OK, so I got asked this question recently. (My response probably should have been, “How do you justify the Wal Mart door greeter position?” or, “How do you justify a Vice-CEO position in a company that employs 30 people, fired five of them, works the rest overtime now, and still has three Vice-CEOs?” or, “How do you justify a research team working on the latest anti-wrinkle cream using theories and materials that could actually be applied to, say, finding more effective ways of treating burn victims?” But, I digress…)
Here’s my response to the question posed – why a PhD in literature, and specifically in medieval literature, is justifiable. It’s not as complete or as thorough a response as it probably could be, but if it were, I’d have written a book (hmmmmm….not a bad idea…! ;op) For now, though, it gets the job done in terms of explaining why literature will always be important as a field of scholarly study.
Well, not to sound too biased, but I think those who study medieval literature know, in a way that many cannot, that what we do is fundamental to the understanding of why western society is what it is, and I believe that by studying the literature, analyzing it, comparing it to other literatures, and exposing the contents of it, medievalists can help modern society come to a deeper and more basic understanding of itself – thus laying the groundwork for change and evolution of our culture, if anyone will listen or really cares to evolve as a society.
I will lay out three examples to demonstrate why I think it is more than relevant, but in fact absolutely necessary, to seek to understand what was going on in the Middle Ages – which, of course, is recorded in the texts that are left to us, if you dig deeply enough.
First: the medieval era was the era in which everything we think and feel about gender differences in our society first coalesced. You want to know why the nineteenth century focused so heavily on the Madonna-Virgin-Whore paradigm, and why Britney Spears at 16 was the Princess of Pop and at 21 was washed up and condemned as a slutty has-been, while Jude Law can spread his seed with impunity and maintain his “sexiest man alive” status? Medievalists know. In the 4th century, St. Jerome codified Catholic thought through the creation and dissemination of the Vulgate Latin Bible – which became the cornerstone text of Catholic thought for the next thousand years, until the Protestant Reformation and the King James version of the Bible. Based on Jerome’s textual choices (and he definitely picked and chose; for a VERY interesting experience pick up The Other Bible and take a look at how differently everything would have evolved in terms of the equality of the sexes if he had chosen from the other texts available at the time, much less Mary Magdalene’s gospel – the only one by a woman, which was conveniently dropped from the canon). According to Christian doctrine, the teachings of Church Fathers, and the paradigms set up by such, Eve was inferior to Adam, and through that inferiority and her subsequent womanly wiles, she became responsible for everything bad that happened to humanity, including, by passing on her temptable defect, the first murder via her eldest son, Cain. It’s all her fault. The Church spent the next thousand years condemning women as the weaker and lesser sex – except, of course, for Mary – the paradigm of greatness, virtue, and perfection in woman, who as the Virgin-Mother of God’s son redeemed Eve’s behavior through her perfect sacrifice, but did so in a way no other woman could ever hope to live up to – thus setting the stage for every subsequent woman on earth to fail at atoning for Eve’s sin. This was the accepted truth, and it became so ingrained in the Western cultural tradition that it became self-propagating. We STILL to this day live by this code of thought, even if we wilfully choose not to believe it. But I swear to you, that if there is a group of five people working together on a project, and four of the people are men and the fifth is a woman, if the project goes bust the four men WILL blame it on the woman either in their heads or vocally, and the woman WILL assume she is being fingered because she’s a woman, and this is no matter what the circumstances behind the failure actually are. That is because in the Middle Ages – in nearly every (western)text you can read from the medieval period, this is in some way played out – and that’s because the Church held such sway over the society that it filtered through to the core of that society’s identity.
Which brings us to the question of identity. National, that is. We want so badly to pretend there’s no such thing as national thought, and that in our modern, global, multicultural society such things as national boundaries shouldn’t exist and / or matter, but they do. And that started in the medieval era. As powers coalesced and modern European nations began to form into what they are today, the writers of those nations crafted identities for them via epics. This is not new – Homer did it, Virgil did it. The writer of the Song of Roland and the Charlemagne cycle did it for France, crafting that nation as a great one ruled by the most perfect, Christian King in accordance with God’s will to divine rule and justice for all believers (which politically eventually worked its way from absolute monarchy to socialism). The writers of the Arthurian tradition in Britain did it, rendering Arthur also the most perfect, Christian king – only, in Arthur’s case, the focus was not so much on the justice through God and worship as it was on the unification of the various individual communities in England – because in an island nation, that was more important than the Crusading going on in the mainland(which politically eventually worked its way from absolute monarchy to a monarchic figurehead and a more democratic, Parliamentary government – and moved to the USA as an experiment in democracy from the beginning). And on, and on. Every country has a foundational story. The writers of that country did that, and the stories evolved over time to accommodate the changes and shifts socio-historically within the country. And therefore, national identity is a fictitious creation that was crafted to aid in the foundation and propaganda of the developing nations – in the Middle Ages. We still adhere to so many of those codified ideals today, and if you look at places where the French and British settled, these ideas came along for the ride. If we as literary critics can study these foundations, through the texts, expose the fictions, and explain how they work, then we can actually begin the foundation of a new modern understanding of societies – and THAT might actually begin the talks we think we are having, but really aren’t. There’s too much fiction in the way for modern countries to be able to reach common ground. The study and understanding of those fictions can pave the way for a common, human baseline from which to begin real negotiations for a global community.
Finally, we think we are so much more sophisticated and humane in the modern world than “they were in the Middle Ages”. But that is also a fiction. In studying and comparing medieval texts and modern culture, we can see so clearly that nothing has really changed. We can pretend we are more humane all we want to, but the fact is that torture is still used in the modern world, by societies that claim there is no torture being used, and a lot of the methods we still use today were used in the Middle Ages. We still have mass killings and wars over religious and economic issues. We still have the upper classes and the lower classes, the haves and the have nots. We still have those who are untouchable in terms of being punished for wrongdoings because of their position in society. We still have violence, rape, murder, incest, infidelity and affairs – all of which was occurring in the medieval societies, and recorded in the texts. In the end, the human condition is the human condition, and while we can go ahead and pretend we are more sophisticated, more worldly, kinder and gentler, a true comparative reading of popular culture in the Middle Ages and popular culture now tells us otherwise. We have the capability to be more than we are – but only if we are honest about things. It’s the literature that can show us where to go and what to do, if we are brave enough to point it out and demand that others look more truthfully and closely at it.
Everything that has happened in western society since the medieval era, has been a response to the medieval era. It has either held up what was believed, refuted what was believed, added to what was believed, developed what was believed, or responded to what was believed -as that belief was recorded, in the texts left to us.
There’s a place for science, Math and technology in the modern world, and that place is very obvious. Likewise with service-oriented professions like medicine, social work, and education, and for politics and government. But the linchpin of it all – in my opinion – is the literature. It is the human record, and without it we would not know what has gone before, what has been done, what has been dreamed. We would have nothing against which to compare our existence or our achievements, and nothing to show us where we have gone wrong and what we can do better. My argument stands, as it has always stood, that history repeats itself, that history is recorded in the texts left to us, and that literary studies is the backbone of every other subject matter and every human endeavor.
As I was browsing Jezebel yesterday, I came across this post, which links to a weird article in Britain’s Sunday Times called “What is your fashion sex?” Intrigued, I clicked on the link and was immediately transported to a strange world where phrases like “aggro frog move” and “bodycon dresses” apparently mean something.
#79 – Madonna – “Ray Of Light” – (1998)
Christopher Ciccone has mocked his sister Madonna’s new role as a marriage referee in an upcoming small screen series.