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Look a post wow!
Oh, look, a dreamwidth post from me!
So for the record, I haven't abandoned you guys for tumblr, it's just that 'doing the last follow-up for the book giveaway' became The Thing I Was Putting Off. Finally did that today! Everyone should be followed up - if you asked for books and haven't heard from me, let me know, please!
And the good thing about having such a resilient yet vital Thing I Am Putting Off is that it worked as motivation for me to do other stuff! So, let's see...
I guess the most important is that I am now in Evanston, IL, petsitting! Have been for almost three weeks, even. Evanston is such a nice place to live (even when it is TOO HOT) and I am trying to do EVERYTHING while I'm here, we'll see how that goes.
Also if anyone of you will be in the general Chicago area before the end of August and want to meet up in person, let me know! Fan meetups are fun, and I even have an apartment I can ask people to now!
As one of my Chicago Adventures I spent pretty much all my cogent hours last week attending this : The Middle Ages In Translation: Mellon Symposium (pdf). Well, I say 'attended', I meant 'lurked', I pretty much spent the week sitting in the back of the room putting off 'don't talk to me' vibes as hard as I could.
But it was really interesting! I mean, history conference, *always* interesting, but they were using "translation" in a very broad sense (riffing off the medieval Latin "translatio", which means both translation in our sense and other kinds of transfer and tranfiguration) so it ended up basically being a five-day con about Transformative Works and the European Middle Ages.
Score.
Anyway, I went to, uh, twenty-seven talks, so I'm not going to try to talk about them all here, but I'll list the ones I attended under the cut, and if anyone wants to know more about one of them, leave a comment before I forget it all and I'll give you a very biased account that probably completely misses the point and includes all the questions I would have asked if I'd felt like I had the necessary context to ask non-stupid questions!
Sessions
9 a.m. Rita Copeland(Classical Studies and English, Univ. of Pennsylvania)
Translating Antiquity
Actually about: extant translations from classical Latin texts into vernacular languages, how and why they were used and made
10:15 Katharine Breen(English, Northwestern University)
The Vices Always Die Twice: Translating from Pagan to Christian in
Prudentius’s Psychomachia
Actually about: wow, that Psychomachia sure has a lot of really gory violence between half-naked women, huh?
11:30 Joshua Byron Smith(English, University of Arkansas)
Clerical Creations: Latin Authors and the Making of the Matter of Britain
Actually About: How the recieved scholarly tradition that Arthurian mythology got to France via Breton minstrels rather than translated Welsh texts is bull hockey.
2:30 Heidi Gearhart(Assumption College)
The Practice of Art and the Written Word:
Translating Technical Knowledge in On
Diverse Arts
Actually About: "How-to" texts on medieval arts and how they were used and transmitted
3:30 Shirin Fozi(Univ. of Pittsburgh)
Abstraction and ‘Aesthetic Attitudes’ across
the Twelfth-Century Alps
Actually about: this really weird carved stone lintel that some neopagans have decided is a tree-of-life with a vagina on it, but isn't really.
4:30 Jeffrey Hamburger(Art History, Harvard University)
Hrabanus redivivus: Berthold of Nuremberg’s Marian Supplement to De
laudibus sanctae crucis
Actually about: Medieval sudoku puzzles and infographics
9 a.m. C. Stephen Jaeger (German and Comp. Literature, Univ. of Illinois)
The Romantics Were Right After All: Walter Scott, Kenelm Digby and
Others as Interpreters of the Middle Ages
Actually about: English romantics' version of the middle ages, nationalist politics, and concepts of masculinity
10:15 Gábor Klaniczay(History, Central European University)
Translating the Middle Ages into Postmodern Nationalism in Central Europe
Actually about: sparkly Hungarians and medieval re-enactors
11:30 David Shyovitz (History and Jewish Studies, Northwestern University)
A Bloody Cover-Up: Vegetarianism and ‘Animal Migration’ among
Medieval Christians and Jews
Actually about: Jewish (and Christian) doctrine on whether cruelty to animals was a good thing or not. Also: zombies, bestiality
9 a.m. Eva Hoffman(Art History and Middle Eastern Studies, Tufts Univ.)
