"The Secret Powers of Time"

Today, as part of the orientation for my summer tutoring job, I was shown this video.  I think it has some interesting ideas, and certainly some underlying implications for education--teaching, learning, and curriculum (for both secondary and higher education).  I thought I'd post it to see what you all think.  After all, I think we all are deeply invested in thinking about education (individual and institutional) from many different angles.

Here's the video:

Dream School...

Michael Drout has posted an interesting vision of his pedagogical dream over at his blog.  I think this post presents an intersection of many interests on this blog: academics, pedagogy, educational systems/institutions, and the medieval (to name a few of the first things that strike me).  There is certainly a lot to unpack in his post, and I'm hoping for some of your collective input on the idea.  What are the aspects of cultural wealth and liabilities (to use Martin's terms--which are always, forevermore, with me) inherent in this type of project?  Could such ideals be presented in other types of educational curricula (e.g. public high schools, other sites of education in our society)?

My first reactions to Drout's vision is favororable: after all, I will be looking for a teaching/research/academic job of my own in about 4 years, and this type of opportunity would be great.  My own desires to see opportunities like the one Drout proposes is especially fueled by increasingly public discussions of the role(s) of humanities in educational institutions, and the anxieties surrounding jobs in these areas (for a few examples of the emerging dialog, see articles here [esp. this one!], here, here, here, and here).  Also, I'm largely a proponent of presenting students with the complexities of higher level academics at the high school level; in large part, I think my senior-year English teacher did this (esp. with mythology and medieval literature), and I continue to carry those influences on my life.  I see a lot of Jane Roland Martin's own ideas coming out here, in terms of cultural wealth and liabilities, and I think this opens up a lot of theoretical space for thinking about the ways in which society presents information and education.  Drout's ideas do well to bring out the ways in which society may need to reshape such (re)presentations.  For example, is one of our cultural liabilities the ways in which we conceptualize academics as the "White Tower" of the University or Academy?  With a school like Drout has envisioned, could one of our inherent cultural wealths be the opportunity to push some students toward new intellectual avenues?

Essentially, I'm hoping that these intersecting ideas will help spark a new form of dialog--touching on many of the issues brought out before, but also pointing toward other issues to frame how academics and society intersect.

Just because...

Because Hark! A Vagrant is brilliant. And regularly makes me miss you people.

The long view of the long ships

Robert Ferguson's recently published omnibus history of the viking era [The Vikings, A History. published by Viking, appropriately enough] gets two thumbs up. If I were to teach my dream course on Northern European Life and Literature (a combo of Monks, Monsters, and Manuscripts and Swords, Sails, and Serpents), this would be one of the base texts for the course (I should dream up that syllabus and post it for feedback). The scope of the book is broad--chronologically, geographically, and topically. The general flow of the narrative starts before the 'insular big-bang' of Lindesfarne in 793, but works its way forward ending with the gradual incorporation of Sweden into European (Roman) Christendom in the 12th century. The chapters move from theater to theater--generally concerned more with the Vikings abroad than at home, but as Ferguson makes clear, the story is easier to tell when there are multiple sorts of sources, literary as well as archaeological. (Though the details of the narrative thread is lost in the North, the light is better on Watling Street, etc.)

Ferguson's strength as an author is his deep familiarity with the literary sources as well as with the archaeological record, successive historical treatments, and contemporary or near contemporary chronicles and annals. He makes measured and meaningful use of the truer sources (the poetry) to illuminate other sources. From a teaching perspective, the great virtues of the text are three-fold. First, Ferguson tells a coherent tale that helps the reader keep the big picture in view as the successive threads unfold and intertwine. Second, he let's the loose ends show so that readers can see where conjecture replaces relative certainty. He acknowledges differences of opinion among experts, generally without grinding anyone's particular axe. Third, he models a respect for the various types of sources, giving (in my interpretation) some pride of place to the work of the poets.

The only drawback to the book is probably inevitable: in covering so much, there is little time to tarry with anyone's favorites. (How can we hear so little of Egil Skallagrimson?) No unreasonable or unacceptable gaps appear, however. The one possibly controversial aspect of the interpretation implied in the work is the framing: for Ferguson, the grand sweep of the story is defined by the gradual cultural and religious transition from a separate and independent Nordic community to a post-heathen, at least nominally Christian set of societies, each integrated into larger European society. His parting view of Odin from Snorri's biography of Olaf Trygvasson--as an old man trying to smuggle horse steaks onto the King's table--is a poetic touch. Some might question the choice of making the religious shift the central organizing principle--but I think it works.

Read on--and don't forget to write!

Norse Gods get an upgrade

Too Human is the title of an upcoming game in which the player will be taking on the role of Baldur, one of the Aesir. However, these gods are not all they are told to be in the mythology. Instead of being actual supernatural creatures, they are cybernetically enhanced humans. Baldur [son of Odin] is seen as being insufficiently advanced, and is thusly labeled "too human."

Wikipedia informs me in its article:
In Too Human, the Norse gods are cybernetically enhanced humans. Baldur, son of Odin, is one of these gods and it is his duty to protect the human race from an onslaught of an advancing machine presence determined to eradicate all human life.
The story chronicles the ongoing struggle between cybernetic Norse gods, the invading machine presence and mortal men, it features many Norse gods and characters from Norse mythology including Thor, Loki, Odin, Heimdall, Freyja, and Mimir. Yggdrasil: the tree of life acts as a gateway to an alternate world known as Cyberspace that is accessed through the advanced technology of the gods.The human gods are using cybernetic implants to supplement their own abilities, thus becoming more machine like. Conversely, the advancing machine army is harvesting human blood and limbs in an attempt to become more human.

Until the game is released, later this month, there will be little more for me to say about it. Also, I do not have a 360, the creator's platform of choice, and will have to wait to steal...er...borrow my brother's in order to have a chance to play. The game is being released in trilogy format, further slowing my understanding of it's use of the actual mythology. What I ask here is this:

By bastardizing mythology with technology and turning it into a video game, are we exploiting our cultural pasts for sheer entertainment, or are we, perhaps, utilizing a modern medium to bring our culture's elder foundations to a new generation? Or is it both?

In conclusion, I leave you this, because it was the only non-mature trailer I could find that was of decent quality.

And I thought it was funny.

Recommended Call for Submissions...

Over at the blog Modern Medieval, Matthew Gabriele (a professor of Medieval/Renaissance Studies at Virginia Tech) has posted a sort of "Call for Submissions" to a project he wants to develop: a sort of "blog forum about what medieval studies and/ or medievalism has to offer a wider public." He especially has asked for voices from academics and non-academics (and non-medievalists) alike. Because of the nature of our small thought community here on this blog as well as our backgrounds, our current work, and our general interests (both collectively and individually), I think this call is especially appropriate for us all to contribute.

Take a look at the call for submissions, with Gabriele's overall proposal and aims, and consider contributing to this discussion. The initial deadline (next Friday) for thoughts, short essays, etc. may be close--and some of you have the habit of dropping off of the earth for amounts of time--but I think all of your thoughts would really help foster some great dialog, since this is something we've worked on before together both formally (such as the Education conference some of us presented at) and in our musings on this blog.

No excuse for tardiness. Moving on.

Marvelous.

I have just finished reading [rereading most of it as I went] the essay on the Marvelous in Le Goff. I am still not entirely sure where he is coming from or where in the world he may be going. True, in the first circuitous definition of imagination, he picked and pulled to at least form an idea, if not a solidified concept, but in this chapter I felt as though he did actually define the marvelous quite clearly. Somewhere between the words, perhaps, slipping behind a handy h right when you turn to look, like that spook behind the pillar next to you.

The one connection I managed to maintain is that the marvelous is something natural, something old. It is not magic because magic, in the Christian sense at least, has been sourced outside the world itself to Satan [who then could be sourced to God but a bastardization of holy power and everything kind of jumbles itself around in a mental tussel with no clear winner in my head, but that is unrelated to this conversation]. It is not miraculous because that, too, has the implied source, though in God. So marvels are of nature. How does one then define nature and manage to diferentiate between when something that happened was either miraculous or marvelous?

