Gratuitous book plug

I just want to say that I love Joachim Bumke's Höfische Kultur (translated under the imaginative title of 'Courtly Culture'). It's such a fantastic resource for all aspects of, well courtly culture, and how it is manifested and sometimes transformed in literature. It brings such a fabulous range of sources together, and the analysis is good too.

On a religious lit note, I just bought Caroline Bynum's "Holy Feast and Holy Fast" (well, it is Lent.) It's quite old now (pub 1984), but it really is a very stimulating book - and it makes one aware of a mass of interesting material which is off the undergraduate's radar. I've read it before, but it gave me a new perspective on mediaeval attitudes to the body and its role in religion, and it's still providing food for thought. Very convincingly argued.

So there we are, two excellent books, one from the old school, one from the new. Saying that these are great books isn't saying anything new, of course, but no matter....

Curiouser and Curiouser

You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're
actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their
assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they
build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd
be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Not sure that that's true.

Oh dear. I gain a lot of time by being very productive and finishing tomorrow's lecture about five hours earlier than planned - and then I go and fritter it away on the internet. Whose stupid idea was it to install Ethernet in the Bod, anyway?

Which literary character do you most have the hots for?

I know, I'm spamming a bit today... but this is quite a fun thread on the Grauniad Culture Vulture blog:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2006/03/02/literary_lust.html

So which literary character does it for you?

In my case - like one of the people on the Gaurdian website, it's probably Peter Wimsey (as a result of overwhelmingly wonderful way with words, and nice hands; I don't normally go for blonds). Also up there, though in no particular order: Aragorn, Faramir (yes, I do identify with Eowyn, why do you ask?), Remus Lupin (though at the risk of getting brickbats thrown at me, I didn't really like David Thewliss), Darcy (Fitzwilliam, not Mark, and no, that's not just because of Colin Firth... though it probably helps), and Philip Marlowe. Oh, and although this will probably mean nothing to most people reading this: Willehalm*, in the Wolfram version.

Next question: what does this say about me? I'm not sure I want to know (though it's got to be better than what fancying Rochester would say about me...)

And now back to the life of S. Dominic.

*Willehalm is also known as Saint William of Aquitane, which means that if only there was any reason to suppose he was anything like the character in Wolfram would make him the answer to the appreciably more disturbing question, which saint do you find most fanciable? The field is, admittedly, rather small, since John Donne only rates a Commemoration in the Anglican calendar, and Ludwig of Thüringen, husband of Elisabeth of Thüringen in what is genrally agreed to have been one of the few recorded marriages for love in the middle ages, was never officially canonized, despite the popular tradition in Germany. But you do have to love a guy who, when his relatives tried to talk him out of marrying Elisabeth, because her family were in a lot of trouble and she was no longer a good match, replied 'See that mountain over there? Well, if you turned it into gold, and offered me it not to marry her, I wouldn't take it.' (it sounds a bit corny now, but in the context of thirteenth century historical writing...) And Elisabeth was given to scandalising the court by throwing herself in a passionate and undignified fashion at her husband when he returned even from short absences, so it was obviously mutual.

Elisabeth/ Ludwig OTP (after all, popular hagiography is the fanfic of the middle ages...)