Do you know the Cairo Geniza? Let's have some positive content in this blog

I thought I knew about the Cairo Geniza but I have had my eyes opened to the richness of this amazing collection of medieval writings by the book The Illustrated Cairo Genizah > by Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee. https://www.academia.edu/124354176/The_Illustrated_Cairo_Genizah?

What is the Cairo Geniza? Why is it important?

The authors explain:

Almost one thousand years ago, the Jews of Old Cairo began to place their worn-out books and scrolls into a hidden storage room – a genizah – of their synagogue. Over the years, they added all sorts of writings to the pile, sacred and secular texts alike. When the chamber was emptied at the end of the 19th century, it held hundreds of thousands of paper and parchment fragments. Now known as the ‘Cairo Genizah’, it has become one of the most important sources of knowledge for the history of the Middle East and the Mediterranean world. This book offers the first illustrated introduction to the unique collections of Cairo Genizah manuscripts at Cambridge University Library. Join Genizah experts Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee as they take you on a journey of discovery through more than 125 years of research at the University of Cambridge, showcasing over 300 stunning, full-colour manuscript images across 12 thematic chapters. From ancient Bibles to medieval magic and Renaissance printing presses, 'The Illustrated Cairo Genizah' reveals the forgotten stories of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities at the centre of a millennium of world history.

They have posted a free sample at Academic.edu. > Have a look. You may be stunned, like I was.<p></b>

This project says a lot about the positive potential of the human spirit. Nice to have such a reminder. Such as:

This is one result of an amazing multi-generational scholarly project that's been going on since the 19th century. This should remind us that there are an uncountable number of similar projects out there, mostly the product of people who, given their expertise, are paid very little and receive the appropriate appreciation only in a limited circle -- if even there. If it weren't for Academia.edu and Medievalists.net you might not have heard of this one.

Academics are getting smarter. Lots of them now realize that "ordinary people" are a big audience for their work, if it's appropriately packaged and priced. The genius scholars and publishers have managed to price this book at $60 US. Compare this to other academic books with less demanding technical and personnell requirements published in PDF versions at $120.

We hear a lot about the evils of too few rich people trying to control the half of global wealth they don't already control. This is a very bad, even evil situation. But there have been good things accomplished by rich people, even people who might be considered evil in general and acting from dubious motives when they did something worthwhile. For instance Andrew Carnegie didn't make his name as a great philanthropist, but he built a lot of public libraries, which I and my neighbors have benefitted from for many years.

A final point inspired by this book, though I've had it before. Egypt is an important and creative country which should be known for more than their early expertise in piling stone blocks --though they were awfully good at that. When the Crusaders showed up in Egypt in the 13th century, they were hicks from the sticks (even though the Europeans had gotten pretty good at handling stone blocks by then). And in general, imagine what we might know if other cultures had a custom like the Genizah.

Go, have a look. You'll thank me.

Houston schools don't need libraries -- Boko Haram, Texas style

I was reading about the military coup in the west African State of Niger, and ran across a reference to Boko Haram, a Islamist terror organization that has been making trouble for years now in that region. I have often thought Boko Haram deserves a prize for honesty in extremist politics for the name (which, admittedly, is not its official name). Haram is derived from Arabic and can mean forbidden, corrupt or bad. Boko is from Hausa, a major West African language and now means something like Western Civilization (which is bad).

But look at the word boko. Doesn't it just scream to be translated as "book?" It's not like people in Nigeria, a major center of Boko Haram, aren't familiar with English.

Maybe this is just a fantasy, one if those coincidences common in language studies. No, Hausa is not related to Basque, or Sumerian.

If Boko Haram gets a rather ironic prize for its informal name what do these Houston school boards deserve:

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Students at dozens of Houston ISD schools will return in a few weeks without librarians and to former libraries that have been converted into disciplinary spaces. New Superintendent Mike Miles announced earlier this summer that librarian and media specialist positions would be eliminated at the 28 original schools being overhauled under his reform program, New Education System (NES). Both the librarian and media specialist positions are similar, but librarians typically have an advanced degree in library science. HISD said the 57 additional schools that opted into NES will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. "We understand the significance of certain programs associated with libraries and will strive to maintain those valuable offerings," the statement said.</blockquote> See the bold line above for the key sentence.

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

I just finished this book,

I'm coming to it rather late -- it was published in 1951and has been famous ever since.  (Do younger people know it now?)

Since first publication, it's been famous for a variety of reasons.

• as an astonishing first novel
• as the work of an obscure author who retreated to the country and wrote little else
• as an expose of modern (post-WWII) kids
• as a dirty book unsuitable  for the teenagers it porported to depict, and thus a book time and again banned by school boards, mainly in North America.
• as a source of slang and swear words

I heard a lot about The Catcher in the Rye as a teenager but never was required to read it, or forbidden to read it.  I didn't read high prestige books of that sort; I read science fiction.

But now I've read it, and you know what?  It's very good.

A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine

Last month I was talking about fanfic, Byzantium, Byzantine literature and such. I was inspired by an the Tor.com site article related to Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire, where the author talked in a very interesting way about the relationship between fan fiction and Byzantine literature.

Well, I got the book from my local library and I am reading it now.  Is it good?

Yes. Yes, indeed.

More about Martine here.

Reviewing "Chivalry in Westeros"

My review is posted at an appropriate time.

Jamison, Carol Parrish. Chivalry in Westeros: The Knightly Code of a Song of Ice and Fire. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2018. Pp. 217. $29.95. ISBN: 978-1-4766-7005-8.

