Hwaet?

( CFP (KZOO): Medicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean )

( CFP (KZOO): Medieval Monsters -- Two Sessions )

( CFP (KZOO):Glosynge is a Glorious Thyng: Medieval Studies and the Future of Commentary )

( CFP (KZOO): Pride, Arrogance, and Insolence: Shaping Values and Identity in Medieval Culture )

( CFP (KZOO): Making Readers Work: Constructing Readers and Their Actions in the Late Middle Ages )

( CFP (KZOO): Practical and Theoretical Geometry in Medieval Art )

( CFP (LEEDS): Logic and Heresy in the Middle Ages )

( CFP: Conference on Everyman )

( CFP: Codices and Communities: Material, Book and Print Culture and their Medieval and Early Modern Contexts )

Dear all -

I've managed to turn off the autocorrecting feature to the fullest possible extent via the Spelling and Grammar tab under Tools->Options, but the damn thing is still insisting on inserting all kinds of capital letters after periods. I'm currently transcribing manuscript catalogue data which is chock full of things like "nomina. trinus. trinitas. et talia. non ponunt aliquid. sed tantum privant." and so on. It's vexing in the extreme to look back at my document and see it full of capital letters after periods that only mark abbreviations or ellipses.

Has anyone here sorted out how to make it stop? I'm all out of ticky boxes to untick and it's STILL DOING IT.

Does anybody know if there is a QAD list of charter terms and their equivalents in different languages online somewhere? I've checked the ORB, and there isn't anything I could find. Mostly, it's trying to figure out if words that look like technical terms in German are in fact technical terms, so, for example, I am assuming that the Eschatokoll is the technical term for the closing formula, maybe ... but does that mean that, in a similar context, the Protokoll is the opening formula?

I did not sign up to be a charter historian!!


x-posted at Blogenspiel

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to help a German friend translate a paper about charters, and am going completely blank on the 'term 'Diktatbestimmung' He keeps wanting to call it 'identification of dictation', which I'm not entirely convinced by (though it's a literal translation: it means a method of finding out the original context it was issued in). Anyone have any thoughts? Charters are not my field, Google is letting me down, and I'm currently in Germany so finding an English reference book that might tell me is potentially tricky. I'd be really grateful if anyone can (a) stop us going mad and (b) save us from spending days chasing a single word....

ETA: thanks to scriva, this has been found - 'Diktat' is 'dictamen', so it's something like 'the identification of the dictamen'. And thanks to everyone who helped!

Can someone recommend a book about the Crusades, one that doesn't skew history to champion one side over the other?

After quite a bit of thinking, I have decided to go ahead and pursue a graduate degree in history, particularly in the Medieval field. (I have quite a bit of time, so to say, to do research; I receive my B.A. from Berkeley this December and I plan to take the year and a half following that brushing up on language requirements at community colleges, specifically Latin, German and French, as those are the ones I will need.) I have been browsing through a number of university websites, trying to narrow down programs, but I would also like to know if anyone in this community has any particular recommendations on schools I should look into or avoid.

I should mention: at the moment, I have residency in California. Financial cost is going to have to be a large factor in where I choose to study (as it stands, I can barely afford my undergraduate with a full-time job and because of costs, have to graduate early), even though I wish it weren't so. Several schools have piqued my interest: UCLA, Stanford, Loyola (in Chicago) and the University of Oregon. I'd prefer to stay away from interdisciplinary programs like that offered at Fordham, unless they are M.A.-specific only, because my understanding of academia is that interdisciplinary subjects are taken just a little bit less seriously (if this assumption is wrong, please, feel free to tell me otherwise).

Anyway, I would appreciate any advice on particularly strong Medieval programs (or even on ways to lighten the financial burden graduate school is sure to be and make it less a deciding factor in school choices), including those offered at smaller colleges, which I must admit I know very little about. Thank you all in advance.

Does anyone have a recommendation for some good books on Carolingian Europe? I'm taking a grad class on it next semester and unfortunately, my knowledge is very much contained in the late Middle Ages. I want to do some pre-class reading so I have a good context for the class. Right now, I am basically looking at Rosamond McKitterick's work and I want to expand.

Thanks so much for any help or suggestions!

I picked up a copy of The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse today from my library, and I'm really interested in the 100th piece in the book, which the author editor has titled "A Call to the Crusade", anonymously written circa 1350s. I did a google search on the first line of the poem in an attempt to find some scholarship on the piece, but came up with nothing.

Here's the first stanza.

Christiani nominis corruit insigne,
spurci pompa germinis et gentis indignae
regnat in Jerusalem--quis ferro vel igne
deleat propaginem sobolis malignae?

Anyone ever run across this poem before? Not too worried about finding a translation because the Latin's not too tough, but I would love to find ANY info on this piece.

