Far · West · of · Outremer

Right, so, very busy of... well, seminar things. Which involve reading. And lectures. And so on. It is all fantastically cool, and I can't wait to get a chance to actually use it. Meanwhile, there are some things that just ....must be shared...

"Although among the Three Kingdoms Koguryo was particularly known for its fierce warriors, Silla also developed an elite fighting group. The early Sillan military seems to have been based on young men from midteens to thirty years of age recruited from villages to do the fighting. While these village groups continues, later King Chinhung (reigned 540-576 CE) created a force of upper-class warriors called hwarang, who were young men recruited to train in riding, archery, and self-defense. The hwarang, or 'flowering youth,' were also expected to appreciate natural beauty and part of their training was climbing mountains and becoming aware of the terrain. ... The hwarang, which produced notable generals such as Kim Yusin, was one of the reasons Silla succeeded in unifying Korea."

Me: Wait... are you telling me that early medieval Korea was unified by a bishounen army???

(Local network broadcast of costume-drenched, melodrama-filled, bishie-heavy Korean historical soap drama you are NOT helping)

I would just like to note that the Middle Ages were big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big they were. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to the amount of time from the Fall of Rome to around about when Martin Luther headed off to college.

In short, cramming the entire thousand-year period (look, I realize that bits of that are commonly called the Renaissance, but just work with me here) into a span of, oh, about fifteen weeks, two meetings a week, is making my brain leak out of my ears. As a friend pointed out, it's because I officially know too much about the time period, and thus keep coming up with things that Absolutely Must Be Covered.

Not only that, I am deliberately putting in more stuff written by women and minorities (second is a lot trickier, frankly), which of course means that some "traditional" materials are getting left out, which causes a bit of "But you can't not read Chaucer!"-type anxiety on my part.

(on a related note: anybody have any suggestions for stuff they would want/would not want in a medieval history course?*)

*Marie de France is probably going to be in there anyway; sorry, Ravyn.