Beowulf and Narrative "Tightness"

John Walter, over at Machina Memorialis figures out from the trailers the most significant plot change in the Beowulf film:"Keeping in mind, as I argued on ANSAXNET, trailers are often deceptive these days, I think we finally have a trailer that’s revealing exactly how Gaiman and Avery rewrote the story: Grendel’s mother is the dragon."

It's well worth reading the entire post, but the basic idea, which I think is right, is that Grendel's mother is the dragon, Beowulf lies about killing her due to greed for treasure, and also that Beowulf himself is the "thief" who steals the cup from the dragon, setting off the final confrontation. John links this approach up with the story of Fafnir and talks about Tolkien's dramatization of "dragon sickness" (a point developed in other contexts by Shippey). John says that

In other words, if what we’ve got are echoes of Tolkien here, Gaiman (and Avery) reinscribe Germanic mythology/tradition back onto Beowulf through the lens of modern Fantasy (Tolkien) in much the same way as Terry Pratchett and Tom Holt reinscribe the Victorian conception of the Old North back on to itself through the lens of that other major figure in 20th century fantasy, Robert E. Howard.

I think, without having yet seen the film, that this is a reasonable way of approaching what we know of the adaptation. But I would also add that there's another way to look at the adaptation aside from linking it specifically to Gaiman/Pratchett's tendencies, and that is the idea of "tightness" in narrrative.

Because mass-culture films cannot be much long than 2.5 hours, and because having audience members turn to each other and ask "what just happened?" or "Who is this guy?" Hollywood films tend to increase narrative tightness by reducing the numbers of characters and giving these fewer people more plot duties. In Creative Writing pedagogy we always went over the line from Checkhov, that if someone picks up a gun in Act 1, somebody needs to get shot by Act 5. Although there are of course exceptions, film, written as it usually is by committee and created under the watchful eye of a continuity director, is very good at taking loose threads and weaving them more tightly into the story.

This is fine as it goes for film, and such narrative tightness is also evident in a lot of literature as well: it's a cliche of Dickins criticism that you just need to spot the right very minor character in the first two chapters to know how the whole complicated mess of the plot is going to be solved.

What's particularly interesting to me is how different this aesthetic is from medieval epic (particularly Beowulf) and its direct 20th-century descendents (Tolkienian fantasy), and how the film adaptations of Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings really point out this contrast. One of the things I complained about when seeing the Peter Jackson LotR films was how small they made Middle-earth: and I meant that both physically (you can stand on Orthanc and see Caradhras; you can take a quick jaunt from Henneth Annun to Osgiliath and back to Cirith Ungol) and socially (everyone knows who everybody else is even before they've met).

For example, in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Strider and the hobbits are aided by Glorfindel, a powerful elf-lord who is seen at the Council of Elrond and then never really discussed again. In the Ralph Bakshe version of The Fellowship of the Ring, Glorfindel is replaced by Legolas, tightening the narrative in one way (not as many elves). In Jackson's version, the hobbits and Strider are helped by Arwen, thus introducing her into the main narrative and setting up the Aragorn/Arwen love story which is not a main element of Tolkien's story until "Many Partings" (though in hindsight you can figure out bits at the end of "Many Meetings" and with the delivery of the standard to Aragorn).

I think we see this same tightening in the Beowulf movie by making all three monsters closely related and having the action in Geatland be directly motivated by the action in Denmark.

I've already argued as to why the Hollywood film prizes such narrative tightness, but it's just as a big a question as to why medieval epic does not. One answer could be found in John Miles Foley's approach: the audience already knows who all of these characters are, so there's no need in any given instantiation to tie them so tightly together. The entire epic world and its many sub-plots are immanent in the minds of the audience. Therefore to them Beowulf is basically tight already: they know who Unferth, Ingeld, Freawaru and Hrothulf are and how their stories fit together.

Tolkien himself seems to have had a somewhat different view, chalking up at least some inconsistencies (which I will take as lack of tightness, though that is somewhat problematic and would require a much longer argument than I have time for here to really lock it down). In Beowulf and the Critics in which Tolkien writes:

It is extraordinarily difficult, even in a newly invented tale of any length, to avoid minor discrepancies; more so still in re-handling old and oft-told tales. Critics would seem seldom themselves to have experienced the difficulties of narration. The points they fix on in the study, with a copy that can be turned back and forth for reference, are usually such as may easily escape an author, and still more easily an audience. Let us think, say, of Malory, were all his sources lost beyond recall. (B&C 140 n.1)

I think Tolkien started to go even beyond this point, however, but dropped it. If you refer to the Textual Notes for that page, you'll read:

even in a newly invented tale, of any length,

Critics would seem seldom ^themselves to have experienced

beyond recall. I have now ?? ?? ?? ?? in which the heroine's very name changed from Edith to Ethel 170.

You can see why a change from Edith to Ethel would have jumped out at him. I wonder if there would ever be a way to track down what book he was reading that did this (there's a similar minor inconsistency in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising).

I extrapolate from these quotes and from other things Tolkien wrote to suggest that he recognized--though not naming it--that the work of the critic in the study who can flip back and forth between different texts is fundamentally different from that of the storyteller who has to compose in real time or even who is writing a long tale. To use Ong's terminology, there is a different noetic at play in each case, just as Hollywood films and medieval epics operate under different noetic conventions.

But in writing his works, even though they were conceived in the study where an author can turn back and forth for reference, Tolkien adopted the style -- i.e., the narrative slack -- of the medieval epic. The "Great Chain of Reading" that Gergely Nagy discusses is part of this style, but there is also Tolkien's willingness to introduce entirely new characters -- Gildor, Glorfindel, Farmer Maggot, Erkenbrand, Elfhelm, Quickbeam--and not always tie them neatly into the final action the way they would all have to wrap up neatly in a Dickens novel or a Hollywood film. Narrative slackness is a big part of the aesthetic effect of both Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings (my favorite part in Beowulf being: "Oh, never bothered to mention the second monster until now that she's attacked the hall, stolen the arm and killed Æschere--oops").

