OK, I need some advice from all you YouTube users out there.
After more than a year of trying to get streaming video to work properly, I'm officially surrendering to YouTube. I'm going to post one of those now-legendary MediEvolution videos, just to see how it works out. I'll be posting my least-favorite* first, so that if the whole thing turns out to be a big mistake, I'll be able to cut my losses.
The clip is itself called "Larry Monarch Live," and is a Larry King spoof that obliquely critiques M. Knight Shyamalan's Lady in the Water as Arthuriana. My question is this -- should I categorize it as "comedy" or as "educational?" My impulse is to call it "educational," because that's the ultimate sneaky goal of MediEvolution, but most of the stuff in that category tends to be lectures. What do you folks think?
*It's my least favorite because it's already dated, and something about it just doesn't quite work. No insult is intended to those who wrote/acted/produced the episode.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
Here are just a few of the things that might deserve your attention:
- Got Medieval has a post on medieval depictions of midgets, dwarves, and babies.
- Heavenfield's Person of the Week is St. Egbert of Iona, and Michelle also has a post on verse hagiography.
- The Weird Medieval Animal this week is the ant-lion.
- Heroic Dreams offers the Top Five Fantasy Series of All Time. Go there and argue with him.
- Loreena McKennitt pops up over at In the Middle. Why have all the planets come into alignment to make her suddenly ubiquitous?
- Looking at urine might be useful.
- Matthew Gabriele gives CNN a well-deserved rant about their use of "medieval" to describe a shrimp factory. We all remember how Alcuin wrote that sermon condemning the conditions in medieval shrimp factories, don't we?
- Some chick over at The Naked Philologist posts about the word "bird."
- Mary Kate Hurley responds to the David Brooks article about medieval astronomy/astrology.
- Jeff Sypeck does too.
- Michael Drout has a close encounter with a crossbow.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Writing about not writing
I was going to blog today about this David Brooks piece and the article he's writing about, but then something odd happened. I've been lazy about working on my paper for Kalamazoo, so I decided to start writing it...
... then I found an odd file on my drive. I opened it, and found that my paper is 90% written. Now, it's my writing (or at least the writing of someone really, really good at replicating my style and reading my inner thoughts), but I have no recollection of writing it. None whatsoever.
Uh oh. This is a sign. Either the shoemaker's elves have come to my house and are doing my work for me in the night, or I'm writing too much. So, I'm going to take a break from writing today.
Of course, it occurs to me that I've just written a post about not writing. I'm a sick, sick man.
So, here's some non-writing: For some reason, people have been blogging about Loreena McKennitt a lot over the last couple of days, and Lady of Shalott has been running through my mind. Perhaps this will cure me.
... then I found an odd file on my drive. I opened it, and found that my paper is 90% written. Now, it's my writing (or at least the writing of someone really, really good at replicating my style and reading my inner thoughts), but I have no recollection of writing it. None whatsoever.
Uh oh. This is a sign. Either the shoemaker's elves have come to my house and are doing my work for me in the night, or I'm writing too much. So, I'm going to take a break from writing today.
Of course, it occurs to me that I've just written a post about not writing. I'm a sick, sick man.
So, here's some non-writing: For some reason, people have been blogging about Loreena McKennitt a lot over the last couple of days, and Lady of Shalott has been running through my mind. Perhaps this will cure me.
Monday, April 21, 2008
LOL Manuscripts
I hate LOLCats with a passion I should rightfully reserve only for sin ... though I'm still not sure LOLCats aren't a sin.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
I've got about a bazillion things to do before the end of the semester, several of which depend on receiving other people's e-mails. So, in anticipation of having it all dumped on me at once, here's a rare Sunday edition of the Morning Medieval Miscellany, just so I can ignore such things for the next few days.
- Decorabilia responds to my previous post on the medieval/modern mix in Brit Lit surveys.
- Heavenfield's Person of the Week is St. Magnus of Orkney, who was executed by a cook. The post does not mention the tools of execution, but I like to think it was a poorly-prepared meal.
- Medieval Material Culture has an update with several new posts of newspaper articles, as does News for Medievalists.
- Quid Plura has a post on pilgrimage.
- Derek Olsen has a post On Early Medieval Catechetical Narratives.
- Michael Drout tells us that the Paris Psalter is ready on Anglo-Saxon Aloud.
- The Medieval Term of the Week is hoardings ... but not the same meaning as that in the title of this blog. Of course, it would be cool to imagine that it was the same meaning, because then "wordhoard" would mean something like "Words expressed to enable medievalists to fire on men attacking the base of the culture." Yeah, that would be cool.
Friday, April 18, 2008
There's always room for Jello and medieval
Prof. de Breeze over at Caught in the Snide asks how much medieval is too much in a British survey. My answer is this: Don't be a Newbie Nokes.
When I was such a freshly-minted PhD that you could still smell the wrapper on me, I gave little attention to the medieval lit in my British survey classes. My reasoning as Newbie Nokes ran something like this: I really want to teach the medieval, so if I'm teaching a lot of medieval, it's because I want to, not because the survey needs it. I have a responsibility to the students to avoid self-interest and to cover the other material as well as possible. The anthology was broken up into three sections, with the first (medieval) being by-far the shortest, so I spent the least amount of time on the medieval lit, thus avoiding the guilt of assigning readings that I wanted rather than what's best for the student.
Dumb. But fortunately, I had a (non-medieval) colleague kind enough to tell me what an idiot I was being. He saw my syllabus, and asked why there was so little medieval. I piously gave him the above justification, to which he responded by looking at me like I'm mentally defective. His answer ran something like this:
"So, you're going to deny the students your expertise in your specialty?
I don't remember my answer; it probably involved a lot of stammering. Suffice it to say that I reinvented my syllabus the next semester.
How much, though, is too much? At what point are you no longer teaching a British Lit survey, and are instead teaching a crypto-medieval course? It takes a lot more than you might think. Consider this side rant from de Breeze:
Whoa, whoa. De Breeze has closed that off in brackets as a little aside, but that's precisely the main point! Look at the Norton Anthology of English Literature, for example. The three volumes run at something like 6000 pages, less than 500 of which are medieval. Now, I'm sure M.H. Abrams is a really nice guy with a really low golf score, but he ain't the boss of me, and he sure ain't the boss of you. WE, the collective we of English professors, determine the field, not Abrams or whoever. If Abrams thinks that the English medieval literary tradition is represented by Beowulf, excerpts from the Canterbury Tales, and a few odds-and-ends, then perhaps we should esteem him accordingly.
Here's the balance I've struck. In Brit Lit I, I spend the 1/3 of the semester on Old English, 1/3 on Middle, and 1/3 on Early Modern. In other words, my students are 2/3 of the way through the semester before they get out of that first teeny volume. I would argue, however, that it's perfectly justifiable, if one wanted to do it as a true survey, to take all of Brit Lit I as medieval, because even that gives modern all of Brit Lit II, when it is only 1/3 of the period supposedly being surveyed.
Nor are our modernist colleagues offering us anything close to the same courtesy. Spend about ten minutes looking at the online syllabi of non-medievalists teaching the Brit Lit surveys, and you'll find that the norm is to teach zero medieval texts, though a good number will teach one and only one (generally Beowulf or CT). Quietly take a peek at the syllabi of your colleagues in your own department, and you'll likely find the same thing.*
The only way to change these survey courses so that they actually survey the first millennium of English literature is to teach them that way. No amount of cajoling your colleagues will help. Even if they editors of the Norton & Longman Anthologies read this post, it's doubtful they'll lose any sleep.** To change this, we have to offer a proper view of what the English literary canon is -- mostly stuff written in the Middle Ages.
So, my answer to Prof. de Breeze's question, "How much medieval is too much?" I respond, "Much more than you would think."
When I was such a freshly-minted PhD that you could still smell the wrapper on me, I gave little attention to the medieval lit in my British survey classes. My reasoning as Newbie Nokes ran something like this: I really want to teach the medieval, so if I'm teaching a lot of medieval, it's because I want to, not because the survey needs it. I have a responsibility to the students to avoid self-interest and to cover the other material as well as possible. The anthology was broken up into three sections, with the first (medieval) being by-far the shortest, so I spent the least amount of time on the medieval lit, thus avoiding the guilt of assigning readings that I wanted rather than what's best for the student.
Dumb. But fortunately, I had a (non-medieval) colleague kind enough to tell me what an idiot I was being. He saw my syllabus, and asked why there was so little medieval. I piously gave him the above justification, to which he responded by looking at me like I'm mentally defective. His answer ran something like this:
"So, you're going to deny the students your expertise in your specialty?
I don't remember my answer; it probably involved a lot of stammering. Suffice it to say that I reinvented my syllabus the next semester.
How much, though, is too much? At what point are you no longer teaching a British Lit survey, and are instead teaching a crypto-medieval course? It takes a lot more than you might think. Consider this side rant from de Breeze:
NOTE: someday I'll post a rant about the way this sequence is broken up. Let's see, there's approximately 1400 years of British literary history. Obviously we should spend one semester on the first 1200 and the second semester on the last 200. Seriously, WTF?
Whoa, whoa. De Breeze has closed that off in brackets as a little aside, but that's precisely the main point! Look at the Norton Anthology of English Literature, for example. The three volumes run at something like 6000 pages, less than 500 of which are medieval. Now, I'm sure M.H. Abrams is a really nice guy with a really low golf score, but he ain't the boss of me, and he sure ain't the boss of you. WE, the collective we of English professors, determine the field, not Abrams or whoever. If Abrams thinks that the English medieval literary tradition is represented by Beowulf, excerpts from the Canterbury Tales, and a few odds-and-ends, then perhaps we should esteem him accordingly.
Here's the balance I've struck. In Brit Lit I, I spend the 1/3 of the semester on Old English, 1/3 on Middle, and 1/3 on Early Modern. In other words, my students are 2/3 of the way through the semester before they get out of that first teeny volume. I would argue, however, that it's perfectly justifiable, if one wanted to do it as a true survey, to take all of Brit Lit I as medieval, because even that gives modern all of Brit Lit II, when it is only 1/3 of the period supposedly being surveyed.
Nor are our modernist colleagues offering us anything close to the same courtesy. Spend about ten minutes looking at the online syllabi of non-medievalists teaching the Brit Lit surveys, and you'll find that the norm is to teach zero medieval texts, though a good number will teach one and only one (generally Beowulf or CT). Quietly take a peek at the syllabi of your colleagues in your own department, and you'll likely find the same thing.*
The only way to change these survey courses so that they actually survey the first millennium of English literature is to teach them that way. No amount of cajoling your colleagues will help. Even if they editors of the Norton & Longman Anthologies read this post, it's doubtful they'll lose any sleep.** To change this, we have to offer a proper view of what the English literary canon is -- mostly stuff written in the Middle Ages.
So, my answer to Prof. de Breeze's question, "How much medieval is too much?" I respond, "Much more than you would think."
*Make it really quiet though. No need to cheese people off.
** It's amazing how smug a certain type of scholar is when it comes to his ignorance of medieval literature. If a medieval literature professor were familiar with only one or two modern texts, we'd rightfully consider him incompetent. Am I saying that modernists who aren't familiar with medieval texts are incompetent? You bet I am.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
What is this "Kalamazoo" of which you speak?
