FMyLife, Academic Version
Months ago:
Snippy review criticizes my edition of Beowulf and the Critics for not discussing Haber's A Comparative Study of Beowulf and the Æneid and Bertha Phillpotts' article on "Wyrd and Providence." I get all worried. I go and re-read the book and the articles wondering why I would be so stupid to leave out something so obvious. Turns out there was a reason: the stuff was completely irrelevant.
Today:
Anonymous referee writes: "Drout should look at Title of Book." Remarkably boring, Title of Book is almost entirely irrelevant to my paper. I spent today reading it. All 400 pages. All of today. Hey, I've got a new footnote.
Clearly I am incapable of learning from my mistakes. FMAcademicL.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Beowulf and the Moops
Right now on ANSAX-L, the Anglo-Saxonists' listserv, there is an argument raging about the historicity of Beowulf (Yes, some things never change).
One part of the argument goes like this:
And then things quickly devolve into the Argument Sketch
or, sometimes, the Fish-slapping Dance.
Perhaps Seinfeld has something to say that might be useful. The end of the famous "Bubble Boy" episode turns on a Trivial Pursuit card. The question reads "Who invaded Spain in the 8th Century?" The Bubble Boy answers "The Moors," but on the card is printed "The Moops," and so George holds that "The Moors" is wrong. Hilarity ensues.
I think reading Beowulf 'as we have it' is like insisting upon "The Moops." George may be technically correct within the rules of the game (that what is printed on the card has final within-game authority), but he is obviously incorrect in any reasonable, meaningful sense. Likewise, I think, no one really believes that the error of "dryhten wereda" for "dryhten Wedera" or "hea rede" for "Heardred" or the complete botch the scribe made of "Merovingian" reflects what the poet wrote or what the audience of Beowulf ever heard or read or even what a scribe had in front of him. And in fact, the scholars who say "read the poem we have" don't actually keep those obvious errors in their readings, because if you keep the manuscript readings as they are, you can't actually read the poem.
So the argument is really about how much to emend, and that's a reasonable and important argument to have. Should we be reconstructing possibly lost names of tribes when the philology is inconclusive, as in "egsode eorl" at the very beginning of the poem? The safe emendation is to "eorlas," though accepting that emendation implies that the scribe made a huge and obvious grammatical blunder in the sixth line of the poem; the other alternative, that the poet made a reference to the tribe of the Heruli (exemplar something like "eorle") requires us to import a lot of meaning into a place where it's not obvious from context. Where we draw the line between an error that is "obvious" and an over-clever re-writing of the poem is a very difficult question, and we need to keep debating it.
But using "read the poem as we have it" is really more rhetoric than anything else, and if you say "read the poem as we have it," you would probably, for consistency's sake, have to agree that the Moops invaded Spain in the 8th century.
[When everyone really knows that it was Bayonne, NJ, not Spain, that was invade by the Moops, and it happened in 1926]
Right now on ANSAX-L, the Anglo-Saxonists' listserv, there is an argument raging about the historicity of Beowulf (Yes, some things never change).
One part of the argument goes like this:
Witega 1: We have a poem in a manuscript from the 10th century. Read that poem. As it is. Don't try to reconstruct an earlier version.
Witega 2: But there are things in the manuscript that make no sense. You've got to emend them, and when you do, you reconstruct an earlier version of the poem.
Witega 1: What you think is a mistake may not be, but if it is, it may just be the equivalent of the typo and does not give you license to go creating ancestral versions of Beowulf.
Witega 2: But the scribes of Beowulf consistently get names of people and places bollixed up. The scribes don't have any idea who the Merovingians are, or the Heruli, or Eomer, or Heardred, but the poet did. So "read the poem we have" is impossible.
Witega 1: No it's not.
Witega 2: Yes it is.
And then things quickly devolve into the Argument Sketch
or, sometimes, the Fish-slapping Dance.
Perhaps Seinfeld has something to say that might be useful. The end of the famous "Bubble Boy" episode turns on a Trivial Pursuit card. The question reads "Who invaded Spain in the 8th Century?" The Bubble Boy answers "The Moors," but on the card is printed "The Moops," and so George holds that "The Moors" is wrong. Hilarity ensues.
I think reading Beowulf 'as we have it' is like insisting upon "The Moops." George may be technically correct within the rules of the game (that what is printed on the card has final within-game authority), but he is obviously incorrect in any reasonable, meaningful sense. Likewise, I think, no one really believes that the error of "dryhten wereda" for "dryhten Wedera" or "hea rede" for "Heardred" or the complete botch the scribe made of "Merovingian" reflects what the poet wrote or what the audience of Beowulf ever heard or read or even what a scribe had in front of him. And in fact, the scholars who say "read the poem we have" don't actually keep those obvious errors in their readings, because if you keep the manuscript readings as they are, you can't actually read the poem.
So the argument is really about how much to emend, and that's a reasonable and important argument to have. Should we be reconstructing possibly lost names of tribes when the philology is inconclusive, as in "egsode eorl" at the very beginning of the poem? The safe emendation is to "eorlas," though accepting that emendation implies that the scribe made a huge and obvious grammatical blunder in the sixth line of the poem; the other alternative, that the poet made a reference to the tribe of the Heruli (exemplar something like "eorle") requires us to import a lot of meaning into a place where it's not obvious from context. Where we draw the line between an error that is "obvious" and an over-clever re-writing of the poem is a very difficult question, and we need to keep debating it.
But using "read the poem as we have it" is really more rhetoric than anything else, and if you say "read the poem as we have it," you would probably, for consistency's sake, have to agree that the Moops invaded Spain in the 8th century.
[When everyone really knows that it was Bayonne, NJ, not Spain, that was invade by the Moops, and it happened in 1926]
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Clash of the Gods:
What it's like being a talking head
For additional info on Clash of the Gods, click here.
For Clash of the Gods schedule click here.
Clash of the Gods has been running on The History Channel for a few weeks (Monday nights at 1o p.m. for the premier of each episode). I haven't seen the ones I am in yet, and they're not giving us DVD copies until the specific episodes run, but, having watched some episodes on Greek mythology, I'm feeling pretty hopeful about the ones on Thor (Sept. 14), The Lord of the Rings (Sept. 21), and Beowulf (Oct. 5). The visuals are very good and, although there's a bit of repetition where the series uses the same clips again and again (Zeus sitting down on his throne, for example), the overall quality seems very good. I don't get the impression that the words of the other professors have been twisted into anything they didn't say.
Over at I Just Read About That, Paul concludes that all the guest experts were told to wear black, "or it's an amazing saratorial coincidence." He's right. We were told to wear black jackets and either black or white shirts and then they provided red ties. One expert, who was coming in right after me, didn't get the memo (or chose to ignore it), but they had a jacket for him and were muscling him into it as I was leaving.
The History Channel producers and crew were exceedingly smart and efficient the whole way through (even when they had to call me in last minute). They had a basic script that set up what they wanted to talk about, and I was given the questions that would be asked in advance so I could be prepared. It wasn't possible to have notes because you are looking directly at the producer, who stands to the side of the camera. I had learned, when doing the National Geographic "Behind the Movie" piece for the Return of the King DVD that if your eyes move away from the producer, you look shifty, so I can't imagine how you read notes unless there's a sophisticated teleprompter, which there wasn't.
