The Retrieval of the Medieval

A recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education included an article on the academic field of Medieval Studies and its counterpart, popular medievalism, that caught my eye, especially since it involves J.R.R. Tolkien, the subject of one of my previous posts. The title of the Article is "Knights of the Faculty Lounge," written by John Gravois (Vol. 53, No. 44, July 6, 2007, Page A8), and it's accessible online at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i44/44a00801.htm, but you can only get the full the article if you're a subscriber.

But never mind about that, because I'm going to deal with it in this blog. I should note, for starters, that Fordham University has an excellent Medieval Studies program, and while I have had some contact with the program directors on an administrative level over the years, there has never been any scholarly on intellectual interchange with our department of communication and media studies, at least as far as I know. Both Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman were fond of the term "hardening of the categories" in regard to critiquing academic specialization. Even though Medieval Studies is itself regarded as interdisciplinary, it's still very much a product of scholarly expertise, one that I make no claims to.

Anyway, the article begins by alluding to the distinction between the academic and the popular, which coincides with a high vs. low culture dichotomy:

I had a fat chance of finding a Dungeons & Dragons game in Kalamazoo, they told me. It was a harebrained quest. But it was a quest, at least, and that seemed appropriate.

In early May, I set out for the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, the world's premier annual gathering of scholars who study the middle ages. The congress is probably the best place to hear the latest research on early vernacular Bibles and Norse myths, but my goal was to find a fantasy role-playing game.

In the weeks leading up to my trip, I had spoken to some youngish scholars who said they found their way to medieval studies via an adolescence spent playing D&D, the iconic role-playing game. I spoke to scholars at elite universities and scholars at sleepy institutions; to associate professors, adjuncts, and graduate students; to men and women. All of them had cast spells, slain goblins, and rolled the many-sided dice of Dungeons & Dragons.

Here, we see evidence of a generational change, the same kind of shift that helped to legitimize the academic study of popular culture, of movies, television, and now even comics and videogames. Older scholars would tend to poo-poo popular medievalism, but the younger ones enjoyed it, participated in it, were even motivated by it to pursue their studies in this area. But the dichotomy persists:

They still seemed to love pondering the kinship between fantasy and the Middle Ages. But when I asked some of them whether I might find a role-playing game at the congress, their academic superegos kicked in.

"If you locate a D&D game, I will be extremely surprised," one of them, Jeff Sypeck, a medievalist blogger, wrote me in an e-mail message. "I can't imagine that such a pastime would be viewed fondly at Kalamazoo."

That response revealed something interesting and awkward: the uneasy coexistence of academic medievalists and the burgeoning subcultures of recreational medievalism (Quasi medievalism? Pseudo-medievalism? Neo-medievalism? The terms vary according to levels of interest or contempt). Recent decades have produced millions of medieval re-enactors, role players, and fantasy buffs — and billions of dollars for the industries that fuel them. "There is big, big money flowing into commercial medievalism," says Richard Scott Nokes, an assistant professor of medieval literature at Troy University. "There is this deep desire out there for these things."

Often, academic medievalists have viewed this engorged popular interest not as an embarrassment of riches, but as a plain embarrassment.

Yet those same re-enactors, role players, and fantasy buffs — the young ones, at least — make some of the most natural candidates for academic study of the Middle Ages. Surely, the two worlds must be mixing. Surely, there must be a role-playing game somewhere in Kalamazoo.

And so I set out.

Now, if this were some other periodical, there'd be an anti-intellectual thrust to the story, that would ultimately reveal the academics to be snobs and the popular medievalists as the good guys. But this is the Chronicle of Higher Education, reporting on academics to an academic readership, so the story moves in a somewhat different direction:

So 'Juvenile'

Here's a quick rundown of those burgeoning subcultures:

The Lord of the Rings, a sprawling, three-part saga full of orcs and Anglo-Saxon inside jokes, has become one of the most popular works of 20th-century literature and now of film. Elvish, a language created by Tolkien, is one of the most widely spoken invented languages — along with Esperanto and Klingon.

The Society for Creative Anachronism, a group that formed in the 1960s as "a protest against the 20th century," is an elaborate organization that superimposes a set of imaginary kingdoms over the modern political map and stages combat tournaments to determine who will rule them. In 2006 the society reported 30,000 members.