Reading around the medieval blog-o-web-net-sphere-thingy, I realized that for all the non-academic medievalists out there, all these references to "Kalamazoo" are a bit mysterious. Let me demystify a bit.
Every year, the International Congress on Medieval Studies is hosted by Western Michigan University, which happens to be in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It's the Big Show for scholars of medieval topics, usually hosting in excess of 3000 scholars from around the world. This year's program, for example, shows in excess of 600 sessions. Assuming an average of three papers per session (which is the norm), that means around 900 papers will be delivered. Look at this list of sessions, and you'll see the papers are on every conceivable topic.
The "International Congress on Medieval Studies" is a mouthful, so we usually just refer to it as "The Congress," or "Kalamazoo," or "K'zoo," or even "The 'Zoo." When you read someone's post talking about "Kazoo," they aren't talking about the musical instrument -- it's the conference.
No, it isn't like a Ren Faire or SCA meeting. No one is in costume (the monks and nuns you see really are monks and nuns), and there's no jousting, etc. Still, it's the most fun big conference in any field I know of. For more information on the fun, see "The Knights of the Faculty Lounge." Also, don't forget to listen to the audio report of the dance!
Every year, the International Congress on Medieval Studies is hosted by Western Michigan University, which happens to be in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It's the Big Show for scholars of medieval topics, usually hosting in excess of 3000 scholars from around the world. This year's program, for example, shows in excess of 600 sessions. Assuming an average of three papers per session (which is the norm), that means around 900 papers will be delivered. Look at this list of sessions, and you'll see the papers are on every conceivable topic.
The "International Congress on Medieval Studies" is a mouthful, so we usually just refer to it as "The Congress," or "Kalamazoo," or "K'zoo," or even "The 'Zoo." When you read someone's post talking about "Kazoo," they aren't talking about the musical instrument -- it's the conference.
No, it isn't like a Ren Faire or SCA meeting. No one is in costume (the monks and nuns you see really are monks and nuns), and there's no jousting, etc. Still, it's the most fun big conference in any field I know of. For more information on the fun, see "The Knights of the Faculty Lounge." Also, don't forget to listen to the audio report of the dance!
Morning Medieval Miscellany
As part of my pledge to do the MMM even when there are only a few items, I offer you:
- Got Medieval has some comments on the new Lego Castle Giant Chess Set. WARNING: If your child is into both medievalism and chess, he'll likely get beat up a lot at school. Start taking him to martial arts classes immediately!
- Until Scribal Terror's post on him, I had no idea the Pied Piper of Hamelin was really a medieval story. It always seemed to me more like an Early Modern story about medieval characters. The Lueneburg manuscript might be very late medieval, but it does qualify as medieval -- if for no other reason than that it's a manuscript! Here are a few more versions of the story, as well as a little more information.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
Some upcoming stuff: I'll be a guest on the next Chivalry Today show, I'll be visiting the Atlanta-area Renaissance Faire in a couple of weeks (as a patron), and I'll be at Kalamazoo for the International Medieval Congress. On to the Miscellany!
- Jonathan Jarrett has a post on a study comparing scribal error to genetic mutation.
- The Medieval Term of the Week is villein.
- Jeff Sypeck reminds us of of some of the less-glorious pop culture moments for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
- Moyen Age has images from the Mouse Guard series.
- Medieval Material Culture has a post that might explain why my mother's favorite term for a shady character is a "hood."
- Heroic Dreams points us to a new fantasy website, The Fantasy Guide, and also discusses the archetypal struggle between knights and dragons.
- Jennifer Lynn Jordan presents a new This Week in Medieval History, and the Weird Medieval Animal of the week is the unicorn.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Making the Cut
I haven't blogged for the last couple of days (even when Battlestar Galactica had some Old English) because I've been doing some mostly-invisible housekeeping to the blog.
One visible thing, though, is the blogroll. I think I've added all the new blogs that have popped up and have deleted defunct blogs, but if yours is missing and shouldn't be, please send me an e-mail and I'll correct it.
One visible thing, though, is the blogroll. I think I've added all the new blogs that have popped up and have deleted defunct blogs, but if yours is missing and shouldn't be, please send me an e-mail and I'll correct it.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
It's been so long since I did a Morning Medieval Miscellany that I'm losing track of stuff. I've got to start doing the MMM even when I've only got two or three things to mention. Anyway, this Miscellany has a bunch of new blogs, spin-off pages, etc., so prepare to update your blogrolls!
- A Corner of Tenth Century Europe points us to the new blog, "What Would Wulfstan Do?," with the all-time greatest ULR, blogolupi.
- Over at Got Medieval dogs and cats are living together in a state of sin.
- Haligweorc is setting up a new blog that will focus more on medieval stuff, Homilaria.
- Heavenfield has posts on Henegst & Horsa, and Cadwaladr and Cynan, and also points us to Lindisfarne's Long Century.
- The Weird Medieval Animal for this week is the parandrus.
- Heroic Dreams discusses the future Elfstones of Shannara movie.
- Modern Medieval and In the Middle both review Ashley Crownover's Wealtheow -- both positive reviews, but neither as positive as mine.
- News for Medievalists had a big update with new posts! I'm so far behind, I still haven't read them all.
- Mary Kate Hurley has a post on how blogging has made her a more humane academic ... suggesting that she was inhumane before! Well, not really, but I like to imagine she was committing the academic equivalent of war crimes, such as intentionally misconjugating verbs, and spreading false information that Augustine of Canterbury and Augustine of Hippo were actually the same person. Oh, the inhumanity!
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Why I Blog
Blogito, ergo sum.
OK, not really. One of the reasons I had blog posts about blogging is that meta-blogging leads to an over-inflated sense of one's self importance, something that I'm already far too inclined toward. Still, I was tagged on one of these memes (so long ago that I cannot even remember who the tagger was), and I'm so guilty of neglecting memes that I vowed to actually respond to this one. I hope all will be tolerant of the self-importance this sort of post exudes.
The reason I began blogging isn't exactly the same as the reason I continue to blog. As with all things, it has changed over time. I began blogging because a colleague wanted to blog, but didn't want to start doing it alone. I had a pretty negative attitude toward blogging, and was pretty much concluding that blogs were the medium of political crackpots, or academic preachers-to-the-choir.
My colleague, though, made an impassioned plea for the public intellectual. He argued that every scholar has a responsibility to reach out beyond the classroom, and that a truly healthy intellectual environment doesn't cede the responsibility of the public intellectual to a few publicity-mongers. I found his position so persuasive that I adopted it as my own, and still continue to hold it to this day.
Alas, my colleague changed his mind. We each created different blogs, but after a short time he became disillusioned with his blog and eventually abandoned it, while I kept plugging along. In the early days, in keeping with my new philosophy regarding public intellectuals, I blogged on almost any intellectual issue of the day. The Wordhoard tended to focus on literary stuff, but I had all sorts of other content too.
My original goal was to have 50 hits per month, which I made in my first month of blogging. That might not seem like much -- after all, I've cracked 100,000 hits -- but I still think that's a good minimum. People worry too much about their traffic, but my attitude is this: Fifty people is a good-sized class. If you're hitting 50 people per month, you're essentially "teaching" another class in the public. Those of you out there with light traffic shouldn't feel like you're somehow deficient. I've got a lot more respect for the smart niche blog with low traffic than the blog-whore who's just out for a few more hits.
As the number of posts grew and the number of hits increased, though, I began to feel unhappy with the content of the blog. Too often I felt like I was inhabiting the persona of someone I call "Professor Awesome, PhD." Professor Awesome (PhD) is so brilliant, so dazzling, and so self-confident that he feels comfortable pronouncing on any subject regardless of how ill-equipped he is to make a judgment -- in other words, he's a pompous, arrogant jerk. I can't stand Professor Awesome, PhD, and he is me.
To reduce the Professor Awesome factor, I began limiting my blogging to medieval and literary topics, and eventually only to medieval topics. Prof. Awesome (PhD, mind you) still occasionally decides to take control of my keyboard, but for the most part limiting my topics to things of which I have at least a basic understanding prevents me from exceeding a certain level of stupidity.
I assumed that as I limited my topics, my traffic would fall off -- but the funny thing was, it actually increased. I started looking into it, checking links and comments leading back to this page, and I was surprised to find that there was a nascent medieval blog community (though folks like the Digital Medievalist had been blogging for years), and that I had somehow wandered right into the middle of its town square.
After all this evolution, why do I blog now? As I watched this nascent community form, I noticed that the popular (amateur) medievalists and the scholarly medievalists had very little traffic between them. The scholarly medievalists weren't really functioning as public intellectuals; they tended to use their blogs as ad hoc insta-publishing of their ideas for other scholars to see. The popular medievalists, on the other hand, weren't interested in reading a bunch of posts that they couldn't understand. The situation reminds me of a passage from "The Voice of Saruman" chapter in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers:
This blog today is my attempt to make Gandalf laugh again, to dismiss the fantasy that medieval scholars are so lofty, reverend and wise that we should have no intercourse with popular medievalists. Scholars might fear (and with reason, I'm sorry to say) that public intellectualism could be interpreted as a sign of unseriousness, and that blogging anything without occasionally tossing in medieval arcana (the dropped name of a theorist, the untranslated passage of Latin, the impossibly obscure reference) will be seen by their colleagues as reason to doubt their scholarly writing.
Popular medievalists, too, need to understand that their energy and enthusiam drives this community. No doubt popular medievalists know less than someone who devotes his career to the study of his field, but that doesn't mean they should be shut out of the conversation. Popular medievalists have something to contribute too, even if it is just an unashamed sense of excitement about medievalism.
So that's what I hope the Wordhoard is today, and why I blog. Maybe in a few more years, I'll have a different motivation. For the moment, however, the Wordhoard is open to all comers, popular and scholarly. The comments will continue to be displayed on the front page (instead of "below the fold," as it were) as part of my commitment to maintaining a happy public space for all sorts of medievalists to mingle. I'll still work to publicize other new medieval blogs and send traffic to individual medieval posts through the Morning Medieval Miscellany, and treat other bloggers as fellow-travelers rather than rivals.
As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome in our community.
OK, not really. One of the reasons I had blog posts about blogging is that meta-blogging leads to an over-inflated sense of one's self importance, something that I'm already far too inclined toward. Still, I was tagged on one of these memes (so long ago that I cannot even remember who the tagger was), and I'm so guilty of neglecting memes that I vowed to actually respond to this one. I hope all will be tolerant of the self-importance this sort of post exudes.
The reason I began blogging isn't exactly the same as the reason I continue to blog. As with all things, it has changed over time. I began blogging because a colleague wanted to blog, but didn't want to start doing it alone. I had a pretty negative attitude toward blogging, and was pretty much concluding that blogs were the medium of political crackpots, or academic preachers-to-the-choir.
My colleague, though, made an impassioned plea for the public intellectual. He argued that every scholar has a responsibility to reach out beyond the classroom, and that a truly healthy intellectual environment doesn't cede the responsibility of the public intellectual to a few publicity-mongers. I found his position so persuasive that I adopted it as my own, and still continue to hold it to this day.
