On September 5th 2016, I attended my 13th Renaissance Festival and 9th Ohio Renaissance Festival. The Ohio Renaissance Festival is located in Waynesville, Ohio and this year, it ran from September 3rd to October 23rd. Since my friends and I dress up, we usually wait until October when the weather has cooled to attend. This…
On the Work of Petronius by Merritt Ver Steeg
Petronius Arbiter was a Roman who lived during the reign of Nero, and—according to most historians—the author of The Satyricon. We don’t know much about Petronius’life, but according to Tacitus,“His days he passed in sleep, and his nights in the business and pleasures of life. . . Indolence had raised him to fame, as energy…
A Quick Run-Through of More Sites: The Defensive and Natural Landscape of Ireland by Colin McGarry
Late last week, I moved into a new apartment closer to the city centre, which has had Internet problems, making getting onto the blog a little more difficult to anticipate. However, now that things seem to have cleared up, I think I’ll be able to post a bit more about my adventures in Ireland (although…
Flying In and Forts in Caherdaniel by Colin McGarry
Last week I flew into Cork, where I’ll be spending the semester studying at UCC. Classes start up tomorrow, so naturally I decided to spend the past week wandering around the city to get familiar and go visit some ancient ruins 140 kilometers away in Co. Kerry, near the small town of Caherdaniel. Staigue Stone…
Who Runs the World? Shakespeare’s Girls by Hannah Simpson
“It’s always fun to talk about Shakespeare,” quipped Caroline Bicks at the start of her lecture, “Incited Minds, Rethinking Shakespeare’s Girls.” I couldn’t agree more. Much like the title of her lecture indicates, Bicks’ talk centered on stereotypes that surround adolescent girls and how the strong-Willed (pun intended) females of Shakespeare’s plays defy them. After…
LaRP Or MARRCA? by Josephine DiNovo
Have you ever seen people on the grassy hill in front of Hayes wielding swords or quarterstaffs? Do you stop to snicker at the “LARPers” whenever you spy them? Have you ever really thought about what this group does? This group—often mistaken for role-players unafraid of the public—is MARRCA. MARRCA stands for Medieval and Renaissance…
What Have the Vikings Ever Done For Us? Organized Warfare in Goidelic Ireland By Colin McGarry
Many scholars believe that during the Viking Age the Scandinavian raiders and settlers brought into Ireland a new style of warfare, introducing concepts like total war and formation fighting into Ireland, which previously fought in small raids as its form of waging war. However, this theory disregards the large amount of evidence that the Goidels…
Frankly, My Dear: A history of the Franks Casket By Elizabeth House
In 1867, Augustus Wollaston Franks donated a carved whalebone box to the British Museum. Called the Franks Casket, the box dates from the Northumbrian Renaissance— between 690 and 750 AD—and was probably created in a monastic setting, before it wound up in a shrine and then in a family home in Auzon, France, where it…
Gargoyles, Stained Glass, and Travel Learning by Sarah Thomas
Being a part of Dr. Arnold’s Castles and Cathedrals Travel-Learning Course has been one of my favorite experiences as an OWU student. It allowed me to truly experience the material that I have spent the past three years learning. To copy from another program, I got to put “theory into practice.” One of the things I…
The Importance of Riddling By Patricia DeMarco
Tucked away in the Rare Book archives on the second floor of Beeghly Library is a facsimile of a rare, handwritten manuscript over 1,000 years old known as the Exeter Book. The original manuscript, dating from the late tenth century and owned by the Exeter Cathedral Library, holds the greatest treasures of English literature including…