Per the sneak preview of the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies call for papers, the Tales after Tolkien Society will be offering one session at the 51st annual gathering of medievalists in Kalamazoo. That session is "A Session of Ice and Fire: Medievailsm in the Game of Thrones Franchise," one of the two ideas proposed at the 2015 Annual General Meeting of the Society. It is exactly what it looks like; analyses of how Martin's most popular series of books and television engage the medieval will be welcomed.
While we can hope that future versions of the Congress call for papers will expand to include more sessions for the Society, ideas for the session we do have should be sent to Helen Young (1/363 B Lygon St., Sydney, NSW2006, Australia; helen.young@sydney.edu.au).
Travels in Genre and Medievalism
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
About Just Medieval Things and Related Things
I am perhaps a bit late to the party, but in some of the idle online reading I do, I recently came across Memebase's post, "Just Medieval Things." A quick search turned up a subreddit dealing with much the same thing, and the two together call to mind the older series of memes playing with the Bayeaux Tapestry. Each, with varying degrees of "accuracy," reinterprets the medieval, juxtaposing actual and perceived medievalisms with current practices in the evident pursuit of funniness (a pursuit which is sometimes successful and sometimes not). Several ideas appear to be at play in the various meme treatments, some of which can be explicated (at least tentatively), others of which require further study.
An admittedly brief initial survey suggests that the class of memes under discussion takes the form of a presentation of medieval1 artwork with text superimposed over it. The nature of the text varies somewhat across presentations, however. The older Tapestry memes tend to attempt "medieval" English2, deploying the art and seemingly older phrasing of contemporary song lyrics or references to other prevailing popular culture items such as online games. Those on Memebase and Reddit, though, tend to eschew both the phrasing-changes and the references to lyrics, presenting the images with text in contemporary modern English (with varying degrees of "correctness"3) that comment on events in the artwork in ways consistent with current standards of humorous response. Each blends the medieval and the modern to achieve humorous effect, the juxtaposition of seemingly unlike things eliciting laughter or some similar response. Each also suggests that the medieval remains sufficiently embedded in mainstream popular conception that it can be used as a referent. Jokes, after all, are not funny if they need to be explained; they can only work, they can only exert broad appeal if their contexts and references are sufficiently obvious as to need no overt effort to parse. The popularity of such memes, enduring for at least a decade if the accounts of Know Your Meme are to be accepted, is another indication that the medieval remains an important cultural touchstone. Accordingly, Helen Young's assertions that those who study the medieval are obliged to "get it right" remain in force, for even as reappropriation carried out in good fun need not operate under the auspices of rigorous scholarship, and even such scholarship can be found to be in error by later research, there is need to be vigilant against the tendency for the wide-spread to become accepted as "truth." Prevalence and influence can become blinding, as I argue in my chapter in Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms: From Isaac Asimov to A Game of Thrones. Scholarship should work against such blindness--if perhaps after laughing at the joke.
Something to consider in the memes, and in similar productions such as Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog and Geoffrey Chaucer Doth Tweet, is the difference of effect the various deployments of language have on the humor. What differs between describing a video game in "medieval" English--runst ryȝtlic and jumpst myȝtylic vppon þe þinges or somesuch thing4--and having "plain" text overlaying images taken from Psalters and saints' lives? For there is surely a difference in the effect if there is a difference in the construction of the joke, and one may strike the fancy more powerfully than the other--but why and how needs consideration. In the former case, is it a matter of juxtaposition alone, the "modern" concept in "older" phrasing coming off as funny because there is no way old illuminators could have known that ye daye wiðout þe longe hast ben, freonde min? In the latter, is it an issue of accessibility, "plain" language making the joke easily understood (and accounting in part, perhaps, for the selective "aging" of the "older" phrasings in other memes and in the online Chaucers, whose authors do, in fact, know better)? My own studies do not focus in such ways as will allow me to treat such questions, and I am not nearly funny enough to be able to treat them from praxis. Others will have to look into the differences and the effects of the differences.
Whatever those differences may be, however, there is a common indication--another than that the medieval remains a cultural touchstone. One thing the applicability of medieval images to situations centuries later suggests, among many possible implications, is that we who act now are still very much the same people as those who acted then, whose putative deeds are depicted in the images repurposed. If some of the particulars differ--I doubt that the medievals had much access to fat blunts5--many of them remain in place in a world where beheadings and vivisections still occur in life and in entertainment and the specters of death by plague and violence still loom large, where the images of those in power are polished and those out of it besmeared, where people work to go about the business of living from day to day with some nebulous prospect of a future reward that may or may not ever come. If we are still able to use the medieval to make sense of the world, to manipulate it in some way that makes it more palatable to us, to make light of it and so take some joy from it, it is perhaps because we are still in some ways the medievals, the "post" in which we fancy ourselves living not nearly so distant from the thing we think ourselves well and truly past. And if we are so, then it certainly behooves us to know more about who and what they were who went before. If nothing else, there is joy in it, and more such joy would be welcome.
