For this blog, I have visited one of the Bodleian Library’s
online exhibitions, “The Romance of the Middle Ages”.
When you think of romance, you imagine stories of love,
passion, Romeo and Juliet, or of course you might think of those cheap and nasty B-grade 'Romance' novels, or a movie with Kate Hudson. However,
although many medieval romances tell of love and loyalty, this is not always
the case. In fact, to write ‘en Romans’ in medieval French often meant that it was written in the vernacular as opposed to Latin.
Romances often incorporate ideas taken from Norse sagas,
Middle Eastern tales, the lives of Saints and lyric love poetry. They are
concerned with telling stories through person-shaped narratives.
In this clip, Dr Nicholas Perkins, curator at the
University of Oxford, presents some significant manuscripts and books from the
exhibition and explains, along with other history experts, what medieval
romance was about and what it set out to accomplish.
The exhibition is concerned with romance in literature
and how medieval writing influenced how we currently think and feel about the
subject, and how it has remained relatively unchanged in the way that what you
see on the pages of these books is still relevant today.
Among the library’s collections is “The Song of Roland”,
an epic poem written in Old French in 1100; “The Red Book of Hergest”, a Welsh
text; “The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye”, the first book published in the
English language; and “The Romance of the Rose” (or ‘Roman de la Rose’in French, which is a manuscript I have mentioned in a previous post).
Roman de la Rose is one of the most popular French poems
of the later Middle Ages and was modelled on Publius Ovidius Naso’s (more
commonly known as Ovid) “Ars Amatoria” ('The Art of Love'). The first 4,000 lines
of ‘The Romance of the Rose’, written by Guillaume de Lorris, tells of a dream
in which a woman, symbolised by a rosebud, is wooed within the boundaries of a
garden which represents courtly society. Geoffrey Chaucer translated the first
1,705 lines into Middle English.
Image from Britannica Online.
I think we are in awe at ourselves as human beings a lot of the time. That is something that has never changed. We are especially fascinated at our former selves, as humanity. How we used to live, what we accomplished in comparatively such devastating times. These medieval copiers were inspired by the writers and illustrators who came before them, just as we are today inspired by the medieval copiers. We love to know where we come from. That is what makes us proud of our heritage, or interested in family history, or question the beginnings of the Earth. And that's why we hold so dear the things from our past, things that are hundreds, thousands, millions of years old.
The writers of medieval manuscripts were so proud of their creations, with beautiful detailed illustrations and carefully thought out poetry. They wanted to do the masters justice when copying the great works. We remain this way, in that we preserve these books, talk about them lovingly, yearn to know all we can about them, gaze endlessly at their pages in amazement because it makes us feel a little bit closer to the people who lived, breathed and spoke around them all those many centuries ago.
This is why I believe these exhibitions are so successful.
As well as that, the advent of digitisation has given these exhibitions a different aspect of excitement, because now we can see more than simply two pages of a book when it's opened up behind glass. We can zoom in and admire finer details. But - there's still nothing quite like the real thing and it's always an experience heading into the city to the State or National Library to see some treasures from the Middle Ages!
For more information on the exhibition, visit the Bodleian Library's exhibition website here.
For more information on the exhibition, visit the Bodleian Library's exhibition website here.
RESEARCH
I notice that I am okay at writing artistically, but not as good at writing analytically. I find all the information I read very interesting, but it's hard to dissect it and only include parts that are significant.As I am used to using Britannica now and took almost all the information I needed from the Bodleian Library Exhibition website, this blog was also straightforward and I did not encounter any difficulties.
SOURCES
The canterbury tales 2012, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, viewed 1 June 2012, <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/93091/The-Canterbury-Tales>Roman de la rose 2012, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, viewed 1 June 2012, <http://www.britannica.com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/EBchecked/topic/507700/Roman-de-la-rose>.
bodleianlibraires 2012, Mini-documentary: the romance of the middle ages, 16 January, viewed 1 June 2012, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xP8uJ3YU974>
Bodleian Libraries 2012, Explore the objects : the romance of the middle ages, University of Oxford, viewed 1 June 2012, <http://medievalromance.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/romance-explore>
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