(no subject)

[ralphmelton]

A question whose answer will feed into my D&D campaign:

During the Dark Ages, were people aware that they were in dark ages?

(I suppose that this assumes that the Dark Ages were really "dark"--is this an accurate assumption, at least in medieval Europe?)

Comments

[eub.livejournal.com]

I've heard many medievalists say with some vehemence that "Dark Ages" is a misnomer. I don't know exactly what this means, or what the characteristics of a dark age are anyway. So maybe I should ask, what kind of darkitude are you thinking about awareness of?

My butt bets ninety-nine percent of the population had no knowledge of history beyond local tales. It has been told that one characteristic of the medieval worldview was that it didn't have a sense of long-term change. Then the 99% shouldn't think of the current state of the world as current, just as the state of the world.

With respect to classical learning, I believe it was not just lost but forgotten, even among the educated. Classical books were preserved in monasteries, and might have been read, but there was no shared culture of classical scholarship.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I think I had heard similar things about Dark Ages being a misnomer, which is why I hedged.

The sort of dark ages that I'm thinking of for my campaign is "mighty civilization that has now been overrun by barbarians." Kind of like the transition from the Roman Empire to the Holy Roman Empire.

There would be an interesting perspective if most people didn't know much about the political setup of the world. It would mean that as well as discovering the topography of the world, the PCs were also discovering the history and political geography--which would fit in well with my plans.

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

I don't think people felt they were living in "the Dark Ages." They may have been perturbed at the shifts of power going on, but it probably just didn't matter to most folks.

This is, of course, a simple answer to a rich and complex question, but it is the best I'm coming up with on five hours sleep and over 12 hours on campus ;-)

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

My understanding of the period to which you refer is that, as has already been amply pointed out, "dark ages" is an inaccurate term...

Further, people's awareness of history and perspective in that time was far less than what we have today. People (the general population, of course) were far less concerned with the history, and far more concerned with that knowledge which served them in their daily lives (though there is certainly a present day argument that understanding history assists with approaching your daily life).

Finally, remember that the period is referred to the "dark ages" not only because of what came before, but also because of what came after. People living in a particular era cannot know what is to come. Today we have better tools to postulate and far more history to glean knowledge, but we still don't necessarily know what tomorrow (in the general sense) brings. People living in an "era" are most often unaware that they are living in an "era."

I hope this helps. I did study the period at some length and never came across any information which would tell me otherwise, but obviously there could be something I missed. There are often an enlightened few (I hope you'll pardon the expression since enlightened could also refer to a later period in history) who have a better sense of placement in history. However, when referring to the masses, I think you can be reasonably secure in the assumption that people did not know they were in the "dark ages."

I hope this helps!