In 2007 there will only be two weekends when a Renaissance Faire is not scheduled to take place somewhere in America. (Despite the name, Renaissance Faires often focus on the Middle Ages. Go figure.)

And those are just activities for skin-bags, as online citizens sometimes refer to nonvirtual folk. World of Warcraft, the largest online role-playing game, boasts 8.5 million subscribers with avatars roaming around its medieval-style landscape. And according to some reports, Lord of the Rings Online is closing in on those subscriber levels. Another, similar online game, EverQuest, has earned the nicknames "Never-rest" and "Ever-crack" for its addictive tug.

Meanwhile, far away from the movies and festivals and virtual worlds, medieval scholars do the arduous detective work of unearthing, interpreting, and contextualizing the evidence that has survived from the actual Middle Ages — a period when real people lived, labored, imagined, and died. Yet it was also a period when knights and monsters were pressing literary concerns.

"There's so much about the medieval that's associated with the juvenile, the popular, the low," says Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, a professor of medieval English literature at George Washington University. As specialists in Arthuriana and other literature heavy on adventure and light on introspection, he says, medievalists already dread being regarded as scholars of so much juvenilia.

And so sometimes their responses to the truly puerile strains of pop medievalism are downright grouchy and exasperated — as when medievalists point out for the umpteenth time that turkey legs, consumed with such gluttonous abandon at Medieval Times restaurants, did not exist in medieval Europe.

Interesting to note that medievalists might be subjected to a certain amount of prejudice on account of their subject matter, a position that those of us dealing with media and popular culture find quite familiar. And note that the position here is essentially sympathetic to these scholars, that their "exasperation" with popular medievalism is at the very least presented as understandable (it would not be in the popular press). And we again return to the theme that scholars in medieval studies also take part in popular medievalism:

But another factor that heightens the tension between medievalists and their dress-up counterparts is this: Alongside the painstaking manuscript work, medievalists have a lot of fun. At Kalamazoo, or K'zoo, or the Zoo, as the scholarly congress is often called, the agenda is salted with events like medieval beer and ale tastings, demonstrations of medieval weaving techniques, and campy dramatic readings of tales in Middle English. Year after year, the conference culminates in a dance legendary for its debauchery. ("I only know one person who left the profession because of bad choices at the dance," writes the medieval blogger Michael Drout, an associate professor of English at Wheaton College and a leader in the field of Tolkien studies.)

"There's an embarrassment that most medievalists feel for enjoying the work they do so much," says Mr. Cohen. None of them want to be taken for mere enthusiasts.

Hence recreational medievalists have had an off-and-on relationship with their scholarly brethren. Years ago, the Society for Creative Anachronism had a presence at Kalamazoo. They came in costume. They jousted. Then the congress organizers told them the jousting and codpieces were out. Unless they were willing to learn Latin and deliver papers, they were not welcome anymore.

Journey's End

But as generations of gamers and fantasy buffs have matured into scholars — and as role-playing games have migrated from dice and tabletops into the brave new world of online avatars — something has begun to shift in medieval studies. As evidence, I submit this: My quest to find the D&D game lasted ten minutes.

When I arrived in Kalamazoo on a warm Thursday evening, my first glance around the conference lobby revealed a couple of men in bow ties, a cash bar, and a nun. (And indeed, bow ties, alcohol, and robed clerics studying early church history, I would learn, are all plentiful at the congress.) Then I saw the stack of fliers.

"Medieval Video Gaming: A Festive Workshop," the fliers announced. "Also featuring GrailQuest — a board game that involves a killer rabbit!" I looked down at the posted time. "Thursday, May 10th, 7:30 p.m." That was ten minutes away.

So I hurried up to the second-floor computer classroom where the event, sponsored by something called the Medieval Electronic Media Organization, was already drawing a crowd. Each of the computer terminals was loaded with a different massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMORPG, as gaming aficionados call them), and the seats were filling up. If any of these stalwart medievalists were ill at ease in this den of pseudo-medievalism, they did not show it.

"When they remade Quest for Glory, I didn't like the remake," said one.

"The landscape details in Lord of the Rings Online are just insane," said another. "I mean, you can pick out constellations."

Then I saw it. There, near the middle of the room, was a computer running Dungeons & Dragons Online. Bingo. Quest closed. But I still had a nagging question on my mind — and I wasn't alone.

