Recalling Puritans

As a result of burning the candle at both ends for far too long, I have managed to contract strep throat. Knocked me flat. I finally dragged myself to the college nurse, who, in addition to recommending a few over-the-counter medications, strongly encouraged ice cream. She then put me on "telly only" bed rest for the next two days. I thought I would take the opportunity to catch up on the BBC's rendition of Wolf Hall and update this blog.

Thanksgiving

Several of us gathered at another American's flat and had a potluck.

That's one end of the table. I was seated roughly in the middle, but unfortunately the photo of the other end turned out even more blurry.

Watching the Brits' -- and other nationalities' -- reactions to the various foods was entertaining. Green bean casserole, the standard kind with cream of mushroom soup and French onions on top, was a massive hit. The loved green bean casserole. Everyone wanted to write down the recipe and scrape out the dregs in the baking dish. The concept of eating fruit salad with the meal rather than after the meal, on the other hand, completely weirded them out. They couldn't do it. Not a single one. And when I told them my family usually makes marshmallow fruit salad instead of plain fruit salad, they just about lost their stuffing. Finally, when the guy hosting the event stopped everyone's conversations and said that it was time to go around the table and say what each of us was thankful for, the Brits got deer-in-the-headlights looks and one of them exclaimed, "Wait, you actually do that?" Well, yeah. It's Thanks-giving. That's the point: to give thanks for what you have. Even if your family doesn't ritualize it, what you are thankful for ought to be foremost in your mind that day. Sure, it's about food, family, and football, but taking a moment to be thankful is the most important part. And being able to pursue a D.Phil in a subject I love here at Oxford with a loving, encouraging family back home, I have a lot for which to be thankful.

Old Library Open Day

The head librarian at SJC opened up the Old Library and put together a 'winter display' of rare books and materials there to kick off December.


 

This is the Old Library. It was built in 1596-8 and was the first in Oxford to be designed with pew-like seats and desks between the cases. Most of the books were chained to the shelves until the second half of the 18th century to prevent thievery, as books were valuable goods.


Here are a few of the 'winter' books that were on display. They included everything from a medieval Book of Hours to an 18th century book on arctic exploration with engraved pictures of the captain and crew's findings.

Here is a Christmas ghost story written by Robert Louis Stevenson.

This vintage Christmas card from Alec and Merula Guinness 

was sent to the then-president of the college.

I encourage you to read the description for this early 17th century manuscript. Ellie and I tried to convince the MCR (Middle Common Room -- the SJC graduate student body, in charge of, amongst other, more serious things, grad student parties) to bring back the tradition of the Christmas Prince/Princess. That would have been a proper #tbt (Throwback Thursday). Maybe next year!

Since I'm talking about our library, I thought I'd throw in a few other photos of it. This is the Oriel window at the top of the stairs. Directly behind me is the Old Library, and to the left of me is the Laudian Library, where I do a fair amount of studying when I don't want to walk to the Bodleian. 

 The chest belonged to Thomas White, our college's founder. That is one of the most fascinating locking mechanisms I've seen. The object to the left of it is a cannonball. Oxford has always been a Royalist institution. When Oliver Cromwell overthrew the monarchy in the mid-17th century, he laid siege to Oxford, and that cannonball was one of the ones fired through the front door of SJC. The roughly life-size statue of Charles I gracing the front of the outside of the library probably didn't go over well, either.

This is the Laudian Library, where the humanities books are kept. They are doing construction on the far end to make the library wheelchair accessible. As it currently stands, the entrance to the library is up a couple steps and through a door so narrow I have to angle sideways a bit to fit my shoulders through. You've seen my photo on this blog; I'm not a very big person.

The Laudian Library was built in 1631-5, but the bookcases were installed in 1838.

Standing next to the cannonball:

Standing where the guy in the blue shirt was, looking back:

One of the desks, overlooking Canterbury Quad. It's actually quite light in there; the camera makes it look dark but it's really bright and cheery.

