OUP changing contracts for academic books to "work for hire" terms?

Reblogged from Blogenspiel:

If you are reading this blog, this piece might be of interest. I heard about it via Steve Muhlberger. Given the extortionate prices of OUP’s books already — or extortionate compared to my salary, at least — this is especially outrageous. I love some of OUP’s textbooks. I really love the John Arnold Very Short Introduction to History. I’m less willing to use OUP, and now really have no wish to publish with them (not that it’s likely) if this is what they are up to.

Read more… 34 more words

This is disturbing. Not that Oxford is going to be asking me to publish anything. What's troubling is that I've seen terms which state that a press retains academic rights while still leaving the author with something. I like OUP books (among other things, for the most part they still have real genuine footnotes at the bottom of pages) and am going to have to figure out what this does for my purchasing habits. The kicker is, I'm not sure how different this is from what they already have - the terms I've received already stipulate press rights to publication in print and digital form but at least they leave you something, such as the ability to copy your own work to use in a class or program (this may still constitute fair use or do these terms specifically sign that away too?).

 

A Different Sort of Christmas Present

I’ve mentioned before how, after not receiving something I really want for Christmas I typically go splurge on something for myself.

This year’s “present for me” takes this to a whole new level and is something I think I can only really capture through song.

With apologies to Don Gardner.

Every body pauses and stares at me
My walk is a lurch as you can see
I don’t know just who to blame for this catastrophe!
But my one wish on Christmas Eve is as plain as it can be!

All I want for Christmas
is my new left hip,
my new left hip,
see my new left hip!

Gee, if I could only
have my new left hip,
then I could wish you
“Merry Christmas.”

It seems so long since I could climb,
Teotihuacan pyramids!
Gosh oh gee, how happy I’d be,
if I could only saunter

All I want for Christmas
is my new left hip,
my new left hip,
see my new left hip.

Gee, if I could only
have my new left hip,
then I could wish you
“Merry Christmas!”

My office chair is not yet terribly comfortable so posts will have to wait for a bit. I suppose I could move my laptop elsewhere and type something up but at the moment the process of unhooking and hooking up the cables, crawling under the desk to unplug stuff, etc., seems a bit daunting.

 

Electronic Submissions

This post won’t have much medieval in it, I’m afraid, and will likely have a lot of stream-of-consciousness to it (can’t say for sure at the time of this first line – I’ll know better once I finish think-typing). I read two interesting articles recently. In Speculum Alex J. Novikoff discusses Lanfranc, Anselm and the monastery of Bec and how they influenced intellectual thought and, specifically, the rise of scholarly dispute as a source of philosophical and intellectual inquiry. 1 This is a very interesting article and one which fits in well with a paper by Justin Lake I heard at Kalamazoo last year, but it’s not a topic I know much about, certainly not enough to comment. As an aside, I should thank the Medieval Academy for continuing to send me Speculum even though I chose not to renew my membership this year.

The May edition of EME is out with an article by Levi Roach on evidence for ritual in late Anglo-Saxon diplomas. 2 Again, interesting stuff but not something I’m qualified to discuss.

What did interest me is this notice on the Wiley online EME page: “Early Medieval Europe has now adopted ScholarOne Manuscripts, for online manuscript submission and peer review.” I don’t believe I’ve seen this before from them.

This is a good thing. It’s 21st century, greener (probably), certainly quicker and, if the site gives you a receipt, means things won’t be lost in the mail when those pesky international address codes trip you up (or when mail delivery does the tripping). I’ve often wondered why the exhibit (AKA book) hall at The International Congress for Medieval Studies isn’t wired so we can pay for books electronically. You can use CC, they just pull out the old 5-lb machine and mechanically swipe your card, complete with a paper copy. Old School. And definitely not greener. I’ve often thought a nice way for me to actually stay within a budget would be to put so much money on my debit card, pay for books that way, and when the card tells me (and the vendor) that I’ve used up my allowance, I can quit. I’m disregarding the fact (and based on my personal history it is a fact) that I would then pull out a CC and pay for it and all subsequent purchases that way. I’ve heard of people with a gambling addiction. I’ve never had that problem but when it comes to books, well, let’s just say that Kalamazoo is my Vegas.

