Part I: Meditations and Memorials

This, the first segment of the issue, contains the most disparate collection of material. Two of the contributors, Carol Harvey and Gina Heinbockel-Bolik, responded to the invitation to write about a senior scholar influential in the individual decision to become a medievalist. Stephen Steele also looks at a well-known medievalist, with a fascinating glimpse at the way in which Gustave Cohen, émigré medievalist in America during the Second World War, appeared in Canada, fostering medieval drama in person and over the radio. Cohen’s willingness to bring the study of medieval theatre to the audience of Radio-Canada responds preemptively to John Osborne's thoughtful consideration of the record of medieval studies in Canada. Cohen foresaw Osborne’s plea that we all involve the general public in the study of our subject with a workshop or set of lectures, at the very least, each year. Similarly, Andrew Taylor responds to Marc Renaud's public musing that humanities scholars need to find the relevance of their work, and embrace it in terms of its utility to society, and also to get with the program as far as new technology is concerned. Taylor proposes firstly that we move beyond our immediate anguished lament that relevance cannot be quanitified and secondly that the relationship between medieval studies and the amelioration of society needs to be measured delicately and with subtlety. He suggests that we turn to our own strengths, and reconsider, for example, why the elegant and well-written A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman remains one of the few medieval monographs read as a matter of course by members of the general public.