Alas, my colleague changed his mind. We each created different blogs, but after a short time he became disillusioned with his blog and eventually abandoned it, while I kept plugging along. In the early days, in keeping with my new philosophy regarding public intellectuals, I blogged on almost any intellectual issue of the day. The Wordhoard tended to focus on literary stuff, but I had all sorts of other content too.
My original goal was to have 50 hits per month, which I made in my first month of blogging. That might not seem like much -- after all, I've cracked 100,000 hits -- but I still think that's a good minimum. People worry too much about their traffic, but my attitude is this: Fifty people is a good-sized class. If you're hitting 50 people per month, you're essentially "teaching" another class in the public. Those of you out there with light traffic shouldn't feel like you're somehow deficient. I've got a lot more respect for the smart niche blog with low traffic than the blog-whore who's just out for a few more hits.
As the number of posts grew and the number of hits increased, though, I began to feel unhappy with the content of the blog. Too often I felt like I was inhabiting the persona of someone I call "Professor Awesome, PhD." Professor Awesome (PhD) is so brilliant, so dazzling, and so self-confident that he feels comfortable pronouncing on any subject regardless of how ill-equipped he is to make a judgment -- in other words, he's a pompous, arrogant jerk. I can't stand Professor Awesome, PhD, and he is me.
To reduce the Professor Awesome factor, I began limiting my blogging to medieval and literary topics, and eventually only to medieval topics. Prof. Awesome (PhD, mind you) still occasionally decides to take control of my keyboard, but for the most part limiting my topics to things of which I have at least a basic understanding prevents me from exceeding a certain level of stupidity.
I assumed that as I limited my topics, my traffic would fall off -- but the funny thing was, it actually increased. I started looking into it, checking links and comments leading back to this page, and I was surprised to find that there was a nascent medieval blog community (though folks like the Digital Medievalist had been blogging for years), and that I had somehow wandered right into the middle of its town square.
After all this evolution, why do I blog now? As I watched this nascent community form, I noticed that the popular (amateur) medievalists and the scholarly medievalists had very little traffic between them. The scholarly medievalists weren't really functioning as public intellectuals; they tended to use their blogs as ad hoc insta-publishing of their ideas for other scholars to see. The popular medievalists, on the other hand, weren't interested in reading a bunch of posts that they couldn't understand. The situation reminds me of a passage from "The Voice of Saruman" chapter in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers:
So great was the power that Saruman exerted in this last effort [negotiating with Gandalf] that none that stood within hearing were unmoved. But now the spell was wholly different. They heard the gentle remonstrance of a kindly king with an erring but much-loved minister. But they were shut out, listening at a door to words not meant for them: ill-mannered children or stupid servants overhearing the elusive discourse of their elders, and wondering how it would affect their lot. Of loftier mould these two were made: reverend and wise. It was inevitable that they should make alliance. Gandalf would ascend into the tower, to discuss deep things beyond their comprehension in the high chambers of Orthanc. The door would be closed, and they would be left outside, dismissed to await allotted work or punishment. Even in the mind of Theoden the thought took shape, like a shadow of doubt: 'He will betray us; he will go -- we shall be lost.'
Then Gandalf laughed. The fantasy vanished like a puff of smoke.
This blog today is my attempt to make Gandalf laugh again, to dismiss the fantasy that medieval scholars are so lofty, reverend and wise that we should have no intercourse with popular medievalists. Scholars might fear (and with reason, I'm sorry to say) that public intellectualism could be interpreted as a sign of unseriousness, and that blogging anything without occasionally tossing in medieval arcana (the dropped name of a theorist, the untranslated passage of Latin, the impossibly obscure reference) will be seen by their colleagues as reason to doubt their scholarly writing.
Popular medievalists, too, need to understand that their energy and enthusiam drives this community. No doubt popular medievalists know less than someone who devotes his career to the study of his field, but that doesn't mean they should be shut out of the conversation. Popular medievalists have something to contribute too, even if it is just an unashamed sense of excitement about medievalism.
So that's what I hope the Wordhoard is today, and why I blog. Maybe in a few more years, I'll have a different motivation. For the moment, however, the Wordhoard is open to all comers, popular and scholarly. The comments will continue to be displayed on the front page (instead of "below the fold," as it were) as part of my commitment to maintaining a happy public space for all sorts of medievalists to mingle. I'll still work to publicize other new medieval blogs and send traffic to individual medieval posts through the Morning Medieval Miscellany, and treat other bloggers as fellow-travelers rather than rivals.
As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome in our community.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Old English Flashcards
There have been pre-made Old English flashcards available on the internet, and I wasn't informed? I demand an investigation!
Flashcards 1
Flashcards 2
I think I'll make my student assistant print and cut all those for me, just to complete my cycle of laziness. I think that's about 3000 words, so surely there are some words in there I don't have off the top of my head.
Flashcards 1
Flashcards 2
I think I'll make my student assistant print and cut all those for me, just to complete my cycle of laziness. I think that's about 3000 words, so surely there are some words in there I don't have off the top of my head.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Review of Wealtheow
With the exception of John Gardner's Grendel, I now have a new favorite re-telling of the Beowulf story. Ashley Crownover's Wealtheow: Her Telling of Beowulf avoids the pitfalls of the women's-retelling subgenre, and enriches the Beowulf mythos in ways that writers have failed to do since Gardner.
I was prepared to hate this book. The problem of great writers like John Gardner is that they make it seem so easy. Here, the writer thinks, I'll just take this great story, slap a new point-of-view on it, and I'll be edgy and praised for my social commentary. Uh, no, it's not that easy. Gardner fills his story with philosophical richness that cannot be conveyed merely by changing perspectives. So many "re-tellings of" are a medium in search of a message -- such as Michael Cricton's Eaters of the Dead (aka The Thirteenth Warrior) which has its genesis in the challenge of making Beowulf non-fantastical.
That was, however, only a minor reason. For a debut novel, I could forgive an amateurish "re-telling of" approach. My major concern was over the treatment of Wealtheow. I teach Beowulf at least once per semester; this semester, for example, I've taught it three times. Students' view of Wealtheow is uniform: she's a pathetic little meadhall wife, bringing brewskis when her husband's carousing friends when they pop in unannounced. They dismiss her with the same smug condescension this culture dismisses June Cleaver. The only admirable woman in this perspective is Grendel's Mother, who has been libeled by centuries of evil Christian scribes.
Crownover, however, recognizes what nearly every student fails to see -- that Wealtheow in the meadhall isn't the serving wench, she is wielding power in ways men are not permitted. The role of the Peaceweaver is depicted as it most likely was, an active role of diplomacy and power, not merely a passive role of submission and sexual servitude, wherein the daughter of a king is reduced to a broodmare.
By teasing out the power of Wealtheow, Crownover manages to make a book about the women of Beowulf without falling into cliche. The men are not diminished, nor are they transformed into villains. Instead of cutting the men down to size, Crownover elevates Wealtheow and the women to the level the original audience probably understood them to be at.
Nor does Crownover shy away from exploring the evil of Grendel's Mother. Too many "women's re-tellings" are afraid to depict women in shadow. Through Grendel's Mother, we see ways in which women like Wealtheow and those around her, with good intentions, could slide into evil. Crownover sees these two females (one hesitates to say "women") as two paths open to leaders and mothers.
Wealtheow: Her Telling of Beowulf is surprisingly good for a debut novel. I recommend it.
I was prepared to hate this book. The problem of great writers like John Gardner is that they make it seem so easy. Here, the writer thinks, I'll just take this great story, slap a new point-of-view on it, and I'll be edgy and praised for my social commentary. Uh, no, it's not that easy. Gardner fills his story with philosophical richness that cannot be conveyed merely by changing perspectives. So many "re-tellings of" are a medium in search of a message -- such as Michael Cricton's Eaters of the Dead (aka The Thirteenth Warrior) which has its genesis in the challenge of making Beowulf non-fantastical.
That was, however, only a minor reason. For a debut novel, I could forgive an amateurish "re-telling of" approach. My major concern was over the treatment of Wealtheow. I teach Beowulf at least once per semester; this semester, for example, I've taught it three times. Students' view of Wealtheow is uniform: she's a pathetic little meadhall wife, bringing brewskis when her husband's carousing friends when they pop in unannounced. They dismiss her with the same smug condescension this culture dismisses June Cleaver. The only admirable woman in this perspective is Grendel's Mother, who has been libeled by centuries of evil Christian scribes.
Crownover, however, recognizes what nearly every student fails to see -- that Wealtheow in the meadhall isn't the serving wench, she is wielding power in ways men are not permitted. The role of the Peaceweaver is depicted as it most likely was, an active role of diplomacy and power, not merely a passive role of submission and sexual servitude, wherein the daughter of a king is reduced to a broodmare.
By teasing out the power of Wealtheow, Crownover manages to make a book about the women of Beowulf without falling into cliche. The men are not diminished, nor are they transformed into villains. Instead of cutting the men down to size, Crownover elevates Wealtheow and the women to the level the original audience probably understood them to be at.
Nor does Crownover shy away from exploring the evil of Grendel's Mother. Too many "women's re-tellings" are afraid to depict women in shadow. Through Grendel's Mother, we see ways in which women like Wealtheow and those around her, with good intentions, could slide into evil. Crownover sees these two females (one hesitates to say "women") as two paths open to leaders and mothers.
Wealtheow: Her Telling of Beowulf is surprisingly good for a debut novel. I recommend it.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
Lemme see how much of the medievalism I can clear out of the pipes before I head off to teach Milton. If I have time later today, I might post my review of Ashley Crownover's Wealtheow: Her Telling of Beowulf. Short verion -- I liked it.
- Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a fresh blog post.
- Got Medieval has a fun little medieval fact or fiction quiz.
- The Weird Medieval Animal this week is the owl.
- Podictionary has a post on the word vellum. Also, Charles Hodgson is hitting the big time -- on Thursdays he'll be carried on the Oxford University Press blog.
- Quid Plura? tells us that NBC is working on a series called "Merlin," and he reminds us of the '80s series Mr. Merlin. Sometimes the mind blocks out painful memories.
- The Heroic Age has a CFP for the Monsters and the Monstrous:Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil conference at Oxford this September.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Aborted Medievalist Prank
Just as I was leaving my office for a meeting, the phone rang. On the other end was a fellow "from Florida" who claimed to have been referred to me as a medieval resource (he never mentioned who referred him; it was all very vague).
He then proceeded with a rambling question about the use of a medieval term in various texts, giants, and the Templars. Hmmmm ... off the wall questions from random people on April 1st? What could this possibly mean?
Unfortunately, I was late for picking up a student for the meeting, so I didn't have time to play. I quickly got him off the phone (answering "well, I don't really know anything about that") until he finally gave up.
I feel a little disappointed. I wanted to see where the prank was going to go, I just didn't have time to play! At one point, referring to the medieval giant figures, he said something intriguing along the lines of: "and of course we all know where that must have come from." Oooooh, I saw a Chariots of the Gods-esque theory coming, about how aliens or nephalim or time travelers or some such people created the figures -- but alas, I had no time to explore it.
So, to whomever was the creator of the aborted medievalist prank today, I offer my apologies. I really, really wanted to play, but the timing was bad.
He then proceeded with a rambling question about the use of a medieval term in various texts, giants, and the Templars. Hmmmm ... off the wall questions from random people on April 1st? What could this possibly mean?
