Man's Speech Must Exceed his Grasp, Else What's a Meta For?

Normally, my classes tend to explain some aspect of the medieval mind. Sometimes they are even taught in persona, from the point of view of a 13th-century woman who has no knowledge of the modern world.
In my last class for a Bardic Madness (at least for a while) I broke with that trend, and used cable TV and 1940s radio to encourage bards to more interesting speech. My plan was to demolish trite phrases, cliché expressions, weasel words, and pleonasms by encouraging more engaging metaphors.
Aristotle suggests how to do this in On Poetics XXII, so I'm not making stuff up. He says that the poet must see the scene portrayed with "utmost vividness". Metaphors, which both deviate from normal language (thus being distinctive) and conform partially to normal language (bringing it clarity) aid in that portrayal.
Old time radio programs depended on language alone to draw the scene. For some examples, I recommend listening to "Pat Novak for Hire", a radio program that shot smart similes like a nervous gangster with a tommy gun.
Period examples of metaphoric scene-painting include Norse kennings, Chaucer's Prologue, and even Dante's Divine Comedy.
I brought some objects, pictures, and scenes for the class to describe in metaphor. (Look at the object on your left. Describe it as a skald or a Pat Novak writer might.)

Gnomes - Short and to the Point

A challenge was issued at Bardic Madness XXV to present a work that used proverbs to prove a point. I had been playing around in psalters, trying to see if the marginal illustrations had any connection to the text.

What did I discover?  Aesop's fables!

Apparently, from around the 11th through the 14th centuries, there were books of sermon illustrations written to help priests put a little more punch in their sermons. They drew from many sources, which included popular sayings and proverbs, the legendary lives of the saints, and the fables that are usually attributed to Aesop.

I tried to give an overview of how some of this material (some of which had roots in ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and India) had come to be in Psalters and books of hours, and how proverbs could indeed be used to prove a point.

I must say, this project was overwhelming in the best possible way. Every rock I turned over provided loads of little critters proclaiming earthy wisdom.  I'm so glad I had a deadline, or my bill at Amazon would have been enormous.

I put the text of my PowerPoint talk on a page here on Blogger. I haven't formatted a true bibliography yet.

Gods and Mortals

Bardic Madness had a theme of "Gods and Mortals" this year, so Kudrun presented an overview of some of the Christian saints who help us (meaning 13th-century folk) bridge the gap between ourselves and the Divine Mystery. It was my intention to help people find the right saint to intercede for them, since some show a particular affinity to certain occupations (like Sts Crispin and Crispinian, patrons of shoemakers), or locations (such as Cuthbert, who insisted that his bones be interred at Durham), or diseases (such as St Fiacre... you can look it up).  I was able to introduce some of the saintly stories that Tertullian considered to be "old wives' tales" (like St Thecla, who baptised herself in a pool filled with vicious seals who were supposed to kill her). I also pointed out some of the scholarly saints, such as St Bede, who reformed the calendar and charted the tides, and St Isidore, who wrote a 20-volume encyclopedia. There was a little skepticism expressed over St Adalbert's two skulls (one claimed by Prague, another by Gniezno) and over St Wilgifortis' instant growth of a beard.  (Wilgifortis' father had her crucified because she refused to marry a rich heathen man.) 
Despite the PowerPoint slides shown behind my head, the class was taught in persona, except for two saints whose cultus didn't grow until after Kudrun's time. (How can one resist St Wilgifortis?)

Draw me a map

The theme for Bardic Madness XXIII was "Directions" so I thought I'd teach a course on cartography. That I knew next to nothing about cartography in the middle ages didn't bother me. I had more fun researching this class than any of the others, since every turn of the page brought some fascinating new insight. I started fairly early, about 6000 BCE (lest early period folk think I'm neglecting them). I ended with a crazy map from c.1590, in which a map of the world replaces the face in a jester's hood. Sayings including "Nosce te ipsum" (Know thyself) and "Stultorum infinitus est numerus" (The number of fools is numerous). A cartouche on the map ascribes it to "Epichthionius Cosmopolites", which is essentially, "Anonymous".
Other interesting maps include one on a coin, a circular one that was about twelve feet in diameter, one that features Paul Bunyan holding runestones. (at least he looks like Paul Bunyan.), and a heart-shaped world map. Maps that hung in churches featured Eden at the top (in the far East); Jerusalem in the center, griffins, elephants and bears in the north; monsters in the far south; and the Minotaur in his maze on Crete. As India and Africa were explored by Europeans, the Pygmies who battled with cranes (reported by Aristotle, Homer, and Pliny) had to be moved from there to Canada, where they lived with unicorns.
There were many revolutions in thought hinted at in this class, not the least of which was the shift from 12 directions to eight (or 16 or 32). And how maps changed in character from geographical, to theological, to nautical, to geographical.
I hope I find another opportunity to teach this class, because it was so much work and so much fun.

Replay, Reuse, Recycle

The class on "Medieval Music You Already Know" inspired me to do a class on contrafacta in period. I'd done classes in "filk" - which is a more lighthearted word for the same thing. But this was about filk in period - from fourth century Arian adaptations of popular music, through troubadours borrowing church music for their love songs, to composers using folk tunes as the basis for polyphonic masses.

We looked at borrowings as many as four deep, as a twelfth-century "Ave Regina" chant may have been used for a twelfth century troubadour's love song, which was borrowed for a thirteenth-century pilgrim song, and a thirteenth century song in praise of gluttony.

Anyone who thinks of the middle ages as insular or restrictive might be surprised at the international trade in music. A tune that's still popular today can be found in Italian, Bohemian, Gallican, and German manuscripts of the tenth to fifteenth centuries.

Those who prize originality might be surprised to learn that troubadour instruction manuals prefer that older tunes be used for some types of song.

This was a study that was too much for an hour's class. It could easily fill a dissertation (actually, several of them). I recommend the Musical Borrowing Bibliography as a resource. Though many of its 1800+ citations cover modern music, there's plenty on medieval/renaissance works as well.

Shakespeare made fun of the contrafacting of Greensleeves by Mistress Ford's comment about Falstaff:, whose words, "do no more adhere and keep place together than the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves." (Merry Wives of Windsor II.i.62) She may not approve, but contrafact was a way of life for musicians in period.

Magic Numbers at Bardic Madness

Since this was Bardic Madness XXI, I thought I'd go with the magic numbers theme and prove that LXII is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Kudrun explained some of the significance of numbers, with reference to Aristotle, Augustine, Plato, Fibonacci and Boethius. Of particular importance for this event was Pythagoras's observation that all musical harmonies could be expressed in simple ratios.

Bardic Madness is probably the only event I'd travel 700 miles (each way) for a one-day event -- it was worth it. Thank you, Schattentor.

Let the catch go round

Bardic Madness XX, which featured challenges on circles, cycles, returning, and remembrance, simply demanded a class on rounds, so I stepped up with Let the Catch Go Round: Canons, Catches, and Circular Songs. The subtitle tells it all.

Though the heyday of published rounds is slightly post-period, there is enough documentary evidence to make a pretty healthy list of period rounds. Sumer is icumen in is probably the most celebrated round of the era, but Three blinde mice and Hey, ho, nobody home were published in 1609, and were likely sung well before that date.

Though many 17th-18th century rounds were written for men's clubs. the Victorians turned rounds into a children's format. They should be for everybody, and I hope to hear more rounds at our bardic circles in the future.