I would submit that one of the great gulfs between those who get aesthetic pleasure from Beowulf and LotR in their original forms and those who prefer the film adaptations is likely to be the degree to which the aesthetic of narrative tightness has been internalized. And it's really important, as I keep telling my students, to keep remembering that modernist aesthetics are not universal (i.e., there's no outside standard that proves that "tight" writing is good and "slack" is bad) but matters of habit, preference and tradition.

Dudes, we're a franchise!

Over on ANSAX-net (the Anglo-Saxonist's listserv) and in a few other places, there has been discussion about the trailer for the upcoming Beowulf movie.

One of the big questions that keeps popping up is why the movie has to take such liberties with the story. There's been some fairly predictable (at least to me, if only because of the eternal arguments about the Peter Jackson The Lord of the Rings films) debate about how the adaptation is inferior to the original versus the idea that stories need to be updated to fit the times in which they are performed.

I go two ways on this. On the one hand, no one is giving me a hundred million dollars or so to make a Hollywood movie (although if any readers want to do this, don't think I'm ruling it out), and so, because there is a lot of money for a lot of people on the line, I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to people who think they know what their audience wants. On the other hand, I think that Hollywood films (which are, remember, made by committee no matter whose name is on the box-top) tend to think that the lowest common denominator is lower than it has to be. My take (and remember, I haven't had a chance to lose a few million on an unsuccessful movie) is that when Hollywood takes risks and respects the audience, things work out for the better. One of the biggests risks in both Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings would be sticking very closely to the story, but such a risk can pay off commerically. For example, the Narnia movie deviated very little from the original text and was very commercially successful.

The big question, though, is: why make a Beowulf movie and then not follow the story? As Johnny Cochrane said on South Park, "It does not makes sense." Want to make a film with Angelina Jolie as a naked snake-woman, and a character beating beating a monster with its own severed arm (I think every time he whacks Grendel with the arm he should say "Why are you hitting yourself? Huh? Why are you hitting yourself?" -- now you can tell I have a younger brother), and dragon rodeo? Why not just make a move with those things in it? But no, you add those things and you still call it Beowulf.

The only answer that makes sense to me is that the film-makers and their financial and marketing people thought that the Beowulf name was worth something. Otherwise there's no reason to use it if you are changing the story. That means that Beowulf, rather than being interpreted in the culture as something boring and tedious (i.e., Woody Allen's "never take a class in which you have to read Beowulf"), is being interpreted as something exciting and worth paying attention to.

That means that to some degree all of our work over the past twenty years or so has succeeded. Many, many of us have been preaching and teaching the joys of Beowulf, and we've helped bring about a cultural change. That's a very big deal, and a very good thing for Beowulf studies, Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature in general. Dudes, we're part of a franchise.

[now, in my next post, I try to tie this in to my recent experience in my Anglo-Saxon class, where students were extremely interested in the Indo-European language tree, ablaut and umlaut. Really. They were. I'm not making it up.]

A Job in Film Studies in the Wheaton English Department

This year the English department here at Wheaton will be searching for a tenure-track, Assistant Professor in Film Studies: World Cinema. The ad mostly speaks for itself, but I can elaborate on a couple of things. First, we already have a specialist in Hollywood film and want to expand our offerings to meet student demand, so our new colleague will not have to invent a film program at Wheaton or introduce it to a department. Second, every professor in the department, at every rank, teaches English 101, so the successful applicant should make it clear in the cover letter how he or she will do this. Finally, Wheaton is a small liberal arts college where teaching is valued very, very highly. Write accordingly.
We will be interviewing at MLA. I won't be part of the interviewing committee, but the entire department reads all the applications, so I'll be reading them.



[This last bit is personal from me rather than anything the department has discussed. You know the job letter in the smallest possible font with the smallest possible spacing and the eyelash-thin margins on each side? I hate that. Remember that your readers are poring over at least 100 other applications. If you make it difficult to read by cramming in everything and the kitchen sink and playing buzzword bingo, your letter is just a blur and readers are unlikely to remember it. You have a much better chance of standing out from the competition if your letter is pithy, clear and absolutely free of buzzwords].

Assistant Professor of Film – World Cinema
The English Department at Wheaton College, in Massachusetts, invites applications for a tenure track position in film at the level of Assistant Professor. Ph.D. in film, English or a related discipline and teaching experience required. We are seeking to add a scholar with primary research and teaching interests in the fields of World Cinemas, Third Cinema, or the aesthetics and cultural history of cinematic traditions outside Europe and the United States. The candidate will also be expected to contribute to introductory courses in film and to teach first-year writing. All members of the department teach courses outside their primary specializations, and we look forward to hearing how the range of your interests can further enrich our program. Areas of additional specialization might include but are not limited to film and literature, comparative film studies, the globalization of cinema and multi-ethnic approaches to film. Wheaton is a liberal arts college in New England with a standard teaching load of 3-2. Wheaton continues its dedication to hiring a diverse faculty and encourages applications from women and people of color. Send letter, vita, dissertation abstract and self-addressed postcard for acknowledgement, postmarked by November 15, to Michael Drout, Chair, Dept. of English, Wheaton College, 26 E. Main St., Norton, MA, 02766. AA/EOE -

Why I Heart Walter W. Skeat

I've been reading Principles of English Etymology, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, Litt.D., Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge (because that's the kind of person I am). I find Skeat's explanation of sound changes better than the more recent ones (as I discussed in this post), and I am just thoroughly enjoying the book.

But I think what I like most is Skeat's persona coming through in the writing in a way that contemporary academic writing doesn't allow. He's even crabbier than Tolkien! (And I see the antecedents of some of Tolkien's academic writing in Skeat, but I'll write that up in a more formal context later).

Skeat is obviously very frustrated with dilettante etymologists who do not understand vergleichende Philologie (maybe that's why I love him so), and he lets these people have it with both barrels on many occasions.

Here is one of my favorites:

If we say that E. foot is derived from the G. Fuss (as is actually said by many), we are then talking nonsense, and contradicting all history; if we say that the G. Fuss is derived from the E. foot (as is never said by any, because Englishmen dare not say so and Germans know better), we are talking a trifle more sensibly and contradicting history a little less. We must, however, use neither phrase; we must drop the term 'derived' altogether, and employ the term 'cognate.'

