An April 2015 Associated Press piece appearing on HigherEdJobs.com, "Game of Thrones- College Course," notes that Northern Illinois University will be offering a course on the as-yet-ongoing television series. Among the comments made in reference to the course are that its subject offers relatively realistic presentations of the European Middle Ages and that it provides a useful example of the continuing manifestation in the past within the present. Also noted in the article is the popularity of the course, which filled quickly and will be offered in consecutive semesters.
The three points identified deserve some comment, with the first speaking to a topic not seldom treated in this webspace (see the Game of Thrones entries and the comments made on them). How "realistic" the presentations are is hardly a settled matter, as Helen Young and a number of other scholars have argued at great length. While some consideration must be made for the fact of reporting and the constraints of journalistic prose, the article's presentation conduces to the idea of the matter as fixed and established, beyond contestation. In facilitating such a reading, the article does a disservice to the body of scholarship that continues to examine Martin's work and the television series deriving from it--as well as to the work and likely to the activities of the class as a whole.
The exemplification of how the past continues to manifest in the present is also something this webspace treats; it is, indeed, the avowed purpose of the Society. That a major media product does invoke and involve the medieval--and not only the "traditional" medieval patterned after the European High Middle Ages--is a good thing, surely. The problem, though, is that the past Martin refigures is not the past as it has been recorded as being or that the physical evidence increasingly available suggests is true. Again, Young and other scholars detail the problems in Martin's portrayals in great detail, and it is admittedly true that "refiguring" is far from the same thing as "accurate reporting." It is not to be expected that a fictional world, even one based more or less loosely on the "real" world, would adhere completely to the "real" world. When a work is presented as being authentic, however, it is obliged to be authentic, or as authentic as it can be (i.e., reliant on the current best knowledge of the medieval as asserted by scholars of the medieval, since it is not necessarily to be expected that a non-specialist will have the same level of knowledge of a specialty as a specialist); to misidentify authority and authenticity, whether willfully or inadvertently, is not helpful.
The popularity of the course, if perhaps less targeted to the interests of the Society itself, may well be of interest to many of the members of the Society, who are themselves students and teachers. Popular courses would seem to argue well on behalf of those who teach them; a popular instructor ought to be someone to be valued. Some scholarship on popularity among instructors and courses, however, raises concerns; among others, Nate Kordell addresses the matter in a 31 May 2013 Psychology Today piece, "Do the Best Professors Get the Worst Ratings?" Many of those who have spent time in the college environment can offer up anecdotal support for the idea that popularity does not always indicate the relative value of a course; many students openly avow taking courses based on the seeming promise of an "easy A." This is not to say, of course, that the class offered at Northern Illinois University will be the "easy A"; Professors Garver and Chown are without doubt pushing their students to excel. But there is a perception that classes treating popular culture materials are less substantial than those treating more traditional subjects, a perception addressed perhaps most prominently among reactionary media but exerting some influence even so. How many students seek to take the course because of the perceived ease of watching television--and it is only perceived, as watching for scholarly purposes is far more dynamic and demanding than watching for entertainment only--or because they will be able to look at a number of attractive people in various states of undress is unclear, but it does likely vitiate against the use of popularity as a rubric for the course's success--something the article neglects, to its discredit.
That the article reporting the course deserves critique does not mean that the course is not worth offering, of course. Again, the Society does attend to Game of Thrones and to the novels which inform it. It does laud continued engagement with the past, particularly the medieval past, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It does work to promote accurate understandings of the medieval past by those who create and consume the products of contemporary popular culture. And so it does stand to reason that the kind of course being offered at Northern Illinois University is the kind of course that the Society could well endorse and support. (I am not in a position to offer such an endorsement on behalf of the Society, although I would encourage such a thing if it became an issue.) But it also stands to reason that, as a group invested in such things, the Society would like to see them accurately reported--particularly when the report appears in a venue so tightly concerned with the scholarly community as is HigherEdJobs.com. The medieval and its refigurations deserve better than a glossed, summary treatment.
Travels in Genre and Medievalism
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
About an Article by Paul Strohm
It seems the new year is off to a slow start...
On 24 January 2014, the online version of The Guardian published Paul Strohm's "Who Was Chaucer?" In the article, Strohm offers a brief biography of the Well of English Undefiled, one tailored for public consumption, partly as a way to advertise his more comprehensive treatment of the poet's life and partly as a way to discuss the interaction of life experience and artistic performance. The biography provided in the article is a useful summary of Chaucer's life, and the commentaries embedded alongside it do well to point out not only the context in which the poet worked and in which his work has been studies, but also the enduring relevance of the poet and his work.
Seeing such commentary, and in a major public venue such as The Guardian, is a comfort, particularly when the study of the medieval is under attack. Recently, the Modern Language Association of America proposed to collapse several of the early English units into one, coalescing them into an amorphous mass stretching across at least a millennium and multiple languages in its treatment. While the proposal was rejected (at least in the short term), it bespeaks a prevailing lack either of understanding of or consideration for the complexities of the slippery and difficult thing that is the medieval. (It also touches upon other concerns noted as of particular interest to individual members of the Society, about which more in another post.) If one of the major scholarly bodies seeks to act against detailed and specific study of the medieval, it bodes ill for those of use who make that study our own--as well as for those who are scholars of the medievalist rather than the medieval, proper, since medievalist study relies on accurate understandings of the antecedent medieval.
For Strohm, then, to highlight the multiplicity of voice and genre in Chaucer, as well as the resonance his works still carry for twenty-first century readership, serves as a corrective. It functions to remind the public--from which academia all too often and all too unfortunately seeks to distance itself, as scholars noted earlier suggest--that what has been done is still being done, so that what has been written is still relevant, still applicable. It still offers readers an image of how things might be improved though its distillation of what is less than desirable--and if there are problems in its depictions, there are certainly problems not only in current depictions that seek to coalesce or elide broad swaths of peoples and histories or in the all-too-real interactions of people with people in the world now.
On 24 January 2014, the online version of The Guardian published Paul Strohm's "Who Was Chaucer?" In the article, Strohm offers a brief biography of the Well of English Undefiled, one tailored for public consumption, partly as a way to advertise his more comprehensive treatment of the poet's life and partly as a way to discuss the interaction of life experience and artistic performance. The biography provided in the article is a useful summary of Chaucer's life, and the commentaries embedded alongside it do well to point out not only the context in which the poet worked and in which his work has been studies, but also the enduring relevance of the poet and his work.
Seeing such commentary, and in a major public venue such as The Guardian, is a comfort, particularly when the study of the medieval is under attack. Recently, the Modern Language Association of America proposed to collapse several of the early English units into one, coalescing them into an amorphous mass stretching across at least a millennium and multiple languages in its treatment. While the proposal was rejected (at least in the short term), it bespeaks a prevailing lack either of understanding of or consideration for the complexities of the slippery and difficult thing that is the medieval. (It also touches upon other concerns noted as of particular interest to individual members of the Society, about which more in another post.) If one of the major scholarly bodies seeks to act against detailed and specific study of the medieval, it bodes ill for those of use who make that study our own--as well as for those who are scholars of the medievalist rather than the medieval, proper, since medievalist study relies on accurate understandings of the antecedent medieval.
For Strohm, then, to highlight the multiplicity of voice and genre in Chaucer, as well as the resonance his works still carry for twenty-first century readership, serves as a corrective. It functions to remind the public--from which academia all too often and all too unfortunately seeks to distance itself, as scholars noted earlier suggest--that what has been done is still being done, so that what has been written is still relevant, still applicable. It still offers readers an image of how things might be improved though its distillation of what is less than desirable--and if there are problems in its depictions, there are certainly problems not only in current depictions that seek to coalesce or elide broad swaths of peoples and histories or in the all-too-real interactions of people with people in the world now.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
About _The Year's Work in Medievalism_ 28
On 15 December 2014, the International Society for the Study of Medievalism released Volume 28 of its journal The Year's Work in Medievalism online.* The volume is a special issue, Medievalism Now, one that seeks, in the words of editor E.L. Risden as he introduces the volume, to bring "marginalized medievalism into the center of our [scholarly] vision." In doing so, it deploys articles from Valerie B. Johnson, Amy S. Kaufman, Elena Levy-Navarro, Nickolas Haydock, Kevin Moberly and Brent Moberly, E.L. Risden, Karl Fugelso, Carol L. Robinson, Jesse G. Swan, Helen Young, and Richard Utz to argue for an expansion of medievalism's formal concerns and the body of scholars, professional and amateur, who contribute to the still-burgeoning field.
Valerie B. Johnson's "Ecomedievalism: Medievalism's Potential Futures in Ecocriticism and Ecomaterialsim" argues convincingly that medievalist study will benefit from deploying the tools common to ecocritical approaches. The article offers a useful list of readings that engage intersections that can be termed "ecomedieval," helping ease entry into their study and pointing out the contested nature of both ecocritical approaches and medievalism. The reminder that the environment is a long-standing socio-cultural concern is useful.
Amy S. Kaufman's "Lowering the Drawbridge" lays out (again) the tensions between the academic humanities and the "useful" world and between proximal disciplines. The article posits that medievalism itself remains a marginal, liminal space, partaking of multiple disciplines but welcomed by none, and finding itself marginalized in part because it is liminal not only within academic but also between it and the "regular" world. That it is one of the few disciplines in which amateurs are welcomed and even embraced vitiates against it for those who occupy the more traditional ivory tower. Medievalist studies are optimally poised to break down the barriers surrounding that tower, or at least to open additional gates in them through the resurgence of the medieval in entertainment culture and social structures.
Elena Levy-Navarro's "A Long Parenthesis Begins" argues that medievalist study needs to be more open to and accepting of non-professional scholars as a means to keep itself fresh and identify and explicate the connections--sometimes seemingly tenuous--upon which it depends. Opening up medievalist inquiry to more minds also allows for a richer historiography, one that rejects the absolutes of periodic and disciplinary boundaries to create a living understanding of how the world continues to use what it has used before.
Nickolas Haydock's "Medievalism and Anamorphosis: Curious Perspectives on the Middle Ages" points out how recapitulations of medieval figures and tropes in succession serve to highlight the unattainability of medieval ideals and of the ambiguous nature of those ideals themselves. In the article, refigurings serve to obscure, not only among receptions of the medieval but in the medieval itself. It is a useful reminder of the continuity of cultural fixtures, although the fixtures themselves are perhaps not ideal for continuation.
Kevin Moberly and Brent Moberly contribute "There Is No Word for Work in the Dragon Tongue," which explicates the manner in which The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim reinscribes the removal of medievalist treatments from the material conditions of the medieval. It also likens that removal to current first-world concerns of removal from production. Manual labor is distinctly non-privileged in the game as in the cultures of which it ostensibly partakes and among which its intended player-base is. It, along with other medievalist popular works, reflects the tension between nostalgia for "good, honest work" and the non-desire to actually do that work, and it calls for a better reflection of the actuality of that work in future medievalist works. (Notably, the Moberlys' article can be read against Johnson's to good effect.)
E.L. Risden's "Miyazaki's Medieval World: Japanese Medievalism and the Rise of Anime" notes that medievalism in Asia is insufficiently examined by scholars of medievalism. Miyazaki's 1997 film Princess Mononoke is used as a case study for how Japanese medievalism might function and be explicated; other works are suggested for further study. Risden's comments speak to something that this webspace has also addressed, and they could well serve as an impetus for treatments of other works entirely.
Karl Fugelso's "Embracing Our Marginalism: Mitigating the Tyranny of a Central Paradigm" reminds readers that any kind of centering motion necessarily implies a fluidity of categorization that vitiates against the effectiveness of categorization. The article highlights the liminality of medievalist study that derives from its disciplinary heterodoxy, but notes that even within the field, there is a centralizing push that unfortunately excludes too many. Some is structural; Fugelso makes the telling comment that "There is simply not enough time, space, energy, and money to air everyone's work, much less give it equal billing, much less make it easily accessible" to highlight that structural limit. Some, though, is merely the result of habit--and that habit is a dangerous thing to maintain for medievalism as a field.
Carol L. Robinson, a valued Tales after Tolkien Society member, contributes "The Quest for a Deaf Lesbian Dwarf (or Anyone Else that Might Have Been Excluded) in Medievalist Video Games: A Response to Karl Fugelso's Manifesto." In it, she argues that the exclusionary and oppressive practices seen in medievalist video games parallel and reinscribe those in medievalist studies as a whole, and that redress of them needs to be "radical, dramatic, abrupt, and thus acutely innovative." The reinscription derives from earlier receipt of benefits from the inscription, and the duty incumbent on medievalists is to reclaim those benefits in the service of a greater inclusivity and diversity of treatment.
Jesse Swan's "Relazation and Amateur Medievalism for Early Modernity: Seeing Sir Henry Yelverton as a Woman in Love and a Bureaucrat Threatened in the 1621 Parliament" takes the uncommon approach of explicating earlier medievalisms, likening the treatment of Yelverton to the treatment of Spencer and Gaveston in then-popular media. Although an elided preposition distracts, the explication of an earlier medievalism is of interest and serves as a reminder that the Middle Ages have long served as a lens through which to examine current culture. The article's early comments about relaxation enabling inquiry are also helpful, recalling Asimov's "The Eureka Phenomenon."
Tales after Tolkien Society founder Helen Young's "Place and Time: Medievalism and Making Race" continues her project of explicating the multiracial nature of medieval Europe and arguing in favor of reflecting that multiracial nature in medievalist works. The article references the common assertion of the Middle Ages as a generative time for racial and national identities, marking nation-building as an iteration of medievalist practice, and argues that the purported lack of a medieval, or of an interesting medieval, among non-European peoples accounts in part for the drive to subjugate them. The implication is one Young has made explicit before (here and elsewhere): medievalist scholars have a duty to correct the abuses perpetuated by medievalist materials.
The volume concludes with Richard Utz's "Can We Talk about Religion, Please? Medievalism's Eschewal of Religion, and Why It Matters." The article contrasts the notable lack of religious discussion in medievalist scholarship with the wide range of materials it tends to cover. Utz posits that the lack stems in part from uncertainty about how to treat religion, informed by disciplinary and periodic divisions as well as an undercurrent of anti-theistic thought (evoking Michael-John DePalma's December 2011 CCC article "Re-envisioning Religious Discourses as Rhetorical Resources in Composition Teaching: A Pragmatic Response to the Challenge of Belief"). It is, in Utz's view, a lack that needs to be redressed.
The eleven articles combine to present an impressive collective call to expand medievalist studies and will certainly undergird no small number of projects that aim to answer that call. The Year's Work in Medievalism 28 (2013) presents excellent scholarship, well worth deploying in further expansion of human knowledge.
*All comments are taken from the volume as it appears online as of 27 December 2014, at which time I printed out copies of the articles for reading and comment.
Valerie B. Johnson's "Ecomedievalism: Medievalism's Potential Futures in Ecocriticism and Ecomaterialsim" argues convincingly that medievalist study will benefit from deploying the tools common to ecocritical approaches. The article offers a useful list of readings that engage intersections that can be termed "ecomedieval," helping ease entry into their study and pointing out the contested nature of both ecocritical approaches and medievalism. The reminder that the environment is a long-standing socio-cultural concern is useful.
Amy S. Kaufman's "Lowering the Drawbridge" lays out (again) the tensions between the academic humanities and the "useful" world and between proximal disciplines. The article posits that medievalism itself remains a marginal, liminal space, partaking of multiple disciplines but welcomed by none, and finding itself marginalized in part because it is liminal not only within academic but also between it and the "regular" world. That it is one of the few disciplines in which amateurs are welcomed and even embraced vitiates against it for those who occupy the more traditional ivory tower. Medievalist studies are optimally poised to break down the barriers surrounding that tower, or at least to open additional gates in them through the resurgence of the medieval in entertainment culture and social structures.
Elena Levy-Navarro's "A Long Parenthesis Begins" argues that medievalist study needs to be more open to and accepting of non-professional scholars as a means to keep itself fresh and identify and explicate the connections--sometimes seemingly tenuous--upon which it depends. Opening up medievalist inquiry to more minds also allows for a richer historiography, one that rejects the absolutes of periodic and disciplinary boundaries to create a living understanding of how the world continues to use what it has used before.
Nickolas Haydock's "Medievalism and Anamorphosis: Curious Perspectives on the Middle Ages" points out how recapitulations of medieval figures and tropes in succession serve to highlight the unattainability of medieval ideals and of the ambiguous nature of those ideals themselves. In the article, refigurings serve to obscure, not only among receptions of the medieval but in the medieval itself. It is a useful reminder of the continuity of cultural fixtures, although the fixtures themselves are perhaps not ideal for continuation.
