About this blog

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have heard that this blog recently won an award (!) for Digital History from the magazine History Today, and they've just published online a very generous article about it. This feels like far more than my little blog deserves, but I'm immensely grateful nonetheless. As a consequence, I know there are quite a few new readers around here at the moment, and I wanted to write a post firstly to say hello to them (hi!), and secondly to talk a little about what I consider to be the aim of this blog. In case you've wandered over here from History Today and are wondering what on earth is the rationale behind a blog like this, I'll attempt to explain. But I'll try and keep it short, because I'm sure you're all capable of reading an About page (which essentially says all this already). I wrote recently about why blogging as an early career academic has been such an enriching experience for me, so I won't repeat what I said there, either.

I think the first thing I want to say is that although this is a blog about medieval literature it has always been, first by chance but now by choice, personal in nature and scope: by that I mean I write only about things which I like and which I want to write about. This is a deliberate decision, partly because to attempt to be comprehensive or even representative would be impossible (and far beyond my capabilities), but most importantly because I want to help my readers to enjoy the literature I study. I'm not a historian; I study and teach medieval English literature. Although a large part of what I study is made up of historical texts - chronicles, saints' lives, and so on - my primary interest is in them as literature; I'm interested in how medieval people perceived and wrote about the past, whether that perception was accurate or not. In this blog I approach the medieval world through its texts, and the guiding principle here is that medieval literature is just as sophisticated, profound, funny, subtle, imaginative, and diverse as the literature of any other period. You might not think that needs to be said - but it does, and often, in a world where 'medieval' is a popular synonym for 'cruel, uncivilized, or primitive'. I couldn't begin to illustrate the range and diversity of medieval English literature in a blog; no one could. But what I hope to do here is to illustrate, post by post, some of the ways in which I personally find medieval literature to be thought-provoking, or pleasurable, or moving.

There are many misconceptions about the medieval period, and especially about its literature, starting with the fact that many people are completely unaware how much of it there is. This was the first revelation to me when I began to study medieval English literature as an undergraduate. Like many British people of my age, I never studied any pre-modern literature at school, and although I had heard of Chaucer (growing up near Canterbury, it was impossible not to), I knew almost nothing about the medieval period - its history or its literature. This is not unusual, in my experience. The way my history education worked (and I imagine this is still common in the UK) was that we started with the Romans in primary school, and then progressed forward in time as we got older; we learned about the Vikings when we were ten, the Anglo-Saxons at eleven, the Black Death at twelve, and that was it. The last four years of my history schooling were devoted to the twentieth century - with the result that I could tell you an awful lot about the Russian Revolution, but I still struggle with Magna Carta. I'm not judging whether this was a good or bad thing (obviously it's not much help to me in my present career, but I understand why schools make these decisions), but it does mean that my understanding of medieval history, like that of many people I know, consisted for a long time mostly of what was taught to me at primary school - that is, what was thought appropriate for ten-year-olds. It was all very blood and guts and Horrible Histories, intended to 'make history fun' (yet somehow never quite doing so, for me). The medieval period was presented to me as - well, 'cruel, uncivilized, and primitive', because that's what children are generally supposed to find entertaining, and I grew up thinking it was simplistic because it had been explained to me in simple terms. That was stupidity on my part, but I don't think it's an uncommon error.

If I hadn't been forced to study medieval literature as part of my undergraduate degree, I suspect I might have gone the rest of my life thinking - like many otherwise well-educated people I encounter - that the medieval period consisted of nothing more complex than what had been taught to me at ten years old. There certainly would have been little in popular culture to challenge what I had been told about the Middle Ages - that it was an unfortunate blip in history, 1000 years of benighted unreason between the clever Romans and the colourful Tudors. Fortunately, although I didn't particularly want to study medieval literature, I was made to. I came to it totally cold, in my first term at Oxford, and I fell in love with many different aspects of it, all at once; I just couldn't believe how much of it there was and how interesting it all was. The intricacies of Old English poetic language, which you could wrestle with all your life and never master; strange but mesmerising stories about saints and the heroes of romance; translations of familiar texts into unfamiliar language; riddles and wisdom-poetry which made the everyday extraordinary; Anglo-Saxon homilists carefully explaining, in a language I could learn to recognise as English, complex theological ideas; audacious Chaucer and the richness of Piers Plowman; the volumes and volumes of anonymous Middle English lyrics, all the voices of poets whose names we'll never know. So many writers, readers, poets, teachers, students, thinkers - not one of them 'cruel, uncivilized or primitive'. It was astonishing to me, and I've never quite got over that astonishment. That was the reason I started a blog when I was a graduate student, and it's the main reason I keep it going. In a world where the general public know almost nothing about medieval literature (and yet think they know various untrue things, like 'it's all in Latin', 'it's all by men'), I think it's just worth saying, again and again: look how much there is, and look how interesting it is. It's not uncommon to hear people assert that 'the Middle Ages didn't have much literature, because most people were illiterate'. Or 'no one wrote poetry in English before Chaucer'. Or 'no one translated the Bible into English until the Reformation'. Or 'people didn't love literature' until 1750. A lot of quite educated people believe these things, and I don't blame them at all - I would have thought the same, if my education had stopped at eighteen. These assertions are wrong, but that doesn't stop them being repeated, endlessly, and it doesn't mean we should stop trying to illustrate the many ways in which they are incorrect and misleading.

There's often a bit more than ignorance going on too, of course; in Britain there's a deep-seated cultural prejudice against medieval religion, in particular, which means that many people simply don't want to take it seriously. That was also part of how I was taught about the medieval period ('gullible pilgrims fleeced by greedy monks at Thomas Becket's shrine') and this is a prejudice inculcated in many British people at an early age; I'm still surprised how often people who are otherwise quite broad-minded (of my parents' generation and older) have a visceral, emotional, kneejerk reaction against pre-Reformation religion, which makes them unable to regard it with the critical detachment they might have towards any other religion or culture different from their own. They were taught that the medieval church was corrupt, superstitious, ignorant, and hateful towards the poor; to them it's all somehow very 'un-English', and just to talk about relic-cults, miracle-stories, nuns, and so on - even as a subject of academic study - is like being in thrall to dark forces. Whether this stems from old-fashioned Victorian anti-Catholicism or New Atheist scorn for religion, in effect it all ends up sounding the same (especially when it's coming from trolls on Twitter). I don't entirely know how to deal with it, since it's so alien to me. All I can say is that I take the medieval past seriously, and that to understand any historical period you need to try and accept it to some extent on its own terms, however unpleasant you might find them. The medieval church could be corrupt or cruel, of course - any human institution can be - but I find it bizarre how often people talk about all medieval religion as if it were one big cynical scam. 'Medieval religion' encompasses 1000 years of history, and beliefs which touch the deepest currents in human life - birth and death, marriage and vocation, sickness, fear, grief, joy, love. You don't have to think any of it was true to appreciate why people might have found it meaningful; if you can't credit some degree of sincerity to those 'greedy monks' - who, in the Anglo-Saxon period at least, wrote or preserved almost every single literary text we have - it will limit your ability to understand the literature. So yes, I write about saints and relics and miracles here and I take them seriously, if not always literally. If you approach the strangeness of it all with an open mind, it can help you think in new ways about the things we take for granted - whether that's our attitude to science, or our relationship to the natural world, or our expectations about what we can hope for from life, ourselves, and each other.