Back to the point of this post, if there is a point (see what happens with stream-of-consciousness? Maybe I should just title this post, “Dear Diary”), ten years or so ago when I worked with younger folks I was interested in studies which showed that kids who spent substantial time using computers from an early age showed minute changes in brain development when compared with those of us who spent our early years looking at paper. At the time, the research didn’t feel these changes were good or bad, just different. The studies (this is long enough in “the ago” that I can’t cite anything, sorry) postulated that for the rest of their lives these kids would be better able to absorb and process information they found on a computer screen than us dinosaurs. Conversely, dinosaurs would always have an advantage with paper. And I am a dinosaur – my first ever use of a computer was using Basic in college and I was a member of the last class at Cornell to use punch cards in our computer class (PLC/PL1, IIRC). To this day I steer clear of electronic reading devices such as Kindle and Nook and if I read an article online that interests me, not only do I save it to my PC but I print it off to read more closely.

Now that I’ve vaguely wandered all over, even into brain development, my point is that electronic submission can be a good thing, so long as it remembers us dinosaurs. I’ve had to submit things where the site had messages such as,

You are not able to save your work on this site. Do not begin entry until you are able to submit. Clicking the “save” button will irrevocably commit you to fulfilling requirements which may be grammatically and, possibly, even logically incorrect.

Or something like that.

Er, GULP!

They’ve gotten better at it. I recently (due March 15) submitted an abstract to present a paper at a national conference where you could save your work and were instructed not to submit until you were sure you had your act together. I’m not sure if it held your hand enough to where it would tell you if you exceeded the 250-word limit. However it still had two flaws. First, it did not give me a receipt on submission – I have nothing except my good name to wave around if, three weeks before the conference I ask someone, “What did you think of my proposal?” and get a response, “What proposal?” The second, probably less critical, is it did not offer me an option to view my proposal as it would appear to a reviewer. I could (and did) save it to a Word document but the dinosaur in me always wants to know how what I write, however small, will look in print. I like the little “view” option even though I can do that myself through copy/paste/PDF-it.

Electronic submissions are a good thing but folks need to make sure they’re set up correctly. For me, electronic submissions are less “green” than you may imagine because I end up with multiple drafts and print each one off to examine for content and style (readers are by this time likely wishing I’d done the same for this post). And you absolutely need a receipt system. I have no idea what the EME system includes. I have not and will in all probability never submit to them. Maybe it has all this but in case someone involved in electronic submissions (for EME or anyone) runs across this post, please make sure the process isn’t simple just for the submittee, but for the submittor.

As for my proposal, haven’t heard a thing, not even an e-mail that the committee has received it. I’d like to find out. For one thing, if it’s accepted, all my expenses will be paid by an organization. If not I have to start begging from multiple folks (I’m sort of locked into going since I volunteered to staff a booth for a couple of shifts). Begging is best done early, before budgets run out. Also, the conference is in early August, less than 4 months from now. It won’t be long before that turns into “next week” and while I know my topic, it would be nice to be working on the presentation now in my spare time.

1 Alex J. Novikoff, “Anselm, Dialogue, and the Rise of Scholastic Disputation,” Speculum 86 (2011), 387-418.

2 Levi Roach, “Public rites and public wrongs: ritual aspects of diplomas in tenth- and eleventh-century England,” Early Medieval Europe 19 (2011), 182-203.

 

Time Management I

This will have very little Medieval content and contains much more information about my personal life than I am planning to habitually post but it may interest some people.

My TV blew up yesterday afternoon. I’m not a huge television watcher. I have exactly two network TV shows I try to watch every week with three others I try to catch but am not disappointed when I miss them. I watch the local news at home in the morning – always – and often in the evening. “Watch” may be too strong of a term. Generally I’m on the computer with the TV serving as background noise and if something catches my interest I’ll look into the living room to catch it. And here’s the biggie – I watch football (American) on Sunday afternoons. I’m also a fan of the NCAA basketball tournament each March.

Cable doesn’t run where I live and I haven’t bought a dish. I get exactly two stations – the local NBC and CBS affiliates. Actually those are 5 stations because the CBS affiliate also has a radar site and the NBC has a local weather network and Universal Sports. So my television watching is already minimal. Also, while I have high speed internet this is through a wireless phone company receiver (there’s likely a technical term for this – I call it my, “USB Internet phone thingy”) with a data limit so watching over the Internet is not an option.

Still, not having it leaves a hole. After some consideration, I’ve decided not to replace it, at least for the short term. I’m going to live two weeks television free, with an option on permanence.

