The victorian filter

[Nan Bradford-Reid]

>>>Great!  But what does 19th century art have to do with the Middle Ages and
>>>Renaissance?  Just curious?  <G>
>
>Actually I the 19th century has a lot more to do with what the sca is and
>does than the middle ages. What The SCA does is much closer to  the
>Midevial re-enactments of that period than the actual period we claim to be
>about. Look at our concept of "chivalry", it is patently more victorean
>than the period constructs. Our attitudes towards children (the phrase
>"walled garden" ring any bells?).
>
>We rarely if ever see the actual middle ages, what we usually see is some
>vague have of history through victorean glasses with fantasy premises.
>
>-Michael


True for some.  My lord husband, for one, however, has made a point of
studying "period" resources on chivalry, etc.  I do not use Pre-Raphaelite
or other Victorian sources for my costuming--even the texts because most of
them were inaccurate.  Whenever possible I use primary sources.  The rest
of what you say is very true and I suppose if we *really* tried to recreate
the Middles Ages as they were (nasty, brutish, and short, etc.)  only the
very masochistic would play >:-}!

Some of the P-R stuff is very good viewing and quite nicely done, but a
newcomer should be cautioned about knowing the difference--not necessarily
*doing* anything about it, just *knowing*.  No offense to Meadbh intended
at all, because I realize that a lot of folks get their SCA idealism from
the Victorian stuff, but when a laurel comes on to announce something like
that, a disclaimer might be helpful--believe it or not, I have actually
talked to people who thought Pre-Raphaelites were early Italian Renaissance
artists, which, of course, is an understandable mistake if one is not very
familiar with art history and hears "Raphael" anywhere in there :-).

Enjoy the exhibition, all.


Catherine




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...Navy Wings are made of Gold...
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|Nan Bradford-Reid                  |"I believe you understand what you|
|Department of English              |think I said, but I am not sure   |
|The University of Texas at Austin  |that you realize that what you    |
|n.b-reid at mail.utexas.edu           |heard was not what I meant."      |
|Member, Board of Directors,        |                                  |
|University Staff Association       |            Richard Nixon         |
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You want this black wedgie-thing to do what?