Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog -- It's alive!

A while back -- 10 years or more ago -- I ran across Dr. Beachcombing's blog. I believe I first found it because Dr. Beachcombing published an evocative description of what Rome must have been like in AD 600 when it was no longer an imperial capital, when it had one one-hundreth of the population that it had in the time of Augustus, but still a great many of the buildings and monuments of the good old days. A wonderful, wonderful blog post.

I followed this blog for a while then somehow it fell off my reading list. Today I decided to see if it had survived, when so many blogs have gone, with their authors's writing energy being diverted to Twitter, etc. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the good doctor is still writing! I recommend it to you.

Hollywood clichés

I am sure there are many, many movie fans and even (gasp!) movie critics who could do a better job on this post, but I feel a need to say something myself about the phenomenon. And the phenomenon is – the amazingly restricted number of cliches that are in movies in the Hollywood traditions. Like a lot of people over the last two years, I have spent more time watching Netflix than ever before. I could not help notice how often certain phrases, actions, and themes showed up. Big news, eh?

But what really struck me was how omnipresent these cliches were. I could hardly get away from them. The list could be longer but I lost some earlier versions. SCRIPT:

/b It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.

I have no choice. There’s always a choice

He’s a good man.

It’s complicated.

Thank you..for everything.

VISUAL ELEMENT: The protaganist or a villain or somebody else, overcome by anger sweeps a bunch of cluttter off a desk, smashing most of it. THEME: Father and Son don’t get along. Sometimes one of them is dead. Of course there are plenty of real father-son conflicts around the globe, but watch a few of these father-son movies and see if you think this item belongs on my list.

Like I said, this is not news. However, what does it say about the making of movies that somebody has to smash the office furniture, so, so often? Who is responsible for making endless confessions of responsibility for blameworthy activity -- with vast numbers of the offenders being immediately excused by their friends or partners or commanding officers?

Do real people say “he’s a good man?” Unless they have just walked out of a cinema? Don’t writers feel choked by the unoriginality imposed on the whole movie-making project? Note: I don’t see many science-fiction or action movies. If I did, my list of Holywood cliches would probably be quite a bit longer.

The Oxford English Dictionary blog has a good long post on "they"

Me, I've been using singular "they" for perhaps twenty years. An expert discusses the history:

Singular they has become the pronoun of choice to replace he and she in cases where the gender of the antecedent – the word the pronoun refers to – is unknown, irrelevant, or nonbinary, or where gender needs to be concealed. It’s the word we use for sentences like Everyone loves his mother. <p> But that’s nothing new. The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf. Except for the old-style language of that poem, its use of singular they to refer to an unnamed person seems very modern. Here’s the Middle English version: ‘Hastely hiȝed eche . . . þei neyȝþed so neiȝh . . . þere william & his worþi lef were liand i-fere.’ In modern English, that’s: ‘Each man hurried . . . till they drew near . . . where William and his darling were lying together.’ <p/>Since forms may exist in speech long before they’re written down, it’s likely that singular they was common even before the late fourteenth century. That makes an old form even older. In the eighteenth century, grammarians began warning that singular they was an error because a plural pronoun can’t take a singular antecedent. They clearly forgot that singular you was a plural pronoun that had become singular as well...

Remember when I used to make fun of "the One True Century?"

More than a decade ago some of my friends in the Society for Creative Anachronism started using the phrase “one true century” in connection with the 14th century. They were re-enactors, and the characterization was based primarily on their love for the armor and the noble clothing of the period.

I had no quarrel with that; I’ve always liked that period myself. But the one-truness of that century spun my head. After all, that was the era of the plague, the HYW, and many other catastrophes, documented in that popular narrative history, Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror; the Great Papal schism; dramatic commoners’ revolts, and more.

I have been working with a number of primary sources of the 14th century, and sure enough a very negative picture very often emerges. But more recently I’ve been inspired by other sources to rethink my feelings about “the one true century”. I subscribe to an e-mail list which publishes reviews of books from the whole range of medieval scholarship. A lot of these books are very specialized, or include articles that because of length may not be published elsewhere.

