GROWLTIGER'S ON THE LOOSE! (medieval version)

 

Full marks for effort, major deduction for execution, though.

Personally, even if my cat loved medieval history (he doesn't), I'd still actually put a picture of him on a "lost cat" poster. I mean, if you see a ginger cat wandering Cambridge, are you just supposed to go up to it and start quizzing it on the Battle of Hastings and call the number if it responds?

On the other hand, I'm sympathetic to the need to advertise the cat's proclivities, but really, if you need a pictures of medieval cats (and yes, I've just used the words "medieval" and "cat" in the same sentence, fully knowing the risk of reigniting the flurry of cat-print-on-manuscript pictures circulating) there are much better options available.

Nevertheless, I do hope these folks find their cat.

Overrun with Dictionaries

Back in the States, back to work, and now off to test out the Arabischekomplexitätsverdichtungstheorie. As opposed to the Germanischeausdruckskomplexitätshypothese, which is largely similar but without right-to-left support or quite as many types of camels.


(Nomenclature adapted from @girlarchaeo.)

A Translation Most Foul (Or, Shakespeare May Have Invented the English Language, But He Probably Never Saw This Coming)

The early seasons of the Fox comedy Bones were quite enjoyable: the writing had its moments, and in spite of some pop-culture-y type misconceptions about what constitutes intelligence, I could rather empathize with a main character who understands dead people better than live ones and can navigate a complicated field of study much better than human relationships. I realize that I can't have the following conversation, transcribed from one of the episodes, as the epigraph of my book (topical though it may be); I feel like I could probably make a solid academic case for it, but it would be completely preposterous. (Just because I can make an argument for anything doesn't necessarily mean that I should.) So simply on the basis of it still having the capacity to make me laugh raucously, I'm going to reproduce it here.

Aside from the odd juxtapositions that result from using "translation" as a code word for "murder" (involving the coroner in the former, for example, or adjectives that have never been seen paired with that word before in the history of the English language), I find it very funny to see characters on a major, mainstream TV program deadpanning a completely absurdist conversation about translation.

The setup is that forensic anthropologist Temperance "Bones" Brennan has realized, while attending the funeral of a colleague with her partner, FBI agent Seely Booth, that the decedent did not die of natural causes. I'm not sure it'll play as well in written form, but unfortunately I couldn't locate a clip online of this particular scene:

BRENNAN: We should remain clear-headed so we can solve the murder.

BOOTH: Code word, okay, for murder?

BRENNAN: Okay.

BOOTH: I want you to say "translation," you understand? Translation, got it?

BRENNAN: Okay. Someone translated Dr. Reilly, and we have to find out who.

BOOTH: Bones, is there any chance you just feel bad about not knowing this guy like the rest of us did? So, now you're just making it about you in saying that he was translated instead of, I don't know, dying of natural causes?

BRENNAN: No, there is no chance of that.

BOOTH: What makes you think he was translated?

BRENNAN: Okay, the rose that his assistant placed on his chest had fallen to the side. So, I reached in to put it back and I touched him….Booth, we are talking about translation.

BOOTH: Bones, did you ever think that, I don't know, if there was evidence of foul translation, that the coroner would have spotted it?

BRENNAN: Yes.

BOOTH: Fine, so, I'll tell you what. Tomorrow morning we will go find the guy who did the autopsy and we'll ask him questions.

BRENNAN: No, Dr. Reilly's scheduled to be cremated this afternoon. All the evidence will be destroyed. We have to get an injunction so that we can examine the remains.

BOOTH: Now? You want me to take the body now?

BRENNAN: Yes.

BOOTH: That family will be scarred for life.

BRENNAN: Booth, the man has been translated.

By George, I think she's got it!

I just saw an article entitled "The Archaeology of Irrigated Spaces in Southeast Granada during the Medieval Period." If you parse it out, what the author is saying is that the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.

Where's Walter?

(Click to enlarge to a readable size.)

The commodity topic for the past two weeks in the intro lecture class has been paper and parchment; so for my lecture later today, I'm presenting the Libro de Alexandre as a textual locus for finding hidden references to different types of writing. So it actually worked thematically to throw a little Where's Waldo reference into the Powerpoint as a slide header. In presenting the verses here, I hope that the students will see places in which the poem refers to its own sources — including one written by a certain Walter of Chatillon — and how the text itself views those sources.

I resisted the urge to take the time to find a little picture of Waldo and make a clipping path so I could stick him in with Alexander's men.

Edited on 12/8/11: A student in my seminar, totally unbidden by me, described the Hall of Justice ceilings in the Alhambra as being like Where's Waldo?. So I've now managed to have Waldo included in both of my classes this week.

Damn you, autocorrect. Library edition.

I'm slightly down on the state of the world's libraries and even my very favorite one can't escape entirely.

I was running out of ways to transliterate the name of the subject of my dissertation so that the catalogue would bring up the record and call number of a particular edition of one of his works that I knew to be part of the collection.

Spelling his name that way never occurred to me. It didn't help any more than the others, as it happens.

And as much as I knew that I was also looking for a particular large, multi-volume work the exact title of which I did not remember, I didn't really anticipate needing a bigger boat:

A Catalyst

Only a medievalist would be reading something late at night including the phrase "fall of the caliphate," and only a medievalist could realize that it's definitely time to go to bed after misreading the same as "fall off the catapult."