Ah, "because Englishmen dare not say so and Germans know better." I laughed out loud while sitting watching my daughter to gymnastics. "We are talking a trifle more sensibly and contradicting history a little less." Why can't people write like that, simply and clearly and with a real wit and personality showing through, in academic books in English (the discipline)?

The book is filled with such mordant gems as that above. Skeat, for example, does battle time and again with the notion that English bite is derived from German beissen, and on the third or fourth time gives a footnote which reads "I feel obliged to continue to protest against this childish error because I find, by experience, that it is deeply rooted, widely spread, and extremely mischievous."

Obviously I have found a kindred spirit.

Walter W. Skeat, Henry Sweet, Albert S. Cook: Shippey is right when he says that we have a long way to go before contemporary English studies has advanced to the level of, say, the 1890s.

At that time, in the first rush to learn and use vergleichende Philologie in the English-speaking world, the subject of English was held in the highest esteem, both among the public and in the universities. Now our beloved subject is less respected than it has ever been.

Coincidence?


[* Let me add that there are problems in Skeat, particularly in terminology. He uses "Teutonic" for "Germanic," "Aryan" for "Indo-European" and "Icelandic" for "Old Norse" ("Old Icelandic" is a compromise). Skeat gives good explanations for why he uses the terms he does, but coming across them now is disturbing, illustrating how words change through events external to their phonetic history. No matter what "Aryan" meant to Skeat, it does not mean only that now, and we read the past through the built-up layers of our own history and inheritances.]

lolbishops



Wormtalk and Slugspeak: Where medieval geekery meets idiotic internet trends.

This is quite possibly the dorkiest thing I have ever posted. And that is saying a lot.

Teaching Old English Vocab and Vowel Changes

My, there's and exciting title for a post!

At some point soon I will write a post about how great it is to be Department Chair (hint: think of the smallest amount of great you can picture. Then divide it in half. Then divide it in half again. Then divide it in half again... [with apologies to the Mathemagician]).

But now I want to discuss a method I've been testing out for teaching Old English vocabulary and vowel changes.

This weekend I was reading Walter Skeat's Principles of English Etymology (yes, that's the kind of thing I do for my few hours of "fun" on the weekend), and I noticed the way he clusters together a whole variety of words that exhibit the same vowel changes from Old English to Modern English. When he does this, you get pairs of words, like wa = woe, na = no, ga = go. You'll notice that all the words on the left side of the equals sign rhyme with each other and all the words on the right rhyme with each other.

So, I'm sitting on a lawn chair, reading Skeat and watching my son water a bunch of rocks with the hose, and my daughter comes over to ask me what I'm reading. I started reciting: "wa, woe; na, no; ga, go" and then I said "ta" and she said "toe." I tried again with "da" and she said "doe" (I guess it could have been "dough" or "doh!", but it sounded like "doe" to me).

And I realized that if it worked for a 7-year-old, it just might work for college students.

I did try it a bit with college students the next day, and they seemed to get it. So now I'm preparing lists of words for each vowel for them go to over. I'm hoping that they will then have an easier time figuring out Modern English forms in OE words and thus spend less time with the Clark Hall Dictionary (though for most of the class they either use my King Alfred glossary or the glossary in Eight Old English Poems).

My questions:

I don't remember this approach being used in other grammar books, but did I miss one where it was?

This seems like it might be a more effective approach for learning vocabulary than Barney's Word Hoard, which has words in semantic clusters rather than simply in terms of vowels (rhyme).

Do you think this approach will work in the long run?

Below is a list of a few of the words for a few vowels. Feel free to use (after all, I pulled them from Mr. Skeat).

la = lo!
wa = woe
na = no
ga = go
da = doe
ta = toe

swa = so

hwa = who
twa = two


hal = whole
mal = mole


†rawan = to throw
sawan = to sow
mawan = to mow
crawan = to crow
cnawan = to know

ham = home
lam = loam
fam = foam

ac = oak
stracian = stroke
spaca = spoke

rad = road
gad = goad
tad = toad
abad = abode

wrat = wrote
gat = goat
bat = boat

rap = rope
sape = soap
grapian = grope

Papa = Pope
(Pronounced "Pap - a", not like "Poppa"; explains why we say “Pope” but “Papacy,” “Papal.”)[more detail in comments]

he = he
∂e = thee
we = we
me = me

hedan = to heed
redan = to read
steda = steed
sped = speed
fedan = to feed
ned = need
bredan = to breed
bledan = to bleed
creda = creed

swete = sweet
scet = sheet
fet = feet
metan = meet
gretan = greet
bete = beet

wepan = to weep

Out of the Mouths of Babes...

My Department Chair duties have recently been pretty demanding, and getting the semester started has also taken its toll, so blogging has suffered. So in place of anything substantive, I have a little story:

My son, who is a little over three years old, has decided that the biggest insult in the world is to say that someone or something "poops in his pants." When he's playing with his cars and wants Lightning to say something mean to Snotrod, he says "You poop in your pants." When he was offered some food he didn't like I asked him: "Why don't you like lima beans?" Answer: "Lima beans poop in their pants." "Why are you afraid of spiders?" "Spiders poop in your pants." You get the idea.

My son is also an absolutely fanatical Red Sox fan. He knows every player by sight and can remember what they each did in previous games. He also recognizes players on other teams. And when he dislikes a player, you can guess what he says that player does in his pants.

Today he was going through his list of players he does not like (hint: they all come from a certain team in New York): "Derek Jeter poops in his pants." "Hideki Matsui poops in his pants." "Jorge Posada poops in his pants." Then he said "A-Rod." And stopped. So, of course, I asked him: "Does Alex Rodriguez poop in his pants?" To my surprise, my son said "No." Then he started laughing. "What? Doesn't A-Rod poop in his pants?" I asked. "No." Hysterical giggles. "A-Rod poops in Derek Jeter's pants."

While laughing along with him I realized that at some deep level I will always be a three-year-old.

Tenure Track Job in History at Wheaton

The History Department here at Wheaton is going to be searching to fill a tenure track position this year. I have pasted the ad in below. I should note that I have nothing to do with this search directly (Wheaton departments are a little prickly--correctly, in my view--about prerogatives with regard to hires and tenuring, so no Chair of English is going to be trying to tell History what to do).