Now, this is where it starts to get interesting. So far, we just have the fact of the tension between the two groups, mediated to a degree by the younger scholars. Now for the $64 question:

In the back of the room, a clutch of Canadian doctoral students was gathered around a bearded man with swirls of gray hair and a Hawaiian shirt. This was Daniel T. Kline, a professor of medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, and one of the event's hosts. At one point, one of the students — a pale young blond woman — leaned forward and asked him the fundamental, runic question behind the evening's proceedings.

"When you say 'fantasy,'" she said, "you think 'medieval.' So: Why?"

Father of Fantasy

The simplest answer to that question is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft, EverQuest: All of them derive from Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth, a world built from medieval languages, references, and literary conventions. And some scholars say Renaissance Faires and the Society for Creative Anachronism got their momentum from Tolkien's surge in popularity in the 1960s.

At the same time, Tolkien, an Anglo-Saxonist, is an immensely important figure in medieval studies. Sessions on Tolkien's scholarship as well as his fiction abound at Kalamazoo. Modern medievalists credit him with being the first scholar to treat Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as texts with literary depth, instead of just as linguistic time capsules. It is thanks to him, many believe, that those poems have become canonical works rather than obscurities.

And so in Tolkien, modern academic medievalism and fantasy culture share a common ancestor — as it happens, one who clearly favored the academic side of the family. Tolkien, who originally wrote his fantasy books for a tiny circle of colleagues and kin, called his fans "my deplorable cultists." So the uneasy coexistence started with gramps.

First, let me note that this quote from Tolkien is taken out of context, so we really don't know what he meant, who he was referring to exactly, what led up to the remark (was he being hassled by some fans, for example), who he said it to and in what situation, whether it represented his attitude over a prolonged period of time or just at the moment, etc. Even granted that the relationship between creative individuals and their fans can be problematic (and who, in his right mind, wants to be the object of cultish devotion?), that's hardly the point, it seems to me.

But I think it worth noting in this context that Tolkien does not deserve all of the credit for popular medievalism, and that there is a kind of snobbery at work even here in that the other author who is consistently overlooked was not a scholar like Tolkien, nor was he capable of the same literary artistry (which even Tolkien's detractors among literacy critics could not fail to notice). Instead, he wrote what was known as pulp fiction for popular magazines, adventure stories, and in doing so, invented what is known as the "Sword and Sorcery" genre (as distinct from Tolkien's "Dungeons and Dragons"). I am referring to Robert E. Howard, whose best known creation is Conan the Barbarian, subject of a series of books, comics adaptations, and of course a couple of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies (Conan was Ahnald's first major role, actually).

It would be interesting to do a comparison between Tolkien and Howard, as the two were contemporaries, both constructing elaborate fantasy worlds that predated known history. But Howard was a professional writer, working in the popular media of the time, mostly pulp magazines, his development of fantasy paralleling the early development of American science fiction. Howard was also an American, an American original, as they say. And his career was unfortunately a short one, in contrast to Tolkien, as he published the entirety of his body of work in a 12 year span, and committed suicide at the age of 30. But it is hard to imagine the fantasy genre without Howard's dark visions complementing Tolkien's spiritual imagery. For more on Robert E. Howard, you can take a look at the official site devoted to his life and work.

Anyway, let's return to the article to consider its conclusion:

That's one way to answer the question of how fantasy got associated with the medieval. But Mr. Kline answered the Canadian student's question differently. Mr. Kline, along with several other scholars of the middle ages, has begun thinking about fantasy literature and role-playing games as actual revivals of medieval literary forms.

Arthurian legends, he and others say, had a similar open-ended narrative structure built of quest after quest, a similar relationship to an ahistorical imagined past (Sir Thomas Malory wasn't writing about his present either), and a similar kind of open authorship (there were hundreds of medieval Arthurian yarn spinners). Unlike more modern forms, the medieval approach to storytelling is one that lends itself perfectly to fantasy worlds that can be endlessly constructed, reconstructed, and traversed. "The grail quest never ends," said Mr. Kline.

By contrast, there will probably never be any massive multiplayer online Henry James novels.

"We can define the Middle Ages in terms of a historical time period," says Mr. Nokes, of Troy University. "But medievalism just keeps moving forward." Geeking out on medieval quests is as old as Don Quixote — who, come to think of it, resembles nothing so much as someone who refuses to leave the Renaissance Faire. (Or someone who might have disappeared into his online avatar.) But oddly enough, we may now be more medievalist than ever.

