A number of people have asked me to blog on James Cameron's claim to have found the tomb of Jesus (and his ancillary claim that Jesus is in the tomb, and therefore presumably is not resurrected, and therefore presumably is not the Son of God). I've endeavored in recent months, however, to keep the Wordhoard focused on medievalist stuff.
So all I will say on the topic is this: Now you all know the eyerolling exasperation medievalists feel whenever a new documentary airs claiming that we have found the "true historical King Arthur" or the "real Holy Grail" or whatever the flavor of the month is. Here is a fictionalized composite version of a conversation I've had many, many times:
Interlocutor: Did you see that show on the History Channel last night?
Me: No, I didn't.
Int: They found the grave of the real King Arthur!
Me: Oh, really?
Int: You didn't know about this?
Me: No.
Int: (shocked) Shouldn't you know, though? I mean, this is big for your field!
Me: Not really. It isn't true.
Int: How can you say it isn't true? You didn't even see the show.
Me: Because King Arthur isn't a real historical person.
Int: You mean there wasn't really a person named King Arthur?
Me: Well, there may have been someone in history named Arthur, but the person we think of is entirely legendary.
Int: (firmly) No, no, you're wrong. Arthur was real, and they just found his grave!
Me: How can you be so sure?
Int: They used all sorts of scientific evidence, like satillite imaging and carbon dating and stuff.
Me: Uh huh. Listen, all the carbon dating in the world can't make a legendary person real. It's just stuff exaggerated to make a documentary.
Int: (exasperated) Well, it was narrated by Leonard Nimoy, after all. It must be true.
At least James Cameron is making stupid claims about a historically real personage. Just wait until you see the sequel: "James Cameron Presents: The Final Resting Place of the Holy Grail, in the Tomb of Jesus, Found in the Lost City of Atlantis, Right Next Door to the Titanic." Coming to an IMAX theater near you.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Anglo-Saxon Aloud
Am I busy this week? Well, it has taken me three days to post on this topic, so you be the judge.
Michael Drout announced an exciting new project recently, Anglo-Saxon Aloud. This is semi-daily podcasts of about 50-100 lines of Old English poetry from the six-volume set called the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (those of us in the biz usually just call it the ASPR). By Drout's calculation he'll have read the entire corpus of extant Old English poetry in a year.
In its current form, I'm not sure how much value the podcasts are. After all, who wants to know what the Old English Genesis lines 103-68 sounds like? After each poem is done, though, then you'll have something quite valuable, since someone might like to hear the the whole of the OE Genesis, conveniently broken up into little chapters.
I suspect that people won't really understand the value of the project until Drout gets to volumes III and VI of the ASPR. Vol III is the Exeter Book, and Vol VI is the Minor Poems. With the exception of Beowulf (in Vol IV), these two volumes represent the bulk of the most popular poems, I think. Indeed, in coming years lazy ol' me might not re-read the Anglo-Saxon poems I assign -- I might just download 'em and listen to them as podcasts.
A cool idea whose time has come.
Michael Drout announced an exciting new project recently, Anglo-Saxon Aloud. This is semi-daily podcasts of about 50-100 lines of Old English poetry from the six-volume set called the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (those of us in the biz usually just call it the ASPR). By Drout's calculation he'll have read the entire corpus of extant Old English poetry in a year.
In its current form, I'm not sure how much value the podcasts are. After all, who wants to know what the Old English Genesis lines 103-68 sounds like? After each poem is done, though, then you'll have something quite valuable, since someone might like to hear the the whole of the OE Genesis, conveniently broken up into little chapters.
I suspect that people won't really understand the value of the project until Drout gets to volumes III and VI of the ASPR. Vol III is the Exeter Book, and Vol VI is the Minor Poems. With the exception of Beowulf (in Vol IV), these two volumes represent the bulk of the most popular poems, I think. Indeed, in coming years lazy ol' me might not re-read the Anglo-Saxon poems I assign -- I might just download 'em and listen to them as podcasts.
A cool idea whose time has come.
Friday, February 23, 2007
About: Medieval History
About: Medieval History has been kind enough to feature the Wordhoard today. I think I've mentioned in this space before that Melissa Snell's About page is probably my favorite medieval general reference page, and she was kind enough to provide me with what information she could for my article "Medievalists without Borders," which should be forthcoming in Medieval English Studies this month.
Thanks Melissa!
Thanks Melissa!
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Review of Bagby's Beowulf
I am probably the only Anglo-Saxonist in the world who has never seen Bagby perform live, so when a DVD of Benjamin Bagby's Beowulf was made commercially available, I popped it to the top of my NetFlix queue.
Bagby is a fellow who has been making a name for himself for his oral performances of Beowulf that are intended to replicate the experience of hearing the poem recited by a scop (an Anglo-Saxon oral poet). Bagby has an Anglo-Saxon-style harp that he uses to accompany the poem, and he sings it more than chants it. For a clip of one of his performances, look here (note that the DVD is of a different performance, and the sound quality is better on the DVD too).
My assumption was that this was going to be something to appeal only to scholars like me, and not the general public -- not even to smart fans of all things medieval. After viewing it, I do think that in its feature-length form (at about an hour and forty minutes, it still only takes us from the beginning through the Grendel sections) is probably too long for all but the most intrepid amatuers. Nevertheless, the performance is smashing, and absolutely captivating. For the non-scholar out there, I would recommend renting (or buying) it and watching as much as you can enjoy. That might mean watching it in 30-minute hunks, or that might mean skipping ahead in the chapters straight to the fight with Grendel -- but it's worth it.
My son (seven years old) watched about ten minutes of it. Though he can read, he couldn't read the subtitles fast enough, so I had to read them aloud as we went. He wandered off, and told me to call him back when we got to the fight with Grendel. I got so lost in it during the fight scene that I forgot to call him back, so when he came back in later, I had to go back on the DVD and re-do the scene for him. Just to clarify -- a seven-year-old boy insisted on having a translation read aloud to him of a guy sitting on a stool playing a harp in a foreign language. þæt wæs god scop!