This will change my life habits. I like having background noise. TV used to do that even when what was on was garbage. Right now I have NPR on (tried several stations and didn’t like ‘em) but this won’t work for a long-term solution. I have CD’s of stuff I like in the car and am not packing that in and out of the house. I think I’m gonna go classical indoors. I’ll leave Pink Floyd, The Who, Led Zeppelin, etc., in the car. I also have XM radio in the car and am debating a receiver inside but as of this moment I’m staying away from that.

The one negative of no TV is that every now and then, probably every 3-4 weeks, I want to completely veg in mindless non-reflection. You may think football fits that description but I usually have a good history book on the coffee table, start off reading it during commercials and end up reading it and only watching football when an announcer sounds excited/during key moments. My mindless vegetative state is achieved by, almost always on a Friday evening, renting 2-3 DVD’s of dubious quality which I won’t much care about if I fall asleep during. Did that this week and yesterday morning I was completely refreshed. I think this aspect of my life is worth keeping. Some people meditate, I watch bad movies. And very occasionally, I watch one I think might be good.

So this is something I need to deal with – but there is a solution. I have a laptop at home with a 22″ screen. I could buy a larger screen for the living room and, when I want to watch a movie, hook the laptop to it. I don’t think watching movies in my office is an option – this is my total mindless relaxation time and the chair doesn’t cut it; neither does moving the recliner in here – the floor’s already covered with books. Though having a 32″ or larger screen to work on has a sinister appeal.

So this brings me to reading. I already read a lot. Almost everything I read at home is on Medieval History – exceptions are my subscriptions to Discover and National Geographic. When I first started reading history I took breaks from the Middle Ages by reading fiction. Today I take breaks from reading about Late Antiquity, Early Medieval and Classical (usually on early Christianity) by reading something Medieval from out of my period which I don’t feel compelled to take copious notes on.

I expect my reading will increase and that I’ll read more productively. I also anticipate exercising more and being more productive around home; at the very least on Sunday afternoons. Possibly I’ll start working on my languages again – I’m in Mexico for 9 days next April and my Spanish needs to be serviceable by then.

The week after Thanksgiving I’m going to take stock. The hole left by the departure of my television may have closed by then – or it may not. If not, I’ll re-subject my home to low grade (likely harmless) radiation. If it has, I’ll likely throw in a follow-up to this post explaining the (I hope) improvements this has made in my life. For the moment though, it’s on to the books.

 

Medieval Movies

More correctly I should probably title this, “Movies About the Middle Ages” but hopefully people don’t think I’m promoting the idea that a film-making industry existed during the Medieval period.

The motivation for this is a recent post by Steve Muhlberger about historical movies. This was excellent – I really enjoyed Paul Halsall’s article which Steve included.

I spend a lot of time thinking about public perceptions of the Middle Ages. There are a lot of misconceptions out there. Some are pretty simple and easily countered if you find someone willing to listen, such as the Agincourt “Pluck Yew” story, (this is still a really cool story – I wish it were true!) or that Medievals engaged in mass infanticide when girls were born. Others are more complex, sometimes because historians haven’t exactly figured things out (exactitude in history is relative anyway), or because it’s a matter of, “it was true in some places and times but you shouldn’t generalize this to cover all of Western Europe for a millennium,” such as people thinking of The Church as some sort of monolithic, power-hungry, repressive agency which actively discouraged intellectual thought and discovery. You can find specific instances where this last happened and if you decided to write every case down it would look pretty impressive (sort of like if I made a list of Stupid Things I did before the Age of Twenty-five) but overall it doesn’t work. This would take a series of posts to go through, or more – books have been written about it. I suggest David Lindberg’s The Beginnings of Western Science as a good starting point for this one.

Part of this whole issue is related to the role of modern popular depictions. These encompass a wide realm of forms including web pages, “popular” histories, historical fiction – and movies. I haven’t devoted a lot of time to this because, quite frankly, historical fiction doesn’t interest me and I haven’t read a lot of the popular histories – in order to critique I should read it. 1

I’ve come up with something of a mantra for all of these; If a book/movie/web page gets people interested in the period, it’s a net positive. If it’s the last thing they ever read/watch and leaves them with a bunch of misconceptions, it probably isn’t. That’s why a book like A World Lit Only by Fire is so bad – I can’t see where William Manchester’s depiction of the period would encourage anyone to engage in further study. OTOH, a lot of people have said that Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror was one of the first things they read and it helped inspire them to further study. The errors of fact and characterization historians point to in this don’t seem to be so egregious as to be beyond correcting.

