Update! Thirteenth Century England XV Online

I note from Björn Weiler’s academia.edu page that you can now access the full program and registration documents for the upcoming 15th Thirteenth Century England conference online via the Royal Historical Society.

• Programme here
• Registration form here

Go for your lives!

I, Me, We, Us

I’ve been puzzling over a conundrum which, perhaps unsurprisingly, has me speculating about medieval language choices. This is the thorny issue of pronouns, specifically, the matter of I and me. It’s not difficult these days to summon up any number of illustrative examples of these little but important words being misused with abandon. Here’s a quote, for example, from the Australian Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Penny Wong, on the topic of same-sex couple parenting: “I do not regret that our daughter has Sophie and I as her parents.” I’m not intending to discuss the gay marriage issue on this occasion. Instead I want to throw out some thoughts on the implications of the common grammatical error of using I as an object. (Senator Wong is merely a useful illustration of how widespread this particular mistake is in Australian – and perhaps other English-speaking – cultures.)

I used to think about this as merely a matter of inaccuracy or lack of education. Knowledge is certainly part of the matrix. My own ‘vernacular’ practice is, I admit, rather variable. The difference between subject and object wasn’t something covered in English classes at my school, and I doubt very much that I was unusual in that experience. My only childhood memory of any ‘discussion’ of the difference is my father interjecting ‘Andrew and I!’, ‘mum and I!’ whenever I used ‘me’ in such combinations. (Sometimes, in retrospect, even when I was originally correct… Sorry, dad!) I only really grasped the distinction when I began to learn Latin as a University student, and even now I sometimes slip, especially in casual conversation. But reflecting on the matter recently – as a result of marking a large number of undergraduate essays – I realised that there are also many other factors at play. For one thing, there is a complicated socially embedded bias against using ‘me’, especially in combination with other individuals. ‘Me and Jane’ (or ‘Jane and me’) seems to smack of a sort of lower class patois that must be avoided at all costs if one intends to sound educated, sophisticated and culturally aware: somehow this sensation remains, even when the sentence is “Anna bought matching watches for me and Jane”, which is, of course, grammatically correct.^[1] I can’t trace the origins of this emotional reaction to language, but it is as if ‘me’ intrudes itself too much upon our notice in a sentence to be considered quite polite. Perhaps ‘I’, by virtue of its particular phonemic resonances, is less obtrusive, less overt, more self-deprecating than ‘me’? Maybe because of the ways that ‘me’ is stereotypically misused as a subject among the less educated, it has acquired connotations of general linguistic impropriety? (Conversely, as The Atlantic recently informed us, the pronoun whom is undergoing an inexorable decline because “Correctness is significantly less appealing when its price is the appearance of being—as an editor at The Guardian wrote—a ‘pompous twerp.’”. So, clearly, wanting to appear educated or at least of a middling-to-upper socio-economic background isn’t the only factor at work in the sociology of language choice. And I doubt I’m telling you anything you didn’t know there!^[2])

In other words, the use or abuse of I and me reflect not only our level of education in grammatical theory, but also how desirable it is in a given social context to perform that education, also taking into account the particular social, cultural and emotional baggage that adheres to individual lemmas of our vocabulary.

So where’s the medieval parallel? Well, in connection with this I have been thinking about the development of the plural as a form of polite address. Grammatically speaking, it’s all wrong: when there is a single subject the subject and verb ought to be singular. For some reason, however, kings of England (and elsewhere) in the high middle ages began to be represented in writing with ‘the royal We’. By the thirteenth century, they also sometimes addressed single subjects with plural pronouns and verbs, as in the formula vobis mandamus quatenus faciatis, which, for the sake of making the point, I will translate as ‘we command yous that yous should do [whatever]!’.^[3]

When I made the point in a paper at Leeds a few years back^[4] that it seemed significant when kings of this period decided not to use the plural pronoun in their commands, instead instructing subjects with versions of the phrase precipimus tibi quatenus facias, it emerged in comments that some scholars working on earlier periods didn’t see why this would be rhetorically important. In their sources, tibi simply indicated that the command was addressed to one person, vobis that there must have been more than one. Their impression was that I simply hadn’t quoted the whole thing and that multiple addressees were in fact involved. But no! Rather, as I replied at the time, the use of the plural was associated with dignity, status, and respect. It was less about the grammar accurately reflecting the number of subjects or objects to hand than it was about expressing the gamut of associated social meaning.