I was a little disappointed by the subtitles. You've got two choices: English or none. I really would have liked to have had Old English subtitles available, because much of it was sung too quickly or with too much embelishment for me to follow in the original language. I could have watched with a book in my lap, but I felt that it would detract from the experience.
The DVD contains two special features, too. In one, Bagby talks about the construction and tuning of the harp, and this section is accessible to any viewer. I'm pretty musically illiterate, and I followed it. Another section, though, is a roundtable discussion by Bagby, John Miles Foley, Thomas Cable, and Mark Amodio. At first, the discussion seemed to be aimed at a general audience, with the participants explaining things that the general public wouldn't know about -- such as the 1731 fire at the Cotton Library -- but by the end they seem to have forgotten themselves, and begin making oblique references to things that non-scholars aren't going to know anything about. For example, they discuss Alfred Lord's research on oral poets at great length without ever explaining what they are talking about. It seems to me that nobody who isn't already a scholar would get that reference. Still, the roundtable is interesting; if you are a scholar, I would recommend watching the whole thing, and if you are a non-scholar, I would recommend watching until you don't understand what they are talking about any more.
Bagby is a fellow who has been making a name for himself for his oral performances of Beowulf that are intended to replicate the experience of hearing the poem recited by a scop (an Anglo-Saxon oral poet). Bagby has an Anglo-Saxon-style harp that he uses to accompany the poem, and he sings it more than chants it. For a clip of one of his performances, look here (note that the DVD is of a different performance, and the sound quality is better on the DVD too).
My assumption was that this was going to be something to appeal only to scholars like me, and not the general public -- not even to smart fans of all things medieval. After viewing it, I do think that in its feature-length form (at about an hour and forty minutes, it still only takes us from the beginning through the Grendel sections) is probably too long for all but the most intrepid amatuers. Nevertheless, the performance is smashing, and absolutely captivating. For the non-scholar out there, I would recommend renting (or buying) it and watching as much as you can enjoy. That might mean watching it in 30-minute hunks, or that might mean skipping ahead in the chapters straight to the fight with Grendel -- but it's worth it.
My son (seven years old) watched about ten minutes of it. Though he can read, he couldn't read the subtitles fast enough, so I had to read them aloud as we went. He wandered off, and told me to call him back when we got to the fight with Grendel. I got so lost in it during the fight scene that I forgot to call him back, so when he came back in later, I had to go back on the DVD and re-do the scene for him. Just to clarify -- a seven-year-old boy insisted on having a translation read aloud to him of a guy sitting on a stool playing a harp in a foreign language. þæt wæs god scop!
I was a little disappointed by the subtitles. You've got two choices: English or none. I really would have liked to have had Old English subtitles available, because much of it was sung too quickly or with too much embelishment for me to follow in the original language. I could have watched with a book in my lap, but I felt that it would detract from the experience.
The DVD contains two special features, too. In one, Bagby talks about the construction and tuning of the harp, and this section is accessible to any viewer. I'm pretty musically illiterate, and I followed it. Another section, though, is a roundtable discussion by Bagby, John Miles Foley, Thomas Cable, and Mark Amodio. At first, the discussion seemed to be aimed at a general audience, with the participants explaining things that the general public wouldn't know about -- such as the 1731 fire at the Cotton Library -- but by the end they seem to have forgotten themselves, and begin making oblique references to things that non-scholars aren't going to know anything about. For example, they discuss Alfred Lord's research on oral poets at great length without ever explaining what they are talking about. It seems to me that nobody who isn't already a scholar would get that reference. Still, the roundtable is interesting; if you are a scholar, I would recommend watching the whole thing, and if you are a non-scholar, I would recommend watching until you don't understand what they are talking about any more.
News for Medievalists
Peter Konieczny has a new blog entitled "News for Medievalists," which is exactly what it sounds like: news clippings relevant to medieval issues from various press sources. Check it out.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
'S up with Rate My Professors?
I had over a hundred Google hits last night from people seeking Rate My Professors. Did something happen in the news that I don't know about?
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Great Moments in Textual Scholarship
Behold! Bagby's Beowulf!
Benjamin Bagby's performance of Beowulf, which is basically him performing it to an Anglo-Saxon harp, is now available for purchase for just under twenty bucks. If you want to see a clip of Bagby performing, there's one available here at his website.
Or, if you're cheap like me, you'd just get it on netflix. Mine is supposed to arrive today, so for Valentine's Day we might just be snuggled up listening to tales of troll dismemberment.
Or, if you're cheap like me, you'd just get it on netflix. Mine is supposed to arrive today, so for Valentine's Day we might just be snuggled up listening to tales of troll dismemberment.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Why I Hate Michael Drout
I am currently being haunted by the Index That Would Not Die! I finally, after years (sic!) of chasing after people, got all the materials for the Curing Elf-shot and Other Mysterious Maladies book, and planned to get it in its more-or-less final form by the end of the week, when the Index That Would Not Die rose from its grave again, forcing me to beat it back down with a shovel while ignoring all the other projects that need to get done. Every time I think the Index is dead, it comes back again and forces me to perform hours of tedious work.
So, here I am, battling to the undeath with Index That Would Not Die, and what does the evil Michael Drout do? He posts Drout's Quick and Dirty Indexing System, and includes in the post this line: "I am getting my Wheaton Research Partners students ready to start indexing..."
You have students to do your indexing for you? I hate you, Michael Drout, oh how I loathe you!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go off and do some more index editing, followed by drinking gin in a fetal position in the corner.
So, here I am, battling to the undeath with Index That Would Not Die, and what does the evil Michael Drout do? He posts Drout's Quick and Dirty Indexing System, and includes in the post this line: "I am getting my Wheaton Research Partners students ready to start indexing..."
