St. Scholastica’s Day: Town and Gown problems in the 14th century

The new semester is well underway, and my teaching load this semester (one section of History of the English Language, one section of Chaucer’s Works, and two sections of a Second-Year Seminar on the Oxford Inklings) means that I’m busy with reading–prep work for classes and piles of student work. As usual, I’ve also got several books around the house in various states of being read–Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death, Frederick Hackwood’s Old English Sports, Timothy Jones’ Outlawry in Medieval Literature, and Armin Brott’s The Expectant Father (this will, of course, require a separate entry soon).

I’ve also got a book that caught my eye in a used bookstore a while back–an 1876 edition of Reverend T. F. Thiselton Dyer’s British Popular Customs Present and Past. It’s an quirky bit of armchair sleuthing in which the Reverend Dyer collects accounts of the various festivals, customs, and local oddments from around the British Isles and from texts drawn from a millennium’s worth of writers and historians.

As a bit of personal entertainment, I’ve started reading the appropriate day’s events and celebrations whenever the calendar dictates it, and today’s entry on St. Scholastica’s Day caught my eye as a useful cautionary tale about the long-standing tension between town and gown. The story is drawn from William Huddesford’s 1772 The Lives of Those Eminent Antiquaries John Leland, Thomas Hearne, and Anthony Wood:

“The Burghers or Citizens of Oxford appeared in their full number on St. Scholastica’s Day at St. Mary’s. Alderman Wright, their oracle, told them that if they did not appear there might be some hole picked in their charter [...] he told them moreover that, though it was a popish matter, yet policy ought to take place at this juncture in time. The origin of this custom was a furious contest between the citizens of Oxford and the students. Some of the latter being at a tavern, on the 10th of February, 1354, broke the landlord’s head with a vessel in which he had served them some bad wine. The man immediately collected together a number of his neighbors and fellow-citizens, who, having for a long time waited for such an opportunity, fell upon the students, and in spite of the mandates of the Chancellor, and even the King himself (who was then at Woodstock), continued their outrages for several days, not only killing or wounding the scholars, but, in contempt of the sacerdotal order, destroying all the religious crosses of the town. For this offense the King deprived the city of many valuable privileges, and bestowed them on the University, and the Bishop of Lincoln forbade the administration of the sacraments to the citizens of the town.”

The story then goes on to explain how, after three years of petitioning, the town of Oxford was able to win a commutation of the sentence, but only so long as, on St. Scholastica’s Day each year, the citizens came to St. Mary’s and swore “observance of the customary rights of the University, under penalty of 100 marks in case of omission of this ceremony [...] The traditional story that the mayor was obliged to attend with a halter around his neck [...] has no real foundation.”

Can anyone else think of any good stories (real or fictional) of medieval students and townsfolk at odds? I’ll spot you The Reeve’s Tale as a freebie…

Kalamazoo Sessions You Won’t Want to Miss!

The Kalamazoo schedule has been posted!

Kisha’s Sessions:

Session 8 (Valley II 205) – Thursday, 10AM – What We Have Here Is a Failure to Confess: Impediments to Confession in Medieval Literature (Organizer and Presenter)

Session 356 (Fetzer 1005) – Saturday, 10AM – After Chaucer (Presider)

John’s Sessions:

Session 49 (Bernhard 212) – Thursday, 10AM – Queering the Cougar – “‘. . . That Love Werc’: Dame Siriþ, Cougar for Hire” (Presenter)

Session 55 (Valley II 202) – Thursday, 1:30PM – The Future of Medieval Disability Studies: Where Do We Go from Here? (A Roundtable)

 

Other FOMM (Friends of MassMedieval) Sessions (in no particular order)
***If I have missed anyone, please don’t be offended. I simply did a quick search. Post your session in the comments below. Same goes if there are any errors to be corrected.

• Andrew Pfrenger

Session 218 (Schneider 136) – Friday, 10AM – Insular Perspectives I: Anglo-Saxon Elements in Medieval Literature – “Anglo-Saxon Saints in the South English Legendary” (Presenter)

• Wendy Marie Hoofnagle

Session 46 (Bernhard 20) – Thursday, 10AM – Computer-Assisted Analysis of Medieval Texts (A Workshop)

Session 287 (Valley III Stinson Lounge) – Friday, 3:30PM – Honoring Foremothers in Medieval Feminist Publishing: University of Pennsylvania’s Jerry Singerman and Ruth M. Karras II: Today’s Issues in Feminist Publishing (A Roundtable)

• Christine Cooper-Rompato

Session 318 (Schneider 124) – Friday, 3:30PM – Medieval Religious Cultures: Key Questions and Directions for Future Research – Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures (JMRC) (Organizer and Presider)

Session 452 (Bernhard 15) – Saturday, 3:30PM – Creating a Medieval Studies Program (A Roundtable)

Session 494 (Schneider 1265) – Saturday, 3:30PM – Medieval Sermon Studies III: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic: Composition and Sources in Late Medieval Preaching – “The Two-Fold Circle of Life and Death: Numeracy in Sermons in Late Medieval England” (Presenter)

• Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby

Session 49 (Bernhard 212) – Thursday, 10AM – Queering the Cougar – “‘That Serpent Is HOT!’: Performing the Same-Sex Seduction of Eve” (Presenter)