Unfortunately, I was late for picking up a student for the meeting, so I didn't have time to play. I quickly got him off the phone (answering "well, I don't really know anything about that") until he finally gave up.
I feel a little disappointed. I wanted to see where the prank was going to go, I just didn't have time to play! At one point, referring to the medieval giant figures, he said something intriguing along the lines of: "and of course we all know where that must have come from." Oooooh, I saw a Chariots of the Gods-esque theory coming, about how aliens or nephalim or time travelers or some such people created the figures -- but alas, I had no time to explore it.
So, to whomever was the creator of the aborted medievalist prank today, I offer my apologies. I really, really wanted to play, but the timing was bad.
Whan that Aprill with his fooles soote...
The Museum of Hoaxes has a section on Medieval Pranks and Tricks, and although some of them are more early modern than medieval, it's nice to find someone has researched this.
According to their page:
*Thomas Betson is the author of A Ryght Profytable Treatyse Compendiously Drawen Out Of Many and Dyvers Wrytynges Of Holy Men, as well as the lesser-known A Ryght Profytable Treatyse on Wrytynges Usyng "Y" as Theyr Mayn Vowyl.
According to their page:
The notebook of Thomas Betson*, a fifteenth-century monk at Syon Abbey in Middlesex, records his joke of hiding a beetle inside a hollowed-out apple. When the apple began to mysteriously rock back and forth people believed it to be possessed. Other manuscripts include instructions for more mischievous tricks, such as how to make beds itchy and meat appear wormy.
The Secretum Philosophorum, which was a kind of fourteenth-century guide to trickery, offered a recipe for magically transforming water into wine. The trick was to secretly drop pieces of bread into the water, after first soaking the bread pieces in dark wine and then drying them in the sun.
*Thomas Betson is the author of A Ryght Profytable Treatyse Compendiously Drawen Out Of Many and Dyvers Wrytynges Of Holy Men, as well as the lesser-known A Ryght Profytable Treatyse on Wrytynges Usyng "Y" as Theyr Mayn Vowyl.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
OK, it isn't really morning yet, but it probably will be by the time you folks read this, and I've got an interview* bright and early in the morning.
*TV, not job. I have to clarify that lest my department chair panic.
**By the way, in looking for that post, I just discovered I'm the 3rd hit if you google the phrase "viking turd." My mother will be so proud.
- Henchminion has a couple of links to medieval recipes.
- Per Omnia Saecula has another installment of Today in Medieval History, in which JLJ examines why we should be happy not to be bitten to death by poisonous snakes.
- News for Medievalists has an update.
- Jeff Sypeck writes about the brass horse in The Squire's Tale. Do not miss clicking on the "Big Dog" video link!
- Dr. Virago and Another Damned Medievalist are plotting this year's K'zoo blogger meet-up.
- The medieval term of the day is falchion.
- Scribal Terror tells us newly-discovered sermons of St. Augustine, as well as medieval horse dung ... which still doesn't compare to the famous Lloyd's Bank Viking turd.**
*TV, not job. I have to clarify that lest my department chair panic.
**By the way, in looking for that post, I just discovered I'm the 3rd hit if you google the phrase "viking turd." My mother will be so proud.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Darkon Review
Darkon is a documentary about a live action roleplaying (LARP) group, focused on wargaming with padded weapons. This is commonly known as "boffer LARPing," but the film never uses either the terms "boffer" or "LARP." Basically, people dress up in armor and act out characters. In non-combat oriented LARPing, this generally results in negotiation rather than battle. Negotiations in boffer LARPing tend to lead to combat since, after all, the chance to strap on a sword and whack at your enemies is one of the main reasons people join these groups.
The film follows just a few of the participants, and in one case looks extensively into his home life. The tag line, "Everyone wants to be a hero" also describes the theme. The film tends to focus on the "lovable loser" type -- the stay-at-home dad, frustrated that his brother took control of the family's tabletop gaming business; the former stripper, now a single mother yearning for marriage and a home of her own; the heavy-set virgin young man who is exploring his first romantic relationships through his character, trying to gain the self-confidence for real-life relationships.
Though the film treats them respectfully, you never quite shake the feeling that the critique of Darkon (and by extension, LARPing) that it is for losers. Skip Lipman, for example, seems to live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. He seems involved in his kids' lives, and seems to have developed a variety of skills for Darkon (such as sewing and woodworking). At one point near the end of the film, he gives a very thoughtful, well-articulated monologue on Darkon's appeal. In other words, he could have been depicted as one of life's winners, but instead the film chooses to focus on the times he has lost. Again and again I thought, "This looks expensive ... not EVERYONE can be living in their parents' basement!"
What the film does best is catch the visceral quality of the boffer wars. It wouldn't take much to make them seem ridiculous, but the camera runs out in the midst of the battle as it goes, and you feel the struggle -- all sweat and grunts and curses and shouted orders. I've never thought much of boffer LARPing, but the battle sequences made me want to be out there with them, thwacking away. Even without the justifications given by the participants, you could see why they would want to be out there, why it made men feel like heroes, why the virgin felt he might be able to talk to girls, why the stripper felt her life might just be OK after all.
My biggest frustration with the film is that I wanted a bit more explanation of how Darkon works. I wondered who created it, and how it is funded. The rulebook on their website is daunting (98 pages), but a little more detail would have been nice. How are countries formed? Who determines which side has won a battle? They obviously have some kind of in-game economy -- how does that work? What about this language the dark elves speak? How developed is that? I felt that the film needed more of the nuts & bolts.
I do recommend Darkon, but the film is not without its weaknesses. If you are into boffer LARPing, you might take offense at the way the participants are depicted -- but then again, you might just want to move to Baltimore to join in the fun.
The film follows just a few of the participants, and in one case looks extensively into his home life. The tag line, "Everyone wants to be a hero" also describes the theme. The film tends to focus on the "lovable loser" type -- the stay-at-home dad, frustrated that his brother took control of the family's tabletop gaming business; the former stripper, now a single mother yearning for marriage and a home of her own; the heavy-set virgin young man who is exploring his first romantic relationships through his character, trying to gain the self-confidence for real-life relationships.
Though the film treats them respectfully, you never quite shake the feeling that the critique of Darkon (and by extension, LARPing) that it is for losers. Skip Lipman, for example, seems to live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. He seems involved in his kids' lives, and seems to have developed a variety of skills for Darkon (such as sewing and woodworking). At one point near the end of the film, he gives a very thoughtful, well-articulated monologue on Darkon's appeal. In other words, he could have been depicted as one of life's winners, but instead the film chooses to focus on the times he has lost. Again and again I thought, "This looks expensive ... not EVERYONE can be living in their parents' basement!"
What the film does best is catch the visceral quality of the boffer wars. It wouldn't take much to make them seem ridiculous, but the camera runs out in the midst of the battle as it goes, and you feel the struggle -- all sweat and grunts and curses and shouted orders. I've never thought much of boffer LARPing, but the battle sequences made me want to be out there with them, thwacking away. Even without the justifications given by the participants, you could see why they would want to be out there, why it made men feel like heroes, why the virgin felt he might be able to talk to girls, why the stripper felt her life might just be OK after all.
My biggest frustration with the film is that I wanted a bit more explanation of how Darkon works. I wondered who created it, and how it is funded. The rulebook on their website is daunting (98 pages), but a little more detail would have been nice. How are countries formed? Who determines which side has won a battle? They obviously have some kind of in-game economy -- how does that work? What about this language the dark elves speak? How developed is that? I felt that the film needed more of the nuts & bolts.
I do recommend Darkon, but the film is not without its weaknesses. If you are into boffer LARPing, you might take offense at the way the participants are depicted -- but then again, you might just want to move to Baltimore to join in the fun.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
Here are just a few of the things you don't want to miss:
- Podictionary talks about the connections between the word affidavit and Alfred the Great. That's news to me, but I affy he's right.
- Apparently, Charlemagne wasn't the only monarch to keep exotic animals -- the lions at the Tower of London were of a now-extinct species.
- The Weird Medieval Animal of the Week fights the Weird Medieval Tribe of the Week over at Per Omnia Saecula.
- Heavenfield tells us about St. Geretrud, and the lost kingdom this month is Lindsey. I have to confess, I find the Lost Kingdom of the Month feature really interesting, moreso than a lit guy has the right to.
- This has been everywhere already, but just in case you missed it, there's now an English Medieval Legal Documents wiki.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Areopagus Lectures Online
The Areopagus Lectures I delivered are now available in audio format online. My own contributions are "Lies I Tell My Daughter: Christian Myth in Modern Culture" and "Warrior Christ: Myth and Masculinity in Depictions of Jesus," though I recommend listening to the others as well.
When I returned from giving the lectures, someone had sent me an e-mail asking me to send him a print copy of my "sermons." I kind of scoffed in my mind that he thought of them as sermons. Listening to them now, though, I realize that after adjusting them for the audience, they do rather sound a bit like sermons. So, sermons or lectures, here they are.
Part of the second lecture relies on visual images that aren't available, so a short bit near the end might not make sense. The sound quality is better than I thought; I had lost my voice, and croaked through both lectures. I guess the microphone had the best seat in the house.
When I returned from giving the lectures, someone had sent me an e-mail asking me to send him a print copy of my "sermons." I kind of scoffed in my mind that he thought of them as sermons. Listening to them now, though, I realize that after adjusting them for the audience, they do rather sound a bit like sermons. So, sermons or lectures, here they are.
Part of the second lecture relies on visual images that aren't available, so a short bit near the end might not make sense. The sound quality is better than I thought; I had lost my voice, and croaked through both lectures. I guess the microphone had the best seat in the house.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
I suspended the Miscellany while Carnivalesque was underway, but now back to work! I haven't decided what I'm blogging for Easter yet. I wanted to do something special about Bede, the Ecclesiatical History of the English Nation, and the Irish Church's dating of Easter (since Easter and St. Patrick's Day fell so close this year), but I haven't had time to work something up.
- Bourgeois Nerd points out that an inscribed first edition of The Hobbit went at auction for 60 thousand pounds. I'm hoping it was someone buying it for my birthday.
- Speaking of Inklings, Gypsy Scholar has a post about Edith Nesbit's influence on CS Lewis.
- Carl Pyrdum makes an excuse to quote the Camelot Samba part of the 1949 musical version of Connecticut Yankee.
- Heavenfield reminds us of the Voyage of St. Brendan, and also has a link to the Yeavering Anglo-Saxon Royal Palace Reconstruction. By the way, if anyone is curious as to how the Angelcynn Heall construction in Laramie, Wyoming is going, the last update to the website was in September, but it was looking pretty good at that time.
- Over at In the Middle, basking in the afterglow of a successful Carnivalesque, they have a series of announcements, and Karl Steel struggles with the Arthurian opening of The Wife of Bath's Tale.
- The blogger Highly Eccentric starts a new blog, The Naked Philologist. No, it doesn't appear to be another version of Hot for Words.
- Moyen Age has a couple of posts about the connection between Lent and Spring.
- I've long thought about writing a paper about race and World of Warcraft, but have been too busy with other stuff ... and now Rhiannon Don has beat me to it. I gots to get me a copy of that paper!
