Morning Medieval Miscellany

Now that the 100,000th visitor contest is over, I can clear the pipes of some of these links that built up. I desperately wanted to write something this weekend about fairies, but I didn't want to knock the contest off the top. Expect more original posting to come soon.

• Got Medieval discusses medieval metaphors of climate change.
• Heavenfield has an early modern print that's worth looking at (and loosely connected with St. Brendan), and the Person of the Week: Cynefrith, Physician of Ely.
• In the Middle has several good posts, including a meditation on the idea of the "stranger" or "foreigner" in medieval lit, a link to someone's reaction to John Howard joining the Order of the Garter (which, as a good republican, I had wrongly assumed had been defunct for centuries), and a link to Middle English air guitar.
• Scribal Terror has a post about Pictish stones (something I had never heard of before), and also a link to an article arguing that not only was medieval thought well-developed, but also that the Renaissance was no great shakes in terms of thinkers. What I found most interesting was that it placed the intellectual high-water-mark in the late Middle Ages, rather than in the beginning, where I would.
• Steven Till has a post about how accurate medieval-themed restaurants are (or rather aren't), and the medieval term of the day, "scutage."
• Mac Stone tells us there's a new issue of Coyote Wild, but I haven't read it yet to see if there are any medieval-themed stories.
• Kate Marie points us to a video of Jeff Sypeck's appearance on C-Span to talk about Becoming Charlemagne. It's just over an hour in length, so I haven't seen it yet, but when he was here on Troy's campus meeting our students, he really wow'ed them, so I'm guessing it's worth watching.
• Somehow, I just realized this weekend that I didn't have Larry Swain's blog, The Ruminate, on my blogroll, nor among my subscriptions. I've rectified that.

Be My 100,000th Visitor!

Looking at my counter, I'll probably have my 100,000th visitor sometime tonight or Saturday morning. This calls for prizes! I've got one final copy of my latest book, Global Perspectives on Medieval English Literature, Language, and Culture that hasn't already been designated for relatives -- a $45 value. I'll send that last copy to Mr./Ms. 100,000.

How to win:
OK, actually figuring out who is 100,000 isn't all that easy, because a lot of you get your Wordhoard through RSS feeds like my own subscription service or some reader, and so you don't count unless you actually click on it to open a new window (I think). Furthermore, some of my visitors are Googlers who are looking for something specific, glance for about 5 seconds, and realize that what they want isn't here, so they navigate away.

Here's what I'll do: I'll check the Wordhoard obsessively. The first person to post a comment in this thread after the counter flips to 100,000 will win. That means in order to win you'll have to actually visit the page and do a little typing. Obviously, anonymous posters can't win (since I won't know who you are). If you want to advance the counter, be sure to visit the Wordhoard by clicking on the page ... don't just read it from your e-mail subscription or in your subscription service.

If I've forgotten some technological glitch, well, then, I'll just muddle through and pick the closest person to 100,000 that I can.

Ready ... set ... comment!!!

Today in Medieval History

Jennifer Lynn Jordan over at Per Omnia Saecula has started a new video feature, Today in Medieval History. This week's entry is on St. Valentine's Day, and features a magical appearing/disappearing cat. It is, perhaps, a Cheshire Cat?

Asse-Hatte

So as to avoid confusing this Chaucerian parody of the current Archbishop of Canterbury with the Chaucerian origins of Valentine's Day, I didn't link to this yesterday ... but today's a new day. Normally I would have just put it in my Morning Medieval Miscellany, but since people actually went to the trouble to e-mail me the links, I thought I ought to give it its own post.

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!

Back from the Areopagus Lectures

The Areopagus Lectures turned out to be a bit of a chore for me, because I lost my voice. Believe it or not, Orlando was both cooler and less humid than Alabama, and the sudden change in humidity coupled with me exchanging anecdotes for a few hours with an old friend resulted in me croaking my way through the papers.

The first paper, "Why Myth Matters," was exactly what needed to be said first. I was a little trepidatious about giving a paper about the Bible as myth at a Christian college, and wondered if I might have to make the first five minutes caveats and a basic lecture on the difference between the word "myth" as the Discovery Channel uses it, and as literary scholars use it. Greg Hartley took care of all that, however, and threw in some CS Lewis for good measure.

My first paper, "Lies I Tell My Daughter," was basically about martyrdom myths in the Bible, late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, contrasting them with prosperity gospels of the 20th and early 21st Centuries. If anyone got cheesed off at what I said, it was probably from this lecture.

The second paper was Brian D. Smith on "Mythology and Neo-Paganism." Essentially, it discussed various strains of neo-paganism and their mythological underpinnings. I suppose this paper is the reason my earlier post of the schedule at the Areopagus lectures got batted around some pagan/wiccan websites, but so far as I can tell no one commented beyond the initial linkage. Frankly, other than the expected discussion of how neo-paganism is dangerous to Christianity, I doubt most neo-pagans would find much to disagree with in his paper. It was a learned and fair-handed portrayal. This is not to say that anyone could have walked away thinking Prof. Smith is a fan of paganism (neo or otherwise), but simply to say that he was careful not to offer a Chick-tract version of neo-paganism.

The third paper way by my old friend Dr. Les Hardin. Besides being a really awesome guy, Les is a really awesome scholar, and laid out a carefully structured reading of Revelation that tied it into emperor-worship in the first century. I've heard him speak on Revelation as part of the apocalyptic genre before, and he was just as good as ever. Unfortunately, he stole my anecdote about the first time we met*, so I'll have to take revenge at a later date.

The last paper, mine, was not meant to be nearly so controversial as the first, though it got a lot more questions, mostly about cultural mythologies of masculinity and femininity. Perhaps this is a reflection on the fact that the first paper I gave was a real downer.

In any case, Florida Christian College was very gracious. They put me up in a lovely apartment, offered a generous honorarium, and had a good spread of papers. Not only did the students show up, but folks from the surrounding churches came as well. I was expecting the questions to be about on the level I get when I present at scifi/fantasy conventions, but the Areopagus crowd was more sophisticated, and had a solid knowledge of the Bible, allowing for a bit more subtlety in argumentation and allusion. If I'm ever invited back, I'll go enthusiastically.

One last thing: FCC videotaped the lectures to put them online. Unfortunately, one of the lectures had serious technical problems, another wasn't geared for video, and mine has me croaking hoarsely. The papers were planned for oral presentation before a popular crowd, so they would need serious re-tooling for print publication. When I left, the compromise solution they were talking about was re-recording the missing parts from the technical problems, then posting them as downloadable audio files. By the time I left, nothing had yet been decided. I'll try to let Wordhoarders know how/when/where the lectures will be available.



*When Les and I first met, he was talking about a particular parable (I can't remember which one). I disagreed with his reading, and felt that the NIV's editing of the parable made it seem like it was stand-alone, when in fact it should have been combined thematically with some other parables. I based my argument on a verbal "cue" in the text that suggested that the parable should be linked to the rest. Les misunderstood me, and heard "cue" as "Q," and thought I was talking about the "Q Gospel." He argued vigorously against the existence of Q, furthermore arguing that even if we accepted the existence of Q, it wouldn't help us to understand the question at hand ... to which I replied, "No, I meant verbal cues..." That's when I knew I liked him.

