and make the subject daffodils
Here is the long-promised second part to Hrosvithe of Gandersheim's play Dulcitius. There will be one part after this, just to wrap everything up neatly. It's been a while, so here is part I again. This is a closet drama, so was likely never meant to be actually performed but rather read aloud in a …
Continue reading "Snow White and the Virgin Martyrs, Part 2"
A cardinal sin in the blogging world, I know, to let a thing lie for so long! I'm sorry for that--I finished my thesis, and submitted it, and the fact is there is very little space for blogging at the end of that process. Or eating, sleeping, and showering regularly, for that matter. But it's …
Thesis progress: THE END IS IN SIGHT. So in the meantime, I am here to bring you something totally unrelated to it! Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim was a Benedictine nun at Gandersheim, a very posh convent in Germany, and a writer of plays that were probably never performed. She would be this formidable lady here. Her …
'When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die' -Cersei Lannister, and everyone ever who has read A Song of Ice and Fire Recently, while reading a lot of things about dynastic inheritance law in medieval Wales and mentally bemoaning how I'm still not caught up on Game of Thrones (I am …
May Day is one of those holidays that seems medieval, even ancient; the customs of flowers and fertility rites definitely feel like they go back a long time, and if they don't, they should. This is the difficulty with settling down to write about medieval May Day celebrations, because so much of what we associate …
Warning: this post pretty much exists to prove one of my friends wrong. Traditionally, there are expected ways of dealing with people who are wrong on the internet--ways that usually involve pithy (or not so pithy) phrases and the judicious application of cat pictures. In this case, this is doubly effective, because what my nameless …
Easter is full of odd traditions when you stop to think about them for a moment—why do chocolate eggs come from rabbits, and what do they have to do with the resurrection of Jesus?--and predictably, a good deal of that is just because they're so old we long since stopped paying attention to where they …
Back from Quadrivium with a new CFP Saturday! Only three this time around, but pretty cool ones. Vagantes Medieval Graduate Student conference CFP EXTENDED to 9 November Madison, Wisconsin, USA Dates: 21-23 March, 2013 Deadline: 9 Nov, 2012 Largest graduate conference in North America, emphasising interdisciplinary scholarship on all medieval topics. Information here. Arthur, War …
Putting England in Its Place: Cultural Production and Cultural Relations in the High Middle Ages 33rd Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, Manhattan March 9-10 2013 The rich culture of England’s mid-eleventh to thirteenth centuries is central to some disciplinary narratives for the High Middle Ages (for example, …
Continue reading "CFP: Putting England in Its Place (Fordham, NY, 2013)"
Generally speaking, I try to keep politics and the internet separate. This is partly because reading anything political on the internet is bad for the sanity; the comments section of any news website from Gawker to the Guardian is bound to be full of people saying horrible things, necessitating the need for saintlike self-control to …
a medievalist errant 