Titles I left behind

The kids and I have just returned from over a month in England, and in cramming our belongings and acquisitions into our semi-expandable luggage, some things had to be left. Among them were a few books--left only because some future occupants of the HC flats may pick them up and read them. I'll mention two of them here in case they are of interest to you.

1. Dissolution by C.J. Sansom.
This is a novel set at the time of the dissolution of monasteries (1538 or so) by Henry VIII (boo hiss); the central character is a hunchbacked lawyer named Matthew Shardlake who is sent to investigate the sudden execution-like death of another 'commissioner' sent to prod the abbot of a south-coast monastery into voluntarily surrendering to the crown. It's a mediocre novel, but pretty good social history. It's interesting too in that the author tries to present the very real tensions between the shortcomings of the existing, exhausted monasticism, and the excesses of the emerging, brutal reformist impulses. For those interested in a creative interpretation of social history, I recommend the title, and will probably read at least one more in what appears will be a series.

2. Without roots: the west, relativism, Christianity, Islam by Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) and Marcello Pera, an Italian philosopher turned politician.

In this volume, two lectures (one by each author) are published along with letters between the two. The topic is the role that Christianity has played in the development of European culture and the difficulties that contemporary European politicians are having in understanding and framing that role (particularly in the language of legal frameworks for the EU). I valued the insight it gave me into the current occupant of the Holy See; also, as the other author is an agnostic academic, it was interesting to see the similarities in their arguments that contemporary Europe must acknowledge and re-embrace it's Christian heritage. Both point out, for example, that the heritage of tolerance that allows Islamic intolerance (not that all Muslims are intolerant, but that strain is of particular concern) is a Christian heritage, and that the tension between accepting difference but insisting on reciprocity will require difficulty confrontations. I recommend it.

Sorry this is slim on details, but it's time for the sweet corn to go in the pot! (There are a FEW things that Western NY has that England has not :-)

Er...

I honestly don't know how I feel about this.

http://www.lulu.com/

Thoughts?

Anglo-Saxons in Music...

I recently (re)found and (re)started listening to a band that I've listened to on and off for a while now, known as The Mountain Goats, and in doing so I got a few more of their albums. On the albums, I found a few songs that may be of interest, titled "The Anglo-Saxons" and "Grendel's Mother." While I was listening and thinking about the intersection of medieval and our contemporary music, I also remembered that in the Anglo-Saxon course with MLP he compared a song by Bob Dylan to the Old English poem "The Wanderer"--mostly for some of their similarities in elegiac style and thematic elements.

I'm posting the lyrics to the songs by The Mountain Goats (below), but I also want to ask a few questions and get some reactions and ruminations:
What are your reactions to these songs, especially in their content and connection to the Anglo-Saxons and their culture, as well as Beowulf (in the case of "Grendel's Mother")?
Where else are their connections and intersections of the medieval and popular music--a la Bob Dylan, etc.--that we can point to and discuss? Any thoughts on these intersections? I would hazard a guess that this whole idea connects to our discussions of neomedievalism (such as medieval concepts in postmodern popular literature and movies), but what other reactions and thoughts might you have about these? Furthermore, what sort of concepts do these musical connections to the Middle Ages present about oral transmission, oral art, and poetry in culture? Any thoughts are welcome!

Here are the lyrics by The Mountain Goats:

The Anglo-Saxons

[Spoken:] "We'd like to dedicate this song to our friends, the former inhabitants of the British isles!"

[Sung:] They used to paint their bodies blue,
A couple of them might be distantly related to you.
According to Caesar they shaved their entire bodies,
Except for the upper lip and the head.

Yeah, the Anglo-Saxons!
Yeah, the Anglo-Saxons!

A sub-literate bunch of guys,
Though some sources say otherwise.
Yeah, the Anglo-Saxons!

Yeah, they were men on a mission,
Preserving their poetry by oral tradition.
Yeah, oral tradition is all you get
Until Saint Augustine brought in the alphabet.

Yeah, the Anglo-Saxons!
Yeah, the Anglo-Saxons!
In 1065 they were ragin',
But 1066 brought the Norman Invasion.
Yeah, the Anglo-Saxons!

Grendel's Mother

The cave mouth shines
By pure force of will.
I look down on the world
From the top of this lonesome hill.
And you can run, and run some more
From here all the way to Singapore,
But I will carry you home in my teeth.

In the great hall you drink red wine,
You chew meat off the bone.
I beat down the new path to the castle,
I come naked and alone.
I laid my son on the bier; I burned the wreath,
Fire overhead, water underneath.
You can stand up, or you can run,
You and I both know what you've done,
And I will carry you home.
I will carry you home.
I will carry you home in my teeth.

Redirection to Medieval Sheep...