   Reviewed by Steven Muhlberger
        Nipissing University (retired)
        Steve.Muhlberger @gmail.com 

This century's most important work of popular medievalism is without a doubt George R.R. Martin's multi-volume A Song of Ice and Fire and the 8-year-long TV series A Game of Thrones which is based upon it. (In the following review I will call this work, books and TV series both, Game of Thrones, in line with common usage). Thousands upon thousands have read the books or pirated the episodes off the internet, and "Game of Thrones" has become a catchphrase used to describe vicious, bloodthirsty politics or Machiavellian intrigue. It is now a cheap but evocative way of characterizing our current situation as "medieval," that is, "bad." 

Game of Thrones has transcended normal levels of popularity. Readers and writers and film producers have swarmed over it, not only demanding more of the story but also the opportunity to create their own versions. The desire to engage with Game of Thrones springs from the fact that having caught the imagination, the story and the setting are both familiar to the audience and capable of being added to, to suit contemporary taste. Earlier examples are Ben Hur, the book and the movies, and the Lord of the Rings and other works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ben Hur made the Holy Land and the passion of Christ, a sacred setting and story for a 19th century audience, more accessible; Tolkien made a vast magical world by mining the aesthetics of the Middle Ages. Martin also builds on a medieval foundation. The world of Game of Thrones, the fictional continent of Westeros, is medieval enough to be familiar and unique enough to make the story fresh. 

Jamison is one of the many who find Martin's mix of real and invented medieval history fascinating. She is certainly well qualified to critique and enjoy Game of Thrones--her academic expertise includes both medieval literature and medievalism. The preface and chapter one establish the parameters for her examination. Medievalism is defined in a number of ways perhaps most usefully by Tom Shippey as "the study of responses to the Middle Ages at all periods since a sense of the medieval began to develop." [1] Of course this is a very broad definition, and Jamison narrows it down; of the many possible medievalisms, her subject is Martin's contribution to the literature of chivalry. 

Chivalry in Westeros systematically works its way through a variety of issues that arise in any discussion of chivalry. Jamison is particularly interested in "the code" of chivalry and how the ideals professed by various characters in Chivalry in Westeros and the stories those characters cite in discussions with each other shape an informal debate on the nature of chivalry and its relationship to other values supposedly held by the society at large. The way in which traditions emerge from such debates, oral and written, is the subject of two whole chapters. One suspects that this analysis may have been included for the benefit of students or teachers who have not thought much about the workings of literary tradition before picking up this book. The treatment certainly is quite extensive with discussion of many actual medieval chivalric works.

Interestingly, Jamison gives pride of place to an examination of the chivalric virtue of franchise. For the purposes of this review, franchise can be defined very briefly as nobility, though it might be equated with chivalry. Franchise, like chivalry, is multi-faceted. Here it is examined in detail because it reflects the idea that real knights are of noble birth and have such obvious attributes as provable noble descent and physical beauty. Of course, neither in our Middle Ages nor in Westeros are all knights actually noble, or in unambiguous possession of the proofs of superior status. Jamison cites many examples of "social climber" knights. Franchise is tricky--and the possession or lack of it is a matter of debate. Many people who in fact do not possess basic characteristics of knighthood take a rather cynical view of the old standards; others need to fake it if they are to be anything more than "hedge [poor] knights" scraping by on the basis of a modicum of prowess or willingness to engage in treachery. The result is that chivalry, despite the sins of many who claim to be practitioners and a recurrent skepticism about its reality, is clearly central to the culture of Westeros. The bulk of the book examines such virtues and characteristics of chivalry as loyalty, prowess, vengeance, and peace-weaving and how they actually shape behavior in Westeros.

Discussion of chivalry is a discussion of ideals versus reality. It is in the nature of such debates that they are unlikely to be resolved. In Jamison's presentation, the problems with chivalry spring not from the faults of individuals, but are inherent in the incoherence of chivalry. It is a matter of broken ideals rather than broken people. [2] Likewise, it shows that whether one consults with medieval romancers, the chroniclers of the Round Table, or George R.R. Martin on the reality of chivalry, the same themes emerge. 

Jamison states at the beginning of Chivalry in Westeros that her interest in using Martin's work was as a jumping-off point for teaching medieval literature and medievalism. In the last chapter, "Conclusions," she returns to this point--how Game of Thrones can be used to enhance (or, admittedly, serve to hinder) a non-specialist's understanding of the Middle Ages. She makes a rather convincing case for the usefulness of Game of Thrones in teaching medievalism, namely when it is done well and the students are receptive. Jamison refers to her experience in incorporating Game of Thrones in courses on medieval literature. Some students wrote papers touching on such sophisticated topics as the creation of "authenticity" in our accounts of medieval history and culture. Likewise students used Game of Thrones to shed light on modern concerns. Her descriptions of her students' accomplishments were very persuasive. This student work sounds on a par with work that has been produced by some of my better students when they get really inspired by a topic. At this point in history, Martin's vivid pseudo-medieval world can lead some students and scholars in interesting directions.

--------

Notes:

1. "Medievalisms and Why They Matter," Studies in Medievalism(s) XVII: Defining Medievalism(s), ed. Karl Fugelso (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2009), 45-54. 

2. p. 113: "[Le Morte Darthur] is not simply a tragedy of character; it is a tragedy of ideas...chivalry is noble but fatally flawed, fatally unstable and so too must be its practitioners," quoting Kenneth Hodges, Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory's Le Morte Darthur (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 2.

