About Some Society Member Happenings

Helen Young has posted a couple of things to another web-venue; I call them to your attention here:

• http://medievallyspeaking.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/bradford-middle-ages-in-childrens.html
• http://medievallyspeaking.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/polack-languedotdoc-1305.html

Go read them!

Game of Thrones Rewatch 1.2: "The Kingsroad"

Read the previous entry in this series here.
Read the next entry in this series here.

Episode 1.2 – “The Kingsroad”

Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss

Directed by Tim Van Patten

Commentary by Lena Heady (Cersei Lannister), Mark Addy (Robert Baratheon), and Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau (Jaime Lannister)

Episode 1.2, “The Kingsroad,” is an episode full of partings, both literal and figurative.  People leave other people, people lose pieces of their identity, people leave behind pieces of themselves they no longer have use for.  This is a major theme of the whole series; people (those who survive) are pared down to their essential essences, leaving behind the parts they don’t need or want.  Sometimes this is a literal leaving-behind—of people or objects—and sometimes it’s more figurative.

In this episode, much of the leaving-behind is literal.  Ned, Arya, and Sansa leave Winterfell (and Catelyn, Robb, Bran, and Rickon) to go south.  Jon leaves everyone to go north.  Tyrion and his siblings split up.  The episode is full of goodbyes, and just as with the small moment between Ned and Bran in the last episode, readers and re-watchers know this is the last time most of these people ever see each other.

The first goodbye of the episode is between Jon and Arya and showcases their relationship. Although there have been only hints of how alike they are in feeling like outsiders in their own family, the connection between them is clear in this scene. Jon’s gift to Arya becomes the focal point of her identity as she proceeds on her journey, the one thing she can’t give up at the House of Black and White. Throughout the books, Arya wishes she could see Jon again, and keeps trying to get to the Wall after Ned’s death, though she’s constantly thwarted in that attempt. Of all the Starks, these two are easily the closest and have the best relationship.

The Jon-Arya goodbye stands in immediate and sharp contrast to Jon’s farewell to Bran.  Bran, of course, is unconscious, so the dramatic tension is between Jon and Catelyn, who clearly loathes the very sight of Jon.  Jon, to his credit, doesn’t let that deter him from saying what he needs to say to Bran, and he doesn’t complain to Robb later that his mother was less than kind about Jon’s presence.  (That Robb asks about Cat’s behavior shows how aware everyone else is of Cat’s loathing.)  Robb and Jon’s goodbye uses few words, but shows a deep respect and understanding between the two young men.

Hard on the heels of Jon and Bran’s farewell is Cat and Ned’s. Again, it’s tense and confrontational, and Cat finally puts into words why she despises Jon so much—he’s living proof of Ned’s (supposed) infidelity. She also expresses the frustration of women in this sort of society—men are always going off and doing things in the name of duty, then claiming they had no choice; “You had a choice,” she tells him, “and you’ve made it.” It’s pretty clear that she doesn’t just mean his decision to leave right now, but every decision he’s made in their relationship—leaving to fight with Robert, (apparently) having sex with another woman, bringing the product of that union back to Winterfell, raising him with her children, and now leaving again, against her advice. All of this comes to a head, and she yells at him before he leaves. (I don’t remember if she regrets this conversation when she finds out about his death. We’ll see when I get there.)

The final Stark goodbye in this half of the episode is between Ned and Jon at the cairn marking where the Kingsroad splits north-south.  This encounter continues a so-far pretty subtle theme of Ned letting his honor and duty keep him from doing the right thing (or at least the smart thing). Assuming that the R+L=J theory is correct (as I do, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, go look it up), and the promise that Ned made to Lyanna on her deathbed was to keep Jon secret and safe, it makes sense that Ned would keep the identity of Jon’s mother from everyone, even Jon. After all, he was young, and who knew when he might blurt it out where people could hear him. But Jon’s shown himself to be diplomatic and careful with his words, and there is no excuse for Ned not telling Jon right there who his mother is. Ned’s got all the foreshadowing working against him—he’s going south at the summons of a king, which is the same situation in which his father and brother died; the last person in his position was murdered—and Jon’s heading into a demonstrably dangerous life as a brother of the Night’s Watch, weeks after a deserter claimed the White Walkers were a-walkin’. There’s absolutely no guarantee that he’s ever going to see Jon again, and not giving him at least a little bit of information about his mother is just plain irresponsible at this point.