Kevin Moberly and Brent Moberly contribute "There Is No Word for Work in the Dragon Tongue," which explicates the manner in which The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim reinscribes the removal of medievalist treatments from the material conditions of the medieval. It also likens that removal to current first-world concerns of removal from production. Manual labor is distinctly non-privileged in the game as in the cultures of which it ostensibly partakes and among which its intended player-base is. It, along with other medievalist popular works, reflects the tension between nostalgia for "good, honest work" and the non-desire to actually do that work, and it calls for a better reflection of the actuality of that work in future medievalist works. (Notably, the Moberlys' article can be read against Johnson's to good effect.)
E.L. Risden's "Miyazaki's Medieval World: Japanese Medievalism and the Rise of Anime" notes that medievalism in Asia is insufficiently examined by scholars of medievalism. Miyazaki's 1997 film Princess Mononoke is used as a case study for how Japanese medievalism might function and be explicated; other works are suggested for further study. Risden's comments speak to something that this webspace has also addressed, and they could well serve as an impetus for treatments of other works entirely.
Karl Fugelso's "Embracing Our Marginalism: Mitigating the Tyranny of a Central Paradigm" reminds readers that any kind of centering motion necessarily implies a fluidity of categorization that vitiates against the effectiveness of categorization. The article highlights the liminality of medievalist study that derives from its disciplinary heterodoxy, but notes that even within the field, there is a centralizing push that unfortunately excludes too many. Some is structural; Fugelso makes the telling comment that "There is simply not enough time, space, energy, and money to air everyone's work, much less give it equal billing, much less make it easily accessible" to highlight that structural limit. Some, though, is merely the result of habit--and that habit is a dangerous thing to maintain for medievalism as a field.
Carol L. Robinson, a valued Tales after Tolkien Society member, contributes "The Quest for a Deaf Lesbian Dwarf (or Anyone Else that Might Have Been Excluded) in Medievalist Video Games: A Response to Karl Fugelso's Manifesto." In it, she argues that the exclusionary and oppressive practices seen in medievalist video games parallel and reinscribe those in medievalist studies as a whole, and that redress of them needs to be "radical, dramatic, abrupt, and thus acutely innovative." The reinscription derives from earlier receipt of benefits from the inscription, and the duty incumbent on medievalists is to reclaim those benefits in the service of a greater inclusivity and diversity of treatment.
Jesse Swan's "Relazation and Amateur Medievalism for Early Modernity: Seeing Sir Henry Yelverton as a Woman in Love and a Bureaucrat Threatened in the 1621 Parliament" takes the uncommon approach of explicating earlier medievalisms, likening the treatment of Yelverton to the treatment of Spencer and Gaveston in then-popular media. Although an elided preposition distracts, the explication of an earlier medievalism is of interest and serves as a reminder that the Middle Ages have long served as a lens through which to examine current culture. The article's early comments about relaxation enabling inquiry are also helpful, recalling Asimov's "The Eureka Phenomenon."
Tales after Tolkien Society founder Helen Young's "Place and Time: Medievalism and Making Race" continues her project of explicating the multiracial nature of medieval Europe and arguing in favor of reflecting that multiracial nature in medievalist works. The article references the common assertion of the Middle Ages as a generative time for racial and national identities, marking nation-building as an iteration of medievalist practice, and argues that the purported lack of a medieval, or of an interesting medieval, among non-European peoples accounts in part for the drive to subjugate them. The implication is one Young has made explicit before (here and elsewhere): medievalist scholars have a duty to correct the abuses perpetuated by medievalist materials.
The volume concludes with Richard Utz's "Can We Talk about Religion, Please? Medievalism's Eschewal of Religion, and Why It Matters." The article contrasts the notable lack of religious discussion in medievalist scholarship with the wide range of materials it tends to cover. Utz posits that the lack stems in part from uncertainty about how to treat religion, informed by disciplinary and periodic divisions as well as an undercurrent of anti-theistic thought (evoking Michael-John DePalma's December 2011 CCC article "Re-envisioning Religious Discourses as Rhetorical Resources in Composition Teaching: A Pragmatic Response to the Challenge of Belief"). It is, in Utz's view, a lack that needs to be redressed.
The eleven articles combine to present an impressive collective call to expand medievalist studies and will certainly undergird no small number of projects that aim to answer that call. The Year's Work in Medievalism 28 (2013) presents excellent scholarship, well worth deploying in further expansion of human knowledge.
*All comments are taken from the volume as it appears online as of 27 December 2014, at which time I printed out copies of the articles for reading and comment.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
About "The Medieval Bishop Who Helped to Unweave the Rainbow"
With apologies for the long delay between entries...
On 27 November 2014, The Guardian posted Michael Brooks's article, "The Medieval Bishop Who Helped to Unweave the Rainbow." In it, Brooks reports that researchers have investigated the scientific works of thirteenth century bishop Robert Grosseteste and found that they in many senses anticipate later scientific understandings, particularly in regards to the behavior of light. Contextualized in an account of observing researchers at the Festival of Humanities at Durham Cathedral reproducing the bishop's experiments, the article accounts in a summary fashion for the provenance of Grosseteste's work, as well as the problems within it and the internal consistencies that, even if at odds with observed reality as currently understood by science, make for what one scientist calls a "curiously satisfying" understanding of cosmology. Brooks's article is well written and reasonably balanced, respectful of all parties concerned, and a worthwhile piece of journalism on both ongoing science and researches into history.
There are several things to note in the article. One that attracts a bit of amused attention is that the subject's name, Grosseteste, translates to "big test" or something similar from several languages, a bit of punning particularly appropriate given the association in Brooks's article between the man and science. More important, however, are the respect with which the journalist reports on the knowledge-base of the humanities scholars with whom he worked and what can be taken as the central theme of the article: the so-called Dark Ages are not so dark as commonly held.
A commonplace about those who study the humanities--the "historians, Latin scholars or theologians" [sic] Brooks notes in attendance at the Festival--is that their knowledge is irrelevant and their fields of study preclude them from having any understanding of the actual functions of the observable, material world. The commonplace fails to address those who apply humanistic methods to the sciences themselves, looking into the histories and socio-cultural contexts in which scientific understanding exists and the political entanglements that enmesh the pursuit of such knowledge. Brooks makes a nod to it in noting that for many of the humanities scholars, direct interaction with the hard sciences is a long-ago thing--but in the next paragraph, he notes that his own knowledge of the humanities pales in comparison to the scientific knowledge of those who are so far removed from scientific schooling as are those scholars. Further, he shortly afterwards notes relying heavily upon a humanities scholar for his reported understanding of some of the importance of Grosseteste's work. In doing so, he subverts the commonplace and acknowledges the hard-won knowledge of humanities scholars as being of value, as being necessary to a full understanding even of the most "scientific" of sciences: physics.
It is easy for those writing in the twenty-first century to look back at the intellectuals of earlier centuries with scorn and derision (although neglectful of the debt owed to those same intellectuals). Their ideas are strange to contemporary readers, and they are in some cases flatly wrong--usually owing to limited observational ability. Brooks avoids the aspersive look in his article, however. Although he acknowledges the places where Grosseteste's research is in error--chiefly in incorrect assumptions prevalent at the time--he does not heap scorn upon the man for sharing the beliefs of his time (in no small part because all too many still share those beliefs despite confirmed evidence to the contrary); instead, he lauds the bishop's insight into the workings of the natural world and the potential for cross-cultural discourse through scholarship that his work embodies. Indeed, Brooks goes to some length to reference scholars who similarly praise Grosseteste and his work and to note the similarities between the bishop's situation and his own, remarking that the passage of time may well invalidate current understandings as thoroughly as current understandings undermine those held by Grosseteste and his contemporaries. His doing so is a reminder that the medieval world was as vital as the current, its thinkers as concerned with understanding the universe around them as current thinkers are theirs. It is an indication that there is still much to learn from centuries gone by, whatever the field, and that such learning is something well worth having in the forefront of public consciousness.
On 27 November 2014, The Guardian posted Michael Brooks's article, "The Medieval Bishop Who Helped to Unweave the Rainbow." In it, Brooks reports that researchers have investigated the scientific works of thirteenth century bishop Robert Grosseteste and found that they in many senses anticipate later scientific understandings, particularly in regards to the behavior of light. Contextualized in an account of observing researchers at the Festival of Humanities at Durham Cathedral reproducing the bishop's experiments, the article accounts in a summary fashion for the provenance of Grosseteste's work, as well as the problems within it and the internal consistencies that, even if at odds with observed reality as currently understood by science, make for what one scientist calls a "curiously satisfying" understanding of cosmology. Brooks's article is well written and reasonably balanced, respectful of all parties concerned, and a worthwhile piece of journalism on both ongoing science and researches into history.
