I have asserted on several occasions (such as in papers given at Society sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies) that the "standard" setting of fantasy fiction is one that is amorphously European feudal (typically High Middle Ages or Early Modern English in overall shape). That is, governmental authority is vested in a single monarch whose rule is supported and vested in a number of subordinate nobles who receive land and authority form the monarch, but there is not much in the way of formal distinctions. Perhaps one or two gradations of nobility are identified subordinate to the monarch, but only those. How this manifests in Tolkien, I mean to discuss in my contribution to the upcoming Society volumes, as does how it manifests in Robin Hobb's Six Duchies novels. It can also be seen in the structure of Gernia, the milieu of Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy that I discussed in a paper given at the 2010 South Central Modern Language Association conference and Helen Young discusses in a recent article; a number of ennobled lords serve a king, with only seniority distinguishing them in formal rank. Katharine Kerr's Deverry novels offer a bit more detail in the nobility of Deverry; there is a king and some princes, supported by those styled gwerbret, tieryn, and lord, in descending order of precedence. George R.R. Martin's Westeros is a bit more detailed, with bannermen sworn to various lords and expressly described as such, and some lords further ennobled as Wardens of large regions of the kingdom. Even so, none offers as much distinction among its noble ranks as does the exemplary English/British structure of nobility, with its overlapping ranks of duke/duchess, marquess/marchioness, earl/countess, viscount/viscountess, and baron/baroness, and gradations of seniority within each. The typical fantasy kingdom's relatively flat social hierarchy stands in contrast to a system forming a complex and complicated order of precedence in which issues of entitlement and privilege become means to exercise authority and their denial a means to offer insult. Why it should do so, why it should gloss over hierarchical distinctions with which the medieval mind (insofar as such a thing can be said to be) was quite concerned amid so many invocations of the medieval bears some explication.
One possibility for the leveling of the formal social hierarchy is the recognition that such structures do not obtain in the daily lives of the readers. The United States is a major market for fantasy literature, and while nobility and gradations of it are seen as prototypically "medieval," so that they have to be included, a strict social hierarchy in which people are born into places from which they may not ascend except in exceedingly rare cases runs counter to the prevailing cultural narrative (as it is reported; as it is evidenced may be a different matter entirely). Too, as I note in an earlier post, formal gradations of nobility in government are expressly prohibited by the core of United States law (US Const., art. I, sec. 10), so giving too much attention to them comes off as "un-American," something generally perceived as to be avoided in the US. But that does not account for readers in the UK, which remains a monarchy, or the various Realms of the Commonwealth, which ostensibly acknowledge the sovereignty of a monarch; in both cases, however, the peerage and royalty are largely nominal and ceremonial. They little affect the daily lives of the people, except perhaps in disruptions to traffic patterns and in providing convenient foci for ideations of celebrity. Thus, while it may be that the flattening corresponds to an anti-hierarchical sentiment among US fantasy readership (and, perhaps, that of other countries that rebelled against such structures or who peacefully but no less decisively removed themselves from royal and noble dominion), it may be a lack of importance or a lack of familiarity that prompts it for those readers who live in the various English-speaking countries in which monarchy is still in force. In each, the medieval is seen as "needing" nobility, but that nobility is minimized so as to correspond more closely to contemporary ideologies.
The idea does, however, leave open the question of Tolkien's flattening of his own noble hierarchy, since, as a medieval scholar and a man born in a British colony late in the Victorian era, he would not have been quite so much subject to the lessening of noble relevance as are those who follow him and those who write as citizens of nations that have repudiated structures of hereditary nobility. Yet his scholarship might provide an answer. Tolkien is noted for having been an Anglo-Saxonist, and the Anglo-Saxon noble structure is much flatter than that imposed on England by the Normans and that which developed in the succeeding centuries. A king (or seven, but who's counting?) is served by those styled ealdormann (alderman), eorl (earl), and thegns--and ealdormann and eorl seems to have been more or less interchangeable. Tolkien's amply attested source material, then, exhibits a relatively flat noble hierarchy, so that it is not to be wondered at that his recapitulation of it does so, particularly in his mimetic-of-the-Anglo-Saxons Rohirrim and his earlier overarching project to develop a distinctly English mythical history or pseudo-history. Since Tolkien does serve as a foundational figure to fantasy literature (as the Society happily acknowledges), it follows that later fantasy authors, looking back to him, would emulate his less-detailed scheme of noble gradation. Perhaps the coincidence of mimicking Tolkien and addressing the expectations of readers who demand "medieval" setting features without violating their current social contexts (much and overtly) accounts for the continued reduction of noble and royal title from their proliferation in England and elsewhere to their appearances on the fantasy literature page. And perhaps there are other factors contributing to the non-distinction than those for which I can account; further discussion of them would be welcome, as would further discussion of the possibilities this piece suggests.
Travels in Genre and Medievalism
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Yt Ys Nat Chaucer on lane That Hath a Blog
I made mention yesterday of the Chaucer blog, one of the more entertaining inside jokes for medievalists. The idea in it is that the text of the blog mimics what the greatest of Geoffreys would write were he to have a blog, as well as what some few others would contribute, given the chance. It is not itself scholarly work, although it is informed by scholarship, but it does serve as an excellent example of how the medieval can be brought forward.
