A BBC report notes that one Steven Payne of Petersfield is undertaking a pilgrimage mimetic of one taken by an Italian teacher in 1365, going with papal blessings from Southampton to Canterbury. The report makes much of the efforts Payne has gone to to make his pilgrimage authentic, noting among others that he will not sleep in any buildings not dating back to 1365 and that his travel kit, with only a few exceptions, is true to the period (which is mislabeled, as it calls 1365 part of the 13th century rather than the fourteenth). The article joins a number of others that have received attention in this webspace--this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one--that suggest continued interest in the medieval, which is a good thing for the Society, as it implies that there will remain much work to be done.
I am glad of such things, to be sure, but I am concerned about possible inaccuracies in Payne's presentation. The article notes that his clothing--and I am impressed by the commitment to period dress down to the underclothes--is based on a peat-preserved Scandinavian body. The body is not given a time-frame or an identification of finding, and so, given how the report is framed, it could be a body from a wholly different time than contemporary with Chaucer, potentially rendering Payne's recreation inaccurate. Similarly, the astonishing lack of alcohol in his described kit rings as other than medieval, given what is described of travelers' practice and what is known of sanitation standards of the time.
Perhaps the matter is merely one of reporting, rather than Payne misapprehending source materials. In many ways, reporting errors would be worse. If it is only Payne who is wrong, then it is one person; if the report is wrong, coming from what many regard as a reliable source, then more people are likely to be led into error. Inaccuracies in depictions of the medieval are problematic for more reasons than the simple inaccuracy, as has been attested repeatedly in this webspace and elsewhere; they conduce to a notion of the medieval as not only less technologically advanced than our present, but also less intelligent in several of the ways that intelligence is commonly measured. The simple truth is that people were no less intelligent then than now; they were misinformed in many respects, owing in large part (although not exclusively) to a lack of refinement of measuring devices, but many people now are just as ill-informed and without the valid reason of lacking access to data and the ability to collect it. When the medievals are presented other than our (continually developing) best understandings of how they were, we do a disservice to people no less human than we, and we do a disservice to ourselves, creating a false impression of "how far we have come" in the centuries since and a concomitant overestimation of our own capabilities and refinement. Neither serves us well.
Travels in Genre and Medievalism
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
About the Society Blog and Website
Thanks to the efforts of Carol Robinson, the Society has a WordPress site in place of its old website (the news is a bit dated, I know). As many will be aware, WordPress is at its core a platform for blogging, and the thought occurs that consolidating this blog into the website might be worth doing. Since I administer the blog (if perhaps poorly), I thought it appropriate that I would poll the Society membership for thoughts on whether or not to do so. A survey asking after opinions is linked below and will remain open through the end of the year. Results will guide what happens with the Society's online presence moving forward.
Thank you for your advice and support. Please continue to send in submissions; I will be happy to post them, wherever they may need to go.
-Geoffrey B. Elliott
Vice-President (USA), Tales after Tolkien Society
The Poll: http://goo.gl/forms/Qx9MKOyFPs
A copy of this announcement appears on the Society webpage, as well.
Thank you for your advice and support. Please continue to send in submissions; I will be happy to post them, wherever they may need to go.
-Geoffrey B. Elliott
Vice-President (USA), Tales after Tolkien Society
The Poll: http://goo.gl/forms/Qx9MKOyFPs
A copy of this announcement appears on the Society webpage, as well.
Thursday, November 19, 2015
About "The Lord of Ragnarök"
Many of the pieces Albert E. Cowdrey writes for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, a venue entirely appropriate for stories involving magic of various sorts. His contribution to the September/October 2015 issue of the magazine, "The Lord of Ragnarök," however, takes a somewhat different path. Set for the most part in and around Mont Saint-Michel--a location prominent in medieval history and literature--and during or soon after the reign of William the Bastard in England (99), the story is clearly marked as a piece of medievalist work (and a well-written one, to be sure). While a fair bit of the medievalism on display in the work is reasonably accurate, there are divergences from the "real," both in terms of geography and in the observable presence of the supernatural. The divergences are typical of fantasy literature, suggesting that, despite the prevailing reliance of fantasy literature on the Western medieval, the genre requires recourse to something outside verifiable history to make it work.