What I could glean of the script from the questions made it seem pretty decent (which has been borne out so far). The writers/producers had done good work tracking down reasonable information. However, it was a little surprising how much the agenda (as opposed to the actual content) seemed to be set by Wikipedia. For example, I got asked a question about the Canterbury Charm, which I hadn't studied very much. I was impressed at how wide-ranging the inquiry was until I happened upon the Wikipedia page for Thor and found the Canterbury Charm referenced. I'm not a Wiki-hater, but the influence of Wikipedia on the script does give yet another reason why professors in relevant fields should perhaps look at the relevant Wiki entries and correct them if need be (though I, sadly, haven't gotten around to doing this yet).
The producers also were surprisingly good at not trying to put words into my mouth. Producers are generally very strong willed (they have to be in order to get anything done when dealing with a lot of creative people), and they don't like you to say "no." But in one particular case, I was just not going to say that J.R.R. Tolkien used the word "orc" to refer to the Roman god of the dead, Orcus. It's just not right. "Orc" clearly and obviously comes from an Anglo-Saxon word (see Tolkien's introductory note to The Hobbit and his comments elsewhere), and while he never laid out his case for why he thought that "orc" did not come from "Orcus," my inner Philologist-Sense (like Spidey-sense, but different) agrees totally with him that the derivation from Orcus isn't right. (Note also that the orc/Orcus connection comes from Wikipedia). In the end, I said all that, and everything was fine.
Overall the people who worked for KPI, the shop that produced the series, were incredibly professional, energetic and fun. Everything I've ever done for TV is always rushed, and this was no exception, but it was a good kind of rush, when time wasn't being wasted and a whole bunch of people were all bustling around doing things at once. I'm looking forward to "my" episodes (of course I'm just one of many experts) and pretty hopeful that I'll like the final result. Particularly if there really is a CGI Midgarth Serpent fighting Thor while I narrate the battle. That would finally be something my kids care about seeing.
What it's like being a talking head
For additional info on Clash of the Gods, click here.
For Clash of the Gods schedule click here.
Clash of the Gods has been running on The History Channel for a few weeks (Monday nights at 1o p.m. for the premier of each episode). I haven't seen the ones I am in yet, and they're not giving us DVD copies until the specific episodes run, but, having watched some episodes on Greek mythology, I'm feeling pretty hopeful about the ones on Thor (Sept. 14), The Lord of the Rings (Sept. 21), and Beowulf (Oct. 5). The visuals are very good and, although there's a bit of repetition where the series uses the same clips again and again (Zeus sitting down on his throne, for example), the overall quality seems very good. I don't get the impression that the words of the other professors have been twisted into anything they didn't say.
Over at I Just Read About That, Paul concludes that all the guest experts were told to wear black, "or it's an amazing saratorial coincidence." He's right. We were told to wear black jackets and either black or white shirts and then they provided red ties. One expert, who was coming in right after me, didn't get the memo (or chose to ignore it), but they had a jacket for him and were muscling him into it as I was leaving.
The History Channel producers and crew were exceedingly smart and efficient the whole way through (even when they had to call me in last minute). They had a basic script that set up what they wanted to talk about, and I was given the questions that would be asked in advance so I could be prepared. It wasn't possible to have notes because you are looking directly at the producer, who stands to the side of the camera. I had learned, when doing the National Geographic "Behind the Movie" piece for the Return of the King DVD that if your eyes move away from the producer, you look shifty, so I can't imagine how you read notes unless there's a sophisticated teleprompter, which there wasn't.
What I could glean of the script from the questions made it seem pretty decent (which has been borne out so far). The writers/producers had done good work tracking down reasonable information. However, it was a little surprising how much the agenda (as opposed to the actual content) seemed to be set by Wikipedia. For example, I got asked a question about the Canterbury Charm, which I hadn't studied very much. I was impressed at how wide-ranging the inquiry was until I happened upon the Wikipedia page for Thor and found the Canterbury Charm referenced. I'm not a Wiki-hater, but the influence of Wikipedia on the script does give yet another reason why professors in relevant fields should perhaps look at the relevant Wiki entries and correct them if need be (though I, sadly, haven't gotten around to doing this yet).
The producers also were surprisingly good at not trying to put words into my mouth. Producers are generally very strong willed (they have to be in order to get anything done when dealing with a lot of creative people), and they don't like you to say "no." But in one particular case, I was just not going to say that J.R.R. Tolkien used the word "orc" to refer to the Roman god of the dead, Orcus. It's just not right. "Orc" clearly and obviously comes from an Anglo-Saxon word (see Tolkien's introductory note to The Hobbit and his comments elsewhere), and while he never laid out his case for why he thought that "orc" did not come from "Orcus," my inner Philologist-Sense (like Spidey-sense, but different) agrees totally with him that the derivation from Orcus isn't right. (Note also that the orc/Orcus connection comes from Wikipedia). In the end, I said all that, and everything was fine.
Overall the people who worked for KPI, the shop that produced the series, were incredibly professional, energetic and fun. Everything I've ever done for TV is always rushed, and this was no exception, but it was a good kind of rush, when time wasn't being wasted and a whole bunch of people were all bustling around doing things at once. I'm looking forward to "my" episodes (of course I'm just one of many experts) and pretty hopeful that I'll like the final result. Particularly if there really is a CGI Midgarth Serpent fighting Thor while I narrate the battle. That would finally be something my kids care about seeing.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Professing Literature: Tendentious with Extra Tendentious Sauce
I've had to go back and re-read Gerald Graff's Professing Literature so that I can dot the i's and cross the t's for an article, and ... wow.
I'm going to break my own rule about not using rhetorical questions just to give an example of how tendentious the "history" in this book really is:
Of the "Classical College" in the early 19th century: "Classroom concerns hardly ever went beyond the endless memorization and recitation of grammatical and etymological particularities."
Endless? Is that a technical term? Is that an honest, fair, accurate historical evaluation?
Of Johns Hopkins in the 19th century: "Its early work in modern languages was so wholly monopolized by philologists that it was late in developing courses in literature proper."
Have we defined "literature proper"? Have we made an argument for "literature proper" as being separate from philology? No, we have not. Can we read "literature proper" in any language other than contemporary languages without philology? (You might think you can, but you'd be wrong). So is all literature before 1800 outside of "literature proper," or should we just assume that the philologists have already gotten everything right and we can just read their editions transparently? How comforting.
Francis A. March's description of his class "makes no mention of the meaning of Milton's works." Instead, the student went through Paradise Lost line by line, "calling for the meaning of words, their etymology when interesting, the relations of words, parsing when it would help, the connection of clauses, the mythology, the biography and other illustrative matter."
Now I'm not the president of the MLA, but it sounds to me that they were figuring out a lot about the meaning of Milton's work by *shudder* studying it in detail.
As opposed to? Well, I assume bloviating about the "meaning" of Milton without having to trouble to tether that meaning to any actual, "relations of words."
It goes on and on like this, and at a certain point I can't decide if Graff just doesn't know what he is talking about (for example, when he talks about philology or etymology), if he hasn't bothered to read the books he is criticizing (when he talks about Albert S. Cook, for instance), or if he does know and is just being tendentious to the point of intellectual dishonesty.
If you want to know why your colleagues think the odd things they do about our discipline and its history, part of the answer might be that they have read Professing Literature uncritically and without actually knowing very much about 19th and early 20th century literary studies.
Depressing. But on the other hand, in a single 24-hour period I topped out on a particular bouldering climb that had been impossible just a few days ago, got bitten by a snake and taught my son how to slide into a base (hint: if you do this at the beach, make sure you don't do a backdoor slide into a chunk of weathered basalt). Real life, when you're doing it right, can be more exciting even than academia.
I've had to go back and re-read Gerald Graff's Professing Literature so that I can dot the i's and cross the t's for an article, and ... wow.
