I have another person to add to my list of imaginary attendees in my hypothetical dinner party. Might I introduce to you one Margaret Lucas Cavendish (d.1673)?.Margaret’s life shows just how much human potential has been wasted by limiting women’s access to education. She gleaned hers through conversations of the men around her — her […]
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The Ancient Romans were not shy about generating erotic sex scenes in their art and literature. In the Late Empire of the second and third centuries, so much evidence surrounding the pleasures of sex abounded that it can be easy to imagine the Romans (well, the male citizen Romans) solely as pleasure-seeking sensualists.But we also
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“Humor is just another defense against the universe,” quipped the great Mel Brooks, and the great comedian’s sentiments extend far back in recorded history. I like thinking about how long humans have been teasing, cracking jokes, and finding play with the absurd. The general scholarly consensus is that the oldest written joke goes back to
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King Arthur never actually lived, but stories about him were extremely popular in Medieval Europe. One of the most well known today is _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_. The poem survives in only one manuscript that dates to the late 14th century. The language is Middle English, but belongs to a conservative rural dialect
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This is the title page for one of the most fascinating and popular books of the Italian Renaissance – _De rerum natura_, or, _On the Nature of Things_, by the Ancient Roman Lucretius. The expense of the artwork and skill of the miniaturist – the copier was an Augustinian friar for Pope Sixtus IV dating
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This is one of my favorite illustrations from Medieval history, from _The Book of the Queen_, and shows Christine de Pizan (1364-1431) — the first woman professional writer in French — standing in a celestial sphere surrounded by the sun, moon, and stars. The miniature features a scene from an allegorical tale by de Pizan
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This is the frontispiece of John Milton’s (of _Paradise Lost_ fame) _Areopagitica_, a treatise promoting free speech by arguing against licensing, aka mandating that publications must have official government/religious approval. Published in 1644, Milton’s world was not one that guaranteed the right to free expression. Instead, both in England and in the nascent colonies, there
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What are these wee beasties adorning this 11th-century Old English manuscript? Not bulls-with-fringe legs, but spiders! I love that the artist makes their bodies more like mammalian monsters — but if you count their legs, you do see that at least the artist got the number correct. In Old English, many kinds of crawling things
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There are many 19th-century paintings like this — where there are seemingly hundreds of minute figures, and you have to concentrate on the small patches of action in order to understand at all what is going on, instead of getting an impression of the whole and then spending time appreciating the details. This one is
Time for a slice of poetry history! Reader, may I introduce you to one Arnaut Daniel, a late 12th-century troubadour from Provençe in southern France, and most likely candidate for the invention of the _sestina_? This image is from a 13th-century manuscript, which is as contemporary as we can get.Admittedly, neither Daniel nor the sestina
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We take for granted the ways we exchange greetings, but these ways are laden with hidden meanings that tell a lot about the culture they develop in. And when greetings change, something about the culture changes too. This is the Chinese character for “li,” an ancient concept developed in some of the oldest Confucian
This is a book that of which I am not a fan. _The Alphabet Versus the Goddess_, by Leonard Shlain, argues that the development of the written word allowed patriarchy to flourish. Sigh. Shlain’s background was in surgery, and the premise of his thesis is rooted in physical claims. “Alphabet literacy,” he asserts, gains
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Based on the following description, whom do you think I might be describing?:. This man lived during the first century of the Roman Empire. According to ancient sources, he was born to a woman who was visited by a supernatural being who told her that she would conceive a divine son. As the child
This sphinx with doodles on its back is way cooler than it looks. At 23.7 cm/9.3 inches, it’s not much larger than a paperweight. But it contains a key to understanding the invention of the alphabet, one of the most significant technologies humans ever developed. Dating to about 1800 BCE at an Ancient Egyptian
It’s _Beowulf_ day in my Early Medieval Europe class, which I absolutely never get sick of — the bloody wrestling match of Beowulf and Grendel, the heartbreaking moment when Beowulf puts on his armor for the last time knowing that the dragon will kill him, the poet’s anxiety about blood feuds wrecking societies while nonetheless
In the 6th century, a wandering monk from Ireland known as St Gall settled down at a monastery in Switzerland. The Medieval account of his life written about three hundred years later tells much of the saint’s holiness, which brought him the ability to do miracles (like – order a bear to put a log
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Here are three close up images from one of the most famous Chinese ink paintings ever created, the _Nine Dragons_, by Chen Rong. Chen Rong produced this handscroll in 1244, and it is massive — over ten meters long! (32 feet) The aesthetic qualities are immediately grasped even if you don’t know a darn
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I adore Medieval flora and fauna mistakes! When they got things wrong, they were so extra about it. So here’s an example of a made-up species that Medieval people thought existed, called the “Barnacle Goose,” or “Branta leucopsis”. Much like the “Lamb of Tartary,” which I did a different post about, the Barnacle Geese
This is a late 12th-century illustration of “the Witch of Endor,” a prophetess from the Bible who could raise the spirits of the dead and talk to them. Artists have enjoyed illustrating her almost as much as religious people have enjoyed debating about her powers. In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament First Book of Samuel
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Moses Maimonides is not only fun to say (alliteration!), but also the name of one of the most important philosophers of the Middle Ages. Born around 1135 in Spain, Maimonides was influenced by the great mix of religious cultures that made the Medieval Iberian peninsula unique. And this brings me to one of his most
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