Mr. Nokes, who also runs a popular medievalist blog, happens to be on a quest of his own. A couple of years ago, he started attending fantasy and gaming conventions as an emissary from the scholarly world. He started giving talks in libraries. He started e-mailing his local Society for Creative Anachronism chapter. And this summer, he plans to attend Dragon*Con, the largest fantasy and science-fiction convention in the world. "I think we need to talk to people in the pseudo-medieval world," he says, "people who are into this stuff just because of the joy of it."

Because if fantasy buffs are willing to put in the time to learn Elvish, he figures, it is not too far-fetched to think they might actually be looking for someone to teach them Old English. "Some people are going to want to put on elf ears and watch people joust, and that's all that they'll want to do," Mr. Nokes says. "But some people are going to want to know more."

An appropriately optimistic ending for a report on an academic scene. But Gravois has touched on an interesting point: why is medievalism popular today? Umberto Eco acknowledged the phenomenon in his book, Travels in Hyperreality, but expressed some of the disdain of the academic medievalist and offered no explanation. Instead, we could turn to Marshall McLuhan who argued that one of the effects we get when a new medium is introduced is the revival or retrieval of something that had been previously obsolesced. Much of McLuhan's emphasis was on a retrieval of village life (in the form of what he called the global village) , and a kind of return to tribalism, a neo-tribalism if you will. But I think it's implicit in McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy that what is coming back is the Middle Ages.

So, at least in the quotes from Nokes, Gravois connects popular medievalism to electronic media, noting the similarity between the "open authorship" of manuscript (and oral) culture, and that of online gaming especially, but also blogs and hypertext. But, this doesn't account for the fact that popular medievalism predates most of these new media (for example, the Dungeons and Dragons board game), and goes well beyond the world of computers and the internet.

Essentially, popular medievalism might best be understood not as a return or retrieval, and I imagine this might come as a disappointment to medievalists, but rather as a neo-medievalism, something entirely new. There is something unprecedented, charming, and inherently fascinating about people learning Tolkien's invented Elvish languages (there is more than one, of course) , and it says something very important about the emerging electronic culture that we're living in, the global village if you will. That's not medieval, it's a new cultural synthesis.

Simply put, once upon the time there were the Middle Ages, whose media environment was largely oral, with an overlay of scribal/manuscript/chirographic culture. Then comes the printing press and the modern world, and one of its effects is to repress certain aspects of the previous media environment and concomitant culture. Now, along comes the electronic media environment, which in part displaces printing, shifts culture from the modern into something entirely new that we have only been able to term postmodern, and allows some of what has been previously repressed to now return--Freud's return of the repressed. So, some elements of the medieval come back, but its not so much as active retrieval as it is a passive bouncing back or restoration, as the force that was keeping them down has been removed. But these old elements intermingle with surviving elements of print culture, and entirely new elements introduced by electronic and digital technologies.

Additionally, in trying to get a handle on a world that is no longer modern, and now is in the unknown territory of the postmodern, we look backwards to the most recent period when the world was also not modern, the difference being that this premodern world is known to, and to an extent understood by us. In this sense, the medieval serves as a model through which we can understand our new culture.

But I would also add that popular medievalism also has special resonance for American culture, insofar as we trace our collective roots back to England, and also Holland, France, and Germany (think of the colonial period here). The Middle Ages really represents the starting point for any significant history of what we call Western Europe, as previously all of the action was taking place around the Mediterranean, in Southern Europe (Italy and Greece) and the Middle and Near East. A point I included in my MEA President's Address last month was how the innovation of the stirrup made possible mounted shock combat, chivalry, feudalism, and the Frankish Empire (leading to the Norman invasion, leading to what we know as Great Britain). This was the turning point that gave us what we think of as the medieval, and really was the beginning of history for Western Europe.

The Middle Ages was also a period in which the Roman Catholic Church reigned supreme in the west, not yet challenged by the permanent schism of Protestantism (a point I discussed in my post on The Tudors). It's not surprising, then, that Catholic media ecologists like McLuhan, and Walter Ong, seem to be especially sympathetic to the medieval, and especially encouraged by the apparent retrieval of the medieval. In contrast, Neil Postman, who is Jewish, and Jacques Ellul, who is Protestant, come across as champions of modernity and the Enlightenment. What's important, though, is that they identify similar patterns in history, even if their evaluation of them (i.e., being a good or bad developments) differs.