I'm going to break my own rule about not using rhetorical questions just to give an example of how tendentious the "history" in this book really is:
Of the "Classical College" in the early 19th century: "Classroom concerns hardly ever went beyond the endless memorization and recitation of grammatical and etymological particularities."
Endless? Is that a technical term? Is that an honest, fair, accurate historical evaluation?
Of Johns Hopkins in the 19th century: "Its early work in modern languages was so wholly monopolized by philologists that it was late in developing courses in literature proper."
Have we defined "literature proper"? Have we made an argument for "literature proper" as being separate from philology? No, we have not. Can we read "literature proper" in any language other than contemporary languages without philology? (You might think you can, but you'd be wrong). So is all literature before 1800 outside of "literature proper," or should we just assume that the philologists have already gotten everything right and we can just read their editions transparently? How comforting.
Francis A. March's description of his class "makes no mention of the meaning of Milton's works." Instead, the student went through Paradise Lost line by line, "calling for the meaning of words, their etymology when interesting, the relations of words, parsing when it would help, the connection of clauses, the mythology, the biography and other illustrative matter."
Now I'm not the president of the MLA, but it sounds to me that they were figuring out a lot about the meaning of Milton's work by *shudder* studying it in detail.
As opposed to? Well, I assume bloviating about the "meaning" of Milton without having to trouble to tether that meaning to any actual, "relations of words."
It goes on and on like this, and at a certain point I can't decide if Graff just doesn't know what he is talking about (for example, when he talks about philology or etymology), if he hasn't bothered to read the books he is criticizing (when he talks about Albert S. Cook, for instance), or if he does know and is just being tendentious to the point of intellectual dishonesty.
If you want to know why your colleagues think the odd things they do about our discipline and its history, part of the answer might be that they have read Professing Literature uncritically and without actually knowing very much about 19th and early 20th century literary studies.
Depressing. But on the other hand, in a single 24-hour period I topped out on a particular bouldering climb that had been impossible just a few days ago, got bitten by a snake and taught my son how to slide into a base (hint: if you do this at the beach, make sure you don't do a backdoor slide into a chunk of weathered basalt). Real life, when you're doing it right, can be more exciting even than academia.
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Welcome, History Channel Clash of the Gods Viewers
Thanks for dropping by. It was a real pleasure to work with The History Channel on the series. I contributed to the episodes on Thor (Sept. 14), The Lord of the Rings (Sept. 21), and Beowulf (Oct. 5). All the shows air at 10 p.m. on Mondays on The History Channel. I myself haven't seen them yet, so I don't know how they'll come out, but the producers asked good questions and listened to my answers, so I'm pretty hopeful that the episodes will be good.
I'm Professor of English at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where I teach Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon), Middle English (what Chaucer spoke), fantasy, science fiction and courses on J.R.R. Tolkien. This year I am on research leave and trying to finish four different books (on tradition, Tolkien, grammar and philology; in retrospect, I probably should have worked on one at a time), but I am giving some talks away from campus, including at Bowdoin College in Maine (Oct.) and Washington College in Maryland (April). I'll also be participating in one or more Scholarly Sojourns (more info to follow).
While you're here, look around the archives, or check out some things that may be of interest:
If you want to hear Anglo-Saxon, the language of Beowulf (and J.R.R. Tolkien's academic specialization), you can go to Angl0-Saxon Aloud, where I've posted a podcast of every poem in Anglo-Saxon (there are a lot). Some of the favorites are The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Dream of the Rood, and excerpts from Beowulf.(just ignore the dialogue box; you don't need to give any info). Currently I'm recording and posting the homilies of Wulfstan, who would definitely have had a Sunday morning television show if he were alive today.
If you like Anglo-Saxon Aloud, you can buy the Anglo-Saxon Aloud: Greatest Hits, which is a two-CD set. This includes the most popular poems both in Old English and Modern English as well as introductory discussions of each poem.
Or, if you like both Anglo-Saxon and Beowulf, I also sell Beowulf Aloud, a 3-CD set that includes the entire poem of Beowulf plus an introductory lecture.
If you'd like to learn to read Anglo-Saxon, you can use my on-line grammar book, King Alfred's Grammar. The book is designed to walk you through Old English and does not assume that you already know a lot about grammar.
My edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf and the Critics is temporarily out of print, but a new edition is at the publisher, so I'm hopeful that will be available soon. My book How Tradition Works is more technical, but, I think, interesting to those who like Anglo-Saxon literature and theories of cultural evolution.
My latest course on CD, The Anglo-Saxon World, should be out from Recorded Books' Modern Scholar series any day now. Until that comes out, I have a number of other courses available in the series, including those on Chaucer, Fantasy Literature, Science Fiction, The History of the English Language, Writing and Rhetoric, Approaches to Literature, Grammar (this is actually a really fun course) and Understanding Poetry.
Again, thanks for stopping by, and I appreciate any comments, suggestions or criticism. I'm also trying to convince The History Channel that they should do a whole series (or at least a longer show) on Beowulf and/or Anglo-Saxon. If you think that is a good idea, please let them know.
Thanks for dropping by. It was a real pleasure to work with The History Channel on the series. I contributed to the episodes on Thor (Sept. 14), The Lord of the Rings (Sept. 21), and Beowulf (Oct. 5). All the shows air at 10 p.m. on Mondays on The History Channel. I myself haven't seen them yet, so I don't know how they'll come out, but the producers asked good questions and listened to my answers, so I'm pretty hopeful that the episodes will be good.
I'm Professor of English at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where I teach Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon), Middle English (what Chaucer spoke), fantasy, science fiction and courses on J.R.R. Tolkien. This year I am on research leave and trying to finish four different books (on tradition, Tolkien, grammar and philology; in retrospect, I probably should have worked on one at a time), but I am giving some talks away from campus, including at Bowdoin College in Maine (Oct.) and Washington College in Maryland (April). I'll also be participating in one or more Scholarly Sojourns (more info to follow).
While you're here, look around the archives, or check out some things that may be of interest:
If you want to hear Anglo-Saxon, the language of Beowulf (and J.R.R. Tolkien's academic specialization), you can go to Angl0-Saxon Aloud, where I've posted a podcast of every poem in Anglo-Saxon (there are a lot). Some of the favorites are The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Dream of the Rood, and excerpts from Beowulf.(just ignore the dialogue box; you don't need to give any info). Currently I'm recording and posting the homilies of Wulfstan, who would definitely have had a Sunday morning television show if he were alive today.
If you like Anglo-Saxon Aloud, you can buy the Anglo-Saxon Aloud: Greatest Hits, which is a two-CD set. This includes the most popular poems both in Old English and Modern English as well as introductory discussions of each poem.
Or, if you like both Anglo-Saxon and Beowulf, I also sell Beowulf Aloud, a 3-CD set that includes the entire poem of Beowulf plus an introductory lecture.
If you'd like to learn to read Anglo-Saxon, you can use my on-line grammar book, King Alfred's Grammar. The book is designed to walk you through Old English and does not assume that you already know a lot about grammar.
My edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf and the Critics is temporarily out of print, but a new edition is at the publisher, so I'm hopeful that will be available soon. My book How Tradition Works is more technical, but, I think, interesting to those who like Anglo-Saxon literature and theories of cultural evolution.
My latest course on CD, The Anglo-Saxon World, should be out from Recorded Books' Modern Scholar series any day now. Until that comes out, I have a number of other courses available in the series, including those on Chaucer, Fantasy Literature, Science Fiction, The History of the English Language, Writing and Rhetoric, Approaches to Literature, Grammar (this is actually a really fun course) and Understanding Poetry.
