tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post4223398966163467791..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: The State of the Field in Anglo-Saxon StudiesCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-52669816140063071062008-07-02T21:01:00.000-04:002008-07-02T21:01:00.000-04:00(Oliver Sacks, Eileen? For cripes' sake, I read Ol...(Oliver Sacks, Eileen? For cripes' sake, I read Oliver Sacks as a teenager and wanted to *be* Oliver Sacks. Saw him speak at Columbia this spring, and realised that, after all these years, I still want to be Oliver Sacks.)<BR/><BR/>In reaction to the first two essays: I love die Herren Grimm and Verner as much as the next person packing a Clark Hall, but I couldn't figure out why, if history is something we should leave to historians and sociology to sociologists, we shouldn't also leave linguistics to.... well... linguists. That's what the word "language" was being used to mean, right? I think there was an attempt to imply that "literature" would somehow also be involved, but it turns out that the right and wrong answers are mainly about the linguistic part of it. Moreover, we are not only to turn to linguistics, but to a point in that field that was current about a <I>century</I> ago, and this is to empower the field in the intellectual marketplace and give it a better bargaining position vis a vis other fields in English. <BR/><BR/>Please understand me -- I happen to bring to the table many of the biases (or opinions, if you will) represented in these papers. I do think someone graduating with a BA in English, to say nothing of PhDs, should have a clue about how the English language works and what its development has been. I do believe there has to be a process in the university classroom by which ideas are rigorously and honestly evaluated, and then assigned a place on a graded scale between right and wrong, false and true. (Note I said a scale?) And when I wake up tomorrow morning I promise the first thing I will do is review my verb classes. <BR/><BR/>But that philological skills which, to my mind, ought to be handmaidens to textual study, should be made the main attraction.... this strikes me as a powerfully misguided notion. The brandishing of Verner's Law certainly won't make the Melville specialist appreciate Anglo-Saxon studies, because what the Melville person wants to know about Anglo-Saxon generally has to do with what was written with the language, with what strange and familiar fascinations the Anglo-Saxon imagination might offer a modern reader. <BR/><BR/>Please forgive what must be quite an incoherent message -- it's late where I am, and this tiny little composition window is less than ideal. Moreover, it's difficult to express my feelings about this topic since it requires me, in a sense, to argue against what I love. Part of the initial appeal of Anglo-Saxon for me, and of medieval studies in general, was the opportunity to learn something more "technical", more delightfully nerdy, alongside the literary studies. And yet the technical takes over too readily, it leaves too little space for the rest, and it's that rest that convinces me to stay in for the long haul. Because if there were really no more to Beowulf than Ablaut, I'd have switched to Milton, or Melville, or Morrison long ago.irinahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17367550625985786599noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-75972759702966322042008-07-02T18:40:00.000-04:002008-07-02T18:40:00.000-04:00Apocalypse? Hellllllllllll no . . . that's kid's s...Apocalypse? Hellllllllllll no . . . that's kid's stuff. I'm a *passive* nihilist, not an *active* nihilist [cadging from Simon Critchley]. I just like "branding."Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.com