1. Not all of the artworks used are "medieval," properly speaking; although the definition of "medieval" is flexible, as noted here, it typically does not encompass Western works from the 1600s or later. Since some of the art deployed in the memes appears to derive from those later periods, indicating a possible misunderstanding among the meme-makers, the term is somewhat fraught in this context.
2. Since the "medieval" in this case is an uneven use of informal second-person pronouns (i.e., "thee" and "thou"), rather than more "typical" medieval English fixtures such as æ, ð, and þ, or older vocabularies, it is more like early modern English than medieval. Again, there seems to be a misunderstanding of what is medieval among meme-makers.
3. "Correctness" in terms of language use is no less fraught than "medieval," and may, indeed, be more so. The prescriptive/descriptive argument is not one that need be rehashed here, however, although noting its existence seems responsible writing.
4. I am well aware I am mangling the language, despite the earlier injunction to "get things right." Take the joke.
5. If I am wrong, I would like to know. Please exploit the features of the blog and offer comments.
An admittedly brief initial survey suggests that the class of memes under discussion takes the form of a presentation of medieval1 artwork with text superimposed over it. The nature of the text varies somewhat across presentations, however. The older Tapestry memes tend to attempt "medieval" English2, deploying the art and seemingly older phrasing of contemporary song lyrics or references to other prevailing popular culture items such as online games. Those on Memebase and Reddit, though, tend to eschew both the phrasing-changes and the references to lyrics, presenting the images with text in contemporary modern English (with varying degrees of "correctness"3) that comment on events in the artwork in ways consistent with current standards of humorous response. Each blends the medieval and the modern to achieve humorous effect, the juxtaposition of seemingly unlike things eliciting laughter or some similar response. Each also suggests that the medieval remains sufficiently embedded in mainstream popular conception that it can be used as a referent. Jokes, after all, are not funny if they need to be explained; they can only work, they can only exert broad appeal if their contexts and references are sufficiently obvious as to need no overt effort to parse. The popularity of such memes, enduring for at least a decade if the accounts of Know Your Meme are to be accepted, is another indication that the medieval remains an important cultural touchstone. Accordingly, Helen Young's assertions that those who study the medieval are obliged to "get it right" remain in force, for even as reappropriation carried out in good fun need not operate under the auspices of rigorous scholarship, and even such scholarship can be found to be in error by later research, there is need to be vigilant against the tendency for the wide-spread to become accepted as "truth." Prevalence and influence can become blinding, as I argue in my chapter in Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms: From Isaac Asimov to A Game of Thrones. Scholarship should work against such blindness--if perhaps after laughing at the joke.
Something to consider in the memes, and in similar productions such as Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog and Geoffrey Chaucer Doth Tweet, is the difference of effect the various deployments of language have on the humor. What differs between describing a video game in "medieval" English--runst ryȝtlic and jumpst myȝtylic vppon þe þinges or somesuch thing4--and having "plain" text overlaying images taken from Psalters and saints' lives? For there is surely a difference in the effect if there is a difference in the construction of the joke, and one may strike the fancy more powerfully than the other--but why and how needs consideration. In the former case, is it a matter of juxtaposition alone, the "modern" concept in "older" phrasing coming off as funny because there is no way old illuminators could have known that ye daye wiðout þe longe hast ben, freonde min? In the latter, is it an issue of accessibility, "plain" language making the joke easily understood (and accounting in part, perhaps, for the selective "aging" of the "older" phrasings in other memes and in the online Chaucers, whose authors do, in fact, know better)? My own studies do not focus in such ways as will allow me to treat such questions, and I am not nearly funny enough to be able to treat them from praxis. Others will have to look into the differences and the effects of the differences.