You have students to do your indexing for you? I hate you, Michael Drout, oh how I loathe you!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go off and do some more index editing, followed by drinking gin in a fetal position in the corner.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Raising the Profile of Medieval Bloggers
Ms. Laing posted the following as a comment to "A Rant on Medieval Blogs and Links":
It seems so weird to me that I've become known as a veteran in an activity I've only been doing for a year-and-a-half, but such is the cyber life. Rather than responding in the comments of that old post, I thought I'd move the conversation up here to the forefront.
Blogging, like any other form of writing, has its own conventions. These conventions are still ill-defined for blogging because of the newness of the genre, but they are there. Because of its ease, blogging has become a sort of catch-all form of quick and simple publication, but in some cases the genre acts against the purposes of the writing. I think that the specific case of Ms. Laing's class might be that the conventions of blogging don't exactly mesh with what her class is trying to do, which may be the reason she isn't getting the traffic she would like. Rather than deal with her specifics, though, I'd rather deal more generally with the issue of how we increase blog medieval blog traffic.
First of all, let's acknowledge that though there is a potential problem about profile among medieval bloggers, it could be worse. A Google search I performed on the word "medieval" today yielded not one single blog in the first 20 pages of hits (and I got sick of looking at that point), but for the most part the hits in those first twenty pages were decent sites promoting books or medieval studies programs. In trying to raise our profile, then, it should not necessarily be our goal to displace those other sites. Our goal should be to create a complimentary structure, not a competing structure.
Blogging is about conversation. In my view (and I know I have colleagues who disagree vociferously about this), blogging is about public conversation, not just scholarly conversation. I'm always glad when I get comments from other scholars, of course, but we've also got Listserv e-mail groups that perform that same function. Though the cliche of the blogosphere is as an "echo chamber," in my mind the goal is to reach beyond our little communities.
As of this writing, the Wordhoard has had just under 50,000 unique visitors. To give some absurdly exact figures, as of this moment the Unlocked Wordhoard has averaged 69.6 unique visitors per day. We have regular visitors from every continent except Antarctica (and I'm working on researching Antarctic medieval issues, such as the Frozen Knights of South Frisia). Pretty fancy, eh? Pretty successful, eh? Gosh, I must be the most influential medievalist in the whole woooooorld!
Well, not really. Let's consider the first month. That very first month I had 56 unique visitors, and I was pretty happy to get them. When measured against current events sites like Little Green Footballs and the Daily Kos, that number is so tiny as to be microscopic, but this isn't a current events site, and can never hope to get that kind of traffic. So how did I go from 56 visitors a month to more than that every day?
Currency. Not money, but the true currency of the internet: links. Links are everything. No links and you are bankrupt. Many links and you are cyber-wealthy. And like any other good capitalist, I understand that currency gets its true value from being traded.
My first big incoming link was from Poliblog. A colleague here at Troy University has a successful blog named Poliblog, and when he discovered my blog he linked here, and got me my first bump in traffic (by the way, his post on The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging is required reading for anyone intending to blog, and it was written as a gentle rebuke to me, at that time an unrepentant sinner). The second big bump was Evangelical Outpost, where Joe Carter has linked to me a few times. Interestingly, being put on The Truth Laid Bear's Academic community, which I thought was THE BIG TIME, has yielded almost no traffic -- indeed, I can't remember the last time I got a single referral from there.
About 90% of my traffic is from Google, which often sends people to my page when they are seeking information about a midieval literary topic. Somehow I've gotten into a golden circle wherein people search for terms, are sent to me, and link to me, which in turn raises my Google profile even higher. The bumps from Poliblog and Evangelical Outpost aside (please note that neither are medieval or literary sites), I did this quite on accident, through a very simple method -- engaging in a conversation.
Aside from the very, very good advice Steven Taylor gives in his Seven Deadly Sins (pinging your blogroll, using Trackbacks, etc.), my main advice is to engage in conversation with the kind of people you want to link back to you. Be a promiscuous commentor and linker. When you go on someone's page and make an interesting comment, they'll become interested in YOU, and will more likely click that profile link back to your page. Sometimes, nothing comes of that, but sometimes they add you to their blogroll.
Commenting, though, is not enough. You need also to have extended responses on your own page. If your comments are more than a few sentences, consider writing them up as a post to your own blog and linking to the original post. Even if you have zero traffic on your blog, this can get you noticed. In my own case, I check my list of referrers every few days to see if there is anyone I should add to my blogroll. Linking to me will often get me to add you to my blogroll, with a few exceptions (such as static sites that don't update). Get into a real conversation, and people will begin to take notice of what's on your blog.
Now, back to the problem of the conventions of blogging. It strikes me that Ms. Laing's blog isn't really conducive to conversation. It has multiple posts, but these are all posted on two days. Since these are student papers, scholars aren't likely to comment much on them, because we've got our own student papers to comment on. Non-scholars are even less likely to comment. It isn't that there's anything wrong with putting papers out in the public domain to ask for comments, it is simply that a blog might not be the best forum for that. Presumably this post and the link will send a little traffic there, but in a week the link will have slipped into the archives, and then what? Somehow you've got to get those student papers in conversation with the blogosphere.
People look at the prominent medieval bloggers and think, "those guys all talk to each other because they are prominent" -- but that's backwards. We're prominent because we all talk with each other. Look at how many of the medieval bloggers are grad students or are off in academic backwaters. The difference is that we talk to one another, and so we notice one another, and trade in the currency of links.
So, medieval bloggers out there, let's raise our profile. Link like you work in a sausage plant. Praise the work of your colleagues when it is praiseworthy. Spread the word about interesting medieval events. Make off-the-cuff-but-on-topic comments. Respectfully but firmly disagree with one another. Be funny, be intimate, be academic. Remember this above all: Your field is medieval studies, which is INHERENTLY COOL! People will be interested if you start talking about it publically! Don't believe me? I've got 50,000 unique visitors who say otherwise, and would probably love to hear what you have to say too.
I am teaching an online freshman medieval history and literature course for Western Michigan University (yup, I have the joy of living in the heart of Kzoo's congress). I am having my student groups write essays on various pieces of medieval literature as a part of their course and we post the drafts at http://www.mdvl1450.blogspot.com/ in order for them to get real life responses to their work. I want them to see that more people than just their professor care about the Middle Ages, but I am not getting much/any traffic to comment on their essays. I linked to your blog and a few others I found, do you have any other suggestions for a newbie?
