Kewl
26 July, 2006
Kewl
Two very cool things. For the first time in recent memory, I opened my newly-arrived Speculum* to find An article that actually has something to do with my research. If you were an early medieval historian, you’d know how rare this is. Not only that, but there was a review of Althoff’s Friends, Family …(and whatever. I can’t remember off the top of my head) by Chris Wickham that rawked. Seriously. Such a good reviews and now I must buy the damned book — which is not all that pricey, thank goodness.
Other cool thing: I just read this over at The Little Professor. It’s really, really good.
Now I’m going to shower and move stuff into my new office!
*(Oi! you just shut yer gobs, you non-medievalist lot. I didn’t name it!)
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Blogenspiel 
Yay for moving into your new office!!
It will need much work to make it look professorial …
and then there’s that review on the eastern carolingians… wow.
OOh — I haven’t got there yet!
That’s one of the harshest reviews I’ve ever read. What’s really sad is that I checked with a Senior Colleague, and SC said the book really was that bad. I am soooo going to make sure I have my stuff read and re-read before I submit!
Amazon even has a few pages of the introduction to the Althoff available as part of their “search inside” programme, so that you can check that you agree with Wickham. See here
Somehow, I can’t imagine not agreeing with him.
Ah, but the good thing about being a professional is that you’re allowed to if you want ;-)I have to admit that the six or so pages that Amazon had available had my eyebrows climbing a tad. There were an awfully large number of mentions of “men” as opposed to people . . . although I realise that this is probably more a reflection on a) the original materials and b) possibly the translation.
I wonder if some of it is translation, but probably not. I’ve read part of the Althoff book, and it’s tremendously useful, but I think Wickham’s caveats are fair and well-founded. They also frighten me a bit, because the holes he points out in Althoff’s research are, I think, typical for any of us who work in areas most studied by Germans — there’s a real split in the historiography. Oh. I’m going to write a real entry about this later, I think. Wait for it …