Why we need the Devil

In Breaking the Spell, Dennett quotes Rodney Stark's assessment of the need for the demonic to counter our understanding of the divine:

he even proposes that a God without a counterbalancing Satan is an unstable concept - "irrationaland perverse." Why? Because "one God of infinite scope must be responsible for everything, evil as well as good, and thus must be dangerously capricious, shifting intentions unpredictably and without reason" (p. 24). (192)

The question raised by Stark and Dennett here is the human need to create a powerful parental figure who wishes us good - who is benevolent and caring. But the universe as we know it is not composed entirely of positives. Humanity therefore has created for itself a scapegoat, a figure of pure and unadulterated evil whose purpose and intention is to do harm to us, to cause us to give in to our darker desires. A figure on which to blame those who do not wish to subscribe to that benevolent dictator.

We, as human beings immersed in our constructed religions, want someone to blame for the evils we have created. In Judaism, there was no devil (originally). There was only a deity whose capriciousness and violent changeability made him inherently unreliable as a father-figure. So, in subsequent years, humanity created a counterpart to this god, a way to siphon off those things that were undesirable in a deity and place them into the - necessarily weaker - body of a creature we dubbed the devil.

So what does it mean that future generations - notably including our own - have attempted to reclaim this devil from his isolation and damnation? Why have we tried so hard - and sometimes, as with Milton's Paradise Lost, against our will - to redefine and reidentify this demon as something we can understand? Something we can sympathize with? Something we can - sometimes - even love?

It is because, I think, we are coming to terms - slowly and unconsciously - with the fact that both deity and devil are contained within ourselves. If we love the divine, then we must also love the demonic, because we are both.

Excuse me, what?!

So as we were watching The Colbert Report (a few days late, thanks to technology), I had one of those I-don't-believe-someone-really-thinks-that-way moments. Colbert was interviewing Douglas Kmiec, a Catholic Professor of Law at Pepperdine about his new book, Can A Catholic Support Him? (the "Him" is Obama). My surprise was not at the book, but at a comment made by Kmiec regarding gay marriage.

Kmiec's argument is that marriage should be the province of the Church and that "legal contracts" should be the province of the government. The latter should be entirely unrestricted by gender, creed, etc. The Church (or synagogue or whatever) should be allowed to put whatever restrictions it wants on who it marries or doesn't.

This was not shocking. In fact, it is one of the more rational religious stances. While I think that, as a society, we have created a legal status that is "marriage" that should not be restricted, as long as religious belief continues, a church should be allowed to marry/not marry whomever it wants for whatever reasons it wants. But that is the purview of the religion, NOT the state.

The shocking thing was when Kmiec suggested that if "legal marriage" were to be only a contract, atheists would convert to the Church to get a valid spiritual marriage.

Um... I hate to be the one to break it to you, Mr. Kmiec, but an atheist doesn't care one little bit about a "spiritual marriage" because we don't believe in the existence of god. As the internet would say, epic fail.

Ages Pass

So it appears that I unintentionally gave up blogging during Lent. Oops. I have good reasons why this happened, but regardless, I have been remiss.

At present, I'm reading Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell, which attempts to rationalize with "believers" that "brights" (his adopted term for atheists and agnostics) are not out of their minds and that "believers" should feel obligated to investigate and question their beliefs.

Given that it is the night before Easter Sunday, I feel obliged to comment.

I think what Dennett is attempting to do is a good thing; there are far too many people out there who blindly accept whatever they are told - whether in regards to religion, government, or American history. My father did me a favor as a child and told me blatant lies on a fairly regular basis, leading me to never take him at his word and investigate everything he ever told me.

Sometimes he was telling me the truth. Sometimes he wasn't. But I did the work and found out.

In twenty-first century America, our society retains the childlike tendency to simply accept whatever we are told - by anyone in a position of ostensibly trustworthy authority. Unfortunately, for some people, this category does not include scientists. Certainly, science has been wrong (something Dennett is more than willing to admit). However, science has also done a very good job of showing when it is wrong and fixing the issue.

Religion... not so much. Not only is religion very hesitant to admit its wrongs, but it is even more hesitant to correct them, instead claiming the all-encompassing net of "faith" or "doctrine" or - better yet - "tradition." I'm sorry, folks, but if "tradition" states that I'm not allowed to be educated simply because I lack a particular piece of genitalia... I don't think so. And yet, this is one of the things that religion does insist upon: Catholicism insists that women cannot be priests; Islam insists on the inherent weakness and inferiority of women; for that matter, all Judeo-Christian-derived religions blame women for the fall of the human race, so we must be bad.

Dennett's problem with religion is not that it insists upon "tradition," per se, but that it ignores factual information in favor of it. For example, the Bible states that the world is 6,000 years old. Science has proven it is not. Believers in the literal truth of the Biblical text insist that science is wrong, despite the evidence that confronts them otherwise.

But my biggest problem with religion - organized or not - is that it fundamentally interferes with personal and social freedom and egalitarianism. Religion insists upon a hierarchy in which all people are subordinated to something somewhere. But at the same time, they insist that they are the "chosen," the most superior [race, species, creed, gender, etc.]. They must submit themselves to a set of rules created by "god" (through the mediating power of generations of very privileged and wealthy clergymen whose personal authority and status was coincidentally increased by these rules) while gleefully condemning everyone else for not wishing to be subject to those same rules.

Religion cannot bring peace and harmony so long as there is more than one, and humanity is incapable of agreeing on a creed. (This is not to say that if the world were atheist, we would all get along. Of course we wouldn't. But we wouldn't be fighting about religion, that's for damn sure.)

Ultimately, this is a subject about which I am pessimistic (uncharacteristic for me). I cannot imagine the people who adhere so desperately to their faith giving it up, since they are clearly unwilling to consider reason at all and therefore will not be swayed by it, no matter how hard people like Dennett try. Those who are reasonable people will cherry-pick: "Okay, I'll concede this point, but you just don't have faith. You have to have faith."

And it all comes down to that: faith. You're right, folks. I don't have faith. I have logic. I have reason. I have ethics. I have a deep respect for human life and the human condition. I have insatiable curiosity and a highly active imagination. I have compassion and love and joy and sorrow and anger and boredom. I have a desire to be more than I am, but also to make a positive difference in the world. I have a passion for life. But I do not have faith. Not in god. Not in religion. Some days, not in the humanity that devotes itself to a creed (which ever it may be) that demands the subjugation and destruction of those with whom it disagrees.

What do I have?

Hope that someday, people will stop using religion as a scapegoat and an excuse. Hope that people will confront one another in terms of ethics and reason, rather than myth. Hope that logic will allow us to move forward scientifically, rationally, and technologically when we are no longer held back by the desire to waste our time and energy devoting ourselves to a fiction that we have deluded ourselves into believing is real.

I do not have faith. I have hope.

Life Moments

Weddings are unique things.