A few other things that obviously wouldn't go in the ad, but I can tell you: The History department is very strong at Wheaton, made up of good people who are involved in all aspects of the life of the college. It is also among the most popular departments among students; when we were reducing requirements for the our new curriculum History was willing to give up a requirement because their classes always fill. Our students clearly are interested in history, and the department has a whole line-up of excellent teachers. Teaching load is 3/2, but a new program makes that 2/2 the first year. Pretty decent research/travel budget (in excess of $1000 and has been going up) for every year and opportunities for other funding. Fully funded junior sabbatical and post-tenure sabbatical. Very, very "flat" organizational structure at Wheaton means that there are no deans over the faculty. Our "connections" curriculum is very innovative and history is at the heart of it (it is the "universal connector" -- I'll explain that in another post). The campus is about 30 miles south of Boston. It's a 30-minute commute against the traffic if you live in the southern Boston suburbs, 45 minutes from the city itself and maybe a little longer from Cambridge. I believe that the commute is about 40 minutes from Providence (which is less expensive and is where a plurality of our faculty live). There are trains and buses, but probably you need a car. The town of Norton, where Wheaton is located, is pretty sleepy itself. Cost of living in the Boston metro area is very high (higher than Chicago, slightly lower than San Francisco or NYC, but not too much); Providence is less expensive. Wheaton pay is competitive with other small liberal arts colleges.

I personally think this is a very good job and I'm hoping that whoever History hires will want to collaborate with me, Joel Relihan in Classics (a superb Latinist and translator of Boethius) and Evelyn Lane in Art History (expert on stained glass, among other things). There is strong support for medieval studies on campus, with professors from Biology, Religion and Math/Computer Science doing various collaborations.

Good luck to those who apply!

Medieval/Ancient World

The Department of History at Wheaton College (MA) seeks a tenure-track assistant professor with scholarly and teaching expertise in the fields of classical, late-antique, and/or medieval history. The History Department is especially interested in social or cultural historians whose thematic expertise includes gender, popular religion, material culture, cross-cultural contact, or the history of science or the environment. Geographic field open; preference for Celtic world, northwestern Europe, or southeastern Europe. Ph.D must be in hand at time of appointment. Send letter of interest, CV, and three letters of reference by November 26, 2007 to Alexander Bloom, Chair, Department of History, Wheaton College, Norton, MA, 02766. Preliminary interviews will be conducted at the 2008 AHA annual meeting. For more information, please contact hr@wheatonma.edu. AA/EOE. Wheaton College seeks educational excellence through diversity and strongly encourages applications from women and men from historically underrepresented groups.

ISAS 2007: London

Sorry no posting of late. Came back from fishing (the fish won, mostly, but I did hook a snook on my fly rod, though he cut the leader with his gill covers) to finish up my paper for the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists conference in London. I was a last-minute substitute for someone, so I hadn't been working on the paper as steadily as I otherwise would have, and it took a lot of work to sweat it down to under 20 minutes (I hate papers that go on too long and I figure the only way to be truly obnoxiously holier-than-thou about it is to make sure my papers don't go too long by reading them aloud again, and again, and again -- my poor family).

I only did this because ISAS is absolutely the best conference in my field, which is the only reason I would ever have agreed to do something this last-minute. The conference only happens every two years and I missed it last time (my son was too small to leave my wife stuck with both kids for that long) but it is always so incredible, with brilliant work being showcased, that I come home inspired to write. Each ISAS I've attended (95 in Stanford, 97 in Palermo, 99 at Notre Dame, 01 in Helsinki and 03 as Arizona) has led to an article, book or computer program, so I'm hoping to come back and be incredibly productive after listening to a passel of good papers.

On the other hand, I am a total homebody and hate traveling, so I'm not looking forward to the trip. But in the end it should be worth it.

The paper is: The Invention of Cynewulf: Albert S. Cook, Philology, Romanticism and English Studies in America.

Crazy Sheep DNA Project Progress

Heading off on the first vacation in a long, long time, so this blog and my email and Anglo-Saxon Aloud will be on hiatus for a little while, and I won't be able to fill Beowulf Aloud orders for a while (though you might want to order anyway, as I am going to have to raise the price for the next print run as soon as this one sells out). I had thought to bring the computer with me, "for emergencies," and my beloved wife quickly brought me down to earth: "You are the Chair of an ENGLISH department!" she said. "What POSSIBLE emergency could happen that couldn't wait until you get back?" I did not have an answer.

So I'm goin' fishin'. But I wanted to give a little progress report on the Crazy Sheep DNA Project. Like many ideas that sound good from an outsider's point of view, the science is turning out to be both harder and more interesting than I had realized. Today my research partner, Amanda Shorette, and I had a good meeting in which we realized how each of our areas of research will feed into the other, and how all are interdependent. We came up with the chart below, and I'll explain how we're tackling each problem so that others who are doing complex interdisciplinary research can steal ideas.



We begin with the historical research, which tells us what questions are most worth asking. Thus I am training Amanda in paleography (she's right now gotten a pretty good grip on writing basic scripts and is now moving to uncials) and she is reading the introduction to Ker's Catalogue and scanning through Gneuss's Handlist. This work tells us about manuscript distributions and what particular problems might be solved by knowing the relationships of the sheep that gave up their skins.

Then we move on to the physical research. We need to find a non-destructive method of testing; otherwise, libraries won't let us near them. We believe we have a patentable testing kit that could be manufactured very cheaply and distributed to thousands of libraries and researchers, but getting it right requires work in microscopy as well as engineering (conveniently, I'm married to a brilliant engineer; I recommend this approach to all researchers). We have to figure out the thickness of the parchment or vellum, its physical structure, and where we are likely to get the most DNA. Then we prototype the extraction kit and hope somebody gives us money to manufacture them.

The next level, which I've labeled "Chemical," but which should really be called "Chemical/Biological," is where Amanda is teaching me. She is learning well enough to teach the processes by which DNA is extracted from material (using Proteinase K, for example, which breaks down all the protein, leaving the DNA behind), identified (using gel electropheresis) and amplified (using polymerase chain reaction). This is all the wet lab work that we'll practice in the fall under the supervision of my previous co-author, Professor of Biology (and diamondback terrapin expert) Barbara Brennessel.