On this blog I write about poems, carols, sermons, prayers, saints' lives, historical texts and more, in Old English and Middle English and sometimes in Old Norse and Latin too - for absolutely no reason except that I think it's incredibly interesting, and I want other people to find it interesting too. That may sound like a broad range of genres and languages, but it's actually very limited, a tiny sample, compared to how much falls under the umbrella of 'medieval literature'. Since I write about what I like most, certain things get massively over-represented here, and some things completely under-represented, out of proportion to their actual importance. There's a bias towards England, of course, and especially the south of England (sorry...). There's a lot of Ælfric on this blog, and not much Beowulf; lots of anonymous Middle English lyrics, but very little by Chaucer or the Gawain-poet or any of the major Middle English authors. That's mostly because there's much more available out there on the internet on those topics, by people more qualified than me. But I deliberately choose to focus here on texts which are less well-known, because my goal is just to think and talk, in public, about the richness of the literature I myself study and teach - which is, I should repeat, only a miniscule fraction of what exists. If you're new here, and you're prepared to tolerate that, you're very welcome.

Some end of year thanks

The last day of the year seems like a good time to say thank you. Over the course of 2014 the number of visitors to this blog has risen rapidly, mostly because of people coming via Twitter, and I've made the acquaintance of many wonderful new readers. I want to end the year by thanking you all for reading, commenting, sharing and contributing here, and I want to explain a little why that means so much to me.

I hope you can tell from this blog that I love my work. I love research, and I love medieval literature, and I love teaching it and thinking about it and I'm never happier than when I'm absorbed in it. Nonetheless, academia is not always a happy place to work. I'm a very junior academic, and to people in my position a career in academia offers a daunting future: a life of short-term contracts and little security, with very limited ability to plan ahead. You can probably imagine the psychological effects of this, and the impact it can have on one's confidence and sense of self-worth; if not, this article explains very well what it's like to be in this situation. Most of my friends are also early career academics, in a similar position, and when I look at them I see talented young people consumed with anxiety and fear about the future, constantly doubting their value as scholars, and consequently as human beings. The system feeds, almost encourages, such anxiety. I remember that just after I started my current job we were learning about the training sessions on offer for junior academics, and were told that their most well-attended session ever had been about 'coping with a fear of failure'. Everyone kind of laughed and looked unsurprised, but this fact stuck with me, and it's sad, when you think about it. By no rational definition could any of the people attending such a session be considered failures: these are graduate students and young academics studying and working at Oxford, which proudly calls itself one of the best universities in the world. You can't get where they are without being talented and dedicated, incredibly hard-working and motivated, excelling again and again at exams and job applications and all the things one is supposed to succeed at in order to find a place in the world. It's hard not to feel that they've done everything right, but nonetheless they - we - can't feel secure. I'm in that position myself, and I too feel like a failure. I don't think I am, yet (am I? don't tell me, if you think I am) but I feel like one, every day.

The precarious nature of academic jobs is an endemic problem, perhaps not something individuals can do much about, but academics often don't help this pervading mood of anxiety by just not being very nice to each other. As an academic you are confronted all the time by scepticism, criticism, doubt, and to an extent, that's fine - that's how academia operates, its bread and butter, and constructive criticism can be a real gift. But a lot of the time you're dealing with criticism which feels unnecessarily vindictive, actually designed to torpedo your sense of self-worth. Criticism is all you ever hear, because it's no one's job to encourage you or tell you what's good about your work - only how it can be improved. Senior academics in positions of power who use that power to be generous and supportive towards younger scholars are absolutely worth their weight in gold, and I've been fortunate enough to be helped by several, but they often seem to be in the minority. Part of the fear of failure is feeling almost desperately dependent on the goodwill of more powerful people, without any control over the fate of your own work; reviewers and academic publishers, for instance, have a huge amount of power over my future, and I have no influence on them whatsoever. I have to get my work published if I ever want to get another job, so they're free to treat me however they want and I have to do as they ask, lest they decide to say 'actually, we won't publish this after all'. That's a frightening situation to be in.

This is where blogging helps. It might seem like nothing to you, but with blogging I'm in control of what I write and post; it might be badly written or contain errors or someone just might not like it, but at least I don't have to get anyone's approval to write it, or apply for permission, or dread the prospect of an anonymous critical attack. That sense of freedom has been very good for my scholarship, in ways I might discuss in another post, but it's also been good for me personally. In response to my blog I receive a constant stream of positive feedback, and I can't tell you what a boost that is to me amid my daily anxieties. Perhaps that makes it sound like the benefits of blogging are chiefly selfish, but what I love is not people saying nice things about me, but recognising the value of the texts I write about. 'That poem is amazing!' is my favourite type of comment; it means, I hope, that I helped someone see how and why a text they wouldn't otherwise have encountered can indeed be amazing. The tone is just so different: there's enthusiasm and interest and passion of a kind you rarely hear expressed within academia. People who aren't used to blogs worry about getting negative feedback through blogging, and of course you do get the occasional troll, especially on Twitter - but in six years of blogging I've never received a comment anywhere near as maliciously crushing as anonymous academic peer review can be. The overwhelming majority of my readers are friendly and eager to learn and ready to contribute knowledge of their own; if they have criticisms, they express them politely. It turns out that out there, outside academia, a lot of people are just really nice. And living and working as I do, inside my own head, it's a lovely surprise to find that out.

There's still debate within academia about blogging, and a considerable proportion of academics who don't understand why anyone would bother to do it. When people ask me about my blog (I never bring it up myself, because I worry what people I know in real life will think of it) they often do so with an air of puzzlement: why would you want to do that? Why would you write if you're not getting anything out of it? And it's true I'm not really getting anything tangible out of blogging, and career-wise it may do me more harm than good; I sometimes imagine sceptical 'real academics' stumbling across my blog, silently judging me, and going away again, and you never know how that might come back to hurt me. To many of the people who have power over my career, blogging doesn't count as a worthwhile activity, even as a form of outreach or impact. But the intangible benefits are immense, and it's been more rewarding than almost anything I've ever done. To be able to write about texts I care about, which I feel are interesting and important and should be better known, and then find a willing and appreciative audience who want to hear about them, is a daily joy. That's because of you, my generous and open-minded readers. I write about texts I like and want to share, and most of the things I choose to post about I could never publish in another forum, so it's particularly encouraging that many of my most popular posts this year have been about some of the most obscure texts: the Old English Menologium, Anglo-Saxon sermons, very minor Middle English lyrics, a little-studied Norse saga. These posts have each attracted hundreds of readers within a few days of posting, and have been received with an enthusiasm which amazes me. Perhaps the element of novelty is a draw - these texts are not the kind of thing anyone would encounter unless they had been studying medieval literature for a few years, and so they are unfamiliar and surprising, maybe. I think that many people who've never studied medieval literature (especially Old English), and even some who have, don't know just how much they don't know; they think the corpus is small and predictable, and so react with astonishment and delight to something unexpected, like Christ III. But still, if you had to pick anything - anything! - you thought a non-specialist audience would be interested in, Ælfric's sermons would be way down the list, let alone the Menologium or the Christ poems of the Exeter Book. Sometimes people comment on my posts (meaning to be kind) 'you should write a book about this!' which, although a well-intentioned comment, is a little painful to hear, because at the moment no one would publish a book by someone as junior as me about texts as obscure as the ones I write about. Who would want to read that? Well, my blog readers, thank goodness.