Playing with the materials, such as the Chaucer blog does, is important. Too often, members of the general public get bogged down in the age of the medieval, thinking that the works are dreadfully dull in all cases. Perhaps this comes from poor teaching, in which people who do not really understand the material are obliged to transmit it as important cultural heritage; they do not know it and so cannot love it, and when they present it without love as they are then obliged to do, they foster in their students the impression that the material cannot be loved. But making the material a means of fun is a way to draw people into it, a way to show them that the medieval can be every bit as engaging as the modern--more, in some ways, since its greater removal allows for consideration of the work without necessarily entangling with contemporary concerns that distract from the work considered. Taking the material as the basis for a series of jokes as the Chaucer blog does makes the material a still-living thing, even if only in a small niche, and anything that helps to keep the better parts of the medieval alive helps medievalist studies such as those the Society promotes, and that is good for us all.
Playing with the materials, such as the Chaucer blog does, is important. Too often, members of the general public get bogged down in the age of the medieval, thinking that the works are dreadfully dull in all cases. Perhaps this comes from poor teaching, in which people who do not really understand the material are obliged to transmit it as important cultural heritage; they do not know it and so cannot love it, and when they present it without love as they are then obliged to do, they foster in their students the impression that the material cannot be loved. But making the material a means of fun is a way to draw people into it, a way to show them that the medieval can be every bit as engaging as the modern--more, in some ways, since its greater removal allows for consideration of the work without necessarily entangling with contemporary concerns that distract from the work considered. Taking the material as the basis for a series of jokes as the Chaucer blog does makes the material a still-living thing, even if only in a small niche, and anything that helps to keep the better parts of the medieval alive helps medievalist studies such as those the Society promotes, and that is good for us all.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Comments about a PBS Report
While looking around the internet, I came across Victoria Fleischer's 3 April 2014 PBS Newshour Art Beat piece "What Does a Medieval Literature Scholar Read into Game of Thrones?" In it, Fleischer reports and comments on a monologue from Prof. Brantley Bryant of Sonoma State University (noted as one of the Chaucer bloggers) in which Bryant discusses in brief possible medieval literary antecedents for the characters in Martin's increasingly famous fantasy series. It is a useful example of popular scholarship, taking something very much in the contemporary popular mind and using it as a bridge to begin consideration of appropriations of the medieval.
Of note to my mind is Bryant's attempt to connect Stannis Baratheon and Melisandre to Arthuriana, specifically Arthur and Nimue. There is some connection present between Martin's work and the primary piece of Arthurian legend in English, Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. For one, Douglas A. Anderson asserts in his introduction to Tales before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy that Arthurian legend underlies all fantasy literature--which would include the tales of Westeros. Too, the civil unrest depicted in the Song of Ice and Fire series echoes the Wars of the Roses, in which Malory fought and which culminated in one of the understood ends of the English Middle Ages. And there is the tentative character connection Bryant suggests--although I am not convinced of its strength, thinking the relationship of Stannis and Melisandre more like that of Accolon and Morgan than of Arthur and Nimue. There is also a stronger structural parallel, that of the interwoven narrative. One of the key features of Malory's text is that it switches among plots, moving from one character to another in ways that are occasionally ragged except for their simultaneity, antecedent to cross-cutting in films. Martin's books do the same thing, with each volume of the Song of Ice and Fire moving among several characters' individual stories. They meet and part, and sometimes their deeds run as one for a while before they become separate threads again. To my mind, it is one of the more notable mimicries of medieval literature in Martin's series, although I can understand why it is not among the comments Fleischer reports.
As a means to begin discussion, then, the piece is worth attention. As is perhaps unavoidable given the constraints on the piece, it does not go as far as it could or as it ought; there is far more to discuss than Fleischer, or those of Bryant's comments Fleischer offers, present.
(Yes, this piece makes use of informal citation. I tend to follow MLA, but tend to does not mean always.)
Of note to my mind is Bryant's attempt to connect Stannis Baratheon and Melisandre to Arthuriana, specifically Arthur and Nimue. There is some connection present between Martin's work and the primary piece of Arthurian legend in English, Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. For one, Douglas A. Anderson asserts in his introduction to Tales before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy that Arthurian legend underlies all fantasy literature--which would include the tales of Westeros. Too, the civil unrest depicted in the Song of Ice and Fire series echoes the Wars of the Roses, in which Malory fought and which culminated in one of the understood ends of the English Middle Ages. And there is the tentative character connection Bryant suggests--although I am not convinced of its strength, thinking the relationship of Stannis and Melisandre more like that of Accolon and Morgan than of Arthur and Nimue. There is also a stronger structural parallel, that of the interwoven narrative. One of the key features of Malory's text is that it switches among plots, moving from one character to another in ways that are occasionally ragged except for their simultaneity, antecedent to cross-cutting in films. Martin's books do the same thing, with each volume of the Song of Ice and Fire moving among several characters' individual stories. They meet and part, and sometimes their deeds run as one for a while before they become separate threads again. To my mind, it is one of the more notable mimicries of medieval literature in Martin's series, although I can understand why it is not among the comments Fleischer reports.
As a means to begin discussion, then, the piece is worth attention. As is perhaps unavoidable given the constraints on the piece, it does not go as far as it could or as it ought; there is far more to discuss than Fleischer, or those of Bryant's comments Fleischer offers, present.
(Yes, this piece makes use of informal citation. I tend to follow MLA, but tend to does not mean always.)
