De realitatis falsis
I'm teaching composition this semester, and at the moment I am grading their first papers, which are to varying degrees an analytical explication of the elements of short fiction. Most of them are all right, but I've come across a disturbing pattern of error in not only their prose but also their thinking: several of them have proposed that something is a "false reality" or that "reality [is] that nothing is as it seems."
As I understand it, these terms would seem to be paradoxical: the idea of reality, especially as we mean it in the post-Enlightenment world, is that there is a single state of being from which all our knowledge arises. To adapt and perpetuate a misinterpretation of Gertrude Stein, there is a there there, and it cannot be changed. What changes is our perception of reality, and that perception is what can be said to be "true" or "false." So why, then, have my students conflated their idea of reality with reality itself, to the effect that they feel it possible to say that reality itself can, on occasion, not be real?
In all likelihood, there are a number of factors at work, from the trickle-down Romantic idealism so popular in American bourgeois culture to the daily barrage of poorly constructed syllogisms that is our current political climate. I'm not out to lay the blame anywhere, but I am sincerely disappointed that not one but several of my students appear to think that reality itself can be unreal. Surrealism I can accept; dreams I can accept; but an unreal reality is too paradoxical for an old materialist like me.
It does lead me to ask, though: what do you think? Am I overreacting, or are there in fact reasons why our students can't tell the difference between "false perceptions of reality" and "false realities"?

Edit: Meanwhile, my parents are in town, and we had brunch (how bourgeois!) at La Maison des Tartes (how aristo!), which was very tasty. On the way back, we took the bike trail, and overtook not only several nice people but a very strange pair of animals: a Great Dane and a small pig, both with the same piebald markings. The Dane was friendly, but the pig was confused. Overall, an amusing afternoon.

Gonzo Journalism Science

Aside from everything else in my life being about normal (behind on reading, behind on projects, behind on grading, life, love, and happiness—hey, it is grad school), I now have a new hero. See, I work in the University's Writing Center sometimes, and today I met with a master's candidate to set up times to work over his thesis. The kicker?

This guy blows up chickens for a living.

Well, not really, but he does inject them with a virus that causes their skins to rupture. So, it's either he blows up chickens or he makes George-Romero-zombies out of them. Either way, that's pretty cool.

Gross, but cool.

Project Updates

I've begun stabbing blindly at writing toward the Utopian survey project. In the course of this research, however, I turned up last Autumn's issue of the JMEMS, which was Karma Lochrie's special Utopian issue. There are a few good moments in that issue, and in Lochrie's essay especially but I haven't been impressed by the scholarship at all. Indeed, at the risk of being that wide-eyed idiot who dismisses things he doesn't like as "excessively bourgeois," I suspect that a lot of utopian scholarship either doesn't go into the HX sections of college libraries, or does but wanders out in a daze (I'll admit that the latter happens to me quite often, though the Ernst Bloch dazes are especially rhapsodic). In any case, a lot of what I've read so far has been fluffy scholarship, full of ifs and mights and lacking in a lot of common sense. Medievalists also seem keen to grapple with "utopianism-before-Utopia," as if More's libellum nugarum was some sort of foundational text along the lines of Wealth of Nations or Das Kapital. But it's not: it's the culmination of one tradition and the inception of another, less Also Spracht Zarathustra and more Le Morte Darthur. But I'll go into greater detail on this as we move through the semester.

I've done less work on my alliterative revival paper, though I do think I'll shoot for working with Pearl. Thankfully a recent article by Helen Barr, "Pearl—or 'The Jeweller's Tale,'" has explored a lot of the class issues inherent in Pearl; moving from that to "utopian visions for the emergent bourgeoisie" should be a snap. Whether it's a snap of the fingers or a snap of my neck we'll know soon enough.

Meanwhile, I've been served with jury duty sometime between the first of October and the end of December. I wouldn't mind it if it wasn't for the fact that they will not call me until a day or two before they want me, so I get to spend [n<90] days waiting for a phone call that will cause me to panic and reschedule, probably at the last minute and with some degree of pain toward my students.

Blog Is Not Lost

No, I haven't disappeared: it's just been a busy two weeks, is all. I'm back to teaching composition for the first time in a year, and it's both refreshing and frustrating. I have rather enjoyed teaching literature, being able to come in and just say "What is this about? How does it work? Does it even work at all?" and while one can do that with the composition courses, I also have to spend time explaining how they need to construct arguments and sentences: it's teaching two and a half liberal arts at once (dashes of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic), and it's a bit of a drag. On the upside, the classes are smaller and the prep is easier, leaving more time for the insane class schedule I now find myself taking.

I've signed up for two seminars: one on Discourse Analysis and another on the Alliterative Revival. Both should be good, and both should generate material towards my dissertation. My current plan in the DA course is to build a chapter in which I examine (to borrow a Raymond Carver title) what medievalists talk about when they talk about utopia. So far I've got some Le Goff, a few articles in German, Spanish, and Italian, and (for better or worse) Michael Uebel's Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages. I'll plough through these and whatever else turns up, and with any luck produce something worthwhile and possibly part of an opening chapter.