And not just because they're (supposed to be) once-in-a-lifetime experiences or because they're an opportunity for family and friends to gather together in fancy clothes and eat free food, though these things certainly contribute. Nor because the people for which they are ostensibly a celebration spend a good deal of time, money, effort, stress, blood, sweat, and tears on them when common platitude has it that this is "their day." Nor because it is a ceremony ratified by (often) church and state, agreed upon across cultural boundaries as a necessary social institution, an opportunity to eliminate surnames (or, today, create newer, longer, more confusing ones), a methodology of determining (theoretically) paternity, and the chance to attain sanctioned tax breaks for no apparent reason.

No. Weddings are unique because around them has developed a culture of purity and "romance," little birds and hearts and bells and ruffles and bows and lace and... You get the idea. Because everything seems geared toward the mental fixations of a prepubescent girl. Pink. Bows. Frills. Pretty dresses. Pillows. Shiny jewelry. Flowers. Girly things.

The groom is meant - and often expected - to stand there and just let all the "femininity" explode into a flurry of petals and birds and hearts and just take it.

No wonder men hate weddings.

And the worst part is, even if the couple themselves is not so inclined, their families (99% of the time) are. The mother of the bride has fits and paroxysms of alternating joy and psychosis. The bride makes irrational demands in a shrill tone about which she will change her mind equally shrilly in less than two hours. The bridesmaids will either endure this sullenly or squee like little girls themselves. The groomsmen will attempt to get everyone (including themselves) very drunk. And who can blame them?

The wedding has become the domain of that most horrifying of creatures, the "bridezilla." A slavering, three-headed monster that spits acid and swallows pride and testicles for breakfast. A curious beastie that may be assuaged by chocolate and falls into a swoon at an appropriately ridiculous amount of lace and toole. It's hunger for petticoats and sparkling beads goes unsatieted, endless amounts of accouterments and accessories sacrificed to its bottomless stomach.

And this creature is meant to represent the desirable female? No wonder men are becoming increasingly commitment-shy.

And yet, social expectations and our own in-bred desires perpetuate this tradition because of what it stands for, not because of what it is. And what it stands for - the union of two people willing to share their lives and struggles, their joys and sorrows - is a wonderful thing.

But do I really have to look like a Bavarian fruitcake in order to do so?

The Fear of Essays

As I have posted before, I'm working on a new portfolio project this semester with my freshman writing class. I'm thrilled. I think this is a great new teaching opportunity, and I think it will be much more effective for my students, as well.

But they seem to be afraid of it. Afraid, perhaps, of weighting all of their grade (though technically only 40% of their grade) on a single project, leading to only one paper. But the idea of one big project... that's frightening. After all, isn't it just easier to do a bunch of small papers and be done with them?

Easier? Perhaps. Though my paperload is actually smaller than the standard sequence here. But I want them to *gasp* learn! K and I have often talked about the fact that students could learn from learning the PROCESS of research, rather than being assigned a topic and told where to find things. And that's what I'm finally allowed to teach. And my students are terrified.

My theory is that they're actually afraid of choosing their own subject material. Sure, there are a few who are just confused and don't want to mess things up, but I think most of them are afraid of making the "wrong" choice. They want their teacher to tell them what to do. My reason for thinking this is that my repeats are all really excited about picking their own topics, because they're used to it. I made them make choices on their own last semester, and they discovered that they like it. My new kids... they don't understand how to write a paper if I don't tell them what to write about.

I have seen this every semester I teach.

Why are people so frightened of picking their own topics? Of trying something new or at least something interesting? If I say "write on Romeo & Juliet, but don't give you a topic, why is that scarier than me telling you to write on the development of Mercutio's character? Shouldn't it be liberating? Exciting?

It makes me wonder what they're actually learning in high school. Are they really only being taught to reiterate whatever they've heard in class? If so, how is that serving them? How is it making them better thinkers? Better people? How is it making them anything but mindless drones?

Because, believe me, these kids have great ideas. They're smart, and they see things in the world around them. They recognize the inherent value in things that we - the jaded academia - don't see because we're trained not to. For instance, a student is planning to write her project comparing the tradition of violence and revenge drama to Metal Gear Solid. I think this is great. I want them to see how the "old dead white men" tradition actually plays a role in their lives. This project idea is why I want to do the portfolios. Because I want them to see the relevance of interpretive study to EVERYTHING.

Now I just have to convince the other students of this.

Something new...

Next semester, I will be participating in a new pilot project at my institution. I teach freshman writing; next semester I have the second part of the sequence, in which students learn research and writing. I've elected - partly out of a desire for a new experience and partly out of a belief that the project will actually help my students learn better - to participate in a project that will introduce our students to the process of accumulating a writing portfolio.

This is something I did as an undergraduate student myself, though I was older than my freshmen (I did this in an advanced English course on Victorian Poetry). However, recalling the process, I am a firm believer that this will be invaluable to them, not only in terms of their writing, but in terms of teaching them organizational and time-management skills - two things sorely lacking in many of today's incoming freshmen. I also did something similar in high school (despite having a horrible overall high school experience, the education I received was exceptional), and it is actually this model on which I would ideally like to base my own course (though there will be planning meetings that might change this idea).

We were assigned a poet (we did have some choice) and asked to do historical, biographical, and literary research into that poet's life, situation, and works. Then we had to do an analysis of their overall trend as a poet and a deep analysis of a single poem. We were assigned to do notecards, outlines, bibliographies, etc. While many things I did I have no intention of ever doing again as a part of the research process, I did learn a great deal about how I work and how to best organize my thoughts.

I want my students to learn about their own learning process as much as I did. Whether they learn about Shakespeare in the process, I think, is largely incidental. If, for instance, they are more interested in the history of witchcraft or in the development from theater to film, I'm more than happy to let them go down that road.

However, my primary concern here is that the whole educational system, from grade school through higher education, is headed in a disturbingly individual-oriented direction. This is not to say that the individual student should be ignored. However, what I do not want to see happen is the privileging of the self over the material. I want students to learn about their interests, not project themselves onto a subject.

What I want to see is a student finding a passion and discovering how he or she best documents and retains that information, what they can do with it, and what it teaches them about their world. What I do not want to see is a student assigning a largely arbitrary judgment to something based on their own narrow world-view. I want to draw their attention away from the one thing that has - for the most part - made up their entire understanding of the universe: themselves. I want them to see that there is more to the world than what they see of it.

I do not want to convert them to my politics or religious views. I do not want them to (necessarily) join a cause or save the world. I want them to see that the student next to them is as important as they are. To see that the world needs more voices than one.

I believe - firmly - that if we can see that there are more people in this world than ourselves, that we will begin to learn to respect one another. I do not think that this will solve world hunger or bring about world peace - as a species we are too greedy and too violent for that. But I do think that, in general, there is much about our lives and our relations with one another, yes, even on an international scale, that might be helped by basic respect for people as people. For the acknowledgment that the person next to us is no less of a person because of their race or gender or creed. Even - I must remind myself - if they are a complete idiot.

My own tolerance for stupidity (in which I hypocritically include intolerance) is low. I despise ignorance, particularly since there are so many opportunities to eliminate it. I hate willful ignorance, in which someone blatantly refuses to believe what stands before them, real and solid. And, ironically, it is this which I seek to obliterate, which I refuse to tolerate.