So, if you've read this far, thank you. Thank you for reading, commenting on, sharing my posts. Thank you for being enthusiastic and generous in your responses, for sharing my enthusiasm. If you're a non-specialist, as the majority of you are, thank you for being open-minded, willing to engage with texts which even within academia are seen as hopelessly esoteric, too obscure for undergraduates and the kind of thing no non-specialist would ever care about. And if you are a specialist, a 'real academic', thank you for being generous enough to read the blog of someone much junior to you, who values your approval more than you can imagine. And all of you, thank you for being kind.

Social Media for Academics

Today I went to a talk on 'social media for academics'. Apparently, the cardinal rules of academic blogging include:

1) don't create new content.
2) don't care about statistics; it doesn't matter if no one reads your blog, because you should only be doing it to make contact with future job or funding opportunities.

And there was me, thinking it was about the sharing of ideas and knowledge. I've been doing it wrong all these years...

Dunbar's Advice to Academics

This is a poem by the fifteenth-century Scottish poet William Dunbar, offering counsel to scholars and 'clerks' on the right attitude to learning and study. In one manuscript this poem is accompanied by the note (in Latin) 'what Dunbar said at Oxford'; there's debate about whether Dunbar ever visited Oxford, but whether he did or not, the advice is generally applicable...

To speik of science, craft, or sapience,
Of vertew, morall cunnyng, or doctryne,
Of jure, of wisdome, or intelligence,
Of every study, lair, or disciplyne -
All is bot tynt or reddy for to tyne,
Nocht using it as it suld usit be,
The craft excersing, considering nocht the fyne.
Ane peralous seiknes is vane prosperité.

The curius probatcioun logicall,
The eloquence of ornat rethorye,
The naturall science filosophicall,
The dirk apirance of astronomy,
The theologgis sermon, the fablis of poetrye -
Without guid lyff, all in the selfe dois de,
As Mayis flouris dois in September drye.
Ane peralows lyff is vane prosperité.

Quhairfoir, ye clerkis grytast of constance,
Fullest off science and of knaleging,
To us be mirrouris in yowr governance,
And in owr dirknes be lampis in schining,
Or thane in frustar is yowr lang lerning;
Gyff to yowr sawis your deidis contrar be,
Yowr maist accusar is your awin cuning.
Ane peralows seiknes is vane prosperitie.


If Dunbar will permit me to offer a translation:

To speak of knowledge, learning, or sapience,
Of virtue, moral knowledge, or doctrine,
Of law, of wisdom, or intelligence,
Of every study, lore, or discipline -
All is but lost, or ready to be lost,
Not using it as it should used be,
To exercise the skill, and consider not the end;
A perilous sickness is vain prosperity.

The curious experiments logical,
The eloquence of ornate rhetoric,
The natural science philosophical,
The obscure appearance of astronomy,
The theologian's sermon, the fables of poetry -
Without good life, all in the self does die,
As May's flower does in September dry.
A perilous life is vain prosperity.

Therefore, ye clerks greatest of constancy,
Fullest of science and of learning,
To us be mirrors in your governance,
And in our darkness be lamps shining,
Or else in vain is your long studying.
If to your souls your deeds contrary be,
Your worst accuser is your own learning.
A perilous sickness is vain prosperity.


The refrain of this poem may at first sight be a little puzzling - why should 'vain prosperity' be a particular temptation of the academic life? In Dunbar's time, as today, clerks (of Oxford and elsewhere) were never likely to be wealthy people; and Dunbar, who knew his Chaucer, would certainly have remembered the threadbare Clerk of the Canterbury Tales, who 'al be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre'. It makes most sense if you interpret prosperity as success, in whatever endeavour, not necessarily including wealth - so the advice is not to get carried away with one's own cleverness. 'Yowr maist accusar is your awin cuning' - what a warning!

'It is not sufficient therefore for us to study the most excellent things unless we do it in the most excellent of manners'

10 October is Thomas Traherne Day, in my world.  I've posted lots of my favourite sections from Centuries of Meditations before, but I feel like C. S. Lewis did about this book - "I could go on quoting it forever".  So today I'll restrict myself to one extract, but also suggest that you go and listen to this reading of another superb passage.

Credenhill in Herefordshire, where Traherne was parish priest

Having been at the University, and received there the taste and tincture of another education, I saw that there were things in this world of which I never dreamed; glorious secrets, and glorious persons past imagination. There I saw that Logic, Ethics, Physics, Metaphysics, Geometry, Astronomy, Poesy, Medicine, Grammar, Music, Rhetoric, all kinds of Arts, Trades, and Mechanisms that adorned the world pertained to felicity; at least there I saw those things, which afterwards I knew to pertain unto it: and was delighted in it. There I saw into the nature of the Sea, the Heavens, the Sun, the Moon and Stars, the Elements, Minerals, and Vegetables. All which appeared like the King's Daughter, all glorious within; and those things which my nurses, and parents, should have talked of there were taught unto me.

Nevertheless some things were defective too. There was never a tutor that did professly teach Felicity, though that be the mistress of all other sciences. Nor did any of us study these things but as aliena, which we ought to have studied as our enjoyments. We studied to inform our knowledge, but knew not for what end we so studied. And for lack of aiming at a certain end we erred in the manner. Howbeit there we received all those seeds of knowledge that were afterwards improved; and our souls were awakened to a discerning of their faculties, and exercise of their powers.

The manner is in everything of greatest concernment. Whatever good thing we do, neither can we please God, unless we do it well: nor can He please us, what ever good He does, unless He do it well. Should He give us the most perfect things in Heaven and Earth to make us happy, and not give them to us in the best of all possible manners, He would but displease us; and it were impossible for Him to make us happy. It is not sufficient therefore for us to study the most excellent things unless we do it in the most excellent of manners. And what that is, it is impossible to find, till we are guided thereunto by the most excellent end, with a desire of which I flagrantly burned.

The best of all possible ends is the Glory of God, but happiness was that I thirsted after. And yet I did not err, for the Glory of God is to make us happy. Which can never be done but by giving us most excellent natures and satisfying those natures: by creating all treasures of infinite value, and giving them to us in an infinite manner, to wit, both in the best that to omnipotence was possible. This led me to enquire whether all things were excellent, and of perfect value, and whether they were mine in propriety?