Several months ago, I mentioned Michael Drout's research in comparing the DNA of medieval ms vellum, which he talked about over at Wormtalk and Slugspeak. In his latest post, he's expounded a few more details and given an update on how the research is going so far. It's fascinating, and looks to lend quite an innovative aspect to interdisciplinary work and the field of medieval studies. Go check out the post for more information.

ITM Book Club...

Some of you may be interested in this post and this post over at ITM (if you don't get to regularly check it out)--announcing an online book club & discussion focused on various aspects of the Middle Ages. I just received the first book in the mail (which I found more than 50% reduced from a seller over at Amazon--perhaps you can find as good a deal if you hurry!), and it's already fascinating reading. Even if you're not into cannibalism (but, really, who wouldn't be?), keep your eyes out for future books, as some of the suggestions look like great reads.

More on What Jack Says...

Following the last thread on Lewis's views of mythology and literature, I dug out a correspondence from a few years ago. It came from Perry Bramlett (a Lewis scholar), who visited Houghton and gave a seminar on Lewis. When I asked him about Lewis's views on myth, he promised to email me; the following was his response. Perhaps it will help focus anyone who wants to read up on Lewis--especially for those who have his woks handy. (Consider the rest of this post quoted from Bramlett's email.)

Walter Hooper's "C S Lewis: Companion & Guide" (if you can find it in the library or order it) has several discussions of Lewis and mythology. And "The C S Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia" (which I wrote for) has a good article (by Wayne Martindale of Wheaton College) on "Lewis and myth."

Lewis mentioned mythology several times in his writings, and some of these are:

1) In "The Weight of Glory" (chap 5) he mentioned mythology and paganism...

2) In the same book (chap 1) he had a quote about mythology and poetry...

3) In "God in the Dock" (pp 57-58, 66-67, 83-84, 132) he mentions mythology as the precursor to Biblical religion...

4) In "Surprised By Joy" (chap 7) he refers to Christianity as the Christian mythology... In the same book (chap 5) he mentions that in mythology he was almost sent back to the false gods to acquire some capacity for worship...

5) In "Reflections on the Psalms" (chap 10) he mentions the death and rebirth pattern in mythology as not accidental and that it teaches the truth that humans must undergo some sort of death in order to truly live...

6) In his "Letters" (24 Oct 1931) he mentions that the desire for a "vague something" as seen in pagan mythology shows a first and rudimentary form of the "idea of God"

7) In "The Weight of Glory" (chap 5) he says that if Christianity is a mythology it is not the one he likes the best... (This was before he became a Christian; he said he liked Greek, Irish and Norse mythology better)

Jack says this...

Conversation with someone (probably one of the R47 group) led me to pick up Gordon MacDonald's Phantastes this weekend. The edition we had on the shelf includes an adaptation of Lewis's introduction to an earlier (1946) anthology of MacDonald's work. The intro is interesting; Lewis pulls no punches in pointing out MacD's limitations:

• The texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at times fumbling. Bad pulpit traditions cling to it; there is sometimes a nonconformist verbosity, sometimes an old Scotch weakness for florid ornament...

Yet for all this, Lewis avers that MacDonald writes fantasy better than anyone else--but that creates a problem for the critic: what is fantasy, after all? Is what MacDonald accomplishes properly a literary art? Lewis' reason for asking this introduces a take on the relationship between myth and literature--indeed, between myth and language--that I would love to discuss with R47-ers and their ilk. Lewis again:

• The critical problem with which we are confronted is whether this art--the art of myth-making--is a species of the literary art. The objection to so classifying it is that the Myth does not essentially exist in words at all. We all agree that the story of Balder is a great myth, a thing of inexhaustible value. But of whose version -- whose words -- are we thinking when we say this? ... For my own part, the answer is that I am not thinking of any one's words. No poet...has told this story supremely well. I am not thinking of any particular version of it. If the story is anywhere embodied in words, that is almost an accident. What really delights and nourishes me is a particular pattern of events, which could equally delight and nourish if it had reached me by some medium which involved no words at all.

Lewis goes on to say that this independence from the words distinguishes myth from poetry. Again, he says it best:

• In poetry the words are the body and the 'theme' or 'content' is the soul. But in myth, the imagined events are the body and something inexpressible is the soul: the words, or mime, or film, or pictorial series are not even the clothes--they are not much more than a telephone.

He goes on to say that myths get under our skin, 'shock us more fully awake,' cause us to question all that we hold certain. They give us delight, wisdom, and strength that we never anticipated. So herewith a few questions:

1. Are you with Jack on this one? (And how does this work with J Campbell's and others' takes on myth?
2. Where do you draw the line around what is and isn't myth, what's primary and what derivative (and where does JRRT fit on that scale?)?
3. Thinking about part of the BABEL project discussion, can he be right in saying that words themselves might not even be needed? (I myself am skeptical on that one -- but I am admittedly logocentric.)

Be well, and post!