Hypocritical? Yes. But I like to think that one can eliminate (in theory) stupidity without eliminating people. After all, the most rational of fictional races wished one another well by saying "Live long, and prosper." Life and prosperity are the products not of blind faith and intolerance, but of enlightenment and acceptance.

Live long, and prosper.

When Life Gets Messy

The current obsession with keeping everything tidy, not accepting long grass and leaning tombs, and treating a funeral as a refuse disposal problem, reflects a deep malaise in society... Death was never a tidy thing: it is foolish to try and make it so, and to compartment it away from life and the living. -- James Stephen Curl, 1972 (from Death, Dissection and the Destitute by Ruth Richardson, p. 7)

Though I, like approximately 53% of the country, am excited and pleased by the new president-elect, the pleasure of the promising and heartening prospect of change (as shown by these pictures) does not eliminate the unease and "malaise" created by our state of war, economic crisis, and low-grade paranoia about "terror attacks."

We like our lives to be neat, clean, and orderly (at least in the major particulars - socks on the floor don't count). We like to know whom to follow, whom to ignore, and whom to ostracize. We like to know who "We" are, and who is "Other." We like our lines to be clear and drawn in stone, not mutable sand.

This election has shown us how truly messy all of the nice, neat labels we've attempted to place on our lives and the people in them really are. Take Obama. He has been labeled (whether truthfully or erroneously) as "Black," "half-white," "Christian," "Muslim," "Arab," "Terrorist," "Patriot," "Insurrectionist," "evil," and "hope," just to name a few. Half of his labels contradict the other half (though I would like to point out that the duality of being both "Black" and "half-white" reflects the latent racism inherent in our labeling system - after all, a "half-black, half-white" man can still be called just plain "Black," but is qualified as "half-white"). Yet all have been accepted by someone as "true."

Other labels have been flying around: "liberal," "fundamentalist," "feminist," "anti-feminist," "maverick," "VPILF," and so on. Some of them are vague, others specific. But all reflect our desire to compartmentalize, to sterilize, to order the society in which we live.

James Stephen Curl, above, is talking about our tendency to quickly and hastily dispose of our dead. To purify them with chemicals and shut them away in boxes, to burn away their impurities and put them in urns or walls or scatter them over the ground. To sweep the unpleasant reminders of our own chaotic mortality away so that we don't have to confront the fact that we are, like all living things, subject to the messiness of death and decomposition. This fear of our own goopy end, he claims, indicates a "malaise," a discontent with the fulfillment of our lives.

If we accept the messiness of death, we must also accept the messiness of our lives. We must accept the fact that, regardless of our striving against it, chaos will permeate every fabric of our existence, reducing us - eventually - to the fundamental primordial stew from which our ancestral microbes first emerged. And with that knowledge, we accept that our lives are also not under our control.

Certainly, there are elements within our lives over which we do have control - whether to do the dishes, to watch television, how to raise our children, how we interact with one another - but there are even more over which we, as individuals, have little influence. Weather, earthquakes, disease (to a degree). Ultimately, we fear that which we cannot dominate, cannot subjugate to our will.

But to embrace death is to embrace this lack of control; to live with death is to live with the knowledge that there are things beyond us. I do not mean god, or the supernatural, or Fate. I mean the magic of chance, the happenstance that began our existence, the perfect coincidence that causes every interaction - chaos. Life.

Why Politicians are Liars, and other things one learns from one's dissertation

It's an election year. The time when, once every four years, we embark upon the farce of pretending that we as a nation are gullible enough to believe all the drivel that comes out of the mouths of the chosen candidates. And of the press, their propagandists, and "unbiased third-party commercials." Right.

It's the time when all self-respecting citizens want to bang their heads repeatedly against the wall at the oblivious stupidity of their fellow Americans.

But what, you may ask, does this have to do with my dissertation on Shakespeare. Well, as Stephen Colbert remarked on a recent edition of The Colbert Report, John McCain is Macbeth. He also likened Barack Obama to Hamlet, but that's not wholly accurate. Obama seems to know who and what he is and doesn't seem to be particularly set on murdering anyone. Maybe Prince Escalus from Romeo and Juliet, perhaps Vincentio from Measure for Measure, but he's not really a tragic hero. But Colbert aside (though the episode was brilliant and featured Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt), the lessons we learn from Shakespeare, and Macbeth in particular, are highly relevant.

But I'm not thinking of Macbeth himself. Rather, I'm thinking of the other kings in his play (and hoping fervently that we don't have to go through a Macbeth). Duncan - the well-liked and well-intentioned "saint" who managed nothing more than to instigate a variety of rebellions, an invasion, and his own murder. Nice guy, though. And, finally, the subject of my thoughts: Malcolm.

Malcolm is Duncan's heir, his eldest son, and an "innocent." He claims to never have known the touch of a woman, to not drink, and to be free from greed and ambition. But he wants the throne. Oh, and he also claims (in the same scene) to be lecherous, a drunkard, a profligate spender and gambler, ambitious, vengeful, violent, and murderous. And he claims all this within about a hundred lines - no wonder poor Macduff is confused and depressed.

And here we are, facing a decision of ruler in which case we have no idea which story to believe about whom. Now, there are some pretty obvious stupidities out there - such as the infamous "Obama is an Arab" routine (for the record, he isn't) - but there are also quite a few things that are stretches of the truth or just plain fabrications that aren't obviously false. Like Malcolm's claims. He's the man who admits that he is a liar. Do you believe him because he's obviously telling the truth (only a liar can say he is a liar), or do you not believe him because he is, as he says, a liar.

The solution in Shakespeare's play is dissatisfying - Malcolm has Macduff kill Macbeth, and takes the throne. Someone else does his dirty work, and he inherits his father's throne on the functional basis of a series of lies. We don't see Malcolm's rule in Shakespeare's play. We don't know which Malcolm appears once the crown is placed upon his head. And we find ourselves faced with Macduff's decision: which set of lies do we choose? Not which do we believe, because - if we are smart - we can see that none of it is the truth, but which do we choose as the public face of our king? Do we choose the liar who speaks of restoration and order, or do we choose the liar who has experience with rule and a sword?

We are Macduff, and I do not envy him his choice.

O nation miserable!
With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd,
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,
Since that the truest issue of thy throne
By his own interdiction stands accus'd,
And does blaspheme his breed?
... Fare thee well!
These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself
Hath banish'd me from Scotland. - O my breast,
Thy hope ends here! (4.3.103-108, 111-114)

The Show of Kings

There is a good deal of critical consternation surrounding the "show of kings" in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Just how many people are on stage? What does the "glass" do? Is Banquo one of the eight, or is he a ninth body in the procession? How like to James I are the kings meant to appear?

The "show" itself is not described in the text beyond Macbeth's broken speech:
MACBETH Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo: down!
Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls: – and thy hair,
Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first: –
A third is like the former: – filthy hags!
Why do you show me this? – A fourth? – Start, eyes!
What! will the line stretch out to th’crack of doom?
Another yet? – A seventh? – I’ll see no more: –
And yet the eight appears, who bears a glass,
Which shows me many more; and some I see,
That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry.
Horrible sight! – Now, I see, ’tis true;
For the blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me,
And points at them for his. (4.1.112-124)

There are dozens - if not hundreds - of readings of this "show" in academia. Suggestions of smoke and mirrors - literally - and even the argument that the mirror (the "glass") was used specifically to reflect James I's image back to him from where he sat in the audience. Another reading of the "glass" is of a theatrical trick; one mirror sat on stage, and another in the wings, creating the effect of an infinite line of identical kings. The most simple suggestion (and the one that seems most plausible for the outdoor theaters, at least) is that the eighth king carries a mirror that reflects back his seven companions, raising the number of kings to fifteen, which seems to be more than enough for Shakespeare's purposes. While the technician in me would love to use the mirror-trick to infinitely replicate the kings (and this was perhaps possible for an indoor court-room stage), it seems unlikely to have been done in the public playhouses.

In the passage, I read Macbeth, the witches, eight kings, and Banquo's bloody ghost. It seems clear to me that Banquo is not one of the kings, as he isn't regally dressed (he is "blood-bolter'd") and would thus stick out of the line. That's thirteen people on stage, which is also a very nice (read, "evil") number for the scene.

What I find most interesting about this scene - indeed, about the whole play - is its tendency to mingle English and Scottish politics. Macbeth, like James, is king of Scotland. Macbeth, like Elizabeth, is childless. Macbeth, like James, came to the Scottish throne following the violent death of the previous monarch (Elizabeth had Mary Queen of Scots executed). Macbeth, like Elizabeth, kills another monarch. Tricksy, William Shakespeare. Very tricksy.

So what are we to make of the "show"? Since James' descent from Banquo is fiction (concocted by Boece to placate James IV of Scotland), what DO we make of it? And what did Shakespeare make of it? Did he know Banquo was a fiction? If so, is the "show" meant to mock James' claim of descent, or is it meant to support it in theory, if not in substance? Is it Shakespeare's tip of the hat to James for being a clever dramatist in his own right, using the fiction of Banquo to support his claim to the throne as though it were truth?

I can't help but think that Shakespeare was a little impressed by James' use of the fiction, and his own adoption of it was part-tribute, part-mockery. After all, a fiction is only useful insofar as others accept the fiction as truth. Elizabeth, late in life, became almost comical as she insisted upon her "eternal youth and beauty," but it was a fiction she managed to perpetuate despite the obviousness of its falsity. But Elizabeth was aware of its failure; her insistence upon the perpetuation of the myth exploited the scission between the physical body of the monarch and the eternal aspect of sovereignty. The Queen was eternally young and beautiful, even if Elizabeth Tudor was not. James, however, did not as clearly separate the two elements of his role as king, and perhaps Shakespeare's "show" is meant to reveal his awareness of the fallibility of the fiction - and his acknowledgment that when that fiction is exposed, the structure built upon it must crumble.

Religion and Myth

I find it interesting that a good deal of people - scholars included - insist that "myth" is a different creature from "religion." Now, I know that my atheism probably introduces a good deal of bias here, but I still don't see a technical distinction. Even if I were religious, I would consider what is popularly considered "myth" a form of religion. Just because one thinks it is wrong should not automatically requalify it as "myth" rather than "religion."

All this comes to the forefront of my brain because I recently read Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth. Short, it certainly is, though her views on the development of hunting and agrarian mythologies are interesting. What irritates me about the book, however, is the clear bias toward twentieth- and twenty-first-century understandings of "religion" and "spirituality." She states that "We are meaning-seeking creatures," further stipulating that imagination is what gives rise to myth and religion:
Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We have imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something that is not immediately present, and that, when we first conceive it, has no objective existence. The imagination is the faculty that produces religion and myth. (Armstrong 2)
So far, I follow. We make up stories and fairy tales, so why not myths and religions? But I was initially a little disturbed at the distinction being drawn between "religion and myth." This leads her to make several claims that privilege an older, more archaic form of social imagination, stating that "Religion has been one of the most traditional ways of attaining ecstasy, but if people no longer find it in temples, synagogues, churches or mosques, they look for it elsewhere: in art, music, poetry, rock, dance, drugs, sex or sport" (Armstrong 8), as though this is a bad thing. Now, I agree that when we no longer find meaning in religion, we as a species tend to turn elsewhere. My objection is to the continual thread running through the book that implies that this is a bad thing. When she says "Today we separate the religious from the secular" (Armstrong 15), she implies sympathy with the ancients whose myth pervaded all aspects of their daily life. Why is it that my imagination may not permeate all that I do, enriching it without the false construction of mythology (or religion) to ratify it with illusory value?

As she continues, Armstrong feels obliged to apologize for identifying Jesus with Herakles - "This is not intended to be pejorative" (Armstrong 106), she writes - and states, in contradiction to her own previous distinction, that "unless a historical event is mythologised, it cannot become a source of religious inspiration" (Armstrong 106). I completely concur, yet my irritation with her for her blatant apologism leads me to almost wish she were not right. My conclusion from this is that all religion is myth, the events contained within its scope mythologized so that they may become universally accessible and permeable.

But it is when Armstrong turns to logos that I find her argument most fractured. She divides logos from myth/religion (despite the almost universal association of Logos with God or divine law) and blames it for the loss of myth in the contemporary world:
But logos had never been able to provide human beings with the sense of significance that they seemed to require. It had been myth that had given structure and meaning to life, but as modernisation progressed and logos achieved such spectacular results, mythology was increasingly discredited. (Armstrong 122)
And:
We may be more sophisticated in material ways, but we have not advanced spiritually beyond the Axial Age: because of our suppression of mythos we may even have regressed. We still long to 'get beyond' our immediate circumstances, and to enter a 'full time', a more intense, fulfilling existence. We try to enter this dimension by means of art, rock music, drugs or by entering the larger-than-life perspective of film. We still seek heroes. (Armstrong 134-135)
And, by implication, we fail to find fulfillment in these "material" things, leading, therefore, to the need for myth/religion.

She concludes with the suggestion that the "sacred" appears now in novels and works of art, that what we consider to be "academic" or "godless" (her term) really harken back to the mythology we claim to have left behind. In one sense, I agree with her. We do use alternative means to find fulfillment in our lives now that the Industrial Revolution and the Ages of Reason and Enlightenment have led us away from the Church. But why must meaning be affiliated - always - with the "sacred"? It is an argument made by Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Christopher Hitchens (God is not Great), both of whom point out that they find their greatest awe when faced with the non-sacred, with science, with the scope of the human imagination. To find value, why must we always turn to something outside of human understanding and aptitude? Why can't we find fulfillment within ourselves and within our species? Are we truly so terrible that the majority of our species refuses to even consider the possibility that we - and only we - are responsible for what we have become?

