Ok, More Medievalism Stuff...

....this one from Douglas Rushkoff, "media ecologist" and author of Life, Inc. In this interview via the Reality Sandwich blog, Rushkoff contrasts the "Dark Ages" with what he sees as our corporate dominated future, and finds the Middle Ages were probably better, stating "'m not usually a conspiracy theorist about these things, but I think the reason why we celebrate the Renaissance as a high point of western culture is really a marketing campaign. It was a way for Renaissance monarchs and nation-states, and the industrial age powers that followed, to recast the end of one of the most vibrant human civilizations we've had, as a dark, plague-ridden, horrible time.

Historically, the plague arrived after the invention of the chartered corporation, and after central currency was mandated. Central currency became law, and 40 years later you get the plague. People got that poor that quickly. They were no longer allowed to use the land. It shifted from an abundance model to a scarcity model; from an economy based on annual grain production to one based on gold released by the king."

A thought provoking interview and makes want to read the book....

Congress 2010

The CFP for Congress 2010 seems to be up. http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/Assets/pdf/congress/Sessions10.pdf

Funny Medievalism of the Week

I read one of my favorite comics today and decided that it needed to be shared for those who may not read it:

http://www.seattlepi.com/fun/Bizarro.asp?date=20090628

The Legend of Charlemagne: 9th-11th c.

Sorry it's been quiet from me lately. Trying to finish the book this Summer. Anyway, if you're interested, I'd thought I'd share. Please check out my abstract (slightly, but not totally out-of-date) and these google maps I've put together. (Personally, I've found google maps incredibly helpful in letting me get a visual sense of the geography I'm talking about.) All the data in these maps relates to the period 814 - ca. 1100.

View Misc. Texts - Charlemagne Legend in a larger map


View False Diplomas Attrib. to Charlemagne in a larger map


View Spread of Einhard's Vita Karoli in a larger map

KEY
Red = 9th/ 10th c.
Green = 11th c.
Yellow (in top map) = 1st Crusade Narrative

All thoughts/ comments/ suggestions most welcome.

The Heroic Age Issue 12

I'm so happy about this, I'm posting it everywhere!

The Editorial Board of The Heroic Age is very pleased to announce the publication of our twelfth issue. Point your browsers to http://www.heroicage.org and click on "Current Issue." Information elsewhere on the site has also been updated including the staff, links pages, and the Call for Papers. Please take a look; comments are always welcome. I have taken the liberty of pasting below the Letter from the Editor which has some items of interest in it.

§1. Sumer is icumen in! Or so said the poet, in agreement with the weather prognosticators for once. It is both a frustration and an embarrassment that the Winter issue is seeing the light of day as summer is fast approaching, but regrettably that is too often the state of affairs in academic publishing. But it isn't for lack of trying.

§2. So, I'd like to begin by mentioning the important people who volunteer their time to make The Heroic Age happen each issue. First, and foremost, there are three people who work very hard to make each issue come together, edited, polished, and coded. Deanna Forsman, our webster, formats and codes each page on our website, including each issue, taking time from her own academic duties and courses, family, and leisure to do so. Without her efforts, there would be no The Heroic Age. Eileen Joy has done an enormous amount of work for the journal. Not only is she now editing a column for us, but she has been a reader, an editor, and copy editor. It is not as if she is not busy elsewhere: in addition to her work for us, she has been editing volumes of essays (http://www.siue.edu/babel/ProspectusFragmentsVolume.htm), putting together a new journal (www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/), blogging at In the Middle (www.inthemedievalmiddle.com), and other activities. I am very grateful for all her efforts with The Heroic Age. Last but certainly not least, Bill Schipper is our archivist and is another of those wonderful people whose helping hand is everywhere. In addition to his work with us, Bill is planning and hosting the next meeting of The International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, hosts and manages several well-known email lists in early Medieval Studies, and of course has his own work to undertake. My very grateful thanks to each of these three for their very hard work on my behalf.