Session 153 (Valley I 10) – Thursday, 7:30PM – A Readers’ Theater Performance of Mankind (A Performance and Roundtable  Discussion)

• Anne Berthelot

Session 493 (Schneider 125) – Saturday, 3:30PM – Merlin, God, and the Devil  – “‘Merlin l’anemis’ in La suite du Merlin” (Organizer and Presenter)

• Joshua R. Eyler

Session 55 (Valley II 202) – Thursday, 1:30PM – The Future of Medieval Disability Studies: Where Do We Go from Here? (A Roundtable) (Organizer and Presider)

Session 133 (Schneider 127) – Thursday, 3:30PM – Gender, Sexuality, and Disability (Organizer and Presider)

Session 154 (Fetzer 1005) – Thursday, 7:30PM – Burn after Reading: Miniature Manifestos for a Post/medieval Studies (A Roundtable)

• Joanna A. Huckins MacGugan

Session 384 (Schneider 134) – Saturday, 10AM – Landscape and Culture in Medieval Britain I: Spaces and Buildings – “‘Eald is þes eorðsele’: The Ancestral Landscape of The Wife’s Lament” (Presenter)

Session 507 (Schneider 234) – Saturday, 3:30PM – Medieval Cultures of Death: Historical, Literary, and Material Perspectives II (Co-organizer and Presider)

• Laura Saetveit Miles

Session 225 (Bernhard 15) – Friday, 10AM – Monastic Vernacularities (Organizer and Presider)

• Jeanette S. Zissell

Session 295 (Valley I 10) – Friday, 3:30PM – Static and Shifting Landscapes in Medieval Literature, Art, and Thought – “‘Swat yðum weoll’: Blood and Water Imagery in Beowulf” (Presenter)

Session 448 (Schneider 2345) – Saturday, 1:30PM – Medieval Cultures of Death: Historical, Literary, and Material Perspectives I (Organizer and Presider)

Session 507 (Schneider 234) – Saturday, 3:30PM – Medieval Cultures of Death: Historical, Literary, and Material Perspectives II (Co-organizer)

• Cameron Hunt McNabb

Session 49 (Bernhard 212) – Thursday, 10AM – Queering the Cougar (Organizer and Presider)

Session 304 (Fetzer 201) – Friday, 3:30PM – Parody, Farce, and Authority in Early Drama – “Hocus Pocus and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament” (Organizer and Presenter)

• Frank Napolitano

Session 8 (Valley II 205) – Thursday, 10AM – What We Have Here Is a Failure to Confess: Impediments to Confession in Medieval Literature (Presider)

Session 62 (Valley I 101) – Thursday, 1:30PM – Medieval Drama – “Hybridized Grief in the N-Town ‘Betrayal’” (Presenter)

Session 304 (Fetzer 201) – Friday, 3:30PM – Parody, Farce, and Authority in Early Drama (Presider)

• M. Wendy Hennequin

Session 442 (Schneider 133) – Saturday, 1:30PM – Technical Communication in the Middle Ages (Organizer and Presider)

• Patricia Taylor

Session 15 (Valley I 10) – Thursday, 10AM – Topics in Early Modern English Literature – “Typology and the Imitation of Christ in Sidney’s Defense of Poesy” (Presenter)

• Kathleen Tonry

Session 19 (Valley I 11) – Thursday, 10AM – Aura – “The Personality of Production” (Presenter)

• Leah Schwebel

Session 267 (Schneider 132) – Friday, 1:30PM – Dante V: Interpretive Problems in Dante’s Inferno – “‘Simile Lordura,’ Altra Bolgia: Usurpation through Conflation in Inferno 26” (Presenter)

• Robert Hasenfratz

Session 318 (Schneider 124) – Friday, 3:30PM – Medieval Religious Cultures: Key Questions and Directions for Future Research – “Key Questions about Spatial Theory in Medieval Studies” (Presenter)

• Lindy Brady

Session 384 (Schneider 134) – Saturday, 10AM – Landscape and Culture in Medieval Britain I: Spaces and Buildings – “Spatial Paradox and the Ambiguity of Guthlac A” (Presenter)

• Pamela Longo

Session 507 (Schneider 234) – Saturday, 3:30PM – Medieval Cultures of Death: Historical, Literary, and Material Perspectives II – “Whan we ben dede and elleswhere: Writing for Posterity in Late Medieval London” (Presenter)

• Brandon Hawk

Session 539 (Schneider 124) – Sunday, 8:30AM – Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture I – “The Fifteen Signs before Judgment in Anglo-Saxon England: A Reassessment” (Presenter)

• Jeremy DeAngelo

Session 546 (Bernhard Brown & Gold Room) – Sunday, 8:30AM – The Basics of Medieval Ireland (A Roundtable) – “Directions for the Journey: Proper Conduct in the Immrama” (Presenter)

Criticism or Emotion? Why Not Both?

I was recently reading a piece in The Chronicle, “Faculty Productivity in Literary Studies.” In this post, Daniel Deckner proposes that scholars of literary studies shift their focus away from critical interpretation to the study of how readers respond to texts. His conclusion is that this approach would “be of significant relevance to other fields,” a valuable endeavor and one that is often missing as departments and disciplines remain regretfully isolated from each other.

