tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-112797582008-08-26T21:11:42.673-04:00Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comBlogger258125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-72236759941617153802008-08-26T21:00:00.000-04:002008-08-26T21:11:42.892-04:00

Currently wrapped up in reading and settling into the semester, I've decided to post another excerpt from a work I'm reading about "Place" and Middle English language and literature, chapter four taken from Christopher Cannon's book, Middle English Literature (Cambridge: Polity P, 2008). Here it is: Dialectical variety in Middle English was often so great... that, despite an underlying unity of

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-88588449202783089992008-08-24T21:00:00.001-04:002008-08-24T21:04:26.762-04:00

[Image courtesy the Alkborough and Walcot website.] [Disclaimer: Rambling connections and speculation follows.] Yesterday, a new shipment of books arrived from Amazon, containing books for my fall classes as well as another title from my MA exams list, Craig Wright's The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and Music. Setting my pre-semester reading of Chaucer aside, I

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-80754996549633668422008-08-19T22:30:00.000-04:002008-08-20T10:54:29.984-04:00

I'm reading through M. T. Clanchy's book England and Its Rulers: 1066-1272 in preparation for my Piety and Place course, and his discussion of "Names and languages" in post-Conquest England struck me. For this week's MLT, I'm posting some passages and thoughts. Clanchy discusses the shift in naming practices in England, observing that "most freemen [in England] by then [the twelfth century]

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-38824553152046706872008-08-18T00:00:00.001-04:002008-08-18T00:11:07.366-04:00

As an attempt to get some more non-course-related reading done before the semester starts, I read through The Lais of Marie de France (trans. and ed. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante; Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 1978) a few days ago. I thought it was on my MA exam reading list, but it turned out not to be; still, it was a good read, and I enjoyed all of the lais quite a bit (I was worried that I

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-52931345438411277322008-08-15T12:30:00.000-04:002008-08-15T12:30:00.929-04:00

I'm back. Life seems to be settling, and I think I'll have a bit of time to blog in the next ten days before the semester starts up. I've been following the medieval blogosphere, trying not to miss too much, for about the last week, but hope to get back into conversations and my own blogging again more regularly now. Readers can hold me to a new MLT this coming week, and perhaps some other

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-69842206521116685002008-07-22T22:00:00.000-04:002008-07-22T22:00:19.587-04:00

Over the last few days, I've been a bit busier than I have been for the rest of summer--namely because I'm going to be the Leading Bride's co-star in a wedding this Saturday, followed by a week-long honeymoon, followed by (the day, in fact) moving into a new apartment. Because of all the intensity of this week and my preparation for the events of my next few weeks, I unfortunately do not have an

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-87486882916487785612008-07-18T19:00:00.000-04:002008-07-18T19:12:40.852-04:00

Today I finished Marc Bloch's book, the Historian's Craft--and I loved it. I found this book, of course, because it's part of the required reading on my MA list, and I've certainly found it helpful. So far, I've been glad of the books I've read from the list, but this one perhaps has been most accessible and full of fuel for my own reflections and thoughts on the work in history. With wit,

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-12382339614240569852008-07-15T10:00:00.000-04:002008-07-15T22:06:22.710-04:00

This week's MLT partly acts as a continuation of the examinations in last week's post, in exploring the development of concepts of Purgatory in medieval English literature. Moving away from the Old English vernacular for a moment, within the Old English corpus, we find 93 instances of words formed on the Latin root purg*, including such words as purgationis, purgare, purgabit, purgari,

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-2807396809736788162008-07-14T13:00:00.002-04:002008-07-14T13:17:15.010-04:00

Today's Albany Times Union contains a fascinating article by Michael Janairo (a sort of factual-centered autobiographical reflection) on genealogical genetics and the Genographic Project to map DNA family trees. For much of the article, Janairo explains genealogical genetics, the project, and how he and his family bought a kit to test their "deep ancestry" through DNA markers. Janairo also (

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-5682505416240455932008-07-08T21:30:00.008-04:002008-07-09T11:51:15.944-04:00

Lately, I've been thinking more and more about the history of the development of Purgatory in medieval England--largely due to reading LeGoff's book The Birth of Purgatory. LeGoff mentions several textual moments in England that represent thoughts about the concept of penitential purgation. Foremost to study of England, LeGoff cites the visionary literature of "Anglo-Irish Christianity" as

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-91706941465912867142008-07-06T21:30:00.000-04:002008-07-06T21:30:01.009-04:00

Several months ago, when I presented this paper, one of the questions I received both intrigued me and set me to thinking about the issue, and it's been nagging my mind since then. As I presented the paper to a range of audience--some familiar with Anglo-Saxon England and medieval studies, some not--the questions came from a variety of understandings and thoughts on the subject that I might not

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-39716773134638731952008-07-02T10:30:00.001-04:002008-07-02T10:30:01.826-04:00

According to Discovery News, examinations of Danish medieval remains shows evidence of several monks' exposure to toxic mercury, most probably through the red ink used in medieval manuscripts of the Bible. In addition to this problem of monastic poisonings, as Discovery reports, "the researchers found that mercury-containing medicine had been administered to 79 percent of the interred

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-70544322785834657462008-07-01T12:30:00.000-04:002008-07-01T12:30:00.321-04:00

I've recently been reading (alongside my Ma reading list) Jacques LeGoff's The Birth of Purgatory, in which he argues that--while there were definite beginnings of the doctrine of a type of Purgatory throughout Christianity--the true birth of the place, doctrine, and fleshed-out understanding of Purgatory is in the twelfth century. He makes much of his preliminary case on the use of the Latin

