Does D&D even have a component of "midieval" anymore?

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Quote By Pawsplay:
"The idea that the Renaissance differs markedly and distinctly from the so-called Dark Ages is pretty much a myth." End Quote.

Oh, wow. Pawsplay, there is an enormous and *vast* difference between the “Dark Ages” and the Renaissance, across the board, in nearly every aspect of life and society.

Historical Periods As Currently Taught

I--Late Antiquity (ca. 315 to 550)
II--Early Middle Ages (ca. 500 to 1000) Historians used to call this period “The Dark Ages”
III--High Middle Ages (ca. 1000 to 1300)
IV--Late Middle Ages (ca. 1300 to 1500)
V--Renaissance (ca. 1400 to 1700)
VI--Early Modern Period (ca. 1490 to 1750)

The existing primary literature as well as professional works and literature written since these historical periods of time clearly demonstrates a vast change overall, and while usually the immediate changes were subtle or incremental, there were also periods of dramatic and swift change. I have listed a few works below that posters might find of interest in these matters. These books are a small sampling of my private library, and have been quite useful and interesting in my own studies.

Bibliography:

The Medieval Military Tradition: State, Society, and Military Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe; Ayton, Andrew and J.L. Price, Eds. (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1998). 208 pages.

Fighting Techniques of The Medieval World AD 500-AD 1500: Equipment, Combat Skills, And Tactics; Bennett, Matthew; Bradbury, Devries, Dickie and Jestice; (New York: St. Martins Press/Amber Books, 2005); 256 pages.

A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times: Important Technological Achievements, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450; Hill, Donald. (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1984); 263 pages.

Daily Life in Medieval Times: Life in a Medieval Castle, Life in a Medieval City, and Life in a Medieval Village; Gies, Frances and Joseph. (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1990); 397 pages.

Medieval Europe: A Short History; Bennett, M. Judith and C. Warren Hollister. (New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2006); 383 pages.

The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success; Stark, Rodney. (New York: Random House, 2005); 281 pages.

The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason; Freeman, Charles. (New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 2002); 432 pages.

A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance; Manchester, William. (Boston/New York/London: Back Bay Books, 1993); 322 pages.

Readings In Medieval History, Volume I: The Early Middle Ages, Third Edition; Geary, Patrick J. Ed. (New York: Broadview Press, 2003); 352 pages.

Readings In Medieval History, Volume II: The Later Middle Ages, Third Edition; Geary, Patrick J. Ed. (New York: Broadview Press, 2003); 520 pages.

Medieval Worlds: A Sourcebook; Anderson, Roberta and Dominic Aidan Bellenger, Eds. (London/New York: Routledge, 2003); 328 pages.

Medieval Technology and Social Change; White, Jr, Lynn. (New York/London/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964). 194 pages.

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud; Watson, Peter. (New York: Harper Collins, 2005); 822 pages.

Ideas That Changed The World; Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. (London/New York/Melbourne/Munich/Delhi: DK Publishing, 2003); 400 pages.

The Mediterranean: And The Mediterranean World In The Age of Philip II, Volume I. Fernand Braudel. (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1995). 642 pages.

Cities. John Reader. (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004). 358 pages.

Civilization: A New History of The Western World. Roger Osborne. (New York: Pegasus Books, 2006). 532 pages.

The Middle Sea: A History of The Mediterranean. John Julius Norwich. (New York: Doubleday, 2006). 667 pages.

Cluny: In Search Of God’s Lost Empire. Edwin Mullins. (New York: BlueBridge, 2006). 245 pages.

Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and The Empires of A.D. 800 Jeff Sypeck. (New York: Harper Collins, 2006). 284 pages.

Crusades; Madden, F. Thomas, ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005); 224 pages.

The Crusades: A History; Riley-Smith, Jonathan. (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2005); 353 pages.

The First Crusade; Asbridge, Thomas. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); 408 pages.

The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims; Bostom, Andrew G. Ed. (Amherst/New York: Prometheus Books, 2005); 759 pages.