Whatever those differences may be, however, there is a common indication--another than that the medieval remains a cultural touchstone. One thing the applicability of medieval images to situations centuries later suggests, among many possible implications, is that we who act now are still very much the same people as those who acted then, whose putative deeds are depicted in the images repurposed. If some of the particulars differ--I doubt that the medievals had much access to fat blunts5--many of them remain in place in a world where beheadings and vivisections still occur in life and in entertainment and the specters of death by plague and violence still loom large, where the images of those in power are polished and those out of it besmeared, where people work to go about the business of living from day to day with some nebulous prospect of a future reward that may or may not ever come. If we are still able to use the medieval to make sense of the world, to manipulate it in some way that makes it more palatable to us, to make light of it and so take some joy from it, it is perhaps because we are still in some ways the medievals, the "post" in which we fancy ourselves living not nearly so distant from the thing we think ourselves well and truly past. And if we are so, then it certainly behooves us to know more about who and what they were who went before. If nothing else, there is joy in it, and more such joy would be welcome.
1. Not all of the artworks used are "medieval," properly speaking; although the definition of "medieval" is flexible, as noted here, it typically does not encompass Western works from the 1600s or later. Since some of the art deployed in the memes appears to derive from those later periods, indicating a possible misunderstanding among the meme-makers, the term is somewhat fraught in this context.
2. Since the "medieval" in this case is an uneven use of informal second-person pronouns (i.e., "thee" and "thou"), rather than more "typical" medieval English fixtures such as æ, ð, and þ, or older vocabularies, it is more like early modern English than medieval. Again, there seems to be a misunderstanding of what is medieval among meme-makers.
3. "Correctness" in terms of language use is no less fraught than "medieval," and may, indeed, be more so. The prescriptive/descriptive argument is not one that need be rehashed here, however, although noting its existence seems responsible writing.
4. I am well aware I am mangling the language, despite the earlier injunction to "get things right." Take the joke.
5. If I am wrong, I would like to know. Please exploit the features of the blog and offer comments.
Friday, June 12, 2015
About _Travels in Genre and Medievalism_
It has been a bit more than a year that the Tales after Tolkien Society has been maintaining its blog, Travels in Genre and Medievalism. In that time, there have been fifty-seven entries made to it (this is the fifty-eighth), making an average of approximately one update weekly. Entries have not been consistently spaced, however, coming in fits and starts more often than not.
They have also proceeded from only two contributors: Society founder and current President Helen Young and Vice-President (USA) Geoffrey B. Elliott. Other contributors will be greatly appreciated; an earlier post speaks to submitting.
A number of calls for papers remain active. One is discussed in the post linked above. Two others--for "Heaven, Hell, and Little Rock" and Studies in Medievalism--are also still open. Note also that the Society will attempt to sponsor a session at the 2016 South Central Modern Language Association conference, and suggestions about topics to consider will be welcome; please send them to geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com under the subject line "Tales after Tolkien at SCMLA 2016 Suggestions." Please also note that the Society is happy to advertise its members' other calls for papers, even if they are not strictly related to the Society; send them along.
As we move forward, the Society hopes to make updates more regular and to include more voices in them. That does not mean, however, that we do not appreciate the attention we have already received; we hope you'll stay with us.
They have also proceeded from only two contributors: Society founder and current President Helen Young and Vice-President (USA) Geoffrey B. Elliott. Other contributors will be greatly appreciated; an earlier post speaks to submitting.
A number of calls for papers remain active. One is discussed in the post linked above. Two others--for "Heaven, Hell, and Little Rock" and Studies in Medievalism--are also still open. Note also that the Society will attempt to sponsor a session at the 2016 South Central Modern Language Association conference, and suggestions about topics to consider will be welcome; please send them to geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com under the subject line "Tales after Tolkien at SCMLA 2016 Suggestions." Please also note that the Society is happy to advertise its members' other calls for papers, even if they are not strictly related to the Society; send them along.
As we move forward, the Society hopes to make updates more regular and to include more voices in them. That does not mean, however, that we do not appreciate the attention we have already received; we hope you'll stay with us.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
About the Release of a Tales after Tolkien Volume
Our own Kris Swank reports that the release of Tales after Tolkien's Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms: From Isaac Asimov to A Game of Thrones will happen on 18 June 2015. Rumors of copies already floating about abound, but any purchases of the book will be greatly appreciated.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Society News and Updates
A few items to bring to Society attention:
More discussion of Society activities at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies is forthcoming. Some information has yet to be reported about those activities (although many have responded already, which is greatly appreciated); when it comes in, it will be posted to the blog. It is the summer, though, and the many Society members who are academics may well be about other business; updates are forthcoming.
Planning for the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies remains underway. The topics survey (http://goo.gl/forms/eCwatwn7NS) remains open; if you are a member of the Society and have not filled it out, please do so. It will help us make the next Congress a better one yet--and our sessions are already high-quality and attended well, so making them better will make them excellent, indeed.