- Jeff Sypeck recommends a short list of medieval bloggers, but yours truly is on it, so the company can't be all THAT illustrious. Also, Sypeck was recently interviewed by Scott Farrell of Chivalry today, and the podcast is available here (or on iTunes if you're a subscriber like me).
- Scribal Terror reminds us that today is the Harrowing of Hell, one of my favorite subjects of art, because you get to see Jesus kicking demonic butt. Awesome.
- The Heroic Age announces the publication of Signs on the Edge: Space, Text and Margin in Medieval Manuscripts, and also has a couple of CFPs.
- Over at The Ruminate, the Swain tells us of an opportunity for intensive Latin and Greek in Philly this summer.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Before the Printing Press
In class the other day, a student asked a question that reminded me that most people don't understand the profound impact of the printing press on language and culture. Sometimes, as a medieval scholar interested in the material text, I forget that -- so here's a little bit on why the printing press is important.
The pinnacle of medieval technology is Johannes Gutenberg's development of the movable type printing press in the 1450's. This was the single most important technological development of the Second Millennium, and its impact was so great that many would argue it marks the end of the Middle Ages. I would mark that as the symbolic end of medieval literature.
The printing press changed us in ways that we should bear in mind when we read medieval literature or think about medieval culture. Let me just talk about three areas: education, religion, and literacy.
Education
If you've gone to school you're neither wealthy nor a priest, you can thank Gutenberg. King Alfred the Great is known as a great patron of education because he had a program of universal literacy ... for noble men only, though. Why? Our modern assumption is that Alfred might have been some sort of bigot, The Man trying to keep down women and the poor. Is that fair, though?
Consider the economics of the situation before the printing press, though. Books had to be copied by hand. I've copied (transcribed) medieval manuscripts by hand, and I can tell you it is miserable and time-consuming. If I spend a day copying a manuscript, by evening my hand is siezed up like a claw. Even a short manuscript can take days. The effort it would take to provide primers for every child in the medieval world to read would overwhelm every scriptorum for decades. Books were difficult to come by, and therefore were expensive, which explains why only the wealthy (who could afford them) or clergy (who had the institutional financial support of the Church) tended to have access.
Imagine for a moment that a wormhole opened in space/time, and enough elementary school primers for every medieval child were dropped right in front of Charlemagne, who then made sure they were distributed. Let's say that every child learns to read -- then what? What will those children read? Unless the press that printed those primers also dropped through space/time, other books would still be expensive. Even considering that universal literacy would allow more people to be scribes, not everyone can be a scribe. Once those primers wore out from over-use, you'd probably be back to the former situation in a century or so.
Universal education is an ideal, but it is also a luxury provided to us by the printing press. Medieval people were not uneducated because they were stupid or repressed; they were uneducated because it was impossible to educate everyone.*
Religion
I can't tell you how many papers I get from students writing about how everyone in the Middle Ages was Catholic because the Church would burn you at the stake if you weren't, or because people were superstitious. First of all, let's remember that there happened to be plenty of non-Christians around (such as Muslims and Jews) who, by default, weren't Catholic -- and second, what those students mean by "Catholic" isn't even something that was around in the Middle Ages -- because of the printing press.
I'm going to be dealing only with the Western Church here, because I don't think those students mean Catholic in the sense of Eastern Rite vs. Western Rite, but rather Catholic vs. Protestant. What does it mean, ultimately, to be a protestant?
At root is the idea that the Church, or at least the hierarchy of Rome, has a special responsibility in helping people interpret the Bible. Protestantism suggests that the ideal instead is that individuals should interpret the Bible for themselves.
Here's how the myth runs: The evil men of the monolithic Catholic hierarchy, in order to maintain their power, repressed the people by holding a monopoly over the Bible. They could simply say, "God doesn't like what you are doing," and you had no chance to disagree because you had no real direct access to Scripture. Today, however, as red-blooded Americans, we aren't about to listen to some foreigners tell us how to read the Bible (or even to read it at all).
This myth, though, forgets what life was like before the printing press. Sure, it is a nice ideal for everyone to read the Bible -- but what if you can't read? Or what if you can read, but you can't read much, or you can't afford the whole Bible? What then?
In that case, you have to rely on prayer books or psalters (which, if you owned only one book in the Middle Ages, is probably what you owned), and rely on experts with access to more information than you have -- i.e., the Church. In other words, people basically did what we do today regarding issues that the average person simply doesn't have the education or finances to personally investigate. For example, I don't know that the Periodic Table of Elements is accurate, nor do I have the lab equipment to investigate it. Instead, I rely on experts to interpret the chemical universe for me.
When the printing press comes along, it isn't surprising that the first book printed was the Bible. Nor is it surprising that Martin Luther came along in the first generation to be born after the printing press. Suddenly, anyone who could read could have access to the whole Bible; indeed, they could theoretically own any of the commentaries of the Church Fathers. Protestantism as we understand it today simply wasn't possible without the printing press.**
Literacy
It would seem that we've already covered "literacy" in education, but in this case I mean something beyond just functional literacy. Before the printing press, the general assumption was that most people couldn't read, so anything that was written down would be read aloud to illiterate people. People simply didn't read silently -- Saints Jerome and Ambrose were considered astounding geniuses because they could read silently. Even in monasteries, scribes would presumably subvocalize as they copied.
What does this mean for literature? It mitigates in favor of poetry and against prose, in favor of short, episodic texts and against long ones. Poetry is "better" because it sounds better, whereas prose reads easier to the eye than the ear. Ever notice there's no such thing as the medieval novel? Who's going to read an entire novel aloud? Even the earliest writings we consider proto-novels (such as Don Quixote or The Tale of Genji) aren't merely broken up into chapters -- they are broken up into episodes.
Still not convinced that the printing press changed the way we view literacy? Just try reading this blog post aloud. This post presumes that it will be read silently. I've bolded some topic headings -- how do you read boldness? In other places, I have parenthetical comments that aren't part of the flow of the sentence, or footnotes that cannot be read as part of the sentence. Ever know someone who liked to put "air quotes" up with their fingers when they are talking? That action doesn't make sense if you're talking to an illiterate person; it assumes that the person you are talking to can visual the text as words on a page requiring punctuation. Note also that I've not fully explained what "air quotes" are -- I've assumed that if someone doesn't know what they are, they can click on the link to see them demonstrated.
The upshot of this post is simply to remind folks that medieval people understood reading differently than we do. They came at it with a whole different set of assumptions, and those assumptions colored the way they viewed their world, just as our assumptions color the way we view our own. If you keep that in mind, you should start to perceive rich nuances in medieval writings that you might have missed before.
*I'm leaving out here, of course, vocational training of the sort guilds provided. That is a form of education, but it's not the type of education we're talking about here. You don't need to be literate to be a blacksmith or carpenter.
** Yes, I know I'm glossing over Lollardy, but I can't see any way that Lollards could have become as numerous as Protestants without the printing press.
The pinnacle of medieval technology is Johannes Gutenberg's development of the movable type printing press in the 1450's. This was the single most important technological development of the Second Millennium, and its impact was so great that many would argue it marks the end of the Middle Ages. I would mark that as the symbolic end of medieval literature.
The printing press changed us in ways that we should bear in mind when we read medieval literature or think about medieval culture. Let me just talk about three areas: education, religion, and literacy.
Education
If you've gone to school you're neither wealthy nor a priest, you can thank Gutenberg. King Alfred the Great is known as a great patron of education because he had a program of universal literacy ... for noble men only, though. Why? Our modern assumption is that Alfred might have been some sort of bigot, The Man trying to keep down women and the poor. Is that fair, though?
Consider the economics of the situation before the printing press, though. Books had to be copied by hand. I've copied (transcribed) medieval manuscripts by hand, and I can tell you it is miserable and time-consuming. If I spend a day copying a manuscript, by evening my hand is siezed up like a claw. Even a short manuscript can take days. The effort it would take to provide primers for every child in the medieval world to read would overwhelm every scriptorum for decades. Books were difficult to come by, and therefore were expensive, which explains why only the wealthy (who could afford them) or clergy (who had the institutional financial support of the Church) tended to have access.
Imagine for a moment that a wormhole opened in space/time, and enough elementary school primers for every medieval child were dropped right in front of Charlemagne, who then made sure they were distributed. Let's say that every child learns to read -- then what? What will those children read? Unless the press that printed those primers also dropped through space/time, other books would still be expensive. Even considering that universal literacy would allow more people to be scribes, not everyone can be a scribe. Once those primers wore out from over-use, you'd probably be back to the former situation in a century or so.
Universal education is an ideal, but it is also a luxury provided to us by the printing press. Medieval people were not uneducated because they were stupid or repressed; they were uneducated because it was impossible to educate everyone.*
Religion
I can't tell you how many papers I get from students writing about how everyone in the Middle Ages was Catholic because the Church would burn you at the stake if you weren't, or because people were superstitious. First of all, let's remember that there happened to be plenty of non-Christians around (such as Muslims and Jews) who, by default, weren't Catholic -- and second, what those students mean by "Catholic" isn't even something that was around in the Middle Ages -- because of the printing press.
I'm going to be dealing only with the Western Church here, because I don't think those students mean Catholic in the sense of Eastern Rite vs. Western Rite, but rather Catholic vs. Protestant. What does it mean, ultimately, to be a protestant?
At root is the idea that the Church, or at least the hierarchy of Rome, has a special responsibility in helping people interpret the Bible. Protestantism suggests that the ideal instead is that individuals should interpret the Bible for themselves.
Here's how the myth runs: The evil men of the monolithic Catholic hierarchy, in order to maintain their power, repressed the people by holding a monopoly over the Bible. They could simply say, "God doesn't like what you are doing," and you had no chance to disagree because you had no real direct access to Scripture. Today, however, as red-blooded Americans, we aren't about to listen to some foreigners tell us how to read the Bible (or even to read it at all).
This myth, though, forgets what life was like before the printing press. Sure, it is a nice ideal for everyone to read the Bible -- but what if you can't read? Or what if you can read, but you can't read much, or you can't afford the whole Bible? What then?
In that case, you have to rely on prayer books or psalters (which, if you owned only one book in the Middle Ages, is probably what you owned), and rely on experts with access to more information than you have -- i.e., the Church. In other words, people basically did what we do today regarding issues that the average person simply doesn't have the education or finances to personally investigate. For example, I don't know that the Periodic Table of Elements is accurate, nor do I have the lab equipment to investigate it. Instead, I rely on experts to interpret the chemical universe for me.
When the printing press comes along, it isn't surprising that the first book printed was the Bible. Nor is it surprising that Martin Luther came along in the first generation to be born after the printing press. Suddenly, anyone who could read could have access to the whole Bible; indeed, they could theoretically own any of the commentaries of the Church Fathers. Protestantism as we understand it today simply wasn't possible without the printing press.**
Literacy
It would seem that we've already covered "literacy" in education, but in this case I mean something beyond just functional literacy. Before the printing press, the general assumption was that most people couldn't read, so anything that was written down would be read aloud to illiterate people. People simply didn't read silently -- Saints Jerome and Ambrose were considered astounding geniuses because they could read silently. Even in monasteries, scribes would presumably subvocalize as they copied.