Dungeon, Fire, & Sword: The Knights Templar in the Crusades; Robinson, J. John. (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1991); 494 pages.

God’s War: A New History of The Crusades. Christopher Tyerman. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006). 1023 pages.

Carlo Ginzburg. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). 208 pages.

END Bibliography

Quote By Pawsplay:
"There is no date one ends and the other begins, nor any crucial demarcation in belief or culture." End Quote.

I note gladly that some other posters, including one or more fellow historians, have generously pointed out to you Pawsplay that the change in society from one of these recognized “eras” to another was definite, sweeping, and profound, though such changes occurred at no single date, place, or time. Rather, they occurred as a *process* in different places, in different times, and by different degrees. The process of change eventually totally transformed European society. I’m surprised you were not taught that in high school or freshman year history at college.

Quote By Pawsplay:
"Nor is the Renaissance a time of country farmers praising philosophical advancements or cheering on discoveries in the field of astronomy." End Quote.

Historian Carlo Ginzberg, author of “The Cheese and The Worms” would certainly disagree with your assessment, as I do. Ginzberg clearly demonstrates that in renaissance Italy, many different folks, from farmers, to millers, tanners, and other craftsman and commonfolk, while not always educated anywhere near to what scholars or priests were, that these people did in fact, show an avid interest and surprising knowledge with various philosophical advancements and discoveries and theories of astronomy. These common people’s knowledge was incomplete, as was their understanding—but they often possessed such written works, were literate, or had literate people read the works to them, and they would often gather at houses or shops, restaurants, or even in the fields by a tree or cool stream to discuss what they read, and what they meant in their published theories and ideas, as well as theology, and church doctrine, history, the gospels, and so on.

Interesting conversation here though, for sure.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Slife]

Actually, DnD is very "midi"eval. That is, it has a baseline set of signals sent, but these are then interpreted by the group, and based on the set of assumptions on the part of the group the output is created.

 

[fusangite]

Our group was having a discussion and we got into a heated debate about whether D&D really is "midieval" fantasy anymore.

Here's the thing: D&D is part of a long literary tradition dating back to the Middle Ages.

Arthurian romances and epics from whence the fantasy literary genre ultimately sprang was never about telling historical stories. It was about re-imagining past events, personages and stories in the terms of the present day and its own eccentric conceptions about what aspects of human society and nature were eternal and which ones were ephemeral.

So, starting in the 12th century, the 6th century Breton warrior chieftan was invested with a hodgepodge of things from disparate cultures and historical eras. Medieval fantasy, from its very inception in the Middle Ages, was a literary genre powered by anachronism.

The fact that the anachronistic knights, saracens, Roman consuls and Joseph of Arimathea of the original genre have been replaced by other anachronisms that speak more to our present-day society's misperceptions of the past doesn't especially bother me.

While I would agree that mixing East Asian elements in creates some new genre challenges with which I have difficulty, I wouldn't go so far as to back Emirkol's original claim.

EDIT: And SHARK, if you're going to steal verbatim from my CircvsMaximvs post, don't change the numbering system.

 

[pawsplay]

Greetings!

Quote By Pawsplay:
"The idea that the Renaissance differs markedly and distinctly from the so-called Dark Ages is pretty much a myth." End Quote.

Oh, wow. Pawsplay, there is an enormous and *vast* difference between the “Dark Ages” and the Renaissance, across the board, in nearly every aspect of life and society.

And on what day did this vast and enormous change take place? I am certainly aware of the differences between medieval theology and the flowering of humanism, the rise of the burghars and the consequent mercantlism of the noble class, etc etc.

Don't assume I fell asleep in history class. You don't know what courses I took in college. You don't whether or not I've been studying medieval history since I was a young child, or whether I've participated in medieval reanactment socities. You would have no way of knowing if I've read translations of Augustine and Aquinas, of for that matter whether I've read over a third of the books in your bibliography, some more than once.