The reviewers, the authors, and the readers have a wealth of material to draw upon. Individual reviews may seem obscure, but taken together can make a big impression.

In particular, the large number of writings, say those devoted to theology, the development of clerical institutions, and so forth provide a rich picture of a century in which many things happened not all of them bad. Another example of the true century: I am sure that I am merely the millionth person to notice that Geoffrey Chaucer not only fought in the HYW but invented English literature. (OK, exaggeration.)

I am a bit embarrassed to find myself granting such legitimacy to “the One True Century.” After all, my first graduate course was one about the Avignon papacy (taught by Norman Zacour, bless him).

And of course we can easily find any century nearly impossible to classify: If you are old enough to remember it, try to find a good label for the twenieth century!

Korean romance

I have been watching South Korean TV series lately, with an emphasis on historical flicks. I quite like them. Some are movies like other movies. Some are quite excellent. Can I recommend again Mr. Sunshine/p One characteristic is the handling of romantic elements. This is often really good. Of course South Korea is famous these days for romance in music, too, so that should be no surprise. This kind of emphasis appeals to teenagers anywhere.../p I am now watching Clown and King on Netflix. One of the major plots involves a young Korean king and a young queen falling in love. There are various barriers keeping them apart. Nevertheless they talk to each other and speak eloquently about what love is or should be. A couple of eloquent passages. The young queen, when asks what she expects to get out of love, says:

I am here to laugh and cry together...

The young king answers a similar question:

[I am here] to see you with a bright smile, even just once.

And the visual element is really amazing.

The Last Duel

Just recently an official trailer for a Hollywood film, hhas been released to the web. I am very interested for, a number of reasons. First, it claims to be a true story about a real duel of1386 . ,

As I have written a book on judicial duels, I’m interested in what the author and the director, (Eric Jaeger and RidleyScott) have done with a difficult stortScott is an eminent figure in film and he has made movies about duels and other “deeds of arms” Gladiator, say,

In fact, Scott’s very first movie the Duelists was about two officers in opposed armies of the Napoleonic era who fight a parallel war in the form of a running duel which seems to be more important than their personal war.

See the Duelists if you can. It is extraordinary..

Most of the comments i have seen have been complaints by reenactors who are unhappy with the armor and costumes. I suggest that this is not what Scott wanted to focus on. It likely will come across as a very serious film. And if we moderns may feel unhappy with the conclusion of the story/duel, well so did people in 1386.

Time for a papal apology -- or not

What’s with the Pope?
Pope Francis came to the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church riding on a wave of good will. Compared to his rigid and very old predecessor, he seemed to be muuch more of a modern man, or at least someone who better understood the challenges facing the organization. He has shown a willingness or even a determination to deal with the great many lay members and lower clergy who disapprove of some of the traditional teachings of the Church.
Which makes his reluctance to apologize for the Church’s role in running Canada’s now notorious residential schools very puzzling. What is he thinking? Does he understand how this looks, what the effect his position will have on the Canadian church in the short run and the long?
Many of my readers will have no idea what I am talking about. Residential schools were in fact an important part of Canadian life from the mid-19th century until the 1990s, when the last one was closed. Yes, the schools were in operation in your lifetime. The purpose of the schools was to turn “savage” Indians, Metis, and Inuit into “civilized” Canadians. The method for doing this was to culturally assimilate these people by eliminating their languages and institutions. The residential schools were a key part of this policy. Young members of these First Nations group were taken from their families and subjected to a curriculum, if you can call it that, that said everything native was bad and everything white was good.
Perhaps a gentle approach to these goals might have worked, but there was nothing gentle about the residential schools. The “students” were badly fed, isolated from their families, and beaten for various errors, the most important being speaking their own languages, even a few words. The cruelty of the environment was such rthat many, many of these kids ran away and died as a result. Most of the schools were in remote, cold locations, and if you have experience a northern winter in Canada, you can easily imagine that the death rate for runaways was very high.
Now non-native Canadians don’t need to imagine. Twice in the past month, archaeologists and other volunteers, looking for the history of the residential schools and their students have found graveyards filled with hundreds of unmarked graves of students. The first find of about 250 bodies shocked the country; before the week was out, a graveyard of over 700 ws found near another school.
All the reports of residential school problems had not made a dent in the Canadian self-image – on ‘racial’ issues Canada waas one of the good guys, most thought, but all those dead kids made a tremendous impact. It sure did on me, and I already knew about the residential schools.
Now here’s where the Pope comes in.
When in this era an atrocity is brought to light – generally by the children of those who were slaughtered or displaced – those wronged demand that the wronged make recompensation, perhaps material, perhaps in the form of an apology. How much good this may do anyone is certainly open to opinion. But a lot of people have made an apology for the treatment of indigenous children central to their image of justice.
He won’t do it.
Francis has said that a separate and wider apology is not necessary because he has already made one in Bolivia, a country full of indigenous people, in 2015. This is true. There is something going on though. How can the Pope be so willing to alienate Canadian Catholics with such a PR disaster? What consideration can be so strong?
Could the Doctrine of Discovery, where Pope Alexander VI gave away the Western Hemisphere to European powers have some thing to do with it? Or some arcane in church doctrine? Tune back in half a century.

