Kalamazoo at Last

At last, my report on Kalamazoo 2011. Few seem to do this anymore, which is sad considering how significant this conference is. And how large. There is no way that any one person can give an account of all the great scholarship (and sometimes not so great) that is read at Congress. So I annually appreciate the comments of my fellow bloggers the Medieval Geek who posts his experiences every year. Since Curt gets to sessions I can not attend or haven't attended, I always learn a great deal from his posts and so appreciate those posts. His posts also include info about books he purchases; these are enjoyable as well but also educational as a way of being apprised of what is going on out there even in areas I am interested in. In the Medieval Middle also had some K'zoo related posts, mostly from Jeffrey Cohen. I heard rumors of papers being tweeted, but since I have so little time anyway, Twitter is one of the lines I have drawn for myself: that is, I don't Twitter because right now I don't need another thing to keep up on. But if anyone knows for sure, send me a note and I'll add it here. Also there were a few comments by Nokes, Unlocked Wordhoard on this year's K'zoo. You might notice some guy posing as me with the Great Nokes. Vaulting and Vellum also had a post on post-Kalamzoo. That's all I know. Granted I'm behind on my reading, even of blogs, and others may be like me and be delayed in posting about K'zoo. In any case, here's my conference.

For the third year in a row, events conspired to prevent me from being at Congress as planned. I had planned on being there Wednesday afternoon, meeting with some old friends, doing some work, and having dinner with fellow attendees with Thursday dawning bright and early with a meeting followed by sessions. That didn't happen. I did leave early Thursday morning to catch a train; that was a comedy of errors, but I at least made the train sans breakfast, cash, or caffeine....and since the train's credit card reader was down, I was without coffee for the duration of the trip!

We arrived a little late at 11:30. Thankfully and blessedly, a million thanks upon their noggins, the fabulous, intelligent, and ubertalented Jena Webb and Francesca Bezzone came and retrieved me from the train station and then took me to lunch where coffee was had, food partaken, company enjoyed. We didn't watch the time as closely as we ought, so we drove back to Fetzer where my two companions were attending a Late Antique session. I was off to an A-S sessionnin Bernhard. Regrettably, I ran into construction on Sangren hall...so by the time I found a way round and got to Bernhard, I was 15 minutes into the session and missing the paper I wanted to hear addressing an already packed room. So I went downstairs to the computer lab and finished my own paper and printed it off.

There I fortunately ran into Bruce Gilchrist. Bruce was reading in the very next session, and as I was undecided which of the three I wanted to go to, prevailed on me to go to the Bede session. There were only two papers, "Why no Love for Constantine the Great in Bede's HE? by Bruce in which Bruce examines the lack of any Constantine mention in Bede and talks somewhat about the growth of the Constantine legends. Good paper, but he tells me that he discovered in process that someone else beat him to it in some out of the way place...but still already done. The second paper was titled "Lessons from Lesser Kings: Books IV and V of Bede's HE" which aimed to accomplish just exactly what the title says: what do we make of the kings in those two books.

Next, I went down to the wine hour. There were too many conversations, new acquaintances made, friends caught up with to mention here. But t'was a good time had by all. Dinner was had with Francesca and Jena again and others; we ended up missing the evening sessions because of a the wait at the restaurant. So it was off to the receptions, many conversations, including one that hopefully will appear in HA in the not so distant future. More on that anon.....

Friday morning came a bit too early. But I went off anyway to the Bloggers Meetup. I was fashionably late; I do know how to make an appearance. Before arriving there I pleasantly encountered Bridget Slavin, now a medieval archaeologist. It was grand to catch up with her a little bit and very good to see her. Then off to the meetup: present and delightful were ADM, Jonathan Jarrett, the aforementioned Curt Emanual of The Medieval History Geek, the incomparable Elizabeth Carnell, the fabulous and knowledgeable Steve Muhlberger, me, and Vaulting and Vellum. I had a good time.

Next came the session in Valley I that I presided over and co-organized with Mary K. Ramsey. One of my long time interests is notions and practices of translation. The session was called "Found in Translation: Linguistic Evidence for Culture Change". We received three abstracts, but only two papers showed. The first paper never communicated with either of us as far I know about not being there, but he didn't show. Anyway, Sandra Hordis read an interesting paper about "Anglo-Saxon Paradise" regarding especially the odd compound for paradise, neaxorwang. She's submitted to HA, so hopefully you'll all read that one in the nearish future. Mary Ramsey then read on "Translating the Names of God" which does as the title says, talks about how God is referred to in OE TEXTS. Two really good, solid papers.

After lunch with Jena and Francesca at Bilbos (my first Bilbo's trip of the year!), I spent the next session in the exhibit hall. For one thing, I needed to find Witan Publishing's booth; there I met the rest of the team in addition to Nokes, took some pictures, and shook some hands. I also made the rounds of book stalls looking for good stuff. Very few primary texts to be had this year, that was very disappointing.

I had intended at the 3:30 session to FINALLY appear at one of the sessions in honor of Pat Conner. Unfortunately, the presider started the session 5 minutes early, the room was packed, not even standing room, so after standing around a bit pondering at the rudeness of starting early and what to do next, I ended up having some coffee and then popped into a paper down the hall on Women Selling Women by Mary Valante. It was very interesting about a topic I had never considered before, so got an education there.

Then off to the wine hour!! By this point being in Jena and Francesca's orbit, I had encountered many folk I might not otherwise have encountered. But still, the nature of the wine hour is to meet, greet, chat, and there are so many I talked to and had a good time with that I can not begin to make a list.

Friday night is the AngloSaxonist dinner, an event that I try to go too. Yes, it is generally the "old guard" and at a "stuffy restaurant" etc. But so what? What matters is the people: I have always enjoyed getting to know my colleagues as people whether Andy Orchard, Paul Szarmach, Tom Hill, Don Scragg, Katherine O'Brien O'Keefe, and others. Or us lesser lights too, who as these big names retire, become big names ourselves. This year I shared a cab and table with two folk becoming big names and whom I respect very, very much: Chris Vaccaro and Yvette Kisor. Both are delightful people and good scholars. I had a very good time in their company.

I had intended to go down to the Babel gathering, but was having such a good time with Jena, Francesca, Yvette, Chris, Michael Fletcher, David DiTucci, Beth Stollar, and others. We exchanged many views on many things and Babel somehow got along without me this year.

Saturday morning became an odd one. It was supposed to be a meeting of the board of the HA for breakfast. We met briefly in the lobby of Valley III and that was that. We were going to go to Maggie's. Maggie's was sadly closed. Bruce Gilchrist was going to join us. So it ended up being Michelle Ziegler, Bruce, and I and first we went to a "coffee shop" in town and I won't comment, and then off to Bob Evans, and a dash back for the first session. I went to the exhibit room for awhile and then ran through my paper a couple times.

After lunch in the company of Francesca, Jena, Lauren Doughty, it were time for my session, "Beowulf Against the Grain." Quite apart from my paper that I've already posted, the other two were really good. J. D. Thayer read on "Hwil Dages: A Mythological Reading of Beowulf and the Man" which was interesting and of course goes the opposite direction of much Beowulf criticism: to read the poem as myth rather than for history or language. The second paper was "Making Beowulf Scream: The Punctuation of Old English Poetry" by Eric Weiskott. I had concerns about this paper. Going in, it was an "Hoo boy" and all I could think of was discussions by Bruce Mitchell. But in the end, this was the best paper in the session, it was terrific, well argued, well delivered. If only I could be that good! Fantastic as a matter of fact.

I had intended to go to a session, but lo, and behold, my friend Melody Harris was at my session, and I hadn't seen Mel in some time. So we went for coffee and caught up with one another, lives, careers, research, etc. Then off to wine hour!! Michael Fletcher had a large group together and they included m kindly in the group. Before going out, Michael thankfully wanted to stop by the Boethius Society reception...good call! There I was able to catch up a bit with Paul Szarmach and Rhonda McDaniel. We went down to a tapas place across from Old Penn. It used to be a French place, then a pizza place...and now this place was FANTASTIC. I would so spend money there again! Wish I could remember the name.

Dinner was fabulous. I met Cedric Briand at last, and we all talked, laughed, and shared plates of food. T'were grand.

Then it was off to the dance....and I danced. And overall a good time was had by many. I still miss the old days, but ah well. Lack of self policing solved that.

Well, believe it or not the next morning dawned. I always intend to go the morning sessions. In recent years, it hasn't happened. Mostly because I have to say Sunday is my chief book time. I spent more time in the book exhibits and finally got to the end at Powells. T'were a sad affair. I think I only bought six books this year. Of course, my budget doesn't extend as far at Curt Emanuel's, whose time to read I also envy! Still, I found this year's exhibit disappointing overall.

So there it is. My 2011 Congress.

A Smidge on Higher Education in America....

Well, I've been posting in the old days and thinking of adding posts on the topic of why college education matters, why a liberal arts college education matters. In part this is because of what has been going on my campus this past year, but also because of things we have witnessed on the national scene as well as in various states. Attacks on the value of a college degree, attacks on teachers and their role in education, attacks on faculty, and more. It is more than high time we responded. But before I could, the National Review did in this article. It's the National Review, old school conservative. That's a different kettle of fish altogether than the current neo-conservative and tea-party crowd that would like to bring us back to the 19th century.