It seems from a cursory glance at earlier medieval sources that this developed into a standard practice sometime in the mid to late twelfth century (although I would be eager to hear of earlier examples). It’s intriguing that this is also a period in which many other means of defining and demarcating the distinctions between social ranks are also emerging and solidifying. What I ask myself, in light of my musings over the modern grammar of colloquial English, is whether medieval authors were completely aware of these changes at work, or if they too, in their turn, were sometimes mystified by the use of language that seemed technically incorrect. I open the floor for yous to discuss it…

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[1] Conversely, coming into contact with a large number of manual and trade workers through my other half’s work, I am sometimes astonished to hear myself beginning sentences with pearls like “Me and my sister went…”. There’s some kind of chameleonic essence to my language use that I’ve never been able to shake. As a child I reportedly spoke a broad Glaswegian brogue with my school mates and would turn around in my chair and translate into ‘Australian’ for mum and dad on request, while recently on a visit to the States I was asked if I had been born there when my accent started to ‘tune in’ to the local cadences apparently of its own accord. Fitting in is what I do.
[2] Although I am making a personal stand to bring ‘whom’ back into correct usage, and hang the accusations of twerpery. (Twerpery? Twerpitude? Hmm…) Students who use whom correctly in essays for me get bonus smiley faces in the margins. True story.
[3] Which reminds me of my favourite line in that great Australian film, Two Hands, if you will excuse me… Young thug: “Yous two are f***in dead!” (Sees two police officers walking past.) “Nah, not yous two.”
[4] ‘To dictate or delegate? The language of governance in English royal letters, 1272–1307’, given at International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 13 July 2010.

Books

My recent purchases have just arrived! This calls for celebration… and planning of future projects.

An image to make my heart sing…

 

Word of the Day III: Apotropaic

apotropaic (adj.):  Having or reputed to have the power of averting evil influence or ill luck.^[1]

I found this great word in Magistra et Mater’s report on a recent IHR seminar by Annette Kehnel, here. I recommend it to you (the post that is, not just the word) together with many other interesting posts to be found there.

In this report Magistra discusses Annette’s paper which examined the role of humility/humiliation in ritual behaviour during medieval royal inaugurations. I was particularly struck by the suggested apotropaic use of such rituals in political display and the way in which looking at ritual this way seems to demand a collapse of the humility/humiliation distinction. Presumably the voluntary humiliation of a public figure, such as in the cited example of kings of Ulster reportedly mating with a white mare,^[2] would, in this light, be part of what protects him/her from later criticisms of pride, of acting without church/community/peer authorization, and so forth. But is humbling oneself, for instance, by bowing the head before an archbishop, really the same as being humiliated?

What do you think? Are they the same or different? And does it matter for the proposed evil-averting intention of the ritual?

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[1] Oxford English Dictionary <http://www.oed.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/view/Entry/9475?redirectedFrom=apotropaic#eid&gt; [accessed 28 February 2013].
[2]Warning! Gerald of Wales reference! There may be serious questions over whether such ritual activity can or should be taken as given… There is also the question of whether, assuming Gerald’s report stands, we should also assume such behaviour was considered humiliating in an early medieval Irish context… But I digress.

Ritual, State and Lordship: Registration Open

Here’s a meeting that I shall be attending, although not, at this stage, presenting at, owing to the possibly ambitious list of things to which I’m already committed over the next three or four months. (What; me, bite off more than I can chew? Never!) The line up looks superb, so I’m very much looking forward to listening and absorbing. Registration is now open, and more details are here: http://events.history.ac.uk/event/show/9753

Ritual, State & Lordship

The conference will take place on 16 July 2013 at the New College of the Humanities, London, between 0900 and 1830. Registration cost: £5 for students/£10 for salaried attendees, to be paid on the day. In order to register please email the organisers at RitualsConference@hotmail.co.uk no later than 7 July.

