About Oklahoma ScotFest

On Sunday, 20 September 2015, my family and I went to ScotFest in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On a purely personal level, it was a fun outing and a good way to spend time with parents and wife and child, a wholesome activity well worth doing. But it was also more than simply a pleasant daytime affair; it was one among a great many events in the United States that celebrate a particular view of heritage and history extending back into the medieval (although attending significantly to the post-medieval, as well).

There were some things, certainly, that the festival had "right," things that accorded with what is known of medieval practice and the British Isles. The weather on the day we went agreed with the event; it was overcast when we attended and had rained heavily before we got there. Not much of the area was paved, so muddy shoes were common. The festival organizers can hardly be credited for the weather, however, even if they took advantage of a happy coincidence. They can be credited, however, with having a double line of temporary vendors arrayed on the path between the major plazas at the festival site, traveling merchants hawking their wares from under tents and lean-tos (and at least one of the vendors, a sculptor, had what looked a rough-hewn setup in place, something not made from a lumberyard's offerings). And the food seemed more or less authentic, insofar as local health codes and the differences in what was available then and what is available now allow.

It must be noted that ScotFest does not advertise itself as reflecting older practice, necessarily. It celebrates heritage rather than reproducing the circumstances that give rise to that heritage. But in celebrating that heritage, it tends to fall into the same problem of accuracy as many such festivals do; it presents the middle and higher reaches of society only, neglecting the great majority of people in the world at the time. Rarely, if ever, does the peasantry figure at such festivals; more frequently, events and attendees figure themselves as being among the gentry and minor nobility, eating food and drinking drink that presuppose the ability to pay for them in currency or in kind, wearing frequently-cleaned clothing meant to resemble the long work of hands that is not able often to be washed for lack of another and the inadvisability of standing naked under the open sky in the cold and wet and wind. While it is the case that those in the lower reaches of medieval societies had time to themselves and found ways to enjoy life, it is also the case that they had much less with which to do so than did those above them--and that less is hardly ever shown at festivals such as ScotFest.

It makes sense, actually. Peasant life is unattractive, particularly to those whom depictions of it might point up their own equivalent status.* Festivals have to make some money to keep themselves going, and so the marketing aspects of the presentation need some attention. Too, they are not necessarily intended to be accurate representations of "how things were," although the problems with negotiating that intent remain as they have been discussed in earlier blog entries. But I think something else is at work in the depictions of older forms offered by such festivals, more than the other something else I note in an earlier post. I think there is some longing for exaltation at work, some thought that participation in the festival is in some ways participation in a past perceived as glorious when the present, for whatever reason, is not. As an escapist fantasy, taking on the trappings of the "medieval" allows for the re-presentation of an aspect of the self in elevated form, perhaps with the thought that "Had I been there then, I'd have done better," and maybe with the addendum that "Things would be better now, too." And if it is the case that festival-goers look to the medieval to make themselves feel better and provide themselves with images of how they can be better, that is surely something worth more than even a good day at a park with family.

*As ever, I write from a relatively mainstream United States perspective. Other perspectives' results may differ.

CFPs and News from Helen Young, and Business

Society Founder and President (2015-2018) Helen Young sends reminders, to which some emendations are made for the current medium:

CFPs
There is still time to submit to our TAT panel at Kalamazoo next year: A Session of Ice and Fire: Medievalism in the Game of Thrones Franchise. Send an email to talesaftertolkien@gmail.com or helen.young@sydney.edu.au by 15 September (abstracts and information forms will help).

Another Kalamazoo CFP, "Knights Errant and Private Dicks," on medievalism and crime fiction is at http://www.marycflannery.com/kalamazoo-2016-cfp-knights-errant-private-dicks. Space may be available, and it is of possible interest to Society members.

A TAT panel may be forming at Leeds IMC for 2016 (4-7 July 2016). Those interested in participating should let Helen know before 11 September; abstracts are not needed, but some indication of what will be treated (title and a few sentences) should be sent along so the panel can be proposed.

The blog always needs contributions! Send them along.

Publication News
Gillian Polack has had two books come out: Langue[dot]doc 1305 and, with Katrin Kania, The Middle Ages Unlocked: A Guide to Life in Medieval England, 1050-1300--a wealth of knowledge aimed at helping authors.