When nearly a quarter of state legislators do not have a college degree, folks largely voted in in the last election, and largely funded by a handful of neo-conservative billionaires and groups (Koch brothers, Dick Army, I'm looking at you), well, you put those two things together and you have an anti-education platform. Why? Why would these folks benefit from an anti-education platform? from the resultant uneducated electorate?

We've already seen the purpose behind this backlash against faculty, teachers, and college education. We can tsk tsk about the Koch brothers giving money to a university and for the cash they get to approve the new faculty members, the Koch brothers (or their intermediaries) decide who will be considered, who gets hired, and will give annual reviews to ensure that the content is Koch Industry approved, else they will withdraw their considerable "gift. Nor is the Florida State case just referred to the only one: the Koch brothers have similar conditional agreements at George Mason, West Virginia, Brown, Utah State, and other institutions, or at least programs within institutions. Some of those agreements include not just funding a particular view of society and political structures, but require the reading of Charles Koch's book! What's the goal? Rather than free thinking and critical thinking, the goal is indoctrination. For years, the right has been accusing faculty in academia of indoctrination and making students into leftists. While we know that's not true, since it's hard to talk about Beowulf as a "save the whales" text, we do know that much of the neo-conservative movement and the newish tea-party movement use a strategy that accuses their opponents of something that the neocons and tea partiers themselves do. You know, like Gingrich going after Clinton for having extra marital affairs while Newt himself is busy divorcing his wife who lay in the hospital dying of cancer so he could marry his mistress. Or Eric Cantor demanding that Weiner resign while defending Republicans who did far worse, like Vitter.

So, the more that they cut our budgets, the more we will be dependent on organizations like the Koch brothers charity who will kill intellectual freedom by attaching strings and conditions to their "gifts" ensuring an indoctrination of students rather than an education. This silences dialogue. This silences debate. This silences argument. This is the opposite of education.

So back to the beginning. There are those who want to create a society in their own image. They will spend billions to do so. They do not want the current faculty empowered or able to respond, rather discredit the current faculty so that they can be replaced with faculty more in line with the "party."

Part of weakening the current faculty is to reduce student bodies. Fewer students means that fewer faculty are needed. Thus, discourage students from going to college. That further weakens colleges and universities so that they *NEED* cash from such organizations that will stipulate who to hire and what to read.

Of course, they are wrong: a college degree is worth the investment in the long run, yes even a *gasp* liberal arts degree. In the long view, a college degree gets the student on average more than $20 grand a year in income to pay back those loans rather faster. An educated public *should* be able to see through this. I haven't even begun to discuss the problems with "Academically Adrift", but one thing we all agree on: modern companies, business, law, political, scientific...., need people who can not only be trained to handle technology, but also to assess, evaluate, and deem worthy or unworthy a vast amount of information and develop fresh, innovative, creative ideas. No one is more equipped to that than a college graduate with a liberal education.

A Paedogogical Moment of which I'm rather Chuffed

So, for a couple of reasons I'm brought back to this past semester: I was thrown the task of teaching British and World Drama. I am something less than a drama expert or critique. Nonetheless, the class was mine. One of the things I did was assign them groups, each group at random drew a television show. I put 10 current shows, 5 comedies, 5 dramas, in a hat and a group member drew from the hat the show the group would deal with for the semester. The idea was that at each stage of the semester (Classical, Medieval, World), the groups would transform their shows into the genre we were studying....so for classical, dramas into a Classical drama, comedies into Classical comedy.

Some really got into the spirit of the exercises. Two that I revisited today were the group doing Two and a Half Men and Law and Order. The middle section of the semester was on medieval drama, chiefly focusing on morality plays, saints' plays, mystery plays, and bit on folk plays and interludes. Now Two and a Half men is easily transformed into a morality play and that's what that group did, though admittedly the timing couldn't have been better since they presented at the time that Charlie Sheen was in full-on meltdown mode! I could not have planned that better.

The other group I revisited today was the Law and Order group. They consistently did a fabulous job on their show in all three phases. But they really went over the top I thought with the medieval. Undoubtedly they wanted to earn brownie points, and they succeeded. In explaining the saint's life I had gotten WAAAAAYY off topic and did a little pony show about saint's lives and some of the oddities one finds there. I found myself unexpectedly talking about St. Mary of Egypt and St. Eugenia of Alexandria, particularly the latter. One of the points I was trying to make was the concern about sexuality regarding female saints vs. male saints...prepatory to reading and teaching Thais the Whore. This group did Law and Order doing the story of St. Eugenia. Priceless. Truly priceless. I wish I had film of it. They did marvelously well, complete with the "doink doink." At least they learned something about a saint....

And now for something completely different....

Well, that was an interesting tempest in a tea-cup. I've decided to let some things slide, to respond to others over time, and to move on to things of more interest and importance.

Of interest at least to me is a project I began 8 years ago on where Grendel's hand is displayed after Beowulf's victory. It's now a 55+ page monstrosity of a paper....too long to be published in a journal, too short for a monograph. I might be able to extend it into a short monograph, especially if I go into more detail on the folklore and archaeological aspects of the question and go full on into analysis of the literary analogues (which in the end are unhelpful in determining the question for Beowulf). I could also go into more detail on the philological aspects. All of that might push me up to the slightly over 100 page category. I don't know. Or it could be better to carve it up in several shorter papers and publish them in a sequence, hopefully in the same journal. Advice and insight always welcome.

As most readers of Beowulf know, the usual understanding these days is that Grendel's hand is displayed over the steps or stairs leading into Heorot, perhaps from the gables, or is over the roof. The article I've written argues I think pretty absolutely that that understanding cannot be maintained. I then further argue that the hand is elsewhere in the hall (hey, not giving the whole shebang away just yet!).

At this year's Congress in between having a blast, making connections, and listening to some good papers, I gave one of my own this year. I took a part of my 55 page project that though started in 2003, I haven't looked at since 2007. I thought it high time I looked at it again and shared a part of it with a larger audience.

So I did. What I read is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vb1iMXCnz0tj2GDi5r2lumYqeraANv2tY_aOkBMdjF0/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CNL51Y0O. The paper as read looks at the source for our current understanding and seeks to demonstrate why that basis is unsustainable. I didn't read the last couple of pages due to time, but I keep it here because I'd like some discussion on them as well.

The paper went over well. I won over some skeptics. There were others who were absolutely convinced it must be outside over the stairs and that this is explicit in the poem, not an interpretation. It isn't explicit in the poem: thus the problem. But they were convinced nonetheless. In any case, the paper went well, I share it here, feel free to comment or download as you wish.

Et tu?

It seems my comments have caused a stir elsewhere. I have a long post reacting to comments made here; I'm not sure I have either time or energy to address the comments in the blogosphere. Or if more heat will be generated by doing so than light. Here today I will make but a few comments and reserve the most of my comments for that other post already in process.

First, the list form is nothing other than I think in lists. It's the way my mind works. Nothing more is meant.

Second, each of the items in the list refers to a specific event from which a general lesson is drawn. Only one of those listed happened to me, the rest happened to graduate students of my acquaintance and who were quite disturbed at the time of the event. Most have now made legends of the event and find it all very humorous. The fault may be mine for trying to generalize enough that even some of those involved will not recognize themselves in my comments.

Third, I discovered through someone else's comments that another discussion on all this has been occurring elseweb without my knowledge or awareness. This blog post elseweb and the following commentary is....well, I am so nonplussed by it that I haven't an appropriate word. I've had these folks' back many times before, defended them in private and public, applauded their efforts, lent a hand where ever and whenever I could to aid their efforts in my own small way, I stuck my neck out AS A GRADUATE STUDENT WITH NO STANDING ANYWHERE WHATSOEVER to defend their right to speak at the table, to insist that disagreements with them take the form of valid discourse rather than snide asides, that what they do has value even for those in other disciplines...perhaps especially for those...and they don't have the decency to let me know of this conversation? to invite me to explain myself? To address me directly? Not even a quick email to say this was going on? No. Now some of the commenters there have commented here, and I am very appreciative that they did...but even they did not mention the other blog post and its lengthy comments. I don't know what to say about that, I guess I haven't processed it all.

Fourth, the attention paid to MA students is because of the specific situations on which the comments are based involved MA students as the performers of those behaviors.

Fifth, I was accused of being bored a lot. There is only a single point that addresses that topic or uses that word.

Sixth, I was also accused of making a lot of highly sexualized comments. A) I think that less than careful reading has made more of this than there actually is and more importantly B) Sexual violence even in the context of a conference is still sexual violence; intellectual rape is still a form of rape, and even more so when a male student or professor is forcing himself both intellectually and physically on a female colleague of whatever standing; sexual harassment is still sexual harassment even if it happens at the dance or a wine hour. Now as above I recognize that my descriptions and efforts at anonymizing and making the situations somewhat generic may have disguised too well the gravity of what my young colleagues experienced; at the same time it worries me no end that otherwise intelligent colleagues are far less concerned about the kinds of sexual politics that a certain sector of congress attendees and academics practiced making victims out of other colleagues. Yes, that disturbs me very much. And I say shame on you. While you are so concerned with how students might feel at my "litany" you've swallowed the camel to strain at the gnat.

