"Clive Owen" and "King Arthur" kind of alliterate

Welcome back, readers!

I started this blog because my academic life is so often reflected by my suburban one. Coincidences happen as often as you look for them, as it turns out.

Yesterday I finished prepping for Malory's Le Morte Dartur. Once I wrote it up on my wall of triumph, I took my congratulatory wine glass up to bed and looked for a TiVo'd movie. And what did  I find? The 2004 not-even-near-blockbuster, "King Arthur."

This was clearly an act of fate. And I'm an Anglo-Saxonist, so I know allllll about fate.

Starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley, the movie boasts some pretty sexy characters.

Behold, the ever-furrowed brow of the tormented but resilient hero:

And the rescued, single-parent, sex maven/ liaison to Merlin:

I was surprised-- tickled, even-- that the director had stuck to the "original" (ahem) 5th century setting, around time of the sack of Rome.

Most people associate Arthur with the later Middle Ages because writers like Malory were 14th or 15th century authors of chivalric romance. Though writing of better days long past, they imported their own cultural necessities into the stories, bringing tales of long ago into contemporary frameworks.

But still, how did this transition happen?

Here's a brief run-down of the Arthurian tradition, derived from Shepherd's critical edition of Malory:

410: Rome withdraws from Britain

5th-6th centuries: "Various historical records" make note of an unnamed British warlord's successes against invading Angles and Saxons

late 6th century: Welsh poems attribute supernatural powers to a warrior named Arthur

c 800: Welsh chronicle Historia Brittonum documents a dozen victories of Arthur, dux bellorum (leader of battles), over the Saxons.

c 1000-1100: "Development of a body of Welsh Arthurian tales with much marvellous content," some of which may indicate "the Celtic origin aspects of the Grail quest"

1140: Geoffrey of Monmouth cobbles together different bits of Arthurian lore and becomes the source for most subsequent treatments of the legend.

1155: Wace's Anglo-Norman Brut incorporates much of Monmouth, adds the Round Table, and, perhaps most importantly, "'moderniz[es] Arthur's court into a chivalric institution."

1190: Layamon translates Wace's work, making the "first Arthurian retelling in England"

The rest of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the development of "non-courtly" renderings as well as highly Christianized stories of the individual knights, all in addition to the French prose Vulgate Cycle.

The fourteenth century witnessed the construction of the Winchester Round Table, the establishment of The Order of the Garter, and the composition of Middle English's alliterative Morte Arthure and stanzaic Morte Arthur.

Malory began (and probably finished) his Morte Darthur in prison in 1470. He died a year later, in the middle of the Wars of the Roses.

For a more in-depth look at some of these sources (as well as some sources I've left out), check out the inimitably awesome blog of Medieval Bex:http://medievalbex.wordpress.com/

So now, back to the movie, appropriately set at the autumn of the ancient ages (Huizinga wink).

We're off to a good start with the handsome cast and the approximate historical time period. But it all kind of crumbles from there.
I worried that watching this after reading so much of the Arthurian tradition would confuse me, but it turned out to be a great test of my knowledge. Consider, for instance,  Lancelot, depicted with two swords:

I saw this and proudly told Drew, "No! The knight with the two swords is Balyn!" Yay me.

But Arthurian legends--in any of their countless iterations-- are not ever really about accuracy, anyway. The earliest stories were tales of bravery in the face of slaughtering invaders; the later authors replaced episodes martial valor with those of marital fidelity as the concerns of the works became increasingly interested in courtly affairs.

Taking its cue from Braveheart, our 2004 rendition takes freedom as its primary lesson/ theme.

And this anachronistic emphasis on personal (yet also national?) freedom isn't all these two movies share. They share something else: face paint.

We all know that Braveheart is about a 13th century Scotsman who rides around trying to act like Mel Gibson. Nevertheless, there is some measure of authenticity in the iconic face paint the warriors wear. This tradition came from the Picts-- the pre-Scotland Scots, if you will-- who were so named for being "painted."