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Something That Came up at Kalamazoo
I was digging through my notes from the 2014 International Congress on Medieval Studies and came across a call for submissions to the online Journal of Tolkien Research. It appears to be amenable to the kind of work that the Society seeks to handle (and involves people who have helped the Society and whom the Society could stand to help in return), and so members are encouraged to draft and submit articles. Look for it also to be taken up for the kind of reviews and commentary discussed in the first post to this blog.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Against Some Perceived Limits on Popular Culture: A Small Case
What is often meant by the term "popular culture" is what is pushed forth in mass media, whether print, analog, or digital. It is treated as being a thing of widespread information transmission, limited to bookshelves and screens small and large, and certainly it appears in those places. The work of the Society and the work many of its members have done and still do outside the purview of the Society attest to it amply. But it is not only in them that popular culture appears, not only in them that it exists, and so it is not only in those places that the medieval, broadly understood, is figured and appropriated.
One such bit of the medieval that appears with surprising frequency and in locations that make sense once considered but are rarely considered is heraldry. The notion of identifying sigils is hardly new, of course, and hardly unrecognized as belonging to the knights in shining armor so frequently associated with the "Middle Ages." And it appears in plenty in the pop culture genre that is perhaps most prominent in refiguring the medieval: fantasy literature. Tolkien, whose work undergirds the Society (see the name) makes use of shield-borne insignia in The Lord of the Rings, notably in Gondor and Rohan. Following him, though, are such current luminaries as George R.R. Martin, whose Song of Ice and Fire novels include appendices noting the shield devices and mottoes--both heraldic features--of the various houses in play in Westeros and beyond. My own research in medievalism has focused on the works of Robin Hobb (primarily, but not exclusively), and much is made in her Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies of the badge to which narrating protagonist FitzChivalry Farseer is entitled. Other examples can be found without trouble, certainly, and how heraldic conventions are deployed--usually in much simpler form than is observed among the medievals, broadly defined--is well worth investigating.
No less deserving of attention, however, is how the heraldic appears in other facets of popular culture than those commonly regarded as being popular culture. Perhaps the most prominent example of it is in the continued use of heraldic insignia not only by the remaining successors of the medieval royalty in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth,* but among many of the militaries of the modern world. That hereditary nobility, such as is still found in the British Isles, would retain features of the cultures that generated their nobility makes sense, of course; retaining contexts that provide privileges suggests itself as a way to retain privilege. It serves a legitimating function by providing a connection back to a somewhat romanticized past in which the emblem can be used to cover the frequently less-than-pleasant deeds through which it was ostensibly earned. In that regard, it suggests that medievalism, as the deployment of the medieval, can be used as a way to embed a context of power and authority--something that other scholars have discussed at some length. Medievalism in the Postcolonial World offers examples well worth reading. The deployment contrasts sharply with that usually seen in figurations of the medieval seen in what is commonly regarded as popular culture, which usually appear as either surface-level milieu-dressing or as externalizations of inner character. And given the media attention that accrues to royal families in their own countries and those which ostensibly explicitly repudiate royal authority and titular nobility proceeding from it, the deployment and the people who enact it are very much in the purview of popular culture even understood as mass media production.
Similarly clearly within the purview of popular culture, at least in the United States,** is the military (particularly in the wake of the recent seventieth anniversary of the D-Day amphibious assault on Normandy), and the military very much continues to make use of heraldry. Despite the rejection by the United States of the social structures of titular nobility with which heraldry is linked (US Const., art. I, sec. 10), the nation maintains an Institute of Heraldry as part of its army that reports itself as authorized by law to provide heraldic emblems for all military and federal governmental bodies of the United States. It does so with the idea of fostering quick recognition of various units and the awards offered to units and to individuals, so that the deployment of the medieval in the employment of the heraldic serves both as a reassertion of the original purposes of heraldry and as an implication that the medieval is of value. It cannot be a source and symbol of pride if it is not regarded as having value, and it is used in such capacities, denoting advancement through ranks, progression of citations for excellence and valor, and unit identities including the crews of ships in the US Navy and US Coast Guard. In the latter capacities, especially, the heraldic emblems are described in traditional terms, and the symbolism of the emblems is explicitly discussed, invoking the medieval even more explicitly than the presence of heraldic emblems alone. The medieval is thus reinforced as relevant, praiseworthy, and emblematic of praiseworthiness in what is often regarded as the most "real" and "necessary" part of the existence of the United States (with, admittedly, no small degree of irony) and a part that is glamorized and valorized throughout much of the country.
Other examples can be found, certainly. Various awards ceremonies, such as one at East Carolina University that some of my other work brought to my attention, partake of the heraldic, conferring honor through explained symbolism. Graduation and commencement ceremonies, in which many members of the Society have partaken and likely hope to partake again, do so as well. Each is a part of popular culture relevant to shared experience but not frequently examined for its figuration of the medieval, and it might well behoove the Society to take a closer look at such things in carrying out its mission to explore the continued appropriation of the nebulous thing that is called "medieval."
*I hope I am using the terms correctly. If I am not, please (gently) let me know, and I will be happy to adjust. It is the kind of thing that blogged scholarship is supposed to support, as I note in "About Short-Form Medievalist Scholarship."
**I write in the US, and the US exports a fair chunk of its popular culture. I hope I may be forgiven for centering on it somewhat. And how the ideas in the paragraph play out in other countries would make for good discussion.