Yes, I'm Ignoring You

I got back from the Aeropagus Lectures a couple of hours ago to find my e-mail box 97%+ full, and nearly 400 unread posts in Google Reader.

Therefore, unless you are a student, or had some unbelievably important-looking subject heading (such as "Re: Aaargh! My eyeballs are melting and only a blood transfusion from you can end the pain!"), I probably ignored your e-mail. After an hour of deleting every non-medieval heading in my Reader and still having well over 300 unread posts, I simply went down the list and hit "Mark all as read."

So, if there's some big news, such as the skeletons of King Arthur and Alfred the Great have been found choking one another over a 4th century Gaelic/Latin parallel version of Beowulf, along with a rough draft of Boethius II: How Philosophy Bummed Me Out, an admission from Saladin that he was secretly a Christian, a picture of CS Lewis karate-chopping JRR Tolkien, and video footage of Gary Gygax getting mauled by a lycanthrope SCAer ... well, I missed that news, and have no comment on it.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

Feh ... I think I'll be out of town when the Wordhoard gets its 100,000th unique visitor. I was hoping to track it and send a free copy of my book to Mr./Mr. 100,000 but that looks like it won't be possible.

Speaking of the book, if anyone wants to review Global Perspectives for their journal, let me know and I'll pass your name, etc. on to the publisher.

• The Heroic Age has an update with all sorts of conference announcements and calls for papers.
• Will McLean notices something about Brits thinking all sorts of real people were fictional, and visa-versa -- some of the "correct" answers, particularly the medieval ones, are questionable. By the way, I've been looking online for the complete survey results. Does anyone know where to find them?
• Scribal Terror has a link to a list of popular misconceptions about the Middle Ages. An oldie, but a goodie.
• You too can become Charlemagne!
• More on Mary (the mother of Jesus) from Heavenfield, and her role as a kind of catch-all saint in the Anglo-Saxon period.
• Carl Pyrdum shows us what medieval doctors looked like (by which he means physicians, not the Doctors of the Church).
• Cinerati tells of the new Age of Conan board game. The box says it has 150 pieces -- ha! Someone who has played Axis and Allies, I laugh at your mere 150 pieces!

Ash Wednesday -- belated!

One way I know I'm in the South ... whenever Ash Wednesday comes along, people tell the Catholics, "Hey, you got somethin' on yer forehead!" As Sean Connery says in The Untouchables, "Ah, the ignorance of the heathen." It almost makes me want to become Catholic just to cause trouble.

What I found myself wondering today was the origins of Ash Wednesday. Catholic Encyclopedia gives a date of at least the 8th Century. That places it probably in the early Middle Ages ... and Catholic Encyclopedia also quotes a bit from Aelfric. The main description reads:

The name dies cinerum (day of ashes) which it bears in the Roman Missal is found in the earliest existing copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary and probably dates from at least the eighth century. On this day all the faithful according to ancient custom are exhorted to approach the altar before the beginning of Mass, and there the priest, dipping his thumb into ashes previously blessed, marks the forehead -- or in case of clerics upon the place of the tonsure -- of each the sign of the cross, saying the words: "Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." The ashes used in this ceremony are made by burning the remains of the palms blessed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year. In the blessing of the ashes four prayers are used, all of them ancient. The ashes are sprinkled with holy water and fumigated with incense. The celebrant himself, be he bishop or cardinal, receives, either standing or seated, the ashes from some other priest, usually the highest in dignity of those present. In earlier ages a penitential procession often followed the rite of the distribution of the ashes, but this is not now prescribed.

Do any Wordhoarders know more about the origins?

Morning Medieval Miscellany

I'm finally coming up for air after about two weeks of breakneck writing, leaving the number of medieval blogposts in my reader in the hundreds ... so I'll just link for a while until I get sick of linking. My apologies in advance to any medievalists out there whose fine posts are skipped by your exhausted Wordhoard host.

• Jonathan Jarrett has a really interesting post on feudalism that is too complicated to describe in a single sentence. Just read it.
• Caught in the Snide has a post on Aelfric and Wordsworth.
• This isn't really medieval, but as I'm a regular guest on Geekerati, I think I should mention that they're putting out a call for writers in various aspects of geek culture.
• Got Medieval has now moved to www.GotMedieval.com ... sort of. It's really just a redirect, but Carl would like us to update links accordingly.
• Speaking of Got Medieval, as part of his Google penance, he's discussing pope names in his usually LLCoolCarl style.
• Heavenfield has posts on St. Bridget of Kildare, the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, and Osfrith son of Eadwine, whom I've apparently read about a bazillion time in Bede's Ecclesiastical History but have no memory of.
• The Weird Medieval Animal this week is the chimera.
• JJ Cohen has a post about whether "The Prioress's Tale" can bring Jews & Christians together, referring to this Prioress's Tale Chamber Opera. Eileen Joy is none too happy in the comments.
• Medieval Material Culture has posts on a book about the big Gough Map in the Bodleian Library, and archeologists who think they might know the location of the palace of the first king of Scotland ... who, as it turns out, is nothing like Forrest Whitaker.
• News for Medievalists had a big update, including a bit more on the Gough Map, as well as a bit on Islamic medieval science.
• Dr. Virago sticks up for the churches in Norwich.
• Steven Till has a bunch of links to medieval history resources online.
• The Swain points out that the 2008 Medieval Congress program is up.
• The Punch Die laments that Richard the Lionhearted has, along with Winston Churchill and Charles Dickens, fallen into legend.
• A Commonplace Book wonders how sharp the edges were on tournament swords.

Areopagus Lectures

I'll be speaking at the Areopagus Lectures at Florida Christian College this Saturday, February 9th. If you'll be in the Kissimmee/Orlando area, you can register here.

The Agenda:

8:00 - 9:00 Breakfast and welcome
9:00 - 10:00 "Why Myth Matters," Prof. Greg Hartley
10:00 - 10:15 Break
10:15 - 11:15 "Lies I Tell My Daughter: Christian Myth in Modern Culture," Me
11:15 - 11:30 Break
11:30 - 12:30 " Mythology and Neo-Paganism," Prof. Brian D. Smith
1:30 - 1:30 Lunch with presenters (ain't you lucky? That's "with presenters!")
1:30 - 2:30 "John, Revelation, and the Myth of the Divine Emperor," Dr. Les Hardin
2:30 - 2:45 Break
2:45 - 3:45 "The Warrior Christ: Myth and Masculinity in Depictions of Jesus," Me again
3:45 - 4:00 Closing

My topics are far more medieval than the titles suggest. In the first address, I'll talk about Tertullian, Juliana, and St. Guinefort; in the second, I'll talk about Gregory the Great, Augustine (of Canterbury), Norse mythology, and the Dream of the Rood.

Don't worry, this won't be too hoity-toity -- I'm writing my papers so that a reasonably smart high school graduate can follow them. Actually, that's why I've been blogging so irregularly lately; it takes more effort for me to write easily-understandable papers for oral presentation than it does to write in the mode of Eliade or Frye, so I've been working hard to make this stuff understandable.

Google Toolbar, How I Hate Thee

NON-MEDIEVAL RANT AHEAD

Somehow the Google toolbar got installed on my computer over the last two days. I say "somehow" because I certainly didn't put it there. My best guess is that one of my children accidentally installed it, though it's possible that I accidentally installed it myself, since the dang thing is insidiously bundled with every other thing you might possibly download. I've probably unchecked that "also install Google Toolbar" button about a dozen times since the beginning of the year.