Then there is an additional Chemical/Biological step that is more on the biological side: we need to figure out the best way to characterize the information we get, whether in terms of complete sequences, or microsatellites, or single nucleotide polymorphisms, or other aspects of DNA. Amanda knows about these, but she needs to teach me.

Then we have to learn how to take the next step, to go from the chemical/biological to the bioinformatic: how to we get our amplified DNA into sequences of base pairs such as TTCSGATTACA, etc.? I don't know, and Amanda is just learning.

But when we do that, my work with Prof. of Computer Science Mike Gousie begins. We will be designing a database with a visual interface to hold all of the information that will, we hope, pour in from libraries and researchers all over the world once we get the whole prototype project running. For a mock-up of the interface (which has been re-designed and much improved thanks to input from Tiruncula, see this post).

Then, and here is where the magic happens, the results from the database feed back to help answer the original historical questions and help us pose new and interesting questions.

So that's the status of the Sheep DNA project right now. Most of the "work" is happening in our heads, as we teach ourselves what we have to do. But I've learned from hard experience that the most important work you do may be the planning that occurs before you ever set foot in the lab, and so my desire to monkey around with PCR must be frustrated for a few more months. But in the end, we hope to end up with some very solid foundations for the research: and maybe a patent or two. Any patent attorneys out there who want to help, given that the value of this particular patent would probably approach zero in financial terms but would be a good contribution to human knowledge (do you think I have to mention that zero-money part when I talk to the college attorney?).

Really Interesting Call for Papers

First, apologies for very limited posting, and thanks to those who offered condolances and support after my last post. It has been a very challenging month or so, and it is not over yet. I just got back from recording another course for Recorded Books' Modern Scholar series (A Way with Words 2: Understanding and Discussing Literature) and still have to finish that course book as well as many other things.

But I wanted to publicize this Call for Papers for Kalamazoo that just came in over ANSAX-net, both because it looks fascinating and because I think this kind of approach is exactly where the action is likely to be in literary studies in the near future. Unfortunately, my own work in this area is probably not yet advanced enough to have an abstract ready to submit (neuroscience turns out to be really hard: who knew?), but hopefully some of you readers are further along. So, kudos to Ron Ganze. I know one session at Kzoo 2008 that I will definitely be attending.

International Medieval Congress 2008
Call for Papers: Cognitive Approaches to the Medieval Texts

The use of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology in literary criticism has increased exponentially in the last decade; several monographs and essay collections on the subject have appeared, and entire issues of journals, both in literary studies and in the cognitive sciences, have been dedicated to the study of literature using a cognitive approach. We are also beginning to see conferences dedicated to the cognitive study of literature, with at least two national conferences in 2006 alone.

This approach has important implications for the study of medieval literature and culture, as it both supplements and acts as a corrective to the predominant social constructionist model through which we usually read texts and their characters. In some very important ways, it opens the medieval texts to understandings and interpretations that the social constructionist model often closes off, and calls into question some of the assumptions made by both medievalists and theorists about the nature of the self. It also provides a useful way of understanding narrative, as cognitive psychology and neuroscience now understand the impulse to narrative as hard-wired into the human brain, and as the primary means by which we make sense of reality.

This session seeks to bring work in this area to the Middle Ages and to the attention of medievalists, who may find this new approach useful and illuminating. Papers on such topics as the neurology of narrative, the impact of cognitive approaches to literature on perceptions of medieval authorship or the medieval sense of self, and particularly papers investigating similarities between medieval psychological models and those forwarded by cognitive psychology are welcome, though the panel need not be limited to these subjects.

Email submissions preferred (MS Word—save as Word 2003 or earlier—or rich text format, please). Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent by September 1, 2007, to Ronald J. Ganze at one of the following addresses:

(before August 10):
Department of English
1409 Chapel Drive
Valparaiso University
Valparaiso, IN 46383
Ronald.Ganze@valpo.edu

(after August 10):
Department of English
212 Dakota Hall
University of South Dakota
414 E. Clark Street
Vermillion, SD 57069-2390
ronald.ganze@gmail.com

Marilyn Todesco, R.I.P.

This evening my closest friend at Wheaton College, Marilyn Todesco, passed away after a difficult and intense battle with renal cancer. Marilyn became sick back in late November, had what seemed like successful surgery, and was supposed to back to work at the beginning of June. On Memorial Day weekend we learned that her cancer had returned in very aggressive form.

The great things a person does in life should define them, not their disease, so I want to use the rest of this post to talk about how important Marilyn was to me personally, to our department and to our building.

Marilyn was the building secretary for Meneely Hall, which meant she handled the needs of English, Hispanic and Italian Studies, and German as well as every faculty member who couldn't figure out the copy machine, every student confused about classes and every other possible problem that arose.

Her office was, in the words of the poet Sue Standing, our hearth, and the fire burning in that hearth was Marilyn's personality. Always ready with a laugh or a word of comfort, always calm even in the midst of chaos, always caring even at the most stressful times, Marilyn held everything together. If our building was a remarkably collegial place, it was mostly due to her, to our desire to please her (she disliked conflict) and her ability to listen.

Marilyn was the first person I met at Wheaton after being hired there. She sent me around on all my errands across campus (locksmith, human resources, mail room, information technology), and then she chatted with me about her family, her dog and life in general. This started a pattern. Every day I would come in 15 minutes early so that I'd have time to stand in Marilyn's office and talk to her.

Her granddaughter was born about a year after my daughter, and so Marilyn and I would swap child stories and show artwork and pictures and enjoy raising kids together. Marilyn was very good on life advice. When my wife was pregnant, she and I had one of those fights that are in retrospect idiotic, but at the same time impossible to stop. I was telling Marilyn about it the next day. "Go home, unplug the electric pencil sharpener" (this was the source of the stupid fight) "and bring it down and put it in your office," said Marilyn. Her advice worked, and she always got a laugh out of telling the story.

Marilyn had me keep my eye out for students who might want to work in the office. She trained them, trusted them, befriended them, and in the end often did more good than any other individual on campus. I know of more than one student whom she physically walked over to the counseling center and into an appointment. I can think of two students whose lives, it is only a minor exaggeration to say, she saved. I saw her put band-aids on students' hands, give out water, candy and tissues, and more importantly, provide a ready ear and a mind that knew every single thing about Wheaton College.

