Morning Medieval Miscellany

Good morning/evening! Rivkah again. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving! While you were eating and relaxing, medievalists have not flagged in their bloggery; here is a small selection of material from this past weekend:

• Over at A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe, there are two seminary reflections; one regarding the eleventh century reform and the other, change instigated by Islamic conquests. The author also posts about the recent BBC Scotland controversy about their new history program and recommends David Beard's Archaeology in Europe for timely updates. (Yep, it's going on my feed-reader.)
• Muhlberger raises an eyebrow at Pope Innocent III's threats during the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
• StevenTill posts a short history of the Anglo-Saxons in Medieval England and also introduces us to the lovely word machicolation.
• Magistra et Mater reflects on the way that Carolingian propaganda contributed to their internal conflicts.
• Quid Plura? brings to our attention the root galangal, which seems to have disappeared from Western cooking.
• In the CFPs, we have Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture from the Heroic Age and Within Reach: European Peripheries in the Middle Ages from Hwaet?
• The iTunes Store is now offering Michael Drout's Bard of the Middle Ages: The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Groupies will know him from Anglo-Saxon Aloud (which is on Psalm 122 as of the 26th).
• Bourgeois Nerd calls to our attention a slasher at the British Library.
  
• Looking to get involved? Quod She would like some suggestions about keeping herself interested in the discussions of a survey course in medieval lit. and a user from LJ's Hwaet? would like input on his upcoming paper.

Image from Arundel 162 f.1, courtesy of the British Library.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

... being a Medieval Miscellany in which I test Dr. Richard Scott Nokes' patience with my definitions of the terms "medieval" and "relevant." (My Christmas list is both medieval and relevant... really!)

• In anticipation of Black Friday, Got Medieval offers a unique shopping experience for the medievalist on your gift list -- fine simian products and magnetized Historic Personals. Avoid the mad mall rush! (And tell my mom. Because she thinks I need more kitchen utensils. And really - I don't. Papa John's Pizza treats us just fine during the last month of the semester, thanks.)
• Royal charters, frontier settlements, and an "I told you so" are on tap at A Corner of Tenth Century Europe.
• In the Middle has a call for papers for Blackwell Compass's first-ever virtual humanities conference, "Breaking Down Barriers."
• News for Medievalists has a review of Henry Hitching's The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English.
• Mary Kate Hurley at Old English in New York wonders if we can think of Old English poetry "without loss."
• Viking Society Publications online, for free - including Dorothea Cokes Memorial Lectures, 110 years' worth of Saga-Book volumes, and facing-page translations of Gunnlaugs saga (ed. Quirk), Heiðreks saga (ed. Tolkien), Völsunga saga (ed. Finch), and Jómsvíkinga saga (ed. Blake). Courtesy Old Norse News.
• Chime in on your favorite Gawain manuscript at Per Omnia Saecula.
• Italian choral script illuminations are on display at the Met as of this week. Courtesy Medieval Material Culture.
• Slouching Towards Extimacy has questions about angels in Chretien de Troyes. Help her out, because all the pizza has gone to her brain, making it, er... greasy. Yeah.
  
• Lost in Transcription has Emo Poems: the Middle English version.

Seriously, this is a bit early for "morning" because I have some papers to finish grading before I can get on the road for the telos of turkey -- but I hope you enjoy these relevant medieval tidbits as much as I'm going to enjoy cranberry sauce (not pizza!) later this week.

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.

OK, that's it. Happy Easter!

Morning Medieval Miscellany

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

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

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

Morning Medieval Miscellany

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

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

Until there, here's your Morning Medieval Miscellany:

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