Open Dusty Throated Lectures

[Philomena]

Winter 20th, 512 AV
Early Evening
Lecture Hall, West Wing, University of Zeltiva
-------------------------------------

In the best of times, a mid-week lecture in the West Wing is not exactly a deeply popular destination in the early evening. When given by a not-particularly-popular professor, this population decreases. What is scheduled then on the 20th of Winter, 512 AV - "An Examination of Oral Transcription in the Poetic Record of Early Post-Zeltivan Epic Poetry" - manages to pull in a mere sprinkling of people. Two young students sit in the dusky back of the hall, paying more attention to their mutually engaged lips than to the lecture. Two professors of history sit close to the front. A smattering of students, slumps in the benches. On the stage, in a heavy overstuffed chair, where she mouths the notes to herself off of a wax tablet, sits the diminuitive form of Dr. Philomena Lefting, the lecturer of the evening.

She is in partial academic dress: she wears the stole-and-cape of the school of literature, a deep, wine-colored samite, and the flat cap of the WEst Wing, but otherwise beneath wears a somewhat tatty - and horribly coordinated - green tartan jumper, and, peeking out from a skirt that somehow, even with her extraordinarily small size, manages to be too short, there are the pointed toes of scuffed black dress boots.

The room is lit, for the early evenings of winter - a few of the students, in fact, poor on candles perhaps and interested in the free heat as well, seem to simply be using the room to study, paying no heed to the lectern at all. The air, with the winter's plagues, is subdued, gloomy.

Finally, a few minutes after the bell, Minnie stands and looks around hopefully, then nods her head, with the slightest of sighs - she is used to having a small turnout, at least. From long practice, she has learned that the lectern is too tall for her, so she bypasses it altogether, and sits, with an awkward informality on the edge of the stage. Then she looks around the room, and speaks. She annunciates, fairly clearly in the acoustics of the hall, but in order to make her voice rise to the corners of the room (even with the turnout, the fear of contagion leaves people scattered to every corner of the hall), she pushes her throat into a piercing, irritating voice, too timid to be shrill, but too sharp to be soft. Wheedling would be a better word.

"Well, I suppose we can start, then?"

The room, already nearly dead, hardly has to settle.

"Yes, well... I'm sure you all read the title of the lecture tonight, so, I won't repeat it. IF you're... you're anything like me, I'm sure you've looked at the manuscripts of some of the early epic poets of the Post Valterrian - the Anonymous author of 'The Fall of the Fishdock', for example, or Dorset with his perhaps more well known 'The Eyriad' - and wondered: how much of the lofty language of these proto-troubadours was really the manifestation of the intertextual drift of post-Valterrian dialectics, and how much was - well, lets just say it," she chuckles nervously, "How much of it was the transcriptionists' manifestation of academic longing for a Pre-Valterrian linguistic tradition of coded Old Commontongue Grammatics, with their 'hree,hro,hrum'?"

She smiles, looking for a replying laugh. One of the two professors smiles at the joke(?) politely, but otherwise there's not much reaction. She blushes a bit.

[Hadrian]

It was really only his second day back in town, and already the backlog of work was threatening to overwhelm him. The Farson Home was doing fine; its staff was exemplary at their work and he was mainly there to manage external affairs and the education and mentoring of the children. The others took care of their health, and their daily needs. But he had made his report on the situation in Sahova, and now he was in the University halls. Walking through the West Wing en route from one appointment to the next, he neared the open doors to the lecture hall where he had first spied Kendall, beautiful and studious as they picked apart poetry. She had said something warm and understanding in response to his own deconstruction of the Benshira sonnet they were studying, and it had made him love her, right then and there. Later, he had had a chance to be with Kendall, but alas, it did not work out. All the same, his feet carried him softly to that open door and he leaned quietly against the doorjamb to listen. His face was too impassive to wince at the professor's occasional gaffe, but this was why he preferred mentoring students on their independent studies than holding forth before a crowd that likely didn't want to be there. He wasn't the sort to interrupt, so he stayed there on the sidelines, not seeking a seat.

