Posts: 112 Location: Stockport, UK
Tue 09 Jun, 2009 6:58 pm
I really was resisting posting anything here, but…
The Professor’s argument seems to be that: ‘Real experts (professional historians) do not need the use of any typology - but the man in the coffee shop does.’ Why? Apparently because the true expert understands an individual sword so well that his comprehension transcends the need for classification.
Now it is not unreasonable to say that by studying a single sword in depth you may intuit more about it than any attempt at classification can convey. True maybe, but how many swords can an individual ‘know’ in this way, how can you translate this understanding of a given sword to swords in general - and place it in its true perspective? How can you begin to contextualise this knowledge? Furthermore, how can this understanding be conveyed to anybody else (professional historians or otherwise)?
For the sake of argument let us say that a sword has four main dimensions by which it may be understood; its aesthetical properties, its historical background, the way it is constructed and the way it performs as a weapon. Certainly an in-depth knowledge of a given sword may help to understand the individual circumstances that lead to the choices made in making that sword, but this must also translate into information that may be passed on to others or it is of little value to academics or anyone else.
Aside: I am not even sure what ‘understanding’ the professor claims to have here. Has he sufficient experience and had time to handle these (very precious) swords in order to gain a full insight as to how they perform as weapons? I would contend that to ‘fully’ understand a sword he must have done this - it would be interesting to know if this is the case.
Oakeshott seeks to place swords in historical perspective by providing a system by which we may begin to understand how swords develop over time, addressing both the way changes in fashion lead to trends in hilts and providing as a way to understand the underlying functionality of the sword as blade designs change to accommodate the evolution of armour and fighting styles. This does not mean that the system tells us everything about an individual sword, but allows for both the placing of a sword in its wider historical context as well as giving a foundation for any discussion about an individual sword in both form and, by extension, function. I fail to see how the ability to do this becomes, at any point, redundant to the professional historian - no matter how well he ‘knows’ any number of individual swords.
Oakeshott provides firm patterns in his types and sub-types against which individual swords may be compared, but this is still a framework that is flexible enough to allow for the idiosyncrasies of the individual sword-smith. His typology is inherently ‘soft’, it does not attempt to shoe-horn swords into categories based on strict metrics, but by matching them to a pattern, it allows comparison and consensus to be achieved in identifying the major (visual) characteristics of an individual sword within a set of parameters. By providing set of types for blades and the main components of the hilt, not only can the individual elements of a sword be classified, but we can group these individual features into families representative of commonly observed combinations of these components, which may then be more firmly located in history. Should some swords fall outside Oakeshott’s general classifications; ‘it’s not quite a type XVIIIb’, even here we have a reference pattern from which the deviation may be perceived.
As long as these patterns can be successfully applied to the significant majority of swords (and Oakeshott proves this can be done in both The Sword in the Age of Chivalry and Records of the Medieval Sword et al), this underpins the fact that a typology such as this represents the very essence of good, academic understanding.
As Oakeshott himself points out, his typology is not of itself a basis for dating a sword - indeed that two similar swords cannot automatically be attributed a similar date - but without a means of comparing appearance how do we substantiate this claim? In fact without the capacity to ‘type’ a sword how can we even establish ‘similarity’? We may look at works of art and say that a sword probably dates to a given time period because the pommel, cross and blade are like those we observe in a number of such datable images, but which is the more academically rigorous; to justify a conclusion by stating that in our ‘expert’ opinion (and good luck getting two experts to agree on that!) the swords under analysis ‘look similar’; or to say that they conform to a pattern codified by Oakeshott (or anyone else for that matter).
I know this ‘debate’ is based on second hand evidence and so I am quite willing to be wrong, but I detect a note of snobbery here. Oakeshott was an amateur and did not write like an academic (nothing wrong with that - I make a secondary living as a part time I.T. lecturer, so I feel I have some right to an opinion here - information is an accurate representation of data plus meaning. This holds true regardless of the form of this presentation, only its attribution matters). I feel the Prof’s ideas come across as a touch of professional sour grapes to be honest.
Neil.