Carnivalesque XX

Welcome, dear reader, to the twentieth edition of Carnivalesque here at Recent Finds Weblog.

Carnivalesque is a Blog Carnival dedicated to pre-modern history, and this month it’s an Early Modern edition.

Pittoresque

Early Modern Whale gets to open this Early Modern Carnivalesque with a silly PhotoShop Woodcut ™ in the category of Pittoresque: The Student, apart from men, sitteth alone.

Now we’re at the drôleries, you can say what you will about i’s for j and two v’s for w. By far the most humorous element of early modern typography is the long s. This is true for at least four reasons. First, it’s fun to read English out loud when every initial s is an f. Just is. Over at Blogging the Renaissance, Truewit really got himself going on Scholarly Typographic Inquiry for Scholars of Serious Business, where wee may thus fuck and bee fatiffied – with pictures! If you didn’t figure already, I must warn you that it’s a bit, er, rude…

BibliOdyssey has some very instructive prints that show you just how one gets about Transporting the Vatican Obelisk. If you’re more fond of the grotesque or macabre you might want to enjoy some Russian Folk Prints or a Heidelberger Totentanz – the kitchen is open 24/7!

Academiesque

What kind of person defends a brutal rapist? Mr. Bell of Boston 1775 provides both a general and a specific answer and discusses the defendants right to adequate counsel, as Josiah Quincy, Jr., Takes the Case.

Next, we’ll join the English Civil War for som saddling fun. The New Model Army is the best documented army of the time and the records show that in the period from April 1645 to April 1646 the army bought 9,379 new saddles, and paid for another 500 old saddles to be repaired. Most of these saddles were supplied by 26 named individuals of whom at least 4 were women. Investigations of a Dog takes a thorough look at these not-that-rare Female Saddlers and even drops a link to an early modern map of London on the fly. Nice!

Different media and different historical cultures shape different fears, but it seems as if exploring the world from the comfort of your armchair is still as dangerous as it was in 1778. In vain is youth secluded from the corruptions of the living world… at least according to The dangers of novels brought to you by Earmarks in Early Modern Culture.

Over to archaeoastronomy where a Sex saga from sevententh century takes dramatic new twist ! Alun surely knows how write those catchy headlines that just makes you want to read it in private! This one is office safe, though.

Scandinavianesque

In To “nye” gullfunn fra Kristiansand (Two ‘new’ gold finds from Kristiansand) norwegian archaeologist Frans-Arne Stylegar of Arkeologi i nord relays the story of a spectacular 1643 gold find near Augland in Torridal – including the story of how information on this find was lost and recovered.

For those of you not very strong in the scandinavian tongues, I can paraphrase a bit:

Frans-Arne tells us about how in the easter days of 1643 a young maid-servant, Sissel Simonsdatter, stumpled upon a gold ring of 130 grammes, probably an Iron Age ring of some kind. We know about the ring, because a legal dispute followed between the young girl and the landowners Torgi and Osmund (of Augland) over who should have the gold.

The issue was settled by Kristiania judge Augustinus Olufsøn who referred to Magnus Lagabøte’s old law from around 1270 AD which determined that the King, the landovner and the finder should each have a third of any lost and unclaimed property. A local goldsmith, Daniel, had valued the ring to 36 riksdaler of which Sissel was thus rewarded 12.

Frans-Arne notes that for this rather large amount of money, the girl would have been able to buy either 4 new candelabra for the local church or 320 kilos of barley flour from the King’s granary at Akershus Castle(!)

The ring was most likely turned into jewellery and wedding rings by said goldsmith and is, eheu!, no more.

For another round of strange language, swedish archaeologist Pierre Petersson in his new blog Ahimkar brings us old news of Värnaby – byn som försvann (Värnaby – the town that disappeared). In historical terms, the town of Värnaby evolved from a couple of farms in the 15th century, blossomed in the 17th century and had lost it’s importance by the end of the 18th century. But Pierre also contrasts the historical record with an archaeological perspective that underlines that history and archaeology won’t always give the same story, yet can both be useful disciplines.

The last scandinavian this month, Simon R. Hughes has done a nice work of chewing up the sources to an incident where ships of the Royal British Navy apparently sacked a Norwegian trading post in the Finnmark! Strange as it may sound, this incident has been deferred to the Glemmeboka (Book of oblivion) by English historians. Until now, that is! You shouldn’t be scared by the fact that the name of his site Gammelost means ‘oldcheese’. The site really isn’t that cheesy and it’s in proper English, even!

Christianesque

Muninn changes tracs and investigates Jesuit historian Juan de Mariana, treason trials and definitions of treason. It’s all in Jesuits on Treason. Konrad himself considers this post ‘procrastination’. If only I procastinated that well!

Chris Laning is into rosaries and she has a blog about them called Paternosters. I have selected This rosary is shot for this edition of Carnivalesque. Still, all the entries are well written and Chris obviously has a huge knowledge of rosaries and beads, so I’ll really just like to recommend all of it. Amen!

I’m very fond of Jesus Kites and so I am very glad to include a post entirely devoted to them! The Jesus Kite or Aquilone di Gesù was an iconographical representation of Christ being flown as a kite(!) – a rather eccentric subgenre of religious painting from the late Middle Ages through the early Italian Renaissance. Conrad of Varieties of unreligious Experience takes a flight in the Jesus Kites.

Wordesque

In Bologna, in 1839, the decorative artist Antonio Basoli published an album of twenty-five elaborate lithographs, each one featuring an alphabetical character cast in some fantastic architectural form. Giornale Nuovo discusses the meaning of Basoli’s Alphabet.

Words must mean just what they mean. But what of speakers? What of writers? We say one thing but mean, as it were, another. As if it were so. A phrase used to indicate that a word or statement is perhaps not formally exact though practically right. The mood is subjunctive. One would say it, if only he could mean it. Brad at The Mind is a Methaphor, as it were, certainly means it!

Anybody interested in the art of memory and the history of the book should be familiar with the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. Borges too was obsessed with the perfection of meaning in words – one of the strongest repeated themes throughout his work is of crafting words so precise in meaning that they encompass infinities.
Now Flashboy over at i blog, you blog, they blog, weblog provides the very first clean english translation of Borges’ modern classic The Library of Babel. It is probably the first case in which the translator has not interpretated the meaning of the text in any way whatsoever. It’s called The Library of BabelFish. It’s not very good, but it’s certainly Borges like you’ve never had him translated before! Ever.

Finalesque

And finally to wrap it up, Carolyn of 18thC Cuisine will serve you a delicious dish: Eggs with Gravy or à la Huguenotte after a 1691 recipe. Complete with cooking instructions and pictures, this winter warmer is sure to get its deserved revival – or should I say renaissance? Wether it is more appropriately categorised under Carnival or Lent I’m not sure, but to me it feels kind of carnivalesque…

Well, that’s all for this months Carnivalesque. It’s been a pleasure to cook up the blog for you! Bon Appetit!

Next Carnivalesque

Next month will see an Ancient/Medieval edition – not to be missed!

UPDATE: The next edition will be hosted by Gill Polack at Even in a little thing on or around the 25th of november.

If you would like to help make Carnivalesque the best kique-arsch blog carnival around, submit your nominations for the next edition of Carnivalesque to the upcoming host (once a name has been announced), to the carnival email address: carnivalesque [at] earlymodernweb [dot] org [dot] uk – or you can use the handy submission form at Blog Carnival.