The same holds true for the Alliterative Revival. Right now, the dissertation looks to be shaping up into an examination of dream-visions as sources of utopic energy, specifically how the middle ages imagined the city, the other, and the self. The AR paper will likely focus on Pearl, Langland, or something more obscure. In any case, I've had to put aside any plans for popular romance until another project.

Right now, I'm at that stage in a project where I'm excited to find out what's been said, but I'm afraid I'm not going to have anything to say myself. I'm also beginning to get burnt out on doing coursework, as I feel like having to take classes is sapping my ability to do my work. Is that normal for a second-year PhD, do you think?

In completely one-off news, I am now the proud owner of maps which show the world's landmasses as they will look when the oceans rise by 100m. Frankly, I can't wait to sail the Gulf of Louisiana or live on the island of Wales, just south of the Irish archipelago. Despite the loss of just about every major capital of the world—London, Washington, Rio, St. Petersburg, Shanghai, etc.—I can't help but think that these maps also show some hope: new oceans in the deserts, new kinds of politics, perhaps even entire nations cobbled from the seas (shades of China Miéville). Those maps are here, by the way.

A shiny penny for the first person to title this post

I read my evaluations from the survey course this week. There were high marks overall, with a lot of praise. The lowest marks were in "keeps student attention" or somesuch, but I'm not terribly worried, as even those were no lower than three on a scale of five. They did suggest I try to make my lectures more interesting, which I intend to do over time; they also suggested I somehow make the book less heavy, something I cannot do unless I work for Norton, or can get the University to only buy Volumes A and B of the NAEL rather than Volume 1—especially since I know that Volume C is useless, as we teach the 18th century course with the Longman Anthology. Insert rant about standardized book orders here, I suppose.

I also got a number of very nice comments; indeed, the only quizzical comment was the rather cryptic note that "there was a lot of yawning." Since there wasn't any context for that statement, I'm not sure what this person meant: was there a lot of yawning on my part? Among the students when I wasn't looking? In this person's head?

Ah well. They've asked me to teach it again in the spring, and I'm all for it; right now, I'll be teaching our "Writing About Literature" course, which given the coursework I'm set to do right now, will be a welcome relief. However, expect more posts about the Alliterative Revival and the analysis of discourse over the coming months.

Some regrettable news: fellow TA C---- P---- has decided to take a semester off to pursue mental health and well-being. It's for the best, but he'll be missed. Take care, C---- P----.

Utopian Musings

Utopia is the hope that the scattered fragments of good
that we come across from time to time in our lives can be
put together, one day, to reveal the shape of a new kind of life.
The kind of life that ours should have been.
— Nick Bostrom, "Letter from Utopia"

You lot. You spend all your time thinking about dying,
like you're going to get killed by eggs, or beef, or global warming,
or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible.
That maybe you survive.
— Ninth Doctor, "The End of the World" (Doctor Who)

Sorry I've been out lately; work's got the best of my time, and what's left goes to, oh, old serials from Doctor Who, or having to call maintenance to vacuum out the water from my A/C on the hottest day of the year to date, or other little things. But I've been working, oh don't you think otherwise! Today was the second of three lecture/discussions on Paradise Lost, one of the many texts I've felt under-qualified to so much as attempt to teach. On Monday I was faced with lecturing on Donne, and discovered to my horror that Elegy 18 is not as innocent as I'd previously hoped (frankly, I always liked it for being clever, but several of my students pointed out that she has no say in what he demands, and is never really there at all other than as a thing to be possessed ["Oh my America! Oh my New Found Land!" etc.]) The week before was the Faerie Queene, which I'd like to think I handled all right. Overall, though, it's been a slog.

But I'm not here for confessional, your grace; I'm here toss out a dissertation idea. I want to deal with the medieval utopian. What is "utopia" in the middle ages, you ask? Well, I don't know yet, but when I do, I'll let you know. The scope of the project, though, is likely to include both elite (yay canon!) and popular (yay, er, this book) understandings, and may focus on dreams and dream-visions. If anyone out there knows of a good dream vision in, say, popular romance or a nice one-off chronicle, I'd be glad to know ye.

Meanwhile, I've been poking at the idea like a boy with a stick and a dead badger, and have begun generating the sort of philosophical musings that will probably—deus voluit and the creek don't rise—work their way into the first chapter.

No, you can't see them. What are you, some dead-badger-fetishist?

