All teachers know that the best way for students to learn a language is through swear words, and nobody knew this better than Aelfric Bata, a monk from Winchester whose Colloquies, compiled in around the year 1000, instructed pupils to swear in Latin with elaborate and vivid fluency. Mary and Irina work through some of Aelfric’s fruitier dialogues, and ask whether his examples can be taken purely in good humour.

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Read more in the LRB:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/irina-dumitrescu/making-my-moan

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Were the Middle Ages funny? In this bonus series for 2024, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley begin their quest for the medieval sense of humour with Chaucer’s 'Miller’s Tale', a story that is surely still (almost) as funny as when it was written six hundred years ago. But who is the real butt of the joke? Mary and Irina look in detail at the mechanics of the plot and its needless but pleasurable complexity, and consider the social significance of clothes and pubic hair in the tale.

You can also watch a video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/_o1GdU5-O8U?si=ca_I-wnwR1HVGMqV

Sign up to listen to this series ad free and all our subscriber series in full, including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignup

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup

Get in touch: [email protected]

Read more on Chaucer in the LRB:

Barbara Newman: Chaucer's Voices

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n22/barbara-newman/kek-kek!-kokkow!-quek-quek!

Gabriel Josipovici: Imperfect Knight

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n07/gabriel-josipovici/imperfect-knight

Tom Shippey: Chaucer's Life

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n01/tom-shippey/nayled-to-the-wow

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