Like most successful fantasy literature, Cowdrey's piece follows one of Tolkien's dictates and grounds itself in the real. In "On Fairy-stories," Tolkien famously asserts that works depicting the kind of fictional world that fantasy literature needs have to partake largely of the observable world of their expected readers; they cannot be so far removed from what the readers know that they cannot be understood by them. Situating his work largely amid history and geography accessible to readers through travel and study--or even a quick Google search--allows Cowdrey to do such a thing. "The Lord of Ragnarök" is embedded in the documented and (largely) verifiable, imbuing it with an authenticity that allows the supernatural elements of the text to occur without straining credulity beyond tolerance and breaking the Coleridgean willingness to suspend disbelief upon which all narrative fiction depends. Additionally, the title itself evokes a fairly familiar concept; Ragnarök is hardly an arcane term, particularly to the audience most likely to read fantasy literature or that most likely to examine treatments of the medieval.
Further, depictions of the peasantry are hardly atypical or inauthentic. In the text, they are left without defense by the exodus of fighting folk to the Crusades--and imperiled by those who have returned therefrom, bereft of lords and governance and honor (80). Their children are bent and misshapen by the hard physical labor they are forced to do (81), subject to conscription and abusive training (81-82), and subject to threats of torture when they are captured as a result of fighting that they do not necessarily wish to do but perceive as one of the few available methods of advancement (82-83). At the same time, the privations of peasant life provide certain skills--such as the ability to wait patiently (89)--and a simple ideation of justice (94-95), as well as a particular practicality utterly unbound by concerns of chivalric codes. That practicality allows the low-born protagonist, Richard, to save himself both after being captured by an enemy force (83-89) and after the battle turns against that same force (91-93). Even after he is knighted through chance (95), the practicality does not desert him; he keeps largely to himself and away from boasting, using quiet diligence as a way to avoid jealousy at being jumped up in social standing (95-96), listening to much but saying little (99-100). In each, as in the many other lingering traces of his peasant background, Richard displays the kind of fortitude and practical cunning often associated with the lower classes, serving as a sharp contrast to the poorly-idealized noble-born and ringing of the kind of truth that makes the story accessible to readers.
Some of the inaccuracies in the text also serve to familiarize it to its readers. For example, the eponymous lord in the story exercises droit du seigneur, the purported right of a feudal lord to copulate with a vassal's wife on the wedding night (103, 116). It is a mainstay of medievalist fiction, and even of supposedly historical fiction, so that its deployment connects to common conceptions and therefore serves backhandedly to connect the text to readerly expectations of the "authentic" medieval. The practice in its supposed medieval manifestation, however, is fiction; there is no direct evidence of the first-night right being exercised, although there are many accounts of neighboring or antagonistic communities partaking of the practice. That is, it is negative propaganda about "those people," far from factual even if embedded in popular conception sufficiently that it has a force not unlike truth.
Other inaccuracies to the known medieval in the text serve less to authenticate it than to imbue it with features that seem necessary for the function of fantasy literature. For example, while there is much of "real" geography at work in the story--the details of Mount Saint-Michael correspond to what is known--there is also much that is less verifiable. The antagonistic nobleman against whose depredations Richard is conscripted into service is described as "Count of the Dry Hills and Dusty Valleys" (82), an area described as easily accessible from Mount Saint-Michael, yet the climate in the surrounding areas is temperate. "Dry Hills and Dusty Valleys" hardly comes to mind as an accurate descriptor, although it is a fitting land for an antagonistic figure to rule; the inaccuracy therefore helps the work to correspond to long-standing readerly expectations. It indicates that fantasy literature needs something else for its functions, even as it benefits from solid grounding in the medieval.
