Welcome to Week 2. Now that you’ve mostly figured out how to create and use your blogs, I’ll direct your attention to the class website. Again it’s at:
All Modules will be posted here, and links to all student blogs will also be kept here. If you want to see what your classmates are saying, please go to the class website, look toward the right side of the page, and you’ll find a list of names. Click on a person’s name to get to that person’s blog. You’ll need to do this for interactive class assignments as we go through the semester, so please take a moment and run though how to do it now. Let me know if you have any questions about how to find each other’s blogs.
In Module 1, we noted that certain characteristics of our existence – things we might take for granted – are in fact very “Modern” concepts. We noted things like individualism, personal journey, and democracy. As we go through the semester, be on the lookout for evidence of these and other shifts toward a “modern” world view… see if you can find ways in which our readings might reflect expansion of these modern concepts as they were brought onto the world stage under the guises of: emphasis on the individual as an actor on the historical stage, interest in the personal journey of a hero or heroine, and the institutionalization of democracy.
People sometimes have a narrow interpretation of what is “modern” and so it’s interesting to read your thoughts on this in your first blog posts. For the purposes of this class, we will take a broad view of modernity. It’s not just modern America. Not just the US. Not just the 20thcentury. It goes back hundreds of years and includes phenomena such as the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the development of capitalism, communism, and democracy. It includes notions of progress, perfection, utopianism, inclusion, and exclusion. In short, it’s complicated. Maybe we will understand it a little better by the end of the semester.
During the early Modern period, for example, what we call the Renaissance in European history, we saw the “re-birth” of Classical Greek ideals and their actualization in Western European intellectual life. Not everybody participated in these changes – rural life in many ways did not change very much, and still has not changed very much – but urban life, and intellectual life, changed enormously during this time. Wealthy patrons sponsored translations of Classical Greek texts into languages that literate Europeans (i.e. elite Europeans) could read. Byzantine and Islamic centers of learning had been the keepers of these texts for centuries… now, elite Western Europeans felt a passionate interest in their own intellectual past and were willing to pay scholars to bring these ideas, through translations, salons(discussion gatherings), and other forms of patronage, back into the talk of the day. A contemporary equivalent might be a philanthropist or corporate-giving commitment supporting specific kinds of projects or scholarships. And today, of course, modern societies have also embraced the very modern notion of “careers open to talent,” which requires that access to educational funding, scholarships, fellowships, etc., be equally available to all. Private patronage plays a smaller role in the development of novel intellectual ideas than it did in the early part of the modern period. Have we fully lived up to that goal? The ideas of Plato and Aristotle were re-born for Western Europeans as a result of this new interest in Classical ideas, and this included ideas about politics. Forms of story-telling, such as novels and drama, also flourished as people indulged their interest in human individuals and the capacity of an individual human being to have agency in the world. Humanism and humanistic thinking, were revived from the Classical period, dusted off, and given a distinctly modern form.
An additional factor of interest during the early modern period was the role of the Black Death in propelling individuals forward into a brave new – and “modern” – world. Just like the covid pandemic we are currently living through, people of the early modern world had an experience of pandemic. The Bubonic Plague that struck humanity in waves in the 1300s traveled along the growing trade routes of the time. People didn’t understand how it attacked or how it traveled. They knew no cure. Waves of Plague gave the civilizations of Afro-Eurasia a common experience. In Western Europe, many urbanites ultimately responded by embracing a new identity. Some argue that this powerful experience of living through pandemic changed people’s outlook so much that it was a catalyst for the Western European pivot to modernity. Will the covid pandemic likewise change people’s outlook so much that it serves as a catalyst for global or regional pivots to some fundamentally new historical world view? What will that world view look like? More democratic? Less democratic? Will it usher in the age of the Anthropocene that you read about at the end of your World History textbook, Ways of the World?By the time today’s college students are my age, we’ll almost certainly know the answer to some of those questions.
Meanwhile, this week, we will connect with the people of the early modern period by exploring their experience of pandemic. An excellent primary source for this is Boccaccio’s Decameron, a recounting of the Black Death in Florence, framed as a collection of stories told by a fictional group of young people escaping the city to take a break from the misery that was Florence in 1348. Boccaccio describes the pandemic in his introduction to the book, although it is unclear how much of his description is based on his own first-hand observation of the situation in Florence. Having described the pandemic as an observer who lived through it, he then describes a fictional group of young friends who take refuge outside the city and pass their time telling stories. Does that sound familiar? We can learn a lot about the plague of 1348 by reading Boccaccio’s introduction, and a lot about life on the Italian peninsula during the early modern period by reading those fictional stories.
1) This week, please read through page 29of Boccaccio’s Decameron, using the free online version linked below. Scroll down to the “Proem” and begin there, reading through to page 29. Then, choose two of the stories – Boccaccio calls them “Novels” – to read and reflect on. After reading, write a blog post with two components: a) Compare/Contrast the experience of the Black Death as Boccaccio describes it in the introduction with your experience of the pandemic we are living through today; and b) Summarize the two stories you chose and explain what insight into early modern life you gained by reading them.
https://flc.ahnu.edu.cn/__local/7/E7/75/6AB8DEBA692DD0CF6790CA70701_26DE4EC2_17EED4.pdf?e=.pdf
2) For extra credit, you can record yourself telling one of the stories. Post the recording to YouTube or your other go-to online media site, and include the link to your recording on your blog post.
3) If you have not yet sent me your blog link, please do that ASAP so you can get started participating in the class.
Have a great week, and enjoy the reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment