Um, that doesn't change a single thing about what I said.
Why is 'Dark Ages' considered innacurate?
- Thread starter Ajidica
- Start date
If you are complaining about a label like "Dark" Ages or "Renaissance", what the hell makes "High" Middle Ages any better? Presumably one objects to the first two on the grounds that they are, in fact, Whig-history labels, implying some sort of progress interrupted. And "High" Middle Ages doesn't have that connotation somehow? It's incomprehensible.
This is only really true for male Christians in the non-peripheries of Europe. Female slaves (Ancilla) existed for quite some time after, mostly in domestic servant and textile roles - most great households had textile workshops run by ancilla. As well, non-Christians were still enslaved - there is a reason why we use the word slave, after all.
Ummm... I wasn't complaining... (And it seems to me you have no notion of where the term High Middle Ages comes from...)
They matter when they give a vastly wrong impression of that time period.
Um, the term is used to contrast with the post-Black Death Late Middle Ages and the pre-Crusades Early Middle Ages. The so-called High Middle Ages are viewed as a period of economic prosperity, high levels of population, the twelfth century renaissance (!), increased contact with non-European societies, and all sorts of wonderfully optimistic masturbation because the Western Europeans finally left the Dark Ages but haven't been raped by the Black Death yet. Was there some other reason for calling the period the "High" Middle Ages that I didn't cover? Stop beating around the bush already and tell me your secret reason for thinking that this particular Whig history label is all right while others are unsatisfactory.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Indeed. If someone were to observe that Shakepeare wrote in both the Robotic and Nuclear eras, in a dialect known as Caramelised English, and is seen as a major literary figure of the English Gravitational Inversion, we'd all be left very confused.
I don't think "this particular Whig history label is all right while others are unsatisfactory" nor have I posted anything to that effect.
turfcat
Prince
I believe the reason it was called the "Dark Ages" is because the standard of living was generally lower than in the previous generation. With the fall of the Roman Empire several small factions were formed which all went through a temporary lack of law and order and "Growing Pains" for lack of a better word.
All this is not to say the populous was intellectually inferior , it was just a natural transition.
Also many improvements implanted by the Roman Empire were no longer used.
All this followed by various plagues probably made the world look like a dark place to live in.
I think part of the reason is because historians put too much emphasis on the "Glorious Roman Empire", forgetting to mention the internal problems the Romans went through as well.
I'm sure life wasn't that great living during the time of Caligula or Nero either.
All this is not to say the populous was intellectually inferior , it was just a natural transition.
Also many improvements implanted by the Roman Empire were no longer used.
All this followed by various plagues probably made the world look like a dark place to live in.
I think part of the reason is because historians put too much emphasis on the "Glorious Roman Empire", forgetting to mention the internal problems the Romans went through as well.
I'm sure life wasn't that great living during the time of Caligula or Nero either.
Now, I truly despise these headbutting sessions you and I tend to get into over failures to communicate, so I'll drop this now. Postcount can be farmed in more congenial ways.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Except that it wasn't.
Yes, we've already covered the "Renaissance intellectual self-fellatio" concept repeatedly in this thread.
This:
was your comment. Perhaps then you should explain in detail what you mean by it, as I don't quite follow what those labels imply for you. (To me they are not 'Whig history' labels, simply because that's not where I learned them from - as might have been obvious from my reference to Hochmittelalter; in fact the term 'Whig history' has no meaning for me, as I did not study history along such lines.)
"High" Middle Ages smacks of Whig history just as much as "Renaissance" and "Dark Ages" do.
was your comment. Perhaps then you should explain in detail what you mean by it, as I don't quite follow what those labels imply for you. (To me they are not 'Whig history' labels, simply because that's not where I learned them from - as might have been obvious from my reference to Hochmittelalter; in fact the term 'Whig history' has no meaning for me, as I did not study history along such lines.)
'Whig history' is shorthand for a view of history centered on 'progression' and 'regression', whether social, technological, cultural, economic, or whatever.
It's not really a 'school', it's a pejorative term. High is clearly emphasizing the prosperity and advancement of the period in question as compared with the preceding one; Renaissance [rebirth] implies a relatively advanced period, from which a comparison is drawn both to a preceding prosperous one and an intermission of relative decay.
I don't quite follow how "high" implies prosperity and advancement. Maybe it means the Middle Ages were at their height, it was the climax of the era (which doesn't imply it was the most prosperous part of the era). When someone says "Middle Ages" people tend to think of the "High Middle Ages" because its in the middle and when most of the things we associate with the medieval period were at their height (knights, crusades, etc). I have always seen it more as that, though if you know a history of the term that might clear things up a bit.
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