§3. In addition to those three, others have had a hand in producing this issue who should be mentioned: Rolf Bremer, Tim Clarkson, Michael Treschow, Linda Malcor, Rolf Bremmer, Dan O'Donnell, and Michel Aaij have all undertaken editing at several levels. Finally, I will mention our readers, who will remain nameless for obvious reasons, but they know who they are. The only reward I can offer all these people is my sincere gratitude. If you have a moment whether via email or at a conference, please say "thanks" to these folk who have made this issue possible.

§4. Before turning to the issue itself, there are some exciting developments in connection with the links pages hosted at the journal's site. For this issue, the Anglo-Saxon links have been culled, weeded, and expanded. Ten years ago, in winter 1999, when I first split the Anglo-Saxon links off into their own subpage, I had grand plans to do the same for other subfields within the journal's purview. While it won't make it for Issue 12, there is at least one subsection and possibly two in development that will make debut appearances in Issue 13.

§5. More importantly, and in my view far more exciting, is a new development for some older but useful tools. As many know, the Richard Rawlinson Center at the Medieval Institute (http://www.wmich.edu/medieval) of Western Michigan University once hosted several online bibliographies and other projects that covered a range of subjects in Early Medieval Studies. A few years ago, some decisions were made that caused the removal of these tools from the Richard Rawlinson Center website, at that time intended to be a temporary situation. Several years later, however, the bibliographies remain inaccessible to the medieval researcher. These bibliographies are now in the process of being migrated to The Heroic Age site and will be linked off the HA links pages. There are many to thank for these developments. First, and foremost, Paul E. Szarmach, now Director of the Medieval Academy of America (http://www.medievalacademy.org), James M. Murray and Elizabeth Teviotdale of the Medieval Institute, and Bill Schipper and the good folks at Memorial University of Newfoundland (http://www.mun.ca) are all owed a deep debt of gratitude for allowing this to happen and making the migration possible. As of this writing, the first such bibliography, Robert Fulk and Kari Ellen Gade's online edition of A Bibliography of Germanic Alliterative Meters, is almost ready to go to its new home and may be included in Issue 12's update links release.

§6. Turning to our regular features for this issue, I would like to draw your attention to a new column: Philological Inquiry written by Michael Drout and Scott Kleinman. The plan is for this to be a recurring column on philological approaches to the field. This first foray examines the word "Merovingian" in Beowulf in order to "illuminate culture, history and politics and shed new light on an old problem." Please join me in welcoming Mike and Scott and this new contribution to our columns.

§7. Eileen Joy has edited a second offering in our still new "babelisms" column. The column is devoted to publishing essays that explore convergences between early medieval and modern texts and ideas. In this issue's column, Helen T. Bennett offers a meditation on halls in Beowulf: "The Postmodern Hall in Beowulf: Endings Embedded in Beginnings."

§8. In Michel Aaij's Continental Business column, Michel reviews and discusses recent scholarly works on Rabanus Maurus, and Dan O'Donnell returns as columnist of Electronic Medievalia with "Byte me: Technological Education and the Humanities." This rounds out our recurring columns.

§9. Elsewhere in this issue's Forum, Jonathan Jarrett, well-known to many as the blogger behind A Corner of Tenth Century Europe (http://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com) and author of the forthcoming Pathways of Power in late-Carolingian Catalonia: Charters and Connections on a medieval frontier from the Royal Historical Society, contributes to our ongoing series about current developments in subfields of medieval studies. He offers us "Digitizing Numismatics: getting the Fitzwilliam Museum's coins to the world-wide web." As this issue's installment of our series introducing projects in the field, Margaret Cormack introduces us to her site and asks for readers' aid in a column titled "Saints and Sacred Space: An Interactive Database—A Call for Collaborators." Howard Wiseman offers a review essay on a fiction novel, Albion. Finally, Cullen Chandler offers a review essay discussing several recent books on things Carolingian in his contribution titled "Regna et Regnum: Studies of Regions within the Carolingian Empire."

