book review: Roman Britain and Early England (55 B.C.-A.D. 871)

I have been terrible about posting these days, and I’ve even let a few books go by without reviewing them.  I’ll try to make up for it, but I really just don’t feel like I have the energy even to throw together a mediocre review.  but oh well, here’s a lame attempt.

I wrote elsewhere that this is history at its (almost) most boring.  not that the author falls short of covering a certain amount of information or of dissecting a few themes, but this is the kind of book — and his is the kind of narrative — that recapitulates classical historians whenever available, supplementing it with archeological data, recounting the step-by-step process of Roman invasion or the suppression of a national revolt.  my interest in history goes way beyond (and in fact cares little for) the history of military exploits.  the overall reconstruction of conquest from archeological data (from roads to forts, etc.) is very interesting and is a great achievement (the overall discovery, not necessarily is account of it), but it’s the kind of story that really needs to be supplemented with lots of interesting plates and maps (as opposed to one or two, which you constantly have to be flipping back and forth between, and even then it doesn’t really give you a real sense of the process).

I think recapitulation — in terms of the main root of the word — is the best term for his historical account.  it’s as if he, a genuine master of the available material (historical and material), has been forced, at gunpoint, to give us all his information.  it doesn’t come across as the account of someone truly fascinated by this story and inexplicably invested in our comprehension of it.  not that every history book has to play to its audience and write like a novelist, but what the publishing historian should hope to produce is something that doesn’t sound like a Ben Stein Clear Eyes commercial in your head.

OK, with that out of my system, I can still say that the book provides valuable information for anyone wanting to study such a difficult period in British history.  there are a few subject-centered themes (e.g., the conversion to Christianity, pre-Christian religion, Anglo-Saxon society), but they are not nearly as vivid and as interesting as I’d hoped.  and I would have hoped for more excerpts from original sources (in Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, etc.) in the text or in an appendix.

we shall be reading

so it looks like I’m off to a good start this year bookwise: here’s a snapshot of some of the books I’ve received (or purchased with gift money) over the past few weeks (not including two new awesome vegan cookbooks we have).

the list of books on my “to read” list just keeps growing. I’m currently re-reading the LOTR books, including The Hobbit, this time paying more attention to the languages and lore created by Tolkien.  it’s impressive stuff.  I also have lots of language stuff in store this year: my brother Ryan gave me intro-level Chinese books and workbooks; I received Marquez’s Memoria de mis putas tristes in Spanish (obviously) from my sister Megan; Tim lent me a book I bought him a few years ago on the Romance languages; I haven’t read any of the French books I bought in Montreal; and I picked up a linguistics book on Old English and its closest “relatives” (I also have to finish my current reader and move on to the dual-language Beowulf I found a few weeks ago).

I always imagined one day I might catch up and then be able to immediately buy and/or read whatever I felt like on a whim, as opposed to always having books beckoning from the shelves (for instance, Emily gave me Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought, but I also have his How the Mind Works to read…).  oh well.  I’m always happy to provide a safe and loving home for new or used books when the opportunity arises, confident that I will one day give them their due (or at the very least lend them to someone else who will).

a pair of britches fit for a spider

reading in B. Cottle’s The Plight of English, I came across a fun fact.  our word “britches” is an alternative to the spelling “breeches.”  no news there.  “breeches,” however, which has been with us at least since the days of Middle English, is presumably plural for “breech,” though  nobody uses the singular.  the Old English word brec, however, the root to which “-es” was added in later English to make it plural, was already the plural (nom. and acc.) form of the word broc, which I suppose was an acceptable word in the singular, meaning “leg covering” or something.

so let’s do the math: broc (one leg)  x 2 = brec (two legs) x 2 = “breeches” (four legs).  throw in “a pair” and you’ve got eight legs.

a nice example of the redundancy that sometimes accompanies language as we feel the need to keep adding emphasis and exaggeration, though maybe this time it was unconscious.  I guess our brains just can’t cope with the idea that pants don’t come in anything but a pair…

book review: Introduction to Old English

a good introduction to Old English, but by far not the best grammar (or intro text) I’ve ever used.  I appreciate the interactive nature of the work (with online readings and quizzes), but it doesn’t help when some of the online resources aren’t available.

also, there aren’t any simple exercises to test your progress — just texts in which you’re supposed to underline examples of verbs or something silly like that.  so now I’ve memorized paradigms and vocabulary, but don’t really have much hands-on experience.  I’m definitely ready to move on to the next grammar.

but still recommended, especially since you can access it online for free here!