If it weren't for Marilyn, there would be no Tolkien Studies, no Bibliography project, no high level of productivity. If it weren't for her, I don't think I would have survived my first few years at Wheaton. If not for her, I might not have gotten through the really difficult months of adjusting to a new child and then, later, to a second child.

My children loved Marilyn and couldn't wait to see her. She was one of the first adults outside of the family with whom they had a relationship, and she was the first person at Wheaton I brought my kids to meet when they were only a month old and I carried them in the baby bucket.

She loved the college, and she loved each of us, "her professors." She knew us, understood us, and took care of us. Only her family was more important.

I joked once to Marilyn, about three years ago, that there were only four people on campus who were impossible to replace. Everyone else, all the faculty, the administration, etc., could go, but there were four people Wheaton couldn't do without. She was number one on that list. No one in the room disagreed.

I don't know how we will go on without her. I think we have already learned how much of a difference one person can make, and it will only get worse as we realize that she really is not coming back. Now we will have to try to live up to the standard she set.

I am heartbroken, but also grateful that I got to spend 9 years of my life with such a good, true friend. I will always miss her.

The Dream of the Rood and other things

Posting has been light here due to workload and also because the person who has probably been my closest friend at Wheaton for the past ten years has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and is rapidly slipping away. It's a very difficult time. She has been such an important part of encouraging me with my work and helping me along, and I'm at a loss.

But I am trying to keep up with my projects. Over at Anglo-Saxon Aloud, I've posted The Dream of the Rood. It is one of the most beautiful poems in Old English, and I know it very well, so I think that the recording isn't too bad. If you haven't listened to an Anglo-Saxon poem yet, this might be a good one. It is about 11 minutes long.

This past weekend I gave an invited lecture, "Engineers as Heroes: Science Fiction from the 1930s to Today" to the Sigma Xi (the Scientific Research Society) chapter at General Motors in Warren, Michigan. This one of of the most well-informed, intelligent audiences I've ever spoken to, and I had a great time visiting the Tech Center and giving the talk. Great people (and one of them was a Wheaton alum from 1978--in anthropology!).

Also, I'll be giving a research seminar at the Santa Fe Institute next week. And, it turns out, I will be presenting at the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists' conference in London at the beginning of August (despite what I told everyone at Kalamazoo).

But before then, I have to write all fourteen lectures for A Way with Words Part II: Understanding Literature for Recorded Books. I think it's funny that I, a Theory skeptic who thinks Derrida is wrong about many things because he didn't read his Wittgenstein, got hired to write a Theory-related course. But I'm really happy about working with Recorded Books again, not the least because my colleague in Biology, John Kricher, has agreed to do a course on Dinosaurs for them and I will get to be in the studio when part of that is recorded. Dinosaurs! So cool.

Andreas now complete

I've just posted the final segment of Andreas over at Anglo-Saxon Aloud, so the entire poem should now be able to be downloaded either from the site or from iTunes.

I found recording Andreas very challenging. The poet uses some formulas and other set pieces that are similar to Beowulf, but they never completely felt right when I was reading them. I found myself getting tangled or losing the rhythm much more in Andreas than any other poem, even Christ and Satan.

But in terms of content, Andreas is really interesting, and if you haven't read this poem, I recommend it, even in the S.A.J. Bradley prose translation: it contains all kinds of weird and interesting things, from cannibalism to drugs that drive people insane to rivers pouring out of marble and drowning the bad guys... God Himself makes a number of appearances, some of them in disguise. I have read Andreas many times since first reading it in grad school, but I still don't know what to make of it.

Next up are a few short poems--"Fates of the Apostles," "Soul and Body I," the excitingly named "Homiletic Fragment I" and the great "The Dream of the Rood." Then the Vercelli Book poems conclude with Elene, about Saint Helen and the finding of the True Cross. That poem is almost as long as Andreas and possibly even more interesting. I estimate that I'll finish the Vercelli book sometime around mid to late June. The Exeter Book will take at least the rest of the summer.

By the way, a few people have been kind enough to ask if they can use these recitations in their Old English classes. Of course! It's what they are there for. I also intend, once the entire recording process is done, to put them on CDs so that people can buy the entire ASPR as a set. But until then (and even after then), everything I've recorded and edited is available at Anglo-Saxon Aloud, except for the Beowulf recording, which you can buy at Beowulf Aloud. But, I only have 1 more undamaged Beowulf Aloud left from the first pressing. Another print run is in progress.

A New Stage
(follow-up Kalamazoo)

Tiruncula writes about Kalamazoo feeling different this year and attributes this change not to her new affiliation with a fancy-pants university, but to having several cohorts of grad students at different stages in their careers at the conference. In this post Dr. Virago and her commenters discuss the complexities of the dance, noting that a person's relationship to that event changes with the years as well. Medieval Woman talked about being pretty much filled up with conference by Saturday afternoon and skipping the dance. New Kid on the Hallway discussed how there can be a conference with >600 sessions and yet so few that you are excited to attend.

I recognized a lot in those posts. I've felt exactly the same ways at other times. Kalamazoo, because it is so large, because of the dance, and the dorms, and the continuity year after year, works as some kind of psychic amplifier. There was one year when, after listening to a paper that went on forever speculating about how many lines are missing from the beginning of Judith, I just had to get out of there. Luckily, Jenny Adams, who was sharing a ride with me, had just at that point also gotten fed up, so we drove back to Chicago and then I felt stupid for missing the dance.

Kalamazoo for me is now a lot more pure fun. I enjoy seeing my undergraduates show up as successful grad students, and I like meeting people I've otherwise been introduced to at invited lectures, etc. I have enough friends there that I'm always rushing to see one or the other, and this year a couple of people whose work I really admire were willing to sit down and talk about work (not job possibilities, gossip, job shuffling; just intellectual work--it was great!).

However, this year there was a new feeling, and it was not entirely a pleasant one (though I would have guessed it would be). That feeling, I think, was a kind of fear.