It is the Glory of God to give all things to us in the best of all possible manners. To study things therefore under the double notion of interest and treasure, is to study all things in the best of all possible manners. Because in studying so we enquire after God's Glory, and our own happiness. And indeed enter into the way that leadeth to all contentments, joys, and satisfactions, to all praises triumphs and thanksgivings, to all virtues, beauties, adorations and graces, to all dominion, exaltation, wisdom, and glory, to all Holiness, Union, and Communication with God, to all patience, and courage and blessedness, which it is impossible to meet any other way. So that to study objects for ostentation, vain knowledge or curiosity is fruitless impertinence, tho' God Himself and Angels be the object. But to study that which will oblige us to love Him, and feed us with nobility and goodness toward men, that is blessed. And so is it to study that which will lead us to the Temple of Wisdom, and seat us in the Throne of Glory.

Many men study the same things which have not the taste of, nor delight in them. And their palates vary according to the ends at which they aim. He that studies polity, men and manners, merely that he may know how to behave himself, and get honour in this world, has not that delight in his studies as he that contemplates these things that he might see the ways of God among them, and walk in communion with Him. The attainments of the one are narrow, the other grows a celestial King of all Kingdoms. Kings minister unto him, temples are his own, thrones are his peculiar treasure. Governments, officers, magistrates and courts of judicature are his delights, in a way ineffable, and a manner inconceivable to the other's imagination. He that knows the secrets of nature with Albertus Magnus, or the motions of the heavens with Galileo, or the cosmography of the moon with Hevelius, or the body of man with Galen, or the nature of diseases with Hippocrates, or the harmonies in melody with Orpheus, or of poesy with Homer, or of Grammar with Lilly, or of whatever else with the greatest artist; he is nothing, if he knows them merely for talk or idle speculation, or transient and external use. But he that knows them for value, and knows them his own shall profit infinitely.

C. S. Lewis' Perfect Day

As described in Surprised by Joy, recalling the time he spent in Great Bookham in Surrey under the tutelage of William Kirkpatrick, 'the Great Knock':


We now settled into a routine which has ever since served in my mind as an archetype, so that what I still mean when I speak of a "normal" day (and lament that normal days are so rare) is a day of the Bookham pattern. For if I could please myself I would always live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors for a pint of beer would not do quite so well; for a man does not want to drink alone and if you meet a friend in the taproom the break is likely to be extended beyond its ten minutes. At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one (such as I found, during the holidays, in Arthur) who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.

The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four. Tea should be taken in solitude, as I took it as Bookham on those (happily numerous) occasions when Mrs. Kirkpatrick was out; the Knock himself disdained this meal. For eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. Of course not all books are suitable for mealtime reading. It would be a kind of blasphemy to read poetry at table. What one wants is a gossipy, formless book which can be opened anywhere. The ones I learned so to use at Bookham were Boswell, and a translation of Herodotus, and Lang's History of English Literature. Tristram Shandy, Elia and the Anatomy of Melancholy are all good for the same purpose. At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies (and at Bookham I had none) there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven. But when is a man to write his letters? You forget that I am describing the happy life I led with Kirk or the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman's knock.

Albert Chevallier Taylor, 'The Quiet Hour' (1913)

Lewis lived at Bookham between the ages of 15 and 18, from September 1914 until April 1917, when he went up to University College, Oxford. This is a strange isolated life for a teenage boy, but it does sound like a pleasant and a peaceful one. No mail would, of course, have to include no email...

"What a place to be in is an old library!"

An extract from Charles Lamb's essay 'Oxford in the Vacation', published in The Essays of Elia in 1823:


'...I am plain Elia - no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher - though at present in the thick of their books, here in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley.

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or other of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or a curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle I can be content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor.


The walks at these times are so much one's own, - the tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen! The halls deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in unperceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose portrait seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and to adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at the butteries, and scullieries, redolent of antique hospitality; the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fireplaces, cordial recesses; ovens whose first pies were baked four centuries ago; and spits which have cooked for Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple.

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being nothing, art everything! When, thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!

What were thy dark ages? Surely the sun rose as brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning? Why is it we can never hear mention of them without an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered to and fro groping!


Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, thy shelves --

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of MSS. Those variae lectiones, so tempting to the more erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these curiosities to Porson, and to G.D. [his friend George Dyer] - whom, by the way, I found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. I longed to new-coat him in russia, and assign him his place. He might have mustered for a tall Scapula.


D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning... D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrowgate. The Cam and the Isis are to him 'better than all the waters of Damascus.' On the Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains; and when he goes about with you to show you the halls and colleges, you think you have with you the Interpreter at the House Beautiful.'



Lamb's picture of an Oxford denuded of its undergraduates resonates with me, as I sit here in the silent, nearly empty Radcliffe Camera (even the shelves are empty; they move books around in the vacation). Today, unlike in 1823, the streets are packed with tourists, but within the corridors of deserted colleges and libraries the sense of being alone with antiquity is very strong. There is no feeling so equally humbling and heartening: to be surrounded by the past, "that, being nothing, art everything".

As I was preparing this post and waiting for the pictures to upload, I got an email advertising an upcoming conference. It's about working with archives - Lamb's winding sheets for the souls of dead scholars. This conference will be "demystifying and demonstrating the skills needed to make new histories"; "[t]oo long associated with settled dust, archival research will be championed as engaged and engaging: a rigorous but permissive field." Too long associated with settled dust! Ouch. Nothing could provide a sharper contrast to Lamb's half-reverent, half-mocking attitude to the scholarship of the past, and his understanding of how quickly the present moment becomes history. It's always a source of amusement to me how terrified modern academia is of appearing to be anything less than modern. You don't have to disparage the past in order to find new ways of talking about it; all academics do by attempting to demystify a field in that way is to create new mysteries - new jargon, ever-more alienating to non-academics, and enacting a kind of shaming towards people who study the past because they love it. As if one could not feel 'engaged' with settled dust!

I can't help feeling that, judging by the numbers of tourists who come to take pictures of Oxford in the vacation, the mystery of ancient libraries and shelves of settled dust possess as much charm for your average person today as they did for Charles Lamb. If academics really want to demystify our arcane and exclusionary fields, we should stop pretending that charm is a bad thing.

Aldhelm and A Confederacy of Idiots

Anglo-Saxon religious manuals don't often feature on the pages of the Daily Mail, but today I read this article:

The only way is no sex: Book of advice from 1,300 years ago shows even then the church had concerns about 'untamed impulses of bodily wantonness' among Essex girls

Essex girls don't exactly have a reputation for being paragons of virtue - and it seems 1,300 years ago that was no different.

A book of advice issued to nuns in the 7th century has revealed that even then the church had concerns about their conduct.

The book shows a senior cleric's disgust at the amount of flesh the nuns of Barking Abbey put on show and their relationship with the opposite sex.

It warns the congregation to dress appropriately and to avoid garments which 'set off' the body before giving a series of pointers to the girls on the benefits of virginity and how to avoid the sin of pride.

