the Chaucer Blogger, and other academic ephemera
Today Brantley Bryant, the mastermind behind the fantastic Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog, stopped by our campus to give a talk, about his reveal as the Chaucer Blogger last year, about medievalism, playfulness, the place for pleasure in academia, and many other things. I've known Brantley (er, not in the biblical sense, no) for several years now, intermittently, through encounters at conferences and talks and medievalist gatherings, and he's funny and kind and one of the smartest people I know (and we had lunch and talked about China Mieville and Vonda McIntyre and giant squid, after he finished the guest lecture).
Anyway, we were thinking about the role of pleasure in the academy, and the need to love what we do--the reason that many of us got into our field in the first place. And we thought about how groups like the BABEL Working Group (who are all fantastically brilliant academics), and the medievalist bloggers over at In The Middle, have called for a renewed emphasis on the joy of history, the fun of literature. We do what we do because we love it (and this is also true of fandom; I am, I think, a fan of medieval literature as well, and obviously Brantley is writing wonderfully erudite and joyous fanfic). We shouldn't have to write as if what we do is dry and boring; we need to write with all the enthusiasm that we feel. And works like the Chaucer blog make the past alive again--not that I am suggesting an abolition of scholarly rigor altogether, of course. I'm not. But there is a space for playful, transformative, participatory works of love, I think, that academics have been suspicious of, traditionally (if it doesn't have fifty footnotes, you're not doing it right!), but that is important to recognize.
Chaucer wrote to be read. Malory wrote to be read (well, arguably). The authors of Anglo-Saxon riddle-poems had fun (sometimes disturbingly sexual fun, at that). Brantley's amazing Serpentes On A Shippe post is fun. And if we can share their enjoyment, we can make connections across time. This is, to borrow a term from Carolyn Dinshaw, the queering of history: there's no straightness, no line from past to present to future. There are just people, touching each other in myriad ways across time and space, through literature.
Also, there might've been an offer about guest-posting on the Chaucer Blog at some future date, if I find an appropriate medieval persona. We'll see...
Anyway, we were thinking about the role of pleasure in the academy, and the need to love what we do--the reason that many of us got into our field in the first place. And we thought about how groups like the BABEL Working Group (who are all fantastically brilliant academics), and the medievalist bloggers over at In The Middle, have called for a renewed emphasis on the joy of history, the fun of literature. We do what we do because we love it (and this is also true of fandom; I am, I think, a fan of medieval literature as well, and obviously Brantley is writing wonderfully erudite and joyous fanfic). We shouldn't have to write as if what we do is dry and boring; we need to write with all the enthusiasm that we feel. And works like the Chaucer blog make the past alive again--not that I am suggesting an abolition of scholarly rigor altogether, of course. I'm not. But there is a space for playful, transformative, participatory works of love, I think, that academics have been suspicious of, traditionally (if it doesn't have fifty footnotes, you're not doing it right!), but that is important to recognize.
Chaucer wrote to be read. Malory wrote to be read (well, arguably). The authors of Anglo-Saxon riddle-poems had fun (sometimes disturbingly sexual fun, at that). Brantley's amazing Serpentes On A Shippe post is fun. And if we can share their enjoyment, we can make connections across time. This is, to borrow a term from Carolyn Dinshaw, the queering of history: there's no straightness, no line from past to present to future. There are just people, touching each other in myriad ways across time and space, through literature.
Also, there might've been an offer about guest-posting on the Chaucer Blog at some future date, if I find an appropriate medieval persona. We'll see...