McCormick, Wickham and early medieval economics

Back in the 1990s, I thought I might write a textbook on mrdieval history. In preparation for this I bought two rather new books, Chris Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages and Michael McCormick's Origins of the European Economy. Well, neither book got read until 2021. Finally I have prioitized them and though I don't think I will be writing the textbook, I have come to a new understanding of the Crusades, which is very satisfying. It can be summed up in the question, how different were the Normans from the Bulgars in the period around 1000? I think they were very similar. If we in the European West did not have a prejudice that tells us that Bulgaria is not very important but Normandy is, we would have a quite different point of view of Easttern Europe. More later.

Horses and the laws of arms

 Loïs Forster has written an article on Geoffroi de Charny and military horses.  I only know a brief summary in ‘La place du cheval dans les traités de Geoffroi de Charny,’ in Le cheval dans la culture médiévale, ed. by Bernard Andenmatten, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, and Eva Pibiri (Florence: Sismel, 2015), pp. 199-219.

Movie clichés

I have been watching lots of Netflix movies and have noticed that there are certain cliches that are repeated A LOT, especially if they are produced in Hollywood or some other major center.  Some are visual clichés, others are dialogue.

For instance:  

    An important character angrily sweeps books and pens and so forth, creating a big mess and showing how disturbed he/she is.

"Thanks-for everything"

"It's all my fault."

And plenty more.

What really struck me is how the writers must feel constrained by these clichés. 

Another movie or so

 There are a lot of movies on Netflix that may be better than they look.

One of them is Broadchurch, a TV series about a picturesque region of England (out in the West country)  where some children have have been murdered and a cop who comes from out side the region has the difficult job of figuring out the local culture. Since I  started watching Netflix I have seen quite a few series with pretty much the same plot  -- set in Orkney, Denmark, you name it.  I tend to steer clear of most of these

But Broadchurch is different. How, you ask?  It is absolutely excellent in all respects.  

Not quite as good is Gotham, which is a non-superhero series about Batman's father.  When I say it's not quite as excellent as Broadchurch, that still leaves plenty  of room for enjoyable watching.  Note that I am not very interested in the DC universe, the Marvel universe, or most graphic novels.  Nevertheless, Gotham won me over.

Mr. Sunshine: an unlikely Korean movie

 I have been viewing some Korean TV series and I think I have found the most unlikely movie title of the last few years.  It would be more appropriate to call it AWESOME, and it surely is.  It's a historical TV series which depicts the period 1890-1910, which is a believable history of the end of the Joseon dynasty, when the great powers (especially Japan) are gearing up to take over Korea.  The cinematography is truly fine and I was impressed by the acting.  Give this a chance.

If you are to believe the screen, there never were any Good Old Days in Joseon.