These farewells are poignant, but also speak to new beginnings and moving forward. The farewells in the second half of the episode are harder and tend more toward the symbolic. There are two literal farewells between Starks, though—Cat leaving Bran and Arya driving away Nymeria.

The assassination attempt on Bran is what shocks Cat out of her stupor and refusal to do anything besides sit next to Bran’s bed—anything, even things that, as lady of Winterfell, she’s duty-bound to take care of. She neglects her guests and other children for weeks, refuses to handle the affairs of the house (Robb has to take over for her), and is not present to see off her lord-husband and her guests. I think the sheer magnitude of her faux pas get lost in both the books and the show; Martin doesn’t do a lot with the responsibilities of women in running a household, and the show doesn’t have time to instruct the viewer on the finer points of medieval courtly etiquette and household responsibilities. But the attempt on Bran’s life and her realization that this is the second attempt on Bran’s life give Cat a purpose again, and she finally gets up, dresses, and leaves in order to warn Ned that everything is so much worse than they thought.

Arya, too, learns that everything is worse than previously thought when she’s forced to send Nymeria away. Again, this is somewhere that the show loses some nuance in the visual rather than written medium. The show doesn’t really establish the wolves as much beyond special pets; the depth of the Stark children’s relationships to their wolves and how the wolves represent their identities as Starks and/or Northerners is completely lost in the show (at least as far as I remember; if the re-watch turns up evidence to the contrary I’ll point it out).  Arya has to drive Nymeria away to save her from being executed, but that puts Lady in danger—which Arya of course never anticipated. Thus, Sansa, too, loses her wolf, though she never gets to say goodbye to Lady.

Which brings us to the figurative farewells; among the Starks it’s mostly their sense of justice. Ned begins to realize how incapable Robert is of ruling. Sansa gets a glimpse of Joffrey and Cersei’s true natures. Arya realizes that nothing is fair and loses her trust in just about everyone (except maybe Ned). It’s a loss of innocence on a wide scale—all in these two or three scenes. Jon, too, is losing his innocence, realizing that what he signed up for isn’t as grand and respectable as he tried to convince Jaime it was at the beginning of the episode. These farewells and losses aren’t complete yet, but the groundwork is being laid for the catastrophic end of the season.

In the Dothraki Sea, Daenerys is also losing parts of herself. She begins the episode miserable, in pain, and being raped (again). But something about the dragon eggs seems to awake something in her, and she voluntarily recruits Doreah to teach her how to “make the Khal happy.” This is a slight shift in agency from the books; in A Game of Thrones, Doreah is a wedding gift from Viserys, given specifically so that Doreah can teach Dany how to please a man. These lessons are never shown. Instead, there is a brief mention that Dany and Doreah stay up late talking before Dany takes charge and seduces Drogo. In this episode, Dany is losing her fear and timidness and gaining agency. She has been sold to Drogo like a slave, but when Doreah asks if she is a slave, she shakes her head. She demands equality in her next sexual encounter with Drogo and begins to gain the confidence of a khaleesi. Obviously, there are still problematic elements here; Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau points out that this is very Stockholm-Syndrome-y: “because if you see in episode one, she is basically just given to this man who is just raping her, and now she falls for him.” This is continued fallout from the issue I mentioned in the last post, that changing that one scene and Dany’s early dynamic with Drogo will have far-reaching consequences for their relationship and its implications.

RIP: Mycah the Butcher's Boy, unnamed would-be assassin, Lady

Next week: Jon grows up. Dany gets pregnant. Littlefinger smarms his way onto the screen. Arya's dancing lessons begin.