One of the areas I haven’t critiqued is that of film. I haven’t always felt that way. When I first saw Braveheart I quickly learned NOT to watch these in a theater but wait for the DVD (VHS back then). I spent the entire movie mumbling under my breath how Isabella was 10 when William Wallace was executed or about the whole “Right of First Night” thing, or that Edward II had a bunch of kids so if he was gay, indications are that he wasn’t all gay, etc. My gf was not happy. Fortunately the place wasn’t full so I don’t think I bothered other people too much – at least my griping was fairly quiet. Now I wait for the DVD, watch it the first time and gripe about it, then watch it a second time a couple of weeks later for entertainment. I gripe a lot less than I used to – the latest Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe didn’t bother me at all even though Richard’s death wasn’t depicted as the sources indicate, the whole Magna Carta thing was completely ahistorical and Philip never invaded England (though he intended to).

Movies, even those advertised as historical (this is a peeve – what’s wrong with “historically based”?), have a different purpose. They’re designed first and foremost to entertain (I think I may be disagreeing with Dr. Halsall here) and to get people in theater seats – or at least renting the DVD. Movies generally impose modern sensibilities into the plot. The audience needs to sympathize with the characters (at least one) and it’s hard to get them to do that if they have no idea where they’re coming from. Historical facts take a back seat to dramatic effect.

One of the things I really enjoyed about Paul Halsall’s essay that Dr. Muhlberger posted is the discussion of how we can examine popular contemporary sources for bias; how does the 20th/21st century view/depict the medieval period? What contemporary values and beliefs color popular depictions of the period? This would make a great exercise for an introductory history class; to use what we’re doing, right now, in depicting the Middle Ages as an introduction into why it’s so important to examine source material while taking into account the chronicler’s/author’s background, motivations, and so on. How does, say, Ridley Scott’s and William Monahan’s depiction of the Crusades in Kingdom of Heaven compare with the 12th century’s depiction of King Arthur, complete with equipping a 6th century figure with 12th century values, clothing and armor, etc.?

16th Century sculpture of King Arthur from Innsbruck, Austria, wearing a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t exist in the 6th century. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Ultimately, what I’ve come to do with popular history is to be prepared to counter the factually incorrect aspects if asked. More important is to be prepared not just to rattle off a list of inaccuracies (this often has the dual result of boring people to death and their thinking you’re trying to show off your knowledge at their expense) but to really discuss the period (mis)represented. How close does the film/book come to what we understand about the period? Could a medieval Count/Lord behave as barbarically as they are often depicted and not face a wholesale revolt, assassination or, at least, complaints taken to another authority such as a bishop or king? Were religious leaders really first and foremost concerned with power rather than the spiritual well-being of their “flock”? 2

I have a group of people I eat lunch with 2-3 times a week and I love it when something like this comes up. Part of that is because these folks seem to actually enjoy when I go into some depth on a topic (though I’ve come to recognize the glazed look in their eyes as a sign that enough is enough). In any case, I think that rather than providing a blanket condemnation of a film or book, we’re far better off using this as an opportunity to engage people in a discussion. 3

1 A recently formed academic organization devoted to studying how the Middle Ages is perceived today is The Society for the Public Understanding of the Middle Ages or PUMA. There’s also The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages. I couldn’t say if the two entities are related. I’ve debated signing up for them but I doubt I have much beyond anecdotes to offer.

2 There have been efforts to correct factual missteps in popular media. Tim O’Neill, who I’ve known online from way back on soc.history.medieval, goes after The Da Vinci Code and Dan Brown. I haven’t read the book and while I saw the movie, it made so little of an impression on me that I think I’d forgotten it by the next morning. Sharon Krossa, an independent scholar, has pointed out factual errors in just the first couple of minutes of Braveheart. I’m sure the same has been done for other films and books.

3 The next step is to not just recommend that people read something, but hand them a book along with notes about sections they might want to look at. You hand someone a 500-page book without suggesting they read through, say, a 20-page section and they’ll look at you like you have two heads. If you’re very lucky, people will find the section so fascinating that they’ll read the whole thing.