Again, thanks for stopping by, and I appreciate any comments, suggestions or criticism. I'm also trying to convince The History Channel that they should do a whole series (or at least a longer show) on Beowulf and/or Anglo-Saxon. If you think that is a good idea, please let them know.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
J.R.R.T. CFP
Wanted to pass this along:
"We are issuing a call for papers for a proposed volume of scholarly essays on J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Papers should address any aspect of the work, but the editors are especially interested in works which make connections among disciplines, demonstrating the richness of the trilogy as well as its continuing widespread appeal.
Papers should be between 20 - 30 pages, note key words, and include a 250 word abstract.
The deadline for papers is 15 September 2009; decisions will be announced by 1 November 2009. "
Papers should be submitted to
Prof. Kathleen Dubs
Angol Intézet
Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem
2087 Piliscsaba
Egyetem utca 1.
Hungary
kedubs@axelero.hu
Dr. Janka Kaščáková
Katedra Anglického Jayzka A Literatury
Katolícka Univerzita v Ružomberku
Hrabovská cesta 1
023 01 Ružomberok
Slovakia
janka.kascakova@fphil.ku.sk
Wanted to pass this along:
"We are issuing a call for papers for a proposed volume of scholarly essays on J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Papers should address any aspect of the work, but the editors are especially interested in works which make connections among disciplines, demonstrating the richness of the trilogy as well as its continuing widespread appeal.
Papers should be between 20 - 30 pages, note key words, and include a 250 word abstract.
The deadline for papers is 15 September 2009; decisions will be announced by 1 November 2009. "
Papers should be submitted to
Prof. Kathleen Dubs
Angol Intézet
Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem
2087 Piliscsaba
Egyetem utca 1.
Hungary
kedubs@axelero.hu
Dr. Janka Kaščáková
Katedra Anglického Jayzka A Literatury
Katolícka Univerzita v Ružomberku
Hrabovská cesta 1
023 01 Ružomberok
Slovakia
janka.kascakova@fphil.ku.sk
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
That Max Planck sure was one smart feller
Bad News
A new scientific truth does not establish itself by its enemies being convinced and expressing their change of opinion
Good News
but rather by its enemies gradually dying out and the younger generation being taught the truth from the beginning.
A real spate of the good news lately. It's incredibly gratifying to read articles and dissertations where work that I did that was thought to be "out there" by certain establishment folk (whom I dearly love), is now being cited as a matter of course by a new generation of Ph.D.'s and Assistant Professors. Weird feeling, and I keep wanting to yell out "you need to get an authority better than Drout for that point..." But overall a very hopeful sign.
I do basically believe that if the idea is good, it will eventually get picked up, but it's still nice to know that "eventually" isn't as long as it could be.
Bad News
A new scientific truth does not establish itself by its enemies being convinced and expressing their change of opinion
Good News
but rather by its enemies gradually dying out and the younger generation being taught the truth from the beginning.
A real spate of the good news lately. It's incredibly gratifying to read articles and dissertations where work that I did that was thought to be "out there" by certain establishment folk (whom I dearly love), is now being cited as a matter of course by a new generation of Ph.D.'s and Assistant Professors. Weird feeling, and I keep wanting to yell out "you need to get an authority better than Drout for that point..." But overall a very hopeful sign.
I do basically believe that if the idea is good, it will eventually get picked up, but it's still nice to know that "eventually" isn't as long as it could be.
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Return of Anglo-Saxon Aloud: The Prose
Turns out that I miss recording and re-recording and re-re-recording bits of Old English every morning. So I am back to posting daily podcasts of Old English at Anglo-Saxon Aloud.
I had originally planned on starting with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and I'm sure I will eventually do that text, but I ended up deciding to go with the Homilies of Wulfstan. I am going to work through these in order, using Dorothy Bethurum's edition.
The first post, Wulstan homily Ib "De Anticristo" (I'm skipping the Latin homilies, as no one wants to hear me read Latin), is up here
Turns out that I miss recording and re-recording and re-re-recording bits of Old English every morning. So I am back to posting daily podcasts of Old English at Anglo-Saxon Aloud.
I had originally planned on starting with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and I'm sure I will eventually do that text, but I ended up deciding to go with the Homilies of Wulfstan. I am going to work through these in order, using Dorothy Bethurum's edition.
The first post, Wulstan homily Ib "De Anticristo" (I'm skipping the Latin homilies, as no one wants to hear me read Latin), is up here
Friday, June 19, 2009
Google Books: Actually Useful
I've been finishing up my revised edition of Tolkien's Beowulf and the Critics and have cleaning up the section where I identify of all the "voices" in Tolkien's "Babel of Voices," where he presents the history of Beowulf criticism.
In doing all the necessary but tedious i-dotting and t-crossing, I've found Google Books to be remarkably helpful for nineteenth-century Beowulf scholarship. They have full text of a lot of important but hard-to-find books (hard to find because Interlibrary Loan isn't often willing to send books published in 1840), and the interface and mark-up is much better than I remember it being.
I'm still not a fan of Google Scholar, which seems incredibly random in its selection of material, but Google Books seems to be not only a copyright grab but also a useful resource.
I've been finishing up my revised edition of Tolkien's Beowulf and the Critics and have cleaning up the section where I identify of all the "voices" in Tolkien's "Babel of Voices," where he presents the history of Beowulf criticism.
In doing all the necessary but tedious i-dotting and t-crossing, I've found Google Books to be remarkably helpful for nineteenth-century Beowulf scholarship. They have full text of a lot of important but hard-to-find books (hard to find because Interlibrary Loan isn't often willing to send books published in 1840), and the interface and mark-up is much better than I remember it being.
I'm still not a fan of Google Scholar, which seems incredibly random in its selection of material, but Google Books seems to be not only a copyright grab but also a useful resource.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Another Boynton Forgery!
Editorial Hypercorrection in the "Cavort" Recension of But Not the Hippopotamus
Earlier this year I announced the blockbuster news that Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton was likely a forgery by a later author who was attempting to imitate Boynton the Great. I can now show that the forger of Hippos Go Berserk, or Pseudo-Boynton, was at work elsewhere as well.
I recently purchased a copy of But Not the Hippopotamus at the Blue Bunny bookstore in Dedham, Mass. In this copy I found the following opening lines:
A Hog and Frog
cavort in a bog.
But not the Hippopotamus.
Something did not seem right, so I consulted my personal copy of But Not the Hippopotamus. Sure enough, the opening lines are:
A Hog and a Frog
do a dance in a bog.
But not the Hippopotamus.
This variation, "cavort" for "do a dance" is an editorial hyper-correction, probably based on an attempt to force Boynton the Great's artistically flawless meter into a straightjacket of perfect regularity.
Note that in the original version, "do a dance" is a straightforward anapest. I scan the lines as:
a HOG and a FROG (iamb plus anapest)
do a DANCE in a BOG (two anapests)
Pseudo-Boynton forces both lines to be iambs followed by anapests, but examination of the rest of the poem shows that Boynton only once uses the 2 / 3 pattern in the line:
a HARE and a BEAR (iamb anapest)
have BEEN to a FAIR (iamb anapest)
In the other two stanzas we see:
are TRYing on HATS
and
toGETHer have JUICE
These two parallels, "are TRYing" and "toGETHer" are amphibrachs, also three-syllable feet. So there is no need to assume that the iamb in the fourth stanza needs to be followed slavishly by forcing a two-syllable foot ("cavort") into the first stanza.