There are several things to note in the article. One that attracts a bit of amused attention is that the subject's name, Grosseteste, translates to "big test" or something similar from several languages, a bit of punning particularly appropriate given the association in Brooks's article between the man and science. More important, however, are the respect with which the journalist reports on the knowledge-base of the humanities scholars with whom he worked and what can be taken as the central theme of the article: the so-called Dark Ages are not so dark as commonly held.
A commonplace about those who study the humanities--the "historians, Latin scholars or theologians" [sic] Brooks notes in attendance at the Festival--is that their knowledge is irrelevant and their fields of study preclude them from having any understanding of the actual functions of the observable, material world. The commonplace fails to address those who apply humanistic methods to the sciences themselves, looking into the histories and socio-cultural contexts in which scientific understanding exists and the political entanglements that enmesh the pursuit of such knowledge. Brooks makes a nod to it in noting that for many of the humanities scholars, direct interaction with the hard sciences is a long-ago thing--but in the next paragraph, he notes that his own knowledge of the humanities pales in comparison to the scientific knowledge of those who are so far removed from scientific schooling as are those scholars. Further, he shortly afterwards notes relying heavily upon a humanities scholar for his reported understanding of some of the importance of Grosseteste's work. In doing so, he subverts the commonplace and acknowledges the hard-won knowledge of humanities scholars as being of value, as being necessary to a full understanding even of the most "scientific" of sciences: physics.
It is easy for those writing in the twenty-first century to look back at the intellectuals of earlier centuries with scorn and derision (although neglectful of the debt owed to those same intellectuals). Their ideas are strange to contemporary readers, and they are in some cases flatly wrong--usually owing to limited observational ability. Brooks avoids the aspersive look in his article, however. Although he acknowledges the places where Grosseteste's research is in error--chiefly in incorrect assumptions prevalent at the time--he does not heap scorn upon the man for sharing the beliefs of his time (in no small part because all too many still share those beliefs despite confirmed evidence to the contrary); instead, he lauds the bishop's insight into the workings of the natural world and the potential for cross-cultural discourse through scholarship that his work embodies. Indeed, Brooks goes to some length to reference scholars who similarly praise Grosseteste and his work and to note the similarities between the bishop's situation and his own, remarking that the passage of time may well invalidate current understandings as thoroughly as current understandings undermine those held by Grosseteste and his contemporaries. His doing so is a reminder that the medieval world was as vital as the current, its thinkers as concerned with understanding the universe around them as current thinkers are theirs. It is an indication that there is still much to learn from centuries gone by, whatever the field, and that such learning is something well worth having in the forefront of public consciousness.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
About "Race in Online Fantasy Fandom"
As has been noted, Helen Young's "Race in Online Fantasy Fandom: Whiteness on Westeros.org" was published in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies on 12 August 2014. In the article, Young asserts that the online community at Westeros.org overwhelmingly conflates a particular "authorized" fandom (reliant upon acceptance of specific views including deliberate avoidance of racial discourse) and whiteness with varying degrees of explicitness. As she does so, she invokes treatments of the racist overtones of Tolkien and much fantasy literature and its fandom and argues that the ways in which whiteness is encoded into the Westeros.org fandom are primarily concerned with avoidance of accusations of racism on the part of Martin and his readers.
The article is, overall, convincing. Young makes excellent points and supports them well, and her reports seem to correspond with a number of other popular manifestations of racism that seeks to disguise itself as non-racism through obfuscation or avoidance. And her article is particularly relevant because of the increasing cultural cachet of Martin's fantasy series; criticism of that series and of the communities that grow up around it is tied to better understandings of the prevailing popular culture which generates and consumes it. That said, some issues do come to mind for further consideration, perhaps in a revision of the article as part of a larger collection, or perhaps in another paper altogether:
The article is, overall, convincing. Young makes excellent points and supports them well, and her reports seem to correspond with a number of other popular manifestations of racism that seeks to disguise itself as non-racism through obfuscation or avoidance. And her article is particularly relevant because of the increasing cultural cachet of Martin's fantasy series; criticism of that series and of the communities that grow up around it is tied to better understandings of the prevailing popular culture which generates and consumes it. That said, some issues do come to mind for further consideration, perhaps in a revision of the article as part of a larger collection, or perhaps in another paper altogether:
- Given the US origin of Martin's text and Young's own comments regarding the entanglement of Martin and Hollywood, the question must be asked of how much of the fanbase is in or from the US. The tactics used to construct/encode whiteness among the Westeros.org "authorized" fans seems to run parallel to those used in mainstream US culture; the parallel suggests that the fans are themselves predominantly of the US.
- The question of to what extent other largely online fanbases encode whiteness in ways parallel to that of Westeros.org also arises. The bronies offer one example, with one discussion of the fraught construction and "authorization" being discussed in Christopher Bell's Humanities Directory 1.1 article "The Ballad of Derpy Hooves: Transgressive Fandom in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic." (There is some overlap in the the demographics Young reports of fantasy fandom and what Bell identifies as those of bronies.)
- The fandom seems to take on an almost religious nature in the descriptions Young provides. The extent to which it parallels the formation of religious communities and identities may be worth consideration; putting it alongside the more evangelical/proselytizing groups suggests itself as a useful exercise.
Admittedly, an article cannot treat all avenues of inquiry, and it is not a fault that it selects one focus to pursue and not another. It is, again, a well written piece that makes solid points worth consideration and offers a lens through which to examine other medievalist works and their receptions. (The thought occurs that Martin is spawning imitators much as Tolkien did, and examining their responses to fantasy/medievalist tropes as Martin iterates them suggests itself as worth doing.) And insofar as it provokes further questions and thus, it is to be hoped, more discussion, Helen Young's "Race in Online Fantasy Fandom: Whiteness on Westeros.org" is a piece of scholarship well worth attention.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
About Paul B. Sturtevant's Website
Online discussions of the Society pointed out Paul B. Sturtevant's website The Public Medievalist some weeks ago. Sturtevant describes himself as "a Public Historian--a Public Medievalist....most interested in how people learn about and use history in their lives" and notes "This has traditionally only encompassed historical institutions for public education--archives, historical-heritage sites, museums or universities. I conceive of it as being broader than that: anywhere that people engage with and learn about the past is a part of public history." Despite some few issues of concern, the site does well to support his stated mission; although missing some points, it presents helpful insights into how contemporary popular culture engages with medieval history
His 18 July 2014 article, "If 'Chivalry' Isn't Dead, Let's Kill It," illustrates the point nicely. In the piece, Sturtevant rails against the cries voiced by The Daily Telegraph and others that "chivalry is dead" and that it was killed by feminists, among others. He does so in large part by pointing out that the definition of chivalry commonly used is not the same kind of chivalry attested in medieval writings; instead, it evolves from Victorian medievalist understandings of the term. In that sense, he asserts, it perhaps ought to be allowed to pass unmourned, given the oppressive heteronormativity of the construction. In the prevailing medieval sense, he also remarks, it is not particularly unique, so that distinguishing "chivalry" is perhaps according too much distinction to the medieval European feudal warriors.
There are some problems in the way he makes his argument. One that stands out to my eye is an omission. In explicating the Victorian medievalist origins of chivalry as a normative set of heterosexual politeness practices, he lists such sources as Malory, the Gawain poet, Chrétien de Troyes, and Sir Walter Scott. Lacking is Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose Idylls of the King enjoyed more currency among Victorian readers than any of the medieval Arthurian sources and, quite likely, Scott.* Tennyson is hardly an unknown author; not mentioning him is an oddity.
Even so, the article does much well. It is framed nicely as a response to a series of articles in a major newspaper and a study published by a major academic group, grounding the discussion firmly in popular culture; the invocation of relatively popular films also does so. The systematic dismantling of popular arguments about the killing of chivalry is good to see, as is the corollary argument that chivalry is not a static category taken from a monolithic Middle Ages. Sturtevant is correct in framing it as a still-dynamic descriptor, the use of which has changed substantially and which at its best can still offer people something worth having. And if his "If 'Chivalry' Isn't Dead, Let's Kill It" is representative of his public medievalist work, then his ongoing efforts in The Public Medievalist will be well worth continued attention.
*See my dissertation, pgs. 182-86.
His 18 July 2014 article, "If 'Chivalry' Isn't Dead, Let's Kill It," illustrates the point nicely. In the piece, Sturtevant rails against the cries voiced by The Daily Telegraph and others that "chivalry is dead" and that it was killed by feminists, among others. He does so in large part by pointing out that the definition of chivalry commonly used is not the same kind of chivalry attested in medieval writings; instead, it evolves from Victorian medievalist understandings of the term. In that sense, he asserts, it perhaps ought to be allowed to pass unmourned, given the oppressive heteronormativity of the construction. In the prevailing medieval sense, he also remarks, it is not particularly unique, so that distinguishing "chivalry" is perhaps according too much distinction to the medieval European feudal warriors.
