Lecture 2: Reform and reformations

This course has piqued my interest in a huge way. After nearly spending the entire weekend – unintentionally – in the Warburg Library reading about reformation music and refreshing my memory regarding the Council of Trent, I am hooked. Happily the security guard escorted me out when he realised he’d locked me in.



Background

Last week I cast my mind back to the historians that my A-Level teacher talked about. I refreshed my memory concerning revisionist history books of the 80/90s which were all the rage in 1990-2 and we were encouraged to read JJ Scarisbrick, C Haigh, D Starkey and disregard J Elton and AG Dickson. So finally reading the latter, who was the set text this week, was quite an interesting experience. This continuous re-editing of history proves the reformations throughout Europe at this time were extremely complicated.

Christianity was not monolithic even in the 15th century. Devotion varied; in practice and belief which had evolved. After all, the New Testament is not a set of rules or a religion. The gospels are interpreted and even the bible is made up of council picked, selected texts. Church tradition, dogma and doctrine evolves throughout the Middle Ages

The London Mappers: Thames Festival Talk

Stephen Walter 'London Subterranea' (2012)

After spending a virtual week in the troll-inhabited unmannerly wilderness of the internet, Friday took a turn for the civilised and I entered the world of maps and the City of London. As part of the Thames Festival 2013, Renaissance expert Jerry Brotton and map dealer Daniel Crouch told a cartographic story of London and its iconic river, from the first printed map of the city to recent artistic attempts at mapping the capital.

Jerry opened with statements regarding the different directions in which his and Daniel's experience of maps go. From a renaissance studies point of view his focus is the 'idea' or philosophy of maps, with emphasis on depicting the civil v barbaric. He is also interested in how maps define our identity or even imagining how the early moderns used maps. Daniel's interest is the materiality of maps - how they are presented aesthetically or how rare they are. This duality should have made for an illuminating partnership.

Looking Skeptically at Trolls

‘They see me trolling: What can we do about online abuse’ was a lively Soho Skeptics event which took a semi-serious look at the ‘trolling’ phenomenon. The speaker Helen Lewis provided a definition of ‘trolling’, followed by an overview of the different types of trolls and examples of each. She then gave a whistle stop tour of why anyone would troll, the state of the law and what can be done about them and ended on a positive note.

Chaucer on Thames Street

View of Wool Wharf from the Tower

I've chosen the Paul Strohm lecture on Chaucer from the 'On the River' Summer School to write up first. There are a few immediate reasons: the talk wasn't about Chaucer's poetry; it involved the commercial aspect of the Thames; and the corruption amongst 14th century tax collectors felt very familiar. The scream of the Ricardian parliament for legislation! legislation! seems extremely modern and was just as effective.

As I proceeded to write this up, I started to question some of Strohm's assertions, some of his concluding remarks particularly confused me. However I hope that the summary of this lecture gives an insight into his ideas. He opened by stating that no one really mentions Chaucer's role as customs official, concentrating solely on his poetry. He says, and I agree, that people are missing quite a lot of interesting detail. Hence when Strohm stressed his interest in historical than literary Chaucer we were keen to hear what he had to say.

Get me a Retrospectascope...Stat!: John Hunter

Hunterian Museum

‘No theory can ever be proved true - we can only show that a theory is false’ - Karl Popper

I've been meaning to do something specific on John Hunter (13 February 1728 – 16 October 1793) for some time and though there have been a couple of posts that touch on him, I've not written anything explicit. Indeed my course in the spring used his collection of curios at the Royal College of Surgeons as a point of departure for many themes coming out of ‘exhibiting the body’. Therefore the excellent talk presented by Professor Stephen Challacombe at the RSM provided the material for this post.

The simple question that he wanted to explore focused on the relevancy of John Hunter’s approach to science and research. What was so special or different about his methods?

The Colour of Money; The New Financial Services Regulations

Two of the best things about being in law librarianship for decades are 1. seeing the changes in colours of institutions’ rule books; 2. the learning and relearning of industry acronyms. London Stock Exchange Listing Rules went from being the ‘yellow’ book to ‘that weird aubergine colour’ and the SFA, SIB, FIMBRA, PIA rule books all had their own coloured binders which had to be painstakingly updated by hand. I vaguely remember one of them being green, though the Bank of England reports tended to be a very elegant expensive looking white and gold. However when the FSA overturned these organisations in 2000-01 all their rules were subsumed into the multiple FSA Handbooks (white, purple and pale turquoise green), horrible new binders which would take your thumb off if you let them. 

Belief suspended at the RAI

Pain. Some will go out of their way to avoid it, making use of all medical science to dull the sensations and make the feeling go away. Even the medical terms used euphemise it; a 'sharp scratch', 'mild discomfort' ensure that you are safely cocooned and protected from negativity. I don't pretend to know about chronic pain...I'm lucky, but there are migraine moments when my head, neck and eyes are clenched in stomach churning agony. It is a normal reaction for me to blindly reach for pain relief and sink into a proper sleep.

Except secretly I don't always immediately take tablets. I don't know why and I've never really questioned this but to lie there and feel the familiar ache is both comforting and oddly rhythmic. Without that monthly incredible river of brain sickness on that right hand side, I'm not sure how I'd feel. I consciously and carefully explore what is going on in my body observe the blood pumping into a furnace like head and wonder how much I can take. No, this probably isn't rational but a lecture last night gave a vague insight into what might be going on.

Art/Photography/Space/Death

On my course so far we’ve covered labels, art/space/geography and this week we are looking at the art of photography. So when I saw the title of the first incredibly timely and apposite lecture at the Inside Out festival ‘Death and Space’ my attendance was assured. ‘Death and the Contemporary’ according to the website, is a series of ‘site-specific events providing an opportunity for interdisciplinary discussions to consider issues surrounding the representation of death in contemporary culture’.

Paul Benney 'Pissing Death' (2012)

And where better to talk art, photography, space, contemporary cultural practices and death than in the Deadhouse under Fountain Court at Somerset House? This space resonated with all these connections; from links with the 17th century dead who were in attendance, to contemporary portrayals of powerful spirituality with the art of Paul Benney. As a brief aside, his exhibition works in perfect synchronicity with the light wells and moody, enclosed spaces of the Deadhouse. His mysterious shadowy figures beckon you, forests threaten to maroon you, saints watch over you, whilst Death in time honoured tradition simply pisses all over you.

Reflections reflected: Chris Orr at the Geological Society

Chris Orr RA. On the Road to Damascus

Heraclitus has entered into my life twice in the past week, both times relating to discussions of space, change, art and rivers. He states that “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” He essentially believed that nature was in a state of constant flux, with things changing spontaneously without any external prompting. This is a very interesting place to start when talking about the artistic presentation of the built environment. Any landscape which has had repeated encounters with people will be undergoing constant change, both natural (through flooding/water, possible subsidence, vegetation growth etc) and unnatural (new buildings, changes in land use, pollution etc).