I was interested in his dredging up of the literature and lore of the knights and lower nobility, which brought to mind Once and Future King, The Faerie Queene, and Dante [yes, in that order, though the first and second are hardly as applicable as the first and the latter two are both based in some overt form of Christianity. I did not see fit to include Phantastes, though it also was sluiced in], bringing with them the images [which Le Goff believes is also an important part of the marvelous] of a sword coming from a lady in a lake, and a tree that is bleeding.

And here is where my thoughts trailed off into bafflement...comment. Question. Answer. Something.

Medieval fish sticks--not again!

Nothing changes more than history. The reputation of the Vikings seems to be in a state of constant flux. Thanks to archaeologists of the codfish trade (another in the ever-expanding set of niches for medieval geneticists), it begins to appear that some of the poor Norse were just long-distance fishmongers (think Amazon grocery delivery a-la 10th century). This opens a whole new set of possibilities for interpreting the prayers for protection from the Northmen! It's interesting, but as an explanation for Viking mobility in general, well, it sounds a little fishy.

Yea, I've been to Vinland, only it should have...

I had never heard of novelist Thomas Holt, but I picked up his Meadowlands in some Swedish-American bookstore somewhere (probably at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis) because of its subject. Meadowlands is a novelization of the Vinland Sagas told from the perspective of two 'regular guys' who crewed the ships of 5 voyages from Greenland to Vinland. They recount their adventures to a Greek civil servant whom they are accompanying, as members of the Varangian Guard, on a trip across Greece.

The re-telling is pretty faithful to the accounts in the Sagas and is pretty effective in getting the reader to think in some detail about the lives that are sketched so sparingly in the source material. What was it like to sail on small ships packed with people and material? What was it like to be cooped up in a turf-built house throughout the dark winter? How did the regular folks view the families in charge? What would it have meant to be part of the fatal, fraught last expedition? The narrative voices sound a little like 20th century English working-class types, but that's as good a way to get into the social space as any, I suppose.

The frame and some of the dialogue between the narrators and their Greek auditor are good reminders that the Norse of the 11th century were connected both to the end of the European-known world and to the most sumptuous center of European power; they were culture watchers as well as travelers and traders, and Holt, the author, seems to have done his homework well. He represents the Norse view of the world and of human significance in contrast with the Mediterranean; the reflective moments challenge the question of interior considerations (motivation) versus the consequences of actions. Holt also plays with the problem of oral transmission; both narrators are eye-witnesses, and should have virtually identical perspectives, and yet...

The book has an interesting 'what could have been, if only' twist at the end when Harald Sigurdson (the silent junior member of the Varangian trio of guards) weighs the potential risks and benefits of conquering England or settling Vinland. Recommended for pleasure reading.

For what it's worth, I hate Thomas Holt. He was born in the same year I was and has written nearly 40 historical novels. Ah well, fate goes always as it must! mlp

Not dead yet!

After a week of the creeping misery [also known as a sinus infection of sorts], I have finally regained my mental prowess [though none more than already had, don't expect much] and thusly am finally approaching the bench for a report on Le Goff [whose name still makes me giggle inwardly]. I apologize for the delay. And the fact that this is just a bit on the intro, as my brain still has no focus power, and I didn't make it to the Marvelous just yet.

Anywho.

Let me join both of Mark and Brandon in congratulating/thanking Le Goff for poking out of the historical boundaries into a broader realm. There is great truth behind his statement that "the life of men and societies depends just as much on images as it does on more palpable realities...the imagination nourishes man and causes him to act" (5). It brought to mind a quote from Lewis in which he states that "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." To imagine and create is an imperative for man, for whatever technical or philosophical reason and to separate any examination of man that goes beyond the physiological from such a thing would be silly. Incomplete, as it were. As Le Goff says, "a history without imagination is a mutilated, disembodied history" (5). [I liked page five.]

Outside of that, I would just like to attempt to clarify his definition of the imagination as, though he provided three "nots," he did not set it outright for me to see. Kind of like trying to set up a square pasture with three fences--the proverbial cows are guided in a direction but are set roaming after a certain point. Or maybe it is just me. Bear with me as I basically walk through what he says.