Works Cited
One such bit of the medieval that appears with surprising frequency and in locations that make sense once considered but are rarely considered is heraldry. The notion of identifying sigils is hardly new, of course, and hardly unrecognized as belonging to the knights in shining armor so frequently associated with the "Middle Ages." And it appears in plenty in the pop culture genre that is perhaps most prominent in refiguring the medieval: fantasy literature. Tolkien, whose work undergirds the Society (see the name) makes use of shield-borne insignia in The Lord of the Rings, notably in Gondor and Rohan. Following him, though, are such current luminaries as George R.R. Martin, whose Song of Ice and Fire novels include appendices noting the shield devices and mottoes--both heraldic features--of the various houses in play in Westeros and beyond. My own research in medievalism has focused on the works of Robin Hobb (primarily, but not exclusively), and much is made in her Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies of the badge to which narrating protagonist FitzChivalry Farseer is entitled. Other examples can be found without trouble, certainly, and how heraldic conventions are deployed--usually in much simpler form than is observed among the medievals, broadly defined--is well worth investigating.
No less deserving of attention, however, is how the heraldic appears in other facets of popular culture than those commonly regarded as being popular culture. Perhaps the most prominent example of it is in the continued use of heraldic insignia not only by the remaining successors of the medieval royalty in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth,* but among many of the militaries of the modern world. That hereditary nobility, such as is still found in the British Isles, would retain features of the cultures that generated their nobility makes sense, of course; retaining contexts that provide privileges suggests itself as a way to retain privilege. It serves a legitimating function by providing a connection back to a somewhat romanticized past in which the emblem can be used to cover the frequently less-than-pleasant deeds through which it was ostensibly earned. In that regard, it suggests that medievalism, as the deployment of the medieval, can be used as a way to embed a context of power and authority--something that other scholars have discussed at some length. Medievalism in the Postcolonial World offers examples well worth reading. The deployment contrasts sharply with that usually seen in figurations of the medieval seen in what is commonly regarded as popular culture, which usually appear as either surface-level milieu-dressing or as externalizations of inner character. And given the media attention that accrues to royal families in their own countries and those which ostensibly explicitly repudiate royal authority and titular nobility proceeding from it, the deployment and the people who enact it are very much in the purview of popular culture even understood as mass media production.
Similarly clearly within the purview of popular culture, at least in the United States,** is the military (particularly in the wake of the recent seventieth anniversary of the D-Day amphibious assault on Normandy), and the military very much continues to make use of heraldry. Despite the rejection by the United States of the social structures of titular nobility with which heraldry is linked (US Const., art. I, sec. 10), the nation maintains an Institute of Heraldry as part of its army that reports itself as authorized by law to provide heraldic emblems for all military and federal governmental bodies of the United States. It does so with the idea of fostering quick recognition of various units and the awards offered to units and to individuals, so that the deployment of the medieval in the employment of the heraldic serves both as a reassertion of the original purposes of heraldry and as an implication that the medieval is of value. It cannot be a source and symbol of pride if it is not regarded as having value, and it is used in such capacities, denoting advancement through ranks, progression of citations for excellence and valor, and unit identities including the crews of ships in the US Navy and US Coast Guard. In the latter capacities, especially, the heraldic emblems are described in traditional terms, and the symbolism of the emblems is explicitly discussed, invoking the medieval even more explicitly than the presence of heraldic emblems alone. The medieval is thus reinforced as relevant, praiseworthy, and emblematic of praiseworthiness in what is often regarded as the most "real" and "necessary" part of the existence of the United States (with, admittedly, no small degree of irony) and a part that is glamorized and valorized throughout much of the country.
Other examples can be found, certainly. Various awards ceremonies, such as one at East Carolina University that some of my other work brought to my attention, partake of the heraldic, conferring honor through explained symbolism. Graduation and commencement ceremonies, in which many members of the Society have partaken and likely hope to partake again, do so as well. Each is a part of popular culture relevant to shared experience but not frequently examined for its figuration of the medieval, and it might well behoove the Society to take a closer look at such things in carrying out its mission to explore the continued appropriation of the nebulous thing that is called "medieval."
*I hope I am using the terms correctly. If I am not, please (gently) let me know, and I will be happy to adjust. It is the kind of thing that blogged scholarship is supposed to support, as I note in "About Short-Form Medievalist Scholarship."
**I write in the US, and the US exports a fair chunk of its popular culture. I hope I may be forgiven for centering on it somewhat. And how the ideas in the paragraph play out in other countries would make for good discussion.
Works Cited
- Davis, Kathleen, and Nadia Altschul, eds. Medievalism in the Postcolonial World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. Print.
- East Carolina University College of Nursing. "College of Nursing Honors 2014 Hall of Fame Inductees." ECU Health Beat. East Carolina University, 26 March 2014. Web. 7 June 2014.
- Elliott, Geoffrey B. "About Short-Form Medievalist Scholarship." Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 4 June 2014. Web. 6 June 2014.
- The Institute of Heraldry. US Army, n.d. Web. 7 June 2014.
- US Constitution. Art. I, Sec. 10.
Friday, June 6, 2014
A Small Milestone
We had our first 100-view day today! We look forward to seeing both numbers--how many days, and how many views--increase.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for reading!
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Publication News
Advanced contracts for the first publications affiliated with the Tales After Tolkien Society have now been signed. Two volumes, edited by Helen Young, will appear with Cambria University Press, with planned publication next year.