§10. We have three excellent articles in this issue. Karmen Lenz examines the liturgy for St. Cuthbert in her Liturgical Readings of the Cathedral Office for Saint Cuthbert. This is followed by Douglas Simms who contributes an article focused on linguistics titled Heavy Hypermetrical Foregrounding in the Old Saxon Heliand and Genesis Poems. Rounding out the General Article section is a team-sponsored article titled King Alfred's Scholarly Writings and the Authorship of the First Fifty Prose Psalms by Michael Treschow, Paramjit Gill, and Tim B. Swartz that examines the attribution of these psalms to Alfred. These three very solid and interesting articles complete the issue.

§11. Looking ahead, Issue 13 is already well under way. Originally imagined as an issue to focus on medieval manuscripts, as it turns out, the issue will instead focus on translations from early medieval texts! Nonetheless, the issue will also include articles on Old Norse, Hincmar, and Arthur plus our usual columns.

§12. Issue 14 is in development as well. Its a twin-themed issue guest-edited by Andrew Rabin and Eileen Joy. Andrew is collecting and editing a group of essays on Early Medieval Law. Eileen has gathered and is editing a number of essays on the topic of theory and early medeival literature. I myself enjoy the juxtaposition of a traditional topic with a more cutting-edge, perhaps even edgeless topic and placing these in conversation. If all goes well, this issue should be published in early 2010.

§13. The Heroic Age will celebrate its first decade in 2010. We formed the board in late 1999 and published our inaugural issue in Spring 2000, imagined then as appearing quarterly. That first issue was all about Arthur. Our fifteenth issue is scheduled to be published in mid-2010 and is seeking papers on "Arthur-related" topics, revisiting the edges of that first issue. The three sections currently planned for that issue will cover the world of Late Antique Britain and Gaul, connections with the rest of the continent in Late Antiquity, and new views of the Adventus Saxonum. The second section will examine Arthur and Arthurian literature. The third section will include studies of Late Antique and Early Medieval authors.

§14. Even further ahead, Issue 16 is already gathering papers. A special section on Alcuin is being guest-edited by James LePree. Issues 17 and 18 are in the planning stages as well. One will be guest-edited by Jonathan Jarrett, mentioned above, on "Carolingian Border-lands" and Issue 18 will focus on Old French/Provencal/Occitan studies. That takes the editorial planning up through the beginning of 2012.

§15. As always, feedback is appreciated. I now turn you over to the issue itself, lest this note become as long as what it introduces! On behalf of the editorial board, our readers, and editors, I hope you the reader enjoy the issue.

Nokes on Beowulf etc

Readers of the Great Nokes over at Unlocked Wordhoard (see our blogroll) has mentioned a piece he's written and published in the Old English Newsletter. I received my copy of OEN's latest last night and read Scott's article Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, Nazis, and Odinists. Scott talks chiefly about the movie in the title and various modern, cultural reactions to it, though those reactions are not based in scholarly reactions, but in other sorts of things. Well done Scott! The piece is of great interest and it has now appeared on the OEN website, just follow the link.

Religious Violence in the USA

Family planning doctor shot, at his church in Kansas, by Christian anti-abortionist. I wonder about the religious element here. I wonder how it'll be covered. I wonder if the journalists covering the story will have read this.

Newt Gingrich is Medieval

He says so himself. Speaking of his recent conversion to Roman Catholicism:

Part of what led to my conversion is the first time we [he and 3rd wife, Callista] went to St. Peter's together. It's St. Peter's. I mean, you stand there and you think, this is where St. Peter was crucified. This is where Paul preached. You think to yourself, two thousand years ago the apostles set out to create a worldwide movement by witnessing to the historic truth they had experienced. And there it is....

The moment that finally convinced me [to convert] was when Benedict XVI came here [to the United States] and Callista in the church choir sang for him at the vespers service and all the bishops in the country were there. As a spouse, I got to sit in the upper church and I very briefly saw [Benedict] and I was just struck with how happy he was and how fundamentally different he was from the news media's portrait of him. This guy's not a Rottweiler. He's a very loving, engaged, happy person....