There are some problems in the way he makes his argument. One that stands out to my eye is an omission. In explicating the Victorian medievalist origins of chivalry as a normative set of heterosexual politeness practices, he lists such sources as Malory, the Gawain poet, Chrétien de Troyes, and Sir Walter Scott. Lacking is Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose Idylls of the King enjoyed more currency among Victorian readers than any of the medieval Arthurian sources and, quite likely, Scott.* Tennyson is hardly an unknown author; not mentioning him is an oddity.
Even so, the article does much well. It is framed nicely as a response to a series of articles in a major newspaper and a study published by a major academic group, grounding the discussion firmly in popular culture; the invocation of relatively popular films also does so. The systematic dismantling of popular arguments about the killing of chivalry is good to see, as is the corollary argument that chivalry is not a static category taken from a monolithic Middle Ages. Sturtevant is correct in framing it as a still-dynamic descriptor, the use of which has changed substantially and which at its best can still offer people something worth having. And if his "If 'Chivalry' Isn't Dead, Let's Kill It" is representative of his public medievalist work, then his ongoing efforts in The Public Medievalist will be well worth continued attention.
*See my dissertation, pgs. 182-86.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
About the Sale of a Caxton Printing
A 17 July 2014 BBC.com article, "First Printed Book in English Sold for Over £1m," notes that a copy of Caxton's Recuyell of the Histories of Troye was auctioned off by Sotheby's, through which it had been offered by the Duke of Northumberland in an attempt to offset costs of flood damage. The article offers a brief summary of the book's plot and history, highlighting the role of Caxton in bringing printing to English and England from the Continent and Continental languages. It also serves to indicate the continued valuation of the medieval--even at the fringes of what can be called the medieval--by contemporary popular culture; that the sale of such a thing occasions public comment, and that the sale of such a thing commands the price, both bespeak the importance of it.
Insofar as it does those things, the piece is good. The provision of historical context is always helpful in enhancing understanding, and the reiteration of the idea that what has gone before matters even now is appreciated. There is a possible problem in the article, however; the assertion in the final two paragraphs that the Recuyell that the work told on Caxton, based on his statement in the epilogue that he was wearied and fatigued, may not be entirely correct. While it is certainly the case that those who engage in long works of translation may find themselves tired at the end of the projects, it is also the case that the medievals--even at times late medievals such as Caxton--indulged in the trope of humilitas, protesting their unworth as a backhanded means of either securing patronage or self-aggrandizing. While Caxton was not necessarily in a position to need additional patronage--he was, as the article notes and I have discussed elsewhere, in several positions of power and influence--he was steeped in the culture and traditions that made the pursuit of patronage by scholars obligatory. And, as I discuss in the earlier "elsewhere," Caxton continued to deploy phrasings consistent with humilitas although not with the demonstrated qualities of his printing work. That he does write as he writes in the epilogue to the Recuyell may therefore be less an honest admission of his incapacity than a common rhetorical maneuver of his and his contemporaries' and thus situation of himself as a fully engaged member of his culture. The latter seems far more consistent with the successful public servant, businessman, and cultural touchstone that was William Caxton than the mewling whiner connoted by the former.
Even so, having the piece appear in major news media is refreshing. If nothing else, it says that the Tales after Tolkien Society continues to have work to do looking at how what is medieval continues to be presented.
Insofar as it does those things, the piece is good. The provision of historical context is always helpful in enhancing understanding, and the reiteration of the idea that what has gone before matters even now is appreciated. There is a possible problem in the article, however; the assertion in the final two paragraphs that the Recuyell that the work told on Caxton, based on his statement in the epilogue that he was wearied and fatigued, may not be entirely correct. While it is certainly the case that those who engage in long works of translation may find themselves tired at the end of the projects, it is also the case that the medievals--even at times late medievals such as Caxton--indulged in the trope of humilitas, protesting their unworth as a backhanded means of either securing patronage or self-aggrandizing. While Caxton was not necessarily in a position to need additional patronage--he was, as the article notes and I have discussed elsewhere, in several positions of power and influence--he was steeped in the culture and traditions that made the pursuit of patronage by scholars obligatory. And, as I discuss in the earlier "elsewhere," Caxton continued to deploy phrasings consistent with humilitas although not with the demonstrated qualities of his printing work. That he does write as he writes in the epilogue to the Recuyell may therefore be less an honest admission of his incapacity than a common rhetorical maneuver of his and his contemporaries' and thus situation of himself as a fully engaged member of his culture. The latter seems far more consistent with the successful public servant, businessman, and cultural touchstone that was William Caxton than the mewling whiner connoted by the former.
Even so, having the piece appear in major news media is refreshing. If nothing else, it says that the Tales after Tolkien Society continues to have work to do looking at how what is medieval continues to be presented.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Regarding Gilsdorf's D&D Piece
On 13 July 2014, the New York Times published Ethan Gilsdorf's "A Game as Literary Tutorial: Dungeons & Dragons Has Influenced a Generation of Writers." In the piece, Gilsdorf reports that a number of authors in both fiction and nonfiction, in prose and drama, came to writing through D&D. The author focuses mostly on Junot DÃaz, but makes mention of a number of other writers (including Martin, with whose work the Society engages) and such critics as Ball State University assistant professor Jennifer Grouling, whose work examines narrative practices in roleplaying games. It is a valorization of a genre of game* that has its ultimate roots in the fundamental storytelling practices of humanity and its specific roots in a perhaps half-drunken playing of a miniatures wargame** and the principal iteration of which has reached forty years despite opprobrium from fearful fundamentalist groups, the grief-stricken mother of a mentally unstable son and her followers, and law enforcement agencies that listened to both.
Commentary on D&D bears in on the work of the Society. The default setting of the game has long been one modeled directly on the Tolkienian tradition of fantasy literature, following the practice of the first RPG campaign: Dave Arneson's Blackmoor (Schick 18). Too, the RPG feeds back into fantasy literature (Mackay 20), not infrequently reinforcing the Tolkienian tradition. I have motioned toward some of the features of the tradition in this blog (see my 12 June 2014 post); among them is a focus on something like Northern and Western Europe during what is commonly regarded as the Middle Ages, meaning that the RPG is often a recapitulation or reinterpretation of the medieval, and thus exactly the kind of thing to the study of which the Society is devoted. More to the point, however, is something Gilsdorf notes and to which I can from my own experience attest; RPGs, and D&D specifically, serve as a means through which (some) people begin to engage directly with the medieval. I am not alone in finding my way to looking at Arthuriana and the Crusades by way of polyhedral and other kinds of dice rolled to aid and abet telling lies in the name of fun.
One thing that my own earlier research (admittedly much in need of revision) tells me is that one way in which the RPG tends to embody the medieval, more subtly than in the surface trappings of kings and knights in chainmail armor, it the figuration of alterity. The "standard" perspective on the medieval (and one much subject to critique, as I well know) is that it is a Euro-centric phenomenon; rightly or wrongly, prevailing popular conception in the United States (which produces most tabletop RPGs) runs that way. Within that (and this is true whether or not the Middle Ages is regarded as Euro-centric), medieval Northern and Western Europe clearly possessed a schema to differentiate itself from all that was not Northern and Western Europe. Typically, this could be seen as (at least nominal) religious allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church; at one level, a large swath of the continent looked to the same source for a basic confirmation of humanity. Outside it were others of varying otherness; presumably, Eastern Orthodoxy was not as alien as various branches of Judaism or Islam, and those not so distant as Greater or Lesser Vehicle Buddhism or any of the many forms of Hindu practice. Within it, too, were marked distinctions; while a Frenchman and a Spaniard would recognize each other as brothers in faith, and would likely unite to oppose outside threats, in the absence of an external enemy, they would not necessarily regard one another as really akin.
The same is true of D&D. In its third and third-and-a-half editions (I try to ignore the fourth, and I have yet to get the new set), there are seven assumed player "races," with marked physiognomic and biological differences among them. There is exchange among them; there are nation-states and organizations that transcend the "racial" boundaries, and the various "races" are interfertile with one another (as witness the half-elves) and with yet other "races" (witness the half-orcs). But there are also tensions among them; elves and dwarves do not always get along, and most other people look at half-orcs askance. Within them, there are tensions, as well. Most races have multiple realms, and those realms are no more frequently at peace than were France and England during the Middle Ages. And the various "races" in their realms may be at war with one another, as well. Too, there are clear lines between player races and savage or brutal races not necessarily "less" than the player races--except within the racial schema perpetuated by the player races themselves, which tend to stereotype entire populations of thinking, feeling, sentient beings as "good" or "evil," "lawful" or "chaotic."† It rings of medieval European understandings of the divisions of the population of the world among three "races" descended from the three sons of Noah and the "other" population descended from demons and other forces of darkness.