Seventh, I was implicitly accused of being a killjoy. I should perhaps be less concerned with what people wear to the dance etc, or perhaps not even attend. Apparently you people don't know me very well. Perhaps you could try. Always much easier I suppose to take pot shots in comments on a blog about the matter if there is no concern that I'll actually see them. Perhaps you'd like to consider that one of the reasons the current dance is so damn tame is a direct result of the kinds of behavior that I outlined. It used to be so much more! I miss those wilder, woolier days of the dance. But there are consequences to one's actions, no matter how fun they were in the doing. Now I'm fully aware I'm not one of the cool kids, never will be. I'm just an old ruminate chewing on things as I can and occasionally spitting them out on a blog or two. But I do go to the dance, have done so longer than many of those commenting, and have seen a thing or two, and the fallout behind the scenes of things at the dance since I also once upon a time worked behind the scenes of the Congress. You see, my erstwhile friends, out here in the real world, many of us struggle damned hard to get where we are. Not being cool or a hot commodity with the socio-economic connections means a bit more struggle for those of us little people. And out here in the real world, what you wear even to something like the K'zoo dance has an effect; it shouldn't, it isn't right, it isn't good, and we should do all we can to minimize and eradicate such reactions. But I'm not on every hiring committee and I know of interviewees who have been asked by hiring committees about something said or done by interviewee at some conference or hiring committees who have rejected a candidate because of dress, not at the interview, but elsewhere at a major conference. Whether you head in the sand "live and let live" altrustic idealists like it or not, realize it or not, want it to happen or not....it does happen, and how very sad for talented people to lose out on a job because of something that can be easily addressed WITHOUT restricting self expression. I'm not saying don't wear tight dresses or a see through shirt showing that six pack, I am saying that if your clothing isn't up to keeping your body in check during a dance and you are sharing more of that body than you intended, perhaps rethinking your attire beforehand might be a good idea. Go nude to the dance for all I care. Paint your face woad and wear leather armor. Wear whatever you like. But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Likely no one will care. That's good. But just in case....

Oh, and by the way....I still have that kind of fun and I'm nearly 50, and I do it more than at Congress. If you applied even a modicum of the skills you profess to what I wrote, you wouldn't have missed some key information like "have fun." Nowhere did I decry having fun, being silly, enjoying yourself. Read carefully people. Where did it say a thing about not going barefoot? Nowhere I can see. Is our discipline in such trouble that basic, basic reading skills are lacking?

Eighth, while the slight majority of my comments were addressed to students, the problems and issues addressed to professors were to my mind far more serious. These have largely been overlooked.

Ninth, the hypocrisy is palpable. While on the one hand claiming to be such a wonderful community, the posters in question exclude. They certainly haven't included me in their discussion or made comments here (with some exceptions)...that's community building? Really? And while claiming that "hierarchizing" is wrong, they hierachize....after all, is it not explicitly stated (yes, it is) that their way is better? Is that not a hierarchy? And of course while doing so not one of them has bothered to comment on how I treat my grad students much less other grad students. They can only speak for themselves.....perhaps they will.

Enough. For now. If the folks over at the other blog want to take me to task for speaking out against intellectual violence, power politics based on gender, to defend sexual harrassment in the name of not hierarchizing and everyone having fun, well that's up to them. But I'll be happy to help young students out by helping them avoid bad behavior and learn how to see themselves as others see them and speaking out for victims and intended victims of such behavior. And if they don't like it...oh well. One can only hope for further dialogue, but with few exceptions I am not hopeful.

Among those exceptions are Myra Seaman, whose comments I appreciate though she has grossly misunderstood my comments (we'll see about clarifying that), Holly Crocker whose comments here and elseweb I appreciate, and Eileen Joy, though I wish she'd made her comments here too rather than only elseweb.

On a final note, I'm still happy to say that the victims of the worst behavior are strong people, have already turned the events into story, story told humorously and creating laughter, the great healer. Still, those who might be tempted to commit such behavior should be made aware of it and that it isn't cricket. And if that makes a banker on holiday....so what if it helps someone?

Kalamazoo Lessons

So. I'm returned from the great busyness attending the last moments of the academic year, moving apartments, preparing to spend the summer in another city with my wife, and of course attendance at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI. Before reporting on the events I experienced there, I thought it might be useful to some to give some important Kalamazoo lessons to various potential readers. Some I observed this past Congress, others I've experienced on previous occasions. So without further ado, here goes:

Dear Graduate Students:

1. Dear Masters Student: You are a Masters Student. Do not go out of your way to offend tenured professors in your field if you have expectations of a future. Your thesis topic is obvious and will not be so grand as to set the field on its head.

2. Dear Masters Student: Act professionally. It's good to go and talk to people, don't expect said people to fawn all over you. Act professionally and you will be treated professionally most of the time.

3. The K'zoo dance is grand and can be a lot of fun. It is not a club. Do not dress as if it were a club or you were going clubbing. No matter what happens at the dance, your professional colleagues are present and they remember the teeny dress more than they will your first couple papers. Teeny dresses do not get one jobs.

4. Along the same lines, Congress is an opportunity for graduate students to professionalize and rub shoulders with the top folk in the fields as if equals. Act accordingly. The collegiality of the Congress is a rare thing; lack of professional behavior, egregious violations of professional behavior usually result in a loss of that rare collegiality. And yes, we do notice and we do remember. There are many young, beautiful faces that I've seen at Congress once or twice and never see again thereafter because they didn't get anywhere.

5. Don't assume that every other graduate student has come there to hook up. Wherever human beings gather, people hook up. The purpose of the conference is not to hook up though that may happen. So please stop using every reception to troll the crowd, show off your dancing skills, impress us with the banality of your research; this isn't a bar on a Friday night. It's a gathering of professionals.

6. Speaking of your research, tell me about if I ask, and I probably will ask. Don't thrust your research on me as if it is the most fascinating thing I've encountered and that I need to know about it; the situation is likely the other way round. I'm always glad to help; I am reluctant to aid morons.

7. Dear Graduate Student (esp. Masters students): Congratulations, you got into grad school, maybe even a good one. That means you're smart and gifted. But so is everyone else around you at Congress. It is the great leveler.

8. If you happen to be a grad student in a completely unrelated field to anything Medieval and decide to come to the medieval Congress, your behavior at said Congress counts just as much (and maybe more) than everyone else. We medievalists are more likely to be on the hiring committees in your field than for fellow medievalists. So going ballistic on the ex you followed to the conference, or surprising a significant other and accusing him or her of cheating because they were chatting and maybe even (*gasp*) flirting with someone will undoubtedly be noticed.

9. Don't be creepy.

10. Don't overdrink. This isn't a frat party. It's a fun gathering of professionals who may be able to impact your career.

In short, have fun. Have boat loads of fun. Don't become the stuff of legend, the kind of legend that gets repeated to great guffaws in years to come.

Now a briefer word to professors:

1) It is still sexual harassment if you say something unwelcome, untoward, and uninvited at a conference, such as a male professor saying to a female grad student as she exited a car "Now I can get a proper look at you." The horror on her face told the story well.

2) Congress is not your personal trolling ground either....see comments above about clubbing. Touching the students is not cricket, rubbing yourself on the young women when not dancing and at receptions when they don't know you is not cricket; inviting yourself along with a group of grad students who are not yours, don't go to your school, and didn't invite you is not cricket.

3) Don't change your name to that of a character in a medieval work.

4) Do not wear chain mail. You don't look good in it.

5) Don't be creepy.


Again, have fun. Have boatloads of fun. Try not to become the stuff of legend in a bad way.

Feel free to add your own, I'll edit them in.

And So It Goes...

Among the things that prevented me from blogging for almost six months was an overdue paper I've mentioned here before on Cynewulf's Christ II and his list of "gifts" the ascended Lord gives to humanity. I spent a great deal of time between Sept. and March 1 on rewriting and completing a draft of this beast. In the end it clocked in at 38 pages. I was supposed to write 20 tops. So I had to spend about a month cutting it down to size: in the end it still ended up at just over 23 with the footnotes added. It is now in the hands of the editors, and I'm awaiting their comments to revise. But I thought I would share the unedited version with whomever wants to read it. It falls into 3 parts: a bit about our approach which I've shared before, the Ascension imagery that Cynewulf makes use of that isn't just stuff from Gregory's sermon (the usually cited source for much in the poem) but rather an image that is Biblical, Patristic, Germanic, and Greco-Roman. And then a discussion that the gifts are following a pattern of sapientia et fortitudo. There's a bit of everything: cultural history, text criticism, linguistics, some Latin, a smidge of Greek, chunks of Old English, some source criticism, and a tiny bit of theory (that was axed in the submitted version). Interested readers can find it here. And if interested, a reader may post comments here or at Google Docs, and commentary is welcome.