Makes me lick my lips in anticipation -- medieval Genoa

A recent book comes to us from the Medieval Review:

Benes, Carrie E., ed. A Companion to Medieval Genoa. Brill's Companions to European History, 15. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. xxvii, 560. $229.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-36061-7.

   Reviewed by Laura K. Morreale
        Independent Scholar

        lmorreale3@gmail.com

And the first paragraph makes it sound so, so attractive:

On page one of chapter seventeen, entitled "Genoa and the Crusade," author Merav Mack argues that "Genoese history is a narrative not of one city but of distant but closely-linked parts of the Mediterranean" (471). Although this statement appears near the collection's end, it neatly encapsulates editor Carrie Benes's vision throughout A Companion to Medieval Genoa, a work that emphasizes connections between the Genoese local and remote, comprehensively fleshed out in the book's maps, figures, glossary, and eighteen essay-length chapters.  

Now in real life, I could never afford this -- well, maybe if I studied Italy-- but I admire the editor and the article authors  for the ambition of their enterprise.  In a different lifetime I might have written works that emphasized connections  "of distant but closely-linked parts" of the Mediterranean and other regions.

Image:  Genoa as a top Mediterranean port today.

From the University of Pennsylvania Press: Slavery in a "Free State"

 The University of Pennsylvania Press is advertising this fascinating book:

The Alchemy of Slavery
Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730-1865

M. Scott Heerman

248 pages | 6 x 9 | 12 illus.
Cloth Sep 2018 | ISBN 9780812250466 | $45.00s | Outside the Americas £35.00
Ebook editions are available from selected online vendors
A volume in the series America in the Nineteenth Century
View table of contents and excerpt

"M. Scott Heerman provocatively muddies the waters, demonstrating how slavery survived in 'free' Illinois all the way through the Civil War. His reinterpretation does much to link the history of Middle America to the global history of slavery."—Christina Snyder, Penn State University

"M. Scott Heerman offers much-needed and close scrutiny of the Illinois Country, a region that, because it straddled empires, labor systems, freedom, and slavery, opens up new understandings along a number of fronts, not least of which is the relationship between slavery's many iterations and the kind of freedoms those slaveries engendered. This book joins a growing body of scholarship that considers slavery and its legacies to be a national (versus a southern) problem, and which illuminates slavery as a historical process as opposed to a static and singular institution."—Susan Eva O'Donovan, University of Memphis

"Ambitious and meticulously researched, The Alchemy of Slavery illuminates the complex development of slavery and freedom in Illinois over more than a century. Heerman demonstrates the significance of local practices without neglecting broader developments in the French and British empires and in Washington, D.C. This book is wonderfully attentive to questions of geography and scale and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of colonial and early national North America." —Kate Masur, Northwestern University

In this sweeping saga that spans empires, peoples, and nations, M. Scott Heerman chronicles the long history of slavery in the heart of the continent and traces its many iterations through law and social practice. Arguing that slavery had no fixed institutional form, Heerman traces practices of slavery through indigenous, French, and finally U.S. systems of captivity, inheritable slavery, lifelong indentureship, and the kidnapping of free people. By connecting the history of indigenous bondage to that of slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world, Heerman shows how French, Spanish, and Native North American practices shaped the history of slavery in the United States.

The Alchemy of Slavery foregrounds the diverse and adaptable slaving practices that masters deployed to build a slave economy in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, attempting to outmaneuver their antislavery opponents. In time, a formidable cast of lawyers and antislavery activists set their sights on ending slavery in Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, Lyman Trumbull, Richard Yates, and many other future leaders of the Republican party partnered with African Americans to wage an extended campaign against slavery in the region. Across a century and a half, slavery's nearly perpetual reinvention takes center stage: masters turning Indian captives into slaves, slaves into servants, former slaves into kidnapping victims; and enslaved people turning themselves into free men and women.

M. Scott Heerman teaches history at the University of Miami.

Books on parade!

Over the past twenty years I have written several books on "formal deeds of arms," namely jousting, tournaments, judicial duels and the relationship between chivalry and pragmatic warfare.  These books have been available from a number of large and small publishers (online) but few people have had a chance to see the books (very pretty) or hold them in their hands before making a decision to buy.

So this weekend I will be taking my personal copies to the Ealdormere Coronation in Shakespeare, Ontario.  I don't have copies for sale, but at least you will be able to judge their quality.  There will also be display copies of some SCA-relevant books.

The Sword of Justice by Christian Cameron.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51pWIXsYO5L._SX323_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Earlier this month I was able to get hold of the next volume of my favourite historical series – which is called the Chivalry series or the Thomas Gold series. The story takes place in the historical. That's not exactly neglected by historical writers, namely the Hundred Years War. But Cameron is much better at handling this material than just about anybody I can think of. The main character is the Squire/Knight Thomas Goldwho rises to the social ranks by fighting for various warlords, mostly English. He is a first-person narrator, which means that Cameron has taken on the challenging task of creating a character with a believable 14th century presentation who also speaks convincingly and comprehensibly to us. For instance Thomas Gold  has got to have a reasonably accurate attitude towards religion in the era of the papal schism, and talk about it in such a way that he doesn't lose our sympathy  or our ability to keep track of what's going on.

How many people reading this know anything about the papal schism in the 14th century? Yet Cameron is able both to explain the conflict in the church at this time and convince us that real people in that time took their seemingly exotic beliefs and religious practices seriously.

Other strong points. Cameron, who has a military background and intense personal interest in historical combat is very  good at depicting not just hand-to-hand fighting, but also training regimens and the organization of armies. He makes all of these subjects extremely interesting if you are at all inclined to military fiction.