It seems so weird to me that I've become known as a veteran in an activity I've only been doing for a year-and-a-half, but such is the cyber life. Rather than responding in the comments of that old post, I thought I'd move the conversation up here to the forefront.
Blogging, like any other form of writing, has its own conventions. These conventions are still ill-defined for blogging because of the newness of the genre, but they are there. Because of its ease, blogging has become a sort of catch-all form of quick and simple publication, but in some cases the genre acts against the purposes of the writing. I think that the specific case of Ms. Laing's class might be that the conventions of blogging don't exactly mesh with what her class is trying to do, which may be the reason she isn't getting the traffic she would like. Rather than deal with her specifics, though, I'd rather deal more generally with the issue of how we increase blog medieval blog traffic.
First of all, let's acknowledge that though there is a potential problem about profile among medieval bloggers, it could be worse. A Google search I performed on the word "medieval" today yielded not one single blog in the first 20 pages of hits (and I got sick of looking at that point), but for the most part the hits in those first twenty pages were decent sites promoting books or medieval studies programs. In trying to raise our profile, then, it should not necessarily be our goal to displace those other sites. Our goal should be to create a complimentary structure, not a competing structure.
Blogging is about conversation. In my view (and I know I have colleagues who disagree vociferously about this), blogging is about public conversation, not just scholarly conversation. I'm always glad when I get comments from other scholars, of course, but we've also got Listserv e-mail groups that perform that same function. Though the cliche of the blogosphere is as an "echo chamber," in my mind the goal is to reach beyond our little communities.
As of this writing, the Wordhoard has had just under 50,000 unique visitors. To give some absurdly exact figures, as of this moment the Unlocked Wordhoard has averaged 69.6 unique visitors per day. We have regular visitors from every continent except Antarctica (and I'm working on researching Antarctic medieval issues, such as the Frozen Knights of South Frisia). Pretty fancy, eh? Pretty successful, eh? Gosh, I must be the most influential medievalist in the whole woooooorld!
Well, not really. Let's consider the first month. That very first month I had 56 unique visitors, and I was pretty happy to get them. When measured against current events sites like Little Green Footballs and the Daily Kos, that number is so tiny as to be microscopic, but this isn't a current events site, and can never hope to get that kind of traffic. So how did I go from 56 visitors a month to more than that every day?
Currency. Not money, but the true currency of the internet: links. Links are everything. No links and you are bankrupt. Many links and you are cyber-wealthy. And like any other good capitalist, I understand that currency gets its true value from being traded.
My first big incoming link was from Poliblog. A colleague here at Troy University has a successful blog named Poliblog, and when he discovered my blog he linked here, and got me my first bump in traffic (by the way, his post on The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging is required reading for anyone intending to blog, and it was written as a gentle rebuke to me, at that time an unrepentant sinner). The second big bump was Evangelical Outpost, where Joe Carter has linked to me a few times. Interestingly, being put on The Truth Laid Bear's Academic community, which I thought was THE BIG TIME, has yielded almost no traffic -- indeed, I can't remember the last time I got a single referral from there.
About 90% of my traffic is from Google, which often sends people to my page when they are seeking information about a midieval literary topic. Somehow I've gotten into a golden circle wherein people search for terms, are sent to me, and link to me, which in turn raises my Google profile even higher. The bumps from Poliblog and Evangelical Outpost aside (please note that neither are medieval or literary sites), I did this quite on accident, through a very simple method -- engaging in a conversation.
Aside from the very, very good advice Steven Taylor gives in his Seven Deadly Sins (pinging your blogroll, using Trackbacks, etc.), my main advice is to engage in conversation with the kind of people you want to link back to you. Be a promiscuous commentor and linker. When you go on someone's page and make an interesting comment, they'll become interested in YOU, and will more likely click that profile link back to your page. Sometimes, nothing comes of that, but sometimes they add you to their blogroll.
Commenting, though, is not enough. You need also to have extended responses on your own page. If your comments are more than a few sentences, consider writing them up as a post to your own blog and linking to the original post. Even if you have zero traffic on your blog, this can get you noticed. In my own case, I check my list of referrers every few days to see if there is anyone I should add to my blogroll. Linking to me will often get me to add you to my blogroll, with a few exceptions (such as static sites that don't update). Get into a real conversation, and people will begin to take notice of what's on your blog.
Now, back to the problem of the conventions of blogging. It strikes me that Ms. Laing's blog isn't really conducive to conversation. It has multiple posts, but these are all posted on two days. Since these are student papers, scholars aren't likely to comment much on them, because we've got our own student papers to comment on. Non-scholars are even less likely to comment. It isn't that there's anything wrong with putting papers out in the public domain to ask for comments, it is simply that a blog might not be the best forum for that. Presumably this post and the link will send a little traffic there, but in a week the link will have slipped into the archives, and then what? Somehow you've got to get those student papers in conversation with the blogosphere.
People look at the prominent medieval bloggers and think, "those guys all talk to each other because they are prominent" -- but that's backwards. We're prominent because we all talk with each other. Look at how many of the medieval bloggers are grad students or are off in academic backwaters. The difference is that we talk to one another, and so we notice one another, and trade in the currency of links.
So, medieval bloggers out there, let's raise our profile. Link like you work in a sausage plant. Praise the work of your colleagues when it is praiseworthy. Spread the word about interesting medieval events. Make off-the-cuff-but-on-topic comments. Respectfully but firmly disagree with one another. Be funny, be intimate, be academic. Remember this above all: Your field is medieval studies, which is INHERENTLY COOL! People will be interested if you start talking about it publically! Don't believe me? I've got 50,000 unique visitors who say otherwise, and would probably love to hear what you have to say too.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Middle English Compendium
For anyone doing research in Middle English, the Middle English Compendium was lauched this month, connecting the Middle English Dictionary, a Hyperbibliography, and other electronic cool stuff.