The Epic Love Story

Having just finished rereading Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra for class next week, I am reminded yet again of the absurdity of so many of our "epic love stories," this one (and, of course, Romeo and Juliet) included. In particular, I am irritated by our response to the tragic love stories with which we we are inculcated by literature classes and movies.

These two of Shakespeare's - along with, let's say, Gone with the Wind - are perhaps the ones that aggravate me the most. It is not that they are poorly written or badly presented. Not at all. It's the placid insipidity of the characters and their utterly irrational behavior that drives me insane.

Like Jane Austen's Eleanor of Sense and Sensibility, I do not see the point of dying for love, unlike her more emotional sister Marianne, who can think of nothing more grand. I just don't see the beauty of dying for love. Dying to protect those you love, certainly. But dying for love betrays a kind of insipid and ignorant melodrama.

But I - as has often been determined - am cold and dead inside. I was never happier during my reading of Gone with the Wind than when Rhett walked out. The best part of Madame Bovary was when Emma finally died the horrible death she deserved. I desperately wanted Gwendolen of Daniel Deronda to drown when she was shoved off the boat. If Romeo had been killed by Tybalt at the beginning of the play, or if Rosaline had opened her bloody window, or if that plague Mercutio mentions had struck a little earlier... You get the idea.

I am particularly vexed by melodrama in young love - R&J aren't even old enough to drive in contemporary society - though in Antony and Cleopatra, one cannot help but think that two people of their age really ought to know better. At least R&J have the excuse of "young and stupid."

Ultimately, though, it isn't the works or their authors who drive me insane. It's the cultural response. We name our children and our pets after Romeo and Juliet, we happily quote "Quite frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," as though it were the most romantic mantra in the world, and we get starry-eyed over the great love of Antony and Cleopatra.

Wake up, people. Scarlett and Rhett made out the best of the lot, because at least they LIVED. Romeo, Juliet, Antony, and Cleopatra all DIED. By dagger and sword and snake. Dead. All of them. Not exactly a fairy-tale ending.

And you know what? They don't get to live happily ever after. They don't achieve the fulfillment of their love because they're dead. Death is not a good way to go about finding love. In fact, it's pretty much the best way to not find it at all.

So when the editors of the edition of Antony and Cleopatra suggest that Antony and Cleopatra win in the end because their love allows them to transcend the petty concerns of the world... I call bullsh*t.

Antony and Cleopatra caused widespread war, neglect, civil and international conflict, infidelity, slavery, and an epidemic of suicide (Enobarbus, Eros, Charmian, Iras, to say nothing about themselves). They were screwups of royal proportions. So don't go immortalizing their love story as if it were the great lauding of love. It's not. It's about how two daft people should not let their privates govern their countries. You can't even definitively prove they did love each other. Only that the gratification of their private desires completely screwed both Rome and Egypt and only got hauled back out of the muck because Caesar Octavian was a serious bad*ss.

Ah, yes. The joys of love. The complete obliteration of all you've ever worked for so you can stab yourself dejectedly when some strumpet fakes her own death, only to discover she's not dead at all, and then you die anyway. Oh, yeah, she dies, too. And so do your friends. And her friends. And then the guy you were fighting wins.

Personally, I'd rather not.

Intelligent Design...

As a literary critic and (hopeful) creator, I find myself taking exception not simply to the idea of Intelligent Design in the anti-Darwinian sense, but in a creative sense, as enumerated in Roger Shattuck's Candor and Perversion:

Few of us can resist the wish to put the pieces of the world together, and we give lasting recognition to some, like Jesus, Muhammad, and Gandhi, who convinced many others that they could makes sense of it all. There is nothing original about saying that the widely held belief among artists and writers in a universal unity represents a survival of religion in secularized form. Few of them would reject any connection at all to spiritual experience... R.P. Warren says what most artists, let alone ordinary citizens, would agree with: "I am a man of religious temperament in the modern world who hasn't got any religion." But in fact he does. He practices religion in a diluted form, which we accept as artistic and literary, a poetic faith without worship or ethics. It is difficult to say how long analogy alone will sustain and satisfy us. (49)

I take exception not to Shattuck's (accurate) observation that many people believe "in a universal unity," whether they call it god or a human spirit, but, rather, to 1) the suggestion that an artist/writer expressing anything other than complete nihilism must be religious, and, 2) the implication that "analogy alone" will be incapable of "sustain[ing] and satisfy[ing] us."

First, when Warren says he "hasn't got any religion," he is most likely correct. To say that he "practices religion in a diluted form" is offensive - both to the act of artistic creation (which is not "diluted" in any way) and to the idea that one may be creative without investing in some sort of "religion." Creativity and imagination do not require the existence of religion, deity, or a larger metaphysical plane in order to exist. And to imply that an artist (under which category I include "writer") needs something beyond him or herself in order to produce something of beauty and value is offensive to the artist.

Is creation truly nothing more than "religion in a secularized form"? A positive answer is understandable; after all, for centuries nearly all art was religious in nature. However, does that necessitate that art is religious? Does it mean that simply because an artist works with a religious medium, mythos, or image, that he or she must believe in its supernatural elements? Certainly, no one would suggest that simply because an artist painted a picture of a minotaur that he or she believes the minotaur is real.

And this leads, finally, to my counter-question. Why cannot "analogy alone... sustain and satisfy us"? We think, reason, and dream in analogies. We relate to one another in terms of metaphor and simile, we recognize our emotions in images and words that are not the things we think of upon viewing them. Why may not an "analogy" satisfy our creative, our emotional, or rational minds? After all, if I am right, then the greatest religions in the world have made a millennia-long practice of sustaining and satisfying with nothing more than "analogy alone."

So why do we constantly attempt to mitigate our own talents and creations? Why do we, as a species, constantly attribute our art, our skills, our talents, to the intervention or blessing of a deity? Quite simply, because of fear. Because our society recognizes a kind of selfless ecstasy in the act of imaginative creation, and is afraid to attribute that kind of raw and unmitigated power to a mere human being. Because if we acknowledge that we are capable of Creation, then we become gods. And if we are gods, then we must accept not only the power, but the responsibility that accompanies it. And if we accept that responsibility, then we must acknowledge that, as the gods of ourselves and our world, we have been terrible gods indeed.

The Meaning of Life

Every few months, I - and, I suspect, many others - wonder what, precisely, it is that I'm making out of my life. What it is that I really want to do. Do I want to spend the rest of my life devoted to the largely insular world of academia? Not particularly. Devoted to my students? That I could do.

It brings back, again and again, the recognition that I do what I do because of the students. Not because of the texts, not because of Shakespeare, but because of the students. Because it allows me to teach them how to think critically, not about the texts, but about the world. About what they are told - even by me. I simply use literature as the medium.

But my secret heart - well, perhaps not so secret - wants desperately to create that medium. To create something that will do by itself what I struggle to teach. To change not the world, but minds. Because, ultimately, it is the changing of minds that will change the world.

And the thing to which I come back, every time, is the idea that there is no binary. There can be no binary in a world made of color and light and sound and touch. And that those who live with binaries ultimately condemn themselves to exactly that which they hate and fear.