Further, is not just the main character who is well described and believable, it is all of the characters who appear in the series. Cameron has room in the series for a lot of detail. He uses it well to create a world inhabited by a rich variety of characters: men and women, rich and poor, Christian and non-Christian and on and on.

As a professional historian I find the most impressive thing about this series is that Cameron does not restrict himself to the easiest and the best known parts of the first half of the Hundred Years War. It's not all English roughnecks wandering over the devastated French countryside – though there is plenty of that in parts of the series. This book, however is largely about the wars in the Mediterranean basin. This is unfamiliar material for most of us, but we are surely better informed and deeply interested by the time we are done with this book. We come away from it as well with an appreciation of what crusading was like in this later era.

Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century, by Andrew B.R. Elliott

Medievalism can mean several different things: historical re-creation inspired by the Middle Ages, drawing on medieval precedents to shape art and literature, using the symbols of the medieval past to justify modern nationalist movements; the academic study of the Middle Ages. Undoubtedly some of you can come up with more types of medievalism. The adoption of medieval ideas and and symbols by extremists in the last little while is something that concerns me as a medievalist (academic) and a medievalist (hobbyist). These people are stealing my good name by associating medievalism with loathsome ideas and actions, which in some cases include murder. The Medieval Review (hosting site being upgraded this week) slipped into my mail box today, and it included this very interesting book review. I know no more about it than what is written below:

Elliott, Andrew B. R. Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century. Medievalism. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. Pp. 223. $39.95. ISBN: 978-1-84384-463-1.

Reviewed by Richard Utz

Georgia Institute of Technology

richard.utz@lmc.gatech.edu

While researched, written, and published before most of last year's momentous discussions about the role of race, gender, politics, and ideology in medieval studies and medievalism, Andrew Elliott's study is a timely and relevant contribution to the field. It continues the work begun by Louise D'Arcens and Andrew Lynch (eds., International Medievalism and Popular Culture, 2014), Tommaso Carpegna di Falconieri (Medioevo militante: La politica di oggi alle prese con barbari e crociati, 2011), David M. Marshall (ed., Mass Market Medieval: Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture, 2007), and Bruce Holsinger (Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror, 2007), but deepens their insights with a focus on the roles of contemporary media and communication, specifically online medievalisms. It also offers an original theoretical framework for future investigations.

Aware of the often visceral reactions of medieval historians to the public (mis)use of the Middle Ages by non-academic voices, Elliott is careful to prepare a secure theoretical foundation for his subject matter in the first three chapters. He immediately demarcates medievalisms referring to medieval history from heavily mediated popular political medievalisms. For the latter, the Middle Ages is most often merely a "'surprise player' used throughout political discussion by the modern media in order to become a site of identity, a point of identification or an ideological weapon then reused across other media" (6). According to Elliott, these popular medievalisms tend to originate in a three-step process: First, they need to be expropriated from history, as when medieval objects, concepts, and symbols are invoked in a postmedieval context; second, this expropriation is repeated and retransmitted, allowing the meaning of the object, concept, and symbol to gradually stand for new meanings increasingly unrelated to any historical reality; and third, the object, concept, or symbols is assimilated, translated, and modified so that it is completely "divested [...] of its original meanings and context-dependent significance making it ripe to be grafted onto modern concerns" (6). In chapters 4 and 5 of his study, Elliott details this process for the use of the (medieval) crusades by both George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden:

"In each case, though for very different purposes, the cultural symbolism of the Crusades was excised from its original meaning, transmitted through the mass media in a new form, and ultimately became the subject of a dispute not over their original meaning but over their new significance as an ideological weapon. So when bin Laden calls on his fellow Muslims to resist a Crusader invasion of the Holy Land, he is referring to an established tradition which has, through relentless repetition, assimilated the modern armed incursions into the Middle East with twentieth- and twenty-first-century "crusades." Likewise, it is precisely because the term was already in use that Bush's famous description of the War on Terror as a Crusade had such enormous political and ideological resonance"(6-7).

In chapter 6, Elliott shows a similar process at work for the events and media reception of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011 and justified his actions by stylizing himself as a Knight Templar defending western civilization against its allegedly impending Islamization. Chapters 7 and 8 move on to a discussion of the popular political medievalisms of the right-wing English Defense League (EDL) and the Islamic State (IS), respectively.

The central claim of Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media is that these various social media and other online mass medievalisms have little or nothing to do with the historical Middle Ages, but only and exclusively exist because of contemporary meme culture. In this culture, traditional models of authority and authenticity for communicating about medieval culture are pretty much irrelevant. Instead of the onerous identification of sources, causes, and paths of transmission, which would challenge ambiguity and inaccuracy, the modes of dissemination for medievalist memes in contemporary mass media are excellent examples of Jean Baudrillard's simulacra, presenting world-wide audiences with copies of copies without an original. However, even a Baudrillardian analysis of the vertical relationships between contemporary medievalisms and the Middle Ages will not do justice to the empty signifiers dominating current mass media. What is needed to understand these medievalist memes is an investigation into the horizontal relationships between various contemporary and multiply mediated mass medievalisms.

Elliott clearly has the background in communication and media theory necessary for dealing with these "elastic," "ludic," "pejorative," and "deliberately inappropriate" (all terms used in Elliott's study) mass medievalisms. In Michael Billig's Banal Nationalism (1995), which explores the uses of nationalism as when someone waves the flag not as part of a conscious and specific expression of national identity, but as a vague celebration of patriotic identity, Elliott has found a perfect model for his own study. He investigates "banal medievalisms," which he describes as bricolages of ideological redeployments of medievalist tropes or memes, or "the Middle Ages in the twenty-first century media landscape" as "unconscious sites of unchallenged heritage and, ultimately, unchallenged reference points in our collective imagination" (16).