Tales After Tolkien: Medievalism in Science Fiction and Fantasy
J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was a defining work for Fantasy, substantially contributing to the creation of an audience, a publishing category, and what became conventions of the genre. It was also a major entry point for medievalism into twentieth-century popular culture, with impact reaching far beyond the genre which it helped make. The Middle Ages, particularly as filtered through Tolkien’s works, have haunted the Science Fiction genre since its inception; even the most politically progressive tales of the future reacted against the conservative, nostalgic medievalism they perceived in Lord of the Rings and its imitations. Fantasy has been imagined as imitation of Tolkien’s work, and Science Fiction as its antithesis, but such constructs vastly under-estimate the complexities of both genres and their interactions. In the twenty-first century, the boundaries between Fantasy and Science Fiction have become increasingly blurred, and both genres have arguably moved into a post-Tolkienian mode; Tolkien did not have the last word on medievalisms. ‘Medieval’ has multiple meanings in Fantasy and Science Fiction, which shift with genre convention, and which bring about their own changes as authors and audiences engage with what has gone before in the recent and deeper pasts. This volume explores the ways in which twenty-first century Science Fiction and Fantasy creatively re-imagine the Middle Ages, it shows how genre shapes contemporary engagements with the past, how those same engagements drive changes in the genres themselves. Tales After Tolkien will be the first edited collection dedicated to the intersections of medievalism and Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Beyond Tolkien: Medievalism, Genre, and Identity
Beyond Tolkien: Medievalism, Genre, and Identity explores the varied medievalisms of twenty-first century popular genres, shedding new light on the ways in which social constructions of identity are shaped through re-creations of the past. Medievalism in the twenty-first century is layered, folding into itself the practices, processes, and representations of earlier eras, as well as those of contemporary culture. A high proportion of popular re-workings of the Middle Ages are structured by the genre of any given creative work. Profit and pleasure define popular culture, and genres are a major framework organizing the production of both: creative industries use them to make the former, and consumers to help find the latter. The triple crown of income, entertainment, and convention far outweighs any commitment to history in genre medievalisms, leading Umberto Eco to, now infamously, rail against “avalanche of pseudo-medieval pulp in paperbacks.” Yet if some scholars still incline to Eco’s attitude, this collection explores rather than bemoans his avalanche, taking its depth and breadth to be an indication of how important the idea – if not the historical realities – of ‘the medieval’ is in contemporary articulations of identity. This collection brings together explorations of multiple different popular genres – Romance, Children and Young Adult, Historical, Folk Music, Cyberpunk, and Crime.
Tales After Tolkien: Medievalism in Science Fiction and Fantasy
J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was a defining work for Fantasy, substantially contributing to the creation of an audience, a publishing category, and what became conventions of the genre. It was also a major entry point for medievalism into twentieth-century popular culture, with impact reaching far beyond the genre which it helped make. The Middle Ages, particularly as filtered through Tolkien’s works, have haunted the Science Fiction genre since its inception; even the most politically progressive tales of the future reacted against the conservative, nostalgic medievalism they perceived in Lord of the Rings and its imitations. Fantasy has been imagined as imitation of Tolkien’s work, and Science Fiction as its antithesis, but such constructs vastly under-estimate the complexities of both genres and their interactions. In the twenty-first century, the boundaries between Fantasy and Science Fiction have become increasingly blurred, and both genres have arguably moved into a post-Tolkienian mode; Tolkien did not have the last word on medievalisms. ‘Medieval’ has multiple meanings in Fantasy and Science Fiction, which shift with genre convention, and which bring about their own changes as authors and audiences engage with what has gone before in the recent and deeper pasts. This volume explores the ways in which twenty-first century Science Fiction and Fantasy creatively re-imagine the Middle Ages, it shows how genre shapes contemporary engagements with the past, how those same engagements drive changes in the genres themselves. Tales After Tolkien will be the first edited collection dedicated to the intersections of medievalism and Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Beyond Tolkien: Medievalism, Genre, and Identity
Beyond Tolkien: Medievalism, Genre, and Identity explores the varied medievalisms of twenty-first century popular genres, shedding new light on the ways in which social constructions of identity are shaped through re-creations of the past. Medievalism in the twenty-first century is layered, folding into itself the practices, processes, and representations of earlier eras, as well as those of contemporary culture. A high proportion of popular re-workings of the Middle Ages are structured by the genre of any given creative work. Profit and pleasure define popular culture, and genres are a major framework organizing the production of both: creative industries use them to make the former, and consumers to help find the latter. The triple crown of income, entertainment, and convention far outweighs any commitment to history in genre medievalisms, leading Umberto Eco to, now infamously, rail against “avalanche of pseudo-medieval pulp in paperbacks.” Yet if some scholars still incline to Eco’s attitude, this collection explores rather than bemoans his avalanche, taking its depth and breadth to be an indication of how important the idea – if not the historical realities – of ‘the medieval’ is in contemporary articulations of identity. This collection brings together explorations of multiple different popular genres – Romance, Children and Young Adult, Historical, Folk Music, Cyberpunk, and Crime.
More about Short-form Medievalist Scholarship
What follows is likely more along the lines of "commentary" than of "scholarship" proper, but as it discusses scholarship, I offer it with the label.
In a post yesterday, "About Short-Form Medievalist Scholarship," I discuss some basic scholarly justification for short-form medievalist scholarship as an activity of the Society presented on this blog. The discussion is incomplete, of course; there is much more scholarship that engages with and makes room for blogging as scholarly endeavor available than what I report. (To be fair, there is also scholarly argument against the activity. I happen to think such arguments erroneous. Obviously.) And there is the question of what "short-form medievalist scholarship" means in the context of this blog, which is not necessarily easy to ascertain.