Finally it got on my computer, so I decided to give it a chance. I needn't have wasted my time. It adds another toolbar to the top of my computer, so that the top 20% of my monitor space is toolbars. Incidentally, the Google toolbar offers not one single service I have any need for. Even the Google search box is redundant, since I keep my Internet Explorer search box set for Google anyway.

So what is it that finally made my head explode? Norton Internet Security very nicely (and silently!) blocks popups for me. Google has decided that it too will help out by blocking popups. The problem is that whenever Google blocks a popup, they make a little noise and give me a popup bragging about how they blocked a popup!

Google! Stop being evil!

Medieval Warm Period

I was looking at NOAA's page on the medieval warm period today, and it suddenly struck me that I can't think of any medievalists who are skeptics about the medieval warm period. NOAA's claims about this are a little odd, carefully parsing the language to say that "there was no multi-century periods [sic] when global or hemispheric temperatures were the same or warmer than in the 20th century." How do the last few decades of the 20th Century qualify as a multi-century period? Looking at the abstract of the article they cite as their source for medieval warm period skepticism, it would appear that the authors would suggest the data is insufficient to be conclusive -- which isn't exactly how NOAA presents it.

There have GOT to be medievalists who are medieval warm period skeptics ... can anyone point me to scholarly articles that support NOAA's claim? Or is the consensus so strong that NOAA is ignoring the evidence contradicting their model that there really aren't medieval warm period skeptics among medievalists?

Morning Medieval Miscellany

Apparently, today is Black Death Thursday.

• Cronaca and The Punch Die both have posts growing out of a NYTimes article about the Black Death, and PD links us to a post by the son of a medievalist about the Death.
• Heavenfield tells us of the lost kingdom of Gododdin, a place so lost that I'd never heard of it before. It's an interesting post, so don't miss it.
• Jeff Sypeck reveals that the medieval denizens of Maryland, both Muslim and Christian, have united against the common foe: The Dragon Gods of Miniature Golf.
• Shana Worthen has an original poem about Hengest and Horsa at Ebbsfleet.

The Dream of the Rood vs. The Bible

In preparing my address on Warrior Christ imagery, I've decided to make "The Dream of the Rood" the centerpiece. As I've focused tightly on it, I've been surprised by how willing the Rood poet is to depart from the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion.

Some lines, of course, are a matter of interpretation. For example, when the poet writes, "Then saw I mankind's Lord come with great courage when he would mount on me," we can excuse it as a heroic rendering of the crucifixion -- after all, Jesus probably wasn't skipping along gleefully. Others, though, simply cannot be rectified with the Gospel accounts. Here are a few examples:

• Strong fiends seized me there, worked me for spectacle; cursèd ones lifted me. On shoulders men bore me there, then fixed me on hill; fiends enough fastened me. According to the Biblical accounts, Jesus carried the Rood himself. When he grew too weak, Simon of Cyrene bore it.
• The young hero stripped himself--he, God Almighty--strong and stout-minded. In the Gospel accounts, his clothes are removed and soldiers gamble for the garment.
• Then they worked him an earth-house, men in the slayer's sight carved it from bright stone, set in it the Wielder of Victories. Then they sang him a sorrow-song, sad in the eventide, when they would go again with grief from that great Lord. That the poet refers to the disciples as "warriors" (hilde-rincas) so often doesn't really bother me, since that is clearly metaphorical language designed to depict Jesus as a temporal lord. They didn't "work him an earth-house," though -- they used Joseph of Arimathea's tomb.

Scribes who might be very careful in copying sacred texts apparently did not find their concern's matched by poets. I suspect if I examined other Anglo-Saxon poetic treatments of Biblical myths (such as Genesis and Crist), I'd find a similar ethic regarding poetic license. Our modern ethic (as I draw it from film) seems to be that you can fill in the blanks as you wish, but you have to be very careful about making changes. For the Rood poet, a poetic treatment seems to have permitted much more latitude in taking liberties.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

Modern, schmodern! Here's some medieval for you!

• The recently-retired Oxford Medievalist comes out of retirement to begin a new blog, The Punch Die, "a blog of history and numismatics -- that's coins for those of you playing at home.
• Steven Till offers up some medieval resources for those of you writing fiction set in the Middle Ages (or, I imagine, fantasy fiction).
• Jeff Sypeck travels back in time to the Viking era.
• News for Medievalists has several updates, including this news: Medieval Craft of Chainmail Gains Popularity. It's like they say about your wardrobe -- eventually, everything comes back into fashion.
• Steve Muhlberger points us to the blog A Commonplace Book: Deeds of Arms and other Matters Medieval and Otherwise.
• Over at Heroic Dreams they'll be making a paper medieval castle -- you know, a stronghold to withstand a long siege, or a barrage of staples. Don't skimp on the glitter!
• The Weird Medieval Animal this Monday was the basilisk -- or so I suspect. Every time I click on the link, my computer turns to stone.
• Heavenfield has has a bunch of interesting new posts of late, including one on the Lichfield Angel and one on King Œthelwald.
• Carl Pyrdum discusses Chris Matthews's failed attempt at a medieval metaphor. Swing and a miss!
• A fellow out at Princeton has started the Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry Project, translating the poetry bit by bit. So far he's working on Andreas. h/t In the Middle.
• The problem with In the Middle adding new folks is that now I have trouble keeping up with the links. They've recently asked the question, "Could Robots Survive the Middle Ages," have posted a delightfully-contrarian reading of a book review, and Karl Steel discusses the difficulty in countering Bring Out Your Deadism.

In Which My 2nd Life Is as Annoying as my 1st

So, one of the things we're doing for my interdisciplinary class is meeting once in Second Life. Besides the hip, experimental nature of the whole thing, we actually have a reason: we're looking at how identities are constructed/mediated by technology. The 2nd Life meeting will follow watching eXistenZ and The Thirteenth Floor, as well as reading Jekyll & Hyde, "A Cyborg Manifesto," and any number of other minor texts. In other words, we're not just getting together to play Sims.

All this means that I've had to learn about 2nd Life -- and so far as I can tell, after several hours spent online, there are only two activities going on in 2nd Life: Virtual clubbing, and selling crap to other people for virtual clubbing.

I find this especially annoying because I had hoped to find medievalist activities going on. Now, supposedly there are medieval/fantasy-themed roleplaying groups, but they either have their events at such times that make me suspect they are based in Europe, or they aren't meeting at all. Last night, for example, I went to a "Renaissance" themed event, which turned out to be virtual clubbing by people dressed in Ren-style clothing. They were friendly, but not what I thought I was going to.

Has the medievalist community really not broken into 2nd Life, or am I just looking in the wrong places?

Review of Podcasts on Medieval Texts

Matthew Gabriele over at Modern Medieval has produced a set of podcasts on medieval texts available at iTunes. Each of the podcasts is short, mostly between 3-4 minutes long, and act as a brief introduction to the texts.

For the scholar who already knows a bit about these texts, they aren't much help. For example, there wasn't a single thing about Beowulf that I didn't know pretty much off the top of my head. On the other hand, what I knew about Baha ad'Din could have been printed in 76 point font on a postage stamp, so I found the podcast on Baha ad'Din's The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin to be lacking ... I found myself wanting much more.

