Hey, Medievalists... (Fall 2015)

[unræd]

What's the point of a 4.0 if you still don't get to be on the special list? I've been excluded every semester because I've always had 12 units of classes and then 2-3 research units, which are pass/no pass... bleh. I don't know, I suppose I'm just rambling now.

 

But! To get back on the medievalist track, I suspect the answer to your question is fot on muþ - does that seem right, Unræd? Again, I'm still just teaching myself, so I'm better at translating than composing - I know very little about word order. But that would be my best guess!

 

My school only allows independent studies as pass/fail, which is how I've taken a lot of my graduate-level coursework, so I'm familiar with the "but will I have enough credits for the Dean's List?" gunner dance! 

 

I'm on vacation at the moment and don't have an OE dictionary with me, so I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that muth (damned vacation, again, so I can't type eths/thorns) is masculine, yes? In which case (and unless it belongs to one of the anomalous morphological classes, but I think it's a garden-variety strong noun) it'd be fot on muthe, in the dative.

[Dr. Old Bill]

Excellent...excellent...my plan to set these Medievalists at each other's throats is working!

 

[hreaðemus]

I'm on vacation at the moment and don't have an OE dictionary with me, so I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that muth (damned vacation, again, so I can't type eths/thorns) is masculine, yes? In which case (and unless it belongs to one of the anomalous morphological classes, but I think it's a garden-variety strong noun) it'd be fot on muthe, in the dative.

 

Yep, you're right! I just checked with the B-T online dictionary - do you know about that? It's handily mobile, for vacation and the like. Anyway, I admit I'm not terribly good with case and morphological constructions yet, but my class with my mentor in the fall should fix that!! I'm so excited for this semester, even though I'm scared too. 

[unræd]

Excellent...excellent...my plan to set these Medievalists at each other's throats is working!

 

Yeah. Wait until I start a 'poetics' forum and innocently ask a question about a particularly tricky bit of scansion--then we'll see if you're templing your fingers in Burnsian joy!

[Dr. Old Bill]

Yeah. Wait until I start a 'poetics' forum and innocently ask a question about a particularly tricky bit of scansion--then we'll see if you're templing your fingers in Burnsian joy!

 

Ooh. Nice risposte!

[unræd]

Yep, you're right! I just checked with the B-T online dictionary - do you know about that? It's handily mobile, for vacation and the like. Anyway, I admit I'm not terribly good with case and morphological constructions yet, but my class with my mentor in the fall should fix that!! I'm so excited for this semester, even though I'm scared too. 

 

 

I am--does it have a handy mobile site? Honestly I've never tried to use it on my phone!

 

And Lord, there's no reason for you to be familiar with OE morphology before you've taken a class in it! You will be, soon enough, from your intro class. Not to mention 8 credits of Latin--that'll beat case distinctions into your head darned fast. And in re your fear: pshaw. You'll do just beautifully, I'm sure!

[hreaðemus]

I am--does it have a handy mobile site? Honestly I've never tried to use it on my phone!

 

And Lord, there's no reason for you to be familiar with OE morphology before you've taken a class in it! You will be, soon enough, from your intro class. Not to mention 8 credits of Latin--that'll beat case distinctions into your head darned fast. And in re your fear: pshaw. You'll do just beautifully, I'm sure!

 

Eep, thank you! I'm less sure, but the encouragement helps.  

 

Also I just meant mobile as in easily accessible - I don't think they have a mobile site. I just thought, since you said you were on vacation and didn't have a dictionary even though you were on the internet, that maybe you didn't know the B-T Dictionary was online! But you do, so never mind!

[littlepigeon]

And Lord, there's no reason for you to be familiar with OE morphology before you've taken a class in it! You will be, soon enough, from your intro class. Not to mention 8 credits of Latin--that'll beat case distinctions into your head darned fast. And in re your fear: pshaw. You'll do just beautifully, I'm sure!

 

This is absolutely true. Even if I wanted to forget everything about Latin cases and morphology, it would be impossible. I literally declined nouns and conjugated verbs in my SLEEP (dreams? nightmares?) all summer.

[hreaðemus]

This is absolutely true. Even if I wanted to forget everything about Latin cases and morphology, it would be impossible. I literally declined nouns and conjugated verbs in my SLEEP (dreams? nightmares?) all summer.

