(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

So I've been doing a fair bit of historical research -- not for my poor, neglected website, though I have all the material I need to read for my next entry gathering dust on my desk, awaiting a time of motivation.

No, I've been researching medieval Europe for the second novel I have going, especially those details that most fantasy writers just don't care, and just crib off other writers, who cribbed off other writers, who cribbed off other writers, who stole them from either J.R.R. Tolkien or Gary Gygax. It's about time the whole inbred fantasy genre got some fresh blood.

On that note, I've gone back to the history books for my setting, back to the medieval sources for my monsters, and back to medieval and Roman stories about witches for my spells. I'm reading an excruciatingly-detailed 19th-century history text on crime in medieval England right now.

Meanwhile, I'm returning to material I'd forgotten since undergrad history. I'd forgotten that spaces between words and small letters only really came into popular use in the court of Charlemagne, in the 700s AD.

Think about it -- up until then, all letters were written in all-caps shouting, which strikes me as very rude. No wonder there were so many wars back then.

Comments

[helenseidolon.livejournal.com]

If you need any Latin help, let me know!

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I think I might need to take you up on that offer when I get near the end.

[frog-songs.livejournal.com]

HWÆT is your problem with all-caps shouting all the time, hm?

One of the best courses I took at Trent was an honours seminar about monstrosity in Old English lit. I'm hoping for future livejournal posts about medieval monsters, now.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Well, I've always been told it's rude :)

I've been mining the bestiaries pf the Middle Ages. There's a direct correlation between how often a medieval monster appears in folklore, and whether Dungeons & Dragons used it. If Dungeons & Dragons never used it, it never appears in modern fantasy novels. So if you go back, you can find stuff they never used, and no one's used it.

For instance, I threw in a creature called a parandrus, which is essentially a deer with long, black fur that can change its shape. There are also darters -- venomous snakes with wings.

[montrealais.livejournal.com]

metaquotes?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Certainly ^_^

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

That is very odd. There are spaces between [Hebrew] words in the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, which are 700 years earlier. I wonder why Old English didn't use spaces. Any ideas?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_phinn_/]

I got directed here through metaquotes, but it may have been because paper was really expensive and they needed more words per page. But that's just a guess.

[shiro-no-wired.livejournal.com]

(also via metaquotes)
The cost of paper was definitely a concern, although you also have to take into account that Old English took on the Roman alphabet from the Romans, and the Romans wrote in all caps with no spaces because that's how the Greeks did it, and the Greeks didn't use spaces because that's how the Phoenicians did it. And the Phoenicians...well, once you get back that far, everything was still in beta.

Also, to risk stating the obvious, IE languages are not Hebrew, and (to risk sounding like a crackpot) Hebrew orthography was influenced as much by mysticism (gematria) as by historical precedent and phonology.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_phinn_/]

I knew the Romans didn't use spaces, but I didn't know that was because of the Greeks.

I thought that Old English was more related to German than Latin, and I was a bit confused about how we got the Roman alphabet. Were things more related than I originally thought?

[shiro-no-wired.livejournal.com]

You can blame the Greeks...both Roman and Etruscan are derived from the script of Greek settlers in pre-Latin Italy.

Old English is definitely more related to German. It's only related to Latin in an abstract sense, since they're both IE. The use of Roman script is kind of incidental. Rome managed to conquer half of Britain by the time the Empire fell, and between the strong presence of Roman culture and the slow but steady influx of Christian missionaries, Roman script managed to supplant the indigenous scripts.

[montrealais.livejournal.com]

The relationships between languages don't have anything to do with the writing systems they use. Writing is a technology that has been passed from culture to culture regardless of the language they used. Latin characters are now used for everything from Vietnamese to Basque to Mohawk, all of which are completely unrelated to Latin.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

Old English does use spaces. I have never seen an OE MS without spaces - although in some cases the spacing is pretty irregular.

That would be unsurprising if spacing became the thing around the time of Charlemagne, ie, ~700 - we don't have much OE before the 800s.

[maenad-au.livejournal.com]

You got metaquoted!

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

So I've been told, though the metaquote never showed up on my friends' pages, and I can't see it. That's very weird -- I usually like reading the comments in those things :/

[annemjw.livejournal.com]

I'm jumping in waaaaay late, but I've been busy, so I'm working through my flist very slowly. Anyway:

You can't see it because it was posted under comm lock, for some reason. But it's there!

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Comm lock...?

[annemjw.livejournal.com]

Community lock - you can only read it if you're a member of the comm.