A classic SF novel includes an interesting verbal usage

I've been rereading Isaac Asimov's novel of robots and overpopulation, The Caves of Steel (1951). Many people on Earth are resisting AI. Seeking a simpler life, they call themselves "Medievalists."

Another biography of a French warlord of the Hundred Years War: Bertrand du Guesclin

Bryant (trans.), Cuvelier, The Song of Bertrand du Guesclin (Graham-Goering) The Medieval Review Bryant, Nigel, trans. Cuvelier: The Song of Bertrand du Guesclin. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2019. Pp. x, 432. $99.00. ISBN: 978-1-78327-227-3. Reviewed by Erika Graham-Goering Ghent University erika.graham@ugent.be Bertrand du Guesclin, who rose from obscurity as the son of a minor Breton noble to become one of the most powerful men of the realm as Constable of France, is one of the most remarkable characters of the Hundred Years' War, a period certainly not lacking for noteworthy figures. Unfortunately, the original 24,000-line poem in Middle French written by Cuvelier to commemorate Bertrand just after his death in 1380 is not a readily approachable work to the modern reader. Bryant himself points out that in addition to its length, the verse is unwieldy and inelegant in its style (2–3), and it is perhaps telling that the poem was already rewritten into more compact prose (on two separate occasions, no less) by the end of the decade. [1] But these same prose adaptations, as well as the seven manuscript copies of the poem proper, attest the contemporary popularity of this work, and so it is exciting to see an English translation that finally puts this text before a wider audience in an engaging and readable fashion. Cuvelier's panegyric follows Bertrand du Guesclin from his earliest years to his death, focusing especially on his successive battles and campaigns (though with a happy disregard for strict accuracy if it made for a better story). The early episodes show Bertrand's growth from an ugly wild child reviled by his parents to a respected and admired (though still ugly) tourneyer and captain in the Breton War of Succession (1341–1365). Following his exploits in Brittany and Normandy, the narrative shifts to Spain, where Bertrand took up the cause of Enrique de Trastámara against his half-brother King Peter of Castile. Despite the setback of the battle of Nájera in 1367, where Bertrand was captured and ransomed, his ultimate success in this endeavor earned him widespread recognition and the position of Constable (leader of the French armies) under King Charles V. Glossing over Bertrand's less politically comfortable return to Brittany in the 1370s, the story winds down with the expulsion of the English from the Poitou region, and culminates in Bertrand's somewhat incongruous death by illness during the siege of Châteauneuf-de-Randon, which he nevertheless manages to bring to a successful conclusion. To help structure this lengthy recitation, Bryant has divided the poem into twelve chapters of unequal length that pull together the major narrative arcs, as well as running page headers that identify individual episodes more precisely. These breaks do not always reflect those indicated by the text itself, where Cuvelier stops rather at random to address his audience and reset the scene, but Bryant's schema gives the narrative greater coherence. Throughout, Bertrand is shown to be both a paragon of chivalric virtues such as generosity, loyalty, and bravery--sometimes to the point of excess--and also a brutal, even frightening figure, such as might be used to warn disobedient children: "Hush, or you'll pay for it! Bertrand du Guesclin's here" (22)! This tension alone would make this work an interesting access-point to the aristocratic culture of the late Middle Ages and it offers an intriguing case study in the construction of knightly reputations during this period. In addition, Cuvelier writes particularly vivid descriptions of combat that will be of great interest to students of medieval warfare and tournaments (as I have already been able to confirm first-hand in the classroom). These include a number of striking details, from the act of "pulling up hauberks and haquetons" so as better to run an enemy through under their armor (118) to the female camp followers who kept the knights supplied with water and wine during battle (115, 380), that give an almost cinematic insight into elite attitudes towards violence. But while Bertrand is undoubtedly the subject of the poem, Bryant argues persuasively that the work is about French knighthood itself, and the pursuit of (supposedly) just causes elevated to the status of holy wars. Indeed, Bertrand himself seems to fade into the background for large stretches, leaving the stage to these wider themes. This work is thus an effective source for examining the social history of religious and nationalist interactions, especially in their darker manifestations. Cuvelier's polemic, especially during Bertrand's "Spanish Adventure," is aggressively and often shockingly anti-Semitic and Islamophobic, although rare illustrations of cooperation among the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian populations of Spanish towns shed light on the legibility of the complex socio-religious dynamics of the Iberian peninsula to an outsider such as Cuvelier. In fact, by explaining away these views as "standard" (10) Bryant misses the opportunity to reflect on their specific contextual appeal, both to Cuvelier's intended audience (mentioned in passing by Bryant but left undefined) and to Cuvelier himself (here left incognito but in all probability a clergyman associated with the French court). Similarly, there is ample scope in this work for exploring Cuvelier's inconsistent and even at times paradoxical depiction of gender dynamics, which speaks to recurring contradictions within medieval society itself. Bryant is well-known for