Organisers: Lars Kjær (NCH), Levi Roach (Exeter), Sophie Ambler (KCL)

Bjorn Weiler (Aberystwyth): Introductory Remarks

Charles Insley (Manchester): Ottonians with Pipe Rolls?  Kingship and Symbolic Action in the Kingdom of the English

Levi Roach (Exeter): Full of Sound and Theory Signifying Nothing? Social Anthropology and the “Late Anglo-Saxon State”

Benjamin Wild (Sherborne): King Henry III and the Power of Aesthetics: Art & Ceremony in Thirteenth-Century England

Sophie Ambler (KCL): Making and Re-Making the King: the Ritual power of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Thirteenth-Century England

Christopher Tilley (KCL): “Communities of the Mind”: Ritual and Perception of Collective Political Identity in Thirteenth-Century England

Kenneth Duggan (KCL): The Ritualistic Importance of Gallows in England in the High Middle Ages

Lars Kjær (NCH): Hunting, Sociability and the Experience of Royal Favour

Nicholas Vincent (UEA): Concluding Remarks

Gratuitous Palm Sunday Goodness

Morning all! Some gratuitous medieval eye and ear candy for you this fine day.

From the ‘Très Riches Heures’ of the Duc de Berry, fol v.173. The Office for Palm Sunday, “Domine ne longe facias”. Musée Condé, Chantilly, France. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

The Office for Palm Sunday, presented here in a famous and beautiful early 15th-century Book of Hours, reads:

domine ne longe facias auxilium tuum a me ad defensionem meam aspice: libera me de ore leonis et a cornibus unicornum humilitatem meam. deus deus meus respice in me: quare me dereliquisti? longe a salute mea verba delictorum meorum.^[1]

And here is the office being sung…

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[1] O Lord, remove not Thy help to a distance from me, look towards my defence: save me from the lion’s mouth, and my lowness from the horns of the unicorns. O God, my God! look on me, why hast Thou forsaken me? Far from my salvation are the words of my sins.

Medieval Catalonia comes to Melbourne

It seems to be a trope of academic blogging to begin by apologising for one’s extended absence from the airwaves. So much so that it actually reminds me of the medieval monk (any medieval monk) who knew that the only way to begin a treatise was by insisting on his inadequacy for the task. Right; so we’ll consider that done and move on.

It’s not anything to do with the thirteenth century, or England, but it is still rather exciting that Jonathan Jarrett of A Corner of Tenth Century Europe (among other things) is going to be in Melbourne and talking about new work on the evening of 3rd April. So if you are around, come along. But let me know – because if the audience really starts to swell I am going to need to book a bigger room! We shall also be wining and dining Dr Jarrett at a local eatery afterwards, and you are welcome to join us provided you indicate your intentions in advance. A rather spiffy poster of which I am quite proud is here for you to download and print as a memento, and/or to promote the thing at your home institution should you wish.

Fundamental texts in Medieval Studies

What do you buy for a bibliophile?

I’m in a happy position, but it’s complicated. I’ve got a *massive* book voucher to spend on anything I want. But what do I want? Not novels… I already own many hundreds more than I will probably ever find the time to read, and I have access to the even more substantial fiction collections of various family members. I want to spend my loot on something meaningful, and so this morning I’m pondering what exactly are the fundamental texts that any medievalist worth her or his salt ought to own. I already have my own copy of Lewis & Short’s Latin Dictionary – a lucky find on the Blackwell’s second-hand shelf about a decade ago; I own Latham’s Medieval Latin from British and Irish Sources; I’ve got one and a half sets of Tout’s Chapters in the administrative history of mediaeval England, and both medieval volumes from the English Historical Documents series; if you’ve been reading closely you know that I recently acquired Powicke on King Henry III and the Lord Edward, and I already have his The Thirteenth Century — another lucky second-hand find in York a couple of years back; I’ve also got both the earlier and later medieval volumes of the much more recent Social History of England, and a miscellany of royal biographies… In fact I have four full-height bookshelves of assorted medieval ‘stuff’, but I’m sure there are things I don’t have that I ought.