Game of Thrones Rewatch 1.1: "Winter is Coming"

Welcome to the first part in the flagship Tales after Tolkien blog series of 2016-17.
Read the next post here. -GE

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This is the first in (what I hope will be) a weekly series of re-watching Game of Thrones and each episode’s commentary.  There will be some slight recapping, but primarily analysis, and I welcome (polite) discussion.  Spoilers will abound, as will criticism and comparison to A Song of Ice and Fire.  Without further ado—

1.1 “Winter is Coming”

Writ. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss

Dir. Tim Van Patten

Commentary by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss

Original Air Date: April 17, 2011

Episode 1.1 is (aptly) titled “Winter is Coming,” and it sets up the overall plot, aesthetic, and ethos of the show, while introducing most of the major characters. Like the books, the show begins with Ser Waymar Royce, Will, and Gared heading out north of the Wall and encountering the wights and the White Walkers. This scene helps to set up one of the central themes of the book and the title of the episode—winter is coming, and it’s not coming alone.  That’s why I was so surprised to hear David Benioff and D.B. Weiss discussing how close they came to not including this scene at all.  They were going to start with the Starks, but realized that characters kept talking about the Wall, but no (non-book-reading) viewers would have any idea what they meant by “the Wall,” so they shot and included the scene while reshooting the pilot.  This scene isn’t just the prologue of A Game of Thrones; it helps to establish the central struggle of the novels, that most of the people of the southern kingdoms have no idea what kind of danger they’re in and are in no way prepared for the coming winter.  With the hindsight of knowing how much of a mess the show becomes in later seasons, this is an early red flag for trust in Benioff and Weiss’ understanding of the nuances and deeper themes of the novels.

Tales after Tolkien at Kalamazoo 2016: A Session of Ice and Fire

At 1330 EDT on Saturday, 14 May 2016, the Tales after Tolkien Society sponsored several talks in A Session of Ice and Fire: Medievalism in the Game of Thrones Franchise. Three excellent papers were presented to a full audience (of which thirty members signed up for inclusion in the Society). Abstracts for each appear below, listed with a brief blurb about the author and organized by order of presentation.

Alexandra Garner

Alexandra Garner holds master's degrees in both medieval studies and popular culture. In Fall 2016, she begins work on a doctorate in English at the University of Oregon. Her ongoing work traces medievalism in popular culture. Describing her paper, "Forging and Reforging Valyrian Steel: The Role of Arthurian Sword Motifs in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire," she writes

George R.R. Martin himself has characterized Valyrian steel as “a fantasy metal, which means it has magical characteristics, and magic plays a role in its forging.” While Valyrian steel weapons often have a mystical aura about them in the series, both on page and screen, they are marvels not only magical, but literary. The Valyrian steel weapons that are crucial to the narrative as has thus far been revealed all carry a genealogical relevance to Arthurian swords and their properties.

This presentation delves into a few weapons—especially swords—from Martin’s series and its HBO adaptation Game of Thrones that are reflections or deviations of Arthurian swords and sword motifs. In particular, I discuss Ice, the greatsword held by Ned Stark until his death, at which point Tywin Lannister has it re-forged into the longsword Oathkeeper and the shortsword Widow’s Wail, given to Jaime Lannister (and then Brienne of Tarth) and Joffrey Baratheon, respectively. Additionally, the Mormont house sword called Longclaw, repurposed and given to Jon Snow, bears some significance when compared to Arthurian swords.

Being weapons crucial to survival in Westeros and in the medieval period, swords feature prominently in the literature of both. Depictions of Valyrian steel swords, their owners, and the contexts in which they feature in the series reveal their deviance from and adherence to medieval sword motifs. I analyze the aforementioned examples and juxtapose these with Arthurian swords like Excalibur to argue that Martin’s Valyrian steel relies on and adapts these motifs and characteristics in particular ways for the series.

Carol Jamison

Carol Jamison, an eminent professor of medieval literature and linguistics at Armstrong State University, has taught and written on Martin, as well as on Gower, Rowling, and fabliaux, among many others. She is currently at work on a book on Martin's chivalric codes. In the abstract of her paper, "Peaceweaving in Westeros," she remarks