So does the yet more unreal geography of the Hidden Isles from which the eponymous character takes his name. Reached by Breton-crewed longship after a northward journey of just over a week (78-79, 93, 105-106), the area is inhabited by people who speak "a harsh, guttural language that might have been Norse" and ruled from a formerly volcanic island (107). While the description perhaps evokes the decidedly real Faroe Islands, there is no mention of other land being seen along the journey, and it seems unlikely that a craft traveling between the two "real" places would utterly avoid the sight of land along the way. Too, the Faroe Islands were Christianized (admittedly coercively) before the ascent of William the Bastard to the English throne; by the time of the story, the Faroes would likely not be so overtly pagan as the Hidden Isles are described as being (107). The Hidden Isles, then, suggest themselves as being another place, not likely a "real" one, pointing again to the need to deviate from the medieval to make the fantastic happen.
That the Hidden Isles are described as pagan is justified within the text. The eponymous character, who is also known as "Sieur Drangø des Iles Occultes, Comte de Mont Saint-Michel" (99), describes himself as the son of the Master of Tides, "a great magician [who] raises storms to drive ships onto the rocks" (85) and possessed of great wealth therefore--evidence of which is presented in the text. Both are otherworldly. Drangø is possessed of scaled skin taken by many as being evidence of leprosy (80, 100), viewed by the standards of the time as a supernatural affliction; he is in some senses crocodilian, with large scales, an armored back, slit-pupil eyes, and claws (108). His reptilian appearance is not something that is to be found in the "real" world despite the protestations of many conspiracy theorists; its inclusion marks the text as supernatural, out of accord with the observable. So does his transformation into "the reborn Master of Tides" whose "crimson scales glinted, its whiskers had become long, trailing spines, and its huge green eyes...with unwinking gaze" look out on a domain inherited from the mystically-charged father (109); so, too, do the later sending of storms to conclude a campaign and to reveal how an earlier one had been concluded (113). That the text ultimately demands Drangø for its function places difference from the real at the heart of the story. I have argued before that the pages of Fantasy & Science Fiction can be taken as representative of the genre as a whole ("About 'Avianca's"); what the magazine endorses stands as exemplary of the fantastic. That the magazine, through its publication of the story, endorses the contents thereof suggests that it takes a view of fantasy as working best when deeply rooted in the real (particularly the medieval, as "About 'Avianca's Bezel'" also notes) but demanding the insertion of something else for its effect.
That fantasy literature seems to need such things, however, does not mean that it should not ground itself in as much accuracy as it can. Artists and scholars both retain the duty Helen Young notes to get things right. The more that is done well and correctly, after all, the more that can be done to go into something else, since that other needs a solid frame of reference in which to exist.
Works Cited
Like most successful fantasy literature, Cowdrey's piece follows one of Tolkien's dictates and grounds itself in the real. In "On Fairy-stories," Tolkien famously asserts that works depicting the kind of fictional world that fantasy literature needs have to partake largely of the observable world of their expected readers; they cannot be so far removed from what the readers know that they cannot be understood by them. Situating his work largely amid history and geography accessible to readers through travel and study--or even a quick Google search--allows Cowdrey to do such a thing. "The Lord of Ragnarök" is embedded in the documented and (largely) verifiable, imbuing it with an authenticity that allows the supernatural elements of the text to occur without straining credulity beyond tolerance and breaking the Coleridgean willingness to suspend disbelief upon which all narrative fiction depends. Additionally, the title itself evokes a fairly familiar concept; Ragnarök is hardly an arcane term, particularly to the audience most likely to read fantasy literature or that most likely to examine treatments of the medieval.
Further, depictions of the peasantry are hardly atypical or inauthentic. In the text, they are left without defense by the exodus of fighting folk to the Crusades--and imperiled by those who have returned therefrom, bereft of lords and governance and honor (80). Their children are bent and misshapen by the hard physical labor they are forced to do (81), subject to conscription and abusive training (81-82), and subject to threats of torture when they are captured as a result of fighting that they do not necessarily wish to do but perceive as one of the few available methods of advancement (82-83). At the same time, the privations of peasant life provide certain skills--such as the ability to wait patiently (89)--and a simple ideation of justice (94-95), as well as a particular practicality utterly unbound by concerns of chivalric codes. That practicality allows the low-born protagonist, Richard, to save himself both after being captured by an enemy force (83-89) and after the battle turns against that same force (91-93). Even after he is knighted through chance (95), the practicality does not desert him; he keeps largely to himself and away from boasting, using quiet diligence as a way to avoid jealousy at being jumped up in social standing (95-96), listening to much but saying little (99-100). In each, as in the many other lingering traces of his peasant background, Richard displays the kind of fortitude and practical cunning often associated with the lower classes, serving as a sharp contrast to the poorly-idealized noble-born and ringing of the kind of truth that makes the story accessible to readers.