Another survey, asking after member opinions about the Society blog, remains open, as well. Again, if you are a Society member and have not responded to it, please do so. It will help the Society direct the blog to its members' interests and benefit.
We are always interested in having new members. Joining is easy and free; send an email to talesaftertolkien@gmail.com with "Tales after Tolkien Society Membership,"your name and a note asking to join, and you will be added to the mailing list and membership roll soon.
Also, we are always seeking contributions to the blog. If you are a member and have something you'd like to see on the blog, email it to either talesaftertolkien@gmail.com or geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com with "Tales after Tolkien Society Blog Submission" in the sbuject line, and we'll see about getting it posted.
If you'd like to be a regular contributor (which would be most welcome), send an email to one of the addresses above with the subject line "Tales after Tolkien Society Blog Contributor," and we'll see about getting you authorized to post away.
If you'd simply like to comment on what we already have up (which would also be welcome), please feel free to do so. And if you'd simply like to continue to read what gets posted, that's just fine; we're glad to have you do so.
More discussion of Society activities at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies is forthcoming. Some information has yet to be reported about those activities (although many have responded already, which is greatly appreciated); when it comes in, it will be posted to the blog. It is the summer, though, and the many Society members who are academics may well be about other business; updates are forthcoming.
Planning for the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies remains underway. The topics survey (http://goo.gl/forms/eCwatwn7NS) remains open; if you are a member of the Society and have not filled it out, please do so. It will help us make the next Congress a better one yet--and our sessions are already high-quality and attended well, so making them better will make them excellent, indeed.
Another survey, asking after member opinions about the Society blog, remains open, as well. Again, if you are a Society member and have not responded to it, please do so. It will help the Society direct the blog to its members' interests and benefit.
We are always interested in having new members. Joining is easy and free; send an email to talesaftertolkien@gmail.com with "Tales after Tolkien Society Membership,"your name and a note asking to join, and you will be added to the mailing list and membership roll soon.
Also, we are always seeking contributions to the blog. If you are a member and have something you'd like to see on the blog, email it to either talesaftertolkien@gmail.com or geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com with "Tales after Tolkien Society Blog Submission" in the sbuject line, and we'll see about getting it posted.
If you'd like to be a regular contributor (which would be most welcome), send an email to one of the addresses above with the subject line "Tales after Tolkien Society Blog Contributor," and we'll see about getting you authorized to post away.
If you'd simply like to comment on what we already have up (which would also be welcome), please feel free to do so. And if you'd simply like to continue to read what gets posted, that's just fine; we're glad to have you do so.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
CFP Survey for a Society Roundtable at the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies
As noted here, the Society will be proposing a roundtable for the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Unconventional Medievalisms. At the meeting where the idea was voiced, comments noted that some guidance in the CFP will be helpful; the survey below seeks to elicit member responses to help form that guidance. Please take a few moments to fill out and submit it; it will help the Society do its work.
http://goo.gl/forms/eCwatwn7NS
http://goo.gl/forms/eCwatwn7NS
Tales after Tolkien at Kalamazoo 2015: Introduction and the Meeting
As the Society webpage notes, the Society formed from work at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. As such, the Society does tend to privilege that conference, and in 2015, it sponsored two sessions and conducted, somewhat informally, the Annual General Meeting called for in the Society Constitution 5.1. Reports on the sessions are forthcoming; information needed for those reports is still outstanding. A report on the meeting, however, appears below.
The AGM was held in Kalamazoo but away from the conference site at approximately 6pm EDT on 15 May 2015. In attendance were Stephanie Amsel, Geneva Diamond, Judy Ann Ford, Alexandra Garner, Jewel Morow, and Kris Swank; Geoffrey B. Elliott presided.
The initial agenda of the meeting was to confirm office-holders, per the Society Constitution 3.2.1, and to elect officers to the positions of Secretary and Social Media Officer, per the Society Constitution 3.2. Items added to the agenda during the meeting were proposals for sessions to be sponsored at the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies and a proposal to have the Society sponsor a session at a regional conference in 2016.
The initial agenda was completed without difficulty. Helen Young was confirmed as President of the Society. Molly Brown was confirmed as Vice-President (At-large) of the Society. Geoffrey B. Elliott was confirmed as Vice-President (USA) of the Society. Stephanie Amsel was acclaimed as Secretary of the Society. Kris Swank was acclaimed as Social Media Officer of the Society--although Geoffrey B. Elliott continues to be tasked with curating the Society blog.
