Christopher Crockett wrote -
>
>Am I just slow, or is the surviving narrative and/or charter evidence so
much
>more fecund for (I assume you are talking about) pre-conquest Ireland?
>
>Or both?
>
Dunno c. It didn't seem at all fecund when I first started. I was trying
to understand the context for reliquaries. The hagiographies were baffling
for this, and it was only after I'd dragnetted the annals to find out who
led the hostings, what sort of comments the deaths were accorded, what
happened afterwards, who broke what oaths, etc - that the changes in the
hagiographies began to make some sense. And then I found an Irish
definition of art which changed my whole view of what they thought they were
doing with it - and even then, it was only after I'd tried to separate out
the textual layers of the annals by tracing duplications (my maths wasn't
fast or reliable enough - couldn't do it alone, but got enough done to find
a substantial lacuna in one of the layers which threw the rest out) that
things started falling into place. We're talking years, I'm afraid, and
then luck. If I'd layered before I got the art bit, it wouldn't have
suggested anything to me. But that timing mechanism finally held it all
together and the existing patchy record turned out to be much fuller than
we'd thought. It's not really that anything _tells_ you what you want to
know (the authors assume you either know why the date of any event was
significant, and to whom, or it's none of your business), but knowing what
they were doing with their art, you can "collect" sequences of dates which
provide proprietary connections between events, claims, and the vicissitudes
of family fortunes, anad these sequences sometimes turn a floodlight on the
historical situation.
You know what? I feel I'm being tiresome - really I should come out and say
what I discovered, but I don't want to pre-empt publication. Once the trick
is recognised, it's so blooming obvious, anyone can do it, and I want my
mark on it first! My apologies all round, I thought I could skirt the edge
in response to a posting and found myself being led inexorably forward. I
should have just held my peace!
Best wishes,
Pippin
Pippin Michelli, Ph.D
Assistant Professor of Art History, St Olaf College
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/michelli/index4.html
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|