Gabriele isn't aiming at guys like me, though -- these are aimed at students in his classes, and in that way, the podcasts are extremely useful. Students rarely read the introductory material in the books we assign, but I suspect listening to a 4-minute podcast with a few droll comments is the kind of assignment a student might just do.

Aside from the gee-whiz element and easy convenience that might just coax students to learn this introductory material before class, I suspect the podcasts have another important element that could encourage participation in class: The names of all these figures are pronounced. Very often, I think, students are intimidated to participate in class because of uncertainty about the way the names of the characters are pronounced. How do you say Sulpicius Severus? Eusebius? Sergius? Fulcher? Ibn al'Qalanisi? His podcast on Beowulf even has an anecdote about overhearing a conversation in which a man doesn't know how to pronounce Beowulf's name even after having seen the Zemeckis film the night before! I wonder if Prof. Gabriele is finding that his students are speaking with greater confidence about these texts; perhaps we'll get a full report at the end of the semester.

What about the non-scholar, non-student? For you, these podcasts might be ideal little nuggets. We're all busy people, and can't read everything. Just a few minutes listening to a podcast on a particular medieval text might be enough to tell you whether you want to read that text yourself, or whether you'd rather skip it. After all, as Chaucer reminds us, "The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne," so you've got to use your time in the best way; Gabriele's podcasts help you do just that.

So, in short, Gabriele's podcasts: Nothing new for scholars, essential introductions for students, and bite-sized tastes for the rest of us. On Tuesday in Brit Lit I, when we start on Beowulf, I plan to direct them to his Beowulf podcast.

In closing, let me also direct you to another of Chaucer's comments, that might just as well have been applied to Prof. Gabriele.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

Hooray! I'm finally catching up with things! I should complete my White House Fellow application by the end of the day, and finally make some progress on some internal grant writing. Until then:

• Jonathan Jarrett discusses unbelief vs. false beliefs in medieval and contemporary contexts.
• Henchminion muses about possible connections between medieval lepers and zombies.
• Heroic Dreams has a review of Medieval Seige Warfare -- which, believe it or not, is a book and not a computer strategy game. I've noticed trebuchets and catapults on the TV a lot lately; what's with all the sudden interest?
• In the Middle has a post about the best-dressed medievalists. Ironically, when I arrived in class today without a bowtie, one of the students protested, and after a bit of discussion he decided that he couldn't learn as well without my tweed & bowtie combo.
• Medieval Material Culture had a flurry of links over the last couple of days.
• Highly Eccentric has declared Archbishop Wulfstan of York the person of the year. This is what I get for waiting so long to respond to my meme-tag; someone has stolen my guy! I suppose here's where I should come out of the closet: I actually have a World of Warcraft character named Wulfstan, who is loosely based off this historical person.
• The Heroic Age directs us to the "Alfred the Great: Warfare, Wealth and Wisdom" exhibit to be held in Winchester 2 Feb - 27 April. Larry Swain also directs us to a 10-minute video of the opening of a Roman coffin, which I've embedded below. Just in case you're wondering, Indiana Jones does not swoop in with fedora and bullwhip to steal it at the end.
• Back in the States, the Medieval Club of New York announces the presentation of a delicious-sounding paper February 15th: "The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby: Shaping the Image of St. Vincent Ferrer."
• I normally don't print links sent to me by commercial enterprises, but International Listings has the Top 25 Most Beautiful Castles in the World. The only one I've ever visited is Casa Loma. Note that this is not a countdown list, but is divided by region instead.

Now for the promised unearthing of the roman grave. I hope that centuries from now, they unearth my grave -- and exclaim, "A tweed and bowtie combo! We had no idea they were so well-dressed!

Morning Medieval Miscellany

Lots of tasty stuff here:

• Got Medieval finds a new use of the word "medieval" in the global warming debate.
• Heavenfield's Person of the Week is Aethelwald of Lindisfarne.
• Per Omnia Saecula's Weird Medieval Tribe is the Hippopodes. Oh, Manolo, can't you help these poor people?
• In the Middle has a post about controversy over repatriating the Lewis Chessmen. I suppose it's hard for us Americans to understand the importance of these kinds of issues to people who live in tiny countries like those in Europe.*
• It's not really medieval, but New Kid on the Hallway has a post about why she teaches history, spinning off from a similar literary post from Dr. Crazy. I might just respond here if I find the time.
• The Heroic Age has a nice set of links to news articles.
• FYI, I've finally finished listening to all of Matthew Gabriele's podcasts, and I'll probably post a short review when I finish grading the big stack of papers that hits my desk in 40 minutes.

*The first time I went to Europe, I landed in Vilnius and had to be driven from the airport to Klaipeda, on the Baltic coast. Having an American sense of size, I assumed it would be a long drive, and that we might go late into the night. Imagine my surprise when I discovered you can drive across the breadth of the entire country in three hours.

A Bargain at Any Price

My latest book, Global Perspectives on Medieval English Literature, Language, and Culture (co-edited with Dr. Noel Harold Kaylor) is now available at Medieval Institute Publications for the low, low price of $45. Please order one for your school, one for yourself, and one for each of your friends and family.

Makes a perfect Valentine's Day gift! Remember, ladies, if your man doesn't get you a copy of Global Perspectives, he's definitely a cad and is probably cheating on you.

Also, if you don't read my own contribution to the book, "Global Literature, Medieval Literature, and the Popal Vuh," you should be ashamed to show your face in decent company. In the old days, people like you were taken out behind the woodshed and beaten.

Please also note: Readings from Global Perspectives have been shown to cure the gout, cancer, ague, and assorted skin disorders in laboratory rats. Corpses buried with Global Perspectives do not show normal signs of corruption even after several years. None of these claims has been validated by the Food and Drug Administration because the scientists who were supposed to study them were too engrossed in reading the articles.

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.

It's Friday!

It's Friday before a 3-day weekend. I'm exhausted from a difficult week on the outside, but on the inside I feel like this:

Morning Medieval Miscellany

For your pleasure:

• Medieval Material Culture tells us about Kiosque, an exhibit that allows you to look at detailed images of manuscripts. More at the Royal Armories Museum here and here.
• Deogolwulf has a curmudgeonly fewtril in praise of chivalry.
• Scribal Terror gives us more about Saint Guinefort the dog (not found in Farmer's Oxford Dictionary of Saints).

Medieval Manuscript Videos

Even if you aren't that interested in medieval manuscripts and their production, these videos are very beautiful. The first, just over four minutes in length, is a series of images about the production of medieval manuscripts. The second, nearly eleven minutes in length, is a series of beautiful images. These include haunting music from Hildegard of Bingen, so even if you're too busy at work to watch 15 minutes of video, you can run them in the background for the music.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

Lately, I've had a lot of link-tastic posts, and not as many original postings. For those of you who fear this might be part of a new format, fear not! I've been researching my memorandum to the President for my White House Fellow application, as well as preparing two keynote addresses for February.

That's not to say that all original posting will be on hold until then. One of the things I'm doing, for example, is listening to all of Matthew Gabriele's podcasts so I can report on them to you. I listen to them on my daily run, so I ought to finish them in the next day or two (unless the weather turns nasty).