Oh, all right. Here, tell me what you think:

Writing on the Utopian in the European Middle Ages is dangerous, because there is a great temptation to conflate the Utopian impulse with Ecclesiastical notions of the millennium and have done with it. While the Millennium is an outgrowth of the Utopian, it is not solely one and the same. Rather than asking how they are alike, we might better consider the ways in which the anticipated Heavenly Jerusalem is not Utopian.
#
The particular fascination with the urban, built-form concrete Utopia is an early modern obsession, stemming from More's Utopia and (another text the name of which escapes me--JCL). The form "Utopian" thought took before this period—More's use of it in Utopia is no surprise—was metaphysical and theological; when it talked of cities at all, only Heavenly Jerusalem came up. Few would talk of building heavenly Jerusalem—such work was God's, not man's—and as such we expect few examples post-More to apply.
#
The question remains: what do we mean by the medieval Utopian? On the one hand, we can say, as Ernst Bloch does, that the Utopian represents a universal ideal of human freedom, an imaginary space where alternatives may be contemplated and hope for a new world nurtured. This level of definition seems however almost too encompassing: do we include as Utopian all sides of alterity, all moments of subversion, all instances of hope? The Carnivalesque, the queer, the millenarian, even the fundamental? "Yes" is the answer—yes, but not today. Not all at once.
#
As Nicola McDonald writes, “Modern narrative is often distinguished by the way in which it frustrates the conventional trajectory of desire, pulls it up short and resists the closure that is otherwise, in narrative terms, inevitable. Our desires, such narratives contend, are not finally satisfiable” (Pulp Fictions of Medieval England 13). It is no surprise that one modern descendant of romance is categorized as “fantasy”: those narratives in which it is even remotely possible for desire to be fulfilled must be separated from the vast, shambling herds of “real” fiction. We cannot hope for better than this life, in which, like Milton’s Satan, we have said “farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear / Farewell remorse” (Paradise Lost IV.108-9). Indeed, the world where all desires are known and met is often dismissed as a trivial place, not even worth experiencing—yet, as Fredric Jameson notes, “the complaint about the boredom of Utopias can much more clearly be seen to be so much propaganda for the excitement of market competition” (Jameson, Archaeologies 339).


There, that's the whole start of things. Nobody steal this or I'll. . . hurt you somehow.

Mass Media Consumption Day

What have I been doing all day? Was it "finish reading the things on which you'll be lecturing on Monday"?

NO!

Was it "offering editorial suggestions for the thesis of the Bachelor C---- P---- of Elkins, AR, as you agreed to do yesterday?

NO! (well, mostly—there was a bit of a lag in the morning before I could off, so I did read most of the rest of it. . .)

Was it "running to the post office to pick up your package from Canada, which contained your copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which you then, on receiving, drove straight home, opened, and read through from 9:30 AM - 5:30 PM?"

YES!

That's right, friends, I'm now up-to-date on the latest bits of Harry Potterdom. I've learned all about his last adventures, and have come to several conclusions:
This book beats Half-Blood Prince, and while it's true that a dead mackerel coated in polystyrine could have done that, it's also true that
J. K. Rowling has become a better writer over the past 17 years.
This was a much better book: she's got a stronger sense of pacing, for one, and for another, the fact that SPOILER most of it takes place outside of Hogworts frees her up to explore much of the rest of the world. Frankly, that castle was becoming a bit of an annoyance, and it's good she's gotten away from it. END SPOILER.

That said, I'm looking forward to seeing what her post-Potter literary career is like.

I'm also looking forward to some Monty Python's Flying Circus, and probably MST3K's riffing on Ring of Terror.

I'll do the school stuff tomorrow.

At Week Four's End

Cometh the hour, cometh the man: this week has been the start of something early modern, by which I mean I've been reading sonnets for most of the week. The week began, as I mentioned before, with Malory, whose inclusion on this side of the test I justified by claiming that he was going through a bit of self-fashioning. The self-fashioning theme continued through the sonnets of Wyatt (Tuesday), Spenser (Wednesday) and Shakespeare (Thursday), and the works of Elizabeth (Friday).

On Thursday I got a little fed up with the lack of participation, and decided that since they'd had two days of sonnets, and since it was Shakespeare for chrissakes, they could do group work. I split them into groups of three, and had each group select three sonnets. Those sonnets had to be connected thematically—i.e., they couldn't just pick three sonnets that used red as an symbol. They were to spend the majority of class determining how their selected sonnets fit together, and how they might not fit together. How, I asked, did they support or disturb the dominant theme of the group? It went pretty well, I think: I heard from a few students I'd not heard from before, and instilled some confidence in them that they could produce viable, valid readings.

Today, though, there was none of that: I gave them a lecture on Elizabeth. It was, perhaps, shorter than I might have liked, but that's okay. I figure, I've done them the best I could, and if that didn't fulfill today's time requirement, who cares?

But the hell with all that: you're here for the statistics, aren't you? Actually, you're not here at all, but that doesn't matter. The numbers are:

A: 38% (6)
B: 50 %(8)
C: 6% (1)
D: 6% (1)
F: 0% (0)

Still, no-one's failing, so that's pretty good. I did have one student come up to me today and ask me whether it was all right if she deliberately sabotaged her own grade so that she'd get a C. My response was that it was her right to make the grade she wants to make, but that she should do her best; what I didn't tell her was that she would have to nigh on fail miserably on the remaining classwork to make anything less than a B.

Next week: Colonialism and the Other!

Didn't I have a curve somewhere?

So, as promised, I've finished grading. I also delivered a lecture this morning in which I partially used Malory to talk about two key theories: Stephen Greenblatt's ideas about self-fashioning, and Benedict Anderson's origins of nationalism. Both theories are, of course, about periods after Malory, but I am one of those people (you know, those people) who see Malory's text as a step toward English nationalism and toward ideas of the self. Whether that's because it actually is used in the Early Modern age as a tool for moral development, or whether it's that I've decided to read Caxton's preface in earnest:

humbly beseeching all noble lords and ladies with all other estates, of what estate or degree they been of, that shall see and read in this said book and work, that they take the good and honest acts in their remembrance, and to follow the same. . . . For herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renommee.

In any event, I talked too much today, but that's the way it goes. Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes you're ambushed by a giant lecture. Ah well.

Anyway, statistics: as of this morning I have all the exams graded, and including this morning's attendance, we see the following figures.

Exam Grades:
A: 44% (7)
B: 44% (7)
C: 6% (1)
D: 0% (0)
F: 6% (1)

Current Grades
A: 44% (7)
B: 44% (7)
C: 6% (1)
D: 6% (1)
F: 0% (0)
18 enrolled; 2 withdrawals
16 total current students

I had one 100% A, and frankly, with 88% of the class passing at or above expectations, I wouldn't give a curve for all anything. That said, I was pretty proud of this last exam—but the next will be sneakier indeed.

Numbers Game

Normally, I'd post about this week in teaching, but I'd also like to do that after I've graded the exams. To make matters more annoying, I've left my flashdrive at work, and can't get it again until Monday.

Expect, then, a post. . . then.

*sigh*.

From the left, a Challenger. . .
Confessio docendis No. 3*

The classroom in which I teach is angled in such a way that I can approach it from the stairwell without being seen. Doing so today, I heard some students discussing the day's reading (the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, in middle English thanks to Norton's brilliance). Initially, they were in agreement that it was hard to read (no surprise—in a summer course, how much of a crash course can I give them?), and then they complained about my pedagogy. So when I finally rounded the corner, I said something flippant and defensive, and then one of them asked why we needed all this history in a literature course. Would it be on the test?

After the few seconds it took to recover from my internal weeping, I responded that I don't teach to the test (it's not No Child Left Behind, after all), and that while I do realize I don't talk about the text enough, I generally believe that they're smart enough to read the text without me having to explain it to them. Granted, with the Canterbury Tales and perhaps later with the Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, there will be some moments where syntax or sense runs away from the text, and I'll have to slow down and point at stuff. But generally speaking, in a class full of Junior and Senior English majors, I would expect them to be capable of reading a text, especially one whose language has been modernized, understand the content, and form some opinion of its meaning. My job, then, is not to say "There is meaning in the text," but to say, "there is extra meaning around the text that you need to understand the text further."

For instance, yesterday I taught the second half of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. On Wednesday I had left them with the thought that it might all be an allegory for the soul's journey from perdition to perfection—but then we get to day two, which is, as always, kinkier than I remember.** So, I thought, what better time to explain courtly love? Granted, I needed to take them back a bit and explain its origins, especially given that those origins are so contentious,*** but overall it went pretty well. Once I'd explained how it worked, I took them into the text and demonstrated how Gawain embodies those virtues and how the Pearl-poet challenges them. That, ideally, is the sort of thing I do every day.

So, I explained this to the student, who seemed to accept this as an explanation. Most of my fellow TAs who have heard this story have agreed with me: lectures are for context, not content. That said, I'm not against talking about content if the students are having trouble with it; however, what I want is connections made and understanding brought into focus.

I'm glad someone challenged me, though; most of the time I only hear such complaints after the fact in our evaluations. Getting it here allowed me to articulate it for the class as a whole, and probably staved off a few negative reviews while opening a few minds to the real goal of this course: getting them to think about why we produce literature and to what ends we do so.

Grade Statistics: Week Two:
A: 2 (13%)
B: 7 (44%)
C: 3 (19%)
D: 1 (6%)
F: 3 (19%)
16 enrolled students.
2 withdrawals.
Grade is based on 9 days of attendance. That's almost a curve, really, and it's doing what it ought: most students have been there most of the time, and only a few are really screwing off. We'll see how things are next week, after I get and grade their exams.
_____
* No. 1? The larch. Seriously, you expect me to keep track of this, as if it were some series, here to amuse you?
** Bercilak's wife pins Gawain to the bed and says he can't get up until she gets a kiss. If that's not wonderful, I don't know what is.
*** I did a combination of The Allegory of Love and The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History.

Confessio docentis No 28:
Lecture Notes

So, sometimes I'm pretty sure I've said ridiculously stupid things in class. I don't mean the non-sequiturs, I don't mean random innuendo—not the sorts of things that just sort of jump out when you're not really filtering—but genuinly stupid comments that you don't realize until later. Today, for instance, I was doing the symbolism of Gawain's pentangle (reading without a net, as usual) and something in the back of my brain forgot that the six-point star is not called the same thing as the five-point star, i.e. both are not the star of Solomon. It wasn't until much later that it occured to me that I could have said one brought echoes of the other--but the real critic in the back of my head says "why mention the star of David at all?"