Lindberg, David C., The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1992). ISBN: 0-226-48231-6.

 

Sixth Century Climate Change?

The new issue of Speculum showed up in the mail last week. The first article was by Paolo Squatriti titled, “The Floods of 589 and Climate Change at the Beginning of the Middle Ages: An Italian Microhistory.” I read the title and thought it would be a really good article, in part because this is an area I’m pretty familiar with. One of the things I do is when I’m at a Medieval Conference and introduce myself, when someone asks me what my field of study is, my usual response is, “I’m a pure amateur, I believe I’m the least intelligent person here.” Obviously I know there’s a difference between intelligence and knowledge but I’m shooting for humor – I don’t want people to think I’m whining about the situation. If the person I’m talking to is interested enough, I might invite him or her (humorously) to a Conference I’m presenting at and say, “Don’t worry – there are places where I’m actually fairly intelligent. Feel free to come and then I can be the smart one.”

So I read the title and thought this might be an opportunity, on my blog, to demonstrate that yeah, there are things I’m actually competent in. The first few pages of the article did nothing to alter my thoughts. Dr. Squatriti tracked how the flood event in 589 that impacted Rome has frequently been pointed to as a symptom of climate change, including statements such as, “The result [of climate change described by historians] was a post-Roman Italy of scraggly forests and soggy marshes, traversed by wild torrents that Muratori [an 18th century historian] repeatedly contrasted with the agricultural order he and his contemporaries in Modena could see around them.” (799) He continued to track the evolution of this position to “. . . the phenomenon modern historians usually call the ‘rotta della Cucca,’ or ‘the Cucca Breach.’”

The Cucca Breach is a title given to a series of alterations in the landscape of sixth century Italy resulting from heavy rains and snows. This changed watercourses, caused the abandonment of previously productive agricultural lands in the Italian peninsula and the growth of swampland. On first reading, I didn’t sense that Squatriti was going to do anything but fine tune this concept – add some details regarding the 589 event but subscribe to the overall theory. By this time I had mentally crafted a blog post in response discussing the abandonment of lands due to loss of population from the Plague, Justinian Wars, Lombard Invasion and Merovingian raids and wars. I planned to download some Italian data layers (or maybe not – I have 20 Gigs of worldwide GIS data on CD’s) including forests, soil types, waterways, throw them in ArcMap, combine them with some of my own layers related to land use, soils and drainage, and describe why some other options may be more feasible than climate change to explain the growth of swampland. This was gonna be good.

 Artificial drainage structures for a Central Indiana County necessary to keep it from being a swamp

Imagine my disappointment when I arrived at this statement, “In this essay I will . . . disengage the extreme weather events recorded for late 589 from the so-called climactic worsening of late antiquity.” (802) I then woke up, realized this article was not about me – or at least not a means by which I could demonstrate my brilliance through my blog, went back to re-read the first few pages, and regained a bit of sense about this.

The severe weather events of 589 are mentioned in multiple sources. The sources describe a massive flood whereby the banks of the Tiber were breached causing massive destruction in Rome. Some of the sources are a bit more creative. Gregory of Tours was quite analytical, describing a chain of events resulting in the election of Gregory the Great as Pope. 1

The Liber Pontificalis is less colorful, “At that time the rains were so great that everyone said the waters of the Flood had overflowed; so great was the disaster that no one could remember anything ever like it.” 2

Paul the Deacon recounted events much as Gregory did (you kind of have to assume that, writing at Charlemagne’s court, Paul had access to Gregory’s Historiae) complete with snakes, dragons, pestilence and Gregory the Great becoming Pope. 3

Gregory the Great himself refers to this event in his Dialogues though his account was much less dramatic than those of Gregory of Tours and Paul. 4

In any case, what we have here is a big flood, remarkably well-dated to the fall of 589, sometimes(according to Gregory of Tours and Paul) accompanied by rain and storms, which did substantial damage to Rome.

Here’s where this article gets interesting. After tracing the 589 Flood historiography and its mentions in sources (I haven’t listed all of them – just those I have) Squatriti enters into a discussion of whether this can be seen as an event accompanying climate change. He believes it should not. First – and I have a hard time believing a historian would do this – he restates the caution against the cardinal sin of using an isolated weather event, however severe, as a symptom of longer-term, broader climate events. He then begins to separate 589 from a series of events which could be linked to describe this broader event.

