Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Updates

It amazes me the strong, strident even, reactions people have to adaptations of Beowulf. In a recent discussion someone sent me at LiveJournal has at least some folks upset that Heaney used "archaisms" such as "tholed", which his introduction to the stand alone version has him explaining that the word derived from his grandparents Ulster dialect which one writer there said was a "snobbish" and didn't make Heaney special.

Interestingly though no one reacted specifically to things like "So" for "hwaet" or "tarn hag", and other things that have annoyed others. I do find it surprising and have a theory as to the root of it.

One of the good things that this shows though is that there is excitement about Beowulf, an excitement we Anglo=Saxonists should harness and enlarge on and encourage.

New Carnivalesque Up

The New Carnivalesque is up at Seredipities: http://earmarks.org/archives/2007/10/28/168
Its the Early Modern Edition this month.

The News

Not much going on Medievally speaking, but here's what there is:


Will a cemetery excavation establish a link between the Black Death and
resistance to AIDS?
:

Late Antique Roman Graveyard At Copenhagen


Medieval Ruins Found Near Stockholm Castle

Monday, October 15, 2007

Willibrord

Back in Issue 6 of the Heroic Age (www.heroicage.org) Michelle Ziegler published an interesting paper that sought to establish that Bede was wrong about Willibrord "continuing" the work of Wilfrid in Frisia and that Willibrord can not be said to have belonged to Wilfrid's familia by the time he went to Frisia. Its an interesting paper, though in subsequent work I've come to disagree with it but not because of anything wrong with the paper itself. I know, that's confusing.

Anyway, among the evidence that Michelle adduces is the presence of Irish art, script, and works produced at Willibrord's monastery. But I've begun to wonder if this as certain an idicator that Willibrord was not part of Wilfrid's familia as I did those years ago when Issue 6 was published. On further examination of Wilfrid's biography, there is much of the Irish there: from hermits to connections to St. Brigid to his style of being a bishop, there is MUCH that Irish in Wilfrid's career. So pointing to the Irish with Willibrord seems to me not as much of an indication of Willibrord's connections as one might think.

Friday, October 05, 2007

This is so wrong in so many ways

The first soferet Yes, folks, it is Tefillin Barbie. Wow. The article is interesting, but I'm just arrested by Tefillin Barbie....