The author of De Laude Virginitatis [In Praise of Virginity] is the Anglo-Saxon cleric Aldhelm, who goes on to say he is ashamed of the nuns' 'bold impudence' and 'stupidity'.

He tells the nuns that abstinence from sex is not enough - their 'stainlessness of bodily virginity' must be accompanied by a 'chastity of the spirit' if they are to avoid the 'untamed impulses of bodily wantonness'.

Sigh. The actual news story buried among all the nonsense is that Sotheby's is selling four pages from a manuscript of De Laude Virginitatis, a Latin text written in the seventh century for the nuns of Barking by Aldhelm, one of the greatest scholars Anglo-Saxon England ever produced. It goes without saying, I hope, that there is no substance whatsoever to the 'sexy nuns' interpretation put on this story by both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, and international news outlets who have subsequently copied them (large parts of the Mail and Telegraph stories are word-for-word identical, so either one of them is copying and pasting from the other, or else they both plagarized the same source without giving credit; nice to see the very highest journalistic standards at work here).

So let's deal with the facts quickly: is Aldhelm's text a 'rule-book' telling the nuns not to dress so sexily? Of course it isn't. That's insulting to Aldhelm, to the nuns of Barking, and to the intelligence of us all. It's not a rule-book or a rant, but a treatise written in praise of the principle of virginity, addressed to women who had already made vows of chastity - standard Christian doctrine and practice, then and now. Aldhelm explains why virginity is valued by the Church; he cites examples from the lives of saints; he considers the dangers of sexual misbehaviour, including immodest dress, to society and the individual soul. He's not lecturing; the nuns doubtless already agreed with him, as would every orthodox Christian from the seventh century until this day.

But this would not make for a story in the Daily Mail. In fact, auctions of medieval manuscripts are not very headline-worthy, and so I can only assume it was someone at Sotheby's who decided 'No sexy outfits for nuns' was a good spin to put on the story, and one which would get them some publicity. The journalists reporting the story demonstrate remarkable shallowness of mind, but idiotic and insulting as the 'Essex girls' twist is, the real distortion here comes from the person who fed the quotes from Aldhelm to the press. Someone knew Aldhelm's work well enough to quote it and describe him, but thought it was OK to misrepresent him and the nature of the text. I hope I'm not alone in finding that reprehensible.

Presumably that person wasn't Timothy Bolton, who is quoted in the article doing his valiant best to explain the facts in a way which is both interesting and, you know, accurate:

Timothy Bolton, a specialist in western medieval manuscripts at Sotheby’s, said: “Aldhelm’s work is remarkable because there simply aren’t any texts by English authors addressed to women before this.

"He expects the nuns to study and understand his sophisticated writings, raising the bar of education for women to the same level of men, becoming the first English feminist author.”

To anyone with a scrap of intellectual curiosity, this is far more intriguing than the newspapers' version. The truth is always better than a cliche! To call Aldhelm 'the first English feminist author' is a tiny bit of a stretch, but yes, it is remarkable that in seventh-century England a group of nuns could be expected to understand Aldhelm's difficult Latin. Aldhelm was a great scholar (one might estimate his brain-power at approximately 60 Daily Mail journalists): he knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew and wrote poetry and prose of astonishing complexity, and the subjects he is known to have studied (at Canterbury in 670-3) included Roman law, the 100 different types of poetic metre, the technicalities of marrying verse with chant, mathematical calculation and astronomy.* Can you do any of that stuff? I can't. And this is in seventh-century England, an era most people still call the Dark Ages, and in a period when only a tiny minority of people could read or write.

(*Unlike professional journalists, I cite my sources: Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester, 1984), pp.94-7).


That a scholar like Aldhelm was writing for the nuns of Barking is a great compliment to their intelligence. Anglo-Saxon nunneries were powerhouses of women's education: they fostered the education of women to an extent that was impossible in lay society, and to be a nun was to have opportunities for learning which were not to become available to most women for centuries. St Hilda is one excellent example of a woman widely respected for her learning and wisdom, and there are numerous others. What makes the 'Essex girl nuns' thing especially galling is that Barking Abbey had a particularly strong tradition of educated women throughout the medieval period: the nuns not only formed a responsive audience for sophisticated authors such as Aldhelm and Goscelin but several nuns, in the post-Conquest period, composed their own poetry and prose, making them some of the earliest known female authors in England. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne has described Barking as "perhaps the longest-lived, albeit not continuously recorded, institutional centre of literary culture for women in British history". Representing these nuns as a bunch of provocatively-dressed Essex girls is kind of sickening, actually. Who is denigrating women here - Aldhelm, who believed the women of Barking could appreciate a learned Latin treatise, or the twenty-first century media, who are only interested in the fact that he was talking to nuns about sex?


I wasn't originally going to post about this story, since my first thought when I read it was 'What do you expect from the Daily Mail?' (I did once expect better from the Telegraph, but its online edition is getting dumber by the day). I shrugged and moved on, but then I had second thoughts. A story like this goes around the internet, and people comment on it, and blog about it (under titles like 'Medieval dress code for nuns put up for auction', as if that's all it is!), and base arguments about the Church on it which are entirely inaccurate - because the basic premise is distorted. Does it matter? I think so. Remember that stupid pyjamas story I blogged about last month? That was based entirely on a misrepresentation of the situation, and contributed to a public view of Oxford that is false and damaging. The misrepresentation could have been easily corrected (yes, reader from a Daily Mail IP address, I saw you reading my blogpost half an hour before you posted your inaccurate rubbish), but it wasn't, despite the college's efforts, and the lie is more memorable than the truth. But the truth should at least be out there on the internet for someone to discover.

The public perception of medieval religion is, in general, mind-blowingly ignorant and inaccurate. A story like this plays into an utterly false narrative about the medieval Church's oppressive treatment of women, while also encouraging the objectification of nuns in a way that is repulsively sexist - and is, in fact, a wholly modern phenomenon (look at this treatment of the story, if you can bear it). The journalists churning out their stories should know better, but the really shocking behaviour here is that of the person who allowed this - encouraged it, even - by presenting the text to the media as a 'dress code for slutty nuns'.

This kind of thing is exactly how public engagement in academia should not be done. I'm all for promoting public knowledge of medieval literature; I think it's vital precisely in order to counter the widespread ignorance this story exemplifies. But if you do it in this way, by distorting the truth and encouraging sloppy mischaracterisations of the facts, you're doing everyone a disservice. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who had never heard of Aldhelm now have an impression of him as a woman-hating slut-shamer, and think that the educated nuns of Barking were a bunch of promiscuous Essex girls who had to be lectured about their trashy behaviour. That's disgraceful.

Let me finish by quoting what a nun of Barking wrote, a few centuries after Aldhelm's death, in the introduction to a text she herself translated from Latin into Anglo-Norman (she is Clemence, arguably the first known woman author from England):

All those who know and understand what is good have a duty to demonstrate it wisely.

Every scholar should take this to heart. If you're lucky enough to have studied something really interesting, and you want to tell people about it, you have a duty to do so wisely, accurately, and honestly. You have no right to distort the truth for the purpose of getting headlines and hits in the Daily Mail, and if you do, you should be ashamed of yourself.