Until there, here's your Morning Medieval Miscellany:

• Jeffery Hodges has a meditation upon curiousity that features Bernard of Clairvaux.
• Heavenfield discusses whether St. Augustine (of Canterbury, not the City of God guy) established a church on Ely.
• Heroic Dreams has a post on medieval weapons, as well as one on mysterious halberds. Perhaps a Wordhoarder can help with the Case of the Mysterious Medieval Halberds.
• Speaking of weapons, Musings from a L.O.O.N. has a post with lots of images of armor (you've got to scroll a bit to get to the armor).
• JJ Cohen posts his syllabus for his "Myths of Britain" class, and discusses the role of Wikipedia in scholarly publishing.
• And for the scholars out there (whether they cite Wikipedia or not), The Heroic Age issues a CfP.

A Couple of Zemeckis Beowulf Reviews

Among the offended gasps by Anglo-Saxonists about Sophia Gee's rather silly "Neowulf" article have come these links to Zemeckis Beowulf reviews I missed before: John Fleming and Richard North.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

A few things this morning:

• JJ Cohen watched The Backyardigans: Tale of the Mighty Knights. I only saw about the first ten minutes before I had to leave for an appointment. I was a little surprised by the rock music, and asked my kids if that was the usual soundtrack for the Backyardigans. They looked at me with scorn and replied, "No, daddy. It's a baby show."
• Per Omnia Saecula gives us the allocamelus, the animal that gets medieval on both your ass and your camel.
• Sarah Winters will be speaking at Nipissing University on "From the White Witch to the Dark Mark: Evil in Children's Fantasy Since WWII."

The Scandal of the Moment

Anglo-Saxonists are up in arms about this essay in the New York Times, an essay that argues ... wait for it ... that the Beowulf poem was given the "kiss of life" by the Zemeckis adaptation. Sophie Gee also argues that Paradise Lost was similarly saved by Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy.

I couldn't agree more! Furthermore, I humbly submit to you other adaptations that have given the "kiss of life" to their dreary originals:

• The Christopher Lambert Beowulf, which was the first savior of the poem.
• Weekend at Bernies II, which finally resolved all those unresolved issues from the original Weekend at Bernies.
• Hannibal, which was a marked improvement over the historical Hannibal.
• Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, which gave the kiss of life to the Stevenson original.
• Mansquito, which is a definite improvement on Mansfield Park.
• Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein -- if Mary Shelley had any talent, she'd have written that screenplay instead.
• Franklin and the Green Knight, which improves on Sir Gawain.
• Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which improved on Jack Kerouac's On the Road with the addition of more baby cannibalism.
• Van Helsing, which improved greatly on boring ol' Dracula.
• The town of Hamlet, Indiana, which is like Shakespeare without all the "prithees."
• Ishtar, which brought only honor and praise to the Sumerian goddess.
• World War II, which had the kind of climactic ending World War I lacked.
• Judge Dredd, which improved upon the concept of social justice.
• Paris Hilton, who has entertained far more drunken Frenchmen than Paris, France.*
• The "Bible Adventures" video game -- just the facelift that boring old book needed.

As you can plainly see, old stuff is boring. New stuff is always better. New stuff with special effects and big marketing campaigns are best.


*Oooof! Yes, I know, a very cheap shot ... I just couldn't help myself.

Dictionary of Old English now online!

I didn't want this to get lost in the crush of my earlier miscellany:

The Dictionary of Old English project announces with joy the release of the first online version of DOE: A to G in December 2007. Highlights of the new publication include:the first release of the letter G, as well as revisions of the seven previously published letters; a more powerful search engine which enables Boolean searches on two or more fields of a DOE entry as well as Boolean searches within a single field; the hotlinking of Latin short titlesto their bibliographic references; and, most excitingly,the hotlinking to the OED (as long as your university has access to the online OED) for those Old English words which have a later history.

DOE: A to G online is distributed by site license both to institutions ($200 per year) and individuals ($75 per year).Further information is available at the DOE website: www.doe.utoronto.ca

h/t Heroic Age

You know, whenever I mention the DOE, I always feel like I should have Sesame Street-style sponsorship: "This posting has been brought to you by the numbers 5 and 7, and by the letter G."

Medieval Pet Names

JJ Cohen over at In the Middle has a post about medievalist pet names; i.e. modern pets with medieval names. This got me to thinking about actual medieval pet names -- I can't think of any off the top of my head, unless maybe Charlemagne's elephant, Abul-Abbas, counts.

Does anyone know of names of actual medieval pets?

Morning Medieval Miscellany

OK, I know it's not morning -- It's Sunday night, in fact. The problem is that I begin teaching so early this semester, I can't post in the mornings, but I figure most of you won't read this until Monday morning anyway.

• Cronaca points us to an article about an Anglo-Saxon burial ground for executed criminals. I learned a new Old English phrase I had never heard before: heafod stokkan, or "head stakes" -- probably the stakes on which the heads of criminals were mounted.
• Heavenfield has a round-up of her history-meme tags ... and I confess, the guilty party who still hasn't done his part is I.
• Jennifer Lynn Jordan compares two very different views the New York Times has taken on the Beowulf movie when it was first released and now.
• In the Middle gives us Karl Steel's review of Claustrophilia: The Erotics of Enclosure in the Middle Ages.
• If you happen to be in Michigan, Medieval Material Culture tells us of an armor exhibit in Midland.
• Highly Eccentric offers links to various online sites offering Old English grammar help. Most of these are probably well-known to this community, but it bears re-linking.
• News for Medievalists has had a couple of big updates lately, so head on over there if you haven't for a while.
• Becoming Charlemagne got a mention today in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Hooray, Jeff!
• The Swain reminds us of Raymond Clemons and Tim Graham's new book, Introduction to Manuscript Studies, and announces Graham will be teaching his four-week intensive graduate seminar on paleography and codicology. I took P&C from Graham at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and it was great. I highly recommend it ... plus, he's a really nice guy.

Medieval Life Trilogy

A couple of months ago, someone posted this three-part series (which seems to be motivated by a desire to defend the Middle Ages) called "Medieval Life." Each of the videos is short; you can watch the entire thing in 11-12 minutes.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

I'm not sure how these morning medieval miscellanies are going to work on my new schedule -- they may come later in the morning during the Spring semester. We'll just have to see how things shake out.

• Heavenfield has two posts on Marie de France's Life of Saint Audrey.
• Among a bunch of medieval tidbits, Per Omnia Saecula leads us to the podcast for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit, "Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture." I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, so I'm not sure how it works as a stand-alone podcast (vs. a guided tour through exhibits you can't see if you aren't listening to it at the Met). If any Wordhoarders listen and want to comment on its worth below, feel free.
• In the Middle has a post on the phrase "mock medieval" -- and now I have to read Marcus Bull's book, Thinking Medieval: An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages.
• K.A. Laity has some images of The Simpsons Bayeaux Tapestry.
• Heroic Dreams has a post about medieval-style castles in America during the Gothic Revival.

One more thing -- I've never liked labelings posts, but as the Wordhoard has grown, it has gotten harder to find old posts you are looking for. I'm going to try to start labeling posts for your convenience.

Medieval Material Culture Blog

Here's a newish blog on Medieval Material Culture, at which I learned, among other things, that Giovanni Boccaccio's house is now open to the public. Heck, I didn't even know it was still standing!

