that they used to enjoy at the old puppet theaters. Nowadays it is all packaged food: candy, waffles, chips and sodas for the kids; coffee, beer and pèkèt for the adults. Generally the bar opens as soon as the public arrives and closes when the show begins. It resumes selling at intermission and after the show is over. I feel compelled to say something about the consumption of alcohol at such an event, since it is so very maligned in my own culture. In Oregon, I once was told by the server to leave a going-away party for a colleague which was held in a bar after work because I arrived with my 6 month old baby. Europeans who grow up around alcohol have good laughs over stories like this that portray America’s legacy of prohibition. In general, alcohol is integrated into a wider variety of settings in Belgium than it is in the United States, though it is less common to hold an event where drinking alcohol is the main focus. Researchers agree that alcohol affects ones’ perception which is why it is so dangerous when driving. This quality of altering perception might actually enhance puppet performances for adults, who have ceased viewing the world with the naïve eyes of children. In their altered state, moments of misrecognition (which children experience frequently) increase and add to their enjoyment. The refreshment bar is a central feature of the one room Tchantchès Museum which houses the theater where Henri Libert performs. It lies on the right bank of the Meuse River on a street filled with small businesses. A simple sign outside announces the theater/museum, but the theater is well known and a fairly regular group showed up every Sunday. After they paid their 40F admission, parents could belly up to the bar as they watched their children on the benches screaming for Tchantchès. Libert performed from mid September

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to Easter except when other puppet troupes were invited. This happened quite frequently since the Tchantchès Museum was a seat of UNIMA of Belgium and the organizers wanted to raise the profile of puppetry and provide a performance venue for puppeteers. Even when other troupes performed, they were usually introduced by Libert through Tchantchès who came back on stage after the show was over to orchestrate the drawing for prizes. These were donated weekly by different business people in Outremeuse. While Libert did not consider himself a traditional puppeteer, he did consider his performances at the Tchantchès Museum traditional since he performed with traditional puppets, inserted various interventions of Tchantchès, followed the traditional repertoire and used Walloon. However, Libert was adamant that the audience of 1982 was no longer the audience of 1912 who could sit still for a play in which the backdrop never changed. “Today’s children are accustomed to the rapid movement of television,” he said, “so puppeteers have to adapt to that style.” The chivalric material was predominant in Libert’s repertoire, though he occasionally slipped in stories taken from other classical literary works, for example, Faust, la Bohème, and The Three Musketeers. He enjoyed doing parodies for adults, often in Walloon, as he used to do with his itinerant theater. He fit in about one a year at the Tchantchès Museum and the room was always packed. One year he did a parody, Romeo and Zoulietta about a boy from Outremeuse and an Italian immigrant’s daughter.119 In 1982, he performed Li voyèdge è l’Orient, a comedy in Walloon about Tchantchès winning a trip to the Middle East. Before leaving Liège, Tchantchès strapped his cooking pot (casserole) on his back, so that he could save money and prepare the kind of food he liked while in a foreign country. This simple act sealed his fate because when he stepped off the plane, he was immediately mistaken for the awaited leader of the revolution, Fidel Casserole. Jacques Ancion’s goal since he opened his theater in 1973 has been to develop a regular adult audience. He has the most formal education of all the puppeteers and in addition to performing traditional plays from the Liège repertoire, he also included other material. From early Christian literature, he added The Temptation of St. Anthony and The Prodigal Son to the typical Passion and Nativity plays. From the 19th century he included the Walloon play Tåti l’Pèriquî by Édouard Remouchamps and the avant garde Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry. In his monthly brochure, he included excerpts of reviews and arcane literary histories, as well as announcements of puppetry events around

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Europe. He performed every Wednesday and Saturday at 8:30 p.m. for an entrance fee of 125BF. The elevated price is related to the fact that Ancion was the only puppeteer for whom puppeteering was the major source of income. He also performed Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. for a lower price of 75BF. For these matinees in 1981/82, he performed La Chanson de Roland, Li Naissance, La Passion and an assortment of popular folktales. He named his theater “Al Botroule,” or “at the umbilical cord” in Walloon, indicating a desire to return to the source. He installed the theater which holds about 40 people on one of the four floors of his 18th century, typically skinny Belgian house made of brick and limestone. The bar downstairs was open before and after puppet shows and during intermission and at these times, spectators could also buy select regionalist publications. Ancion, who was aided by his wife Françoise and a few friends, rejected amplification devices and pre-recorded music in his theater. He billed his theater as the only professional traditional theater left in Liège, since it was his main source of income. Jean Pinet, who often spoke of the importance of maintaining his family tradition, admitted to departing from the tradition by adding intricate light and sound techniques to his show. His conflict over this is reflected in the following quote: C’est un peu une petite dérogation à la tradition je crois, mais enfin, elle est valable parce que quand on voit, quand même, nos spectacles, les gens apprécient et nous disent, ‘Bon bah, c’est magnifique vos éclairages. C’est magnifique votre sonorisation. C’est parfait!’ {It’s a little bit of a small deviation from the tradition I think, but well, it’s valid because when you see, after all, our shows, people appreciate them and tell us, ‘Well, your lighting is magnificent. Your sound is magnificent. It’s perfect!’}

In this quote we see that the departure from tradition is first qualified by two diminutive adjectives and then judgement is deferred to the present day audience, not some folkloric model of the past.120 Dufour also admitted to departing from the tradition somewhat in creating what he calls “petites pièces” for younger children which have Tchantchès as a major character, but quickly added that you can feel the tradition even in his contemporary plays. Dufour’s and Pinet’s concern with tradition is understandable considering that they performed in a museum based on Walloon folk traditions. You must walk through the courtyard of a thirteenth century monastery to get from the Museum exhibits to the puppet theater. One of the museum guards sets up a table at the door before the show to collect the entrance fee of 30 BF.

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There’s a cloakroom down the hall where people can hang their coats on hooks, but refreshments are not sold. Pinet and Dufour shared the theater at the Museum of Walloon Life, though they each used their own puppets, backdrops, and drum. They alternated performing on Wednesday afternoons (when the children were out of school) and Sunday mornings from mid December to Easter. The season began with the Nativity Play, went through one series of “petites pièces,” two chivalric series, and ended with the Passion Play. The theater holds about a hundred people, but it is rare for it to be filled to capacity except for the Nativity Play during the last week of December. There have been other initiatives in the puppet community which use quite different performance settings. Marcel Slangen began working with puppets in 1972 as a high school ethics teacher. He found that the students (ages 12 through 16) had less trouble expressing themselves when speaking through puppets. This worked so well, in fact, that he had a puppet stage installed in the classroom. In 1977, with 40 puppets, Slangen put on his first show for adults at a local theater usually reserved for live drama. Slangen wanted to call into question some of the traditional historical themes. Roland, the famous knight, was given very Germanic features and was shown to be quite dull-witted, while Ganelon, the well-known villain, had a sad face belying his role as scapegoat for the manipulative Charlemagne. Napoleon also entered into Slangen’s repertoire. He was revealed as transforming the French Revolution into an enterprise for the recuperation of bourgeois rights. These plays were presented in French, though Slangen also presented some stories by the regional author Marcel Remy in a mixture of French and Walloon. In the 1990s, Slangen performed a series of puppet shows on T.V. and has become an important figure in the Walloon in the School movement.

5.5. Past and Present The past is present in contemporary Liège puppetry. The material objects necessary to this oral genre remind the participants (both performers and audience members) of the history of the puppet theater in Liège. Voices from the past perpetuated by the classic model of apprenticeship keep up particular styles within the genre of speaking through puppets, but, as we’ve seen, not everyone follows the classic model. Of the two sons of puppeteers who are performing today with their father’s puppets, the one with the self-taught father felt strong-

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ly about developing his own style while the one from a long line of puppeteers felt strongly about maintaining the family tradition. The two puppeteers who apprenticed themselves to non-family members now show elements from both right and left bank traditions in their performances. Other people are experimenting with new venues. I even talked to one woman who wanted to begin performing heroic tales from the Middle East through puppets in her Turkish restaurant. Another puppeteer was thinking about introducing hand puppets into his Nativity Play. The dreams of potential puppet shows are as important to Liège puppetry as the maintenance of one tradition or another. There will always be audience members who want to step into the past when they enter the puppet theater and others who grow restless with old things and have no patience for repetition. Puppeteers also are pulled more toward tradition or innovation, but successful puppeteers incorporate both. In Europe, contemporary puppeteers maintain the traditions of Sicilian rod puppets, French Guignol, and English Punch and Judy, to name only the most well-known. All of these traditions have changed through time — taking up contemporary material, introducing new stage techniques, losing regular adult audiences and picking up audiences of children (and tourists) — but the performers still feel an attachment to the past. Alongside of this, we find people who are inspired to do something different with puppets. Puppets have figured prominently in the European avantgarde. The movements of surrealism, dadaism and the Bauhaus all had members who worked in puppetry. Playwrights who felt weighted down by human actors (like Maurice Maeterlinck, Michel de Ghelderode, Alfred Jarry, and Edward Gordon Craig) and artists who wanted to see their creations in motion (like Joan Miró and Sophie Taeuber) turned to puppetry to realize their dreams.121 In the United States in the 1990s, Amy Trompetter got outstanding reviews for her avant-garde puppet performances. In Liège, voices from the past influence the backstage voices as they critique particular styles of puppets and performances, discuss how to mount and maintain a puppet theater, and tell stories of past puppeteers and puppet performances. These voices contextualize the various styles of the genre called speaking through puppets. Voices from the past also influence what puppets say on stage and how they say it: topics which will be treated in more detail in following chapters.

CHAPTER 6

Entextualization / Intertextuality

The past is present in how people talk about the puppet theater, how puppeteers teach their skills, and how they arrange their own theaters. All of these contextual aspects have shaped the genre of speaking through puppets and continue to engender different versions of the same story. As a fully performed genre, speaking through puppets is more susceptible to decontextualization than other genres of discourse (Bauman and Briggs 1990: 73). In fact, it is its very quality of being entextualized, decontextualized and recontextualized that has made it an oral tradition and keeps the past as a constant reference in the present. In each instance of the entexualization/recontextualization process we can explore what the text brings with it from its earlier context and what emergent form, function and meaning it is given as it is recentered in a new context (Bauman and Briggs 1990:75). Entextualization implies decontextualization or the removal from one social context and recontextualization in another social context.122 Puppet shows over time continue to have a relationship with one another, as they do with the broader social, cultural and historical context. We can call this network of relationships intertextuality. Looked at over a generation’s time, daily puppet performances in working-class neighborhoods were transformed into weekly performances in museums to non-local, non-class specific audiences, through the continual process of recontextualization. In a more restricted time frame entextualization/ recontextualization occurred and recurs each time stories were/are transformed into the performed dialogues of the puppet show. By focusing on the process of (re)creating performance texts, we obtain a clearer picture of the similarity and variation inherent in performance traditions. The question is addressed from several different angles in this chapter, taking into consideration transformations from book to script, from script to performance, and from performance to performance. In addition to the intertextual relations between puppet shows, we must also look at their relationships to other kinds

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of texts in society. The multiply refracted Nativity play offers fertile ground on which to explore these questions.

6.1. Writing Scripts In order to examine the process of entextualization, we need to look at the sources of performance. Texts used in traditional puppetry have gained the status of “originals” over the years, but they are far from original. Many of the stories performed in the puppet theater circulated for years in the oral realm. They were written down numerous times while being orally performed. Ryding’s work on medieval narrative (1971) tells us that songs were lengthened throughout the Middle Ages. For instance, the 13th century manuscript of Ogier le Danois has 10,000 verses, while its 14th century “transcription” has 25,000 verses. Likewise, Huon de Bordeaux became 20,000 verses longer between its oldest manuscript and the Turin manuscript. As far as Liège puppeteers are concerned, the “originals” of these two tales are from Alfred Delvau’s Collections des romans de chevalerie (1869). Here the repetition of the older songs has been excised and they have been prosified. Puppeteers have continued the trend toward shorter stories. At first they read/memorized directly from the book. Later they compacted a certain number of complete episodes out of the book. It is important to realize that at the time Delvau’s books came out, Outremeuse and St. Marguerite (where most of the puppet theaters were found) were the least literate neighborhoods in Liège. Puppeteers were probably slightly more literate than their cohort of which only 62.4% of the men could sign their names in 1861 (Fournaux 1975:175). Of course, signing one’s name is not a very good indicator of literacy. As Street and others have shown, literacy practices are complex and ethnographically specific (Street 1993). Literacy cannot be reduced to a single trait and measured in a uniform fashion. Puppeteers are a case in point. The ability to read seems to have been a source of pride. Nevertheless, there are many stories of puppeteers who could not read and managed to continue performing in a tradition based on written stories. These puppeteers had someone (usually their wife, or daughter) read the stories aloud to them. They would then memorize the story, keeping their illiteracy secret. But, calling these men “illiterate” diverts one’s attention away from the major role that literature played in their lives. Not only had they memorized numerous

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written stories, but they, no doubt, participated in the same kind of oral literary criticism that constitutes part of backstage talk today. The method of marking a book for performance appears to have been quite stable: dialogue was marked off and the characters’ names and stage directions were written in the margins. Standard orthography had little importance to the unknown puppeteer who wrote “trompar” right next ot the standard spelling of “Trompart.” Some examples can be seen in the following excerpts from nineteenth century versions of Orson and Valentine (n.a: n.d.) and of Gérard de Nevers (Delvau 1869). I have looked at books marked by five different puppeteers from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries and saw few differences between them, so it does not appear that different styles of performance can be derived from the markings in books. However, even when performing from the same marked text, puppeteers certainly distinguished themselves through the way they manipulated their voices and puppets in performance. When puppeteers began writing scripts, more possibilities opened up for variation. In addition to the iconic signs of the puppets and the indexical qualities of voice, the semantico-referential language also became a site of variation as puppeteers (now limited by time) selected different scenes to portray and wrote out the dialogue. In comparing three of Dufour’s scripts to their sources in Delvau’s Collections des romans de chevalerie (1869),123 I found that certain adaptations were made consistently (Gross 1983). For instance, the story was streamlined with subplot material deleted or relegated to another episode. Sexual scenes or anything deemed inappropriate for children was left out. Simultaneous action was portrayed as sequential action or deleted. While Dufour showed a general tendency to shorten the story, he also greatly expanded a few scenes which only occupied a sentence or two in the book. When I began this project of comparison, I expected that the major shift would be from authorial monologue to dialogue. When I looked at Delvau, however, I found that the number of paragraphs divided fairly evenly between description and direct speech. In fact, it was probably the proliferation of direct speech in this literary form that led the readers to begin taking on different voices as they were speaking the words of various characters. In comparing Dufour’s scripts with Delvau’s stories, I found that he took over twice as many excerpts from the direct speech sections as from the descriptive sections. Furthermore, he ordinarily borrowed direct speech in its complete form,

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Text marked for performance by puppeteers

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making only minor changes and inserting the addressee’s name (if not already present) to clarify the switch of speaking characters. Delvau’s and the other 19th century versions of medieval literature are written in slightly archaic Modern French as we can see in the two excerpts above. Words like “courroucé” and “céans” were common words in Old French, but are seldom used today. Puppeteers try to maintain the style of this language while substituting more current French for the most obscure words (so, comme je dusse is changed to comme je devrais faire). They call the language of the books “Old French” even though it exhibits none of the grammatical and phonological patterns that distinguish Old French from Modern French.124 In calling the code “Old French,” we see a desire to collapse the temporal distance between the book and the heroic events recounted in the book; to capture the words that were actually spoken by the medieval nobles. But during performance, the puppeteers privilege the role of translator, transmitting old stories to a younger and younger audience. Perhaps it was the growing strangeness of medieval court life in combination with the desire for an exact representation of that life that necessitated the introduction of an intermediary character who could help translate and was not bound by the written word. In the old method of marking the published text, some puppeteers simply wrote “Tchantchès” in the margin when he was supposed to appear, but his lines were not written. As puppeteers began writing scripts, they continued the practice of not writing Tchantchès’ lines. The absence of Tchantchès’ lines in the written scripts can be explained in several different ways. From an elitist point of view, it could be said that nobles, not commoners, “made history.” Subaltern characters seldom appear in the courtly romances as their words did not alter the course of history. This is supposed to be different in a democracy, but since the early puppeteers and their clientele were not even qualified to vote, it is doubtful that they felt they were active shapers of history whose words should be dutifully replicated.125 It could also be argued that since the language of the nobles is not the vernacular of the puppeteer, he needs the written word as a linguistic guide, so that he correctly represents this learned dialect whereas he does not need a guide in using his own vernacular for the commoners. A related interpretation (in fact, the one which Dufour used) was that the puppeteer did not know how to write the vernacular language he spoke. Walloon scholars had devised a writing system for it, but this was not known by the general population of speakers.126 A fourth interpretation is that Tchantchès’ words belong to the present and so

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they must be improvised in the context of performance or else they risk sounding static. This interpretation focuses on the performance whereas the first one privileges content and the following two, linguistic form. Another interpretation having more to do with politics comes to light when we acknowledge that the writing of scripts coincided almost exactly with the entry of puppeteers into the museum and that one of the requirements of performing at the museum came to be the submission of one’s scripts for approval. When government subsidies became available a few decades later, they, too, required that scripts be approved. Seen in this light, leaving out the lines of Tchantchès gave puppeteers the liberty to insert comments without approval. When asked about the absence of tchantchès’ lines in the script, puppeteers can always offer one of the four plausible interpretations listed above, or simply say that they are only following tradition, ensuring their right to continue escaping censorship. One incident related by Dufour alerted me to the nervousness of the management about unscripted lines and the puppeteer’s insistence on their importance to the performance. He told me that in the 1970s Princess Paola (the present queen of Belgium) came to the museum with her children and wanted to see a puppet show. The director, who never entered the puppet theater, according to Dufour, came down to tell him to make absolutely no “allusions” during the show. Dufour said that he gave the show as he thought it should be presented, but the director was not happy and before it was over, he returned backstage to insist that he not deviate from the text. Dufour obeyed, making sure that the performance was totally flat and uninteresting. The director hurried backstage again to tell Dufour, “Continue as you began.” Dufour was able to use the minimalist script to his advantage, proving that the lines that are not written in the script are positively integral to the performance. The scripts of performing puppeteers today show much more variety than the 19th century texts marked by puppeteers. Today’s scripts run from simple titles used by Engels, Deville, and Maquet; to the partial scripts of Dufour and Libert; to full scripts with stage directions of Pinet and Ancion. Each of these puppeteers has a specific idea of what a script should be: what it should contain and what it shouldn’t contain. Dufour was the most outspoken about the importance of performing from a script, perhaps because he claimed to be the first to have written them.127 The purpose was not to give the performer a complete map to the performance, in his opinion, but to insure that history was respected. Dufour got angry when puppeteers diverged from the “original” text and included anachronistic asides about telephone poles or unemployment

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during the Nativity play. He insisted that one could not be consistently accurate about historical facts by relying on memorization and improvisation. Improvisation, however, had its place when speaking for the tchantchès. Dufour stated that a puppeteer should be able to perform any show, whether from someone else’s script or simply a skit topic given at the last minute. For this, one needed good improvisation skills. Dufour’s practice of script writing is not shared by the other puppeteers. Neither Engels nor Maquet saw any use in scripts. Engels said that the traditional method of performing was to read directly from the book, so script writing was totally unnecessary. Since Tchantchès lines were always improvised and the skits he performed at the fairs centered around Tchantchès, he saw no reason to write down anything more than the title which would give him the topic of the improvisation. Deville has continued this practice, but also attended Dufour’s classes to learn how to write scripts for other types of plays. Maquet regarded both books and scripts as not only unnecessary, but detrimental to the performance. He said that scripts reduce the spontaneity necessary for a good puppet show. He did, however, record each show before he performed it in front of an audience and used the tape to correct his mistakes. Later, he recorded it in performance and gave these tapes to his students to study and perform. The recorded spoken word, according to Maquet, did not constrain performance in the way that the written word did. In a recording, the word is never seen in its flat written form, but always heard as embodied in a voice. It also can substitute for the long years of hearing the master’s voice as the older model of apprenticeship is replaced by shorter periods of direct teaching. Other puppeteers produced scripts which contained far more detail than Dufour’s. These puppeteers were often quite reluctant to share their scripts with me. I looked at the scripts and saw the level of detail they reflected, but was not usually allowed to photocopy them. These puppeteers regarded their scripts as maps of performance and it made them uneasy to imagine someone else using their script to produce a similar performance. Working from a detailed script corresponded with more intensive rehearsing before performing in front of an audience, conceivably to re-embody the flattened writing into voice. This pattern of performance fits structurally into theaters where assistants (who have not spent their youth as puppeteer apprentices) have more education and are comfortable reading and following stage directions from the script.

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6.2. Script to Performance Almost every puppet theater puts on a Nativity Play during the Christmas season and more Liégeois attend this play than any other. These plays have been influenced by official published versions and unofficial written and oral versions. To take the example of Dufour; his script of the Nativity Play (or Li Naissance as it is known in Walloon) was reputedly written by the father of his teacher, Verrées, in 1884 and was the only written script that this performer lineage had until Dufour began writing scripts in the late 1920s. Dufour knew the Nativity play by heart but refused to perform without the script in front of him, which he would carefully remove from its own special folder. The Verrées Nativity script consists of thirty one 6 1/2 by 8 inch pages written out longhand margin to margin, recopied by each puppeteer. Characters’ names are centered and written above their speeches in red ink. Minimal stage directions are also done in red, and are placed after the speeches. In addition to being the first script, Dufour emphasized that his Nativity play was taken directly from the Scriptures (which, for Dufour, was venerated more for its age than its sacredness). When I examined the Bible, I found the following outline (with “?” standing for those scenes not located): Matthew I: 20–21; Luke II: 1, 3–4; ?; Luke II: 7; ?; Matthew II: 1–9; Luke II: 8–15; Luke II: 16; Matthew II: 12–13; ?; Matthew II: 16; ?; Matthew II: 18. Unlike, the material of the Bibliothèque bleue, the verses from which the story is taken are not in dialogue form. Therefore, it seems that there is a much looser fit between the published source and the written scripts of the biblical plays than of the chivalric plays. It could also be that I haven’t found the actual source used. Dufour told me it was taken from the Bible, but as Pinon discovered in Seraing, he may have been talking about a children’s Bible which was not kept by the puppeteers I knew (Pinon 1958: 330). Moving from the entextualization of scripts to the actual puppet show, it is interesting to compare the written word to the spoken performance. When Dufour performed Li Naissance on December 24, 1982, there were only 13 people in the audience of the small theater at the Museum of Walloon Life.128 The play began with Tchantchès coming out on stage alone. He conversed with the audience for 5 minutes in Walloon and then switched to addressing the children in French for another 2 minutes. He brought up the linguistic quarrels of present day Belgium, the “Walloon in the schools program”, the anomaly of Christ being born every year, and common cures for colds (when he heard

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someone coughing). During other performances, Tchantchès’ initial interaction with the audience was sometimes slightly shorter or longer, based on the response from the audience and the mood of the puppeteer, but it always occurred and there is no indication of it in the script. The speech that begins the script does not transpire until after Tchantchès exits and Joseph enters. I reproduce below the beginning of the Nativity script which focuses on specific biblical characters, and then skip to the final page in which the Massacre of the Innocents takes place. While the massacre is presented as an historical event in the Bible, no specific characters are mentioned as victims so the puppeteer is free to fill in with his tchantchès. The difference in the amount of departure from the text in the first part and in the final part is clearly apparent. In the reproduction of the beginning of the script, I have underlined the words that were left out in performance and capitalized the words that were added in performance on December 24, 1982.129 Li Naissance Script/PERFORMANCE — First Page Joseph Dieu m’a révélé le mystère de l’Incarnation qui s’est opéré en Marie, un ange m’est apparu en songe et m’a dit “Joseph, fils de David, ne craint point de prendre Marie avec toi car c’est par la vertu du Saint Esprit qu’elle est devenue mere. Et le fils qu’elle mettera au monde, tu l’appelleras Jésus, c’est a dire Sauveur, car c’est lui qui sauvera son peuple et le délivrera de ses péchés! J’ai obéi, le mariage précédemment convenu a été célébré, Je suis donc devenu le protecteur de la vierge mère et le père nourricier du sauveur. Mais ce qui me préoccupe le plus c’est la publication de l’edit de César Auguste, CAESAR AUGUSTE, Empereur des Romains, qui veut faire le denombrement des sujets de son immense empire! A cet effet, il ordonne que tous les habitants de la Judée aillent se faire inscrire sur les régistres de leur ville natale, or Marie et moi sommes originaires de Bethléem, nous sommes donc obligés de quitter Nazareth et de nous rendre en Judée pour obéir aux prescriptions de l’Empereur, or Nazareth est éloignée de Bethléem de plusieurs journées de marche et j’ai bien peur que Marie ne soit pas en état de supporter les fatigues de cette longue marche et cependant il le faut. Voyons ce qu’en pense Marie. Marie!, Marie. (entre Marie) Marie JOSEPH, MON AMI Joseph Marie il nous faut quitter notre retraite et nous en retourner à Bethléem

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pour prescrire aux volontés de notre Empereur. Croyez vous avoir assez de force pour entreprendre ce voyage. Marie Joseph, je suis votre humble sujette, commandez. Je n’ai qu’à vous obéir. Joseph Et bien, venez Marie, ressemblons les objets qui nous sont le plus nécessaires POUR et mettons nous METTRE en marche, LÀ, TRÈS BIEN MARIE, NE VOUS ENCOMBREZ PAS DE TROP. VENEZ. VENEZ MARIE ET si en court de route vous êtes fatiguée vous vous appuierez sur mon bras. (Départ Joseph et Marie) (Passer 2 marchands) First Merchant Hattons nous mon amis, c’est aujourd’hui grand jour de foire à Bethléem et j’espère que nous y ferons des affaires d’or, quand à moi je vais mettre en vente ces riches manteaux et ces robes de prix. Second Merchant QUANT À moi mon ami, j’apporte quelques bonnes épées et CES cuirasses et J’ESPÈRE AUSSI faire aussi bonne recette, c’est pourquoi, hâttons nous afin de retenir nos places dans une bonne hotellerie. Marie JOSEPH, SOMMES-NOUS ENCORE TRÈS ELOIGNÉS DE LA CITÉ? Joseph NON MARIE, ENCORE UN PEU DE COURAGE. VOYEZ, ON PERÇOIT AU LOIN DES TOURS CRENELLÉS DE LA VILLE. APPUYEZ-VOUS SUR MON BRAS, MARIE. VOILÀ, C’EST TRÈS BIEN. Joseph Voyez donc Marie, la Cité de David est pleine de monde à cause du recensement, voyons si nous pourrons trouver place dans une hotellerie. (sortir) (Entré Joseph Marie) Marie Joseph, mon ami, hâtez vous car je sens les forces qui m’abandonnent, car si vous ne trouvez bientot à nous héberger je me laisserai choir par terre. Joseph Prenez courage Marie, n’augmentez pas nos peines, je vois une hotellerie, voyons s’il y a de quoi nous abriter pour cette nuit. (Frapper à la porte)

The relationship between the script and the performance of the initial part of the play is very close, except for the initial framing interaction between Tchantchès and the audience. The puppeteer’s departures from the script do not alter the

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dramatic plot, they only fill it out, making it seem more believable and easier for the audience to follow. For instance, for rhetorical stress he repeats the name, “Caesar Auguste” and Mary responds to Joseph’s call. He also ad libs small talk like “Venez, venez, Marie” and “Voilà, c’est très bien.” He inserts an extra exchange between Joseph and Mary to emphasize the length and difficulty of the journey. Finally, he feels free to slightly alter grammatical constructions, such as substituting “pour nous mettre” for “mettons-nous.” The conformity of performance and script in this section of the play is not continued when the tchantchès take the stage. Below I have reproduced the last page of the script, followed by a transcript of the same performance. Walloon is represented in bold print. Li Naissance Script — Last page Hérode Mes seigneurs nous arrivons trop tard, le nid est vide l’oiseau s’est envolé, mais ma vengeance ne restera pas la. Parcourez toutes les rues de la ville et que tous les enfants du sexe masculin qui n’auront pas atteint l’âge de deux ans soient passés au fil de l’épée. (sortir Hérode) François Qu’as ti di cila (question les enfants) nèni ci nès nin çoula qui la dit. Houte bin dji v’sèle va dire, y la dit qui les èfants qui n’avi nin dès dins n’ poli nin magnî des macepin. (sortir) (massacre des innocents) Hérode Le massacre à asser durer et je crois que cet enfant n’aura pas echapper à ma vengeance. Capitaine faite sonner le rassemblement nous retournons à Jérusalem (sortir) (entre) Pasteur Vas, affreux tyran, tu seras puni de tous ces crimes, les vers et la corruption du tombeau te dévorerons tous vivant et tu expieras dans d’effroyable souffrances chargé des maledictions de tout ton peuple. Ecoute ces clameurs, ces lamentations ces cris déchirants qui retentissent à Bethléem. C’est Rachel qui pleure ses fils et qui refuse toute consolation parce qu’il ne sont plus. (sortir) Tchantchet FIN

In performance, Herod’s and the Pastor’s words stay pretty much the same, but between the two speeches of Herod, the parenthetic stage direction “massacre des innocents” stands in for a scene of five minutes in which three tchantchès

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with sons under age two encounter Herod’s soldiers.130 This is transcribed and translated below. Words said by audience members are in parentheses. Li Naissance- Performance François Qu’est-ce qu’il a dit don, celui-la? Est-ce que vous avez compris quelque chose, vous autres? Qu’est-ce qu’il a dit? {So, what did that guy say? (children respond with “no” and “yes”) Did you understand something, you guys? What did he say?} Child in Audience Il a demandé si Joseph il est déjà parti. {He asked if Joseph had left already.} François Je n’ai pas compris ça sais-tu moi. (pause) Sais-tu bien ce que j’ai compris moi? (Non) Ben. moi, j’ai compris qu’il disait qui tot lès p’tits-èfants qu’ n’avît nin dès dints n’ sårît nin magnî dè mas’pin. (laughter) C’est pas ça qu’il a dit? (Non, Non, Non) Qu’est-ce que c’est qu’il a dit? (pause) Ay ay ay ay ay! {I didn’t understand that ya know. (pause) Do you know what I understood? (No) Well me, I understood that he said that all the little children who don’t have teeth can’t eat marzipan. (laughter) He didn’t say that? (No, No, No) What did he say? (pause) Oh no} Child in Audience Il a dit qu’il va tuer tous les enfants. {He said that he’s going to kill all the children.} François Ah oui! c’est vrai. Eh ben! Euh... Mins- {Yeah it’s true. Well uh now-} Child in Audience qui n’ont pas deux ans. {who aren’t two yet.} François Oui, maintenant je me rappelle. Je vais bien vite retourner, hein, pour aller cacher mon p’tit François pour pas qu’i l’ trouve. (Puppets leave stage.) {Yeah, now I remember. I’m going to go home quick and hide my little François so he can’t find him.} Grîse Pîre Èy! Quî volà, Mossieû l’sodård! Îy! Qui v’z èstez bê, vos. Vos-avez mètou voss’ bê costume, la, hein? On dîreût qu’ vos-avez stu fé vos påkes. (laughter) Qui volez-v’ don? {Well look who’s here, Mister Soldier. And how handsome you are. You’ve put on your pretty suit, huh? You’d think you’d been celebrating your first communion. (laughter) What do you want?}

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Soldier Dis-moi, mon ami! As-tu des enfants du sexe masculin chez toi? {Tell me, my friend, do you have children of the masculine sex at your house?} Grîse Pîre Mi, dji n sé nin pocwè qu’ vos l’ loumez Mårtin. Mins nos-ôtes on l’ lome Grîse-Pîre come si papa. {Well, I sure don’t know why you call him Martin. As for us, we call him Grey Peter like his dad.} Soldier Et quel âge a-t-il? {What age is he?} Grîse Pîre O valèt! Là, vos m’ènnè d’mander trop’, èdon. Mi dji n’a nin stu è scole, mi. Dji n’ sé nin compter. Ça fêt ... Mins çou qu’ dji v’ pou dîre c’èst qu’i-n-a cwinze djoûs qu’on l’a batisé. {Oh Bud, there you’re askin’ me too much, ya see. Me, I haven’t been to school, me. I don’t know how to count. It’s... Well, what I can tell you is that we baptised him less than two weeks ago.} Soldier Laisse-moi voir. (stabs the child) Tiens! Voilà ce que je fais de ton enfant! {Let me see. (stabs the childs) Here, here’s what I do with your child!} Grîse Pîre An! L’ moudreû d’aguèces! C’èsteût po ‘nnè fé çoula qu’il a d’mander mi p’tit Grîse-Pîre. Mins, ratindez, canåri, si dji v ratrappe jamês parèt, vos m’ l’alez payî tchîr. (Characters leave stage. New ones enter.) {You child-killer! It was to do that that he asked for my little Grey Peter. Well wait, canary, if I ever catch you, you’ll pay for it.} Nicolas Quî èst-ç, don, qu’èst là? Èy quî volà, Mossieû l’ sodård! Qué novèle, don, dispôy qu’on n’ s’a pus vèyou? {Who’s that there? Well look who’s here, Mister Soldier. What’s been happenin’ since we’ve last seen each other?} Soldier Dis-moi, mon ami, as-tu des enfants du sexe masculin chez toi? {Tell me, my friend, have you children of the masculine sex at your house?} Nicolas Atindez ‘ne pitite minute, valèt! Pace qui Nanèsse va aler fé sès comissions èt i fåt qu’ dji m’ocupe di lèy d’abôrd. Quand dj’årè fini avou Nanèsse, dji m’ocup’rè d’ vos. Prindez on pô pacyince. (to Nanèsse) Alez Nanèsse! Vos corîz èvôye sins ‘v ristourner, èdon, et mi dji m’ocupe di lu. {Wait a little minute, Bud, cause Nanèsse is going to go shopping and I’ve got to take care of her first. When I’m finished with

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Nanèsse, I’ll take care of you. Be patient a little. (to Nanèsse) Go on Nanèsse, you run along without turning back, okay, and me, I’ll take care of him.} Nanèsse Ça va! Ça va, Colas! N’åyîz nin sogne! Dji f’rè insi. (baby cries: WAAAAAA) {Okay, okay, Nick. Don’t be afraid, I’ll do as you say. (WAAAAAA)} Soldier Qu’est-ce que j’entends? Misérable! {What do I hear? Wretch!} Nicolas Abèye, Nanèsse! Èvôye! (WAAAA) Èvôye Nanèsse! {Hurry Nanèsse, hit the road. (WAAAA) Hit the road, Nanèsse} (Nicolas and soldier fight, then exit stage followed by a knock at a door) Tchantchès Quî èst-ç’, don, qu’èst là? N-a pèrsone chal, valèt! Lès djins sont-stèvôyes pace qu’i n’ payît nin leû lodjis’. {Who’s that there? There’s no one here, Bud. The people took off because they didn’t pay their rent.} Soldier Ouvre la porte, mon ami! {Open the door, my friend.} Tchantchès Såreûs nin droviért li pwète, hin mi. N’a nin l’ clé. {I couldn’t open the door, me. Don’t have the key.} Soldier Ouvre ou je l’enfonce! {Open or I’ll bash it in} Tchantchès Â, mins çoula, valèt, mi, dji m’an fou, in, mi. Dji n’ sos nin propriétêre. {Oh that, Bud, well I could care less, ya know. I’m not the owner.} Soldier Misérable! {Wretch!} Tchantchès È hê! (He jumps onto the soldier from the window, fights with him, and runs.)

After this, Herod enters and utters his scripted lines reproduced above and the performance follows the script to its end. Then, all the characters leave and, after a pause, Tchantchès re-enters and chats with the audience in French for another two minutes before closing the event. This ending interaction between Tchantchès and the audience mirrors his initial interaction with them. Whereas at the beginning he began discussing topics outside the play and ended up talking about the play, at the end he begins by talking about events within the play

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and ends up outside of the frame of the play. Except for Tchantchès’ introductory dialogue with the audience which stands somewhat outside the frame of the play (or, more exactly, serves to frame the play), the first section of the performance follows the script quite closely. In contrast to this, the final section of the performance diverges sharply from the written text. The Massacre of the Innocents begins with a tchantchès addressing the audience to clarify the order he has just heard King Herod give. This passage is written in Walloon in the script, something that does not occur in any other traditional scripts used by the Dufour performer lineage to my knowledge. It serves at least two functions. The first one is to make sure that the audience has understood the words of Herod. When the script was initially written, it is possible that some members of the audience didn’t understand French and so Tchantchès checked on their comprehension, addressing them in Walloon. But he does not correctly translate the important phrase into Walloon, he mistranslates the order and leaves it to the audience to correct him. This is a pedagogical tool of the wise fool, not the pedant. Without a doubt, it is one of the most horrifying orders ever given in Christian legends and, even if understood, one could well “not believe one’s ears.” Tchantchès’ intervention gives the audience time to let the impact sink in, as one of their co-members of the audience accepts the responsibility of explaining Herod’s words to Tchantchès. For contemporary audiences, Dufour translated François’ scripted Walloon into French, however he retained Walloon for the crucial translinguistic reporting of Herod’s order. This seems to show a recognition on his behalf that Walloon has passed from active usage, but is still passively comprehended by many audience members. Tchantchès’ misunderstanding of Herod’s order to kill all male children under age two as the order that children without teeth can’t eat marzipan, trivializes the statement at the same time that it references the contemporary Christmas practice of giving children representations of fruits and animals made from sugared almond paste. In a carnivalesque manner, a linkage is made between death and life-giving food. Perhaps the puppeteer is telling the audience to maintain a sense of humor in the face of adversity. As Gaston Engels used to say, “The moment you feel that your audience is going to cry, you put in Tchantchès to make them laugh.” Tchantchès (in this case, going by the name of François) may make people laugh, but he is no laughing stock. He is a man of action. Once he understands Herod’s words he runs home to hide his son, not allowing grief, worry, or fatalism to stop him from actively trying to

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foil Herod’s plans. As we can see, only the first tchantchès is unaware of the soldier’s intent. By the time he arrives at the second house, the commoners have heard the news and resist the soldier. François’ misunderstanding of Herod’s announcement to kill “tous les enfants du sexe masculin qui n’auront pas atteint l’âge de deux ans” {All the children of masculine sex who will not have attained the age of two} seems to originate with the miscomprehension of “masculin,” a word that belongs more to the official world than to the vernacular. François hears the word as “mas’pin” which influences his comprehension of the following clause, “qui n’auront pas atteint” This phrase he interprets as the equal syllabled and rhyming “qui n’avît nin dès dints” {who don’t have teeth}. He arrives at the nonsensical translation of the king’s proclamation, “all little children who don’t have teeth can’t eat marzipan.” For the next commoner, “masculin” also poses a problem. Grîse-Pîre thinks the soldier is calling his son, “Martin” (only picking up on the first and last consonant vowel combinations), but cannot figure out why, since the boy’s name is “Grise-Pîre,” like his father. Both of these misunderstandings of a higher register of French index the lower class status of the tchantchès. The commoner characters draw attention to their lower class status in many other ways. Their misunderstanding of erudite words is certainly more subtle than their diminutive size in comparison to the historical characters. The tchantchès do not reach above the shoulders of Herod and his knights or even of Joseph. They also wear distinctively peasant/worker clothing and speak Walloon. If we take into account what they are actually saying, there are even more indexes to their class status. Grise-Pîre explicitly says that he has never been to school and therefore cannot count. I detect a veiled criticism of the linking of intelligence with the state educational system. People in biblical Palestine and medieval Europe could count without the benefit of a school system, as could people in turn of the century Belgium when the script was probably written. What does hold true for this period of history in Liège is that those who did not attend school were far more likely to converse in Walloon, not French. In the final encounter, François clearly identifies himself as a renter, not a house-owner. Leaning out of an upstairs window, he tells the soldier that the other renters left because they did not pay their rent. He refuses to let the soldier in, claiming that he does not have the key. The voice of authority quickly snaps back, “Open, or I’ll bash it in!” to which François flippantly replies, “I could care less. I’m not the owner.” This entire scene, which is absent from the script,

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clearly shows the antagonism between the lower class and the state apparatuses of the school, the military, and even the king himself. It seems to add support to the theory that lines which risk being censored are best left out of the script.

6.3. Refractions of the Nativity We have looked at the writing of scripts and the recontextualization of one Nativity script in a performance. This begins to give a picture of the relationship of stories and performances in a linear fashion. In order to flesh out the context, we must also look laterally to other entextualizations of the same story. The Belgian literary critic/translator André Lefevere addressed the question of recontextualization in literature, naming the various versions “refracted texts.” He tells us that “refraction occurs when a text is produced to replace an original text for a given audience.” The main motives for doing so are : “to promote the values in which a culture, or an audience (professes to) believe(s), and to make a profit” (1984: 219). The book Lefevere uses as an illustration is De Coster’s Thyll Ulenspiegel, considered the founding text of Belgian literature. He states that by the time he had actually read the book, he felt he already knew it since he had read various refractions of it: comic strips, texts in anthologies, plot summaries in histories of literature, and films. He might also have seen it in a puppet theater since it has been performed by Flemish puppeteers. I don’t know of it being performed in Liège, but the stories performed there fall into the same type of canonized literature which articulated particular values that people wanted to perpetuate, and that there was a market for. The older puppeteers I worked with might well have seen refractions of a particular story in picture sheets, history books, songs, the Walloon theater, the puppet theater, oral story telling sessions, novels, written plays. Elements from the stories also show up in proverbs, nicknames and other primary speech genres. Refractions of written literature are texts which have been decontextualized and then recontextualized in a new setting. Lefevere states that refracted texts are never exact replicas of the original, though they remain linked to it (1984: 217). They also don’t have to be written texts at all: films, plays, comic strips, paintings, musical compositions can all be refracted texts (1984: 222). Whereas, literary criticism has tended to ignore the refractions and elevate the original, Lefevere stresses that, from the point of view of the majority of “readers,” one of the refractions is the original. Furthermore, although refractions of

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texts are maligned by those who defend the canon, they are absolutely vital for its perpetuation (1984: 225). This line of thinking is much more helpful to those of us working with oral traditions who have long abandoned the notion of Ur Text and find ourselves with numerous refractions of a text. The Liège puppet theater is full of refractions of stories which themselves have been multiply refracted over time. Again, Lefevere’s work is helpful as he shows the constraints on refracting texts which he lists in decreasing order of importance as: “patronage (whether more ideological or more economic in nature), poetological, generic, and linguistic” (1984: 221). He examines the 1918 English translation of Thyll Ulenspiegel and notes the omission of the ribald gluttony, sexual elements, anticlericalism and political radicalism. These were all extraneous (and even detrimental) to the aim of this publication which was to drum up support for the Allies. On a more formal level, he notes how the compositional equilibrium is destroyed and many of the devices which sum up and comment on the fabula are deleted along with repetitions in the text. Three refractions of the Nativity puppet play as performed by Dufour, Libert, and Pinet will be examined here. Before doing so, however, I feel compelled to say something about other refractions of what is possibly the most refracted story in the Christian world. In the early ninth century, Amalarius, Bishop of Metz and a prominent figure of the court of Charlemagne, believed that theatrical presentations of church services would help communicate the meaning of the new Latin mass which was not understood by commoners (Harris 1992: 23). One theory of the origin of the term “marionette” is that it comes from the “little Marys” who were exhibited on the steps of Catholic churches to illustrate for the illiterate masses the stories of the Bible. The Passion was the first subject to be dramatized, but this was soon overtaken by the stories of Christ’s birth. In the 10th century, plays of the shepherds, the three kings and Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents multiplied and by the end of the eleventh century the Christmas season had become the focus for dramatic development (Harris 1992: 32–33). The first Christmas play written in a vernacular language (Auto de los Reyes Magos or Play of the Wise Kings in Spanish) appeared in the latter part of the 12th century. Litvak (1973) writes that secular elements including Joseph doubting Mary’s virtue and shepherds who sing Christmas songs, boast, and insult each other in regional dialect as they bring the Christ child local foods were introduced into the Spanish tradition during the late 15th century.

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As the role of the shepherds expanded, the Nativity Play gained in importance to become the most common play in European popular drama in the second half of the 15th century (Schmidt 1965: 223–224).131 Pirard (1950) attempts to show a continuous history of the play in Wallonia by textually linking two Latin manuscripts from Wallonia in the 11th and 12th centuries to subsequent vernacular manuscripts from the 15th and 17th centuries. The “jewel” of Walloon medieval dramatic literature is a Nativity Play found in 1905 in a museum in Chantilly, but traced linguistically to Liège and later to the convent of the White Ladies in nearby Huy (Cohen: 1920).132 This manuscript was written between 1478 and 1484. It begins with a dialogue between Mary and Joseph and her announcement that she is about to give birth. Three shepherds and two shepherdesses come and give presents to the newborn Christ child (a flute, a lamb, a lamp, nuts and apples). The three wisemen led by a star are asked by Herod to come back after they have found the child. The wisemen give their presents to the child and as they are leaving, an angel tells them not to return to Herod’s palace. There is some evidence that at least one representation of the play ended here, but it is followed by a scene between Herod and a fool in which Herod gives orders to kill all the children who are less than three years old. Mary is then visited by St. Anne and goes through a purification ceremony forty days after childbirth. The play ends with the presentation of Baby Jesus at the temple. All of the scenes except for the last ones of the purification ceremony and the presentation at the temple are represented in Liège puppet shows today. Other parts of the story which appear in the puppet shows but not in the Chantilly manuscript can be found in later Walloon manuscripts. The flight to Egypt is the major scene in a mystery played in Namur at the end of the 17th century and the peasant seeding his field who helps the Holy Family escape appears in a late 18th century manuscript from Jodoigne (Pirard 1950: 53–57).133 These manuscripts lack some of the previous material that is represented in the puppet shows. Contemporary puppeteers also continue the European folk tradition of shepherds speaking and singing Christmas songs in the local dialect. Dramatic Christmas songs came into vogue in the 17th and 18th centuries, probably serving to animate veillées preceding the Christmas mass, and later they became joined with the other dramatic presentations (Delbouille 1978). A 1939 collection of Christmas songs in Wallonia produced about forty complete and fragmented songs ranging from 24 to 265 lines. (The 18th century ones

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were in manuscript form and those after 1844 were printed.) The earlier songs are in the form of dialogue. Some of them represent a bidialectal conversation between French speaking angels and Walloon speaking shepherds. Delbouille suggests that Christmas songs were written down more often than other songs since they were only sung during one short period of the year and it was difficult to remember them for the intervening 11 and a half months. The most frequent subject of these songs (which accompanied the line dance called cråmignon) was the adoration of the Christ child by the shepherds who bring the child gifts to warm him, clothe him and feed him. Within this structure lies a great deal of variation and even humor (Delbouille 1978). The popularity of these songs flagged by the end of the 19th century, and today the only place they are regularly heard is — in the puppet theater. While the puppet theater is an important part of many families’ Christmas traditions, it has no monopoly on Nativity refractions in contemporary Belgium. In museums, images of the birth, adoration and flight to Egypt of the Christ child adorn the 15th and 16th century canvasses of painters like Roger van der Weyden, Hugo Van der Goes, Breughel, Francois Walschartz, Joachim Patenier, L. Lombard, and Auguste Donnay. Myriad images of the same subjects occur in paintings from later centuries. The practice of making three dimensional santons and arranging them in a Nativity scene during the Christmas season survives to this day in Liège. These figurines influenced two further representations of the Nativity. One is the crèche vivante in which live actors play the roles of Joseph, Mary, Jesus, the shepherds, and wisemen, and pose with a live cow, lamb and ass around a crib in a mock manger. In St. Pholien, prior to setting up on a wooden stage strewn with straw in the central place, the actors followed an artificial star through the streets (stopping at houses where they could get pèkèt). Another refraction is the Bethléem Verviétois. In the tradition of the mechanical crèches of Provence, these figurines were made to move while the story of the Nativity was being told.134 This mechanical crèche is historically documented from 1820 in Verviers and the figurines were shown in Liège at the 1903 doll exposition and at the International Puppetry Congress in 1930. Nowadays, it can be seen in the attic of the Archeology and Folklore Museum in Verviers during the Christmas season. Children manipulate the figures while the pre-recorded story is broadcast over loud speakers.

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6.4. Li Naissance: Semantico-Referential Variations As was pointed out previously, the Nativity play on Christmas eve became the site at which classes converged in Liège puppet theaters around the turn of the last century. It continues to be the most popular puppet play today. Most theaters have extended the time during which it is presented. All three of the performances examined here occurred during the Christmas season in 1982. The three puppeteers represented belong to different performer lineages, no two being in a teacher/student relationship or multiple students of a single teacher. Jean Pinet claims an attachment to right bank puppetry, Adrien Dufour to left bank puppetry and Henri Libert sees himself as an independent who has adopted right bank stylistics. The three plays were performed in different theaters. Dufour and Libert performed in their habitual museum theaters (the Museum of Walloon Life and the Tchantchès Museum, respectively) while Pinet’s play was in a church, though not part of a religious service. Libert’s play was slightly under one hour and the other two were slightly over an hour. Even though Libert’s show was shortest, the duration of the whole puppet event was the longest since it included two ten minute intermissions so that people could get up and order refreshments at the bar. The other two puppeteers were performing in places without bars so they only had short intermissions in order to reorganize props on stage. The different voices of each puppeteer, their distinct carved actors, their performance contexts and their music made each play unique, but what I focus on here is the semantico-referential content transmitted linguistically. Below I have divided each play into scenes. I based the divisions on the entrance and exit of characters, and broad thematic unity. Some are quite short, and others are extended scenes that may have a series of characters entering and exiting, but the action is linked thematically. In the chart below I have taken the three plays as a single unity and have numbered each scene chronologically, giving precedence to the first time the scene appears in one of the plays. Occurrences of the same scene later on in a different play are italicized and followed by a scene number in parentheses. Off stage narrator’s comments in Libert’s play which are said with the curtains closed are in bold print and left unnumbered. I have not included the initial and final speeches where Tchantchès brings the audience into and out of the frame of performance. These will be compared in a later section.

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Pinet 1

Libert

Dufour

Joseph asks for Mary’s hand twice, she refuses. Angel tells him to ask a third time and she won’t refuse.

2

Bouyotte complains of today’s furniture and gets Joseph to repair his chair.

3

Angel tells Mary to accept Joseph’s offer and that she will have a son and tells her to visit her cousin Elizabeth.

Angel tells Mary she will have a son and tells her to visit her cousin Elizabeth.

4

Mary accepts Joseph’s proposal and says she will go visit Elizabeth.

Mary asks Joseph if she can go visit her cousin Elizabeth. Bouyotte and Joseph discuss women.

5

Mary interacts with Elizabeth’s servant, then greets Elizabeth, sees baby John and leaves.

Narrator announces that after several months Mary returns

6

Mary arrives home. Joseph doubts her virtue and Angel comes to enlighten him

Mary arrives home. Joseph doubts her virtue and Angel comes to enlighten him.

Joseph recounts how an Angel told him that Mary would have a son, their marriage took place.

7

Messenger tells of the census and peasants discuss going back to Liège. Joseph and Mary prepare to leave.

Joseph hears of the census from Bouyotte and messenger. Joseph and Mary leave for Bethlehem.

Joseph continues saying that they have to return to Bethlehem for the census. Joseph and Mary prepare to leave.

Narrator announces Intermission while Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem

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Pinet

Libert

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Dufour

Narrator – After a long voyage, they arrive in Bethlehem to find the inns are full 8

9

Two travelers arrive in Bethlehem who reserved a room in advance. They refuse an old man shelter.

Two merchants discuss the good business they’ll have at the Bethlehem fair and hurry to get a good room.

Joseph and Mary arrive in Bethlehem, Joseph goes to look for shelter. Second innkeeper accepts them and invites them into his kitchen for a meal.

Joseph and Mary arrive in Bethlehem, Joseph goes to look for shelter. Third innkeeper accepts them, directs them to the stable and has a premonition that the stable will become greater than the most beautiful castle on earth .

Joseph and Mary arrive in Bethlehem, Joseph goes to look for shelter. Third innkeeper accepts them and invites them into his kitchen for a drink of warm milk.

Set up Crèche

Set up Crèche

Set up Crèche

10

11

Innkeeper sends his peasants out to look after the flocks. see below

Wisemen discuss following the star and decide to go see Herod. They ask him where the child will be born and, after stating his nefarious intentions to the audience, Herod calls in a priest to find out where the event will happen. He tells the Wisemen that the birth will be in Bethlehem and asks them to return with more

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Pinet

Libert

Dufour exact directions. Wisemen follow the star.

12

Shepherds watching over flocks. Angel comes. Three Wisemen, following the star, run into Herod who tells them to return after finding the child. (11) Tchantchès announces Intermission while they prepare the crèche

Narrator tells us Joseph and Mary are settled in the stable and at midnight the bells of the village churches all rang.

Shepherds watching over flocks. Angel comes. They sing Walloon Christmas songs.

13

Shepherds arrive at the stable, they insult each other, ask favors of the child, and then give presents and go to pray silently. Three Wisemen arrive, then leave. Shepherds offer to build Joseph a house.

Tchantchès adores the child along with Bouyotte, Djoseph, Plate Nasse, Hubert, Djefke, Leon, Berthinne, Nanèsse, the Prime Minister, and Three Wisemen. Tchantchès says a prayer.

Joseph thanks innkeeper and shepherds arrive, adore, and give gifts while insulting each other. Innkeeper invites them to eat and drink. Wisemen arrive, give gifts, and leave.

14

Angel tells Wisemen not to return to Herod.

Angel tells Wisemen not to return to Herod.

15

Herod realizes that the Wisemen have not returned and sends out his men.

see below

16

Angel tells Joseph to flee to Egypt. Joseph tells Mary and she gets ready to leave.

Angel tells Joseph to flee to Egypt. Joseph tells the innkeeper who lends him an ass and then sends a peasant out to seed.

17

Peasant is sowing his field, but tells the Holy Family they can pass.

Peasant is sowing his field, but tells the Holy Family that they can pass

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Pinet

18

21

Dufour

The wheat grows as they pass and is immediately ready to harvest.

Herod realizes that the Wisemen have not returned and sends out his men (15) Pastor sees the ripe wheat and sends his peasant to harvest.

Herod asks peasant about the Holy family, then orders the Massacre of the Innocents.

Herod asks peasant about the Holy family, then orders the Massacre of the Innocents.

19

20

Libert

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Tchantchès verifies with audience what Herod said. Massacre of the Innocents: 2 encounters between tchantchès and Herod’s men.

Massacre of the Innocents: 3 encounters between tchantchès and Herod’s men. Herod calls an end to the massacre The innkeeper says Herod will be punished for his crimes

As you can see, each puppeteer included different parts of the story. Of the 21 scenes outlined, only scenes 6, 7, 9 and 13 were shared by all three puppeteers, and in Dufour’s version 6 and 7 are collapsed into a single scene with the visitation by the angel and the news about the census being framed as recollection rather than live action. This information is necessary in order to establish the holiness of the pregnancy and the upcoming hardship resulting from the displacement. Scene 9 of Mary and Joseph’s search for lodging in Bethlehem, and scene 13 of the visitation of the crèche form the core of the Nativity play. Everyone expects to see some version of these scenes, or it probably would not be considered the same play. Beyond this core material, the puppeteers have a lot of freedom in choosing scenes to present before and after the journey to

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Bethlehem and the birth of Christ. The plays do not start or end at the same point in the story and there are even disagreements as to the order of events. For instance, when Mary found out that she would give birth to the son of God was she already married to Joseph or not? According to Dufour’s version, they had agreed upon the marriage before hearing of the miracle, but did not actually celebrate the event until after this fact was known. In Libert’s version, Joseph and Mary are happily married when they receive this message from heaven. In Pinet’s version, the angel tells Mary that she must marry Joseph (whom she had refused twice before) at the same time that he tells her that she will give birth. Comparing the structure of the plays further, we find that Dufour and Pinet share the greatest total number of scenes, but Pinet’s play is actually more like Libert’s in the first part and more like Dufour’s in the second part. Pinet’s and Libert’s versions include the visitation of the angel to Mary and her leaving to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Pinet elaborates the most on Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, while Dufour leaves it out altogether. Dufour also leaves out Joseph’s doubting of Mary’s virtue, a story elaborated in the infancy gospels that form part of the Christian Apocrypha, or early written materials that didn’t make it into the Bible (Barnstone 1984). Libert, by ending his play at the crèche scene, does not represent the popular apocryphal scene of the newlyseeded field which miraculously grows as the holy family passes on their way to Egypt. Since Pinet and Dufour continue their plays through the Massacre of the Innocents, they are much more similar in the second part, sharing nine of the remaining eleven scenes, though two of them occur at different places in the narrative. In the versions by Dufour and Libert, it is immediately obvious that Mary’s primary role has been ceded to Joseph. In Dufour’s play we don’t even get to see the angel visiting Mary, but hear about the event from Joseph. Mary tells Joseph at one point that she is his “humble subject,” ready to obey. Later when the angel tells Joseph he must flee to Egypt, Pinet’s Joseph tells Mary, but Dufour’s tells the (male) innkeeper. In all three plays, Mary fills a supporting rather than a leading role, while Joseph is the one who decides and directs the action. Mary’s most powerful moment in all the performances occurs at the beginning of Pinet’s play when she twice refuses Joseph’s offer of marriage, before being told by the angel to accept. From this time on, Mary follows the decisions of Joseph and, as if by divine recognition of this unequal relationship, the angel no longer visits Mary, but gives instructions to Joseph. How different

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from the Chantilly manuscript which emphasizes the roles of the female characters and reduces Joseph to merely answering questions, leading scholars to postulate female authorship (Cohen 1920). Following this argument, the tone of the puppet plays leaves no doubt about the gender of the authors. Each puppeteer presents scenes not presented by any of the others. In Dufour’s play these scenes are: 19) Tchantchès verifying with the audience what Herod has said and 21). the lamention following the Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew II:18, put in the mouth of the innkeeper). The unique parts of Pinet’s play are: 1) Joseph’s numerous offers of marriage to Mary and 5) Mary’s visit with Elizabeth. Libert’s unique scene is his first (and the corpuses second) when Bouyotte consults with Joseph on a carpentry problem. While entire unique scenes are limited to one or two per puppeteer, the internal variation of the scenes can be very significant. For instance during Libert’s scene 4, Bouyotte talks with Joseph about the incomprehensibility of women, then suggests they take advantage of Mary’s absence to go out for a drink. Joseph firmly refuses, calling it a sin, so Bouyotte goes alone. In the versions by Pinet and Libert, tchantchès comment on the census announcement in a mixture of French and Walloon. Pinet’s two tchantchès, ask each other where they have to go. One says he is going to Pierreuse and the other to St. Pholien — two working-class neighborhoods of Liège which happen to be the homes of the left and right bank styles of puppetry, respectively. The major scene which is included in all three plays is the adoration of Christ, newly born in the manger. The “shepherds” present their gifts before the arrival of the three kings. The gifts of the three kings are standardized across all three shows: gold from Melchior; frankincense from Balthazar and myrrh from Gaspard. It is during the scene of the shepherds, that popular imaginations show through. All three plays project the feeling of warmth and generosity, spiked with humor that has made this scene central to European popular drama, but the particular people included, gifts brought and things said vary considerably from puppeteer to puppeteer. Below I have listed the visitors to the manger before the arrival of the kings and what they brought or said to the baby in the three versions. Pinet TCHANTCHÈS — warns his friends not to slobber and let their nose run on the baby. One says “Oh he looks like me,” and is told that if his picture were on cigarrette packets, no one would smoke anymore. CHEVEUX — asks that there be no more war and lots of work. He gives a cow to

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warm the baby with her breath. TOÛNE L’OÛY — gives an ass for Mary and the baby when traveling. MÅ D ‘DINT — gives 30 centimes, which his wife had given him for a sandwich, to buy a shirt for the baby. Dufour NICOLAS — gives a lamb on behalf of all the peasants present. DJÈTROU — kisses the baby. Nicolas warns her about her bad breath. FRANÇOIS — comments on the baby’s red cheeks. Nicolas tells him to be careful that the lice in his beard don’t fall on the baby. GRÎSE PÎRE — says the baby thinks he’s his father. Nicolas tells him to make sure his false teeth don’t fall in the baby’s mouth. NOYÉ — wishes the baby could walk so he could go with them to the fields. Nicolas tells him to spit out his chewing tobacco and stop slobbering on the baby. BATISSE — is stopped from going too close by Nicolas who says the baby will mistake his nose for a bottle. Libert BOUYOTTE — gives part of his retirement pension. DJOSEF FROM VERVIERS — gives rice pudding pie and Verviers cake. He asks that the water from the Gileppe be sent to Flanders so that something will be done about the lead content. PLATE NASSE FROM ARDENNES — gives health foods, Bastogne ham and 50 kilos of potatoes. HUBERT THE UNIVERSITY STUDENT — gives one fourth of one half of one third of the students’ St. Nicolas’ collection. DJEFKE THE FLEMING — gives mussels from Antwerp and carbonade flamande. He tells him not to go to the Fourons. LÉON — gives marbles. BERTHINE — gives knitted scarf and socks and makes a comment about the arms race. NANÈSSE — offers to make them a good meal; stew, hot coffee, bouquettes, and milk sausage. MARTENS THE PRIME MINISTER — gives economic rundown on Belgium as the reason why he can’t give more than the regular allocation given to new mothers.

Dufour’s manger scene is the most removed from contemporary affairs. He did reference such material objects as false teeth, chewing tobacco, and baby bottles which we do not associate with biblical Palestine, but made no reference to

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contemporary life in Liège. It was as if his “contemporary” ceased when he began performing in the Museum of Walloon Life in the 1930s. He also did not have the shepherd ask anything of the Christ child, whereas both Pinet and Libert made requests for the alleviation of contemporary problems. Libert’s lower class characters are fully integrated into contemporary local life and politics and this is what the adults in the audience at the Tchantchès Museum came to see. Both Pinet and Dufour made use of humor centered around bodily functions, as the lead shepherd jokingly insulted the others. Drooling, urination, defecation, flatulation, and other body odors are common subjects of this carnivalesque humor. Dufour, however, drew the line at the lower body functions, claiming that it was a facile way to make children laugh and had no place onstage. He criticized other puppeteers for talking about urination and defecation and only made a few oblique references to flatulation. Libert’s humor depended on an understanding of local contemporary politics and not bodily functions. Pinet and Dufour both stressed the rural origins of the tchantchès, sticking to their status as shepherds in the Bible, while city dwellers predominated among Libert’s tchantchès. Rather than the traditional gifts of animals, harking from an agricultural society, Libert’s tchantchès gave prepared regional foods and money. Even his peasant character, Plate Nasse from the Ardennes, left no doubt that he was integrated into global agribusiness. First of all, he called his agricultural products “health foods,” commenting afterwards in Walloon, “That’s the fad, right?” Then he presented the holy family with a ham from Bastogne in the Ardennes (well known for its hams) which, he added, was “from a Dutch pig, raised in Norway on Brazilian grain. It’s the finest in local production. You can believe me, Joseph because it’s marked on the label.”135 His 50 kilos of potatoes came from Poland. Libert used a wider range of both regional and social types than Pinet and Dufour. Three of his tchantchès were clearly marked as being from Verviers, the Ardennes, and Flanders. In addition to these typical lower class men, he inserted a university student and the prime minister. Bouyotte, Tchantchès’ wife Nanèsse and their two adopted children make up the rest of the group, creating a scene which is funny, yet touching. Of all the plays, it is in this most refracted scene of the most refracted play that Libert places extremely serious comments on local and global politics, couched in humor. Libert ends his play at the manger, but Dufour and Pinet continue with a scene in which an angel tells the departing Wisemen not to return to Herod.

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Pinet’s next scene is of Herod realizing that the wise men are not coming back. He calls his servant and a tchantchès appears. The servant tchantchès protests his wanting to kill the baby, but Herod replies that he must fulfill the oracle and goes to gather his army. The following scenes in both versions depict an angel telling Joseph he must flee followed by the scene where Joseph, Mary and Jesus run into a man seeding the fields on their flight to Egypt. They ask to be able to cross and he resists at first thinking that they will ruin his seeding. Joseph assures him that he’ll have the best crop ever and as soon as the holy family crosses, the wheat grows before his eyes. The man who was seeding must retrieve his scythe and begin harvesting. This miracle allows the farmer to reply truthfully and still mislead King Herod when he is asked whether a man, woman and baby have passed by. The farmer replies that he did indeed see them when he was seeding the fields. As the king can see that he is now harvesting, he assumes that several months have passed and tells his troops that they have arrived too late. Pinet lengthens this scene by having the harvester rudely joke with the king. Despite the numerous differences in these three versions of the Naissance, there are passages which exhibit a striking similarity. One of these instances is King Herod’s speech leading to the Massacre of the Innocents, the final scene in the plays by Pinet and Dufour. Below, I have laid out the two passages line by line to highlight their parallelism. Dufour’s speech is on line one and Pinet’s on line two. Capitalized words are replicas and words in bold type fullfill parallel grammatical functions. 1. 2. 1. 2. 1. 2. 1. 2. 1. 2. 1. 2. 1. 2.

TROP TARD! Mes seigneurs, nous arrivons TROP TARD. TROP TARD, Centurion, TROP TARD. Le nid est vide. L’OISEAU S’EST ENVOLÉ. L’OISEAU S’EST ENVOLÉ. Mais ma vengeance ne restera pas là. Ecoute, tu vas disperser tes gens. Parcourez TOUTES LES rues de la ville Tu rentreras à TOUTES LES maisons de Bethléem: ET que TOUS LES ENFANTS du sexe masculin ET TOUS LES ENFANTS QUI N’AURONT PAS ATTEINT L’ÂGE DE DEUX ANS Î QUI N’AURONT PAS ATTEINT L’ÂGE DE DEUX ANS soient passes AU FIL DE L’EPÉE. tu les passeras AU FIL DE L’EPÉE.

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Of the 102 words in these two passages, 61 are identical (in upper case) and 19 fill parallel grammatical functions (bold type). Only 22 words are actually disparate. If one speech was not borrowed from the other, this level of homology at least indicates a common source.136 All three refractions examined here blend the serious with the comic and it is the historic French speaking characters who are serious and the fictive Walloon characters who are comic. Libert is the only puppeteer of the three who occasionally allows his historic characters to say something funny and contemporary. Joseph, for instance, mentioned that he was worried about being paid by the city of Liège for some carpentry work he had done, given the pending bankruptcy of the city. Libert’s is also the only play in which the tchantchès character (Bouyotte in this case) treats Joseph informally as if he were an old buddy. Libert’s humor is highly contemporary and political while Pinet’s is a mixture between short quips about contemporary affairs and carnivalesque humor passed down from his father. Dufour’s humor, too, is largely handed down and carnivalesque. In the plays of Pinet and Libert, the tchantchès enter the action more regularly than in Dufour’s play so the humor is more evenly interspersed. The humorous, or tchantchès, scenes, in Dufour’s play are clearly separated from the others.

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The Nativity Play: The crèche scene in Henri Libert’s theater

6.5. Framing Performance The puppet theater is rich in examples of framing and frame breaking (Goffman 1974; Proschan 1981). Sometimes breaking the frame is inadvertant as when a puppet’s body falls off during the show, but the puppeteer also pur-

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posefully breaks the time frame of the story by inserting comments about contemporary life. It is in these passages where we can see most clearly the intertextuality between life and art. Tchantchès generally initiates these moments of intertextuality, standing in for the puppeteer on stage and mediating between the live audience and the world of the puppet play. This kind of mediator role is not rare in dramatic traditions. The Chantilly manuscript begins and ends with a speech by a meneur du jeu (leader of the play) who brings the audience into and out of the frame of the performance. Tchantchès serves this role in the puppet theater. Interestingly, the term used in the fifteenth century manuscript mirrors the Walloon term for “puppeteer,” mêsse dèl djowe (master of the play). In the Nativity performances described above, Tchantchès introduced and closed the play in the theaters of Dufour and Pinet, framing the performance. Libert replaced the opening of Tchantchès with a disembodied off stage voice. This off stage narrator set the scene of the play in Walloon after the lights had been dimmed, saying that Joseph and Mary lived simply in a little house in Nazareth. He was a carpenter, she took care of the house and their neighbor, Bouyotte, was an old retired man from Liège. Dufour and Pinet began their shows with a conversation between Tchantchès and the audience. Dufour’s conversation was much more interactive than Pinet’s. Dufour’s Tchantchès conversed at length with the audience, speaking both in Walloon and in French as described earlier. It is only toward the end of this conversation that he introduced the Nativity Play. Unlike Libert, Dufour and Pinet did not introduce the characters and setting of the play, but talked instead about the play as part of the traditional puppetry repertoire. When Tchantchès spoke about this play, it was as if the puppeteer himself was talking, as shown by the following passage which began Pinet’s play. Je suis heureux de vous acceuillir turtous ici pour vous présenter un spectacle de marionnettes et surtout un spectacle de marionnettes traditionelles et ici c’est la haute tradition savez-vous. C’est de père en fils dans la famille depuis 1835 pour vous dire n’est-ce pas. Et la pièce qu’on a l’honneur de vous interpréter est de Pierre Paul Pinet, mon arrière grand oncle. {I’m happy to welcome you all here to present for you a puppet show and especially a traditional puppet show and here it’s the high tradition, you know. It’s from father to son in the family since 1835, just to let you know, okay. And the play that we have the honor of presenting to you is from Pierre Paul Pinet, my great great uncle.}

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Dufour’s Tchantchès also spoke in a metaperformative style as if he were the puppeteer himself. Alors vous savez bien que comme c’est la tradition au Musée de la Vie Wallonne, on va vous donner aujourd’hui comme représentation, la pièce qui a pour titre “Li Naissance.” Ça veut dire “La Nativité.” Et la Nativité bah c’est Jesus qui vient au monde (Ah) Ah oui mais, il a de la chance lui, il vient au monde toutes les années lui (laughter, Non, c’est pas vrai) Siya, c’est vrai (Non) Siya, parce qu’il a encore venu au monde l’année dernière (Non, c’est son anniversaire) Mais tu vas le voir tantôt hein. Voilà mais cette année ci, cette année ci, le Jesus je crois qu’il est blond (laughter) L’année dernière il était brun (louder laughter). Awé, mais celui de cette année, il n’est pas facile hein ( ?) Awé il pleure pour un rien du tout. Alors on va essayer de le faire dormir quand il viendra sur la scène, il faudra essayer de ne pas le réveiller hein pace que si vous le réveillez vous allez voir des embêtements hein. Et i crie hein celui là. Po moi ça sera un tenor quand il sera grand. {So, you well know that since it’s the tradition at the Museum of Walloon Life, we’re going to perform for you today the play that has the title “Li Naissance.” That means “The Nativity.” And the Nativity well, it’s Jesus who is born (Ah) Well yeah, he’s lucky he is, he is born every year (laughter, that’s not true) It sure is true (No) Yes it is, because he was already born last year. (No it’s his birthday.) But, you’re going to see him pretty soon, huh. So it is, but this year, this year, I think Jesus is blond (laughter) Last year he was brunette. (louder laughter). Yeah, but the one this year, he’s not easy-going, huh (?) Yeah, he cries for nothing at all. So, we’re going to try to make him sleep when he comes on stage, you’ve got to try to not wake him up because if you do, you’re going to see some trouble, huh. And he cries, that one. In my opinion, he’ll be a tenor when he grows up.}

Both puppeteers employed the word “tradition” in their framing remarks and placed themselves firmly in positions of authority. Pinet stressed that it was a family tradition while Dufour specifically attributed the tradition to the Museum of Walloon Life. Pinet continued with more information about the tradition of puppetry in his family. He named the author of the Nativity play he was about to perform. Dufour, instead of speaking of the production of the script, entered into the content of the play, but not in the sense of introducing the characters and setting the scene. First of all, he appeared to make fun of the belief that Christ is reborn every year. The children in the audience did not

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seem to follow this custom, believing, instead that Christmas was the celebration of Christ’s birthday. Dufour did not let that interrupt his narrative, since he really just brought it up to make fun of it. He talked instead about the physicality of Christ, eliciting laughter from a subject which in official culture calls for utmost seriousness. First, he mentioned how Christ’s hair is a different color from last year.137 This double-voiced comment could be interpreted as referring to Christ or to the doll he uses to represent Christ. The oppositions Christ/Human and Puppet/Human can be easily confused when the puppet is representing Christ. Secondly, Dufour talked about the baby’s bad temper and how easily he cries, contradicting the official representation of the peacefulness and wisdom of the Holy Child. These comments, too, can be interpreted either as going against official Christian dogma, or as a clever ploy to keep the children in the audience quiet by telling them not to wake the baby. The introductory remarks not only shifted the audience from the world of humans to the world of puppets, but they secularized the drama that was about to be represented. They didn’t mention its sacredness or create an air of seriousness. Dufour and Pinet pointed out its status as a tradition, but not as a religious tradition. I should mention that backstage, the Nativity puppets were not treated differently from any of the other puppets and that Dufour absolutely refused to perform in conjunction with a religious service.138 Libert’s off stage narrator came in four other times during the play; twice to announce intermissions and then to introduce the scenes following intermissions. Although Pinet and Dufour did not have long intermissions, like Libert, in their shows, they both had to break to set up the crèche scene. Dufour arranged the break so that it occured just after the shepherds sang and danced their way off stage. He closed the curtains and turned on Tino Rossi’s Minuit Chrétien, letting the music announce the break. Pinet broke just after the three kings crossed the stage following the star. He then had Tchantchès tell the audience: While the kings and shepherds are on their way to adore the baby Jesus, we’re going to take two or three minutes to prepare the crèche. If you have something little or big to do, don’t be embarrassed. It’s there in the back near the cloakroom. There’s paper on the wall and it’s free.

Dufour’s use of the song, Minuit Chrétien, although anachronistic with the time period of the play, maintained the focus on the (re)birth of Christ, since it has become part of the Christmas tradition in Belgium. (The old friends Dufour

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introduced me to in St. Pholien encouraged me to put bread, salt, water and coins on the outside window sill before midnight on December 24th. They told me that at midnight, Tino Rossi would begin singing Minuit Chrétien on the radio, Christ would be reborn and our offerings would be blessed.) Pinet allowed the audience to believe that the shepherds and wisemen would continue looking for the manger while the curtain was closed, but then shifted the focus to bodily urges here and now. After the brief intermission, both puppeteers opened the curtain directly on the crèche scene with no introductory remarks. There were other times within performances when characters turned to the audience and said something that referred to the human world and not the world of the other actors on stage. Rather than framing the performance, these quips break the frame of performance in a pleasurable way. They are basically of two types: one primarily for children and the other primarily for adults. The first kind is meant to actively engage children in the show. Tchantchès might ask them in which direction the villain fled, or he might ask them to stand guard for him. In the right bank style, villains may also threaten and get into arguments with the children. During some shows, children are made to feel like they are directing the action of the show and may stand up and yell at the puppet characters, much to the delight of the adults in the back of the room. In practically every show, there is a chance for the children to scream “Allez Tchantchès!” as he fights the “evildoers.” Puppeteers encourage the idea that it is through their screams that Tchantchès gains the power he needs to win the battle. They recognize that children like the battles most of all and find the two religious plays problematic because of the lack of battles. Dufour has remedied this by inserting a battle between a tchantchès and one of Herod’s soldiers during the Massacre of the Innocents, “so they don’t get bored,” he reasoned. The second type of frame breaking consists of injecting an anachronistic comment which draws attention to contemporary life and politics. During the Nativity plays under examination, all three puppeteers made reference to the unfairness of a class system, Pinet and Libert made anti-war statements, Dufour and Libert made fun of Belgium’s linguistic problem, Pinet brought up the high unemployment rate and Libert the financial difficulties of national and local government. These issues will be examined more thoroughly in the final chapter, but here I simply want to point out their frame-breaking qualities. To end the frame of the play, Dufour closed the curtain after the Massacre of the Innocents and brought out the tchantchès, François who talked about the evilness of Herod and his men.139 “But,” he added “they didn’t find my little

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son.” He told the children that he hid him in the pocket of his tie. “That’s where your fathers hide all their money. But don’t tell your mothers.” Having thus made the transition from the frame of the historic puppet show back to real life, François declared the show over, told the audience that he hoped they enjoyed it, and announced the times of upcoming shows. He told them all to bring their friends on Sunday and to come with a bouquette (a heavy crèpe made during the Christmas season) and a bottle of pèkèt and they would have a big party after the show. In Pinet’s play the transition was sharper from the massacre to a more joyous occasion. Tchantchès briefly sympathized with the people who lost their children then said: “Well our little play in principle ends here but not altogether, as you know.” He explained a few Walloon Christmas traditions involving food and drink and the various subaltern characters gathered on stage for a party with real pèkèt and bouquettes and sang two Walloon Christmas songs. Pinet’s Tchantchès ended by encouraging the audience members to donate to the poor of Liège. Libert ended the play just after the adoration in the manger. After the highly amusing parade of gift-givers, he shifted gears, and had Tchantchès say a serious prayer that we not be judged too harshly in our sins. The curtain closed and Tchantchès emerged again. Now he was completely part of the here and now and made no mention of the Nativity play from which he just emerged. He proceded to announce the weekly raffle for various small prizes donated by local businesses to the Free Republic of Outremeuse: a tart, a bottle of wine, a free pass to the Walloon theater down the street. One of the officials of the Republic in charge of announcing the winning tickets stood in front of the stage and chose a child to draw the winning tickets, while Tchantchès, standing on stage, announced the prizes. Much more than the chivalric plays, the Nativity, performed during the season of joyous eating, drinking and commercial frenzy, presents a transitional problem for puppeteers. The plays they commonly perform are either heroic epics or comedies. They have been able to insert elements from these genres into the Nativity, but they feel compelled to maintain a serious ending. Libert ended his play at the height of the sacred manger scene with a serious prayer for today’s audience. Dufour and Pinet brought theirs to a close after the massacre of babies; a scene that is horrific, rather than heroic. All three were left with the problem of how to transition back to Christmas cheer. Libert made the cleanest break. The closing of the curtains ended the play and when it re-

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opened, Tchantchès got on with today’s business and made no reference to the play. Pinet’s Tchantchès took on his metaperformative voice again and verbalized the fact that “the play” was finished. Only Dufour’s Tchantchès referenced his role within the play and how he was able to save his son from Herod’s soldiers. The place where the son was hidden is pointed out to be the same place where fathers hide their money — much sought after during the Christmas season. The final topic of all three shows was food and drink, shifting into the merriment of the season. In this chapter I examined processes of entextualization and co-temporal refractions from three different performer lineages of the biblical story of Christ’s birth. All three performers regarded their shows as intrinsically different from the others, despite certain similarities. In the following chapter, I shift to a single performer lineage where subsequent generations regard their shows as being basically the same, despite certain differences.

CHAPTER 7

Closing Intertextual Gaps

The desire to “relocate the original instance of discourse to a new context” (Urban 1996: 21) dominates the discussion in this chapter. We use the term “replication” to refer to the attempt to close the gap between texts, so that they continue to appear the same through time. Replication constitutes a specific instance of the general process of mimesis where the copy draws “on the character and power of the original, to the point whereby the representation may even assume that character and that power” (Taussig 1993:xiii). I have chosen to look at the Verrées-Dufour-(Deville)-Ficarrotta performer lineage because there is a general feeling that replication is more important in this performer lineage than it is in many of the others and because I have a number of their scripts, and recordings of their performances stretched over three generations and almost forty years. I continue the focus on the Nativity play, beginning with an examination of a teaching session which took place just before Christmas in 1982. In this section I concentrate on scripted words. In the next one I compare and contrast the unscripted Massacre of the Innocents segment of Nativity plays performed by Victor Verrées in 1957 and by Joseph Ficarrotta in 1987, taking note of their differential use of Walloon. Finally, I look beyond the word to examine the role of musicality as a method of closing intertextual gaps.