There is more to do, of course. D&D has forty years of rulebooks, novels, television series, video games, and movies to investigate, as well as the untold numbers of narratives that its many players could relate and the many derivations and parodies that have grown from it. In each, it works with some erroneous ideas and against others; it both subverts and reinforces some of the worse ideas of the medieval and some of the better. And in each, it serves as a reminder that what has been done is still done, that what the people of the Middle Ages did, we yet do, so that there is still abundant reason to study it.
*The genre distinction is one that needs clarification. There are many sorts of RPG, from the vastly informal pretend-play of children (that still prompts cries of "That's not fair!" despite a lack of formal rules) to the intensely algorithm-driven MMORPG typified by World of Warcraft. This discussion focuses on the tabletop, pen-and-paper style of RPG.
**Fine, Mackay, and Schick all note that the origin of the role-playing game as such came from a tabletop miniatures wargame played in Minneapolis-St. Paul (Mackay 14; Schick 17), during which a spell was cast on a whim and accepted by the other players (Fine 13-14).
†This is complicated by the presence of "thinking, feeling, sentient beings" that are demonstrably "good," "evil," "lawful," or "chaotic," hailing as they do from parts of existence that represent and enforce such perspectives and attitudes.
Works Cited
Commentary on D&D bears in on the work of the Society. The default setting of the game has long been one modeled directly on the Tolkienian tradition of fantasy literature, following the practice of the first RPG campaign: Dave Arneson's Blackmoor (Schick 18). Too, the RPG feeds back into fantasy literature (Mackay 20), not infrequently reinforcing the Tolkienian tradition. I have motioned toward some of the features of the tradition in this blog (see my 12 June 2014 post); among them is a focus on something like Northern and Western Europe during what is commonly regarded as the Middle Ages, meaning that the RPG is often a recapitulation or reinterpretation of the medieval, and thus exactly the kind of thing to the study of which the Society is devoted. More to the point, however, is something Gilsdorf notes and to which I can from my own experience attest; RPGs, and D&D specifically, serve as a means through which (some) people begin to engage directly with the medieval. I am not alone in finding my way to looking at Arthuriana and the Crusades by way of polyhedral and other kinds of dice rolled to aid and abet telling lies in the name of fun.
One thing that my own earlier research (admittedly much in need of revision) tells me is that one way in which the RPG tends to embody the medieval, more subtly than in the surface trappings of kings and knights in chainmail armor, it the figuration of alterity. The "standard" perspective on the medieval (and one much subject to critique, as I well know) is that it is a Euro-centric phenomenon; rightly or wrongly, prevailing popular conception in the United States (which produces most tabletop RPGs) runs that way. Within that (and this is true whether or not the Middle Ages is regarded as Euro-centric), medieval Northern and Western Europe clearly possessed a schema to differentiate itself from all that was not Northern and Western Europe. Typically, this could be seen as (at least nominal) religious allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church; at one level, a large swath of the continent looked to the same source for a basic confirmation of humanity. Outside it were others of varying otherness; presumably, Eastern Orthodoxy was not as alien as various branches of Judaism or Islam, and those not so distant as Greater or Lesser Vehicle Buddhism or any of the many forms of Hindu practice. Within it, too, were marked distinctions; while a Frenchman and a Spaniard would recognize each other as brothers in faith, and would likely unite to oppose outside threats, in the absence of an external enemy, they would not necessarily regard one another as really akin.
The same is true of D&D. In its third and third-and-a-half editions (I try to ignore the fourth, and I have yet to get the new set), there are seven assumed player "races," with marked physiognomic and biological differences among them. There is exchange among them; there are nation-states and organizations that transcend the "racial" boundaries, and the various "races" are interfertile with one another (as witness the half-elves) and with yet other "races" (witness the half-orcs). But there are also tensions among them; elves and dwarves do not always get along, and most other people look at half-orcs askance. Within them, there are tensions, as well. Most races have multiple realms, and those realms are no more frequently at peace than were France and England during the Middle Ages. And the various "races" in their realms may be at war with one another, as well. Too, there are clear lines between player races and savage or brutal races not necessarily "less" than the player races--except within the racial schema perpetuated by the player races themselves, which tend to stereotype entire populations of thinking, feeling, sentient beings as "good" or "evil," "lawful" or "chaotic."† It rings of medieval European understandings of the divisions of the population of the world among three "races" descended from the three sons of Noah and the "other" population descended from demons and other forces of darkness.
There is more to do, of course. D&D has forty years of rulebooks, novels, television series, video games, and movies to investigate, as well as the untold numbers of narratives that its many players could relate and the many derivations and parodies that have grown from it. In each, it works with some erroneous ideas and against others; it both subverts and reinforces some of the worse ideas of the medieval and some of the better. And in each, it serves as a reminder that what has been done is still done, that what the people of the Middle Ages did, we yet do, so that there is still abundant reason to study it.
*The genre distinction is one that needs clarification. There are many sorts of RPG, from the vastly informal pretend-play of children (that still prompts cries of "That's not fair!" despite a lack of formal rules) to the intensely algorithm-driven MMORPG typified by World of Warcraft. This discussion focuses on the tabletop, pen-and-paper style of RPG.
**Fine, Mackay, and Schick all note that the origin of the role-playing game as such came from a tabletop miniatures wargame played in Minneapolis-St. Paul (Mackay 14; Schick 17), during which a spell was cast on a whim and accepted by the other players (Fine 13-14).
†This is complicated by the presence of "thinking, feeling, sentient beings" that are demonstrably "good," "evil," "lawful," or "chaotic," hailing as they do from parts of existence that represent and enforce such perspectives and attitudes.
Works Cited
- Elliott, Geoffrey B. "Regarding a Feature of Common Fantasy Milieus: Formal Social Hierarchy." Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 24 June 2014. Web. 14 July 2014.
- Fine, Gary Alan. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002. Print.
- Gilsdorf, Ethan "A Game as Literary Tutorial: Dungeons & Dragons Has Influenced a Generation of Writers." NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 13 July 2014. Web. 14 July 2014.
- Mackay, Daniel. The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland P, 2001. Print.
- Schick, Lawrence. Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus, 1991. Print.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Continuing with the Issue of Historical Authenticity
Read the previous entry in this series here.
The accuracy of ideas of the medieval carried forward in popular culture is one that seems to have been on the minds of contributors to this blog of late, as Helen Young's "Who Cares if Game of Thrones Is Authentically Medieval?" and "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity? I Do," and my "About a Popova Piece...and a Bit of Rebuttal" indicate. Given this, when I ran across Robert Krulwich's NPR piece, "Wrong! Deconstructing 5 Famous History Stories," I found myself interested. I continued to be so as I read the piece, in which Krulwich reports on the YouTube efforts of CGP Grey, who makes a habit of putting together internet videos that deconstruct and seek to correct cultural commonplaces. The piece is short and is badly titled ("history stories" seems awkward and unpolished, which I do not expect from an NPR writer), but there is a point of interest in it (aside from the links to Grey's work, which is not bad overall, although its condemnation of poets and artists is unpalatable).