In a bit of a tangent, I was messing about in Second Life for my interdisciplinary class on constructing humanity and race, and discovered that one of the family names you can take for your avatar is "Boccaccio." I tried for "Beowulf Boccaccio," which was already taken, and settled on the less-metrically-pleasing "Chaucer Boccaccio."

Morning Medieval Miscellany

Your medieval morning news:

• In the Middle won the Cliopatria Award in the category of Best Group Blog! Huzzah!
• Per Omnia Saecula really gets my goat.
• Cinerati suggests a replacement for Dragon magazine and Dungeon magazine: Kobald Quarterly. This is more geek-culture than medieval, but I thought I'd throw it in anyway.
• Do clothes make the man? Steve Muhlberger suggests that, in the case of mail-shirts, they just may have.
• In two very similar posts, Scribal Terror discusses the Three-Hare design.
• Jonathan Jarrett offers criticism of medieval scholarship that uses obfuscating language, and he compares it to "the Carolingian court élite trying simultaneously to mysticize their special knowledge and recruit people to share it."

HotforWords on "Medieval" and "Evil"

Uh, I wanted to say something witty about this, but irony fails me.

My Kenyan Wordhoard Remains Locked

As many of you know, my sister and her family are serving as missionaries in Kenya -- which has led to people asking me about the violence there, whether or not they are safe, what's the difference between the Kikuyu and the Luo, etc.

My apologies, folks, but I will not be discussing these issues publicly. Having lived abroad and been in precarious and life-threatening situations myself, I know how dangerous it can be for a foreigner to say anything about sensitive situations in his host country. Anything I say could be interpreted as having come from my family, which then in turn could offend one side or another. If you know me personally and want to talk about it in private, I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you have, but nothing public.

Of course, many of you may feel the need to do something, even if you aren't sure what exactly you can do. Prayer for the country is always a good thing. If you want to contribute something materially, you can learn more about the Brown Family Mission on their website, or you can contribute money to the Kenya mission through Christian Missionary Fellowship International. If you want even greater involvement, CMF has service opportunities among the Maasai and the Turkana.

The Modern-Day Christian Knight

One of the books I got for Christmas was Raising a Modern Day Knight: A Father's Role in Guiding his Son to Authentic Manhood* -- and a good choice, too, considering I have a son who really wants to grow up to be a Jedi (but I worry about his Sith tendancies).

What I found interesting about the book is that it uses knighthood as its central theme, but it's really more about raising a Christian boy who grows up to be a decent man. The evangelical Christian focus is no surprise, since the book is a "Focus on the Family" resource. Since I'm an evangelical Christian myself, both the medieval theme and Christian focus were welcome.

Evangelical Christians have a mixed relationship with medievalism. Though they sometimes borrow medievalist terms, for the most part the word "medieval" draws connotations of Catholicism that many evangelicals see as mostly a spectator religion.** While there are some groups like Campus Crusade for Christ, the word "crusade" there is used as the blandest of metaphors; it isn't like CCC is trying to drive the Muslims out of the Holy Land, or like they use a lot of medieval iconography.

The disconnect between the medieval and evangelical works both ways. I have found that medievalists tend to be the most Christian of scholars in English Departments. Even those who are non-Christian generally demonstrate a great degree of respect for Christian thought. The ethic seems to work like this: Scholars of the medieval have to gain familiarity with the important Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, and so even when they disagree with them, they are familiar enough to respect them and see the notion of the "superstitious medieval church" as the kind of phrase uttered only by the ignorant. In other words, lack of respect for Christian thought is often thought of as a lack of scholarly acumen.

For that same reason, then, medievalists tend to view proper Christianity as more Catholic, especially in such areas as liturgy. Anglicans and Lutherans, by following similar forms to Catholics, are at least recognizable, but evangelical denominations tend to be ignored or considered "low Church" in both senses of the word "low."

So, why the use of the knight metaphor in this book? Author Robert Lewis's explanation could have been written in the introduction of almost any book of modern medievalism:

This medieval figure casts an impressive masculine shadow. Clothed in chain mail, brandishing a sword, and mounted on an invincible steed, the knight remains even today a symbol of virile manhood. Vestiges of knighthood still dot our cultural landscape, from our language to our ideals to our traditions [....] Even though historians would probably say the knight once popularized by literature was more an ideal than a reality, still he remains a powerful metaphor. In fact, I would be so bold as to argue that knighthood -- despite some of its shortcomings -- offers any dad a powerful outline for his son's successful journey to manhood. (11-12)

Lewis interprets the metaphorical outline of manhood in knighthood as boiling down to four principles:

1. A Real Man Rejects Passivity (i.e., doesn't avoid social responsibility)
2. A Real Man Accepts Responsibility He subdivides this into three categories: a will to obey, a work to do, and a woman to love. This strikes me as a good thumbnail sketch of knighthood in romances of troubadours.
3. A Real Man Leads Courageously
4. A Real Man Expects the Greater Reward He cautions that all of the above require duty and sacrifice, but that the knight can expect non-material rewards, such as an honorable name, respect of his community, etc.

Finally, Lewis divides a boy's childhood development into three stages: page, squire, and knight. In addition to offering advice on how to raise your son in each of these stages (such as teaching a particular code of conduct, etc), Lewis spends a great deal of time on the importance of ceremony to mark the movement of a boy from one stage to the next -- which for his own sons involved creating their own family coat of arms, which was then engraved on custom-made rings for the men.

In the end, the knighthood metaphor is of limited usefulness for describing the childrearing methods Lewis is proposing. At one point, he abandons it altogether for a volleyball metaphor (leaving me visualizing knights in plate armor on the beach spiking the ball). Perhaps the greatest usefulness of the knighthood metaphor isn't in its ability to describe raising boys, but rather in its ability to capture the imaginations of boys and inspire them to aspire to honorable manhood.

*I find all these slickly-marketed packages annoying. Stuff like that leads me to think that Rick Warren has, on balance, left a negative legacy for other evangelicals.
**Yes, I know that there are Catholic evangelical groups like the Fellowship of Catholic University Students. I'm talking about stereotypes here, not necessarily the reality.

Morning ... er, EVENING Medieval Miscellany

I'm getting off to a late start on my Morning Medieval Miscellany. My son fell asleep in my office while reading the Spiderwick Chronicles this morning, so I used the quiet time to produce some writing that requires a good deal more concentration. A bit of the Miscellany is old, having built up when I was in my Chi-Rho-Mas* cyberwilderness.

• Jeff Sypeck gives a positive report on his mini-trebuchet.
• Sypeck also has a "Best-of" round-up from 2007.
• In the Middle has a "Best-of" round-up too, helpful organized by poster.
• Highly Eccentric reports on Roger Bacon's Mega Ray of Death.
• Michelle of Heavenfield tagged me in a meme, which I'm not so much ignoring as responding to very slowly.
• She also gives us this picture of St. Genevieve in a boat filled with giant sausages, flipping people off on the shore.
• I've missed two Weird Medieval Animals during my blogging lacuna, the hydrus and the Cynocephali tribe.
• BBC tells us that medieval diets were healthier. If so, that's a happy coincidence. Without refrigeration, the diets were whatever grew within a reasonable distance. h/t Per Omnia Saecula.

