The Past Isn’t Dead

4/9/2018

Shakespeare’s audiences only heard the side of the story that made Henry VII a hero and Richard III a villain. They had little access to alternative viewpoints. Today so much is out there that we can’t absorb it all. Picking and choosing, we tend to hear one side as narrowly as Shakespeare’s audiences.

“The past isn’t dead,” William Faulkner wrote. “It isn’t even past.” Competing historical narratives live on in current events: progress versus decay, pride versus shame, self-sufficiency versus interdependence. It’s easy to dismiss one or the other, easy to say there’s right on all sides, but challenging to try to understand a story too complex for sound bites. After the history department at Oberlin College (my alma mater) organized a teach-in about Charlottesville and Confederate memorials, Chair Renee Romano wrote:

“Learning history gives students the knowledge they need to assess claims about the past that routinely circulate in public discourse. A historical education teaches students how to ask critical questions. It prepares them to evaluate competing arguments. And it encourages empathy towards people different from ourselves. These are skills and qualities that the world desperately needs . . .”

[quoted from Oberlin’s “Around the Square” 2018 Spring Newsletter]

21 Comments

Lisa the free spirit

4/9/2018 09:16:04 am

Sarah, I'm going to share this with my genealogy writer friends. It's important to note that I was born and raised less than 50 miles south of here. My favorite two ancestors, bar none, are my Confederate cavalry soldier great-great-grandfather, and his mother (g-g-g-grandmother). And I developed an interest in Richard III when his grave was found, and then I became a huge fan of his when I visited the new museum in Leicester, built around his grave site, a year and a half ago. I always say I am a genealogist because my history education in high school and college was abysmal. Learning history also gives students the knowledge they need to assess claims that circulate in the FAMILY.

Sarah link

4/9/2018 11:41:24 am

Lisa, this is wonderful! Like the past, our ancestors aren't really dead - neither the ones we remember or rediscover, nor those that are the subject of family myths. Family history and well-taught history classes (such as I was lucky enough to have in high school and beyond) are two doorways into the wonderful world of the past still with us. A third and fourth are local history and historical museums, overlapping doorways for the more visually and tactilely oriented. Of course any of these (even genealogy?) may perpetuate some myths if they're poorly done.

Richard III may get a separate blog post of his own, one of these weeks. I'd love to see the museum in Leicester.

Lisa the Free Spirit

4/9/2018 12:05:40 pm

The Richard III museum is stunning. Absolutely stunning. My sister was in London last fall and apparently, Richard III is still a villain in London, according to the Tower of London folks, but you will definitely come out of the Leicester museum wondering...

Genealogy can perpetuate myths. And it can be hard to claim someone who did something against our personal philosophy and modern mindset. Goes for King Richard III of England as well as James A Bailey, Company D, 1st Virginia Cav. The only reason I came to accept that James A could even BE one of my ancestors is by accepting first that he was in the cavalry. So he could ride. I embraced that meagre commonality and went forward.

4/9/2018 01:49:00 pm

Getting into somebody else's head is an important practice in history, biography, fiction, and everyday life. It's so clear-cut today that slave-holding was bad, any kind of empathy for a Southern slaveholder can be interpreted as a moral failing. But most people are creatures of their culture to at least some extent. A few are ahead of their time (i.e. have values more like ours), a few are nasty even by the standards of their own time, and many are decent folks within the confines of their imperfect culture. To deny the last is to choose self-righteousness over understanding.

4/9/2018 12:24:54 pm

I remember my shock when it was announced that Richard's body had almost certainly been found under a parking lot. How do you lose a king, for 500 years no less, and then defile him with blacktop???!!! I have since learned that the world was a very different place 500 years ago, and we cannot evaluate it based on today's world. And that we should not discount eccentrics like Prudence, who was obsessed with Richard and led the charge to raise money to excavate, because the government wasn't going to pay for it. Richard's groupies have a ways to go to exonerate him completely, but then, Thomas Jefferson never had a bevy of mulatto children, either, did he?

4/9/2018 01:37:42 pm

The debate over whether Richard was evil or the best king ever seems to ignore the realities of the time and of human nature. It's possible for the same person to promote justice, do good in the world, and still order or connive in a murder that was politically unacceptable even then. If you're going to usurp the throne, either you get rid of the competition or they will get rid of you. How you misplace a king is an interesting question. He died on the battlefield. Did his body just lie there, or did someone drag it away? He certainly wouldn't have been placed in Westminster Abbey, or wherever they were putting deceased royalty those days.

On thing I've found interesting is the suggestion that we have important new information in the evidence that he had curvature of the spine but wasn't a hunchback. Thomas More and Shakespeare may have used Richard's physique as a symbol for formal deformity, but does anyone in this day and age think his physical issues/disability shed light on innocence or guilt?