Now, for me, being Jewish probably has something to do with the fact that I feel less connection to the Middle Ages than I do to antiquity. But then again, Tolkien's fantasy, which includes modern elements, not turkey legs but tobacco specifically, has perhaps as much to do with the ancient world as the medieval (and the division between the two is relatively arbitrary anyway, being the fall of Rome in the year 476, or was that 410?). Gondor is modeled on Rome, for example, and the history of Middle-Earth includes an Atlantis-like island of Númenor. Robert E. Howard also has a fictionalized Roman Empire, Aquilonia, and his world is an antideluvian one, which is why the history was forgotten (another character, Kull, not as fully developed, also lived in another Atlantis-like world).

The fantasy genre draws on both antiquity and the medieval, on myths and legends from all time periods, and also from the modern and contemporary (consider Harry Potter, for example). But what it all boils down to is something new and unprecedented. A new set of narratives, and with them a new set of environments or worlds, for a new age.

The Tudors of Perception

With no news to report since yesterday, I've been meaning to put up a post about the Showtime series The Tudors, and this seems as good a time as any to do so (click here for the official Tudors site). I didn't have time to watch the program when the episodes first were coming out earlier this year, but I've watched all 10 through the miracle of Showtime On Demand recently.

And the verdict is, here we have another example of quality programming courtesy of cable television--good going, guys! Not quite up to the level of The Sopranos, but what would be? Definitely in the same league as Rome, maybe better overall, it definitely surpasses Rome's disappointing second season. And like Rome, The Tudors is a historical drama, and while both cinema and broadcasters have been known to take liberties with historical fact, this trend still is cause for celebration, because getting some history in this way is better than getting no history at all. I remember Neil Postman saying that, when he was growing up, kids would get some sense of past events from biographical films of the sort no longer made by Hollywood. If HBO, Showtime, and the rest pick up that slack, well, it may be a drop in the bucket when it comes to amusing ourselves to death, but every little bit helps, even in a losing cause.

So, The Tudors gives us history, although I do wish it were a bit more, well, historical. I didn't recall seeing or hearing any mention of what year any of the events were taking place, although in a recent conversation with family friend Emily Smith, she said that she thought there was a year in the opening titles of the opening episode (although she couldn't remember what the year was). In fact, let me go check right now...

Nope, I just watched the first few scenes of the first episode, and no year is given. Now, there is an element of accuracy in doing this, in that people living in the 16th century rarely noted or even knew what year it was, but as a service to the audience, something more in the way of temporal orientation would be a good thing.

Holding that aside, it is of course odd to watch the series, knowing a little bit about how things may turn out. I think that this Thomas More chap is way too Utopian for his own good, for example, and that Anne Boleyn gal seems to be sticking her neck out much too far, but that's just my opinion. In all honesty, watching this program with some knowledge and many gaps in knowledge makes for a strange experience. I kind of know how things are going to go, but don't quite recall (or never knew in the first place) exactly what's going to happen when, and anyway they are taking some liberties with events--you can see this on the official Tudors site where they provide accurate information on the characters that is at odds with what actually happens on the series.

But these are details, and the point in drama is not detailed accuracy, but providing verisimilitude, a sense that you are there. And that they do. I found the series did hook me, and make want to keep watching to see how it all turns out, even knowing the direction it was all going in anyway. And even though the characters were not all that compelling, in my opinion. Interesting, yes, utterly fascinating in some instances, but curiously, not grabbing me emotionally.

For example, it's repeated over and over again that Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who serves as the king's Lord Chancellor, has many enemies and is hated by most, but we never really see, let alone experience, why this is so, we are just asked to accept this as a fact. Wolsey himself emerges as the most intriguing character of all, portrayed sympathetically by the likable actor Sam Neill. He seems to have some kind of Machiavellian, power behind the throne role, but far from being a Rasputin, he is shown to be quite subservient and loyal to the king--I kept waiting for something sinister to emerge from him, but it never does. We are made to wince, I certainly did, at his fall from grace at the end of the series, where he begs the king to believe that he had always and only served his interests. If the accusations of his corruption have any truth to them, the program does not let on, one way or another. And Wolsey is shown to be eminently reasonable, ahead of his time in trying to work for a treaty of universal peace (a kind of proto-UN or League of Nations), putting his own ambitions of being pope aside to serve his king. We're told his is the sin of pride, but apart from enjoying the accolades and accepting status equivalent to that of a Lord or Duke, he doesn't seem inordinately prideful. What else can be said, but that loyalty and good service may be rewarded, but may result in punishment at the hand of a capricious and easily misled ruler?