The items of the added agenda were concluded without difficulty. Suggestions for sessions to be proposed for the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies were made and voted upon by the membership present at the AGM. Desired sessions include a paper panel focusing entirely on Martin's Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones and a roundtable titled "Unconventional Medievalisms," per member suggestion, focusing on medievalism outside fantasy, science fiction, and period pieces. A survey to determine the exact headings to be suggested for the latter was promised and is forthcoming. (The suggestions have since been reported to Helen Young, who will compile the necessary paperwork for submitting the sessions to the Congress; a CFP is forthcoming, pending their approval by Congress staff and results of the survey.)
Membership discussed sponsoring a session at a regional conference. The specific conference will be the 2016 South Central Modern Language Association conference, to be held 3-5 November 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Geoffrey B. Elliott and Stephanie Amsel will be heading the sponsorship efforts.
Questions were raised during the AGM. A list of Society members, to be posted either to the Soceity blog or the Society website, has been requested; one member noted having been asked to prove membership, and a directory would be helpful to that end. (Work on such a list is forthcoming.)
The meeting was adjourned at approximately 645pm EDT.
The AGM was held in Kalamazoo but away from the conference site at approximately 6pm EDT on 15 May 2015. In attendance were Stephanie Amsel, Geneva Diamond, Judy Ann Ford, Alexandra Garner, Jewel Morow, and Kris Swank; Geoffrey B. Elliott presided.
The initial agenda of the meeting was to confirm office-holders, per the Society Constitution 3.2.1, and to elect officers to the positions of Secretary and Social Media Officer, per the Society Constitution 3.2. Items added to the agenda during the meeting were proposals for sessions to be sponsored at the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies and a proposal to have the Society sponsor a session at a regional conference in 2016.
The initial agenda was completed without difficulty. Helen Young was confirmed as President of the Society. Molly Brown was confirmed as Vice-President (At-large) of the Society. Geoffrey B. Elliott was confirmed as Vice-President (USA) of the Society. Stephanie Amsel was acclaimed as Secretary of the Society. Kris Swank was acclaimed as Social Media Officer of the Society--although Geoffrey B. Elliott continues to be tasked with curating the Society blog.
The items of the added agenda were concluded without difficulty. Suggestions for sessions to be proposed for the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies were made and voted upon by the membership present at the AGM. Desired sessions include a paper panel focusing entirely on Martin's Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones and a roundtable titled "Unconventional Medievalisms," per member suggestion, focusing on medievalism outside fantasy, science fiction, and period pieces. A survey to determine the exact headings to be suggested for the latter was promised and is forthcoming. (The suggestions have since been reported to Helen Young, who will compile the necessary paperwork for submitting the sessions to the Congress; a CFP is forthcoming, pending their approval by Congress staff and results of the survey.)
Membership discussed sponsoring a session at a regional conference. The specific conference will be the 2016 South Central Modern Language Association conference, to be held 3-5 November 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Geoffrey B. Elliott and Stephanie Amsel will be heading the sponsorship efforts.
Questions were raised during the AGM. A list of Society members, to be posted either to the Soceity blog or the Society website, has been requested; one member noted having been asked to prove membership, and a directory would be helpful to that end. (Work on such a list is forthcoming.)
The meeting was adjourned at approximately 645pm EDT.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
About "5 Horrifying Realities of Daily Life Edited out of History"
On 5 May 2015, Chris Fox's article "5 Horrifying Realities of Daily Life Edited out of History" appeared on Cracked.com. As the title suggests, the piece details five facets of life common to earlier periods that purport to strike the expected readership of the website as terrifying or otherwise abhorrent. It moves away from the typical discussion of military technologies, seigneurial depredations, plague, and famine to the more quotidian toilet humor and unemployment troubles, as well as to the more esoteric spice trade. While some mention is made of both late imperial Roman and early modern English practice, the bulk of the article is focused on presentations of the Western medieval, depicting some of the less-commonly-understood challenges that the people of the European Middle Ages faced.
There are some problems, of course, with the presentation of the medieval offered by Fox's piece. It is somewhat sensationalist, although such is perhaps to be expected from offerings of a self-styled comedy website. It is also presentist in its biases, portraying the past as a time of terror from which current readers are likely to be excepted--although that, again, is perhaps to be expected. More locally to the article, though, the ordering of points is less than optimal. The excesses of the European spice trade do not seem to be more terrible than beatings for unemployment or the daily or more frequent occurrence of risky defecation--despite the rhetorical privileging afforded them by their placement at the end of the article.