That point is Krulwich's assertion that the repeated assertions of scholars do not change people's attitudes. He remarks additionally that those who teach are aware of the difficulty of getting people to change their preconceptions, and I can attest to the truth of that statement in my own life and teaching. (I am aware that individual anecdotes are not terribly convincing evidence.) Comfort, though, is more important than feeling smart, it seems. Identifications and interpretations of data that are more inclusive and leaner, that work better at producing desired results and determining what results are most to be desired, are set aside in favor of others that require less cognitive work. Even when those less effort intensive understandings lead to error and problems, they are held, not infrequently more tightly because of the problems; persecution complexes are easily developed. To borrow another (somewhat) popular medievalism and its correction, the idea of Chaucer as the representative of Middle English and standard from which to judge all other Middle Englishes, is a faulty one, as Tim William Machan correctly notes. Yet it is the idea that is transmitted forward in many surveys of early British literature, and even in higher-level courses to and by those who really ought to know better. That it is is depressing for those who agree with Young's assertion in "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity? I Do" that those who will study the medieval (and that must include those who will study its appearances in later periods) are obliged to work to correct misconceptions; if even those who ought to know better, working to help those who want to know better come to know better, perpetuate wrong-headed beliefs, then there is little hope for the many who are content to be wrong so long as they do not need to work to change their beliefs. (And they are beliefs. They are choices. So they are not "facts."*)
The notion of teaching's difficulty intersects with Grey's assertion in "5 Historical Misconceptions Rundown" that poets and artists are to blame for historical misconceptions. Artistic endeavor does not purpose to report "facts" as such, and to castigate it for failing to do so is to impose a rubric upon it that it does not claim for itself and does not deserve. Artistic endeavor purposes, among others, to prompt examination and reexamination not only of the "facts" but of the contexts in which those "facts" are gathered and disseminated, as well as those who will gather, disseminate, and interpret them. The problem in misunderstanding history is not the fault of the artist, who does not seek to produce "true history" so much as to offer an alternative understanding of world and self, but of the teacher who misreads art as what it is not and presents the results of that reading as "fact." It is the fault of the student who follows the banking model and sits quiescent, accepting what is given in the hopes of regurgitating it successfully so that it need not be retained. Some of it will always remain, though. Some will have been metabolized, however quickly it is spewed back again, and the little that remains is not likely to be the best bit to retain. That which is eaten earliest is most likely to be digested, to be taken and incorporated into the undiscriminating eater, true of teaching as of dining; it is the ideas inculcated early that take the most to overturn, and it is unfortunately those ideas that are most frequently wrong. Not simplified (for there is sense in scaffolding knowledge, and people do not react as adversely to the complication of things as to the overthrow of them), but wrong. Grey points out the example of Columbus, and in the comments on his video as well as in the Krulwich article that discusses it, there are defenders of the notion that the Italian "discovered" the New World despite the earlier travels of Icelanders to the continent and the older presence of indigenous peoples throughout the landmass. The oft-cited adage that "ain't" is not a word is maintained despite the presence of the word in such dictionaries as Oxford's and Merriam-Webster's.** Other examples abound, and many of them--perhaps even most--go to the issue of early teaching skewing all future understanding, rather than the artists being to blame for how their works are used in years they never see and cannot foresee.
If there is to be the kind of palliative for which Young calls in "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity? I Do," it has to come not only from the scholarly community, whose reach is limited by social factors that themselves need to be addressed (and that this blog seeks to address, albeit in a small way), but from those in the broader community who are positioned such that others will listen to them. Teachers of younger students are among them, as are the artists whom Grey identifies as contributing to the problem. The Society has been fortunate to host one such in a presentation at the 2014 International Congress on Medieval Studies, but there needs to be more such work done. Making works of popular culture more consonant with "how things really were" has to be a shared endeavor if it is to be successful--and it needs to be successful.
*The concept of "fact" is fraught, of course, given that selecting what data count as "facts" and which "facts" are worth reporting are interpretive decisions. This is entirely aside from the physical limitations on perception that necessarily limit access to information.
**Using presence in major dictionaries as an indicator of "being a word" is somewhat suspect, admittedly. It does function as a useful shorthand, however, and is deployed for that purpose only.
Works Cited
The accuracy of ideas of the medieval carried forward in popular culture is one that seems to have been on the minds of contributors to this blog of late, as Helen Young's "Who Cares if Game of Thrones Is Authentically Medieval?" and "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity? I Do," and my "About a Popova Piece...and a Bit of Rebuttal" indicate. Given this, when I ran across Robert Krulwich's NPR piece, "Wrong! Deconstructing 5 Famous History Stories," I found myself interested. I continued to be so as I read the piece, in which Krulwich reports on the YouTube efforts of CGP Grey, who makes a habit of putting together internet videos that deconstruct and seek to correct cultural commonplaces. The piece is short and is badly titled ("history stories" seems awkward and unpolished, which I do not expect from an NPR writer), but there is a point of interest in it (aside from the links to Grey's work, which is not bad overall, although its condemnation of poets and artists is unpalatable).
That point is Krulwich's assertion that the repeated assertions of scholars do not change people's attitudes. He remarks additionally that those who teach are aware of the difficulty of getting people to change their preconceptions, and I can attest to the truth of that statement in my own life and teaching. (I am aware that individual anecdotes are not terribly convincing evidence.) Comfort, though, is more important than feeling smart, it seems. Identifications and interpretations of data that are more inclusive and leaner, that work better at producing desired results and determining what results are most to be desired, are set aside in favor of others that require less cognitive work. Even when those less effort intensive understandings lead to error and problems, they are held, not infrequently more tightly because of the problems; persecution complexes are easily developed. To borrow another (somewhat) popular medievalism and its correction, the idea of Chaucer as the representative of Middle English and standard from which to judge all other Middle Englishes, is a faulty one, as Tim William Machan correctly notes. Yet it is the idea that is transmitted forward in many surveys of early British literature, and even in higher-level courses to and by those who really ought to know better. That it is is depressing for those who agree with Young's assertion in "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity? I Do" that those who will study the medieval (and that must include those who will study its appearances in later periods) are obliged to work to correct misconceptions; if even those who ought to know better, working to help those who want to know better come to know better, perpetuate wrong-headed beliefs, then there is little hope for the many who are content to be wrong so long as they do not need to work to change their beliefs. (And they are beliefs. They are choices. So they are not "facts."*)
The notion of teaching's difficulty intersects with Grey's assertion in "5 Historical Misconceptions Rundown" that poets and artists are to blame for historical misconceptions. Artistic endeavor does not purpose to report "facts" as such, and to castigate it for failing to do so is to impose a rubric upon it that it does not claim for itself and does not deserve. Artistic endeavor purposes, among others, to prompt examination and reexamination not only of the "facts" but of the contexts in which those "facts" are gathered and disseminated, as well as those who will gather, disseminate, and interpret them. The problem in misunderstanding history is not the fault of the artist, who does not seek to produce "true history" so much as to offer an alternative understanding of world and self, but of the teacher who misreads art as what it is not and presents the results of that reading as "fact." It is the fault of the student who follows the banking model and sits quiescent, accepting what is given in the hopes of regurgitating it successfully so that it need not be retained. Some of it will always remain, though. Some will have been metabolized, however quickly it is spewed back again, and the little that remains is not likely to be the best bit to retain. That which is eaten earliest is most likely to be digested, to be taken and incorporated into the undiscriminating eater, true of teaching as of dining; it is the ideas inculcated early that take the most to overturn, and it is unfortunately those ideas that are most frequently wrong. Not simplified (for there is sense in scaffolding knowledge, and people do not react as adversely to the complication of things as to the overthrow of them), but wrong. Grey points out the example of Columbus, and in the comments on his video as well as in the Krulwich article that discusses it, there are defenders of the notion that the Italian "discovered" the New World despite the earlier travels of Icelanders to the continent and the older presence of indigenous peoples throughout the landmass. The oft-cited adage that "ain't" is not a word is maintained despite the presence of the word in such dictionaries as Oxford's and Merriam-Webster's.** Other examples abound, and many of them--perhaps even most--go to the issue of early teaching skewing all future understanding, rather than the artists being to blame for how their works are used in years they never see and cannot foresee.
If there is to be the kind of palliative for which Young calls in "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity? I Do," it has to come not only from the scholarly community, whose reach is limited by social factors that themselves need to be addressed (and that this blog seeks to address, albeit in a small way), but from those in the broader community who are positioned such that others will listen to them. Teachers of younger students are among them, as are the artists whom Grey identifies as contributing to the problem. The Society has been fortunate to host one such in a presentation at the 2014 International Congress on Medieval Studies, but there needs to be more such work done. Making works of popular culture more consonant with "how things really were" has to be a shared endeavor if it is to be successful--and it needs to be successful.
*The concept of "fact" is fraught, of course, given that selecting what data count as "facts" and which "facts" are worth reporting are interpretive decisions. This is entirely aside from the physical limitations on perception that necessarily limit access to information.
**Using presence in major dictionaries as an indicator of "being a word" is somewhat suspect, admittedly. It does function as a useful shorthand, however, and is deployed for that purpose only.
Works Cited
- "Ain't." Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford UP, 2014. Web. 21 June 2014.
- "Ain't." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2014. Web. 21 June 2014.
- 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. 21 June 2014.
- Grey, CGP. "5 Historical Misconceptions Rundown." YouTube. Google, 18 April 2012. Web. 21 June 2014.
- Krulwich, Robert. "Wrong! Deconstructing 5 Famous History Stories." NPR.org. NPR, 20 June 2014. Web. 21 June 2014.
