Snarking History - An Introduction

One of my happiest blog discoveries over the past year has been stumbling across the "Snark Squad". The raison d'etre of this blog is to provide humorously 'snarky' recap-reviews of a variety of TV shows and books. I first came to them through their painfully-funny-do-not-read-on-public-transport recaps of Fifty Shades of Grey. I thanked my lucky stars at discovering them, because it meant that I could find out what all the fuss was about without having to actually read the books. And, if their recaps are anything to go by, I had a lucky escape.

Their FSoG 'snarks' are not the friendliest review EL James has ever received, but something I love about their other recaps is that, by and large, they come from a place of love - but a place of love that recognises that, for all his awesomeness, writers such as Joss Wheedon can sometimes be just a little bit ridiculous (they do Buffy and Angel recaps as a regular feature). Such an approach is the inspiration for the series of posts that I anticipate writing over time on this blog, in between other updates. I intend to 'snark' history.

As an aspirant scholar, for the vast majority of the time I take history very seriously indeed. To me - though I am sure it is to others - the question of what people in the early modern period thought about mountains (my thesis topic) is not a trivial one. I think that understanding the past in general is a laudable and important goal, and that it is a great honour to have been given, as I have, the time and freedom to delve into the richness of past human experience. History, to me, is far more than the dramatic voiceovers of Simon Schama or the silly clothes of The Tudors. But. But. Sometimes the things that people in the past did, said, or thought, can seem just a little ridiculous to the modern eye. Sometimes it can be very difficult to resist the urge to burst out laughing in the rare books room of the Cambridge University Library. So these posts are to be an outlet, for sharing these amusing and bemusing discoveries with you all.

Of course, it is the weird stuff that can make history really interesting, and ideas that seem laughable to the modern mind can reveal, once scrutinised, a host of beliefs and understandings of the world that tell us a great deal about how different the human experience once was. So, I also hope to use my 'snark' posts not just to recount the apparently wacky things that I come across, but also to start to unravel them, and perhaps understand them a bit.

Finally, just to get you intrigued for the first 'snarking history' post - the reason I have been spurred to start this series is because, in a meeting with my supervisor this morning about the things I had discovered recently, I uttered both the term "mountain-like scrotum" and the Latin phrase, "penis terrae", i.e., the 'penis of the Earth'. And if that sort of thing doesn't require some gentle snarking, I just don't know what does.