Friday, May 13, 2016; Book post
May. 13th, 2016 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bearshortyDefending the City of God: A Medieval Queen, The First Crusades and the Quest for Peace in Jerusalem by Sharan Newman
This book is a biography of Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem who lived from 1105 to 1161 and was a queen of Jerusalem in her own right through her father, King Baldwin II. She did co-rule with her husband Fulk (grandfather of Henry II of England) and then with her son Baldwin III, but Newman is very insistent that Melisende was never a Queen Consort or Queen Mother as historians often portrayed her. In her own time, Melisende was a very respected and powerful woman and Newman wants historians to treat her as such.
Newman also aims to make vivid the living situation in the Latin States. She wants us to understand the different mentality of the Franks (broad terms for Europeans who came to conquer Jerusalem and established four states in the Middle East. Many went home but many stayed, who were born in the Latin States with its multiculturalism and wide mixed customs from many cultures. Melisande was of this generation, born in Edessa to a European father and an Armenian Christian mother. Newman wants for us to really think what it was like for regular people, the peasants, for example, to live through the constant wars and conquest and power plays of both Christian and Muslim military elite.
That understanding of what it was like when Jerusalem was conquered and people driven out/massacred and an empty city was left behind was well done. It certainly gave me a perspective of the Crusades I haven't though about, despite teaching the Crusades many times, assigning primary sources and a book written from the perspective of Muslim nobility.
And I enjoyed reading about the family dynamics of Melisande's family. I though Newman handled the complicated relationships, which so much intermarriage, of European and Latin nobility very well.
I do have a few qualms. Newman inserted her opinion many times in the story, using "I" often. It is not common among historians to write this way. She was very directly rooting for Melisende and other women in the story - in an effective way - but still very biased.
She was also guessing quite often, which is partly necessary based on the military chronicles we have left and Newman's social history focus, but the book was filled with "might" "probably" so much that it made me uncomfortable. Melisande's mother has very few references in the sources, but Newman speculated a lot on her motivation. It was effective to see her mother as a real person but it is still speculation.
And the book got a little bogged down once Melisande was queen. She was a powerful woman but the evidence is all grants and charters, which does not make it exiting nor does it show her power clearly to most readers.
I did like the book. It wasn't my favorite history book. But I would be a book I would assign undergraduates if I was teaching history again. The writing style is wonderful and very accessible. And Melisende and her three sisters were well represented. They were certainly in the narrative and Newman reinforces her point that other nobility at the time and regular people did not have an issue with female rulers, unlike later historians who tend to erase them from history or just used the term "Queen Mother" to downplay actual roles. Melisende was never a "Queen Mother", she was the Queen.
I actually wrote a paper on women in the crusades as an undergraduate for my senior history seminar "Pilgrimage and Crusades". And I remember reading about Melisende and including her in my story. She stuck in my mind then. I'm glad there is now a full scale study on her.
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
I think this is my favorite book by Sacks. I really enjoyed it and I feel like I learned a lot. It is weird to think that the power to perceive music is an separate part of the brain, often muted for better language acquisition. I'm very left-brain logic oriented person so it is no wonder I'm not super musical. I like music and enjoy it but I don't have absolute pitch nor can I tell what key is playing. When I took music lessons as a child I could not put the first note on the notation scale but I could do the rest at more or more proper intervals. I took this test online to test for music ear and I got about 75% or so. I wonder what music sounds to those with absolute pitch.
I feel I got more appreciation of music just by reading about various levels needed to appreciate music from melody to pitch to key to rhythm to tone etc what what happens when one loses any of those parts. Also musical hallucinations are interesting to read about. And just imagining music. I have aphantasia - I don't have any visual imagery when I think in my head. But I also don't taste anything if I think of food or hear anything if I think of sounds or voices. I don't remember my grandmother's voice anymore (when I watched a home video it was strange to hear it again). I can talk to myself inside my head or hum a melody but I don't hear actual sound. So it is again fun to read about how other people perceive the world and talk about it with Bear, who is the opposite of me in that regard (vivid imagery, can taste even smell, and can hear when he imagines it).
Reading this book and reading about synthesia and music, especially how common it is in kids, also made me not correct Tanya when she commented that the classical music that was playing in the car was "zelyenaya musyka" or "green music." Maybe she sees colors with music for now.
I think one thing that I got out of this book is how important and useful music therapy is. The first half of the book is more about problems in the brain that can tell us where in the brain music is but the second part is of people with trauma or dementia or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's for whom music is the only outlet to feel human again. Just the power of music even for people who can't form any memories. (It is a little comforting that if one loses ability to make memories, and past memories on top of it, two things would remain: memory of love and of music.)
Reading all those chapters made me think of my Grandma Tanya and what I would have done differently if I knew these things about music then. For the last six months of her life, my Grandmother was in a locked-in state. She had a second stroke (the first one was two years earlier, from which she did recover) and then couldn't move or talk or do anything or show awareness. I think she was aware inside because when my cousin Katya, her eldest beloved granddaughter, came to visit her from Minsk, she reacted with emotion according to my Mom and Katya, spend a good day with them, and died in her sleep that night. She held on to say goodbye. She had to live in a nursing home for medical reasons - my mother hated that but there was nothing she could do about that. My mother did spend almost every single day of those six months in the nursing home with my grandmother and on the days when she couldn't be there tried to get someone else to sit with her. She never wanted my grandmother to feel alone. I was away working in a summer camp that summer (I was 19) but before I left I did spend a whole day with my grandmother. I wish I did more like read to her longer. And now I wished I could have brought her music. But this was the time before iPods. I had a CD player but I don't think I had CDs of things she might have liked. And I was 19 and this was the person I loved most in the world and I don't think I was handling it well. Now I know to bring music or I hope music would be brought to me if I have to go through that.
