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August 4, 2005
Carnivalesque
What have people interested in things Ancient and Medieval been up to lately? Here are a few offerings -- some submitted by their authors, some by readers, and some dug up by your host - Michael Tinkler. all links open in new windows
To begin on a properly carnivalesque note, Anne Brannen at Creating Text(iles) tells us about Lewd Maygames and Riotous Piping in Barns
Item bicause the Saboth day is so fondly abused in going vnto Fayers and visiting of frendes, and acquaintances, and in feasting and making of good chere, in wanton dawnsing, in lewd maygames sometyme continuing riotously with Piping all whole nightes in barnes and such odde places, both younge men and women out of their fathers and masters howses, I charge all my parishes, within my Dioces, and charge the Churchwardens, Sidemen, and ministers to see that no such disorders be kept vpon the Sabaoth day, commonly called the sundayes, as they will aunswere vppon their othe.This entry is an entry from a series describing a summer research trip. We know that academic summers sometimes look like beer and skittles, but some of us travel around the world to go to ill-ventilated libraries and read documents in crabbed hands. I myself had a few posts using the word Carnivalesque earlier this summer, but I didn't get to go anywhere. No one even brought me a tshirt.
Natalie Bennett of Philobiblon took a less professionally focused trip -- she was cycling through Kent -- but when those inclined to think about the past go pedalling around high and late medieval buildings, they can't help but think. Those who blog can't help but type about architectural cycling.. She found that the villages and towns of later medieval Kent weren't quite what she expected.
Carl Pyrdum at Got Medieval offers Astonishing Tales of French Bureaucracy -- his first trip to the Bibliotheque Nationale as a reader. Woe! Footnotes!
Michael Hendry at Curculio offers a way to pass the dog days of summer for those of us who aren't travelling -- Latin Scrabble! Go comment and play at home!
It seems that many people who aren't reporting research trips are still thinking more lightly than usual. Jim Davila at Paleojudaica offers a list of lost books he'd like to see.
It's heartening to know that what once was lost can be found. the eponymous Glaukôpis of Glaukôpidos commented on the rediscovered Sappho poem and offered some alternative translations.
Two of my daily reads for keeping up with things found are Mirabilis.ca and David Nishimura's Cronaca. Both are constant sources for urls forwarded to my students with the subject line "look! someone just dug up another one of those things we were just talking about!" I recommend them both to your rss feed reader. When they go on vacation I miss them!
David Nishimura took a plunge into publishing original scholarship in late July, though -- he's been posting regularly on the Macclesfield Psalter situation. Because an article he and his wife have written is in festschrift limbo, he's posted it (with permission but without images). Ah, those double-medievalist marriages!
Michael Drout at Wormtalk and Slugspeak has an Update on the Crazy Sheep DNA Project (his use of the term "crazy"). For your less crazy medieval manuscript needs there's always Pecia -- nominated by a reader and also recommended on Cronaca last week. You have to be able to read French, but we can do that, can't we? And for archeology news, mainly in German but occasionally launching into other tongues, Archaeo-News-Blog.
Since I just used the word part archaeo-, I turn to archaeoastronomy - the term and Alun Salt's site. He speculated recently about which comes first -- addition or multiplication? The answer might surprise you, but for those who think I'm setting a math reading, there are pictures. I especially liked the aside "A lot of thought on numbers requires assumptions which we don’t even acknowledge existing."
Word parts and words - I know that's what hooked a lot of us on a past. Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti had a nice post on augurium and auspicium.
Another Damn Medievalist at Blogenspiel speculates about why she loves the early stuff -- I concur. But to remind us all that a specialty in things old doesn't improve one's character, Dennis at Campus Mawrtius posts about an Italian human interest story I'd missed retired classics teacher as con man. Can't trust a man just because he has Latin and Greek. What is the world come to?
The past isn't always long ago and far away. Tony Badran at Across the Bay posts on Ethnohistory, Ideology, and Modern Politics -- what's an Amorite? a Canaanite? a Phoenician? Think it doesn't matter in modern Lebanon? Then you don't read Tony often enough.
Did you know there's a Beowulf movie? It's going to be about as horrible as you might imagine -- Grendel has a father, for instance -- but the costumes look like fun. The world premiere is going to be at the Toronto film festival in September. I'm sure we'll all buy it on DVD, no matter how horrible it is, just like I'm about to buy the director's cut of Alexander.
The next will focus on the Early Modern, but I haven't seen a host announced yet.
Further: you can also go read this -- about a blog I intended to include.
Further: The Über Carnival page at Truth Laid Bear
Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 4, 2005 4:31 PM