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Medieval Readings
May. 3rd, 2009 04:52 amYou know you’re doing something too much when you start getting odd favoritisms. For example, I have a favorite miniature sculptor -- Werner Klocke, who I have posted about before.
Well, after listening to so many educational audiobooks/lectures, I have a favorite teacher/presenter -- Michael D. C. Drout. Witty, intelligent and a wonderful font of information, Christine and I both have listened to him lecture on Geoffrey Chaucer, Fantasy Literature, Science Fiction, The History of the English Language, and Rhetoric. He has some others on writing and poerty that I haven’t been able to find at any of local libraries and he has one on Anglo-Saxon England coming out later this year.
He also has an online project where he reads Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and is a well known Tolkien scholar. And he is going to be at Kalamazoo.
He has written a book, How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Cultural Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century, and that is what I read on the plane trip out to Chicago, at least the first 100 pages or so. It is well written in a casual yet precise manner, humorous in places and manages to do something which very few history books manage -- to delve into quite fine detail about esoteric things and yet still be easily accessible to non-academics (or at least, hobbyist-level academics).
The book starts out with a description of and history of memes, the theory, the criticisms, the advocates and the detractors. It then looks at the 10th Century reformation of England’s monasteries and canons and tries to explain how they happened, why they happened, what things worked and what things didn’t work using meme theory. I’m only about halfway though this section so far and am very excited to keep reading.
Having listened to so many of his lectures, probably about 60 hours worth, I feel almost like I know him, and I can certainly see many of his favorite anecdotes and pet peeves coming through in his writing.
I’ll post more on this book as I keep reading . . .
Well, after listening to so many educational audiobooks/lectures, I have a favorite teacher/presenter -- Michael D. C. Drout. Witty, intelligent and a wonderful font of information, Christine and I both have listened to him lecture on Geoffrey Chaucer, Fantasy Literature, Science Fiction, The History of the English Language, and Rhetoric. He has some others on writing and poerty that I haven’t been able to find at any of local libraries and he has one on Anglo-Saxon England coming out later this year.
He also has an online project where he reads Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and is a well known Tolkien scholar. And he is going to be at Kalamazoo.
He has written a book, How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Cultural Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century, and that is what I read on the plane trip out to Chicago, at least the first 100 pages or so. It is well written in a casual yet precise manner, humorous in places and manages to do something which very few history books manage -- to delve into quite fine detail about esoteric things and yet still be easily accessible to non-academics (or at least, hobbyist-level academics).
The book starts out with a description of and history of memes, the theory, the criticisms, the advocates and the detractors. It then looks at the 10th Century reformation of England’s monasteries and canons and tries to explain how they happened, why they happened, what things worked and what things didn’t work using meme theory. I’m only about halfway though this section so far and am very excited to keep reading.
Having listened to so many of his lectures, probably about 60 hours worth, I feel almost like I know him, and I can certainly see many of his favorite anecdotes and pet peeves coming through in his writing.
I’ll post more on this book as I keep reading . . .