What is imagination, then? Le Goff sets it next to three similar concepts with which it may be confused and proceeds to separate them. The first was "representation" which he defined as "the mental image of an external reality" (1). Put simply enough, it is a mental construct of something in the physical reality, his example being our idea of a cathedral as gleaned from art or literature. Imagination, he states, "is more comprehensive than representation. Fantasy is nto limited by the intellect" (1). Symbolism [add the lisping, elongated s there, Brandon!] is applied when the object in question is used to make "reference to an underlying system of values," a process possibly involving the imagination, but not imagination itself (1). Lastly is ideology, the imposition of a conception of the world, possibly upon an image of some sort. Ideology and imagination again are simlar with a fuzzy boundary, but ideology is a preformed notion that will, when applied to either, distort temporal and imagination based reality.

My conclusion is that this reality he is attempting to describe is one completely created through the "inner" sensibilities, which he notes are often linked to the divine or supernatural (6). The presentation of these worlds are creations are unique historical realities in and of themselves; "aesthetic values and ideas of beauty are in themselves historical constructs" (4). These, being their own self-contained entities, cannot be interpreted through the same lens as techincal historical documents, which may still have small applications of the imagination through set up and presentation, etc.

Does this make sense, and can you help further the concretization of these thoughts with comments, gentlement [and Mandy, if she has time]?

I am looking forward to see how all this comes together in the essays. And I again apologize for my tardiness and incomplete reading. [sheepish]

The marvels of history

Thanks, Brandon, for putting us on this course. I've now read the introduction and the essay on marvels. As a relative latecomer to the study of wider European history of the first 15 centuries of the 'common era' (having looked at the span of time mostly through a Scandinavian lens for the past 25 years), I am happy to see facile periodization disrupted. The threads of history have always seemed more tangled than the standard periods would have them to be. The idea of the long middle ages (paralleling the long twilight of antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean) makes sense, and his determination to cut the Renaissance down to size is particularly welcome.

I am also glad to see another intellectual set of categorical straight-jackets challenged as well: the boundaries of the contemporary academic disciplines. From page 3: "The academic disciplines are scandalously specialized...This poses obstacles to interdisciplinary research, making all but inevitable failures to which those who have done everything in their power to make success impossible then point with unseemly amusement." (The same can be said of interdisciplinary teaching as of interdisciplinary research, unhappily for us all.) So I applaud this work and its focus in imagination.

Turning to the chapter on marvels, I am intrigued, though again very much aware of my status as a novice in the field. I have read just enough marvelous material in saints lives and passions, and in vernacular texts and histories, to recognize and affirm several of his distinctions. And his sense of development and social location of the marvelous also seems reasonable against the limited set of examples I can call to mind. So I guess the value of the essay as given is that it helps to frame the extent and the social location of marvels across several centuries. So far so good. I'm still left wondering what to make of the baby saint (name escapes me) who came out of the womb demanding baptism and preaching conversion before dying three or four days later. I wonder how the perfect stone coffin showed up for Ætheldreda in the swamps of Ely, or how Cuthbert made the fires go out. I wonder about these things from a material standpoint, but I also wonder about them in terms of what the people of the time period made of them--how they understood them, and how they made use of them in navigating through life. So Le Goff has been intriguing, the essay provides a good basis for framing questions and observations, but happily, I am left with more questions than ever!

Getting our Leg Off the Ground*...

Well, since we've finally chosen a book to tackle together, and since I know that Mark and Leslie have them by now (for a few day), I thought I would start some thoughts here about the introduction to Jacques Le Goff's The Medieval Imagination.