At least three times, people came up to me to talk and said that they were using my work. Two of them were dissertations, and one is a book-turned-into-a-dissertation. This is, of course at one level very gratifying, and my enormous ego enjoyed it a lot. But I walked away from each discussion with my heart pounding and sweat running down the back of my neck, and I didn't figure out why until later. I realized that really until now I had been unconsciously assuming that everything I published, even at the highest levels, was fairly likely to be wrong but that this was ok, because at some point a senior person would come along and say "no, not exactly," and fix it. Yes, even for work that's gone through double outside anonymous review, or appeared in JEGP or Studies in Philology or Neophilologus or Anglo-Saxon England, I've been unconsciously assuming that the grown-ups will eventually come along and straighten everything out.

Now I realize, in a way I hadn't before, that at least one or two (possibly exactly three) people have read my work working under the assumption that it's right and that they can build from it. I had no idea how profoundly scary that would be, but it certainly gives me a nice adrenaline shock when I think of it, even right now.

Hanging on the wall in my office is a quote from Max Planck: "new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." I have always found this line encouraging when struggling to get people to engage with my ideas.

But it's scary as well. Because if it starts to happen, all of a sudden you have a responsibility to be right, not just to the best of your ability, but to be right enough that you don't lead astray some poor, overworked, underpaid graduate student (like you yourself were not that long ago) with any bits of sloppy thinking or unclear expression. Thinking about this in more detail makes your blood run cold: what if one of your discursive footnotes ends up not proving what you think it proves, but the student runs with it, and then he or she ends up suffering for your mistake...

All of a sudden you want the grown-ups back. And thinking of yourself as one of them is not a very comforting thought.

I think this was all brought home even more by the memorial session for Nick Howe (I have my own two "this is how unbelievably generous Nick Howe was..." stories, but I'll put those in another post), the fact that Nick Doane is retiring from Wisconsin, and Steve Glosecki's untimely death. These people, and Patrick Wormald and Phil Pulsiano in previous years, weren't tottering ancient scholars. They were the very active heart of the field. And I know that I, and my colleagues of the same age and experience, will just never be capable of taking their places. And yet, due to the structure of academia, in some weird way new generations of scholars, who don't know any better, will assume that we have.

I'm sure this is all related to my own anxieties about becoming Department Chair, and others' experiences are likely to be very different, but for me, right now, getting the things I have always wanted--real engagement with my ideas for what they are, not where they come from--is turning out to be one of the most intellectually frightening (and with that, exhilarating) times of my life thus far.

But I close by saying that I will not grow up and will continue to stay in the dorms. Do you realize that, if you've been to more than ten Kalamazoos, that you've spent at least a month of your life in those dorms? The day I give up and move to a hotel with a real bed, an unshared bathroom, and no rooster outside my window is the day I am officially old.

Obligatory Late Kalamazoo Post
So much to write, no time to do it. I returned from Kalamazoo to Mother's Day, a pile of laundry, a Red Sox game, and a huge steaming heap of grading. I am only now digging out, and not so efficiently, either.

This Far Side explains how I felt at Kalamazoo (and still feel now):


But before the moment passes, this is a good time to make a comment or two. The actual details, including the blogger meet-up (which was fun) have been better discussed by others: Scott Nokes (scroll down), Another Damn Medievalist (Blogenspiel), Medieval Woman (whom I knew in a completely different context), Tiruncula (more on later), History Geek, Shana Worthen of Owlfish, Lisa Spangenberg, Elisabeth Carnell and others. I was also moved into a kind of awed awkwardness by meeting Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light.

In the tradition of weird things happening at Kalamazoo, I was woken by a rooster on Friday morning at 4:30 a.m. I assumed I dreamed this, but then I was talking to a woman who works on staff and she told me that there are some people who have backyard chickens who live off campus near the Valley dorms. So it really was a rooster: the first time I've been woken up by one. Just another surreal Kalamazoo moment.

I'm glad that a couple people (Behold a Pale Horse and Scott Nokes) at least liked my paper with the plastic animals. It was a lot of fun to give, but because there was no time for questions, it was hard to tell whether people were convinced at all or just liked, well, the plastic animals.

The papers I attended were very good, although all the things I wanted to see were at the same times. Also, this year everything I had to go to was on alternating sides of the campus: first Fetzer, then Valley III, then Schneider, then Valley II, then Bernhard. Got a lot of good exercise, though.

Best part of the conference was getting a chance to talk to my former undergraduate student who has gone on to great things (and who will be teaching in my department this fall) and to catch up with people I'd met previously. Next best part was to say to a graduate student "Oh, you really need to meet Christina Lee, who is working on that" and, not 30 second later, have Christina Lee walk by and say hello. One of those weird Kalamazoo coincidences.

Most embarrassing moment: at dinner with Don Scragg and others, I started in with "What did you think of Drew Jones' brilliant piece in the new Speculum." No one else had read it. "What is it about?" asked Don, not unreasonably. And then, my friends, I had a complete Alzheimer's moment that lasted a very, very long time. I could not, for the life of me, remember the name of the text or the author. So I basically said "Hey, wasn't that article great? Can't remember what it's about, though." Very sad. Two hours later, I suddenly recalled that it's on Odo of Cluny. How hard is it to remember Odo, I ask you?

Almost as bad, and demonstrating how sleep deprivation in dorms that are worse than the prison Paris Hilton is going to leads to poor thinking, was my brain's performance at one interesting paper. About 2/3 of the way through, the presenter started talking about a medieval commonplace of a serpent with a jewel in its head that presses its ear against a rock and then tucks the tip of its tale into its other ear to block out temptations, etc. Interesting, right? Well, all I could think about, for the remaining five minutes of the paper, was "Snakes don't have ears." That particular problem so consumed my stupid brain that I totally lost the line of argument and didn't understand what the paper concluded.

I did manage to buy a manuscript fragment and leaf for the Crazy Sheep DNA Project, a Roman coin for my daughter, and the conference copy of Mechthild Gretsch's Ælfric and the Cult of Saints (I never get the conference copy of books that I really want, so I was very happy). Also, thanks to Phil Kaveny, I sold all of my copies of Beowulf Aloud, giving me a lovely I-told-you-so moment with my beloved spouse (these are quite rare).

