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Just a thought (NEW CONCEPTS)
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TelMiles


In: London
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Whilst walking through the woods close to where I live, I began to think about the spread of urbanisation on our countryside. That then led me on to wonder if, for example, medieval man had the same appreciation for natural beauty that we do. For instance, their world was full of the forests and streams and rolling hills that we find so attractive. It was normal for them. Their appreciation seemed to be reserved for such buildings as cathedrals and castles. Any thoughts on this? Did medieval man (for example) have the same appreciation for natural beauty that we do today?
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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Close to where I live in the New forest, we have Queen Bower walk. The locals believe that it was named as the Queen (Eleanor ?) considered it to be a walk of great beauty.....

http://bit.ly/bjxqfH

The link does this no justice as it features an opening a small distance from the walk.

I can vouch for the beauty of the walk, not the history....
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TelMiles


In: London
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(that link won't work for me)

Yeah, I can see that some areas would be considered beautiful, hence the sacred groves and such (if that's what they really were), but I think that in a world that was basically non-stop countryside, would they have the same reverence for it that we do today?
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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Yeah good question.

We see for example babies in historical paintings and they don't look cute/beautiful they look different maybe a bit freaky to our eyes.

Babies must be beautiful, the countryside must be beautiful, to our eyes.... but were they always?

It's a good question. I am really stumped......

Could be a slow burner. Sorry I missed the point of the first post.

Maybe you have hit on something...
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berniegreen



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TelMiles wrote:
Whilst walking through the woods close to where I live, I began to think about the spread of urbanisation on our countryside. That then led me on to wonder if, for example, medieval man had the same appreciation for natural beauty that we do. For instance, their world was full of the forests and streams and rolling hills that we find so attractive. It was normal for them. Their appreciation seemed to be reserved for such buildings as cathedrals and castles. Any thoughts on this? Did medieval man (for example) have the same appreciation for natural beauty that we do today?
The question that you pose here goes to the heart of post-modernism and indeed to the core of Epistemology. How can we know anything simply from the "text"? And how do we know what we know? But watch out! This is all a bit philosophical. The Thought Police will be after us.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Glad you can see the difference, Bernie. Please, no more in this vein.
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berniegreen



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Mick Harper wrote:
Glad you can see the difference, Bernie. Please, no more in this vein.
Oh dear, what have I done wrong this time?
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GrouchoMarxthespot



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The term medieval covers quite a long period of time, but wouldn't Canterbury Tales just about scrape in?

The Prologue seems quite accessible today as an appreciation of natural beauty:

When April's gentle showers pierce to the root
The drought of March, and seeds begin to shoot;
And every vein is filled with flowing power
To quicken the early undeveloped flower.

(Or, if you prefer:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendered is the flour;)

Isn't this clear evidence of some shared aesthetic values between those who would have heard these Tales in the 1500s and those who hear them, (or encounter them through private reading), today?
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Mick Harper
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Orthodox history has the job of proving 'we are special' and the best way of doing that is by creating a 'modern' age (what we special people have created) as opposed to an Ancient Age. But this means there has to be a Middle Age spliced in between because otherwise we are just the children of the Ancients.

Chaucer is important because technically he is Medieval (the Middle Ages in Britain finished promptly at 1485) but appears at the very end, and is therefore a Founding Father of Modernity. Hence orthodoxy simultaneously wants to make his language Archaic but his content Modern.

We here just regard him as an English poet of no overwhelming importance, it is only that his forebears and contemporaries have not been recorded and preserved so he stands out basically as an artefact of early English Literature. (Early Eng Lit, not Early Eng.)
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GrouchoMarxthespot



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Hence orthodoxy simultaneously wants to make his language Archaic but his content Modern.

We here just regard him as an English poet of no overwhelming importance, it is only that his forebears and contemporaries have not been recorded...

Yes I take the point - indeed you wrote in THBR that far too much is made of the differences between our English and earlier English for the reasons above. I would disagree with the point that his forbears and contemporaries have not been recorded: Chaucer's work IS a recording of these - his stories are not original at all, indeed plagiarism from travelling storytellers, far from being regarded as an offence, was a compliment.

The trick would be to free Chaucer from the task assigned to him by orthodox history and appreciate him as a chronicler of his time - not the middle ages, (abrupt end therof), nor modern, (sharp start of 'ours'), but a sympathetic source of insight into whatever might have been going on then - aesthetically as well, to go back to the original question.
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Grant



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Surely we find beautiful what our hunter-gatherer forebears would have found the best sort of landscape to live in. Rolling hills, a bit of forest, a decent sized stream. It's only recently with the introduction of natural history documentaries that we have started to appreciate deserts and the arctic circle. And we only appreciate them from the comfort of our armchairs when watching TV

So yes, people would have appreciated the countryside as much as us.

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med

And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu!
Awe bleteþ after lomb,
Lhouþ after calue cu.
Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ,
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu, wel singes þu cuccu;

Ne swik þu nauer nu.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Mick Harper wrote:
Hence orthodoxy simultaneously wants to make his language Archaic but his content Modern.


Alternatively...

You've just described the residue of forgery.
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GrouchoMarxthespot



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You've just described the residue of forgery


A very sweet forgery, all the same.

Never underestimate forgers and counterfeiters, (and general purveyors of relics, orthodox and otherwise) - they often know more about the value of things than the rest of us put together.
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GrouchoMarxthespot



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On historical forgery, and what we might learn from it, consider the following thought experiment:

The owner of an art gallery produces, in his studio, a perfect counterfeit in the style of a recently deceased artist, and passes this off in the gallery as a recently discovered previously unknown piece by said artist. The factor input cost to the gallery owner of producing the work is £200.

A customer comes into the gallery and dismayed by the knowledge that pieces by this artist are already fetching £10m+, way beyond his budget, readily agrees when the gallery owner suggests that he rents the piece for the next ten years at a total cost of £100,000. He writes the cheque there and then, takes the picture home and hangs it on the wall.

Every day for the next ten years he looks at the painting and obtains pleasure from this and having the work on the wall of his house. He dreads the day when the gallery owner will come to collect the painting.

The day dawns and when the gallery owner turns up he cheerfully discloses the origins of the painting. The customer is aghast and claims the gallery owner has cheated him out of £100,000. The gallery owner disagrees, arguing that the customer has obtained exactly the same benefit as if the painting had been real, not more not less - he has received exactly what he paid for.

The customer objects and insists that he either be refunded £999,800 and be allowed to keep the painting, or the whole £100,000 if the gallery owner takes the painting away.

YOU are an anthropologist, (in the AE way of thinking), from some distant planet in the future. You are doing a piece of research into the functions and value of artistic artefacts among this long lost culture, (not a million miles away from the original question that prompted this thread). You are allowed ONE visit to the society and may interview just ONE person. Do you interveiew the painter, the forger or the customer?

Supplementary question for fellow earthlings: Was the customer correct in his assertion that he had been cheated, and, if so, of what?
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Edwin



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I am confused at the claims of forgery. I cannot see that Chaucer's works are a forgery unless the conspiracy started before he wrote anything. And on what would a forger be basing their efforts? Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which have looked totally different?

Surely Occam suggests that the name on the book is the author? Special circumstances are necessary to question this and a good source of evidence would be any discovered attempts at forging the relevant period's works.

I don't see that Beowulf, for example is necessarily a Tudor forgery, it could be a text-book for young Athelings
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