Among Le Goff's definitions and beginning to sort out his use of imagination as a methodology to think about history, I found it striking how he saw it so central to human thought.
was the following:

The images of interest to the historian are collective images as they are shaped, changed, and transformed by the vicissitudes of history. They are expressed in words and themes. They are bequeathed in traditions, borrowed from one civilization to another, and circulated among the various classes and societies of man. They are a part of social history but not subsumed by it.... The imagination nourishes the man and causes him to act. It is a collective, social, and historical phenomenon. A history without the imagination is a mutilated, disembodied history. (5)

In its eloquence, this passage struck me, but, more than that, it also informs some of the discussions we've had about the collectivity of history and literature. It thrilled me to see a scholar embracing such a definition as the core of his methodology in searching for the past. All of this also points toward his strong sense of interdisciplinarity--using literature, art, historical documents, philosophy.

Another aspect that I found fascinating is Le Goff's sense of time and the medieval period, as he writes, "when one takes a broad view of human evolution, it is clear that certain slowly developing systems or phases persist for relatively long periods" (9)--an idea he uses to justify the long Middle Ages and his even longer approach to history of the period (further developed in his first chapter). I'm interested in your thoughts about his views here and in the first chapter "For an Extended Middle Ages."

No doubt there are myriad other concepts to focus on--for me, I'm also greatly pulled toward Le Goff's examination of the marvelous, since I've always gravitated toward that sort of aspect of history and literature. Hopefully that's enough to get us started!


*Again with the punny title, I know. Please continue in your forgiving attitudes.

Books and links.

No Brandon, I haven't done the meme yet, but I'm working on it. Sort of.

Since we have created this plot to read Le Goff's The Medieval Imagination, I stopped by Borders to see if they had it [a. because of the general immediacy of a book store and b. I currently have a 40% off coupon...I'm so shallow]. For some inexplicable reason, however, they did not. Instead of walking away upon discovering this, as would have been the bright thing to do, I allowed myself to drool over the following three books:

Mysteries of the Middle Ages [which I did not buy for price's sake]
History of the Franks [which I did not buy for the fact that it is amply available online]
and, to cap it off in a veritable pool of mental drool [gross, but to the point]
Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition [which I did not for the fact that I own at least two copies not in anthologies already, if not three]

There were a number of other books I would love to mention, but for now these are the titles I remembered and desired to share.

Mainly that last one.

It's really pretty.

Meme...

In an effort to force you all to post something, I've tagged all of you fellow Riddlers for the mutated medieval meme. You can find the details in my version of the meme, posted at PoKR. I know you're all busy, but I'm expecting good things from you all!

Sir Gawain and the Gush of Translations...

Today in my email I received a link to a new "innovative translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by Adam Golaski (professor of creative writing at the University of Connecticut), which he has titled Green. So far, Golaski's released on section a month, started in December: here is fit one, part one; here is fit one, part two.

I also recently bought the new (and also acclaimed as innovative) translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Simon Armitage (W. W. Norton, 2007), and have so far read about the first fit.

Why all the surge of Sir Gawain? I don't know, but he (and his poem) seems to be gaining popularity in the public eye. Perhaps he'll start giving Beowulf a run for his money, although that might take a major motion picture release, and we haven't seen (or hear rumors of ) one of those since 1984 (film title: Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). I'm interested in people's thoughts on this: either about the growing popularity of the Middle English poem or about the translations. As Gawain himself would say, "Haf at þe þenne!"

[Cross-posted at Point of Know Return.]

This really does not belong here, but...

...I GOT MY DEGREE FROM HOUGHTON!

I'm officially out of there and smart and stuff, just like the rest of you!

[And post already, will you? I don't have anything to say right around this time.]

Finally read it! NotR

I am a lapsed novel reader, and every year at Christmas I promise to climb back on the wagon. For the second holiday season, Umberto Eco provided the means. This season, I finally read Name of the Rose. In the interest of keeping NYR (New Year's Resolution) 1--namely to post more on R47--and in hopes that the ensuing conversation might help encourage me to keep NYR2 (read more novels)--I'll make a brief post here.