It almost makes me wish I were doing research in Middle English, just so I could use it.
It almost makes me wish I were doing research in Middle English, just so I could use it.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
The Love Lives of Medieval Beavers
Since it isn't updated often enough for me, I don't check "Got Medieval?" as much as it deserves. Still, with posts about the testicular hijinx of medieval vs. modern beavers, it's worth a read.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
The End of Medieval Forum
Alas, Medieval Forum has now released its sixth and final issue. I salute the editors in their pioneering efforts.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
A Quiet Evening at the Nokes House
Students often wonder what their professors do in their free time. Here are some images of a typical quiet evening at the Nokes household.
Monday, January 29, 2007
The Ruin Movie
Here's a marvelously beautiful six-minute film adaptation of The Ruin, with voice-over in Old English and subtitles in modern English. Good enough that I might just make my Brit Lit I students watch it as an assignment.
A Day Late and 99¢ Short
For those of you who are regular readers of this site, you might remember that on January 10th I engaged in a little bomb-throwing on the state of the field. Those bombs must have had long fuses, because I got not a single comment or e-mail on that post for ten days, until Eileen Joy posted taking Michael Drout and me to task. By the next day, I had received a few comments and e-mails urging me to respond. Unfortunately, as I posted, I had injured my hand a few days earlier, and so typing long posts was prohibitively painful. The blogosphere responded in generous fashion by moving the debate over to the Wordhoard, for which I am grateful.
Well, my hand isn’t at 100% yet, but it’s far enough along that I can sit and type longer things. Unfortunately, my recovery time took longer than the debate, which has since fizzled. I considered not re-opening the subject, but I did promise I would, so here’s my much-belated response:
It strikes me that there were several issues at play here. First was the role of history vis-à-vis that situatedness (for some reason, there wasn’t too much talk about philosophy, so I’ll let that drop). Second was the role of intentional in textual interpretation. Third was the situatedness of language. Finally was the über-question about the state of Anglo-Saxon studies. Let me divide these up and deal with them separately.
First, on the role of history in literary interpretation, whether Anglo-Saxon lit or otherwise, the use of history should be optional. Can history potentially tell us interesting things about the use of language? Sure – but language pre-dates history precisely because if anything is “situated” (more a little later on why this term has become tiresome), history is situated in language. Though I might disagree with some ways in which Eileen summarizes what I said, she does get this part right: “language study first, before anything else.”
Let us not over-state the case, though. History is a worthy object of study, and there are medieval historians who focus on Anglo-Saxon England whose work deserves our respect. I expect, however, that their mantra should be “history study first, before anything else” – after all, this is their task. Does this mean that they will never discover anything interesting about history from literature? Of course not – but at the end of the day, if historians do not focus on history, who will? By the same token, if language experts do not focus on language…?
Second is the issue of the role of intention. This is a little off-topic, I fear, leading me to twist Godwin’s Law into Nokes’s Law: “As an online discussion on literature grows longer, the probability of an argument about authorial intention approaches one.” I’ll not resurrect this subject here, except to point out that it isn’t really germane to the topic at hand.
Third is the situatedness of language, the place that Eileen Joy and I have the strongest disagreement. At one point, responding to something Drout wrote, she says, “[language] is situated in a human body, which is itself always situated somewhere, and that, my friend, is […] meaningful.” Well, it is meaningful in the non-bolded or italic way, but beyond that, not really.
Situated language is an old chestnut, every few years pretending to be exciting and new, when it really is not. Eileen is right about one thing – today how language is situated in the body is a hot topic, and no doubt gets current grad students all worked up in a lather. It may also be that metaphor works, in part, off of the way in which we negotiate our body’s position in the world.
But the situatedness of language is not really all that revealing. Critical schools argue, in large part, about how to situate that language. When I was in grad school, it was all “race, class, and gender,” which soon morphed into “race, class, gender, and sexual orientation” until we all decided that “gender” included sexual orientation anyway. The idea of the body as the locus of language was around in those days too, mostly in the Donna Haraway my-body-is-a-machine type of criticism. I participated in all that in the 90s as well, as the title of my paper “From the Spiritual to the Statistical: Changing Discourse about Human Sexuality” attests.
Slowly, though, I began to realize that all these examinations of contingencies and positionings weren’t really telling me anything. As I looked back at the various critical trends throughout the ages, I realized that everyone had always understood, in one way or another, that language was positioned. Marxists thought that it was best examined in its economic situation, feminists in gender, Freudians in psychology, etc. Even the ol’ fashioned types were all about situatedness – Eliot in the tradition, Pope in the classics, Aristotle in the genre, and so forth. Whether we use the ugly term “situatedness” to talk about canonicity, or aesthetics, or archetype, or genre, or manuscript context, we’re still talking about language vis-à-vis these contexts. Even “ars gratia artis” does not suggest that art exists in a vacuum, but rather that it is positioned among other works of art.
I’m not saying that we can learn nothing from the situatedness of language – but I am saying that the situatedness of language is seriously overrated for its ability to help us understand. Frankly, I’m much more interested in those elements of language that are not contingent upon situation, the things that used to be called “universals” (the word is so out-of-vogue that it seems quaint even to type it in scorn quotes).
The fourth issue is the state of Anglo-Saxon studies, and here we are on much less stable territory. Much of what I have argued above isn’t specific to Anglo-Saxon studies, and medievalists may actually be less-inclined to these excesses. When I think of the times theory specialists boasted to me that they didn’t read much (“I don’t do lit, I do theory”), not once was the person a medievalist. One medievalist once said to me (and I won’t out him here lest it infuriate his colleagues) that he felt we are better scholars than others in English departments, because “we actually have to know things” like dead languages and how to read a manuscript and whatnot. When he first said it, I dismissed it as ofermod, but I soon recalled an incident: A colleague, a very smart Americanist, asked me what my dissertation was about. When I gave her the 20 second spiel, she looked surprised and said, “oh, you’re actually doing real research!” Perhaps she and the ofermod medievalist were reacting to the same thing.