Like Billig's seemingly innocuous "banal nationalisms," Elliott reveals "banal medievalisms" as an "endemic condition made more powerful by the fact that [they] pass unobserved in most cases" (17). Behind these medievalisms' superficially harmless repetitions and unaware remediations, then, he recognizes the potential for the kind of banal evil Hannah Arendt diagnosed in the quotidian absence and failure of thinking, imagination, and self-awareness embodied by Hitler's Adolf Eichmann.

Many traditional medievalists will consider Elliott's book as external to medieval studies and therefore unrelated to their own work. After all, he is investigating medievalisms that are intentionally extirpated from the past events, texts, and artifacts they study. Moreover, these semantically "flattened" medievalisms are popular and political, two features most academics have learned to treat with disdain or at least caution. However, I would suggest that all medievalists should read his book because they will gain important insights into how their own published work and their teaching will increasingly be perceived by academic as well as non-academic audiences. Even if only to resist the alacrity with which these medievalisms can now spread at an electronic news cycle's notice, it serves medievalists well to comprehend the processes by which certain dominant (and often contradictory) ideas of the Middle Ages come about and are transmitted.

The association between "Middle East" and "Middle Ages" in the early 2000s is a case in point: Elliott documents how politicians, journalists, and others on instant messaging services and social media ceaselessly repeated and repurposed banal tropes and memes of the Middle Ages as regressive, violent, superstitious, primitive, anti-modern, and non-technological, until these tropes and memes ended up in support of political positions completely unrelated to anything we know about medieval culture. Elliott even documents how similar or the same memes of the "dark ages" were employed by the U.S. government as well as by Al Qaeda: If George W. Bush's famous post-9/11 gaffe about calling his "war on terrorism" a "crusade" was the beginning of a wholesale cultural clash between the "modern" west and the "medieval" East, Osama bin Laden employed Bush's neoconservative use of western orientalist/medievalist rhetoric and its elision of Islamism, Islam, and Arabic culture to mask Al Qaeda's own technological sophistication as well as to brand the western interference in the Middle East as a Crusader/Zionist alliance

.

Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media would be a valuable contribution to our understanding of the phenomenon of medievalism if only for the wealth of illustrative examples it provides. However, I predict that its real legacy will be in affording a solid theoretical framework within which we can unpack what otherwise might well remain a confusing maze of medievalist mass media references. As Elliott states: "[M]edievalisms are rich with meaning because they are used so often across the mass media that the meaning is made elastic. Thus the (seemingly circuitous) assertion of banal medievalism is that medievalisms have meaning because they surround us, and they surround us because they have meaning" (45).

I am grateful to Andrew Elliott for providing us with sound scholarly tools with which to explain the proliferation of banal medievalisms in the last 15 years, and I expect similar guidance about the sociological processes motivating the cultural phenomenon of medievalism from Paul Sturtevant's forthcoming book, The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination: Memory, Film and Medievalism. How long these tools will be efficient may depend on the accelerating pace of new communication technologies and how users and societies negotiate them. And the scholarly monograph, which takes years to write and thus considerably lags behind the speed at which technological change drives communicative practice, may not be the most efficient genre for critically accompanying what the future holds for the study of mass media medievalisms.

Boydell and Brewer's Medieval Herald

Boydell and Brewer's Medieval Herald might be seen as simply a fancy catalogue for this publishing house. But it is very pretty and even more  includes all sorts of supplementary material.

The copy I just received has not one but four different interviews with authors and editors of B and B imprints.

Two of them are of particular interest for me:  The two editors of Frisians and their North Sea Neighbours From the Fifth Century to the Viking Age ( John Hines & Nelleke IJssennagger ) have a lot of interesting things to say about the Frisians of the North Sea coast. They make the very worthwhile point that the Frisians have maintained an ethnic identity for many centuries without  uniformity in language or other cultural characteristics. They don't say so but I would guess that the landscape and seascape of the region has always been the most important common element in Frisian life.  Quote from the interview:

Today, Friesland is one of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands, whilst there also is a region of Ostfriesland in Germany. In Friesland, Frisian is still a living language with a speaking population of around 450,000, and people born here consider themselves as Frisian. The regional identity is still quite strong, and is often linked to traditions of historical events and not least the idea of a historical independence of Frisia. The historical Frisia, however, was not the same as Friesland, but covered a much larger area of the present-day Netherlands and in Germany. In different eras, the area either considered to be Frisia or to be populated by Frisians varied; in Roman times we first hear of Frisii living in the northern Dutch coastal area, while in the exceptionally valuable source Lex Frisionum the Frisian area of around AD 800 was defined as between the Zwin on the modern border between Belgium and the Netherlands and the Weser in modern Germany. In between historical reference points such as these the Frisian area variously expanded and contracted, or was not clearly defined, but the idea of a Frisia and of Frisian people continues with remarkable tenacity.

Frisians in the Early Middle Ages were not necessarily the same people as the apparently Celtic-speaking Frisii of the Roman Period, because of a habitation hiatus (or massive demographic decline) and re-colonization by people from around the North Sea. In general, it can be said that the medieval Frisians are considered as a maritime-focussed Germanic people, who made a name and fame for themselves before and during the Viking Period through seafaring and trade. They were in close connection with their North Sea neighbours, as both written sources and material culture testify, and as is explored in detail in this book.