The dance was also fun. I had a chance to chat with Another Damn Medievalist and dance with various friends, old and new. I still think that the dance should have been painted by Hieronomous Bosch (I think Korncrake would agree), but I always have a good time and I only know one person who left the profession after bad choices at the dance. It is a much more civilized event now that it's no longer in the Valley dorms, and I think the distance from the dance to the dorms protects many marriages and relationships just as the cash bar protects many reputations. As James McNelis said: "When medievalists have parties, we rock!" It may be it's own kind of weird medievalist rocking (involving belting out Bon Jovi songs -- who knew medievalists like Bon Jovi?), but it's rocking all the same. Try doing that, Americanists!

If I can dig out from all the other work I'll try to write something substantive and respond to insightful comments by Dr. Virago, Another Damned Medievalist and Medieval Woman in particular, but until then: this was my 14th out of the past 15 Kalamazoos and, despite the fact that it falls at exactly the wrong time of year and always creates work and family hardship, I'll keep going. Because you really can't ever run out of fun things to do when surrounded by medievalists for four days.

Kalamazoooooo

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimmages... to Western Michigan, in search of friends, books, power and position, maybe love, and that one night during an otherwise far-too-tense life in which rhythmless people will dance frenetically to Beyonce's "Check on it."
This year I go looking to buy a roman coin for my daughter and a medieval parchment for my research project. To visit with my old friends, to have dinner with a few mentors, to have a few meetings and some good company, and above all to sit in on papers that will give me good ideas for future teaching and research (the "New Voices in Anglo-Saxon sessions are almost always worth it for that alone).

Unfortunately, when I come home, on the afternoon of Mother's Day, the lawn will be as high as an elephant's eye and no one will be mowing it but me. Ah, the sacrifices we make for Lady Philosophy. True, Boethius was executed, but did he ever live in a Valley dorm?

Things I'm learning from Anglo-Saxon Aloud

Because it is unlikely that my pre-Kalamazoo post, if I can ever write it, will be as good as that by Kornkrake (though I'll try), instead I want to talk about what I'm learning by doing Anglo-Saxon Aloud.

The first thing is that if the Junius Manuscript poems were occasionally outside of my comfort level (established with Beowulf, after all), then Andreas is way outside of my comfort level. Particularly at the beginning of Andreas, I regularly had difficulty at getting a rhythm going, at expressing the sense of a sentence through inflection, at even understanding exactly what was going on while reading on the fly (What is God's problem, anyway, with the whole disguise thing?). But when I got to the set pieces, many of those problems went away. Sea voyages, torture, destruction: those the poet did well and the meter matched the Beowulf meter with which I'm familiar. It definitely feels to me if Beowulf is the most effortlessly accomplished of the poems I have read thus far and that Andreas (and perhaps Christ and Satan) is derivative, with the metrical structure not being as perfectly internalized by the poet.
I also am more convinced that Exodus is more like Beowulf than any other poem, far more like Beowulf than Andreas is, although Andreas has a much higher percentage of shared lines.
But listen to the poems yourself (via Beowulf Aloud and Anglo-Saxon Aloud) and see what you think.
And see you at Kalamazoo, I hope.

Beowulf Aloud: Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has purchased a copy of Beowulf Aloud. I hope those who have received it will post some feedback, and if anyone is still interested, I do have a few more copies available.

(this paypal link is for domestic US shipping only)

(this paypal link is for domestic US shipping only)
Beowulf Aloud is my dramatic reading of the entire poem in Old English. I can sell the 3-CD collection, which includes every single line of the poem plus an introductory lecture, for 15 dollars US. Packaging and shipping to anywhere in the US is 3 USD, so the total would be $18.00. Overseas shipping will whatever it costs me, checked on an individual basis (but so far, not more than $5 to Europe) . You can use the button above for my PayPal account or use my PayPal address, mdrout@wheatonma.edu. I am also happy to take personal checks.

If you are enjoying Anglo-Saxon Aloud, I think you will like Beowulf Aloud even more, as the sound quality is somewhat better because it was recorded, edited and mixed professionally.

And owning a copy of my chanting/singing Finnsburg has to be worth something, if only for the opportunity to use it as embarrassing material at just the right occasion years from now...

Medievalists Use Annoying Words, Too

I was just reading the new Speculum (a journal my wife won't allow me to keep in the house, by the way) on Monday and came across Milton Gatch's review of Mechthild Gretsch's Ælfric and the Cult of Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Now, as readers of How Tradition Works know, Mechthild Gretsch is the medievalist whose work I most admire. Her The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform absolutely changed my scholarly life (and I would be willing to bet good money that I am the only person in the world who has read it four times). So when I got to the part of the review where Gatch is ready to make some criticisms, I was ready to rise in defense of whatever it was that Gretsch had done.

But instead, I found myself in total agreement with Gatch, who objects to the use of the verb "culted" throughout Gretsch's new book. Gatch attributes this usage to Gretsch's being German, and he's wrong about that, but boy is he right that "culted" is a barbarism (though he does not use those words).

When I was in graduate school and reading all the then-current scholarship on the English Benedictine Reform, no one used "culted" as a past-tense verb. But sometime around 2000-2001, it started to show up everywhere. Phrases like "Swithun was culted at Winchester" became commonplace in Anglo-Saxon England and elsewhere. Before this time, people would write something like "a cult of St Swithun was started at Winchester." Now it's "was culted."

In other words, the use of "culted" is a meme, one that has spread rapidly through the ranks of elite Anglo-Saxonists (though thankfully, nowhere else).

I understand desire for shorthand, and I think that "culted" is marginally better than "imbricated" ("imbricated" is a bad metaphor, while "culted" is a bit of insider jargon with only one real meaning). But "culted" is still loathsome. It's ugly to look at, and it works immediately to alienate nearly all readers. It is also unnecessary, as scholars were able to write about the cult of the saints, etc. for a couple hundred years without using "cult" as a verb.

Look, Milton Gatch has read more Anglo-Saxon scholarship than nearly any person alive. When he thinks the use of a word is due to the author's not speaking English as a native language, it's obvious that "culted" isn't helping with communication. I'm all for jargon when it's necessary or even particularly useful, and I love teaching my students to use "hapax legomenon" or "homoeoteleuton" in the appropriate situations, but "culted" is just too foul. Please don't use it any more.