From this analysis of the forgery, we can conclude that Pseudo-Boynton is a highly trained scholar, but one for whom Boynton's brilliant verse is not a native idiom. We can also note that as well as lacking Boynton the Great's attention to detail (in that Pseudo-Boynton forgets to deal with the six distressed hippos who have never left in his/her version of Hippos Go Berserk), Pseudo-Boynton has a predilection for hippos. Scholars should thus re-examine the Boynton corpus to determine which other texts may have been interfered with by Pseudo-Boynton, looking for editorial hypercorrection, subtle contradictions, and hippos.
And the "Cavort" Recension of But Not the Hippopotamus must be athetized from the corpus.
Editorial Hypercorrection in the "Cavort" Recension of But Not the Hippopotamus
Earlier this year I announced the blockbuster news that Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton was likely a forgery by a later author who was attempting to imitate Boynton the Great. I can now show that the forger of Hippos Go Berserk, or Pseudo-Boynton, was at work elsewhere as well.
I recently purchased a copy of But Not the Hippopotamus at the Blue Bunny bookstore in Dedham, Mass. In this copy I found the following opening lines:
A Hog and Frog
cavort in a bog.
But not the Hippopotamus.
Something did not seem right, so I consulted my personal copy of But Not the Hippopotamus. Sure enough, the opening lines are:
A Hog and a Frog
do a dance in a bog.
But not the Hippopotamus.
This variation, "cavort" for "do a dance" is an editorial hyper-correction, probably based on an attempt to force Boynton the Great's artistically flawless meter into a straightjacket of perfect regularity.
Note that in the original version, "do a dance" is a straightforward anapest. I scan the lines as:
a HOG and a FROG (iamb plus anapest)
do a DANCE in a BOG (two anapests)
Pseudo-Boynton forces both lines to be iambs followed by anapests, but examination of the rest of the poem shows that Boynton only once uses the 2 / 3 pattern in the line:
a HARE and a BEAR (iamb anapest)
have BEEN to a FAIR (iamb anapest)
In the other two stanzas we see:
are TRYing on HATS
and
toGETHer have JUICE
These two parallels, "are TRYing" and "toGETHer" are amphibrachs, also three-syllable feet. So there is no need to assume that the iamb in the fourth stanza needs to be followed slavishly by forcing a two-syllable foot ("cavort") into the first stanza.
From this analysis of the forgery, we can conclude that Pseudo-Boynton is a highly trained scholar, but one for whom Boynton's brilliant verse is not a native idiom. We can also note that as well as lacking Boynton the Great's attention to detail (in that Pseudo-Boynton forgets to deal with the six distressed hippos who have never left in his/her version of Hippos Go Berserk), Pseudo-Boynton has a predilection for hippos. Scholars should thus re-examine the Boynton corpus to determine which other texts may have been interfered with by Pseudo-Boynton, looking for editorial hypercorrection, subtle contradictions, and hippos.
And the "Cavort" Recension of But Not the Hippopotamus must be athetized from the corpus.
Monday, June 08, 2009
"Clash of the Gods" on the History Channel
UPDATE: More stuff here.
Back in December and January I did some work for the series that is going to be on the History Channel. Today they sent me the tentative air dates (and a nice basket of English muffins!):
Clash of the Gods
Airing on The History Channel at 10:00pm
Zeus 8/3
Hercules 8/10
Odyssey(1) 8/17
Odyssey(2) 8/24
Hades 8/31
Medusa 9/7
Thor 9/14
Lord of the Rings 9/21
Minotaur 9/28
Beowulf 10/5
I am in the Thor, The Lord of the Rings and Beowulf episodes.
I'm hoping that they did what they said they would do in the Thor episode, and that my narration of "Thor and Hymir Go Fishing" includes a cgi Thor fighting a cgi Midgard Serpent.
UPDATE: More stuff here.
Back in December and January I did some work for the series that is going to be on the History Channel. Today they sent me the tentative air dates (and a nice basket of English muffins!):
Clash of the Gods
Airing on The History Channel at 10:00pm
Zeus 8/3
Hercules 8/10
Odyssey(1) 8/17
Odyssey(2) 8/24
Hades 8/31
Medusa 9/7
Thor 9/14
Lord of the Rings 9/21
Minotaur 9/28
Beowulf 10/5
I am in the Thor, The Lord of the Rings and Beowulf episodes.
I'm hoping that they did what they said they would do in the Thor episode, and that my narration of "Thor and Hymir Go Fishing" includes a cgi Thor fighting a cgi Midgard Serpent.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Time-wasting and Productivity
I'm somewhat hopeful that the dead silence here and at Anglo-Saxon Aloud is coming to an end. I'm slowly but steadily extricating myself from the gigantic backlog of work and deadlines caused by:
1) the economic crisis causing me to have to spend inordinate amounts of time with spreadsheets, budgets, etc. as well having to reshuffle and reschedule the department's course offerings three times;
2) the unexpected good news that I need to do a new edition of Beowulf and the Critics;
3) my ill-considered decision to assistant-coach two different youth baseball teams (although this is incredibly fun, and I will do it again next year, it has been a huge un-budgeted time-committment);
Before those three things happened I was already scheduled to the hilt, but I would have made all the deadlines, etc. Once number 1 hit, I pretty much had to run as fast as I could to stay in place.
So having finally worked out from under most of my administrative responsibilities (annual reviews, etc.), in the past couple weeks I was able to turn my attention to real work, and it's amazing what you can get accomplished when you have a break from 40-75 emails per day, paperwork and meetings (Oh, how I hate meetings).
In a little more than two weeks I was able to:
Turn my paper from the Bergen conference into a real essay for a forthcoming book. The essay is “‘I am Large, I contain Multitudes’: The Medieval Author in Memetic Terms.”
Do revisions and complete proofing of the course book for the latest course from Recorded Books, The Anglo-Saxon World, which should be out very soon.
Finish identifying all of the "voices" in Tolkien's "Babel of Voices" in "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics."
Write the first large article to come out of our lexomics research: "Lexomic Methods for Analyzing Relationships Among Old English Poems." (it still needs some revisions, but I think we will ship it off to a journal at the end of next week).
Although a couple of those things were "finish," that was a lot of work to get done in a little more than two weeks when I also wrote three annual evaluations. But it as basically easy, because my time wasn't being fragmented by useless meetings and incessant email. Think of how productive we could be if we could find ways to skip all that crap.
Thus you should not expect to see me writing reports or going to meetings. I am now on a crap-skipping crusade.
I'm somewhat hopeful that the dead silence here and at Anglo-Saxon Aloud is coming to an end. I'm slowly but steadily extricating myself from the gigantic backlog of work and deadlines caused by:
1) the economic crisis causing me to have to spend inordinate amounts of time with spreadsheets, budgets, etc. as well having to reshuffle and reschedule the department's course offerings three times;
2) the unexpected good news that I need to do a new edition of Beowulf and the Critics;
3) my ill-considered decision to assistant-coach two different youth baseball teams (although this is incredibly fun, and I will do it again next year, it has been a huge un-budgeted time-committment);
Before those three things happened I was already scheduled to the hilt, but I would have made all the deadlines, etc. Once number 1 hit, I pretty much had to run as fast as I could to stay in place.
So having finally worked out from under most of my administrative responsibilities (annual reviews, etc.), in the past couple weeks I was able to turn my attention to real work, and it's amazing what you can get accomplished when you have a break from 40-75 emails per day, paperwork and meetings (Oh, how I hate meetings).
In a little more than two weeks I was able to:
Turn my paper from the Bergen conference into a real essay for a forthcoming book. The essay is “‘I am Large, I contain Multitudes’: The Medieval Author in Memetic Terms.”
Do revisions and complete proofing of the course book for the latest course from Recorded Books, The Anglo-Saxon World, which should be out very soon.
