The Medieval World: Life, Thought, Action

Introduction

This seminar gathered together a group of extraordinary, and extraordinarily dedicated, Houston teachers. We set out to explore the Medieval World in the actual lives of its people, in their thought processes as expressed through their writings, and in their actions as shown in their histories. The Fellows in this seminar brought with them a range of interests and abilities that lent a marvelous variety to our investigations. Many were involved in the teaching of languages— English or Spanish—which led them to look to the literature of the Medieval World. Others came with a background in music and music theory and in the practical arts of metal and woodworking. Still others focused on either the drama of the Medieval World, or the expression of that world through Medieval drama. The result of bringing together this particular group of Fellows with their unique interests and skills was a seminar with a rich variety of investigations that is well expressed in the wide variety of written units in this collection, displaying the Medieval World through an interesting range of media, and giving directions for teaching the Middle Ages in a broad range of formats.

Our own study of the Medieval World began by reading a Primary source—the life of Guibert of Nogent. Guibert of Nogent was a medieval monk who wrote a wonderful autobiography explaining his life in three phases. He began by remembering his childhood and the world in which he grew up, with his parents and his tutor, then his monastic school and his education. When he became an abbot himself, he first described his new abbey’s history and traditions, and included vignettes of neighboring abbeys in his area, along with the people with whom he was most familiar, whether monks, abbots, bishops, or noblemen and noblewomen. Then he turned to the political life of the nearby city of Laon, into which he was plunged, full of bishops and clerks, townspeople and merchants, lords and ladies, and even kings and queens.This rich and wide-ranging work introduced us to the toils and turmoils of its medieval eyewitness in the various stages of his life: childhood and the immediate family, school years, early career as abbot, and later career as political mover and shaker in the world of high politics. This work, which many of the Fellows have included in their own curriculum units for this project, gave us a vivid introduction into the life, thought and action of the medieval world.

Often when young people inquire of other cultures they first want to know “What did they eat?” then “What did they wear?” and finally “How did they entertain themselves?’—sports, games, parties, courtship, etc. But when Medieval people tried to describe themselves, they perceived themselves as “Those who work, those who fight and those who pray”—a concentration on what people did, a world of action. Many of our Fellows wanted to know how people thought and felt—how did they perceive themselves and their world, and interact with it? Often medieval literature lets us enter the medieval mind and heart. So we all sought to explore the medieval world from a variety of perspectives, looking at literature, histories, geographies, art and architecture, social descriptions of daily life and its environment, sports and entertainments, music and drama. All of these approaches are both valid and valuable, and their combination informed us well of the Medieval world. For the first four weeks, we concentrated on Medieval People and the roles they played—a field of rich possibility. In the first week’s meeting, a discussion of the rich variety of medieval people led to an outline of topics for the rest of the seminar. In this meeting, Fellows chose a medieval group of people on which to report, from the following list:

Thus we sought to explore the rich variety of roles in the medieval world.

We next sought to identify specific books of help in explaining the Medieval World, as the Fellows developed their thoughts on the shape of the units they wished to create. Each by then had identified the specific topics they wished to study in depth, and had developed some idea of how they might teach the specific students whom they normally teach and understood well, and whom they wished to inspire and to help in the learning process. Now that we had a handle on the roles people played and the lives they led, we focused on particular aspects of life, action and thought that interested Fellows further, and worked on both topics and units that served Fellows’ goals. Each Fellow selected an appropriate book and reported to the rest its contents. Fellows also researched what books are available specifically for students in the age groups they normally teach, and came up with a rich variety of resources. We also sought to identify specific videos on medieval topics, including fictional movies and plays that portrayed the Middle Ages truthfully and well. We viewed selections from a variety of these videos, and discussed their value and appropriateness.

It was through this study that the Fellows created the extraordinarily broad and wide-ranging units of this collection, which include a number of literary studies, but also some dramatic endeavors including role -playing and creative writing; hands-on recreation of medieval scientific discoveries; making “medieval” diaries, books, costumes, weapons, and machines; holding a medieval festival; and even the creation of a hypothetical medieval travel bureau. At the end of our seminar, Fellows remarked that they were surprised at how “light” were the so-called Dark Ages. They had discovered that the Middle Ages were a time of great creativity, including scientific and technological inventions, literary and artistic inventions, major and quite remarkable building programs producing the largest buildings in the world up to the modern age, and over all exemplifying a world of extraordinary beauty, exuberance, and enlightenment—all of which are reflected in the wide variety of units emerging from our seminar.

Yates High School literature teacher Daniel Addis chose to create a unit centering on the analysis of the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, looking for literary allusions in its exposition, primarily of Biblical references, with which it is filled. He seeks to help students see that literature has layers of meaning, and to find in these layers the literary allusions that both enhance the meaning of the work and increase the beauty of its language. Through this study, students will come to a deeper understanding of the Bible as literature, of the medieval world through this work of literature, of human nature, and develop a deeper perspective of life.