What does this mean for literature? It mitigates in favor of poetry and against prose, in favor of short, episodic texts and against long ones. Poetry is "better" because it sounds better, whereas prose reads easier to the eye than the ear. Ever notice there's no such thing as the medieval novel? Who's going to read an entire novel aloud? Even the earliest writings we consider proto-novels (such as Don Quixote or The Tale of Genji) aren't merely broken up into chapters -- they are broken up into episodes.
Still not convinced that the printing press changed the way we view literacy? Just try reading this blog post aloud. This post presumes that it will be read silently. I've bolded some topic headings -- how do you read boldness? In other places, I have parenthetical comments that aren't part of the flow of the sentence, or footnotes that cannot be read as part of the sentence. Ever know someone who liked to put "air quotes" up with their fingers when they are talking? That action doesn't make sense if you're talking to an illiterate person; it assumes that the person you are talking to can visual the text as words on a page requiring punctuation. Note also that I've not fully explained what "air quotes" are -- I've assumed that if someone doesn't know what they are, they can click on the link to see them demonstrated.
The upshot of this post is simply to remind folks that medieval people understood reading differently than we do. They came at it with a whole different set of assumptions, and those assumptions colored the way they viewed their world, just as our assumptions color the way we view our own. If you keep that in mind, you should start to perceive rich nuances in medieval writings that you might have missed before.
*I'm leaving out here, of course, vocational training of the sort guilds provided. That is a form of education, but it's not the type of education we're talking about here. You don't need to be literate to be a blacksmith or carpenter.
** Yes, I know I'm glossing over Lollardy, but I can't see any way that Lollards could have become as numerous as Protestants without the printing press.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Dragons?
Someone came to the Wordhoard today by Googling this phrase: "Was there such thing as a dragon in medieval times?"
As a public service, let me answer that question.
No.
As a public service, let me answer that question.
No.
Hooray! We're Going to the Carnival!
In the Middle is hosting Carnivalesque XXXVII! Let's read all the ancient and medieval links, and then we can ride the Tilt-a-Whirl!
A special Wordhoard thanks to the Tiny Shriner for MCing the Carnivalesque.
A special Wordhoard thanks to the Tiny Shriner for MCing the Carnivalesque.
Belated: Patrick the Briton
[I wrote this post yesterday, for St. Patrick's Day -- but then our first day back from Spring Break was one emergency after another, until I found myself sleeping soundly in bed without first finishing it off. Here it is, under the philosophy of "better late than never].
With the possible exception of King Arthur, St. Patrick is probably the world's most famous Briton.
"What?!" exclaim the non-medievalists. "Surely you typed that wrong. He was Irish. There are even Shamrock Shakes and everything."
Nope, sorry. Patrick was a Briton, which explains why he was raised a Christian (though in his Confessio he says he "knew not the true God," because the Britons were Christianized more-or-less along with the rest of the Roman Empire. His family must have been Christian for a while, because his grandfather was a priest and his father was a deacon.
So, how did Patrick get associated with Ireland?
Pirates of the Caribbe ... er, I mean, of the Irish Sea! Patrick was kidnapped by Irish pirates and enslaved as a youth. After a few years, he left (it isn't clear whether he was escaped or freed) after a dream told him he would return to his own country. He had some sort of religious training, then returned to Ireland -- and the rest (the shamrock, driving out the snakes, etc) is as much legend as history.
Patrick has what everyone wants in a saint's life -- pirates!
Want to know more about the medieval, non-Shamrock Shake version of St. Patrick? Here are some sources for you:
With the possible exception of King Arthur, St. Patrick is probably the world's most famous Briton.
"What?!" exclaim the non-medievalists. "Surely you typed that wrong. He was Irish. There are even Shamrock Shakes and everything."
Nope, sorry. Patrick was a Briton, which explains why he was raised a Christian (though in his Confessio he says he "knew not the true God," because the Britons were Christianized more-or-less along with the rest of the Roman Empire. His family must have been Christian for a while, because his grandfather was a priest and his father was a deacon.
So, how did Patrick get associated with Ireland?
Pirates of the Caribbe ... er, I mean, of the Irish Sea! Patrick was kidnapped by Irish pirates and enslaved as a youth. After a few years, he left (it isn't clear whether he was escaped or freed) after a dream told him he would return to his own country. He had some sort of religious training, then returned to Ireland -- and the rest (the shamrock, driving out the snakes, etc) is as much legend as history.
Patrick has what everyone wants in a saint's life -- pirates!
Want to know more about the medieval, non-Shamrock Shake version of St. Patrick? Here are some sources for you:
- You can read his Confessio for yourself.
- Scribal Terror talks about St. Patrick and smiths (i.e. blacksmiths).
- Nihil Fit reminds us of the importance of Patrick's monastic movement.
- Heavenfield has an excerpt from Muirchu's Life of Patrick. Muirchu was a medieval Irish historian who wrote the most famous hagography of Patrick.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Cornwell's The Pale Horseman
Steven Till has written several times about Bernard Cornwell's historical fiction, so I was aware of Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles series. Over break, I decided I wanted to read something vaguely medievalist just for fun, so I picked up A Pale Horseman -- which is book 2 in the series, but the local bookstore didn't happen to have the others in stock at the moment.
I thought it was a rolicking good story. In his review, Till finds the protagonist a bit too roguish for his taste, but that's what I rather liked about it. Uhtred isn't a Han Solo-style lovable rogue -- he's kind of an arrogant jerk. I didn't feel under any compulsion to like him, so I didn't much care.
For the scholars out there, the book has all sorts of insider references to King Alfred, and particularly his interest in Boethius. Indeed, there was enough about Boethius that I'll probably have a little post soon explaining who Boethius was for the non-scholars out there.
Anyway, I wouldn't assign it to a class, but A Pale Horseman convinced me to read the rest of the Saxon Series.
I thought it was a rolicking good story. In his review, Till finds the protagonist a bit too roguish for his taste, but that's what I rather liked about it. Uhtred isn't a Han Solo-style lovable rogue -- he's kind of an arrogant jerk. I didn't feel under any compulsion to like him, so I didn't much care.
For the scholars out there, the book has all sorts of insider references to King Alfred, and particularly his interest in Boethius. Indeed, there was enough about Boethius that I'll probably have a little post soon explaining who Boethius was for the non-scholars out there.
Anyway, I wouldn't assign it to a class, but A Pale Horseman convinced me to read the rest of the Saxon Series.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
A Lost Page from the D&D Monster Manual
A brother-in-law sent me a link to "Presidential Candidates as Dungeons and Dragons Characters." The jokes are far more geekish than wonkish, so I thought Wordhoarders might like it.
By the way, in a recent phone call he also revealed that the Wordhoard is the first link they look at every day when they are getting their non-Kenyan news (he and my sister are missionaries in Kenya -- you can find out more here). This gives me the opportunity to offer the first draft of the news. Therefore, here are some of the news items you might not have heard in Kenya:
There -- all your news for the day. Absolutely true.
By the way, in a recent phone call he also revealed that the Wordhoard is the first link they look at every day when they are getting their non-Kenyan news (he and my sister are missionaries in Kenya -- you can find out more here). This gives me the opportunity to offer the first draft of the news. Therefore, here are some of the news items you might not have heard in Kenya:
- In Denmark, Prime Minister Hrothgar is embroiled in controversy over his decision to hire a foreign contractor rather than local labor to take care of a pest control problem in the palace. Opposition leader Unferth claims that the contractor has inflated his level of experience. The debate has grown nasty with counter-claims that M.P. Unferth has a drinking problem.
- French students protested en masse because the Hundred Years War had still not ended by 1437. Said one student, "Eet ees called ze "Hundred Years War," not ze "Hundred and Sixteen Years War." President Sarkozy has vowed to expel the Plantagenets from France to end the conflict.
- In religious news, a Briton slave by the name of Patrick has been riling up the Irish countryside with his evangelism. Herpetologists have called Patrick's ministry "an environmental catastrophe." Also in religious news, the ghost of Dante returned to give a report on the afterlife. According to the ghost of Dante, his predictions about the afterlife had proven to be 87.4% accurate, but that the 3rd circle of Hell had grown much more crowded after the invention of Doritos. Interestingly, no one has ever eaten enough ugali to qualify as one of the gluttonous damned.
- In the markets today, watermill futures are up, and most analysts predict that the Cistercians will have a big quarteras a result. Also, Viking vintners in Greenland have complained that more than a decade of colder-than-average weather has led to weak grape harvests. Viking climatologists worry that we might be in for a few centuries of global cooling. One alarmed Icelandic scientist claimed that if the weather continues in this fashion, in the future Greenland might be little more than an icy wasteland hospitable only to fishermen. Local Eskimo fishermen, on the other hand, cheered the news as a chance to "get rid of all those pesky Norse tourists."
- In sports: Except for tournaments, nothing interesting happened in Europe, nor will anything interesting happen until trade opens up with the New World, bringing with it rubber for balls and trashy soccer hooligans. New World sports -- The Tecpan Panthers defeated the Uxmal Warriors 10-6, the Uaxactun Gators defeated the Palenque Monarchs 7-5, and, in a stunning upset, the Chichen Itza trounced the Quiche Conquerors 16-1.
- On the lighter side of news, the Aachen zoo has a new addition! Abul Abbas, a 9000 pound elephant given to Charlemagne by Caliph Harun al-Rashid, has been wowing visitors to the Holy Roman Empire Elephantarium and Gift Shop. Early next year, zookeepers plan to attempt a mating between Abul Abbas and a bear, hoping to breed a fearsome "Beariphant," the natural enemy to the griffin.
There -- all your news for the day. Absolutely true.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Dating Advice from Me
This is interesting: Highly Eccentric has gotten a request from Nerve.com to participate in an upcoming column (part of a series), Dating Advice from Medievalists. Here's an example of the current installment, "Dating Advice from Comedy-Club Employees."
Me? I'm supposed to be fixing a tiny snafu in the submission of the Curing Elfshot book, coming up with an Alfred the Great/Boethius paper that's been requested of me, and reading the script of the upcoming Beowulf: Prince of the Geats movie so that I can write a piece on race & Beowulf movies for a different volume.
Naturally, I feel that this is not enough to do, so I'll be emailing the writer to volunteer my services as a dating consultant. I feel I am qualified to offer a historical perspective because a.) I'm a medievalist, and b.) I haven't had a date in this millennium.*
*Unless you count my wife, or that hooker I paid $5k for at the Emperors' Club.
Me? I'm supposed to be fixing a tiny snafu in the submission of the Curing Elfshot book, coming up with an Alfred the Great/Boethius paper that's been requested of me, and reading the script of the upcoming Beowulf: Prince of the Geats movie so that I can write a piece on race & Beowulf movies for a different volume.
Naturally, I feel that this is not enough to do, so I'll be emailing the writer to volunteer my services as a dating consultant. I feel I am qualified to offer a historical perspective because a.) I'm a medievalist, and b.) I haven't had a date in this millennium.*
*Unless you count my wife, or that hooker I paid $5k for at the Emperors' Club.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
me grade lots midterms. me brain hurt. me cant use brain rite. me find lots of cheeters. also, many times me reed: "There are many examples of language and expression in the texts we have read this semester. This paper will examine those texts [....] In conclusion, this paper has examined many examples of language and expression in the texts we have read this semester."
see wut me has to endure? o the humanity!
