After the revolutions

It seems to me that when I was a youth, historians tended to stress discontinuity and change. There were 'revolutions' (political, economic, technological, social, cultural) and 'renaissances' all over the space time continuum. Ironically that approach appears to have been overthrown. It seems that most of the interesting stuff I read nowadays stresses the essential continuity of human affairs over 'la longue durée'.

Whether Braudel's 'we're here because we're here because we're here because we're here' history of France, Ackroyd's works on London and the English Imagination or Fischer's magnum opus on the essential invariability of regional culture in the United States, all stress deep underlying patterns and the absence or superficiality of apparent change.

Seamus Heaney translates Beowulf because English speaking poets always have translated. Paris is where it is because it always has been there. Folks in Kentucky fry their food and are prone to violence because people on the Scottish border were and so on. Ou sont les revolutions d'antan?

crossposted to askahistorian

Everything I really needed to know about naps I learnt from a bengal

The combination of the change in the weather and getting up at silly hours to watch rugby is making me incredibly sleepy much of the time. Fortunately, the bengals have introduced me to the art of the nap. Find warm place, preferably equipped with other warm and furry human or feline, and snooze. Its that simple. I recommend it highly.