Even so, Fox does a number of things well. The mere fact of reminding early twenty-first century readers of the European medieval serves as a useful, if small, counterpoint to prevalent short memories. The piece also usefully roots itself in current scholarship, working from the best available understandings at the time of its writing, and the involvement of ongoing research in the comedic piece helps remind readers that new knowledge of older events and activities is still being developed. (Admittedly, not all of the sources used are of equal scholarly quality. Again, however, the article is an offering on a comedy website.) Further, although perhaps unwittingly, the text accords with some of the most commonly studied written humor of medieval England; in moving to the scatological early, Fox's piece follows Chaucer's pattern in The Canterbury Tales, in which the jesting begins with fart jokes and references to cunnilingus or analingus in the ribaldry of the Miller.
In essence, then, Fox's piece may not be the best presentation of the medieval in current popular culture, but it is far from the worst that can be found.
There are some problems, of course, with the presentation of the medieval offered by Fox's piece. It is somewhat sensationalist, although such is perhaps to be expected from offerings of a self-styled comedy website. It is also presentist in its biases, portraying the past as a time of terror from which current readers are likely to be excepted--although that, again, is perhaps to be expected. More locally to the article, though, the ordering of points is less than optimal. The excesses of the European spice trade do not seem to be more terrible than beatings for unemployment or the daily or more frequent occurrence of risky defecation--despite the rhetorical privileging afforded them by their placement at the end of the article.
Even so, Fox does a number of things well. The mere fact of reminding early twenty-first century readers of the European medieval serves as a useful, if small, counterpoint to prevalent short memories. The piece also usefully roots itself in current scholarship, working from the best available understandings at the time of its writing, and the involvement of ongoing research in the comedic piece helps remind readers that new knowledge of older events and activities is still being developed. (Admittedly, not all of the sources used are of equal scholarly quality. Again, however, the article is an offering on a comedy website.) Further, although perhaps unwittingly, the text accords with some of the most commonly studied written humor of medieval England; in moving to the scatological early, Fox's piece follows Chaucer's pattern in The Canterbury Tales, in which the jesting begins with fart jokes and references to cunnilingus or analingus in the ribaldry of the Miller.
In essence, then, Fox's piece may not be the best presentation of the medieval in current popular culture, but it is far from the worst that can be found.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
About a Recent News Piece on Martin and Coursework
An April 2015 Associated Press piece appearing on HigherEdJobs.com, "Game of Thrones- College Course," notes that Northern Illinois University will be offering a course on the as-yet-ongoing television series. Among the comments made in reference to the course are that its subject offers relatively realistic presentations of the European Middle Ages and that it provides a useful example of the continuing manifestation in the past within the present. Also noted in the article is the popularity of the course, which filled quickly and will be offered in consecutive semesters.
The three points identified deserve some comment, with the first speaking to a topic not seldom treated in this webspace (see the Game of Thrones entries and the comments made on them). How "realistic" the presentations are is hardly a settled matter, as Helen Young and a number of other scholars have argued at great length. While some consideration must be made for the fact of reporting and the constraints of journalistic prose, the article's presentation conduces to the idea of the matter as fixed and established, beyond contestation. In facilitating such a reading, the article does a disservice to the body of scholarship that continues to examine Martin's work and the television series deriving from it--as well as to the work and likely to the activities of the class as a whole.
The exemplification of how the past continues to manifest in the present is also something this webspace treats; it is, indeed, the avowed purpose of the Society. That a major media product does invoke and involve the medieval--and not only the "traditional" medieval patterned after the European High Middle Ages--is a good thing, surely. The problem, though, is that the past Martin refigures is not the past as it has been recorded as being or that the physical evidence increasingly available suggests is true. Again, Young and other scholars detail the problems in Martin's portrayals in great detail, and it is admittedly true that "refiguring" is far from the same thing as "accurate reporting." It is not to be expected that a fictional world, even one based more or less loosely on the "real" world, would adhere completely to the "real" world. When a work is presented as being authentic, however, it is obliged to be authentic, or as authentic as it can be (i.e., reliant on the current best knowledge of the medieval as asserted by scholars of the medieval, since it is not necessarily to be expected that a non-specialist will have the same level of knowledge of a specialty as a specialist); to misidentify authority and authenticity, whether willfully or inadvertently, is not helpful.
