Morning Medieval Miscellany

Greetings! I'll be guest-blogging the Morning Medieval Miscellanies for a little while hopefully with help from others. Personal blogs aside, I am working on a blogged presentation of digitized medieval manuscripts.

• Michelle of Heavenfield remembered St. Hild's day on the 18th.
• Magistra et Mater recently posted about the 11th c. Gregorian reformation and why the enforcement that followed appeared at that particular time.
• The Naked Philologist gives a fangirlish "squee!" over J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Neogrammarian on the LiveJournal medievalist community is curious about the Alliterative Revival as expressed in prose and would like recommendations.
• There's a lively discussion on In The Medieval Middle about Karl Steel's student question regarding the two holes in the chapel mound of SGGK.
• On The Heroic Age there is a post detailing 10 postdoctoral fellowships for next year!
  
• In other news, there is a post on early church sites and standing stones, the location of an early medieval Scottish battle at Degsastan, and several people irresponsibly disassembling themselves in marginalia. If you have a second, go encourage Jacob (who finished his written comps) and Aaron (on the completion of the first draft of Guthlac B).
• Things are looking up for medieval studies in terms of the number of students in Michael Drout's classes!

Feel free to comment if I've missed anything that ought to be posted! There is quite a lot of activity amongst medievalists on the internet.

Detail from MS Arundel 11 f. 9, courtesy of the British Library.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

I have a love/hate relationship with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In small doses, I love it, but if I have to teach it too frequently, I start to hate it. This morning, I go to teach SGGK with a dreadful sense of boredom that one can get with texts that almost teach themselves. When I hear myself talking about the "five fives" on the pentangle, in my mind my voice is Ben Stein's.

On a happier note, today is Valentine's Day, so perhaps not a bad day for a poem in which seduction plays a central role. Here are various Valentine's Day love notes from around the medieval blogosphere for you:

• Folks have reminded us about the role Geoffrey Chaucer had in the development of Valentine's Day, including In the Middle, Quid Plura, and CNN. Catholic Forum has page on St. Valentine, as does the Catholic Encyclopedia.


• Quid Plura has a bunch of links that are not to be missed, including the second and third videos embedded below.


• In the Middle has an excerpt from Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain that my Brit Lit I students would do well to read (*hint*hint*)


• Heavenfield has a post on St. Brendan and Lent.


• Steven Hart has a video clip and translation of a song about trolls. I'll also embed the video below, but it's quite long, so unless you've got a great deal of free time, your best bet would be to listen to it in the background while doing something else.


• Slouching Toward Extimacy has Medieval Hagiography Mad Libs!

Morning Medieval Miscellany

A lot of people have done link round-ups over the last few days. It seems weird to be linking to other people linking to me linking ... it's an infinite regression of linkage! So, in order to prevent this from being entirely superfluous, I'll have a few non-medieval comments at the end.

• Start off here: Highly Eccentric is hosting Carnivalesque, with all sorts of linky goodness.
• Scribal Terror has a post about dog-headed St. Christopher.
• Jeff Sypeck has a review of Simon Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which he sums up by writing, "Having focused on diction while skimping on form, Armitage failed to engage me."
• Mary Kate Hurley discusses her upcoming article on blogging and Old English.
• If you are able to make it to Louisville between January 22nd and April 20th, the Speed Art Museum is hosting medieval treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum. h/t Medieval Material Culture Blog.
• Heavenfield has a belated Folklore Friday, this installment being St. Aldhelm's Loathly Lady.

And now, for my promised non-medieval anecdote: A friend who works with international students told me that they wanted to know where all the parties were this weekend. She was puzzled, and asked what parties they were talking about. They wanted to know where all the Martin Luther King, Jr. parties would be, and what exactly Americans did to celebrate that day.

Therefore, I propose the following MLK day traditions: Little boys all dress up like MLK (little girls like Rosa Parks) and go door-to-door. When people open the door, the children cry out, "I have a dream!" and the adults have to fill their bags with goodies. Then, that night, when all the kids are asleep, Rosa Parks will drive a bus full of gifts into the neighborhood, and MLK will slide down the chimney and leave gifts under the MLK Day shrubbery (purchased from Roger's Shrubbery on Highway 8). Instead of sending cards, we'll send each other letters postmarked from Birmingham jail.

Of course, there will also be local variations. For example, the Chicago River will be dyed rainbow colors, McDonalds will have seasonal shakes, and in New Orleans all the boys will dress up like Rosa Parks and all the girls like MLK.

So, now, if any foreigners ask you how we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, you'll have a ready answer. Perhaps when Labor Day rolls around I'll have some suggestions for that one too.