Rebecca link

4/15/2018 03:11:29 pm

I saw a "Secrets of the Dead" on PBS about Richard III found under a London parking lot. That was a very interesting show. They cast a man with a similar spine to act as Richard III in the show, and discovered that with armor his unique back made him an excellent jouster! R

4/16/2018 08:31:46 am

How fascinating that his curvature of the spine was actually an advantage for jousting! I wonder if he had to have specially fitted armor for it.

walter hassenpflug

4/9/2018 04:23:59 pm

The author writing about history is perhaps likely to project his/her own bias. Can the writer easily remain free of bias? I have been heavily into Germanic tribes, how some were so totally independent that no one leader could rise to be a king over several tribes (those speaking the same dialects, etc.)
Numerous chiefains were the norm. The culture of Saxons was somewhat different from that of the Bavarians. Do we drink light beer or dark beer. Some eat fries with ketchup while those in a different region will eat fries with mayonnaise,

How does one write a history of France, Spain, Germany? Different regions with different dialect and somewhat different customs.

I personally LOVE history books even though the writer may have been biased here and there and though I would not know enough to recognize any bias.

Hitler was responsible for millions of deaths. Yet, Stalin has been credited with upward of some 30 million deaths of his own Russian people. High school books portray Hitler as a horrible monster yet say so very little, if anything, about Stalin who killed so many of his own people. I had to learn about Stalin in college.

The writer and his/her culture and own time period can influence his/her views about another culture and another's time period.

Did Richard's crooked spine influence his kingly policies?

As a former educator, I was amazed to learn that publishers of social studies books would print the "same" book based on that state's "special interests." For example, that book printed as "Texas" version was somewhat different from the "Ohio" version. Sometimes entire chapters were deleted and/or rewritten for the different states. Yes, there was a West Virginia printed version.

I still love reading history books. Over the years I have read a number of books about German history. Yet each author/editor will have put a different emphasis on Saxon history, or Hessian history.

I do not believe I have contributed verbiage here that you Lisa or you Sarah were not aware of in your readings of history.

I hated history in junion high and in high school where we were forced to learn events with dates and not know what the overall impact on us really was.

Enuf.

Sarah, your blogs are great. Lisa, you comments are great.

4/10/2018 08:49:03 am

Walter, my college history seminar professor talked about the 19th-century German ideal of objectivity and drummed into us that it's utterly impossible to write without bias. No matter how much care we bring to it, we always have to chose what to include and how to arrange it. What he urged us to do, instead, was to recognize our bias and acknowledge it.

I disliked history in grade school and junior high - memorizing names and dates - but in high school got introduced to doing historical research. Role-playing the Constitutional Convention after going to campus to read Madison's notes to understand our character's concerns. Writing a research paper in world history, I forget on what. History turned from memorization to discovery.

I had the same experience as you re Hitler vs. Stalin. I presume the Hitler-was-worst bias is from Russia having been our ally in WWII. When we finally learned that Stalin killed comparable numbers of people, I wonder if that was because we were getting a more balanced view or because the Cold War had added anti-Russian bias to the mix.

Nowadays the popular supposed antidote to bias is to find equal good or fault on both side. But that's a bias too. All sides aren't always equal.

4/9/2018 08:06:22 pm

Thank you Walter. :)

No one, not even his fans, would call Richard the best king ever. How did he come to be lost that way? He was not popular even then, and certainly not in the Midlands. So, when he died, he was put on display in Leicester for three days so people could view him and be assured it really was him. Then he was buried in the friary churchyard/cemetery in a somewhat unmarked grave. 100 years or so later, the friary was torn down, and the brick walls enclosing the cemetery eventually fell down and the city closed in more closely. (The church still stands.)

So Prudence someone, a well-known albeit eccentric local historian, was driven to find his grave for many years, and one day walked into that inner city parking lot, enclosed on all sides by buildings less than 400 years old, and suddenly just KNEW he was there and that was where they needed to excavate. She had no knowledge of the precise location of the original cemetery, and neither did anyone else really, other than it was believed to be like a certain direction from the church. It was a private parking lot, for the employees of businesses around there but not like for shoppers, you know.

She had to get all sorts of permissions and donations because no one would allocate government money to disrupt the city that way.

The rest of the story is hair raising and one can't help but believe Richard had a part in it all happening. The museum has resin casts of his bones and spine, and he really had a significant curvature. I don't believe that was ever considered to be a reason he was hated in life tho, and did not read that it had any effect on his policies. At that time the power was not in the monarchy, it was truly in the hands of the wealthy, but not in the way we would say it is true today. Do many Brits care? Nah.

Yes, Walter, understanding the overall impact on us is much better than just learning history dates. England is what it is today because of the events of 1473 (or thereabouts...) I was lucky enough to visit the museum with my friend and her beau who both have a decent knowledge of British history, and we were able to discuss it in this manner that we are now discussing it, meaning the politics. Not just ignorantly. The museum is amazing and provokes the visitor's mind constantly.

History certainly is being revised in Leicester as a result, and not just because it's a nice tourist draw. But like I said, they are not promoting Richard in London yet, apparently!

4/10/2018 09:03:04 am

Lisa, thanks for the update on what happened to the body. Fascinating story. I was mis-remembering "best king in history" but from the BBC History Magazine citing Philippa Langley: "Richard III was a “great king” who achieved more than the Elizabeths and Henry V. . . . If we look, for example, at the pieces of good governance that he achieved during his incredibly short reign, they were really quite staggering." It includes a quote from a contemporary: "He contents the people wherever he goes, for many a poor man hath been relieved and helped by him. I have never liked the condition of any prince as well as his. God hath sent him to us for the wellbeing of us all.”

4/10/2018 09:23:41 am

Ah yes, Phillipa. I was saying Prudence. Her name is Phillipa and, um, well, she may or may not be the best judge of Richard's greatness. Of course there were those who liked him, but all leaders have their following. Time will tell? As I understood it, he was in enemy territory (the Midlands) when he died. We think of England as a unified nation with one king/queen who rules, and all we can sort of understand is our own civil war, but like I said, the power was distributed in a way we can't understand today and there were always factions trying to get more. And even multiple kings and queens vying for power and blatantly doing away with each other to get it.

4/9/2018 08:16:12 pm

And as for James A., I think I was shocked to discover that he had been a Confederate as much as anything because NO ONE HAD TOLD ME THAT, until my great-aunt, who knew him well and loved him much. How does that so completely disappear from family lore? My grandmother was born in Knoxville. It was a border state and my other ancestors in that line were Quakers and northerners.

4/10/2018 09:11:50 am

A pretty major omission! Family lore must select which stories to pass on, but you've got to wonder whether nobody thought it important or someone deliberately decided to de-emphasize this.

Lisa you know who

4/10/2018 09:31:37 am

My mom grew up in the 1940s before the civil rights movement so it was not kept secret for shame. James A "deserted" half way through the war, but apparently lived openly in his home town in Virginia. James A's son verged on being a civil rights activist in Knoxville. My grandmother married my grandfather and moved far away, and I think she was pretty much swallowed up by her in-laws. My mother has no recollection of ever being told that her g-grandfather was a Confederate, not even when she was studying the Civil War in school. Her mother had known him well; he even lived with them off and on after he became a widower. shrug :)

4/10/2018 06:24:29 pm

Lisa, so much to be curious about in your Confederate ancestor's story. Like, it would be an entirely different story if he "deserted" because he had changed his mind about the issues, or if he remained devoted to the Confederate cause. And there's no family myth to even purport to tell the answer, since there was no family story about his Civil War participation at all. Fascinating.

I've heard people say you can find the answer to anything on the Internet. I say hogwash, if you think that you've never tried looking up some of the things I get curious about. There's always more to wonder.

Lisa the Reb's g-g-grand-daughter

4/10/2018 06:54:34 pm

Sarah, I think I may eventually be able to piece together some more information, but as you say, it won't be on the internet. I'll have to go back to Abingdon again. Yippeee!

Lisa fan of Richard III

4/16/2018 08:59:57 am

As Rebecca says way above, the show was on Secrets of the Dead on PBS and you could stream it. I don't remember that his spine curvature was an advantage in any way, but the show did prove that he could ride quite well.

I also saw the show a couple times. Told my British friends about it, and they were like, yeah, right, silly Americans making these shows. So I asked at the information desk at the museum and they knew all about the young man in the show, who along with his mother is local a military reenactor (sp??). After the show he was given half of the armor which was specially made to fit him. As of the time of my visit, he was trying to raise the money to purchase the other half. My friends stood in mute amazement as I had a sort of animated conversation with the museum folk and that this was not some silly American for-television drama.

Richard III never had any children, so it's not possible that this young man is some secret and lost descendant. :)

4/17/2018 08:18:40 am

Curious that the fitted armor was split up to give him only half. Richard made quite sure no plausible kin were available to succeed him. Do you suppose he planned to produce an heir after he secured the throne? Henry Tudor was pretty distant with a pretty weak claim to the throne, but no one with a better claim was still alive.

Lisa

4/17/2018 08:36:42 am

that I cannot speculate about. It might have been mentioned somewhere, such as at the museum. But I do not recall.

The Past Isn’t Dead

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