I say this because I've been having some thoughts about teaching with notes, specifically the degree to which each lecture should be a well-researched, multi-viewpoint demonstrating presentation. That, I think, is the platonic ideal of lecture: the sort of brilliant talk given about a text that someone like the other medievalist named Lewis or Fleming or Tolkien would have given. Granted, these people had time, and, as my friend Craig is fond of pointing out, they didn't have television. I tried for that at the start of the term, but after I ran out of notes on Beowulf (i.e. after I'd run out of the things I'd cribbed from Andy Orchard and Bill Quinn), I started having to do research on a regular basis, and between that and reading the text and somehow boiling all that down into 120 minute speech every day, I just sort of fell apart.

So I reverted back to the old way, which is "read the text, make some notes, and come up with discussion questions." The latter usually devolve into rhetorical questions that I have to answer, which I don't want to answer, because I'd like to hear from them. In the end, I get nervous and zip around from topic to topic, and cover things I didn't think about until after I'd got into the classroom. It feels fine, but it also looks, on reflection, like a mess. But I'll do it again tomorrow, and probably on Friday and for the rest of the term. Perhaps eventually I'll have those well-researched lectures, but not today.

Besides, as my occasionally uncomfortable students can tell you, I move around too much to lecture. If I stood behind a podium for an hour, I'd probably explode.

I'll never abandon you, sweet blog of mine!

Don't worry, loyal fan(s), I'm not gone forever now that the "book club" is done. In fact, I'm still around, and thanks to a new part-time job, I'll be chained to a desk for about seven hours a week, so there will be plenty of time for me to screw around at the computer. It's a Mac, though, and it's running an ooooold version of Firefox, so I'm not too terribly sure what I'm doing. Fun!

The first few days have been pretty good. Lectures have gone smoothly, with me doing most of the talking—but I expected that, even planned it that way. It's much easier to get things done if I know where I'm going, and the less dead air (the usual response to questions in these parts) I have, the better I feel. So, lectures it is, even if it kills me.

The lectures, though, seem to be boring some people, to which all I can say is, "tough it out." One woman was even trimming her nails (what disrespect), which to me says, I'm not here to learn, I'm here for you to give me answers to things. Tch. Most of them, however, seem alert if not attentive, and one or two even ask clarification questions and respond when I ask them general-knowledge questions.

So far, the stuff hasn't been too bad: we did a few OE lyrics (The Wanderer, Bede's account of Cædmon's hymn, The Dream of the Rood) and now we're onto Beowulf. After that, there will be some more nation-building texts (selections from Anglo-Norman chronicles about the origins of the English), then Sir Gawain, Chaucer, Second Shepherd's Play, then an exam, then some Renaissance stuff I'll probably tell you about later, whoever you are you strange people. The goal for the whole course is twofold: explore the creation of the self (interority, alterity, etc.) alongside the creation of England as an idea (what does it mean to be English? To encounter things that are not English?) Hopefully it will give them some idea of the usefulness of literature. We'll see.

Summer Reading Reviews: Part the Last
The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance

Carol Heffernan. The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003. Pp. x, 160, two illustrations. $70.00.

The title of Carole Heffernan's work implies a large and perhaps ambitious project, surveying not only Chaucer but all of "Medieval Romance" for traces of "the Orient." Alas, in its scant 160 pages, it does not live up to that promise. Focusing instead on a few of the Canterbury Tales (The Man of Law's Tale and the Squire's Tale), two episodes from the Legend of Good Women (Dido and Cleopatra) and two Middle English romances (Floris and Blauncheflur and Le Bone Florence of Rome), Heffernan seeks to uncover the "remarkable oriental influence" in these selections, and "to call for a reconsideration of the textual exchanges as well as other cultural interactions linking English (and European) romance literature of the Middle Ages and the Orient" (2). Even in this last paring, one can discern problems with this study: a chronological marker—even one that, as Norman Daniel pointed out years ago, is patently Eurocentric—is not equivalent to a spatial marker. For Heffernan, it seems, either the Middle Ages is a place or "the Orient" is timeless.[1]

Heffernan's study is largely balanced in its scholarly approach, though proving that Christians and Muslims exchanged stories where they met seems rather straightforward. Each of the sections discusses a different exchanged story type: the Man of Law's Tale depends on an understanding of the trade networks in the Mediterranean; the LGW selections view the Muslim Female Other[2]; the Squire's Tale is a moment when 1001 Nights-style interlacing comes into European narratives; and the romances deal, in their own way, with the working out of courtly love paradigms. Each argument is on the whole valid; each has its flaws. For example, the discussion of the interlacing of the Squire's Tale is technically right: the interlacing exists and is better done than its analogs and precursors. Yet the context around Heffernan's reading—the "how and why" the technique derives from Oriental sources—isn't well argued: instead, Heffernan spends time talking about the 1001 Nights, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and a number of modern, secondary works without ever driving all the points home.

