Morning!

Today, my room has that delicious atmosphere of a winter morning (although it's fading quickly, because the sun is entering my window). I believe they call it crisp, but I'm afraid that word has been worn out.

Yesterday in the library, I ran into (I was actually running) the person probably most close to me here in Exeter. She's called A., like so many of us. I hadn't seen her for a week, because, as said, this campus is not like UC's campus, and besides, she lives in town. I had assumes she hadn't replied to our e-mails and joined our outings because she had been too busy with her (boy)friend who was coming over from Germany this weekend. Instead, I had before me a rather downhearted A. who was beginning to get seriously homesick. Her friend had had an accident (though not too grave) and had not been able to come. Poor girl... But there's nothing we can do but hope he will be better in a few weeks, and try to engage her more in life in England...

Now I have to run again - to my sexuality study group (just talking).

Medieval ghosts

Mm, supermarkets are a different experience when visited in a state of slight tipsiness - but it wasn't my fault: in English pubs "bitter lemon" is evidently translated into "lemon bitter".

Before our drink in "The Old Firehouse", we had already heard some good stories about "England's most haunted city" (which status it oddly shares with Chester and York), and visited some of those most haunted places. So I'm sure I will sleep excellent tonight.

I got some good news today: UC administration has just come to the conclusion that it is quite OK for me to stay in Exeter, doing the courses I do. Hey, did they just beat the UvA in organisational distinction? That just leaves me wondering what would have happened if things weren't okay...

My four-leaved clover has by now reached a stage of undecimity (elevenfoldedness)!

Meanwhile, I have finished my first essay. Five to go. Fortunately, essays are a bit shorter up here than at UC.

I've done two nice discoveries: first, there is some great, diverse and rather human (as opposed to schematic) literature to be found in the works of Marie de France. Most importantly today: one of her "lais" (a poetic genre) is about a real-life werewolf! In twelfth-century Bretagne! She describes how the werewolf's wife deals with the knowledge of her husband's condition... http://web.english.ufl.edu/exemplaria/marie/bisclavret.pdf

A second interesting discovery was that the journey-metaphor so common today to describe the course of human life, began to be used in the eleventh and twelfth centuries only. In other words: it was only then that life came to be experienced as a quest for some personal goal or happiness - before, life was just something to be endured (of course I'm only speaking about medieval Europe here).

But for the rest: why study the Middle Ages?

A nice feature it shares with for example Antiquity is the number and nature of sources that are left. And in the end it is these sourcs you are dealing with. Their number is not such as to simply drown in, but also not so small/material that you would get into serious trouble when you try to imagine what is was like to be a Neanderthaler. So archaeology and material culture and so is all very nice and important, but please give me some texts to go with it!

A continuous challenge when you deal with this period is that, even now, it is still somehow associated with backwardness. Even I (who feels greater sympathy for the period than many other people) can still be shocked by how little understanding medieval scholars had of, let's say, simple Pythagorean issues. But then again, it's our difficult task to try to understand how this can happen in a society where at least the level of biological intelligence could not have been lower than in our own society... And indeed, these people had very diferent resources and, partly as a result, very different concerns (which in turn provided for different resources).

On the other hand, my still existing prejudices make it possible to be surprised. The pervasive misogyny of the Middle Ages for example is legendary, not least because of the works of otherwise very intelligent people like Georges Duby, while on closer scrutiny matters were not that gloomy.

Of course all these explanations for the appeal of medieval studies are made with hindsight: it all starts with a romantic fondness of a period that is so diferent from our own, but in which yet so many of our modern institutions (universities!) and conceptions (love as a precondition for marriage!) come into being. Only, you have to be prepared to find a world much more complex and much more real than your average modern (or prerafaelite) medieval fantasy...

Tot slot: you never guess what's playing in my room right now. It's Ademnood. My excuse: waiting for Lemon Tree. It's a 1995 greatest hits cassette, so you have put up with La Macarena and Paul de Leeuw and quite some more stuff before you finally reach Fool's Garden... But I'm still embarrassed.

It's midnight: happy birthday!

& goodnight.