7.1. Cultural Transmission In Lefevere’s (1984) discussion of refraction, the author/cartoonist/artist/ musician has in mind creating a new text which is not a replica of the model text. The replicated text is, in fact, looked down upon in the literary/artistic world and even designated as criminal with such terms as “counterfeit” and “plagiarized.” The elite literary world prizes the appearance of individuality

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and maligns texts that seem to be mere copies. Linguistic anthropologists working with oral literature have looked at replication in a much more positive light as the central mechanism of cultural transmission. Here they are working within the tradition of Benjamin Whorf’s notion of “habitual thought” and Pierre Bourdieu’s of “habitus,” both of which try to get at the central unconscious patterns that shape culture. Within the context of unwritten oral traditions, Urban notes that replication is most likely to occur when the original represents itself as detached from the originator (1996: 38). So, a traditional myth (like the Nativity play) is more likely replicated than a personal anecdote. Similar to the traditions studied by Urban, traditional stories which have no known ‘original author’ are the texts most likely to be replicated in the puppet theater. Unlike Urban’s Shokleng myths, however, writing is an integral part of the tradition. Urban also addresses the question of the relationship between originator and copier, finding that the more symmetical and egalitarian this relationship is, the greater will be the divergence between original and copy (1996: 37). The hierarchical, respectful relationship that obtains between master puppeteers and their apprentices creates a context for replication and in Liège, the puppeteers who apprenticed themselves to master puppeteers as boys are the people most likely to try to replicate performances. As we saw in the last chapter, Pinet and Dufour learned the trade through apprenticeship and these were precisely the puppeteers who insisted on their role as bearer of tradition, emphasizing that their scripts preceded them. They prided themselves on good execution of the play, and were publicly apologetic about or dismissive of their originality. Libert, on the other hand, wrote his own Nativity script and consequently felt free to toy around with it each year. He had no ancestor whose performances he was trying to replicate and expected no one to replicate his. In 1982, his son, Michel, was already developing his own version of the Nativity play with a different twist. Michel said that he would rather leave it out of his repertoire than perform it the same old way. The desire to replicate the words of past puppeteers is a form of reported speech in which the goal of replication is the discourse event itself. Reported speech is also an organizing rhetorical device within texts and this, too, creates stability in oral texts over time (Bauman 1986). This notion of reported speech is multifaceted in the puppet theater. In one sense, the entire content of puppet shows is reported speech, since the puppeteer speaks in the voices of multiple characters. In another sense, the entire event is one of reported speech when

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we see each puppet show as the continuance of a tradition of performing puppet shows. In yet another sense, we can see a bifurcation between types of reported speech in the puppet theater, depending on the perceived originators of the speech. On one hand, we have the words of the historical characters which are thought to replicate words actually said at the point in history when the story supposedly happened. On the other hand, we have the words of the tchantchès which are thought to originate in the mouths of past puppeteers at a later point in history. Puppeteers feel more comfortable manipulating the second kind of reported speech. This is due to their close identification with past puppeteers and their confidence in capturing the intended spirit of the words. Not only, is it more difficult for puppeteers to identify with past historical figures than with earlier puppeteers, but words of historical characters have been handed down in written, not oral form. As puppeteers differentiate the two types of reported speech according to their perceived relationship with the “original” speakers, artistic tension arises between sections of the play where one or the other type of character predominates. Whether verbal artists stress replication or originality, these are only ideals. In reality, nothing is completely original or entirely the same. The past informs, but never subsumes the present. Humans continually refract texts whether they feel they are creating an original or producing an exact replica. A completely original utterance would be incomprehensible and even an exact replica is not the same when uttered in a new context. So, rather than exploring exact replicas and complete originals, we look at the varying degrees of sameness and difference which pattern types of discourse and which are used strategically by speakers. The puppet theater is far from being an oral tradition in the classic pattern described by Lord (1960). It is not a purely oral tradition and yet it is largely transmitted orally. It shows qualities of what Lord later described as a transitional text (1995) in that both fixity and fluidity of text co-occur during a single puppet performance, but the fixity goes beyond Lord’s notion of a certain stability of formulas and themes and heads into memorization. In fact, in the master/apprentice model, the performance is formally differentiated into parts which must be memorized; parts which must be thematically followed, but the replication of exact wording is not necessary; and parts which are open to pure improvisation. In other words, an apprentice will try to replicate his master’s performance, but integral to the replication is a continual updating of the speech of subaltern characters and the improvised interaction with the audi-

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ence which, by definition, is original. Within the cultural transmission of this speech genre, then, we find reading, writing, memorization, improvisation and subliminal patterning. In this chapter I discuss the two stable parts of performances: the scripted and nonscripted parts of the story. The dialogues of Tchantchès with the audience are highly idiosyncratic and context dependent, and are treated in chapters 8 and 10. A good place to begin our examination of replication is by examining a teacher/student dialogued performance between Dufour and Deville. Remember that Dufour established a puppetry school in 1982 in which Deville (who had apprenticed to Engels) was a student. Pedagogically-oriented performances tell us what a teacher thinks is important for the student to learn. This may not completely match what the teacher says is important to learn. For example, Dufour told his students that they should perform the shows “in their own way,” but no evidence of this was apparent in the teaching session on December 12 1982, three days before Christian Deville was to perform Dufour’s Nativity Play at the Museum of Walloon Life. Joseph Ficarrotta, and Deville’s son Hubert helped him with puppet manipulation while Dufour sat in the audience, yelling out corrections. Deville performed with a script in front of him that he had transcribed from a recording of Dufour. I put one microphone on Deville and hung the other outside the theater to capture Dufour in the audience (not always successfully). The first correction Dufour made was to tell Deville to slow down his speech. All master puppeteers told me that their students had to work on this. Dufour also commented on the manipulation of puppets: if they were looking the wrong way, or should be moved in a crisper, more rapid fashion. And he commented on voice quality, as in, “quand i tchoûle, c’est pas l’ minme que quand i rèy” {when he cries it’s not the same as when he laughs}. More often than explaining what was wrong, Dufour interrupted the performance and performed the defective lines, expecting them to be repeated word for word in the same manner. Sometimes he became carried away with his own performance and continued the passage to the end of the scene. When this happened, Deville (seeing an opening for passive resistance) would wink at his assistants and go on to the next scene. I never saw Dufour ask him to repeat. Below, I have transcribed a representative part of this session. I reproduce a passage as it is printed in the script first and then show how it was broken up in the practice session. It occurs at the beginning of scene 11 of the Nativity play outlined earlier. In a typical Dufour performance, it took about one

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minute to say, but in the practice session, five and a half minutes were spent on this passage. SCRIPT Oui mes seigneurs, à cette époque, c’est dans tout l’Orient une opinion constante qu’un roi doit sortir de Judée pour conquérir l’empire du monde, au milieu de cette attente universelle un astre inconnu à brillé au ciel et nous les Mages de la Perse toujours attentifs à la marche des étoiles, nous avons vu cet astre et nous y avons reconnu un signe merveilleux. Seigneur Balthasar Gaspar souvenez vous que d’après les prophéties de Balaam l’arrivée du Messie doit être signalée par une étoile. C’est pour cela que nous avons résolu d’aller en Judée rechercher celui que le ciel annonçait. {Yes my sirs, at this time, throughout the whole Orient, it is a constant opinion that a king should be born in Judea to conquer the world empire, in the middle of this universal wait an unknown star shone in the sky and we, the Kings of Persia, always attentive to the movement of the stars, we saw this star and we recognized in it a marvelous sign. Sir Balthasar Gaspar remember that according to the prophesies of Balaam the arrival of the Mesiah must be signalled by a star. It is for that reason that we have resolved to go to Judea to look for the one that the heavens announce.}

The script is written in cursive and the line breaks do not correspond to intonational/pause breaks. I have chosen not to represent these line breaks below, to concentrate the reader’s attention on the interruptions. I use / to indicate cut off speech and capitalization to indicate overlapped speech. PERFORMANCE PRACTICE 1 Dev: Oui mes seigneurs, à cette époque, c’est dans tout l’Orient une opinion constante qu’un roi doit naître en Judée pour conquérir l’empire du monde, au milieu de cette attente universelle, un astre inconnu a brillé [brilje] au ciel et nous, les Mages de la Perse, toujours attentifs à la marche des étoiles, nous avons vu cet astre et nous y avons reconnu un signe merveilleux. Seigneur Gaspar, souvenez-vous que d’après les prophé[t]ies de Balaam/ 2 Duf: Les prophé[s]ies. C’est “t.” On n’ dit nin prophé[t]ies. 3 Dev: Awé hin. C’est vrai. SOUVENEZ-VOUS QUE D’APRÈS LES PROPHÉTIES DE BALAAM 4 Duf: SOUVENEZ-VOUS QUE D’APRÈS LES PROPHÉTIES DE

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

24 25

26 27

BALAAM Dev: l’arrivée du Messie devait-z- être signalé par une étoile/ Duf: doit être signalée par une étoile. Dev: C’est pour cela que nous avons quitté (pause) que nous avons résolu d’aller jusqu’en Judée ch/ Duf: d’aller en Judée chercher celui que le ciel annonçait Dev: Seigneur Gaspar, souvenez-vous que d’après les prophéties de Balaam, l’arrivée du/ Duf: A mins, Djozèf ni dit nin çoula, in! Dev: Non mais je recommence puisque j’ai Duf: (?) alôrs qu’i djåzéve. Dev: Bin, awé Duf: Èt n’èstîz nin tot près onk di l’ôte, in. (pause) Alez ratake avou tès Rwas Mâjes. Dev: (Alèz, Avancez ainsi!) Oui, mes seigneurs! à cette époque, c’est dans tout l’Orient une opinion constante QU’UN ROI Duf: QU’UN ROI Dev: doit naître en Judée/ Duf: doit sortir de Judée, I n’ djåse nin de “naître.” Dev: doit sortir de Judée? Duf: Hein? Euh, oui mes seigneurs, a cette époque, c’est dans tout l’Orient une opinion constante qu’un roi doit sortir de Judée pour conquérir l’empire du monde. C’est pour cela que nous avons résolu/ Dev: Non! Duf: Non! (?) C’èst bon. Vou bin, mi. Dev: Oui mes seigneurs! À cette époque, c’est dans tout l’Orient une opinion constante qu’un roi doit naître, euh doit sortir de Judée pour conquérir l’empire du monde. Au milieu de cette attente universelle UN ASTRE INCONNU A BRILLÉ AU CIEL ET NOUS LES MAGES Duf: UN ASTRE INCONNU A BRILLE AU CIEL ET NOUS LES MAGES Dev: de la Perse toujours attentifs a la marche des étoiles, nous avons vu cet ASTRE ET NOUS Y AVONS RECONNU UN SIGNE MERVEILLEUX. Duf: ASTRE ET NOUS Y AVONS RECONNU UN SIGNE MERVEILLEUX. Dev: Seigneur Gaspar, souvenez-vous que d’après les prophéties de Balaam l’arrivée du Messie devait être SIGNALÉE PAR UNE ÉTOILE/

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28 29 30 31 32

Duf:DOIT ETRE SIGNALEE PAR une étoile Dev: C’est pour cela/ Duf: Elle ne “devait” pas, elle “doit.” Tu vas fé rîre di twè! Dev: Comment? Duf: Tè, elle devait ... Non! ... Ci n’èst nin co fêt. Il n’èst nin co å monde. Souvenez-vous que d’après les prophéties de Balaam l’arrivée du Messie doit être signalée par une étoile. C’est pour cela que nous avons résolu d’aller en Judée chercher celui que le ciel annonçait. (?) Fåt fé atincion, hin, à çoula (pause) Alèz! 33 Dev: Atins dji corîje, in Seigneur Gaspar souvenez-vous que d’après les prophéties de Balaam L’ARRIVÉE du Messie 34 Duf: L’ARRIVÉE 35 Dev: doit être signalée par une étoile. C’est pour cela que nous avons résolu d’aller en Judée chercher celui que le ciel annonçait.

This transcript shows Dufour’s insistence on Deville’s exact replication. In all, four mistakes in the passage were corrected. The first mistake/correction (passages 1 and 2) was simply a pronunciation mistake of an unfamiliar word, “prophéties” which Deville initially pronounced with a /t/ as it is spelled rather than a /s/. The second (passages 5 and 6) was the correction of Deville’s past imperfect tense “devait” for a present tense “doit”. The third was Deville’s addition of “jusque” before “en Judée” (in passage 7) which Dufour did not like. The fourth mistake was Deville’s substitution of “naître” for “sortir” in passage 17. Deville made this substitution in the first passage and it wasn’t caught by Dufour. After the correction, he made it a third time (passage 23), but corrected himself. He also repeated the tense mistake (passage 27) and Dufour cut him off. Deville tried to continue the speech after the tense error, but Dufour cut him off again (passage 30) insisting that it had to be “doit,” not “devait.” Then he told Deville in Walloon “You’ll make a laughing stock of yourself!” Deville answered, “What?” (passage 31). It is unclear whether he didn’t understand the sentence or the severity of his error. Dufour is audibly upset in passage 32 and finally bursts out with, “It hasn’t happened yet. He has not been born yet”. Dufour then performed the lines, rather than metalinguistically explaining that the imperfect tense Deville used describes past action and since he is recounting a prophesy made before Christ’s birth, he cannot substitute a past tense. It seems that any teacher would correct pronunciation and tense mistakes, but the third and fourth corrections made by Dufour demonstrate the desire for memorization.

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Which innovations are acceptable within a tradition and which are not is a perennial question for folklorists. As is clear from the transcript above, deviations from the written speeches of historic characters were simply wrong, not stylistically innovative, in Dufour’s view. Yet, Dufour told his students that they should perform the show “in their own way.” This made me curious to see how Dufour would correct Deville’s performance of the unscripted parts of the Massacre of the Innocents. Interestingly, the practice session had to be cut off before he reached that scene and Dufour did not seem unduly concerned that they had not gotten to it. I came to realize that it was through the flexibility of the tchantchès scenes that young puppeteers performed the show “in their own way.” There are two major types of unscripted tchantchès scenes in the VerréesDufour-(Deville)-Ficarrotta performer lineage which differ in their degree of replication: Tchantchès’ framing conversations with the audience and dramatic scenes in which tchantchès characters predominate. Young puppeteers brand their performances as their own primarily through the introductory and concluding conversations between Tchantchès and the audience. These scenes cannot be simply replicated since their purpose is to talk about contemporary events. The other kind of unscripted tchantchès scene is integral to the story being performed. Puppeteers have a certain amount of freedom in these scenes as can be detected by Dufour’s lack of concern in monitoring Deville’s practice of this scene. However, what is more interesting in the purview of this chapter is the high degree of similarity between these integrated tchantchès scenes within the same performer lineage. Let’s give this a closer look.

7.2. Unscripted Continuity When Deville performed in front of a real audience on December 15th, he had no trouble with Tchantchès’ interactions with the audience since he had, after all, been performing in Engels’ improvisational style for several years. He continued with a very close replication of the script, even using Dufour’s intonation patterns. During the Massacre of the Innocents, he deviated more from Dufour than in the scripted scenes, but he followed the basic plot line, nevertheless. The biggest difference was the transposition of the last two tchantchès, so that the exchange about not having the key to the building came before the scene involving Nanèsse pretending to go shopping and running off with the baby.

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I timed Deville’s massacre at 4 minutes, 20 seconds which was 30 seconds to 1 minute shorter than the three performances of Dufour’s that I recorded in 1982, but longer than the Dufour performance recorded in 1949. The seven Massacres I timed ranged from 3 minutes 35 seconds (Dufour 1949) to 6 minutes 5 seconds (Ficarrotta 12/23/87). These are the oldest and most recent recordings I have. The other recordings seem to roughly line up with a slight expansion over time, but I cannot say whether this is significant since I do not know the conditions of the earlier recordings. Increases in time are due to longer battles or stretching out a single exchange into two or three, rather than adding new content. Far more significant is how similar each of the seven performances are, despite the lack of a script. Comparing a Nativity performance by Dufour’s teacher, Victor Verrées in 1957 with one of his student, Joseph Ficarrotta in 1987, I found that the scripted speeches of historical characters were very close, only occasionally did the words not match up exactly.140 On the other hand, the opening conversations between Tchantchès and the audience were very different. Ficarrotta’s 5 minute opening was far more elaborate and incorporated some elements found in the performances of Deville and Pinet. Verrées’ 1 minute 10 second opening was very direct and made me wonder whether he was made uncomfortable by the presence of the recording equipment. What I concentrate on here is the section of the performance which conforms most closely to the unwritten oral traditions studied by Parry and Lord and their followers. I am talking about the parts which are integral to the story (unlike Tchantchès’ free floating framing dialogue with the audience), though not scripted. In particular, I focus on the Massacre of the Innocents. The Verrées show transcribed in part below was performed before Ficarrotta was born, yet the similarities are striking. I have put the passage numbers in parentheses when the passages are clearly an elaboration of the same exchange.

1a

Verrées 1957 Time: 4 min. 53 sec.

Ficarrotta 1987 Time: 5 minutes

FRANÇOIS Qu’a-t-i raconté ci-là? Avez-v’ compris çou qu’a dit, vos-ôtes? (Oui.) Qu’a-t-i / Qu’est-ce qu’il a dit donc? (Qu’on allait faire mourir tous les enfants.)

FRANÇOIS Et qu’est-ce qu’il a raconté, donc, ce vieux babouk-là. Vous avez compris quelque chose, vous autres, les enfants? (children yell) Comment?(Il veut tuer les

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On va fé mori lès-èfants? (Ah oui, oui!) Èt pocwè, don çoula? (Ben, pour êt(r)e sûr de faire mourir ... Jésus.) Â wè, valèt? Mins, mi dj’aveûs compris ôtreumint, mi. Dj’aveûs compris qu’i d’héve que tous les petits Martins qui n’avaient pas des dints n’ savaient pas manger du massepain.(Â!) Ci n’èst nin çoula? (Non!) Ça fêt qu’i vout fé mori lès-èfants valèt? (Oui! Oui!) Mon Dju! ‘T-on bê moudreû d’aguèces, ci-là! Bin, hoûtez bin! Dji va bin vite ènnè raler, ènon, mi èt dj’va aler catchî mi p’tit Grîse-Pîre, mi. Qui ... Qui v’ sonle-t-i, don, vos-ôtes? (Oui!) Awè, don, m’ fèye, don! ‘Qu’à tot rade, savez! N’èl dihez nin, savez! (Non!) A! Tinez ça por vos, èdon! (Oui!) N’èl dihez nin, savez! (Non!) C’èst bin compris, èdon! (Oui!) (puppet noise)

SOLDIER OFF-STAGE Allons, mes soldats, allons! Que tous les enfants due sexe masculin soient passés au fil de l’épée. Allons, allons! Dispersez-vous!

1b

2a

enfants!) I veut touwer / (Oui!) Nèni! Ci n’èst nin çoula qu’il a dit, in! Il a dit comme ça qui lèsèfants qui n’ont nin dès dints, i n’ polèt nin magnî dè mas’pin, in. (laughter) C’èst nin ça qu’il a dit? Siya, in? (Non!) Vous êtes certains qu’il a dit qu’il allait tuer les enfants? (Oui!) I n’èst nin ... C’è-st-on bon méchant, sais-tu là. Je vais vite aller cacher mon p’tit François, alors, hein, moi, les enfants. Hein? (Oui!) Allez! Allez! On va aller vite cacher le petit François, ainsi, hein.

GRÎSE PÎRE Ha! Bondjou Mossieû l’sôdård.! Îy, don! Îy, tonêre! Qui vos-èstez bê, vos! Pô vèyî ... O! Qué bê costume qui v’savez mètou! Por mi, vos avez stu fé vos påkes, édon, awè!

GRÎSE PÎRE Wè, wè! Qui n-a-t-i co, don? Qu’a-t-i à bouhî so m’ pwète insi hin, ci-là? Qué novèle, don? Va spiyî m’ pwète, sés’! Åy twè, quî voilà, Moncheû le sôdård! Qu’il èst bê, lui! Il a fêt sès påkes, sés’!

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2b

SOLDIER Dis-moi, mon ami! N’as-tu pas un enfant du sexe masculin chez toi?

SOLDIER Écoute, mon ami! As-tu des enfants du sexe masulin chez toi?

2c

GRÎSE PÎRE A! Dji n’ sé nin pocwè qu’vos l’ lomez Mårtin. Mins, mi, dji l’ lome Grîse Pîre come si papa.

GRÎSE PÎRE A! Dji n’ sé nin pocwè qu’i l’appelle Martin, mès mi, on l’ lome Grîse Pîre come si papa, in.

2d

SOLDIER Et quel âge a-t-il?

SOLDIER Et quel âge a-t-il?

2e

GRÎSE PÎRE O! Hoûtez! Bin, lèyîz-m’ on pô compter so mès deûts, savez! One, deûs...; Awè! Volà cink, sî samin.nes qu’on l’a batisé.

GRÎSE PÎRE Oy! Mâlèreûs! Tu m’en d’mandes beaucoup, sés’,toi. Je n’ sais pas compter. N’ai jamais été à l’école. Mais ce qu’ je peux t’ dire, mon Dieu, hein... ; N’a n’a djusse deûs meûs qu’on l’a batisé.

2f

SOLDIER Laisse-moi voir. (stabs the child)

SOLDIER Peut-on le voir?

2g

GRÎSE PÎRE Bin, wè, in! Dji va te l’ faire voir. Bin, wè! C’è-st-on bê, sés’, ci-là! Mâlèreûs!

2h

SOLDIER Tiens! Voilà ce que je fais de ton enfant!

SOLDIER Voilà ce que je fais de ton enfant! (stabs child)

2i

O! O! O! (?) C’èst çoula qu’il a fêt avou mi p’tit Grîse Pîre. Mins, fez atincion, alez! Si dji v’ ratrape måy, èdon, vos-alez passer on bê cwårt d’eûre, alez! (puppet noise)

GRÎSE PÎRE O! Moudreû d’aguèces! C’èst po ‘nnè fé çoula qu’il a d’mandé à vèyî mi p’tit Grîse Pîre. Mins, ratins, sés’! Si dji t’ ratrape måy, ti vas passer on bê cwårt d’eûre, sés’ twè!

3a

NICOLAS (Knocking) Oh!... Wice vas’? Doucement, valèt. Ni bouhez nin insi, Mi, dji n’ so nin soûrdô, savez!

NICOLAS (Knocking) Wè, wè, wè, wè! Qui n-a-t-i co, don? Â, c’est toi, Monsieû l’soldård! Mossieû l’ sôdård! Èt qué novèle èt c’mint va-t-i dipwè l’ timps qu’on n’ s’a plus vèyou?

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3b

SOLDIER Dis-moi, mon ami! N’as-tu pas des enfants du sexe masculin chez toi?

SOLDIER Mon ami, écoute-moi!

3c

NICOLAS Quéle linwe djåse-t-i, don, ci-là? Èstez-v’ åljéryin ou bin îtålyin, vos?

NICOLAS Wè! Qu’èst-ç qu’i-n-a?

3d

SOLDIER Allons! Réponds-moi!

SOLDIER As-tu des enfants du sexe masculin chez toi?

3e

NICOLAS Atindez, valèt! Ine munute. Dji deû fé ine sacwè ine comision à Djètrou èt quand’ dj m’årè-st-ocupé d’ lèy, dji m’ocup’rè d’ vos. (puppet noise)

NICOLAS Attends une petite minute, hein, Mossieû l’ sôdård! I-n-a Nanèsse, in.... Elle doit aller faire ses comichons et on va la laisser partir et puis on s’arrangera tous les deux. T’es d’accord, Monsieur le soldat?

3f 3g

SOLDIER Certes, mon ami! Certes! NICOLAS Alez, Djètrou! Èvôye! so ç’ timps-là (WAAAA)

NICOLAS Alèz, Nanèsse! Tu vas cori tro/ tot dreût, tot dreût, in. Ni tome nin! Mi, dji va m’ocuper d’ lu.

3h

NANESSE Bin, c’èst bon, insi.

3i

SOLDIER Alors, mon ami?

3j

NICOLAS Wè! Mais rattends un peu, Mossieû l’ sôdård! (WAAAAAAA!) Allez, cours Nanèsse!

3k

SOLDIER Misérable! (fight)

SOLDIER Misérable! (fight)

4a

TCHANTCHÈS I-n-a persone chal, vî fré. Lès djins sont-st-an chômâje. I n’ payî nin lès djins, i sont baguis.

TCHANTCHÈS Hê! I-n-a pèrsone chal? I-n-a pèrsone chal!

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4b

SOLDIER Ouvre-moi la porte, mon ami!!

SOLDIER Ouvre-moi la porte, mon ami!

4c

TCHANTCHÈS Dji n’ såreûs nin, hin. Dji n’a nin lès clés.

TCHANTCHÈS Dji n’ sé nin. Dji n’a nin l’ clé. Lès djins sont baguîs pace qu’i n’pèyît nin l’ lojiste, in.

4d

SOLDIER Ouvre, ou j’enfonce la porte!

SOLDIER Ouvre, ou je l’enfonce!

4e

TCHANTCHÈS A! Fês çou qu’ ti vous, valèt! C’èst nin mi qu’èst propiétêre. Dji n’ påy’rè rin, hin, mi.

TCHANTCHÈS Por mi, ti pous fé çou qu’ ti vous. Ci n’èst nin mi qu’èst propriétêre.

4f

SOLDIER Misérable! Si je te tiens, tu vas me l’ payer cher. (fight)

SOLDIER Misérable! (fight)

4g

TCHANTCHÈS Hé! Avancîz!

TCHANTCHÈS Èt hop, là! Hé!

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The two scenes line up very closely in content. After the initial interaction between Tchantchès (called François in the script) and the audience (1a-b), there are three interchanges between a tchantchès and a soldier. In Tchantchès conversation with the audience, he asks them what Herod said and then tells them that he understood it differently. He understood that Herod said that all the children (“Martins,” according to Verrées) who did not have teeth, couldn’t eat marzipan. He double checks with the audience “Isn’t that what he said?” They respond with “no.” He then repeats what the audience told him previously, “you mean that he is going to kill the children?” They respond in the affirmative and he calls Herod a name and says that he is going to quickly go hide his little son (Grîse Pîre for Verrées and François for Ficarrotta). Ficarrotta adds the far off voices of the soldiers arriving, while Verrées checks and double checks that the audience won’t tell the soldiers. Next, we have Grîse Pîre’s ineraction with the soldier (2a-i). He greets the soldier at the door and comments that he looks so nice, he must have just celebrated his confirmation. Confirmation was one time that the working class spent beyond their means to dress their children in fancy clothes. That the

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Christian/Catholic religion would not have yet been formed makes this into an amusing anachronism. The soldier does not respond to Grîse Pîre’s comment, but gets right to business asking him if he has masculine children at his house. Grîse Pîre misunderstands “masculine” for “Mårtin” and says he doesn’t know why the soldier is calling his son “Martin” when he is named Grîse Pîre like his father. Having verified that he does have a son, the soldier then asks his age. Grîse Pîre acts like the soldier just asked him to do a difficult task. Verrées has him count on his fingers and Joseph has him say that he can’t count, that he has never been to school. Both puppeteers end up saying how long it has been since he was baptised (5 or 6 weeks in Verrées and two months in Ficarrotta). Again we have Catholic rites of passage projected into a time period before they existed. The soldier asks to see the child. Ficarrotta elongates this scene slightly by adding an interjection by Grîse Pîre about what a beautiful baby he is (2g). When the baby is brought out, the soldier stabs him and throws him down on the stage. Grîse Pîre responds by calling the soldier a name and lamenting what the soldier did to his “little Grîse Pîre.” His sadness quickly seems to turn to anger and he yells after the soldier that if he ever catches him, he’ll spend a “pretty 15 minutes.” The following interchange (3a-k) begins with violent knocking. Nicolas answers the door, a little upset at the visitor’s insistence. Ficarrotta’s Nicolas appears to know the soldier since he adds “Oh it’s you…what’s new and how’s it been going since we last saw each other?” Once again, the solider ignores the question and gets right to the point, asking whether Nicolas has any male children. In Verrées’ show, the soldier says “Tell me, my friend. Have you not children of the masculine sex at your house?” (3b). This elevated register of French is treated like a foreign tongue by Nicolas who asks the audience, “What language is that guy speaking?” He, then, turns to the soldier and says, “Are you Algerian or Italian, you?” (3c). In 1957 when this play was performed, new immigrants were landing to work in the mines and steel industries of the Liège basin regularly. In 1987, the play was performed by the son of Italian immigrants who considered himself more Belgian than Italian. After the soldier’s question, Nicolas tells him to wait because Djètrou/Nanèsse is going to run some errands and afterwards he will take care of him. Nicolas then turns to his female companion and tells her to go. Once again, Ficarrotta’s scene is more elaborate and includes Nanèsse’s response to Nicolas (3h). As she leaves in both performances, the baby she is trying to hide begins to cry and a fight ensues.

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The last exchange (4a-g) begins with Tchantchès telling the soldier that no one is home. The people took off because they didn’t pay their rent. Ficarrotta adds this information after the soldier demands that he open the door while Verrées inserts it before. The soldier repeats, “Open, or I’ll bash it in” and Nicolas responds “Do what you want. It’s not me who is the owner.” Verrées’ Tchantchès adds that he won’t have to pay anything. The scene ends with a fight. So, the content is parallel, although only the soldier’s lines in passages 2d, 3k and 4b are identical. Other segments of passages are identical as in 2c “ l’ lome Grîse Pîre come si papa,” and 4a “I-n-a persone chal.” The second sentences in 4e differ only in the addition of the (redundant) negative particle before the verb by Ficarrotta. The final sentence in passage 2i is identical except that Verrées uses the formal form of address and Ficarrotta the informal. This appears to be in keeping with older Walloon speakers telling me never to use “ti” because it was vulgar. Then again, one would think that someone who had just killed your child would deserve to be the target of vulgar speech. If we move from content to form, other observations are pertinent. First of all, both puppeteers show different types of voices and rhythmicality for the soldiers on one hand and the tchantchès on the other. The soldiers only speak in French and their words are more homologous between the two performances than are the words of the tchantchès. Interesting differences in code choice are apparent in the lines of the tchantchès. One of the most striking differences is the reversal of codes in the initial speech. Verrées addresses the audience initially in Walloon, adds a sentence in French, and goes back to Walloon before presenting his mistranslation of Herod’s order in French (with one Walloon word “dints” to make the rhyme). Ficarrotta addresses the audience thirty years later in French (with two Walloon words), adds a sentence in Walloon then presents the mistranslation in Walloon. After the mistranslation, Verrées shifts back to Walloon for the remainder of the interaction, while Ficarrotta shifts back to French with a few Walloon interjections. Walloon was Verrées’ native language whereas Ficarrotta’s parents spoke Sicilian at home, while he and his siblings conversed in French. He had to put some effort into learning Walloon in order to be a puppeteer. He spent a lot of time listening to older puppeteers and to Walloon comedy records. Some of what he said in Walloon during performances, he did not feel competent to translate into French for me. For the remainder of the scene, Verrées’ tchantchès use Walloon exclusively. Ficarrotta’s tchantchès use a majority of Walloon, but only in five of the 13 passages is it not interspersed with French words.141

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Today, I think that most people would regard Ficarrotta’s tchantchès to be speaking Walloon. The fact that he interjects the French word “appelle” in passage 4, even though he uses the Walloon translation “lome” further down in the same passage, would probably not make people deviate from this impression. Sometimes, it is not clear where one language ends and the other begins because of bivalent terms which are pronounced the same in informal regional French and in Walloon. Orthographic conventions in the two languages force you to make a choice. For instance, “What did he say?” can be pronounced virtually the same in Walloon and in French, but in Walloon, it would be spelled “Qu’èst-ç qu’il a dit?” (or in a more divergent orthography, K’èst-ç k’il a dit?) and in French it would be “Qu’est-ce qu’il a dit?” I transcribed bivalent words as French in a French context and Walloon in a Walloon context, unless it appeared to be a translation, as in the second line of Verrées’ Tchantchès above. This illustrates how the border between languages can be blurred. Since the Massacre of the Innocents is an unwritten part of the play, we cannot say that the puppeteer has been constrained by the written words of historical characters. The desire to replicate, in this case, comes from the respect puppeteers have for past performers in their lineage. If we were to leave the subject of replication with the understanding that it is created by the respectful attitude toward original speakers (be they famous figures of history/mythology or local puppeteers who have left an impression on their followers) we would still not have the full picture, because the words may actually play a secondary role in the communicative event.

7.3. Rhythmic Continuity The 31 page Nativity script that Dufour gave to me is but a hint of the Nativity performance, and even if one was to include the Massacre of the Innocents in the script, it would still seem lifeless in comparison with its performance. Voice quality, intensity, pitch, pause structure, intonation pattern, and tempo, not to mention other sound effects and the entire visual component, all transform the small script into something quite different. Image and music may, in fact, leave a stronger impression than the meaning of the words in a puppet show. I commonly heard people characterize Dufour’s performances as “singing.” He elongated vowels and his pitch did not follow a normal conversational pattern when speaking for historical/mythological characters. Linguistic

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anthropologists have noted the capacity of music for suppressing intertextual gaps (Briggs and Bauman 1992: 158), so it is instructive that the VerréesDufour-Ficarrotta performer lineage stands out in Liège both for the musical qualities of the puppeteer’s voice and for showing the least deviation through the generations. Dufour was a musician and a music teacher on the side throughout most of his adult life. He prided himself on playing the drum and bragged (putting the words in someone else’s mouth) that when he played the drums, the puppets practically marched by themselves. Liège rod puppets do perform a sort of tap dance on the stage, as their wooden feet hit the wooden stage punctuating their words, like a percussive instrument. I eventually came to see the rhythm of puppet tap dancing as intricately intertwined with the speech of the puppets which itself was patterned into lines by intonation curves and pauses. In Urban’s exploration of Native South American discourse, he relates “style” with the unconscious, but suggests that consciousness and unconsciousness are two poles of a continuum, not mutually exclusive categories (1991: 178). That offers me a way to think about my own response to Liège puppet shows and quite possibly the responses of other people. When I was intensively recording puppet shows in 1982, I certainly acknowledged the extralinguistic sounds of the performance, but I was focused on what the puppeteer was saying, not what instrument he was playing, or what he was doing with the puppets. For example, I would usually turn my tapes over during a battle scene, so that I would only miss some of the drumming and not the words. Later, when, I was transcribing (after timing a fair number of battles) I would usually fast forward during the drumming/battle scenes. As I transcribed I filtered out the noise that did not originate in the puppeteer’s mouth, except for sound effects which affected the discourse. This isn’t to say that I restricted my analysis to the semantico-referential realm. I did specific analyses of voice qualities and rhythmicality. In fact it was due to my interest in intonation pattern that one day I trotted some samples of a puppet performance over to the pitch extractor in the linguistics department at the University of Texas. The technician who fed in my sample, nearly hit the roof when he heard the excerpt. “What is all that clomping noise!” he exclaimed. The lines on the machine went berserk and he declared that the sample was unusable. It was only then that I realized how my brain had filtered out those noises which I considered extraneous at the time. Yet, even while considering them extraneous, I do think that, on some unconscious level, I recognized the

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drumming and the clomping and even the clank of metal puppet rods against their hangers as integral to the performance. It is hard to even imagine the clear voice of a puppeteer reciting the story in dialogue form with no accompanying noise of puppets performing. Perhaps I will be accused of projecting my personal feelings on puppeteers, but I am suggesting that they process the “noise” and rhythmicality of the puppet theater in much the same way. The words are open for metalinguistic commentary, but most of what constitutes a puppet performance sinks into our unconscious over time. This is in keeping with Jakobson’s comments about the importance of intuition over rational elicitation in the writings of individual poets. He wrote that the “phonology and grammar of oral poetry offer a system of complex and elaborate correspondences which come into being, take effect, and are handed down through generations without anyone’s cognizance of the rules governing this intricate network” (Jakobson 1985:68). Words alone do not capture the essence of any communicative event, and perhaps least of all, a puppet performance. I compared Joseph’s opening soliloquy of the Nativity play in performances by three generations of puppeteers in the Verrées-Dufour-Ficarrotta performer lineage. Rather than writing it as prose, I followed the patterns of intonation and pause and divided it into lines. The transcription below refers specifically to the play Dufour performed on the day before Christmas, 1982, but the additional five performances that I analyzed showed the same line structure. Each line begins with an upswing in pitch on the first syllable except for the lines three and eight that are preceded by steep upswings on the final syllables of lines two and seven. The intonation patterns are practically identical for all six performances of the three puppeteers stretching over 38 years. The performances I compared included four by Dufour (1949, 1981–82, and two from 1982–83); a performance by Verrées in 1957 and one by Ficarrotta in 1987. In all the performances, Joseph has a medium pitched clear voice and transitions between different pitches and intensities are smooth. The overall effect is one of chanting, a characteristic of all historic roles in this performer lineage but identified most closely with chivalric nobles. The code employed is standard French in keeping with written standards. It is as if Joseph’s status as an historical (therefore written) character caused him to take on speech characteristics of the ruling class, even though he is understood to be a poor man. In the following chart you see the pitch contours produced through the auto pitch graph tool of Speech Analyzer 1.5.142 In addition to the combination of intonation pattern and pause structure combining to separate the lines of the

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text, I also noticed a relationship between these aspects of prosody and the manipulation of puppets. I underlined the syllables and pauses where you hear the noise of the puppet coming down on the wooden stage in two or more of the performances. This came to a total of ten composite clomps. No clomps can be heard on the 1949 recording of Dufour (which makes me wonder how the recording was done). The other five shows range from four to 18 clomps in 25 to 31.5 seconds. In none of the six performances analyzed did a puppet clomp occur after lines two and seven which both end with steep pitch rises. All other lines were marked by clomps at the end in one or more performances. The line end most consistently marked in this way (four of the six performances) is line four — just before the quoted speech. Puppet clomping in recent plays presented by Dufour were more homologous than they were with the other performances, even down to the same number of clomps. Ficarrotta and Verrées only clomped four times during the segment, but all of Verrées’ clomps and three of Ficarrotta’s occurred at the same spot as Dufour’s. This foray into pitch, pause, and puppet noise shows that it is misleading to attribute the high degree of replication in the Verrées-Dufour-Ficarrotta performer lineage solely to the importance of written scripts. The rhythm of the show which is made up of the clomping of puppets and the beating of drums, in combination with vocal patterns, supports the replication of linguistic material with or without the existence of written scripts. The distinction between oral and written traditions is decidedly blurry. Written scripts are cherished by puppeteers, but the mechanics of replication work on a more intuitive level through an absorption of music and rhythm which never becomes a subject of discussion as do content and lexicon. The purpose of the script is to correctly report the referential content of the words of historical characters. How these words are framed and presented falls into the realm of oral tradition.

CHAPTER 8

Embodying Identities Prosodic patterns enable a high level of replicability in the puppet theater, but they also are the stuff of which individual puppet voices are differentiated. The embodiment of identities in the puppet theater is the focus of this chapter. Richard Schechner in Between Theater and Anthropology situates humans as unique among animals since they carry and express multiple and ambivalent identities simultaneously (1985: 4). Schechner tends to focus on theater as a place of liberatory transformation where different identities can be expressed. Halm reminds us that human perception precedes and drives representation and that perception is “nearly always culturally and ideologically influenced” (1995:7). In his view theater is “a place of seeing that represents and illuminates the interested and fabricated nature of all views of the self and the world” (Halm 1995: 15). I do not deny that there is something transforming and liberatory about performing a puppet show, but I am more interested in the cultural/ideological influences on puppeteers’ perception that can be read through an ethnography of performance which pays close attention to language.143 Susan Gal suggests that the way linguistic forms map onto social groups is most productively approached as a question of language ideology (1998: 327). “(H)owever they arise, we have observed that both the system of linguistic contrasts and the system of social categories are usually noticed by speakers and are elaborated, systematized, and rationalized” (Gal 1998: 327). The way linguistic and paralinguistic differences are noticed and used by puppeteers to create different social categories on stage is the central concern of this chapter. I begin by exploring the semiotic relationship between puppet theater and life outside the theater. In the following section I examine how different puppeteers use four sociolinguistic variables in their performances. Then I explore social categories that are represented in the puppet theater and the linguistic dimensions of their construction.

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8.1. Puppet Bodies and Voices: Semiotic Insights Bogatyrev (1976 [1938]) described what we see in the theater as signs of signs. A tree stands for a forest and a painted bookshelf for a library. Puppet theater takes this process even further in that the live actor (who necessarily has life outside of the theater) is replaced by an object. This distinguishes puppet theater from live theater in elevating the importance of plastic art in the performance. Language in the puppet theater is in some ways similar to the objects of the theater in that a selective process occurs with language as well; the imitation of one or two features evokes a particular way of speaking which is actually defined by a series of such traits. Since the amount of language is necessarily reduced, distinctive traits are often concentrated. Puppet theater is also distinguished from live theater by the general separation of the speaking subject and the physical source of its voice. Besides manipulating puppets, puppeteers manipulate this separation to create an additional layer of semeosis. In some traditions, such as Japanese Bunraku, but also the Toone rod puppet theater in Brussels, the “speaker” is visible to the audience and does not physically manipulate the puppets. In other theaters, including the traditional Antwerp rod puppet theater, the puppeteer who physically manipulates the puppet speaks for that puppet, so there are multiple speakers, but they are hidden from view. In the Liège theater, one person speaks for all the puppets. He also physically manipulates the puppets, but he is helped by assistants in this domain. Sometimes the puppeteer is holding the rod of the puppet for whom he is speaking and sometimes he is not. Over the last few decades theoreticians have built on Prague School theory of the puppet theater, incorporating Piercean semiotics (Jurkowski 1988). They have focused on iconicity as the dominant mode of signifying in the theater. Certainly, iconicity which governs sign interpretation in mimesis strikes one as obvious when looking at chunks of wood carved to look like people, but when examining language in the puppet theater, indexicality appears even more interesting. Toro claims that indexicality makes theater discourse more like everyday communication than any other type of literary discourse because deixis links the locutionary act to a pragmatic context (Toro 1990: 80). While this can be said to characterize all theater, European traditional puppetry connects its theater discourse more extensively to the context outside the theater. Puppet voices in Liège index the social class, gender, age, and emotional state of individual puppet characters but they also index Liège through the particu-

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lar variety of regional French and Walloon as well as through references to specific people and places. A tension between iconicity and idexicality seems to exist in both the bodies and voices of puppets. Puppets are carved to look like people, but not just like people.144 For one thing they are miniaturized. They also don’t move like people and the size differential among them corresponds more to language about class position than it does biological variation. The voice of the Liège puppet is a real human voice unmodified by instruments, yet it is altered to refer to different types of people. These imitations are less often exact replicas of how real people of that category speak than they are indexical of those ways of speaking. In a few performer lineages, as we have discussed in the previous chapter, the voices created by a puppeteer are more likely to be iconic with the voices of his teacher, rather than with the social voices that surround him. Nevertheless, the voices must be understandable by contemporary audiences. If we look at a puppet show as a communicative event, the audience members should be able to decode the specific signs of the tradition. But the artist, also, “should know the sign systems existing potentially in the minds of the audience” (Jurkowski 1988:61). Puppets have a voice, a body, and a system of movement. If we compare Liège puppets to humans, each subsequent aspect is less mimetic of human beings than the previous one. The voice is an actual human voice with little modification. The body is usually carved in a realistic manner, though on a much reduced scale. The realm of movement has the least in common with its human counterpart. Puppets are manipulated by a single steel rod through the head and the limbs are articulated but not controlled. They move in hops across the wooden stage and jerk their heads from side to side as they speak. Their bodies lurch into inhuman angles to represent such actions as bowing, kneeling and sitting. During battles, the soldiers in the back (farthest away from contact with the enemy) are the first to die: their rods tossed onto the stage, cutting all ties to their animator. The puppet body is carved out of wood according to a variety of different models: pictures that accompany the old Bibliothèque bleue stories, the stories themselves, live people, statues, television and film images, imaginations, and the puppets of other carvers. Sometimes elements from various models are combined, though never in free variation. Visual features group the puppets into different social categories. Nobles tend to have the most realistic faces, albeit in a classical mask-like form. Commoners might have gaping mouths,

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Size/class differences in puppets (Note the anti-racist pin worn by Tchantchès)

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huge noses, and crossed-eyes. These were often carved as caricatures of people the puppet-maker knew. Knights often have insignia on their armor which index where they come from or their religion. In Engels theater, the traitors all had turned up moustaches. The puppets are put together with articulated joints in the neck, shoulders, elbows, hips and knees. Even here, we find variation depending on the social category of the character. Commoner puppets have cloth arms in most theaters and many Tchantchès have knees which bend both directions. Dress marks the social category of puppets as it does humans: the nobles wear rich velvets and brocades and the commoners cheap cottons. In addition to nobles and commoners, there are witches, devils, monsters, and other magical beings. The visual aspect of the puppets is important, but when I speak of embodying identities within the context of the Liège puppet theater, I am predominantly speaking of vocal dramatization since the voice animates the puppet. The primacy of language is clear in this tradition. I mentioned earlier how Joseph would sit outside the theater and listen to the performance as a boy, but no one could imagine attending a show where the puppets did not speak. Further illustrating this point is the fact that Dufour put out a record and François Pinet performed on the radio, but if a puppeteer comes down with laryngitis or the microphone does not work, the performance is cancelled. Tchantchès is the puppet who represents the puppeteer himself on stage. Puppeteers claim that he speaks in their voice. They, in turn, are often called Tchantchès and may even sign their own name as such. After the puppeteer has given his own voice to Tchantchès, he still has dozens of other puppets to equip with voices. Besides the voices of other puppeteers, ideas for voices, like the models for the physical bodies of puppets, can come from a variety of places: real life, radio, recordings, television, film, and even descriptions of voice quality in texts. Voices are not arbitrarily distributed to puppet characters. The body must fit the voice, Here, gender, social class, age, and phenotypical ethnicity cut down the range of possible voices each puppet could have. A particularly interesting iconic connection between puppet voices and the puppets themselves came to light after I noticed that some of the speech abnormalities exhibited by various tchantchès seemed to fit their faces. I then made it a practice to choose specific puppets and ask puppeteers how they would talk. They would look at the puppet’s face and mime its wooden features before speaking.145 If the puppet had an elongated face and rather dull-looking eyes, the puppeteer would drop his jaw and create a muffled sepulchral voice.

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If it had a big gaping mouth with visible teeth, gums, or tongue, the puppeteer would open his own mouth wide and produce enough saliva to create a slobbery voice. An unusually long nosed puppet would generally be matched with a nasalized voice. This process increases the realism in the theater by creating a less arbitrary link between voice and puppet.146

8.2. The Sociolinguistics of Performance A useful distinction to be made before going on is that between communicative and informative signs (Lyons 1977). Much of what a person does with language opens the receiver to information which the speaker does not intend to communicate. We may not intend to sound middle-class or female or tired, but all that information can be picked up from our speech. The fact that we, as receivers, do perceive the indexical link between certain linguistic variables and social information allows us to circulate easily in our own societies. The perception of linguistic variables lays the ground for conscious imitation of these variables. At this point, however, they become communicative instead of informative signs since the conveyance of the indexical information is intentional. Puppeteering in Liège (and many other places) is about consciously imitating the voices of others, yet in descriptions written by upper class Liégeois, it was the linguistic markers of the puppeteer’s class background, rather than the variables used to distinguish puppet characters that were remarked upon. For the past century Liège puppeteers have had upper class audience members, and the language of the puppet theater did not have the same effect on them as it had on the neighborhood working-class audience. The bourgeoisie was more likely to laugh at the regionalisms inserted in the theatrical noble speech and to praise the Walloon of Tchantchès while the working class was likely to be in awe of the flowery prestige variety of the nobles and to tire of Tchantchès’ banter. In response to this, some puppeteers increased lower class speech habits that brought laughter from the upper class audience while others converged with the higher variety, insisting that their new audience take the show seriously. In chapter two I mentioned several linguistic variables that distinguished different speech varieties in Liège, corresponding to class, age and formality. These same variables were in use in the puppet theater and I wanted to see whether quantification could help clarify how they were being used. When I examined the traits in puppet shows by five puppeteers to see how they were

EMBODYING IDENTITIES

Types of Puppets from Christian Deville’s theater

Lower class characters

Christian nobles

207

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Non Christian nobles and magicians

Witches and a skeleton

EMBODYING IDENTITIES

Devils

Monsters

209

210

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES

Christian Deville and his Tchantchès

EMBODYING IDENTITIES

211

used intentionally to differentiate puppet characters, it became clear that the same trait used communicatively by one puppeteer to mark a certain class of puppets was an informative sign in the case of another puppeteer — indexing his own age or class affiliation. I examined one play by each of five puppeteers — Engels, Dufour, Libert, Pinet, and Ancion. The puppeteers sampled here presented approximately three quarters of the puppet shows given yearly in the area of Liège in the early 1980s. Having listened to several plays in situ by each of these puppeteers (except for Engels who came out of retirement to perform a show for me), I can say that their systems of voice manipulation do not change from one play to the next. The widely varying durations of each play pose a problem for comparability between plays, but I think this is less of a problem than would be created by analyzing only parts of some plays in order to even out the duration times. The total time listed for each play is somewhat longer than the total speaking time since every play contains a certain number of battles and other nonspeaking sections. Following the sociolinguistic analysis laid out in chapter two, I examined four linguistic traits which seemed to follow variable patterns in Liège. They are: 1. the simplification of consonant clusters in word final position like “traître,” and “diable” — C(C)# 2. the substitution of intervocalic [lj] for the standard pronunciation of [j] in words spelled with “ll,” like “piller” — [j] > [lj] 3. the aspiration of “h” — silent > [h] 4. the substitution of [j] for formal [lj] in words like “milieu.” [lj] > [j] The following charts are organized according to characters within the plays. Only characters who say more than a few words and whose speech includes one of the variables listed above are included. The number before the colon refers to the number of times a variable occurred in the particular character’s speech. The number following the colon refers to the percentage of those times that the variable was pronounced in the regional or informal manner. Popular working-class characters are listed to the left of the vertical line. Plot summaries of the play precede each chart.

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ENGELS: “L’Enchanteur Ramanou” Time-15.44 min. The evil magician Ramanou calls on Satan to steal the princess Eléonor from her father King Lisvart, for whom Djefke is the servant. Tchantchès intercedes, fights a phantom, and brings the princess back home. Djefke 1 2 3 4

Tchantchès

Phantom

Satan Ramanou

Lisvart

9:56

2:0

2:0

2:0

3:0 1:100

1:100

DUFOUR: “Valentin à Constantinople” Time-24.67 min. An episode of Orson and Valentine in which Valentine (Vale) accompanies Pacolet (Paco) on his flying horse to Constantinople to meet his father. Duke Savary (Sava), Orson (Orso), Bellisant (Bell), and Esclarmonde bid him farewell. He is greeted soon afterwards by King Alexander (Alex), King Pepin (Pepi), and the Green Knight (GrKn) who are happy to see him since they are under seige by the Sultan Moradin (Sult) and slowly starving. Valentine leads two battles against the Saracens. He captures plenty of provisions for the Christians, but is finally captured himself. Tchantchès (Tch) introduces and closes the play and fights in the battles. (MSo=Moorish soldier; MKn=Moorish Knight; CKn=Christian Knight)

1 2 3 4

Tch

MSo MKn

CKn

Paco GrKn Orso

9:78

2:0

1:0

1:0

1:0

2:100 1:100 2:0

Vale Bell

1:0 1:0 24:4 1:0 1:100 1:100 1:100

Sava

Suit

Pepi Alex

3:0

1:0

6:0

10:0

3:0

1:0

1:100

LIBERT: “La Paix Brisée” Time-55 min. Saxon soldiers (Sxso) begin raiding Charlemagne’s subjects (Djef, Bouyotte [Bouy], Frankish soldier [FrSo]) despite the recent peace treaty he signed with their king, Wittikind (Witi). After being notified by his sergeant (Ser), Charlemagne (Char) sends his nephew, Roland (Rola), and Tchantchès (Tcha) to look into this. Wittikind’s nephew, Otto, tells Roland that his uncle ordered the plunder, but Tchantchès discovers that Otto himself arranged the breach of peace to discredit his uncle and gain the throne for himself. Peaceful relations are restored after several battles.

213

EMBODYING IDENTITIES

Djef 1 2 3 4

Bouy Tcha

2:100 2:100 2:100 1:100 1:100 1:100

SxSo FrSo Serg

Otto

2:50 2:50

8:0 9:12 7:14 5:20 1:100 2:50 1:100 4:0

3:33 2:50

7:29 2:0

Rola Witi

2:0

1:0

Char

3:0

PINET: “La Prise du Montfort” Time-56 min. An episode of Les Quatre Fils Aymon which opens with Renaud (Rena), Allard (Alla), and their two brothers hiding from Charlemagne (Char) at the Montfort Castle with their servants Cheveux (Chev) and Tchantchès (Tcha). Hernier (Hern) tricks them into thinking he defended them in front of Charlemagne and because of this was banished from the court. The Aymon brothers give him shelter and during the night, he sets the castle on fire. Bayard, their magical horse, awakens the brothers and they escape. Later Ogier and Duke Aymon come across the brothers in the woods. They return to tell Charlemagne and he accuses Aymon of protecting his children and therefore of being a traitor. Naymes tries to keep the peace, but Aymon returns home to his wife, Aude, in dispair. Chev 1 2 3 4

Tcha

2:1003 38:95 3:0 2:100 7:100 1:100 6:100

Kn

Alla

1:100

Hern Rena 4:25

Ogier Aude

11:55 1:0

7:14

Aymon

Naymes Char

11:45

10:40 1:0 1:0 1:100

2:50 2:100 3:0 1:100 1:100

12:50 5:0 2:100

ANCION: “Geneviève de Brabant” Time-84 min. When Count Siegfried goes to war, he leaves his pregnant wife, Geneviève, in the care of his traitorous friend, Golo. When Geneviève refuses his advances, he accuses her of adultery and has two servants (Robosse and Tchantchès [Tch]) take her away to be killed. Having pity on her, they simply leave her in the forest where she gives birth to a son, Benoni. There Geneviève and Benoni live for several years until one day Count Siegfried discovers them while out hunting. The truth is discovered and Golo is drawn and quartered. (RomGu=Roman Guard).

1 2 3 4

Robosse

Tch

RomGu

Golo

Benoni Priest

Geneviève

Siegfried

2:0 2:50

22:27 1:0

3:0

17:12 3:0 1:0

4:0 1:0

15:0 1:0 2:0

15:7 4:0

3:0

3:0 1:0

1:0

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The chart below compares the five puppeteers according to their ranges and averages of usage of the four variable traits selected. The top line represents the number of times that variable occurred in each play. The range represents the lowest and highest character percentages of regional or informal pronunciations, and the final line gives the overall percentage of these pronunciations for each puppeteer. Engels

Dufour

Libert

Pinet

Ancion

C(C)#

# range avg.

18 O-56% 28%

61 0–78% 13%

46 0–100% 24%

97 0–100% 64%

79 0–27% 11%

j > lj

# range avg.

0 NA NA

2 NA 100%

16 0–100% 44%

6 0–50% 17%

12 0–50% 8%

ø>h

# range avg.

2 NA 100%

5 NA 100%

1 NA 100%

20 0–100% 45%

3 NA 0%

lj > j

# range avg.

0 NA NA

6 NA 0%

6 NA 0%

12 NA 100%

4 NA 0%

If there is no range, then either we do not have enough data, or this variable is used in the same manner for all types of puppet characters. If the latter is the case, there is a good chance that the variable is informative rather than communicative for that particular puppeteer. The variables which show differential usage (or range, as charted above) are the ones that are being used distinctively (or communicatively). This is summarized more clearly in the following chart which shows which puppeteers (identified by their first initial) are using which variables communicatively to distinguish certain kinds of puppet characters from others. C(C)# j > lj ø>h

E

D

L L

P P

A A

EMBODYING IDENTITIES

215

The simplification of consonant clusters word finally is the only variable that is used distinctively by all five puppeteers. This is a widespread phenomenon which also occurs during the rapid speech of speakers of standard French. I suggest that this trait functions as a formality marker in the daily lives of all the puppeteers and they all use it communicatively in the theater to make a class distinction between peasants and nobles. Ancion has, by far, the narrowest range of variation, but it is still a peasant character who has the highest value of consonant cluster simplification. However, this is also a low level feature of the German accent, which would account for the slightly raised percentages for two of the German nobles. The variables are not used categorically within social classes, but show intragroup variation much like language in the real world. In fact, several of the variations I noted in the puppet theater seem to complement more thorough sociolinguistic studies. For instance, Libert’s traitor, Otto, pronounces every one of his eight consonant clusters. This character is plotting to take the throne from his uncle. His ultra-careful speech indexes a desire to climb the social ladder. The kings who are already in power do not have to worry so much about their speaking habits. The pattern of European women using more high prestige forms than men (Chambers and Trudgill 1980) also seems to be supported in these puppet shows since (if we strike Ogier’s single occurrence) the highest value for consonant cluster pronunciation in Pinet’s play is for Mme. Aymon. Variable two (j > lj) is much less clear-cut than consonant cluster simplification. Engels shows no occurrences of it and Dufour’s two occurrences are limited to upper class characters. Libert and Ancion seem to be using it as a class indicator, while Pinet shows variation, but distinctive patterns are not apparent. The most significant fact about Libert’s play is that Charlemagne never pronounces [lj] in words like “piller.” Ancion does not use this variable enough to demonstrate quantifiable differences, however, due to the nature of the single occurrence of [lj], I feel compelled to see his usage of this variable as distinctive. The one time [lj] is used is by a commoner, Robosse, making an anachronistic reference to the Liège train station, “Guillemins” (pronounced [gilj
me]). This is the normal pronunciation of working-class people in Liège. Later on, in a less regionally-loaded word also spelled with “ll,” Robosse uses the standard [j]. I contend that although the [j] pronunciation could be overlooked in most words, to use it in such a strongly local word would jolt the audience into thinking Robosse was a higher class character, which he

216

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definitely is not. It seems that for Ancion, j > lj is no longer perceived as a process, but as an inherent trait of particular words. For the puppeteers over age 50 (Engels, Dufour, and Libert) “h” is aspirated for all characters — peasants and nobles alike. The fact that I was corrected more than once by older people from Liège for pronouncing words in the standard French manner, treating “h” as a silent letter, supports the idea that [h] is simply an indicator of older regional speakers with minimal education and functions as an informative rather than a communicative sign among this group. While a categorical rule for the older puppeteers, “h” has a more variable nature for Pinet. (I would expect the same to be true for Ancion, though we have no occurrences of this trait for his peasant characters.) Logically, [h] could mark three things: regional affiliation, old age, or lower social class status. Using Pinet’s figures, we can rule out the regional category since Charlemagne and Renaud are both considered to be from the Liège area. We can rule out old age since Naymes and Charlemagne are two of the oldest characters in the play. What the pronunciation of [h] seems to mark is lower class status, as we can see from the categorical usage of this variable by the two peasant characters. However, if this is true, we must explain the noble Hernier’s use of [h]. These two instances occur in the pronounciation of his own name while he is seeking refuge from Renaud so that he can later betray him. Although my first inclination was to exclude proper names from the sample, I saw that variation did occur. The peasants call him [hernje], while Charlemagne, Renaud, and Naymes call him [ernje]. I believe the explanation can be found in this traitor’s false deference to Renaud. He wants to convince Renaud that he supported him in Charlemagne’s court, contrary to his own better interests. Therefore, he cannot sound pretentious which might belie his self-serving nature. To achieve this end, he adopts nonstandard [h] and also a higher pitch. The [h] is associated with lower class characters and the higher pitch with women and children. Both of these social groups are subordinate ones in the plays. Therefore, traits associated with them are used communicatively by Hernier to index his subordination to Renaud. The last linguistic trait under discussion is the reduction of intervocalic [lj] to [j] in words like “milieu.” Speakers of standard French use this variable as they do consonant cluster reduction to index levels of formality. Interestingly, though variable usage of consonant clusters is used to differentiate social class in the puppet theater lj > j is not used by any of the puppeteers in my sample to differentiate characters. Dufour, Libert, and Ancion follow the careful stan-

EMBODYING IDENTITIES

217

dard norm and pronounce [lj] 100% of the time, Pinet follows the informal, rapid speech norm pronouncing [j] 100% of the time. The use of C(C)# is the only quantified feature that the two oldest puppeteers use distinctively. Engels and Dufour follow the regional rather than the standard norm for aspirated “h” and j > lj. For the more generalized lj > j, however, Dufour follows the formal standard norm. We have no information for Engels. Libert uses the regional model for the pronunciation of aspirated “h,” the formal standard model which calls for the pronunciation of [lj] instead of [j] in words like “milieu,” and seems to variably use [j] and [lj] in words like “piller.” Pinet uses “h” distinctively, vacillates between the pronunciations of [j] and [lj] for intervocalic “ll,” and follows the rapid, informal model on the fourth variable pronouncing intervocalic [lj] as [j]. Ancion is the only puppeteer to stick to the standard norm of the non aspiration of “h.” He follows the formal standard norm in his pronunciation of variable four and distinctively pronounces intervocalic “ll” as [lj] in one case, though the usage is not regular. While variable one, C(C)#, appears to have fallen into style niches, solidifying the variation in a sense, variables three and four, ø > h and j > lj, are undergoing change and gradually being effaced by the standard forms. There seems to be general confusion concerning variable two, j > lj, among the three younger puppeteers. All of them exhibit some variation, but not always in discernable patterns. Since this exercise dealt with the relationship between the puppeteer’s own linguistic repertoire and his performance, it suggested another area to examine. Recalling how the puppeteers claimed that they used their own voice when speaking for Tchantchès, I recorded segments of the puppeteers’ conversational speech next to the voices of their lower class regional character, Tchantchès. Not only did I find that the prosodic features of the puppet and puppeteer were different, but also that there were different uses of linguistic variables. Furthermore, there was a split between whether the linguistic variety used for Tchantchès’ exhibited more or less working-class regional pronunciations than the puppeteer’s own vernacular. The two oldest puppeteers used the most nonstandard traits in their own conversations. Their Tchantchès’ lines were more standard than their own informal conversational styles. Libert’s Tchantchès, except for increased theatricality, most approximated his own vernacular. Pinet used far more nonstandard variables when speaking for his tchantchès than he did in his own conversations. Ancion’s Tchantchès was the least regional sounding of them all, but still the puppet exhibited more nonstandard traits than the puppeteer.

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As a performative genre, speaking through puppets entails a high degree of attention to speech, but this does not correlate directly with formality. Studied informality can also be the result of attention to speech. The discrepancy between the voices of Tchantchès and the voices of puppeteers led me to think about attitudes toward the puppet theater as a context for speaking. One explanation for why certain puppeteers increase nonstandard pronunciations when speaking for Tchantchès while others decrease these features lies in the historic trajectory of the puppet theater in Liège during a period of language obsolescence. The use of both French and Walloon has been the norm in the Liège puppet theater for as long as it has been documented. What this has meant to the puppeteers and their audiences has shifted over time as have attitudes toward these codes and conventions of their usage. Engels and Dufour grew up in a largely Walloon-speaking community where French was a marked code signaling a formal situation. The puppet theater, whose repertoire was based on written sources, was necessarily in French for the most part, even though workingclass characters spoke Walloon. This “pure” written French marked a formal context for Engels and Dufour and therefore they shifted toward the standard when speaking for Tchantchès. On the contrary, Pinet and Ancion grew up in post World War II society where French was the dominant language and Walloon was reduced to contexts of high emotional content associated with intimacy, anger, joking, etc.147 To them, Walloon is the marked code and it creates an informal situation. Since working-class puppet characters must use at least some Walloon, this marks the puppet theater as an informal context which leads the younger puppeteers to use more nonstandard variables when speaking for their Tchantchès. Libert who is midway between the older and younger puppeteers is perhaps the most balanced bilingual of all and showed the least amount of difference between his Tchantchès’ voice and his own vernacular. Variation in the linguistic repertoire of puppeteers results in different traits being used communicatively in their performances. In a situation of language shift, it is perhaps not surprising that age was a significant factor in whether or not a variable was used communicatively. Age also emerged as a significant factor in whether a puppeteer uses a more informal manner when speaking for his Tchantchès or whether he uses more standard pronunciations: the younger puppeteers follow the former pattern and the older ones the latter. In areas where one dialect is taking over another, both the old who grew up under a different linguistic system and the lower class who have less access to the new

EMBODYING IDENTITIES

219

standard, may share many linguistic traits. This can be seen in the above analysis where linguistic traits used informatively by older puppeteers are used communicatively by younger puppeteers to index class, not age.

8.3. Social Indexes in the Puppet Theater In the course of a single show, a Liège puppeteer often speaks in the voice of upper and lower class characters; men and women; young people and old people; humans, animals and supernatural figures; people from different regions of Belgium and even different countries; good guys and bad guys. Each puppeteer has a particular style of speaking for puppets, but they all differentiate several characters in dialogue with one another. A few puppeteers excel at voice manipulation, so that spectators are shocked to find out that all the voices were performed by one man. Others put less emphasis on manipulating their voice, concentrating only on differentiating the voices through particular indexes and portraying the correct emotional coloring. Despite the levels of virtuosity, similar patterns occur in the different puppet theaters of Liège. In the last section, I focused on four linguistic variables and explored the different social meanings they appear to have for five puppeteers. In this section I take the opposite approach, focusing on social categories within the puppet plays and exploring common linguistic characteristics used to identify these categories. Although I draw on material from all puppeteers, the analysis below concentrates on three: Deville, Libert, and Dufour. They represent quite different styles of performing. Deville inherited Engel’s fair style, Libert invented his own style, and Dufour continued Verrées’ permanent theater style. These three puppeteers presented approximately half of the shows given yearly in the area of Liège. Due to the frequency of their performances and their cooperation with this project, I have more than 15 recorded shows by each of them. 8.3.1. Class Of all the distinctions between social groups which are made linguistically on the Liège puppet stage, the one that is the most evident is that between the lower class peasants and workers and the upper class rulers. Class is distinguished by linguistic code, pronunciation, tempo, pitch, vocal fillers, lexicon, abnormal

220

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES

speech qualities, referential content, rhetorical strategies, and interactional patterns. In early descriptions of the puppet theater, the lower class characters spoke Walloon and the upper class characters spoke French. Now, the lower class characters usually speak a French/Walloon code-switching variety. The proportion of Walloon in this variety varies from theater to theater. The only time they speak exclusively in Walloon is when they are specifically performing a “Walloon play.” Even in Walloon plays, however, the upper class and foreigners still speak in French, but the action is focused on the commoners. The different statuses ascribed to French and Walloon are clearly reflected in the most famous Walloon play, Tåtî l’ pèriquî (Tati the Barber), which Ancion performed in his puppet theater in 1982. The play revolves around a perceived change in economic status and subsequent changes in lifestyle which the protagonist deems important. The first thing the poor barber does when he thinks he has won the lottery is to hire someone to teach him French. Believing that he now possesses sufficient capital, he hopes to acquire the symbolic capital by learning a more prestigious language which would allow him to enter a higher social class. Asteûre, pusqui dj’ so ritche, bin sûr qui dj’ candj’rè d’ vèye! Dj’a minme l’idèye, èdon, dè n’ pus pårler lîdjwès: Li ci qui djåse walon a l’aîr di si pô d’ tchwè! C’èst bon po li p’tit peûpe èt po leûs feûs d’ pasquèyes; Mins ‘ne fèye qu’on a d’ çoula, hoûtez, n’a rin d’parèy Qui dè fé l’ fransquignon èt d’ fé ‘ne creû so l’ patwès. Ni pôrîz-v’ nin m’aprinde a pårler è français, Tot v’ payant? (Remouchamps 1934 [1885]: 36) {Now, since I am rich, of course I will change my lifestyle! I am even thinking of not speaking Liégois anymore: Those who speak Walloon seem to be so low-born! It’s okay for the poor people and for their false rhymsters, But once you are well-to-do, listen, nothing has as much worth As speaking French and crossing out the patois. Couldn’t you teach me to speak in French, for a fee?}

While the use of Walloon or French indicated one’s class standing in Liège in 1885 when this play was written, today this opposition has transformed into one between distinctly regional French and a more standard variety. Present day diction classes are filled with modern Tåtîs trying to gain access to the

221

EMBODYING IDENTITIES

prestige variety. Puppeteers feed off the linguistic differentation of classes in Liège in order to portray their characters onstage. As we saw in the previous section, the clearest linguistic indication of class membership is whether the character pronounces consonant clusters at the end of words (upper class) or simplifies them into the first consonant (lower class). To review how this variable was patterned, we can look at the chart below and see that even though the percentages vary greatly from puppeteer to puppeteer, there is always a recognizable difference between the two classes within each puppet show. duration of play

puppeteer

number

15.44 24.67 55 56 84

Engels Dufour Libert Pinet Ancion

9 9 6 40 24

LOWER CLASS UPPER CLASS percentage percentage number pronounced pronounced CC# CC# 44% 22% 0% 2.5% 86.5%

9 72 41 57 57

100% 99.7% 77.4% 58.9% 96.8%

Additional variables that occur in the speech of the Walloon working class and are used by puppeteers to indicate the class standing of particular puppet characters include the pronunciation of /h/, the pronunciation of “ll” intervocalically as [lj], the devoicing of voiced consonants, the transformation of [tj] and [dj] into the palatal affricates [t] and [d], the denasalization of nasalized vowels, the diphthongization of simple vowels, the laxing of tense vowels, and the raising of [œR] to [ü:R]. These variables are not differentiated by every puppeteer, but each is used in at least one theater. Worker and peasant puppets tend to have higher pitched voices and faster tempo than upper class characters. Upper class voices are also louder, or as Dufour once said when asked about voice dramatization, “on donne toujours le plus de voix aux plus forts” {we always give the most voice to the most powerful ones}. These characters in Dufour’s and Deville’s shows employ a chanting style with a slow tempo and stylized intonation pattern, exhibiting smooth rises and falls. Lower class speech is more variable in pitch over an equal amount of time, giving it a spiky pattern. There are important tempo differences as well. I compared two excerpts of upper class and working-class speech from Dufour’s performances. The number of syllables per line and the

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length of their line final pauses was very similar, but the upper class speech lasted considerably longer. I carefully timed the passages and divided by the number of syllables. The 30 second delivery of 65 syllables by the upper class character gives us a rough average of .46 seconds per syllable. The lower class character took 12 seconds to deliver 40 syllables, putting the average length of time per syllable at .3. Lower class characters employ a lot of tag words and expletives inluding “hein,” “hin,” “in,” “parèt,” “celui-là lui,” “ci-là lu” “moi,” “mi,” “là,” “Ha(h),” “savez-vous,” “sais-tu,” “sés” and “tiens.” Let us go back to the play Le Prince Volant outlined in the first chapter and note the high number of oral speech fillers used by Tchantchès/pauper which I have underlined below. È! Fât-st-aroubi! Qué bê costume qu’i m’a d’né, lu, ci-là lu! Ha! Ha! Pour moi, il a fait faire mon costume chez Volant ici en face, hein, parèt. Hah! Eh bien mon p’tit Pacolèt, je suis bien beau, tiens, moi, avec ce beau costume-là. When Tchantchès’ voice is transformed into that of a prince, the vocal fillers drop out, the pitch is lowered and the tempo slowed down. Me voici devant le château dit la Forteresse des Brumes. Maintenant, je vais m’entretenir avec Melise la sorcière et tâcher de délivrer la princesse. Prince Tchantchès also employs more elevated vocabulary, such as “s’entretenir” instead of “parler” and “tâcher” instead of “essayer.” At one point he asks the children what he should do and they scream “Attaquez!” Whereas Tchantchès/pauper would simply repeat their command to fight and act on it, his transformed self responds with “Il faut lui livrer combat, dîtes-vous?,” presenting them with a much more complex way of saying the same thing and indexing his newly acquired class status. Lower class males are the only social category to exhibit a range of abnormal voice qualities. These include a high-pitched, tense, nasal voice; a slobbery voice, produced by pressing the sides of the cheeks against the teeth and forcing all palatal fricatives through an abundance of saliva; and a low pitched nasalized sepulchral voice with blurred articulation. As I mentioned before these voices bear an iconic relationship with the physical characteristics of the puppet’s face. High nobles often speak in longer sentences than do the other characters, but what is more striking is topic of conversation and their different rhetorical strategies. High nobles speak of past causes of future wars and direct the action of the play. Lesser nobles advise them about how to carry out their plans and then aid in the execution thereof. They all speak of noble lineages and occasionally of love

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and religion, though these subjects are subordinate to the topic of war. In contrast, the lower class characters speak about the here and now. They express this immediacy within the time frame of the play by conveying messages to the nobles about what is happening and commenting on the action to both the nobles and the audience. They also conflate the time frame of the play with the present by making apt allusions to events discussed in today’s media: dams being built, laws being altered, and, of course, troubles between Flemings and Walloons. Lower class characters identify local landmarks and contemporary figures and talk about regional food and drink, linking the action to Liège. Eating, drinking, and working are favorite topics of conversation. For instance, orders to underlings are met with comments like, “It’s always the little guys who do all the work.” Soldiers are an ambiguous group. They are closer in size to the tchantchès than to the nobles, but they represent official culture. In Dufour’s and Deville’s theaters, soldiers act as silent fighting retainers. Dufour even told me once that soldiers were really slaves.148 To Dufour, I think this meant that they had no rights and responded by simply doing as they were told. Generally they spoke only to tell their commander that his orders will be carried out. These lines were always spoken in French. Libert’s soldiers, on the other hand, acted as a distinct group among the feisty Walloon working class. They sometimes switched to Walloon when they were trying to hide something from their supervisor. Like tchantchès, Libert’s soldiers frequently voiced the woes of the modern worker, e.g., they get caught sleeping on the job and must give up their vacation time, they complain about low wages, etc. Characters with different social statuses use different rhetorical strategies to get interlocutors to heed their words. Dominant nobles control the action through commands. They tell the other characters what to do. Subordinate nobles accept the orders of their superiors (for the most part) and re-issue these orders to their soldiers. They are more likely to use elaborate, indirect language to convince their interlocutors. Lower class characters, on the other hand, win support through their directness and their use of humor. The lower body and the principle of incongruity form the basis of their rhetorical strategy of humor. Tchantchès are masters of the carnivalesque. Urinating, defecating, burping and farting are woven into their conversations, though certain puppeteers criticize others for resorting to this easy way to make children laugh. Using incongruous references to the lower body, tchantchès reverse the social order and debase official culture. One telling

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example of this strategy is when Pinet’s Tchantchès takes charge of a regiment and, to the roll of drums, orders the soldiers to take off their pants. This is done in rhyming form and after it is said, Tchantchès quickly takes back his words as if he had just been carried away by the rhyme. Another example is when the same character announces, “J’ai fait mes latrines et mes humidités à l’Université de St. Pholien.” (I studied toilets and humidity at the Univerity of St. Pholien.) By changing only three phonemes, Tchantchès reduces two wellrespected academic subjects in the university curriculum, Latin and humanities, to “toilets” and “dampness.” mes latrines et mes humidités ø an mes latines mes humanités

In addition to the word play, the phrase is an oxymoron in that St. Pholien, the Liège neighborhood from which the Pinet family originates, is a distinctly working-class neighborhood whose inhabitants, before the gradual gentrification of this area, had little to do with the city’s university which is located across the river. This short phrase also exhibits one of the ways in which lower class characters link the action to Liège and how they mix time frames, since no universities were present in the area at the time of Charlemagne when the play’s action presumably took place. Working-class alienation from school, a topic of discussion for contemporary sociologists, is reflected in the puppet theater.149 Lower class characters in the puppet theater will often make references to their not having gone to school as we saw in the Massacre of the Innocents. A common line is for Tchantchès to say that he only went to school on holidays to paint the ceilings. This sets up a clear distinction between those who study and those who do manual labor and Tchantchès falls solidly into the latter group. Social groups are created in opposition to other social groups. For this reason, interaction among and between puppets of different classes is an interesting area to examine. One obvious place to start is the use of formal or familiar terms of address. When peasants and workers converse they use reciprocal “tu.” Nobles use “vous” with each other, but “tu” when speaking to commoners. Often they are condescending or angry when they address lower class characters. Generally, peasant and worker use “vous” when speaking to a noble, though they are usually quite direct. In certain theaters, however, Tchantchès uses “tu” when speaking with Charlemagne and other nobles. In

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Libert’s theater, Tchantchès uses “tu” with Charlemagne and is considered his old friend and right-hand man. In Deville’s theater, Tchantchès is respected by the kings, even though he engages in constant word play which is at times insulting to his interlocutor. Libert’s scene of Joseph looking for lodging in Bethlehem illustrates the use of “tu” and “vous” between classes. In this case the emphasis is on physical rather than linguistic markers of class since Joseph speaks in Standard French. In French, as in all Romance languages, the formal (vous) and familiar (tu) second person singular forms correspond to distinct verbal endings. I have underlined tu and vous and paradigmatic partners, “toi, te, t’, ta, votre.” SECOND INNKEEPER Oui, j’arrive. Et alors que me veux-tu, toi qui a l’audace de te présenter à ma porte? {Yeah, I’m coming. Well, what do you want from me, you who has the audacity to come to my door?} JOSEPH Je voudrais, maître hotelier, pouvoir, si vous le permettez, passer la nuit chez vous. {I would like, sir innkeeper, to be able, if you permit it, to spend the night at your place.} SECOND INNKEEPER Chez moi! Apprends donc, manant, que je n’héberge pas les gueux de ton espèce. Allez décampe. {At my place! Learn then, manant, that I don’t lodge mugs like yours.} JOSEPH Oh oh oh, je ne suis point riche, certes. Mais je suis un honnête homme. Je payerai, soyez-en sûr, tout ce que vous me demanderez. {Oh oh oh, I am hardly rich, indeed. But I am an honest man. I will pay, be assured of that, all that you ask of me.} SECOND INNKEEPER Payer ce que je te demanderais? Allons, laisse-moi rire. Tu n’en est certainement pas capable. Ta pauvre mise me le prouve. Tu m’as plutôt l’air d’un mendiant ou d’un vagabond. Aussi, il n’y a-t-il point de place pour toi dans mon hôtel, le plus beau de tout Bethléem — seize étoiles au Guide Michelin. Allons, passe ton chemin et ne m’importune pas plus longuement. Allons. {Pay what I ask of you? Go on, don’t make me laugh. You are certainly not capable. Your poor looks prove it to me. You look more like a beggar or a vagabond. And there’s no place for you in my hotel, the most beautiful in all of Bethlehem — 16 stars in the Michelin Guide. Go on, be on your way and don’t bother me any longer. Go on.} TRAVELER Holà! Holà! Holà! aubergiste! Je viens de loin et désire trouver chez toi le gîte et le couvert. Puis-je entrer? {Wait wait wait innkeeper! I come from far away and I want to find shelter at your place. May I enter?} SECOND INNKEEPER Hélas! noble étranger, je suis bien désolé car chez

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moi tout est comble. J’ai été, oh bien à regret, dans l’obligation de refuser l’entrée à ce voyageur ici présent. {Alas noble foreigner, I am very sorry because everything is full here. I was regretfully obliged to refuse entry to this traveller here.} TRAVELER Trève de parole inutile. Cette bourse pleine d’or est à toi si tu me satisfais. Allons, réponds. Je suis pressé. {Cut the useless talk. This pouch full of gold is for you if you satisfy me. Go on, respond. I’m in a hurry.} SECOND INNKEEPER Noble seigneur, devant une telle insistance, il me serait bien desagréable de vous refuser l’entrée de ma demeure. Mais venez donc, je vous prie, et installez-vous au mieux. Dans un instant je suis tout entier à votre service. Suivez-moi Seigneur. Voilà. Entrez, je vous prie.(turning to Joseph) Quant à toi, ne reste pas auprès de ma porte. File d’ici car ta vue seule pourrait écarter chez moi de riches voyageurs. Allons, va t’en ou je lache mes chiens. {Noble foreigner, before such insistence, it would seem to me very disagreeable to refuse you entry to my abode. Come then, I beg you and settle in where it is more comfortable. In one moment I will be entirely at your service. (turning to Joseph) As for you, don’t stay near my door. Get out of here because your looks alone will turn rich travellers away from my door. Go on, get out or I’ll sic my dogs on you.}

As soon as the innkeeper sees Joseph, he addresses him with the familiar form, or what would more exactly be called the disdainful form since it has little to do with familiarity in this case. Joseph addresses him with the formal, or respectful form, as he does everyone. The wealthy traveler arrives and addresses the innkeeper with the disdainful form and in return he receives the respectful term from the innkeeper. When the gold is offered, the hotel suddenly is not full anymore and the innkeeper welcomes the rich traveler in. Almost groveling, he tells him “Come then, I beg you and settle in where it is more comfortable. In one moment I will be entirely at your service.” Instantly, he whirls on his heels and orders Joseph to leave or be chased away by his dogs. In addition to the pronomial forms, other distinguishing names of address occur in this passage. The innkeeper calls Joseph “manant, gueux, mendiant, vagabond,” all words denoting poverty, {peasant, beggar, vagrant, tramp}. He calls the rich traveler “noble étranger, noble seigneur, and seigneur” {noble foreigner, noble lord and lord}. Joseph calls the innkeeper the respectful “maître hôtelier” {hotel master} while the rich traveler calls him the less respectful “aubergiste” {innkeeper}. Certainly the power of address to sepa-

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rate social classes in a society where money determines ones’ social worth comes through clearly in this passage. The different classes also vary in the ways in which they interact with the audience. Puppeteers follow various patterns in this respect. In Libert’s theater, all the characters interact with the audience, but while the commoners ask the children how they are and what they have seen happening onstage and carry on a friendly dialogue, nobles are much more formal and demanding. In fact, when Charlemagne comes onstage, he insists that all the children rise and greet him with “Bonjour Sa Majesté, l’Empereur Charlemagne.” In Deville’s theater, the commoners carry on the same sort of friendly dialogue with the children in the audience. There is a sharp division in upper class interactions with the audience depending on whether the character is good or evil. The good kings appeal to the audience for advice while the evil ones engage in shouting matches with them. In Dufour’s theater, Tchantchès is the only character who addresses the audience. Upper class characters are only to be listened to, not to be engaged in dialogue. 8.3.1. Gender The next most salient social division in the puppet theater is gender. Using these two divisions, four character groups are created: lower class men, upper class men, lower class women, and upper class women. These are commonly referred to as: tchantchès, chevaliers, nanèsesses, and princesses. Unlike the multiplicity of linguistic variables that mark class, gender is distinguished predominantly by contrastive pitch. Contrast is important, since their absolute pitch is closer to the male than the female norm. In fact, when I played tapes of puppet voices to people outside the puppet theater, class affiliation was always correctly identified while female puppet characters were usually misidentified as male. No one misidentifies female characters during a performance because their pitch is higher than the male characters (especially the first few syllables) and the spectators are looking at the physical representation of a female. In addition to pitch, female characters speak less frequently than men. There are physical constraints to maintaining a high pitched voice, but this is certainly not the most important consideration. The role of women has been de-emphasised in the tradition. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is the way in which Mary takes a back seat to Joseph in the Nativity play, despite her obviously more central role in the narrative and her prominence in the

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Catholic church. Women are also portrayed as passive in most of the epic material. The plots revolve around strategies of alliance. Princesses are the cause for battle among suitors and are given away by their fathers to brave men to whom they owe favors, but they seldom direct the action. The ideal voice for a noble women is soft and smooth and clear. This is not easy to achieve with the flabby vocal cords common to old men. Pitch lowers and voices become gravelly, especially after several decades of smoking. Occasionally puppeteers recognize this and have a younger person, or a woman do the female voices, but it is not common practice, since one risks being excluded from “the tradition.” Engels’ father who was performing before “the tradition” was solidified had his son perform the voices of princesses. Puppeteers often have trouble producing believable decontextualized women’s voices, but one puppeteer told me that he could not imagine there being a woman puppeteer because they could not do realistic male voices. The possibility of reversal, performing the stories so that women characters had more speaking roles and men only spoke occasionally, was not considered an option. While noble women generally obey their husbands, lower class women often scold theirs. They speak a more regional variety of French than upper class women and occasionally mix in a word or two of Walloon, though less than the male characters. (In one of Dufour’s introductions, Tchantchès even says that Nanèsse tells him he should speak in French.) Lower class women have harsher, more constricted voices than their noble counterparts, especially when they are scolding. Unlike lower class men, nanèsses do not curse and never have speech disabilities, nor ethnic/regional accents. Reference is sometimes made to their obtaining information through female gossip networks. Supernatural female characters include witches, fairies and angels. These women all share a code with the upper class, but the evil ones are separated from the good ones by degrees of harshness in their vocal quality. Witches have creaky voices that are harsher and more constricted than nanèsses’ and fairies and angels have voices that are even softer and smoother than noble women. Benevolent supernaturals also seem to have higher mean pitches than their evil sisters. Frequently the appearance of fairies and angels is heralded by an upsliding blow on the harmonica. Witches often let loose a high, strident laugh (quite similar to that of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz). They are in contact with devils and monsters which they call to do their bidding. They are rude to the lower class characters, often referring to them as “viles paysans” (vile peasants).

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8.3.3. Ethnic and Regional Differences The Moor-Christian opposition is the focus of the vast majority of material from the chansons de geste performed by the puppeteers, so one would expect this to be manifested linguistically. However, the linguistic distinctions were not nearly as developed as those concerning class and gender. Moorish sultans and princes have no accent in most traditional puppet theaters. They may have a slightly lower pitch and harsher voice quality, but their French is identical to that of Charlemagne and the other Christian nobles. Moorish kings and knights interact with each other in the same way as Christian nobility and the topics they discuss are the same. One slight difference I noted was that Dufour’s Moors were more likely to use “tu” with their younger relatives while the Christians employed mutual “vous.” Moors index their religion by exclaiming such things as “Par notre Dieu, Mahom!” (By our god, Mohammed) or even, “Par Jupiter!”150 Puppeteers who did not apprentice themselves to older puppeteers for a long period of time are more likely to have Moors occasionally use an apical [r] to index their foreignness, but their syntax is still complex and their vocabulary flowery. I was looking for differences and was surprised by how slight they seemed. But, the differences were sufficient for Dufour. When I asked him in a letter to tell me about the different voices he used, he wrote back the following: En ce qui concerne les sarrasins en général d’après les romans de la Bibliothèque bleue, ce sont des gens cruelles, barbares et conquérants qui s’allient et réunissent leurs forces pour écraser la Chrétienté. On leur donne alors une voix arrogante, méchante même, pour que le public sache que c’est ceux là qu’il ne faut pas supporter. {As for the Saracens, in general, according to the stories of the Bibliothèque bleue, they are cruel, barbarous, conquering people who allied and brought together their forces to crush Christianity. We give them then an arrogant voice, even a mean one, so that the public knows that those are the ones that they shouldn’t put up with.}(personal letter 6/17/81).