OK, that be todays missellanee. me still gots 5 midterms to grade, but despair keep me from grading them. me hope soon me will be back to reguler blogging. me gots medieval stuf to rite about -- brain just hurt too much.
see wut me has to endure? o the humanity!
- The Ruminate has a series of links to recent news stories.
- In an effort to confuse me, the Swain has another series of news bits over at The Heroic Age.
- Also, for those who need even more links, News for Medievalists has an update -- along with this particular article, that makes me think I should quit jogging and immerse myself more in the medieval.
- Michael Drout continues his life-long campaign to seduce non-humanities folks into medievalism. Muhahaha!
- Tributes to Gary Gygax abound, including Moyen Age, Quid Plura, and Timothy Burke.
- Christopher Roman tells us why he teaches medieval lit.
- Highly Eccentric is thinkin' about thyncan.
- The Weird Medieval Animal Monday was the hyena.
- Heavenfield has featured St. David, King Ecgfrith, and St. Owine.
OK, that be todays missellanee. me still gots 5 midterms to grade, but despair keep me from grading them. me hope soon me will be back to reguler blogging. me gots medieval stuf to rite about -- brain just hurt too much.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Help ... *gasp* ... me ... *gasp*
Today I begin grading the midterms from three of my classes. I don't even have the mental energy to put together the Morning Medieval Miscellany. Within an hour, my mental capacity will be noticably diminished. By the time lunch rolls around, I'll have difficulty putting together sentences. If I don't take a break, I'll be drooling by sunset. If I were to do something stupid, like try to grade them all straight through, the brain damage would likely be permanent.
If my wife really loved me, she'd have smothered me in my sleep last night to spare me the agony of about 110 sophomore-level essays.
If my wife really loved me, she'd have smothered me in my sleep last night to spare me the agony of about 110 sophomore-level essays.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
I haven't had a miscellany for a while because I've been swamped with students panicking over midterms. I'll post this one today regardless of whether I get everything in.
- Got Medieval has had a series of funny posts of late, including one on the relative sexiness of Viking female garb, and one on medieval fanfic.
- Heavenfield gives us a post on the importance of prayer beads in the late Middle Ages, and the Person of the Week, Bishop Trumhere.
- The Weird Medieval Animal of the Week is the badger, an animal known for its teamwork.
- In the Middle, which will soon be hosting Carnivalesque XXXVII, has Karl Steel (with a name like that, he should be a secret agent or a stuntman) on Symkyn, the miller in "The Reeve's Tale," and the abstract from his Exemplaria article. Karl enters the ranks of published scholars! Hooray!
- The Material Medieval Culture Blog tells us of an upcoming online map of medieval Chester that promises to have all sorts of neat features, and also tells us of a medieval art display entitled "Realms of Faith" at the Walters Art Museum.
- The medieval English word of the day is bobbaunce.
- Navit (a.k.a. "Papa's Secret Voodoo Boot") critiques James H. Morey's arguments about Beowulf.
- News for Medievalists has had a couple of updates, with too many interesting items to list.
- Scribal Terror tells us that over 3000 11th century Anglo-Saxon skeletons are to be reinterred. I wish I could give the eulogy at that funeral.
- The Heroic Age has a bunch of links.
OK, there's more ... but I've got to drop off the kiddies at school, and suspect I'll be deluged with students again this morning, so I'll call it quits here for today.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
RIP: Gary Gygax
Gary Gygax, creater of Dungeons & Dragons, died Tuesday morning. Cinerati has some nice commentary. The Tuscaloosa News explains how far-reaching his influence was in gaming, and others tell how Gygax made it cool to be a geek. Certainly Gygax guided many scholars of my generation to medieval studies.
Here's to Gary Gygax, the original Dungeon Master, who has missed his final saving throw.
Here's to Gary Gygax, the original Dungeon Master, who has missed his final saving throw.
þa ymbe hlæw riodan hildediore,
æþelinga bearn, ealra twelfe,
woldon care cwiðan ond kyning mænan,
wordgyd wrecan ond ymb wer sprecan;
eahtodan eorlscipe ond his ellenweorc
duguðum demdon, -- swa hit gedefe bið,
þæt mon his winedryhten wordum herge,
ferhðum freoge, þonne he forð scile
of lichaman læded weorðan.
Swa begnornodon Geata leode
hlafordes hryre, heorðgeneatas;
cwædon þæt he wære wyruldcyninga
manna mildust ond monðwærust,
leodum liðost ond lofgeornost. (Beowulf 3169-3182)
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Brian Fagan's The Great Warming
Here's an audio interview of Brian Fagan, author of The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. The recording is very soft; I had to turn up the volume on my speakers all the way to make it out. The headline on the front page of the National Review website ran, "Brian Fagan says global warming was a positive force in the development of the West during the Middle Ages." Uh, no ... he says it was both good and bad, depending. A far more accurate description is that found on the "Between the Covers" page, which states that Fagan argues that "the warming period of 800-1200 A.D. had its good and bad sides."
Monday, March 03, 2008
The Most Sincere Form of Flattery besides Imitation
Apparently, someone stole a copy of my most recent book, Global Perspectives on Medieval English Literature, Language and Culture. We mailed a copy off to the Wordhoard's 100,000th visitor, but all the winner got was an empty envelope.
At first we assumed that somehow we'd forgotten to put it in the envelope, but no. Two different people were involved in preparing it for shipping and both confirmed that it was in there -- indeed, it had to be in there to weigh what it weighed. No, the book was shipped, but at one point or another it was stolen. I'll be shipping out another copy tomorrow.
Some people might suggest that the thief assumed there was something valuable in the package and opened it, not realizing it was my book. I prefer to believe that the thief was absolutely desperate to get a copy of my book, but would not be satisfied with a brand new copy. No, he wanted a signed copy by the world's most charming and handsome living medievalist (whom modesty forbids me from naming). No doubt he has been surveilling the outgoing mail from Troy University for weeks, patiently biding his time until an opportunity would arrive for him to snatch up that oh-so-coveted signed copy of Global Perspectives.
Well played, sir. Well played.
At first we assumed that somehow we'd forgotten to put it in the envelope, but no. Two different people were involved in preparing it for shipping and both confirmed that it was in there -- indeed, it had to be in there to weigh what it weighed. No, the book was shipped, but at one point or another it was stolen. I'll be shipping out another copy tomorrow.
Some people might suggest that the thief assumed there was something valuable in the package and opened it, not realizing it was my book. I prefer to believe that the thief was absolutely desperate to get a copy of my book, but would not be satisfied with a brand new copy. No, he wanted a signed copy by the world's most charming and handsome living medievalist (whom modesty forbids me from naming). No doubt he has been surveilling the outgoing mail from Troy University for weeks, patiently biding his time until an opportunity would arrive for him to snatch up that oh-so-coveted signed copy of Global Perspectives.
Well played, sir. Well played.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
For your consideration:
- Michael Drout has a post on crackpot theories and Beowulf.
- The Medieval Club of New York has the announcement for their "The Subjects of Friendship, Medieval and Medievalist" event on Friday, March 7th. Me, I'll be at a gala at the Fitzgerald Museum, but if you're out that-a-way, you should consider going.
- The Heroic Age has an update with all sorts of Calls for Papers and the like.
- Steven Till has the medieval term of the day, investiture, as well as the cover art for George R.R. Martin's next book.
- Navit struggles with primogeniture in Beowulf.
- Heavenfield has questions about King Alfrith of Northumbria, his relationship to Aldhelm, and his baptism.
- The weird medieval tribe this week is the Panotioi. Many of the descendants of the Panotioi have either been President or have run for the office.
- JLJ also gives us another installment of Today in Medieval History, in which she explains the origins of leap year. Please note, however, the skull & crossbones on her arm -- she's turned to piracy!
- Modern Medieval has been boasting that it is the top Google hit for the phrase "medieval porn." In an effort to attain medieval online supremacy, therefore, I include the following words in this post, carefully selected from Google Zeitgeist: American Idol, anna nicole smith, badoo, barack obama, bill richardson, britney spears, chris benoit, club penguin, dailymotion, ebuddy, facebook, fred thompson, Heroes, hillary clinton, hi5, iphone, iran, joe biden, john edwards, john mccain, mitt romney, myspace, nokes (ok, not really, but I was feeling left out), paris hilton, ron paul, rudy giuliani, second life, tmz, transformers, vanessa hudgens, webkinz, youtube, 2007 cricket world cup.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The Best Medievalist News -- EVER!!!
Here is the best possible news for medievalists. Oh, Boethius, who needs the consolation of philosophy when you've got mead to console you?
How I Know I'm a Medieval Geek
I spent several minutes examining the image at the top of this post, thinking that the hand looked familiar but I couldn't remember from where, before I realized I still hadn't read the actual post.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
OE by DL, anyone?
I've had several people who don't live in Troy express an interest in taking my Old English class via distance learning. Now, the problem here is the phrase "express an interest," which is meant to imply a noncommital comment.
At the moment, my Old English class is scheduled to be a traditional "brick & mortar" class meeting TTh 11:30-12:45. I can fight to get an evening slot instead, however, and see if I can get the University to let me teach it as a distance learning class.*
To do this would take a expenditure of political capital, as well as a big chunk of my time, not to mention re-designing the class to work in the DL environment. It's worth doing if I get enough people wanting to take it via distance learning, but definitely not worth it for two or three folks.
Therefore, I am willing to fight to change this to a DL class if I get enough commitments from you folks out there to take it. Notice I said "commitments" -- that is, you promise to take the class if it is at all possible -- a general vague interest is not enough. Please also note that the University isn't going to use all this expensive infrastructure for people who want to, ehem, "unofficially audit the class." You'll have to commit to actually taking the class as an official student.
This class is intended for undergraduates with no previous experience with Old English. Folks who have previously studied OE will not find much of use here, but on the good side there is no prerequisite. We'll start with a brief bit of the history of the English language, followed by a week's study of modern English grammar (which we'll use as a basis for the study of OE grammar -- those of you with Latin background will already know all that stuff). After that, the first half of the semester is learning grammar and vocabulary, so grading will be mostly by quiz, though you'll also be expected to do an oral recitation of some OE verse.** The second half of the semester will be translations of verse and prose.*** Every day I'll assign a certain number of lines for you to translate, and every day in class we'll go over the translations together. The final project will be to translate a certain number of lines of verse (usually around 20-30), and to write an accompanying essay defending the translation and editorial choices you made.
So, the upshot is this: If the above class sounds cool, and you are willing to commit to take the class from August to December 2008, e-mail me this week. If I get enough commitments, I'll fight to get a DL slot. If not, well, I hope you can find an Old English class near you. By the way, when you e-mail me, please also include your real name and contact information, not just your nom de blog.
*i.e. real-time, not e-mail, wherein distant students are watching on a monitor and participating via video cam and microphone.
** This is the part that current and future high school teachers find particularly useful -- confidence in pronunciation.
***No, we won't be translating Beowulf. I find it's too hard for beginners, though I may find a very tiny easy section for us to translate. We will however, be translating a few dirty riddles near the end of the semester as a little reward for those who have survived the Old English boot camp experience. Riddles are really, really hard to translate, but are so much fun that they're worth it.