- Machan, Tim William. "Chaucer and the History of English." Speculum 87.1 (January 2012): 147-75. Print.
- Young, Helen. "Who Cares if Game of Thrones Is Authentically Medieval?" Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 12 June 2014. Web. 21 June 2014.
- ---. "Who Cares about Historical Authenticity? I Do." Tales after Tolkien: Travels in Genre and Medievalism. Tales after Tolkien Society, 16 June 2014. Web. 21 June 2014.
Friday, June 20, 2014
About a Davis Piece
During my morning reading, I came across an io9 piece by Lauren Davis, "These Medieval-Style Tolkien Illustrations Are Like Nothing We've Ever Seen." In it, Davis reports on and reproduces the Lord of the Rings artwork of Ukrainian artist Sergei Iukhimov, commenting on its resemblance to medieval iconographic traditions. Her comment about jealousy of those who grew up with such editions is likely to be agreed with by a number of her readers, for she is correct in noting that the illustrations do much to capture the feeling of Middle-earth.
How what Davis reports interacts with what Popova discusses (noted in this blog on 17 June 2014) is interesting. Admittedly, Davis can go into more detail with her single artist than Popova can with several, but what is notable is that the medieval scholar Tolkien does not deploy a medieval iconographic style in his illustrations, nor do the others Popova discusses, while Iukhimov does (and more than just the Orthodox style Davis names in discussing him). The effect of Iukhimov, then, is one that does far more to evoke the "medievalness" than do many of the other illustrations under discussion, which is not a condemnation of the illustration quality but is a comment on pseudo-historical context and its interaction with the narrative. There is something of the Crusades in the battles of Gondor and Mordor and much of the broader European medieval, and so the Iukhimov illustrations seem to be more in line with Tolkien's text than even the author's own; they look more like what is found in old manuscript copies, and so they fit more closely with the imagined transmission history of the text that the text itself presents.* Their inclusion makes the text more authentic, both to itself and to the medieval material from which it borrows so much.
*Mary R. Bowman discusses the issue of textual self-transmission in "The Story Was Already Written: Narrative Theory in The Lord of the Rings" (Narrative 14.3 [October 2006]: 272-93), as does Vladimir Brljak in "The Books of Lost Tales: Tolkien as Metafictionist" (Tolkien Studies 7 [2010]: 1-34.)
How what Davis reports interacts with what Popova discusses (noted in this blog on 17 June 2014) is interesting. Admittedly, Davis can go into more detail with her single artist than Popova can with several, but what is notable is that the medieval scholar Tolkien does not deploy a medieval iconographic style in his illustrations, nor do the others Popova discusses, while Iukhimov does (and more than just the Orthodox style Davis names in discussing him). The effect of Iukhimov, then, is one that does far more to evoke the "medievalness" than do many of the other illustrations under discussion, which is not a condemnation of the illustration quality but is a comment on pseudo-historical context and its interaction with the narrative. There is something of the Crusades in the battles of Gondor and Mordor and much of the broader European medieval, and so the Iukhimov illustrations seem to be more in line with Tolkien's text than even the author's own; they look more like what is found in old manuscript copies, and so they fit more closely with the imagined transmission history of the text that the text itself presents.* Their inclusion makes the text more authentic, both to itself and to the medieval material from which it borrows so much.
*Mary R. Bowman discusses the issue of textual self-transmission in "The Story Was Already Written: Narrative Theory in The Lord of the Rings" (Narrative 14.3 [October 2006]: 272-93), as does Vladimir Brljak in "The Books of Lost Tales: Tolkien as Metafictionist" (Tolkien Studies 7 [2010]: 1-34.)
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
About a Popova Piece...and a Bit of Rebuttal
A friend of mine suggested that the Society blog consider Maria Popova's 13 June 2014 Brain Pickings piece "Vintage Illustrations for Tolkien's The Hobbit from around the World," hinting that it might do the kind of thing in which the Society is interested. The piece points out a number of older illustrations for Tolkien's children's work, although it notes Tolkien's own comments regarding children's literature in opening. Sections for several early editions of the text are provided, in which a brief introductory paragraph precedes representative illustrations from each edition. Popova makes a point of providing examples from multiple languages and countries, displaying an admirable attempt to resist the kind of field-narrowing Helen discusses in an earlier post. It is the kind of project that would be good to see expanded and offered more detail, perhaps along the lines of Barry Gaines's Sir Thomas Malory: An Anecdotal Bibliography of Editions, 1485-1985.
One matter of note in the piece is the blending among some of the artists represented (but neither Tolkien nor Jansson) of medieval and later clothing among the characters, particularly Bilbo. (The images from the Tolkien text do not show Bilbo, while those from the Jansson edition seem to tie to the idea of The Hobbit as bedtime story, with the night-capped Mr. Baggins depicted.) In them, the eponymous hobbit lounges about in waistcoat and breeches, looking very much like he is in a shoeless form of Regency court uniform. Yet the disparity of historical reference does not strike the eye as odd--partly because Bilbo is described as wearing a buttoned waistcoat, among others, and partly because the issue of historical accuracy in fantasy referentiality is fraught. While some fantasy series attract some censure because of their inconsistency of invocation, the cornerstone of the genre does so only rarely, if at all. (References to examples and counter-examples would be welcome in the comments below.) How many bat an eye at the hobbits of Lord of the Rings dressing as they dress among the robed and mailed mighty ones of Gondor and Rohan? How many balk at brocaded vests with chain mail beneath? And what of pipe-weed, that typifying halfling past-time ripped from its historical colonialist context and shoved into an otherwise medievalist milieu?
Certainly, scholars have a duty to the truth. Those who are medievalists are obliged to point out to those who are not that the medieval was not as it is often depicted. But if they will do so, then they need to do so for all--and there are many who are introduced to the study of the medieval through Tolkien. His works are foundational to the fantasy genre and to current genre medievalism (as the Society officially recognizes). If those works which derive from his are to be chastised for their inaccuracies, then his must be the more so, both because they serve as the example from which others work and because Tolkien was in a position to know better. He was a scholar of the medieval, after all, and even if understandings of some particulars have changed based upon information developed since his career ended, many broader views have not. And if his works are not challenged on such grounds, perhaps those who look into the uses and misuses of the medieval ought to be a bit less condemnatory of his successors when they do the same as their forebear. This does not mean that the deviations should be ignored or that they should be allowed to promote incorrect understandings of the medieval unchecked and unremarked, but they may perhaps be considered as something other than mere mistakes.
One matter of note in the piece is the blending among some of the artists represented (but neither Tolkien nor Jansson) of medieval and later clothing among the characters, particularly Bilbo. (The images from the Tolkien text do not show Bilbo, while those from the Jansson edition seem to tie to the idea of The Hobbit as bedtime story, with the night-capped Mr. Baggins depicted.) In them, the eponymous hobbit lounges about in waistcoat and breeches, looking very much like he is in a shoeless form of Regency court uniform. Yet the disparity of historical reference does not strike the eye as odd--partly because Bilbo is described as wearing a buttoned waistcoat, among others, and partly because the issue of historical accuracy in fantasy referentiality is fraught. While some fantasy series attract some censure because of their inconsistency of invocation, the cornerstone of the genre does so only rarely, if at all. (References to examples and counter-examples would be welcome in the comments below.) How many bat an eye at the hobbits of Lord of the Rings dressing as they dress among the robed and mailed mighty ones of Gondor and Rohan? How many balk at brocaded vests with chain mail beneath? And what of pipe-weed, that typifying halfling past-time ripped from its historical colonialist context and shoved into an otherwise medievalist milieu?
Certainly, scholars have a duty to the truth. Those who are medievalists are obliged to point out to those who are not that the medieval was not as it is often depicted. But if they will do so, then they need to do so for all--and there are many who are introduced to the study of the medieval through Tolkien. His works are foundational to the fantasy genre and to current genre medievalism (as the Society officially recognizes). If those works which derive from his are to be chastised for their inaccuracies, then his must be the more so, both because they serve as the example from which others work and because Tolkien was in a position to know better. He was a scholar of the medieval, after all, and even if understandings of some particulars have changed based upon information developed since his career ended, many broader views have not. And if his works are not challenged on such grounds, perhaps those who look into the uses and misuses of the medieval ought to be a bit less condemnatory of his successors when they do the same as their forebear. This does not mean that the deviations should be ignored or that they should be allowed to promote incorrect understandings of the medieval unchecked and unremarked, but they may perhaps be considered as something other than mere mistakes.
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.)
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