Introduction
Darren’s Strange Histories is as much about historical rift as the incongruity of the past. In this acclaimed volume, the author collects an assortment of tales and bizarre incidents to illuminate the culture exhibited in Europe during the medieval and early modern era. What seems unpalatable to the present-day world was practiced with ease and almost tolerable smugness during the dark era. Albeit the cropping civilization, the society was still mired by crude beliefs and tethered by barbaric tendencies and practices. In this master piece the reader is continually reminded of the contemporary world which has aped a lot from history, imbued with ridiculous, fantastical, absurd events. Strange Histories pursues astonishing occurrences which happened in North American and European history, yet in their illogicality they made sense to those who lived in that age and time.
Main body
From macabre tales about ghosts, spanning to codradicting accounts of witches and ware wolves the volume is spawned making intense use of case studies for the period spanning Middle Ages to early modern period. The author takes the reader to provide enthralling wisdom into the world view of a mislaid age. The author elaborately expresses how the absurdity fitted well with “common sense” during that era, hence deducing an elaborate elucidation of the entrancing and eventually normal phenomena. Darren persuades the reader to understand why levelheaded educated people behaved in out rightly nonsensical way to the contemporary man. In his volume the absurdity finds an acceptance in the confines of the modern society.
Darren, like any other man, is drawn by the mysteries of the events which took place in the past to try and decipher what went on in the minds of people who distorted normal way of living to embrace strange behaviors and trends. With keen details the author tries to draw an evaluation as he parallels the past circumstances with the current world. A discussion crops up as the author focuses on the religious fundamentalism observed in the twentieth century in relation to the views exerted by the modern psychologist as they endeavor to explain human behavior.
The author customizes his work to orient the lay reader to his intrinsically complex ideologies so that he can prepare them for the bizarre content which explores strange phenomena observed in the orient past. In the fourth chapter where he touches on The Roaming Dead the author provides a fleeting rundown on how different attitudes were molded by the society so that people embraced the supernatural hard to comprehend world of ghosts and the living dead. In order to have a real explanation for the essence of life it was believed that the dead took an invisible form of ghost and pre existed in another different world elevated above the living. Hence the living people believed that the dead were more powerful than them and could either bring bad or good omen depending on whether they were pleased or displeased by the actions and activities of the living people. (Oldridge 14)So whether living or dead, once born into the society an individual existed for all the time either as living and visible or dead and invisible.
Oldridge’s work analyzes the major beliefs held in the pre modern era; he also takes a keen analysis of the role played by witches, zombies, angels and werewolves in the society. The writer explains how animals got punished for human crimes and as well how people opted to lose their lives rather than their faith owing to their ardent resolve to stand for what they thought was the truth. Oldridge gives only emphasis into the ancient past without necessarily illuminating into the modern history. His monograph is spawned with a keen attention given to the ancient past. He broaches the subject with such perspicacity to the point that he manages to woe the modern reader into understanding the ancient past and accepting the way people conducted themselves in the medieval times. The author gives a lot of prominence to the psychological nature of the past history making his work easy to understand.
The key issues which dominate Oldrige’s volume are linked to the supernatural world which affected the living in diverse ways. The supernatural world had links to both good luck and bad omen depending on the way people conducted them. Matters concerning the dirty subdued world of witchcraft are savored in adroit detail in the chapter Understanding Witchcraft. The writer does not view witchcraft under the subjective world view which dispels witchcraft as utter veil rather he sees it as a way of the supernatural to compensate humanity for atrocities committed. Suffering Saints broadens the overview of the constantly changing attitudes towards suffering so that suffering is embraced when an individual has to fight for a worthy cause. Suffering here in the present world clearly links the presents life, the suffering here on other paves a way for a better after life.
There is a deliberate assertion by the author that understanding the strange histories paves a way for the modern reader to have a deeper understanding of the way people conducted themselves in the past in relation to the present. The apparently irrational beliefs, in the confines of the modern man’s mind, make sense when placed in their intellectual and cultural context (Oldridge 57) unless a reader is able to be taken back in time and have a feel of the past world and its beliefs and attitudes its extremely hard for him to decipher why people acted and behaved in the way they did in the past. The modern reader’s credulity is challenged to consider whether their own presumption and attitude have more compact foundations as compared to the attitudes drawn from the past era.
Darren makes the contemporary reader understand that in the ancient past, people’s thinking and acting was intensely influenced by their beliefs. Religion played a massive role in persuading the way people related with others and the supernatural world. In the pre-modern Europe both the Bible and religion offered the final answers to the people existing during that time. In the same manner the modern society relies on education, religion and science to solve their questions, religious beliefs held the key to all mysteries during the ancient times. As the author expresses it, his stories appear weird to the modern reader because “The full-blooded and coherent religion of the pre-modern age has disappeared” (oldridge 19). The past religion has withered away with modernity hence the same beliefs that were observed by the past generations has no room in the modern world. In the past religion God was actively involved in peoples’ lives, He interacted with them and participated in all their tribulations and this caused the past generations to have intense faith in the supernatural as compared to the modern world.
Analysis of actions conducted in the past era like the acts committed by heresy hunters who cleansed the society by killing the heresy victims. The ideology behind their action was that the victims were not fit to exist and that they brought bad omen to the society. It was believed that heresy could be eliminated by fire. Hence the victims had to be purged by fire so that the bane could be eliminated. When the victims were razed their possessions were taken up by the living, hence one would be impelled to think that the major motive behind the killing was possession of wealth and material, the author suggests that it would be exceedingly negative to see this as the primary cause of clerical persecution (Oldridge 98). Other bizarre cases involved judges who tried animals for such crimes as homicide and any violent crime, these judges were not merely looking for excuses to kill the animals but rather following the divine law of order which defined animals as creatures intended to benefit man kind not to hurt him. Therefore, judging animals for crime was justified in their context because any animal which harmed mankind flouted the established law.
Darren Oldridge’s strange histories is an absorbing volume in it all the peculiarities of the ancient past are brought to light yet in an eccentric way the reader finds himself hoodwinked into believing the way of life observed in Medieval and the Renaissance period. The intensity with which the author puts his tales forth, especially in the matters concerning God and the supernatural compels the reader into understanding the way normal people involved in uncouth occult and practices. What seems absurd in the eyes of the modern world finds a meaning after understanding the context within which it was performed.
Oldridge focuses on the reasoning and the logic behind the beliefs held in the historical times, in a way he challenges the modern reader to assuage their hard judgment on the people who lived in the past era. The modern society, could broach the issues and practices exercised in the past with abhorrence due to nominal exposure to their structured thinking. Yet after understanding their belief systems and their ardent observation of superstition one would almost have a peak at the reason behind their ‘warped’ up practices and actions.
Conclusion
The author suggests to the modern reader to have a keen scrutiny of the modern morals, behaviors and even values exercised in the society because he is so convinced that they are clearly an illumination of the past. As a matter of fact they have so much in common with the Medieval and Resistance epoch. Humanity has been programmed by the encoded belief systems to behave and act in certain ways depending on what is socially acceptable or not. This gives the author an edge to challenge the cruel dismissal that the modern world accords the past generation terming their actions and attitudes as primitive and absurd. The point he emphatically wants to pass on is that beliefs shape actions and attitudes, we are products of what we believe in. In order to get rid of any strange tendencies we exercise in the modern world we must understand the past strange behaviors and learn from them how to deal with our oddity.
Works Cited
Oldridge, Darren. “Strange Histories. The trial of the pig, the walking dead, and other matters of fact from the medieval and Renaissance worlds”, Rutledge, Abingdon and New York, 2005.