One means to approach what the term means here is to discuss the component parts of the term and how they interact. Doing so results in three sub-terms that need clarification: "short-form," "medievalist," and "scholarship." The first, short-form, is necessarily relative. For those scholars who routinely produce book-length treatments of topics, a twenty- to thirty-page journal article is "short," while for those who are not necessarily professional academics, such a piece is interminably long, and a stock five-paragraph, five-hundred-word essay is "short." Because this blog is supposed to reflect the Society, and the Society is meant to be one of general membership, a middle way is desirable; twenty or thirty pages will likely be too much for the blog to handle at a time and five paragraphs will likely not go into enough detail to be useful (unless they are excellent paragraphs, which the typical five-paragraph form usually does not generate). A perhaps-useful guideline comes from the journal The Explicator, which notes in its "Instructions for Authors" that "Essays should be about 1,200 words." For those used to the US college system, this comes out to something like three to five pages of text, which is enough to get an idea going and to get into it in some detail, sparking discussion as the blog hopes to do. And since writing well is as much art as science, exact numbers are not useful as absolute standards; a range is better, and 1,000 to 1,500 words centers on the 1,200 already noted, offers a fairly decent range, and gives easy-to-work-with round numbers.
The second term, medievalist, appears to be less uncertain. The International Society for the Study of Medievalism (a good group of folks) defines the term on its homepage as "the study of responses to the Middle Ages at all periods since a sense of the mediaeval began to develop," which is sensible enough. It presupposes, however, a stable definition of what the Middle Ages are, and there may well not be one. Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul comment throughout their introduction to Medievalism in the Postcolonial World that the terms "medieval" and "Middle Ages" may or may not actually apply to areas outside Europe, in which they have not seldom been used as descriptors of indigenous peoples applied to justify colonialist oppression. The geographic exclusivity and the problematic applications of the terms, then, destabilize them somewhat. Even within Europe, however, the period covered by the blanket term "medieval" is uncertain; it changes depending on where in Europe is being discussed. My own more traditional research tends to focus on late medieval England, and the end of the medieval period in England is variously reported as 1476 (the introduction by Caxton of the printing press to England) and 1485 (the ascent of the Tudor dynasty to the English throne). The case could be made, as well, that the Middle Ages in England only end with the 1534 Act of Supremacy, if "medieval" is taken as "time in which the Catholic Church serves as the primary legitimizing body" or the early modern whose advent ends the medieval is taken to begin with the serious questioning of papal hegemony. And that date and others depend on physical location, so that in studying the medieval, the medievalist is looking at uncertainty; it is itself uncertain therefore. A useful rubric may be to go by what is considered medieval or its reasonable cultural equivalent in each region; a useful series of discussions might treat what counts as "medieval" and where.
The third term, scholarship, can be easily taken to mean the generation of new knowledge and understanding observation of the world and from analysis of already-existing knowledge and understanding--primary and secondary, as often described. The emphasis in either event is on making new knowledge, something that escapes many people. It is not enough to say "This thing is there," as that knowledge is not new. It is not enough to say that "So-and-so says this thing," as that thing is knowledge already out in the world. Scholarship begins with such things, but does not end there, even in so informal a setting as this blog is likely to be. Something new, some new perspective or understanding, something that has not been said even if it has perhaps been noticed and passed over as "obvious" (and not all things that seem obvious actually are; the differences among people's perspectives and perceptive abilities will highlight different things to them) needs to be given voice, even here. That does not mean it must be an earth-shattering revelation to be of worth; most of the best research works diligently on a small point, offering a position from which to look at other small things, until the small things can be examined as parts of bigger things, and on to the totality. The small focus allows for deeper investigation on larger projects, and it allows for meaningful investigation in smaller projects such as might be found in blog posts. Even something like the clarification of a term can count as a reasonable bit of scholarship, particularly scholarship that seeks to be of limited, easily accessed scope.
For this blog, then, tentatively and certainly open to discussion, short-form medievalist scholarship ought to be essays of 1,000 to 1,500 words that seek to propagate new knowledge and understandings of the ways in which post-medieval works, particularly those of popular culture of the late twentieth century and after (given the focus of the Society), define and appropriate cross-cultural ideas of the medieval. The definition should allow for plenty of room in which to work; I look forward to seeing the results.
Works Cited*
In a post yesterday, "About Short-Form Medievalist Scholarship," I discuss some basic scholarly justification for short-form medievalist scholarship as an activity of the Society presented on this blog. The discussion is incomplete, of course; there is much more scholarship that engages with and makes room for blogging as scholarly endeavor available than what I report. (To be fair, there is also scholarly argument against the activity. I happen to think such arguments erroneous. Obviously.) And there is the question of what "short-form medievalist scholarship" means in the context of this blog, which is not necessarily easy to ascertain.
One means to approach what the term means here is to discuss the component parts of the term and how they interact. Doing so results in three sub-terms that need clarification: "short-form," "medievalist," and "scholarship." The first, short-form, is necessarily relative. For those scholars who routinely produce book-length treatments of topics, a twenty- to thirty-page journal article is "short," while for those who are not necessarily professional academics, such a piece is interminably long, and a stock five-paragraph, five-hundred-word essay is "short." Because this blog is supposed to reflect the Society, and the Society is meant to be one of general membership, a middle way is desirable; twenty or thirty pages will likely be too much for the blog to handle at a time and five paragraphs will likely not go into enough detail to be useful (unless they are excellent paragraphs, which the typical five-paragraph form usually does not generate). A perhaps-useful guideline comes from the journal The Explicator, which notes in its "Instructions for Authors" that "Essays should be about 1,200 words." For those used to the US college system, this comes out to something like three to five pages of text, which is enough to get an idea going and to get into it in some detail, sparking discussion as the blog hopes to do. And since writing well is as much art as science, exact numbers are not useful as absolute standards; a range is better, and 1,000 to 1,500 words centers on the 1,200 already noted, offers a fairly decent range, and gives easy-to-work-with round numbers.