In other news, another project keeping me busy is Heroic Age Issue 14 is now complete and out, a fact I don't think I mentioned here.

A Small Tolkienish/Old English thang

By way of quick posts, I mused on this elsewhere, so forgive the repeat. I and my OE students this semester were translating the Finnsburh Fragment. In that fragmentary poem the Beasts of Battle motif is mentioned and the wolf there is called "greyhame." As is well known, the beasts of battle are both harbingers of battle as well as who's left when the thing is done, carrion creatures.

I don't know why it didn't strike me previously, but in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, one of the names of Gandalf among the oh-so-Germanic (Anglo-Saxon even) Rohirrim is Gandalf Greyhame. Another that he is called among the people of the horse is Lathspell, bad news (something of an irony with the Christological typography going on with Gandalf). Anyway, it suddenly struck me that "greyhame" might be more than just describing Gandalf's color of cloak, but also his nature as "lathspell." That is, like the grey hued wolf, beast of battle, harbinger of war, feeder on the dead and living, Gandalf's role in the legendarium has often been as harbinger of war, beast of battle in that way, and often depending on the living and according to his critics, metaphorically feeding on the dead and living alike. So, is Tolkien having another little linguistic joke on us? T'would see so. As far as I can tell this is the first time he is called "Greyhame":

Gandalf!" Eomer exclaimed. "Gandalf Greyhame is known in the Mark: but his name, I warn you, is no longer a password to the king's favour. He has been a guest in the land many times in the memory of men, coming as he will, after a season, or after many years. He is ever the herald of strange events: a bringer of evil, some now say."

Note that the name is given in the context of Gandalf being "the herald of strange events", even a bringer of evil! And certainly Gandalf's physical description might lend one to think of the beasts of battle too, with popping up unexpectedly in stealth, his beak nose, etc.

Interesting, no?

Srong Verb?

It has been a long time. I have rather missed blogging. But this first year as a tenure track professor has eaten up a lot of time with course prep, personal development plans, finding out who is who and what is what, battles over budget, saving the job, plus traveling to see my fav wife yet in the city I used to live in, and once in a while some actual scholarship. Truth be told though, I have really missed blogging. Hopefully over the summer I'll be able to be a little more consistent about setting things down.

There are so many things I could post about, but I shall restrict myself to one that came across my desk by accident.

Every once in awhile I'm able to take a minute and read some blogs myself. One of those I follow is Wil Wheaton of Star Trek, Stand by Me, and most importantly Woot Stock. He's also an author these days, and while I've not read any of his books, I've heard readings from his books and have liked what I've heard. When I retire and have time to actually read again, I plan to read his material. Anyway, in a recent post, Wheaton used the colloquial verb that hasn't yet made it into the OED, "wing", as in "to wing it". When his wife asked him about whether he had followed a recipe for black bean soup or whether he was winging it, he responded that he had wung it.

That got me to thinking a bit. We do have a verb "wing", as in to have wings, or to behave as if giving wings (he winged the ball at me) in which case as can be seen the verb form follows the typical modern pattern of past tense in -ed. But this other "wing" as in "wing it", similar to "on the fly" to improvise. I'm told that this comes from the 19th century theater, where an actor would be called on to hurriedly prepare the role and learn his lines "in the wings" and be prompted from the wings....hence wing it.

Now quite apart from the "proper form" or what have you, I'm interested that a young American professional opted for the strong verb form on analogy with ring, rang, rung, sing, sang, sung, wring, wrang, wrung, and so on rather than the modern pattern of neologisms, tweet, tweeted, have tweeted (or have tweeten?), ping, pinged, have pinged. Is there hope yet for the invention of more strong verb forms in modern English? One can only hope.....

The Scholar-Geek

Curt Emanuel over at The Medieval History Geek just posted how he's not a geek according to this quiz. I had to find out how someone as interested in the period and well-read as Curt could possibly not be close to 100%, so I took the quiz. I'm a Scholar-Geek, which fits I suppose. Sadly, I only scored 88% on the scholar side, which is said to so far be more than 100% of my fellow scholars on the test, which means that I'm the only one to take it so far. But it was fun and a bit funny if you to take it.

Tolkien Transactions VI

Well, as typical in the six weeks from the beginning of October to just before Thanksgiving, the teacher of 5 college level courses, 3 of which are writing courses, and four of which are new preps, is swamped with only occasional forays into thinking about other things. Sadly, none of them blog related. So while I have a half post on the Undark "Dark" Ages that I hope to finish next week, very little has been done here, or really anywhere in my "life of the mind" corner of existence. Soon to change for a few weeks before the final projects come in and time to finish off the semester and begin prepping for the next.

While I start writing again, an internet friend by the name of Troels Forschammer has posted on Usenet in Tolkien related groups a collection of blog posts and other related Tolkienana on the web each month. That is a welcome addition to Tolkien studies I think. I also think his efforts deserve a wider audience than the Usenet groups. So I offered to share his posts here for those interested in things Tolkien, and Troels accepted. So this is the sixth in Troels' series, for October 2010, and I'm a bit behind in posting it since Troels sent it to me a few weeks ago. Still, it should prove useful to folks. Thanks for doing this, Troels! I think it a real service to other Tolkien readers, fans, and scholars.

Tolkien Transactions VI October 2010

The time has come for a new issue of my attempt to extract the best or most interesting (in my highly subjective estimate) of Tolkien-related events this past month. This time I have ignored a lot of things such as the news that Tolkien is the third-highest earning dead celebrity (following Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley), that _Mythlore_ can be read at the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ site, a theory about Lewis being inspired to prolificacy (shot down in the comments), that some author has made a snide remark at Lewis and Tolkien in a footnote in his autobiography and a lot of other items. Still, as usual, please chime in with interesting stuff that you have found elsewhere! All the usual disclaimers apply about newness, completeness and relevance (or any other implication of responsibility) :-)

Sources

John D. Rateliff (JDR) - "Sacnoth's Scriptorium" sacnoths.blogspot.com

Jason Fisher (JF) - "Lingwë - Musings of a Fish" lingwe.blogspot.com

Michael Drout (MD) - "Wormtalk and Slugspeak" wormtalk.blogspot.com/

Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull (H&S) - "Too Many Books and Never Enough" wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/

Pieter Collier (PC) - "The Tolkien Library" www.tolkienlibrary.com/

Douglas A. Anderson (DAA) et Al. - "Wormwoodiana" wormwoodiana.blogspot.com

Corey Olsen (CO), "The Tolkien Professor" www.tolkienprofessor.com

David Bratman (DB), "Calimac" calimac.livejournal.com/

Larry Swain (LS), "The Ruminate" theruminate.blogspot.com

'Wellinghall', "Musings of an Aging Fan" wellinghall.livejournal.com

Various, 'The Northeast Tolkien Society' (NETS),

"Heren Istarion" herenistarionnets.blogspot.com

Bruce Charlton (BC), "Tolkien's The Notion Club Papers" notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/

_Mythprint_ -- 'The Monthly Bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society' www.mythsoc.org

_Amon Hen_ -- the Bulletin of the Tolkien Society www.tolkiensociety.org/ - and others


News


JF, Thursday, October 28, 2010, "Parma Eldalamberon 19" lingwe.blogspot.com/2010/10/parma-eldalamberon-19.html

The announcement that _Parma Eldalamberon_ 19 has gone to the printer. The issue will be available for shipping by November 15 according to the journal's web-site: www.eldalamberon.com/parma19.html

PC, Wednesday, October 20, 2010 "Lot of correspondence between J.R.R. Tolkien and Roger Verhulst" www.tolkienlibrary.com/dmiller/CLP0125.htm

From the description at the Tolkien Library site: 'Very interesting lot of letters discussing Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis. and the unpublished book by W.H. Auden on J.R.R. Tolkien.' I fully agree that this is a 'very interesting lot of letters' -- offered for sale, but if you're only interested in the contents, you can read them on the Tolkien Library site (thanks to Pieter for making these available for fans on a tight budget!)

PC, Tuesday, October 19, 2010, "A one page handwritten letter signed J.R.R. Tolkien to BBC Radio Producer Terence Tiller" www.tolkienlibrary.com/dmiller/CLP0126.htm The Tolkien Library offers a handwritten Tolkien letter for sale. While this in itself is possibly interesting to fans with a bigger Tolkien budget than mine, the letter itself is not without interest. Writing to BBC Radio Producer Terence Tiller, Tolkien gives his permission to Tiller to make an adaptation for radio of _The Lord of the Rings_, but he also expresses his doubts about how such an adaptation can be achieved. The story on the Tolkien Library site also includes a good, fairly high resolution, scan of the letter.

'Compa_Might', Monday, October 18, 2010, "Tolkien & Co. Return in The Dragon's Apprentice" www.theonering.net/torwp/2010/10/18/39211-tolkien-co-return-in-the-dragons-apprentice/

Does any of you know the series _The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica_? Apparently this series features three Inklings, Tolkien, Lewis and Williams, as 'Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica', doing some fantastic things. The series has its own web-site at www.heretherebedragons.net/. It'd be interesting to hear if anyone knows this series and what they think about it.