The popularity of the course, if perhaps less targeted to the interests of the Society itself, may well be of interest to many of the members of the Society, who are themselves students and teachers. Popular courses would seem to argue well on behalf of those who teach them; a popular instructor ought to be someone to be valued. Some scholarship on popularity among instructors and courses, however, raises concerns; among others, Nate Kordell addresses the matter in a 31 May 2013 Psychology Today piece, "Do the Best Professors Get the Worst Ratings?" Many of those who have spent time in the college environment can offer up anecdotal support for the idea that popularity does not always indicate the relative value of a course; many students openly avow taking courses based on the seeming promise of an "easy A." This is not to say, of course, that the class offered at Northern Illinois University will be the "easy A"; Professors Garver and Chown are without doubt pushing their students to excel. But there is a perception that classes treating popular culture materials are less substantial than those treating more traditional subjects, a perception addressed perhaps most prominently among reactionary media but exerting some influence even so. How many students seek to take the course because of the perceived ease of watching television--and it is only perceived, as watching for scholarly purposes is far more dynamic and demanding than watching for entertainment only--or because they will be able to look at a number of attractive people in various states of undress is unclear, but it does likely vitiate against the use of popularity as a rubric for the course's success--something the article neglects, to its discredit.
That the article reporting the course deserves critique does not mean that the course is not worth offering, of course. Again, the Society does attend to Game of Thrones and to the novels which inform it. It does laud continued engagement with the past, particularly the medieval past, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It does work to promote accurate understandings of the medieval past by those who create and consume the products of contemporary popular culture. And so it does stand to reason that the kind of course being offered at Northern Illinois University is the kind of course that the Society could well endorse and support. (I am not in a position to offer such an endorsement on behalf of the Society, although I would encourage such a thing if it became an issue.) But it also stands to reason that, as a group invested in such things, the Society would like to see them accurately reported--particularly when the report appears in a venue so tightly concerned with the scholarly community as is HigherEdJobs.com. The medieval and its refigurations deserve better than a glossed, summary treatment.
The three points identified deserve some comment, with the first speaking to a topic not seldom treated in this webspace (see the Game of Thrones entries and the comments made on them). How "realistic" the presentations are is hardly a settled matter, as Helen Young and a number of other scholars have argued at great length. While some consideration must be made for the fact of reporting and the constraints of journalistic prose, the article's presentation conduces to the idea of the matter as fixed and established, beyond contestation. In facilitating such a reading, the article does a disservice to the body of scholarship that continues to examine Martin's work and the television series deriving from it--as well as to the work and likely to the activities of the class as a whole.
The exemplification of how the past continues to manifest in the present is also something this webspace treats; it is, indeed, the avowed purpose of the Society. That a major media product does invoke and involve the medieval--and not only the "traditional" medieval patterned after the European High Middle Ages--is a good thing, surely. The problem, though, is that the past Martin refigures is not the past as it has been recorded as being or that the physical evidence increasingly available suggests is true. Again, Young and other scholars detail the problems in Martin's portrayals in great detail, and it is admittedly true that "refiguring" is far from the same thing as "accurate reporting." It is not to be expected that a fictional world, even one based more or less loosely on the "real" world, would adhere completely to the "real" world. When a work is presented as being authentic, however, it is obliged to be authentic, or as authentic as it can be (i.e., reliant on the current best knowledge of the medieval as asserted by scholars of the medieval, since it is not necessarily to be expected that a non-specialist will have the same level of knowledge of a specialty as a specialist); to misidentify authority and authenticity, whether willfully or inadvertently, is not helpful.
The popularity of the course, if perhaps less targeted to the interests of the Society itself, may well be of interest to many of the members of the Society, who are themselves students and teachers. Popular courses would seem to argue well on behalf of those who teach them; a popular instructor ought to be someone to be valued. Some scholarship on popularity among instructors and courses, however, raises concerns; among others, Nate Kordell addresses the matter in a 31 May 2013 Psychology Today piece, "Do the Best Professors Get the Worst Ratings?" Many of those who have spent time in the college environment can offer up anecdotal support for the idea that popularity does not always indicate the relative value of a course; many students openly avow taking courses based on the seeming promise of an "easy A." This is not to say, of course, that the class offered at Northern Illinois University will be the "easy A"; Professors Garver and Chown are without doubt pushing their students to excel. But there is a perception that classes treating popular culture materials are less substantial than those treating more traditional subjects, a perception addressed perhaps most prominently among reactionary media but exerting some influence even so. How many students seek to take the course because of the perceived ease of watching television--and it is only perceived, as watching for scholarly purposes is far more dynamic and demanding than watching for entertainment only--or because they will be able to look at a number of attractive people in various states of undress is unclear, but it does likely vitiate against the use of popularity as a rubric for the course's success--something the article neglects, to its discredit.