Deckner makes an interesting point: “Empirical research on reader response shows that the main attraction of literature is its ability to change moods, arouse feelings, and allow the formation of beliefs that merge text understanding with new understandings of themselves and aspects of the world around them.” To a certain extent, I agree. I think the power of literature, its genius, is that it communicates images from one human mind to another, invoking memories that have the ability both to strike chords within us – some comfortable, others not so much – and to change us in fundamental ways. I’ll turn to Virginia Woolf, for, as my students always say of their sources, she says it better than I ever could: “Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.” Or maybe, to overemphasize the point, some Emily Dickinson…

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry—
This Travers may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll—
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.

Considering literature as a link between authors and readers, it is clearly a valid form of study to explore reader response. I do, however, have reservations with the idea of considering it the only form of study. While I am not sure this was Deckner’s intent (in fact, I’m sure it wasn’t), the impression of this post is that we as literary scholars should drop our other activities to jump exclusively on this bandwagon. The post is a brief discussion, but a portion of the author’s evidence rests on a seemingly informal study in which second-year literature majors were given an assignment to comment on self-selected passages from a short story. A significant portion of these responses emphasized emotional reactions to the texts. For Deckner, this provides support for his theory that reader response should be the core of literary studies. Here is where my questions start to emerge, especially analyzing this claim through the eyes of a medieval literary scholar.

My first question: while given, as I have said, that emotional responses are valid, how can we have an informed emotional response (which I believe literature majors should have) without studying all aspects of literature? For instance, my response to a medieval text may be non-existent until I understand its allusions, its context, its place in history, its language…the list is almost limitless. I have had students who find nothing to connect with in the works I teach until we examine it from critical viewpoints, what Deckner dismisses as scholarship which only seeks “ways to understand literary texts.” For medieval literature in particular, there is a disconnect between the texts and typical readers (i.e. those who have not spent time studying it or becoming familiar enough with its history, culture, and writing conventions in order to have a natural response to it). Perhaps the point here is not the direction of literary scholarship in general, but the difference between effective and ineffective scholarship. Effective scholarship does not seek to prescribe an interpretation; it seeks to open up possibilities for interpretation – thus, possibilities for reader response. I also propose there is a danger in emphasizing emotional response to students in that they may have a tendency to think it is the only valid way to analyze a text, thereby prematurely dismissing works that do not seem to produce such a reaction on a first read.

My next question: as a medieval scholar, in what reader response should I be interested? Readers contemporary to the texts I study are a different proposition – and a much more difficult one to pin down – than modern readers. If the former, then I require literary scholars to continue with their (admittedly, sometimes esoteric, sometimes dry, sometimes isolated) studies, for it is through the collection of knowledge scholars produce that I (and others) are able to create theories about medieval readers. If the latter, then I suggest that it makes a difference whether or not a modern reader is familiar with the medieval world and the medieval mind (made possible through the production of scholarship – and rather not through the History Channel – see John’s “A Plague on the History Channel”) or not, as knowledge alters emotional response.

I welcome all forms of scholarship and encourage any individual with an interest to pursue it. As such, I think it is counterproductive to assume that any one avenue of study will yield a comprehensive picture of what is essentially one of the most complicated products of the human mind.

–Kisha

Felicem annum ineuntem!

The semester’s ended, the Yuletide is ebbing quickly, and the hours are ticking down to the new year. This is just a quick thank you to those of you who’ve come here to share in our professional and personal enjoyment of medieval studies, and a wish for an annus mirabilis in 2012 for anyone reading this.

While you’re waiting to pop your champagne (or nursing your hangovers, depending on when you read this), I offer the following links for anyone looking for some light reading on the medieval in the modern world…

Medieval “Zombie Borders”: An NYT article some of you may have seen on the “zombie borders” of Europe–specifically, on the correlation between the post-WWII “innerdeutsche Grenze” which divided East and West Germany and the tenth-century borders established in the early years of the Ottonian Dynasty. Why “zombie borders”? Presumably because 2011 has been the year when we reached zombie saturation point as a culture, which means even the Grey Lady has caught on that sticking zombies in anything officially makes it hip…

Medieval warriors and PTSD: An interesting if surface-skimming article of the “medieval people were just like us” variety–but exactly the sort of thing that might spark an undergraduate’s interest in our field.

A hidden ship-image in Broadstairs?: A self-proclaimed “history enthusiast” by the name of Simon Gerrard believes he’s found an image of a medieval sailing vessel traced by the roads of a town on the Isle of Thanet. My favorite part of this article is the lone quote from a source other than Mr Gerrard–a museum curator whose full (and polite) analysis is: “To be honest I have never heard anything like it before but it is an interesting theory.”

A Brief History of Eggnog: One of those end-of-year fluff pieces that get trotted out for the holidays so the editors and writers (in this case, of Time) can spend a few days with their families. And who are we to begrudge them that chance? Especially when they provide us with lines like “While culinary historians debate its exact lineage, most agree eggnog originated from the early medieval Britain ‘posset,’ a hot, milky, ale-like drink. ” I’m delighted by the notion of a small, bitter minority opinion among the culinary historian community regarding the provenance of eggnog. I invite you to imagine the gall they must feel every year around this time…

Medieval cookies: An NPR report on the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition of making Christmas “springerle,” those cookies made from the intricately-carved rollers or molds. I had a “real” one for the first time a few years ago (in London, as it happens), and they’re nothing like mold-pressed butter cookies I’d always associated them with. Tasty, though.