In point of fact, Charlemagne had very little to do with the Saracens (Daniel 1975). He was busier fighting other Germanic tribes to the north and east. One of Libert’s students tried to reflect this historical reality by shifting the emphasis from the Frank/Saracen opposition to the Frank/Saxon one. He had just begun performing in 1982 and had his Saxons speak with a heavy German accent (devoicing voiced consonants and inserting German vocabulary). The Franks

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(also a Germanic tribe) showed no trace of a foreign accent in their French. Collard was able to do this because Libert did not see the Saracens as being the quintessential enemies as did the older traditional puppeteers. He even departed from the tradition once in awhile and portrayed them as the heroes because he felt sorry for the North African children who occasionally came to his theater. Gender differences among the Saracens parallel gender differences among the Christians. Class within the Saracen group is not much of an issue since soldiers are usually silent and most of the non military lower class characters are Walloon. In Libert’s theater, however, where soldiers are vocal members of the working class, Saracen soldiers index ethnicity as well as class. In one of Libert’s shows, a Saracen snuck up behind Tchantchès who exclaimed, “Ça sent le couscous.” The Saracen replied with an apical [r], “Il sent les frites.” Both characters are identified by the smell of their national foods: couscous and French fries (which, in spite of what they are called in American English, are much more indexical of Belgium than of France). While most of the Arabs in the shows are associated with medieval military exploits, there are occasionally contemporary working-class Arabs who work either as salesmen (selling carpets or nougats) or doormen. They speak the same French-Walloon code-switching variety as the tchantchès, though with many non native mistakes. A common mistake is substituting the object pronoun for the subject pronoun and failing to conjugate verbs, e.g., “Moi pas vouloir faire mal à toi” (Me no want do harm to you) or “Moi m’appellé Ali” (Me called Ali). They also use “ti.” We could interpret this as the the familiar form of address in Walloon which is considered impolite, or as the stereotyped North African pronunciation of “tu.” Working-class Arabs are part of the diverse group of working-class male puppet characters in Liège and it is among this group that regional accents find their fullest realization. To begin with, Walloon dialects vary from town to town with more distinct borders between Central and East Walloon and intermediary Wallo-Picard and Wallo-Lorraine areas along the Picard dialect area to the east and the Lorraine dialect area to the south (Remacle 1972). Regional dialects while indexing place are not tied to that place and all of these dialects have been spoken in the urban center of Liège. The characters who speak other dialects of Walloon are either old friends of Tchantchès, or are members of his family, usually brothers-in-law. Not all puppeteers make use of regional Walloon differences, but Libert included regular appearances of characters from Verviers and from the Ardennes, both with very distinctive accents. Characters from these

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regions speak the same French/Walloon code-switching variety as does Tchantchès. However, the one from Verviers elongates, diphthongizes, and denasalizes his vowels, creating a slow drawled accent. He has a sing-song intonation pattern and a soft voice. The Ardennes character has an apical [r] which he rolls on occasion. His voice is low and harsh, his tempo quick and he uses some archaic vocabulary. He is always a farmer, indexing the agricultural base of the region. The Verviers character usually makes some reference to the economic problems of Verviers, an important industrial center of textile production in the nineteenth century which went into steep decline and is now a bedroom community for Liège. These characters are benevolent, easy-going fellows. In the same category as the working-class guys from throughout Wallonia is the Flemish character. Another surprise, perhaps, given the history of the puppet theater and the animosity between the Walloon and Flemish movements. This character, who is usually called Djef or Djefke, also code-switches between French and Walloon, but with a Flemish accent. Puppeteers differ on just exactly what this entails. Engels’ Djefke realizes both [y] and [i] as []. Libert’s Djef has an alveolar tap [r], and inserts definite articles and object pronouns where they are not necessary, e.g., “Tu n’as la pas vu le Tchantchès?” {You didn’t see it the Tchantchès}. He also makes gender errors on occasion. This character is often referred to as being married to a Walloon woman, usually one who sells cheese on the Batte. Marriage is not alluded to in the case of the Arab workers. They always appear to be single men, in keeping with early North African migration to the region. 8.3.4. Age Age manifests itself linguistically in the puppet theater both in absolute and relative ways. Only the very young and very old are distinguished in an absolute sense, meaning that their age is a major factor in the representation of their voice even when they are alone onstage. More commonly, age is distinguished on a relative basis, by means of age markers distributed to characters according to their interlocutors. In this system, a knight might have one voice when he is talking to a younger knight and a different one in a conversation with an older knight. Despite the fact that certain segmental linguistic variables are patterned by age in Liège, these are not employed to show age differences between puppet characters. It is, rather, nonsegmental features, especially pitch and tempo, that

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index age differences on the puppet stage. Many of the young knights speak quickly (especially Roland who is considered a nervous type) while older dukes and kings speak slowly and carefully. In general the older the character, the lower his or her pitch. This overlaps with lower voice being used to indicate the more dominant character and creates no contradiction since dominance usually comes with age. Children are distinguished linguistically by a very high pitch (higher than that of women), soft intensity, and slow tempo. In certain theaters, their articulation is slightly fronted. In Libert’s theater, they are charmingly candid. Baby talk (how people talk to babies) is another index of relative age. Examples of it from the scene of the adoration of the shepherds in the Nativity Play show some common characteristics of baby talk, such as high pitch and diminutive pet forms. These names are always in Walloon, the language of emotions (e.g., “bê nozé gningnin” {pretty little crybaby},”bê r’djèton,” {pretty sprout}, and “pitit mamé” {little loved one}). “Gningnin” is onomatopoeic of baby talk or baby crying, though it is used metonymically to refer to the source of the sound rather than to the sound itself. The reduplication exhibited in this word is also a common feature of baby talk (Helfrich 1979). 8.3.5. Personality and Temporary States I admit to being drawn to the more permanent categories of class, gender and race, in my analysis, but in conversations with puppeteers about voice, they placed more importance on the portrayal of transitory states. In other words, their emphasis was on the dramatic unfolding of the show, rather than static social groupings. They would not deny that class, race, and gender divisions were basic to the shows, but they felt that a puppeteer really showed his skill through the emotional coloring of a character’s words. By emotional coloring, I mean both the basic personality of a character and the situationally determined alterations in psychological or physical states. A prime example of vocally indexing a physical state is the fatigue that can be sensed in a knight’s voice after he has just fought a battle.151 Another temporary physical state which is accompanied by a distinctive type of language is drunkenness. Drunks sing and hiccup. Their words are slurred and their pitch range is highly varied. Voices used to distinguish the different personalities and temporary psychological states are generally the same, but in the first case these traits are incorporated into the basic voice set, while in the second case they only mani-

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fest themselves for a brief period of time and often in a more intensive form. For example, a self confident character speaks in a clear voice which is not breathy. Dufour’s soldiers who are in a subordinate position have breathy voices as part of their basic voice set, but a character who is normally self confident with a clear voice will adopt breathy voice when he finds himself in a subordinate position, especially when frightened. In addition to breathiness, characters stutter when they are scared. This is not to be confused with the speech disability of stuttering which is part of the basic voice set of certain lower class males. Breathiness also shows up in people who are sad. If they are in the process of crying, the words alternating with sobs emerge in great exhalations. More contained sadness might manifest itself in a tremulous voice. Happy characters, on the other hand, often speak through spread lips and commonly punctuate their speech with laughter. Their tempo is much quicker than that of a sad character. The voice of someone who is emotionally tense is loud and sharp. Both of these qualities are intensified when the character is angry. 8.3.6. Beyond The Human Realm In addition to human characters, puppeteers also vocally represent animals and supernatural creatures. There are various kinds of “good” and “bad” animals portrayed in the puppet theater. Good animals are domesticated or tamed wild animals. Dufour’s Tchantchès has a dog, Kiki, that occasionally helps him in battles in his newer plays for children. Kiki only emits a high pitched bark. Geneviève de Brabant’s son has a pet deer which Ancion portrays as communicating through mood signs — whining when she is wounded, for example. Of all the animals, horses figure most prominently due to their importance in medieval battle. In fact, puppeteers not only know the names of the famous knights, but also the names of their swords and their horses. Some horses have supernatural qualities, for instance, Pacolet’s flying horse and the magical horse, Bayard, who carries all four sons of Aymon on his back.152 Both these horses simply neigh, though in at least one play Bayard does communicate by whinnying excitedly in the middle of the night to alert the Aymon brothers that their castle is on fire. A second group of animals consists of humans magically transformed into animals. Sometimes these animals only appear for a short stretch of time and remain silent as they are being walked off stage. Other times they retain their human voice. The retention of the human voice is a very good indication that

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this is a temporary animal not like the others. The animals mentioned so far have all been benevolent, whether guided by good supernatural forces, good people transformed by evil supernatural beings, or just simply pets. The next group includes the evil animals which are called on by evil supernatural forces. These animals emit low growls which scare the children in the audience (and characters onstage, too). Deville’s evil animals also utter words in the same growling tone. These words always refer to the same thing, namely, the eating of their opponents. Sometimes they say it in Walloon (“magnî, magnî, magnî”) and sometimes in French (“Je vais te dévorer”). The fact that these animals produce human language through their growls makes them even more frightening.153 The last category is animal-like humans. The most famous one is, of course, Orson, whom we read about in the introduction. Stolen by a she-bear at birth and raised in the woods, he cannot speak like a human. He growls and sputters and makes some human-like sounds but no intelligible words. When it is discovered who he is and the membrane attaching his tongue is clipped, he can then speak perfectly. Once Orson is able to talk, he instantly acts like any other knight raised in human society. Basically, there are two types of humans with supernatural qualities or supernatural beings which appear in humanlike form onstage: the good and the evil. The good category includes angels and fairies and benevolent magicians and the evil one includes witches, evil magicians and devils. Pitch is higher in the benevolent group. While the female evil characters exhibit a harsh voice quality, the males are more often characterized by especially resonant voices. This is achieved by lowering the larynx and thus increasing the area of the vocal cavity. Maquet intensifies the resonant quality of these voices by talking into a copper plate which serves as a sort of echo chamber. Biblical figures follow similar patterns to other supernaturals. All speak in the standard French used by the upper classes, even if they are explicitly marked as being poor. Pinet says that he uses an echomaker on his sound equipment and speaks in a very soft voice when representing Christ as a grown man in the Passion Play. He also uses an echomaker when representing Satan, but in this case, he speaks with a tense voice, clipped syllables, and higher intensity.

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8.4. Evaluating Puppet Voices Liège puppeteers represent language and society as varied and infused with power relations. Within this varied puppet speech community, social class emerges as the most important division between characters. The puppeteers do not simply mark the different social categories and leave it at that. Evaluation is built into the voices and the puppeteer leaves no doubt in the minds of the audience with which class he himself is aligned. Tchantchès, the lower class hero, stands in for the puppeteer as narrator onstage. The audience’s interactions with him and the other tchantchès are far more frequent than they are with the noble characters. This creates a sort of affinity between the lower class characters and the audience. Furthermore, lower class characters are never malevolent. The malevolent characters all speak in the voice of the upper class, whether supernatural or human. The linguistic dimension of the Liège puppet theater points to a world full of variation, but more particularly to a world in which the puppeteers’ own social group (working-class males) is much more highly differentiated than those social groups which are removed in some sense from his own. This should come as no surprise since we perceive diversity in that which we know well, whereas foreign people and practices appear undifferentiated: the farther away from the self, the more stylized and static the voices become. Scherer notes that people with accented speech are seen as being more friendly, likeable and sociable while people using the standard or “high” pronunciation are seen as being more dominant and competent as well as more intelligent (1979: 189). Other researchers have not had the same results with matched guise tests, but Scherer’s findings are supported in the distribution of voices in the puppet theater. Lower class characters may not always show the best judgement and don’t have a lot of instruction, but they are loyal and generous and brave.

CHAPTER 9

Religion and War

If, rather than attending a puppet show, one were to examine only the written scripts of puppet plays, vocal virtuosity would be overshadowed by the themes of religion and war. Christian heroes battle against evil non-Christians who commonly die or else they “see the light” and convert to Christianity. The Christian knights often turn out to be saints.154 At first, I steered away from looking at the topics of religion and war, because none of the puppeteers I knew were particularly religious, nor were they war mongers or virulent racists and it seemed that I would be misrepresenting their motives by emphasizing religion and war. However, there are reasons for the importance of these themes which surpass the individual desires of puppeteers. Religion and war lead us into the very politics of identity that engendered and supported the puppet theater. First, I reach back into history to examine the mimetic impulse as it concerns war and religion and then look at how this plays out in contemporary Liège. This leads into discourses about war and religion in the context of Belgian nationalism. Religious differences take on racial characteristics, so I take a closer look at some Belgian discourses of race. Finally, I touch on counter discourses in the puppet theater.

9.1. Mimesis in Religion and War Despite the common American perception of puppets as cuddly playthings for children, traditional puppets around the world deal with highly serious adult topics. Religion, war and politics figure among the most prevalent themes. War and religion intersect in many different ways. Wars have been waged to defend one’s religion, or one’s holy sites, and to expand one’s religion. War means death and death is the time when peoples’ thoughts most often turn to the

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supernatural, the afterlife. War and religion must also be seen in their political context. Religion legitimizes the political order and provides some of the basis for legal codes. Wars grew in importance along with centralized states and occur between political entities. The fusion of religion, war, and politics occurred most powerfully in European medieval history. During the Middle Ages the Christian Church changed its earlier pacifist stance to a militaristic one and war became sacred (Contamine 1993: 302). While religion took on militaristic aspects, warrior elites borrowed the pageantry and ceremony from the church. A mimetic relationship developed between the two social institutions. In the ninth century following the breakup of the Carolingian Empire, the church developed new prayers for armies, warriors and swords (Bernstein 1979). By the mid 10th century the church had taken over the ceremony of knighting and soon bishops were leading men into battle (Ehrenreich 1997). The laws of chivalry required that knights be defenders of the church and those who died in battle became martyrs like Jesus. As Ehrenreich states “The merger of church and military transformed each battle into a religious rite” (1997: 170). Contamine attributes the success of Europe’s global predations to the fusion of religion and militarism in the Middle Ages (1993). This explains, in part, the attraction of the chivalric age to subsequent generations of Europeans. Religion and war played central roles in Liège history. For most of recorded history, Liège was ruled by Prince Bishops as part of the Catholic political organization of Europe. Its position at the intersection of different cultural groups in an easily traversed, centrally located area of Europe made it a constant host of armies. In addition, Liège had a special interest in war, since the production of weaponry was a major industry in the city. Weapons from Liège were being used by Spanish soldiers in the Americas starting in the 16th century. What concerns this analysis is not just the close relationship between religion and war, but how humans find in them targets of mimesis. Puppets have been used to represent and sometimes to embody supernatural beings in very different religious contexts. Even today in Europe, supernatural beings from the pre-Christian era (fairies, elves, witches and giants) are represented both in overblown proportions as processional giants and in miniaturized form as puppets. As mentioned before, even the name “marionette,” is thought to derive from the “little Marys” used to portray Bible stories to the illiterate masses. These plays used to be performed inside and on the steps of churches. Later, church officials found them to be idolatrous and chased the puppeteers away. The santons of Provence, Italian

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presepi, the talking crèche of Verviers, and the Nativity and Passion plays in the puppet theaters are descendants of that tradition. Religious statuary in Catholicism has much in common with puppetry. Outremeuse is filled with potales, or small statues of Mary housed in glass cases along the narrow streets. Private citizens take on the duty of dressing the statue and keeping it clean. Their efforts are doubled around the time of the parish festival. During the parish festival, the major saint’s statue of the local church is taken out of the church and paraded around the neighborhood by the faithful. People also keep statues of Mary and Jesus in their homes and these are often cleaned up and put in the window for the parish festival, almost as if the smaller house statues are put where they can watch the larger church statue go by. I attended St. Pholien’s and St. Nicholas’ parish festivals in Outremeuse and was struck by the prevalence of mimesis and the integration of imitation soldiers and imitation puppets into these initially religious events. There was the usual carnivalesque gender mimesis: men dressed as women and women as men. More interesting yet, was the man who mockingly impersonated a priest and handed out cucumber hosts. Catholicism is woven very tightly into the cultural fabric of Liège, but it peacefully co-exists with a rather pervasive anticlericalism.155 Much of this is due to the history of politics in Belgium and the connection of the Catholic political party with the upper class and with Flanders. When someone would say, “He’s Catholic,” it was meant to designate the person’s political affiliation rather than his religious adherence. Francine told me, “Je n’ suis pas Catholique mais je suis croyante” {I’m not Catholic, but I’m a believer}. She never went to church, but her statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary were very important to her. Each time she moved to a new apartment, she brought her Christ statue in first, followed by the statue of the Virgin that her son had won in a shooting gallery. Her friend Anna had once borrowed her Virgin during the Festival of St. Pholien to outdo her neighbor in window decorating. Francine said that she was very nervous the whole time her Virgin was gone, thinking that it would get broken in the rowdiness of the festival and just not feeling right without it in her house. The priest of St. Pholien had warned that the procession was religious and not “folkloric,” but no one paid much heed. Anna and her friends had been talking about the festival for months and recruited me to help with the preparations. This consisted mostly of cutting up confetti. The festival began with a mass, and I was on my way there when Anna called me in to help make sandwiches. Clearly the secular part of the festival was deemed more important.

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‘Potale’ in Outremeuse

The confraternity of St. Hubert had come from Aubel to parade their 17th century St. Hubert statue along with the Virgin of St. Pholien Church. Bands of little boys wearing velvet hunting outfits followed the patron saint of hunters and the residents of St. Pholien threw confetti as if to mark the path for the statues. Dufour’s brass band, all wearing costumes typical of Tchantchès, was part of the procession and so was a band of marine drummers that included the puppeteer, Jules Van Mullem. The priest soon took a shortcut back to the church and the rest of the procession continued without him. The procession stopped at houses where they knew the hosts would be ready with trays of glasses of pèkèt for the crowd.

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Statues inside watching statues outside

A few months later, the neighboring Outremeuse parish, St. Nicolas, had its parish procession on August 15th, Assumption Day. It began with a mass in Walloon and the procession of the Black Virgin of St. Nicholas church.156 Following the Virgin statue was a statue of Tchantchès from the local puppet theater. The real crowds showed up for the folklore parade extravaganza later in the afternoon which included folklore troupes from all over Europe. Among them were two groups of imitation soldiers from different areas of Wallonia. I was warned to plug my ears as they shot off their muskets, but I wasn’t quite quick enough and was left with my ears ringing as if I’d been in a battle. Military parades, whether folkloric or official, invite us to think about war as an orderly exercise of brave and honorable men. Perhaps it was recognized that official images were needed to counteract soldiers’ first-hand accounts of confusion, disorder, and fear.157 Imitating soldiers retains the drama without the terror. Mock soldiery is well documented in the Liège region. The origin of this practice dates back to when a military troop defended a city while also carrying out political and religious ceremonial duties. This type of organization was already widespread in the 13th century. By the second half of the 16th century when firearms replaced cross bows, the earlier weapons continued to be used for sport and the

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St. Pholien parish festival with Adrien Dufour’s brass band dressed as Tchantchès

troops that used them took on a more dramatic flare, even presenting skits between segments of target shooting contests. In the mid 18th century, defense had moved from a local to a national level, and the various troops were left with only their ceremonial duties (Roland 1973). In the 19th century, a new mock troop emerged that targeted Napoleon’s army for mimesis. 51,000 Belgians died as soldiers in the French army between 1794 and 1814, so we cannot think of Napoleon’s troops as representing an external nation-state (Roland 1973: 58). The center of mock Napoleonic marches is exactly the area in which Napoleon raised the army for his last battle. During the two German occupations, the marching of these mock military troops was prohibited which seemed to make the people even more interested in continuing the custom after occupation was over (Roland 1973: 73). In 1960

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the mock soldiers formed an association which soon gathered over 4000 members (Roland 1973: 140). Today it is common to see these troops in the folkloric parades that many parish processions have become. The toy soldier is another iconic representations of war. Miniature metal soldiers could be found in specialty shops in Liège, but a puppeteer friend told me that the best ones come from Germany. He invited me to his house for supper once and after we were finished eating, he took me up to the attic. There he had placed hundreds of little soldiers in proper uniforms in battle formation. The battles had been constructed according to their description in history books. Downstairs he showed me some of the books with battle descriptions that served as models for his realistic depictions. In this milieu of religious statuary, toy soldiers, and people imitating religious rites and famous battles, we have the puppet theater with its marches and battles of soldier-puppets incorporated into the portrayal of the lives of Christian saints. The puppet theater of Liège targets both religious and martial themes for mimesis, based as it is on biblical stories and the chansons de geste that focus on the defense and spread of Christianity. Armies are raised to defend lands from non Christians and people are ennobled and sanctified in battle.158 Perhaps war and religion make good targets for mimesis because they are just too serious, and out of one’s control. Religion uses mimesis to try to gain control of uncontrollable situations. The warrior elite mimes religion in order to partake of its power. It follows that people outside of the hierarchical orders of the church and the military may be drawn to mime religious and martial performances in order to symbolically take control of them.

9.2. Religion and War in Official Discourse Religion as a matter of state is not a foreign concept in Belgium. Soon after the formation of the Belgian state, Jules de Saint-Genois (1837) pointed out that even though Belgium did not have natural borders, a distinct climate, or a common language, it had a rich history which includes being the birthplace of the three men who most stirred the world between Julius Caesar and Napoleon: Charlemagne, Godefroid de Bouillon and Charles V.159 The raison d’être of all three of these political leaders was to defend the Catholic faith. Charlemagne and Charles V were both crowned by the Pope as Holy Roman Emperors and Godefroid de Bouillon led the First Crusade to the Holy Lands.

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Not only were these heroes admired for their religious faith, but also for their martial abilities. Ironically, religions profess to strive for peace after this life on earth, but the very self/other distinctions they create often lead to war and havoc before death. Both religion and war emerged as important in the social discourse of Belgian nationalism. The Catholic faith defined Belgium according to the well known historian and teacher of Henri Pirenne, Godefroid Kurth. In an address to school children on the 75th anniversary of the Belgian state, he called the Catholic faith “the soul of our soul” which explained why Flemings were bound to the Walloons and not to their fellow Dutch speakers to the north who tended to be Protestant. Kurth went on to praise the generations of Belgians who fought for this faith. Naming Godefroid de Bouillon among others, he stated that the Crusades were above all a Belgian feat. As Kurth saw it, Catholicism internally united the Belgian soul, and the desire of Belgians to remain as one has been expressed externally by continually fighting off foreign invaders. This vision of Belgian history became standard fare in school history texts. Not only did Kurth downplay regional differences in favor of a common religion, but he also explained the colonial policy in Central Africa as an extension of the Crusades, as a “Holy War” against slavery. (Kurth 1922). By virtue of their religion, the Turks who held Jerusalem and the Arabs in Central Africa were lumped into one forever evil-doing group (a tactic that has been continued by European right wing groups).160 In this context, the emphasis in the puppet theater on Charlemagne’s battles with the Muslims, when he actually spent more of his time fighting pagans to the east and north, makes more sense. If we look to primary school history textbooks used in Liège, there is a marked difference in how Muslims are portrayed between the pre-colonial and post-colonial periods.161 Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles Martel, is well known in francophone culture for having defeated the Arabs at the Battle of Poitiers (or Tours) in 732. This event was treated in a surprisingly even-handed fashion in textbooks before Belgium’s colonial forays into Africa. In an 1866 history text published in Liège, Martel’s victory over the Arabs is reported after his victories against the Saxons and various Germanic tribes. The name of the Arab chief, “Abdérame” is noted along with the number killed in battle. The author adds that through this battle the Gascons and Aquitanians submitted to Martel (J.-J.-P. 1866: 34). The account gives the impression of many warring tribes, of which the Arabs were one. Other European ethnic groups who were not yet christianized were equally troublesome.

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After Belgium became a colonial power, the report of Martel’s battle took on a different cast. Martel’s battles against other European ethnic groups took a back seat to his defeat of the Arabs. A 1922 text, after noting that Charles Martel “crushed” the Arabs near Poitiers in 732, stated that the followers of Mohammed, “already masters of western Asia, North Africa and Spain” had just entered France through the Pyrenees. By his triumph at Poitiers, Charles “saved the Catholic religion and civilization from a great disaster” (Alexandre and Piret 1922: 21). No mention is made of the Gascons and Aquitanians. The same sense is preserved in a 1934 text and in a 1939 text, the anti-Muslim sentiment is even stronger (Despontin 1934:26; Bynens 1939:23). These fanatics, full of hate for the Christian religion, came from Arabia. The Koran, which is their Bible, commands among other things, `In wars of religion, kill the enemies wherever you may find them. The brave ones killed in combat will go directly to heaven like the martyrs.’ Pillaging, ruining and burning, they had already taken over the north of Africa and Spain. In the desire to implant the crescent in place of the cross, they traversed the Pyrenees and spread into Gaul (Bynens 1939: 23).

The interpretation of history is shaped by present conditions, so to understand this anti-Muslim/Arab turn of events, we can begin by looking at a 1911 history text where a chapter on Belgian colonialism opens with an emotional account of how King Leopold II rallied the world to free Central Africa from the hateful Arabs who were selling the natives into slavery (Defays and Dontaine 1911: 119). Leopold even likened his men in the Congo to knights in the Crusades (Hochschild 1998: 66). It is fairly clear now that he used the image of the Arabs as vile slave traders to stir up public support for his sending troops to Africa. Morality was not a strong suit of Leopold’s and he was mostly concerned with the Arabs as economic competitors in the exploitation of Africa (Hochschild 1998; Fabian 2000). By 1930 there were 17,676 Belgians in Central Africa, and Belgians were beginning to feel like an “Imperial People” (Reisdorff 1931). Part of their mission was to christianize the natives. The textbook mentioned above entreated children to remember the Belgian martyrs who died in Africa and asked that “God continue to give our race the strength to follow their glorious example” (1911: 121). The White Fathers aided in directing missionary activities toward areas “threatened by Islam.”162 There were other political events beyond a general strain of European antiArab racism which might have led to a negative feeling toward the Arabs.

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Walloons who felt an affinity with France might have harbored resentment toward the natives of North Africa who regularly battled against French colonialism. By 1936, left wing anti-colonialists had their own reasons to dislike Arabs since Franco brought Moroccan troops in to fight the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. The Saracen was already an outsider figure in Walloon folklore (Doppagne 1977), but all of these more recent conflicts with the Arab world served to focus attention on medieval battles with the Arabs. These were played out in the puppet theater.

9.3. The Racial Other Doppagne (1977) in researching the name “Saracen” in Belgium discovered that it could be used for Neolithic peoples, Romans, Franks, Lithuanians, Baltic-Slavs, Slavs, Tartars, Normans, and even local populations before they had been christianized. In other words, it meant non-Christians. The name was also sometimes used for fairies who live underground or disagreeable old women (1977: 25). The traitor connotation of the word was extended to refer to a worker who worked below standardized trade union wages. In a similar vein, Haust’s Walloon dictionary lists one meaning for “Jew” as someone who betrays his co-workers. “Mahom,” “Mahon” or “Mahomet” was used to designate the god of the Muslims (rather than his prophet) but it was also used to refer to effigies placed by the house of someone who transgressed local norms or to a figure drawn on the transgressor’s door. The latter was often done to point out marital infidelity, but the technique was also used after World War II to call attention to collaborators.163 Omi and Winant described race as “an unstable and de-centered complex of social meanings.” Random conversations I had with people in Belgium reflected this instability. I heard the term “race” used to refer to people of color, different social classes, different Belgian ethnic groups, different religious groups and even extended family groups. Engels, the oldest puppeteer I worked with, was sometimes influenced by the racial classifications derived from early physical anthropology and at other times he used “race” to refer to a particular family.164 Within the puppet plays themselves characters speak of the Montglave and Mayence extended families as “races.” In sum, “race” appeared to be a cover term for whatever self/other distinction one was trying to promote at the moment.

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I mentioned in chapter three, how the symbolists were the first upper class group who took an interest in the puppet theater. The movement included both Flemings and Walloons with one of the group’s most revered authors being Emile Verhaeren, a francophone Fleming. One day in the library, I happened to pick up his book, “Belgium’s Agony” published in 1915. Expecting to see poems influenced by socially progressive politics about industrialized European cities for which he was known, I instead discovered a screed on the German invasion of Belgium. In the second chapter, he graphically described barbarous acts of the German soldiers. After a Bruegelian description that resembles the Massacre of the Innocents, he dedicated a poem to the people of Liège who died to save the world from German encroachment (Verhaeren 1915: 17–34). In the next chapter entitled “Belgian Pride” he clarified that these brave soldiers: ... represented, unconsciously of course, a great past of cultured civilization. If the French-speaking race is the incarnation of both Greece and Rome, we can assert that these soldiers of ours defended and upheld their inherited traditions, at the moment when they were most seriously threatened....At Liège, as in Sparta, a handful of men saved the world.165

I was struck by the Herderian conjunction of race and language, together with the incarnation of the classical Indo-European civilizations which had recently been cut off from the Semitic and African worlds (Bernal 1987). Perhaps I should not have been so surprised then to read Chapter eleven, “Germany the Asiatic.” If ever there was a stellar example of the unstable and de-centered meaning of race, this must be it. The initial sentences state that: In the sixteenth century Spain, with her savagery and her fanaticism, seemed like a fragment of Africa soldered on to Western Europe. The Moors had conquered her. They had forced her to accept their brutal idea of violent authority (Verhaeren 1915: 111).

He went on to say that during the Moorish occupation of Spain, Spanish Christianity became like Spanish Islam and “she imposed her faith by blood and iron,”invading Flanders in the process (Verhaeren 1915:111–112). Shifting to the present, Verhaeren stated that “As Spain in the sixteenth century was imbued with the spirit of Africa, so Germany in the twentieth century is imbued with the spirit of Asia.” (1915: 112). By the spirit of Asia, Verhaeren meant that Germany had been invaded by the other Semites, Jews. “Jews have thrust themselves, more numerously than anywhere else, into

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German lands” wrote Verhaeren (1915: 112). He saw the Jews as having taught Germany to organize her efforts and to be skillful at business, eventually voiding the world of sentiment and leading the Germans to see life only as selfinterest. According to Verhaeren, Jews controlled Germany from behind the scenes and their meddling extended beyond Europe. “In every undertaking of German finance, we meet either them, or their equally Semitic cousins, the German-Americans” (1915: 113). This racial linking of Germans, Jews and Americans as controllers of finance is also to be found in the rhetoric of the Belgian Abbot Norbert Wallez.166 Verhaeren dropped this particular train of thought and took up, instead, the subject of the “Jewish-controlled press” which worked to transform the old Germany, “turn(ing) the eyes of the race toward conquest and booty.” The Jews, according to Verhaeren, transformed the German character and led them into World War I. Hitler later blamed them for the German defeat in that war. Christian Europe has always been able to slip the character of the Jew into the position of “the evil-doer within” in the drama of European history as they can use the Muslim as “the evil-doer from the outside.” Verhaeren’s racialized view of the world and aversion to hybridity is clear in the excerpts given above. Religion is a major element in his classification of racial character and Christianity stands for civilization while other religious traditions promote barbarism. In the following excerpt he elucidates this model with a discussion of war which I quote at length. But it is above all in the conduct of war that Germany has revealed the spirit of Asia that dominates her. Aryan Europe has, since the middle ages, gradually christianized her barbarous instincts. She has fought her battles with honour. She has created the most perfect type of soldier — the knight. She introduced the Truce of God. She condemned deceit and treachery. During the Renaissance Francis I and Bayard were the models of honour and nobility. In the eighteenth century, at Fontenoy, war was courteous and gallant. During the French Revolution and the First Empire it was sublime. To-day, thanks to Germany, war is branded and dishonoured by treachery and lies. No longer can one rely on the word of the enemy; no longer can one trust his promises; his every action is known to cloak a crime. Candour and honour have disappeared; they are mocked and scorned. Cruelty and barbarism have become a system. Pity has vanished. The wounded are butchered, the dead thrown into a river. Dying men are burned alive, prisoners are slain. Prussian methods recall those bas-

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reliefs of the relentless Assurbanipal, commanding the torture of his conquered foes, their total extermination. Pillage, arson, wholesale destruction were the orders given in war by the Babylonians of Asia centuries ago. They are the orders given in war by the Germans of Europe today (Verhaeren 1915: 116–117).

From the vantage point of post World War II, Verharen’s description set my head spinning. First he attributed Germany’s war time barbarism to Jewish influence on the Aryan race which had civilized the act of making war. This racial-religious hybridity of Jews and Aryans was likened to the equally distasteful African (Muslim) influence on Spain which caused Spain to take-over Flanders in the 16th century. It is not far-fetched to derive from this reading the idea that over the centuries, what is now Belgian territory has suffered, not from the aggression of its Christian European neighbors, but from the barbarous hordes of Africa and Asia who were able to sway Belgium’s good Christian neighbors. Certainly Belgium takes the moral high ground by not having been steered off the course of civilized Christianity. War is not seen as evil in and of itself. In fact, Verhaeren describes war in the Christian Aryan European format as being “courteous,” “gallant” and even “sublime.” In other words, war as it is displayed in the puppet theater. Racial politics only increased after WWI, but still “race” remained an unstable term. It was commonly used to refer to the Flemish and Walloon races of Belgium, but there was a certain effort to expand the notion of race to Christian Europe which was popularly seen as being co-terminous with lighter skinned people. One of the more extreme positions was outlined by Ketels (1936) in his Espoir en la Formation d’un Parti Raciste. What I found most interesting about this text was its clear opposition to socialism. Socialism, Ketels says, unites classes of different races which leads to the opposition of classes within a single race. In contrast to this, he calls for Pan European Racism which unites people of the white race no matter what class they belong to. It is not quite so “black and white” (to borrow a phrase) because Russia is depicted as anti-European through its adoption of socialism and France has shown her empathy to socialism, so their political leanings exclude them from the White European race. Racists were also upset by the fact that the French army was full of non-White soldiers from her colonies. I cannot imagine Ketels program having much of a following in Liège since it was a stronghold of socialism and had extremely close relations with France, but I cite it as another example of how race was envisioned in interwar Belgium.

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Though it never became a national project, anti-Semitism did not skip over Belgium. The Flemish nationalist movement was tinged with anti-Semitism and both of the Walloon political leaders, Picard and Destrée were quite vocal anti-Semites before World War I. After the war when the racist party, Rex, was formed in Wallonia, Destrée seemed to abandon anti-Semitic talk.167 Beginning in the 30s eastern Jews began flocking into Belgium. They were not turned away, but neither were they entirely accepted. During the German occupation, the new Jewish immigrants were the first ones to be given up to the authorities. The Jews with Belgian nationality were safe at first. As the extermination policy was stepped up, however, they too were in danger. A Jewish Defense Committee was formed and was able to hide about 4000 Jewish children around the Belgian countryside.168 25,257 “racial deportees” from Belgium were sent to Auschwitz and about two thirds of these people were immediately assassinated. By May 1945 only 1,207 were left alive (Steinberg 1995: 16). It is not easy to measure the mutual influences between official discourses, expressive texts, and actions in the world, but to not juxtapose the racially based wars of religion depicted in the puppet theater with the exploitation of the Congo and waves of anti-Semitism that formed the political unconscious is to limit our understanding of its meaning in society.

9.4. Religion, Race, and War in the Puppet Theater The puppet theater portrays official discourses which center on war and religion and tip into race. The appeal of these romantic stories with which audiences could self-identify as members of a virtuous and valiant nation attracted people of all social classes. However, the non dominant subject position of the puppeteers led to the insertion of counter-textual material. Anti-war, anticlerical and anti-racist images are not rare in puppet performances, but they are not readily available for analysis in written scripts. Like all popular cultural forms, the puppet theater is contradictory and multivocal. This has been its secret for survival. It appeals to conservative, ruling class values, at the same time that it speaks to those who have a different idea of the way the world is structured. In most Nativity plays there is a space for the shepherds to ask for something from the Christ child. In 1982, Libert put the following speech in the mouth of Tchantchès’ adopted daughter, Berthine:

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Quand les puissants de ce monde, oh pas tous sais-tu, petit Jésus, mais i n’en a beaucoup sais-tu, beaucoup plus qu’on croit. Quand les puissants de ce monde profitent des fêtes de Noël pour nous souhaiter bons voeux de bonheur et de paix et puis qu’après ils s’occupent à acheter des canons, des tanks, et des missiles; si l’micro devant lequel ils parlent pouvait leur pèter à la figure, je crois que l’humanité ne perdrait pas grand chose sais-tu petit Jésus. {When the powerful ones of this world, oh, not all of them you know Little Jesus, but there are a lot of them you know, a lot more than one would think. When the powerful ones of this world take advantage of the Christmas holidays to send us good wishes of happiness and peace and then afterwards they busy themselves buying cannons, tanks and missiles; if the microphone they are speaking into could blow up in their faces, I think that humanity wouldn’t lose a great deal, you know Little Jesus.}

In this short speech, Berthine attacks the ruling class who exploit the religious holiday to wish everyone peace and happiness and then purchase war materials. Her solution is to give them a taste of their own medicine, blowing them up while they are deceptively wishing everyone peace — and presumably before they succeed in blowing up the (non ruling class) members of their audience. After this speech, the room hummed with approval. Interestingly, the speech was given by a child who had not yet learned the rules for speaking. Acquiring communicative competence is both enabling and disabling. It trains us what to say at appropriate times, but can also stifle thoughts we would like to express. We are eventually taught to hold our tongues when speaking of religion and war.

CHAPTER 10

The World of Puppets, The World of Puppeteers: Politics in Performance

In this chapter, I take a more ethnographic approach, comparing the sub-texts and later accretions of the puppet shows with discourse patterns drawn from observation. What occurs on the puppet stage is often echoed in conversations outside the puppet theater and what occurs in conversations outside the puppet theater often makes its way onto the stage. This chapter examines some of the intersections having to do with gender, class, immigration, work, and language politics. Salient cultural themes in Liège working-class culture inform a world view that puppeteers represent on stage. We are left with a vision of a hierarchical world in which people with more power always take advantage of those with less power. The proper stance toward this hierarchy is to resist and rebel, but not without being compassionate and generous toward others who are in difficult positions. Compassion and generosity can quickly fade when the object of interaction becomes “the Other.” Women and the bourgeoisie are “othered” by Liège puppeteers, but they effortlessly slide into the in-group when confronted with Flemings and immigrants. Even Flemings become part of the group when confronted with immigrants. Within the immigrant group, Christian Europeans are far more likely to become part of the in-group than are Muslim Turks and North Africans. References to Pope Urban II launching the Crusades against the Muslims in order to stop European princes from warring against each other are probably in order here.