producing sharp and usable translations of medieval French texts, and the Song is no exception. In his short introduction, Bryant emphasizes Cuvelier's skill as a dramatic storyteller in the epic tradition of the chanson de geste (while defying strict generic classification). It is this narrative spirit which Bryant sets out to capture in the English rendition, and he does it well. His translation sensibly takes Faucon's critical edition as its base, [2] although Bryant explains that in the interest of clarity and completeness he has preferred readings from other manuscripts where appropriate (these are not individually indicated in the text). Much as his medieval predecessors, Bryant has chosen to transmute the poetry into prose, an effective decision that foregrounds the liveliness of Cuvelier's account. He also adopts a relatively colloquial register which is largely responsible, I think, for his remarkable success at delivering a lively read while by and large faithfully preserving the literal sense of the clumsier original. There are of course moments where his flair for idiomatic turns of phrase leads him perhaps slightly astray: "Lady, you're losing the plot" (29)! is a stretch where "you're being unreasonable" would be both perfectly clear and closer to the original; likewise, "Bertrand of such renown" becomes "big noise Bertrand" (209). Nor is he consistent in choosing either to preserve unfamiliar--if often quite comprehensible--medieval expressions in the text along with an explanatory note, or to replace them with an alternative idiom (with or without noting that he has done so). There are a few outright errors, such as his translation of "Bretaigne Galo" as "Celtic Brittany" (40), a contentious choice even if it were accurate, but in fact it is the standard term for the upper or eastern, Romance-speaking portion of Brittany (in contrast to Breton-speaking lower Brittany to the west, referenced elsewhere in this text). A recurring phrase, "A Dieu le veu," Bryant renders as "God wills it!" (104, 304, 329, 398, 414); while perhaps this resonates with the quasi-Crusade on which Cuvelier imagines Bertrand, the contemporary sense (seen for instance in the poetry of Eustache Deschamps) was rather "I swear to God!", an expression that better reflects Bertrand's penchant for bombastic oath-making. A few longer clauses also become a bit muddied, such as "He [Bertrand] called the herald who'd brought the message--Longueville was his bailiwick--and said..." (304): a stronger reading would be "Bertrand, who had Longueville in his governance, called the herald who'd brought the message and said...", to make it clear that the reference is to Bertrand's county of Longueville in Normandy (cf. 123), not some domain of the herald's. However, I point to these examples not in the spirit of nit-picking, but to give a better sense of the scale on which deviation from the French occurs, which is to say, relatively incidental: nearly all that is essential is here. In fact, I was impressed with how effective this translation will be as a guide for researchers wishing to quickly and easily navigate the lengthy poem, especially since Bryant's preservation of Faucon's stanza numbers make for very convenient cross-referencing with the original. Given the commentary already available in Faucon's edition, Bryant's relatively light touch with remarks throughout is justified to streamline the narrative experience. His footnotes focus especially on providing helpful contextual information such as the identification of people, places, and events, especially where Cuvelier himself got these wrong. If there are a few slips here and there in the details (e.g. identifying the "lord of Laval" at the 1363 siege of Bécherel as Fulk rather than Guy XII [80, note 75], or misrepresenting Charles de Blois's abortive canonization as an annulment [141, note 142]), these remarks remain an effective complement to the translation. Bryant's frequent cross-references in these notes help navigate the somewhat repetitive text while also offering enough reminders that shorter excerpts may be read and understood on their own; at the same time, the text may also be enjoyed without reference to this unobtrusive apparatus. Three maps of France, Brittany and western Normandy, and the Poitou region also help orient the reader, though Cuvelier's highly inventive approach to Spanish geography defies any cartographic aid for that portion of the account. An index of people and places completes the set of tools at the reader's disposal. Taken all together, this translation is a thoroughly valuable resource for medieval social, political, and cultural historians, from undergraduates up through experienced scholars. For teaching, it is a vibrant addition to the all-too-short list of accessible English translations of Middle French sources, one that offers scope for studying quite diverse aspects of life and thought amidst the violence of the Hundred Years' War. The price, which is more consistent with an academic monograph than with student-friendly offerings, may prove the only limitation on its accessibility in the classroom. For more advanced research, it offers a welcome alternative to tackling Cuvelier's verse, but is especially practical as a sort of gloss of the edition that vastly enhances the approachability of this sprawling epic. -------- Notes: 1. Yvonne Vermijn, "Trois traditions manuscrites parallèles: La Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin et ses mises en prose de 1380 à 1480," in Pour un nouveau répertoire des mises en prose: roman, chanson de geste, autres genres, eds. Maria Colombo Timelli, Barbara Ferrari, and Anne Schoysman (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014), 348. 2. Jean-Claude Faucon (ed.), La Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin de Cuvelier, 3 vols. (Toulouse: Éditions Universitaires du Sud, 1990).​