 

That’s all for now. See you in 2012!

~jpsexton

 

A Plague on the History Channel

I’ve just spent a few minutes stocking up my Netflix account with a set of films and documentaries with a vaguely medieval theme, ranging in quality from “looks like a pleasant enough way to kill a couple of hours” to “how bad could it possibly be?” This is one of the ways I like to entertain myself during breaks from teaching, and sometimes it pays off with a new short scene to use or reference in a lecture, or at least with greater (if sometimes painful) knowledge of what my students may have seen or heard recently. One of the documentaries that popped up during my search is a hideous misfire by the History Channel called The Dark Ages (A&E Home Video, Dir. C. Cassel, 2007), which I actually watched during a break this past year. The Dark Ages was merely bad—poor production elements, questionable research, and people who looked as if they wished they were elsewhere. I watched it and forgot it.

The Dark Ages DVD, however, harbored a dark secret—a second documentary, The Plague (A&E Home Video, Dir. R. Gardner, 2005), which was presumably deemed so terrible that it was never given an independent release and instead was hitched onto The Dark Ages‘ bonus features rather like a surprise yersinia pestis-carrying flea on a rat. I watched this second excremental documentary in a state of disbelief—and, caught somewhere between horror and grudging wonder, I offer the following comments. In the interest of getting on with my day, I’ll limit myself here to just five moments in The Plague that made me want to scream out my pain and agony and then track down the writer and director to make them suffer as I have suffered.

FIVE MOMENTS IN THE PLAGUE THAT SAPPED MY FAITH IN HUMANITY

1. The narration
The story this documentary and its guest experts (who acquit themselves reasonably well and, I assume, had no idea what was going to be done to their efforts) are trying to tell is already quite dramatic enough–the Great Mortality (the actual name used in the 14th century for the plague; “Black Death” wasn’t coined until the 19th century) wiped out something close to half the population of Eurasia in the space of a few years, and left a fundamentally different geopolitical and socioeconomic world behind. Apparently this wasn’t thought to be enough to sustain the interest of the target audience of this documentary (children? Intelligent border collies? Steven Seagal fans? Steven Seagal?), so the producers tracked down a voice-over actor who contributed a passable impression of the movie-trailer guy (“In a world where…”) and gave him a script that also sounds like a bad movie trailer, so that the narration provides us with grimly-intoned but oddly silly lines like “they had no idea that within the ships were cargoes of food, textiles…and death.” One assumes that, in fact, the crew of the average 14th century merchant ship did know that at least two of those things were down there, unless sailors were routinely shocked when they’d peer down into the ship’s hold: “Say, Guiseppe, where did all these carefully-stowed containers of cinnamon, pepper, and assorted foodstuffs of the East come from? And is that a waterproof-wrapped selection of costly silks brocaded with silver thread down there, or am I nuts?”

Oh, and while we’re on the voice work…

2. The silly, silly accents
Admittedly, this is a pet peeve of mine–movies and documentaries that want us to understand that the person speaking is NBOA (Not British Or American), but that don’t trust us to read subtitles. The solution, and it’s apparently so obvious that even the director of The Plague figured it out, is to bring in actors to put on fake and hilarious accents so we know they’re playing foreigners. In this documentary, there are “Mongols,” “French,” and “Italian” speakers in addition to English speakers (and, of course, the Movie Trailer guy). Leaving aside for the moment the problem of sticking modern versions of these accents on the characters, and the fact that they’re all speaking modern English anyway, it’s hard to take the whole thing seriously when half the speakers sound like Peter Sellers. The whole thing reaches the height of inanity when a voice-over, purportedly that of Italian chronicler Gabriel di Mussis, speaks on the horror of the plague: “Alla-mighty a-God, son ava de entire-a human-a race, we are-a wallowing in-a the mire av manifold-a wickedness…” I assume the voice actor was wearing a bushy black mustache, holding a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, and recording his lines on break from helping his brother Luigi to fight Donkey Kong. Later, the same actor reads an account by Agnolo di Tuola of the early mass graves dug in the Italian countryside, presumably not realizing that his I’m-a-da-pizza-guy delivery somewhat undermines the gravity of the lines: “In-a many-a places, great-a peets were dug and-a piled-a deep with-a da multitude of-a da dead…”

3. The presentation of various popular legends as fact
There are a few really egregious examples here–my favorite is the recounting of a well-known (and, quite possibly, true) story about the Mongol army using “crude catapults” to toss plague victims into the city of Kaffa. The narrative seems a little confused about whether or not this happened:
“While the story might be more legend than fact, the Mongol pestilence spreads to the townspeople of Kaffa. But while these facts seem clear, a mystery remains…”
I should say so. For starters, what facts are we talking about here? Why bother including the disclaimer immediately before asserting that the catapult-a-plague strategy was real? How, exactly, do apocryphal stories spread disease? And while we’re at it, is it worth mentioning that plague could also be spread quite easily between two clashing armies, with or without what the narrator (in another of his Movie Trailer moments) calls “the first example of germ warfare”?