The female characters in A Song of Ice and Fire echo the freoβuwebbe, or peace weavers, of Anglo-Saxon literature who are married off in attempts to form political alliances. The peace weaver could become, in the best of situations, a sort of diplomat, participating actively in the politics of her husband’s kingdom. However, in a society that values warfare, especially one in which a game of thrones is underway, marrying off women as a means to gain power or ensure peace could turn out badly. Martin’s peace weaving exchanges are pervasive and numerous, and they vividly evoke the various situations of literary peace weavers in such works as Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon elegies "The Wife’s Lament" and "Wulf." Like their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, peace weavers in Westeros have a number of possible responses to marital exchanges. While some are victimized by the exchanges, others find power within the system, either asserting their influence as mothers and diplomats in their new husbands’ homes, or exerting power as queens. My presentation explores several of the peace exchanges in Martin’s novels that illustrate the variety of possibilities that could occur when women (and men and children) are used to forge alliances. I emphasize Sansa Stark, who echoes the passive peace weavers of the Anglo-Saxon elegies, and Cersei Lannister, who causes destruction rather than using her status as queen to wield positive political power.

Shiloh Carroll

Shiloh Carroll, working at the Tennessee State University Writing Center, is working on a book on Martin's medievalisms in A Song of Ice and Fire and its television adaptation. Of her paper, "Dragons, Alliances, Power, and Gold: Disruptor Beam's Game of Thrones Ascent," she notes

This paper examines the structure, mechanics, and medievalism of Game of Thrones Ascent, the social media flash game based on HBO's Game of Thrones. An examination of video game theory reveals that Ascent suffers from many of the problems usually seen in social media games, particularly Skinner box mechanics and micro-transactions. Likewise, the game also uses neomedieval trappings to enhance engagement and keep players involved with their Skinner-box mechanics and paying for neomedievally-themed gear and other perks. However, Ascent does provide some psychological satisfaction through meeting the player's need for mastery, autonomy, and social relevance.

Tales after Tolkien at Kalamazoo 2016: Introduction and Meeting

As the current Society webpage notes (here), the Society emerges from paper sessions hosted at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and it tends to privilege that conference. In keeping with the regard for the Congress, as well as §5.1 of the Society constitution, the Society Annual General Meeting (AGM) was held at approximately 6pm EDT on 13 May 2016 in Kalamazoo, proximal to the Congress itself. Attending were Luke Baugher, Shiloh Carroll, Alex Garner, Jim Hard, Carol Jamison, Jewell Morow, and Kris Swank; Geoffrey B. Elliott presided. As announced on 19 April 2016, the stated agenda for the meeting included what sessions to propose for the 2017 Congress and what efforts should be made to expand Society activities to other conferences; some other new business also followed. Reports of each appear below.

Proposed Sessions for the 2017 Congress

The AGM suggested that the Society propose two sessions for the 2017 Congress. The first is something of an ongoing project, a roundtable session on Unconventional Medievalisms. Information about earlier attempts to offer such a session can be found here and here; it is expected that the session to be proposed will be of similar sort. The second session is a traditional paper session meant to treat medievalism in young adult and children's literatures, emphasizing but not restricting itself to the works of JK Rowling. CFPs are expected to emerge after session proposals are made to the Congress; it is hoped that they will be approved.

Expansion to Other Conferences

The idea of expanding Society presence outside the International Congress on Medieval Studies and the International Medieval Congress at Leeds remains one the Society wishes to pursue. To that end, Kris Swank will be proposing a Society session at the 2017 Southwest Popular Culture/American Culture Association conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Shiloh Carroll will attempt to propose one at the upcoming Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association in the South conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

New Business

Two items of new business were discussed. One was informal and wholly welcome; the Society welcomed new members Luke Baugher and Jim Hart.

The other was more formally conducted. Kris Swank resigned her position as Social Media Officer for the Society. Upon her announced resignation, a call for nominations/volunteers to succeed her was offered. Discussion ensued, and Luke Baugher was acclaimed as the Social Media Officer for the Society, with a term to extend from the end of the 2016 meeting to the 2019 meeting, following the three-year term expressed in §4.2 of the Society Constitution.

This report also appears on the Society website.