At the moment, my Old English class is scheduled to be a traditional "brick & mortar" class meeting TTh 11:30-12:45. I can fight to get an evening slot instead, however, and see if I can get the University to let me teach it as a distance learning class.*
To do this would take a expenditure of political capital, as well as a big chunk of my time, not to mention re-designing the class to work in the DL environment. It's worth doing if I get enough people wanting to take it via distance learning, but definitely not worth it for two or three folks.
Therefore, I am willing to fight to change this to a DL class if I get enough commitments from you folks out there to take it. Notice I said "commitments" -- that is, you promise to take the class if it is at all possible -- a general vague interest is not enough. Please also note that the University isn't going to use all this expensive infrastructure for people who want to, ehem, "unofficially audit the class." You'll have to commit to actually taking the class as an official student.
This class is intended for undergraduates with no previous experience with Old English. Folks who have previously studied OE will not find much of use here, but on the good side there is no prerequisite. We'll start with a brief bit of the history of the English language, followed by a week's study of modern English grammar (which we'll use as a basis for the study of OE grammar -- those of you with Latin background will already know all that stuff). After that, the first half of the semester is learning grammar and vocabulary, so grading will be mostly by quiz, though you'll also be expected to do an oral recitation of some OE verse.** The second half of the semester will be translations of verse and prose.*** Every day I'll assign a certain number of lines for you to translate, and every day in class we'll go over the translations together. The final project will be to translate a certain number of lines of verse (usually around 20-30), and to write an accompanying essay defending the translation and editorial choices you made.
So, the upshot is this: If the above class sounds cool, and you are willing to commit to take the class from August to December 2008, e-mail me this week. If I get enough commitments, I'll fight to get a DL slot. If not, well, I hope you can find an Old English class near you. By the way, when you e-mail me, please also include your real name and contact information, not just your nom de blog.
*i.e. real-time, not e-mail, wherein distant students are watching on a monitor and participating via video cam and microphone.
** This is the part that current and future high school teachers find particularly useful -- confidence in pronunciation.
***No, we won't be translating Beowulf. I find it's too hard for beginners, though I may find a very tiny easy section for us to translate. We will however, be translating a few dirty riddles near the end of the semester as a little reward for those who have survived the Old English boot camp experience. Riddles are really, really hard to translate, but are so much fun that they're worth it.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
The rain is really pouring here, so I got to work a bit late. Let's see how many of these I can post before I teach Canterbury Tales.
- Michael Drout announces that he's finished the Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems for Anglo-Saxon Aloud. Hooray! I'm going to use that as a resource for my Old English class in the fall. By the way, watch this space for an announcement about the OE class.
- Mirror in the Smoke has a post about medieval lesbianism and other transgressive sexual acts.
- Jeff Sypeck sees Njal's Saga in a car wreck.
- Modern Medieval gets in on the "Why I Teach Medieval Lit" action.
- Steve Muhlberger points us to the Anglo-Norman Dictionary Online.
- Steven Till's medieval word of the day: heriot.
- Jennifer Lynn Jordan points us to the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia. Oh, please, please, PLEASE someone create an entry for me! To have my name in the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia ... well, with a career highlight such as that, I could just immediately retire.
- The Weird Medieval Animal is the dipsa.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Sword & Shield Saturday
Saturday we hosted a Society for Creative Anachronism demonstration on Troy's campus, and had about 50+ students show up. I originally met the SCA group doing research for a book, and they really wanted to come to campus, in large part because they are hoping to reinvigorate an SCA chapter that was at Troy University, but had disappeared years earlier.
I thought I might find a venue to invite them, probably in conjunction with something having to do with medieval literature, but then something odd happened. The International Student Cultural Organization (of which I'm the faculty advisor) heard about the SCA Pillage on the Plains weekend, and wanted to sponsor something like that for international students. At first, I tried to talk them out of it -- I didn't really get the connection -- but they said that they really wanted to do something different than the usual bowling/dances/trips. This sure seemed different, so we set it up.
The only disappointment about the event was that we were hoping for more of our new international students, but all the int'l students who showed up have been here for a while. Except for that, the event was well-attended, and after four hours we still had a crowd. At one point, I even had to bully some students away from the manuscript illumination demo to allow the scribe a chance to eat lunch! We even had a number of kids come, and they had a great time. Unfortunately, my camera started malfunctioning part-way through the event, so my images are limited, but here are a few:
Explaining to students
Preparing for battle
Spinning
Discussing medieval fashion
Weaving and manuscript illumination
Fighting on the Quad
Little Jedis
Friday, February 22, 2008
Morning Medieval Miscellany
Enjoy!
- Steven Till discusses the legal battle over Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
- News for Medievalists has an update, including an article about Wikipedia's refusal to remove images of Muhammad.
- Heavenfield's Person of the Week is Cynefrith, Abbot of Gilling. The question is asked there: why did he leave Wearmouth-Jarrow for Ireland? The answer is obvious: he heard Shamrock Shakes were available year-round there.
- Geoffrey Chaucer (the one who hath a blog) laments the passing of Sir William, aka "Ulrich von Liechtenstein"
- Dr. Virago tells us why she teaches medieval literature.
- Medieval Material Culture Blog gives us an article with this opening line: "The tiny Channel Island of Sark will meet on Thursday to discuss plans to bring Europe’s last feudal state in line with western democracies." Um, perhaps I'm missing something here, but if they've been voting on this issue, in what way are they feudal? Is it only the Chief Pleas who are meeting together to vote on this?
- Jonathan Jarrett has a post about the motives of Crusaders, and the rights/responsibilities of historians when they moralize about the past.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sword & Shield Saturday
Live near Troy? We're having a medieval demonstration for the new international students. Here's the official press release:
Troy University’s MediEvolution Project and the International Student Cultural Organization welcome the community to a Medieval Demonstration on February 23rd from 10 am to 2 pm on Shackelford Quad in Troy, AL. This event features the Society for Creative Anachronism, a non-profit educational organization devoted to the study of the Middle Ages. The event will feature weapons demonstration, dance, arts and crafts, and much more. Troy University main campus hosts the event, encouraging visitors from the surrounding community. The International Student Cultural Organization (ISCO) is an organization devoted to promoting cultural exchange and understanding between international and American students. The Troy University English Department’s MediEvolution Project promotes medieval studies through popular outreach, such as this demonstration.
Morning Medieval Miscellany
As usual, lots of interesting medievalia out there:
- Will McLean offers some medieval research resources, particularly around Middle English.
- John Holbo offers a review of Mervyn Peake: The Man and His Art. OK, not technically medieval, but I wanted to throw it in anyway.
- Scribal Terror offers a tale of "terror, pestilence, and a very nasty-smelling dead guy who wouldn't stay buried" from medieval England.
- Medieval Material Culture has a link to an article from the Telegraph, "Mutilated Body Identified as Edward II's Lover" ... indicaing that at least SOME of the dead in medieval England stayed that way.
- In the Middle links to the same article, and also asks what scholarly work has been done on the medieval body, as well as what needs to be done.
- Jeff Sypeck has a post contrasting sweet, Playmobil medievalism with the medievalism of the Battle of Kosovo. Definitely worth reading.
- Our Weird Medieval Animal this week is the caladrius, a bird that, if real, would be bred by life insurance companies.
- Heroic Dreams tells us of haunted castles, and a new element of the Highlander franchise.
- St. Columba offers marital counseling, and Heavenfield defends all the people who weren't Bede in the Age of Bede.
- Carl Pyrnum argues that his Appalachian roots make him a better medievalist, and also offers some medieval porn. Don't worry; it's work-friendly. And, by the way, by linking his page to the phrase "medieval porn," I've probably just given him the highest Google profile of any medieval blog.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Elves and Fairies
I've been thinking a lot about fairies recently -- perhaps more than an adult man should. Someone asked me a question about fairies sometime ago, and it started me thinking about how fairies manifest themselves in our culture.
Medieval elves have always struck me as being somewhat closer to our contemporary idea of fairies: small, mischievous little sprites, with just a bit more of a dangerous edge. Tinkerbell might betray you to Captain Hook, but medieval elves could shoot you and your livestock with invisible arrows that would make you sick, perhaps even mortally ill.
In that way, I don't think medieval elves occupied the position of "other" in the sense of being non/human.* There were "others" in the medieval mind -- for example, trolls in Scandinavian folklore often seem very nearly human, and certain kinds of fairies (the kind that look more like The Fairy-Queen or Midsummer Night's Dream fairies), as well as all those weird foreign tribes who are cynephalous or acephalous or scatocephalous.** Instead, they are a way of labelling the unknown.
** OK, I made that last one up, but I know some people like that.
Medieval elves have always struck me as being somewhat closer to our contemporary idea of fairies: small, mischievous little sprites, with just a bit more of a dangerous edge. Tinkerbell might betray you to Captain Hook, but medieval elves could shoot you and your livestock with invisible arrows that would make you sick, perhaps even mortally ill.
In that way, I don't think medieval elves occupied the position of "other" in the sense of being non/human.* There were "others" in the medieval mind -- for example, trolls in Scandinavian folklore often seem very nearly human, and certain kinds of fairies (the kind that look more like The Fairy-Queen or Midsummer Night's Dream fairies), as well as all those weird foreign tribes who are cynephalous or acephalous or scatocephalous.** Instead, they are a way of labelling the unknown.
Being "elfshot," which sounds ridiculous to the modern mind, is strikingly similar to the ideas that you and I hold to. "What? Invisible flying elves shoot you with invisible darts that you cannot even feel, and you become ill? Preposterous! Everyone knows that invisible flying creatures called germs and viruses, that you cannot even feel, enter your body and you become ill!"
How many times have we gone to see a physician about an ailment, and we are told "it's some kind of bug going around -- here, I'll prescribe you an antibiotic." Throwing antibiotics at patients is another way of saying that we don't know what is causing the illness, but it's probably some kind of bacteria. Ditto for a lot of other ailments. One problem with studying Latin is that you'll hear from your physician that you have something with a Latin name, and you realize from that Latin name that they don't know what's causing it either.
So, we throw a Latin tag on it, we label it "viral" or "bacterial" or whatnot, and we call it a day. As many times as not, this is really our way of saying that illness is caused by a variety of invisible things, and it could be any one of them. Elves and fairies occupy the same space, I think. Unlike witchcraft, which suggests a malevolent human agent, elves are fairies are just part of the natural world. When we same someone is "elfshot," we are saying that an illness is caused by one of any number of invisible things, and it could be any of them.
What about the other kinds of elves, trolls, and fae, the big ones? The ones who are "others," and nearly human, occupy a more malevolent (or at least alien) intelligence in the world. I use the word "alien" intentionally, because aliens (the outerspace, abducting kind) work in the same way for our culture. If Fox Mulder had lived a millennium earlier, he'd have been an Inquisitor, looking into claims that children had been abducted by fairies, or were perhaps changlings. Indeed, our "alien/human hybrid" of science fiction is just another version of the changling.
We haven't really changed much at all. Elves, fairies, changlings or viruses, bacteria and aliens -- in many ways we still occupy the same mental geographical landscape, we've just changed the names of some of the more prominent features.
** OK, I made that last one up, but I know some people like that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