This book is a biography of Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem who lived from 1105 to 1161 and was a queen of Jerusalem in her own right through her father, King Baldwin II. She did co-rule with her husband Fulk (grandfather of Henry II of England) and then with her son Baldwin III, but Newman is very insistent that Melisende was never a Queen Consort or Queen Mother as historians often portrayed her. In her own time, Melisende was a very respected and powerful woman and Newman wants historians to treat her as such.
Newman also aims to make vivid the living situation in the Latin States. She wants us to understand the different mentality of the Franks (broad terms for Europeans who came to conquer Jerusalem and established four states in the Middle East. Many went home but many stayed, who were born in the Latin States with its multiculturalism and wide mixed customs from many cultures. Melisande was of this generation, born in Edessa to a European father and an Armenian Christian mother. Newman wants for us to really think what it was like for regular people, the peasants, for example, to live through the constant wars and conquest and power plays of both Christian and Muslim military elite.
That understanding of what it was like when Jerusalem was conquered and people driven out/massacred and an empty city was left behind was well done. It certainly gave me a perspective of the Crusades I haven't though about, despite teaching the Crusades many times, assigning primary sources and a book written from the perspective of Muslim nobility.
And I enjoyed reading about the family dynamics of Melisande's family. I though Newman handled the complicated relationships, which so much intermarriage, of European and Latin nobility very well.
I do have a few qualms. Newman inserted her opinion many times in the story, using "I" often. It is not common among historians to write this way. She was very directly rooting for Melisende and other women in the story - in an effective way - but still very biased.
She was also guessing quite often, which is partly necessary based on the military chronicles we have left and Newman's social history focus, but the book was filled with "might" "probably" so much that it made me uncomfortable. Melisande's mother has very few references in the sources, but Newman speculated a lot on her motivation. It was effective to see her mother as a real person but it is still speculation.
And the book got a little bogged down once Melisande was queen. She was a powerful woman but the evidence is all grants and charters, which does not make it exiting nor does it show her power clearly to most readers.
I did like the book. It wasn't my favorite history book. But I would be a book I would assign undergraduates if I was teaching history again. The writing style is wonderful and very accessible. And Melisende and her three sisters were well represented. They were certainly in the narrative and Newman reinforces her point that other nobility at the time and regular people did not have an issue with female rulers, unlike later historians who tend to erase them from history or just used the term "Queen Mother" to downplay actual roles. Melisende was never a "Queen Mother", she was the Queen.
I actually wrote a paper on women in the crusades as an undergraduate for my senior history seminar "Pilgrimage and Crusades". And I remember reading about Melisende and including her in my story. She stuck in my mind then. I'm glad there is now a full scale study on her.
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
I think this is my favorite book by Sacks. I really enjoyed it and I feel like I learned a lot. It is weird to think that the power to perceive music is an separate part of the brain, often muted for better language acquisition. I'm very left-brain logic oriented person so it is no wonder I'm not super musical. I like music and enjoy it but I don't have absolute pitch nor can I tell what key is playing. When I took music lessons as a child I could not put the first note on the notation scale but I could do the rest at more or more proper intervals. I took this test online to test for music ear and I got about 75% or so. I wonder what music sounds to those with absolute pitch.
I feel I got more appreciation of music just by reading about various levels needed to appreciate music from melody to pitch to key to rhythm to tone etc what what happens when one loses any of those parts. Also musical hallucinations are interesting to read about. And just imagining music. I have aphantasia - I don't have any visual imagery when I think in my head. But I also don't taste anything if I think of food or hear anything if I think of sounds or voices. I don't remember my grandmother's voice anymore (when I watched a home video it was strange to hear it again). I can talk to myself inside my head or hum a melody but I don't hear actual sound. So it is again fun to read about how other people perceive the world and talk about it with Bear, who is the opposite of me in that regard (vivid imagery, can taste even smell, and can hear when he imagines it).
Reading this book and reading about synthesia and music, especially how common it is in kids, also made me not correct Tanya when she commented that the classical music that was playing in the car was "zelyenaya musyka" or "green music." Maybe she sees colors with music for now.
I think one thing that I got out of this book is how important and useful music therapy is. The first half of the book is more about problems in the brain that can tell us where in the brain music is but the second part is of people with trauma or dementia or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's for whom music is the only outlet to feel human again. Just the power of music even for people who can't form any memories. (It is a little comforting that if one loses ability to make memories, and past memories on top of it, two things would remain: memory of love and of music.)
Reading all those chapters made me think of my Grandma Tanya and what I would have done differently if I knew these things about music then. For the last six months of her life, my Grandmother was in a locked-in state. She had a second stroke (the first one was two years earlier, from which she did recover) and then couldn't move or talk or do anything or show awareness. I think she was aware inside because when my cousin Katya, her eldest beloved granddaughter, came to visit her from Minsk, she reacted with emotion according to my Mom and Katya, spend a good day with them, and died in her sleep that night. She held on to say goodbye. She had to live in a nursing home for medical reasons - my mother hated that but there was nothing she could do about that. My mother did spend almost every single day of those six months in the nursing home with my grandmother and on the days when she couldn't be there tried to get someone else to sit with her. She never wanted my grandmother to feel alone. I was away working in a summer camp that summer (I was 19) but before I left I did spend a whole day with my grandmother. I wish I did more like read to her longer. And now I wished I could have brought her music. But this was the time before iPods. I had a CD player but I don't think I had CDs of things she might have liked. And I was 19 and this was the person I loved most in the world and I don't think I was handling it well. Now I know to bring music or I hope music would be brought to me if I have to go through that.