Translating Scientific Knowledge: Exchange of Image and Text in Greek and Arabic Manuscripts
Actually about : illustrations in medieval herbals and what they tell you about how the text was used
10:15 Jacqueline Jung (Art History, Yale University)
Gothic Sculpture and the Translation of Charisma
Actually about: differing portrayals of the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in Northern European cathedrals
11:30 Christina Normore(Art History, Northwestern University)
Translating the Madonna of Cambrai
Actually about: this one painting of Mary that everybody else totally ripped off (without even reverse-image-searching to find author credit, omg)
2:30 Seth Hindin(UC Davis)
From the Wilds of Russia: Exoticism and
Cross-Cultural Exchange in Late Medieval Sculpture
Actually about: how artistic portrayals of the Russian trade in squirrel fir make it look a lot more exciting and adventurous than it actually was
3:30 Vanessa Crosby(Northwestern Univ.)
Eastern Silk, Western Brass: Cross-Currents
of Trade and Commemoration on Late
Medieval Funerary Monuments for
English Merchants
Actually about: the copying of patterns from Eastern silk brocades in Flemish brass engravings in England
Robert Lerner(History, Northwestern University)
The Prisoner of Avignon Carries On: John of Rupescissa’s Vade mecum in
tribulatione (1356) in Seven European Vernaculars
Actually about: this one crazy prophet who was inciting a peasant uprising against the rich, and why his stuff was a bestseller despite the church being Very Unhappy about it
9 a.m.Claire Waters(English, University of California at Davis)
Teaching, Translation, and Transformation in Thirteenth-Century French
Verse
Actually about: ...I have apparently forgotten this whole talk. It was interesting? It was about French verse in manuscripts vs. French prose vs. Latin verse, and teaching? Augh, I want to remember. :/
10:15 Daniel Hobbins (History, University of Notre Dame)
Authorial Colophons in Late Medieval Manuscripts: A Translation from
Scribal into Authorial Practice
Actually about: how the practice of authors trying to ensure they got credit for their work developed, and why this is often misleading for people studying the manuscripts, and how this carried forward into modern printing practices
11:30 Susie Phillips(English, Northwestern University)
Translating Mischief: Laughter and Language Lessons in Premodern
England 2:30 Jessica Berenbeim (Magdalen College,
Oxford)
Actually about: Wow, medieval phrasebooks were REALLY CRACKY
2:30 Jessica Berenbeim (Magdalen College,
Oxford)
The Discourse of Documents in English
Medieval Art
Actually about: how people thought about written legal documents as objects of power when written legal documents were first becoming really common
3:30 Lyle Dechant (Yale University)
The Lovers’ Conversation: A Dialogue
between Text, Image, and Social Practice
in the Thirteenth Century
Actually about: this particular image of a man and a woman that occurs in close variation in a lot of medieval manuscripts, especially songbooks, where it originated and why it was so popular
4:30 Barbara Newman(English and Religious Studies, Northwestern)
Translating the Trinity (and a long-lostsaint): On the Origins of the
Rothschild Canticles
Actually about: this little book of Christian meditations with REALLY INTERESTING and REALLY UNUSUAL illustrations, and the exciting detective story of how she figured out where it was made.
9 a.m. Richard Kieckhefer (Religious Studies and History, Northwestern)
Translations that Kill: Conflation and Confusion of Regional Terms
for Witchcraft
Actually about: all the different terms that are used to mean 'witch' in witchcraft tracts and trial records, and how they didn't actually all mean the same thing in their original context, but the witch-hunters conflated them all together into one concept
10:15 Suzanne Conklin Akbari(English and Medieval Studies, Toronto)
Translatio imperii and the Poetics of Periodization
Actually about: this one manuscript about the history of Empire and how it portrays the idea of empire being handed down from Alexander to Flanders, and where it got its 'history', and what that says about the concept of Translatio Imperii in other medieval works.