The Ideal Scholar

The real Clerk of Oxford

This was the OT reading at Evensong last night (Ecclesiasticus 39.1-10); I suppose we all aspire to be like this! A description of the wise man:

He seeks out the wisdom of all the ancients, and is concerned with prophecies; he preserves the sayings of the famous and penetrates the subtleties of parables; he seeks out the hidden meanings of proverbs and is at home with the obscurities of parables. He serves among the great and appears before rulers; he travels in foreign lands and learns what is good and evil in the human lot. He sets his heart on rising early to seek the Lord who made him, and to petition the Most High; he opens his mouth in prayer and asks pardon for his sins.

If the great Lord is willing, he will be filled with the spirit of understanding; he will pour forth words of wisdom of his own and give thanks to the Lord in prayer. The Lord will direct his counsel and knowledge, as he meditates on his mysteries. He will show the wisdom of what he has learned, and will glory in the law of the Lord’s covenant. Many will praise his understanding; it will never be blotted out. His memory will not disappear, and his name will live through all generations. Nations will speak of his wisdom, and the congregation will proclaim his praise.

"Preserving the sayings of the famous and penetrating the subtleties of parables" is what I try to do around here, even if in practice it really just means helping the googling student with their English homework, or to find some mildly amusing medieval riddles...

St Anselm and Bertrand Russell and the Proof of God

St Anselm, from this window in Canterbury Cathedral

This is a snippet from one of the most illuminating books ever written about medieval history, R. W. Southern's Saint Anselm and His Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought 1059-c.1130, published in 1966. It's an account of Anselm of Canterbury and the Canterbury monk Eadmer, his close friend and admirer, who wrote Anselm's biography (and many other things besides). This little extract exemplifies, to me, one of the best virtues of traditional scholarship: to have such a broad range of reference that you can make connections across time and space - or, to put it rather inelegantly, to have the power of remembering that every 'yesterday' was some real person's 'today'.


Of Anselm’s ontological proof of God, Southern observes:

"Whether it is true or false, nothing is more surprising than the way in which this proof has united, at least temporarily, men of the most diverse temperaments and outlooks – a tenuous link across vast seas of spiritual difference. Among living philosophers none is perhaps further removed from Anselm in outlook, though perhaps not so far in qualities of mind, than he who remembers:

the precise moment, one day in 1894, as I was walking along Trinity Lane, when I saw in a flash (or thought I saw) that the ontological argument is valid. I had gone out to buy a tin of tobacco; on my way back, I suddenly threw it up in the air, and exclaimed as I caught it: ‘Great Scott, the ontological argument is sound.'

"Leave out Trinity Lane, the tobacco and the ‘Great Scott’ (delightful evocation of an age more remote in spirit than the eleventh century) and substitute Bec, Matins and Deo gratias, and it was just so that the argument came to Anselm in 1078:

Behold, one night during Matins, the grace of God shone in his heart and the matter became clear to his understanding, filling his whole being with immense joy and jubilation."

R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought 1059-c.1130 (Cambridge, 1966), p.58.


The philosopher in question is Bertrand Russell, as I would not have known without Google. I do like that Southern felt 1890s Cambridge to be 'more remote in spirit' from 1966 than eleventh-century Normandy; I often feel the same way about the 1960s.

St Anselm on the tomb of Archbishop Henry Chicele in Canterbury Cathedral

Oxford Interviews: Not That Much Fun

OK, I'll bite. Normally when stories about Oxford interviews appear in the national press I just roll my eyes and turn the page, because they're always inaccurate, irrelevent and, most of all, boring. They always go the same way:

Someone rejected by Oxford: Oxford is elitist!
Oxford (feebly protesting, but usually shouted down): We're not elitist, we take lots of state school kids and do lots of outreach...
Rejectee: Oxford is elitist!
Uninformed audience concludes: Oxford is elitist.

So I tried to ignore this story which is in the news about a kid who wrote a 'rejection letter' to Magdalen College after being interviewed there; all over my facebook page Oxford students are protesting that Oxford isn't elitist and she's just bitter, and it's all the same argument as usual. Her letter is indeed fairly silly and pretty badly-written (heaven defend us from teenagers who think they can be witty!) but she obviously has a flair for self-publicity, so good luck to her.

The thing that got to me about this story, and which made me unable to ignore it, is that I too was interviewed at Magdalen College, more than eight years ago now. It was the most miserable experience of my life. Magdalen is a beautiful place and the person who interviewed me is, I now know, an extremely talented literary scholar; but I have never, ever felt as unhappy and lonely and lost as I was after that interview, and so I do think this girl, silly as her letter is, raises a useful point.

Oxford interviews are often not much fun. The letter-writer complains that the college took it too seriously, but that isn't the problem; it's a serious matter, and it's quite right that tutors who conduct interviews should take the responsibility of it very seriously indeed. They work hard to make sure they choose the right students for their college. But it's important to remember that not every student who is bright enough to be at Oxford is the right fit for every college, and that quickly becomes apparent at interview. It is heart-wrenching to be in an ancient, venerable institution which by reputation you already love (Magdalen, home of C. S. Lewis and Oscar Wilde, my teenage self's ill-assorted heroes!) and to which you sorely want to belong - and yet to find out that the people there are not like you; you don't belong there, and they know it as well as you do. I didn't belong there; I still don't, even now, eight years later, with my First Class Honours from Oxford, my Master's degree, and my soon-to-be-obtained doctorate. I'm not listing those things to boast - I'm using them to suggest that it's not about academic ability. I'm very glad I didn't get into Magdalen, but was accepted by another college, and have been at Oxford ever since. I've been happy; I've done well. I still think I would have been miserable at Magdalen.

I don't blame Magdalen for this. I blame my state school, who didn't have the faintest idea how to prepare me for the interview; I blame myself, for being so shy and awkward; and I blame Oxford, a little, for perpetuating the fiction that all colleges are the same and that it doesn't really matter which one you apply to. That's simply not true. Magdalen, because it's famous and beautiful, attracts a high number of applicants and is thus statistically harder to get into. I wish someone had told me that when I applied. Furthermore, from my experience of Oxford over the past nine years, I have also seen that Magdalen has a college culture in which extremely self-confident people particularly shine. There's nothing wrong with either of those facts, but the truth is that not all old, beautiful colleges are like that, and if I'd known a single thing about the Oxford admissions process I would never have applied to Magdalen in a million years. It's just a bad fit for me.

If you find this post because you're a state school pupil who wants to go to Oxford, take heart: if you love learning and you want to enjoy everything Oxford has to offer, you really can do that. I dreamed about going to Oxford all through my teenage years, but it always seemed more or less impossible for someone like me. My unhappiness at my first encounter with Magdalen was the misery of disappointed love and a shattered dream; but nothing since that has disappointed me here, and it has been better than my best dreams. I love Oxford and I am immensely grateful for my time here - though everything about its way of life baffles the people I went to school with!