Americans -- too many of them -- abandon their base values

THE ATLANTIC The world watched today as the president of the United States confirmed his critics’—and American allies’—fears, railing baselessly against election fraud, arguing from his perch in the White House that he had won an election whose result remained in doubt. Donald Trump’s remarks signaled a dangerous new episode in the soap opera of his presidency. Waking up to the news that he has claimed victory—despite official and media sources, to say nothing of the Joe Biden campaign, insisting any final result remains some ways off—the world has been forced to confront its faith not just in America, but in the American idea. Before today, the American president himself could be loathed or ridiculed, the nature of American power challenged, and even the corruption of American politics debated. Yet few doubted the strength of America’s constitutional nature, the foundation upon which it built its republic. There have been disputed elections before—hanging chads and worse—but Trump’s comments, made before all the votes have been tallied nationwide and with multiple states up for grabs, signaled a break. This is no constitutional crisis, yet, but a president laying claim to an office he has not won (albeit one he might) is a crisis of its own. The world has long looked at the American experiment with a sense of awe, disbelief, and skepticism that it could hold. In 1835, with the United States a mere fledgling, its original foreign chronicler, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote of the “feverish excitement” that gripped the country at election time, but observed that normality quickly resumed once the result was clear. “As soon as the choice is determined,” he wrote in Democracy in America, “this ardor is dispelled; and as a calmer season returns, the current of the State, which had nearly broken its banks, sinks to its usual level: but who can refrain from astonishment at the causes of the storm.” Today the world watches, wondering whether the latest current has finally broken its banks—the storm of this particular election and this particular president too much for the system to bear. Outside the U.S., there is despair. The impact of what is happening will be felt much further afield, the consequences not just practical and domestic but philosophical and global. Diplomats and officials I spoke with have voiced worry over the future of the U.S.-led Western alliance, and over the implications for countries abroad. Today, with Washington in chaos, its future sovereign unknown, it is the idea of America that risks being submerged, an idea that much of the world has grown to rely on—and, indeed, has adopted. ... De Tocqueville appreciated that underneath the constitutional foundation of American stability lay even deeper trenches—the accepted norms that held its society together. At the root lies its commitment to republican government and the sovereignty of the people. If this goes, then there really is a problem. “Without such common belief no society can prosper,” he wrote. “For without ideas held in common, there is no common action, and without common action, there may still be men, but there is no social body.”

I'm no Brit but during the Brexit fight, it ssure looked like that they, too, had lost track of their norms.