And part of me is inherently medieval. I resonate to Gothic churches and the sense of the cross in a way that is really pre-modern.

Um, yeah. I've spoken many times of this kind of nostalgic, Romantic medievalism. But I'm struck by his evocation of the Gothic (no surprise, really) and a "pre-modern" devotion to the cross. Not really sure what that means. I do know, however, that Newt's no dummy so he probably has thought about it before he said it. Is he thinking of the Man of sorrows and late medieval devotional literature? Is he thinking about Francis of Assisi? Or is he thinking about Carolingian devotion to the cross? Is he thinking of power and vengeance? Is his "pre-modern" devotion to the cross linked in some way to the more "overt Christianity" he now professes, a more aggressive religio pushing outwards against non-believers? Dunno the answers to these. I hope someone will ask Newt though.

(Perceived?) Holy War in Iraq: The Rumsfeld Memos

Image: Screenshot from GQ.com, slideshow of covers to Rumsfeld's memos.


GQ now has an article online by Robert Draper, detailing Donald Rumsfeld's tenure as Pres. George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense. 2 things going on here:

--> The whole piece reads like an apologia for a certain segment of the Bush II administration -- Rice, Card, etc. Everything -- even the response to Katrina! -- was Rummy's fault. That stuff's interesting but needn't detain us here.

--> Not at all the main point of the article but contained within it, are the covers to classified intelligence memos that Rumsfeld himself (as Sec. of Def.) would deliver to the President. One of those is captured at right (again, for the full slideshow, go here). They all have images from previous day's events (mostly in Iraq) and they all have "appropriate" biblical quotations. The one in the image here, as it says, comes from Daniel 5. The whole chapter tells of the prophetic vision of King Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, and the false scholars who can't understand God's plan. Daniel, however, can understand the divine writing and foretells Belshazzar's doom, how God will cast down his kindom. The rest of the quotations on the memo covers are similar but this one in particular reminded me of this:

et ipse mutat tempora et aetates transfert regna

He changes times and seasons, deposes kings and sets up kings (Daniel 2:21)

Why did I think of this last quotation? It was a favorite quotation of Pope Urban II (1088-99), the man who in 1095 stood in a cold field at Clermont, in what's now southern France, and asked his listeners to engage in a holy war. Urban believed that God would cast down the proud Muslims who then held the Christian East, including Jerusalem, and those who truly believed would find His favor as instruments of His will. There's a reason one of the chronicles of the First Crusade is called Gesta Dei per Francos ("The Deeds of God through the Franks").

Image: From a 13th-century manuscript; Christ leading Crusaders.

I'm not arguing for any sort of 1-1 comparison. Context matters. You can't simply put events, even very similar events, up next to each other and just look for similarities if those phenomena are separated by more than 900 years. Moreover, going by what Draper has to say in that GQ article, Rumsfeld used these quotations utterly cynically. He didn't care much for religion but he knew that his boss (Pres. Bush II) did. Rumsfeld thus knew that using these quotations would allow him to push Pres. Bush II in directions Rumsfeld wanted, by using language familiar to Pres. Bush II.

But then, this does suggest some similarities. Pres. Bush II perhaps would think this way and be receptive to this type of framing -- the events in Iraq as a holy war. Not Christians vs. Muslims, but the chosen people (for example, see also the image in the slideshow before the one above that has a quotation from Isaiah 26) against God's enemies. If you look at the language of the sources of the First Crusade, they too don't care so much about their enemies. I mean, they have only a very tenuous grasp of the religious difference between their enemies and themselves. The only thing that matters is that they -- the Muslims in this case -- held Jerusalem, that they stood in the crusaders' way, that they weren't Christian. This meant that they were enemies of God, that the crusaders were participants in a cosmic struggle between good and evil for the very fate of the world. You've heard this before, and you'll likely hear it again. Perhaps, I ask again, the best thing to do is to realize that it's time we stop being surprised when it happens.

