"What can this world more afford / Than a lass who will sociably sit on my knee?"

[larryhammer]

The internets continues to have more cool things --

More world music: Debashish Bhattacharya plays Indian classical music on (modified) Hawaiian slide guitar: Calcutta Slide Guitar volume 3. Sah-weeeet. (via)

More flight: footage from a cam strapped to the back of an eagle soaring in the Alps. Stunning. (via)

More questions: Why are there so many medieval illuminations of knights fighting snails? THIS IS IMPORTANT YOU KNOW. (via)

What goodness have you across lately?

Subject quote from "The Wine Vault" by George Alexander Stevens, who apparently didn't appreciate cabana boys.

---L.

Comments

Fighting the snail

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

I read all the erudite commentary on the article, and am unenlightened. It seems to me that the explanation is pretty simple: all the monks who copied and illuminated manuscripts also worked in the monastery gardens. All monks worked in the monastery gardens. Snails are the enemy of a gardener. They destroy the community's food supply. How more amusingly could you illustrate the battle than as a knight tilting with a snail?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The knight-vs-snail images are just marvelous! How strange and wonderful!

Re: Fighting the snail

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That was my guess.

Re: Fighting the snail

[larryhammer]

I am unenlightened as well. My best guess is that someone with a sense of humor drew one as a whim (possibly, as you suggest, a gardener) and it memishly caught on, like a sort of monastic lolcat.

---L.

[larryhammer]

Especially the animal joust at the bottom of the article.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I hadn't noticed that last one! Snail battling rabbit while both are piggybacking on monkeys! That's pretty cool.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

The knight versus snail illustrations are wonderful! Thank you.

And 'The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare’ is such an excellent title for a paper.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I put St George battling a slug (which is, after all, just a snail going commando) into one of my books (http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/book/1~FC~FC11~2152/the-lurkers.aspx), so I was very interested to see this. I'd love to believe it was based on a pun, but if so I can't think what it might be. I suspect it's just a picturesquely misproportioned battle: frogs versus mice, pigmies versus cranes, that kind of thing.

[larryhammer]

It is an awesome title for a paper.

---L.

[larryhammer]

That is possible. Or at least, a factor.

---L.

Re: Fighting the snail

[mount-oregano.livejournal.com]

Most manuscripts were created by professional manuscript scribes and artists, not monks. They probably all gardened because everyone did, but other gardening jokes don't show up with frequency -- unless you count nuns collecting penises from the penis trees. (I am not making this up. I have not explanation for that joke, but I do for the snails.)

The knights vs. snails is a recurring motif because snails are armored just like knights, so it's logical that they should fight because what could be funnier?

Medieval humor was weird.

Re: Fighting the snail

[larryhammer]

The penis tree fits in perfectly with several medieval dirty jokes I've read ...

---L.

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

The repeated invasions of Europe by armies of giant snails are one of the lesser-known series of wars in medieval history, but were nonetheless a pivotal period in the defense of Western civilization.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Snails are awesome and all, but ... that eagle!

Re: Fighting the snail

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Medieval humor was weird, agreed. "Most manuscripts" when and where? I've done some work on the first MS in the linked post, and the other manuscripts in which its text appears are fairly evenly split between monastic and non-monastic production--aside from the question of whether some monasteries encouraged some monks to specialize as scribes/artists, which does seem to have been the case. If "professional" means only that they were paid for their work by a commissioning patron, then perhaps the monks weren't pros, but that seems orthogonal to expertise.

Re: Fighting the snail

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Do you know about Carl Pyrdum's blog (http://www.gotmedieval.com/)? The old "Mmm… Marginalia" posts (he seems not to use categories or tags) have boatloads of odd--sometimes not at all unusual!--bits of MS art which may help to contextualize these snails (without, y'know, going and looking at hundreds of European medieval MSS oneself).

Re: Fighting the snail

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

[ETA oh for goodness' sake, LJ, not everything with a link is spam]

Do you know about Carl Pyrdum's blog, Got Medieval? The old "Mmm… Marginalia" posts (he seems not to use categories or tags) have boatloads of odd--sometimes not at all unusual!--bits of MS art which may help to contextualize these snails (without, y'know, going and looking at hundreds of European medieval MSS oneself).

[larryhammer]

EAGLECAM! SOARING!

Re: Fighting the snail

[larryhammer]

I know of the blog, but not those posts. I will archive-binge post-haste.

---L.

[larryhammer]

Did they ever solve the question of the origin of the snails? (I'm partial to the theory they descended from the wetter Alpine valleys, though I'm aware of some of its weaknesses.)

---L.

Re: Fighting the snail

[mount-oregano.livejournal.com]

"Towards the end of the 12th century the quasi-monopoly of the church over teaching began to weaken, and the secular scribes, who were collaborating with the monks, began to organize themselves into guilds and workshops. They drafted official documents for the new merchant bourgeoisie, and they also wrote books.

"Until then the issuing of books had been the exclusive domain of the nobility and the clergy; luxury works for the former and missals and theological manuals for the latter comprised the total output of book production. This output was now expanded with new works; treatises on philosophy, logic, mathematics, and astronomy all began to appear, while authors such as Dante began to write in their own tongue, thus reaching a much wider public, who were educated, although unable to read Latin. For the first time, the middle classes had access to literature and to books.

"In order to cope with this new demand, the number of scribal workshops increased, and production diversified. From now on, books of all sorts appeared -- cookbooks, educational books, medical manuals, books on astronomy, even novels. Tales of courtly love, such as 'The Song of Roland,' were much sought after. The client chose the calligraphic style and the type of illustration by visiting different workshops, or more commonly by dealing with a book supplier who acted as an intermediary."

From "Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts" by Georges Jean

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

No one's ever really figured it out ... and they may still be out there somewhere, waiting for their time to strike.

Fortunately, with modern sensor technology, we should have plenty of advance warning. Because you know, snails.

[larryhammer]

I am now going to try to make every other sentence I say aloud end with "because snails."

---L.

[danielmedic.livejournal.com]

That strikes me as an excellent plan.

Re: Fighting the snail

[larryhammer]

Ah -- here's the linky comment. Sometimes, LJ does not make it easy to find these things.

---L.