About the 2016 Annual General Meeting

Per §5.1 of the Society Constitution, an Annual General Meeting of the Tales after Tolkien Society will be held during the International Congress on Medieval Studies. Because the Congress has not allotted the Society a time and location for the meeting during the regular schedule, it has been arranged to take place off-site at a local restaurant. (Response to a similar occurrence in 2015 was positive, encouraging repetition.) This post therefore serves as the formal announcement that the 2016 Annual General Meeting of the Tales after Tolkien Society will take place at 6pm (local time) on Friday, 13 May 2016, at Zooroona Mediterranean Grill (1701 West Main Street, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA 49006). Two items are already on the agenda: discussion of what session/s to propose for the 2017 Congress and whether efforts to arrange sessions at other conferences should continue (and, if so, in what form). Others may be added in advance of the meeting; email details to geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com with the subject line "TaT AGM Agenda."

This announcement is also posted to the Society website.

Thoughts about a Children's Program

Read the next piece in the series here.

I have the great pleasure of being a father to a young daughter. In trying to be good at it, I spend a fair amount of time reviewing the media my daughter consumes, whether that be in the form of children's books or television and movies. One such that I recently watched "with" her--meaning that it was playing while she moved among watching, playing with blocks, chasing the cats, eating strawberries, and begging for oranges--is Manuel Sicilia's 2013 Justin and the Knights of Valour. In the movie, the eponymous character leaves a home where his prominent father pushes him to go into the practice of law, choosing instead to become a knight in the image of his grandfather, the heroic knight Roland. Doing so sends him to a remote monastery for training under a retired knight and two markedly disparate monks; it also sees him return to his hometown, ostensibly rejected from candidacy for knighthood. While there, he learns that his putative lady, Lara, has been kidnapped, and he rushes out to retrieve her. In doing that, he comes not only to find companionship from the former bar-maid Talia and the schizophrenic magician Melquiades, but also to confront his grandfather's killer, who is plotting to take over the kingdom where Justin lives. After a brief battle, the takeover plot is thwarted, Roland is avenged, and Justin is elevated to the dignity of knighthood, the first in a generation to receive the honor. It is a movie that ostensibly celebrates the medieval, but it does so in an unfortunately inaccurate way that conduces to the continued transmission of wrong-headed ideas about how things were and what they mean now.

There are some things that the movie gets right about the medieval, or at least has in accordance with the records and literatures left by the medievals. For one, Justin takes an article of Lara's clothing (admittedly incorrectly and in a bit of humorous dramatic irony), a sock, as a token of her courtly affection--a commonplace of chivalric literature and one that could be read as particularly charged, following Evelyn Meyer. As an emblem of the exposed foot and leg, it would both come across as "masculine" forwardness and as an expression of particular intimacy, given courtly prohibitions against showing the (lower portions of) women's bodies. It also comes across to Justin as an endorsement of his endeavor, and in the finest knightly tradition, he vows to do particular deeds in honor of the award--they are done, and he returns the token to an unsympathetic, disdainful figure who is also in keeping with at least parts of the courtly-love model,* as N.M. Heckel succinctly outlines it. In at least motioning toward a major conceptual construct of the Western medieval, then, Justin and the Knights of Valour does well.

Additionally, the movie handles a fair bit of knightliness well, at least as measured against literary depictions. For one, the knights associated with the "good" kingdom in which Justin is raised and which his grandfather--whose very name evokes one of the most prominent exemplars of chivalry in medieval literature--ostensibly operate under the terms of a specific, reasonably simple oath, one that reads as a reduced form of the Pentecostal oath taken by the Knights of the Round Table in Malory (75-76). For another, when Justin seeks training as a knight, he finds it among isolated monks in a remote monastery,** one of whom was a knightly companion of Roland--something else that echoes Malory, in whose work knights retire into contemplative life and in which religious hermits work mighty acts of healing such as Justin comes to need. So there is another point at which the movie manages to remain in line with its medieval predecessors.

But although there are things that Justin and the Knights of Valour does well to represent, there are far more that it does less well to depict inaccurately. Some of the inaccuracies are understandable, given the direction of the movie towards children. For example, few if any characters actually die during the film. The only one that comes to mind is the usurping knight that slew Roland, and his death--by falling from on high--is not directly depicted; the corpse is never shown. Indeed, with little exception, combat in the film is bloodless. It is a marked departure from both the medieval antecedents--Malory's Arthur early grows "so blody that by hys shylde there myght no man know hym, for all was blode and brayne that stake on his swerde and on hys shylde" (22), and Lancelot slays Mellyagaunce with a blow that was "such a buffett that the stroke carved the hed in two partyes"(663), among many others--and from prevailing contemporary iterations of the "medieval" on film and television; it is one, however, wholly consonant with long-standing tropes of "children's" works. Others are accommodations to more modern storytelling sensibilities. Notably, the film ascribes agency to several female characters--Talia, Justin's grandmother, the queen--in ways not always or often attested in prevailing documentation of medieval conduct and behaviors but which are accepted or (rightly) expected as a matter of course in more recent storytelling.