JF, Tuesday, October 12, 2010, "The contents of Middle-earth and Beyond" lingwe.blogspot.com/2010/10/contents-of-middle-earth-and-beyond.html

This is an announcement of the list of contents for the upcoming book, _Middle-earth and Beyond: Essays on the World of J.R.R. Tolkien_, edited by Kathleen Dubs and Janka Kašcáková. At 150 pages, I can't help but wonder what the price will be (at the time of writing this, the book does not yet show up for pre-order anywhere that I can find)? The earlier volume that Jason speaks of (_Thruths Breathed Through Silver: The Inklings' Moral and Mythopoeic Legacy_) sells at £25.49 at Amazon UK, so we should probably expect something in the same range. I agree with Jason that the list of contents does look promising (in addition to Jason's essay, there are two essays on Tom Bombadil, one about 'Grotesque Characters' in _TH_ and _LotR_ and other promising titles as well), and I will look forward to the reviews.

JDR, Monday, October 11, 2010, "Ransome's Tolkien"
<http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2010/10/ransomes-tolkien.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/2wp3gqy>
I know that there is more to it than that, but right now I'm envious
enough to accuse John Rateliff of blogging about this just to spite
all of us fans who will never get a chance to hold this treasure in
our hands ;-) The item in question is the advance page proof copy
of _The Lord of the Rings_ that was sent to Arthur Ransome by Allen
& Unwin at Tolkien's suggestion and in the hope that he would write
"a sentence or two about it which we could use to assist in ensuring
that it gets rapid recognition as the work of genius it undoubtedly
is".
See also the items at the book-seller's page:
<http://www.jamescumminsbookseller.com/details.php?record=236966>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/25zyccn>

Kelly Faircloth, Saturday, October 9, 2010, "How to learn from
Tolkien without flat-out copying him: Top fantasy writers speak!"
>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/2ukmmju>
A panel discussion with authors Jim Butcher, Brandon Sanderson,
Naomi Novik, Joe Abercrombie, Peter V. Brett, and debut author
Deborah Harkness speaking about their influences, and whether
fantasy writers are still knocking off Tolkien.

Oskar Stevens, Friday, October 8, 2010, "Tree man rumored to star in
new Tolkien movie"
<http://www.execte.com/other/2010/tree-man-rumored-to-star-in-new-tolkien-movie-08103555.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/26729wf>
Sometimes the news in which Tolkien's name appears are . . .
grotesque to say the least. The story of the Indonesian Dede is
certainly one of those (the above is just one of many links to
variations of this story). I shan't say why this story suddenly
(re-)surfaces, but as one commenter said, the poor man has probably
had his full of being the freak. Fortunately there are no Ents in
_The Hobbit_ and Aragorn hadn't encountered them either prior to the
War of the Ring, so I hope that he is safe from Hollywood for now.

JF, Thursday, October 7, 2010, "The new issue of Mythlore"
http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-issue-of-mythlore.html
http://preview.tinyurl.com/33zhahd
I guess this really ought to read 'The upcoming issue of Mythlore'
as Jason is announcing the table of contents and that the issue has
gone to the printer. My copy has not yet arrived in Denmark, but
surely it can't be long now . . .

_Greenwich Citizen_, Wednesday, October 6, 2010, "Lewis and Tolkien
Expedition: Expert to explore two literary figures in lecture"
<http://www.greenwichcitizen.com/news/article/Lewis-and-Tolkien-Expedition-Expert-to-explore-690232.php>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/29ov3hj>
This is the story about the Rev. Dr. Earl F. Palmer giving a lecture
in Greenwich about Tolkien and Lewis titled 'Defiant Traditionalists
Who Believed in God - J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis'. Apart from
what is listed here, does anyone know more about Palmer's work on
Tolkien and Lewis?

JDR, Saturday, October 2, 2010, "Christine O'Donnell, Tolkien
Scholar?"
<http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2010/10/christine-odonnell-tolkien-scholar.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/383kpac>
Following the sudden rise to notoriety of O'Donnell, Rateliff
comments on her paper, thinking that '[o]n the whole, this is a
decent little piece' and that '[w]here O'Donnell is on much firmer
ground is in her discussion of Eowyn'. In the end, his conclusion is
that he would 'like to see more work in the field from the intern!'
The intern being O'Donnell's niece, Jenna Murry.

The Hobbit films . . .
<http://news.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Tolkien+Hobbit+Jackson+Film+OR+Movie>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/36jzcc3>
and
<http://the-hobbit-movie.com/>
As in September the planned films inspired by Tolkien's _The Hobbit_
make up a very large proportion of the news-stories mentioning
Tolkien's name. It appears that there have been some four main
stories to cover this month: the negotiations concerning the
financial re-organisation of MGM resulting about mid-month in the
go-ahead for the film, the troubles with the New Zealand actors',
that Peter Jackson is taking over as director of the films after
Guillermo del Toro left the project in May, that Jackson's _Hobbit_
may become the most expensive film ever made (until it is surpassed
by some other film). The clear runner-up has been all the casting
stories. I'll let you in on a little secret: I really do not care! I
will go see the film (with my expectations probably better adjusted
this time round . . .), and I am grateful for the attention the
films have created for Tolkien's work, but as for the rest of the
media attention on the upcoming films I'd much rather that it'd go
away.


Essays and Scholarship

BC, Saturday, 30 October 2010, "Evidence to prove Tolkien's nervous
breakdown 1945-6"
<http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2010/10/evidence-to-prove-tolkiens-nervous.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/2uhtug9>

BC, Saturday, October 30, 2010, "1945-6 Tolkien's darkest time -
whilst writing the Notion Club Papers"
<http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2010/10/1945-6-tolkiens-darkest-time-whilst.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/36hzlme>
This is why I am subscribed to various other news-feeds that deliver
me tons of uninteresting (or worse) items. Bruce Charlton is here
blogging about _The Notion Club Papers_ and in these two posts
Charlton argues that Tolkien was having a nervous breakdown in the
period of 1945-6 when he was working on this book rather than on
LotR, arguing further that Tolkien experiences during this time
influenced his writing also when he took up writing LotR again. I'll
happily go through another thousand drab and irrelevant items to
discover another interesting source such as this.

Unknown, Monday, October 25, 2010, ""Rationality" sets science
fiction apart from fantasy"
<http://io9.com/5671561/rationality-sets-science-fiction-apart-from-fantasy>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/24r4lvx>
This article reports on an essay by one Simone Caroti who argues
that the use of estrangement and cognition is the key factor
separating science fiction from fantasy. The author of this review /
commentary agrees to a large extent with Caroti, but not entirely.
Caroti's paper is also available on-line from
<http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol6/iss1/11/>. I haven't had
time to read Caroti's paper, so I cannot very well comment on this,
but I remain sceptical of this attempt to create a distinction
between science fiction and fantasy (between magic and technology)
that is based on rationality -- that 'that science fiction uses a
"plausible rational framework" to support the speculative aspects of
the story.' as the unknown author of the review puts it.

Anthony and Jessica, Sunday, October 17, 2010, ""Frodo Lives!"...Or
Does He?"
<http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com/2010/10/frodo-livesor-does-he.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/2eb4lar>
An obituary for Len Rosenberg, Tolkien enthusiast, a 'part of the
original New York Tolkien Society, founded by Richard "Dick" Plotz'
and partner of the late Alexei Kondratiev. Also posted here is a
link to Len's 1973 college paper titled, as the blog-post, '"Frodo
Lives!"...Or Does He?', which deals with the reception of Tolkien's
work in the US.

DB, Friday, October 15, 2010, "religion in Middle-earth"
<http://calimac.livejournal.com/474130.html>
Also posted to the Mythsoc Yahoo mailing list:
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/21512>
David Bratman responds to two parallel queries on the Mythsoc list,
from John Rateliff asking which books on Tolkien and religion that
the members on the list could recommend, and by Ellen Denham asking
for input for a panel she was to appear in where the starting point
was Lin Carter's criticism of the lack of religion in Tolkien's
LotR. Acting both as a response directly to Lin Carter as well as a
more general commentary on the question and the most relevant of the
available books on the subjec this is a highly recommendable
reading.

JS, Friday, October 8, 2010, "J.K. Rowling among the Inklings"
<http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2010/10/jk-rowling-among-inklings.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/2ctb2sl>
I have already discussed this blog-post in a separate thread, so I
won't go into details with it here. The thread can be found on
Google here:
<http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books.tolkien/browse_frm/thread/4d9c1dffb773a4dc>
http://preview.tinyurl.com/37rah9s>


Reviews

I have agreed (truth be told, I eagerly offered to do it) to write
the review of _Tolkien Studies_ vol. 7 for _Mallorn_, the journal of
the Tolkien Society, so I expect to also post some longer reviews of
the articles in the Tolkien newsgroups.

