Medieval people everywhere!

What a huge day.  I love this medieval conference stuff… it’s like going to an SCA collegium weekend but run by crazy people (well even more crazy than usual) who spend their entire lives dedicated to research the most out of left field, bizarre niche shit you can imagine!

Today I attended seminars on these topics:

Emotions of Crime and Death in Medieval and Early Modern Europe…

  • Benefit of Clergy: Complexities of Mercy and Emotion
  • Pro Timore: Criminal Suicide in the Middle Ages
  • “Because I loved that husband of mine”: Early Modern Witchcraft Trials for Sources of the History of Emotion.

Translating Medieval Thought…

  • From Aristotle to the Heaven of the Moon: Dante on Acting against Conscience
  • Translating of the Spirit: The Birth of Religious Orders and the High Medieval Rationalization of Spiritual Identity
  • Nature Law and Reason : Models of Moral Action between XII and XIII century

Courtly Cultures in Translation…

  • Not Lost In Translation: Aragonese Court Culture on Tour
  • Eleanor of Aragon and her Spanish interpretation of the Role of the Princely Consort.
  • The Representation of Female Power and Co-Rulership in Fifteenth Century Ferrara.
  • Instructing the Next Generation: Eleanora of Aragon and her Daughters

And a keynote address by internationally renown art historian, Anne Dunlop…
European Art and the Mongol Middle Ages: Two Exercises in Translation

And I hate to think that each each session had seven panels running at the same time so I have only managed to see the tip of the iceberg.  It’s so hard to choose which panels to go and see.  For anyone interested in Medieval and Early Modern studies in the Australia/New Zealand, I highly recommend joining this organisation – ANZAMEMS. You will get on their mailing list, gain access to the back catalogue of the Parergon journal that they publish and keep an eye out for info on next years’ conference which I believe is being hosted in Brisbane, Queensland… and it’s totally open to independent scholars (ie: people not officially currently associated with an education institution).

It’s been a huge day and I can’t believe I get to see more amazing research papers presented tomorrow.   So yay, more Medieval fun tomorrow, but for now… I am le tired.

book of hours (‘The Maastricht Hours’), Liège 14th century.

Voracious Monkey Puts a Fish in the Arse
Book of Hours (‘The Maastricht Hours’), Liège 14th century.
British Library, Stowe 17, fol. 83v

Medieval Conference Part I

We had an aboriginal elder doing the welcome to country first thing… as you do!  But I have to admit I didn’t hear a lot of what she was saying other than her prefacing remarks of ‘Oh dear.. I’ve just come from Melbourne and all this running around makes me rather hot.’ while wearing two dead possum skins sewn together over her shoulders.  I’m sorry, I don’t care where you are from or what you identify with, but you don’t get to stand up in front of a couple of hundred people and talk about change in culture, history and even mention changes in fashion and then not look ridiculous wearing roadkill.  Ewww.

Well, the keynote address last night was interesting…  or it might have been if I hadn’t spent the entire time in the lecture theatre freezing my arse off!  I was so cold, I was huddling in on myself and trying not to visibly shiver the whole time.  I mean I know there’s a lot of guys in the room wearing suits, but still.  :S

Originaly we were to have a presentation by Professor Chris Baswell, but unfortunately he had to withdraw to do ill health and the Associate Professor, Peter Howard Director for the Centre of Medieval and Renassaince Studies at Monash University stepped in with less than 24 hours notice and delivered an amazing paper on Aquinas and Antoninius: A Tale of Two Summae.  It was a bit, ‘here’s one I prepared earlier’ but very weel done.

The abstract read:  While the Summa theologieae of Thomas Aquinas is famous, that of the Florentine Archbishop, Saint Antoninus is much less well known.  Yet in the sixteenth century the Summa theologica of Antoninus was by far the more published of the two.  Modern audiences are often introduced Antoninus simply by way of unfavourable comparison with Aquinas – as a lesser mind responsible for the vulgarisation of cultural translation – this paper situates Antoninus’ reading and dissemination of Aquinas within his own understanding in his time and place.  More broadly it is a paper about method and the historian’s sensitivity to textual, oral and visual translation.

I thought the lecture sounded incredibly interesting, especially given that Antoninus is pretty much doing what all of us do everyday as modern day scholars… take the work of those giants who went before us and translate and interpret their work.  However, I found myself, either because I was fighting the cold or because I am fighting off the flu, failing to comprehend half of what the good Professor was saying!  This, I have to say is quite unusual.  It wasn’t unti the question time that I had a few ‘ahh’ moments that his paper made sense.  Hope I’m more switched on today… really got to learn to drink coffee like all the other academic types.

cultures in translation and interpration

Major Gen Peter Cosgrove on Kids With Guns.

kids with guns

 

Stupid question, excellent response!