10.1. Gender and Class It should be clear by this point how closely being a puppeteer is tied with being male and working-class. When I asked all the puppeteers what one had to be in

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order to be a puppeteer. Everybody said that a puppeteer had to be “of the people.” They said they couldn’t imagine a bourgeois puppeteer. They did not say that one had to be male, because it was almost too obvious to point out. All the puppeteers performing in Liège in 1982 were male and the major puppet characters were male. It was also understood that young boys in the audience would be more interested in the plays than the girls, though I could find no clear evidence of this. While puppeteers did not specifically say that one had to be male to be a puppeteer, they often pointed out the physical requirements of the job and implied that it could not be done by women. One line of explanation for the exclusion of women centered on the production of male voices and the other on the strength needed to set up and take down stages and carry out extended puppet battles. The older puppeteers were proud of their physical strength and mocked men who they thought were weak. Once when I mentioned to an older working-class man who used to frequent the puppet theaters that I had heard that Lassaux’s daughters manipulated puppets, it led him into a commentary about the strength of past generations and the weakness of people today. ... it’s not a criticism, huh, but today’s generation no longer has the same physical strength as the last generation. It was a man with his five daughters, but they were women (gestures “big” with jaws dropped and hands showing width) a head bigger than me and twice as wide as me…You, the youth of today, you are very tall, but not wide. You are very thin, always thin. Before we didn’t worry about our figures and our diet. But we had physical strength that you young people have trouble imagining… now they do a lot of jogging, and a lot of hikes, 5, 10, 20 kilometers and they get medals. They are very proud, huh. Well me, only me, not to mention my father and my uncles and my grandfathers, everyday before the war from the age of 16 till, yeah till the age of 19, in Liège we walked 20 kilometers everyday to go to and from work and then I was on my feet for 8 hours in front of a printing machine and we found that completely normal. I didn’t get a medal everyday because I walked my 20 kilometers!169

While class is not made explicit in this passage, he is definitely not talking about managerial or desk jobs. Gender is also blurred, as if the only reason women do not perform with puppets today is because they are not as strong as women were in the last generation.170 For the older generation, strength and large bulky bodies went together. It was inconceivable to them that someone could be thin and strong at the same time. In fact, Dufour and Engels always

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sucked in their cheeks to denote weakness. Strength was necessary, but it had to be combined with a strong will to “give it your all.” A puppeteer who wasn’t sweating after a battle, did not care enough to give the audience a lively performance. Dufour recounted on numerous occasions playing the drums so hard that he tore his skin off. The physicality of the job excluded both women and upper class men from being puppeteers, in his opinion. But women and upper class men are not excludable from the world of puppeteers. Working-class men construct their identities through attraction and repulsion to these two groups of people. Below, I contextualize four Walloon expressions heard both within and outside of the puppet theater. 10.1.1. Lès feumes, parèt!: Female Irrationality and Betrayal This line which can be simply translated as an exasperated “Women!” was uttered in the Nativity play by Bouyotte to Joseph after Mary precipitously asked to go visit her cousin Elizabeth. It encapsulates a pervasive male belief in the irrational behavior of women. This is a small step away from the fear of women, or more specifically, the fear of losing control over women. When I returned from the field, I felt guilty more than once for having decided to research a male performance form. My colleagues in women studies constantly asked what women did in the puppet theater. I had to answer “not much” and then racked my brain for all the instances of women in the theater that came to my attention. There was the female student of Dufour’s who dropped out after a few lessons and the one of Maquet’s who had stuck with it, but didn’t have a theater yet. There was Engels’ wife who always helped him in the theater and when she died, he said he lost interest in performing. Engels also told me that Lassaux’s daughter had spoken for the puppets (everyone else claimed she didn’t, though they did recognize that the Lassaux girls helped their father manipulate).171 Wives and daughters were mentioned in passing in the puppetry literature as reading stories to their illiterate husbands and fathers, helping to dress the puppets, policing the audience, collecting admissions and selling refreshments. Some of these roles women accomplish even today. However, when I tried to interview women, they would usually direct me back to a man who was “the expert.” Sometimes it appeared as if the role of women had been covered up; treated as something which brought shame on the master puppeteer. The only place where puppeteers readily acknowledged the help of women was in making costumes for puppets. Nevertheless, a number of pup-

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peteers told me that they even made their own costumes. More often women came up in puppeteers’ stories as disruptive forces. I heard multiple stories of good assistants who stopped working with puppets when they got married. I also heard stories about wives and daughters selling a puppeteer’s material after his death, treating puppets as mere commodities. Puppeteers would disdainfully recount how entire collections were sold piecemeal to whoever would pay the price, while younger male relatives, eager apprentices, and fellow puppeteers stood by helplessly. Bisscheroux’s daughter and the wives of both Deletrez and Crits are accused of this betrayal. Even to this day, puppeteers speak regretfully of the portion of Bisscheroux’s beautiful puppets that ended up in an antique/junk shop, rather than a working puppet theater. Deletrez’s son and Crits’ grandson, after losing their desired inheritance took up carving and painstakingly (re-)created a cast of puppet characters. Wives of puppeteers learn that their husbands spend an inordinate amount of time in the puppet theater and that a good proportion of extra resources are fed back into the theater. The wives of puppeteers I talked with enjoyed the puppet theater and they saw how important it was to their husbands, but they felt that it was a little too consuming of time and money. I didn’t ask them what they would do with the puppet material if their husbands died, but it would surprise me if they kept it intact and presented it at little or no cost to an interested young puppeteer. More likely, in the face of losing a major breadwinner, assets would have to be liquidated and the puppet material which was no longer being used would be high on the list. This behavior only seems traitorous or irrational if one is unable to shift away from the point of view of the puppeteer. 10.1.2. Li gros pèhon magne li p’tit: Hierarchy and Power Liège is a hierarchical society where members of higher social classes wield more power than those of lower social classes. The same is true in the puppet theater. The clear existence of a social hierarchy and differential power in Belgian society is metaphorically mapped onto visual size. Upper class socially powerful people are referred to as “les grands” and lower class people referred to as “les petits” or “le petit peuple.” The proverb stated above, which translates as “the big fish eats the little one,” is commonly heard in conversations concerning power differentials in Liège.172 This saying is also occasionally used in puppet dialogue where, in addition to referring to characters as “little” or “big” through language, the hierarchical structure is carved into the

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visual representation of the character. The nobles stand about 25% taller than the commoners. When I questioned this one time, Dufour told me that nobles were taller than other people because they always ate well.173 It is far more likely that differential puppet size is based on metaphor, rather than visible physical differences. The older man of noble birth is the quintessential big fish on the puppet stage. This is not the case outside the puppet theater where the King of Belgium plays a symbolic role in national politics. Working-class people in Liège tended to see the king as benevolent. He may be a big fish, but he does not eat little ones. The quintessential “big fish” in Liège were rich people who controlled political power with their economic power which also brought them social power. These people were usually identified by their political, economic or social status (Libéral, riche, bourgeois, respectively). Puppet characters assert their degree of power through discourse strategies. When nobles bark an order, their underlings reply with, “Vos ordres seront executés avec promptitude” {Your orders will be executed with promptitude} or a similar recognition of the chain of command. Noble characters can interrupt those beneath them and they seldom empathize with their interlocutors. They simply extract needed information from them. They also feel free to change the topic of discourse at will. All of these discourse strategies exist outside of the puppet theater as well. I have heard them used between members of different social classes; between men and women and between masters and apprentices. Though not exactly conforming to the older model, it is interesting that the puppet theater both portrays medieval epics and reproduces itself through a medieval-like master-apprentice system. The master’s power over his apprentice is recognized and criticized if taken to too great an extent, as the following passage shows: The old puppeteer, most of them, I wouldn’t say all, but I’m saying most of them…these were pretty bizarre people, if you like. Here…for example… you go give him a hand. He accepts that you give him a hand, but for him, you didn’t do him a favor. It’s him who honored you by taking you into his theater.174

While the master has a great deal of power within his theater, he usually realizes that he is merely a big fish in a little pond. The real big fish are the ones who speak standard French and make funding decisions. They are the ones

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with disposable income who own both city and country homes. The simplification of social hierarchy crystallized in the saying “the big fish eats the little one” allows for the continuity of the place of the underdog (to shift animal metaphors) throughout successive models of social hierarchy. Tchantchès embodies the little fish, whether he is a servant, farm hand or factory worker and whether the story takes place in biblical times, in the early or late Middle Ages, during the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, or in contemporary times. Tchantchès can always look at the audience and say “Have you noticed that it’s always the same people who do the work.” In the puppet show model the bottom slot of the social hierarchy remains constant despite the upheavals that occasionally take place in the upper echelons of society. 10.1.3. Nos-avans lès djvès fwèrt près dèl’ tièsse: Resistance and Rebellion While the puppeteers and other working-class people in Liège were well aware of the established hierarchy, this did not mean that they passively accepted it. People who do so are considered dupes of the system. The old knight in the scene below is a laughing stock because he has managed to reap no dignity from either his age or his noble birth. He indicates his subordination in the uncreative repetitiveness of his response to Charlemagne when asked what he would do during his retirement. “Seigneur, je vais faire comme d’habitude ce que vous me direz de faire, seigneur, en faisant tout mon possible pour faire tout ce que vous m’avez dit de faire, seigneur.”{Sir, I will do as usual what you tell me to do, Sir, in doing my best to do everything that you told me to do, Sir.} To calmly accept one’s subordinate position in a hierarchical system stands in stark contrast to the resistant behavior of Tchantchès, Ogier le Danois, Roland, the Aymon brothers and other famous rebels represented in the puppet theater. These are all admirable characters who are quick to notice acts of injustice and act quickly, without much forethought. When I first began asking about the puppet theater, people would often respond that Tchantchès had “his hair close to his head.” When they saw that I looked confused, they would try to explain that it meant that he angered easily and would fight when riled. Some even said it was a typical trait of the people of Liège. My background made it difficult for me to see this as the positive trait it seemed to be to my interlocutors. When I saw it in the “Song of Walloons” I knew that it must be a cherished local trait to be included in the regional anthem. It took me much longer to see the connection with 19th century racial

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categorizations. This trait linked Walloons to the hot-headed Latins, rather than the more methodical Germanic people, emphasizing a fundamental difference between Walloons and Flemings.175 While the racial connections cannot be ignored, I do not think that the regionalist political agenda fully explains the adoption of this trait. Rather, I think that it emerged as an underdog’s response to the hierarchy. It was nurtured in Liège by the anarchist, communist, and socialist political movements.176 Tchantchès is a perfect anti-hierarchical figure. In several puppet theaters he only uses the familiar address form, “tu” with Charlemagne. He is a workingclass Walloon guy, with no pretensions, but he wins all battles in an invented world where fighting power is supposed to be a result of good breeding. Hierarchy has been a constant feature of European society, but there have been shifts in the structure of the class system in historical times. For instance, in the early middle ages, noble status was gained by prowess in battle, but by the 12th century, nobility had become inherited in western Europe. This is the model of social hierarchy portrayed in the medieval epics and in the puppet shows based on them. Noble power began weakening in Liège in the 14th century and the guilds began to claim power. The new burgher class continued to rise and as the Industrial Revolution got underway, they achieved dominance over the nobility. This means that the big fish of today were in one sense, the little fish of the past. The shifting referents of “big fish” and “little fish” provide space for several possible entextualizations, allowing puppeteers to identify with other social classes in other times. One of the favorite stories about the history of Liège is referred to as “La Mâle St. Martin.”177 At least a half dozen working-class people told me this story during my stay in Liège. When I examined children’s history books written during the interwar period, the St. Martin’s incident comes after sections which talk about the weakening of the nobility and the rise of the bourgeoisie. In the texts the nobles are referred to as “les grands” which is in keeping with what puppeteers and their audiences might say today. What struck me as odd, however, was that the bourgeoisie was referred to as “le peuple.” Before going on, let me relate the story. The incident occurred in 1312. The artisans and shopkeepers of Liège had gained many rights and the town prospered, but the nobles maintained administrative control of the city and abused their privileges by demanding high taxes. A nobleman came to the Market Hall and demanded tax money from a butcher. When the butcher refused, the nobleman reached for his cash box. The

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butcher took out his cleaver and chopped off the man’s hand. (This part of the story is usually left out of history texts, but is a climactic moment in oral accounts.) Soon afterwards the artisans and shopkeepers, hearing that the nobles were plotting against them, took up arms. Two hundred nobles fearing for their lives ran to St. Martin’s church where they assumed they would be safe. The rebels, however, were not stopped by religious sentiment and burned down the church, with the nobles inside. Working-class people in Liège identified with the resistance of little fish against big fish. The fact that the bourgeoisie (who are now “les grands”) was referred to as “le peuple” can be a bit confusing, as we will see below, but it can also be used to promote class solidarity and resistance in the present. Thomas Talbot performed La Mâle St. Martin between the wars and I was able to copy his script. In it, he clearly distinguishes the two opposing groups as “le peuple” and “la noblesse” with the latter group supported by the other stable social category throughout the Middle Ages, the clergy. A member of the merchant class, Herembaux de Metz, differentiates the two groups through a self-referential passage concerning the use of official discourse versus physical action. “Je ne sais pas faire des discours comme des clercs et les gens lettrés, mais quand il s’agit de manier la hache et le couperet, Herembaux de Metz s’y entend à merveille.”178 {I don’t know how to make speeches like the clergy and literate people, but when it concerns handling a cleaver and kitchen knife Herembaux de Metz knows it well.} Further evidence of the little fish status of the bourgeoisie at this particular moment in history is that the tchantchès fight on their side during the battles, against the nobility. Talbot goes a step further in assimilating bourgeois struggles of the 14th century to working-class struggles of the 20th century with the following speech by Bouchard le Foulon: Tant que les nobles sont restés dans les limites de leurs droits, le peuple leur a temoigné son estime et son respect; non d’une manière servile comme l’a dit le sire de Saint Servais, car le peuple comprend fort bien que la naissance patricienne est due au hasard, et il ne reconnait que la noblesse de coeur, d’intelligence, et de sentiment. Dans les siècles passés ce qui donnait aux nobles une supériorité incontestable, c’est que né dans l’opulence, ayant tous les moyens de s’instruire et de développer leur intelligence, ils étaient mieux policés que les gens du peuple. Aujourd’hui, il n’en est plus ainsi; le peuple s’est civilisé, il pense. Il réfléchit. Il pense qu’il ne doit pas servir de jouet à une classe privilegiée, il réfléchit aux

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abus monstrueux de despotisme…l’homme du peuple a la conscience de sa force et de ses droits sociaux.179 {As long as the nobles stayed within the limits of their rights, the people pledged to them their esteem and respect; not in a servile manner as stated by the Lord of St. Servais, because the people understand clearly that patrician birth is a matter of chance, and they only recognize nobility of heart, of intelligence and of sentiment. In past centuries what gave nobles incontestable superiority was that born into opulence, having all the means to instruct themselves and to develop their intelligence, they were more refined than the people. Today, it is no longer like that; the people civilized themselves. They think. They reflect. They think that they should not serve as toys to a privileged class. They reflect on the monstrous abuses of despotism…the man of the people is conscious of his force and of his social rights.}

Talbot was an activist in the socialist party and during the interwar period when this play was performed, the socialist party campaigned for workers’ educational programs and social rights. Many of these programs were carried out in the Maisons du Peuple where Talbot was a frequent performer. It seems very likely that in delivering this speech, Talbot might well have had something in mind besides 14th century power struggles. Dufour also wrote a play based on this incident. As was museum policy, he turned the script in to the director of the museum, but he never got it back. He told me that the director claimed to have lost it. He looked at me to see if I understood the impact of he said, but I was confused and asked for clarification. On a prétendu au Musée qu’on l’avait égarée et ça c’etait pour ne pas que je la joue ... parce que ça allait à l’encontre et ça leur/ ça les blessait dans leur amour propre parce qu’ils étaient d’une corporation ou d’une autre, voistu… et y en avait une des deux qu’était le peuple là-dedans et l’histoire raconte que le peuple, ayant gagné la bataille, avait fait entrer tous les nobles dans l’église St. Martin et ils l’ont mis le feu. Alors c’est un déshonneur pour les nobles et certainement, bon disons les libéraux, (le directeur) est de ce coté là et, bah, ils n’ont jamais voulu la laisser jouer.180 {They claimed at the Museum that they had misplaced it and that was so I wouldn’t perform it…because it went against and it offended them because they were from one corporation or another, you see…and one of the two were the “people” and history says that the “people,” having won the battle, made all the nobles go in St. Martin’s church and they set it on fire. So, it was a dishonor for the nobles and of course, let’s say the Liberals, (the director) is on that side and well, they never wanted to allow it to be played.}

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Whereas Talbot brought together the contemporary working class with the rebellious nascent bourgeoisie, Dufour completes the shift into the contemporary class structure by coalescing the 14th century nobility with the contemporary bourgeoisie who control the Liberal Party. He refused to accept that Remouchamps might identify with the rebels and saw the losing of his play as a deliberate act of sabotage born of class struggle. Resistance and rebellion of the little fish have a long history in Liège. Until the 18th century, hunger was what motivated the poor to rebel and the riots were generally stopped by executing the leaders and/or providing food (Havelange, Hélin and Leboutte 1994). In the 19th century, demands for workers’ rights and political representation became the source of rebellion. Soon after major strikes in the coal mines of the Borinage in 1884, the Belgian Workers’ Party (POB) was formed. Its goal was to unite all workers of the country and fight for universal suffrage, secular and free education, the separation of church and state, nationalization of banks and railways, raising the legal age for children to work, limiting the workday and having one day a week off (Perin 1979: 18). The following year, riots broke out in Liège as work hours were increased and salaries reduced. The uprising spread and parades of strikers destroyed factories and the homes of factory owners. The army was brought in and several strikers were massacred and hundreds arrested.181 20,000 marched on Brussels to demand amnesty for the strikers and the right to vote. In 1902, 300,000 workers participated in a strike, continuing to demand the right to vote. In 1913, after the Catholic Party was victorious in the elections, there was a general strike of 400,000. The workers had to wait until 1921 before their dream of universal suffrage was attained, after which the socialist party rose to a position of dominance in national politics. Massive strikes again broke out in Wallonia in 1932 and 1936, and in 1959, people went on strike over the closure of the coal mines. This was closely followed by a general strike in the winter of 1960–61 against the reduction of social benefits. Puppeteers were often participants in acts of rebellion. Victor Verrées’ father lost his job in the mines before World War I because he was seen as instigating his fellow workers to strike. Thomas Talbot performed puppet shows at the tramway men’s strike between the two wars. Henri Libert performed anti-Hitler skits in the work camps in Germany during World War II. The puppet theater in Liège, as elsewhere, has been formed in a context of resistance and rebellion, and often reflects the same.182

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10.1.4. Qwand deûs pôves s’êdèt, l’bon Diu `nnè rèy: Compassion and Generosity If one way to counteract a hierarchical system is to maintain an independent spirit and resist efforts to keep you in your place, another way is to be compassionate and generous toward people in need. “When two poor people help each other, the Good Lord smiles” is the translation of the saying above. Through compassion and generosity, little fish ease life’s burdens. The working-class people I knew in Liège were very generous and always ready to lend a hand. I was received very warmly in the Outremeuse neighborhood because I had arrived alone, without my family and with very few personal possessions. The old retired coal miner who rented one of the rooms in the same building quickly ran to my aid when I was exchanging my empty gas bottle for a full one. He told the merchant, “La mademoiselle est venue sans rien” {the girl came with nothing}. She nodded solemnly and offered a cart to help us make the journey back home with the extremely heavy bottle. When one of the old men in the neighborhood died, his women friends made sure I got his horse hair bed and blankets because they knew I was sleeping on a cot. They also insisted I take his electric coffee maker. I told them I had a small pot that I heated on my gas hot plate, but they quickly reminded me that my landlady paid for the electricity, but gas money came out of my own pocket. When I visited working-class houses, I was always treated to lots of food. A quarter of a pie and a constantly refilled cup of coffee were par for the course for an afternoon visit. Micheline Deletrez always made sure I stayed for supper. Frying a mountain of pork chops in a half kilo of butter, she would smile and say, “ici c’est la grosse quantité” {Here, it’s the big quantity}. Used to cooking for her two teenage boys, three younger daughters, her mother, and her husband, she always assured me that one more mouth made no difference. When I ate at Dufour’s, he would punctuate the conversation with orders for me to eat more. He was worried that I would not eat enough and would get sick.183 During my first week in Liège, he took me up to the city administration building to get me an employee’s card so that I could eat in the workers’ cafeteria. With the socialist party in power, Dufour was seen as a patron, as someone who could get things for people. Almost every time I went to his house, someone would either call or arrive to ask him a favor. He loved having the ability to help people out. When his wife would reprimand him for spending too much money, he would respond with the saying, “l’argent ne suit pas le

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corbillard” {money doesn’t follow the hearse}. Public spending of money in acts of generosity is cherished by the working class. When I went out to restaurants with academics, the bill was always split, but with working-class people, they would insist on paying. When drinking in a café, it would be unheard of for people to just pay for their own drinks. Everyone took turns buying rounds and if the party broke up before someone’s turn, they acted very embarrassed and promised to start off the next time.184 In order to have money to spend in public, one often had to go without in private. One puppeteer had no heat in the bedrooms of his house and the kitchen sink was outside in a shed. One old woman acquaintance chastised me for buying a newspaper when you can get it free from the hairdresser the following day. This same woman was thrilled when she heard on T.V. that she could alleviate the suffering of poor children by donating her old X ray sheets to a water purification project in the third world. If generosity is appreciated. Stinginess is a major topic of gossip. Dufour dropped me off at the museum conservator’s house when I had first arrived and saw that I was only being served a bowl of soup. He recounted the story numerous times, highlighting the stinginess of the bourgeoisie. Within puppetry circles, stinginess was always noted. Master puppeteers were the only ones paid for performances, but they were expected to be generous with their assistants. If they were not, they would be gossiped about. “Puppeteer X used to get 5000BF for a show and wouldn’t give you 100BF for helping,” I was told about one interwar puppeteer. I was told multiple times of a contemporary puppeteer who got 20,000BF for a show and only gave his assistant 500BF. Puppet-makers were prime targets of accusations of stinginess because they created the products most desired by performing puppeteers (who weren’t themselves carvers). Puppets were quite expensive, and several times I heard people talking about how helpful they had been to Puppet-maker X or Y, but when it came to buying a puppet, the puppet-maker would not lower the price. While others were often accused of stinginess, the self was more often accused of being too generous for their own good. Women, in particular, saw their having a big heart as their downfall. Francine often told me of her sacrifices as a mother and a wife. She attributed her present physical ailments to her past indulgences of her children. She told me that her bad back was a direct result of sleeping on the floor beside her epileptic daughter’s bed for 8 days straight. Maria told me how her first husband’s family took advantage of her because she had not bothered to keep her belongings separate from his, so

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when he died soon after they married, his family claimed all of her things.185 With the strong cultural ideal of generosity, even when one has little to share, we can understand why the shepherds’ gifts to the baby Christ have such cultural salience. Puppeteers, following Christian teachings, stress the poverty of Mary and Joseph and the poverty of the shepherds. This forms the background to the scene where the shepherds give what little they have to help the Holy Family. The rend between past and present is sewn together with the thread of common poverty. Feeling someone else’s need and giving away one lamb out of a small flock, or giving away part of an already too meager retirement check are parallel acts of generosity. Certainly, the compassion and generosity of the poor continues to be relevant and helps assure the Nativity Play a place in Liège puppetry. Two puppeteers I worked with in 1982 had always dreamed of having their own theaters. They worked day and night over many years to achieve their goals, but life was not easy on them. One went through a divorce. The other had one son who had a debilitating accident and lost his other son in a car accident. Both were caught in the downsizing of the 1990s. They helped each other through the crises, carving puppets together. When I returned to Liège in 1996, I was pleased to find that they had opened a theater together. They called it “Âs deûs Tchantchès qui rèye” {To the two laughing Tchantchès}.

10.2. Immigration and Work Liège’s coal deposits and industry led to immigration from all corners of Europe, North Africa and Turkey.186 The puppet theater has an interesting relationship to immigration. Puppet historians over the years have traced the origin of the Liège rod puppet theater to Italy, or more precisely to Italian immigrants performing in Liège. Even today, Italians compose the largest foreign population in Belgium, and their presence is particularly noticeable around Liège. The next largest foreign population is Moroccan. If we consider that the Saracens of the chansons de geste are ancestors of Moroccans, then the two largest post war foreign populations were already present in the puppet theater. We might even guess that the puppet theater has had an influence on how those populations are viewed today. With immigration from non European countries being one of the most volatile issues facing the European Community, it is difficult to imagine that

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institutionalized racism is actually quite recent in Belgian history. In fact, until 1933, there was no difference between the identity cards of native Belgians and immigrants. As thousands of Jews and other anti-fascist refugees entered Belgium, the government saw fit to start making a distinction. In 1936, the Belgian government began issuing work permits for the first time. Following World War II, Belgium enjoyed a period of economic growth which is now called “Les Trente Glorieuses” or the Thirty glorious ones (years). During these years there was rapid reconstruction which led to a labor shortage. At first about 64,000 German prisoners of war were forced to work in the mines, then around 1946–47 their places were taken by about 70,000 Italian workers. Throughout the 1950s, laborers from Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal arrived. By the 1960s, labor recruiters sponsored by the Belgian government were going to Morocco and Turkey in search of more workers (Merckx and Fekete 1991). This created what Castles and Kossack (1973) call a dual-tiered work force whereby immigrants occupy the least desirable jobs. Even though these jobs have been abandoned by indigenous workers, they still perceive immigrants as a competing group, rather than as members of the same class. In the 1970s, the coal and steel industries began to show signs of decline. Many Belgians are quick to blame the reconstruction money that poured into Germany after World War II, updating all their industrial equipment which soon outperformed the companies of Liège. New industries chose to locate in Flanders where the socialist trade union activity was less. Migrant workers shored up declining industries with low wages, poor working conditions and frequent lay-offs. As the jobs in production dropped off, they shifted into the service sector. Many had begun to settle and bring their families, living in the poorest sections of the city. They were barred from holding public service/government employment. By 1974 primary immigration had virtually ceased, yet discourse about the “invasion” of immigrants increased. More and more bureaucratic effort was put into the policing of foreigners. Foremost in the various documents of surveillance are records documenting periods of work and periods of unemployment. These files follow the foreign worker everywhere and must be presented to the community in which the immigrant wishes to live. The community can refuse them permission to settle there. These papers are also required for people born in Belgium of foreign parents. I arrived toward the beginning of post-industrial decline and the city of Liège was in deep financial trouble. Over several months, the staff at the

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Museum of Walloon Life were not sure how long the museum would stay open. It reached crisis proportions in May when city coffers were declared empty and city employees were told they would not be paid. The museum guards were among these employees and they made plans to walk out and lock the doors. On the day before May Day, the city announced that they would be able to pay people through September. At that point, jobs would be cut and so would unemployment benefits. The impending bankruptcy of the city of Liège and the high rate of unemployment were common topics in the daily papers and this was reflected in the puppet plays. In Libert’s Nativity play, Joseph expresses some doubt that he will be paid by the city of Liège for some carpentry work he has just completed. There was a general malaise amongst young adults who had not yet secured permanent work. Parents wondered whether their children who had far better educations than they did had to look forward to a life of unemployment. In Pinet’s Nativity, one of the shepherds had to sign up for the dole at nine o’clock the next morning and his friend remarked, “like everyone else.” The word used for checking in for unemployment payments in French is “pointer” which is easy to substitute for the verb “to work,” “travailler.” It was common to hear a tchantchès say “Je vais travailler” {I’m going to work} and cut himself off to make the correction “Je vais pointer, enfin.” {Well, I’m going to sign up for the dole}. The May Day celebration in 1982 mirrored the dual-tiered work force. I had thought that this celebration in a socialist city plagued with labor problems would be a significant one. Instead, the socialists preempted the date by holding their demonstrations a few days before. I read that a Turkish march was supposed to start on Boulevard d’Avroy at 10 am. I got there 10 minutes early and there was no activity at all. After waiting awhile in the drizzly cold, I began walking. The only people who were out were those selling little bouquets of lilies of the valley. When I got to the university, a crowd was forming. A little Latin American boy sold me a sticker that said “From their hiding places Chilean workers greet Belgian and immigrant workers.” Most of the people in the crowd had signs about El Salvador, with some about Uruguay. I was handed one pamphlet urging Andalusians who had emigrated to vote for the Communist Party of Andalusia and another calling for the immediate release of four syndicalists arrested at the metallurgical strikes. The huge demonstrations that I had been expecting never happened. May First had been left to a few communist groups and foreign workers. During my early house-hunting days in Liège, I arrived at Francine’s house

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and she excitedly told me that there was a room for rent around the corner on Chaussée des Prés. I walked by and saw a sign underneath the “For Rent” sign that said “Pas d’Etranger,” so I didn’t inquire about the room. The following day, she asked if I had seen the room and I told her that the sign said “No Foreigners.” She said in an exasperated tone that it meant “no Moroccans,” not me. She didn’t push me to return because she had something better. I was glad because I didn’t know how to tell her how uncomfortable I would have felt shopping at the Moroccan grocery store downstairs and eating at the Algerian restaurant across the street while renting from a racist landlord who overlooked my “foreigness” because of my “whiteness.” The people I associated with in Outremeuse all did business with North Africans in the neighborhood and were friendly with several families, but when someone stole my cheese off the window sill, everyone told me it was Moroccans, without even knowing the details. In 1982, Adrien Dufour had just written his first puppet play in Walloon. In it, Tchantchès returns to his old neighborhood and the first person he meets is a North African worker who comments on his strange clothing. Tchantchès is quick to respond that he’s wearing what all Liégeois wear while his interlocutor is dressed like a carpet vendor.187 Tchantchès asks what he is doing there and the foreigner answers that he is at home and he is on a committee composed of “Italians, Moroccans, Arabs and all the other foreigners” to defend their rights. He says that they have made the Liégeois leave and they are arranging to vote their own people into City Hall. Tchantchès walks away mumbling that they have enough headaches with the Flemish without having foreigners get involved in the government. The next person Tchantchès meets is a bourgeois man who also comments on his strange dress and threatens to have him hauled off to jail as a vagabond. Finally he meets one of his old working-class buddies. They talk about all the demolition that has taken place in Liège, erasing their history and leaving nothing but holes. Then they run into another buddy of theirs who has just returned from Brussels. He tells them that the government has decided to fill the holes with workers’ salaries, pension and health care funds. Finally, a dejected Tchantchès returns to his wife, Nanèsse, to report that in Liège, no one speaks Walloon anymore. Instead, it is full of foreigners who are taking over the city which has been partially demolished. The play ends. Dufour was a member in good standing of the socialist party which grew out of a solidarity movement among workers from all over the world. Yet at

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this historical juncture in Europe, it was not considered odd that his play found foreign workers as guilty as the ruling class in ruining the quality of life of Walloon working-class people. His notion of the good life was based on being an insider and speaking Walloon. The play evokes nostalgia for the solidaritybased working-class community in which Dufour grew up and that he saw coming to an end. This play was written and performed completely in Walloon, restricting its audience. He performed it at a special show for people in the Walloon in the Schools movement. Later, when I saw the same play performed in French, I realized that the sentiments as well as the language had been translated. What had been the portrayal of an embattled Walloon worker with nowhere to turn was now a nationalistic plea to stop ethnic squabbling between Flemings and Walloons in Belgium. It was as if the switch to an national language necessitated a shift to national discourse. In the French version of the play a national, multi-ethnic perspective was espoused. The Walloon working-class buddy who returns from Brussels is now the Flemish character, Djef. In addition to the hole stuffing related in the Walloon play, he makes a speech about how the government encourages fighting between Flemings, Walloons and Bruxellois so that the people do not notice how the ones in control are profiting. Tchantchès agrees. Then, rather than the play ending when Tchantchès returns home, he and Nanèsse pay a visit to his popular puppet counterpart, Woltje, in Brussels. After warm greetings, they talk about national problems. Djef joins the crowd, giving equal representation to Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels. Soon a military parade goes by and they realize it is the Belgian national holiday, July 21. They agree that in times of war there are no Flemings, Walloons and Bruxellois — only Belgians and this is how it should always be. As an unofficial language, Walloon is steeped in ethnic solidarity. This can have very positive attributes, but it can also tip into xenophobia and racism. Working-class Walloons, or at least people who still speak Walloon, constitute the chosen group in Dufour’s Walloon play. When the play is “translated” into French, the different position of this language causes an expansion of the chosen group from a substate nation to the nation-state as a whole. Working-class people from the three major Belgian regions, Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels, now fuse with the image of the nation-state concentrated in the military parade. War as an excuse to unite the nation against foreign invaders is invoked. Only, as Dufour indicates rather clearly at the beginning of the play,

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the foreign invader is now construed as the foreign worker within the borders of the nation-state. The parallel with the traditional role of the Saracens in the puppet theater as foreign invaders is quite clear. In fact, no new puppets had to be made for this show. Dufour simply grabbed a Moorish soldier to represent the North African immigrant worker.

10.3. Language Politics188 If immigration is the new Crusades uniting Belgium against a common enemy, language is what divides Belgium from within. Language politics is a frequent topic of Belgian official discourse, but what they mean by “language politics” is only a shadow of what constitutes language politics in linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, gender and ethnic studies, and, for that matter, puppetry. In these fields, language politics is understood as the discursive strategies used by social groups and individuals to gain or maintain power. This usage assumes an implicit understanding of heteroglossia or the multiplicity of ways of speaking which vary according to region, social class, age, gender, education, etc. Feeding off heteroglossia, puppeteers manipulate a rich array of phonological, prosodic and paralinguistic features to shift the advantage from one puppet character to another. Switching from one named linguistic variety to another is only one strategy among others. In contrast, to a focus on subtle linguistic power plays, the more conventional understanding of “language politics” focuses exclusively on the legislation of language policies which only address named linguistic varieties. Here, the assumption is that codes are unified and monologic. Belgium is well known for the centrality of language policies in their political agendas. Another difference between the two types of language politics is the level of linguistic reflexivity. In the first understanding of language politics, language is manipulated, but seldom explicitly discussed. The legislative type of language politics reverses this pattern by putting the topic of linguistic code at the center of the discussion. These two types of language politics are not unrelated. The choice of an official language generally is based on what the national elite speaks and the official language exerts pressure on unofficial languages in the discursive strategies used by social groups and individuals to gain or maintain power. There are also less direct ways that the two types of language politics are related as lin-

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guistic ideologies shift in response to hegemonic and counter hegemonic movements which bring language to the foreground as a topic of discussion. When we consider the production of language policies, then, we necessarily must consider metalinguistics and metapragmatics. This has not always been the focus of linguistic anthropological analysis. Boas was attracted to the way linguistic phenomena remained unconscious and therefore free of the “misleading and disturbing factors of secondary explanation which are so common in ethnology” (Boas 1964 (1911): 21). With the ethnography of communication and studies of language and ideology, the privileging of unreflexive language practices has slowly given way to explorations of linguistic reflexivity itself (Lucy 1993). Language policies are based on historically constructed ideologies of language which are kept alive in discourse. Language ideologies show themselves in reflexive discourse in which overt reference is made to language-use regularities. Silverstein’s research on metapragmatic discourse led him to state that it “encapsulate(s) ideologies of language use and play(s) an obvious role in the institutionalization of discursive mechanisms of society” (1993:55). The puppet theater is a particularly interesting place to examine the two types of language politics intersecting and interacting. Speaking through puppets requires an understanding of how language is subtly used to create relationships of both solidarity and power in society. On the other hand, language politics at both the regional and national levels created the conditions necessary to preserve the puppetry tradition in Liège and the Walloon language within the puppet theater. The vogue for puppetry among the bourgeoisie of Liège was fueled by the Walloon movement and this movement, while part of the general wave of romantic regionalism in Europe, cannot be understood apart from the Flemish movement to attain linguistic rights. It should not be surprising, then, that the second form of language politics finds its way back into the theater. In what follows I examine instances of when legislative language politics at both the regional and national levels became a topic for performance in the puppet theater. Included in this general metapragmatic discourse is a strategy I call multilingual reflexivity, where multiple languages are used to make statements about multilingual situations. I focus on excerpts from Nativity Plays in two different puppet theaters recorded in Liège in 1982.

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10.4. Regional Language Politics in Performance A secondary effect of the struggles of Dutch speakers for linguistic equity was the attention to and preservation of the Walloon puppet theater, but Dutch seldom enters puppet dialogue. The multilingual reflexivity of the puppet theater concerns French and Walloon. In 1982, the top regional language story was the implementation of teaching Walloon in the primary schools. Even though the first director of the Museum of Walloon Life advocated this position, fifty years before, the phrase “Walloon in the schools” still had an oxymoronic flavor to it. French has long been considered the school language to which Walloon was opposed as the language of home and work. In the puppet plays, a much used joke structure centers around Tchantchès using a Walloon word and being misunderstood. His interlocutor gives a definitional gloss in French and Tchantchès replies that he doesn’t know French because he has never been to school. It is especially ironic, then, that teachers of Walloon in the schools now bring classes to hear Tchantchès speak it on the puppet stage. The following excerpt of Tchantchès’ pre-play dialogue with the audience was recorded at the Museum of Walloon Life puppet theater a few days before Christmas in 1982. Bon! Bondjou, savez, mès p’tits-amis (Bodjou! Bonjour!) Vos m’avez fèt sogne. Dji contéve qui nos n’avîz nin co dès Walons è l’ såle, mi (laughter). Â mins, asteûre avou les quèstions, kimint dist-on donc çoulà, lin-lin-linguistiques. C’est des mots à soixante-quinze, hin, çoula por mi. C’èst, c’èst målåhèye. Anfin, avou les questions linguistiques, on n’ sét pus kimint qu’on deût tourner s’ linwe po djåser asteûre. Alors, quand dji di bondjou à mès petits-amis, à mès p’tits camarådes, bin, quand n’ mi rèspondèt nin, dj’èlzès prin po tot dès flaminds, mi. (laughter). Bin, c’èst djusse, èdon, çoula. Asteûre là, dji m’aveûs abituwé à djåser l’fransès èt pus voilà qu’on m’a fèt houkî à l’échevinat d’ l’instruction èt on m’a dit, ‘Tchantchès, il faut parler wallon, hein, maintenant parce qu’on apprend l’ wallon à l’école.’ (signs of agreement and disagreement) Hè! Ça n’ fèt rin. Mins mi, dji li/ Il a stu drole, sais-tu, l’èch’vin ç’ djou-là pace qu’i m’a dit ‘Tchantchès, faudra bien qu’ tu parles le walon à l’é/ parce que nous autres,‘ dist-i, ‘à l’échevinat d’ la instruction de la ville de Liège, on fait des concours de wallon à l’école.’ ‘Ah je l’ai vu,‘ di-dj’ mi, hin. ‘Comment donc,‘ dist-i, ‘tu l’as vu?’ Je dis: ‘Oh oui! J’ai vu les résultats dans l’ journal.’ ‘Et qu’est-ç que t’as vu comme résultats?’ ‘Ben, j’ai vu qu’ les trois premiers c’étaient des

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Italiens, di-dj’.’ (laughter) Il aveût l’êr tot èwaré lu. Èt portant c’èst vréy, hin, ç’ que j’ai dit, hein. Enfin en attendant les résultats du “wallon à l’ecole,” hein, ben, nous allons toujours essayer de parler français. C’est du mauvais français mais quand même, hein.189 {Well he-hello my little friends (Hello) You scared me. I was counting on there not being any more Walloons in the room (laughter). Well now with the questions, how do you say it, ling- linguistic. That’s a 75 cent word for me. It’s, it’s hard. Well with the linguistic questions we don’t know how we should turn our tongues to talk now. So, when I say hello to my little friends, my little buddies, and they don’t answer me, I consider them Flemings (laugh). It’s right, isn’t it. Now, I got used to speaking French and then they call me into the city hall and tell me ‘Tchantches, you’ve got to speak Walloon now because they’re learning Walloon in school (signs of agreement and disagreement). It doesn’t matter. He was funny, you know, the councilman that day because he told me ‘Tchantches, you must speak Walloon because those of us at the school board of the city of Liege’ he said, ‘are holding Walloon contests in the schools.’ ‘Oh I saw it,‘ I said. ‘How did you see it?’ he said. I said, ‘Oh yeah, I saw the results in the newspaper.’ ‘And what results did you see?’ ‘Well, I saw that the first three were Italians,‘ I said. (laughter) He seemed so surprised. And, after all, it is true what I say. Well anyway, until we get the results of “Walloon in the school,” we should still try to speak French. It’s bad French, but anyway.}

The excerpt manages to express the fact, first of all, that it is rare to find children in Liège who speak Walloon. This mirrors the trajectory of dying regional languages everywhere. Tchantchès purposefully confuses the term “Walloon” referring to the ethnic group with “Walloon-speaking.” So, he says, when people don’t speak Walloon in the audience, he assumes they are Flemings. What he does not say is that the vast majority of Walloons do not speak Walloon anymore. He then alludes to “linguistic questions” becoming part of the social discourse and making it difficult to speak. Tchantchès, known for his double entendre, could be alluding to several linguistic situations in Belgium at that time at the national, and local levels which made people reflect on their speech. From the point of view of national politics, he could have been making a veiled allusion to the Fourons affair (which I’ll explain below) and the problems that arise when rules that link the official codes of French and Dutch with specific geographical territories are not respected. Tchantchès also seems to be referring to a more generalized problem of social register and how officials make use of words

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that are not clearly understood by the masses. The word “linguistic,” poses a problem to him, breaking up the fluency of his speech and making him comment directly on the difficulty of the word which he pronounces in a non standard fashion dropping the /w/ after the /g/. He gives the word a price tag, linking register to an economic base.190 Rather than using the regional standard French “septante cinq” (literally 70–5), Dufour subsitutes in the Parisian standard “soixante-quinze,” (literally 60–15). This echoes the notion that a simpler construction could have been used. In other words, “soixante-quinze” is to “septante cinq” as “linguistique” {linguistic} is to “de(s) langue(s)” {of language(s)}. Even more justifiable in this context, is that Tchantchès’ ‘difficulty in speaking’ comes from the confusion he feels about when he should speak Walloon. In this Tchantchès mirrors Dufour, who learned Walloon as his first language and added French when he went to school where Walloon was not allowed. Now, just when Walloon speakers have trouble finding conversants, Walloon has been introduced as a subject in the school. This is the topic Tchantchès brings up next. He recounts a conversation he had with one of the mayor’s assistants who told him that he had to speak in Walloon because they had begun teaching it in the schools. He re-tells this conversation about Walloon in French, but it is embedded in the conversation in Walloon that Tchantchès was having with the audience. He marks the code-switches with verba dicendi in Walloon. The story builds to a punch-line concerning the fact that the first winners of the “Walloon in the School” contest were Italians. The politician was either trying to keep it a secret or was so detached from the actual running of the program that he didn’t even know. Considering the likelihood that the children’s families may have been in Liège for generations, the classification of nationality through a proper name has a racist, anti-immigrant air to it.191 Also of note, is Tchantchès’ comment that they should “try” to speak French, even while recognizing that it is “bad French.” This echoes the earlier program of ‘Walloon in the schools’ which concentrated on overtly teaching the differences between Walloon and French in order to prevent the mixture of the two codes and “improve” the regional variety of French.

10.5. National Language Politics in Performance The top national language story in 1982 actually led to the fall of the national cabinet in 1987 and the conversion of Belgium into a federal state. It began in

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1962 when the linguistic border was frozen into place by legislation. A village north of Liège which had a majority of French speakers found itself on the Dutch side of the border. The mayor, José Happart, refused to speak Dutch and the Flemish were up in arms. The man became a hero in Wallonia, where they had, over time, come to see themselves as oppressed by the central government, and a villain in Flanders where they feared that one man might bring down all the linguistic legislation they had fought for over the past 150 years. National language politics is a less common topic on the puppet stage than local language politics. But the Fourons affair was so electric that Henri Libert (1982) gave it a central place in his Nativity Play. During the visit to the manger, one shepherd (played by a Walloon working-class puppet) asked the Baby Jesus whether he could divert the Gileppe river into Flanders so that officials would stop ignoring the problem and remove the lead. He added that with all the lead that they swallow in Verviers, instead of asking for their identity cards, the police could simply put them on a scale. While not dealing specifically with language, this excerpt indicates that language issues are a cover for perceived inequities between the regions. In each region people think that the central government favors the other region, creating animosity toward the other group. As the visits to the manger continued, the relationship between Flemings and Walloons came into closer focus. A Flemish shepherd, Djefke, showed up to see the baby and Tchantchès asked Joseph if it was all right to let him in, as if he expected him to say ‘no.’ Joseph replied that Christ was born for everyone and Tchantchès responded “Even for them?” Djefke entered and told Joseph that he had to ask permission from the Flemish nationalist party to be able to come see the baby. They told him he could go since Jesus was not Walloon. Throughout this scene, Tchantchès and Djefke got along quite well, but they acted as if greater forces had determined that they were not supposed to get along. Tchantchès was not sure Djefke would be allowed in and Djefke had to ask the Flemish nationalist party for permission to visit the manger. Afterwards, Tchantchès and Djefke arranged to meet at the corner bar, indexing their working-class solidarity. Djefke gave the baby typically Flemish gifts of food (mussels from Antwerp and Flemish stew) showing the same generosity of the poor that is highlighted in the Walloon peasants. As he was leaving, Djefke gave the Holy Family a piece of advice in his Flemish-accented mixture of French and Walloon. He told Joseph and Mary that if the Little Jesus came to take a tour of

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Belgium someday, they should not let him go to the Fourons and they should tell him to pay close attention to the linguistic border because Belgium was in a mess. Joseph responded that it looked like Jesus would have a lot of work to do in Belgium. The linguistic border is referenced in Libert’s play as a point of danger where the code you use is far more important than what you say in that code. The linguistic border masks the identical language problems that people experience on both sides of the border as they maneuver their way through continua of non standard and standard varieties, dominant and subordinate ways of speaking. Since verbal art traditions are often implicated in linguistic ideologies, it behooves us to examine metapragmatics within them. Dufour’s Tchantchès spoke of “linguistic questions” and Libert’s Djefke, of “the linguistic border” when relating to an audience through this popular performance tradition. These terms refer directly to decisions about code choice that have been made at various levels of the government. Libert addressed national language politics and the oppositional stance that has developed between Flemings and Walloons. Dufour addressed the plan to introduce a minoritized regional language into the school curriculum. Both of these puppeteers drew attention to the problematic nature of official language politics. Libert seemed to suggest that all the controversy surrounding the linguistic border kept Flemings and Walloons from discovering their commonalities. Dufour seemed to caution people about how difficult it is to change language ideology and revive a language that has dropped out of usage.