 

I just cracked open my books for this semester, and it looks like I've got my work cut out for me! It's so cooool though. <3 I'm such a dweeb, I get excited about verb conjugation - that was my favorite part of Spanish. Ahora no recuerdo mucho de que yo aprendi, but hopefully that won't be true with Latin because I'm going to read until my eyeballs fall out or the language is firmly ensconced in my long term memory, whichever comes first!

 

Any study tips or suggestions?

[Katia_chan]

Oh God, creeping in late on this thread and feeling *totally* inept in the language department.  You are all amazing!

 

*quietly sneaks off to re-open Latin books in shame*

 

Also I am the SLU person Arthurian mentioned a few weeks ago.  We haven't technically started, but as the semester progresses I would be more than happy to give anyone information about the program.  It seems really great so far, and all the students seem really happy.  I'm also not used to being a Medievalist amongst other Medievalists, so the fact that there are, like, 6-7 of us is kind of blowing my mind.

 

Also: moving sucks.  Just thought I would put that out there.

 

(Also AC one of the Medieval PHDs here got one of his degrees at UNM.  It's a small world...)

[littlepigeon]

I just cracked open my books for this semester, and it looks like I've got my work cut out for me! It's so cooool though. <3 I'm such a dweeb, I get excited about verb conjugation - that was my favorite part of Spanish. Ahora no recuerdo mucho de que yo aprendi, but hopefully that won't be true with Latin because I'm going to read until my eyeballs fall out or the language is firmly ensconced in my long term memory, whichever comes first!

 

Any study tips or suggestions?

 

Charts. Make so. Many. Charts. I've got two 1-subject notebooks from this summer that are just filled front to back with my study/practice charts and the notes I took in class, as well as pages where I just wrote out specific rules, etc. that I'd had trouble memorizing the first time around. Also, if you get stuck on any particular word, Wiktionary is surprisingly helpful (particularly for verbs). You can enter any conjugation of pretty much any verb (at least from the introductory vocab lists, which were all I was dealing with), and it will tell you what tense and person it's in, as well as link you to the main Wiktionary entry for that verb that has it's full meaning, etc. Same deal for nouns, adjectives, and the rest. I'm not sure how reliable it would be for more advanced Latin, but for an Intro course it was a quick and easy way to help my studying move a little faster.

[queennight]

Following the language study advice in this thread, I've decided to (foolishly) take Old English during my first semester of my MA. Any tips from you medievalists who are well versed in the area? I am generally speaking quite atrocious at languages, so I'm mainly taking it to boost my language background because I know nothing about linguistic identity that is not English - I feel like Old English is at least a start, albeit a very, very, difficult one to master.

[hreaðemus]

Following the language study advice in this thread, I've decided to (foolishly) take Old English during my first semester of my MA. Any tips from you medievalists who are well versed in the area? I am generally speaking quite atrocious at languages, so I'm mainly taking it to boost my language background because I know nothing about linguistic identity that is not English - I feel like Old English is at least a start, albeit a very, very, difficult one to master.

 

While obviously "well-versed" does not apply to me, I wanted to offer a bit of comfort and say that, in some ways, OE is a very sensible choice for expanding one's linguistic understanding. While case and morphology may be complex (and not something I can speak to at the moment), there is a kind of logic to OE word and sentence structure that will seem very common-sense if you are a native English speaker.

 

For example, in the little phrase we discussed earlier, "fot on muðe" - fot = foot, on = in, and muðe = mouth. The only complicated part of this construction lies in the fact that "on" doesn't connote the same spatial relationship in OE as in Modern English - but otherwise it's pretty straightforward, right?

 

The same is true of the phrase from my signature: "Lytle hwile leaf beoð grene; ðonne hie eft fealewiað, feallað on eorðan." This literally translates to: "Little while the leaf be-eth (is) green; then he/it afterwards fallows (i.e. turns yellow/brown), falls on earth." If you accept that the ð symbol represents "th," the whole sentence is basically readable in modern English with only a few vocabulary hitches - it sounds super archaic and weird, but it makes logical sense. 

 

In short, the seeds of modern English are hiding in OE; you just have to look for them! So my vote is that you're not foolish at all.

 

Also, felibus: got it! Charts it is. Do you think flash cards would help at all?