11:30 David Wallace (English, University of Pennsylvania)
European Translations, 1348-1418
Actually about: So he edited this book about European literature in that period! And they had to come up with some way of organizing the chapters geographically in a period when nation and ethniticy concepts were really in flux. So they used 'routes of transmission' connecting cities instead, and they made this really cool website with Google Maps!
2:30 Ottó Gecser (Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest)
Translating the Plague: From Learned
Medicine to Popular Interpretations
Actually about: Medical texts on how to treat the Plague, and how they got transmitted and used in other ways in the years after the height of the Black Death.
3:30 Sarah Kernan(Ohio State Univ.)
From Cooking to Text and Back Again:
Translating Between Action and Text in
Late Medieval French and English
Cookbooks
Actually about: whether medieval cookbooks were actually used the way modern people use cookbooks, and if not, what were they used for?
...oh hey, only one I totally forgot! Not bad, considering I didn't remember the existence of caffiene until Thursday.
So for the record, I haven't abandoned you guys for tumblr, it's just that 'doing the last follow-up for the book giveaway' became The Thing I Was Putting Off. Finally did that today! Everyone should be followed up - if you asked for books and haven't heard from me, let me know, please!
And the good thing about having such a resilient yet vital Thing I Am Putting Off is that it worked as motivation for me to do other stuff! So, let's see...
I guess the most important is that I am now in Evanston, IL, petsitting! Have been for almost three weeks, even. Evanston is such a nice place to live (even when it is TOO HOT) and I am trying to do EVERYTHING while I'm here, we'll see how that goes.
Also if anyone of you will be in the general Chicago area before the end of August and want to meet up in person, let me know! Fan meetups are fun, and I even have an apartment I can ask people to now!
As one of my Chicago Adventures I spent pretty much all my cogent hours last week attending this : The Middle Ages In Translation: Mellon Symposium (pdf). Well, I say 'attended', I meant 'lurked', I pretty much spent the week sitting in the back of the room putting off 'don't talk to me' vibes as hard as I could.
But it was really interesting! I mean, history conference, *always* interesting, but they were using "translation" in a very broad sense (riffing off the medieval Latin "translatio", which means both translation in our sense and other kinds of transfer and tranfiguration) so it ended up basically being a five-day con about Transformative Works and the European Middle Ages.
Score.
Anyway, I went to, uh, twenty-seven talks, so I'm not going to try to talk about them all here, but I'll list the ones I attended under the cut, and if anyone wants to know more about one of them, leave a comment before I forget it all and I'll give you a very biased account that probably completely misses the point and includes all the questions I would have asked if I'd felt like I had the necessary context to ask non-stupid questions!
Sessions
9 a.m. Rita Copeland(Classical Studies and English, Univ. of Pennsylvania)
Translating Antiquity
Actually about: extant translations from classical Latin texts into vernacular languages, how and why they were used and made
10:15 Katharine Breen(English, Northwestern University)
The Vices Always Die Twice: Translating from Pagan to Christian in
Prudentius’s Psychomachia
Actually about: wow, that Psychomachia sure has a lot of really gory violence between half-naked women, huh?
11:30 Joshua Byron Smith(English, University of Arkansas)
Clerical Creations: Latin Authors and the Making of the Matter of Britain
Actually About: How the recieved scholarly tradition that Arthurian mythology got to France via Breton minstrels rather than translated Welsh texts is bull hockey.
2:30 Heidi Gearhart(Assumption College)
The Practice of Art and the Written Word:
Translating Technical Knowledge in On
Diverse Arts
Actually About: "How-to" texts on medieval arts and how they were used and transmitted
3:30 Shirin Fozi(Univ. of Pittsburgh)
Abstraction and ‘Aesthetic Attitudes’ across
the Twelfth-Century Alps
Actually about: this really weird carved stone lintel that some neopagans have decided is a tree-of-life with a vagina on it, but isn't really.