Wayne Cook’s unit, Life in Medieval Times, is one of the most creative in this group. He actually wrote a mini-novel documenting the lives of typical medieval peasants, whether men or women, medieval knights and lords, a medieval crusader, and medieval churchmen. This gripping story will serve him well to illustrate to his students what they themselves can do in the learning projects he has outlined for them. These projects include researching aspects of medieval life and illustrating or recreating them in various hands-on ways: posters, dioramas, making medieval weapons and machines, building medieval buildings, or making medieval costumes. He will end the whole unit with putting all these projects to work in a Medieval Fair for his students, their parents, and the school faculty illustrating and recreating medieval life in a very vivid way.

Deborah Dabbs, in her unit Through the Medieval Mirror Dimly: An Illumined Path to Enlightenment, seeks to inspire her students with an enticement to see the fascination of the medieval period through its people and their lives—their pleasures and sorrows, and even tediums. It is the humanity of medieval people that she wishes to place in the forefront, placingflesh on the dry bones of the past, breathing life into its people. She hopes to inspire students to see the similarities between themselves and the people of a world long past. It is in her plan to guide students into a recreation and reenactment of this past that she hopes will begin their comprehension of a world that, even though long past, nevertheless forms a part of their own background and origins. She will do this by having her senior high school English students research, plan, and carry out a Medieval Festival to celebrate the end of their senior year, in conjunction with several of her colleagues in her school and another in her district. The students will make and decorate booths, plan tourneys and menus, research and make costumes, prepare foods, arrange and play music and entertainments to recreate a whole medieval experience. Parents, faculty and administrators will be asked to judge how “real” their creation is: how closely it accords to historical fact. With this project, she hopes to replace traditional senior malaise and boredom with senior spirit and enterprise, and a sense of interest and satisfaction.

Patricia Green’s unit, The Influence of Marie de France and Chretien de Troyes in Medieval Romance and Story-Telling, like Daniel Addis’s unit, approaches the Middle Ages through literary sources. She has chosen two twelfth century French authors, Marie de France and Chretien de Troyes, who had a profound effect on the development of medieval, and indeed world, literature. The stories of King Arthur that they recount in their romances endure to the present. She cites the importance of these French works in a world of English education that usually focuses exclusively on English literature. Chretien de Troyes’ development of the novel structure invented a new literary form—the novel. Marie was a highly influential woman poet. Both these authors will lend insight into other perspectives of Arthurian romances, for highschool students, and help them explore the way that medieval people thought and interpreted works, from both Chretien’s male and Marie’s female perspective. Students will learn through class discussions and writing assignments of these French authors not often found in a traditional American high school textbook, but who nevertheless had an important influence in the literature from the medieval times to the present.

Juan Pablo Lodeiro also has chosen The Lais of Marie de France for his unit, but he pairs it with the more traditionally taught Canterbury Tales. He will use these two literary works to recreate the historical worlds of two different eras: the twelfth century world of Marie de France, at the height of the Medieval Renaissance in which new art forms and new educational advances were made, along with many literary creations; and Chaucer’s world after the Black Death of about 1350. He will guide the students to analyze themes, tone, figurative language, and other literary elements that display the vast differences in the worlds of Marie and Chaucer. Students will be asked to critically examine the connections between these written expressions and their historical contexts. Part of the study will include, of course, the historical background of the 12th and the 14th centuries, in which these two works were written.

In his unit on Traditional Lyrical Poetry and Theatre in the Spanish Medievo, Rafael Lozano introduces us to the world of Spanish medieval literature. Just as Pat Green wishes to introduce her American high school students to the world of French literature, Rafael Lozano wishes to broaden his students’ world with equally neglected Spanish literature, very rich and original in its own right, with its elements of Hebraic and Arabic literature. These elements resulted in a unique blend of the native Spanish, primarily Latin, elements with its later colonists of Hebrew and Arab origins, late also including French, Italian and Germanic elements. Lozano will focus on Spanish lyrical poetry and theater, the spoken tradition as lyric, which would finally be written down by monks, poets and other writers. He will guide the students to analyze different literary theories and lyrical works, along with one piece of theatrical drama. All will be examined in bilingual versions, and here Rafael has included many of his own very fine original translations of quite difficult poetry, in hopes of helping his students understand the Medieval world of Spain more completely—especially native Spanish speakers, both high school students and those Spanish teachers who may be inspired use his unit, both groups whom he hopes will appreciate their origins better.

Sixth grade teacher Karlene McGowan also designed her unit as a literary study, but in a very different way. Karlene’s unit is designed for sixth graders, and originated with Karlene’s fascination with the children’s novel Freak the Mighty, by Rodman Philbrick. There are two heroes in this novel, who combine each of their strengths—one contributes brains, and one braun. The brainier hero, Kevin, is obsessed with Arthurian literature, and makes frequent allusions to the Legends of King Arthur. Karlene then seeks to enrich her young readers’ appreciation of this compelling novel by introducing them to Arthurian literature, so that they may better understand Kevin’s inspiration in his own heroic quest through life. She will introduce the students to the Legend of King Arthur to give them background knowledge for reading the novel Freak the Mighty, including elements such as character analysis, vocabulary, reading comprehension, fact and opinion, context clues and cause and effect. Although she designed the unit for sixth grade, she provides modifications for various levels of readers, and includes a brief study of the Medieval Era. Karlene’s experience with this excellent novel leads her to describe it enthusiastically as very enjoyable for its novelty and story appeal for both students and teachers.

