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Nov. 2nd, 2005 03:09 pmToday my brain and body are nicely disassociated. My body is telling me that it is humid and that humidity warps the world and that I need to avoid life. My brain is telling me it wants to think.
Mostly my brain wants to think about the relationship of non-historians with the past.
An email list I am on has been busy discussing the 'ius primae noctis'. They want simple answers. It existed or it didn't exist.
The reality is that people in every period of history look at the past and work out ways of relating to it. In the late Middle Ages the supposed law relating to a lord's first night marital privileges was one of those ways. "It was worse in the bad old days," people would say, "Virgins were raped by their lords on their wedding nights. Look what a nice lot we are, by comparison." Existence is secondary to a belief in it having existed in the past.
Someone saying something rude about an earlier age is not proof of that earlier age. It is very interesting evidence, though, concerning how people shaped their views of the past. It tells us all sorts of wonderful things about how people construct themselves. History is important because it helps inform us about us. How we see where we come from, how we see ourselves as distinct from people in the past, how we see others: all crucial to a functioning society and a functioning sense of self.
Mostly my brain wants to think about the relationship of non-historians with the past.
An email list I am on has been busy discussing the 'ius primae noctis'. They want simple answers. It existed or it didn't exist.
The reality is that people in every period of history look at the past and work out ways of relating to it. In the late Middle Ages the supposed law relating to a lord's first night marital privileges was one of those ways. "It was worse in the bad old days," people would say, "Virgins were raped by their lords on their wedding nights. Look what a nice lot we are, by comparison." Existence is secondary to a belief in it having existed in the past.
Someone saying something rude about an earlier age is not proof of that earlier age. It is very interesting evidence, though, concerning how people shaped their views of the past. It tells us all sorts of wonderful things about how people construct themselves. History is important because it helps inform us about us. How we see where we come from, how we see ourselves as distinct from people in the past, how we see others: all crucial to a functioning society and a functioning sense of self.