What would you do? Get something shiny and new, reflecting up-to-date scholarship? Or invest in the big reference tomes like the New Cambridge Medieval History? Primary sources? Readers for undergraduate teaching ideas? Specialist works? General surveys? What are the indisputable must-haves on your list? I need some inspiration, because for some perverse reason it’s much harder to know what to do with windfalls when they fall, than it is to dream about what you would do with the money when you haven’t any!

[Edit: it turns out it's quite difficult, nay, impossible, to get second hand volumes through this outlet, so we're looking at stuff that's still in print on this occasion, folks...]

Thirteenth Century England XV

It’s official! Details of the fifteenth Thirteenth Century England conference have just been released and I’m happy to pass them on to you, dear reader. I’m not so happy that having spent most of July in the UK it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll be able to make it back again in September, because it looks like a corker. If you can be there, enjoy, and I shall be there in spirit…

Oh, and if anyone would like the registration form and full program, just email me or post a comment and I’ll be happy to forward them on. Sadly, they don’t seem to want attach to this post!

Thirteenth Century England XV: Authority and Resistance in the Age of Magna Carta

2–5 September, 2013

Aberystwyth & Lampeter

Conveners: Janet Burton, Phillipp Schofield, Björn Weiler

• Helen Birkett (Exeter), Visions of Power: Authority and Religious Identity in Cistercian Exempla
• Richard Cassidy (London), Bad sheriffs, custodial sheriffs, and control of the counties
• Judith Collard (Otago), Visual representation of authority in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris
• Peter Coss (Cardiff), On what authority (if any) did knights revolt in the thirteenth century?
• Rhun Emlyn (Aberystwyth), Graduates and Authority during the Conquest of Wales
• Ian Forrest (Oxford), Sources of Power in the Thirteenth Century
• Beth Hartland (Glasgow), Rebellion and the North in the thirteenth century
• Katherine Harvey (London), A Disputed Episcopal Election in Thirteenth Century Winchester, 1238-44
• Philippa Hoskin (Lincoln), Bishops and rebellion: theory and practice in the mid-thirteenth century
• Jennifer Jahner (Pasadena), Polity, Privilege and Voice: Political Poetry in the Age of Magna Carta
• Melissa Jones (Cardiff), Family Strategy or Personal Principles? The Cantilupes in the reign of Henry III
• Owain Wyn Jones (Bangor), The ‘Oes Gwrtheyrn’ chronicle
• Fergus Oakes (Glasgow), King’s Men without the King: Royalist Castle Garrison Resistance between the Battles of Lewes and Evesham
• John Sabapathy (London), Innocent III’s Political Thinking on Questioning and Resisting Authority
• Sita Steckel (Münster), Voicing resistance. Arguments against the mendicants in England and France
• Katherine Sykes (Oxford), Regulating religious women in the age of Magna Carta

This is more or less what Aberystwyth looked like the last time I was there… This time let’s hope the drama is in the research rather than the weather. (Photo from aberystwythguide.org.uk)

Postscript

And another thing… This:

Skeleton recently identified as that of Richard III

seems to answer a question that has been at the back of my mind since high school. Viz., whether the king really had a physical deformity, or whether this was all so much Tudor rhetoric. Given that it seems the former was the case (i.e. skeletal analysis shows evidence of scoliosis; they haven’t just laid it out oddly to make it *look* hunch-backed), it raises an important point that isn’t necessarily new but possibly in need of restating:

The academic world, or perhaps the world in general, has an excessive tendency to regard historical reportage, particularly in medieval and ancient texts which are already highly ‘othered’, as metaphorical, mythic, exaggerated, or just plain baloney. I see this as having been intensified by the linguistic turn, at which point historians everywhere suddenly realised (or at least articulated) that language is/was a manipulable and fallible vehicle for the ‘truth’ about historical pasts. This theoretical inheritance puts us at risk, occasionally, of throwing the baby of historical depth and complexity out with the bath-water of Whiggish certainty. The king’s remains remind me that sometimes or rather, also, the most politicized and rhetorical of texts can reflect observed realities, and we really should be working harder to keep both our trust and our cynicism –if that’s the word I want– in constant dialogue when approaching the past.

No doubt there’s more to say, but I’m still digesting this, and I refuse to be rushed…