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February 4, 2005
What I'm Reading - on spec
"Every Valley Shall Be Exalted": The Discourse of Opposites in Twelfth-Century Thought, Constance Brittain Bouchard. Even though Bouchard has a strong tendency to write about the top of the social spectrum (NOT that there's anything wrong with that; my main folks are the Carolingian court, after all), this book considers the other side of the dialectical set-up -- the valleys, unexalted, in terms of their worth. She is trying to help us see that dialectical opposition is not necessarily the same as the modern "other." since my #3 or #4 project for this term (which may get moved up if the last abstract I sent out is accepted) is on a difficult-to-explicate iconography based on the base. For longer-term readers (no, I haven't been trying very hard to redeem my archives, sorry, no links), the genitalia-themed pilgrimage badges I was messing with last April.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at February 4, 2005 10:24 AM