Some of the inaccuracies in the text also serve to familiarize it to its readers. For example, the eponymous lord in the story exercises droit du seigneur, the purported right of a feudal lord to copulate with a vassal's wife on the wedding night (103, 116). It is a mainstay of medievalist fiction, and even of supposedly historical fiction, so that its deployment connects to common conceptions and therefore serves backhandedly to connect the text to readerly expectations of the "authentic" medieval. The practice in its supposed medieval manifestation, however, is fiction; there is no direct evidence of the first-night right being exercised, although there are many accounts of neighboring or antagonistic communities partaking of the practice. That is, it is negative propaganda about "those people," far from factual even if embedded in popular conception sufficiently that it has a force not unlike truth.
Other inaccuracies to the known medieval in the text serve less to authenticate it than to imbue it with features that seem necessary for the function of fantasy literature. For example, while there is much of "real" geography at work in the story--the details of Mount Saint-Michael correspond to what is known--there is also much that is less verifiable. The antagonistic nobleman against whose depredations Richard is conscripted into service is described as "Count of the Dry Hills and Dusty Valleys" (82), an area described as easily accessible from Mount Saint-Michael, yet the climate in the surrounding areas is temperate. "Dry Hills and Dusty Valleys" hardly comes to mind as an accurate descriptor, although it is a fitting land for an antagonistic figure to rule; the inaccuracy therefore helps the work to correspond to long-standing readerly expectations. It indicates that fantasy literature needs something else for its functions, even as it benefits from solid grounding in the medieval.
So does the yet more unreal geography of the Hidden Isles from which the eponymous character takes his name. Reached by Breton-crewed longship after a northward journey of just over a week (78-79, 93, 105-106), the area is inhabited by people who speak "a harsh, guttural language that might have been Norse" and ruled from a formerly volcanic island (107). While the description perhaps evokes the decidedly real Faroe Islands, there is no mention of other land being seen along the journey, and it seems unlikely that a craft traveling between the two "real" places would utterly avoid the sight of land along the way. Too, the Faroe Islands were Christianized (admittedly coercively) before the ascent of William the Bastard to the English throne; by the time of the story, the Faroes would likely not be so overtly pagan as the Hidden Isles are described as being (107). The Hidden Isles, then, suggest themselves as being another place, not likely a "real" one, pointing again to the need to deviate from the medieval to make the fantastic happen.
That the Hidden Isles are described as pagan is justified within the text. The eponymous character, who is also known as "Sieur Drangø des Iles Occultes, Comte de Mont Saint-Michel" (99), describes himself as the son of the Master of Tides, "a great magician [who] raises storms to drive ships onto the rocks" (85) and possessed of great wealth therefore--evidence of which is presented in the text. Both are otherworldly. Drangø is possessed of scaled skin taken by many as being evidence of leprosy (80, 100), viewed by the standards of the time as a supernatural affliction; he is in some senses crocodilian, with large scales, an armored back, slit-pupil eyes, and claws (108). His reptilian appearance is not something that is to be found in the "real" world despite the protestations of many conspiracy theorists; its inclusion marks the text as supernatural, out of accord with the observable. So does his transformation into "the reborn Master of Tides" whose "crimson scales glinted, its whiskers had become long, trailing spines, and its huge green eyes...with unwinking gaze" look out on a domain inherited from the mystically-charged father (109); so, too, do the later sending of storms to conclude a campaign and to reveal how an earlier one had been concluded (113). That the text ultimately demands Drangø for its function places difference from the real at the heart of the story. I have argued before that the pages of Fantasy & Science Fiction can be taken as representative of the genre as a whole ("About 'Avianca's"); what the magazine endorses stands as exemplary of the fantastic. That the magazine, through its publication of the story, endorses the contents thereof suggests that it takes a view of fantasy as working best when deeply rooted in the real (particularly the medieval, as "About 'Avianca's Bezel'" also notes) but demanding the insertion of something else for its effect.
