| RIP Virginia Brown |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|02:11 pm] |
Professor Brown, Paleographer Extraordinaire, passed away over the weekend. There are details here.
Whenever I come across a difficult document, I hear a voice with a strong southern accent saying "You must develop the oculus!"
In memory of Professor Brown, some Precious Beneventan.
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| When snails attack |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|05:20 pm] |
Carl Pyrdum at Got Medieval has a good post this week on the motif of a knight fighting a snail in the marginal illustrations of manuscripts. He shared this image from the Macclesfield Psalter.
I see two things in that picture.
1. The knight is drawing his sword with his left hand. There aren't many illustrations of left-handed swordsmen in medieval art. The only other one I can think of is from 1497 and shows up in the statutes of the Collegium Sapientiae in Freiburg. You can see it on the cover of Ruth Mazo Karras' From Boys to Men.
2. The left-handedness may be part of the joke. It looks to me like we're supposed to understand that the knight was out for a stroll, carrying his sheathed sword wrapped up in his sword belt, like the statues on Naumburg cathedral. Suddenly, he was ambushed by a snail! It all happened so fast that he didn't have time to transfer his scabbard to his left hand. (It was a racing snail, ok?) So now he has to use a variation of the quick-draw technique from the last play of the sword vs. dagger section in Fiore dei Liberi's Flos Duellatorum. He's about to poke the snail in the eye with his scabbard chape in order to buy a moment to sort himself out.
It's a joke about speed, but it's also an arming sword play, complete with encoded information about weight transfer and footwork. That's the cool thing about medieval fighting illustrations: they're more like little video clips than single stop-motion photographs. If you study enough fechtbucher, you start to recognize the motion compressed into them. You see how the knight has taken his right foot off the line of attack? You can tell because the background gives you some perspective and because his weight is on his left. After he hits the snail in the eye, he clears his sword, pivots around his right foot and strikes the beast from its now-blind side. It's all one tempo; Fiore would love it. |
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| Medievalist geekery |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|02:25 pm] |
I was looking at Alexander Neckam's De Nominibus Utensilium today and I couldn't understand why it was giving me a vague sense of déja vu.
The text is a twelfth-century primer for learning medieval Latin vocabulary. It uses the ancient mnemonic device of the memory palace: the narrator walks through an imaginary medieval manor and names everything he sees. Students can later recall the Latin vocabulary by calling up a visual image of the manor.
But where had I seen a vocabulary book like that before? Then I remembered...
( Read more... )
Somebody really ought to publish an edition of De Nominibus Utensilium as a picture book. They could illustrate it with little squinchy-faced people, like the Luttrell Psalter. It would be awesome. |
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| A random question |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|04:18 pm] |
Backpacking in Romania a few years ago reminded me that I usually take for granted the role that animal control agencies play in modern cities. When a city doesn't have a functioning pound or humane society, packs of stray dogs start to congregate in the streets and squares. The sleep on park benches and beg for scraps like furry panhandlers. Sometimes four or five of them will try to slouch after you into a dark side street with the air of hungry coyotes.
It occurs to me to wonder if medieval European cities had the same kinds of semi-feral animals as modern ones do. There are certainly no Tantony pigs in Toronto. What about pigeons? Were wild pigeons quite so common when pigeon was considered good to eat and meat was expensive to come by? |
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| Happy first of July |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|02:35 pm] |
It's almost Canada Day, and you know what that means. It means it's time for the Dominion Institute to issue its annual media release to tell us that we suck at Canadian history. This year, apparently we suck because only 8% of us can identify Sir Frederick Banting by his face. I'm trying to work up the appropriate sense of horror at this revelation, but somehow I can't quite do it.
Every year the Dominion Institute release reminds me of a conversation I once had with a prominent Canadianist while I was TAing for his colonial history course. "It's great that there's a lobbying organization dedicated to Canadian history," he said (in these words or something close to them), "but I suspect that I lose good students over it. The smart ones know when they're being manipulated and they associate this field with nationalist manipulation, so they take other courses."
With this in mind I went and took a peek at the Dominion Institute site. After looking around for a bit, I'm a little less worried about Canadians' ignorance of their history. That's not to say that the site is completely without its teachable moments. If I ever TA an introduction to Canadian history again, I think the Canada quiz would make a good jumping-off point for a tutorial discussion. Maybe the first tutorial of the year, or one around essay time when you know that no one has done any reading.
Lots of discussion questions come to mind when I take the quiz.
- What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of multiple choice tests? Can a multiple choice test adequately evaluate someone's understanding of history?
- When I first took the test, seven of the ten questions asked me to identify politicians. Is the history of politicians the most important kind of history? What other fields of Canadian history could you study?
- Under what circumstances might someone's ignorance about the Lafontaine-Baldwin coalition impede their ability to function as a Canadian citizen? Provide specific scenarios.
- The question about Vimy Ridge is the only one referring to an event that happened outside Canada's borders. Should a course on Canadian history stick to events that happened inside Canada? If not, how much of the course should be about Canadians interacting with the rest of the world? What about the history of Canadian immigrant groups before they came to Canada? Should that be part of a Canadian history course too?
- Did all Canadian women get the right to vote in the same decade? Why does the test accept only one correct answer? Does this suggest something broader about the Dominion Institute and its mandate?
- I've TA'ed Canadian history courses at the University of Toronto, but I flunked the question about which hockey team won the most Stanley Cups. Have I failed my students?
- I took this quiz a few years ago and I think they used the same questions. What are the advantages and disadvantages of always using the same questions versus thinking of some new ones? Does history change?
- What's the difference between national history and national propaganda?
That would keep a class talking for an hour or so. |
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| One hundred push ups (er, sixty-six) |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|04:13 pm] |
I've been amusing myself lately by doing the one hundred push up challenge that has been going around cyberspace. It purports to be able to transform you in the space of six weeks from a noodle-armed weakling into someone who can do one hundred push ups in a row. While the program is more than a little ambitious, it's not completely bunk.
I've always hated push ups. Actually no, I think I liked them before those stupid Canada Fitness Program tests in elementary school convinced me that they were all about failure and humiliation. (Now there was a government program that richly deserved its eventual death. But I digress.) Anyway, when I saw the Hundred Push Up program, I thought it was past time to sand off that particular emotional rough spot.
It turns out that the program works. I started by being able to do eight push ups and when I took the final test a few days ago, I could do sixty-six. So I guess I'm not a complete failure after all.
The pace of the program is somewhat ambitious, as I said. I often had to repeat workouts or even whole weeks in order to level up. It took me about nine weeks to get to the end of Week Six. I also think the workouts should be done in conjunction with some kind of pulling exercise so that you don't end up with imbalanced muscle development. Still, it's hard to argue with the obvious improvement in strength.
Now I feel kind of like the dog who caught the car. What does one do with sixty-six push ups anyway? It's kind of like having a degree in medieval studies. |
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| Dance craze |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|12:36 pm] |
Via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kalivor, here's an interesting article that just came out in The Psychologist. It talks about the plague of compulsive dancing that broke out in various cities along the Rhine in 1374 and speculates about whether it could have been a kind of mass anxiety attack. |
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| Trial by Combat |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|12:07 pm] |
Attention medieval fighting geeks: George Neilson's Trial by Combat has appeared on Google Books. That used to be a difficult volume to get your hands on in hard copy.
I have no idea what's up with the cover art in the online edition. It's about the most inappropriate stock photo I've ever seen on the front of a book. |
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| Professor Awesome, Ph.D. |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|04:42 pm] |
Ever wonder what English professors get up to when the term is over? Apparently they make videos. Dr. Scott Nokes at Troy University Professor Awesome, Ph.D. describes his curriculum vitae here.
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| Fun en français |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|03:15 pm] |
I was going to write a review of the International Swordfighting and Martial Arts Convention, which was awesome as usual, but I didn't find the time, and then I didn't write any other posts because I hadn't written the ISMAC review yet, and somehow it's now two weeks later. So, um, yeah: I learned stuff at ISMAC.
Meanwhile, during this afternoon's research procrastination research, I've run across some cool stuff.
Here are the records of the fencing masters' guild of Paris. The masters didn't really incorporate until 1567, so most of the content of the book is a few centuries late for my academic or martial purposes, but it has some nifty records nonetheless.
And here's a collection of thirteenth-century regulations for the craft guilds of Paris. Among the things I learned are that urban fast-food outlets weren't allowed to sell meat on the third day after it had been cooked and that armuriers apparently made gambesons and other bits of light harness, but didn't work in steel. The armourers' regulations are seriously awesome. There's all kinds of stuff about types of cloth and whalebone and the correct metal for rivets. I'm resisting the urge to translate them this very afternoon, but they look like a good procrastination project for another day. |
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| Things I learned this weekend |
[May. 18th, 2009|03:35 pm] |
In no particular order...