Edited August 20, 2014 by hreaðemus

[unræd]

Following the language study advice in this thread, I've decided to (foolishly) take Old English during my first semester of my MA. Any tips from you medievalists who are well versed in the area? I am generally speaking quite atrocious at languages, so I'm mainly taking it to boost my language background because I know nothing about linguistic identity that is not English - I feel like Old English is at least a start, albeit a very, very, difficult one to master.

 

I'm pretty well-versed ('okay-versed'?), but by no means an expert--I'm still a lowly undergrad, obviously, but I've taken two semesters of Old English (one intro, one grad Beowulf seminar), and lead my university's Old English reading group. I'll give you some nitty gritty, practical tips first, and then some general thoughts:

 

• Go to this website, print out the Magic Sheet you find there, fold it in half, laminate it, and LIVE with it. Keep it in your OE textbook at all times, do your OE readings with it ever by your side, sleep with it underneath your pillow, and stroke it gently when the lonely hours come.

• From there, on to bibliography. So, your instructor will require whatever book they require, but Peter Baker's Introduction to Old English (make sure to get the most recent edition, there are some egregious typos in earlier ones) is, for my money, the best introduction for people without experience in an inflected language. If you do have that experience, or are looking for greater philological detail, Mitchell and Robinson's A Guide to Old English is a great bet, and an excellent reference. There's really only one good student dictionary--the Clark Hall & Meritt, but BE WARNED: Amazon abounds w/ unscrupulous vendors of public-domain OCRd copies based on old editions that are uniformly crappy and to be avoided. You want the 4th edition published in the Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching series, put out by Toronto. It's the one w/ the blue and white cover with OE text in an inset window, and can be found here. Peter Baker's intro textbook is also online, and make sure you check out the links to the left--there are great resources there, exercises, annotated readings, etc. The Dictionary of Old English is online and should be available through your university, but it only runs through G; Bosworth-Toller (the best complete dictionary) is available for free online, as well, but often entails (as does the print version, sigh) having to look through various supplements and addenda to make sure you've done your lexicographical legwork responsibly.

• Baker says: "Indeed (though some Old English teachers may not approve of our telling you so), you may find it possible to read Old English prose pretty well without having to put in a lot of work on adjectives." This is, to put it gently, litotes. My advice? Do not bother to obsessively learn adjective endings. At all. I say this as someone who adores morphology, fetishizes philological rigor, etc etc etc. The payoff simply isn't there for the complexity of the paradigms, and that time would be better spent working on things like i-mutation, other sound changes, strong verb classes, etc, or even just having a beer or two. It is largely unnecessary in prose since adjectival hyperbaton is rarely an issue, and while there will be moments in poetry where the proper reading will turn on an adjective (usually when dealing with substantives or unexpected weak adjective endings) being correctly parsed, they're pretty rare--and when they do happen, you'll have your Magic sheet to refer to, anyway!  Of course this advice is useless if you'll be tested on them in class, in which case: ugh. Gird your loins.

• Other than that, though, learn your paradigms, backwards and forwards. Don't learn them as isolated, discrete units; look for connections between them. It's a lot easier (I think) to remember that the feminine accusative singular pronouns/articles are always the same as the plural nominative and accusative pronouns/articles than to try to remember them as three separate things. This is, again, only one of the many moments in which your Magic Sheet will be more than handy.

• Read real Old English things as soon as possible! The first few weeks of morphological drudgery can be a bit of a slog, but remember that at the end of your road paved with hard-won paradigms are the manifest glories of Anglo-Saxon literature. Since the end of that road can seem a little far off when you're wading through a sea of ðæm and þisses, though, put real Old English in front of your weary eyes as soon as you can. Baker's great about that, Mitchell and Robinson less so. Cambridge publishes a great Old English reader (edited by Marsden) whose marginal glossing is ridiculously complete (and with a full glossary in the back). The Dumbarton Oaks series by Harvard (it's the medieval equivalent of the Loeb Library, and if that isn't enough to make you wet yourself think hard about the choices you've made in your life) publishes a ton of OE stuff in bilingual en face editions, but since the texts aren't normalized or glossed it's probably a choice for when one's a bit surer with the language. 