That fantasy literature seems to need such things, however, does not mean that it should not ground itself in as much accuracy as it can. Artists and scholars both retain the duty Helen Young notes to get things right. The more that is done well and correctly, after all, the more that can be done to go into something else, since that other needs a solid frame of reference in which to exist.
Works Cited
- Cowdrey, Albert E. "The Lord of Ragnarök." The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction September/October 2015: 78-119. Print.
- Elliott, Geoffrey B. "About 'Avianca's Bezel.'" Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 7 October 2014. Web. 19 November 2015.
- Tolkien, J.R.R. "On Fairy-stories." "The Monsters and the Critics" and Other Essays. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 2006. Print. 109-61.
- Young, Helen. "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity? I Do." Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 16 June 2014. Web. 19 November 2015.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
CFP: SCMLA 2016
As noted in the report on the 2015 meeting of the Society at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, the Society voted to propose a session for the 2016 South Central Modern Language Association (SCMLA) conference, to be held in Dallas, Texas, USA, on 3-5 November 2016. Those who attended the 2015 iteration of the conference, just concluded in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, were given a form to propose special sessions at the 2016 conference, in which 30-word descriptions and contact information for session organizers is requested. In accord with the Society's (thwarted) desire to see an "Unconventional Medievalisms" panel at the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies and the aforementioned decision to pursue a panel at the 2016 SCMLA conference, the following text is being sent to SCMLA officers for inclusion in forthcoming newsletters:
The medieval appears in historical, fantastic, and speculative fiction--and other places seldom investigated. The less-investigated is the focus of the proposed panel. More information appears at talesaftertolkien.blogspot.com and talesaftertolkien.org.The "More information" is this:
That the medieval appears in historical, fantastic, and speculative fiction is a commonplace--and sensibly so. Historical fiction that situates itself in the centuries between the fall of Western Rome and the emergence of the traditional Renaissance will necessarily work with the medieval. Fantastic fiction, following Tolkien and the more recent Martin, also makes much of the medieval, deploying its tropes to various purposes but in effect making medievalism a convention of the genre. Something similar happens in much speculative fiction, if less often. But the medieval also appears in other places--in a variety of contemporary musical genres, in amusement parks, in other fictional genres than the commonplace, in body modifications, and elsewhere. For a special session at the 2016 South Central Modern Language Association conference--3-5 November 2016 in Dallas, Texas, USA--the Tales after Tolkien Society requests abstracts (100-300 words) of papers looking at how the medieval manifests in one unconventional place or another. Please send them to Geoffrey B. Elliott, Tales after Tolkien Society Vice-President (USA), at geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com before 1 February 2016.This text also appears on the Society website, proper.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
About SEMA 2015
Some time ago, the CFP for the Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA) conference went up in this webspace (here). Society member Brian Brooks attended the event and has provided a short report of it, which can be found as a PDF here.
His exhortation to send to the next iteration of the SEMA conference is worth following.
His exhortation to send to the next iteration of the SEMA conference is worth following.
About the Battle of Agincourt
As several news outlets have remarked (here, here, and here, among others), today, 25 October 2015, marks the sexcentenary of the Battle of Agincourt. Notably depicted with a stirring bit of battlefield rhetoric in Shakespeare's Henry V, it is remarked upon as a high point for England in the Hundred Years War, another in which the common folk of England emerged triumphant over a numerically superior and better-provisioned French force. And because it does make such a presentation of common folk fighting and winning against substantial odds, it is a piece of the medieval that lends itself to refiguration, not only by Shakespeare and those who have continued to produce his plays, but also in more "accessible" writing--as Linda Davies's comments, linked above, indicate.
