Alphabet Soup

For the final year of my undergraduate degree in Classical, Medieval, Renaissance Studies I am working on a thesis project which is a required course for honours students of this degree. My topic of interest is the lives and ongoings of English country-folk in the Middle Ages as they happened in established manor communities which scholars primarily examine via records that we would recognize as minutes called manor court rolls. These records provide by no means a colourful, detailed view into the lives of medieval peasants- the "unwashed masses", the nebulous et cetera, the 90% comprising the rest of England's medieval population after the upper classes of nobility and royalty- but they have left traceable hints and narrow rabbit-trails for us to follow.

Right now I am working on transcribing some of these documents; court rolls from Wakefield manor in fourteenth-century Yorkshire. I have discovered that trying to read the dirty, smudged, faded medieval latin ink-scrawls of English chancery-hand written by a man who lived in 1346 is comparable to self-flagellation of the brain. I have also discovered that I LOVE IT. 

One of the most pestilential qualities of manor court rolls is that many of the legal terms deployed are obsolete, and therefore demand glossary consultation. They are highly abbreviated, which therefore demands a more specialized knowledge of standardized chancery hand abbreviations. Familiarity with the hand of the scribe is also an issue which involves muffled cursing and swelling incredulity at how the *$%&! this smudge of ink could possible say 'ideo'... 

It occurred to me that these abbreviations, which are a language to be learned in and of themselves, are not unlike our modern acronyms that we use when we are texting or sending quick emails. Granted these are highly informal and I would say their usage serves the ignoble purpose of bastardizing the English language and the gradual deterioration of grammatical understanding in our youth...but I digress....  I remember when I was in high school, before every child over the age of six had a cell phone such as it seems nowadays, MSN messenger was all the rage. Brb was "be right back" (after I make myself some macaroni and cheese or grab a spoon and the jar of nutella). G2g was "got to go" (because my parents told me to get off the computer UGH they just don't understand me and treat me like such a child *rolls eyes dramatically*). Among others were lol, lmfao, ttyl, rofl and our grandparents would look at us and express the same confusion I express when trying to confirm whether "tra. sa." really means traxit sanguinem. 

A few weeks ago, I just had one of these moments with my Grandma Alice, who is interested and quite good at keeping up with social media and makes regular use of her iPhone and iPad. I had confused her, however, in some of our textual correspondences by ending my missives with '<3 '. 

When I finally explained to her what it meant and the picture that it makes, she was very amused and now regularly uses it to end her notes to me! 

Similarly, when I am hastily taking down notes for a lecture and haven't the time to wind over the curvatures of the word "with", I will happily use the medieval scribe's cum denoted by 'c' with a single stroke above it. 

Confiteor

Anybody who knows me well is aware that I am somewhat recalcitrant towards the sundry, ever-quickening, expanding technological trends that permeate the daily lives of we who were born to grow and age through this period of time called "post-modernity."
I myself am aware that as a person who uses technology for her own convenience, pleasure, and ease of labours that would seem herculean without its devices, I am a hypocrite to assert I do not like technology and the idea of its inevitable advancement.

I must confess I have given this blog its name with this recalcitrance in mind. If I am, indeed, to use this space towards the study of medieval bestiaries and perhaps their context within digital humanities, I thought it clever to come up with a title that included both these aspects. I consulted the text of MS Bodley 764, a thirteenth-century English bestiary, and in the section devoted to discussing lions found this statement:

"Their courage is in their breast, their strength in their head. They fear the noise of wheels, but fire frightens them even more."

According to the medieval (who is in fact working from ancient texts), the king of the animal kingdom, the most courageous and strongest of beasts, an exemplary representative of the natural world, is terrified by the two most primitive forms of technology. Mythology tells us the gods refused to share fire (a symbol of enlightenment, advancement etc.) with humankind and that rogue Prometheus suffered an excruciating punishment for his stunt with the fennel-stalk that restored the flame to humankind. The inventing of the wheel forever has a place in colloquial figures of speech as the first form of technology which was also apparently very difficult to obtain, according to the nature of our expression. I for one am also daunted by the prospect of needing to harness HTML, TEI, and other acronyms that I am told wield inexplicable power in order to seriously pursue the humanities.
I would much rather leave these digital flames in the hands of the digital gods and insist the only wheels I employ be those of faithful Rimbert (my bike), whose basket I shall fill with books.

Eala!
me miserum!


So now you know why my blog bears its peculiar name and why any semblance of a wrinkle now on my forehead may deepen into corrugations as this course progresses. Perhaps my outward appearance will soon betray the little old woman who lives inside me.