• Read aloud! Not only does it sound cool (eventually--you'll feel like embarrassed/like a jackass at first, but there's no avoiding it), but it'll help internalize the rhythm of the language, which will help you internalize the syntax.

• As far as how to study, I found the process for doing translations/preparing readings outlined here to be enormously helpful (even if a crapton of work), at least during the early stages.

More general advice: Hreaðemus is (as usual!) exactly right--Old English is, if not easy, at least considerably easier than a lot of other medieval languages, to say nothing of Latin. I'm about to take what will be the equivalent of my seventh semester of Latin this fall, and while my Latin's not necessarily shabby, I still hobble and stumble and falter my way through it with tons of dictionary support, confusion, and cursing. In comparison, Old English is a breeze. It's funny. I tend to get all needlessly indignant when I tell people I study Old English and they say "like Shakespeare?" and I have to patiently explain that, no, it's an entirely different language--showing them the first few lines of Beowulf usually clears that up. But, at the same time, the following are all sentences of Old English:

 

Harold is swift. His hand is strong and his word grim. Late in life he went to his wife in Rome.

Is his inn open? His corn-binn is full and his song is written. Grind his corn for him and sing me his song.

He is dead. His bed is under him. His lomb is deaf and blind. He sang for me.

 

Those are obviously cherry-picked examples (and they're Mitchell and Robinson's, not mine--they have more of them, too, if you're into that sort of thing), but there's a lot about Old English that will be at least familiar to a speaker of modern English.

 

That doesn't mean, though, that there isn't a lot that isn't familiar, and that will trip you up if you approach it as if it's just funny looking ModE. Aside from lexical differences, Old English is an inflected language, and that means that it preserves grammatical distinctions that ModE doesn't, and that it can be much freer with word order (especially in poetry) and use constructions--bare instrumental datives, for example--that have zero equivalent in ModE. This is where time spent learning morphology and syntax, as boring as they are, really pays off--if you haven't, it's all too easy to just completely miss the sense of an OE text because you aren't able to pick up on the grammatical clues the various inflections might be giving you.

 

I hope some of that helps, and wes þu hal!

[unræd]

I just cracked open my books for this semester, and it looks like I've got my work cut out for me! It's so cooool though. <3 I'm such a dweeb, I get excited about verb conjugation - that was my favorite part of Spanish. Ahora no recuerdo mucho de que yo aprendi, but hopefully that won't be true with Latin because I'm going to read until my eyeballs fall out or the language is firmly ensconced in my long term memory, whichever comes first!

 

Any study tips or suggestions?

 

Felibus is right on with charts--write out your paradigms, over and over, until you bleed ablatives!

 

I haven't used Wiktionary for looking up Latin morphology, but I know a lot of people who do really like it, and have used it in all sort of classes; when I'm looking to, ahem, complete a translation without spending too much time puzzling over parsing I use Perseus's Word Study Tool. It has some idiosyncrasies (it doesn't handle prefixed verbs well, for example), but I like that it's linked to full dictionary support (Lewis and Short), which is often necessary. The University of Chicago has a free app called Logeion that's pretty sweet, too--it doesn't have morphological lookup capabilities (you need to know what headword you're looking for), but not only does it have Lewis and Short, it has Du Cange, which is the major medieval Latin dictionary. (Downside: De Cange only gives uncommon defs not found in other more basic dictionaries, and its definitions are in Latin, so it's not intended to be your first stop.)

 

A lot of the stuff I said in my ginormous OE post applies: take the time to really get morphology and syntax down, and start reading continuous unadapted Latin as soon as possible. I know a lot of people have trouble making the transition from textbook Latin to real Latin, but I think this varies based on what textbook your intro class uses--I hear it more as a complaint about Wheelock's than other programs.

 

And read fun things! There are a ton of Latin readers out there, that cover just about any kind of literature you'd like to read--and that often focus on the proverbial juicy bits--all with appropriate aids (glosses, glossaries, notes) for students. Knowing your interests, Hreaðemus, there's a cheap student edition of extracts from Bede that might be right up your alley! I haven't used that one myself, but I can recommend other readers I've used (and some specifically medieval ones) if you or anybody's interested. There are lots of bilingual options (Loeb, Dumbarton, I Tatti, depending on your period of interest), too, and the simpler texts in those are great when you've got syntax and morphology down but maybe don't have as much vocabulary. Before that they can be a bit too much of a crutch, I think, but when you're at the point where you can see that a Latin sentence says that "BLANK did BLANK to the BLANK," but you just don't know what any of the blanks mean, they're useful.