This is the pattern throughout The Orient: a strong, sometimes faultless reading is combined with a less-than-satisfactory critical apparatus. Indeed, at times the critical work reads more like a literature review than an argumentative synthesis. This, combined with some issues of diction (the repeatedly-used "Mohammedan" is so 19^th-century) and a lack of clear linkage between each of the readings leaves this work lacking. Perhaps there is something to be made of the connections between "the Orient," "Chaucer," and middle English romances, but it's not made here.
_____
[1] Of course, as Catherine Brown points out in "In the Middle" (JMEMS 30.3 [Fall 2000]: 547-574), sometimes it is useful to consider the past as a place rather than a time. Heffernan doesn't seem to do that in The Orient, though.
[2] Though both Dido and Cleopatra lived before rise of Islam, this hardly matters to Chaucer; time is static in the Middle Ages, and the past is just a better version of what we have now.

Note about the last review.

Even though the readings course I'm taking technically ends today, I'm probably not going to get done with the last review (of Carol Heffernan's The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance) today, since I've two lectures to write before next week starts. Bear with me, loyal reader(s)!

Summer Reading Reviews, Part 6:
The Arabs and Medieval Europe

Norman Daniel. The Arabs and Medieval Europe. New York: Longman, 1975. Pp. xiv, 378. Four illustrations. $44.00 cloth.

Although now more than twenty years old, much of Norman Daniel's 1975 work, The Arabs and Medieval Europe, still rings true. In this, Daniel argues for a new way of seeing history as fundamentally interconnected—we can no more talk of European history without Muslims than we can talk about Etruscan history without the Greeks or South African history without the Xhosa. Daniel begins his argument by selectively drawing parallels between the entire Arab world and Western Europe, especially England, in the 8^th century CE, demonstrating the degree to which both were similar in their philosophical, philological, and scientific endeavors. He then proposes to trace how "the two societies have gradually diverged" (22).

This he does, in a series of well-written and insightful chapters, starting with what might be considered a "fracture point": the sudden, though not unexpected, turn toward martyrdom as a form of protest in Cordoba in the 9^th century CE—an impetus that might best be recognized as the ideology behind religious suicide bombings[1] today. From here, Daniel turns to the wider Mediterranean, especially Sicily and Italy, before touching on the rise of the Recoquista in Spain, the impact of the crusades across the Mediterranean on both sides of the religious divide, and the rise of the Norman kingdom in Sicily toward its most tolerant peak in Frederick II. These discussions lead into an extended examination of the philosophical impact of such fields as courtly love, theology, natural philosophy, and medicine, most of which have been superseded by later, more focused studies.

Although hampered, perhaps, by its predating Said's Orientalism, as well as Daniel's forgivable, though unavoidable, biases toward Islam, The Arabs and Medieval Europe is largely quite useful. His investigation, for example, of the origins of troubadour and courtly love lyrics (101-105), ending in the surprisingly tentative conclusion that "there were certainly some parallel developments [between European and Islamic sources], and these were probably related" (105), seems mostly to be the skeleton on which the arguments of someone like Maria Rosa Menocal have been built. From time to time the evidence seems unconvincing—at one point he seems to base the existence of an Arabic-speaking Christian population in Spain purely on the fact that a number of Latin names "hide" Arabic meanings—but for what was groundbreaking research on a sensitive and largely cloaked topic, this is not out of the question. Still, the heavy bias toward Islam, perhaps rhetorically necessary when this book was first published, is largely regrettable today, since it undercuts the idea that world history of the period between 412 and 1483 CE is unbalanced in favor of Europe. One does not re-balance the scales by throwing everything on the lighter pan. Instead, what must be done is to see that period of history for what it was: a time in which Europe, far from the Enlightenment portrait of the "Middle Ages," was an active member of a vibrant, yet violent, pan-Mediterranean culture, sometimes Muslim, sometimes Christian, yet always, always, looking East.

_____
[1] Not necessarily Muslim suicide bombings; one could easily apply the same standards to IRA bombings in the 1980s.

Summer Reading Reviews, Part 5:
Europe and the Mystique of Islam

Maxime Rodinson. Europe and the Mystique of Islam. 1980. Tr. Roger Venius. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987. Pp xv, 163. Paper, $26.95.

Maxime Rodinson's Europe and the Mystique of Islam is a work in two parts. The first is an examination of the origins of Orientalism, especially the medieval fascination with and fear of their Muslim neighbors. The second is a call to change in Oriental studies. Both parts evoke and enter into a dialog with Said's Orientalism, and overall, by taking a longer historical view, Rodinson improves on Said's classic investigation, especially in Orientalism's origins with and applications for the medieval. Rodinson notes that "the image of Islam was not drawn simply from the crusades, as some have maintained, but rather from the Latin Christian world's gradually developing ideological unity" (7). He traces various contacts between the Muslim and Christian worlds, then argues that a gradual change from fear to fascination came about in the West's perception of Islam, derived from "the increase in factual information about Islam and the Muslim world, the steady growth of actual contacts through both political and commercial relations, and even the mutual respect that was the occasional result of these experiences" (24). He also roots some notions of tolerance in the encounter with the Mongols, another, even less Christian people beyond Islam. Thus, in the mid-13^th century, "the feeling that Islam shared the same basic concept of religious monotheism with Christianity was reinforced; it was a notion that recurred earlier only fleetingly" (28-9).