Laura Chuhan Campbell's The Medieval Merlin Tradition in France and Italy: Prophecy, Paradox, and Translatio is about the Merlin tradition in medieval literature. My interest is the fact that one of the commanders in the Combat of the 30 believed strongly that the prophecies of Merlin guaranteed victory for  his side in that famous deed of arms.

Image:  From the Medieval Herald.

 

Istanbul: a tale of three cities, by Bettany Hughes

Back in the fall I promised somebody that I would review this book. Even when it arrived on my doorstep, all 800 pages of it,  I thought I would have no trouble finishing it up in time for people to buy copies of it for their historically minded friends before Christmas.  I soon found that I had mistaken the nature of the book. As I sank deeper and deeper into it, I realized Istanbul is not a book you read, nor digest quickly. It is a book you immerse yourself in. Quite a few readers will lack the patience for such a work. But for people who want a book that reflects the size and variety and significance of the city of Constantine (and so many other more interesting residents),  this may prove to be a treasure. It certainly is both well-written and well-thought out.

Hughes shows us Istanbul as many different peoples living together in cooperation and rivalry on a landscape and seascape that is equally varied.  She knows the city neighbourhoods and surrounding districts, the people who have lived there, the agriculture, fishing, industry that have characterized the place over the last 8000 years.  (Indeed at one point she takes a story back 800,000 years, something I thoroughly approve of.)  The network that holds place to together is network of stories and customs, many of which have been around for very long time, and indeed seem to have it originated or developed in Istanbul.

Take for instance the production and use of eunuchs for specialized political and cultural functions. No historian would argue that eunuchs were "invented" in the city. But for very long time they were an important factor not only in the practical workings of the capital of the Eastern Mediterranean, but part of its image abroad, an image that it was by no means solely negative. This is part of the complex nature of Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, that it can be and has been simultaneously a symbol of luxury, imperial power, religion and vice.

Constantinople/Istanbul also had periods of vulnerability and at times it has almost been a backwater.   It might be said that Istanbul is only now emerging from its long twentieth-century period of isolation, and isolation that Hughes clearly thinks is quite atypical of Istanbul's history.  The theme of this book is the cosmopolitan nature of the city, its capability to learn and invent and absorb elements from a variety of cultures, and to use and transform those elements into a city culture that has often been predominant in the eastern Mediterranean basin.  But since World War I the Republic of Turkey has not been a great power, and Istanbul has not been a world city putting its own unique stamp on much of the rest of the world.  It is quite possible, however, that this period is coming to an end. 

But what kind of city may today's Istanbul be?  The Great War destroyed empires, which nationalists of many stripes tried to reorganize as national states, where one history, one religion, and one ethnicity asserted its unique  legitimacy by expelling many of the historic "minorities"  from the "national homeland".  One of these empires became a Turkish state, while the imperial city lost its status as  a great eastern capital.  It is only in the last two decades or so that Turks have come to reconsider the role of their relatively new republic and its  greatest city.  This book is a cautious  argument in favor of remembering that the most important role that Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul have played during the long history of the city, has been to teach people how and why to be citizens of the world. 

Did I say that Hughes was cautious?  In today's Mediterranean region, this is a radical thought indeed.

Image:  A "Grand Turk" (Mehmet).

3000, more or less -- and a new book

Blogger tells me that the previous post is number 3000.  That's not quite accurate.  I started blogging on a different platform, and I was very active on the blog back in the pre-twitter days.  Also the 3000 posts that Blogger counts includes drafts saved by the blog.

Still, it seems that a celebratory note is appropriate.  ESPECIALLY since yesterday I started another a new book, an English translation of Le Tournoi de Chauvency.  Le Tournoi is a verse account written in 1285 of a tournament in the north of France.  The poem seems to be a lighthearted celebration of the "noble, beautiful and good people" who took part, either as participants or as audience.  It's one of the few tournament accounts about real people.  Most such descriptions are about tournaments in Arthur's court or at least in Arthur's time.

So have a festive breakfast! I will say more about Chauvency soon.

Money to burn on books? Check out ISD holiday offerings

ISD is a disributer of Medieval Studies scholarly books, generally high quality books from small presses.  For instance they distribute my Deeds of Arms series by Freelance Academy Press.

Last week I got a special offer flyer from them and it made my mouth water.  The boks on offer were mainly art oriented and the contents promised to be interesting and beautiful.

Note that these books are by no means cheap, but they have been marked down substantially.  Just the thing, if you can afford it, to give to the love of your life -- or  yourself, if you can justify the expense.

ISD

The William Morris Manuscript of The Odes of Horace
​

by William Morris, introduction by Clive Wilmer, translated by William Gladstone

9781851244492

Hardback, 2 volumes, 186 pages (facsimile + 240p commentary and translation, 183 col illus.)

Publication Date: November 2016

Regular Price: $275.00 /

Special Offer Price: $195.00

Pompeii, a Different Perspective:

Via dell'Abbondanza, a long road, well traveled​

by Arthur Stephens and Jennifer Stephens

9781937040789

Hardback, 126 pages

Publication Date: June 2017

Regular Price: $50.00 / 

Special Offer Price: $40.00

Mosaics of Ravenna: Image and Meaning

by Jutta Dresken-Weiland

9783795432065

Hardback, 320 pages

Publication Date: July 2017

Regular Price: $108.00 /

Special Offer Price: $87.00

Martin Luther. Treasures of the Reformation: Catalogue

edited by the Minneapolis Institute of Art and The Morgan Library and Museum​

9783954982233

Hardback, 504 pages, 488 color illus.