This is not a new point. I do not claim it is. However, it is one that needs revisitation. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of people who do not recognize the hypocrisy inherent in themselves, in their religion, and in the ideologies they purport. I hope, someday, to see a majority of rational, thoughtful people who are able to place their faith in their own logic rather than in something external to themselves. Whether they want to call that part of themselves god or reason is unimportant, but until we as a species stop attributing right and wrong based on illogical and hallucinatory fairy tales, we will not be able to work as a cohesive species.

Nothing More Than Feelings

I've noticed an alarming trend of late in student writings, and, it appears, in our educational system: the permissiveness and even encouragement of treating our "feelings" as though they were valid sources of fact and argument. This is, "I feel," complete crap. As an academic, I view it as a degradation of the art of interpretation.

It is part - or is at least an off-shoot of - the increasing validity of reader-response. Which is itself the bastard child of New Criticism. Both of which, "I feel," should be dragged out back and shot.

We, especially here in the United States of America, want our feelings to be given credence and importance that they do not deserve. This is, of course, not to say that feelings aren't important. They are. In social relationships. Not in my classroom, thank you very much.

I am not one of those teachers who belittles her students. I am respectful of them and I expect them to be the same of one another and of me. I do not try to hurt their feelings and I go out of my way to make sure that any and all criticism I offer them is constructive. But what they "feel" about Shakespeare has no place in their papers.

I'm glad Shakespeare makes them feel something. I'm glad that Eliot was right about the objective correlative. But I don't care. And not only do I not care, I actively do not want to know how they feel about Hamlet and Gertrude or Romeo and Juliet. What I want to know is what they have discovered within the text. And since the entire purpose of education is to encourage thought, I don't think I have unrealistic expectations.

The problem is that they are being encouraged in high school to tell me what they feel. To tell me that they agree with Machiavelli, or that they think Machiavelli is going to Hell. I. Don't. Care. Go right ahead and think it, but it does not belong in any serious treatment of the text. This isn't about what you "feel." Life does not care what you "feel." I don't care. The text doesn't care if it hurt your feelings or if you disagree with it.

The entire purpose of critical thinking, of interpretation, of analysis, is to find things that are intrinsic to the text. If you can link that to its contemporary history, great. If you want to link it to other historical, literary, philosophical, etc. circumstances, great. But don't tell me "I agree with Machiavelli that rulers need to be deceptive." Unless you, sir or madam student, are a political authority, historian, or literary giant, your opinion doesn't count. Show me that Machiavelli is jaded and bitter over the corruption of political office. Show me that he contradicts himself. Show me how idiots in office took him seriously without realizing that they're proving the very things he satirizes. But don't tell me you "agree" or - god forbid - that you don't think rulers can be deceptive anymore because of the internet. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a-whole-nother kettle of fish.

What really drives me crazy - in case you couldn't tell - is our society's penchant for wanting to make everyone's "feelings" important. I don't want to have to pussy-foot around an issue simply because it might "hurt someone's feelings" to have it addressed. I want to be able to say "it drives me crazy when everyone assumes I'm a lesbian" without worrying about offending lesbians. I mean no offense to lesbians. But I'm not one. It's just like saying "it drives me crazy when everyone assumes I'm a man." I'm just not, no matter what the guy who told me I look like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie thinks.

Have your feelings, kids, but recognize that you'll be a whole heck of a lot better off if you learn that feelings aren't worth a damn (except, as I said, in social relationships). Because, boys and girls, no matter how much you "feel" that Hamlet shouldn't die or Romeo and Juliet was written to you personally, it just isn't true. Feelings can lie to us. They're unreliable, variable, and very often quite stupid. Yes, they can also be wonderful, life-changing, fabulous things. But they belong between you and your family, your friends, your lover. They do not, I repeat, do not belong in the world of facts and critical thought. Maybe I am, as a dear friend so often insists, "dead inside." But, please, relegate your feelings to their proper place and let your brain get a little more exercise.

On the Interpretation of...

We, as a species, often find ourselves in the position of interpreters. It is our nature to interpret - not simply on the most basic level of language, but on so many various sublevels. We read one another - body language, tone, expression, eyes. We interpret these extralinguistic cues on a daily basis - and we believe them, often more readily than we believe the language that accompanies them.

We are accomplished liars, but we are also accomplished interpreters. Often, we seek answers in places other than in language in our day-to-day interactions, reading things other than words.

And we reproduce these signs and symbols, both the linguistic and the extralinguistic, in art. Certainly, literature is the art of language. There is nothing more linguistically pure than literature (drama excepted - it gets its own category). It is composed entirely of words. Words that lie. Words that speak truth. Words that do both at once. Words that delve into the essence of human nature, rife with ambiguity and impossible layers. But these words so often invoke the other aspects of interpretation - descriptions of bodies, of voices, of colors, of all the sources of sensory input upon which we rely. All put into words. Limited. Exploded. Infinite.

No wonder we, as readers, are always interpreters. Even if unconsciously, we must interpret words on a page. Is this serious? Sarcastic? Sad? But, as interpreters, we also skew that which we choose to interpret. Stephen Leo Carr and Peggy A. Knapp write that as we interpret, "We make the text over, rewriting it in our own image so that it seems to anticipate and validate that image" (838).*

For so many, the act of interpretive reading - and all reading is interpretive, whether consciously done or not - is the act of assigning one's own value systems, one's own ideology, to the text. It is an act of penetration, of violation, that attempts to conform characters and themes to the familiar and, often, the agreeable. We grow disturbed by a text when we cannot force it to agree with our views. We choose to dislike it, labeling it as "bad," despite its probable virtues. This is a crime of which teachers are most often accused.

It is something we do not only to books, but to movies, to music, and to people. When a person does not conform to our desires for them, we dislike them.

I do not suppose that there is anything wrong with this. I dislike many things, and many people. But my dislike should not make them inherently "bad." While there are things that are inherently "bad" - murderers and Harlequin romances spring to mind - there are more that we simply dislike for their unwillingness to conform to our "image."

But, as has so often been said, variety is the spice of life. We would not like it - no matter how much we think we would - if everything in the world conformed to our "image." We might like it if everything were "good," we would still desire difference - or, in the Derridian sense, differance. We like conflict. We like the clashing of ideologies. What we do not like is their ultimate destruction.

So pause. Take a moment, the next time you dislike something, to determine whether it really is "bad," or whether it is simply an "image" in which you do not wish to see your own reflection.


*Carr, Stephen Leo and Peggy A. Knapp. "Seeing through Macbeth." Publications of the Modern Language Association 96.5 (1981): 837-847.

My Country, 'Tis of Thee

It's approaching the anniversary of our nation's declaration of independence, the one day out of the year that the entire population (more or less) feels obliged to wear red, white, and blue; to wave flags; to run about stuffing their faces with both food and drink while saying "God bless America." The time of year when those of us in the tourist industry in colonial cities gear up for the influx of patriotic visitors seeking something extra-special and extra-American. Good, clean, wholesome family fun.

