Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Travel,Persona
From: hzhao@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 7 Apr 92 08:49:52 EST
Organization: Wesleyan University

   Cariadoc's comments on the various views of travel are well taken. In my
local group, due to a severe shortage of autos and TIME on weekends, unless
it's a big event (ie.War), we're not making over a 1-hour ride.


>               Views of Persona
> 
> "As indeed I did not - I have naught but praise for this approach, so
> long as it  doesn't entail withholding knowledge on such specious
> grounds as that advanced by the teacher mentioned in the message to
> which I was responding." (Fra Tadhg Liath)

> Since Fra Tadhg has finally expanded his original comment on my story
> about Schola into a recognizable argument, it seems a good
> opportunity to respond to it. For those who have by now forgotten,
> what I had posted was:
> 
> "On one occasion a lady was teaching a class in Anglo Saxon poetry.
> She mentioned the existence of one type of poem, then explained
> apologetically that she didn't know anything about that type, because
> it was always done in the hall after the women had left."
> 
> Tadhg's objection to this seems to be that the result of the
> teacher's deliberately staying in persona was to keep the students
> from learning what she could otherwise have taught them. I think
> there are two problems with this argument.
> 
> 1. You cannot teach everything known about every type of Anglo-Saxon
> poetry in a one hour class. If she had spent ten minutes explaining
> that particular sort of poetry, she would probably have had to leave
> out something else. 

        Not necessarily so. In any event, a proper lesson plan would make
allowances for such things as well as discussion time on what the attendees
wished to know more about. To mention something potentially of great interest
and then omit it is quite....irksome. Nothing prevents a teacher from saying
that "it's only read after the ladies have left, but I'm told it goes something
like this..."

> 
> 2. By saying what she did, she taught the students a different and
> valuable lesson--that a culture looks different from inside than from
> outside. Someone who learned about wars by playing board games would
> have a badly distorted picture of what they were really like, because
> he would see everything from above, rather than from the much more
> limited and detailed perspective of someone actually in the battle.
> Similarly, someone who learns about Anglo-Saxon poetry from a modern
> book is likely not to realize that it looked very different from
> inside--in part for the reason the lady was pointing out.
> 

      See above. I personally know much about things I have not experienced
first hand. It seems not unreasonable to assume a person from any time could do
likewise with a subject near-at-hand and sufficient interest.


     As to what is appropriate to a persona, I believe it was pointed out
earlier that slop between eras was probably not uncommon. To live in 1410
England did not mean not believing things a 12th c.Englishman might, nor
practicing a trade the way your grandfather did. Everything was not up to date
in Kansas City, particularly in the mind. Some areas, too, were more
'cosmopolitan' than others, and could expect to have wider knowledge of places
and customs. 

       There is merit in the notion of not letting the persona construct get in
the way of the person behind it. It is often mentioned that the SCA is "real",
as opposed to made-up stories. Leaving beside certain flaws, we must ask where
the reality is. Mr. X is an excellent fighter. The persona, Duke X, is a mask
placed over the real person, who takes his existence from the underlying
reality. The mask is the servant of the reality, not the other way around. Or
else we come around again to mere story-telling.

Newsgroups: rec.org.sca