Exposé #3

I delivered my last of three exposés this morning. Up at 6:50 for my 8:00 class, I had already rehearsed twice, and gave the transcript a third run-through while eating my yogurt and stale baguette at my desk. I didn't want to wake up my neighbors, so I recited silently, the walls in the dorm being a bit too thin for genuine privacy. I was partway through a fourth scan when I saw that I needed to head out.

The reading, I should mention, is on the topic of travel in the medieval ages. My principal source of info was Jean Verdon's Voyager Au Moyen Age (which has been translated into English, in case it interests anyone). I had to scrutinize and draw what I could out of two thirteenth-century primary sources, one of them a prospective route to travel on pilgrimage from Stades (a monastery about 75km north of Bremen) to Rome, the other one a retrospective account of the costs incurred by the voyage of a convoy of mercenary Genovese sailors from Languedoc to Paris. Interesting, right? Well, I ended up learning a fair bit along the way. I analyzed Albert of Stades's proposed detour to visit the fingerbone of Saint John the Baptist in light of medieval sightseeing (I can't call it "tourism," which didn't exist, in the common sense of the word), and the salaries payed out to the sailors in light of typical traveling costs, the value of French money, etc (fun fact: Philippe IV of France had two nicknames: "The Fair" and "The Counterfeiter," the latter because he minted coins with a lower real weight than theoretical value).

I had prepared fairly well, but because there were more students in the class than texts to analyze, I didn't actually get to present my exposé to my peers. Rather, I sat in class as one of my classmates, Roman, gave his super-detailed, carefully-researched presentation on exactly the same topic: there was virtually nothing I had to say which he didn't say (what's more, he can speak fluent French), and even though he spoke incredibly quickly, and exceeded the 20-minute time limit by over 3 minutes, he didn't have enough time to finish. Class ended 30 minutes late (quite normal, actually), and it was only after class that I delivered my exposé to the TA (or whatever the title is here).

My exposé had its weak points and strong points. Among my errors were lack of a full explanation for the multiple routes to and from Rome (all roads lead there, so there are multiple possibilities, right?) in Albert of Stades's narrative, and a lack of analysis on the more expensive costs of river travel than overland travel of the Genevese sailors. Furthermore, many of the contextual elements in my introduction were not strictly on topic, such as the fall the last crusader fortress, at Acre, in 1291, and the ongoing Guelph-Ghibelline quarrel, and could have spent that 1 minute allowance of time on more important elements of historical context. On the other hand, I did a better job at synthesizing and compressing the various elements than Roman (according to the TA, any way), I had a good analysis of the fundamental difference between the two sources (prospective practical travel info in contrast to retrospective accounting), and efficiently treated both money and lodging.

I don't normally share my grades with others, but I'm making an exception here, because I think it's important for all you folks back home to have some kind of a handle on the French grading system. In France, grades are fractions with a denominator of 20. According to Mme. Bowman, back at IHS, nobody ever receives a 20/20, because only God is perfect. Well, on this assignment, I got a 13/20, which I wager is probably about equivalent to a B or B-. It is not the equivalent, I think of 65%, which I think lands in the bel0w-the-belt region of a D. In other words, nothing to write home about (which, come to think of it, is exactly what I'm doing), but far from a failing grade.

So, I hurried off to my Cours Magistral at the Sorbonne, listened to a cool lecture on ties of love and friendship among friendship, and met three of my classmates, Roman (who had given the great exposé), Daniel (who gave the other exposé today, on a naval battle between Venice and Genoa), and Nathaniel. It was a rest day for me, today, having kept up fairly well on my runs.

Now, I just need to write that 8-page paper on the Young Turk Revolution, keep up on weekly textual commentaries on Louis XIV primary sources, and keep on reading. Really, that's less than what it sounds like...

~JD

"The fact that in ordinary times the bulk of the population had to spend about 50% of its inccome on the bread ration and in critical times virtually all of it is one striking measure of this dependence [on cereal crops]" (Steven L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Lous XV, p. XVI).