4. A World Gone To Hell
I lost count of the number of variations on this particular theme–it’s almost the theme of the entire film. I counted at least half-a-dozen actual references to “hell on earth” or “a world gone to hell.” It’s not a question of whether things were really very bad in the late 1340s–they absolutely were. The problem is that these lines, almost invariably, are accompanied either by pictures of actual fire (even if that means just showing a torch on a wall) or by totally incongruous images (such as a bored-looking Jewish merchant named “Agamnet” or something similar, whose performer was apparently chosen specifically for his ability to make Jewish merchants look shifty and untrustworthy, but who here seems to be wondering whether he left the oven on). Apparently the idea of people actually dying of a disease they couldn’t explain and couldn’t stop isn’t horrifying enough, but a picture of a large candle is meant to make us widdle ourselves in horror.

5. Joan of England
The documentary builds its narrative around a number of key figures (among them Pope Clement VI, the physician Guy de Chauliac, and Agamnet). One of the major plotlines revolves around Joan of England, the teenage daughter of the English king Edward III. Since essentially the only significant thing anyone knows about Joan is that she died in 1348 on her way to Castile to meet her fiancé, the documentary has to work extra-hard to build some kind of suspense around her story. It fails utterly to do this, opting instead for a series of tooth-achingly-ironic ruminations on the elaborate security precautions and vast personal guard her father expended on getting her safely to Castile: “Along with many distinguished clergymen and diplomats, 100 bowmen will make the journey will make the journey to protect this…precious cargo. But their precautions will come to nothing. Within a year, almost all of them will be dead...” Later, in case we’d forgotten, we are reminded, “Joan is perhaps the most well-guarded woman in Europe right now…but archers and castle walls cannot shield her from an unseen enemy. The phantom, the plague, strikes randomly.”
By the time Joan finally grows ill, we are fully expecting an over-the-top moment, and even here the documentary goes beyond our wildest hopes and fears. As we watch the actress playing Joan laugh and toss her hair fetchingly with her attendants, the narrator intones, “Joan, princess of England, favorite daughter of the king of England, does not survive. Like almost half the population of Europe, she falls victim…” [dramatic pause, while church bells begin to chime] “…to the Black Death. Her father, Edward III, is powerless to do anything but mourn.” And the scene fades out, but not before we are treated to a fade-in of magnified green-tinted yersina pestis bacteria and a brief image of a skull over Joan’s face.

There’s plenty more that was equally ridiculous–the hammy overacting of the Flagellants; the constant re-use of a limited amount of re-enactment footage (so that peasant burials in Italy, France, Germany, and England all involve suspiciously familiar-looking peasants); the shots of Joan of England playing “Ring Around the Rosey” with her friends, seemingly without the connect-the-dots irony which limns the rest of her story; the depiction of prostitutes in plague-era Germany as, apparently, bawdy Italians; and on and on.

If you have the opportunity and are of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 temperament, I recommend hunting down the full documentary and treating yourself to an unparalleled viewing experience. If you take the rather narrow view that something calling itself a “documentary” ought to resist forced melodrama or, indeed, be in any way based on documentary evidence, then you can probably afford to skip it.

In the meantime, does anyone have any recommendations for me to add to my Winter Recess viewing list?

~jpsexton

A Life of Infinite Variety

Kisha Tracy’s last post (one of several with which she has ably kept this blog up and running while I’ve been snowed under with various matters personal and professional) offered a list of reasons to be thankful for being a medievalist. I heartily agree with her list, and would especially second her appreciation for the flexibility and interdisciplinarity of Medieval Studies. It is, in fact, a large part of what led me to the field in the first place.

When I was a child, one of my favorite authors was James “Alf” Wight, who wrote semi-autobiographical books about a country veterinarian under the pen name James Herriot (no, this isn’t going to turn into my own autobiographical reminiscing—that’s a different post). In an anecdote apparently taken from Wight’s own experiences in secondary school, Herriot often reflected on the words of a Veterinary College president, who spoke before Herriot’s class. The outlook for graduates in veterinary medicine in 1930s England was bleak due to the economy and the decline of working animals on farms, but the president’s message was reassuring. “If you enter into veterinary medicine,” he told Herriot’s class, “you will never be rich, but you will have lives of infinite variety. That line, which I thought about a lot as a boy, pretty well sums up why I love what I do for a living.

In a given week, I might (as I am doing this week) read articles on the decline of sanctuary practice in early modern England and the problem of free will in Chaucer’s Tales along with reviews of books on Old Norse women’s poetry, Benedictine monastic life, and medieval peaceweaving; work on an article on modern interpretations of Beowulf and early drafts of conference papers on gender-bending sexual aggression in thirteenth-century poetry and representations of physical disability in medieval literature; and, best of all, spend time with students talking about the meaning of Lady Mede’s mouton of gold and the reddit Caesari tale in Piers Plowman (as well as the convoluted problem of PP’s manuscript tradition), Edward III’s Statute of Laborers laws, Shakespeare’s views of madness and monarchy, dactylic hexameter as “heroic meter” in the Aeneid, the memento mori of 15^th-18^th century grave art, and the trebuchets and catapults in Maryland’s annual “Punkin Chunkin” competition—which led to an entertaining hour yesterday morning spent watching video from the 2011 competition (it counts as research, right?). Next week will bring a whole new set of topics and more of the never-ending surprises that come from learning about hundreds of years of material from any number of scholarly fields.