Others, however, are not justifiable on such grounds. One such is the overwhelming whiteness of the milieu. Despite being a Spanish production and so deriving from a part of the world in which the medieval was decidedly multicolored and multicultural, Justin and the Knights of Valour shows few if any characters of color. The closest are "Sir" Clorex, voiced by Antonio Banderas in the English-language version, and Talia, voiced by Saoirse Ronan, and neither character is marked as coming from a separate or distinct culture; if they are characters of color, they are thoroughly colonized, so that their Otherness is a token inclusion rather than an actual engagement with the kind of multiculturalism Helen Young has been at great length to demonstrate was embedded in the medieval experience and should be embedded in re-creations and appropriations of the medieval (something she discusses in "'It's the Middle Ages, Yo!'" and "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity?" if not also elsewhere).

Another, and one particularly repugnant from a disciplinary standpoint, is the compression or conflation of the pre-modern. In the movie, medieval and medievalist ideas and presentations are yoked directly to later concepts of dress, decorum, architecture, and even governance. Knighthood not even a generation gone has been replaced almost wholly by a stultifyingly bureaucratic rule of law, an utter anachronism that grates. Building styles on display reflect Baroque, Georgian, and Augustan architectures rather than the medieval--save for the exaggerated Gothics of the castle, tower, and monastery--and the grounds of Justin's home reflect the English gardens of Jane Austen more than the brewery and mill of Margery Kempe. Matters of attire are similarly evocative of later periods than the medieval, the white powders reading more of the Hanoverians than the Cerdicingas or Plantagenets. Each part of the past is deserving of its own attention; for so much of the pre-modern to be condensed together devalues history, and the promulgation of such amalgamations serves to foreshorten what should be an enrichingly deep view of what the world has been.

While Justin and the Knights of Valour does have some merits--and that my daughter enjoyed watching it is among them--it is emblematic of a larger problem. While I have noted elsewhere that misreadings and misrepresentations of the medieval can be "something other than mere mistakes," and there are some such things in the movie, there is far more that conduces to a view of the medieval not only ignorant but, given easily accessible emergent research and commentary, willfully so. Such movies as I watched with my daughter today contribute to a broader cultural current that drags down the necessary and proper nuances of the world as it was, hampering children's abilities to understand both it and the world as it now is even before they come to realize that there are subtleties for which to seek. What the adults those children will become will perceive, or not, can only be guessed at, but if they start out with the restrictions that already grow up around them, they will have a hard time with anything but the shallowest surfaces of a rich, deep world.

Notes
*Admittedly, Lara evokes the end of the medieval; her name is pronounced with the open, Continental "a," making it sound like the name of Petrarch's scornful beloved and so connecting the character and the work as a whole to the then-emergent Renaissance.

**Another of the monks deploys technologies that read as iterations of such modern things as remote controls. It seems almost a living backwards, something associated with wise figures in another prominent Arthurian work--White's Once and Future King.

Works Cited

• Elliott, Geoffrey B. "About a Popova Piece...and a Bit of Rebuttal." Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 17 June 2014. Web. 15 March 2016.
• Heckel, N.M. "Sex, Society, and Medieval Women." University of Rochester River Campus Libraries. U of Rochester, n.d. Web. 15 March 2016.
• Justin and the Knights of Valour. Dir. Manuel Sicilia. Arc Entertainment, 2013. Netflix, n.d. Web. 15 March 2016.
• Malory, Thomas. Works. Ed. Eugène Vinaver. Second ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. Print.
• Meyer, Evelyn. "Undercutting the Fabric of Courtly Love with 'Tokens of Love' in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival." Academia.edu. Academia.edu, n.d. Web. 15 March 2016.
• White, T.H. The Once and Future King. New York: Ace, 1987. Print.
• Young, Helen. "'It's the Middle Ages, Yo!': Race, Neo/Medievalisms, and the World of Dragon Age." The Year's Work in Medievalism 27 (2012). Georgia Tech, n.d. Web. 15 March 2016.
• ---. "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity? I Do." Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 16 June 2014. Web. 15 March 2016.