Sometimes, people ask me how the Middle Ages matter. Sometimes, I want to ask them how they could possibly not.

Blogging, Twitter, and New Paradigms: Thoughts from Kalamazoo

My thoughts here are kind-of half-baked, springing from some conversations with very intelligent people at the infamous Kalamazoo. 2 panels in particular. Please bear with me.

The first, the panel I was on was, in truth, rather sparsely attended but still generated some interesting discussion around the topic of the "medieval," especially I think because we had the benefit of a specialist on East Asia and another on South Asia (but even these both fraught terms, of course). In the end, I was left wondering whether "medieval" -- or, more generally, any rather arbitrarily-decided result of periodization -- can ever tell us anything about the period itself. Does "medieval" in the end primarily useful as a way to get at a culture's/ society's myths of nation/ identity/ modernity? And relatedly, I'm increasingly shocked by how captive to late 19th- and early 20th-century scholarship we (as scholars) all seem to be. They have/ still do define the frames by which we look at the past and constrain the very questions we think to ask of our sources. The great Chris Wickham (and you have to put magnus next to his name) seemed to touch on this recently. But I'm left thinking that, pace Tony Grafton, we need someone to destroy our intellectual "coherence." Someone needs to grab hold of our most basic premises -- what we think we really know about the European Middle Ages -- and shake them to the core. Maybe this'll happen through New Media, online sources that can be manipulated in ways previously unthought of, or the prospect of the type of collaboration that only New Media can bring. I dunno. It does, however, seem like it's time to be daring.

This brings me to my second point, inspired by another panel, conveniently having taken place just after mine. 'Twas on blogging and the academy. The papers, let me say, were all excellent -- well thought-out and well-presented. But a question posed at the end by Manan Ahmed, in conjunction with an announcement made at the beginning of the panel that this would be the last year they would organize a session on blogging, in conjunction with the very sane observation made by one of the presenters that, well, things had changed in academic blogging over the past few years, got me thinking. Is blogging worth it? To paraphrase Dr. Ahmed, the revolution will now be covered in 140 characters. Yes, it will be tweeted.

And I think that's largely true. To a degree, we in academe are in the position we lamented of our parents -- a day late and a dollar short, still using the VCR. High School/ College students know and use email, perhaps they even blog themselves. But they don't use email in the ubiquitous way we do. They communicate in different ways, via txt, IM, tweet, or status update. This, of course, has long-term implications because these are the technologies that they'll bring with them to our courses and then outside of college. These new technologies are the ones that will govern our ability to communicate with them because it's how they communicate with one another. I wonder if blogging just isn't one of those technologies. Are we now just talking to ourselves?

I don't have a Facebook account (despite increasing pressure) but I do tweet, and am growing increasingly fond of doing so. The opportunities to communicate quickly and directly with people are huge, even if there remains the looming challenge of cutting through the inevitable "white noise" of so many short posts, so many followers. For example, see what happened when Oprah joined Twitter (also, check out the reporter's name).

And yet, and yet, and yet. Twitter is only good for 140 characters. (Eileen Joy would never survive, although she's gamely making a go of it on Twitter...) You just can't do the sort of long-ish, really good stuff that you can do in a blog post. So I think, in the end, I slightly disagree with Dr. Ahmed's point. The revolution will be tweeted but it'll be blogged too. You need both, a synthesis of "old" and new. The new paradigm shouldn't totally supplant the old but perhaps ought respect its contributions and then go back, take a different route, and build alongside it. It is, indeed, time for something bold.

UPDATE (5/15): See this interesting and related post by Jon Jarrett at A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe. I'll post somet thoughts there as well.

UPDATE II (5/18): The NY Times now has an article about the mammoth growth in social network sites (not surprising) but also how time spent on those sites positively dwarfs time spent with email. See above for my thoughts on that.