by chiggerbit » Sat Oct 27, 2007 12:04 pm
This is a film, not a book, but I thought it looked interesting. Registration is required:
McFadden, Margaret
Introduction: Gleanings
NWSA Journal - Volume 13, Number 2, Summer 2001, pp. ix-xii
Indiana University Press
Introduction: Gleanings - NWSA Journal 13:2 NWSA Journal 13.2 (2001) ix-xii Introduction: Gleanings Agnès Varda's new film, The Gleaners and I, examines the community of scavengers, those who take up what the rest of the world throws away or leaves behind. Historically, the law (both secular and religious) gave rights to gleaners: after the harvest, others were allowed into the fields -- the poor, the hungry, widows, the unemployed. Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, 1765-1769) notes that "The poor are allowed to enter and glean upon another's ground after the harvest, without being guilty of trespass." Comparable laws in France (read aloud by robed judges in Varda's film) and other parts of Europe enunciate the same principle. Likewise, religious (Hebraic) law gave rights to gleaners (including outcasts and even foreigners), and we remember that Ruth gleaned in the fields of Boaz, her mother-in-law Naomi's kinsman. As next-of-kin to Ruth's dead father-in-law Elimelech, Boaz exercised his right to marry Ruth to maintain the patriarchal lineage. We observe, however, that the narrator emphasizes Ruth's status as a foreigner, a Moabite. Since Ruth is noted as the great-grandmother of King David, the fact that she is not an Israelite becomes more important than the Levirate law of inheritance (Deut. 25:5) or the rights of...