1. Anyone else remember the old Girl Guide song "The Princess Pat"? I always suspected that it had some kind of military origin, considering its references to light infantry and crossing the channel, so I finally got around to googling it. It turns out that the venerable "Princess Pat" is actually a badly garbled and bowdlerized version of the regimental song of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. The real Princess Pats find it quite irritating.
2. Do not google coconut crab. You have been warned.
3. Dall'Agocchie's sidesword is surprisingly similar to Fiore's sword in one hand and every other single sword or stick system I have seen. |
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| Blonde privilege |
[May. 14th, 2009|07:39 pm] |
When you're white and you're female, you can carry a longsword down Bay Street, a few blocks from the nation's financial district, and the only person whose eyes focus on it will be the woman panhandling in front of the coffee shop. It's like magic. |
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| With Fire and Sword |
[Apr. 29th, 2009|04:22 pm] |
The other day Matt3 lent me his DVD of With Fire and Sword, a big-budget epic historical movie made in Poland.
I feel like I should say something profound and analytical about it, but all I have to say is *Squee!* Blood and horses! Twue wuv! *Squee!* Awesome seventeenth-century costuming and sets! Fur hats! Feathers! Fortresses! *Squee!*
Here, see for yourselves:
It's a good thing I'm not a guy. If I were, I'd be tempted to see if I could grow a mustache that I could tuck behind my ears. |
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| Zellers fail |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|06:52 pm] |
I seem to be harping on a theme here lately, but since I took up reading Junkfood Science and Shapely Prose, these things keep jumping out at me.
I walked into the pharmacy at my local Zellers today and discovered that in a display at the end of an aisle they were prominently promoting laxatives for anorexia. This is what our culture has come to. I have no words.
Needless to say, I will be boycotting my local Zellers for awhile. |
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| Cognitive dissonance |
[Apr. 21st, 2009|05:45 pm] |
Why do stores that sell "natural" products always seem to devote most of their shelf space to pills? What's more synthetic than a pill? |
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| Kel's First Rule Illustrated |
[Apr. 17th, 2009|05:06 pm] |
Carl Pyrdum at Got Medieval posted a great image this week. It's a marginal illustration from Pierpont Morgan G24, a Flemish copy of The Vows of the Peacock from circa 1350.
Does this picture look sort of familiar to anyone else? The nifty thing is that it predates Fiore by a good fifty years and Talhoffer by more than a century.
Ever had one of those moments when you were so intent on getting the fancy footwork right that you forgot the not-getting-hit part? That's me on the left. |
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| Watch out, I'm feeling rant-y |
[Apr. 13th, 2009|05:03 pm] |
Ontario MPP France Gélinas has been getting some publicity lately for her private member's bill, Bill 156, The Healthy Decisions for Healthy Eating Act. This seemingly innocuous bit of legislation passed second reading the other day, and is now on its way to the standing committee on social policy, an unusual success for an opposition bill, which would usually be expected to sink without a trace. However, the more I think about this bill, the more it irritates me.
The bill stipulates that large food service providers who make more than $5 million a year (including their smaller franchises) be required to post the calorie counts of all their items on their menus in the same typeface and font size as the price. The legislation is being touted as a way to improve the overall health of Ontarians and reduce obesity in the province. The problem is that the premises it seems to be based upon have been pretty thoroughly exploded for some time. Let's look at them one by one.
( Read more... )
So if Bill 156 will probably have no effect on the health or weight of Ontarians, what's the big deal? Well, apart from the irritation it will cause people when they confuse the price and the calorie count on a menu, I think it sends an ugly message. Eating disorders have been on the rise in recent years. Unlike obesity, they're incredibly bad for your health. (The death rate for anorexia is something like 20%.) A 2001 study found that 27% of teenage girls in Ontario were engaged in some level of disordered food and weight behaviour. Why is it that we as a society feel the need to continually hector each other about how much we eat? You would think that an MPP from a party that tends to be pretty self-righteous about diversity and tolerance would think twice about a bill based on the assumption that bodies that differ from her own are unnatural and unacceptable.
*I'm being quick and dirty with the references here. If you want an introduction to the subject with proper cites, see Chapter 5 of Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin. |
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