I’ve got no crystal ball to tell you with any certainty what the future of medieval literature will be (I take it for granted that Anglo-Saxon studies will be in the same broad situation as other medieval lit), but I’m pretty sure of three things:
1. It will be very different than today. Like language, scholarship evolves; it can’t help itself. An extremely prominent medievalist recently told me that he started his work Anglo-Saxon prose as a student because it interested him, not because he thought the field would turn to prose.
2. It will still be the odd man out in English departments (assuming they still exist). 20th Century Americanists can read and understand the work of 18th British scholars, who can read and understand the work of film scholars, but unless they can read Old English or Old Norse, or medieval Latin, or Old Whatever, there will always be a barrier between us and them. We can understand them, but they can’t understand us. The medievalists will just have to eat lunch with the Comparative Lit specialists, I guess.
3. New technologies will change the ways in which we perceive texts, which will change our field. How and why is a subject I’ve dealt with before in this space, but the changes may be profound.
In any case, with my injured hand it has taken me about three days to type this late response. I’ll try to post some much shorter items for the next few days.
Well, my hand isn’t at 100% yet, but it’s far enough along that I can sit and type longer things. Unfortunately, my recovery time took longer than the debate, which has since fizzled. I considered not re-opening the subject, but I did promise I would, so here’s my much-belated response:
It strikes me that there were several issues at play here. First was the role of history vis-à-vis that situatedness (for some reason, there wasn’t too much talk about philosophy, so I’ll let that drop). Second was the role of intentional in textual interpretation. Third was the situatedness of language. Finally was the über-question about the state of Anglo-Saxon studies. Let me divide these up and deal with them separately.
First, on the role of history in literary interpretation, whether Anglo-Saxon lit or otherwise, the use of history should be optional. Can history potentially tell us interesting things about the use of language? Sure – but language pre-dates history precisely because if anything is “situated” (more a little later on why this term has become tiresome), history is situated in language. Though I might disagree with some ways in which Eileen summarizes what I said, she does get this part right: “language study first, before anything else.”
Let us not over-state the case, though. History is a worthy object of study, and there are medieval historians who focus on Anglo-Saxon England whose work deserves our respect. I expect, however, that their mantra should be “history study first, before anything else” – after all, this is their task. Does this mean that they will never discover anything interesting about history from literature? Of course not – but at the end of the day, if historians do not focus on history, who will? By the same token, if language experts do not focus on language…?
Second is the issue of the role of intention. This is a little off-topic, I fear, leading me to twist Godwin’s Law into Nokes’s Law: “As an online discussion on literature grows longer, the probability of an argument about authorial intention approaches one.” I’ll not resurrect this subject here, except to point out that it isn’t really germane to the topic at hand.
Third is the situatedness of language, the place that Eileen Joy and I have the strongest disagreement. At one point, responding to something Drout wrote, she says, “[language] is situated in a human body, which is itself always situated somewhere, and that, my friend, is […] meaningful.” Well, it is meaningful in the non-bolded or italic way, but beyond that, not really.
Situated language is an old chestnut, every few years pretending to be exciting and new, when it really is not. Eileen is right about one thing – today how language is situated in the body is a hot topic, and no doubt gets current grad students all worked up in a lather. It may also be that metaphor works, in part, off of the way in which we negotiate our body’s position in the world.
But the situatedness of language is not really all that revealing. Critical schools argue, in large part, about how to situate that language. When I was in grad school, it was all “race, class, and gender,” which soon morphed into “race, class, gender, and sexual orientation” until we all decided that “gender” included sexual orientation anyway. The idea of the body as the locus of language was around in those days too, mostly in the Donna Haraway my-body-is-a-machine type of criticism. I participated in all that in the 90s as well, as the title of my paper “From the Spiritual to the Statistical: Changing Discourse about Human Sexuality” attests.
Slowly, though, I began to realize that all these examinations of contingencies and positionings weren’t really telling me anything. As I looked back at the various critical trends throughout the ages, I realized that everyone had always understood, in one way or another, that language was positioned. Marxists thought that it was best examined in its economic situation, feminists in gender, Freudians in psychology, etc. Even the ol’ fashioned types were all about situatedness – Eliot in the tradition, Pope in the classics, Aristotle in the genre, and so forth. Whether we use the ugly term “situatedness” to talk about canonicity, or aesthetics, or archetype, or genre, or manuscript context, we’re still talking about language vis-à-vis these contexts. Even “ars gratia artis” does not suggest that art exists in a vacuum, but rather that it is positioned among other works of art.
I’m not saying that we can learn nothing from the situatedness of language – but I am saying that the situatedness of language is seriously overrated for its ability to help us understand. Frankly, I’m much more interested in those elements of language that are not contingent upon situation, the things that used to be called “universals” (the word is so out-of-vogue that it seems quaint even to type it in scorn quotes).
The fourth issue is the state of Anglo-Saxon studies, and here we are on much less stable territory. Much of what I have argued above isn’t specific to Anglo-Saxon studies, and medievalists may actually be less-inclined to these excesses. When I think of the times theory specialists boasted to me that they didn’t read much (“I don’t do lit, I do theory”), not once was the person a medievalist. One medievalist once said to me (and I won’t out him here lest it infuriate his colleagues) that he felt we are better scholars than others in English departments, because “we actually have to know things” like dead languages and how to read a manuscript and whatnot. When he first said it, I dismissed it as ofermod, but I soon recalled an incident: A colleague, a very smart Americanist, asked me what my dissertation was about. When I gave her the 20 second spiel, she looked surprised and said, “oh, you’re actually doing real research!” Perhaps she and the ofermod medievalist were reacting to the same thing.
I’ve got no crystal ball to tell you with any certainty what the future of medieval literature will be (I take it for granted that Anglo-Saxon studies will be in the same broad situation as other medieval lit), but I’m pretty sure of three things:
1. It will be very different than today. Like language, scholarship evolves; it can’t help itself. An extremely prominent medievalist recently told me that he started his work Anglo-Saxon prose as a student because it interested him, not because he thought the field would turn to prose.