The medieval English reliance on the longbow in the conduct of war, particularly the Hundred Years War that factors heavily into understandings of "the medieval," emerges in the most prominent twentieth-century refiguration of the medieval, and one that exerts substantial influence on works still emergent: Tolkien's Middle-earth. Their effectiveness plays out in Peter Jackson's movie adaptations of the relevant works, certainly, as this scene demonstrates--but the Elves are not the analogs of the English in Tolkien's works. It is instead the Númenóreans and their descendants who are the analogs of the English,* and their association with the longbow expected of the later medieval English emerges in some of the peripheral materials of the corpus. Unfinished Tales makes the note in "A Description of Númenor" that "it was the bows of the Númenóreans that were most greatly feared" by the enemies of that people, describing as a standard military practice something not unlike the withering repeated volleys of arrow-fire the English armies released at Agincourt, Crécy, and Poitiers.
How Agincourt and things like it continue to emerge in figurations and presentations of the medieval--not only the fantasy literature that frequently admits of overt medievalism and the historical fiction and fictionalized histories that strive to be "authentically" medieval, but also other presentations of the medieval in other guises and genres--bears examination, to be sure. That Agincourt still attracts the attention it does suggests--along with relatively recent attention to a Caxtonian incunabulum, medieval optics, Richard III, medieval antibiotics, and the Holigost--that the work the Society does, tracing the manifestation of the medieval in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (and beyond, perhaps?) is of some value to the world at large. People outside the academy remain interested in what happened centuries in the past, and they remain captivated by the ways in which what happened in such times is presented anew; the Society remains interested in examining the accuracy of such depictions, and so it must remain interested in developing and refining standards against which to assess that accuracy.
Continued study of what is left of what has been is therefore necessary, and contributions to Society materials of such studies--no less than those which explicitly examine medievalism--are welcome. Please send submissions along.
*See "Moving beyond Tolkien's Medievalism: Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man Trilogies," my chapter in Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms: From Isaac Asimov to A Game of Thrones, 185 and 196n3. (Why would I not plug a Society volume or my contribution to it?)
The medieval English reliance on the longbow in the conduct of war, particularly the Hundred Years War that factors heavily into understandings of "the medieval," emerges in the most prominent twentieth-century refiguration of the medieval, and one that exerts substantial influence on works still emergent: Tolkien's Middle-earth. Their effectiveness plays out in Peter Jackson's movie adaptations of the relevant works, certainly, as this scene demonstrates--but the Elves are not the analogs of the English in Tolkien's works. It is instead the Númenóreans and their descendants who are the analogs of the English,* and their association with the longbow expected of the later medieval English emerges in some of the peripheral materials of the corpus. Unfinished Tales makes the note in "A Description of Númenor" that "it was the bows of the Númenóreans that were most greatly feared" by the enemies of that people, describing as a standard military practice something not unlike the withering repeated volleys of arrow-fire the English armies released at Agincourt, Crécy, and Poitiers.
How Agincourt and things like it continue to emerge in figurations and presentations of the medieval--not only the fantasy literature that frequently admits of overt medievalism and the historical fiction and fictionalized histories that strive to be "authentically" medieval, but also other presentations of the medieval in other guises and genres--bears examination, to be sure. That Agincourt still attracts the attention it does suggests--along with relatively recent attention to a Caxtonian incunabulum, medieval optics, Richard III, medieval antibiotics, and the Holigost--that the work the Society does, tracing the manifestation of the medieval in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (and beyond, perhaps?) is of some value to the world at large. People outside the academy remain interested in what happened centuries in the past, and they remain captivated by the ways in which what happened in such times is presented anew; the Society remains interested in examining the accuracy of such depictions, and so it must remain interested in developing and refining standards against which to assess that accuracy.
Continued study of what is left of what has been is therefore necessary, and contributions to Society materials of such studies--no less than those which explicitly examine medievalism--are welcome. Please send submissions along.
*See "Moving beyond Tolkien's Medievalism: Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man Trilogies," my chapter in Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms: From Isaac Asimov to A Game of Thrones, 185 and 196n3. (Why would I not plug a Society volume or my contribution to it?)
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
About Henry V's Holigost
A 12 October 2015 note from Historic England comments on the likely discovery of Henry V's great ship Holigost, and while it would be expected that an organization with that name would concern itself with such discoveries, the attention it has received from news agencies indicates the continuing regard in which the medieval is held. Among others, the BBC, the Independent, the Daily Mail, and the Telegraph discuss the find; the various outlets, each addressing different (if overlapping) audiences, bespeak a wide interest in the England of the Hundred Years War, which event serves as one of the defining events of what "medieval England" means.