The second term, medievalist, appears to be less uncertain. The International Society for the Study of Medievalism (a good group of folks) defines the term on its homepage as "the study of responses to the Middle Ages at all periods since a sense of the mediaeval began to develop," which is sensible enough. It presupposes, however, a stable definition of what the Middle Ages are, and there may well not be one. Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul comment throughout their introduction to Medievalism in the Postcolonial World that the terms "medieval" and "Middle Ages" may or may not actually apply to areas outside Europe, in which they have not seldom been used as descriptors of indigenous peoples applied to justify colonialist oppression. The geographic exclusivity and the problematic applications of the terms, then, destabilize them somewhat. Even within Europe, however, the period covered by the blanket term "medieval" is uncertain; it changes depending on where in Europe is being discussed. My own more traditional research tends to focus on late medieval England, and the end of the medieval period in England is variously reported as 1476 (the introduction by Caxton of the printing press to England) and 1485 (the ascent of the Tudor dynasty to the English throne). The case could be made, as well, that the Middle Ages in England only end with the 1534 Act of Supremacy, if "medieval" is taken as "time in which the Catholic Church serves as the primary legitimizing body" or the early modern whose advent ends the medieval is taken to begin with the serious questioning of papal hegemony. And that date and others depend on physical location, so that in studying the medieval, the medievalist is looking at uncertainty; it is itself uncertain therefore. A useful rubric may be to go by what is considered medieval or its reasonable cultural equivalent in each region; a useful series of discussions might treat what counts as "medieval" and where.
The third term, scholarship, can be easily taken to mean the generation of new knowledge and understanding observation of the world and from analysis of already-existing knowledge and understanding--primary and secondary, as often described. The emphasis in either event is on making new knowledge, something that escapes many people. It is not enough to say "This thing is there," as that knowledge is not new. It is not enough to say that "So-and-so says this thing," as that thing is knowledge already out in the world. Scholarship begins with such things, but does not end there, even in so informal a setting as this blog is likely to be. Something new, some new perspective or understanding, something that has not been said even if it has perhaps been noticed and passed over as "obvious" (and not all things that seem obvious actually are; the differences among people's perspectives and perceptive abilities will highlight different things to them) needs to be given voice, even here. That does not mean it must be an earth-shattering revelation to be of worth; most of the best research works diligently on a small point, offering a position from which to look at other small things, until the small things can be examined as parts of bigger things, and on to the totality. The small focus allows for deeper investigation on larger projects, and it allows for meaningful investigation in smaller projects such as might be found in blog posts. Even something like the clarification of a term can count as a reasonable bit of scholarship, particularly scholarship that seeks to be of limited, easily accessed scope.
For this blog, then, tentatively and certainly open to discussion, short-form medievalist scholarship ought to be essays of 1,000 to 1,500 words that seek to propagate new knowledge and understandings of the ways in which post-medieval works, particularly those of popular culture of the late twentieth century and after (given the focus of the Society), define and appropriate cross-cultural ideas of the medieval. The definition should allow for plenty of room in which to work; I look forward to seeing the results.
Works Cited*
- 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. "About Short-Form Medievalist Scholarship." Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 4 June 2014. Web. 5 June 2014.
- "The Explicator: Instructions for Authors." Taylor & Francis Online. Informa UK Limited, n.d. Web. 5 June 2014.
- "The International Society for the Study of Medievalism." The International Society for the Study of Medievalism. International Society for the Study of Medievalism, 17 March 2014. Web. 5 June 2014.
*While I do tend to follow MLA guidelines, as noted, I am aware of the demands of the online environment, and so I offer links where practicable.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
CFP: MAPACA 2014 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY AREA
The following may be of interest.
Call for Papers MAPACA 2014
SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY AREA
The Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association (MAPACA) invites academics, graduate and undergraduate students, independent scholars, and artists to submit papers for the annual conference, to be held in Baltimore, November 6-8, 2014. Those interested in presenting at the conference are invited to submit a proposal or panel by June 15, 2014. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words long. Include a brief bio with your proposal. Single papers, as well as 3- or 4-person panels and roundtables, are encouraged. All proposals should be submitted via the online system at www.mapaca.net, where you can also find more information on our organization and our conference.
Science Fiction and Fantasy welcomes papers/presentations in any critical, theoretical, or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to SF/F: art; literature; radio; film; television; video, role-playing, and multi-player online games. Though not an exhaustive list, potential presenters may wish to consider the following:
Ø Gender and Sexuality
Ø Race and Otherness
Ø Class and Hierarchies
Ø Utopia/Dystopia
Ø Mythology and Quest Narratives
Ø Creatures and Aliens
Ø Science and Magic
Ø Reading Other Worlds
Ø Language and Rhetoric
Ø Genre: Space Opera, Cyberpunk, Dark Fantasy, Steampunk, etc.