Then there are the side benefits—the high-quality people with whom I share the profession, the incidental knowledge that comes my way, the constant striving to find new ways to use “Burckhardtian” as an insult. No, we don’t get wealthy doing this for a living, but the richness of a life of infinite variety is worth a great deal.

5 Reasons to Be Thankful for Being a Medievalist

In an earlier post, I posed the statement “You Know You Are a Medievalist When…“ In honor of the holiday and time of year, I will offer a quick companion post: “5 Reasons to Be Thankful for Being a Medievalist” (with no disrespect to my colleagues in other fields!).

5) “People, people, people!”

If you ever doubt the generosity as well as the delightful diversity of medievalists, check out one of the bars in Kalamazoo, Michigan, one evening during the International Congress weekend. I have always been grateful for my colleagues and none more than my fellow blogger, John Sexton!

4) “I think you need to be a little more…flexible.”

Medievalists, by their very title, are responsible for at least six hundred years of literature and history, but, more than that, we reach backwards and forwards in time constantly, searching for connections and identifying the evolution of ideas. As a result, medievalists tend to have sub-specialties in classical and Early Modern as well as a command of a significant geographical space. It calls for flexibility and I, for one, think this is a positive of the field.

3) “A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That”

The inherent interdisciplinarity of medieval studies has informed not only my scholarship but how I run my classrooms as well. Art, history, literature, science, theology, etc. – all disciplines work together to inform scholarship. It both keeps everything interesting as well as reinforces the previous point about flexibility.

2) “You Sound Like an Elf from Lord of the Rings!”

 I have often been asked if it is difficult to get students to get involved with what I teach. My answer has always been an unequivocal “no.” They want to know more about the medieval world and generally eat up anything you can give them that goes against expectations – the “reality” of courtly love is high on the list. Being the only medievalist in the English Studies Department at FSU allows me a unique perspective in that I may be the only access they ever have during their academic careers to anything medieval. It’s a responsibility, but one I enjoy. (And, yes, I have now heard the Lord of the Rings line at least twice in my teaching career.)

1) “Eventually, you get to like it.”

All right, so being a medievalist may not have the same adrenaline factor – or moral flexibility – as being a hit man like Martin Blank (as always, points if you got the film reference), but the amount of fun medievalists tend to have cannot be ignored. We study monsters, demons, knights, mythology, religion, philosophy, diseases – you name it, we read about it. It is hard not to enjoy a field that calls up images of stories we hear and read about from the time we are kids and remain enamored with whether we dedicate our lives to studying the period or not. Medievalists just get to continue the fun.

These are just a few reasons to be thankful for my profession. My fellow medievalists, feel free to add yours!

A very happy Thanksgiving!

–Kisha

Brainstorm: A College Student’s Guide to Wikis

I had a brainstorm yesterday for a book-length project, and, while it isn’t strictly a medieval topic (although could have a tangental medieval pedagogy angle attached to it), I feel the desire to expound on it here – just to see if it has legs – even if they are of the awkward-if-eager-baby-giraffe variety at the moment.

I have mentioned before that I have become something of the point person  on campus for wikis in the classroom, having given a few workshops and having received a teaching innovation grant to purchase an instructional library and equipment to support and promote the use of wikis. In case the wiki phenomenon hasn’t blipped on to your radar yet, I’ll define, especially as, for many, “wiki” invokes Wikipedia, and that’s not a site we typically like to invite into our classrooms. Wikis, however, are collaborative web sites that allow for the simple creation of new online spaces, revision of updates, and manipulation of content. Any participant can add data or comment on the generally interlinking pages. They are easy to set up and easy for users with any level of technological expertise to manage. Blackboard – if your university has purchased the wiki tool – has its own internal one, which is what I am currently using.

The benefits of these spaces? By encouraging students to work in an experimental, low-pressure environment (I say this now, but I may contradict myself later in this post), instructors can hear voices that occasionally are stifled in the classroom. Wikis have allowed me to understand student interests as well as progress and adjust my courses accordingly. I am particularly interested in increasing the time students spend in discussion and reflection both inside and outside of the classroom. I can also require more ongoing work, especially writing, from my students without substantially adding to my grading load.

So, with that, which is far more background than is probably necessary, I return to my brainstorm. One of my students came in to my office to talk to me about an upcoming assignment. He looked at my bookshelf, on which I have the library of works I purchased with the innovation grant. He became momentarily excited, thinking that he might borrow a book on wikis to help improve his participation on ours. I had to explain that they were for instructors and wouldn’t be that helpful for students wanting ideas or needing guidance on how to interact with this new classroom presence.

Which is when the light bulb went off.

A College Student’s Guide to Wikis.

(This is where you need to stop reading and write me a scathing comment if this idea has already been done to death. I have looked, but I haven’t found anything like I am envisioning. Still, I haven’t done a full search yet.)