2. It will still be the odd man out in English departments (assuming they still exist). 20th Century Americanists can read and understand the work of 18th British scholars, who can read and understand the work of film scholars, but unless they can read Old English or Old Norse, or medieval Latin, or Old Whatever, there will always be a barrier between us and them. We can understand them, but they can’t understand us. The medievalists will just have to eat lunch with the Comparative Lit specialists, I guess.
3. New technologies will change the ways in which we perceive texts, which will change our field. How and why is a subject I’ve dealt with before in this space, but the changes may be profound.
In any case, with my injured hand it has taken me about three days to type this late response. I’ll try to post some much shorter items for the next few days.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Language and My Situated Human Body
I've been demoted to the level of lurker for the last few days because, as Eileen Joy points out here, language is "situated in a human body," and my human body injured its hand in a martial arts class on Thursday night. It's getting better (two days ago I couldn't capitalize because I couldn't hit the shift key and a letter simultaneously), but it's still not fully back. I can now type reasonably well, but only for very short periods of time before my wrist starts giving me trouble again.
In any case, I'm able to post in terms of short, pithy things, but not much beyond, so the rant I was planning about the Norton Anthology of Brit Lit will have to wait. For the many of you who have e-mailed me asking for a response to Eileen Joy's comments here, you'll just have to wait for a couple more days of healing. And, yes, I did notice the implication that (unlike Drout) I'm a "conservative troglodyte," but as the knuckles on my left hand are dragging to the ground a little lower than normal, I can't give the post the longish response it deserves at the moment.
Just a preview: For those of you hoping for a flame war, go off to the Daily Kos or somewhere else. I happen to like Eileen Joy's writing, and nice vigorous disagreement is part of the academic life. Besides, what I said that she's responding to is difficult, was posted in a seriously reduced form, and flies in the face of the conventional wisdom. When it gets a response, it won't be an "I hate that mean ol' Eileen," because I don't, and she's not mean (at least so far as I know).
In any case, I'm able to post in terms of short, pithy things, but not much beyond, so the rant I was planning about the Norton Anthology of Brit Lit will have to wait. For the many of you who have e-mailed me asking for a response to Eileen Joy's comments here, you'll just have to wait for a couple more days of healing. And, yes, I did notice the implication that (unlike Drout) I'm a "conservative troglodyte," but as the knuckles on my left hand are dragging to the ground a little lower than normal, I can't give the post the longish response it deserves at the moment.
Just a preview: For those of you hoping for a flame war, go off to the Daily Kos or somewhere else. I happen to like Eileen Joy's writing, and nice vigorous disagreement is part of the academic life. Besides, what I said that she's responding to is difficult, was posted in a seriously reduced form, and flies in the face of the conventional wisdom. When it gets a response, it won't be an "I hate that mean ol' Eileen," because I don't, and she's not mean (at least so far as I know).
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Grendel and The Wheel
After having said nasty things about the SciFi Channel's "Grendel," I thought I should post another film focusing on Grendel.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Sudden Surge of Subscribers
People must have really liked my post on "The Epic Badness of Grendel," because the number of subscribers to the Wordhoard has doubled in the last 24 hours. Of course, the number of visitors has spiked slightly too, but nothing like the number of new subscribers.
For those interested in subscribing, simply click here, fill out the form, and you should be approved in short order.
For those interested in subscribing, simply click here, fill out the form, and you should be approved in short order.
The Epic Badness of Grendel
I have now seen the SciFi Channel original movie, "Grendel." A team of therapists, after much debate, has reluctantly permitted me to write a review. If the writing of this review should kill me, please donate my body to religion.*
This is a bad movie. I have been trying to decide if it dethroned Christopher Lambert's futuristic "Beowulf" as the worst Beowulf adaptation ever, and I finally came to the decision that this movie is marginally ... very marginally ... better. This film has three things going for it:
The great badness of the film, though, was not the mixing of metaphors or the cue-card-reading acting; it was the "King's Weapon." Early in the film King Higlac gives a special weapon to Beowulf to use in defeating Grendel. The weapon looks like a crossbow with a rifle stock, three strings, and big Cadillac-looking fins/blades at the front. I started laughing as soon as I saw the thing, and nearly fell out of my chair when Beowulf took a practice shot at a wooden dingy, which exploded.
Yes, "the King's Weapon" is a crossbow that fires explosive bolts. Every time it seems like the action of the film might be slowing, the movie makes an excuse to whip out the Weapon and blow something up -- usually a tree. When Beowulf does kill Grendel, it is by shooting him with the weapon (which merely burns him, rather than killing him) before chopping his arm off with his sword "Nagling." No hand-to-hand combat here. This is, by the way, the third time Beowulf gets a point-blank shot at Grendel. Since the King's Weapon has a scope (no, I'm not kidding), we can only conclude that Beowulf is the world's worst shot.
The setting was strangely interesting. Heorot Hall was designed to look very Roman, and indeed Beowulf compares the Golden Age of Hrothgar's kingdom to that of Rome. The Viking ship seems to have been lifted from the set of a pirate movie. Rather than the cliche dragon-prowed ship, they go with a three-masted vessel that looks like it should have been sailing the Spanish Main. Wouldn't Jack Sparrow have been surprised to get a shot from the King's Weapon across his bow?
Some other interesting things to note:
Though IMDb lists Marina Sirtis as "Queen Wealhtheow," they change her name to "Queen Onela" in the film. They also transform her from a strong, politically-saavy woman into a madwoman with some limited prophetic powers. Her madness seems to disappear after the first quarter of the movie, though. Apparently Beowulf brought her some anti-schizophrenia medication.
Hrothgar has two sons, one named "Renn," and the other named "Unferth." Unferth has the characteristics of the person by that name in the poem (he gets into a drunken debate with Beowulf over the Brecca swimming contest, he has a partial rehabilitation by the end, etc.). When they were young men, Renn and Unferth went off to battle Grendel, but Unferth abandoned Renn and he was killed.