I am not denying that Wolsey is a good character, that Neill is a talented actor who does himself credit with this performance, but it could have been so much better if the drama had been framed more distinctly with Wolsey as the one mature adult individual living amongst a group of children, the young, and also the spoiled and childlike older nobles and aristocrats of the court. That would have been very interesting, to imagine an age when most people were ignorant and immature, and what it must be like to be the only or one of the few people actually able to think clearly and logically, but still be subject to the authority and caprices of those higher in rank. A missed opportunity.

But, it's not just Wolsey, all of the characters seem less than completely engaging to me. Fascinating, yes, but somehow distanced, and not just historically. Maybe it's that British thing, that cool reserve, although there is plenty of passion, especially sex. But the Anglo-Saxon style rightly dominates here. In a previous post about the Fantastic Four movie, I criticized the unwillingness of contemporary filmmakers to use traditional White Anglo-Saxon Protestant characters where they would be appropriate, as a result of the backlash against their dominance of our popular culture for most of our past, and our current emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism. Now, here we are with a series where most of the characters are WASPs, or more accurately, WASCs, as the white Anglo-Saxons still belong to the Roman Catholic church at this point in history, although there are a few infected with the Lutheran heresy. But this, of course, is all about how England broke with the Church of Rome, although technically the Church of England is not considered Protestant, but rather a breakaway form of Catholicism. Not that the true Protestants are completely absent, as we have Thomas Cromwell as one of the characters, a champion of the English Reformation.

I should note that it's not all English all the time, you do have the French, the Spaniards, the Portugese, and the Italians, but mostly its the English. And how refreshing to see England at a time before it became an imperial power, although they do occupy part of France. But mostly they are a secondary power, with Spain being preeminent. Its great when you can root for the Brits as the underdog, when you can get some of the Churchill-like stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. They are so good in that role.

But the main attraction is King Henry the Eighth. And, thinking about it, I realize that of all the countless kings and queens of England (well, yeah, they did keep count of them, didn't they, that's why they all have numbers after their names, but the point is that there's a whole lot of them and I really couldn't say how many altogether), Henry VIII looms large as one of the very few that I really have heard of outside of historical reading, that is one of the few who are part of American popular culture, and whom I have known of since childhood. Known of, I should emphasize, not really knowing much about--Postman liked to point out the difference between knowing about, which comes from book learning and schooling, and knowing of, which seems to be all that television can deliver, and sure enough, what stands out from childhood is just an image, not facts or narrative, just the picture of that old, or middle-aged, overweight monarch holding an enormous hunk of meat (was it a lamb's leg?) and eating heartily. It is therefore refreshing to find that this Henry 8 in The Tudors is youthful, athletic, albeit continually overestimating his abilities and taking unnecessary chances, a bit of a mook, really, kind of a jerky boy, all about stunts and sex. He's also spoiled, demanding, but also commanding, and not without half a brain.

But what I remember, from my childhood was that other image, and it is hard to reconcile the two, although I am looking forward to seeing the transformation. I should add that, as a lad, I also knew about Henry the Eighth through the popular song, which actually had nothing to do with the king, and was performed with a cockney accent by Herman's Hermits--good old British invasion rock and roll! I just found this unusual site that let's me add the lyrics in a fancy-shmancy way, so here goes:

HERMITS HERMAN'S lyrics

Well, that's amusing, maybe even weirdly cool, but it doesn't quite get across the lyrics properly, so let me present them in a more traditional format:

