My other, main, reason for being a medievalist is marginalia: that is, in illuminated manuscripts and in a world around them that’s a medieval manuscript writ large, a world of multi-media multi-dimensional storytelling that extends to associate all things (and beings) marginal and marginalised.
This world is still very much around you in Belgium, where I grew up; your whole environment is Medieval … and older and deeper, and Surrealist and bande dessinée … and you’re never too sure where one ends and the next begins, their borders blur. Where you are is layered, sometimes it’s been concreted over, it makes you stumble over broken pavement, there’s glimmers of other otherworlds haunting the gaps. In addition, you see more when you’re a child, and yet more because you’re short-sighted; already used to being in two worlds at once because you see something else just beyond the frame of your glasses, removing your glasses and looking closely lets you access a third world.
Seeing this way is a curse, the life sentence of high myopia; and a blessing, the lucky conjunction of the ideal elements at the perfect stage of early development. It didn’t stop there; it continued in training for appreciating where I was then, for later work in close reading and medieval literary studies and multilingualism, and for being in other places. Seeing them as layered worlds; always looking outside the frame, around the corner, into the crack in the surface; seeking the margins.
Be warned: pre-modern conditioning is a way of life and it’s for life. It’s serious, tough, slow, hard, dirty work; requires dedication and discipline; and is only for the very special.
Kidding aside … the pre-modern condition can be taught and learned. It’s for anyone anywhere. It’s free and fun. It’s fast: no, seriously, it doesn’t need several years’ devoted doctoral work. It is dangerous and it does require daily practice, though.
The first step in your pre-modern conditioning journey, and your obligatory regular daily exercise in applied medievalism, is to be curious. Sounds simple? It should be easy but it might be the most difficult thing that you’ve done in a long time, since you were a very small child, depending on how much your education and training have made you uncurious and how much unlearning you’ll have to do. Being curious might mean relearning curiosity, rediscovering whimsy, regaining delight, and reconnecting with your sense of wonder; a sense like the five (or six) (or seven) others, in common to all humans and many other sentient creatures.
This first step probably looks something like opening your eyes, opening a third eye, opening your mind, listening, focus, unfocus, mindfulness, mind-wandering, etc.
Why would you want to do this? What will you gain? What’s the potential return on your investment? What are the learning objectives and outcomes? How will you benefit? Well, if you’d asked me ten years ago, I’d have answered: this thing has instrinsic value. It is worth knowing in its own right, it is an end in and of itself. The same answer to any questions about learning anything. The same answer that university faculty in the arts and sciences have been giving, over the last century, when asked what the point is of a university undergraduate education (in these faculties, that is, the literate intelligent humanities and other areas of sapience). Ten years later in 2026 and GenAI times, I would add: this might be the most vital thing that you do right now to stay human, to cognise and meta-cognise, to feel intelligent and alive, to feel, and to be.
Here’s a sample practice exercise:
Look! A squirrel!
Here’s an example of how this different kind of seeing — in local terms here at UBC, a “way of knowing” — translates to looking at medieval manuscripts, to close reading in slow motion while keeping an eye on what’s happening in those marginal areas near the edges and out of the corner of your eye.
Juliet O’Brien 