Dr. Faustus, Middle English an Ichabod Crane

I'm not sure if anyone else watches the show Sleepy Hollow, but last night's episode included a heavy dose of Middle English, and Tom Mison, and Middle English. Needless to say, I enjoyed it immensely.

 

Ichabod Crane

Now to the task at hand, Dr. Faustus. First impressions are that this play is going to be predictable. The appearance of the Good Angel and Bad Demon on his figurative shoulder before every bad decision leads me to believe that regardless of how far astray Faustus goes or how depraved his behavior will become, in the end he will be forgiven. Given the time period, this would have been nearly blasphemous, but the benefit of four hundred plus years of similar story lines has jaded me just a bit. 

Middle English: I feel like I'm in Spanish all over again!

Oh my gosh, reading through the prologue for The Canterbury Tales is probably the hardest and, simultaneously, funniest thing I've ever really done. Just looking at some of the words and seeing how foreign they look just make me wonder how the English language got where it is today. The evolution of language and things like linguistics have always been interesting to me, but until today I never really looked at Middle English. Some of the words in the prologue just look like a strange mixture of consonants and vowels to me. And then finding out that a lot of the vowels aren't even pronounced the same? I've discovered that I'm spending all this time just trying to pronounce the words that I don't even realise I don't know what I'm saying (thank God for the precious side notes in this book, or I'd be totally lost)!

I think I almost lost it listening to the recording. I tried so hard to follow along but the reader seems to read so smoothly that a lot of the words just kind of came out as noises to me. I've got to say it'll be interesting to read this aloud in class while we go through The Canterbury Tales. A lot of the time when I'm reading through the prologue (maybe it's just me) it sounds like I'm just trying to say English words in a really bad, stereotypical Swedish accent.

But then again, I wonder what Chaucer would think if he heard English today. I think he'd be just as confused as I am.



In other news, I tried to google search a hilarious picture for this post, and it didn't quite work out.