Ø Fans and Fandom/Community Building
Ø Textual Analysis
Ø Sociological or Psychological Readings
Ø Archival Research/History
Ø Technology: Textual and Literal
Ø Online Identity Construction
Ø Fairy Tales
Ø Paranormal Romance
Ø Young Adult Literature
Ø Tolkien (literature and film)
Area Chairs: Marilyn Stern sternm@wit.edu
Call for Papers MAPACA 2014
SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY AREA
The Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association (MAPACA) invites academics, graduate and undergraduate students, independent scholars, and artists to submit papers for the annual conference, to be held in Baltimore, November 6-8, 2014. Those interested in presenting at the conference are invited to submit a proposal or panel by June 15, 2014. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words long. Include a brief bio with your proposal. Single papers, as well as 3- or 4-person panels and roundtables, are encouraged. All proposals should be submitted via the online system at www.mapaca.net, where you can also find more information on our organization and our conference.
Science Fiction and Fantasy welcomes papers/presentations in any critical, theoretical, or (inter)disciplinary approach to any topic related to SF/F: art; literature; radio; film; television; video, role-playing, and multi-player online games. Though not an exhaustive list, potential presenters may wish to consider the following:
Ø Gender and Sexuality
Ø Race and Otherness
Ø Class and Hierarchies
Ø Utopia/Dystopia
Ø Mythology and Quest Narratives
Ø Creatures and Aliens
Ø Science and Magic
Ø Reading Other Worlds
Ø Language and Rhetoric
Ø Genre: Space Opera, Cyberpunk, Dark Fantasy, Steampunk, etc.
Ø Fans and Fandom/Community Building
Ø Textual Analysis
Ø Sociological or Psychological Readings
Ø Archival Research/History
Ø Technology: Textual and Literal
Ø Online Identity Construction
Ø Fairy Tales
Ø Paranormal Romance
Ø Young Adult Literature
Ø Tolkien (literature and film)
Area Chairs: Marilyn Stern sternm@wit.edu
About Short-Form Medievalist Scholarship
In the initial post to this blog, I noted that one of the things that the blog will do is offer a venue for occasional bits of short-form medievalist scholarship. The justification for it deserves a bit of explanation.
That justification is presented, at least in part, in the 2011 issue of the Modern Language Association of America's* publication Profession. In it is a cluster of articles discussing the evaluation of digital scholarship, and in the introduction to that cluster is the suggestion that digital scholarship needs to be encouraged among junior scholars (126)--those who have not yet been awarded tenure and those who find themselves off of the tenure track but not secure in identities as independent scholars. This means that there needs to be more digital scholarship, and so more venues for it. Hence this blog offering space for such things. The same introductory essay notes also that "the digital is conducive to the kinds of projects...including pedagogy, public humanities, and the creation of scholarly editions" (125), and the Society has among its aims the promotion of wide public discourse about medievalism in genre. Indeed, the Society welcomes not only scholars but the artists who generate popular culture and the audiences who take it in. Since the blog form helps to open discourse, it suggests itself as a useful platform for short-form work.
In the articles in the cluster, Geoffrey Rockwell directly praises blogs for their ability to track emergent trends in research and scholarship and for their ability to present verification of scholarly and general impact through tracking reading figures (159-61). This aids the same encouragement of junior scholars noted above; the short works can be demonstrated as scholarly and as having been examined by others, suggesting scholarly influence. More relevantly, however, and the greater hope for the short-form pieces in this blog is the potential for commentary and sustained discussion that blogs provide. Kathleen Fitzpatrick remarks on the immensely valuable scholarly potential of post-publication comments on online materials (199-200). Since the stated mission of the Society is to discuss things, forums that promote discussion are to be sought--and so this blog will offer them.
*In the interest of full disclosure: I am a member of the organization. I also habitually write in it, so my comments will tend to follow MLA guidelines for citation and usage.
Works Cited
That justification is presented, at least in part, in the 2011 issue of the Modern Language Association of America's* publication Profession. In it is a cluster of articles discussing the evaluation of digital scholarship, and in the introduction to that cluster is the suggestion that digital scholarship needs to be encouraged among junior scholars (126)--those who have not yet been awarded tenure and those who find themselves off of the tenure track but not secure in identities as independent scholars. This means that there needs to be more digital scholarship, and so more venues for it. Hence this blog offering space for such things. The same introductory essay notes also that "the digital is conducive to the kinds of projects...including pedagogy, public humanities, and the creation of scholarly editions" (125), and the Society has among its aims the promotion of wide public discourse about medievalism in genre. Indeed, the Society welcomes not only scholars but the artists who generate popular culture and the audiences who take it in. Since the blog form helps to open discourse, it suggests itself as a useful platform for short-form work.
In the articles in the cluster, Geoffrey Rockwell directly praises blogs for their ability to track emergent trends in research and scholarship and for their ability to present verification of scholarly and general impact through tracking reading figures (159-61). This aids the same encouragement of junior scholars noted above; the short works can be demonstrated as scholarly and as having been examined by others, suggesting scholarly influence. More relevantly, however, and the greater hope for the short-form pieces in this blog is the potential for commentary and sustained discussion that blogs provide. Kathleen Fitzpatrick remarks on the immensely valuable scholarly potential of post-publication comments on online materials (199-200). Since the stated mission of the Society is to discuss things, forums that promote discussion are to be sought--and so this blog will offer them.
*In the interest of full disclosure: I am a member of the organization. I also habitually write in it, so my comments will tend to follow MLA guidelines for citation and usage.
Works Cited
- Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. "Peer Review, Judgment, and Reading." Profession (2011): 196-201. Print.
- Rockwell, Geoffrey. "On the Evaluation of Digital Media as Scholarship." Profession (2011): 152-68. Print.
- Schreibman, Susan, Laura Mandell, and Stephen Olsen. Introduction to Evaluating Digital Scholarship. Profession (2011): 123-35. Print.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)