The film has a "dark secret" that is introduced and revealed near the end. The secret doesn't really make a lot of sense, and it unnecessarily besmirches the name of Shild Scheffing, so I suspect it is in there to make Hrothgar a more complicated figure.
Grendel and his mother look pretty good. Grendel looks more like a giant werwolf with a monkey tail than a troll. He has these things dangling from his elbows which at first appeared to be additional tails, but which I later took to be long tufts of hair. Grendel's mother, on the other hand, looks like a giant bat. Neither she nor Grendel is aquatic; Grendel lives in the woods and strings up his victims like a spider, and Hag (Grendel's mother) lives in a kind of canyon.
The King's Weapon, though it does wound Hag, is not the killing weapon. Instead there is a special sword in her lair (conveniently displayed, lest Beowulf miss it) which is named "Eotens."
One of Beowulf's companions is named "Finn," and he is Higlac's nephew. He and Unferth are the only interesting characters in the film, and indeed, by the end we realize it is Finn who has been telling the story. Finn's main job is to be our eyes and ears, as well as doing normal sidekick duty (e.g. getting captured to give the hero motivation to save the day).
So, in summary, Grendel is not quite as bad as Beowulf, but in the same league.
*I know the cliche is to donate one's body to science. Screw science. Once you're dead, what good is it to you? At that point, you'll need religious brownie points.
This is a bad movie. I have been trying to decide if it dethroned Christopher Lambert's futuristic "Beowulf" as the worst Beowulf adaptation ever, and I finally came to the decision that this movie is marginally ... very marginally ... better. This film has three things going for it:
- First is the theme. "All we have are our stories" is the refrain, and there is a kind of Beowulfian call to glory found there. That's not a bad theme if you are going to be doing a Beowulf film. It's relatively close to the poem in terms of thematic elements.
- The film follows the basic outline of the story. The Danes are attacked by Grendel, Beowulf and friends come to defeat him. After they kill him, they celebrate, only to find out that Grendel's mother (called by the name "Hag" in the film) isn't too happy, so they have to kill her as well.
- There is a sly reference to Burton Raffel at the outset of the film. An old man is showing Beowulf a cave in which a giant snake lives, and as Beowulf goes on to kill the snake, he turns to one of his companions and warns them to keep an eye on "Raffel," because he does not trust him. I assume this is an homage to Burton Raffel -- perhaps they used his translation to write the screenplay.
The great badness of the film, though, was not the mixing of metaphors or the cue-card-reading acting; it was the "King's Weapon." Early in the film King Higlac gives a special weapon to Beowulf to use in defeating Grendel. The weapon looks like a crossbow with a rifle stock, three strings, and big Cadillac-looking fins/blades at the front. I started laughing as soon as I saw the thing, and nearly fell out of my chair when Beowulf took a practice shot at a wooden dingy, which exploded.
Yes, "the King's Weapon" is a crossbow that fires explosive bolts. Every time it seems like the action of the film might be slowing, the movie makes an excuse to whip out the Weapon and blow something up -- usually a tree. When Beowulf does kill Grendel, it is by shooting him with the weapon (which merely burns him, rather than killing him) before chopping his arm off with his sword "Nagling." No hand-to-hand combat here. This is, by the way, the third time Beowulf gets a point-blank shot at Grendel. Since the King's Weapon has a scope (no, I'm not kidding), we can only conclude that Beowulf is the world's worst shot.
The setting was strangely interesting. Heorot Hall was designed to look very Roman, and indeed Beowulf compares the Golden Age of Hrothgar's kingdom to that of Rome. The Viking ship seems to have been lifted from the set of a pirate movie. Rather than the cliche dragon-prowed ship, they go with a three-masted vessel that looks like it should have been sailing the Spanish Main. Wouldn't Jack Sparrow have been surprised to get a shot from the King's Weapon across his bow?
Some other interesting things to note:
Though IMDb lists Marina Sirtis as "Queen Wealhtheow," they change her name to "Queen Onela" in the film. They also transform her from a strong, politically-saavy woman into a madwoman with some limited prophetic powers. Her madness seems to disappear after the first quarter of the movie, though. Apparently Beowulf brought her some anti-schizophrenia medication.
Hrothgar has two sons, one named "Renn," and the other named "Unferth." Unferth has the characteristics of the person by that name in the poem (he gets into a drunken debate with Beowulf over the Brecca swimming contest, he has a partial rehabilitation by the end, etc.). When they were young men, Renn and Unferth went off to battle Grendel, but Unferth abandoned Renn and he was killed.
The film has a "dark secret" that is introduced and revealed near the end. The secret doesn't really make a lot of sense, and it unnecessarily besmirches the name of Shild Scheffing, so I suspect it is in there to make Hrothgar a more complicated figure.
Grendel and his mother look pretty good. Grendel looks more like a giant werwolf with a monkey tail than a troll. He has these things dangling from his elbows which at first appeared to be additional tails, but which I later took to be long tufts of hair. Grendel's mother, on the other hand, looks like a giant bat. Neither she nor Grendel is aquatic; Grendel lives in the woods and strings up his victims like a spider, and Hag (Grendel's mother) lives in a kind of canyon.
The King's Weapon, though it does wound Hag, is not the killing weapon. Instead there is a special sword in her lair (conveniently displayed, lest Beowulf miss it) which is named "Eotens."
One of Beowulf's companions is named "Finn," and he is Higlac's nephew. He and Unferth are the only interesting characters in the film, and indeed, by the end we realize it is Finn who has been telling the story. Finn's main job is to be our eyes and ears, as well as doing normal sidekick duty (e.g. getting captured to give the hero motivation to save the day).
So, in summary, Grendel is not quite as bad as Beowulf, but in the same league.
*I know the cliche is to donate one's body to science. Screw science. Once you're dead, what good is it to you? At that point, you'll need religious brownie points.
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