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Mar. 10th, 2010 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardSo, I occasionally (read: more and more often as my college career progresses at a breakneck pace) worry that I am not cut out to be (a) an academic, (b) a historian, and (c) a professor. Case in point: in King John, which I read for Medieval England, one of the appendices in the back is about various historians' attempts to reconstruct what happened with the accident to King John's baggage in October 1216. Sources from the time are very scarce about it, except that at some point some of his baggage train were (a) "submerged in the waters of the sea, and sucked into the quicksand"1, (b) "lost...for the ground was opened in the mdist of the waves, and bottomless whirlpools engulfed everything, together with men and horses" 2, or (c) "lost irretrievably...for the ground opened in the midst of the waves, and the sand which is called quick sucked in everything...apart from his life."3.
Anyway, one way or another King John lost his baggage, either all of it including his men and the horses, or just some of it, and he did it at some indeterminate point between one location and the other, at such and such a date, except no one's sure when or how or where or anything, just that it happened. Warren, the author of the book, spends a long time talking about different historians' attempts to figure out what the hell happened based on geology, geography, other historical records, all the possible routes John could have taken...all very fascinating, except I spent the whole time going, "I would be much more convinced by these arguments if they were presented in story form, since y'all are pretty much making them up anyway."
Which is -- how I feel about most of the stuff I read. I find it absolutely fascinating (except for Christianity, but more on that later), except I'm always thinking about how it would function in a fictional(ized) setting, rather than in proper historical context, and I am about ninety percent sure that this is not what is needed to be a Proper Academic.
On the bright side, I am writing fiction again. (Which is not to say I haven't been writing, I have, but co-writing is Different. Not bad, just different.) World-building, darling, I missed you.
I also very much recommend the book, for those interested in a biography of King John (yes, that King John, of Robin Hood fame); it's very well-written, very readable, and highly objective.
1. Ralph, Abbot of Coggeshall, Chronicum Anglicanum
2. Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum
3. Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum
Anyway, one way or another King John lost his baggage, either all of it including his men and the horses, or just some of it, and he did it at some indeterminate point between one location and the other, at such and such a date, except no one's sure when or how or where or anything, just that it happened. Warren, the author of the book, spends a long time talking about different historians' attempts to figure out what the hell happened based on geology, geography, other historical records, all the possible routes John could have taken...all very fascinating, except I spent the whole time going, "I would be much more convinced by these arguments if they were presented in story form, since y'all are pretty much making them up anyway."
Which is -- how I feel about most of the stuff I read. I find it absolutely fascinating (except for Christianity, but more on that later), except I'm always thinking about how it would function in a fictional(ized) setting, rather than in proper historical context, and I am about ninety percent sure that this is not what is needed to be a Proper Academic.
On the bright side, I am writing fiction again. (Which is not to say I haven't been writing, I have, but co-writing is Different. Not bad, just different.) World-building, darling, I missed you.
I also very much recommend the book, for those interested in a biography of King John (yes, that King John, of Robin Hood fame); it's very well-written, very readable, and highly objective.
1. Ralph, Abbot of Coggeshall, Chronicum Anglicanum
2. Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum
3. Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum