'Do you bite your thumb at me sir?': The Failure of Medieval-Modern Discourse and a Personal Justification of Ranting.

Article by Simon Lax. Edited by Hannah Probert.

Modernists have so many sources, they are effectively journalists. Medievalists have so few, we could more accurately be termed ‘novelists’.

3 . Does periodisation help in understanding the transistion from the ancient to modern worlds?

It has been my pleasure to write for New Histories this year, and a real kindness on behalf of the editors-in-chief to allow me to submit articles for their consideration. They have both done a fine and largely unrecognised job, coupled with the difficulty of organising the schedules of dozens of historian students (two nouns which alone imply limited capacity for organization) which suggests either masochism, insanity, or an unbelievably high charitable desire to continue this innovative and important magazine. However, a constant theme throughout my articles has been the failure of successful discourse between medievalists and modernists within the magazine. In part, this must be due to my presence as sole medievalist until Jacob Harrison-Beaumont took mercy on me last issue, but also because the topics selected raised the ire of myself and my fellow knights and damsels (my protesting editor, Miss. Hannah Probert) by being unsuited to the medieval period. The so-called ‘rants’ that have been published in full in issue 2.2 and 2.4, and the heavily censored call to arms in 2.5 were appended in issue 2.6 by my response to the censorship here. In this special and slightly more formal article, I will offer my justifications for all the things I said, and why I was in fact obligated to say them.

The question at the top of this piece was the essay question I answered on the very first exam paper I took at this university, all the way back in 2007. It’s a question that has repeatedly tortured me, as my favoured early medieval period particularly suffers from the issues that the giving of names to discrete periods of time neccesarily entails. As a ‘medievalist’, there are a thousand years of history which fall within my remit, and yet, as a historian of Merovingian and Carolingian France of the 6th to 9th centuries, I’m often forced to look back to Roman times and structures to understand how society functioned. I try very hard not to see it in those terms though: I’m not a medievalist looking back beyond the bounds of what I know, but a historian trying only to create the strongest justification for my understanding of the past. That the first thing a graduate historian of early modern history thought of when considering significant medieval people was ‘Robin Hood’ gave me serious cause for concern. This resulted in the setting up of the ‘Cross-Chronological Seminars: Medieval and Early Modern Perspectives’, which has and shall continue to improve the knowledge of masters-level historians within the department of periods that fall outside of their rigorously periodised degree programs.

The issues of New Histories that particularly vexed me were those of Revolutions and Sports & Leisure, and the further rants were the frustration at not having those concerns addressed. In spite of the constant urgings by the delightful and much derided autocrat Mr. Hercock that I could write outside of the theme, I felt it important for me to make a stand. That revolution excites the modern mind is undeniable, but to the medieval person, the word meant turning, or orbit. Articles have been written by early modernists describing the beginnings of leisure in the 16th century. The titles were by design exclusively of use to historians of the early modern period or later. Medievalists were frozen out of any type ofdiscourse: if the language games that Wittgenstein described are anything approximating reality, it is clear that the medievalists and modernists were talking different languages (and I’m not referring to Latin). The topics were designed to appeal to historians of the early modern period or later and therefore force medievalists (yes, me) into the dilemma of either writing a hopelessly modern interpretation of a medieval event, or writing the medieval event in defiance of the modern concept.. Neither option preferable, but I hope to have erred towards the latter as the lesser of the evils. This is important not only for our efforts to continually question and thus improve what we do in this journal, but also beyond. Time is often spent by Medieval historians disputing whether we should try to understand the medieval world using terms such as ‘state’ or indeed ‘revolution’. These terms may be highly anachronistic and, what is worse, not useful, but Medievalists must worry whether abandoning them will contribute to the dismissal of our topics from the thoughts of modernists.

And yet, it need not have been so. The antecedents of revolution and the antecedents of leisure exist in medieval Europe. Consumer markets, shops, a bourgeois class were products and parts of a medieval age that begat leisure. Popular movements have been seriously argued to have not existed in the medieval period (and the early modern, for that matter), because of the lack of mass and rapidly responsive media. And yet, we see in Waldensians, in the crusades, even in the followings of itinerant Holy Men and Women clear ideas of a group consciousness and group action: the nascent beginnings of revolution. Clearly some concepts are period specific: it is one of the way we define periods (those of a marxist bent especially). Despite that hopeless circularity, I would not suggest that the editors (or, as I have called them, crazed exarchs, Nero-esque dictators and tyrannical autocrats, perhaps more persuasive in rhetoric than reality) have ever issued a theme so entirely modern as to render the effort of writing a medieval article pointless. Even with Revolution and Leisure, I was able to write articles. They were necessarily less accurate than could have been hoped, but I had to make the point that badly chosen language with modernist bias doesn’t exclude medievalists entirely, but more broadly. A more concerted effort to include medievalists would have reaped better history, but the themes spoke in a language they did not understand. The lack of a clear attempt to include or promote medieval writers was the consequentia, rather than the causa of these problematic themes (if modernists are allowed to use discriminatory themes to exclude my fellow medievalists, I will exercise my right to use Latin to exclude them).

But, “why rant?”, I can almost hear the cry of an anguished editor in chief within the masters’ computer area in Jessop West. A great deal of life should be governed, á mon avis, by a search for the humourous and Schadenfreude, and if I have some slight conceit that I write better when I write satirically then I am less at fault than I would be were I to pump out endlessly bland articles on boring topics. It has been popular: not simply with the medievalists, but also with other members of the New Histories team. If their pleasure had been more to do with its style than its argument, then I consider that an acceptable price for me to pay whilst creating something which has given the articles a certain, recognizable tone. I am also assured that the power-crazed tyrants have rather liked the title: a certain glint appears behind the eye of Mr. Hercock when he is offered authority which does not altogether comfort one of his eligibility for any power in the real, non-academic world (or even within it, were one to be safe). Most importantly than the florid language though, to me, was the message that better history could be done without periods, periodisation and periodising language. I am grateful if any were convinced of the veracity of my argument, but I admit the likely futility of the exercise, given the limited interest in medieval topics within this journal. If I have not convinced anyone, at the very least I provoked some laughter and enjoyed myself whilst quoting the bible, Shakespeare, and using increasingly polysyllabic words to make a point few cared about. And on that final point, what else is history but that?

The Uncensored ‘Epic Rant’ from 2.5

Firstly, it is incumbent on me, having complained bitterly at the iniquities committed against the medieval members of the New Histories magazine (elliptically here and explicitly here) to congratulate the general editors of bowing to the vox populi and the threat of strike action. At last, one can almost hear the freeing of chains from the oppressed medieval populations both of history, and of academia as the general title for this issue is not ridiculously slanted towards modernist historians. The (modern, post-Marxist sense) revolution begins here comrades: never again shall cruel and tyrannical autocrats in their ivory towers at Ranmoor cry foul scorn upon the noble art of the medieval historian, and any further suggestion of issues on industrialism and democracy (currently derailed by the will of the people) will result necessarily in a rising up of the proletariat against the system upon which this magazine relies. The gauntlet is thrown, the challenge presented in accordance with our noble traditions, and if those Nero-esque dictators have the temerity to accept it, the response shall be swift, decisive and of such ferocity as to eclipse even the massacres of 1099 and 1191. Nemo nos impune lacessit.

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