That there is some room to question what "medieval England" means is noted, at least in part, here. While the comments I make in "More about Short-form Medievalist Scholarship"--which identify likely ends of the medieval in England as 1476, 1485, and 1534--would clearly put the ship, which fought for England between 1415 and 1420 (as Historic England notes) among the medieval, the thought occurs that the medieval in England could be said to register with the differentiation of the English royalty from the French nobility. That differentiation is a consequence of the Hundred Years War, so that later parts of it could be said to have removed England from the medieval (if perhaps only by the virulently anti-Gallic).
If it is, though, the French motto Historic England reports emblazoned on Holigost would serve to medievalize her. More to the point, however, the technologies employed on the ship mark the vessel as medieval. Clinker-built ships in northern and western Europe find their most prominent examples in the Viking longships of history and legend--and, at least in popular conception, the raiding Viking is one of the key figures of the medieval. (Indeed, it is a figure that caused me no small amount of trouble in the initial papers from which the Society sprang, which I detail in my contribution to Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms: From Isaac Asimov to A Game of Thrones.) The single-mast construction is similarly evocative, despite an evident lack of oars to maneuver the ship or propel her in calm weather. Too, the limited reliance on gunpowder weapons and the heavier employment of the thrown gad suggest a more proximal, personal killing of the sort typically associated--again, in popular conception--with medieval warfare, even if prevailing (and incorrect) ideas of medieval warfare are of armies facing one another in shining armor, blades bared in the sunlight and dimmed by spilled blood soon after.
In any event, the seeming rediscovery of Holigost promises to offer more insight into what is "true" about some facets of medieval life--for the popular conception of medieval life is not incorrect in noting the prevalence and influence of violence in and upon it, and Holigost is a vessel of war. And that it has received the attention it has argues that there is yet value perceived in learning more about the medieval, that there is relevance still about the events of some six centuries past--a relevance we can hope for our own lives six centuries in the future.
-With thanks to Society member Brian Brooks for bringing this to attention
That there is some room to question what "medieval England" means is noted, at least in part, here. While the comments I make in "More about Short-form Medievalist Scholarship"--which identify likely ends of the medieval in England as 1476, 1485, and 1534--would clearly put the ship, which fought for England between 1415 and 1420 (as Historic England notes) among the medieval, the thought occurs that the medieval in England could be said to register with the differentiation of the English royalty from the French nobility. That differentiation is a consequence of the Hundred Years War, so that later parts of it could be said to have removed England from the medieval (if perhaps only by the virulently anti-Gallic).
If it is, though, the French motto Historic England reports emblazoned on Holigost would serve to medievalize her. More to the point, however, the technologies employed on the ship mark the vessel as medieval. Clinker-built ships in northern and western Europe find their most prominent examples in the Viking longships of history and legend--and, at least in popular conception, the raiding Viking is one of the key figures of the medieval. (Indeed, it is a figure that caused me no small amount of trouble in the initial papers from which the Society sprang, which I detail in my contribution to Fantasy and Science Fiction Medievalisms: From Isaac Asimov to A Game of Thrones.) The single-mast construction is similarly evocative, despite an evident lack of oars to maneuver the ship or propel her in calm weather. Too, the limited reliance on gunpowder weapons and the heavier employment of the thrown gad suggest a more proximal, personal killing of the sort typically associated--again, in popular conception--with medieval warfare, even if prevailing (and incorrect) ideas of medieval warfare are of armies facing one another in shining armor, blades bared in the sunlight and dimmed by spilled blood soon after.
In any event, the seeming rediscovery of Holigost promises to offer more insight into what is "true" about some facets of medieval life--for the popular conception of medieval life is not incorrect in noting the prevalence and influence of violence in and upon it, and Holigost is a vessel of war. And that it has received the attention it has argues that there is yet value perceived in learning more about the medieval, that there is relevance still about the events of some six centuries past--a relevance we can hope for our own lives six centuries in the future.
-With thanks to Society member Brian Brooks for bringing this to attention
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
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.
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.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
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.
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.
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