The time of year when the site at which I work digs out a Union Jack and prepares to badmouth the historic Patriots. We tell the other side of the story. Which, I might note, is both interesting and horrid.

As children, we learn about "no taxation without representation," about the protests against British imperial rule, about the Liberty Tree and Paul Revere's famous Midnight Ride (except we don't learn about William Dawes or poor Samuel Prescott). We don't learn just how horrifying being tarred and feathered is (think second and third degree burns over your whole body); how the Patriots lied and stole their way to independence; about the lootings and burnings of Tory houses; about the murders and executions of Tory Loyalists; or about the massive financial and psychological hardships endured by those who believed themselves doing nothing more than being loyal to their King.

That's my job. I - and my staff - tell the other side of the story.

Most of the time, people think it's really interesting. Sometimes, you see them grow a little bit horrified at the thought of what their beloved Patriots (particularly the smuggling pirate John Hancock) were up to. You see them realizing that the British citizens forced out of the colonies were suffering, too.

An hour or a day later, of course, these lessons and memories fade, but for a little while, at least, they recognize that there are always two sides to every story. There are always victims, even - especially - in the greatest of victories. That nothing new can be born without bloodshed.

I have no problem with patriotism. What I have a problem with is blind patriotism. With beliefs that disallow the questioning of the dominant ideological paradigm simply because it is dominant. With the automatic vilification of the Other Side. Love your country, but don't hate all others. Don't create a cookie-cutter image of the "American" and antagonize everything that doesn't fit into it.

Our country was born out of diversity, forged in the heat of a war of rebellion, and tempered by blood and gunpowder. We as a nation came about precisely because we were able to reject the strictures we found suffocating. Our founding fathers did not make this nation so that it might stifle itself under dictates of what we must think or speak or feel.

Love your country. But love it as a parent - firmly, sternly, and with the knowledge that when it needs correction, it is better to correct than to allow it to become uncontrollable. Love it as an audience - applaud its good performances, but when it fails, boo it from the stage. Love it as a child - recognize that it has brought us this far, but that we cannot forever remain under its strict control; respect it, but recognize that change, that evolution, is necessary to life; remember that it has loved and nurtured us, but know that it has come to need our care.

The Book of Martyrs

I've recently been reading about the Jesuit missions to England in the 16th and early 17th centuries, specifically, as they relate to the Gunpowder Plot. I find it interesting how the majority of the authors I've picked up seem so sympathetic toward the Jesuits, and critical of the Elizabethan/Jacobean governments.

Is it that we, as a society, tend to automatically vilify the dominant regime? To root, as it were, for the underdog? The Jesuits lost in England - not only did they not succeed in converting the nation back to Catholicism, they failed to assassinate Elizabeth and to blow up James (though to be fair, most of them weren't out to blow up anything). Underdogs. But... not really. The Catholic Church isn't much of an underdog. And yet it occupies a strangely liminal position between supremacy and oppression.

That particular role, it seems, centers around the concept of the martyr.

Martyrs are attractive. The notion of self-sacrifice for a cause, the willingness to give up even one's life in the pursuit of a noble idealism, is lauded, praised, and sanctified by our national and religious cultures. "So-and-so died for his/her beliefs/country" is the highest of praise.

I wonder. If our biological ancestors had been into self-sacrifice, our species very likely wouldn't exist (with the notable exceptions of dying to save one's young or the rest of one's pack).

In The Lion's Court, Derek Wilson suggests that “Martyrs are seldom made by events. There has to be something deep within a man’s soul to prepare him for, or impel him towards, the ultimate sacrifice... To welcome death in a righteous cause was the surest way to avoid the everlasting torments prepared for the worldly. There is always an element of selfishness about the martyr’s preoccupation with his own eternal well-being” (377-378). I find his point about selfishness to be particularly interesting.

As did the Jesuits. And - as I learned at a session at Kalamazoo this year - the missionaries to the Muslim East in medieval times. The latter were much disposed to going to the Middle East with the specific intention of getting killed. Sure-fire one-way ticket to heaven. How do we know this? Because as long as the missionaries in question didn't preach close to a mosque (in the instances recounted in the paper), they'd be left more or less alone. They chose to do so anyway. They were disemboweled, decapitated, etc. No surprise to anyone. The Papacy elected to stop canonizing them - and to discourage the praise of said individuals - to keep more people from going out and dying. Same deal in England with the Jesuit missions; they actively encouraged people NOT to go unless they felt that the priests in question were capable of deception and espionage.

But that never seems to stop people. People want to become martyrs. And why?

I have to say that here is one of those points at which my atheism leads to my incredulity. Perhaps if I believed in another, spiritual life, a reward, a heaven, martyrdom would make more sense. As it is, I just don't get it. Martyrdom seems such a waste. Why give your life for something when you could devote the time and energy of that life TO it?

Shakespeare, he is good.

There is a reason we still, after 400 years, read Shakespeare. And it's not because he's a dead, white male. He is, but that isn't why we read him. The man had a gift. I hesitate to say "genius," if only because that is a word charged with so much angst and excuse, but Shakespeare, he is good.

Some of Shakespeare, of course, is not good. Some of it is downright terrible (and yes, I still think the terrible bits are Shakespeare, too, despite what certain *ahem* editors out there tend to argue). But that does not change the fact that the man was an intellectual giant.

What I perhaps love the most about Shakespeare is the fact that he became what he became simply because he was so damn good at what he did. Not because he was highly trained (he wasn't) or educated (he wasn't that either) or born into the right family (nope, still not).1 He was just plain and simple good at what he did. It didn't matter that his spelling was terrible or that he made up new words (we like that about him). He wrote what he saw, and when he saw, he understood. He recognized the patterns and the passions in the world and put them into a language that translates into performance as well as writing. He saw the intrinsically human, the universally recognized, the basest and greatest drives we possess, and he translated them into something that survived for centuries.

All this is, of course, instigated by my dissertation, about which I will not write. But suffice it to say that today I found yet another pattern, a perfect circularity, a flawless symmetry that made me recognize that what so many critics view as a "flaw" is, in fact, no such thing. It is deliberate and elegant. And it works. It reaches out off the stage and grabs us by the ruff and shakes us, it makes us feel something we should not feel, forces us to recognize in the most pathetic of figures the beautiful contradiction that is the human condition. It causes in us the same epiphany we have just witnessed - and the most glorious part is that we are not told what to think. We are shown. The scene is played out before us and it is up to us to recognize what we have seen, to bear witness to the passing of a man who has only just learned how to become great. To mourn his death, but to revel in it, because it is only through this single scene that he could become what he has just become. And it is great, and it is terrible.

And it is what makes us question whether we, too, can be both saint and sinner. Whether we, like this figure before us, have the capacity to be at once so mighty and so fallen. We are, it tells us, flawed. But we are also great.



1.[This is supposing, of course, that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon is the playwright rather than the Earl of Oxford or Francis Bacon or Elizabeth I or Christopher Marlowe or whatever-other-monkey-they've-come-up-with-this-week. Not to say that some of those figures don't have a case... Oxford in particular is an intriguing suggestion, though I do have to note that both Elizabeth and Marlowe died before Shakespeare stopped writing. And don't give me crap about "they found it later," because those later plays were referring to contemporary historical events.]