He makes several points leading up to this however his ultimate and most interesting comments related to this involve regional or micro-climates. He recognizes that there is some evidence to suggest that Europe was becoming cooler and wetter during the 6th century – but that this evidence is not from Italy but from areas to the north and west. He further discusses Italy as part of the “Mediterranean isoclimactic area” rather than continental Europe, where so much of the climate data originates. (813)

He relates several periods where climate impacting the remainder of Europe does not seem to have impacted Italy, such as the lack of tree ring alteration during the Medieval Warm Period and suggests that this indicates that a cooler wetter continental Europe in the 6th century does not necessarily indicate the same in Italy. Finally he points to alluvial deposits (deposits from flooding) and delta growth. The Tiber delta was relatively stable during the 6th century, as were its deposits from flooding, indicating that nothing remarkable was going on. (815) The Adige River is much more interesting as, south of Verona, in some areas there is evidence of increased flooding – and in some areas the flooding appears to be reduced from the norm. (816-7) Overall, Squatriti does not see evidence for major climate change in 6th century Italy, or that the 589 flood should be used as evidence of this.

What he does believe the 589 event can be used as evidence of is something I had never considered before and relates to how it was referenced by the sources. Squatriti believes the emphasis this event has received in the sources is related to Gregory the Great, not the flood itself. He argues that the flood was viewed as a direct precursor and in fact as something of a triggering event in the elevation of Gregory as Pope. “Its [the 589 flood] unusual memorialization is certainly related to the renown of Gregory the Great in the Middle Ages, much more, I would suggest, than to any sense that the floods were especially devastating.” (819)

He argues that Gregory of Tours’ account relates to his view that good may come from even the worst occurrences and that Paul the Deacon uses it to point out that the Lombards were not the enemies of God. (820-1)

One issue he doesn’t raise which I think should be considered is that Gregory of Tours would likely have considered the flood a necessary cleansing event where evil is washed out from the city, as represented by the serpents and dragon, to prepare the way for good, in the person of Gregory the Great, to lead the Catholic religion and faithful. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve recently read so many of Gregory’s miracle stories but his propensity to relate a cleansing purge; as indicated by the ejection from the body of blood, pus or vomit; with healing seems to me to have a very strong parallel with a flood washing away evil serpents in order to cleanse Rome.

In any case, though I wasn’t able to show everyone how smart I am, (grin) I found this to be an interesting article. To a certain extent I think the climate change in 6th century Italy issue is still a bit up in the air with some contradictory evidence however I found Squatriti’s argument persuasive; that the prominence of the 589 flood in sources was related to the importance with which the authors viewed Gregory the Great.

1 Historiae X.1; Gregory’s deacon, Agiulf, told him about an event on November of 589 where a flood destroyed several churches and large stores of grain. The flood was accompanied by a bunch of snakes swimming downstream, including “. . . a tremendous dragon as big as a tree-trunk . . .” The snakes and dragons washed up on shore, died, began to rot and caused a plague which killed the current Pope, Pelagius, resulting in Gregory the Great’s elevation to the papacy.

2 Liber Pontificalis 65

3 Historia Langobardorum III.24; Unlike Gregory, Paul neglects to connect rotting carcasses with the onset of disease.

4 Dialogues, 3.19; How dramatic is a bit objective. If you’re interested in the Church of the martyr Zeno, Gregory’s account had plenty of drama. If you’re into serpents and dragons, not so much.

Davis, Raymond, trans., The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), 2nd ed. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (2000). ISBN: 9-780853-235453.

*Gardner, Edmund, ed., Warner, P. L., trans., The Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great. Merchantville, NJ: Evolution Publishing (2010). ISBN: 9-781889-758947.

Peters, Edward, ed., Foulke, William Dudley, trans., Paul the Deacon: History of the Lombards. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2003). ISBN: 9-780812-210798.

Squatriti, Paolo (2010). “The Floods of 589 and Climate Change at the Beginning of the Middle Ages: An Italian Microhistory”, Speculum 85, 799-826.

Thorpe, Lewis, trans., Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks. London: Penguin Books (1974). ISBN: 9-780140-442953.

*This is not the greatest edition. I’d recommend getting the Deferrari (1939) edition if you can find it. Unfortunately it’s out of print and used copies are very high priced. I finally picked this up so I’d at least have something.