Finish identifying all of the "voices" in Tolkien's "Babel of Voices" in "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics."
Write the first large article to come out of our lexomics research: "Lexomic Methods for Analyzing Relationships Among Old English Poems." (it still needs some revisions, but I think we will ship it off to a journal at the end of next week).
Although a couple of those things were "finish," that was a lot of work to get done in a little more than two weeks when I also wrote three annual evaluations. But it as basically easy, because my time wasn't being fragmented by useless meetings and incessant email. Think of how productive we could be if we could find ways to skip all that crap.
Thus you should not expect to see me writing reports or going to meetings. I am now on a crap-skipping crusade.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Drout Bingo
More amusement from my students. This time it wasn't given to me, just left behind in the classroom. Hint to students: if you want to keep something secret from your prof, don't leave a pile of copies in the classroom.
I can't tell if this was ever actually done (though I imagine that it was), but students constructed their own boards by choosing from a list of words:
Tolkien, Beowulf, Medieval, Anglo-Saxon, Philology, Poetry, Scribe, Drunk, Battle, Monster, Myth, Revenge, Killing, Grendel, Lord of the Rings, Thane, Warrior, Unicorn, Rainbow, Syphilis, Knight, Nun, Mead, Thor, Egil, Sheep, Killer Bjarni, Jane Austen, New Jersey, Axe, Epic, Death, Virgin Mary, Armor, Sword.
More amusement from my students. This time it wasn't given to me, just left behind in the classroom. Hint to students: if you want to keep something secret from your prof, don't leave a pile of copies in the classroom.
I can't tell if this was ever actually done (though I imagine that it was), but students constructed their own boards by choosing from a list of words:
Tolkien, Beowulf, Medieval, Anglo-Saxon, Philology, Poetry, Scribe, Drunk, Battle, Monster, Myth, Revenge, Killing, Grendel, Lord of the Rings, Thane, Warrior, Unicorn, Rainbow, Syphilis, Knight, Nun, Mead, Thor, Egil, Sheep, Killer Bjarni, Jane Austen, New Jersey, Axe, Epic, Death, Virgin Mary, Armor, Sword.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Things Professor Drout Said: Spring 2009 edition
(Apparently this is becoming a tradition. The following appeared anonymously in my mailbox).
Sheep DNA from manuscripts = CSI: Beowulf.
A librarian's goal in life is to not let people touch the materials.
'Cataloguey' -- I don't know if that is a word, but I'm going to use it.
(on theories of authorship): So theory will help you decide who's responsible for the awesomeness of Star Wars... and the crapitude of Jar Jar Binks.
I haven't mentioned J.R.R. Tolkien yet in this whole class, and that's just not acceptable.
So there was this bus full of drunken Anglo-Saxonists...
Scyld overturns the mead benches. Yes, he's fearsome because he re-arranged furniture.
I do have a life ... sometimes ... Maybe I was playing Lord of the Rings online and forgot to check my email...
Is New Jersey its own ethnic group?
(on Beowulf's lack of children)
I think the perfect phrase would be "epic fail."
Grendel couldn't pay wergild. My theory? No pockets.
(on Beowulf's sword)
It's a sword! It's pointy! Like a penis! And when it fails ... I don't really know what that means or when the other sword melts...
(on Icelandic sagas)
People don't worry too much about the existential meaning of life when at any moment someone might show up at their door with an axe.
His name means "Killer Barney" and all I can think of is the purple dinosaur.
"I love you, you love me. I slaughtered some members of my family..."
Imagine how well class would go if my name was "Killer Drout."
Where's the last severed head you had in a Jane Austen novel?
(On Egil Skallagrimsson)
He's a huge, snarling, murdering freak, and everyone wants him as their ancestor.
If I live in tenth-century Iceland, I don't want to go into Egil Skallagrimsson's bed closet for any reason whatsoever.
So I mixed up my 80's hair bands ... oh God, how horrible!
(on Gawain and his shield)
"So as I'm hacking someone's arm off and making him bleed to death, I can gaze at the Virgin Mary and it makes me feel better."
Everyone has a favorite Mayan god and Tlaloc is mine.
The first circle is the good part of Hell, with nice condos.
(on the problems with the rain in the upper circles and the rain of fire in the seventh circle)
It's a vision of Hell. I don't have to explain the meteorology!
Let's play "Name that heresy!"
Then the vikings realized "Hey! We can just go over to England and take their stuff."
Newton would boil mercury for a while, go insane, be dragged back to London and then invent physics.
Word of advice: Never build torture devices for evil tyrants. Ever.
Think of the barrators as being in a fondue pot of pitch.
Look! I made it to one minute before the end of class ... J.R.R. Tolkien!
(Apparently this is becoming a tradition. The following appeared anonymously in my mailbox).
Sheep DNA from manuscripts = CSI: Beowulf.
A librarian's goal in life is to not let people touch the materials.
'Cataloguey' -- I don't know if that is a word, but I'm going to use it.
(on theories of authorship): So theory will help you decide who's responsible for the awesomeness of Star Wars... and the crapitude of Jar Jar Binks.
I haven't mentioned J.R.R. Tolkien yet in this whole class, and that's just not acceptable.
So there was this bus full of drunken Anglo-Saxonists...
Scyld overturns the mead benches. Yes, he's fearsome because he re-arranged furniture.
I do have a life ... sometimes ... Maybe I was playing Lord of the Rings online and forgot to check my email...
Is New Jersey its own ethnic group?
(on Beowulf's lack of children)
I think the perfect phrase would be "epic fail."
Grendel couldn't pay wergild. My theory? No pockets.
(on Beowulf's sword)
It's a sword! It's pointy! Like a penis! And when it fails ... I don't really know what that means or when the other sword melts...
(on Icelandic sagas)
People don't worry too much about the existential meaning of life when at any moment someone might show up at their door with an axe.
His name means "Killer Barney" and all I can think of is the purple dinosaur.
"I love you, you love me. I slaughtered some members of my family..."
Imagine how well class would go if my name was "Killer Drout."
Where's the last severed head you had in a Jane Austen novel?
(On Egil Skallagrimsson)
He's a huge, snarling, murdering freak, and everyone wants him as their ancestor.
If I live in tenth-century Iceland, I don't want to go into Egil Skallagrimsson's bed closet for any reason whatsoever.
So I mixed up my 80's hair bands ... oh God, how horrible!
(on Gawain and his shield)
"So as I'm hacking someone's arm off and making him bleed to death, I can gaze at the Virgin Mary and it makes me feel better."
Everyone has a favorite Mayan god and Tlaloc is mine.
The first circle is the good part of Hell, with nice condos.
(on the problems with the rain in the upper circles and the rain of fire in the seventh circle)
It's a vision of Hell. I don't have to explain the meteorology!
Let's play "Name that heresy!"
Then the vikings realized "Hey! We can just go over to England and take their stuff."
Newton would boil mercury for a while, go insane, be dragged back to London and then invent physics.
Word of advice: Never build torture devices for evil tyrants. Ever.
Think of the barrators as being in a fondue pot of pitch.
Look! I made it to one minute before the end of class ... J.R.R. Tolkien!
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Lexomics at Kalamazoo
Do you like to count things? If so, the website our research group (me; Mark LeBlanc, prof. of computer science; Mike Kahn, prof. of statistics; and our students) is unveiling at Kalamazoo might be useful to you.
The on-line tools we have put up at http://lexomics.wheatoncollege.edu help researchers examine Anglo-Saxon texts in terms of patterns of words. For example, if you would like to list all the words in The Gifts of Men in order of frequency, you can. If you'd like to see what were Wulfstan's favorite words, you can. If you want to know how many words there are in the entire Anglo-Saxon corpus, and which are most common, you can find out.
