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A Tiny Typo May Explain Centuries-Old Mystery Bout Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: A Tiny Typo May Explain Centuries-Old Mystery Bout Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'

#3

Post by vintermann »

> “Here we have a late-12th-century sermon deploying a meme from the hit romantic story of the day,” Seb Falk, a historian at the University of Cambridge, says in a statement. “This is very early evidence of a preacher weaving pop culture into a sermon to keep his audience hooked.”

One of the oldest pieces of writing I have from my ancestors is a dedication in a family bible, to my great-grandfather from his parents. It quotes a popular hymn. But when I looked it up, that was a quite recently written text at the time they quoted it, and it wasn't technically even a hymn, but a song from a play (Christian Richardt's version of the fairy tale sleeping beauty). Looks at first glance like they're quoting an old hymn, but it's more like me quoting a Disney film from 20 years ago.

Re: A Tiny Typo May Explain Centuries-Old Mystery Bout Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'

#6

Post by mcphage »

vintermann wrote: post #3

> “Here we have a late-12th-century sermon deploying a meme from the hit romantic story of the day,” Seb Falk, a historian at the University of Cambridge, says in a statement. “This is very early evidence of a preacher weaving pop culture into a sermon to keep his audience hooked.” One of the oldest pieces of writing I have from my ancestors is a dedication in a family bible, to my great-grandfather from his parents.…

I’m sure that there’s a ton of things out there that look like biblical references but are actually just quoting Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction :-)

Re: A Tiny Typo May Explain Centuries-Old Mystery Bout Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'

#7

Post by perihelions »

dcminter wrote: post #4

The paper is very approachable too: https://academic.oup.com/res/article/76/326/339/8198901 Includes mention of M.R.James whom I know mostly as an author of ghost stories!

So, that scribble that looks approximately like "ẏlueſ" is interpreted, variously as "ylves" which is identified as elves; or as a clumsy rendering of "ƿlues" which uses an archaic character (that's not a "p") that corresponds to something like "wlues" or "wlves" (wolves). (??)
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