Honors Retreat- Part the First

Today was a workshop from Bob Charron, an instructor from the St. Martin's Academy for Medieval Arms. Let that sink in a minute and absorb the awesome of that statement. In a word: Epic best describes that class. Let me list a few of the things that we learned:

• The medieval education system was universal, it was the baseline for everyone, everywhere
• Astronomy was very important to Medieval culture since they were an agrarian society
• This era was not squalid, it actually had a great deal of splendor with everything brightly painted and gilt in gold, not just plain stone
• The French term for "downward blow" is fendente which literally translates to "break your teeth"
• Modern metallurgy has found that quenching in blood and milk wasn't just superstition, it actually gives the metal a certain crystalline structure due to the rate at which these different liquids quench he metal
• Knights were itinerant judges, lawyers and jurors because the law was their #1 occupation with fighting being #2
• This society was very lawful and the laws were very clear. The goal for the everyday citizen was to always follow the law
• In sword fighting you always want to be the smaller number (will come back to this later)
• The first thing for children to learn was how to make a mind palace (so cool!)
• Math, music, astronomy are all involved in swordplay
• Swordplay is not just "technique" it's an artistic science that involves other sciences
• Because it's an art, if you're thinking about it, you die
• They believed that you had 3 souls
• Animal soul- social interaction, locomotion, etc.
• Contemplative soul- thinking, technical
• Plant soul- autonomic processes in the body
• In order to fight well you have to engage your animal soul

OK, that was a lot. However, that's only a small part of what we learned at the beginning. Then we got into actually playing with the swords (yay!). To sum up several hours of work: we learned blocks, strikes, how to steal our opponent's sword, how to place our feet, how to "be the smaller number" and a whole ton of other things. Out of all that, the thing I want to really talk about is the whole "be the smaller number" thing.

"Be the smaller number" means that between you and your opponent you make the least amount of motions (hand and feet), move the smallest distance or take the smallest amount of times. All of these are numbers and when you add all of these numbers together on both yours and your opponent's side, you want to be the smaller number and if you are that smaller number, then you have won. Here's an example: If I do and overhand blow while taking a step and my opponent simply takes a step back, they win because I have completed more motions and I had to cover more distance. In this case time=distance, if I create more distance then I have more time to move and if my sword is simply moving from scabbard to strike rather than over the shoulder to strike then it's less distance, meaning less time, meaning I would win if I was the smaller number. Once we understood this principle, we got way better at doing the drills.

The other thing I want to talk really quickly about is that we had to be using our "animal soul" in order to do this well. This meant that when we were completing the drills, there was no talking because if we were talking then we were using our contemplative soul. After about the first 20 minutes, there wasn't anymore awkward giggling or chatting, Charron would give us a command and we followed it immediately. We made eye contact with our partner and completed the prescribed motion on command. It gave me a whole new respect for the training style of the time and I feel like if this philosophy of the different souls was applied in other sports, it might make us more accurate in our play because we wouldn't be thinking, we would be moving and simply trusting our bodies. This is something I've tried to teach to people I work on swimming with and I think that this animal soul is the best way to explain trusting your body to move naturally because your body can do many things but it is bounded by your brain or you contemplative soul as the medieval man would say.

I hope that was at least somewhat understandable. It was a really great experience and I hope I get to try that again. Thanks for reading my ramblings!

Jessie Jane

Does "Le Morte D'Arthur" Epically Obey Aristotle???

In some ways "Le Morte D'Arthur" is very much the Aristotelian definition of an Epic but in others it is definitely it's own story. The best way for me to visualize this is in list form, so here goes:

Ways Yes:

• Covers an incredible length of time
• Can be classified as a Tragedy (for the most part)
• complete
• possesses magnitude
• can be divided into episodes
• can be narrated
• admirable
• effects katharsis (in my opinion anyway)
• However, it doesn't necessarily use pleasurable language but we'll come back to that.
• Has both simple and complex plots
• Merlin makes everything complicated (see Arthur's conception)
• When Arthur pulled the sword from the stone it was a pretty straightforward part of the story
• There is most DEFINITELY suffering
• Excellent description and detail allowing the reader (or listener as the case may be) to really visualize what is happening in the story
• Has plots AND subplots
• Written in third person

Ways No:

• Is not really written poetically but rather like someone chronicling the events around them
• There are definitely some inconsistencies within the story
• People "coming back from the dead" because the author apparently forgot he killed them off
• There could be an argument made that this book is not really a narration because it could, theoretically be acted out, however, I think that would result in something akin the Harry Potter movies with parts of the story being lost.
• There is no Chorus commenting on the events in the story
• In this story it almost feels like the author wants the reader to form their own opinions about the events rather than simply giving them one. Sir Thomas Malory is making it harder and better for us as the reading audience
• Not really constructed in a dramatic way
• Like I mentioned earlier it is more like a chronicle. 
• However, there are vignette-like sequences where there is a complication, a change of fortune, and a resolution, just as Aristotle described
• There is no one complication, change of fortune, and resolution for the whole story

In my opinion, I think that "Le Morte D'Arthur" is an Epic even if it doesn't conform to all of Aristotle's standards. As we discussed in class, these are the standards which Aristotle observed to have the most success in his time. In our time, there are certain aspects of the story that Aristotle would find "wrong" that would actually do pretty well in our time such as the lack of a chorus. Can you imagine The Avengers (a movie most people would consider "epic") being narrated with the addition of a group of characters whose sole function was fourth wall breaks to comment on the situation? No, you can't, because it would make no sense for us today. Here's another example, say there was a reading of the entire Harry Potter series, but it had been changed so that Dobby appeared in the first book and he commented on all the situations all the way through the 7th book (meaning he wouldn't die, yay!). How weird would that be?

In our time, I believe that what defines an Epic has changed somewhat so that, while "Le Morte D'Arthur" doesn't necessarily completely obey Aristotelian principles, it still touches us and sticks with us because it conforms to how WE see Epics today.

Jessie Jane Out!