"HANGING LITTLE JOE ON THE SUBURBAN PONDEROSA
Or, What has the Middle Ages to do with the Old West?"
This experimental piece of creative non-fiction was published in 30 to 40 Years West of Here, a special edition of the Journal of the West, edited by Colin Irvine, (2015). Here's a snippet:
Historical imagination is necessary to our understanding of any historical period, but especially the Middle Ages. At the same time, that imagination must be tempered with dispassionate, unemotional examination of the evidence. We must not romanticize the period. It was neither an idealized era—all nobility and all chivalry all the time—nor was it an age that was entirely ‘dark,’ plagued by ignorance and violence. No. The medieval period was much more complicated than that, and to understand it requires subtle, nuanced thinking. Above all, one must overcome the regular diet of stereotypes the movies have fed to us. As much fun as Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood or his crusader epic Kingdom of Heaven may be, these are not the historical Middle Ages--
This is what I tell my students when I teach medieval history. But I am a fraud. For when it comes to the history of the Old West, no such subtle, nuanced thinking applies. I have access to historical evidence about the West, if I chose to look at it. I am trained in a range of historical methods—not only in textual analysis but in the interpretation of material culture—if I chose to practice these. But where the Old West is concerned, all of that goes out the window for me. I am happy to live entirely in the imagined Old West constructed in my youth from so many episodes of TV westerns and cowboy movies, and so many hours—years really—of playing “Bonanza” on the edge of the civilized world, Virgil’s Ultime Thule transplanted to the Old West in a suburb where my grandparents had built a house on the outskirts of town.
Or, What has the Middle Ages to do with the Old West?"
This experimental piece of creative non-fiction was published in 30 to 40 Years West of Here, a special edition of the Journal of the West, edited by Colin Irvine, (2015). Here's a snippet:
Historical imagination is necessary to our understanding of any historical period, but especially the Middle Ages. At the same time, that imagination must be tempered with dispassionate, unemotional examination of the evidence. We must not romanticize the period. It was neither an idealized era—all nobility and all chivalry all the time—nor was it an age that was entirely ‘dark,’ plagued by ignorance and violence. No. The medieval period was much more complicated than that, and to understand it requires subtle, nuanced thinking. Above all, one must overcome the regular diet of stereotypes the movies have fed to us. As much fun as Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood or his crusader epic Kingdom of Heaven may be, these are not the historical Middle Ages--
This is what I tell my students when I teach medieval history. But I am a fraud. For when it comes to the history of the Old West, no such subtle, nuanced thinking applies. I have access to historical evidence about the West, if I chose to look at it. I am trained in a range of historical methods—not only in textual analysis but in the interpretation of material culture—if I chose to practice these. But where the Old West is concerned, all of that goes out the window for me. I am happy to live entirely in the imagined Old West constructed in my youth from so many episodes of TV westerns and cowboy movies, and so many hours—years really—of playing “Bonanza” on the edge of the civilized world, Virgil’s Ultime Thule transplanted to the Old West in a suburb where my grandparents had built a house on the outskirts of town.