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Halls of the Dark Muse

Ye Olde Byogh Poste

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Dark Muse
, 01-04-2011 at 02:58 AM (1438 Views)
A while back I read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and the edition of the book I have happens to be a modern English translation, which on the one hand was nice because I could just enjoy the stories without having to decode them first but on the other hand it kind of felt like "cheating" and as it happens one of the groups I belong to is going to be doing The Canterbury Tales, so I figured since I already understand the content of the stories so I would be able to actually follow what was going on, I would read them as they were originally written in Middle English.

I must say though I found the task at first quite a daunting one to consider, I am surprised by how well things are actually coming along. I find that reading it out loud is a great help because then I can get into a rhythm of how the words sound which make it easier to than decipher what the words are suppose to be, though there are still moments where it does seem to turn into absolute gibberish.

Middle English looks like some sort of merging of Shakespearean English, Shorthand, and Welsh. There are some words, where really I just have to wonder, of seriously where just drunk when you wrote that? There are some things where it is like, ok how can than really possibly mean anything to anyone?

One of my favorites that has come up a few times, is "dyvynys" there is no plausible way that that could be deciphered to mean anything. It does not matter what context that is put into, it does not even come close to resembling any sort of word.

Another thing which can be maddening at times, is that is this one word which comes up quite often and it is spelled as "list" but it seems like it can be used to mean a variety of different words at different times. So it is always like, ok how am I supposed to use this word now?

The grammatical structuring of some of the lines is also a bit awkward to read at times.
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  1. TheFifthElement's Avatar
    "dyvynys" surely translates to 'divines'? That's how I'd read it anyway. As in perceives, or intuits, or discovers.
  2. Dark Muse's Avatar
    That would make sense, I will have to go back and check to see if the context in which it is used would actually make any sense for that interpretation, because I recall from my reading whenever that word came up it always seemed to mean something which did not at all resemble the spelling of the world and it was just completely incomprehensible.
  3. Buh4Bee's Avatar
    DM, I tried to read some Old English for a class I had to take in college and utterly hated it. It was more challenging than I had the patience to bare. It must be fun to crack the code!
  4. Dark Muse's Avatar
    I am surprised that I do not hate it as much as I thought I would and am kind of enjoying it. Hmm I wonder if the fact that I am usually reading it really late at night helps.....probably being in a slightly altered state of mind helps comprehending what seems to be something written by a drunk dyslexic.
  5. Buh4Bee's Avatar
    drunk dyslexic... that is very funny.
  6. Dark Muse's Avatar
    Hehe thank you! That is what it looks like with all their extra y's and some of the words really do just look like those games where there would be a word and the letters would be all jumbled up in the wrong order and you had to unscramble them to figure out the word.
  7. qimissung's Avatar
    Really Middle English is at this point another language, DM, so I wouldn't feel at all that it is cheating to read a "translation" of the work, although I admire your, persistence, shall we say, in reading it in the original. And you are enjoying it! You get an A plus plus plus, my friend, for going above and beyond the call of duty!