[Philomena]

The truly great lecturer could recover a dull beginning, a truly GREAT lecturer, even, could elucidate their technical knowledge into something consumable by their listeners, regardless of their understanding of the obscure vocabulary of the specific field at hand. Minnie Lefting was not a great lecturer.

It is thus, perhaps, that we must devolve into a study of the poor lecturer. To paraphrase one of the great novelists of Sylira: "All competent speakers are alike; every incompetent speaker is incompetent in their own way." There are many common traps of the incompetent university lecturer that Minnie manages deftly to avoid. The first of these pomposity - if anything as a lecturer Minnie suffers from the opposite trait, sometimes spending perhaps too long explaining and apologizing for the shortfalls of her research: "Of course, this isn't strictly a proven point, its only hypothesis - the arguments against the nominative being an active form in low-society dialects of Zeltivan Middle Commontongue are really very convincing as well, and so I understand the point I'm making rests on shaky ground. I apologize for that, and I hope you'll put up with me taking a bit of your time to examine a hypothetical..." But even this could perhaps be a sort of idiosyncratic tic, something one could learn to ignore. Another fault she deftly maneuvers around is speaking above her level of knowledge - clearly, while her field of inquiry is narrow, its exceptionally deep. Her references are insightful and impeccable (if you can pay close enough attention to gather them up).

But alas, she falls deep in the other two pitfalls of the lecturer. The first of these is a lack of empathy for the crowd. The truly great lecturer, like any rhetorician, has a deep and powerful understanding of the crowd - they interact with the crowd rather than holding forth. Minnie has none of this talent. IT isn't for a lack of desire - she does TRY to speak to the crowd, as with her opening joke. It is rather simply that she cannot seem to crack through to understand how to translate her own mind to theirs.

And then the greatest fault, is passionlessness, and its the most frustrating, for its clear that she is suppressing it on purpose, that she has in fact worked hard to eliminate her emotion on the subject, to present fact and impartiality with no sheen of her own fascination with the subject. There are moments where this practiced, clumsy facade slips: "But this is why Dr. Gorling hypothesized the culture shifting of the "Tale of the Washbasin God" in the first place - because the speech patterns in the source notes have reflections of a different figure entirely from the one the translator presents as the author. Imagine that a moment, I hardly can! Those dark days after the Valterrian, all that hatred, all that readiness to be frightened of anything new - when everything was new! This sort of thing, it... it could have been, anyone! It could have been composed as a bordello song, or as a sailor chanty, or a, or a, or a field-song, even, from a foreigner! And whoever that was, in a time where the establishment was frightened of ANY radicalism, and they went around telling a story that is both beautiful and blatantly heretical! But... of course... of course we don't have the data to speculate effectively on provenance, short of the barest of hints regarding vocabulary shifts, or the substitionary patterns mentioned in the notes of..."

Each time these little passionate moments rise up, her whole little form quivers from where it sits on the edge of the stage. And if one really is willing to invest the (quite significant) mental energy to deconstruct her argument, and has the (not trivial) domain knowledge to follow her flurry of literary references, the argument itself is a compelling one: she walks through a number of the 'Great Works' of the epic poetry of the early Post-Valterrian days, and suggests that our view of it, as the last hurrah of the old academic poetic tradition, with its strict forms and conservative approach is, frankly, entirely wrong. Her argument walks through the poetry of the time period, and tries to point to the possiblity of it being largely the transcription and bowdlerization of a new form of popular poetry, that many of the masterworks of the time were really watered down translations of the work of normal citizens in the post-cataclysmic chaos of the period. One of the two historians seems to follow it, and puts a few notes down in front of them. A few of the students, while not taking notes, actually seem to pay attention.