Perhaps Kathryn Nash’s project, A Present Day Trip Back in Time: A Travel Guide of Medieval Castles, Churches, and Roads in Between, is the most inventive unit in this collection. Kathryn has designed a plan in which students explore the quintessential medieval buildings, castles and cathedrals, as if they were travel agents designing a tourist brochure. Students will explore background materials such as religious, political, economic and social issues via electronic technology, with which they will then organize the data to design their brochure in the voice of a medieval traveler, detailing the components of a medieval landmark reflecting their understanding of life during the Middle Ages. I suspect that this unit, like Karlene’s, will be as much fun for the teacher who chooses to use it as for the lucky students to whom it is assigned.

Sharpstown Middle School teacher Joanetta Y. L. Rand’s unit, Life in the Castle: The Knight and the Lady, also promises to be a good deal of fun for its fortunate participants. Joanetta envisions the students writing short skits for role -playing the daily life of Medieval men and women on a variety of levels. First, they will research how knights and ladies lived in their castles, from an examination of business, management, diplomatic, entertainment, food preparation, military planning and execution, the manufacture of weapons, tools, and clothing, and, in general, the total functioning of castle life, including romantic, courtship and marriage practices as they intertwined with banqueting and entertainment. She will encourage the students to imagine conversations between medieval men and women, discussing medieval thoughts and manners as the students have come to understand them through their research and their discussions of this research among themselves. In this way, they will come to have an understanding of a culture very different from their own.

The Impact of Medieval Culture on Music is a unit developed by music teacher Enetta Nelson Rose. She seeks to help the students make the connections between music, culture, and history. They will begin by locating medieval societies on maps, focusing on English, German, Islamic and Greek societies, looking first at their cultural backgrounds, then more specifically relationships between the culture and musicians, composers, and performers. Both musical and artistic creative expressions will be examined. Students will seek to discover how art forms from the past and present reflect economic, political, environmental and cultural issues of any society within a given period. Stylistic similarities and differences of compositions in the various musical genres will be explored through application exercises using music software programs. Enetta aims to help students discover that music is a reflection of one’s social milieu, and an artful blend of diverse cultures—a reflection of the artist, and the times in which he lives, and his culture.

Joshua Silberman has designed his unit for a 9th grade pre-AP school course literary survey stretching from Greek mythology to contemporary Americ an fiction. This unit, The Great Vowel Shift—The Great English Movement, is perhaps the most focused of the present collection. Josh is fascinated with the shift in the English language from the Germanic -structured Old English to a more Latin-influenced language due to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Through a close examination of English words that were transformed both in spelling and pronunciation as the Normans imposed a more French culture on the Anglo-Saxons in England, Josh will help students discover the structure of the English language through its history, using two historical authors: Chaucer and William Shakespeare, the latter of whom preserved many medieval characteristics. Whether his students are native English speakers or are learning English as a second language, Josh will guide them to a deeper appreciation of how the English language developed and is currently structured—and perhaps also why it is such a complicated language.

Francisca R. Sorenson teaches fifth grade science at Lantrip Elementary School. Her unit, Teaching Fifth Graders Science through the Lens of Medieval Scientific Discoveries and Development, was a particular revelation to the Seminar as she delved into the scientific and technological discoveries and inventions of the Middle Ages, due, as she says, to its growing curiosity and intellectual adventuresomeness in the twelfth century. Francisca’s unit displays her energetic research into this creativity, fueled, as she describes, by theoretical advances transferred to the practical sphere. She is also concerned with the condition of the environment and the impact of science and technology upon it. Fueled with this background, her unit sets up practical experiences for young students to instruct students on environmental damage through study of medieval examples of impact on the environment. She also will encourage students to demonstrate medieval time-keeping systems through hands-on experiments. Finally, she includes a project to recreate that crowning Medieval mechanical invention, the water-driven mill, which powered what has been called the industrial revolution of the Middle Ages.

Joy Teague came to the seminar with a marvelous novel, Catherine, Called Birdy, in her hand, on which she has based her unit, Voices from the Past. In this novel for teens, a young girl of 14 narrates the text, describing her life as the daughter of a nobleman and lady, in the form of a diary of one whole year, 1290, reflecting her life, thoughts and actions. Joy will begin the unit by having her students research medieval beliefs, customs and superstitions, focusing on daily life including food, health, recreation, and the relationship between students and teachers. With this background, they will read the novel to assess its accuracy in portraying medieval life. Then they will choose a role from medieval life, creating a persona for themselves, from which perspective they will write a fictional account of their persona’s life.

Sally N. Vaughn
Professor of History
University of Houston