 

Of Notes, Books – and Split Personalities

• I read lots of books
• I have an electronic note-taking system
• I use Library Thing

What’s everyone think? Should I exchange the first three lines of my profile for the above? I was pretty deliberate about how I introduced myself when I began this blog. I wanted to make sure folks understood that I’m a complete, 100% amateur and that when I discuss medieval history it is absolutely not from any authoritative/authoritarian standpoint – just the ramblings of a guy who’s read a few things and loves talking about it. I never gave much thought to just what makes me an amateur. Obviously, there’s the fact of not getting paid. But a couple of recent posts from Jonathan Jarrett and Magistra et Mater got me thinking about how very differently I approach my medieval hobby when compared with my real job.

My real job is an academic one – I’m not a professor but I work for a university and I work with information. I think most people would consider my hobby to have a lot of academic elements – I don’t dress up in a suit of armor or even collect coins or other artifacts. I read books and some journals and try to learn. Despite the fact that my job and my hobby both deal extensively with information, I approach the two entirely differently.

Let’s start with note-taking. My “professional” note-taking system is much closer to the one described by Jonathan than the one I use for Medieval History. Now it isn’t identical, but at work I have subject files – three 4-drawer cabinets of ‘em. I have two full bookcases and a couple of rows of wall shelving. And I have boxes of information on some arcane stuff in the basement of my building. When I come across something interesting I generally print it off, fill in the margins with notes, maybe write a brief summary for my use and stuff it in the appropriate folder. My bookshelves have a total of 8 shelves – only two of those have books. The others are for subjects that became so large that they don’t fit in files any longer but have been put in three ring binders. I don’t do any – nada – electronic note-keeping or indexing, though I will save PDF’s.

I had never given this any thought before but if you look at how things are arranged/organized at home for my medieval stuff vs. work, I doubt you’d think this was the work of the same person. And here’s the real kicker – I’m a huge reader at home. Tons of books. I sometimes feel overcome by the urge to buy. Sometimes I go a bit overboard when it comes to medieval books. I could not tell you the last time I read a book – an entire, complete whole book, cover-to-cover – for work. I’ve read chapters of books. I’ve checked books out of the library, read sections, took notes, and copied pages of interest. But I haven’t read a whole book in forever. It’s all magazines, scientific journals, conferences, meetings, field days, conversations with colleagues, committee work sessions, RSS feeds and e-mail – at work, I don’t do books.

For my hobby, I keep track of my books on Library Thing. It was Magistra’s most recent post discussing Library Thing that really got me thinking about this dichotomy. I have zero compulsion to put anything I use at work on my Library Thing Page. But I religiously enter Medieval stuff. On my home computer I keep a book database including a massive wish list – nothing remotely like it for work.

E-mail is yet another divergence. At work I keep e-mail I don’t delete in my Outlook inbox until it bursts. It’s only grudgingly, painfully, that I’ll delete them – generally after printing them off and stuffing ‘em in a file. My home Outlook has multiple folders and it’s rare that an e-mail sits around for more than a week before I either delete it, save it to a subject file on my PC, or at least move it to one of the dozen or so Outlook folders.

I have no idea what this means – I keep my personal and professional life pretty segregated. I do take work home but it’s along the lines of “if I get some spare time with nothing to do I’ll work on it.” If there’s something I have to get done, I go to the office as my efficiency is much better there. For whatever reason, my approaches for dealing with my hobby information (hopefully anyone who’s read this blog much knows it’s a hobby I respect very much and take quite seriously) and my work information are very, very different. This seems a bit strange to me, but it’s the way it is – and I have no particular desire to change how I deal with either my work, or my medieval, information.

 

Book Comments – Edward James and Wendy Davies. Books I Should Have Read Before Now

When I was beginning my Kalamazoo write-ups I looked for things to read that I would be interested in, but something that wouldn’t tax me too much because of how much time I knew I’d have to put into those. I wanted books that I’d be able to “just read” rather than study, think about new concepts, take bunches of notes on, etc. Also something I wouldn’t feel the urge to comment on, or write a review for.

I picked out two books I’d been aware of for a long time but had never purchased because I was involved in my own form of age discrimination. Then I bought them, as well as a few others, at a/two used bookseller(s) at Kalamazoo for a substantial discount. Both were clean hardcovers, showing just normal reading wear – no highlighting or markings on the pages. After reading them I feel compelled to at least comment on them – and I’m going to resist the urge to do complete reviews.