Not only can you count words in any text, but you can create "virtual manuscripts" that combine separate texts into one file for counting purposes. So if you'd like to determine the most common--or the rarest-- words in the Beowulf manuscript (not just the poem Beowulf), you now can. Want to see which words appear once and only once (or twice and only twice) in Cotton Tiberius A.iii.? Easy!
And each of the words you might countis linked to a concordance search in the Dictionary of Old English. So if you discover that meahtum appears only twice in the Beowulf manuscript, you can then click on it and, provided you have electronic access to the DOE, you can see its other appearances in Old English (yes, the texts aren't lemmatized; if you want to know why, come to our paper at Kalamazoo).
Now why would I want to count words, you ask?
First, because looking at word frequencies helps you to identify interesting words in a text. If a word appears only in the OE translation of the Rule of Chrodegang and a text by Ælfric, that's potentially useful. Our tools can thus help literary scholars zero in on words that are worth a second look and can open the way for additional literary analysis.
Also, because the counts can be downloaded as Excel spreadsheets, there are many advanced statistical techniques that can be applied to them. But saying more would give away our paper at Kalamazoo, which I don't want to do.
Instead, I want to invite you to come to a roundtable, "Computing with Style," Thursday at 10:00 in Bernhard 213, our formal paper, "Lexomics for Literature" Thurs at 1:30 in the Bernhard Brown and Gold Room, and the poster session for Digital Humanities Thurs at 6:30 in Fetzer 1035. We'll have the software there for you to try and all three of us will be there to answer questions. We're looking for people who want to use the software and for additional collaborators.
All the software is open-source and available for free at the lexomics website, and it can easily be adapted to work on any electronic corpus of texts in any language.
This work is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Initiative, Grant #HD-50300-08.
Do you like to count things? If so, the website our research group (me; Mark LeBlanc, prof. of computer science; Mike Kahn, prof. of statistics; and our students) is unveiling at Kalamazoo might be useful to you.
The on-line tools we have put up at http://lexomics.wheatoncollege.edu help researchers examine Anglo-Saxon texts in terms of patterns of words. For example, if you would like to list all the words in The Gifts of Men in order of frequency, you can. If you'd like to see what were Wulfstan's favorite words, you can. If you want to know how many words there are in the entire Anglo-Saxon corpus, and which are most common, you can find out.
Not only can you count words in any text, but you can create "virtual manuscripts" that combine separate texts into one file for counting purposes. So if you'd like to determine the most common--or the rarest-- words in the Beowulf manuscript (not just the poem Beowulf), you now can. Want to see which words appear once and only once (or twice and only twice) in Cotton Tiberius A.iii.? Easy!
And each of the words you might countis linked to a concordance search in the Dictionary of Old English. So if you discover that meahtum appears only twice in the Beowulf manuscript, you can then click on it and, provided you have electronic access to the DOE, you can see its other appearances in Old English (yes, the texts aren't lemmatized; if you want to know why, come to our paper at Kalamazoo).
Now why would I want to count words, you ask?
First, because looking at word frequencies helps you to identify interesting words in a text. If a word appears only in the OE translation of the Rule of Chrodegang and a text by Ælfric, that's potentially useful. Our tools can thus help literary scholars zero in on words that are worth a second look and can open the way for additional literary analysis.
Also, because the counts can be downloaded as Excel spreadsheets, there are many advanced statistical techniques that can be applied to them. But saying more would give away our paper at Kalamazoo, which I don't want to do.
Instead, I want to invite you to come to a roundtable, "Computing with Style," Thursday at 10:00 in Bernhard 213, our formal paper, "Lexomics for Literature" Thurs at 1:30 in the Bernhard Brown and Gold Room, and the poster session for Digital Humanities Thurs at 6:30 in Fetzer 1035. We'll have the software there for you to try and all three of us will be there to answer questions. We're looking for people who want to use the software and for additional collaborators.
All the software is open-source and available for free at the lexomics website, and it can easily be adapted to work on any electronic corpus of texts in any language.
This work is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Initiative, Grant #HD-50300-08.
Monday, April 20, 2009
J. G. Ballard
[UPDATE: Geez! Step away from the computer for a weekend so you can coach some little league teams, and, whammo! People descend from everywhere to mark a stylistic infelicity caused by splicing up one start with another. Ouch! Below is the revised. If you want to see the original error, tough.]
[UPDATE: Geez! Step away from the computer for a weekend so you can coach some little league teams, and, whammo! People descend from everywhere to mark a stylistic infelicity caused by splicing up one start with another. Ouch! Below is the revised. If you want to see the original error, tough.]
On a Tuesday in 1982 I was in the Monmouth County Library in Shrewsbury, NJ. I know it was a Tuesday because, as a treat, my dad took my brother and I there every Tuesday. In the metal rack of paperback science fiction books, I noticed a beat-up copy of Chronopolis. On the way home I started to read it and was completely hooked, powering through the entire book that night and reading it several times again before returning it the following week. I had never read anything like it, and the best stories from the volume, "The Voices of Time," "Deep End," "The Cage of Sand," and especially, "The Terminal Beach" have been part of my interior world ever since.
My students find it hard to conceive of "life before Amazon," not to mention "life before the internet" and "life before Barnes and Noble superstores," so they don't understand how it's possible to love a writer but be limited to the one or two volumes in the local library and the bits and pieces that you found in random bookstores. But that was the way I encountered Ballard, a new novel here, a short story there, a paperback tucked away in the science fiction section of a college bookstore. I never engaged with Ballard's work systematically, the way I did with "The Big H" writers that were so important when I was in high school: Hemingway, Heinlein and Herbert. Ballard was different, but that made his books more powerful to me: found treasures.
In college The Day of Creation came out, and for a while it was easier to find other novels. I devoured The Drowned World and obsessively re-read The Crystal World and collections of short stories, The Venus Hunters, Myths of the Near Future, Vermillion Sands. The story that got me into the Iowa Writer's Workshop, I am almost certain, was my attempt to write a reverse version of The Drowned World, and I often argued for the literary value of Science Fiction by using illustrations from Ballard's work (unfortunately none of the other students in Carnegie Mellon creative writing classes had read Ballard).
But it was only in 1990-91, when I was doing my M.A. at Stanford, that I really investigated Ballard and his intellectual world: I found, but did not really enjoy, the books for which he gained so much fame: Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition, The Concrete Island, High Rise. Much more important to me was surrealism, which I discovered through Ballard. I spent hours and hours at Stanford's art library, pouring over major and minor works, and I tried to write surrealist SF myself. Simultaneously I went though a bad period of horrible insomnia (it didn't help that I lived in East Palo Alto, which that year was one of the crime capitals of California, so there were frequent shots fired in the distance and sirens, cracked-out people knocking on the door at 3 a.m., etc.) and for a while thought I was entering into a Ballard story or a Paul Delvaux painting. Somehow this all made Ballard even more powerful and personal.
Ballard was most widely acclaimed for his non-surrealist, non-SF novel, Empire of the Sun, and he was notorious for the experimental, weird books like Crash. But those books, interesting and accomplished as they are, don't do much for me. I am instead fascinated by the visual surrealism of the shorts stories and the books from the 60's and 70's. London half-submerged under warm salt water, a bird encased in crystal, a giant beach of red Mars sand, jeweled insects, sculptured clouds, flocks of sand-rays flying through the desert, the concrete blocks of Eniwetok. Ballard managed to write visually beautiful things, images that, once read, never leave you.
J. G. Ballard died of cancer on April 19th.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Bizarre Email of the Week
More Council of Elrond later tonight, maybe, but I just had to let you see this:
I cannot for the life of me figure out what I ever wrote that had any bearing on whales at all (I've never even written anything significant about Wales).
UPDATE: Google is your friend.
Apparently there is a V. Drout out there who did a 2003 dissertation on Sperm Whales and that must be the source of the confusion. I am so jealous! Although Anglo-Saxon is cooler than anything else in the humanities, Sperm Whales are way cooler than that.
And there goes my plan of seeing if I could actually write something about whales and get published in a by-invitation-only collection. Dang.
UPDATE AGAIN: It gets better: the V. Drout who writes about whales got his/her Ph.D. from the University of Bangor in Wales.
More Council of Elrond later tonight, maybe, but I just had to let you see this:
Dear Dr. Drout,
We have learned of your published research on whales. We would like to invite your participation in our publishing program. In particular, I have in mind a new research or review article for an edited collection (invitation only) being assembled under my direction tentatively entitled "######## [no need to embarrass the editor ###" The contributions for this edited book are intended to range from 4,000-35,000 words. If you are interested in participating, please consult the Notes for Contributors at the bottom of this letter.
I cannot for the life of me figure out what I ever wrote that had any bearing on whales at all (I've never even written anything significant about Wales).
UPDATE: Google is your friend.
Apparently there is a V. Drout out there who did a 2003 dissertation on Sperm Whales and that must be the source of the confusion. I am so jealous! Although Anglo-Saxon is cooler than anything else in the humanities, Sperm Whales are way cooler than that.
And there goes my plan of seeing if I could actually write something about whales and get published in a by-invitation-only collection. Dang.
UPDATE AGAIN: It gets better: the V. Drout who writes about whales got his/her Ph.D. from the University of Bangor in Wales.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The Council of Elrond: An Adapted Play
(My apologies for the lack of content. I have been absolutely buried with:
So in lieu of new content, I offer you something I wrote 31 years ago (how's that for recycling?)
Back in 1978, in Mrs. Hamer's 5th grade class in Ocean Township School, my best friend Chipper Stoll and I decided to adapt part of The Lord of the Rings for a play. Mrs. Hamer, being a brilliant teacher, let us sit in the book corner in the back of the room and do this for several days.
So with the whole Lord of the Rings to draw from, what did Chipper and I choose? Well, "The Council of Elrond" Why not? We had many choices: battles, stirring speeches, deep emotional struggles, beauty and terror. Of course we chose a faculty meeting with Elves.
"The Council of Elrond" is perhaps the most infamous chapter in the book: in 2005 I did a radio show in which one caller, who ran a bookstore, said "I just tell everyone to skip that chapter, and then they enjoy The Lord of the Rings (I'm afraid I took umbrage). And I have heard the same idea from many people, which I why I'm writing a chapter for a Tolkien book (assuming the chapter and the book are accepted) called "The Council of Elrond, all those poems, and the famous F-ing Elves: Teaching the Hard Parts of Tolkien."
Recently I found Chipper's and my script of The Council of Elrond, and, after reading it over, I have to be snotty and say that we did a better job (on this particular chapter) than Philippa Boyens. Our version is not all fighty-fighty, and we managed to use a lot of Tolkien's own words. I'm also extremely amused that my pedantic, academic self manifested itself even in fifth grade: Sez Elrond: "The Rings of Power were forged by the Elves of Eregion in S.A. 1590. The One Ring was forged in S.A. 1600, by Sauron."
So, for your amusement, over the next few days I will post The Council of Elrond, adapted by Michael D.C. Drout and August G. Stoll, III.
More to come...
(My apologies for the lack of content. I have been absolutely buried with:
- Administration
- The editing and then proofing of Tolkien Studies volume 6
- The production of the cumulative index for Tolkien Studies volumes 1-5
- Expansions, correction and revision for the new edition of Beowulf and the Critics
- Prepping our Lexomics presentation for Kalamazoo
- Writing a book chapter, "The Medieval Author in Memetic Terms" for an April 17 deadline
- Prepping to give a lecture at Amherst
- My son's 5th birthday
- My daughter having two weeks off from school and a violin recital
- Easter
- My son's birthday party (which involves knights, princesses and ponies))
So in lieu of new content, I offer you something I wrote 31 years ago (how's that for recycling?)
Back in 1978, in Mrs. Hamer's 5th grade class in Ocean Township School, my best friend Chipper Stoll and I decided to adapt part of The Lord of the Rings for a play. Mrs. Hamer, being a brilliant teacher, let us sit in the book corner in the back of the room and do this for several days.
So with the whole Lord of the Rings to draw from, what did Chipper and I choose? Well, "The Council of Elrond" Why not? We had many choices: battles, stirring speeches, deep emotional struggles, beauty and terror. Of course we chose a faculty meeting with Elves.
"The Council of Elrond" is perhaps the most infamous chapter in the book: in 2005 I did a radio show in which one caller, who ran a bookstore, said "I just tell everyone to skip that chapter, and then they enjoy The Lord of the Rings (I'm afraid I took umbrage). And I have heard the same idea from many people, which I why I'm writing a chapter for a Tolkien book (assuming the chapter and the book are accepted) called "The Council of Elrond, all those poems, and the famous F-ing Elves: Teaching the Hard Parts of Tolkien."
Recently I found Chipper's and my script of The Council of Elrond, and, after reading it over, I have to be snotty and say that we did a better job (on this particular chapter) than Philippa Boyens. Our version is not all fighty-fighty, and we managed to use a lot of Tolkien's own words. I'm also extremely amused that my pedantic, academic self manifested itself even in fifth grade: Sez Elrond: "The Rings of Power were forged by the Elves of Eregion in S.A. 1590. The One Ring was forged in S.A. 1600, by Sauron."
So, for your amusement, over the next few days I will post The Council of Elrond, adapted by Michael D.C. Drout and August G. Stoll, III.
More to come...
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Tolkien Classes
Recently I got an email from the Chair of a high-school English department who wanted to know about classes in Tolkien or fantasy literature that might be taught at other high schools. I realized I have no idea.
Furthermore, I have no idea how many college courses are now devoted to Tolkien. Back in 2003, when I was making the case to WVU Press that they should publish Tolkien Studies, I did a rough survey, searching for "Tolkien" and "syllabus" on the same page and then weeding out by hand. This is no longer possible: there are 37,000 results, and many duplications.
So, instead of brute-force googling (though I'm sure those with better google-fu than I could narrow it down), let's try the power of distributed intelligence and social networking.
If you know of classes devoted to Tolkien or having a substantial Tolkien component, at the high-school or college level, post about them in the comments here or email me. I will assemble all the data and make a new post. You don't need to write much, just something like:
Wheaton College, Norton Mass: English 259: J.R.R. Tolkien, English 401: Sr. Seminar: Tolkien and Le Guin.
Of course if there's a link to a syllabus, that's even better, but not necessary. And if you don't have specific data, but can remember something like "I had a course on JRRT at University of X in 2002," that's fine, too.
My gut feeling is that the number of courses has perhaps even doubled since 2003. Just recently I was partnered with someone from another New England elite liberal arts college, and he just mentioned, in passing, that one of their new faculty members "does this course on Tolkien, of all things, and it's really very good." (I just smiled). Anecdotal evidence suggests that a lot of medievalists are now teaching a Tolkien course as well (and, yes, I'll be they are "really very good"). So I think these courses are now all over the place and are more "respectable" than they were even six years ago. I'd like to see if this hunch is correct.
(I'll save a description of my war with the raccoons for the next post)
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