Conclusion

In the early 1970s, Hymes wrote several programmatic articles explaining why it was necessary to breakdown disciplinary boundaries to fully understand language in its social context. As an outgrowth of this line of investigation, interdisciplinarity underpinned the graduate program I enrolled in at the University of Texas at Austin. In the 1980s, we had begun to critique a functionalist approach that downplayed the influence of historical structures. This is the context within which the ideas for this book were conceived. Folklore studies, sociolinguistics, anthropology, and post-structural criticism all offered different perspectives and methodologies that I used to shed light on various aspects of the puppet theater of Liège. My goal was to offer both a more nuanced description of a fascinating verbal art tradition and to show the tight relationship between linguistic practices and their social context. Face to face oral performance traditions that highlight local references and regional languages do not find themselves at the center of discourse today. People are more interested in globalized forms of communication and the spread of world languages. At the same time, it is not rare to find people craving a sense of rootedness and being attracted to aesthetic forms that had their genesis in earlier ways of life. In so doing, today’s youth is no different from previous generations in emphasizing what they think of as positive aspects of a particular tradition and ignoring the elements that do not fit into cultural vogues of the time. This attitude produces neo-romantic regionalist descriptions of performance traditions, that we find in the liner notes of world beat music, in tourist brochures, and even in the further simplified format of advertisements used to sell products. Ethnographic research shows popular performance traditions to be far more complex than they are portrayed in the popular press. The puppet theater is an oral tradition, but one that is based on written texts; it is a working-class tradition that has persisted because of its entry into bourgeois regionalist dis-

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course; it diffuses the regional language while at the same time valorizing a “more perfect” national tongue; it emphasizes working-class solidarity, but operates in an extremely hierarchical manner; it highlights honesty, modesty, generosity, and responsibility toward others, but is steeped in sexism, racism, and militarism. Oral traditions are enmeshed in the societies in which they occur, so it is no wonder that they are multivocalic. Their richness can only be revealed by examining the society in which they were created and the discourse that surrounds the tradition. It matters what people think about a particular tradition, just as it matters what they think about a particular linguistic variety. Attitudes toward folklore and regional languages are shaped by ideologies of identity which change through time. By relating written materials and discussions about the puppet theater, information about life in Liège, and actual performances of puppet plays, I attempted to show the close ties between the discourse within the puppet theater and the larger societal structures of the economy, politics, language ideologies, and class interests. As the society changed, the puppet theater emerged in new forms in order to appeal to different publics. Sometimes these new forms were reconstructions of older forms that had passed out of fashion (a phenomenon often encouraged by folklorists). However, even when puppeteers conceived of their performances as being “new,” they still bore the imprint of the past. Language, in general, is marked by the past, but this quality is more apparent in oral traditions. Oral traditions which focus on the aesthetic use of language are often the last domain in which minority languages survive. The reported speech element inherent in oral traditions leads people to conserve older ways of speaking when performing. In many areas of the world, past generations spoke different languages. The future of minor languages in today’s world is uncertain. Many are no longer spoken regularly. French speakers may feel threatened by the expanding nature of English, but dozens of regional languages have had to cede their place to French. Walloon is no exception. Tchantchès used to speak exclusively in Walloon and audience members responded in that language. Over the years, there has been a decline in the knowledge of Walloon on the part of both puppeteers and audience members. However, there is less of a decline among puppeteers than among the general populace. In fact, two younger puppeteers whose families migrated in from outside Wallonia learned Walloon well enough to use it when performing. Verbal artists deserve support for their efforts.

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Aesthetic and humanistic arguments must be made to validate minor languages in the world. Instead, metaphors from the marketplace increasingly dominate language learning. Several degree-granting programs in the USA allow students to substitute a computer language for another natural language, reasoning that it is more important for future job preparedness. What kind of comparison is this? Only with a model of language as a code, divorced from society can we justifiably use the term “computer language.” What artificial languages gain in ease of acquisition, they lose in aesthetic weight and connectedness to longstanding cultural realities. Their monologic simplicity pales in comparison to the heteroglossic complexity of natural languages. We need to recognize language, not as a simple means of communication, but as an ideologically saturated process, passed down through the ages and creating social beings along the way. The puppet theater draws its interest from the complexity of language: the sociological meaning of fine differences in pronunciation; the texture of voice quality; the rhythm of language as it is combined with the physical sounds of performing puppets; the double-voiced discourse of characters spoken to life through a puppeteer, himself created from the multiplicity of voices around him. These are exactly the aspects of language that do not exist in computer languages. It is through interacting that each succeeding generation forms a culture. The computer industry promotes its social face, by co-opting the term “interactive,” but sitting alone in front of a computer is no substitute for participating in live small-scale performances on the local level. Humans have always developed their identities listening to family stories, going through rites of passage surrounded by friends and neighbors; choosing and being chosen by the voices that surround them. In the puppet theater, one interacts as an individual within a community and has the pleasure of adding one’s voice in full embodied sound to the panoply of surrounding voices. I hope that this study will be helpful to those who work on cultural transmission, both for the broader question of how ephemeral cultural artifacts constructed of language persist through time and for the more immediate topic of how people learn. The emphasis in the American educational system has been on creativity and individuality and we have forgotten the pleasure and sense of satisfaction that can come through repetition and memorization. But the pleasure only comes if the target is desirable and considered to be worth the work of mimesis. The role of the community, it seems, is to validate the mimetic labor that goes into recreating desirable models from the past.

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This study shows that mimesis is not a passive act, but is central to social construction and transformation. Mimesis is important in the acquisition of language and in the acquisition of different ways of speaking that we acquire as our repertoire expands into adulthood. Individual linguistic repertoires attest to the heteroglossia inherent in all languages. Speaking through puppets represents a genre of speaking that aesthetically reproduces societal heteroglossia and is maintained through mimesis. In perpetuating this tradition, the puppeteers of Liège present us with linguistically rich performances shaped by a century of language politics.

Notes

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This description is a composite of many shows edited to highlight aspects that will be discussed in more detail later. Analysis necessarily deconstructs its object and presents it in pieces. This seems somehow unfair to an event created for aesthetic pleasure, since the sum of the parts does not equal the whole. The pleasure of attending a puppet show results from the synesthesic interaction of sound, vision, and movement. We hear the puppeteer’s voices, the noise of the puppets, the drumming, the special effects, and the interjections and screams of the audience members around us. We see the beautifully carved puppets against painted backdrops and watch the scene grow ominous or gay according to lighting techniques. We can almost feel the jerky movements of the puppets as they stiffly clomp around the stage and we do feel the rustling and excitement of the people around us. Perhaps we even look forward to seeing and chatting with some of these people every week throughout the fall and winter at the puppet theater. This play, popular in puppet theaters throughout northern France and Belgium, is based on an undated Epinal version which itself is based on a fifteenth century prose version inspired by a lost poem. Tale Type 301B (Jean de l’Ours) is found within (Legros 1961: 155). Bernheimer (1952) traces “the wild man” in literature and art throughout the centuries. Exploration of the relationship between language and culture was brought to the anthropological forefront by Sapir and then Whorf and has occupied anthropologists for several decades now as can be seen in the multiple interpretations of the linguistic relativity hypothesis: Schultz (1990), Urban (1991), and Lucy (1992). Lucy also gives an overview of other interpretations of it through time. This show does not have the long pedigree of Orson and Valentine. Gaston Engels made it up as a 15 minute fair show and Christian Deville has continued performing it. See Schieffelin, Woolard and Kroskrity (1998) for cross-cultural efforts in this domain. Here, I am sticking with Bakhtin’s original proclamation, though linguistic anthropologists have found that dividing a language into genres is not a clear cut task. Certain genres are clearly bounded but some bits of speech don’t seem to fit into any genre and others seem to fit into too many (Briggs and Bauman 1992: 132). Woolard’s (1998) article outlining a more fluid approach to bilingual production, hinging on Bakhtin’s notion of simultaneity is certainly in line here. Parallel Walloon examples could be found to match her Catalan ones. Variations of this process have been described by Gal (1979), Dorian (1981), Balibar and Laporte (1974), and others. See Woolard (1985) for an interesting discussion of hegemony and language using Bourdieu.

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New languages may be legally enforced or socially adopted. It is also important to note whether the language that ceases being used is still a prestige variety somewhere else (language shift), or is dying out altogether (language death). While the latter question is rather clear cut, the former one is far from easy to assess. Languages that are installed first by enforcement may soon be adopted as the prestige variety, and languages which are adopted as the prestige variety may then be legally enforced. Enforced language shift can happen when a foreign power invades and forces the populace to speak a different language by making it impossible to be a working member of society without knowing the language of the foreign power. In this case the regional language is banned from the schools, courtrooms, government, workplace, etc., as Spanish was, for example, in the American Southwest. Spanish is, of course, a national language of several other countries and therefore is in no danger of dying out. In a situation of adopted language change, the second language, rather than being imposed by outsiders, is adopted from within, thereby accruing considerable prestige. It gains speakers, not through the threat of physical harm, but by entering at the top of the ideological system of hierarchy. The adoption of a new language depends on the economic advantages and increased opportunity for class mobility it presents. An example of this is shown in Gal’s (1979) work on an eastern Austrian village where German was seen as the language of the city and of opportunity and was slowly effacing the use of Hungarian which was associated with traditional peasant values. The change was led by women who were beginning to reject the hard work and low status of being peasant wives. Kurth (1896–98) claimed they penetrated as far south as about midway through Belgium, creating the linguistic border that exists today between Romance dialects to the south and Low Germanic dialects to the north. Others say Franks colonized the area south of the linguistic border as well, but this area was re-romanized by Occitan groups from southern France in the eighth century (Petri 1937). A third view points to such evidence as German place names south of the linguistic border and the lack of Occitan terms, which seemingly would be present after southern French settlement, and concludes that there were indeed German settlements south of the linguistic border. Yet rather than being reconquered, their population was less dense than the Romance language speakers in this area so they eventually assimilated with the latinized population (Boileau 1946, Dhondt 1947). Liège has the dominant position in the struggle to standardize Walloon. Most of the school materials are in the Liégeois dialect and most of the literature and drama uses Liégeois Walloon. Non Liégeois accents are seen as countrified and are often used for comic effect. This regional replication of what happens at the national level is contested in other Walloon cities, such as Namur and Charleroi. Conscience (1812–1883) had a French father and a Flemish mother. His first language was French and he didn’t begin writing in Flemish until 1837. Their report eventually became the manifesto of the Flemish Movement (Murphy 1988: 66). Newspapers and magazines in Walloon accompanied the numerous Walloon organizations which sprang up in the 19th century. The first Walloon newspapers appeared in Liège, beginning with Li Spirou (1887), Gazette wallonne (1889), Li Clabot and L’Airdie (1892), and Li Mestré (1894) (Piron 1978: 106). The first novel appeared in 1888 (Salme 1888). Weber notes that in the Loire where the patois was in general usage until World War II that a boy asked a girl to dance in French which they continued speaking through their early exchanges as a form of politeness (1976: 87).

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17 Fasold defines broad diglossia as “the reservation of highly valued segments of a community’s linguistic repertoire (which are not the first to be learned, but are learned later and more consciously, usually through formal education), for situations perceived as more formal and guarded; and the reservation of less highly valued segments (which are learned first with little or no conscious effort), of any degree of linguistic relatedness to the higher valued segments from stylistic differences to separate languages, for situations perceived as more informal and intimate” (1984: 53). This is a loosening up of the classical definition of diglossia provided by Ferguson in 1959. 18 One of the chief influences of the Walloon movement was the Félibrige, an association founded in 1854 by Frédéric Mistral to promote the language and literature of Provence. 19 In 1883 Dutch became mandatory in the public secondary schools of Flanders and 1887 was the first time the King of Belgium made a speech in Dutch (Zolberg 1974: 208). 20 It is of interest to note that the SLLW did not participate in the first congress, though two other Walloon organizations from Liège were represented: La Société des Auteurs wallons de Liège and Le Caveau liégeois. 21 By the turn of the century, Walloon was considered to be the language of the common man and the language of satire of the bourgeoisie (de Warsage 1905). 22 Puppeteers were recruited to the cause and Bisscheroux and Boucha performed a play in Walloon entitled “Tchantchès va-t-à Gand.” I must mention that these two puppeteers had bourgeois audiences by this point and I have not found evidence of similar plays being performed in smaller working class theaters around the city. 23 For a fascinating example of class-based language differences using notions of purity and linguistic terrorism, see Hill (1985). 24 I was told that Flemish students also mock French. Knowledge of English is considered more important than the second national language among both Flemish and Walloon secondary students (Laine, Van Leeuwen, Spoelders 1994: 81–87). 25 See Baugh (1983) for a similar discussion of age constraints on style shifting. 26 Kondo discussed this issue in Asian American playwriting in Lavie and Swedenburg (1996: 97–117). 27 Maria Dufour, after telling me that using “ti” was “trop dur” {too harsh}, said “ça sonne crapuleux enfin” {that just sounds vile}. 28 This conforms to Woolard’s description of “el català heavy” in which speakers emphasize the difference between Catalan and Castillian. The working class spoken variety in Liège is more like “el català light” (1998: 12–14). 29 A recent movement, Li Ranteule, is promoting a more active/oral approach to the teaching of Walloon in schools (www.walon.open.net.ma/scoleus.htm#denis). 30 See in particular Gal (1979) and Trudgill (1972). 31 See Woolard (1989) for an excellent discussion of how these terms have been used in various sociolinguistic studies over time. 32 “Michel Paulus plaide pour Robert Gillon en alternant sérieux et familiarité, utilisant parfois le wallon en vue d’accréditer son propre étonnement devant les thèses de l’accusation.” (Hubin 1982: 8) 33 An earlier analysis of the historical transformation of the Liège puppet theater which this and the following chapter build on can be found in Gross (1987). 34 In 1846 only 32% of the Belgian population was engaged in agriculture and by 1910 this had dropped to 17% (Zolberg 1975).

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It is assumed that most of the observations that Louis-François Thomassin reports on occurred while he was a bureaucrat under the French regime from 1799 to 1813. Haesenne-Peremans (1981), in her study of the poor of Liege, found that in 1736, one fifth of the houses in Liege sheltered poor people and of these, 69.6% sheltered the poor exclusively. By 1791, 83.7% of these houses were inhabited only by the poor. She also notes that it was in the neighborhood of Outremeuse and in the suburbs that the separation between the classes was the most distinct. La houille, continua M.R., a prodigieusement fait dégénérer les Liégeois de la classe ouvrière. Ce qu’on appelle le peuple, la partie laborieuse, à Liège, est nombreux et multiplie beaucoup, tout en vivant fort mal. Les faubourgs de Paris n’offrent rien qui approche de ce qu’on voit ici. Vous y verriez deux ménages, ayant chacun quatre enfants, habiter la même chambre. Comment tout cela vit-il? on aurait peine à le deviner. C’est un sujet de conjectures; on croit cependant qu’ils se nourrissent de gros pain noir et de mauvais café de chicorée mêlé de quelques gouttes de lait. Les trois quarts des familles ouvrières, à la ville comme à la campagne, envoient leurs enfants dès leur bas âge chercher leur pâture dans les houillères qui sont en grand nombre, vastes cimetières d’hommes vivants. De petits malheureux vont là s’enterrer dès l’âge de sept ans pour gagner leur subsistance; quand ils n’y meurent pas, ils en sortent rabougris: et cela peut-il être autrement, puisqu’ils croissent et ne se développent que dans une atmosphère chargée de gaz délétères? L’air est très mauvais à Liège parce qu’il est rempli presque toute l’année d’une poussière noire impalpable qui s’échappe des houillères, et que dans le mauvais temps, remplit les rues étroites d’une encre bourbeuse. Cette ville, dont le pavé, les toits et les maisons sont perpétuellement noirâtres, est remplie de bossus, de rachitiques, de poitrinaires et d’hypocondriaques. Presque tous les habitants ont le teint noir, et vous-même, au bout de quelques mois, vous apercevriez qu’il s’est formé dans vos cheveux une croute noire que rien ne peut déraciner (reprinted in Havelange, Hélin and Leboutte 1994: 121–122). I have to interject that what is presented as dire and grim is not always perceived as such from the inside. An older friend of mine in Liège once said that she was sorry I missed the gorgeous skies when all the factories and mines were working full force in the 1960s. You could look up and see a parade of color. Another older man told me that his sister had his mother moved to a retirement home in the country and when he went to visit, the director of the home waxed eloquent on the beauty of country life and the freshness of the air. Victor stood uneasily by the car which he had left running. The director asked “Why are you standing there? Let’s take a little stroll.” To which Victor responded “I’ll stay right here, thank you. I miss the air of the city and the exhaust fumes bring back good memories.” In 1838, the per capita consumption of coffee in Belgium was four and a quarter kilos (Haesenne-Peremans 1981: 396). Early Modern historians Nathalie Davis (1975) and Peter Burke (1981) have written incisively about the veillées. They acquired this name because of their covers of cheap blue butcher paper, though they also have rose, violet, and green covers (Bollème 1965: 64). The term Bibliotheque bleue, is well known among puppeteers in Liège, but its history is less clear. One puppeteer told me that it was a library in France which had burned down and they saved all the books that they could, especially those of Alfred Delvau. Et ci chal don…c’èst-ine pus-aute, savez, lèy…èle vis fait tronler ‘ne vwès d’flûte qui vos creûriz-st-ètinde ine gawe!…alez, s’dji n’mi trompe…c’est l’cisse d’ås marionètes d’a-

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mon Con’ti…là wice qu’on bouhe djus lès Ampèreûres avou dès tchikes di role et dèsêwizés cûtès peûres (Legros 1954). Ellipses are in the original. Earlier references to this form of puppetry exist in Brussels, Ghent, and Antwerp, and it begins to be noted in northern French cities soon afterwards. One of the earliest references to the rod puppet theater in Belgium is by the Flemish author, Hendrik Conscience, whose novels were later adapted into puppet plays in both Wallonia and Flanders. In his Geschiedenis mijner jeugd (1855), he wrote that as a boy around the year 1820, he went once and sometimes twice a week to the principal puppet theater (or poesjenellenkelder) of Antwerp (de Schuyter 1943: 38). Thijs wrote that in Antwerp the earliest and most numerous puppet theaters were in the poorest quarter, Sint Andreis. In 1838 they were reported as a source of corruption of the working class more harmful and dangerous than bordellos (Thijs 1977). On vacations from Liège, I visited rod puppet theaters in Brussels, Antwerp and the LilleRoubaix region and can attest to a certain similarity remaining in contemporary traditional puppetry, though today’s puppeteers, like regional folklorists (with the exception of Roger Pinon), seem more interested in accentuating their differences. The rod puppet traditions in Italy documented in Modena, Rome, Naples, and especially Sicily also exhibit most of these characteristics (Pasqualino 1977). While Italian immigrants to the North played an important role in the early development of rod puppet theater (as they did in the development of theater in general) even in Italy, this tradition is not much documented before the middle of the nineteenth century (Pasqualino 1983). Salme (1888: 52) wrote that the mess they made of the bed was re-paid with flea bites. Eugen Weber’s (1976) monumental work Peasants into Frenchmen documents changes in popular culture from 1870 to 1914. The history of the puppet theater in Liège does not contradict his findings. Strikwerda (1991: 196) wrote that later socialist consumer cooperatives failed to thrive in Liège because the earlier employer-controlled company stores were also called “cooperatives.” Nick Carter was the detective hero of the first French serial adventure originated by Victorian Jasset in 1908. The Apaches became a common exotic figure in fin-de-siècle Europe. Further information about changing socioeconomic conditions in Europe in the nineteenth century can be found in Knapp (1976), Tannenbaum (1976), and Alter (1984). Information about the avant-garde in Belgium and connections between the avant-garde and puppetry can be found in Nardone (1995) and Eruli (1988), respectively. Ce n’est pas non plus au centre de la ville qu’on les dénichera, mais aux abords des cités ouvières aux carrefours des ruelles et dans les impasses. Cherchez dans la tortueuse rue Basse-Sauvenière entre ses cafés-concerts de bas-étage, dans l’impasse de la Couronne qui déverse ses sombres habitants rue Hors-Château ... dans les étroits boyaux qui vomissent leurs flots de mendiants loqueteux aux artères bruyantes sillonant la paroisse Sainte Marguerite; aux environs de la place Delcour refuge des fripiers, et aux abords de la caserne des Ecoliers. C’est là que vous les trouverez (de Warsage 1905: 48). This language is very much in keeping with other Belle Epoque descriptions of the working class. risquant les quolibets et les rencontres dangereuses, s’aventurent dans les quartiers équivoques de la vieille ville pour aller songer et se divertir durant deux ou trois heures, dans le milieu fumeux et pittoresque de la cave des Poechenellen (de Glines 1897).

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Stallybrass and White (1986) explore how the bourgeoisie constructed themselves as a class in opposition to the carnivalesque life of the streets. Servants mediated between these two worlds and many a bourgeois gentleman spoke of servants and nursemaids introducing them to the things of the world. This remained in the bourgeois psyche as they demonstrate using Freud’s personal correspondance and his case studies of others. Between 1865 and 1900, the name “Guignol” (and his friends “Gnafron” and “Madelon”) were used in 25 different titles of local satirical journals in Lyon (Giri 1991). Leach (1985) also talks about Punch in the English satirical press in his very interesting history of the Punch and Judy show. We have to wait until after World War II to hear about the Italian origin of the Liège puppet theater (Piron 1973) or comparisons with similar Flemish traditions (Pinon 1963). When I returned to Liège in 1995, I saw that the newspaper La Meuse had started including a column called “Que Novèle, Tchantchès???” signed in the name of the puppet character. On July 31, 1995 (p. 5), the author responded to some complaints from readers that the French national holiday (July 14) was celebrated with more gusto in Liège than the Belgian national holiday (July 21). “Tchantchès” responds that if they decide someday to celebrate the national holiday of the Principality of Liège, they could count him in. Using language, race, history, religion, and folklore, Walloon soul seekers could easily have used the puppet theater to promote racism and anti-Semitism in the interwar period, especially with the overt anti-Semitism of popularized versions of New Testament stories and the image of Charlemagne chasing out the non-Christian Semites from Europe. Yet this does not seem to have been the case. Ideas for this chapter emerged during an NEH seminar with Steve Ungar and Dudley Andrew at the University of Iowa in the summer of 1994. I thank them and the seminar participants for a thought-provoking summer. In Felix Rousseau’s 1921 bibliography on Walloon folklore and folklorists, there are no less than nine journals prior to World War I where one could read about folklore: Revue de Liège 1844; Bulletin de l’Institut archéologique liégeois 1852; Bulletin de la société liégeois de littérature wallonne 1857; Bulletin du folklore (Wallon) 1891; Wallonia 1893; Le Vieux Liège 1895; Leodium 1902; Chronique archéologique de pays de Liège 1906; Revue wallonne 1906. Fabry later wrote a puppet play, “Au temps où Berthe filait” for the French puppeteer Gaston Baty which was first performed in Paris in 1948 (Pinon 1963: 15). This play was later picked up by puppeteers in Liège. Fabian (1983) focused attention on how denying coevalness had become central to the anthropological enterprise. In 1846, 52.5% of the working population in Flanders was engaged in agriculture compared to 23% in the Walloon provinces of Hainaut and Liège. Between 1846 and 1880 industry declined from 41% to 29% in the Dutch-speaking provinces and increased from 47% to 62% in the French-speaking provinces (Blom and Lamberts 1999: 319–320). The information in this paragraph comes from Perin (1979) who documents the history of workers’ theater in Wallonia. De Warsage tells us that the Cinéma Mondain specialized in Tom Mix and Fantomas and the Cinéma Américain in cowboy films (de Warsage 1936: 39,40). Walloon theater had been getting subsidies since 1892. The extreme success of Tåtî l’Periquî by Edouard Remouchamps caused the rise of theater production in Walloon in the

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1880s (Hélin and Pasleau 1994). In 1924 there were 93 walloon dramatic circles in the Province of Liege (n.a. 1924). The American folklorist, Richard Dorson, would later call these efforts “fakelore” (Dorson 1959). Information about these Belgian artists of the cinema in interwar France can be found in Simenon 1981; Bachy 1968 and Ford 1973. Hélin and Pasleau (1994) point out that although cinema is without a doubt the most popular entertainment form ever, it has never been subsidized by the Belgian state. I had hoped to look through the interwar archives of the Free Republic of Outremeuse, but the building was being remodeled when I was there in the summer of 1995 and their older archives have been moved. What they had, anyway, was not much more than participation lists of their annual folkloric parade. I talked with the president of this organization, Leon Mormont, and the oldest Minister, Raymond Mockel. Neither of them were sure that interwar archives existed. Mormont insisted that I had to go back further than the interwar period for the history of the Free Republic. On the walls of the Tchantchès Museum, seat of the Free Republic, hang the portraits of 19th century Walloon authors. The present officers seem more ready to claim ancestry in the elite literary movements of romanticism and symbolism within the Walloon movement, then the commercial frenzy that occurred during the interwar period. Museum of Walloon Life, Cliché stéréo No. 33874g In 1935 Remouchamps asked the Minister of Public Instruction to create a school of Walloon ethnography at the University of Liège which would hold classes at the Museum of Walloon Life. Remouchamps, himself, was proposed to give courses in Walloon Linguistic Geography, Ethnographic Research and Museography (n.a. 1935). This did not come to pass, but in its place young university people were made adjunct curators and mounted temporary expositions (Pinon and Delrée 1996). Museum of Walloon Life archives 10688, 1931–1959 Puppet Theater Accounting Books Félix Rousseau, curator of the Royal Archives wrote eulogies for both Remouchamps and de Warsage for the National Commission of Belgian Folklore. He praised the former for the precision and objectivity of research in the Museum of Walloon Life which he called “a veritable laboratory of folklore study” (1939: 14). De Warsage, on the other hand, is characterized as a dilettante looking mostly for picturesque and savory details (1940–1948: 9). Pinon remembered him in a similar light (personal communication). Not all of Bisscheroux’s puppets were included in the lot sold to de Warsage. Later, when he went to the public nursing home where he died penniless, his daughter sold his remaining puppets to the antique dealer, Gaston (personal communication, Dufour 1982). Museum of Walloon Life archives #47.B.4 It might have been during this same visit that de Warsage scolded the Bruxellois for letting their own puppetry tradition disappear. He cited the various organizations which had been formed to rescue traditional puppetry from oblivion in Flanders and France. Soon thereafter a sister organization was founded in Brussels and the Toone marionnette theater was revived (Dupierreux 1931). The information about Talbot’s organization comes from Museum of Walloon Life archives #47.B.1 M58822. It includes annual reports, correspondance, newspaper clippings and ephemera.

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The three members of the Fraternité des planquets Joueurs de Marionnettes liégeoises who died included Talbot himself, Jean Lassaux, and Oscar Danthinne (Willé 1970: 37). I’m assuming that this “c.” preceding his name refers to either “citizen” or “comrade.” This article was pasted on the back of the House for Rent sign in Talbot’s papers, but no page number or author was provided (Museum of Walloon Life archives 47.B.3 Dossier 2). Museum of Walloon Life archives 47.B.3, Dossier 2. Danthinne’s nephew and Decallais’ son told me that these relatives were illiterate, so the questionnaires were probably filled out by their wives. These plays were eventually published in brochure form by the Museum of Walloon Life and they include: Le Chevalier Jean-sans-Peur, Les Quatre Fils Aymon, Le Destin de la Princesse Eglantine, Les 600 Franchimontois, and La Grande Tragédie de la Nativité. Still on sale in the 1980s and 90s were Fier-a-Bras, Galien restauré, Guérin de Montglave, Huon de Bordeaux, Le retour de Huon de Bordeaux, Les quatre fils Aymon and Ogier le Danois in three episodes. Of these, three are complete plays (written for children) and the rest are summaries of each scene. Thomas Talbot’s name does not appear on the plays on sale today, but the old puppeteers still referred to them as Talbot’s brochures. I do not know whether he had a hand in writing them, or whether his name is associated with them because he had the original idea of writing separate chivalric plays for children. Museum of Walloon Life Archives 47.B.5–6 Museum of Walloon Life Archives 47.B.5–6 Interestingly, Grétry’s most famous opera, Richard Coeur-de-Lion (1784), focused on a medieval king who is also portrayed in the puppet theater. Patricia Hilden (1993) devotes a substantial section of her book to women coal miners and the use of their image. Collin (1878–1930) was a poet and journalist who served as secretary of the Liège/Walloon section of Le Beffroi, a organization of northern French poets founded in Lille in 1900 (Thiesse 1991: 32–34). La Wallonie, La Meuse, La gazette de Liège and Le journal de Liège This legend was invented by Jean Bosly for Liège touristique in 1939. I was given a copy of it by an elementary school teacher who centered a class lesson and test on it. Her class of 8 and 9 year old girls then sent the legend to a class in Brussels who reciprocated by sending them a legend of the Manneken-Pis statue in Brussels. Dufour told me in 1982 that Denis Bisscheroux used to carve cinematic stars as puppets too, but these must not have been the object of museum collections. Boussart quotes a few lines from this play which I’ve translated as follows, “Oh it’s you Nanole the old painter. They say you’ve become a furrier (führer)! That’s why you’re commanding an army of animals” (Boussart 1971: 15) I found out years later that the jingle was an early advertisement for Eskimo pies and I wondered whether he sold them at intermission. Danthinne’s uncle was the puppeteer, Corin, from Seraing. See collection edited by Gal and Woolard on constructing languages and publics for more examples along these lines (1995). Dufour told me that he saw Le Lion de Flandre performed in puppet theaters when he was a child soon after World War I (Tape 40:B).

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195 Hanks (1996: 246) writes that genres have greater power than grammatical categories to naturalize objects and social relations they mediate. Therefore, if the concept of relativity has any place it must be based on genres. 196 This line of research has been followed up in recent works in linguistic anthropology, most notably a review article by Bauman and Briggs (1990) and an edited volume by Silverstein and Urban (1996). 197 For instance, Labov (1972) viewed individual differences as representing different degrees of formality and informality in speaking. Le Page (1978) portrayed a more sensitive notion of style shifting, claiming that the individual creates his or her system of verbal behavior according to the groups with which he or she wishes from time to time to be identified. Coupland (1980), in a micro ethnographic study of stylistic shifting by a Cardiff travel agent, showed that it is the interplay between message content and status and role relationships among participants that determines the style, while Irvine (1974) presented a picture of individuals self-consciously manipulating language for social ends. More recent work has begun to take a more nuanced look at individual repertoires. Rampton (1995), for instance, looks at the topic of “language crossing” among a multi-ethnic group of adolescents. Still, the individual repertoire of a puppeteer in performance gives us a much more accessible picture of language ideology. 198 “Nanèsse” is the most common name for Tchantchès’ wife/girlfriend today, but “Tatène” and “Djètrou” have also been used and still are in use in some theaters. 199 For more information on the repertoire of Liège marionnettes, I direct you to the work of Liège folklorists Legros (1961) and Pinon (1958). I have restricted my discussion to what I saw in 1982. 100 Van der Essen wrote “When the hero of the piece sang the famous air appealing for revolt and liberty, the effect on the emotions of his hearers was such as to cause them to rush into the streets and then and there inaugurate a revolt against the Dutch” (1915: 153). 101 Engels told me he had more of these books than the Museum of Walloon Life and that you have to pay about 3000BF for the chivalric stories. 102 There were several people I met in Liège who helped manipulate in the puppet theater and who knew a lot about puppets, but who were not interested in taking on the voices and becoming masters. 103 Vera Mark who was visiting from her own fieldsite in southern France helped catalogue the books in Jean Decallais’ trunk. I have placed the list in Appendix 1. 104 Although there is no date on the article, we can place it with some certainty between independence of the Congo in 1960 and 1966 when the name of Elisabethville was changed to Lubumbashi. 105 These are the two Conscience plays that Dufour remembered Verrées playing in his theater. These did not become part of the repertoire at the Museum. Neither did any of the cloak and dagger plays. Dufour once asked if the Museum could restore the Three Musketeer puppets, but they never did. What we see are choices being made which conform to the Walloon Movement’s program. 106 15,000BF was worth a little over $300 during 1982, but with fluctuating exchange rates over the next 15 years, it has been worth as much as $500. 107 In a 1956 interview, Bisscheroux credited Crits with teaching him how to carve (BM 210 Museum of Walloon Life)

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108 This is not true in all theaters, but when I pointed it out to Engels, he simply responded that they didn’t know what they were doing. 109 She is the twin sister of the youngest son of Aymon and goes to battle. She therefore merits two puppets: one with armor which looks like a knight and the other a more feminine version. 110 Taussig explored a very interesting aspect of mimesis in colonial contexts, contrasting the European fascination with mimetically capacious machinery and the practice of the colonized of imitating and making models of Europeans and their machines. Interesting examples of this kind of mimesis existed in the Belgian colonies. The director of the Congo Museum at Tervueren mentioned that the figurines from the Lower Congo which show people with white skin handling European instruments are caricatures without real interest for the art world (Schouteden 1930–31:580). We are left wondering what interest they held for the people who made them. Back home in Belgium, the colonized might have already made an imprint on folk culture. The “traditional” Carnival costume of Binche is said to have originated with descriptions of Incas filtered back after the Spanish Conquest. 111 The heart occupies this position of importance in both French and English. “Connaître le fond du coeur de quelqu’un” is to know someone’s innermost feelings. Other examples include, “avoir le coeur sensible” (to be tender hearted); “avoir le coeur gros” (to be sad); “avoir la rage au coeur” (to be inwardly seething); “avoir bon coeur” (to be kindhearted); “avoir le coeur sur la main” (to be open handed) “avoir le coeur gai” (to feel happy). 112 Goffman coined the term, “downkeying” (1974: 362–363) to refer to this state of affairs. Children often act on this perception, yelling out to the puppets who then react to the intervention (through the puppeteer) and a conversation between puppet(s) and child(ren) ensues. This amuses the adults who stand or sit in the back of the theater watching the front rows of children as well as the puppets onstage. 113 This was quoted from the April, 1977 issue of La vie liégeoise in a brochure put out by the Belgian section of UNIMA in honor of UNIMA’s fiftieth anniversary in 1979 (n.a. 1979). 114 I spoke to one of the three dropouts who felt very constrained by the pattern of direct imitation and I suspect the other dropouts might have felt the same. 115 In opposition to this, Gaston Engels claimed that one of Lassaux’s daughters spoke through puppets in her father’s theater. 116 By 1987, Libert had retired and his Tchantchès was being used by both Vetters and Collard who said that the audience insisted on his presence. 117 I took this behavior for granted until I attended an outdoor Guignol festival in Lyon and adults and tall children crowded to the front, blocking the view of all the smaller children. 118 I took my 5 and 9 year old sons to a modern American puppet show in which the protagonist started out being good, was beaten up several times, and when he finally accomplished his missions and became powerful, he turned egotistical and evil. Afterwards I asked my sons who have seen Tchantchès and Guignol shows which they like best. They replied that they preferred Tchantchès and Guignol because they never lost a battle. I think there is something comforting in the clear distinction of good and evil for children. The nuanced understanding that we hope they acquire as they grow older is perhaps just confusing to them. 119 Italians form the largest immigrant group in Liège. 120 When I asked what was the worst thing that ever happened to him during a show, he answered, “a power outage.” 121 The Belgian playwright, Michel de Ghelderode, claimed to have been indelibly marked by his childhood excursions to the traditional puppet theater of Brussels and he subsequently

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(re)wrote five plays for traditional marionettes during the Interwar period. These include Le mystère de la Passion de Notre Seigneur and Le massacre des innocents which are still performed by the Toone theater in Brussels. Ghelderode, himself, had a taste for the past and was fascinated by puppets which hung in prominent places in his living room (Fox 1994: 181–204). Although decontextualization has to occur in order for the text to be recontextualized, no text exists as decontextualized and therefore this aspect of the process cannot be studied in and of itself. See also Bauman and Briggs (1990: 74–75). Dufour told me that the curator of the Museum told him not to let anyone copy his scripts, but he made an exception for me. Most puppeteers were nervous about giving me scripts for fear they would get into the hands of other puppeteers. This went against their normal generosity with me and, during my last week in Liège, I was able to gather as many scripts as I had all year long. I purposefully only present parts of scripts and plays in order not to betray their trust. Note that the Mexicans who performed the Christmas play described by Bauman heard the elevated theatrical Spanish of the script as the indigenous language, Otomí (Bauman 1996: 306). Suffrage in the new state of Belgium was restricted to males who owned a certain amount of property (less than 50,000 in number) (Hilden 1993: 26). Universal male suffrage whereby every man received only one vote was not achieved until 1919. Women did not attain the right to vote until 1948. The puppeteers at the Museum of Walloon Life seemed to be the least comfortable writing in Walloon. I attribute this to the presence of scholars who worked on the language in the museum and could possibly have looked over the scripts submitted by the puppeteers for approval. Libert wrote Walloon in his plays and also wrote letters to friends in the language. The Museum of Walloon Life has some earlier scripts written by Pierre Paul Pinet. This was an uncommonly small audience. Just two days before, sixty three spectators attended Dufour’s Nativity play. I did not translate this section so as to focus the reader’s attention on the form, not the content. The Pinet family Nativity script (written by Bartholomé (1877–1949) who updated the language of his uncle Pierre-Paul’s script) also simply states “massacre des innocents” and does not include any dialogue that makes up the scene. Christmas plays were introduced to the New World from Spain during the first half of the 16th century and they are still performed in Mexico and in some Spanish-speaking communities in the United States today (Litvak 1973; Bauman 1996). It is interesting to note that during the 16th century, besides its holdings in Latin America, Spain posessed the Spanish Netherlands which included much of what is now Belgium. Of course, we needn’t make a direct link to Spain, since the popularity of the Nativity play grew throughout Catholic Europe. By the time the Chantilly manuscript was discovered in 1905, the bourgeoisie had already begun attending Nativity plays in the puppet theaters of Liège. The manuscript met with great interest when it was made available during the Interwar period and in the 1930s and 40s, students of the University of Liège began performing the play around the region, and even in Paris. We have very little information on the actual performance context of Nativity plays throughout the centuries. We know that at least some of the manuscripts were sponsored by con-

292

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vents and at least some of the actors were paid by the city government which tells us that certain plays had official status. The city accounting books of Namur show that mystery actors were paid in wine in 1665 and other archival materials attest that mystery plays were performed in Namur until the 18th century (Pirard 1950: 54–55). The making of Christmas crèches as well as their mechanization are best known as Provençal traditions (Poueigh 1976: 243–248). In 1987–88 the Museum of Walloon Life put on an exposition of Walloon crèches. Libert 12/24/89 Tape 139:B I should add that the Victor Verrées recording from 1957 only deviates in 3 minor places from Dufour’s performance transcribed earlier, altering two of the seven lines. François Pinet’s 1950 performance deviates more distinctly from his son’s performance transcribed above, preserving only lines two and six in their entirety. Dufour continued this vein of talking about the physicality of Christ backstage, as when he jokingly asked me to check to see if the baby Jesus had wet his diaper. Some churches in Liège had been turned into art galleries and cultural centers and Dufour did not mind performing in them, but his aversion to churches was so strong and wellknown that when a health care assistant requested that a mass be said at his funeral, his musician friends followed the procession only to the door of the church where they stopped and played “The Internationale.” His good friend, Francis, told me that out of respect for Adrien, they could not bring themselves to enter the church. Tchantchès is an old Walloon form of the name François, through its version, Françwès (Piron 1950: 13–18). Verrées’ performance is on Bande Magnétique 17–19 of the Museum of Walloon Life and Ficarrotta’s on the author’s FIC1.87 I’m leaving out the last interjection which could be either language. My thanks go to Juan Trujillo who helped me figure out this software. The two near verticle lines in Line four around 20.5 seconds are recording pops, not vocal contours. The puppet theater differs from live drama in that it is more of an individual product (although in traditional puppetry, one could perhaps see the production team stretching vertically through time). In all dramatic forms the fixity of the text is tempered by the interpretation of the acting group. In elite drama, directors take primary responsibility for the interpretation, but each actor interprets their own role, and scenery, prop and lighting specialists add to the general feel of the performance. In the puppet theater, this is generally all accomplished by a single person, working from a script that leaves much more unsaid than a published play. This tension between iconicity and indexicality is illustrated in a passage by Meyerhold (1913) quoted in Bogatyrev (1983: 53): “There are two puppet theatres: The director of the first wants his puppets to look and behave like real men. ... The other director also wanted to make his puppets imitate real people, but he quickly realized that as soon as he tried to improve the puppet’s mechanism it lost part of its charm. It was as though the puppet were resisting such barbarous improvements with all its being. The director came to his senses when he realized that there is a limit beyond which there is no alternative but to replace the puppet with a man. But how could he part with the puppet which had created a world of enchantment with its imcomparable movements, its expressive gestures achieved by some magic known to it alone, its angularity which reaches the heights of true plasticity? ... When

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the puppet weeps, the hand holds the handkerchief away from its eyes; when the puppet kills, it stabs its opponent so delicately that the tip of the sword stops short of the breast; when one puppet slaps another, no colour comes off the face; when puppet lovers embrace, it is with such care that the spectator observing their carresses from a respectful distance does not think to question his neighbor about the consequences.” As regards facial mimesis, I have often seen children listening to animated conversation, shape their faces to that of the speaker. People and higher primates can often be spied imitating each other’s facial expressions at the zoo. Emphasizing the arbitrariness between puppet and voice can also be an attention-getting device in puppetry. Bogatyrev (1983: 61) wrote of knights in old Czech folk puppetry unexpectedly speaking Czech filled with grammatical errors while the peasants spoke Czech correctly. Pinet’s parents spoke some Walloon to each other, though not to him. He has a passive knowledge of the language but does not claim to speak it fluently. He does, however, have a fairly strong regional accent and in order to receive his teaching degree was required to take a diction course to “improve” his French pronunciation. He disregards this linguistic training when speaking for Tchantchès and, instead, employs a code-switching variety with heavily regionalized French, typical of the character. Tape 40:B One of my informants told me that she never learned much in school because she had to fetch water for the household every morning before school which made her late every day. As soon as she arrived, the teacher would send her to stand in the corner with a book on her head for punishment. Needless to say, she quit school as soon as she could. It is very common in the medieval and medieval-derived Christian literature to lump together god and prophet names from diverse religions and to refer to all non-Christians as pagans. In the Song of Roland, Saracen gods are variously referred to as Tervagant, Muhammad and Apollo.

