oh no! king harold got one in the eye!

*ahem*

we were looking at the norman conquest today. got a bit over involved.

got to apply my picturebook theory in medieval seminar. we were talking about grosteques in the margins of texts and how they related to the written text and how that changed the reading. i was saying that when one reads a picturebook first you look at the picture, then read the text, then look at the picture at again, getting more meaning each time you bounce between them. and how it's more interesting when the picture and text don't match up. (none of this is my own orginal ideas, btw. no footnotes on a blog.) it was interesting trying to apply this to a book of hours - the latin prayers decorated by pictures of little hairy men riding elephants and poking camels with long spears.

also useful as we were, as usual, discussing the tension between oral culture and written culture (and the overlap - do you hear a little voice in your head when you read this? and is it my voice or yours?), and one usually reads picturebooks aloud.

my medieval prof is cool. today we were playing "grill the australian" and i had to explain what lamingtons and pavlova are. his daughter read _possum magic_ at school. then we played "grill the american" (he is from the US) and i found out about "barbeque" and "biscuits". actually, i've had "biscuits" before. they're very like scones. we had them with butter and honey, hot from the oven.