Canadian chivalry

I just heard about this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174625/Modern-day-knight-crosses-Canada-horseback-spread-values-chivalry.html

I was alerted by Jeff Sypeck at Quid plura?  He has an interesting collection of links on Charlemagne, including a notification of a Brazilian Portuguese translation of his own book!

http://www.quidplura.com/?p=3773

To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Today I heard the Byrds' version of Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man played in  the background of a CBC Radio One history of the music business. I realized that it had been a very long time indeed since I'd heard the original version by Bob Dylan himself. This, I thought, is how things fade into the past. To invoke the revolutionary music scene of the 1960s, the producers of the radio show thought it sufficient to play the Byrds. They perhaps thought that this would remind their audience – and CBC radio has a rather old audience – of Dylan's music. But as a matter of fact, how many listeners had ever heard the Dylan version? I don't recall it getting a lot of airplay; that's why the Byrds version was important. Dylan's unique style and voice went off like a bomb, but the initial explosion was rather a small one,and his influence was exercised through cover versions. And now nearly 50 years later even they are fading into obscurity. Some old-timers and dedicated music fans still recognize the Byrds in the background, but I am sure that lots of others only vaguely recognize the 1960s style and react as they think they should react to a discussion of music in the 1960s. And then one of these days, it will really be obscure. Maybe that day is almost here.

If you have never heard Bob Dylan do Mr. Tambourine Man, listen to this. It is really quite something.

Happy Lunar Landing Day!

 

Image:   Apollo 15.

Dry enough for you?

The dried-out bed of  the Mississippi River, from  the Big Picture.

It's too late for the pebbles to vote

Words of wisdom from Babylon 5 (which I never saw the first time around):

 "The avalanche has already begun, it's too late for the pebbles to vote."

The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness, and Honour, by Markku Peltonen

As someone who works on deeds of arms in the Middle Ages – deeds of arms including things like individual challenges, trials by combat, jousts, and tournaments – this is a very useful book. I have always thought there was a big difference between the duels of the early modern era and the the medieval deeds of arms we see in things like Froissart's Chronicles. Peltonen thoroughly documents that this was indeed the case. Early modern duels were part of a great debate about civility and politeness, as well as debates about Royal power and liberty. This was not what medieval deeds of arms were usually about.

 There are a few things I didn't like about this book, and one of them is a common feeling I have these days about academic work in general. This author, like others, is so intent on citing as much evidence as possible that the reader can get overwhelmed. Critics of dueling in England made such and such an argument against the practice – and then we see every single time the point was made by every single author made it. This may not be literally true but it sure feels that way. I think that this book was far too encyclopedic for its own good. But then this may just be me; I used to be, and probably still am, the kind of person who reads big serious books word by word. Even though I can after many years in academe follow many arguments without doing that, I still feel a bit guilty about skipping over material. On the other hand, might it not be worth considering a change in academic practice? This book, which focuses on the written debate about dueling, could have been a lot zippier and still met the intellectual needs of most of its audience.

 A final small gripe is that Peltonen doesn't seem to be very interested in what came before and what came after his period. Where early modern attitudes came from and why they dispersed are things I would like to know more about. Perhaps the author was smart to leave these aside; the book might have been truly vast if he had tried to master all the relevant sources and modern debates about them. Anyway, if you have a serious interest in dueling, this is well worth looking at. I'm glad it showed up in our library, where it sits next to my recent Royal Jousts.

Medieval minstrelsy reconstructed

What should appear in my mailbox this morning but a newsletter from Boydell and Brewer entitled the Medieval Herald. This newsletter is much more substantial and interesting than many of the electronic commercial flyers I get. For one thing, it includes some very good interviews with authors, who all have the knack of making their work accessible – or have been edited very skillfully. Makes you think that maybe their books would be accessible too. One feature in this issue of the Medieval Herald will be of interest to a number of my readers I'm sure. There is an interview with Linda Marie Zaerr, who works on the performance of middle English romances. And what you know, she has a whole page of links to her performances. I will include one below, a short one, and if you are interested, you can follow up here. Her YouTube statistics are not very good, which makes me think that hardly anybody has discovered this resource yet. Here is Prof. Zaerr on the vielle (fiddle) performing an excerpt from Bevis of Hampton: