The CMRS Center for Early Global Studies (CMRS-CEGS) is pleased to share the Daily Bruin story, Medieval Texts Reading Group Travels Through Time with Literature written by Dilara Bahadir.
This article was originally published on November 6, 2024 at dailybruin.com
With elves, giants and magic, the Medieval Texts Reading Group builds community one whimsical text at a time.
Revived this quarter after a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Medieval Texts Reading Group is a collaboration between UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and the Department of English. The co-organizers – a CMRS-CEGS postdoctoral fellow Basil Arnould Price, assistant professor of English Erica Weaver and associate professor Dr. Matthew Fisher – hope to share a love of bizarre historical writing. Born anew, the Medieval Texts Reading Group will explore transtemporal themes and global narratives.
“Even though it (medieval literature) might have been produced thousands of miles away, a thousand years ago in a completely different context, it has a lot to offer to us,” Weaver said.
For many individuals, medieval texts seem daunting. Students may be dismayed by a lack of relatability to the texts or simply the chaos of their everyday schedules, Weaver added. However, Weaver said the organizers encourage individuals of all backgrounds to attend the meeting, stressing that one does not even need to define the Middle Ages to delight in the texts. Price added that the group encourages individuals of diverse backgrounds to attend and simply share an enthusiasm for medieval texts and languages. Fisher said a majority of his students dread reading early literature, believing that the messages and themes will not resonate or be recognizable.
“Medieval texts are weird, right? They’re weird and bizarre and a lot of fun,” Fisher said. “Anytime you read something for the first time, we’re all on the same level of ignorance. With that as a shared starting point, that ignorance isn’t embarrassing or shameful, but ignorance can be really empowering as a starting point. That’s how I think we want to approach this.”
The group’s first literary expedition took place Nov. 1. Price, an expert in Old Norse literature, guided the group through the Old Norse-Icelandic text “Jökuls þáttr Buásonar” (The Tale of Jökull Búason). Despite the distance of temporal and imaginary travel, Price said attendees don’t have to learn Old Norse – yet. Price added that the choice of text was founded upon his own musings and the hope that hearing others’ experiences with it would incite novel insights. Emphasizing the importance of amateur medievalists, Price said he sees the value of readers who are not bogged down in scholarship to recognize oddities that are usually glanced over.
Fisher said the group’s discussions are founded simply on the pleasure of encountering something new. Weaver added that she hopes that the Reading Group will prove her students’ hesitations around medieval texts wrong.
“I think they’re often really delighted to find how wonderful medieval literature is, that a lot of it is hilarious, incredibly fascinating, interesting material,” Weaver said.
The enchanting traveler’s story conceals discourse on modern questions of gender expression and sovereignty, Price said. The text leads one to ponder the representation of Indigenous women, monstrosity and exploration from a Norse lens, he said. Price added that “The Tale of Jökull Búason” reveals the social and historical situation of antagonisms. Timeless human moral questions manifest in these writings in unfamiliar, and sometimes startling, contexts to allow individuals to think about the longer view of social predicaments, he said.
The Medieval Texts Reading Group meets for two hours on the third Friday of each quarter. Each meeting will be a discussion of a different text with its expert leading the conversation. Price added that the club will potentially expand into reading performative texts, such as plays, in upcoming gatherings. These gatherings are meant to cater to the interests of the attendees and create a space on campus for discussion and connection, Weaver said. The co-organizers also believe that reflecting on the whimsies of the past allows individuals to make sense of the present.
“It’s not just the crises we face. It’s the solutions also, whether those solutions are the momentary appreciation of beauty or the strangenesses of what to do with things that don’t fit in the world the way we think they do,” Fisher said. “Whether it’s elves, magic or randomness that can happen in romance, things that don’t fit sometimes help us make sense of what we thought fit in the first place.”