The lecture itself lasts about 30 minutes. Then she stretches, stands, and concludes, with an awkward sort of apologetic passion.

"So much of our analysis of this period is nostalgic, as if we all wished we could just somehow turn back the clock, to when these poets were alive, but... I know, I agree wholeheartedly that it is unproven, it is a hypothesis... but there is compelling evidence that we need to reexamine this period, not as a requiem, but as... as as... as a sort of scream of the newborn world! There's something... something wonderful in all that, something that is.... well, yes, it was probably very clunky and awkward, and you can see from that point of view why the scholars watered it down. But at the same time, this is the voice of the people, it OUGHT to hurt to read. It OUGHT to have its little traces of ugliness, because THAT'S how it... its... its how it was! IT was not a beautiful elegant time, it was clumsy, and bold, and terrible, and exciting, and dreadful and... yes... yes, that's... that's all, I think" she frowns and blinks, her hand near-convulsively reaching to the neckline of her gown to fiddle pensively with a spot of the hemming there, just below the academic collar. She nods a few times, then, in an awkward silence, murmuring through her notes to make sure she hasn't forgotten anything. Then, with the forlorn hope of the eternally spurned but endlessly hopeful, she looks up imploringly to the room, "So, yes. Yes, that's all. Is there... any questions, perhaps?"

[Hadrian]

Hadrian cleared his throat apologetically after her rhetorical stylings petered out. He glanced from the history profs to the students to the lecturer, whose name he hadn't caught. Had she been on the faculty when he had been taking general classes hoping to figure out a path away from his father's idea of his life to one of his own fashioning. When she glanced his way, he identified himself, used to rather a rather formal setting when he had been a student, "Hadrian Aelius, anthropology and magical studies. So clearly linguistics and literature are not exactly my bailiwick. But in my research in early post-Valterrian culture, especially in the environs of Zeltiva, there seemed to be a yen toward innovation, a pulse of new life looking forward more than a nostalgic looking back. As if looking back were too painful, so the desperate need to move forward broke old patterns and while the University itself has struck a balance between curating traditional lore as well as experimenting with new ideas, there must have been a watershed, or a point of cleavage where the old forms began to give way to the new, but because of the industrial disruption, the people of the time didn't have regular access to paper or higher quality inks, so all works were not codified immediately. "So my question, finally, is upon which folios are you basing your dates in order to establish a timeline for linguistic pattern shifts? I have read that some scholars don't believe the Common of today has shifted all that drastically from the Common of the days just before and after the Valterrian. Of course, now we have the refugees from Denval among us, with their markedly different Suvan dialect that developed entirely in isolation for 450 years or so." His questions weren't meant as personal challenges by any means. He welcomed other people battering his logic and rhetoric, the better to perfect it. But really, this was only a curiosity, a question he wanted to ask to see if a puzzle piece would match some of his own. He liked to think that anthropology touched on every other discipline of the humanities and social sciences, as well as the arts and other fields. Some disagreed as some would. Though he was looking at the lecturer, the history professors, at least, seemed interested in his questions. The students looked either confused or frustrated as students were want to look.

[Philomena]

The very first reaction on the little doctor's face was pure, unadulterated delight - a question! The mere presence of words not in her own ringing across the lecture hall blossomed a very genuine, almost child-like smile across her face, and she leaned forward just slightly to listen. It was the name, though, that sent her reeling - Aelius. Hadrian. Aelius. Her eyes clouded slightly above the smile, confusion, the nibbling tooth of the nearly remembered thought catching at the corners of her face. The question itself, though, distracted from this, and left her in a frown - but what sort, there is the truly operative question. It is not a frown of embarrasment or of displeasure, simply of thought. Minnie Lefting was a considerer - her utter obliviousness to the discomfort of the room at the several moments of silence in a sense gave her a certain advantage here, as it allowed her to comfortably work out her thoughts before she launched into them. When she did finally speak, her manner is entirely different - the spontaneous nature of Q&A at once takes away some of the passionless, and intensifies a sort of latent disorganization of thought in her speech, probably most evident previously in her semi-extemporaneous conclusion.

