(no subject)
Today's moment of WTF, brought to you by my reading of the moment, which will go unnamed here, although reference to my reading list sticky-post should make it fairly easy to figure out what it is.
Seriously.
"Feudal society made use of a specific and precise vocabulary when it came to indicating the role and quality of each person. The meaning of certain of these terms qualifying such or such a person in the medieval world has been the subject of numerous studies, as with the titles of dominus and of miles." (p. 395, my translation)
You know, maybe I'm behind the cutting edge of French-language studies of feudalism, but the last time I checked, historians were busily chopping each other off at the knees over the significance of those terms and the question of whether they were used consistently or had specific meanings. Not to mention the metaphorical blood that's been spilled over the question of "mutation féodale" versus "mutation documentaire."
But maybe in France they're still putting their hands over their ears and singing the "I've never heard of Susan Reynolds" song.
Urm, maybe that was mean, but seriously. I'm already highly skeptical of the claim, which is basically the backbone of this study, that there was a set of essentially iron-clad rules for naming in early medieval Europe. I mean, customs, sure, with the flexibility that implies (if it was good enough for law, why not for naming your kid?), but rules so rigid you can safely assume no one outside one single lineage would use any given name? I dunno. Next on my reading list is the article in which I suspect this historian establishes that claim.
On a less annoyed note, I'm exploring the possibilities of putting my hair in a bun (minus hairpins). I'm currently having fairly good success with a green crayola pencil crayon as hairstick. Hee.
Seriously.
"Feudal society made use of a specific and precise vocabulary when it came to indicating the role and quality of each person. The meaning of certain of these terms qualifying such or such a person in the medieval world has been the subject of numerous studies, as with the titles of dominus and of miles." (p. 395, my translation)
You know, maybe I'm behind the cutting edge of French-language studies of feudalism, but the last time I checked, historians were busily chopping each other off at the knees over the significance of those terms and the question of whether they were used consistently or had specific meanings. Not to mention the metaphorical blood that's been spilled over the question of "mutation féodale" versus "mutation documentaire."
But maybe in France they're still putting their hands over their ears and singing the "I've never heard of Susan Reynolds" song.
Urm, maybe that was mean, but seriously. I'm already highly skeptical of the claim, which is basically the backbone of this study, that there was a set of essentially iron-clad rules for naming in early medieval Europe. I mean, customs, sure, with the flexibility that implies (if it was good enough for law, why not for naming your kid?), but rules so rigid you can safely assume no one outside one single lineage would use any given name? I dunno. Next on my reading list is the article in which I suspect this historian establishes that claim.
On a less annoyed note, I'm exploring the possibilities of putting my hair in a bun (minus hairpins). I'm currently having fairly good success with a green crayola pencil crayon as hairstick. Hee.