Edward James’ The Franks (Blackwell, 1988) shows up whenever people start talking about reading materials for Late Antiquity, particularly for the Franks and Gaul. By the time I was aware of it, having figured out what I was interested in, it was 2000, I’d read Wood, Geary, and was into more specialized stuff – detailed books, reading Early Medieval Europe, etc. James was old – over 10 years – and even though I continued to see it footnoted in new books and articles, I didn’t feel an urge to get it.

Wendy Davies’ Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany (University of California, 1988) suffered even more severely as not only was it older, but it was beyond the period I was most interested in.

My goal of using these for “light medieval reading” met with mixed results. James fit my preconception – very good book (better than I’d expected, actually) but most of the concepts were familiar to me and many had benefited from more recent publications, including some by Dr. James himself. Using my usual note taking system I ended up with 9 distinct notes, less than a third of a page. However it is interesting how well the concepts discussed in it have held up over time and how, for the most part, this book has not been contradicted, but “fleshed out” by more recent work. I think it remains valuable and is a new “first book on the Franks” that I’ll recommend. It’s very readable, interesting, and has a bunch of utility for someone just getting started. What makes this book a true, undiscovered treasure for me is the prodigious use James makes of charts, diagrams and images which are very helpful in illustrating his concepts. I regret my hubris in thinking this book had little to teach me ten years or so ago – I should have read it when I decided what I was really interested in. My loss.

Davies is an entirely different story. On finishing this I find myself with the urge to write a full-bore review, which I am determined to resist. There do not appear to be a lot of good, accessible reviews out there on it which adds to this impetus – however, unfortunately, this book appears to no longer be in print. If I thought writing a review would inspire a re-issue, possibly in a paperback edition accessible to those with a smaller budget (that thought would be hubris indeed), I would. This is an extremely good book. 1

I need to give yet another shout-out to Jonathan Jarrett – I seem to do that a lot but that’s just how this blogging thing has worked out. I’d had this book wishlisted for a long time but he brought it back to my attention in a comment he made in my World Lit Only by Fire Review. I have no idea if I’d have picked it up at Kalamazoo without his bringing it back to a more prominent part of my brain. Once again, thank you Jonathan.

Small Worlds is absolutely filled with information. Davies examined surviving documentation from 9th century Brittany, particularly charter evidence from the monastery of Redon, and uses it to reconstruct various aspects of life in Brittany – including a great deal of information on peasant life. She augments this with extensive figures and tables. For example, Table 13 on page 200 lists the documentary evidence for all of the annual rents due to the monastery of Redon which range from straight cash payments to one listed as, “2 big sheep, 2 small sheep(value 3d each), 1 pig(value 12d), 1-1/2m wheat, 1m rye, 6m oats, manaheda”.

I can get enthusiastic about this book and it’s a shame it’s not still in print (used copies should be available). This is another example of the kind of detailed, precise information I love – I don’t care if it is 22 years old. And in covering a small geographic region, I’m not aware of anything which has replaced it for information on Medieval Brittany.

In contrast to James, this was not “light reading.” I took extensive notes – 2 full pages and 34 notations, some covering multiple pages. This for a book that is 213 pages long (not counting the forward and bibliography).

To summarize, both of these books have continued value – and I should have read them long ago. The Franks has become my new “first book to recommend” to someone just getting started on the Franks for its readability and quality. And Small Worlds has become an unqualified recommendation, period – a book filled with quality, well documented information. And her books on Medieval Wales have just moved up on my “books I should get” food chain.

NOTE: I anticipate being less active with this blog over the next 3 months. June-August is always a busy time in my real job and, because of weather and having to do some things around home, personally. I generally change my reading habits during this period too – I look for less specialized books because I may have several days running where I don’t find time to read and that’s a poor way to read a complex academic book. I expect to be able to jump back in sometime in September though. I’m hoping to be able to post something at least weekly in the meantime but no guarantees and I absolutely don’t want to “post just to post.”

1 The best review I’ve found is from 1990 by William Chester Jordan in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 20, 469-471.

Davies, Wendy, Small Worlds: The Village Community in Early Medieval Brittany. Berkely: University of California Press, (1988). Pp. 227, xi. ISBN: 0-520-06483-6.

James, Edward, The Franks. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., (1988). Pp. 265, xii. ISBN: 0-631-14872-8.