Danièle Cybulskie, The Five-Minute Medievalist. Printed by author, 2016.
Reviewed by KellyAnn Fitzpatrick
(kellyann@gatech.edu)
In The
Five-Minute Medievalist, Danièle Cybulskie offers us fifteen witty and
informative short essays that aim to inspire readers to “keep learning more
about the spectacular world of the Middle Ages” (ii). These fifteen essays have
been curated from articles Cybulskie wrote from 2008-2016 (initially for her personal
blog and later for Medievalists.net) under the moniker “The Five-Minute Medievalist.”
Having earned her MA in English with a
focus on medieval literature from the University of Toronto, Cybulskie has the
credentials to back up the “medievalist” part of her pen name. However, as her
stated professional mission is to “share [her] love for the Middle Ages with
modern people by making history fun and accessible, five minutes at a time” (75),
it is clear that Cybulskie’s target readership is a non-specialist audience
rather than a field of academic medievalists. Cybulskie therefore does not
dedicate space to defining “medieval” or “Middle Ages,” nor does she posit her
book as an exercise in medievalism. Yet, the medievalism inherent in a
medievalist translating medieval studies for the bar trivia/Twitter generation
is captured most succinctly by the book’s cover art wherein a medieval lady dons
requisite period attire and headdress while holding a modern coffee mug and
reading a mobile phone. Overall this translation itself succeeds and proves a
fun and informative read.
The first essay, “Ironing Out the Myth of
the Flat Earth,” serves as one of the book’s two “myth-busting” pieces.
Addressing the modern misconception that the general European populace thought
the earth was flat prior to Christopher Columbus “discovering” North America, Cybulskie
does an excellent job citing medieval examples that acknowledge the earth as
spherical. Furthermore, she locates the strongest contributor to the flat earth
myth in Washington Irving’s 1828 The Life
and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. While a later essay on “Medieval
Myth-Busting at the Movies” similarly both debunks and provides origins for
fallacies about medieval culture in film, the flat earth myth stands out in
that it highlights how misconceptions about the Middle Ages can make their way
into the elementary school classroom (where most readers likely first
encountered said myth) just as easily as they make their way into the movie
theater.
The premise of “myth-busting,” however,
presumes a certain accessibility of a “real” Middle Ages that medievalists can
use to counter such myths. In this respect, the straightforward reporting of
the medieval “as it really was” seems too authoritarian for a post-post-structuralist
landscape. In practice, though, the impulse to question received notions of the
Middle Ages—the “myth-busting” part of the essays—comes across more strongly
than does any insistence on a singular alternative truth, and Cybulskie does
well in documenting her sources so that an inquisitive reader (academic or
otherwise) can follow her chains of evidence and make informed decisions on
their validity.
Cybulskie’s stated goal to “share her
love of the Middle Ages” comes through most clearly in four essays that
reconstruct the components of everyday experience from a medieval perspective.
Essays on “Medieval Parenting Advice” and “Medieval Sex Lives: Five Frisky
Facts” use examples from medieval texts to locate common human experiences
within a medieval context. “How to Tell if Your 12th-Century Lover
is Just Not That into You” wittily recasts The
Art of Courtly Love as a dating advice column in the mode of a modern-day Cosmopolitan article. The essay on “The
Tasty Medieval Pasty,” however, provides the clearest pathway for adapting
medieval practices to the modern day, as Cybulskie walks the reader through the
process of following a medieval recipe that has been modified both for contemporary
culinary tools (measuring cups, temperature-controlled ovens) and for 21st-century
dietary restrictions (a pasty crust that is dairy-free).
The formal academic training in
Cybulskie’s background is most evident in three essays concerned with medieval literary sources. “The
Medieval Sleeping Beauty” traces the well-known and oft-adapted fairy tale to
the 14th-century Perceforest,
an Arthurian romance that spins the tale in darker terms more akin to
Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone than
to anything from Walt Disney or the Brothers Grimm. “Meet the Real Ulrich von
Liechtenstien” cleverly pieces together the life of a 13th-century
historical figure best known to 21st-century readers through his
fictionalized portrayal (alongside that of Geoffrey Chaucer) in the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale. Cybulskie even treats the
reader to a taste of philology, as she demonstrates how changes in the English
language over the centuries resulted not only in vowel shifts and letter
changes, but also in “The Quirky Transformation of Five Everyday Words.” The
choice of words examined here, including “minion” and “gossip,” make a strong
case for even the most non-academic reader to start perusing the Oxford English
Dictionary for interesting English etymologies.
Of the remaining six essays, both “Five
Fun Facts About Medieval Archery” and “Five Surprising Rules for Medieval
Monks” provide uncommonly known (even to a medievalist) details about concepts
popularly associated with the Middle Ages. For the former this includes the
observation that “An increase in archery meant an increase in archery-related
crime;” for the latter, Cybulskie crystalizes selections from The Rule of Saint Benedict into pithy
assertions such as “Monastic crafts were great for bargain hunters.” Also
included are essay-lists of well-known historical figures (“Five Great Ladies
Who Refused to Be Quiet,” “Five (In)Famous Break-Ups,” and “Why We’re Still
Fascinated by the Templars”), as well as a meditation on the qualities that are
likely to turn one into a future well-known historical figure (“Five Ways to
Get Noticed by Historians”). The last of these briefly touches on how and why
the information that we use to access the medieval has managed to find its way to
us across the centuries, perceptively summarizing that present-day readers have
a far better chance of being remembered in part due to the “large digital
footprints” we leave.
In keeping with the idea of digital
footprints, it is worth noting that as of October 2016 Cybulskie has authored
over 120 articles as “The Five-Minute Medievelist” at Medievalists.net. In book form, then, The Five-Minute Medievalist contains less than ten percent of
Cybulskie’s short essays. Fortunately, the fifteen essays curated here are a
solid and varied representation of Cybulskie’s larger body work, although the
order in which they are presented—which is not the order in which I review them
above—does not follow any discernable thematic, historical, or publication-based
order. Otherwise the transition to book form is well done, with footnotes in
the print version of the book replacing hyperlinks in the original articles. (The
hyperlinks are maintained in the electronic edition of the book.) Pointedly,
the choice to publish in book form has undoubtedly widened Cybulskie’s
readership and publication profile, as books tend to be reviewed more often
than online articles. In book form Cybulskie’s writing also makes a more
portable gift for a history buff or trivia fanatic, and a more easily
distributed tool for recruiting the medievalists of the future.
KellyAnn Fitzpatrick
The Georgia Institute of Technology
