Grad School Report - Spring 2008 (Week 11)

[osito71]

Sometimes right after class is done for the night or for the week, I feel a sudden depression that takes me by surprise. It is a kind of emptiness where I don't know what to do with myself. . . It is a tiny taste of that feeling I get after each semester is done, that unfocused anxiety of "shouldn't I be doing something?" And of course I should

Comments

[ladybird97]

I just finished re-editing that chapter :) My argument is that Aelred's got more aristocratic ideas in 'De Spirituali Amicitia' than most people give him credit for, but I'm now totally intrigued about your communist ideas :) He's certainly anti-materialist (see my bits about sharing emotions because there isn't any material wealth), but twelfth-century political ideology was pretty separate from economic ideology. I'm really curious to hear more of your thoughts on that, though!

Also, I love the daffodil poem :)

[osito71]

Yes, those aristocratic ideas came up in consultation with my prof yesterday (though we called them "elitist" ideas) because of the narrow requirements to establish and maintain the kind of friendship he writes about.

And that separation of political and economic ideologies (along with ideas of lot in life) might end up being the answer to my question how these communal ideas of monasatic life remain isolated from mainstream political and economic ideas.

Not directly related, but there is a line I cannot recall exactly and I do not have my copy with me, where Aelred talks about the equality of men and women that threw me for a loop when I read it.

[ladybird97]

Some of those narrow requirements are inherited from Cicero - Aelred has to do a lot of bending to adapt them to a Christian context :)

But yeah, I think Aelred can afford to be egalitarian (no pun intended) first because he's talking about an egalitarian community of monks rather than a stratified secular society; and second because wealth was not seen as a determinant of social class in the twelfth century. There was correlation, but not causation.

OK. Diving back into editing now :)