Thoughts about Society Proceedings

It has been some time since the blog has updated; Society members seem to be busy people, which makes sense. Still, I apologize for not doing my part to get materials posted here; I shall continue to try to improve for the future. Contributions from others remain decidedly welcome; please email geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com with "Tales after Tolkien Society" in the subject line, and we'll confer.

For the moment, though, there is some news to report:

Good News

The 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies is coming, and the Society has a panel. Your attendance will be appreciated at it; having more people in the room helps us to keep having such panels in the future, and we may, in time, be able to get another publication out of it. In light of the upcoming Congress, there is a member survey, here: http://goo.gl/forms/x0pqgFcV5h. Please fill it out and let us know your opinions; we always want to hear from you!

Bad News

Less pleasantly, the attempt to have a Tales after Tolkien Society special session at the 2016 South Central Modern Language Association conference in Dallas, Texas, has faltered. Not enough responses to the call for papers came in to construct the hoped-for "Unconventional Medievalisms" panel. We will likely try again for another conference; if you have ideas of where we can go, let us know.

Call for News

As ever, the Society is happy to publicize member interests and accolades. Let us know what's going on with you; please email geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com with "Tales after Tolkien Society" in the subject line, and we'll see about getting things posted.

This will be posted to the Society website, as well.

Thoughts about Koontz's Stance against the Medieval

Some time ago,¹ I posted "Thoughts about Why We Still Look to the Medieval," laying out some potential reasons that the loosely-defined period retains the social cachet it does. In that piece, I note some antagonism towards the medieval, writing that

There is certainly reason to abjure the medieval....Those nations that have formed as a result of throwing off colonial yokes, in whole or in part, could scarcely be blamed for repudiating the trappings of those nations [including the commonly understood medieval] which held them in thrall as peripheries to a colonial/imperial core. Less formal, but perhaps more pervasive, is the ongoing search for novelty, the drive to have the next, new thing--which suggests excision of the old. Similar and more explicit is the frequent throwing-off of inherited trappings, casting aside older standards and methods in favor of quicker and more convenient ways of doing things and more equitable social structures. Each works against the continued re-presentation of the medieval, and each is a substantial thread in the tapestry of contemporary popular culture in the United States and elsewhere.

As I have continued to work in other areas than my scholarship since then, though, I have several times noted the repetition of "medieval" within works as a derogatory term. It is something to which I pay some attention--sensibly, since I claim to work as a medievalist and I do some small amount to produce work that attends to how the medieval is portrayed and presented. Thus, when I saw "medieval" repeatedly used as a derisive term in Dean Koontz's bestselling 2015 novel Ashley Bell,² and not entirely correctly so, I was obliged to wonder why it would be--since the earlier comments about "reason to abjure the medieval" seem not to apply; the character making the derogatory observation comes not so much from a post-colonized population as a still-colonial, and he is engaged in what amounts to colonialist activity as he does so.

Figuring out why "medieval" would carry such negative valence demands examining the situations in which the word is thus used. Two instances in Koontz's novel come to mind. In the first, SOC Paxton Thorpe³ surveys a town where his assigned targets reside, describing its buildings as "crudely constructed, as if no engineer existed in [the] country with more than a medieval education" (Ch. 21).⁴ In the second, Thorpe continues to survey the town, noting that  it "was in some respects medieval. No sewage system. No septic tanks. No indoor plumbing except, in a few cases, a hand pump in the kitchen sink, tapping a private well. There would be an open-air communal latrine just beyond the last buildings, basically ditches and a series of baffles, where people relieved themselves or to which they carried their products" (Ch. 37). In both cases, the medieval is equated with dilapidation and filth, with shoddiness and stink, and with a lack of working building and plumbing technologies.