[Dr. Old Bill]

Unraed, you're making me want to become a Medievalist!

[unræd]

Unraed, you're making me want to become a Medievalist!

 

Seriously, WT, we're where shit's at.

[Dr. Old Bill]

I feel like that little asthmatic kid who watches through the chain-link fence as all the cool kids play baseball.

 

Yep, in my world, Medieval studies is a game of baseball with friends, and Poetics is an asthma inhaler.

[unræd]

I feel like that little asthmatic kid who watches through the chain-link fence as all the cool kids play baseball.

 

Yep, in my world, Medieval studies is a game of baseball with friends, and Poetics is an asthma inhaler.

 

Of course, I feel the same way about both classicists and theory people--two groups each able to look at (what appears to me to be) impenetrable language and get it like it's their mother tongue!

[littlepigeon]

Also, felibus: got it! Charts it is. Do you think flash cards would help at all?

 

Most people would say yes (if not definitely/absolutely/"I would've died without them," etc.). A few classmates of mine this summer who ended up doing pretty well in our courses relied on them. However, I personally have just never been able to make flashcards work for me in any class on any subject. But if they've worked for you in the past, by all means try them out. The best study method for me was just writing and rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting...) verb conjugations and noun/adjective declinations every day until my hand ached too much to keep going. With verbs, it becomes a more tedious task as you get further along in your course and know more and more forms (simply because each verb takes longer to conjugate fully), but getting into the habit of writing them all out really helped me retain the crazy amount of information I had to know in the short period of time I had (not my forte whatsoever--my short-term memory is embarrassing, honestly).

 

Unfortunately, I have zero advice regarding learning/studying OE. I've encountered it in several courses over the years, and really love the language, but have never studied it formally or learned much about the grammar/morphology. I definitely want to take a few semesters of it once I'm (hopefully) in a program next year, and a few that I've looked at actually require 1-2 semesters in OE of all their Ph.D. students, regardless of specialization, which I think is pretty cool.

 

Also, my face is red over having written "it's" instead of "its" in a previous post in this thread...I obviously need to start proofreading my TGC posts more carefully. *hides in corner for a week*

Edited August 22, 2014 by felibus

[littlepigeon]

On a totally different note:

 

I'm sheepishly going to post this question/observation about a current source of anxiety for me, despite the inevitability of me revealing myself as a medievalist n00b/the asthmatic kid trying to climb the fence and get to the baseball game but her shoelaces keep getting stuck in the fence wires...

 

I'm curious to hear what all of you think about lit theory in relation to medieval lit/medieval studies. It has seemed to me that a few of the more popular/accepted schools of theory don't always apply as well to medieval lit as they do to some of the later periods, and while reading over the papers I submitted during my MA program last year, I've noticed that I tend to shy away from making theory-heavy arguments most of the time (that is, I might take a cultural or even new historicist stance, or sometimes even just produce a classic close reading that is focused more on the substance and context of the text itself than in trying to read it through any particular theoretical lens). Clearly, however, most of these adcomms appear to want to see that we know what scholars in our field are doing in terms of their theoretical work and how they're developing innovative approaches to studying medieval lit, and I'm beginning to feel like I have a lot of reading to do before I can confidently say I'm "up to date" with how current medievalists are incorporating theory into their methodologies in productive and interesting ways. My other problem is that I quite simply don't *love* a lot of the theoretical routes available at the moment; I've sustained a marginal interest in gender/sexuality studies, but even that can become a more frustrating than enjoyable approach, in my experience.

 

Sigh. This isn't really a question yet. I guess I'm wondering how you all go about doing this type of broad research? I know I can just start reading recent essays and articles to see who's saying what about which thing, but any other advice you guys have about brushing up on my theory knowledge (specifically, what medievalists are doing in terms of their theoretical work) would be really, really appreciated.

[unræd]

 I definitely want to take a few semesters of it once I'm (hopefully) in a program next year, and a few that I've looked at actually require 1-2 semesters in OE of all their Ph.D. students, regardless of specialization, which I think is pretty cool.

