tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post116402252735340514..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Literature and illiterature: Albert B. Friedman, RIPCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1164032745728277182006-11-20T09:25:00.000-05:002006-11-20T09:25:00.000-05:00Nothing wrong with kicking obituary writers; it's ...Nothing wrong with kicking obituary writers; it's only the dead that we have to respect.<BR/><BR/>In all honesty the writer is simply repeating Friedman's own badly out of date logic: that cultured people wouldn't read tales of incest and blood and bodily functions. <EM>We</EM> modern medievalists know that the audience for courtly romance and for fabliaux were one and the same, and that those who enjoyed stories about love from afar also enjoyed stories with genitalia in them. In the comment to a previous thread you talk about the enduring, Aries-inspired myth that medieval kids didn't possess a childhood. The specious split between low class "pop culture" works and high class aristocratic works is just as enduring. Theya re both the works of an educated and privileged class.<BR/><BR/>Modern analogue: this blog, where Nip/Tuck and garden gnomes meet art house films and high fallutin philosophy. We're just being true to the medieval record.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1164030867183311832006-11-20T08:54:00.000-05:002006-11-20T08:54:00.000-05:00There's also Hartmann von Aue's Gregorius, which i...There's also Hartmann von Aue's <I>Gregorius,</I> which is available in translation in at least two places (I refer to the two on my shelves, sadly unread).<BR/><BR/>I hate to kick around a NY Times obituarist, likely not a medievalist, but I have to note the contrast it draws between "high-toned" upper class literature and, not the form, but the <I>content</I> of the ballads. So far as I can think off hand, the <I>content</I> for high and low class literature in the MA is very often the same. Is <I>Mankind</I> a popular work or not? (or, for that matter, oral or not?) And if Harmann von Aue isn't high class literature, I don't know what is.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.com