Arthur's Two Historiographies in Alliterative Romance

Before I'm overwhelmed by a massive student paper deluge, I thought I'd try to draft my paper for the "Biopolitics" session organized by the Arthurian Literature Discussion Group for the upcoming MLA convention in Los Angeles held during the first week in January.  As I was working my way through this, I realized how HELish it really is (hopefully without the second "l"!).  My reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in particular, explores the meanings and histories of enigmatic words in the prologue such as "winn" (could mean "strife" or "joy") and "depreced" (could mean "conquer" or "release").  If you have any suggestions or comments I would love to read them.  

Arthurian Fan Fiction

Knight Reading in Bed, Bruce Linn 2003
(The Crying Globe)

I hope you won't mind if I share yet another piece of my recent thinking and writing, particularly about my teaching.  Next week I will be presenting this material with a few of my Arthurian Literature students to a group of new faculty at UMB and I would love to hear your thoughts.  It isn't focused directly on HEL, but it certainly is informed by a new and controversial genre of digital English, fan fiction, which is a rapidly expanding catalogue of literary works on the internet.  The writing below (which is just a draft - with obvious gaps), and the assignment it describes, was inspired by the following question: what happens when students don't just analyze texts, as third person observers, and instead inhabit them and write from the points of view of Arthurian figures?

4 U 2 No (or FYI, if you prefer)

Image from New York Times

The other day as I was walking through the halls en route to my Arthurian lit course I was stampeded by a distracted band of texters, eyes fixed on their phones.  They bounced off passersby (and me) as if they were balls in a pinball machine.  And they never missed a beat.

This behavior concerns me and this recent New York Times article suggests that my worries are well founded.  The anxiety expressed here is not new - that texting has changed adolescent brains and will have a negative effect on attention spans - but the comparison to the effects of television is novel, at least to me.  The great irony is that television-watching, which has always been demonized, comes off as the healthier of the two activities because it requires sustained attention, not the multi-tasking that Facebooking or texting encourages.

My question, which you've probably already anticipated, is what kind of effect will such behavior have on language use?  A friend of mine who is an active Tweeter told me that he no longer can tolerate lengthy texts.  Because texting and tweeting requires short and to-the-point text, longer works seem frivolous, superfluous, not worth the time.  What will then happen to the discursive text?

And the question that follows is: how should we respond?  Do we stop texting?  Do we limit Facebooking?  Or do we embrace these activities and change the way we learn and produce/consume text?  One alternative, which in some way responds to the latter, has been explored in another recent NY Times article.  Do we need go digital?  And if so, what is at stake for such digital texuality?

Aw Lancelot . . . Another beheading?

This isn't necessarily language-related and I don't want to get too "booky" here, but this story about the selling of a medieval manuscript may be of interest to us.  French romances, particularly the Arthurian ones, were tremendously popular throughout the Middle Ages and had a direct effect on our beloved English tongue.  One of the most interesting, and maybe disturbing details, about this manuscript is that it was so large that it must have taken 200 cows to make it.  For those of you unfamiliar with medieval manuscripts, this may sound strange, but if you know that medieval books were made from animal skin, this fact attests to how expensive this book really was (and apparently is!).  It reminds us that in many ways the birth of our language rests on the backs of animals - an interesting and often overlooked fact.   
  

The Death of the Book?

As the date indicates, we missed this conference, but it's a shame that we did!  The focus was mostly on the fate of the material text in a digital world, but as we know, these environments have immeasurably influenced the language, from the standardization of spelling to the coinage of new words such as "texting" and "tweeting" to the introduction a number of new abbreviations.  One of the post-conference articles even begins with the following "tweet": "Will the Internet age kill the printed book?  LOL."  What do we think about this question?  Will the printed book and digital text continue to complement each other?  Or will their relationship become increasingly hostile?  And how will this impact the future of English?    

Getting Digital

I apologize for the late notice, but I think the following event is of interest to HEL, especially the digitalization of English.  It may be difficult for me to make this tonight, but I will try my best and I hope you will too.  And if we can't make it, maybe we should check out the video and/or podcast!




humanities in the digital age

Wednesday [NOTE DAY], October 20, 2010
5-7 pm
32-141
MIT Stata Center

Abstract

What is happening to the intellectual field called the humanities? Powerful political and corporate forces are encouraging, even demanding science and math-based curricula to prepare for a globalized and technological world; the astronomical rise in the cost of higher education has resulted in a drumbeat of complaints, some which question the value of the traditional liberal arts and humanities. And of course, and far more complexly, the emerging storage and communications systems of the digital age are transforming all fields of knowledge and all knowledge industries.

How has and how will the humanities cope with these challenges? How have digital tools and systems already begun to transform humanistic education? How may they do so in the future? More broadly, is there a significant role for the humanities in our digital future? Our panelists will explore these and related questions in what is expected to be the first in a continuing series on this subject.