Engrish: dulled and effaced

writing of how languages, especially their vocabulary, change over time, how words take on any number new, often distorted meanings, Basil Cottle, in The Plight of English, wonders, “Is our vocabulary nobly rich, or is it bloated?”  recognizing “that semantic change is not a killer disease for a language, and that twentieth-century modifications of words are all part of a process,” he remains clear that “it does not by any means condone all our abuse of the vocabulary.”  comparing the nature of the language between the Middle Ages and today, along with rates of illiteracy, he continues:

We, on the other hand, have universal education conveyed in our own language, cultured speech available by button even if there be none in our families, books in plenty, cheap dictionaries.  Our opportunities for holding on to our supple and expressive language are far stronger than they were in the fourteenth century, when the language was redeemed from its servitude, and it seems to me unpardonable that we have so maltreated words not slight or slurred but shapely, clear, and meaningful.

and after a few examples (of awful, terrible, fabulous, and the like):

Such handling of any language will make it prone to bloat.  Its riches will be thrown away as mere excess; its lucid and distinctive words will be used with exaggeration, their outlines dulled and their picturesqueness effaced. I am not condemning inventiveness, though it might well be felt that we have plenty of words to be getting on with … but brilliance is needed for such inventiveness … Let us, rather, tend what we have: it is an abundance.

no time for paradigms

sometimes I have little mental breakdowns and freeze up in terms of being academically productive (though I’m not technically heading in any direction right now…) when I feel that there’s too much I want to do and not enough time to fit it all in.  most often this is brought on by a renewed sense of unrest about my job and financial situation, esp. when money’s tight.  this is when I feel that I can’t justify taking too much time for “leisurely” activities (more in the classical, “scholastic” sense of the word) and need to work all the time.  but then I am drained and mentally snuffed out–then I start to grow angsty and what do get back into things but either don’t have the time or don’t know where to start.

one of the biggest time consumers is studying languages.  I know I may not have a career directly involving these, but I don’t want to let them get rusty.  plus there is classical literature that I want to read, but that’s slow going if I’m translating from scratch.  I think I found a happy medium when reading Plato’s Apology by looking through the Greek, reading the translation and making sure I can make sense of the grammar, looking up anything unclear and noting (what I judge to be) important vocabulary to study later.  haven’t been able to decide on what to read in Latin, though, since I’m less interested in much of the literature.  plus I can’t justify buying a new Loeb volume or whatever, esp. if I’m not sure about what I want to read.

but I also need to keep growing my German vocabulary, while reviewing, and getting more reading and translating experience.  my goal is to be able to read German litearture as part of my “leisurely” reading, though I’m a long way off.  I have Kafka’s Das Urteil to start reading soon, so we’ll see where I stand.  but I also want to still work on listening and speaking skills–though I have no one to speak with.  I don’t really care to speak it so much, but it will be a shame if when traveling or meeting someone I am useless in the language that I know well literally.

not to mention I still read French literature and need to revamp my Spanish for speakign and reading purposes.

NOT TO MENTION the fact that I’m always eager to move on to something else.  most likely this will be Old English, for comparative linguistic but also general knowledge purposes (esp. history of English language and literature).  but I can’t rush through it, though the grammar shouldn’t give me any troubles conceptually.  just time for learning vocab, verbal system, case system, etc.

but how do I fit all this into my regulary weekly/daily routine?  I hate working…

hwaet!

sometime soon I’m hoping to start learning me some Old English, or Anglo-Saxon.  my German reading knowledge is pretty OK, and I hope to start my first book soon (not counting Der Gefangene von Askaban, of course), so hopefully I can transition to reading instead of just studying and can move on to something else, something related though distinct.  one of the main texts I’ll eventually get to, of course, will be Beowulf, and I found this pretty amazing clip of the beginning of the text as performed in the original.

somewhere, J. R. R. Tolkien’s ghost just shit its pants.