Appendix 1 Decallais Collection

Ariosto, Ludovico 1850. Roland Furieux. Tressan (transl). Paris: Gustave Havard. Bédier, Joseph, ed. 1924. Le roman de Tristan et Iseut. Paris: L’Édition d’Art. Boulenger, Jacques, ed. 1922. L’histoire de Merlin L’Enchanteur — Les enfances de Lancelot (Les romans de la table ronde [2 separate stories Merlin 3–188 Lancelot 193–247]). Paris: Librairie Plon. Boyardo, Matheo Maria 1717. Nouvelle traduction de Roland L’Amoureux de Matheo Maria Boyardo Conte di Scandiano. Vol. 1. Paris: Pierre Ribou. Boyardo, Matheo Maria 1742. Roland L’Amoureux. Vol 2. Paris: Valleyre and Clousier. Brès de Limoges, J.-P., ed. 1827. Les quatre fils d’Aymon — histoire héroique. Vol 1. Paris: Lugan. Buqcellos (Blocquel Simon) n.d.. Petit voyageur français dans toutes les parties du monde. Paris: Delarue. Clément 1880. Histoire de Jeanne d’Arc. Rouen: Mégard et Cie. Conscience, Henri n.d.. La guerre des paysans: Episode campinois (1793–1798). A. Alvin ( transl). Tournai: J. Casterman et Fils. n.d. (1855a, 1857, 1871). Livres complètes: La guerre des paysans. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères. 1867a. Le tribun de Gand, Léon Wocquier (transl). Vol. 1. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères.

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1867b. Oeuvres complètes de Henri Conscience: Le Tribun de Gand. Léon Wocquier (transl). Vol. 1–2. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères. 1896. Le lion de Flandre. Vol. 1. Paris: Calmann Lévy. de Plancy, J. Collin 1854. La Reine Berthe au grand pied et quelques légendes de Charlemagne. Paris: Societé de St. Victor pour la Propagation des Bons. Delvau, Alfred 1869. Collection des romans de chevalerie. Vol. 3. Paris: Librairie BachelinDeflorenne. Deslys, Charles 1896. Bibliothèque des écoles et des familles: L’héritage de Charlemagne. Corbeil: Imprimerie Crète. Guenot, C. n.d. Lampégia ou la Prisonnière des Arabes. Paris: H. & L. Casterman. Hugo, Victor 1865. Notre Dame de Paris. Paris: J. Hetzel et A. Lacroix. Hurtrel, Georges, ed. La Tour d’Auvergne (le Premier Grenadier de France). Paris: G. Hurtel. Lemercier, Adrien 1849. Hugues ou l’Héroisme de l’Amour filial (épisode de l’histoire des Croisades). Paris: Martial Ardant Frères. n.a. n.d.-a. Histoire de Huon de Bordeaux. Epinal: Pellerin. n.d.-b. Histoire de Valentin et Orson: Très nobles et très vaillants chevaliers/Fils de L’Empereur de Grèce/neveux du très vaillant et très-chrétien Pepin, Roi de France. Epinal: Pellerin. Perefixe, Hardouin de 1782. Histoire du Roi Henri le Grand. Toulouse: Sens Librairie. Prudhomme, H. 1889. Histoire de Bayart. Tours: Alfred Mame et Fils. Sales, Pierre 1908. Les quatre fils Aymon. Paris: Maurice Bauche. Tasso, Torquato 1926. Jérusalem délivrée. Paris: Ernest Flammarion.

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Archival Sources

1.

Museum of Walloon Life Archives Terry, Léonard 1868 Simples notes pour servir à l’histoire des beaux-arts au pays de Liège No. 11947. 1931- 1959 Puppet Theater Accounting Book. 1949–1957 Tape Recordings of Puppeteers. BM 1–4; 8–14; 23;210 Liège Puppetry 47.B.3–7 1910 Christmas issue of L’Actualité illustrée Thomas Talbot’s puppet play scripts. Nos. GG6963; GG6964 1924–1929 Les amis de l’art populaire et Théâtre Tchantchès: Statuts, programmes et affiches et representations, Cahier de comptabilite No. GG6966.

2.

Royal Library Archives in Brussels 1927–1930 “L’Imprimerie à l’école: Bulletin mensuel; le cinéma, la radio et les techniques nouvelles d’education populaire. Revue pédotechnologique mensuelle, organe de la cooperative de l’enseignement laïc”.

3.

State Archives in Liège 1772 “Marionnettes suppliqué”. Conseil Privé 152.

4.

Newspapers Franc-Tigneu 1932 “Ce qui parlent wallon”, Jules Denis, 1/5, May 7, page 1. Germinal n.d. (1960–66) “Du sang pour les “cops d’tiesse epwezonés” de Tchantchès avec les marionnettes de F. Decallais”, Alice Closset, page 22. La Meuse 1995 July.

ARCHIVAL SOURCES

317

Le Soir 1982 “Les évadés de Lantin devant la cour d’assises de Liège”, Michel Hubin, December 1, page 8.

Index

(Stories performed in the puppet literature are preceded by an asterisk) *600 Franchimontois, Les 108, 288 n.81 Alcoholic beverages enhancement of puppet shows for adults with 138 pèkèt 90, 138, 162, 178, 240 Tchantchès’ drunkenness 6, 97 vocal representation of drunkenness 232 *Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves 96 Alter, George 52 Ancion, Jacques 139-140 scripts 148 sociolinguistic variables 213-218, 221 Anderson, Benedict 12, 53 *Au temps où Berthe filait 286 n.10 Authority 5 of authenticity 97, 106 mimesis and 121 of puppeteers 101, 175 Babilone, Jean Pierre 126 Balibar, Renée, and Dominique Laporte 281 n.8 Bakhtin, Mikhail 6, 11, 281 n.7 laughter 61-62 See also Genres Battle of Poitiers (or Tours) See Martel, Charles Baugh, John 283 n.25 Bauman, Richard 101, 182, 197, 291 n.124 and Charles Briggs 8, 100, 143, 197, 281 n.6, 289 n.96, 291 n.122 Belgian linguistic border 282 n.11 Bibliothèque bleue 46, 48, 284 n.4 Bisscheroux, Denis 77, 80, 116-117, 121, 256, 288 n.89

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Bivalency 32-33, 196 Bloomaert, Jan, and Jef Verschueren 289 n.191 *Blue Beard 95 *Bohème, La 139 Bogatyrev, Petr 41, 202 *Borgia 65 Botsford, Antoinette 49-50 Boucha, François 83, 121 Boudoux, Remy Victor 47 Bouillon, Godefroid de 243-244 Bourdieu, Pierre 11, 13, 182, 281 n.9 Boussart, Jean Denys 47, 55, 285 n.90 Briggs, Charles See under Bauman, Richard *Carmen 65 Carnivalesque 239 and the bourgeoisie 44, 59-62 humor 171, 173, 223-224 Chambers, J.K. 15, 215 *Chanson de Roland, La See Song of Roland Chansons de geste 46, 87, 109, 229, 243 Charlemagne 61, 72, 229 in history 160 in the puppet theater 2, 57, 63-64, 69, 86, 130, 135, 141, 212-213 puppet 117-120 buried with puppeteers 123 speech of 93, 104, 215-216, 227 statue of 85, 97, 116 national/regional importance of 63, 97, 243-244 *Chevalier Gabar, Le 65 *Chevalier Jean-sans-Peur, Le 288 n.81 Children (empowerment in the puppet theater) 135 See also Puppeteers: as children Christmas traditions 176-178 Cinema 53-54, 71, 286 n.64 Belgians in French cinema 72-73 Clough, Shepard 23 Coal mining 15-16, 36 and puppetry 85, 94, 110, 124-125 Code-mixing, French/Walloon 18, 21, 25-28 32-35, 141 in puppet plays 104, 169, 189-196, 274 correction of 129 written form 32

INDEX

Code-switching, French/Walloon 37-38, 230 in Christmas songs 162 comic and serious 173 examples of 185-187 Collard, Robert 130-131 Collin, Isi 85-87, 288 n.86 Colonialism 64, 73, 245 likened to the Crusades 244-245 and mimesis 290 n.110 puppets in the colony 110 Comic skits 48, 50, 90-92 See also Humor Conscience, Hendrik 13, 285 n.42 *La Guerre des Paysans 114 *Le Lion de Flandre 113-114, 288 n.94 *Le Tribun de Gand 113 Consumerism, rise of 52-53 Conti, Alexandre 47-49, 50, 90, 94 *Cour des Miracles, La 65 Covert prestige 13 Craig, Edward Gordon See Puppetry: avant-garde Crits, Joseph 80, 117, 289 n.107 Crusades 243-244, 253, 270 See under Colonialism Danthinne, Oscar 80-85, 94, 119, 288 n.92 buried with Charlemagne 123 Decallais, François 82, book collection110-115 Decallais, Jean 110 Decontextualization 4, 100-101, 121, 143, 291 n.122 and refraction 159 Defrecheux, Nicolas See Mès deûs lingadjes Deletrez, Claudy 119, 131 Deletrez, Micheline 263 Delvau’s *Collection des romans de chevalerie 95, 111, 144-147 Denial of coevalness 69 *Destin de la Princesse Eglantine, Le 288 n.81 Destrée, Jules 63, 65, 71, 250 Deville, Christian 122, 125, 129, 131 scripts 148-149 pedagogically-oriented performance 184-188 Nativity Play comparison with Dufour 188-189 See also Language in the puppet theater

321

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Dialect shifting 30 Dietz, Alexis 54 Dialogism 11, 12 Diglossia 22, 283 n.17 Doppagne, Albert 246 Dorian, Nancy 281 n.8 Double-voicedness 176, 279 Drunkenness See Alcoholic beverages Dufour, Adrien 71, 98, 140-141 contemporary references in show introductions 272-274 Massacre of the Innocents performance 154-159 musicality/replication 196-200 Nativity comparison 163-173 politics 261-263, 268-270 puppetry career 93-96 script writing 129, 145, 147-148 sociolinguistic variables 212-218, 221 teaching 129 (see also pedagogically-oriented performance) voice 121 See also Language in the puppet theater Dutch language 18, 19, 282 n.19 Education and language 12, 17-18, 29-30, 34 See also Working class lifestyle: alienation from school Ehrenreich, Barbara 288 n.153 Elias, Joseph 88-89 *Enchanteur Ramanou, L’ 212 Endangered languages 278 Engels, Gaston 123 puppetry career 90-93, 98 racial categorizations 246 scripts 148-149 sociolinguistic variables 212-218, 221 voice 121 Entextualization 4-5, 100, 143-144, 150-157, 259 Ethnographic research 277-278 European local languages 12, 17, 64, 160 Fabian, Johannes 245, 284 n.61, 298 n.162 Fabry, Marcel 25, 69, 284 n.60 *Femme sous-lieutenant, Une 65

INDEX

Ficarrotta, Joseph 119, 122, 125, 129, 131 Massacre of the Innocents performance 189-196 musicality/replication 196-200 Sicilian traditions 125 *Fier à Bras 111, 288 n.81 Film See Cinema Flemish puppet character 231, 269, 275 Flemish Movement 19, 22-25, 66 referenced in puppet show 275 Flemish/Walloon conflict 269, 275, 282 n.14 Folklore See under Walloon Movement Folklore journals in Wallonia 286 n.59 Food as ethnic marker 230, 275 generosity with 263 *Four Sons of Aymon 107, 111-112, 114, 213, 258, 288 n.81, 290 n.109 Fourons Affair 274-276 Framing 51, 109, 135, 157, 163, 167, 174 breaking frame 173-174, 177 closing frames 177-179 downkeying 120, 290 n.112 opening frames 2, 157, 174-176 See also Tchantches: interlocutor with the audience: introductory speeches Fraternity of Liège puppeteer pals, The 80 French language Belgian Standard 28-29 diction exercises 30-31 enlightenment ideology 16 politeness 282 n.16 social class affiliations 257 See also Code-mixing; Code-switching Gal, Susan 201, 282 n.10, 283 n.30, 288 n.93 *Galien Restauré 288 n.81 *Gaule, Amadis de 118 *Geneviève de Brabant 95, 107, 213 Genres 4, 11, 39-42, 61, 99-102, 106, 289 n.95 difficulty of defining 100, 281 n.6 See also Speaking through puppets Ghelderode, Michel de 290-291 n.121 See also Puppetry: avant-garde

323

324

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Globalization 171, 277-279 *Guérin de Montglave 288 n.81 Guignol 48, 61, 142, 290 n.117, 246 n.54 Hall, Stuart 43 Haust, Jean 16-17, 25, 69, 246 Hélin, Etienne 16, 45-46, 262, and Suzy Pasleau 70-71 *Héritage de Charlemagne, L’ 112 Heteroglossia 6-7, 11, 27, 102, 279-280 Hilden, Patricia 17, 60, 288 n.85, 292 n.125 *Histoire de Paladin Roland See Song of Roland *Homme des Bois ou Les Deux Frères, L’ 65 Hosmans, André 80 Humor 105, 157, 223-224, code used in 35, 283 n. 12 in Nativity Play 169-171, 173, 176 See also Comic skits *Huon de Bordeaux 107, 111, 114, 288 n.81 medieval manuscript 144 Hymes, Dell 5, 101, 277 Iconicity 202-206, 222 tension with indexicality in the puppet theater 292-293 n.144 See also Mimesis Identity 278-279 Indexicality 4, 202-206, 211 See also Language in the puppet theater Institute of Walloon Dialectology 25 Intertextuality 143, 253 Interwar Period 67, 249 language politics 24-25 Jarry, Alfred See Puppetry: avant-garde Jeanne, Paul 83-84 *Jerusalem Delivered 113 *Jeunesse de Duc Naymes, La 65 Kroskrity, Paul 281 n.5 Kurth, Godefroid 23, 244 Labor movement 52, 70 Lagauche, Louis 71, 87 *Lancelot of the Lake 95, 108 Language in the puppet theater age 231-232, 249 animals 233-234

INDEX

325

emotional coloring 232-233 ethnic differences 229 Flemish accent 231, 275 formality/informality 218 tu/vous 224-226, 230 gender differences 215, 227-228 influence of puppeteers’ age 218-219 regional differences 230-231 social class 158-159, 219-227, 293 n.146 (see also Walloon: class affiliations) supernatural 233-234 voice manipulation (prosody, paralinguistics, rhythmicality) 6, 195-200, 219, 221222 voice quality 184, 222 Language change 12-14 Language ideology 102, 201, 271-276, 279, 289 n.95, 291 n.124 Language politics in Belgium 7-8, 18-27, 270-276 Language shift 282 n.10 Laporte, Dominique and Balibar, Renée 281 n.8 Lassaux, Jean 80, 123, 255 Leboutte, René 44-46, 51-52, 262 Lebovics, Herman 67, 70 Lefevere, André 159-160, 181 Leloup, Léopold 55-56 Leopold II See Colonialism Libert, Henri contemporary references in shows 267, 275-276 Nativity comparison 163-173 puppetry career 126 replication, attitude toward 182 scripts 148 sociolinguistic variables 212-218, 221 tu/vous in performance 225-226 World War II 89 See also Language in the puppet theater Libert, Michel 130, 182 Liège coal in 15, 36, 284 n.37 contemporary linguistic varieties in 27-34 dominance in Walloon standardization 282 n.12 early theater in 46-47 immigration to 27, 50, 265-270, 290 n.119

326

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES

literacy in 53, 144 medieval multilingualism in 15 new puppetry ideas in 142 post industrial decline in 266-267 poverty in 44, 284 n.36-37 revolution in 17 socialist consumer cooperatives in 285 n.47 socialist theater groups in 71 weapons production in 16, 238 See also Outremeuse Linguistic purity 21, 26, 283 n.23 See also Code-mixing Linguistic relativity 281 n.3, 289 n.95 Linguistic repertoires 35, 218 Literacy (problems with defining) 144-145 See under Liège Lord, Albert 183 and Milman Parry 189 *Lothaire le Traitre 65 Lower class characters (tchantchès and nanèsses) 118-119, 171, 183, 267 absence in scripts 148, 151 iconicity between face and voice 205-206 in performance 153-158, 189-196 vocal portrayal of 205-206, 217, 223, 230-231, 235 See also Nativity Play: Massacre of the Innocents: performance Maeterlinck, Maurice 55, See also Puppetry: avant-garde Maisons du Peuple 71, 80, 127, 261 *Mâle St. Martin, La 259-262 Maquet, José 126, teaching 128, 136 scripts 148-149 Marinus, Albert 71-72 Martel, Charles 244-245 *Massacre of the Innocents See under Nativity Play May Day 267 Mayence family 2, 246 Mès deûs lingadjes 20-22 Metalinguistics 13, 187, 198, 271 Metapragmatics 5-8, 33-34, 271-276 teaching 128

INDEX

Meyerhold 287 n.144 Militarism See Mimesis: military and the church; War Mimesis 4, 7, 47, 181, 203, 279-280 and colonialism 290 n.110 facial mimesis 205-206, 293 n.145 between the military and the church 238, 243 mimetically capacious machinery 68, 75-76 and mock soldiery 241 and puppet bodies contagious magic 120 sympathetic magic 119-120 and speech 102, 121-122 and toy soldiers 243 See also Authority: the role of mimesis; Iconicity; Parish festivals; Religion: statuary Miró, Joan See Puppetry: avant-garde Mistral, Frédéric 26, 64, 282 n.18 Mockel, Albert 55-58 Montglave Family 246 *Mort de Roland, La See Song of Roland Multilingual reflexivity 271-274 Multivocality 250, 278 Museum of Vieux-Liège 64 Museum of Walloon Life 64-65, 68-70, 287 n.70 puppets in attic 119 puppet show recordings in 121 puppet theater in 76-77, 95-96, 140-141 importance of Walloon language 25, 69 World War II 89 Musicality capacity for closing intertextual gaps 196-200 *Naissance, Li See Nativity Play Nanèsse 105, 124, 228, 289 n.98 *Nanole 89 Napoleon 18, 90 141, 242, 243 Nationalism and the Belgian Centennial 73 and the Belgian Revolution 108-109 and language 11, 12-13, 269 and religion 243

327

328

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES

and war 269 See under Puppetry; Walloon Movement *Nativity Play, The 95, 140-141, 265, 288 n.81, 291 n.121,128-133 anachronism in 148, 170-171, 267 earliest evidence of in Wallonia 161 humor in 171, 173 language politics in 275-276 manger scene in 169-171, 250-251 Massacre of the Innocents in absence in script 153 inserting a battle 177 performances (Dufour) 154-159, 188 (Verrées and Ficarrotta) 189-196 performances 154-159, 169-173, 188-200, 225-226, 250-251 popularity of in European folk drama 161 refractions of (Bethléem verviétois, crèche vivante, etc.) 159-162 script to performance (Dufour) 150-159 See also Puppetry: and religion Nobles 222-223, 227 *Ogier le Danois 89, 107, 111, 258, 288 n.81 medieval manuscript 144 Old French 15, 147 Oral Written French and Walloon, aspects of 25 speech genres 100-101 puppet performances, aspects of 100, 147-148, 183-184 *Orçon Tête de Fer 65 *Orson and Valentine (Histoire de Valentin et Orson) 5, 107, 114-115, 212, 281 n.2 voice 234 Outremeuse 55 Free Republic of (RLOM) 126, 129-130, 178, 287 n.68 *Paix Brisée, La 212-213 Parish festivals 239-241 Parry, Milman 189 Pasleau, Suzy See under Hélin, Etienne *Passion Play, The 51, 95, 140-141, 291 n.121 See also Puppetry: religion Pedagogically-oriented performance 184-188 Picard, Edmond 23, 62-63, 250 Pinet Family 124 Bartholomé 124

INDEX

329

François 121 Jean 121, 124, 182 contemporary references in shows 267 departures from the “tradition” 140 echomaker 234 Nativity comparison 163-173 script writing 148 sociolinguistic variables 213-218, 221 Laurent 77, 124 Matthieu 124 Pierre Paul 65, 124 See also Puppeteers: speaking through puppets for the first time Pinon, Roger 150 Pirenne, Henri 23, 62, 244 Piron, Maurice 15-16, 25, 47-50, 55-57, 61, 88 Prague School Functionalism 40, 41 See also Bogatyrev, Petr *Prince Volant, Le 5 Print capitalism 15 *Prodigal Son, The 139 Proverbs 41 Punch 47, 48, 61, 142, 286 n.54 Puppet characters See Charlemagne; Guignol; Lower class characters; Nanèsse; Nobles; Punch; Roland; Soldier puppets; Supernatural Puppet Characters; Tchantchès Puppet literature/scripts/performances 106-115, 289 n.99, 105, 291 n.123 See individual plays by name preceded by an asterisk Puppet shows, contemporary cost of 138, 140 frequency of 137-138, 140-141 length of 137 season 137-138 on radio on T.V. 141 raffles at 178 Puppet theaters differences between permanent and itinerant 136 in museums 67, 79 (see also Museum of Walloon Life; Tchantchès Museum) in private homes 50-51, 77, 90, 121, 126-128, 136, 140 in schools 141

330

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES

number of puppets in 91, 123 organization of spectators 135 permanent theaters, illus. 132-133 itinerant theaters, illus. 134 refreshments 138 See also Children: empowerment in the puppet theater Puppeteers 18th C 47 apprenticeship of 121, 124-125, 128, 130-131, 182 as children 121, 126-127 family relations of 90-91, 123-124 Fraternity of Liège Puppeteer Pals 80 speaking through puppets for the first time 90, 94-95; 127 See also individuals by name Puppetry 19th C abundance of 49 19th C bourgeois interest in 55-56 avant-garde 142 class struggles for 80-81 and commercialism 84-88 common traits of European rod puppet theater 50, 285 n.42-44 cost of 123 cross-fertilization in 50 decline of 51-55, 58, 66, 90-91 description of a play 1-3 as distinguished from live drama 202, 292 n.143 in the fairs of Wallonia 91 formal restrictions for at the Museum of Walloon Life 95-96 government subsidies for 92, 136 institutional shaping of the form 101 (Pinet) 124 hierarchy in age 122-123 social class 256-259 importance of history in 98-99 illustrated story sheets for 90 infantalization of 62 mêsse dèl djowe 174 miracles and transformations in 127 in nationalism 74

INDEX

importance of puppeteers’ books 109-110 as a reaction against rationalism and realism 55 and religion 160, 238-239 sound effects in 137 transformations of between the two world wars (summary) 97 relation to veillées 51 women in 255-256 *Quatre Fils Aymon, Les See Four Sons of Aymon Race instability of the concept 246-249 language and 247 Saracen and Jew in Walloon folklore 246 Racism 286 n.57 anti-German-Americans 248 anti-immigrant 268-269, 274 anti-Jew 246-250 anti-Muslim 244-249 anti-racist 250 illus. 204 institutionalized 266 pan European 249 Recontextualization 4, 100, 103, 143, 159, 291 n.122 Reflexivity language ideology 270-271 multilingual reflexivity 271-274 speaking through puppets 102 Refraction 159-160, 181 of the Nativity 162-173 Regionalism See Walloon Movement; Flemish Movement; Mistral, Frédéric Religion anticlericalism 239, 250, 292 n.138 in Belgian nationalism 243 Christian vs. non Christian 293 n.150 in noble puppet speech 223 statuary 239-241 and war 237-238, 241, 243-251, 247-251 See also Secularism Remouchamps, Edouard 75 See also *Tåtî l’Pèriquî Remouchamps, Edouard (II) 116, 262 Remouchamps, J.M. 25-26, 67, 75-77, 79, 81, 84-89, 96, 287 n.72 See also Museum of Walloon Life

331

332

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES

Remy, Marcel 32, 141 Replication as a central mechanism of cultural transmission 182 differentiated from refraction 181 in the puppet theater 182-200 unwritten text 189-196 written text 185-188 Reported speech 40-41, 102, 182-183, 278 See also Speaking through puppets; Verba dicendi Requilé, Dieudonné 88-89 Resistance and rebellion 258-262 *Revolutionaries of 1830, The (Les R’vinteus de 1830) 95, 108 Right bank and left bank styles development of 87-88, 105 left bank 96, 142, 163 referenced in puppet shows 169 right bank 91, 163, 177 Rivière, G.H. 69-70 *Robin Hood 95-96, 108 Rod puppets classifications of 117 models for 115-117 non traditional characters 138 outside of puppet theaters 119 illus. 74, 118 relationship between roles and puppets 118-119 relationship with puppeteers 120 selling of 264 suitability for battles 115 traditional characters illus. 207-209 (see Charlemagne; Lower class characters, Nanèsse; Nobles; Roland; Soldier puppets; Tchantchès) traditional form and variations 103 woods used 117 See also Mimesis: puppet bodies Roland 86, 117, 141, 212, 232, 258 *Roland Amoureux See under Song of Roland *Roland Furieux See under Song of Roland *Roman de Tristan et Iseut, Le 113 Romanticism 23, 55 *Romeo et Zoulietta 139 Rosati, the 84

INDEX

Rousseau, Felix 63 Salme, Dieudonné 48-51, 63, 285 n.45 Schieffelin, Bambi 281 n.5 Schoonbroodt, Edmond, See Warsage, Rodolphe de Script writing 129, 145-148, 291 n.126 varieties of 147-149 Secularism 176 Sexism 128-129, 254, 255 Mary’s diminished role in the Nativity 168 Sherzer, Joel 5, 100 Silverstein, Michael See Metapragmatics Simenon, Georges 39, 72 *Sire Coline 65 *Six Cents Franchimontois, See 600 Franchimontois, Les Slangen, Marcel 141 *Snow White and the Seven Dwarves 95 Sociolinguistic variables informative vs. communicative 214 in Liège 29 in the puppet theater 211-221 Société liégeoise de littérature wallonne (SLLW) 19-21, 283 n.20 Soldier puppets 223 *Song of Roland 65, 92, 107, 108, 258, 293 n.150 *Roland Amoureux and *Roland Furieux 111-112 Spanish Civil War 71, 246 Speaking through puppets 4, 99-102, 271 See also Genres Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White 44, 59-60, 286 n.53 Strée, Hubert 80 Style 105-106 Supernatural puppet characters 228 Symbolism 55, 62, 247 Taeuber, Sophie See Puppetry: avant-garde Talbot, the lame 48-49 Talbot, Thomas 67, 75, 79-89, 108, 111, 126, 130, *La Mâle St. Martin 260-262 *Tåtî l’Pèriquî 32, 139, 220 Tchantchès bourgeois affiliation of 79 and Charlemagne 224-225

333

334

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES

comparison of Verrées and Ficarrotta 189-190 and Flemish characters 275 as interlocutor with audience 135, 138-139 introductory speeches 174-175 initiating intertextuality contemporary issues 175 errors in texts 107 technical difficulties 174 legend of 97, 288 n.88 at the Museum of Walloon Life 96 outside of the puppet theater 88-89, 286 n.56 and puppeteers 123, illus. 210 resistance and rebellion 258-259 statues of 85-88 transformation of 97, 201 and the Walloon movement 73 as the wise fool 157 working class affiliation of 235 See also Puppetry: commercialism Tchantchès Museum 138 puppet collection in 77, 78 right bank style 105-106 Libert at the 126, 130, 135, 139, 171 as the UNIMA seat 139 See also Outremeuse: Free Republic of *Tchantchès va-t-à Gand 69, 283 n.22 *Temptation of St. Anthony, The 139 Thomassin, Louis-François 284 n.35 *Three Musketeers, The 139 Toone Puppet Theater 202, 287 n.75, 291 n.121 Tradition 4, 5, 40, 72, 140 Dufour’s definition 93-96 Engels’ definition 93 performer lineage, importance of 125-126 referenced in puppet shows 174-175 rigidification of 97, 102-106 *Tragic History of Dr. Faust, The 108, 139 Trente Glorieuses, Les 266 *Tristan of Leonnois 95 Trompetter, Amy See Puppetry: avant-garde

INDEX

Trudgill, Peter 15, 215, 283 n.30 *Ubu Roi 139 UNIMA 74-75, 79-80, 83-84, 139 Urban, Gregory 181-182, 197 Urla, Jacqueline 12 Uvular /r/ 15 *Valentin et Orson, Histoire de See Orson and Valentine Van Mullem, Jules 123 Veillées 46, 161, 284 n.39 relation to puppetry 51 Verba dicendi 31, 41, 274 examples of 272-273 Verhaeren, Emile 247-249 Verschueren, Jef and Jan Bloomaert 289 n.191 Verrées, Victor 94, 121, 123 Massacre of the Innocents performance 189-196 musicality/replication 196-200 Vetters, George 130-131 Vigneron, Georges 131, 136 Voice manipulation See under Language in the puppet theater Voice quality See under Language in the puppet theater *Voyèdge è l’Orient, Li 139 Vrindts, Joseph 86-87 Wallez, Norbert 248 Walloon language baby talk 232 class affiliations of 16, 26, 38-39, 220, 283 n.21 and coal mining 36-37 decline of 25 demographic aspects of its use 35-36 dictionaries of 16-17, 25 history of 14 ideology of 17, 20-22 markedness and formality 218 as central to the Museum of Walloon Life 69 newspapers in 282 n.15 oral/written dialect split 26, 33-34 and the puppet theater 139, 153-158, 272-274 in puppeteers’ linguistic repertoires 90, 94, 274, 293 n.147 in the schools 272-274

335

336

SPEAKING IN OTHER VOICES

as a solidarity code 37-38, 269 and Tchantchès 57, 96 in the theater 41-42, 286-287 n.65 use of ti 33, 195, 283 n.27 in verbal art 16, 39-42, 195, 278 See also Code-mixing; Code-switching Walloon Movement 23-26, 68 1905 Walloon Congress 64 1930 Walloon Congress 73 folklore and ethnography interests 62-66, 68, 70 mimetic nationalism in 65 number of organizations 74 puppet theater interests 63-65 race (soul) discourse 55, 68-69, 258-259 opposition to Rexist Party 70 Song of Walloons 258 working class interests 70, 97 War anti-war 251 in Belgian nationalism 244 Christian Aryan 249 in noble puppet speech 223 See under Religion; Nationalism Warsage, Rodolphe de 64, 67, 77-81, 88-89, 108, 286 n.64, 287 n.72, 75 descriptions of early puppetry 49, 60, 63 connections with UNIMA 74-75, 83-84 Weber, Eugen 18, 46, 63, 285 n.46 White, Allon and Peter Stallybrass 44, 59-60, 286 n.53 Willame, George 64 Willé, Robert 117 Wislet, Pierre 80-83, 131 Woolard, Kathryn 32-33, 281 n.5,7,9, 283 n.28,31, 288 n.93 Wörter und Sachen 25 Working class lifestyle 39-40, 45-46, 52-53, 253 alienation from school 224, 293 n.149 compassion and generosity 263-265 hierarchy 256-258 in the puppet theater 235 importance of physical strength 254-255 See also Resistance and rebellion

INDEX

World War I 24, 51, 65-66, 247-248 World War II 26, 246, 250, 266 anti-Hitler puppet shows 89, 262 songs 40

337

In the PRAGMATICS AND BEYOND NEW SERIES the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 1. WALTER, Bettyruth: The Jury Summation as Speech Genre: An Ethnographic Study of What it Means to Those who Use it. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1988. 2. BARTON, Ellen: Nonsentential Constituents: A Theory of Grammatical Structure and Pragmatic Interpretation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 3. OLEKSY, Wieslaw (ed.): Contrastive Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1989. 4. RAFFLER-ENGEL, Walburga von (ed.): Doctor-Patient Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1989. 5. THELIN, Nils B. (ed.): Verbal Aspect in Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 6. VERSCHUEREN, Jef (ed.): Selected Papers from the 1987 International Pragmatics Conference. Vol. I: Pragmatics at Issue. Vol. II: Levels of Linguistic Adaptation. Vol. III: The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication (ed. with Jan Blommaert). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 7. LINDENFELD, Jacqueline: Speech and Sociability at French Urban Market Places. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 8. YOUNG, Lynne: Language as Behaviour, Language as Code: A Study of Academic English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 9. LUKE, Kang-Kwong: Utterance Particles in Cantonese Conversation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 10. MURRAY, Denise E.: Conversation for Action. The computer terminal as medium of communication. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 11. LUONG, Hy V.: Discursive Practices and Linguistic Meanings. The Vietnamese system of person reference. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 12. ABRAHAM, Werner (ed.): Discourse Particles. Descriptive and theoretical investigations on the logical, syntactic and pragmatic properties of discourse particles in German. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 13. NUYTS, Jan, A. Machtelt BOLKESTEIN and Co VET (eds): Layers and Levels of Representation in Language Theory: a functional view. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 14. SCHWARTZ, Ursula: Young Children’s Dyadic Pretend Play. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 15. KOMTER, Martha: Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 16. MANN, William C. and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds): Discourse Description: Diverse Linguistic Analyses of a Fund-Raising Text. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 17. PIÉRAUT-LE BONNIEC, Gilberte and Marlene DOLITSKY (eds): Language Bases ... Discourse Bases. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 18. JOHNSTONE, Barbara: Repetition in Arabic Discourse. Paradigms, syntagms and the ecology of language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 19. BAKER, Carolyn D. and Allan LUKE (eds): Towards a Critical Sociology of Reading Pedagogy. Papers of the XII World Congress on Reading. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 20. NUYTS, Jan: Aspects of a Cognitive-Pragmatic Theory of Language. On cognition, functionalism, and grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 21. SEARLE, John R. et al.: (On) Searle on Conversation. Compiled and introduced by Herman Parret and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992.

22. AUER, Peter and Aldo Di LUZIO (eds): The Contextualization of Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 23. FORTESCUE, Michael, Peter HARDER and Lars KRISTOFFERSEN (eds): Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. Papers from the Functional Grammar Conference, Copenhagen, 1990. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 24. MAYNARD, Senko K.: Discourse Modality: Subjectivity, Emotion and Voice in the Japanese Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 25. COUPER-KUHLEN, Elizabeth: English Speech Rhythm. Form and function in everyday verbal interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 26. STYGALL, Gail: Trial Language. A study in differential discourse processing. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, 1994. 27. SUTER, Hans Jürg: The Wedding Report: A Prototypical Approach to the Study of Traditional Text Types. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 28. VAN DE WALLE, Lieve: Pragmatics and Classical Sanskrit. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 29. BARSKY, Robert F.: Constructing a Productive Other: Discourse theory and the convention refugee hearing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 30. WORTHAM, Stanton E.F.: Acting Out Participant Examples in the Classroom. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 31. WILDGEN, Wolfgang: Process, Image and Meaning. A realistic model of the meanings of sentences and narrative texts. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 32. SHIBATANI, Masayoshi and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds): Essays in Semantics and Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 33. GOOSSENS, Louis, Paul PAUWELS, Brygida RUDZKA-OSTYN, Anne-Marie SIMONVANDENBERGEN and Johan VANPARYS: By Word of Mouth. Metaphor, metonymy and linguistic action in a cognitive perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 34. BARBE, Katharina: Irony in Context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 35. JUCKER, Andreas H. (ed.): Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatic developments in the history of English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 36. CHILTON, Paul, Mikhail V. ILYIN and Jacob MEY: Political Discourse in Transition in Eastern and Western Europe (1989-1991). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 37. CARSTON, Robyn and Seiji UCHIDA (eds): Relevance Theory. Applications and implications. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 38. FRETHEIM, Thorstein and Jeanette K. GUNDEL (eds): Reference and Referent Accessibility. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 39. HERRING, Susan (ed.): Computer-Mediated Communication. Linguistic, social, and cross-cultural perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 40. DIAMOND, Julie: Status and Power in Verbal Interaction. A study of discourse in a closeknit social network. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 41. VENTOLA, Eija and Anna MAURANEN, (eds): Academic Writing. Intercultural and textual issues. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 42. WODAK, Ruth and Helga KOTTHOFF (eds): Communicating Gender in Context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 43. JANSSEN, Theo A.J.M. and Wim van der WURFF (eds): Reported Speech. Forms and functions of the verb. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 44. BARGIELA-CHIAPPINI, Francesca and Sandra J. HARRIS: Managing Language. The

discourse of corporate meetings. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 45. PALTRIDGE, Brian: Genre, Frames and Writing in Research Settings. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 46. GEORGAKOPOULOU, Alexandra: Narrative Performances. A study of Modern Greek storytelling. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 47. CHESTERMAN, Andrew: Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 48. KAMIO, Akio: Territory of Information. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 49. KURZON, Dennis: Discourse of Silence. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 50. GRENOBLE, Lenore: Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 51. BOULIMA, Jamila: Negotiated Interaction in Target Language Classroom Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999. 52. GILLIS, Steven and Annick DE HOUWER (eds): The Acquisition of Dutch. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, 1998. 53. MOSEGAARD HANSEN, Maj-Britt: The Function of Discourse Particles. A study with special reference to spoken standard French. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 54. HYLAND, Ken: Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 55. ALLWOOD, Jens and Peter Gärdenfors (eds): Cognitive Semantics. Meaning and cognition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999. 56. TANAKA, Hiroko: Language, Culture and Social Interaction. Turn-taking in Japanese and Anglo-American English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999. 57 JUCKER, Andreas H. and Yael ZIV (eds): Discourse Markers. Descriptions and theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 58. ROUCHOTA, Villy and Andreas H. JUCKER (eds): Current Issues in Relevance Theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 59. KAMIO, Akio and Ken-ichi TAKAMI (eds): Function and Structure. In honor of Susumu Kuno. 1999. 60. JACOBS, Geert: Preformulating the News. An analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases. 1999. 61. MILLS, Margaret H. (ed.): Slavic Gender Linguistics. 1999. 62. TZANNE, Angeliki: Talking at Cross-Purposes. The dynamics of miscommunication. 2000. 63. BUBLITZ, Wolfram, Uta LENK and Eija VENTOLA (eds.): Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. How to create it and how to describe it.Selected papers from the International Workshop on Coherence, Augsburg, 24-27 April 1997. 1999. 64. SVENNEVIG, Jan: Getting Acquainted in Conversation. A study of initial interactions. 1999. 65. COOREN, François: The Organizing Dimension of Communication. 2000. 66. JUCKER, Andreas H., Gerd FRITZ and Franz LEBSANFT (eds.): Historical Dialogue Analysis. 1999. 67. TAAVITSAINEN, Irma, Gunnel MELCHERS and Päivi PAHTA (eds.): Dimensions of Writing in Nonstandard English. 1999. 68. ARNOVICK, Leslie: Diachronic Pragmatics. Seven case studies in English illocutionary development. 1999.

69. NOH, Eun-Ju: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Metarepresentation in English. A relevance-theoretic account. 2000. 70. SORJONEN, Marja-Leena: Recipient Activities Particles nii(n) and joo as Responses in Finnish Conversation. n.y.p. 71. GÓMEZ-GONZÁLEZ, María Ángeles: The Theme-Topic Interface. Evidence from English. 2001. 72. MARMARIDOU, Sophia S.A.: Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition. 2000. 73. HESTER, Stephen and David FRANCIS (eds.): Local Educational Order. Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action. 2000. 74. TROSBORG, Anna (ed.): Analysing Professional Genres. 2000. 75. PILKINGTON, Adrian: Poetic Effects. A relevance theory perspective. 2000. 76. MATSUI, Tomoko: Bridging and Relevance. 2000. 77. VANDERVEKEN, Daniel and Susumu KUBO (eds.): Essays in Speech Act Theory. n.y.p. 78. SELL, Roger D. : Literature as Communication. The foundations of mediating criticism. 2000. 79. ANDERSEN, Gisle and Thorstein FRETHEIM (eds.): Pragmatic Markers and Propositional Attitude. 2000. 80. UNGERER, Friedrich (ed.): English Media Texts – Past and Present. Language and textual structure. 2000. 81. DI LUZIO, Aldo, Susanne GÜNTHNER and Franca ORLETTI (eds.): Culture in Communication. Analyses of intercultural situations. n.y.p. 82. KHALIL, Esam N.: Grounding in English and Arabic News Discourse. 2000. 83. MÁRQUEZ REITER, Rosina: Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A contrastive study of requests and apologies. 2000. 84. ANDERSEN, Gisle: Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents. 2001. 85. COLLINS, Daniel E.: Reanimated Voices. Speech reporting in a historical-pragmatic perspective. 2001. 86. IFANTIDOU, Elly: Evidentials and Relevance. n.y.p. 87. MUSHIN, Ilana: Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance. Narrative Retelling. 2001. 88. BAYRAKTAROGLU, Arin and Maria SIFIANOU (eds.): Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries. Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries. 2001. 89. ITAKURA, Hiroko: Conversational Dominance and Gender. A study of Japanese speakers in first and second language contexts. 2001. 90. KENESEI, István and Robert M. HARNISH (eds.): Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse. A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. 2001. 91. GROSS, Joan: Speaking in Other Voices. An ethnography of Walloon puppet theaters. 2001. 92. GARDNER, Rod: When Listeners Talk. Response tokens and listener stance. 2001. 93. BARON, Bettina and Helga KOTTHOFF (eds.): Gender in Interaction. Perspectives on femininity and masculinity in ethnography and discourse. n.y.p. 94. McILVENNY, Paul (ed.): Talking Gender and Sexuality. n.y.p. 95. FITZMAURICE, Susan M.: The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English. A pragmatic approach. n.y.p.