4:30 Jeffrey Hamburger(Art History, Harvard University)
Hrabanus redivivus: Berthold of Nuremberg’s Marian Supplement to De
laudibus sanctae crucis
Actually about: Medieval sudoku puzzles and infographics
9 a.m. C. Stephen Jaeger (German and Comp. Literature, Univ. of Illinois)
The Romantics Were Right After All: Walter Scott, Kenelm Digby and
Others as Interpreters of the Middle Ages
Actually about: English romantics' version of the middle ages, nationalist politics, and concepts of masculinity
10:15 Gábor Klaniczay(History, Central European University)
Translating the Middle Ages into Postmodern Nationalism in Central Europe
Actually about: sparkly Hungarians and medieval re-enactors
11:30 David Shyovitz (History and Jewish Studies, Northwestern University)
A Bloody Cover-Up: Vegetarianism and ‘Animal Migration’ among
Medieval Christians and Jews
Actually about: Jewish (and Christian) doctrine on whether cruelty to animals was a good thing or not. Also: zombies, bestiality
9 a.m. Eva Hoffman(Art History and Middle Eastern Studies, Tufts Univ.)
Translating Scientific Knowledge: Exchange of Image and Text in Greek and Arabic Manuscripts
Actually about : illustrations in medieval herbals and what they tell you about how the text was used
10:15 Jacqueline Jung (Art History, Yale University)
Gothic Sculpture and the Translation of Charisma
Actually about: differing portrayals of the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in Northern European cathedrals
11:30 Christina Normore(Art History, Northwestern University)
Translating the Madonna of Cambrai
Actually about: this one painting of Mary that everybody else totally ripped off (without even reverse-image-searching to find author credit, omg)
2:30 Seth Hindin(UC Davis)
From the Wilds of Russia: Exoticism and
Cross-Cultural Exchange in Late Medieval Sculpture
Actually about: how artistic portrayals of the Russian trade in squirrel fir make it look a lot more exciting and adventurous than it actually was
3:30 Vanessa Crosby(Northwestern Univ.)
Eastern Silk, Western Brass: Cross-Currents
of Trade and Commemoration on Late
Medieval Funerary Monuments for
English Merchants
Actually about: the copying of patterns from Eastern silk brocades in Flemish brass engravings in England
Robert Lerner(History, Northwestern University)
The Prisoner of Avignon Carries On: John of Rupescissa’s Vade mecum in
tribulatione (1356) in Seven European Vernaculars
Actually about: this one crazy prophet who was inciting a peasant uprising against the rich, and why his stuff was a bestseller despite the church being Very Unhappy about it
9 a.m.Claire Waters(English, University of California at Davis)
Teaching, Translation, and Transformation in Thirteenth-Century French
Verse
Actually about: ...I have apparently forgotten this whole talk. It was interesting? It was about French verse in manuscripts vs. French prose vs. Latin verse, and teaching? Augh, I want to remember. :/
10:15 Daniel Hobbins (History, University of Notre Dame)
Authorial Colophons in Late Medieval Manuscripts: A Translation from
Scribal into Authorial Practice
Actually about: how the practice of authors trying to ensure they got credit for their work developed, and why this is often misleading for people studying the manuscripts, and how this carried forward into modern printing practices
11:30 Susie Phillips(English, Northwestern University)
Translating Mischief: Laughter and Language Lessons in Premodern
England 2:30 Jessica Berenbeim (Magdalen College,
Oxford)
Actually about: Wow, medieval phrasebooks were REALLY CRACKY
2:30 Jessica Berenbeim (Magdalen College,
Oxford)
The Discourse of Documents in English
Medieval Art
Actually about: how people thought about written legal documents as objects of power when written legal documents were first becoming really common
3:30 Lyle Dechant (Yale University)
The Lovers’ Conversation: A Dialogue
between Text, Image, and Social Practice
in the Thirteenth Century
Actually about: this particular image of a man and a woman that occurs in close variation in a lot of medieval manuscripts, especially songbooks, where it originated and why it was so popular
4:30 Barbara Newman(English and Religious Studies, Northwestern)
Translating the Trinity (and a long-lostsaint): On the Origins of the
Rothschild Canticles
Actually about: this little book of Christian meditations with REALLY INTERESTING and REALLY UNUSUAL illustrations, and the exciting detective story of how she figured out where it was made.