In neither case is the equation accurate. For one, the engineering knowledge of the medievals was substantial. The castles that still dot the British Isles attest to it, for example, with NJG Pounds attesting to the sophistication of many of their physical structures and even casual glances at the many structures that have endured centuries of turmoil, deliberate work toward reduction, and the workings of weather revealing the excellence of their construction. The many medieval cathedrals and churches that continue to stand throughout Europe are similarly revelatory of the engineering knowledge held among the people of the European Middle Ages, for even if they are actively maintained, they still have to have been built exceptionally well to be able to sustain such maintenance across centuries. And the siege equipment marshaled by the medieval engineers was far from simple; trebuchets, catapults, and ballistae are not simple to use effectively, or to construct in the field, yet medieval engineers did so, and not seldom. A "medieval education" for an engineer, then, may not be what a modern builder would find most useful, but it is hardly to be equated with results in "crudely constructed" mud-brick-and-stucco structures falling into ruin.

Similarly, while medieval sanitation in many places was not good--if not so poor as is commonly assumed, as Caroline M. Barron explains well (255-61)--poor sanitation is hardly unique to the medieval. Indoor plumbing only began to be widely available in the Western world in the eighteenth century--well after even the later ends of the medieval I have elsewhere argued ("More"). I recall my maternal grandmother talking about finally having a house with an indoor flushing toilet, and I recall my paternal grandmother reminiscing about early married and parental life in a house that lacked any toilet other than an outhouse--the latter happening after even the Korean War ended, so decidedly far from the medieval in even its most extreme extensions. I sympathize entirely with the regard for indoor plumbing, of course, but the assertion that its lack is "medieval" rather than, say, nineteenth-century or Biblical--and the Judeo-Christian Scriptures discuss proper waste disposal (KJV Deut. 23:12-13 comes to mind)--is disingenuous.

That a privileged character in a privileged (because mainstream) text makes comments that inaccurately equate the medieval with the backward and objectionable, (probably) inadvertently serving colonialist and ultimately racist ends as Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul assert in their introduction to Medievalism in the Postcolonial World, bespeaks the prevalence of the view that the medieval is "bad." It also bespeaks an idea of "good" as a particular level of personal and household technology, which seems a dangerous one. This is not to say that the technology is in itself necessarily a bad thing,⁵ although such arguments could be made and the relevant questions should certainly be considered. It is to say, however, that the incorrect figuration of the medieval that Koontz presents through the thoughts of SOC Thorpe--which positioning endorses them as the results of right thinking, since, as an elite warrior, Thorpe is supposed to encapsulate much of the idealized virtue of the United States; what he does is supposed to be a goal to which others aspire--serves to advance a particular view of how things ought to be. The view is one that makes a number of assumptions that should be interrogated closely, including for why a false medieval is used as the counterpoint against which they are advanced.

Notes

1. I apologize that I have taken as long as I have to draft another piece for this webspace. Contributions from others are always welcome.
2. With formal academic work paying as well as it normally does, other means to secure income must be found. Some of them involve reading bestsellers and wondering why they are so.
3. Notably, Koontz does not use the descriptor for the character, although information about how to refer to such a person is readily available and, given the prominence of special operations personnel in popular culture, hardly inaccessible to readers.
4. Because I am working from an ebook, I cannot be sure that pagination is consistent. Hence citation by chapter numbers.
5. Clearly not, given the composition and dissemination of this piece wholly online.

Works Cited

• Barron, Caroline M. London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People, 1200-1500. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.
• Davis, Kathleen, and Nadia Altschul. Introduction. Medievalism in the Postcolonial World. Eds. Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. Print. 1-25.
• Elliott, Geoffrey B. "More about Short-Form Medievalist Scholarship." Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society,5 June 2014. Web. 17 January 2016.
• ---."Thoughts about Why We Still Look to the Medieval." Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 24 June 2014. Web. 17 January 2016.
• The Holy Bible: King James Version. Bartleby.com. Bartleby.com, 2000. Web. 17 January 2016.
• Koontz, Dean. Ashley Bell. New York: Bantam, 2015. Ebook.
• Pounds, NJG. The Medieval Castle in England and Wales: A Social and Political History. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.

About a Pilgrimage

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.