(no subject)
I am not dead of American Thanksgiving with erstwhile advisor and family! In fact, Thanksgiving was very nice. I am likewise not dead of productivity, although productivity has cut into my computer time the past couple of days. But leaving my computer turned off has allowed me to accomplish quite a lot in the realms of grocery shopping and cooking, cleaning, and reading, so I can't complain. In fact, I may adopt this revelation about the connection between no computer and getting things done as a general weekend policy (or at least, parts of weekends tbd).
Anyway, since Wednesday, I've finished reading (as those closely following the "currently reading" section in my sidebar will know) Amy Livingstone, Out of Love for my Kin: Aristocratic Family Life in the Lands of the Loire, 1000-1200 (Ithaca, 2010), and Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2006). Now, it's time to end my unofficial break from reading Francophone historiography with Stéphane Morin, Trégor, Goëlo, Penthièvre: Le pouvoir des Comtes de Bretagne du XIe au XIIIe siècle (Rennes, 2010), which has ever-so-shinily been awaiting my attention since I bought it in Vannes. The time is now! And it will provide a useful entry-point into my majority French-language reading list for the rest of the year.
On that note, I'm hoping to finish transcribing ALL THE THINGS by the time I head home for the holidays on December 16th, and I'm also hoping to have my yuletide story mostly written by then, which means RESEARCHING ALL THE THINGS! By the way, I am still open to suggestions as to how one combines epic mountains of crap to do and epic vistas of unstructured time in such a way as to efficiently use the time to accomplish the crap.
But finally, I have to talk more about this latest round of reading. Barbara Rosenwein is always good for redecorating the inside of my head, and this book was no different (although not as much of a revelation to me as her To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909-1049). Amy Livingstone, however, has prompted me to say that it's rare for me to finish a book and say to myself "that book was sadly under-theorized," but this one left me with exactly that reaction.
In substance, I actually really liked the book, and agreed with its findings. I also vastly enjoyed the challenge it offers to some of the largely-unquestioned paradigms about eleventh- and twelfth-century family and social structures put forth by certain towering figures in the field in the past sixty years, and hewed faithfully to by generations of subsequent scholars especially in certain countries. And a pleasing amount of the toasting of these towering figures went on in a series of savage but beautiful footnotes.
However, like I said, I think it was sadly under-theorized, and sadly under-theorized in ways that could potentially really reduce its impact. I suspect that Livingstone took the potential theoretical concerns into consideration in the conceptual stages of the project, but they didn't make it into the text of the book. The result is a book that is almost entirely based on monastic charters (which are tricky and formulaic texts that involve all kinds of problems of authorship, authenticity, and potential editorial shenanigans) but that, with only token exceptions, reads them (or appears to read them), as completely transparent, that is, as faithful and unmediated reflections of reality. I don't necessarily think her readings are wrong, nor, as I said, do I necessarily think she undertook them without an awareness of the theoretical concerns surrounding charters as sources, but I think the absence of any real discussion of the ways in which charters are potentially modified and deliberately-constructed representations of reality, leaves her open to a lot of criticism. I think it would have been perfectly possible for her to address the complexity and potential problems of charters as sources while drawing the same conclusions she drew from them, but frustratingly, she hasn't really done that.
So, while I think she's right, and I want to love her conclusions, I'm left in a state of "you didn't show your work! Partial credit!" I'm also writing a mental note to self for my future works of charter-based scholarship.
Anyway, since Wednesday, I've finished reading (as those closely following the "currently reading" section in my sidebar will know) Amy Livingstone, Out of Love for my Kin: Aristocratic Family Life in the Lands of the Loire, 1000-1200 (Ithaca, 2010), and Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2006). Now, it's time to end my unofficial break from reading Francophone historiography with Stéphane Morin, Trégor, Goëlo, Penthièvre: Le pouvoir des Comtes de Bretagne du XIe au XIIIe siècle (Rennes, 2010), which has ever-so-shinily been awaiting my attention since I bought it in Vannes. The time is now! And it will provide a useful entry-point into my majority French-language reading list for the rest of the year.
On that note, I'm hoping to finish transcribing ALL THE THINGS by the time I head home for the holidays on December 16th, and I'm also hoping to have my yuletide story mostly written by then, which means RESEARCHING ALL THE THINGS! By the way, I am still open to suggestions as to how one combines epic mountains of crap to do and epic vistas of unstructured time in such a way as to efficiently use the time to accomplish the crap.
But finally, I have to talk more about this latest round of reading. Barbara Rosenwein is always good for redecorating the inside of my head, and this book was no different (although not as much of a revelation to me as her To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909-1049). Amy Livingstone, however, has prompted me to say that it's rare for me to finish a book and say to myself "that book was sadly under-theorized," but this one left me with exactly that reaction.
In substance, I actually really liked the book, and agreed with its findings. I also vastly enjoyed the challenge it offers to some of the largely-unquestioned paradigms about eleventh- and twelfth-century family and social structures put forth by certain towering figures in the field in the past sixty years, and hewed faithfully to by generations of subsequent scholars especially in certain countries. And a pleasing amount of the toasting of these towering figures went on in a series of savage but beautiful footnotes.
However, like I said, I think it was sadly under-theorized, and sadly under-theorized in ways that could potentially really reduce its impact. I suspect that Livingstone took the potential theoretical concerns into consideration in the conceptual stages of the project, but they didn't make it into the text of the book. The result is a book that is almost entirely based on monastic charters (which are tricky and formulaic texts that involve all kinds of problems of authorship, authenticity, and potential editorial shenanigans) but that, with only token exceptions, reads them (or appears to read them), as completely transparent, that is, as faithful and unmediated reflections of reality. I don't necessarily think her readings are wrong, nor, as I said, do I necessarily think she undertook them without an awareness of the theoretical concerns surrounding charters as sources, but I think the absence of any real discussion of the ways in which charters are potentially modified and deliberately-constructed representations of reality, leaves her open to a lot of criticism. I think it would have been perfectly possible for her to address the complexity and potential problems of charters as sources while drawing the same conclusions she drew from them, but frustratingly, she hasn't really done that.
So, while I think she's right, and I want to love her conclusions, I'm left in a state of "you didn't show your work! Partial credit!" I'm also writing a mental note to self for my future works of charter-based scholarship.