At Fitchburg State, wikis are as yet an unknown quantity for students. They are relatively new in pedagogy in general. It seems to me that a great deal of time has been spent on educating instructors on what they are and how to use them, but the same energy has not been expended to provide a guide for college students who either struggle with the concept or who wish to improve their overall participation in this essentially fluid, creative environment.

Already, I have encountered any number of different kinds of reactions to the wiki. My first thought is that I might structure the guide by “type” of student.

Reluctant.

Nervous.

Downright Terrified.

Bare Minimum.

Over-Achiever.

I doubt these are exactly the categories (names) that I want to use, but they will serve for the moment as examples. For each, then, the guide would provide advice, models, vignettes, etc., to aid the student. I imagine it being designed so that an instructor could copy specific, relevant sections depending on the need or also they could use it for their own edification of how to help certain students.

My ideal would be to recruit students to help me with sections, using them almost as the representative prototype – encouraging them to provide quotations, insight, etc. I would like it to be interdisciplinary, but I don’t know how feasible that would be. I would have to track down other instructors in other disciplines who are actually using wikis! Thus, it might end up being English or Humanities-focused.

On that same note, the project related to medieval pedagogy would be of a similar ilk, but perhaps more of an article, detailing the uses of wikis for this very specific discipline. I have found that they lend themselves well to providing context for medieval readings, adding a whole new level of interaction both inside and outside the classroom.

So that’s my brainstorm in a nutshell. What’s the verdict?

–Kisha

From Kalamazoo Session to Essay Collection

After a few days of anxiety over whether my session at Kalamazoo was going to make, I am happy to report that it is settled and there were even extra proposals I, regretably, had to turn down. While normally I would have been disappointed if my session didn’t fill up, I would have been doubly so this time as I have a potential opportunity to publish a collection of essays based on the work of this session.This is a new type of venture for me, so I am attempting to conceptualize how to approach it.

As a reminder, my session is entitled “What We Have Here Is a Failure to Confess: Impediments to Confession in Medieval Literature.” For the full description, see my previous post. Briefly, it will seek to think about how medieval writers employ the device of failed confessions or explore impediments to confession, striving towards a more cohesive understanding of the purposes and significance of failed literary confessions.

The core of the essay collection is already settled – provided, of course, the presenters would like to be included, and they have all shown interest. The variations in their topics have proven to be quite interesting: Jean de Joinville’s fourteenth-century Vie de saint Louis, Crusade lyrics and sermons, and Margery Kempe. Already I am beginning to see relationships between their work – one being memory, much to my delight, and something I’ll come back to in a moment. I am particularly intrigued by the concept of texts constructing characters who resist confession, how an individual might be prevented, either consciously or unconsciously, from confessing for specific reasons. It’s a topic I look forward to considering further.

My intention is that my contribution to the panel will be a version of what will eventually become the introduction to the collection. Thus, over the next several months before the conference, I can work on this introduction and be able to use it to formulate the collection proposal to the publisher. Smart, eh? Yeah, I’m the queen of multi-tasking.

Of course, now comes the hard part – deciding how I want this collection to look. At this point, I have devised a few categories of impediments: physical (i.e. something that prevents an individual from getting to a confessor, etc.); spiritual (i.e. particularly egregious sins, etc.); lack of rhetoric; external; and mental (i.e. failure of memory, etc.). These are relatively arbitrary categories at the moment, and I am still devising more – and would welcome any help in doing so. What other potential categories come to mind?

On that note of asking (begging? pleading?) for help, please consider this an informal CFP. I am open to ideas – or kernels of ideas – for inclusion in this collection. I have quite a bit of time to collect interested scholars, so step up.

I said I would get back to the concept of memory – or, rather, forgetfulness – as an impediment to confession. Just a few thoughts and quotations on the subject, which may end up either being part of the introduction or my own essay in the collection.

First, with respect to forgetfulness, Mary Carruthers comments:

The whole matter of memory error seems to be quite differently conceived by the ancients from the one that fuels modern anxieties about “making mistakes.” For us, “making a mistake” of memory is a failure in accuracy, a failure exactly or “objectively” to iterate the original material. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, problems involving memory-phantasms are described as heuristic (recollective) rather than as reproductive problems, and are due to a failure to imprint the phantasm properly in the first instance, thus causing confusion and recollective loss.[1]

Carruthers is mostly concerned with defining forgetfulness only as it helps in understanding the process of properly training the memory – for instance, in how priests needed to have well-trained memories in order to recall sermons while preaching and the reasons for failing to have them.

With respect to confession, the confessor’s role as a prevention against sins being forgotten speaks to one of the main anxieties often expressed in works discussing the sacrament. They pose the question of how a penitent can ask forgiveness for sins that he does not remember. The late fourteenth or early fifteenth-century Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen is deeply concerned with the idea of forgotten sins. Forgetting is equated with blindness, indicating that the penitent cannot see into his conscience in order to discover the sins that he must confess:

Other sixe vices þere beþ þat letteþ amendement of lyf & bringeþ [it to] apeyrement, þat beþ these: tarienge, rechelesnes, forʒetyng, slownes, laches and faylinge.[2]