[cross posting to latin and middle_ages]

Hi all - inspired by my astonishment at some recent reads, I've created a livejournal community for making a scrapbook of hilarious, and/or witty, ascerbic, memorable, or otherwise interesting in-publication academic snipe and snark. This is not a gossip or sparring  site; just for sharing particularly vivid quotations from academic books and journals.


attackademia
 - please join and contribute!

( CFP [KZOO '09]: The Pearl-Poet Society [5 sponsored sessions] - please copy and circulate! )

( CFP (KZOO): Appropriation and Approximation Across Medieval Art )

( CFP (KZOO): Reassessing Women's Roles in the Artistic/Architectural Process )

( CFP (KZOO): Medieval Crying )

( CFP (KZOO): The Siege of Jerusalem in Middle English )

( CFP (GEMCS): Cannibalistic Thinking in Early Modern Poetry, Drama, Travel Narratives, and Liturgical Texts )

( CFP (EHIC): Moving World(s): Changes and Innovations in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Europe )

Is Gower's Middle English generally pronounced the same as Chaucer's Middle English? Or are there significant differences I should know about?

And, on this same note, are any of you going to the Gower conference? It's no Kzoo, but I thought I'd ask just in case ...

Please Forward and Post Otherwhere:

On behalf of the Board and editors of The Heroic Age, I would like
to announce the publication of Issue 11. My special thanks go out
to Linda Malcor, Deanna Forsman, and Bill Schipper and all of our
readers who went beyond the call of duty to finally bring it
together and released to the world. http://www.heroicage.org

There are many things to enjoy in this issue. Board member Linda
Malcor and colleagues have put together an interesting collection
of papers exploring various aspects of Arthur and folklore. In
addition to those four articles, there is a short article on a new
textual find.

Turning to our regular features, we have the usual suspects. Michel
Aaij continues to inform us about medieval studies in Europe in
Continental Business and Dan O'Donnell continues his series of
reflections in Electronic Medievalia. In the Forum, we have several
pieces addressing the State of the Field in Anglo-Saxon Studies.
And we have a new column beginning in this issue. The Babel group
has joined forces with us at The Heroic Age and will be publishing
a column in every issue generally addressing the application of
theoretical approaches to early medieval studies. In this inaugural
column, Daniel Murtaugh weighs in with an article focused on
Beowulf. Further, Aaron Kleist introduces us to the Electronic
Aelfric project. I almost neglected to mention an excerpt from
Martin Foys' recent book, Virtually Anglo-Saxon.

Please take a look at our upcoming Calls for Papers. In addition
to specific, themed sections, The Heroic Age accepts papers on any
aspect of the early Medieval period (300-1100) dealing or touching
on NW Europe (loosely defined) at any time.

http://www.heroicage.org

( CFP (KZOO): Cognitive Theory and Medieval Performance )

( CFP (KZOO): Renaissance Medievalisms in Performance )

( CFP (KZOO): Authorship in Medieval Chronicles )

( CFP (KZOO): Figuring Crime: Women and the representation of crime in medieval and early modern English text )

When Women Speak
Special session, International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, MI, USA
May 7-10, 2009

This session seeks to investigate women's speech (and silence) as it is
represented in literature, visual culture, philosophy, music, and
historical document. We seek papers that examine the ways in which
women (real or fictional) used language, or the absence thereof, to
participate and contribute to medieval life across boundaries of
geography, language, time, and space.

Please send proposals and participant information form by 1 September 2008 to:

Virginia Blanton, blantonv@umkc.edu
and
Chris Africa, chris-africa@uiowa.edu.

This month's CHOICE bibliographic essay is all about online medieval resources. (CHOICE is the monthly book review publication put out by ACRL and is a godsend for those of us doing acquisitions.)

The essay HERE but you do need a log-in. Go make friends with your librarians and they might be able to get to it for you. :) Or find a paper copy of the July issue of CHOICE.

This is probably a really good resource for anyone starting out in the field, or anyone teaching intro courses and wanting to be able to give their students an idea of what kind of resources are out there. Many of the databases mentioned in the essay are subscription-based, but a number are not.


EDIT: Okay, apparently my computer is stealth logging me in, because apparently you do need to login to read the essay. Bother.

I can copy/paste it into a word document and email it to people, if folks would like...

( CFP: Iconography of Death )

( CFP: Negotiating the Past )

( CFP (KZOO): New Approaches to the Pilgrimage Trilogy of Guillaume de Digulleville )

( CFS: Sanctity and Power )

( CFP: Mapping Medieval Geographies )

( CFP: Medieval Passions )

( CFP: 30th Annual Medieval and Ren. Forum: Dreams, Imagination, Fantasy )

( CFS: The Church Fathers in Early Modern England )

( CFP (NEMLA): Kings and Kingship )

( CFP: Gender and Medieval Studies -- Locating Gender )

( Essay Prize -- Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship )

( CFP: Medieval Skin )

( CFP (KZOO): Byzantium and Beyond )