Revisiting History

I've been reading a good deal of history lately - and along with it, some historical fiction. Sets the brain cells a-churning.

The most recent book to have filtered its way through my brain is C.J. Sansom's Dissolution, purchased on a whim at Kalamazoo. It's set in Tudor England under Henry VIII just following the death of Jane Seymour (that's after the Reformation and after the execution of Anne Boleyn for those of you who don't keep tabs on 1500s England). The subject, rather unsurprisingly, is the dissolution of a monastery - more specifically, the dissolution of a monastery following a series of gruesome (of course) murders which must be solved by the main character.

When I started it, I hated it. I thought the writing was flat and uninteresting. But, since I was on a plane, I made myself keep going. Turns out it was one of those books that gets you hooked and then you can't put it down. And it was well-researched, as I'm discovering in reading Derek Wilson's In the Lion's Court, which is about the reign of Henry VIII.

But that's not the point. The point is that we have - as a friend and I talked about a couple weeks ago - this fascination with the early modern period in England. Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth, to be specific.

Sure, there are reasons. Henry's six wives, the Henrician Reformation, the Golden Age of England... But, as my friend pointed out, we don't seem to be nearly as interested in one of the most ground-breaking and soul-shattering instances in English history: the public execution of Charles I.

Why is that? What do we find so utterly fascinating about Henry and his two daughters that we don't find in Charles? There was depravity, disillusionment, and corruption in the Caroline court. Religious upheaval, even a civil war. But we're drawn to the Tudor dynasty like flies to honey. And believe me, the Stuarts have their fair share of scandal and strangeness. But we aren't interested in them.

Is it charisma? The figure of the magnificent, leontine Henry VIII, strutting about in his ruff and puffy sleeves; "Bloody" Mary who executed more people in five years than Elizabeth in forty-five, wearing severe black, subject to cancer and false pregnancy; and Elizabeth, Gloriana, the greatest ruler (supposedly) to ever sit on the throne of England. We can't let go of our fascination with them. TV, movies (Elizabeth, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Tudors, Blackadder II), and books (again, The Other Boleyn Girl, Firedrake's Eye, Unicorn's Blood, Six Wives, the list goes on). And that doesn't even mention Shakespeare in Love.

I say - though I'm a bit biased - that it's propaganda. Portraits (Elizabeth had dozens), pamphlets, pageants, progresses, plays, poems (there are an awful lot of Ps there)... all dedicated to the Tudors. Designed and very often censured or sanctioned by them. And this is what has passed to posterity. The images they wanted us to remember. Yes, we also recognize that Henry was something of a nasty bastard, cutting of two of his wives' heads, divorcing one, annulling another. But he was good at what he did. It all comes down to publicity.

And from this, we learn that the power of media is ancient. It isn't that FoxNews has just figured out the influence they have over us (okay, maybe they just figured it out), it's that we the audience has suddenly recognized what the early moderns knew very well: we are subject to the things given to us. To subvert the system, we must recognize it as as system. And once we understand the mechanisms directed toward us, the tools and tricks of the trade, then we can learn to read between the lines... and to write between them.

Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spencer, Chaucer... the list goes on. They all knew how to write between the lines. To contain in something seemingly innocent or propagantist the message that you don't always have to believe what you're told. Sometimes, you should. But simply knowing that the choice is yours to accept or condemn...

It causes a revolution.

The reason we look at Tudor England? Because without the Tudors, I'll bet you anything Charles I would have kept his head.

La Vita Academia

Writing from a Medieval and Renaissance Conference, at which I am surrounded by not just hundreds, but thousands of academics and scholars from all over the globe, I can’t really help but be prompted to think a bit about what it means to be an academic.

My musings began on the flight over. During the second leg of the trip, two men were seated in the row behind me, a older and a younger, seemingly strangers, discussing the younger man’s life and career. He was in aviation administration somehow – this was not of particular interest to me – and was on a trip to visit his girlfriend, who is still in school. When the older gentleman asked what she did, the younger replied “She’s a women’s studies major. But don’t worry, she’s not one of those man-hating types,” to which the other replied, “What the hell do you do with that?” the disdain evident in his tone.

Part of me wanted to turn around and smack them both., but things like laws and federal aviation behavior requirements kept me facing forward and seething invisibly in my seat. While I give the boyfriend kudos for calmly explaining that the girlfriend wants to go into politics, “because that stuff is useful, I guess,” I couldn’t quite give him enough to make me not want to scream. First of all, the caveat – “But don’t worry, she’s not one of those man-hating types” – was both bigoted and entirely unnecessary (she’s dating one, after all). Second of all, he should have enough respect both for her and her choice of career not to be apologetic about her major.

I don’t really blame the other man for wanting to know what career she will enter with the degree (after all, people ask me that all the time, and I’m getting a degree in something nice and non-threatening), but the tone irritated me no end. It was one of those oh-how-cute-the-little-lady-is-getting-an-education tones. The kind that is usually possessed by persons who are under the impression that women belong in the home, making dinner for their menfolk and raising the kids.

And then at the conference I was taught by a female professor how to “shake hands like a man,” because “this is a man’s world, honey, and you got to fight to stay in it.”

I can’t decide which is worse. The chauvinism inherent in the “uneducated masses,” or the self-perpetuating deprecation practiced by women in the profession. We wear masculine-style suits (particularly to job interviews, where, I learned, skirts are a no-no) and blocky clothing designed to hide our figures – so we won’t be distracting. We put on ball-busting attitudes that will, ostensibly, allow us to get ahead. But these are the very things that cause the illusion that we aren’t as good as our male counterparts to be perpetuated.

I’m not exactly the most girly female in the world. But if I want to be girly, then, dammit, let me. Let me earn your respect regardless of whether I act tomboy or butch or fem or frills-and-ponies. I shouldn’t have to – nor should anyone have to – pretend to be something I’m not just to earn the respect I should deserve simply because I’m competent at what I do.

It’s one of the things I generally like about this particular conference. I’m a little out of my time-period, but I enjoy this place because it accepts everybody based on their competence and intelligence, not on what they wear or how “acceptable” they appear. I’ve seen academics here wearing kilts, dresses, period garb, t-shirts and jeans, sundresses, suits, clerical habits, sweats, and – in once case – the weirdest ensemble I’ve ever seen on ANYONE. There’s no pressure to appear or behave in a certain way. Just the expectation that you accord the other people the respect they deserve as people and as scholars. It’s refreshing.

That said, academics are a very strange breed. They live and exist in a world entirely different from the one in which “normal” people operate. They are people to and for whom the historical world is present – as real as the tangible world outside their windows. They’re people who speak a different language and worship different deities than everyone else, people who understand their existence in relation to a past – or even a fiction (as in my case) – they never saw. They worship it like a god, nurture it like a child, and caress it like a lover.

I can think of worse ways to spend our lives.