The sciences and maths library is on the floor below the Old Library, but as it was built in the 1970s it isn't much to look at. There's a law library somewhere nearby as well.

Whatte the Swyve?

I have spent the past few weeks holed up in the library wading through a massive amount of texts, and so don't have much in the way of snazzy photos or exciting Oxonian anecdotes to share. What I can offer is a series of stick-figure comic strips illustrating a few of the more ridiculous things I've found in my medieval readings. This is one of the aspects I love about medieval literature: even when the authors are being serious (and they joke a lot), you're laughing.

There is an early medieval Irish manuscript detailing how a king ought to spend his days. Sundays are for drinking ale, Mondays are for judging, Tuesdays are for board games, Wednesdays are for hunting with hounds, Thursdays are for having sex, Fridays are for watching horse races, and Saturdays are for a different kind of judging (the distinction between the two is unclear, but there was a lot of judgement flying around).

The Romance (Tale) of Havelok the Dane, which is sort of Lion King meets Snow White with a lot of blood-running and bone-breaking. Havelok is kidnapped by his evil uncle and given to a fisherman and his wife so that they will murder him, but when they see magical light shining out of his mouth while he's asleep, they realize that he's the true heir. Logical. They lie to the evil uncle and raise him themselves. When Havelok grows up, he wages war against the usurper and reclaims the throne.

Sir Tristrem, temporarily exiled to Wales for sleeping with the queen, fights a giant and wins a particolored baby for his efforts. Sort of like getting handed an armoire-sized stuffed animal for shooting targets at the fair and then trying to figure out what on earth you are going to do with it. So he decides to send the weird baby to his queenly true love as a gift and token of his affection. Gee, thanks. Not awkward at all.

I love those moments where I've been reading and reading and reading all day and then suddenly come across a section like these and my brain says, "Wait, what?"

Night at the Museum

Last night, the Ashmolean Museum put on Egyptomania, a celebration of the 1920s discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb and craze for all things Egyptian. I met up with some SJC friends and we spent the night roaming around the Ashmolean after hours. People were asked to come in Britain-in-Egypt '20s and '30s costumes. Every room had a different event, from live jazz bands and Charleston and Lindy-Hop dancing to reenactments of 1890s-1930s Egyptian-themed British plays to an old-fashioned (Victorian lantern) slideshow of antique photographs of archeological digs. Plus cocktails, of course.

If you haven't tried it, find an opportunity to wander around a museum at night. It's a completely different experience, a much better one, and definitely a little eerie. Less eerie once the bands started jamming and people began showing up in flapper dresses. The whole thing made for a fantastic Halloween.

Photo next to one of the exhibits! In costume, too. Wait, is that my sub-fusc ribbon repurposed? Why, yes it is. Waste not, want not.

Tonight we're having a decidedly less cultured Halloween party in college. There will be plenty of normal sophomoric shenanigans, rest assured.

Dining In

Every night, we have the option of eating "in Hall" (think Great Hall in Harry Potter), and have the option of attending formal or informal hall. Informal hall means you show up in your jeans, scarf down your cafeteria food, and head back to the library. Formal hall means you put on nice clothes and your robes (it seems like 'gown' is the preferred term, so I'll switch to using that). It runs about an hour and you get a much better tasting three-course meal with nice cutlery and candlesticks. When those are your options, why on earth would you choose informal? The catch: everyone must stand when the president enters the hall and says some Latin, and then again when the president has finished her meal and says some Latin before leaving. I'm happy to put up with that.

Here's a photo from the first formal hall of the term:

Matriculation Day

On the Saturday before last, we had Matriculation Day. It's the opposite of Commencement. Matriculation admits you into the university; Commencement (graduation ceremony) sends you out into the world.

What this means: Us getting all dressed up in our robes and sub-fusc and parading into the Sheldonian Theatre, where the president, in fancier robes, speaks in Latin for a bit and finally switches to English, giving us beautifully-worded platitudes about embarking upon our studies. We then march back over the cobblestones in our stilettos and take a class photo in St John's College.