I'm disputing some simplistic claims about the "medieval mind" based on a reification of historical periods. I have no patience with the claim "someone from the period X would have no concept of Y" unless you are talking about a particular person, who was then insulated from exposure to the concept itself. It is certainly true that our own world view colors our assimilation of new knowledge. That is why it is so tempting to put things into neat little boxes.

The sack of Rome... event in ancient history, or the Dark ages?
1450.... medieval or renaissance?

The idea that a medieval person works steel in some kind of particularly medieval way, distinct from a modern way of working a hot forge and going home at the end of the day for a few beers, is just ridiculous.

In 546, according to the Wiki, Rome was sacked for the third time by barbarians. In the 1270s, the crusades were going on... a period of time halfway between the sack of Rome and today. However "medieval" someone's mind may have been in 1275, it was more than seven hundreds years distant from an event emblematic of the so-called Dark Ages, and also a little over seven hundred years from before today.

The phrase "the medieval mind" reduces the psychology and culture of Western Europe over hundreds of miles and close to a thousand years to a single stereotype of a smelly, superstitious peasant, incapable of understanding "reason" or experiencing "skepticism."

I can describe changes in music decade by decade over the course of the 20th century... do you think Mozart felt any less that his music had evolved from that of his teacher? While the pace of some changes has radically increased over history, the number of generations in time has remained much the same.

Do you think the generation of the Sack of Rome was any less transformed than those that experienced the bombing of London? And we are talking about hundreds of years of such events.

Medieval scholars and heretics conceived countless ideas. Some gained currency, others didn't.

 

[fusangite]

I'm disputing some simplistic claims about the "medieval mind" based on a reification of historical periods.

That's what you're doing now. But it's a pretty hard sell for you to suggest that this is what you were doing earlier in the thread in the post to which people were reacting.

I have no patience with the claim "someone from the period X would have no concept of Y" unless you are talking about a particular person,

It depends what you mean by this. One can absolutely make statements about how people categorized and conceptualized things in the past. At all times since the beginning of writing, people have had the habit of sorting things into categories and explaining the criteria used to place one thing in category (a) and a different thing in category (h). So, the written record leaves us with a very rich, explicit and detailed set of documents that demonstrate that people in the past did not sort phenomena the way we do now and that these sorting systems deprived past societies' intellectual discourses of certain concepts, just as our present-day categorization systems deprive our society of certain concepts.

Sexual orientation, for instance, did not exist as a category until the recent past. Does this mean that people had no concept of same-sex relations? No. But they did lack sexual orientation as a concept. Men in gay relationships were not a set of people who all shared the same sexual orientation; rather, they were two distinct and dissimilar groups: men and male to female transsexuals. And these ideas were not just a social imposition from above -- people in this group conceptualized their sexuality radically differently because they had no concept of sexual orientation.

The idea that a medieval person works steel in some kind of particularly medieval way, distinct from a modern way of working a hot forge and going home at the end of the day for a few beers, is just ridiculous.

So, you reject everything EP Thompson, Max Weber and everyone else who has theorized about class has to say on this subject?

Even non-Marxists agree that one's relations to the means of production condition his culture. It matters a whole hell of a lot what your relations are to the means of production. For one thing, in a society where people are not alienated from the means of production, they don't "go home at the end of the day for a few beers" not because they're not drinking but because the forge is continuous with their domestic space. Your experience of work is hugely affected by the degree to which it is entangled with the rest of your life, spatially, familially, etc.

The phrase "the medieval mind" reduces the psychology and culture of Western Europe over hundreds of miles and close to a thousand years to a single stereotype of a smelly, superstitious peasant, incapable of understanding "reason" or experiencing "skepticism."

I can describe changes in music decade by decade over the course of the 20th century... do you think Mozart felt any less that his music had evolved from that of his teacher? While the pace of some changes has radically increased over history, the number of generations in time has remained much the same.

Do you think the generation of the Sack of Rome was any less transformed than those that experienced the bombing of London? And we are talking about hundreds of years of such events.

Medieval scholars and heretics conceived countless ideas. Some gained currency, others didn't.

I can see what you are saying here. But I don't see how this is anything other than a total recantation of your previous statement.