Society Business (which does not come from Helen)
Long-time readers may have noted a new page on the blog, a Member List. It emerges from the 2015 Society meeting; please review it to see if the information posted is accurate, and if changes need to be made, email the curator (geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com) with "Tales after Tolkien Membership Update" in the subject line and the changes in the text.

About "Heroes and Demons"

It should not come as a surprise that I am a long-time fan of the Star Trek franchise, having watched the various series with some regularity since 1987 and the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That watching has most recently been through streaming video services rather than catching the various series and movies in syndication and theaters, and that streaming video watching turned not long ago to Star Trek: Voyager. One of the less-popular Star Trek properties, it ran from 1995 to 2001 (per IMDB.com) and follows Kathryn Janeway and the crew of the eponymous ship through abduction into the Delta Quadrant and travel back to the Federation space from which they came. Suffering the effects of franchise fatigue and, perhaps, a reaction to the darker atmospherics of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager languished on minor networks through its initial run and now attracts attention primarily as a negative example (if not so much as Star Trek: Enterprise). Its deployment of medievalism in the early episode "Heroes and Demons" is one encapsulation of the phenomenon; it serves in some ways to underscore its utility as an image of what not to do.

In the episode, the eponymous starship comes across an unusual photonic phenomenon and stops to investigate it. Meanwhile, one of the senior bridge crew, Ensign Harry Kim, is taking recreation in the holodeck, the illusory suite that will replicate a number of experiences for its users. When he is summoned to duty and does not appear, his crewmates begin to search for him; they find that he has vanished amid his holodeck program, an adaptation of an adaptation of Beowulf. In the event, the photonic phenomenon encountered by Voyager is a home for photonic life forms who interact uncomfortably with the holographic constructions of the holodeck; those life forms had used the cover of Grendel in the holodeck program to abduct ship's crew in retaliation for the (admittedly inadvertent) abduction of their own from the phenomenon by the starship's investigation. The ship's holographic doctor is able to carry out what amounts to a prisoner exchange, returning the abducted photonic life forms and retrieving the stolen ship's crew.

Many avenues of critique of the episode and the series of which it is part present themselves, and they are well worth exploring. That most relevant to the work of the Society, however, attends to how the episode presents the purported milieu of Beowulf. That there will be changes to the work for its representation is understandable and even necessary; the original work, cast in Anglo-Saxon verse, would necessarily need alteration to suit the in-milieu new medium of the holodeck (particularly with its interactive elements), as well as the narrative medium of the television series. Too, the program Kim runs is explicitly labeled as "based on" the Anglo-Saxon epic; it is overtly a derivation and deviation within the milieu, rather than a re-creation of the poem. Some "inaccuracies" in the presentation are therefore to be expected and to be "forgiven," if such changes are indeed to be regarded as erroneous (and there are good arguments why they should be, to be sure, such as Helen Young's "Who Cares about Historical Accuracy? I Do").

That some changes are to be expected and set aside as necessary to translations across media does not mean that all of the present changes are good, however. The insertion of the character Freya into the story serves as an example of a less-than-ideal alteration. While there are certainly accounts of shieldmaidens in legends and contemporary "historical" reports (which are not always accurate in the sense that we commonly understand accuracy), and there were certainly warriors who happened to be women among the people of the time and place depicted in Beowulf, the replacement of the unnamed coast-warden--who is explicitly labeled in masculine terms (and who is not unaccompanied, having retainers to order to hold Beowulf's ship against his return [ll. 293-300])--with Freya comes across as an imposition of a female character for the express purpose of having a female character in a more active role than the poem presents (much like the "enhancement" of Arwen's role in Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies or the insertion of Tauriel into his Hobbit films). That she seemingly exists as a love interest whose death inspires heroism from the male protagonist reinforces the impression of Freya as a sop to particular interests, an inclusion made to fill a particular diversity slot rather than as an important part of an amended story. The name, as well, betrays a sense of "oh, this sounds medieval and female; it fits a hole we need." While the overtones of the name--it is one of a goddess of love and war, among others--are perhaps appropriate to the character's function, the relative ineptness of the character herself suggests that the name was chosen for ease of speaking rather than authenticity of depiction. As a change to the source-text, is it one one that responds to prevailing misconceptions about what it true and what needs "fixing" in one medieval culture, making it a model of what to avoid in medievalism.