 

Also, my face is red over having written "it's" instead of "its" in a previous post in this thread...I obviously need to start proofreading my TGC posts more carefully. *hides in corner for a week*

 

Don't hide! Come back! Which programs have you seen that require OE of everybody? Are they US programs? I think that's incredibly cool!

 

(And not just because, oh, I dunno, I want there to be a robust market for people qualified to teach Old English in a few years.)

[unræd]

I know I can just start reading recent essays and articles to see who's saying what about which thing, but any other advice you guys have about brushing up on my theory knowledge (specifically, what medievalists are doing in terms of their theoretical work) would be really, really appreciated.

 

I've had this same issue. I'm very comfortable making very traditional arguments based on linguistics, close reading, and historical/cultural context, but while I have plenty of theoretical interest (and firmly believe that any tool for working with texts can be profitably applied to any text) my background isn't nearly as strong there as it is in other areas. (And yes, I realize that there is no literary discussion that happens in the absence of a set of assumptions that underly our reading practice--i.e. 'theory'--and so valorizing some practices as 'traditional' and others as 'theoretical' blah blah blah boilerplate disclaimer etc etc etc.) In short, I feel very much behind the curve, too, and so I'm less giving advice than seconding your question for other more theoretically-inclined medievalists here!

 

For what it's worth, I had a very productive conversation with a prof about this in the spring. He gave me a big ol' honking reading list based on my specific interests, but in general he said affect is quite big at the moment, as is "Thing Theory," and issues of gender and sexuality spring eternal. As far as specific journals to look in, you'll know these, but Exemplaria and maybe postmedieval. Also consider checking out In the Middle?

Edited August 22, 2014 by unræd

[hreaðemus]

I wish I could speak to the question of theory - I keep trying to post here and drawing a blank. I just really feel like every project benefits from a different angle or approach - and even if a person's angle isn't current or popular, it seems to me that asking a really good question, and creating a really exciting dialogue, is cool enough to repopularize any "stale" theoretical approach. Like, what are the "holes" in our knowledge of a particular time period or literary subfield? How can we fill those holes? An exciting theoretical stance, it seems to me, is the one that offers a new perspective on a hole in our puzzle - and if no one else is currently interested, so much the better. I may just be talking nonsense, though, so don't mind me if that's the case. I also find reading newer collections can give a good sense of work being done - for example, I'm currently mulling over Andy Orchard and Samantha Zacher's New Readings in the Vercelli Book, and that's a pretty exciting overview of current perspectives at work in Anglo-Saxon scholarship!

 

Also, I started my Latin class!!!! We've worked through the first two noun declensions in two days, and are starting verb conjugation on Tuesday. Case is actually not as bizarre as I thought it would be... it takes some getting used to, but it's not an unreasonable way to arrange sentences. I am nervous about the workload - but Honors is mostly reading, so hopefully that will help a bit. 

 

I'm thinking about asking to join the advanced/graduate track in my OE course - it involves a longer paper (15 pages) and there's less margin for error, but we get our own smaller class section later in the semester. This is no small benefit: there are 60 students in the class. 60!!! Whoever heard of such a turnout for Old English? My mentor is just that charismatic, I guess. But it's annoying because individual in-class practice opportunities are extremely limited. What do y'all think? Am I crazy for taking on more work? (You can say so if I am.)

 

How are classes going for everybody else so far?

[poliscar]

I'm not a Medievalist, but Andrew Cole at Princeton has published & edited a fair amount of work pertaining to the Theory/Medieval Studies relationship. His recent book The Birth of Theory traces contemporary theory backwards through Hegel, and into the premodern period. I'd also check out The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages, which is a volume he edited on the medieval roots of theory, as well as the issue of the minnesota review he edited on the turn to the medieval in theory. Bruce Holsinger's The Premodern Condition deals with similar issues, looking at Bataille/Lacan/Bourdieu, etc through a medieval lens. In both cases you're looking more at the use of the Middle Ages to understand theory, than the rote application of contemporary theory to premodern contexts. 

In terms of other people, Carolyn Dinshaw has done some cool work between medieval studies and queer theory, which might be worth checking out. I'd also throw in Amy Hollywood, Vance Smith, and Sara Poor as scholars working in interesting ways.