 

[pawsplay]

For one thing, in a society where people are not alienated from the means of production, they don't "go home at the end of the day for a few beers" not because they're not drinking but because the forge is continuous with their domestic space.

Who puts a forge in their domestic space?

In any case, to return to my original point... the "medieval mind" produced some amazing technology and culture. The Middle Ages was not a few hundred years of stagnation. The medieval period blended quite smoothly into later developments.

I'm hearing, "Yay, Renaissance Man! Boo, stupid medieval turnip eaters!" and that's just a very prejudiced way of looking at history.

 

[pawsplay]

But I don't see how this is anything other than a total recantation of your previous statement.

I fail to see the contradiction. Simply because I don't endorse a storybook version of history doesn't mean I am unaware of history or don't consider historical change important. I view some of the opinions in this thread as the result of product of cultural propoganda.

 

[Hussar]

While technologically D&D might be considered medieval, althought that's problematic as well, socially, it never, ever has been.

Consider alignments.

Do you allow your paladins to rape women? Medieval ones certainly could have.
Do you have higher ranked people randomly demand items from the PC's without compensation?
Do you allow your PC's to take whatever they want from people of lower station?
Do you execute PC's for wearing the wrong color?
Do you execute female PC's for wearing pants?
Do you excuse PC's from laws once they gain title?
Do you allow PC's to gain title?

The list goes on and on. Morally, D&D has always been modern because a Dark Ages moral system is pretty repugnant to most of us today. Look at the definition of Good in any edition. That's certainly not what would be considered Good under a Feudal system.

 

[Celebrim]

Do you allow your paladins to rape women? Medieval ones certainly could have.

You do realize that 'Droit de Seigneur' is a post-medieval myth, right?

It seems rather incredible to suggest that in a culture that celebrated chastity as a virtue, the sort of behavior you suggest wouldn't have involved a major blow to station and a great deal of turmoil in the peasant class. There are some sorts of behavior that would just strain a social structure too much to endure on a regular basis, and that's one of them. Do you have some textual evidence contemporary to the time of the allegedly reutine event?

Do you have higher ranked people randomly demand items from the PC's without compensation?

I'm aware of this occuring legally under Roman law, but I'm not aware of this occurring under fuedal law. The sort of things that a Lord could demand of his serfs were weighed to a nicety. For many examples, read the Doomsday book.

Do you allow your PC's to take whatever they want from people of lower station?

This would have been considered banditry in the middle ages, and while thier were some serfs in early modern Eastern Europe (and later post-feudal slavery institutions) who would have had no recource, it doesn't seem particularly Medieval to me.

Do you execute PC's for wearing the wrong color?

Ahh... now we are finally getting into something realistic. Yes, there are countries in which lords are the only ones entitled to certain forms of dress. For example, in Hulsheen only nobles may wear griffen feathers in thier hair or hats, and the penalty for impersonating a noble-born would be very harsh.

Strictly speaking though, sumptuary laws of this sort are not a medieval institution, and they are most in thier hey day during Reinnasance Europe. In the middle ages, the nobility was not wealthy enough to markedly live differently than the peasants. Granted, they had meat, and better assurance of foodstuffs, greater freedom, and more than one change of clothes, but there is not actually any sign that they had a notably higher quality of life. In fact, by the numbers the expected lifespan of a member of the noble class was actually a little lower than that of a peasant because of the greater risk of death in warfare. However, what few tokens of wealth a Lord may have had were safely his, because there wasn't a notable middle class that had the wealth to impersonate a Lord either. With the rise in general wealth and of the middle class in the Reinasance, there was a class wealthy enough to impersonate the aristocracy and there were more tokens of wealth to stratify society on - so naturally the upper class passed laws demanding that these upstart merchants not dress like Lords.

Do you execute female PC's for wearing pants?

Never really thought about it.

Do you excuse PC's from laws once they gain title?

From certain laws, particularly certain types of taxation, absolutely I do.

Do you allow PC's to gain title?

Absolutely.

 

[Hussar]

/edit

Nope, not going to get into this one.