*That's X-mas, with an inside joke for medievalists, who know that X-mas was not a proto-Festivus aggressive secularization of Christmas, but was instead a typical scribal abbreviation of "Christ" in manuscripts, with the Greek Chi-Rho (which I can't figure out how to reproduce in Blogger) truncated down to "X".

Where My Imagination Lived, c. 1976

In an earlier post, Dr. Virago and I took a trip down Memory Lane, fondly recalling the old Fisher-Price Little People Castle from the 1970's. That castle is one of the earliest Christmas gifts I remember getting. Because we were a foster family for about 30 years, good, unbroken toys never got thrown away, and my old castle survives to this day! All the people, furniture, and animals have long since been lost/destroyed, but the castle itself stands firm.

For a look at a pristine castle with all the Little People, check out this image. The only difference seems to be that between the dragon and the coachman are a bunch of generic-looking people who I don't remember being part of that original set. Those of you too young to remember, take note -- all the people are little wooden pegs with plastic heads screwed on top. No doubt that's why dogs loved to chew on them (By the way, according to the website, someone bought that set for $128).

You can see the front of my own castle here:

As you can see, it isn't exactly in mint condition. The moat is particularly ragged looking (though you can still make out the alligator picture if you raise the drawbridge). The poor quality of the moat probably results from the time my brother and I thought it should have real water in it; though it held the water fine, the sticker picture of the moat started peeling. The drawbridge really went up and down, which was an important part of many adventures. Sometimes the hero would be chased by villains, and would have to get through before they could catch him, sometimes an evil villain would hole up in the castle and the heroes would have to sneak in through the dragon cave to save the day.

Also, that dungeon door opened, and up above was a trap door that the Little People could fall through ... the climax of many stories would be when the hero would be losing a swordfight, would leap backwards over the trap door, and the overconfident villain would step on the trap and find himself in the dungeon.

Take note of the pre-PC days ... there are crosses everywhere.

Here we can see the dragon's cave. There was a sliding door inside the castle leading to the cave. Note the bedding, as well as the iconography above -- apparently, in the happy, hippy 70's*, the dragon and the knight were friends. In our adventures, sometimes they were friends, and sometimes they were enemies. Note the vine climbing the castle wall; there's a very nice vine on the tallest tower, and more than once people scaled the sides.

And finally, the interior. The staircase swiveled out, revealing a secret hiding place big enough for a Little Person to hide in. There was a balcony (though we never did any Romeo and Juliet scenes). The owl is sitting on a sign pointing to the village -- years later, after we got other Little People sets, the village began to take shape, and included a farm and an airport.** The owl, black cat at the foot of the stairs, and the suit of armor behind the secret stair led to many adventures in a haunted castle.

One last thing to note: When flicked, the springy flag at the top of the tallest tower would give a satisfying twang. While that was not important for any of our stories, it didn't stop us from twanging it at every opportunity. More than once the princess would escape the castle by pulling down on the flag and then catapulting herself as far as the spring would fling the little peg princess. Apparently, in my imagination, princesses were hardy enough to survive a very great fall.***

*An era that gave us such travesties as disco, Jimmy Carter, and non-violent Tom & Jerry cartoons.
**Little-known fact: Most medieval manors had an airport.
***I'm not sure what that fractions book is doing in the background, since all the kids currently living at my parents' house are either too young or too old to be studying fractions. Maybe the king and queen were promoting an mathmatical education campaign among the peasants.

I Resolve...

Professors have a theory or methodology of everything, including such things as New Year's Resolutions. Here's mine:

I think most resolutions fail because they are either resolutions about things out of your control, or they are so vague as to be meaningless. These kinds of resolutions aren't so much guides for our future behavior as they are wish-lists for the coming year. For an example of the first, many people will resolve something like, "I resolve to lose 15 pounds this year." A nice idea, but you have no direct control over whether you lose weight or not. For example, I've run 5k three times per week for the past 6 months, and I've lost only 10 lbs.* The losing of weight is the desired result, not really the thing you can control. Instead, I think people should resolve to do things that they CAN control. Also, too many are things are are so vague, the commitment cannot be measured in any meaningful way. An example of this would be something like, "I resolve to improve my relationship with my spouse" -- again, a nice sentiment, but HOW? Here are a few examples of what I think are self-defeating resolutions, followed by what I think would be a better version:

I will lose weight vs. I will visit the gym three times per week

I will eat healthy vs. I will eat two servings of fruit and veggies at each meal

I will improve my relationship with my spouse vs. I will go on at least one date night per month with my spouse

I will spend more time with my kids vs. I will volunteer to be assistant coach of the tee-ball team

I will publish two articles vs. I will submit two new articles for publication

I will be a better teacher vs. I will completely re-vamp my syllabus for this class

I will be a better researcher vs. I will apply for at least one grant this year

Get the idea? Whenever possible, you should first decide what your goal is, then think of a realistic and concrete step that will bring you closer to that goal.

So, what about me? I'm resolving quite a few things, but most of them don't have anything to do with medievalism. A few of them, however, do, and so I give you here my medieval resolutions for 2008, in the hope that you Wordhoarders can encourage/chastize me to keep them as needed.

1. I resolve to organize at least one popular medieval event on campus. The Big Beowulf Bash was a huge success, enough so that I think we wouldn't even need a film to make such an event work. I know the nearby SCA group wants to come do a weapons demonstration, so that's what I'll likely organize.
2. I resolve to submit a request for a Selected Topics course on learning Old English for the fall semester. Four years ago I taught it, and rumors of that still swirl among our English majors even though all the original students have graduated. Several have asked me to offer it, so I'm going to put in for it.
3. I resolve to apply again to be a White House Fellow. This one might seem to have nothing to do with medieval literature at first glance, but my goal here is to spend a year working with federal government agencies so that after my year is up I can use that experience to find opportunities to advance medieval studies. I made it to the interview phase last year, so I think I have a realistic chance, even if it's a slim one.
4. I resolve to offer myself to speak to popular audiences on medieval topics at least twice this year. Up until now, I've mostly been waiting for others to come to me to ask. When I examine my own passivity in this area, I realize that it comes from a sense that contacting others out of the blue to arrange something stinks of crass self-promotion. That's just dumb pride speaking. If I want to promote medieval studies, I'm going to have to swallow my pride and put myself out there. If some book club leader or fantasy convention organizer thinks I'm a crass self-promoter, so be it.
5. I resolve to try to transform the MediEvolution Project from an internal project to a collaborative project. If MediEvolution were a baby, it would be diagnosed as "failure to thrive." I've given a lot of thought to what's wrong with it, and I think my major error has been to try to do everything myself in-house at Troy University. This year, I'm going to solicit other scholars to produce content. Until now I've been running it as the sole proprietor -- I think I'm going to transform myself into Project Director and see what others' creativity can produce. If anyone (including graduate students, by the way) is interested in working on the MediEvolution Project, let me know.

So, those are my medieval New Year's Resolutions. If any of you have medieval-oriented resolutions you're making, I invite you to unlock your own wordhoards in the comments below.

*Yes, I know I don't look like I run that regularly, but I really do. Even though I'm still heavier than I'd like to be, I'm also way healthier (especially in endurance) than I was, so it's worth it even if I never lose another ounce.