Waiting in Canterbury Quad of SJC for things to get started.

Getting debriefed on how the ceremony is going to work. The two people exercising their right to stand on the grass are Fellows of the college.

On our way to the Sheldonian!

Inside the Sheldonian Theatre. So beautiful!

All matriculated and ready to head back!

All Souls of the Faithful Departed

I fell a bit behind on my posts, sorry about that.

Shortly after my last blog post, the Medievalists' Society got together for drinks at All Souls College.

All Souls is short for The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed. It was founded in 1438 and remains the most exclusive college in Oxford. It admits no undergraduates, and graduates who apply are not students, but rather Fellows of the college. A maximum of two applicants may be admitted each year, but the college has no problem admitting zero. Up until a couple of years ago a person had to be invited to apply, and the application examinations are still held to be the most difficult in the world. In the world. I realize that's a bit subjective, but I don't see many people contending it. You must be a matriculated member of Oxford University or have been accepted into Oxford for a graduate program that hasn't started yet, and must have completed your Bachelor's within the past ten terms. (There are three terms per year: Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity. Think of them like semesters.) There are four exams lasting three hours each. Two of these are in the applicant's chosen "specialist subjects": Classical Studies (for which you must be proficient in Greek and Latin), Law, History, English Literature, Economics, Politics, and Philosophy. The essay question can be on any topic in that subject. For instance, if you chose "History", you would be trying to prepare for an essay question that could be on any aspect of any moment of all history, anywhere, ever. The other two papers are "general" and can be on anything at all. So the people admitted to All Souls are both extremely well-read and extremely lucky. The exams used to contain a fifth paper "in which they were required to write an essay in response to a single word", but they abandoned it because it was too difficult to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. Or in the case of All Souls applicants, the wheat from the other wheat. If they like your essays, they call you back for a viva, in which fifty Fellows of the college sit in and grill you about what you wrote and you desperately defend whatever you scribbled down. And no, you don't get to look over your essays to remind yourself what you wrote weeks ago.

Because of this, the college has quite the mystique about it. No one is seen entering. No one is seen leaving. It sits there, exclusive and dignified and forbidden, right next to the beautiful Radcliffe Camera. And I got to waltz in the front gate and say, "I'm here for the drinks party" to the porter on my way up to the Old Library. Cheers to being a medievalist.

The main quad

The Old Library, filled with my people.

Included in our raucous, dare I say Bacchanalian, festivities was a group quiz: "Guess That Medieval Portrait"! You're all jealous, I know. You wish you could have been standing around in sweater vests debating the visage of Gregory the Great. (Check out the guy in the cravat and tails in the back of the photo. The invitation said "casual attire".) But my group won! We won! And we all got a box of very nice chocolate out of it. 

Closeup of the ceiling. Pretty fancy.

This is a (blurry) close up of the 3D coat of arms at the end of the Old Library above the door. The common heraldic animals depicted on either side of the crest in the UK is the lion, representing England, and the unicorn, representing Scotland. This has the lion and the red dragon, representing Wales, because this room was built before England and Scotland were united. And I got to have a party in it!


So as you can see, the "Old Library" doesn't house any books anymore. It was where the library used to be, but has since been cleared out of volumes and shelving to allow for an event space.

Photo from www.blogs.library.ucla.edu

Here is a photo someone else took of the actual All Souls library.

Photo from www.telegraph.co.uk

And here is a much better photo of All Souls College that someone from the Telegraph took. Isn't it beautiful?

After our official drinks party, we retired to the King's Arms, the pub right next to the Sheldonian Theatre and a student favorite. Its website boasts that it was built in 1607 and has the highest IQ per square foot of any pub around. I'm sure some of the pubs in The Other Place would disagree, but we know they aren't right.

The perfect day: starts in an old library, ends in a pub.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

I just got carded at the home goods store because a butter knife is considered an offensive weapon and cannot be purchased by those under 18. This scone better watch out.