That the article reporting the course deserves critique does not mean that the course is not worth offering, of course. Again, the Society does attend to Game of Thrones and to the novels which inform it. It does laud continued engagement with the past, particularly the medieval past, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It does work to promote accurate understandings of the medieval past by those who create and consume the products of contemporary popular culture. And so it does stand to reason that the kind of course being offered at Northern Illinois University is the kind of course that the Society could well endorse and support. (I am not in a position to offer such an endorsement on behalf of the Society, although I would encourage such a thing if it became an issue.) But it also stands to reason that, as a group invested in such things, the Society would like to see them accurately reported--particularly when the report appears in a venue so tightly concerned with the scholarly community as is HigherEdJobs.com. The medieval and its refigurations deserve better than a glossed, summary treatment.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
About an Anglo-Saxon Eye Salve
A number of news reports have avowed that an Anglo-Saxon topical ointment has substantial antibacterial properties. As pieces from ITV News, Claire Wilson of New Scientist, and Vanessa Heggie of The Guardian all note, the ointment, or rather its recipe, derives from Bald's Leechbook, held in the British Library, a tenth-century collection of medical knowledge and recorded practice. As the ITV and Wilson pieces both note, the ointment is as effective as the best modern medicines against MRSA, and the prospect of finding more such gems in the works of old offers an answer to some of the questions frequently voiced by students--undergraduate and graduate both--who find themselves obliged to take coursework treating the medieval: Why do we need to study this? Why does this still matter? Haven't we moved past this?
We study the medieval because it has more to teach us about the world, as an earlier entry to this webspace notes no less than the study on which the three news releases report. And when we do, we are reminded that the medievals were not less intelligent than we. They were in some ways less informed, certainly, lacking knowledge gained only by way of technology to which they did not have access. And they had bad ideas, to be sure. But the same is true for us; we cannot know what we lack the capacity to perceive, and not all of our ideas are good, as the still-sad state of the world makes clear.
The things for the Society to attend to as bear in on the current revelation, then, are these:
1) How will current science continue to deploy the medieval? Will it look to medievalists for their expertise on it? Will they continue to test out what the medievals did to see how much sense their ideas still make? How will such trials be taken up into the prevailing popular consciousness of the world? In effect, what will science prompt the non-scientist to appreciate about the medieval?
2) How will medievalist popular media begin to integrate the revelations of current science into its refiguration of the medieval? As knowledge of the medieval progresses and develops, treatments of the medieval in mainstream media can easily be enriched, nuanced, complicated, and thereby made more authentic and compelling. Or they may not be. Either has implications for what the continued deployment of the medieval means.
3) While interdisciplinary work is valued, and valorization of the humanities departments in which much medieval work is done is welcome, the Society and its members should be wary of the subordination of the humanities to STEM fields, as the comment with which Heggie concludes threatens to imply. Those who work in humanities fields are already too-much seen as adjunct or servitor to STEM fields, and while they are worthy endeavors, they are not more worthy than the humanities. While an instrumental reason to maintain humanities studies is helpful, it must not become the only reason offered for that maintenance.
The medieval manifests in many ways in the post-medieval. Many of them need celebrating. All of them need examination.
We study the medieval because it has more to teach us about the world, as an earlier entry to this webspace notes no less than the study on which the three news releases report. And when we do, we are reminded that the medievals were not less intelligent than we. They were in some ways less informed, certainly, lacking knowledge gained only by way of technology to which they did not have access. And they had bad ideas, to be sure. But the same is true for us; we cannot know what we lack the capacity to perceive, and not all of our ideas are good, as the still-sad state of the world makes clear.
The things for the Society to attend to as bear in on the current revelation, then, are these:
1) How will current science continue to deploy the medieval? Will it look to medievalists for their expertise on it? Will they continue to test out what the medievals did to see how much sense their ideas still make? How will such trials be taken up into the prevailing popular consciousness of the world? In effect, what will science prompt the non-scientist to appreciate about the medieval?
2) How will medievalist popular media begin to integrate the revelations of current science into its refiguration of the medieval? As knowledge of the medieval progresses and develops, treatments of the medieval in mainstream media can easily be enriched, nuanced, complicated, and thereby made more authentic and compelling. Or they may not be. Either has implications for what the continued deployment of the medieval means.
3) While interdisciplinary work is valued, and valorization of the humanities departments in which much medieval work is done is welcome, the Society and its members should be wary of the subordination of the humanities to STEM fields, as the comment with which Heggie concludes threatens to imply. Those who work in humanities fields are already too-much seen as adjunct or servitor to STEM fields, and while they are worthy endeavors, they are not more worthy than the humanities. While an instrumental reason to maintain humanities studies is helpful, it must not become the only reason offered for that maintenance.
The medieval manifests in many ways in the post-medieval. Many of them need celebrating. All of them need examination.
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