9 a.m. Richard Kieckhefer (Religious Studies and History, Northwestern)
Translations that Kill: Conflation and Confusion of Regional Terms
for Witchcraft
Actually about: all the different terms that are used to mean 'witch' in witchcraft tracts and trial records, and how they didn't actually all mean the same thing in their original context, but the witch-hunters conflated them all together into one concept
10:15 Suzanne Conklin Akbari(English and Medieval Studies, Toronto)
Translatio imperii and the Poetics of Periodization
Actually about: this one manuscript about the history of Empire and how it portrays the idea of empire being handed down from Alexander to Flanders, and where it got its 'history', and what that says about the concept of Translatio Imperii in other medieval works.
11:30 David Wallace (English, University of Pennsylvania)
European Translations, 1348-1418
Actually about: So he edited this book about European literature in that period! And they had to come up with some way of organizing the chapters geographically in a period when nation and ethniticy concepts were really in flux. So they used 'routes of transmission' connecting cities instead, and they made this really cool website with Google Maps!
2:30 Ottó Gecser (Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest)
Translating the Plague: From Learned
Medicine to Popular Interpretations
Actually about: Medical texts on how to treat the Plague, and how they got transmitted and used in other ways in the years after the height of the Black Death.
3:30 Sarah Kernan(Ohio State Univ.)
From Cooking to Text and Back Again:
Translating Between Action and Text in
Late Medieval French and English
Cookbooks
Actually about: whether medieval cookbooks were actually used the way modern people use cookbooks, and if not, what were they used for?
...oh hey, only one I totally forgot! Not bad, considering I didn't remember the existence of caffiene until Thursday.
no subject
Okay, so there's a bit somewhere in the Torah about how, if you take the eggs from a bird's nest, you should leave the mother bird alone in return for her eggs, and God will bless you. And apparently this was a pretty tricky verse in the middle ages, for both Jewish and Christian theologians, because they both took it as an element of doctrine that God approved of cruelty to animals. (I think it was something about the Genesis bits about man having dominion over the animals? IDK, it was one of those things that was clearly based less on the Bible than on cultural pragmatism, and also probably existed more in the heads of the ethicists than in the actual practice of people.) Anyway, so most of the people writing about ethics were saying that not only was compassion for animals not mandated, it was actually a sin, because, uh, reasons, I forget what they were. (Even the not-eating-meat people were doing it out of ascetic principles, not anything about the animals.)
But there was this one offeat Jewish sect in, uh, Germany somewhere? who went in completely the opposite direction - they believed that animals had souls, that they were more pure than humans, that meat-eating was part and parcel of the fall of Mankind, they actually read the Bible and pointed out all the places where the Bible says you should treat animals with compassion, and so on. They were vegetarian, obviously (and also apparently really into mortification of the flesh in general.)
The zombies come in because, if you posit animals have souls (as these people did), then what happens when animals die and come back to life? (Many animals do this, of course. Especially weasels. Read your Physiologus.) Their solution was that when they came back to life, they came back without their souls, which had gone on to heaven withotu them.
Apparently the question of the kosher status of zombie animals was a major point of discussion in the Jewish community - if you killed and ate a revivified animal, were you eating freshly kosher butchered meat, or were you eating carrion that had been dead for days? the answer to that question of course depended on the status of the souls of animals...
(It became clear at this point in the talk that somebody could write an entire paper just on revenants and Jewish law in the middle ages, and that EVERYBODY in the room desperately wanted it to exist. Especially the presenter.)
The bestiality comes in because apparently this Jewish sect believed that in the bit in Genesis where Adam tries all the animals but is unsatisfied until God made him Eve? Well, they believed that he actually *tried* all the animals, if you know what I mean, wink wink, "biblically".