If you come here, you will not be discriminated against in any way. But it's a big university and you will like some parts of it more than others. There's no point pretending that you won't meet people who make you feel bad about yourself - even without meaning to - because a lot of the people here are extremely intelligent, prosperous, confident, beautiful and happy. That's the nature of the place. If you're lucky, it will teach you to learn how to value yourself at your real worth - to see what you have that other people don't, and to understand how to use it. If you can learn how to distinguish between what is important and what merely claims to be important, you'll gain more from your time here than a degree with an impressive name.


P.S. I really think that demystifying the differences between colleges would help a lot in giving people unfamiliar with Oxford a fair chance in the applications process. So, these are some of the colleges at which I think I, as a shy, academically-minded state-school-educated eighteen-year-old, would have been happy (I'm not saying anything specifically against the others - I don't have experience of them all - but these are where I would think first of applying to now):

Brasenose
In my experience it's hands down the most friendly and welcoming college in Oxford.

Exeter

Lady Margaret Hall

Lincoln

Pembroke

Somerville

St Anne's

St Hilda's
The college who took me when Magdalen wouldn't, and who gave me a positive, generous, encouraging experience at my interview.

Wadham


My advice would be to at least look at those before you check out the big, intimidating colleges, at least if you're as much of a wuss as teenage me was.


P.P.S. This girl has a point in complaining they didn't give her a glass of water. Those tiny things count. I still remember how it nearly made me burst into tears when one of the scouts at Magdalen was kind to me, while the academics were so distant. It was very cold that winter, and I was huddled up under a duvet in the room they'd allocated me, freezing and desperately trying to cram for the interview; I can't remember what she said, but she was sympathetic and gently kind, human. A smile like hers from the person who interviewed me would have made worlds of difference.

Good and Bad Dickens News from the BBC

Good Dickens news: I just discovered this project, in which a BBC journalist promises to post one line of Dickens every weekday for a year. Although I am extremely jealous that someone else - and not me - is getting paid to read Dickens and pick out the best bits (most fun job in the world? I think so), I still really like the idea and will be watching his selections with interest. He seems to be beginning with The Pickwick Papers, which I re-read over Christmas and which is indeed full of brilliant jokes - besides all the Wellerisms (he quotes one of my favourites: 'He wants you partickler; and no one else'll do, as the devil's private secretary said ven he fetched avay Doctor Faustus"), a line I remember fondly is a character feeling "as much out of his element as a dolphin in a sentry-box"... Oh, Dickens.

And as a medievalist, I love this episode, a warning to the foolish antiquarian:

It was at this moment that Mr. Pickwick made that immortal discovery, which has been the pride and boast of his friends, and the envy of every antiquarian in this or any other country. They had passed the door of their inn, and walked a little way down the village, before they recollected the precise spot in which it stood. As they turned back, Mr. Pickwick's eye fell upon a small broken stone, partially buried in the ground, in front of a cottage door. He paused.

'This is very strange,' said Mr. Pickwick.

'What is strange?' inquired Mr. Tupman, staring eagerly at every object near him, but the right one. 'God bless me, what's the matter?'

This last was an ejaculation of irrepressible astonishment, occasioned by seeing Mr. Pickwick, in his enthusiasm for discovery, fall on his knees before the little stone, and commence wiping the dust off it with his pocket-handkerchief.

'There is an inscription here,' said Mr. Pickwick.

'Is it possible?' said Mr. Tupman.

'I can discern,'continued Mr. Pickwick, rubbing away with all his might, and gazing intently through his spectacles—'I can discern a cross, and a 13, and then a T. This is important,' continued Mr. Pickwick, starting up. 'This is some very old inscription, existing perhaps long before the ancient alms-houses in this place. It must not be lost.'

He tapped at the cottage door. A labouring man opened it.

'Do you know how this stone came here, my friend?' inquired the benevolent Mr. Pickwick.

'No, I doan't, Sir,' replied the man civilly. 'It was here long afore I was born, or any on us.'

Mr. Pickwick glanced triumphantly at his companion.

'You—you—are not particularly attached to it, I dare say,' said Mr. Pickwick, trembling with anxiety. 'You wouldn't mind selling it, now?'

'Ah! but who'd buy it?' inquired the man, with an expression of face which he probably meant to be very cunning.

'I'll give you ten shillings for it, at once,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'if you would take it up for me.'

The astonishment of the village may be easily imagined, when (the little stone having been raised with one wrench of a spade) Mr. Pickwick, by dint of great personal exertion, bore it with his own hands to the inn, and after having carefully washed it, deposited it on the table.

The exultation and joy of the Pickwickians knew no bounds, when their patience and assiduity, their washing and scraping, were crowned with success. The stone was uneven and broken, and the letters were straggling and irregular, but the following fragment of an inscription was clearly to be deciphered:—

+
B I L S T
U M
P S H I
S. M.
ARK 

Mr. Pickwick's eyes sparkled with delight, as he sat and gloated over the treasure he had discovered. He had attained one of the greatest objects of his ambition. In a county known to abound in the remains of the early ages; in a village in which there still existed some memorials of the olden time, he—he, the chairman of the Pickwick Club—had discovered a strange and curious inscription of unquestionable antiquity, which had wholly escaped the observation of the many learned men who had preceded him. He could hardly trust the evidence of his senses.

...

It appears from the Transactions of the Club, then, that Mr. Pickwick lectured upon the discovery at a General Club Meeting, convened on the night succeeding their return, and entered into a variety of ingenious and erudite speculations on the meaning of the inscription. It also appears that a skilful artist executed a faithful delineation of the curiosity, which was engraven on stone, and presented to the Royal Antiquarian Society, and other learned bodies: that heart-burnings and jealousies without number were created by rival controversies which were penned upon the subject; and that Mr. Pickwick himself wrote a pamphlet, containing ninety-six pages of very small print, and twenty-seven different readings of the inscription: that three old gentlemen cut off their eldest sons with a shilling a-piece for presuming to doubt the antiquity of the fragment; and that one enthusiastic individual cut himself off prematurely, in despair at being unable to fathom its meaning: that Mr. Pickwick was elected an honorary member of seventeen native and foreign societies, for making the discovery: that none of the seventeen could make anything of it; but that all the seventeen agreed it was very extraordinary.

Mr. Blotton, indeed—and the name will be doomed to the undying contempt of those who cultivate the mysterious and the sublime—Mr. Blotton, we say, with the doubt and cavilling peculiar to vulgar minds, presumed to state a view of the case, as degrading as ridiculous. Mr. Blotton, with a mean desire to tarnish the lustre of the immortal name of Pickwick, actually undertook a journey to Cobham in person, and on his return, sarcastically observed in an oration at the club, that he had seen the man from whom the stone was purchased; that the man presumed the stone to be ancient, but solemnly denied the antiquity of the inscription—inasmuch as he represented it to have been rudely carved by himself in an idle mood, and to display letters intended to bear neither more or less than the simple construction of—'BILL STUMPS, HIS MARK'; and that Mr. Stumps, being little in the habit of original composition, and more accustomed to be guided by the sound of words than by the strict rules of orthography, had omitted the concluding 'L' of his Christian name.