DB, Thursday, October 28, 2010, "Beowulf iss meyn nahma"
<http://calimac.livejournal.com/479148.html>
Bratman's been to see a performance of the first part of _Beowulf_
(ending, as far as I can make out, about line 1060) recited in the
original Anglo-Saxon. I'd certainly love to try that, though I'm
afraid I'd have to spend a lot of time studying the poem to get
ready (I can, with the help of a modern translation, only just make
sense of the Anglo-Saxon text -- see e.g.
<http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/19.html>)

Gray Hunter, Sunday, October 24, 2010, "Book Review: _The Music of
The Lord of the Rings Films: A Comprehensive Account of Howard
Shore's Scores_ by Doug Adams"
<http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-the-music-of-the/>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/2ccq6r4>
While reading this review -- in particular so soon after reading
Jessica Burke's account of the performance at Radio City below -- I
had the idea that what I would really like to do was to have a
version of Jackson's films that is purged of all acting: a version
that shows scenes, settings, landscapes only, and where actors, if
present at all, are only a part of the setting. they are not trying
to do plot. This version of the films, I would have shown while
listening to a live performance of Howard Shore's music, and thus I
would have the two things that they really got exactly right in the
New Line Cinema films.

JDR, Thursday, October 21, 2010, "A Day at Marquette (part two)"
<http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2010/10/day-at-marquette-part-two.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/3xwygls>
So, this ends up here ;-) Starting as the second part of Rateliff's
report of his stay at the Marquette (looking, among other things,
into Taum Santoski's papers and Boorman's LotR script), this post
continues to explain how he found himself with a copy of a new(ish)
book, _Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth: Tales of Pullman,
Lewis, Tolkien, Macdonald, and Hoffman_ by William Gray, because of
references to Rateliff's own work in the book. To cut it short, the
book has made Rateliff reconsider his policy of not buying books on
multiple authors, even if one of them is Tolkien.

Jessica Burke, Monday, October 11, 2010, "Howard Shore's Musical
Score at Radio City"
<http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com/2010/10/howard-shores-musical-score-at-radio.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/2e5k9pe>
Jessica Burke went to hear the live performance of Howard Shore's
score for Peter Jackson's _The Two Towers_ film together with the
other char of the North East Tolkien Society, but though she loved
the score, she was not happy about the experience, feeling that the
simultaneous screening of the Jackson film took attention away from
the music, and that a not insignificant fraction of the audience was
there not for the music, but for the film.


Reading LotR

One Elethena is blogging at the Northeast Tolkien Society web-site,
Heren Istarion. Elethena is evidently reading LotR in connection
with a class, but whether as a student or teacher is not clear to
me. Most of these pieces are fairly short and quickly read, but they
nevertheless make some interesting reflections.

Elethena, Monday, October 25, 2010, "Of Rohan and Gondor"
<http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com/2010/10/of-rohan-and-gondor.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/2uu5u4w>
A commentary on 'The Battle of the Pelennor Fields' focusing on the
differences in the ways that Denethor on one side and Éowyn and
Éomer on the other side deal with their despair.

Elethena, Wednesday, October 20, 2010, "To Defend a Land Worth
Saving: For the Love of Gondor"
<http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com/2010/10/to-defend-land-worth-saving-for-love-of.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/33nx9ul>
When Gondor appear on the brink of ruin at the start of book five,
we _care_ -- and this is no coincidence, but a concern that is
carefully built up by Tolkien according to Elethena.

Elethena, Wednesday, October 13, 2010, "Rohan, Home of the Horse
Lords, Northern Courage and Blatant Disobedience"
<http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com/2010/10/rohan-home-of-horse-lords-northern.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/3765pxb>
Reflections on the differences between loyalty and obedience as
exemplified by the Rohirrim: 'Faithful heart may have forward
tongue', says Théoden, but the faithful heart may also be forward in
other ways and yet be even more faithful for that.

Elethena, Sunday, October 3, 2010, "The Lady and the Golden Wood"
<http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com/2010/10/lady-and-golden-wood.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/358e6d8>
On the peril and beauty of Galadriel in particular, but by extension
also Elves in general, to mortal Men.

Elethena, Monday, September 27, 2010, "Of Wargs, Shippey, and Middle
Earth, the Land Worth Saving: Musings on The Fellowship of the
Ring"
<http://herenistarionnets.blogspot.com/2010/09/of-wargs-shippey-and-middle-earth-land.html>
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/2vyplc
Mostly on the topic of the _land_ itself: on the value that Tolkien
ascribes to the very lands the company come to.


Other Stuff

_Mythlore_, vol. 47 no. 10, October 2010, Whole no. 339
This issue of _Mythlore_ is dedicated to Alan Garner in celebration
of the fiftieth anniversary of the release of his first novel, _The
Weirdstone of Brisingamen_. The reviews are interesting and
readable, but not really relevant here, and so there is, this month,
very little of direct Tolkien relevance.
Under the heading "Free Lecture on J.R.R. Tolkien" we find the
following announcement:
Long-time Mythopoeic Society Member and Pro-fessor Mike
Foster will discuss ‚J.R.R. Tolkien and the Languages of
His Legendarium. at 6:00 PM, Monday, November 29, 2010, in
the Prucha Archives Reading Room in Raynor Library (1355 W.
Wisconsin Avenue) at Marquette University.
If any AFT/RABT poster has the opportunity and inclination to go, I
for one would be very interested in a report.

_Amon Hen_ 225, September 2010,
Ian Collier, "Announcements"
The good news is that the talks given at the TS Oxonmoots are now
going to be collected and published in some form of proceedings --
the Peter Roe Booklets were mentioned, but possibly just as an
example of format.
Angela Nicholas, "Halbarad Dúnadan: an unsung hero"
An attempt to look at the (scarce) evidence that illuminates
Halbarad's character, with an associated attempt (albeit this is not
stated quite in quite as forthright a manner) to stretch this
evidence to breaking point in extrapolation. Still, if you have an
interest in Halbarad, these four (!) pages will tell you all there
is to know -- and then some :-)

New HA Issue and Share postmedieval cluster

It is with very great pleasure that I announce the publication of The Heroic Age Issue 14.1! This issue marks a number of rather exciting firsts. It is the first, so far as I know, joint publication of a shared cluster of essays between two different organizations, with two different emphases in the field, in two different formats (one entirely online and the other chiefly [though not exclusively] in print. For us at HA it is also the first of a series of new practices: in this case, guest editors putting together a section of essays in their areas of expertise. In this inaugural issue, we have Eileen Joy of postmedieval and the Babel Working Group has put together a cluster of essays published in both HA and in postmedieval: Essays by Elaine Treharne, Gillian Overing and Clare Lees, and Mary Dockray-Miller appear in HA at http://www.heroicage.org. At the Palgrave website for a limited time, essays appearing in the postmedieval authored by Jacqueli!
ne A Stodnick and Renée R Trilling , Kathleen Davis, Carol Braun Pasternack, and Lisa M. C. Weston and appear at http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/journal/v1/n3/index.html#Critical-exchange-II:-The-State-of-Early-English-Studies-(Editor:-Eileen-A.-Joy). In addition, John Sodeberg contributes the first of a new column for us in the field of late antique/early medieval archaeology.

Another first for HA is that we have an embarrassment of riches. So we have split the issue slightly in order to give each section its due and recognize each set of authors for their excellent work. 14.2 which will appear later this month is guest edited by Andrew Rabin on Anglo-Saxon Law. We are pleased to have Kathryn Powell, Lisa Oliver, Nathan Breen, Jay Paul Gates, Rebecca Brackman, Daniela Fruscione. Along with these fine articles, we are quite pleased to have a review essay by Marijane Osborn. A full table of contents is available at: http://www.heroicage.org/issues/14/toc.php

I'd like to thank Deanna Forsman, Eileen Joy, Andrew Rabin, and Brad Eden for their hard work in helping all this come to fruition. I would also like to mention and thank Bill Hamilton, Kris Vetter, and Heather Flowers for editing and copy editing; without them performing this task, this issue would not appear. Thank you all. I hope you, the reader enjoy the issue(s), and as always, commentary is welcome.

Tolkien and White

Whilst I prepare some thoughts on the UnDark Dark Ages, I return to jot some thoughts on another subject altogether. This past summer I returned to a book I read 25 years ago and foolishly decided to teach it: T. H. White's The Once and Future King. I enjoyed it so much I decided to teach it again this semester.

I noticed some connections and while I haven't been extensive in my search, I hadn't noticed anyone else comparing White and the Inklings, particularly Tolkien.

A few points worth considering I think:

They were contemporaries.

They were both born and spent early years in the Empire rather than Britain

They both trained in English.

They both had absent fathers: Tolkien's father died, White's was an alcoholic from whom White's mother divorced when White was 14.

They both spent some important years of their teens separated from parents and in the hands of "tutors" who would greatly influence them.

They both had to do without a maternal connection: Tolkien because his mother died, White's was emotionally distant, distant enough to warp the man.

They both draw on multiple ancient/medieval traditions in telling their tales

They both published their first attempts at what they would become most known for in 1937.

They both kept their audiences waiting until the '50s for the conclusion to their 1937 works.

They both have something to say to their times and the modern world.

They are both engaging in medievalisms of various kinds.

They both have compelling heroes.

They both have something to say about war, heroism, and love.

Those are a few things. The more I think about it, the more I think that a comparison of White, Tolkien, and Lewis in terms of theme, characterization, influences, medievalism etc might be in order.

There are of course differences as well: for example White was too young to see action in WWI and was a conscientious objector to WWII and lived in Ireland during that whole period. It on the subject of war and battle I think that I would start a comparison.

Why the Dark Ages Weren't Dark II

For a few years now, I've been producing headwords for an encyclopedia for a publisher on the Early Middle Ages in NW Europe, roughly 300-1100. The headword lists are huge. There is just simply too much to include and consider, all the more important since the perception is that nothing interesting or important happened in that period (or at least from 400 on). In the meantime the editor at the publisher has produced some other encyclopedia on other topics and has now soured on the idea of riding heard on 600-1000 articles of varying length between two covers. Instead the project has shifted gears to more of what I would call "state of the field" essays in a 600 page volume. And considering the size of my lists of headwords, this is probably the best thing to do. So I've proposed the following loose and general breakdown to be tightened up as I go along. What even this loose program demonstrates, even in its incomplete state, is how much there is going on in this period. I also plan in the series of blog posts to address each of the topics in some way. And thanks Steve for the nudge! I'll try and post as often and much as I can.

Late Antique and Early Medieval NW Europe: an overview of the region in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries that will include an overview of the current debate about the "fall of Rome", but will also include discussion of non-Roman regions as well as specialized focus on Britain, Brittany, and Gaul. A large part of this will be archaeological as well.

Religion: This article will address and span the late antique and early medieval issue, talk about paganism and Christianity and the achieved synthesis, the conversions, monasticism, the holy man, the peregrinatio, the role of church leaders in their kingdoms, political theology, etc etc. I placed it here since it easily spans the period and the region and holds the whole together so to speak

Ethnography, Ethnogenesis, and the Peoples of Early Medieval NW Europe: as the title indicates, this one discusses the problems of identifying ethnicities and peoples and who is who, cultural anthropology of regions and peoples, etc.

Linguistics and Languages: a discussion of the development of the vernacular languages; Latin to Romance, Latin as literate language, the problems with Old English and the Celtic substrata's lack of influence on the language, how medieval thinkers thought of their language, Pictish, Celtic languages and their survivals, other related issues.

Political History and Institutions: as it sounds, overview of the primary events, focus on the political institutions, though, since in such a short space a discussion of the political history of all the regions would be far too much.

Social History: self-explanatory

Economy: trade, land and land use, cities, coinage, slavery as economic factor, etc.

Intellectual History: the major intellectual developments of the period, science, philosophy and theology, navigation, computistics, cartography/geography, political theology, technology, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, etc.

Literature: primarily an overview of genres: heroic, hagiographic, epistolary, sermons, biblical literature, exegesis, scientific, etc. orality

Writing Systems, Palaeography, Epigraphy, and Codicology: the development of these three over the period, ogam, runes, Latinate alphabets, writing in the vernacular, writing in Latin, principle scripts, manuscript construction

The Arts: the non-literary arts, metal-working, glass, painting (outside of mss), music and performance, wood working, ivory, personal ornamentation, instruments, music in the church, music in other contexts, textiles, architecture, etc.

Concluding Essay: The Myth of the "Dark Ages"

Input? Stuff I've missed?

Why the Dark Ages Weren't Dark I

I am always surprised when topics like this rear up again and again and again. In more than one forum in which I participate the issue of "the Dark Ages" and how the late antique and early medieval period were just so bad, and so much worse than the Roman period is taken practically at face value, as, believe it or not, historical fact. *SIGH*!!! And then there was even someone on ANSAX who brought up whether the language should be called "Old English" at all and not rather Anglo-Saxon, since it was simply a German dialect and not really related to modern English. OI!

So I've decided it's time to do something about it. Ok, t'is a little something and not many read this and all that, but nonetheless, this is my little corner and I will gladly use it for this purpose. What purpose? Get to the point! Consider this post an introduction to a discussion on Why the so-called Dark Ages Weren't Dark, not even a bit gloomy.

For this first foray, I'll mention a recent book that while it focuses mostly on the second half of the Middle Ages, still makes the argument that the "Dark Ages" did not exist. Sorbonne philosopher Remi Brague has written The Legend of the Middle Ages: Philosophical Explorations of Medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Well ok, that's the English title, not the original French. The book in some 16 essays argues that the period was philosophically rich and moving. There's also Douglas Rushkoff who has been arguing that we adapt some medieval ideas about banking and the self and other practices to our modern world to make it a better place. I outline these briefly since it is late and this post has already taken a week to get this far. So I'll launch the series and hope for more posting in the near future.

Kalamazoo

So the beginning of the school year's craziness is settling down slowly but surely as the receptions, meetings, student concerns and all those initial matters that eat up so much time finally dissipate, and we get down to the nitty gritty of what we do: teach, research, write, and have regular meetings with stuff to do. I've already been placed on a departmental committee though we have yet to meet, and I'm "embroiled" in a "fight" to put a graduate level Anglo-Saxon lit course on the docket for next semester. Fight is too strong a word; but our current head is an Americanist and the previous incarnations of this spot (used to be 3 people, and now there's me) were heavy on the Shakespeare and late medieval stuff....but there seems to be some interest, curiosity mostly since most of them have never really encountered Old English, Latin, or Anglo-Saxon literature. So hopefully it will pass the request phase and be on the schedule for Spring, and then one hopes that a sufficient number of grad students sign up to make it a go. As part of my evangelism for the course, I've volunteered to give a lecture for the Honors program (the whole university and town are the target audience) on an Anglo-Saxon topic involving the Vikings, always a hot topic. It will occur during the registration period for next semester. More on the topic and the paper anon.

But this post is really about something else. Way back when last fall, Eve Salisbury asked some questions regarding the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo based in part on a letter the current director had received. There was conversation on Facebook where the original post occurred, and I blogged about it here, with comments that followed. I am not certain that the actual questions that Dr. Salisbury actually asked were ever answered. I thought perhaps as we move into another Congress season of preparing for the event, it might be a good time to address those queries.

The first question was "What are the concerns out there?" The chiefest concern I think is really nothing that the organizers of Kalamazoo can do anything about. This came up in the discussions on Facebook and comments on my blog post. That is, that there is an attitude out there that "it's just Kalamazoo." Of course, this can be said for just about any conference. I once had a colleague who felt that way about just everything he did: conference paper, publication, whatever. To him, quality didn't matter. If it got accepted, it was a line on the CV that made him look good: anyone looking at the CV wouldn't know whether it was a good paper or not.

That attitude is pervasive; it is made all the more so because of the pressures that young scholars face in the market place to a significant degree and older scholars feel in terms of seeking tenure should they be lucky enough to have a TT slot. Adjuncts dream of feeling these pressures but generally are too busy making ends meet by teaching at multiple institutions to do so in an effective way. Or at least that was my experience. The point is that the CV building is more important than the production of quality work. It is my belief, however, that sooner or later, such an attitude catches up with you. Sooner or later, shoddy work for the CV line will be noticed. What's more, such dead weight, kills the field. One hopes that those who think they can get by with shoddy papers at conferences will realize their own contribution to the death of an otherwise vibrant field of study.

How can we change the response? That I don't know. I am open to suggestions of how to convince the people who say "It's just Kalamazoo" to "It's Kalamazoo." I'll share a story again that I've shared before. I encountered a fascinating text that so far as I could discover there had only been a not well done dissertation on the text from the early 20th century. SO I began translating it and researching and proposed a paper. Sadly for me, the rest of the school year was overwhelming and I didn't get back to the project and had a very shoddy paper to show for it. My attitude has never been "it's just Kalamazoo", so I was already very ashamed and embarrassed at this turn of events. I hoped that since it was in a session with a wide range of papers, occurring right after lunch, and more or less out of the way, that I might get away with a small audience. But alas, no. A large audience was in attendance, among them the five biggest names in the field related to my paper. I embarrassed myself. Those big names wrote me off that day, and some of them I am still trying to show that I have something to say in the field....no matter how good my papers are, they remember that first encounter. The lesson: it can never be "just Kalamazoo". One never ever knows who will show up at a session; shoddy work can get noticed and can have a career effect. Don't deliberately do bad work and say "its just Kalamazoo" because sooner or later, it'll be found out that you do bad work.

How would I like to see the Congress in the future?

Well, that's a good question. I actually have no problems with the Congress. The structure is good and allows time for networking and other types of meetings to occur. My biggest problems have less to do with the actual event and more to do with the planning.

1) I have submitted sessions that have been refused for no good reason I can see. Going through the CFP and the program later, I have found *NO* sessions related to what I proposed, or at most one. I do keep track of such things.

2) I have also noticed a tendency to group topic sessions: so that in one session block there will be 5 Anglo-Saxon sessions and then the next two session blocks none at all. That's just bad planning and having worked on the other side of the table, I know the tools that we left behind designed to prevent such nonsense actually work!