I'm Henry the eighth I am Henry the eighth I am, I am I got married to the widow next door She's been married seven times before And every one was an Henry (Henry) She wouldn't have a Willy or a Sam (no Sam) I'm her eighth old man, I'm Henry Henry the eighth I am Second verse same as the first I'm Henry the eighth I am Henry the eighth I am, I am I got married to the widow next door She's been married seven times before And every one was an Henry (Henry) She wouldn't have a Willy or a Sam (no Sam) I'm her eighth old man, I'm Henry Henry the eighth I am I'm Henry the eighth I am Henry the eighth I am, I am I got married to the widow next door She's been married seven times before And every one was an Henry (Henry) She wouldn't have a Willy or a Sam (no Sam) I'm her eighth old man, I'm Henry Henry the eighth I am H-E-N-R-Y Henry (Henry) Henry (Henry) Henry the eighth I am, I am Henry the eighth I am Yeah

That's better, but of course to get the full effect of what is, after all, a rather annoying song, you need to hear it sung. But from the lyrics alone, it's clear that the song is a rite of reversal of sorts, in which it is the wife who has multiple marriage partners, not the husband. Also, as a kid, it did leave me confused and thinking that the old king must have had eight wives himself, instead of the infinitely more reasonable six. Six? That's still a lot, who doe she think he is, Zsa Zsa Gabor (for the younger reader, a celebrity perhaps best known for marrying numerous times and guest appearances on TV), or maybe even Elizabeth Taylor? Well, the similarity between royalty and movie stars was noted well before I was born, for example by Marshall McLuhan in The Mechanical Bride.

And if you know anything beyond that image of him munchin' on mutton, you know that he had many wives, that bit makes it into popular culture. And maybe even that he executed one or two of them. Actually, checking with the font of all knowledge on the subject, Wikipedia, I found the following mnemonic rhyme: "King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded: One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded."

But for me, the point was driven home when I was in high school, in 1973, when Rick Wakeman, the keyboards player for my favorite rock group, Yes, released his first solo album, The Six Wives of Henry VIII. The liner notes tried to explain the relationship between the different women's personalities and histories and the music he composed for them, but no one I knew could see, or hear the connection (must be a British thing). But the music was very much in the style of Yes, and the progressive rock band had reached the peak of its popularity and creativity with the albums Fragile and Close to the Edge, so Wakeman's solo album sold pretty well, and made many of us American fans became more familiar with old Henry's cast of characters, or should I say revolving door of leading ladies. Click here to go to the Amazon page for The Six Wives of Henry VIII and order it if you care to, but you can also read the editorial and customer reviews, and listen to samples just to get a sense of what each of the six pieces sounds like (I recommend the Amazon music sampler option that lets you listen to all 6 30-second samples in succession).

So, anyway, the Showtime series is much better at getting across what the wives, or at least the first two, Catherine or Aragon and Anne Boleyn were like, so it has that going for it.

But more than that, what the series brings home is the fact that Henry VIII is remembered because he was such a pivotal figure. He is the one who makes the break with Rome, and in doing so sets England on the course of Empire, although it fell to his daughter Elizabeth to see that little island transformed into the England of Shakespeare and suns that never set.

But, as a drama, the question remains, what's the point they're trying to get across in The Tudors, what's all this history have to teach us today? Much of what goes on seems so very distant from our own contemporary concerns. For one, there's the idea that geopolitics hinges on the idiosyncrasies of personalities and personal relationships. Of course, there is that thing about Bush bearing a grudge against Hussein for trying to take out his father, and looking into Putin's soul, and whatnot, so maybe there is some small relevance there. But then there's the fact that major political events revolve around the king's loves and lusts. Of course, there was that whole thing with Clinton and the intern. So maybe there is something to learn here about the elites that govern our affairs?

Maybe, but no effort is made to make that sort of connection, and anyway, this series is an English effort, so it would not necessarily reflect American concerns, values, or myths. On the
official Tudors site one of the creators, Michael Hirst, explains that he decided not to begin with the beginning of the Tudor dynasty, with Henry VIII's the father, Henry VII, because #8's story was so much more dramatic and relevant to contemporary life. He writes:

The more I read and thought about the Tudors, the more I came to realize that the story of the young Henry VIII presented a rich and so-far untapped vein. For one thing, he presided over the change from the medieval to the modern world. He also engineered the change, in England, from Catholicism to Protestantism, a change so profound that nobody had ever tackled it dramatically before, even though it underscored not only the history of the British Isles, but also the history of America! And on top of that — for God's sake — was the fact that, as a man, he was caught in an erotic triangle between his older wife, and younger mistress. Granted, the stakes were a great deal higher than in most modern examples, but the reality was totally familiar, almost commonplace. Kings and Queens act out, on a vast and public stage, the dramas which fill and define our own private lives.