Þe þridde is forʒetyng þat comeþ of rechelesnes. For whoso is recheles & noght besily beþinkeþ him forʒetiþ lightly may synnes boþe grete & smale þat he haþ doo, of whiche he moot schryue him ʒif he wole haue forʒeuenes of hem. And so rechelesnes and forʒeting beþ to man ful gret periles, for þei makeþ him forʒete his synnes of whiche he schulde schryue him and aske forʒeuenes in his lyf. For wiþoute askynge he may not haue forʒeuenes; and hou schal he repente him and aske forʒeuenes of þat he haþ forʒete? And þere is no man þat resoun haþ, ʒif he wole wel examyne his owne conscience, þat he [f.52v] ne may eche day fynde inowh wherof to repente him & schryue him. But rechelesnes & forʒetyng makiþ a synful man so blynde þat he may no þing see in his conscience, & þat is ouergret perill.[3]

The passage is clear in that sins must be “schryue” (confessed), yet, if they are forgotten, a penitent cannot ask “forʒeuenes” (forgiveness) for them because he cannot feel repentance for sins he cannot remember. The Myrour calls this state an “ouergret perill” (great peril), emphasizing how serious of an issue it is, a concept further exemplified in the genre of quodlibets, popular in Paris and Oxford from around 1230 until the 1320’s, in which a concern is occasionally raised of what to do when a penitent has forgotten his sins. The Liber Poenitentialis, written circa 1215 by Robert of Flamborough, states that a priest should end a session of confession with the expectation that the penitent will confess at some future time any sins that he has lost to forgetfulness:

Multa alia exciderunt tibi a memoria; multa sunt occulta tua; multae sunt omissiones tuae. [. . .] Sed tu de omnibus petis veniam et paratus es confiteri et satisfacere si Deus reduxerit tibi aliquid ad memoriam, quidquid illud fuerit? (229)[4]

[Many things have passed from your memory; many are your hidden sins; many are your omissions [. . .] But are you prepared to ask forgiveness for all your sins and to confess them and to make satisfaction if God will return anything to your memory, whatever it might be?]

Robert acknowledges the problem of forgetting, and he instructs priests to address this issue and caution penitents to confess sins as soon as they are remembered. It should be noted that, in this text, the figure who “reduxerit [. . .] ad memoriam” (I love this phrase – quite literally “to lead back to the memory.” It appears everywhere in medieval texts, and, every time I find it, it’s tantamount to the feeling of finding the Ark of the Covenant.) forgotten sins is not the confessor, but God. The final step in the act of confession is an admonition to the penitent to continue to try to recall sins that might be “hidden” by forgetfulness, emphasizing that neglected sins remain a problem until they have been narrated to the priest.

I’ll forcibly stop myself there.

CFP: all proposals and ideas welcome!

–Kisha

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[1] Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990), 61.

[2] A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen: A prose version of the Speculum Vitae, ed. from B.L. MS Harley 45, ed. Venetia Nelson, Middle English Texts 14 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1981), 120.19-20. Emphases added.

[3] A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen, 120.34-42, 121.1-3.

[4] Robert of Flamborough, Liber poenitentialis: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Notes, ed. J.J. Francis Firth (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971), 199. Emphases added.

Blown Away…

So I’m still here, and working away at the new semester. But September has been a wash writing-wise, for all sorts of reasons–a big one of which was the hurricane.

Hurricane Irene hit New England hard on August 28. In Vermont, it washed out roads and covered bridges and left entire communities isolated. In Connecticut, flash floods blew through the middles of towns and left puddles the size of city blocks. In my part of Massachusetts, it took down trees by the score–and power lines with them.

My house lost power on Sunday at about 11AM, when a tree fell at the end of our street and brought spaghetti-like heaps of power lines down with it. We weren’t entirely surprised by this–while out walking our dog that morning, my wife and I had pointed out that tree as being very likely to come down (I make no claim to any prognosticative talent thereby–the tree was long dead and had been dropping rotting branches onto the road ever since we moved into our house two years ago). A neighbor put out some orange cones around the downed tree; we packed our food into a cooler and played Scrabble while the storm went on.

Then another tree went down, on the other end of the block.

Then another.

Then the first of the telephone poles came down…and then another…

Once the storm ended, the damage assessment started–and it was kind of a doozy. It took the utility companies a couple of days just to clear the roads, and nearly a week to restore power to my neighborhood. By the time power came back on, I had four days left in which to write the syllabi I’d so blithely assured myself I’d get done in the two weeks before the semester started–and I’ve been scrambling ever since to catch/keep up with the daily work of the semester.

I did find this bit of information interesting: according to NPR, the last few years has seen some of the heaviest hurricane seasons since the Middle Ages, which paleotempestologists (archeologist/stormchasers who must have to order extra-long business cards) have pinpointed as having been something of a golden age for great big hurricanes. They figured this out by combining data from inland lagoon sediment layers, coral growth patterns, and other sorts of evidence. The full article is here (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111809658), and offers a glimpse into a world of medieval research far away from my nice dry libraries and archives.

Anyway, with this particular hurricane having passed with no more serious effects for us than a fridge and cooler full of spoiled food and a hectic start to the semester, I’m definitely feeling a bit of guilt over neglecting my writing (both here and elsewhere) over the last few weeks. Back to the grindstone…and all the best to those elsewhere (especially in my fondly-remembered college stomping grounds in Plainfield, Vermont) who are still recovering from more serious consequences of the storm.

 

~jpsexton