Certainly, field session overlap cannot be avoided entirely. But it certainly can be better. And yes, I am more than well aware of the restrictive resource allocation that the MI experiences. But there is really one person who puts it together, always has been, and it isn't the invaluable, fantastic Coordinator whom I love and adore. Unless things have changed since I've been there.

So I'd like to see more even handed, consistent treatment of session offerings and session organization.


Is the ZOO still worth visiting?

Without question. Not only do I often (not always admittedly) hear good papers, but projects I'm involved in get carried a step further, I meet new people every year, I hear papers outside my area, I make new connections the enrich my own scholarship and teaching. There is no question that the Congress at Kalamazoo is worth visiting, and that in fact it is a given that I will try to make it each year as 1 of my 2 or 3 conferences a year.

Heroic Age 13

On behalf of the staff and editorial board of The Heroic Age, it is with very great pleasure that I announce the release of Issue 13: http://www.heroicage.org/issues/13/toc.php. Also please take note of updated links pages, Calls for Papers, and other items at the main site: http://www.heroicage.org.

I would like to give special thanks to Deanna Forsman without whom this whole endeavor would fall apart, Bill Schipper for his archivist activities, Bill Hamilton and Heather Flowers for editorial help, and others who read, edited, and were patient through the too long process.

Sincerely,

Larry J. Swain
Editor in Chief
The Heroic Age
http://www.heroicage.org
haediting@yahoo.com
lswain@bemidjistate.edu
theswain@operamail.com

Čapek and C. S. Lewis Ruminations

Some readers will know that Karel Čapek, the scifi writer who gave us robot (from his Rossum's Universal Robots, from which play Isaac Asimov took the term and so it became common in English, in the short form of the story), wrote a work published in 1936 titled in English War with Newts. The basic plot is that under the surface of the Pacific a race of intelligent newts is discovered, then taught, then exploited, and finally they rebel by waging war on humans. The work is a political and social satire and very obviously fits many a historical and current situation. The most obvious point is the evils of colonialism, a theme shared by many works from Shakespeare's The Tempest-though admittedly Shakespeare I don't think was aware of the power of his description in that regard-to the recent reboot of Battlestar Gallactica.

Not quite two decades and a world war later, C. S. Lewis published volume four in the Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair. The plot takes the heroes underground where an intelligent race of "gnomes" or "earthmen" from deeper down in the earth are held in thrall by the evil Lady of the Green Kirtle who is planning to use the gnomes to invade and wage war on humans on the surface. The gnomes are from Bism, and once the Lady is conquered and killed, the enchantments she devised to hold the gnomes enslaved is broken and they wish to return to that land flowing with molten rock rivers in which there are salamanders cavorting.

Some of the similarities will be apparent. Colonialism is bad in both texts; both texts uphold those from beneath as an enslaved race, both depict that race as exploited. The differences are that in the latter Lewis depiction the gnomes and their wise salamander friends simply return to their world as it was before the enslavement from above. Well, that's the easy way to describe it anyway.

Now I'm not suggesting influence or direct borrowing here. But I do find it interesting how many points of contact there are between the two, only a few of the more obvious I have outlined here. It also interests me that both make use of medieval typology about gnomes and salamanders in Lewis' case and newts in Čapek.
All this mumbling and seeing connections was brought about by a local theater company that put on a play version of Čapek's work; I could not help but see points of contact between the two.

And speaking of Newts and exploitation, Newt Gingrich is back in the news. Some might recall that ol' Newt described himself as "inherently medieval" a year or so ago. And now, he is feeling quite free to distort medieval history in order to support his political agenda. For those who don't read or regularly follow the Got Medieval blog, let me at least suggest that you read this post: Professor Newt's Distorted History Lesson. There you have it.

Note Taking???

Jonathan Jarrett posted recently about his methods of note taking: http://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/take-notes-a-miscellany-of-how-to-posts/. Curt Emanuel followed up with his own method of note taking here. Both posts have comments from other readers which are insightful and helpful. I thought that perhaps I might frighten the two of you who read this with my own "method" of note taking and keeping track of things.

I do take notes. Sort of. I am very visual oriented. If I read it, generally I remember it, though not always where I read it. So I do jot notes on papers I hear, but not many, hoping that if I like the paper, it will appear in print. If I really like what I hear, I'll ask for a copy, though I confess that many are unwilling to share.

Now before going on about note taking, let me say two things about hearing conference papers and two tools that I wish were more widely used in our field.

The first is something that the Society of Biblical Literature does. SBL holds a large conference, a little bigger than K'zoo, each year. Papers are longer than our standard 20 minutes, but other than that there is a great deal of commonality between the two. Each year, the SBL used to publish SBL Proceedings, or something like that that consisted of papers read at the conference (this was back when I was an active member more than 20 years ago now. I can no longer find any such thing on their website, so Stephen or some other SBLer can give me some info, perhaps). Session organizers, I believe, nominate papers from their sessions for inclusion in the published SBL proceedings, authors would polish said papers, and in they would go into a fairly thick but enormously useful and interesting collection of the best of the conference.

I've tried to do something similar on a much smaller scale. At various times in the past, I have written organizers and authors of various sessions at Leeds and Kalamazoo and suggested doing a special section in The Heroic Age that would essentially be a session or two sessions of papers as read at the conference with the addition of footnotes. We'd actually put these up as PDFs for download, and so begin a process of perhaps having an Late Antique-Early Medieval Proceedings....it would involve little editing on HA's part, authors would retain copy right and so could continue to work on their contribution and publish a version elsewhere with only a nod in our direction, and of course would be free other than the cost of hosting, give CV lines, and make scholarship more widely available online. Combine this effort with the new discussions on more open peer editing recently practiced at The Shakespeare Quarterly and subsequent discussions, and in my view we'd have a winner publication. Minimal work by editors, authors, and minimal costs with the benefit of a wider dissemination of good scholarship that benefits interested readers, scholars, authors, and conference organizers alike seems a good initiative to get behind and encourage.

Alas, I've never been able to drum up interest. Usually my proposal is met with silence. I am thinking that I may just simply go ahead and institute a practice next year in the session I'm involved in K'zoo and just do it....though I have been reluctant since *I* am involved that that taint the effort. Anyway....there it is. It is a tool that would make some note taking unnecessary.

A second tool that I wish were more widely used and done in the field is the marvelous practices of the Old English Newsletter. Two issues of the four that OEN publishes each year (ok, now the only 2 issues actually printed in traditional format)are the annual bibliography in Anglo-Saxon Studies and the Annotated Bibl. Also published each year are abstracts from conferences on papers dealing with Anglo-Saxon studies. Once again the online environment and HA provide an opportunity to create useful tools for the field as well.

First, the bibliography would be extremely useful. Copied in part from OEN and from TOCS-IN for classics, an online bibliography for the field of Late Antiquity and Early Medieval Studies (excluding Anglo-Saxon England) would be very helpful in a lot of ways. The biggest thing needed is PEOPLE. While eventually and over time one hopes to build the database backwards, what would be useful is just simply starting with this year (or whatever year) as Year One. Many hands make quick work. So one person is in charge of Merovingian studies, and under that person several colleagues contribute a little. One or two people Irish studies and so on. It would be pretty easy to build a database/wiki if people would be willing simply to input what they read in their own field.

Second, the summary of what is published. We all read journal articles. Not necessarily when they first appear, but we do read them and get to the lastest Peritia, Scholastica, Medium Aevum etc. Simply write a summary, the same summary perhaps that you would do for your own notes and filing system or Library Thing or whatever you use to keep track. Very helpful, and collecting such notes together in one place gives one a good overview of what is going on in the field, even fields outside one's own.

Third, related to the conference proceedings would be the conference abstracts...an abstract of papers in the field for conferences. Most conferences require a submitted abstract, so simply submit the abstract to the abstract wiki after you send the paper in. Organizers of sessions have abstracts, simply submit them to the wiki.....quick work, many hands, one useful tool.

Ok, that covers that....I dream big. I think these would be very useful and for the most part would simply be gathering together work we already do for ourselves.

Back to the main subject now...my method of note taking. I don't have a method. I take notes...I write in margins of books and articles, I highlight, I have journals...you know those blank books they have at book stores, and I jot ideas, articles, info, etc in there. But I also have electronic notes and files. I have a database of materials I have that is not complete in any way, shape or form, but during breaks (like I have those!!!) I do input material. So my note taking is as eclectic as I am: pen and paper, marginalia and other types of glossing, electronic, once in a while I even write up summaries of material.

One thing about databases, notes, and the like: leave room for serendipity!!! Seriously, some of my best finds of information have been the result of accident while browsing something else.

Ok, enough. I will be moving soon, so I am not certain whether there will be posting for awhile. Not that I'm frequent in the first place. But there it is.

Tolkien's Macbeth Update

Thanks to Troels and Jonathan who commented on my Tolkien's Macbeth post and gave me a good bit of info on an issue I hadn't actually looked into.

As a bit of an update, researching something else entirely, I was poking about the Rigsthula and came across a description of the great king who heals and sooths minds. Sounds familiar, eh?