So, it's about sex and love, and power. As he went on to explain:

I pitched Henry as a young, glamorous, athletic, sexy... etc. King because I was fed up with his English iconic version as a fat, bearded monster with a vast ego and even vaster sexual appetite, and very little brain. Holbein's tyrant! He had in fact a keen intelligence — and for me there was nothing more fascinating or more sexy than getting him involved in the big political and religious issues of his day. To tell you the truth, I grew to love this guy: he had everything! He was devastatingly handsome, and he was always the best at all the physical activities — like jousting and wrestling — that he did. He could also speak five languages. He could play chess. He could write philosophical pamphlets. And he had absolute power. That God had given him! What a great premise for a show! For if Henry was you — what would you do?

And, he continues:

Showtime liked the pilot. But they wanted to push it further. I was not to feel under any constraints to show the beauty and the violence of the period. They also liked the idea that Henry was surrounded by a group of young and handsome bucks who had no titles, but who aspired to everything they could lay their hands on: titles, women, fortune and honor. Brandon, Compton and Knivert were the brat pack of their day, heartily disliked by the older generation of aristocrats, like Norfolk, but constantly indulged and elevated by the young King. With Cardinal Wolsey as a safe pair of hands, craftily and carefully guiding the ship of state, Henry lived a hedonistic lifestyle in the early years of his reign — a fact he guiltily admitted to later. Even so, he remained anxious to win fame and honor — if he could — on the battlefield (preferably fighting the French!) and he wanted to be a good ruler in a humanist tradition he shared with his good friend Thomas More (whose head he later cut off).

So, it's the royalty as Hollywood celebrities, only with the power of life and death. But the thing that I think we Americans constantly miss is how much the English grapple with, are conflicted over, have a love-hate relationship with, resent and are enchanted by their monarchy, nobility, and aristocracy. We have long ago lost our bitterness over the royalty and imperial character of the English, and enjoy the royal family for the celebrity spectacle they provide. But the English pay for it, in real tax dollars, and in having to be a part of a culture where certain doors are absolutely closed to most people. Sure, it's almost impossible for almost all natural born Americans to become president, but the point is that it is theoretically possible, and such ideals are powerful. Across the pond, there is something humiliating, degrading, to at least a significant number of English citizens about the existence of royalty and titled aristocrats. For example, in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review (7/8/07), Chrisopher Hitchens reviews On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry Into Some Strangely Related Families, by Jeremy Paxman. But it is not so much the book itself, but Hitchens's essay about it that is of interest, as he is a self-described republican (in other words, against the monarchy), explaining that

Paxman’s fascinating and amusing book is an inquiry into the continuing potency of an anachronism, and also into the largely voluntary thralldom it continues to exert on its “subjects.”

Clear enough for you? Well, let me also include his final paragraph, which is of special relevance given the fact that Henry VIII, in breaking with the Pope, made himself and his royal successors the head of the Church of England:

There is, finally, another point that an axiomatic secularist like Paxman is reluctant to tackle. Queen Elizabeth is the nominal head of the church as well as of the state (and the armed forces). On her expiration date, her eldest son — a sad and foolish man with a half-baked interest in Islam — will become the head of the Church of England. The family values of Henry VIII have left the British with an absurdity at the very apex of their system. The belief in monarchy is deeply related to the supernatural and the irrational and was founded on the wicked idea of “the divine right of kings.” All supposed glamour to one side, the institution still bears the ineffaceable and lowly stamp of this origin, for which the words “fairy tale” might have been designed. In a short time, after a long reign, this will become uncomfortably and indeed unpleasantly clear. The mad principle of heredity will give us, not just a charmless and chinless dauphin, but a brooding, resentful, religious creep. At this point, the “very polite inquiry” might have to become fractionally less deferential.

Marshall McLuhan suggested that when a medium becomes obsolete, it doesn't disappear, but often come to be seen as an art form. There is no question that the British monarchy has been obsolescent for a long, long time now, and has been in many ways reduced to an art form. Could it be that this is the essential message of The Tudors, and more so, that the significance of this series is that it actually presages the full and final abolition of English royalty and nobility? We in the US would regret it, the same way we regret the cancellation of a favorite television show, but it might actually be a healthy development for our cousins over in the UK.