Brandon, I remember you posting something somewhere about the book--could you provide a link? General reaction: I enjoyed the book and felt transported into the 14th century. (And I wanted to stay there, although I think the burning of the library may have totally undone me--I would have become a wandering mad mendicant.) Eco plays with a lot of things, and I lament my lack of Latin yet once more as it means I missed key issues that were at play. One theme that I enjoyed thinking about, and one that seems ever relevant, is the danger of certainty and the shifting sands of knowledge and justification. Both the philosophical issues (Aristotle, later Bacon, vs, Plato, Plotinus, Augustine) and the theological issues (the chronology of the attainment of the beatific vision, and the role of poverty in the life of Christ, the Church, the believer) are imminently current.

So what do you all recall/review from the book, and what did you make of it?

Happy new year!

May God continue grace us all with his love, patience and presence.
Stay warm, friends. Stay safe.

Follow-up re: Amazon's brain improvement tool

This is a follow-up post to Leslie's query about the Kindle. I think I agree with this commentary at The American Prospect. (And I am really loosing my luddite edge--which would be a blunt edge, I guess... I just figured out how to put a link in a post!) Be well!

Beowulf Movie...

Leslie has been asking me to post my thoughts on the new Beowulf movie, so I'm offering the following.

I saw Beowulf (the movie), but I'm hesitant to post any sort of review; there are already so many Anglo-Saxonist (and other medievalist) voices out there talking about it, I don't think I would add much to the many thoughts. I recommend reading a few that have sparked certain amounts of resonance with what I thought about the movie. Here are some names and links to their reviews and thoughts. Beware of plot spoilers.
Michael Drout
Dr. Virago
Jennifer Lynn Jordan (another newly acquainted blogging medieval studies grad student)

The review I most resonate with is Mary Kate Hurley's, over at ITM, not so much for its general perceptions, but for her discussion of what such an adaptation means for the long and continuing history of Beowulf. It's a beautiful post, with great reflections on the life of the poem. She's put into words some of the things I was searching for in my "Prevailing Poetry," and she says them better than I could.

I was was having a conversation with one of my friends in the English MA here at UConn about the Beowulf movie, which then moved into a discussion about translations. Toward the end of the conversation, he mentioned how fascinating it is to realize that we always go back to the Old English poem. Although we keep translating, over and over, those translations still need reworked after a time, the old renderings set aside, the new ones reworked for a new audience. He said that he thinks this was the goal of Seamus Heaney with his translation--to provide a new rendering that spoke to the audience of everyone, not only English majors who would read the poem but also anyone who wanted to pick up the poem and enjoy it. Then he hinted that, someday, even Heaney's translation will be set aside for a new one. But we will always return to the original text, the Anglo-Saxon words that still speak to us and fascinate us from over one thousand years ago. And I think that this life--the life of a poem that keeps speaking to us--is the one that MKH is alluding to in her post. That life is not ended. I especially think the last words of her post speak most powerfully of her reflections:

Maybe there's something yet to learn from this Beowulf, beyond Angelina Jolie's nudity and Beowulf's bad lines. Maybe it can speak to something more than the sum of the parts of the past it inherited. Maybe its resurrection at this cultural moment is itself of value. And maybe we're too close -- temporally, spiritually -- to see this movie for what it might be: another performance of a poem whose ending has not been written yet.

As to my own opinion about the movie, I mostly enjoyed it--as a movie. Walking into the theater, I set aside my critical nature as someone who dissects texts as well as my Anglo-Saxonist side, and I went in hoping to watch and enjoy a movie based upon a story I have loved since I was ten years old. As both a movie and an interpretation, of course it had flaws. Gaiman and Avery made interesting interpretive moves that clearly brought out certain parts of the poem, at the expense of certain other aspects. Of course, those moves also brought out certain aspects that were important to put into the movie. The central plot change--of the relationships between the monsters--helped to smooth over the poem into a more unified poem, with a plot line that moved with connections to everything previously--a sense found in the poem only in the character of Beowulf, not in the actual plot. Of course, this should have been expected, given the nature of plot-driven Hollywood films. I never expected a movie exactly corresponding to the poem; we can never expect that of a movie. But we can at least find certain merits (Grendel's mother playing a philological game with Beowulf's name, the integration of Christian and pagan elements, the postmodern questions about storytelling, to name just a few) for watching the movie and engaging in discussion about it.

[Cross-Posted at Point of Know Return.]