Problems inhere in matters that are less "change" and more "typical presentation," as well. The problem of the "monochrome Middle Ages" that Young decries in "Who Cares about Historical Accuracy? I Do" and elsewhere is painfully present in the episode (although the argument could easily be made that the relative remoteness of Heorot and the poem-stated identification of the Danes sworn to Hroðgar could make for homogeneity in the population). Aside from the Voyager crew who enter the holodeck and the photonic life form that is regarded as villainous, the characters in the program are white, almost exclusively male, and bearded (with little-kept beards)--fitting a common and ultimately inaccurate image of the medieval. The architecture of Heorot in the episode accords little with what is known of mead-hall building, but it fits the half-timbered construction associated with "lesser" buildings in common understandings of the medieval--a style of building common to later periods than that discussed in Beowulf. As with the half-hearted inclusion of Freya, the depiction of Heorot and its inhabitants seems more calculated to accord with generic medieval ideas than with the best information available at the time about how the early medievals lived. It is something that is not to be expected from the demonstrably scholarly Starfleet personnel depicted across the Star Trek franchise, and it is not something that should be taken as a model of medievalist storytelling.

There are other problems to be found with "Heroes and Demons" and Star Trek: Voyager, to be sure, and some that are far worse than the mis-depiction of the medieval in a single episode of a series that has an interesting premise and the ultimately unrealized possibility of excellent storytelling. The particular issue of the inept handling of the medieval, though, serves as a useful indicator of what else is wrong with it, one of many flaws that has led to prevailing disdain for the show. That disdain does much to argue against the value of a franchise that has offered much to many across decades, which is saddening to see, even if, in such a case, deserved.

About a Society Member Publication

Our own Helen Young has had a book come out, Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness. It can be found here; it promises to be well worth the reading.

About Another Video

Following yesterday's comment about one video advertisement, another:

Two is okay. More, for more volumes, would also be good.

About a Video

Our own Helen Young noted the video below. It is worth watching.

Let's see if we can get more.

About "Two Cheers for the Middle Ages!"

On 9 July 2015, Eric Christiansen's "Two Cheers for the Middle Ages!" appeared in the online New York Review of Books. (Find it here.) In the piece, Christiansen reviews three substantial publications that treat the medieval, giving context for each before assessing their comparative quality. To do so, he situates them in a prevailing and long-standing discourse of aspersion upon the medieval, citing condemnation of the period by intellectuals and public figures alike--but he also figures the condemnation as farcical in vivid simile. The piece comes off as an excellent review of three texts, of which two are singled out as particularly useful--but that is not all it does.

As noted above, in providing context for his review, Christiansen points to prevailing attitudes of derision towards the medieval. The use of the term to indicate the backwardness or idiocy of a thing is, as Christiansen notes, entirely too prevalent and bespeaks an all-too-common ignorance of what the medieval, variously defined, actually offers. Christiansen's review is useful as an argument against that ignorance, and one in a wide-reaching venue that may actually do some sort of good. He is correct that current culture maintains many medieval holdings, as this webspace and the scholarship promulgated by the Society and many of its members as individuals hold, and his writing in so prominent a publication as the New York Review of Books works to spread that message further than the currently-limited reach of the Society allows. (We are working on it.)

There is some hope that the kind of rethinking called for by Christiansen (less explicitly), the Society, and other organizations of similar scope (more so), is underway, both within academia and without. Discussions not too long ago within the Modern Language Association of America resisted the collapsing of Middle English sections into a single discussion forum (although how long the resistance will continue to be successful is far from certain, admittedly), and the increasing presence of medievalism studies at academic conferences suggests that there is increasing recognition of the continuing influence of the medieval on what has followed it. Little of it that I have heard or read interprets that influence as a negative quality; rather the opposite is true, and those treatments that deride works for their use of the medieval do so because the works use the medieval badly. The focus is on the misuse, which suggests that "getting it right" is as important as Helen Young avows in an earlier post to this blog. And that suggests that the medieval is valued by the academy as much as the kinds of things this blog has treated suggest the medieval continues to be valued outside academia.

There is more to do, of course. Again, Christiansen is correct in identifying a prevailing disparagement of the medieval--and while it can be argued that the medievals did have some bad ideas and performed wrong actions, they are not worse off in those respects than we who sit in judgment over them by much if at all. It ought to be kept more in mind, and "Two Cheers for the Middle Ages!" helps to place it there.

CFP: Kalamazoo 2016

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).

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.

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.