Lost in a Cyber-Wilderness

I had so much delightful medieval Christmas blogging planned -- a post on the relationship between X-mas and Chi-Rho, pictures of the wonderful Fisher-Price castle I got from Santa many decades ago (my parents still have it), the traditional re-run of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in Old English, etc...

... then a big windstorm came through the Midwest and fried my parents' computer. No computer = no internet unless I drive into town to use the internet at the library. A library that doesn't permit use of the computers for e-mail and whatnot (so I'm a cyber criminal at the moment)>

So, blogging will generally be interrupted between now and when I get back home. Until then, a belated Merry Chi-Rho-Mas and a Happy New Year. If y'all see me at MLA, say Hwaet!

Heroic Dreams

I love being able to promote new medievalist blogs, but every so often one comes to my attention and I think, "Hey, how come I never heard of that 'til now?"

Heroic Dreams is just one of those. It's going straight onto my blogroll and subscription list. h/t Quid Plura?

Morning Medieval Miscellany

For your Thursday morning reading pleasure:

• Per Omnia Saecula give us two weird medieval animals this week: The Yale (no word on whether this creature mates with "the Vassar") and Sciapods.
• Jennifer Lynn Jordan also sends us to this CNN piece about the Night Watchman, described in the piece as "flat-out the most entertaining hour of medieval wonder anywhere in Germany."
• Lots of people (too many to hat-tip) mentioned that Peter Jackson has agreed to do two films of The Hobbit for New Line Cinema. I actually heard about this at Dragon*Con, but I guess it wasn't official until now.
• JJ Cohen critiques the Washington Post's review of The Second Shepherds' Play, describing it as "lazy." Cohen's discussion of it gets at the heart of so much that is stupid in media discussions of the medieval.
• In the Middle also has a review of The Jew in the Medieval Book -- which is not described as lazy. Far from it.
• Over at Modern Medieval, Larry Swain discusses Beowulf as a fad subject (not just a feature-length film), pointing out that compared to other epics, it has gotten a lot of attention lately.
• Stephen Hart praises the audiobook version of Children of Hurin. He also includes for your viewing pleasure Leonard Nimoy singing the "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" -- which even makes me laugh now over about a zillion viewings over the years.

Dæræk thæ Ænglicæn and mæ

Yesterday, sometime between losing and recoving the now legendary thumb drive, I drove up to Emory, where I met Derek the Ænglican and one of his current students, Paige, who also happens to be one of my former students. I learned many things from this meeting:

• Trying dress Goth while simultaneously trying to dress like a professional just comes off as dressing conservatively.
• Derek knows so much about the Church calendar, he should take a crack at the Maya calendar.
• Paige had an epiphany about Epiphany.
• English departments are much more fun to work in than schools of theology.
• Greek and Latin are best taught by those who don't know the languages very well.
• If you get the spinach/artichoke dip at Everybody's pizza, skip the dip (which was mediocre), and go straight to the breadsticks, which were wonderful.
• My son is literate only through the efforts of Paige.
• Being rejected is worse than being stalked. I would have thought the reverse, but I came around to the consensus view.
• Years ago, my World Lit class was considered a terrible amount of reading, followed by a horrific amount of writing. Not much has changed.
• The class "United Methodist Polity" would be more accurate if entitled with scorn quotes: "United" Methodist Polity.
• Just because you're in graduate school doesn't mean you know how to write.
• I'll be "Dr. Nokes" to Paige long after she's old and grey ... which is fine by me, since I still "Doctor" all my former professors through undergrad and grad school.
• I am the Karl Rove / James Carville of Charles Henderson Middle School.
• Peavine parking structure isn't spelled "Peevine," but it should be.
• The Bermuda triangle lies somewhere between Atlanta and Decatur. I got so, so lost trying to get home.

Anyway, I had a great time meeting Derek. Indeed, I don't think I've ever had an unpleasant experience meeting other bloggers. If anyone wants to meet up at MLA in Chicago, let me know!

Elation!

Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! This morning, when the sun came up, I showered and prepared to go to the University to search the parking lot for my jump drive. While I was in the shower, my wife looked in our driveway ... and saw it in the grass!

I've never loved her so much as at the moment she showed it to me.

After waiting a couple of hours to be sure all the dew had tried off it, I popped it in, and it worked perfectly. My first act? Backing it up on my fresh new hard drive.

Despair

A terrible thing happened today. I lost my flash memory drive ... it apparently fell off my key chain.

Normally, this would be simply an annoyance -- after all, what fool doesn't back up his files every so often? Sure, I would have lost a few weeks of work, but I would have survived.

The reason this is so catastrophic is that I just changed the hard drive on my computer, and got it back yesterday. Before taking it in, of course, I burned many of my files to CD ... but many, many of them I backed up on my thumb drive, intending to re-save them today.

So, basically, in the tiny window of vulnerability, I lost BOTH the data on my hard drive AND my thumb drive. Some of it I will be able to reconstruct from paper files and old data on my work computer, but much of it is lost forever.

And THAT, my friends, is why I despair. If Santa wants to bring me a gift this year, he'll bring me my old drive back.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

I've had lots to write of late, but no chance to do it. Tonight I'm scheduled to be on the Geekerati radio program (where we'll be talking about Christmas fantasy) and I'm supposed to be writing the keynote address for the Areopagus Lectures in Orlando this February, so I've got lots of things flitting about my head, pestering to be blogged about.

The good news is that I haven't written much lately because I was getting my computer upgraded. The bad news is that the sound doesn't work on it now, so that's what I've been doing with all my free time -- loading applications, patching applications, and trying to get the sound working.

Here are a few things I almost missed:

• Mark Bauerlein has an article entitled "What We Owe the New Critics" (unfortunately behind the Chronicle's subscription firewall). It strikes me that in my post "Reading Medieval Allegory," where I accuse the New Critics of having failed to work properly with allegory. Though I stand by that assessment, I might have accidentally cast them in the role of villains. I hope this link corrects that a bit.
• Speaking of the "Reading Medieval Allegory" post, it sparked a number of comments in "Allegory in the Voyage of St. Brendan," "Dr. Nokes Pronounces" over at Modern Medieval, and "A Few Thoughts for a Chilly Saturday Morning," which also has lots of other bits and pieces.
• The Folger is performing "The Second Shepherds' Play" -- with puppet sheep! Slouching Towards Extimacy has a detailed and positive review, in which he writes, "I enjoyed nearly every minute of it, and I think they did an incredible job of keepin’ it medieval while still making it accessible to the general public."
• The Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium Spring 2008 schedule is available at Old English in New York.
• Jeff Sypeck has an obituary for Bernard Scudder, an Icelandic translator you've never heard of, but should.
• Speaking of Sypeck, his excellent book Becoming Charlemagne is now available in paperback. It's listed at $13.95, $11.86 after the discount.
• Need a job? Dr. Virago tells us of a medieval lit job at University of Michigan - Flint.
• Scribal Terror sends us to an article about a heraldic lion that has been, er, altered. My favorite quote: "'We were forced to cut the lion’s willy off with the aid of a computer,' Christian Braunstein, from the Tradition Commission of the Swedish Army, said."
• Finally, everyone (including Stan Cynedom, Old English in New York, and In the Middle) has been linking to the video below, in which Eddie Izzard tries to buy a cow in Old English.