"Well, I would say, there is certainly a very literal answer to your question, I could provide you with my precise bibliography in the reception if you like. But on a more general level, the pattern of linguistic shifts is an excellent question - I suffer in part, likely, from the bias of my own education, my own ideas of the development of language are rooted in the work of the late Mr. Harald Dorbern of the Library, who was my instructor in Early and Middle Commontongue. Mr. Dorbern's approach was that of the literalist - its not that he assumed that the literary tongue perfectly reflected the spoken, but instead that the literary tongue had its own history that could be examined and mined for information. I have looked at some of the theories of how the literary record interacts with and affects the spoken, but, frankly, that's just the problem - this is a big question, and one that's so terribly interdisciplinary - really, someone with your own background in anthropology might have a better answer. One of the sources that was most interesting, but also most difficult to integrate into the larger record was from an anthropologist, actually, of the first restoration period, when they were razing some of the wreckage of the old city - he went around and recorded, actually the graffiti on the walls of the wrecked city, before they were destroyed, and some of it referenced characters from the epic poetry of the time. But then, without a background in anthropology, its difficult to evaluate a text like that and posit as to how much of it is the roots of the text and how much of it is the branch - Zeltiva in particular is such a historically literate society that it functions differently than this respect than perhaps some more preliterate societies would? That's a guess, as I said, I'm certainly no anthropologist.

My own sources, though, are so difficult because, as you stated, they were not exactly prodigal with parchment at the time, so it isn't like working with, let's say, Kenabelle Wright's work, where one can reference protoformulations of the final work in the form of written notes and correspondence, or ship's logs or journals, etc. On the one hand this is immensely frustrating, of course, particularly since our ultra-literate society does so spoil one sometimes in other areas of research. In another sense, though... part of the muscular energy of the work, I would posit - and again, maybe this is more a question for an anthropologist than a mere literature doctor - I would suggest may come from the very fact that these works WERE - at least if I'm right - composed orally, that there is this window of time where suddenly, we have this tradition that is more akin to storytelling than composition. I'm not deriding formal composition, not at all - you'd have a hard time getting me to speak ill of authors after all. But, there is something one sees in a work meant originally to be spoken that one does not necessarily see in a work meant to be read. An anthropologist who might have exposure to the traditions of less literate societies, though, might have a better idea of whether I'm just full of bunkum and romance over that idea.

As for your ideas about progressivism in culture, its... its a difficult question. I think, perhaps, in my mind, it is more accurate to see that culture was a set of two prevailing dynamics - that very present progressive dynamic, that you see in, particularly, the lyric poetry, like Pelleas Dior:

To see in smoke the shadow-ghost
Of dreaming worlds awaiting form.
To see in blood a rosy sun
Anxious to be born.

But then, you also see the opposite, this culture of mourning almost of... almost of nihilism. Its less well preserved than the starry eyed lyricists, of course, but I think this is particularly true in the work of the absurdists, you know? In history, we have a very progressivist sort of rubric, we want to see history as a narrative with a clear direction toward the future. I am not as sure that this is unalloyedly true. But, I'm not an expert, either, I... yes. Yes. Does that answer your question?"

[Paragon]

Philomena

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Rhetoric	3
Teaching	3
Philosophy	2

Lores

•	Lore Earned
•	A Cold Reception
•	Pitfalls of a Lecturer: Non-empathy & Passionlessness
•	Stifling Passion
•	Pelleas Dior: Progressive Lyrical Poet

Legend Becomes Reality

Real shame Hadrian retired here, but what I saw was great as ever Only wish I could have more things to give XP for in this - you always capture Philomena's character and personality sublimely. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, please send me a PM and we can work from there.