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-15939944584122443472008-06-26T09:00:00.000-04:002008-06-26T09:18:30.973-04:00

Previously, I have posted two parts in this series of thoughts, the first dealing with the background of the Apocrypha in Christian tradition, the second dealing with challenges to the rejection of the Apocrypha by Protestants. In this, the third and final installment in this series, I will step away from both the historicity of the rejection of the Apocrypha as well as defense against the terms

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-91119313851721022912008-06-24T21:45:00.000-04:002008-06-24T21:48:25.853-04:00

Tagging onto last week's MLT post about geography and language, this week's MLT is about: The biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The story is found originally in Genesis 11:1-9, quoted here from the Vulgate: 1 erat autem terra labii unius et sermonum eorundem 2 cumque proficiscerentur de oriente invenerunt campum in terra Sennaar et habitaverunt in eo 3 dixitque alter ad proximum suum venite

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-8935045328146246802008-06-22T00:00:00.002-04:002008-06-22T00:00:01.784-04:00

Today in ecclesiology is the feast day of St. Alban, patron saint of converts, refugees, and Britain. The most well-known account of St. Ablan is found in Bede's History of the English Church and People, in which he writes about the the persecution of Diocletian (I.6), and continues in the next chapter: In this persecution suffered Saint Alban, of whom the priest Fortunatus in his Praise of

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-66142639423367504202008-06-19T22:20:00.008-04:002008-06-20T01:27:45.487-04:00

In my first post on this subject--a little more than a month ago--I discussed the background of acceptance and the tensions about the Apocryphal books in the history of Christianity in the West (with nods to the divergence of Protestantism from Roman Catholicism). In this post, I would like to assert my reasons for questioning the rejection of the Apocrypha by Protestants up to this point, and

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-43949040747922387652008-06-17T21:00:00.000-04:002008-06-17T21:00:00.985-04:00

Lately I've become more and more interested in medieval conceptions and geography--so I'm focusing on a few points for this week's MLT. Although it's not medieval--rather, it's a Classical source--one of the most famous matters of geography is Caesar's beginning to his Latin Gallic Wars: All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-85895122191551411622008-06-11T10:30:00.003-04:002008-06-11T21:12:07.936-04:00

Two new TED Talks have appeared that are relevant to some of the ideas I've generated on this blog. The first is a talk titled "The Worldwide Web of Belief and Ritual," (~19 minutes) described on TED as follows: "Anthropologist Wade Davis muses on the worldwide web of belief and ritual that makes us human." Essentially, Davis discusses the myriad responses across time and cultures to what he

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-49811260402702331872008-06-10T19:45:00.000-04:002008-06-10T19:50:49.703-04:00

I noticed that someone had come across this site searching for the Arabic word for "dragon," so today's MLT is just that--albeit short. According to one English-Arabic dictionary, the word for "dragon" (noun) is: التنين On yet another dictionary site, "dragon" is listed as: تنين, شخص عنيف, بندقية قصيرة Unfortunately, since I don't know Arabic myself (it's on the list of medieval languages to

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-38508950420392336042008-06-05T17:00:00.000-04:002008-06-05T17:10:16.738-04:00

I just finished reading Auerbach's Dante: Poet of the Secular World (for the MA reading list), so here are my thoughts, reflections and overall review of the work. Auerbach's book gives a nice introduction to reading and thinking about Dante, especially the Divine Comedy. Less a biography than an essay on Dante's works, the book offers insight and interpretation of both the poet and his

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-86742314739098658942008-06-03T22:00:00.001-04:002008-06-03T22:06:19.378-04:00

I'm currently reading through Erich Auerbach's Dante: Poet of the Secular World (for the MA exam reading list), and enjoying it quite a bit. In light of that, this week's MLT is nothing more nor less than a simple poetic selection from Dante's Vita nuova. I've taken this selection from Auerbach rather than another translation of the Vita because it provides Dante's Italian, and (as noted in the

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-5320215152982986172008-05-28T21:20:00.001-04:002008-05-28T21:25:55.228-04:00

Sorry the MLT is late--I didn't have internet accessibility all day yesterday. This week's MLT is a hodge-podge of thoughts on medieval English verbs of thought (apologies for unformed ideas and any illogical thoughts that follow). I originally began thinking about this sort of thing in conjunction with the Old English and Old Norse words þyncan and þykkja--both meaning "to seem"--and also

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-42674556330095770592008-05-23T00:30:00.001-04:002008-05-23T00:34:26.631-04:00

I've just finished reading The Evolution of Medieval Thought by David Knowles (on my MA reading list), and have a sort of review as a way of looking back on the work as a whole. I figure posting my initial reactions and thoughts may help me when I need to review for my MA exams. It should be said up front that I enjoyed this book immensely--from front to back covers, with only a few lags in

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11279758.post-47922588696869828012008-05-20T11:00:00.002-04:002008-05-20T11:21:21.350-04:00

I just read (last night, very quickly) Neil Gaiman's latest publication, a children's book titled Odd and the Frost Giants--which brilliantly incorporates Norse mythology into a story about a Norse boy coming to age in his own identity. It's a fun story, with intelligently crafted bits from Norse works woven into the fabric of the story; recommended for children and anyone interested in Norse

Brandon H.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17909010609907741198noreply@blogger.com