The Pickwick Club (as might have been expected from so enlightened an institution) received this statement with the contempt it deserved, expelled the presumptuous and ill-conditioned Blotton from the society, and voted Mr. Pickwick a pair of gold spectacles, in token of their confidence and approbation: in return for which, Mr. Pickwick caused a portrait of himself to be painted, and hung up in the club room.

Mr. Blotton was ejected but not conquered. He also wrote a pamphlet, addressed to the seventeen learned societies, native and foreign, containing a repetition of the statement he had already made, and rather more than half intimating his opinion that the seventeen learned societies were so many 'humbugs.' Hereupon, the virtuous indignation of the seventeen learned societies being roused, several fresh pamphlets appeared; the foreign learned societies corresponded with the native learned societies; the native learned societies translated the pamphlets of the foreign learned societies into English; the foreign learned societies translated the pamphlets of the native learned societies into all sorts of languages; and thus commenced that celebrated scientific discussion so well known to all men, as the Pickwick controversy.

But this base attempt to injure Mr. Pickwick recoiled upon the head of its calumnious author. The seventeen learned societies unanimously voted the presumptuous Blotton an ignorant meddler, and forthwith set to work upon more treatises than ever. And to this day the stone remains, an illegible monument of Mr. Pickwick's greatness, and a lasting trophy to the littleness of his enemies.

So very true...

Oh, but the Bad News: there's no sign of the wonderful new adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood being released on DVD! Bad, bad BBC. The rather feeble Great Expectations which was also on this Christmas is already available, but not the far superior Edwin Drood - a drama for grown-ups, subtle and dark and intelligent, and full of wonderful music and Rochester Cathedral. What more could you want in a TV programme? Only for it to be available on DVD...

ETA: It is apparently now available on DVD in the US - but not in the UK. Well, that's annoying.

On Publishers

From a letter written on February 14th, 1634, from one antiquarian (the English Sir Henry Spelman) to another (the Danish Ole Worm):

"As for the second part of the Archæologia [Glossary], which the Danish ambassador Rosencrantz drove to my house to inquire about, it cleaves to the shelves, a prey to the moths and worms, and I have not bestowed so much as a thought or an effort on the printing of it. The fact is, our printers and booksellers are a bad lot. Through their devices the first part, which was printed at my own expense, has been a wreck and a failure, as far as I am concerned."

"From the above letter," comments the author in whose book I read this, writing in 1880, "we see that the booksellers of the days when Charles the First was king enjoyed quite as evil a report among authors as they do now."

Worm sympathised with Spelman, and replied: "In Belgium I have no doubt you will meet with more willing publishers than in England, where they seem to be pretty nearly as slow-paced as here in Denmark, and fonder of books that are likely to be popular and profitable to themselves than of what is rare and useful".

A perennial problem.

Is there anything more horrible than writing applications for grants? It leaves a taste in the mouth like nasty medicine. It's my understanding that writing grant applications makes up a substantial part of life as an academic these days; just one of many reasons why I don't think I could bear to make academia my career.

Here's a palate-cleansing picture, the sweetest and most innocent symbol of childhood Christmas to me:


A spoonful of honey to make the medicine go down.


(From the 1949 Rupert Christmas album)

You know you've been reading too much medieval history...

... when you have dreams in which you analyse the etymology of Anglo-Saxon personal names.

(Accurately, I might add).


On another academic note, today is the anniversary of the death of Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), first Chancellor of the University of Oxford. According to one contemporary (Matthew Paris, I think, but I'm not quite sure), Grosseteste was said to be pleased when students stayed away from his lectures at Oxford, because it saved him from the sin of pride. I don't think many of his modern counterparts would agree...

Still in Norway..

... but heading for Denmark. I spend all my time reading about Danes and Denmark but I've never been there, so I have a superstituous hope that the country will be kind to me. I'm spending three years researching how Norse traditions from Denmark and Norway influenced medieval English literature, so they owe me a bit of good luck. Fingers crossed I will be back in Oxford by Thursday. I miss it!

I finally get it

I now finally understand why Norse saints are so often especially honoured for helping people with safe journeys across the North Sea. I'm stuck in Norway, unable to get home thanks to Iceland (the country Old Norse scholars are most fond of!), and St Magnus' ability to produce calm weather is looking pretty handy right now.

Thinking...

My book for Lent is Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditations. It's full of good things and I've been taking notes; I came across this one again today. It should be pinned up above the desk of every academic:

As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.

Academia: A Sob Story

I wish it were possible to be an academic without having to talk to other academics.

You may not know it, but that’s a shocking confession. The model of academic life as a solitary process of research and thought, resulting in a paper or a book which contributes to scholarly debate when other people read it and write about it, is increasingly being replaced by an emphasis on networking, cooperation, dialogue, and talk, talk, talk.

To me, it’s exhausting.

I’m the kind of person who has never really understood the expression "easier said than done". I’m an introvert, who finds talking to other people an effort at the best of times, and talking about myself is a particular nightmare. I can write about myself for ever, but speaking out loud and being required to explain or justify myself verbally on the spot wears me out. Just about everything, for me, is "easier done than said" – the saying requires all kinds of self-evaluation and struggles to choose the right word and the right expression, whereas the doing gives you a finished product, which speaks for itself. The most difficult thing I’ve so far found about being in academia is that you are often required to speak about what you’re doing, as well as just doing it. I know this is entirely reasonable: supervisors need progress reports, scholars want to know what’s going on in their field, the academic community as a whole is supposed to benefit from conference papers and seminars and networking. I understand all this.

That doesn't stop me hating it, though. When I have to explain what I’m doing, I always want to say “let me get on with it, and I’ll show you when I’m done”. Seminars irritate me, because talking is so much less precise than writing – people make up questions just to be polite, whether they care about the answer or not; the speaker has to fudge an answer, whether they have one or not; everyone has to pretend it’s an enlightening scholarly experience rather than a faintly awkward fumble. That’s assuming everyone is of genuine goodwill, of course; most of the time there’s a lot of bitchiness and arrogance and exhibitionism going on as well. People want to show off or to humiliate someone else, to draw attention to their own work and belittle everyone else’s. This is true in informal as well as formal situations among other academics, I’ve found – it’s worse, actually, at a drinks party than at a seminar, because people feel free to look down their noses at each other. Ambition and pride are the academic’s besetting sins.

You would think if there was one corner of the world where it was safe to be an introvert, academia would be it! Apparently not. It does make me glad for the collegiate system, though, because the problem is less pronounced when interacting with people from other disciplines; English students are, I think, particularly ready to show off, and anyway you can’t really show off to people who are experts in another field. Talking to a mathematician or a classicist or a chemist is humbling without being humiliating: I respect their expertise in an area I don’t understand, and they respect mine. I’m not in competition with them the way other English scholars seem to think they are with me.

This is all by way of explaining to myself why I’m not at a seminar right now. I have to go to these events regularly, and I dutifully do so – but I hate them, and usually come back loathing myself and everyone in the world. I went to Evensong instead.