As a housewarming present, Michael Livingston has “Chaucered” my story “Evil Robot Monkey.” Don’t know what that means? It means, that my lovely medieval studies professorial friend has translated my story into middle English.
He explains the process as he goes.
In the corner of his vision, the door to his room snicked open. Sly let the wheel spin to a halt, crumpling the latest vase.
In the corner of his visioun, the chamber dore openyde. Sly letteth the axeltre turn to an ende, foldynge the latteste vesselle. (Mary’s vocabulary is strikingly old; that is to say, she uses fewer post-medieval words than most of us do. That said, “spin” as a verb in the 14th century really only applied to spinning wool, “crumpling” is 16th-century word, and “vase” didn’t make it into our language until the 17th.)
And then he recorded it. So, if it weren’t cool enough, you can listen to my story as it might have been if Chaucer had written it. Or at least, if we’d been in the same writing group…
Go listen to “Yvele Metal Ape!” It’s pretty darn cool and one of the best housewarming presents I’ve ever received.
That’s fantastic!
Since when am I “lovely”? And does Rob know?
Michael, I really like that you told how and why you chose words.
How would someone in Chaucer’s time have gone about giving an ape human mental capabilities?
That’s a mind-bending question. Non-human primates would have been fairly foreign to Chaucer’s experience, even though he was a fairly well-traveled man for his time (he’d toured a fair part of Europe). Artificially adapting such a creature could hardly have occurred to him, so if he was of any mind on the matter he would have wanted to start with giving the creature a basic medieval education, starting with the Trivium (Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric). Given that a foundation for this would have been reading and memorizing Vergil’s Latin, I doubt ape or author would have gotten far.
that is soooo funny. i love it.
Very, very cool. 🙂