For those that don’t know him, Major General Peter Cosgrove is an Australian.
General Cosgrove was interviewed on the radio recently.
Read his reply to the lady who interviewed him concerning guns and children. Regardless of how you feel about gun laws you have to love this! This is one of the best comeback lines of all time. In a portion of an ABC radio interview between a female broadcaster and General Cosgrove who was about to sponsor a Boy Scout Troop visiting his military Headquarters.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
So, General Cosgrove, what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?

GENERAL COSGROVE:!
We’re going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery and shooting.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
Shooting! That’s a bit irresponsible, isn’t it?

GENERAL COSGROVE:
I don’t see why, they’ll be properly supervised on the rifle range.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
Don’t you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?

GENERAL COSGROVE:
I don’t see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
But you’re equipping them to become violent killers.

GENERAL COSGROVE:
Well, Ma’am, you’re equipped to be a prostitute, but you’re not one, are you?
The radiocast went silent for 46 seconds and when it returned, this interview was over.

Angry Birds

I’ve never seen the point of many computer games that are out there in the world clogging up our harddrives and our headspace.  Angry Birds in particular has always left me somewhat bamboozled… hurling birds’ heads at green pigs or something?  To what end?  What’s the point?  Where’s the gain?  I don’t really get it.

However, if Angry Birds looked like this and they were used to achieve something tangible, edifying or cool… well, maybe I would try to buy in.  🙂

medieval version.

 

Angry Birds
aquila/eagle, psitacus/parrot, alcion/kingfisher
Bestiary, England 15th century

Movie 43… be afraid, be very afraid.

It’s hard to know where to start to describe a movie of this caliber.  Yes… caliber is a good word – because someone should have shot the screen writers, directors and casting agents before this abortion of a comedy had life breathed into it and it was launched on an unsuspecting movie-going public.

OMG.  You will probably see this film described as appalling, shocking, dull, disjointed, clumsy, disgusting, stupid, tasteless and a hundred other derogatory adjectives and yet none of them will fully encapsulate the gross spectacle that you will encounter should you decide to still go see this film once you’ve finished reading this.

movie 43 review

So, I can’t describe the plot, the storyline or the narrative of the film – because there isn’t one.  I can’t talk about the protagonists, character development, depth or complexity – because there isn’t any.  We can’t talk about artistic genre vision or intent of the film – because it’s beyond definition.  Hell, we can’t even really talk about the cinematography, costume design or locations and set design – because it’s amateur hour the whole way!  It’s just like a bunch of Saturday Night Live skits hyped up on meth and filth and that certain je ne sais quois that I like to call ‘artistic shock me! shock me! shock me!’, that seemed to have escaped their time slot.  :S

The only thing left to talk about is how the fuck did they manage to get such a sterling ensemble cast of A-list stars to participate in this unadulterated, stinking dog shit of dog shit, of a movie?  Because they’re all in there… Kate Winslet, who I have always so admired,  Hugh Jackman, Dennis Quaid, Richard Gere, Greg Kinnear, Emma Stone, Keiran Culkin, Gerard Butler, Halle Berry, Kristen Bell, Justin Long, Elizabeth Banks, Johnny Knoxville,Liev Schrieber, Naomi Watts, Jason Pratt, Anna Faris, Kate Bosworth, Sean William Scott, Jason Sudeikis and on and on the list goes.  They have Uma fucking Thurman for Christssake!  Such a huge cast, almost every face instantly recognisable and I bet every single one of them will eventually wish that this scatalogical, puerile and idiotic piece of celluloid is not on their resume.  When in gobsmacked disbelief, I asked ‘How?’…  Mr K said “Two words. ‘Contractual obligation.'”  *shudder*  God I hope he’s right.  It’s hard to imagine these amazingly talented people did this willingly!

Overall, this is just a really boring, badly made bunch of comedy skits mashed together by a flimsy premise and a bunch of disjointed directors, who I assume were sitting around stoned off their gourds when they came up with the idea for it.  In fact, the whole thing feels like a dare run amok… or a game of The Aristocrats that got out of control and, to our everlasting lament, found a fucking budget!  I’m almost convinced they did pitch it to studio executives at gunpoint.

For once, I feel that America’s general propensity for litigation may prove to be in our favour – cos surely someone, anyone, should sue all their arses for wasting our precious time on this earth with this complete and utter drivel!

PS:  Like much truly infantile, putresecent and ill advised so-called comedic crud that makes it onto film… it will give you a few laughs.  Though anyone over the age of 13 with an IQ over 70, will be left wonder why you found any of it amusing!?!?  *shrug*  It’s one of life’s great mysteries…