How do you irritate a medievalist?

[rymenhild]

Having blanked on the name of a specific journal focusing on controversial readings of medieval subjects*, I Googled "medieval journals." This brought me to Renaissance Art, a website that sells handmade and supposedly period books. Far be it from me to speak out against handmade leather books, but really, look at this advertising copy...!

Medieval Journals pay homage to the time of Gothic architecture with heavy, oaken doors that swung on cast iron hinges.

If your interests or spirit harken back to a time hundreds of years ago, an age of monks scribbling texts and knights pursuing lofty goals, then our Medieval Journal will feel like a part of your very being. Stylistically heavy, with dark leather “hinges” and a sturdy leather belt closure, our Medieval Journal speaks of a time when darkness covered Europe and the light of the Renaissance had yet to appear.

If you look at the picture of one of these journals, you'll see that the artists did, in fact, design the journals to look like wood-and-iron doors rather than simply elegant or more elaborate and late medieval bindings. I gather from the text of the advertisement that it probably didn't occur to the artisans in question to research medieval books -- they probably never actually thought very much about bookmaking as a medieval process.

I suppose I may be underestimating the artisans, but the easiest way to irritate a medievalist is to suggest that the centuries before the Renaissance were black years populated by unlettered barbarians and a few scribbling monks.

*I was thinking of Exemplaria.

Edit: Having found the journal I was looking for, I managed to distract myself with a fabulous Tom Shippey article on Fuqua's King Arthur. Look at this:

Caroline Jewers begins her article by saying that King Arthur is a movie that cries out for irreverent subtitles: King Arthur, or 101 Sarmatians; King Arthur, or Bend it like Guinevere. Thinking of the final incongruous white-wedding scene, and remembering Eliza Doolittle, I would add, King Arthur, or Wouldn't it be Luverly.

That's funny enough that I'm almost glad I saw King Arthur and can therefore get the joke.

Comments

[gramarye1971]

I had to giggle gleefully at this part:

One may sum up by saying that perhaps the least truthful part of the Fuqua film comes in the first two words of the opening credits, "Historians agree..." On this subject, historians do not agree about anything.

Truthfully, this rather applies to just about anything historical. But it's still such a nice dismissal.

[gramarye1971]

...and oh wow, I posted too soon. You do NOT want to know the clamour that started up in my head when I read the bit in the article on the interview with the screenwriter, where he says, "In my mind I think of Ho Chi Min [sic] as the model for Merlin." *winces a bit, massages temples*

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I'm ... so sorry, Gramarye. (Just in case the headvoice needed his week to get any worse...!)

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

I suppose I may be underestimating the artisans, but the easiest way to irritate a medievalist is to suggest that the centuries before the Renaissance were black years populated by unlettered barbarians and a few scribbling monks.

FWIW, this annoys me too, though I'm an early modernist! As a sort of compensation, I offer you a passage from Samuel Daniel's Defence of Ryme, written circa 1600:

And is it not a most apparent ignorance, both of the succession of learning in Europe and the general course of things, to say that 'all lay pitifully deformed in those lack-learning times from the declining of the Roman empire till the light of the Latin tongue was revived by Reuchlin, Erasmus and More,' when for three hundred years before them, about the coming down of Tamburlaine into Europe, Franciscus Petrarca (who then no doubt likewise found whom to imitate) showed all the best notions of learning in that degree of excellency, both in Latin prose and verse and in the vulgar Italian, as all the wits of posterity have not yet much overmatched him to this day?...And yet long before all these, and likewise with these, was not our nation behind in her portion of spirit and worthiness, but concurrent with the best of all this lettered world. Witness venerable Bede, that flourished above a thousand years since...So that it is but the clouds gathered about our own judgment that makes us think all other ages wrapped up in mists, and the great distance betwixt us that causes us to imagine men so far off to be so little in respect of ourselves.

Also, yay for articles by people in my department. :D

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

That's a fabulous quotation, Lea. Thank you for it.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

You're most welcome. It's a great quote -- that sort of thing is the reason that Samuel Daniel is my Sekrit Elizabethan Poet Boyfriend. ;)

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

How do you irritate a medievalist?

*raises hand* I know! I know!
*points to Lloyd Alexander*

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I'm occasionally easy to irritate. Especially when characters who are complex and fascinating in the source texts get rendered boring.

[vitabeata.livejournal.com]

Medieval fishing journals. Yes.

I had no idea that Exemplaria's focus was defined as such. I quite like that it is, though.