Commonplace Curriculum

Commonplace, Ideas

Here’s a fun writing game to unlock new fields of interest and create a study course that can help fill your commonplace book.

Write a numbered list of 10 descriptive words (adjectives, adverbs, etc.) that you love or find evocative.
Write a numbered list of 10 subjects, disciplines or classes that interest you, that you’d like to know more about, or that you’re attending at school or university.
Roll a d10 for your subject list.
1. Subdivide your chosen subject into 4. These can be further divisions of the subject, rubrics, particular schools or branches of the discipline, or any other subcategory.
If you like, repeat #3 for more combinatory power.
Roll a d10 for your descriptive word list.
Combine the results into a “super subject”, thesis or field.
1. Imaginary fields are also great fun and can even lead to very “real” insights.
(Optional) Use the “study ideas” list below to explore your new field.

☞ You can also create a list of all the subdivisions for all the 10 subjects from #2. However, if you plan to roll two d20s to determine the result, remember you’ll need to start your numbering from 2 (because you can’t roll a 1 with two dice), and that you’ll need to remove one item.

Where my studies led…

In the example, I rolled:

Universal
Shakespearean language
Medieval monasteries

This led me to follow several fascinating threads of inquiry, which, even if they don’t tie all the elements together in a cohesive way, nevertheless discovered to me many details that I didn’t know before…

Shakespeare’s only known London property was on the site of a former Dominican friary – Blackfriars.
1. A plan for the property was discovered recently, and I particularly love that the scholar who found it was researching another subject — discoveries so rarely follow a linear trajectory!
2. Shakespeare’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall Nash Barnard, sold the house in 1665, just before it was destroyed by the Great Fire.
Friars were itinerant, unlike monks who were stationary and lived within the confines of a monastery. This distinction was reflected in their relative church designs.
The Hall of the London Blackfriars was sometimes used to convene parliament (apparently giving it the name, the ‘Blacke Parliament’), and was chosen by Henry VIII for the trial regarding his divorce from Katherine of Aragon. This same Hall was later turned into the Blackfriars Theatre where the King’s Men performed:
“In that chamber, beginning on June 18, the King and Queen and Cardinals staged the drama that was to be reenacted by Shakespeare’s fellows eighty-four years later in the very hall in which it had historically taken place.” (Smith, 1964)
I also learnt that there was a Dominican friary in Shrewsbury, located between the Castle and the English Bridge. The mendicant orders came about far later than the established monastic orders, which is why they were often pinched for space when building their churches.
I think Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory is a good source to unravel the “language + monastery” thread. See also Give Up the Ghost.
As far as the “universal” is concerned:
1. There are some links in Shakespeare’s sources that trace back to (or through) translations. For example, the novellas of Matteo Bandello (written in Italian), furnished material for Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night. Bandello was a Dominican (i.e. “black”) friar.
2. My dictionary explains the etymology of “universe” as: “late Middle English: from Old French univers or Latin universum, neuter of universus ‘combined into one, whole’, from uni- ‘one’+ versus ‘turned’ (past participle of vertere).”
  1. I also synchronously noted down another “definition” earlier in the day, from the work of George W. Carey: “the UNIverse is what the word implies; i.e., one verse”.
  2. I think these suggest a theme about the unifying nature of Shakespeare’s work.
3. There are quite a few instances of the word “universal” in Shakespeare’s plays, and Shakespeare’s Words lists “endless” alongside “general” as its meaning.
  1. There’s also a lovely malapropism from Juliet’s nurse: “the versal world”.
4. The word “universal” also suggests “university”, which of course has strong links to monastic culture.

Sources:

☞ If you don’t find any information about your new subject,

take the general subject (from list #2) rather than the specific one;
roll again for one or more lists;
allow the subject to transform and follow the threads that catch your attention;
or make something up!

Commonplace Study Ideas

Roll a d12 to determine. Pick up the printable in the Coterie.

Define or delimit – Write a real or imaginary description of your field.
Collect material – Collect objects, images, names, specimens, books, events, etc.
Find a fragment – Take one particularly beautiful, strange or surprising excerpt about the subject & copy it out.
Trace it back – Discover the origins of your subject and how it evolved into its present form.
Map a  constellation – Find five things unexpectedly connected to your subject and map them.
Compare – Explore people, periods, cultures or schools of thought that approached your subject differently.
Follow a source – Look up a source you find in a bibliography.
Copy a master – Take an important figure in your field and follow their lead.
Invent a study persona – For example: a character in your favourite fictional world, a superhero, an immortal, a royal tutor…
Use a framework – Examine the subject through a literary, linguistic, philosophical or psychological framework.
Design a one-page study guide – List key texts, people, subjects, and lines of inquiry.
Watch for  synchronicities – Keep a log of synchronous information that is presented to you.