Rodinson argues that the eventual shift away from European intolerance toward the Muslim resulted in a gradual rise in the interest for "the Orient" as a thing to be studied. This in turn led to the rise of Orientalism, which in seeking to understand or quantify Muslim behavior, slowly dehumanized its object of study. In a certain sense, then, this relativism is unfortunate, for it led to the idea that the studied may be controlled—and thus to imperialism. So it goes.

One gets the sense, watching Rodinson sift through the differing western interpretations of Islam, that "the Orient," or indeed "Islam," changes depending on who is looking at it; much like Terry Eagleton's discussion of "the aesthetic" as a discreet category, "all that is solid melts into air," and we are left to face the idea that any human creation is constantly being recreated. This is an unexpected moment of Post-structuralist navel-gazing, but not surprising for a book originally written in the late 70's in France. What such a notion—"The Orient" is a flexible category—tells us is that the Orient is never a thing in itself, but a speculum societatis, no more real than yet just as polemical as Tacitius' Germans or Harriot's Virginians.

Unfortunately, the majority of these moments occur in the first half of the book; the second half of the book is interesting largely to professional Orientalists, and may in fact be out-of-date in some areas; after all, the call to action he provides is a quarter-century old, and surely in a field that contains such critics as Maria Rosa Menocal, some work has been done toward change.

Summer Reading Reviews, Part 4:
Arab Historians of the Crusades

Francesco Gabrieli. Arab Historians of the Crusades. Tr. E. J. Costello. New York: Dorset Press, 1989. Pp xxxvi, 362. $7.95.

It's a short review this time around, for time reasons, and also because the book is pretty straightforward. Gabrieli presents us with selections from the major Islamic historians of the Crusades, translated and given explanatory footnotes as needed. Overall it does what it says on the box: Gabrieli constructs a continuous narrative of the Muslim world's reaction to the rather sudden and unprovoked invasion of Syria in the 11th century CE, and its continuing invention of ways to drive the Franks out. It's worth noting that, in contrast to the hyperbole of such works as Chanson de Roland, most of the historians here are rational and level-headed, with outbursts limited to lines like "the Franks—God damn them—invaded Syria" and similar quick condescensions . Some sources do attribute disgusting practices to the Franks—such as ibn Al-Athir's account of Roger of Sicily's rhetorical farting techniques—and some, like 'Imad Ad-Din, are impressive as works of art but disappointingly unwilling to compromise.

The world from which they write is remarkably, though perhaps not surprisingly, strong: it is a world of those who are rational as well as faithful, able to see that the recapturing of Jerusalem is as much a matter of military planning as God's will. Many of the historians see right through the Christians' propaganda—miracle discoveries of lances and cross pieces are shown for the carefully planned tricks they no doubt were. The Franks come off most of the time as quite human: one can praise Raymond of Tripoli, but fully and rightly despise the treachery of Reynald de Chatillon. The overall impression of the work is one of openness, tolerance, and a society in which even barbarians may be given the benefit of the doubt. Whether this arises from the selection, arrangement, and translation of certain pieces, or of the pieces themselves, I cannot say for certain, but the present work is quite useful toward repairing the popular memory of the crusades.

Weird Little Kids
(an AP scoring report)
originally written 15:15 CST, 18 June 2007

Ninety percent of the time, I don't mind flying. Ten percent of the time, however, I genuinely despite it and spend hours dreaming of a coast-to-coast, high-speed rail network, like British Rail on crack. The reason for this is simple: as I write this—by hand, since network time is expensive—I am on hour six of what should have been a two-hour layover and, as of this morning, still was. However right as we got on the bus at six (EST), we discovered that the 10:40 flight to DFW had been inexplicably canceled. Cue frantic attempts to reschedule, a hassle-up at TSA scanning which cost me half a bottle each of shampoo, conditioner, and toothpaste as well as a Leatherman I'd had since high school, and a literal run to the terminal to get on at the last second. As I say, I've been in DFW since 10:00 local time, which means, considering I woke up at 3:00 EST this morning, that I've been up for fourteen hours. Currently I ache in strange places, like the bottom of my feet or the inside of my biceps, and I'm starting to feel a bit like a Donestre, and may in fact eat someone and weep over their head if I don't get to sleep on the plane. [1]

However, this comes at the end of an otherwise wonderful week. Amalie and David sold it well: you do a lot of what amounts to grindingly repetitive though mildly amusing work, and then you're on the beach or in the bar by five. The food is institutional yet plentiful—like "gluttony popcorn," it didn't taste good but there was plenty of it. [2] Most of the people are great (hello to Shirl Chumley, Grimsley Graham, Joan Snyder, and the lovely Melissa Vosen), and the few who aren't are easily avoided.

