ANST - Award recommendation issues..
Dennis and/or Dory Grace
amazing at mail.utexas.edu
Fri Oct 10 17:22:19 PDT 1997
Salut, mes Cosyns,
Lyonel aisai.
Kihe or Amra asks about my signature line:
>> Micel yfel deth se unwritere.
>> AElfric of York
>
>Been meaning to ask, so I'll take this opportunity: Translation?
No pasa nada. The line is the first clause of the last sentence of
Aelfric's Preface to Genesis, the first complete translation of Genesis
into Anglo-Saxon (some time at the end of the tenth century). Literally
(word-for-word) the line translates as "Much evil does the un-writer."
Cnsidering the context of the quote, Aelfric probably meant something like,
"Bad scribes do a lot of damage." As a writer and literary critic,
however, I prefer some of the alternate possible meanings, like: "Bad
writers do great harm" or (and this one's a hu-u-u-u-u-uge anachronistic
stretch) "Book burners do much evil."
lo vostre por vos servir
Sir Lyonel Oliver Grace
_____________________________
Dennis Grace
University of Texas at Austin
English Department
Recovering Medievalist
mailto:amazing at mail.utexas.edu
Micel yfel deth se unwritere.
AElfric of York
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