Speakers

Alison Byerly is provost and executive vice president as well as professor of English at Middlebury College. During a leave year spent as a visiting scholar at Stanford University in 2008-09, she completed a book manuscript, Are We There Yet? Virtual Travel and Victorian Realism.

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and previously taught at MIT. He is the author of many essays and books including The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature and How the Mind Works.

To be posted following the forum:
Summary
Audiocast
Podcast
Video

A Missing Trojan Text



Hunterian MS V.2.8, folio 1a
Glasgow University Library


The Trojan War, or at least the texts that record its occurrence, has had an immeasurable effect on the English language.  From the many literary references to "the face who launched a thousand ships" to the characterization of a ruse as a "Trojan horse," the lexicon of Troy pervades newspapers and everyday speech.  The following material treats a "Trojan text" that unfortunately did not have much of an influence, at least in comparison to Homer and Virgil.  It is based in research I hope to present at a conference at Harvard on October 1st in honor of a mentor of mine, David Benson.  I would love to know your thoughts . . .

the bone-house of language... and its reflection?

Thank you for allowing me to join the HEL group virtually through this blog. I hope to meet you in person this semester as I return to campus after time on leave. I’ve been preparing to teach an MA-level survey of medieval to renaissance literature -- only one week before we start now! So I’ve been thinking about the course’s starting point of Old English and in particular the ‘Franks’ casket, since it’s featured on the front cover of one of the books we’re using.

To see images and read more about this 8th-century box, see the British Museum site:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/t/the_franks_casket.aspx

As the site explains, on the front panel of this box, a riddle is spelled out in a runic inscription which surrounds the images (mythic Wayland juxtaposed with Christian nativity, interesting). The site gives a translation of the riddle; in more typical Old English characters, it reads something like this: “fisc . flodu . ahof on fergenberig warþ ga:sric grorn þær he on greut giswom.” The answer (“hronæs ban”) is also spelled out in the runes that run up the left-hand side, but the material fashioning of the box means you literally see the answer before you have a chance to ‘see’ the answer (figuratively) or even finish reading the question. I am fascinated by Old English riddles because most people do not think of riddles as literature and because riddles are in fact as difficult to define as literature itself. (My favorite way to define a riddle is a riddle: ‘when you do not know what it is, then it is. when you know what it is, it is not’.) I also deeply enjoy thinking about how the materials we use to fashion texts impact what the text means to us; I can hardly wait to teach an honors course on the subject of material texts next semester!
But I digress... Why do I think the inscription on the Franks casket is especially interesting in terms of HEL? Well, one piece of information not given on the British Museum website, but clear to anyone with even the most basic knowledge of the runic alphabet, the futhorc, is that the bottom line of the inscription is written right to left with reversed runes. It is therefore only easily legible when viewed in a mirror. (Wikipedia’s entry featuring the futhorc currently has a link to the Franks casket: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_runes ). No one has yet offered an entirely convincing explanation of why the riddle was crafted this way, though it certainly adds to the puzzle. And it’s made me start to ponder mirror writing in relation to the history of the English alphabet... Should mirror-reversed letters be considered part of the alphabet since English users can (with some effort/aids) read and write using these? What does this group think? Would a study of mirror writing from the Franks casket to today turn up any interesting continuity? Would it be part of the HEL? What about a history of English writing on bone? I know the whalebone stays that shaped Elizabethan corsets were an especially popular place for inscriptions of erotic poetry... does anyone know of other interesting instances?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/business/media/12link.html?th&emc=th

There was an article in the New York Times a few days ago about Wikipedia that relates to what we have discussed in previous meetings. Hope you guys find it interesting.

Digital Humanities

I realize that it may be too late to attend this conference, but even if it is, I would recommend checking out their website.  It contains a number of projects that fall under the category of "digital humanities."  According to Wikipedia, the digital humanities is "a field of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities."  Since one of our collective interests is the effect of digital technologies on the English language, I think that studies in this field are worth investigating.  Since this is occurring at nearby MIT, we might consider getting involved at some point.

Wikipedia in HEL

Before reading this, be sure to see the poem posted by Danielle in the last entry (I would link to this, but it doesn't appear that I have the editorial power to do it yet).

Below is some work I've been doing on Wikipedia as a both a lexical resource and collaborative model of knowledge production. I thought I'd share this with you because it is of direct relevance to the interests of our club and I'd ideally really love some feedback on it. This Thursday I'll be presenting a version of it at the UMass Boston Educational Technology Conference. As you'll see, it's written for an audience of educators, but I hope you'll find it interesting for your own purposes and research. Also, one of esteemed members is obliquely referenced in the essay - can you figure out who it is?

Eye Halve A Spelling Chequer Eye halve a spelling chequer It came with my pea sea It plainly marques four my revue Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it two say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait a weigh. As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the error rite Its rarely ever wrong. Eye have run this poem threw it I am shore your pleased two no Its letter perfect in it's weigh My chequer tolled me sew. -- Sauce unknown