I think I'm allowed to talk about the questions now that the scoring is over, but I'll be circumspect anyway. Before I go on, let me say that it's highly likely that everything between the next sentence and the three # signs is the property of Educational Testing Services; I believe, however, that posting these anonymously and without any personal gain other than a good laugh is fair use, but if it isn't, contact me and I'll be glad to remove any offending material.
That said, I was assigned to question 3, which asked students to take a position on the ethics of offering incentives for charitable donations, such as bonus points in class for donations. Most of the kids were okay, but some were strange. . .

• Charity is something that is always willing to take the extra change off your hands, is willing to have you come over and fix that hole in the wall free of charge, and would love to sit and talk about how many touchdowns you scored, back in the day.
• If (hypothetically) there were two objects teetering equally balanced on a mountain, one is a suitcase full of money, the other is an infant, which would you grab?
• Although in the twenty-first century we may claim to be sophisticated, we are no better than our ancestral thieves.
• If children are engaging in this sort of sacrifice for an A+, I personally fail to see how this is less degrading or dehumanizing than a young woman exploiting her body for a better grade.
• On the surface the group opposed to this exchange may be more attractive, more magnetic to your north and south poles. But before you go welcoming in Santa Claus, make sure it's not a wolf in gramma's clothes.
• At my school, one of the clubs required its members to sell two bags of onions for a charity or they would not be allowed to return next year. (Frankly, anything that gets you out of the Soviet Poland club is probably a good idea. -- ed)
• More often than not, moms and dads resort to a trail of stickers that leads to a prize. I remember sitting on the toilet for hours to get a tic-tac. Well, two if it was number two.

. . . while others were just confused. . .

• I was thought [sic] that if you do it out of your own will, with the goodness of your heart, you don't need a reward because the reward was the goodness you inflicted [sic].
• As I started applying to colleges, I milked the Darfur cow until I was accepted.
• It is a dark and dreary night. (opening sentence)
• Not everyone is going to be as kindhearted or generous as Boo Radley or the woman at the county fair.
• Ethics is a simple but yet [sic] complicated thing. It has so many sides to it's [sic] coin. Ethics is a world wide thing. Some if not most people say ethics just disturbs the natural order of things. I guess I'm just one of those such people. Ethics just bother me.

. . . while still others were filled with useful knowledge. . .

• Humans are regretfully greedy.
• Incentives for charity began when people figured out that people are human, and humans are not "selfless" (generally speaking).
• George Washington risked his life at war, lived among the other soldiers, and defeated the enemy. Benjamin Franklin sat on [sic] a room for hours, in order to develop the Bill of Rights.
• Charity has changed from its humble beginnings as a beggar on the street.
• There are many all over the world who are in need. There are also those who are well-endowed and need no help at all.
• The ethics of this or any debate can rage on for decades.
  

Also, I'm to pass along this: "I ♥ Mr. McBride. Y'all should give him a raise." Lucky you, Mr. McBride.

I scored 1087 essays or 0.38% of the total number of essays. Of that, 14 students used the word "donator" instead of "donor,"[3] four opened by comparing charity to love (a correct assertion, etymologically speaking) five suggested by name classical or operant conditioning, four suggested the moral position of "tzedakah" (two of them effectively), seven mentioned pride and Prejudice, four mentioned Clueless, another four mentioned the episode of Friends in which Phoebe tries to do a charitable act without getting something in return, seven believed andrew Carnegie "invented charity," and five confessed to being Eagle Scouts (two confessed to having gotten their Girl Guides Gold Awards, though not in the same essay as the Eagle Scouts).

# # #

Anyway, that's my AP scoring report. I'm about halfway through Arab Historians of the Crusades, and will finish it just as soon as I have a brain again. I've also been tapped to teach ENGL 2303, Survey of English Literature to the 17th Century, in Summer II, instead of WLIT 1113. I hope to get the book tomorrow or Thursday and have all that planned out.

More as it develops. Today will be spent doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, shopping, and watching some Doctor Who.
__________
[1] As it happened, no-one had the seat next to me, and I had a nice and restful flight until we got ready to deplane and discovered the jetway was broken, and we had to be towed to another gate. I nearly cried.
[2] This refers to a story I've now lost track of, originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction sometime in the nineties, concerning a young Jesus who tries out for little league. Anyone who can find that story gets a bribe.
[3] I'm not sure this is a real word, but if it were, it would by etymology mean "someone who has been given as a gift."

I believe the word is "bleurg"

I'm back from scoring AP exams in Florida. I wrote a report, which I'll post tomorrow when I have a brain again and my arms stop hurting from schlepping my luggage around.

For now, I'm thinking shower, as soon as Joni Mitchell's done singing "This Flight Tonight," which has been in my head but not on my mp3 player all week.