And guess what? GUINEVERE IS ONE OF THEM. Yep. Guinevere sheds her already ill-fitting clothes for a battle bikini, paints her whole body blue, and goes crazy on some blonde-haired viking invaders.

And that reminded me of someone else:

I know, I know. Your mind is blown.

Well, there's much more to be said about the Arthurian tradition, and hopefully I'll be able to share more thoughts on Malory, Launfal, the Lady of Shallot, Havelok, and Horn.

But for now, I must return to the reading list.

Until next time,
wishing one everyone a surprisingly relevant TiVo experience.

New Page!

Hi again, readers--

I've decided to add other pages to this site. The first, "Academic Sources," shares websites, articles, and apps about digital humanities, medieval manuscripts, and more.

I'll be adding to it as the year goes on, so check in on it every now and then.

To come:
1) the "Suburban Sources" page-- probably about low sodium food and dogs
2) a TimeGlider timeline I've been working on for exams
3) a translation website in the works for an Old English class

Also check out the new sites on my new blog roll-- they're all pretty amazing.

Until next time, wishing everyone a productive winter!

A manifesto

I've recently contributed to HASTAC'S Future of Higher Education Forum, "inspired by a recent workshop called Rethinking Humanities Graduate Education, which was organized by the Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI) and the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI)" (hastac.org).

We were asked, 

"If you could change one component about your own academic program, what would it be, and why?"  

You can bet your next holiday Starbucks drink that I was (and have been for some time) quite ready to answer. 

via Debra Rae Cohen

Here's a brief run-down of my experiences, disappointments, and minor miracles over the past few years. At the end you'll find my mini-manifesto on graduate education. 

What do you think? What would you change? I open these questions to those within and outside of academia because I think it's an important question to raise about one's professional development track, no matter what the profession is. 

Answer: coursework/exams

I  had a great two years in my master's program, but found my PhD program difficult from the very start. I've spent the past two and a half years taking courses of no interest to me or relation to what I'd like to study. Perhaps I should have spent that time trying to publish something that didn't matter to my future work, but frankly I was so disheartened that I spent most of my energy just convincing myself to stay in the program. With little faculty support and a massive, hard-to-navigate administration (who three years later still has my last name wrong), I passed these years in social and academic isolation. 

If the emotional toll that this system has on us is extraordinary, the anxiety is made even more accute by the exam process.

I don't mind that PhD exams exist, of course. But I do mind that I'm responsible for the equivalent of 2 years of coursework in material that I've had to read on my own, outside of my classes. If courses don't matter to my exams,  I shouldn't have had to take them-- or not four semesters' worth, anyway. And now that I'm interested in pursuing digital humanities, I feel that I've run out of time to commit to classes on programming or other interdiciplinary integrations to my field.

The members of my exam committee have been extraordinarilly understanding about my situation, and I'm quite grateful for their support. Still, in a conversation about funding by, support in, and general funcitonality of higher education, my case illustrates the too-frequently ignored example of an outdated system that costs the university money and the students time-- time that is especially precious to those who want to have families, and whose biological clock seems occasionally at odds with our professional plans.

I am not as productive (and by that I mean as published) as those who had the luxury of faculty support during their coursework years. Indeed, of the three medievalists in my cohort, I'm the only one who made it through to the exam stage. And now that I'm here, and now that I have a bit of support, I wonder if it will all be worth it in the end, given what so many people in the third year of their PhDs have already accomplished.

This is not a situation unique to my program or even my school. There needs to be a re-evaluation of what's expected from PhDs and a re-assesment of how programs can position us to be successful-- within and outside of our programs.

I call for a radical streamlining that promotes faculty-student interaction and mentorship, interdisciplinary graduate courses, and a plan of study tailored to students' scholarly interests and professional goals. Such a system would be inherently and necessarily transparent; it would reduce administrative red tape and demystify the process of applying for fellowships or assistantships. This new system would require and reward mentorship by making it easier for students to participate in professors' research or teaching. By inspiring and fostering collaboration, this system would make candidates and professors more productive and more valuable. 

Most importantly, a new system would help students spend less but better time in their programs. 

Until next time, stay radical, readers.