Publication Date: September 2016

Regular Price: $44.95 / 

Egyptian Wall Painting

​

by Francesco Tiradritti

9780789210050

Hardback, 392 pages, 350 color illus.

Publication Date: December 2008

Original Price: $150.00 /

Special Offer Price: $60.00

Publisher: Abbeville Press

The Good Duke now speaks English! Done, sort of (again)

Back on October 13, I announced on this blog that I had (sort of) finished my translation of  the Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis de Bourbon.  Maybe one more  run-through and I'd be able  to start a new project.


Well,  my collaborator Phil Paine and I have done considerably more than that since October.  The problems we faced as we worked on the remaining trouble spots were really difficult -- which only makes sense if you think about it.


So today's announcement should be limited.  What's done is an acceptable translation from Middle French to modern English.  Truth be told there are a very few spots where figuring out what the best equivalent in Modern English is still uncertain.  Also missing are a short glossary of mostly military terms, a map (maybe) and an introduction that will help non-specialists understand the context of the chronicle.


And there is one big thing that remains to be done; I have to retranslate our rather literal English translation into a modern one.


Why is this necessary?  Well, let me tell you of my own experiences.  About ten years ago, I was teaching late medieval history.  I did my best to find accessible, affordable, translations, or translations that were in the public domain.  There were a few century-old public domain works that might have been fun, but as I looked them over, I realized that they would be very difficult for students of the 21st century to read.  Somebody would have to translate the translation first!


That's what I have to do now.  I'm going to treat the text Phil and I have produced and act like it is the base text, and transform it into a modern work, without constantly going back to the Middle French original (though you and I know that I will be looking closely at that original.


It will be a challenge to keep some of the medieval flavor., to avoid too much exoticism or a very dull 21st century presentation.   OTOH, it should be fun to try.

Josh Marshall's excellent Christmas book list

Image:  Chris Wickham, one of the excellent historians listed here.



Josh Marshall is the editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo, my favorite source for news out of Washington, DC.  I think he is pretty smart and judicious.  Marshall, it seems, was trained as a historian, and I think it shows.

When not writing or managing, Marshal reads history.  He has made available some of the best histories he's read recently, and his list shows remarkable good taste.  I'm including most of that post  here.

Enjoy!

The cauldron and promise of Eastern Europe.

* The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End
* The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999

As I noted, I’m generally not interested in reading about contemporary history. And things from the last 100 years I generally see as contemporary history. But I’ve been interested lately in the recent history of Eastern Europe and the aftermath of World War I. These are two very different but related books. Vanquished is about the aftermath of World War I in the East – the relevant point being that the war really didn’t end in the East until the early 1920s. In many respects there were continuing cycles of brutalizing violence in the East that continued – with only a relatively brief interruption in the late 1920s – right through into World War I. This is critical to understanding the origins of fascisms and all the subsequent history of the continent. An engrossing, really important read.

The Reconstruction of Nations goes back into the Early Modern period. It’s largely a history of and a paean to a certain strain of cosmopolitan, multi-national Polish history. I have a general knowledge of the very different path to the formation of nation-states in Eastern Europe versus Western Europe. This book helped me understand that history at a much, much deeper level. It also greatly deepened my understanding and perspective on the current struggle between nationalism and multinationalism which is roiling Europe and in many respects the entire globe. These are both books I highly, highly recommend. (I also did a podcast interview with the author of Reconstruction of Nations.)

Pre-History

* By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia
* Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
* The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

History from one certain understanding begins with writing. Writing is when most of the things that historians use to understand the past come into view, when some of them even come into existence. But of course the human past did not begin with writing. Writing is a fairly recent development and in some parts of the world it’s extremely recent. Indeed, writing itself, certainly in its literary permutation, is often less reliable that modern archeology, at least on the things archeology lets us see clearly. These are three books that look at the distant past, often spanning thousands of years, mainly before the advent of writing. By Steppe, Desert and Ocean is simply the last 10,000 years of Eurasian history, the vast and surprisingly integrated stretch of land from the Pacific coast of China to Spain – where did human civilizations first develop over this expanse, how did they came into contact with each other, what were the key drivers of change. Excellent book.

Pathfinders covers some of the same territory but from a different vantage point. We tend to think of the history of exploration as the history of largely Western Europeans traveling to the Americas, Africa and Asia starting in the 1400s. There’s a whole complex and political debate about whether this counts as discovery versus conquest. But set that all aside. People have been traveling and settling new places for thousands, even tens of thousands of years, starting from the initial migrations out of Africa and culminating in the island explorers who spread out from southeast Asia to populate most of the islands of the Pacific. Basically, how did humans go from an origination point in one part of Africa to populate almost the entire globe, all long before the history of any kind of writing. Almost all long before Western European exploration. That’s this book. Fascinating read.

The last of these three is one of the densest books I’ve read in a very long time but also one of the most transformative in my understanding of numerous topics. It’s so dense that I would recommend reading it even if you read only the first half and then find it simply too tough going after the first half. (That’s what happened to me the first time. Then months later I went back to try to tackle the second half.) Because to me it went from being very dense and complex to almost impenetrable. That probably doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation. But, a transformative learning experience about the history of language, archeology, history and much more.

About half the world speaks an Indo-European language. It’s by far the biggest language family. That is largely because the ancestor language “proto-Indo-European” is the ancestor language of major languages in India, Iran and most of Europe. From Europe, English and Spanish came to dominate the Western Hemisphere. That’s a lot of people. But where and when did this language come from and how do we prove it? The premise of this book is that the speakers of this original language began in the steppe lands north of the Black Sea, which is to say modern southern Ukraine and southern Russia with Romania, Moldova and a few other countries in the mix. I don’t even know where to begin in explaining the book. But that’s what it’s about. It’s not an easy read but I found it a deeply fascinating and transformative one.

Rome

* SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
* The Triumph of Empire: The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine (History of the Ancient World)
* The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (The Penguin History of Europe)

Here are three books on Rome. We begin with the city itself in its republican period and end up with the civilization of Rome in which the city of Rome itself had become a peripheral part. SPQR is a new treatment of the whole civilization from one of our leading contemporary historians of Roman history. A very good read. The Triumph of Empire is a new look, a new interpretation of what we once called the early decline of the Romand Empire. That is what we might call the long 3rd century that takes us from high imperial years of the Antonine emperors – Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius – to the the breakdown of the third century and reconstitution of the empire under Diocletian and Constantine. I found it a very interesting discussion and history of just why this happened, the mix of successional breakdown, invasions, the rise of a new, more aggressive dynasty/state in Iran, the changing structure and personnel of the empire beginning in the early third century which anticipated the very different composition of the imperial government starting in the 4th century. If you’re interested in this period, I found it an illuminating, interesting read.

Finally, Chris Wickham’s book on the Late Antique period and the ‘Dark Ages’. The concept of a ‘dark ages’ has been under assault by historians for decades. From another perspective, it has progressively had its historiography colonized by historians from the classical period. All of these histories are – broadly speaking – efforts to understand this period on its own terms rather than just a long period when everything went to shit between the Classical era and the Renaissance or at least during the High Middle Ages. Wickham looks at the period as parts of an evolution from the classical world, still deeply formed by many of its basic assumptions. He is also attempting to push off efforts to look at this period as the proto-history of modern states. So looking at the societies and states or quasi-states of 8th and 9th century Gaul isn’t a way to understand the deeper history or origination of … say, modern France with all its nationalist mythologies. As with all these histories, modern archeology is making itself felt at the expense of the literary record which was always incomplete and wanting. Anyway, another really illuminating and pleasurable read, like every book I’ve read by this author.

A new Charny book

Surprise!

Just the other day I heard from an Australian independent scholar named Ian Wilson, who with the help of Hugh Duncan is producing  a two-volume book on Charny, one volume of biography and one consisting of translations of the Livre Charny and Charny's Questions.

I thought you'd like that!

I haven't had time to read the unfinished work, but what seems to be the most important aspect is that Wilson argues that The Book of Chivalry was not written by Geoffroi Charny, but by his son, who had the same name.

More later!

Written in Blood

Yesterday my copy of Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood arrived.  This is noteworthy because I wrote chapter 3, "Chivalry in Westeros."  Despite my involvement in this project (which included me being paid real money), I have always been skeptical of these attempts to teach history to the general public -- or at least the general fandom -- by drawing comparisons between the fictional treatment (there are, as you may imagine, more than one about Middle Earth) and  what we pros call "the real stuff." (No, we don't do that, we are too stuffy.)

But in this case, it works.  The "real stuff" is explained and interpreted with respect, as is the fictional environment.   The writing is good and accessible!  The scholars who wrote the various articles are really very good indeed.

I have to wonder what they are like in the classroom,  Actually the editor, Brian Pavlac, in telling how he got involved in the project gives us reason to believe that he at least knows how to enchant undergraduate students.

Must reconsider my earlier attitude.

Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent A Fourteenth-Century Princess and her World, by Anthony Goodman

I would like to read this book, maybe even own it. The publishers describe it this way.

"Anthony Goodman's brilliant yet accessible scholarship draws in the reader in the most entertaining and vibrant way. He was one of our greatest historians of the later medieval period, whose warm humanity shines forth in his writing. He has given us, as a parting gift, the definitive biography of an exceptional, intriguing woman. I cannot recommend it highly enough." ALISON WEIR

Joan Plantagenet (1328-1385), acclaimed in her youth as the "Fair Maid of Kent", became notorious for making both a clandestine and a bigamous marriage in her teens and, in her thirties, a scandalous marriage to her kinsman, Edward III's son and heir, Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince. Despite these transgressions, she later became one of the most influential people in the realm and a highly respected source of stability. Her life provides a distinctive perspective of a noblewoman at the heart of affairs in fourteenth-century England, a period when the Crown, despite enjoying some striking triumphs, also faced a series of political and social crises which shook conventional expectations. Furthermore, her life adds depth to our understanding of a time when marriage began to be regarded not just as a dynastic arrangement but a contract freely entered into by a couple.

This accessibly written account of her life sets her in the full context of her world, and vividly portrays a spirited medieval woman who was determined to be mistress of her fate and to make a mark in challenging times.

The Green Count by Christian Cameron

I know two excellent writers of fiction, one being Robert Charles Wilson, the traveller of time, and Christian Cameron, the historical fictioneer.  I've talked about Wilson here recently, so now it is Christian's turn.

Fear not, Christian! I have nothing bad to say about you or your most recent book, The Green Count!

I am also not going to go into great detail about the virtues of Mr. Cameron.  They are two: he combines a tremendous knowledge of the periods he writes about with believable characterizations of people who lived in those periods.  This a necessary skill for anyone who wants to re-create the people of the past; even someone who does a mediocre job is doing something remarkable.  Mr. Cameron is no mediocrity, however.  He is a master.