Monday, July 10, 2006  New World Medievalists, Fantasy and
History  In the comments to the previous post, a frequent and
perceptive commentator going by the moniker N50 wonders:
Another Damn Medievalist responds:   I've already made public my
embarrassing revelation about how a certain famous medievalist
who also wrote works of fantasy convinced a young me that
studying the Middle Ages might be more fun than devoting myself
to astrophysics (my other obsession at that time; thank you,
Carl Sagan). Then again, I've never even contemplated joining
the Society for Creative Anachronism and -- much to the shock of
the many students who ask me this question -- would never under
any circumstances have wanted to live in any prior time period.
It probably didn't help that Cambridge, Boston, Bedford,
Lexington and Concord were the geographical ambit of my
childhood. I remember declaring as a kid that if forced to walk
the Freedom Trail once more I would vomit (this was in the days
of US Bicentennial hoopla). A surfei