My evidence:
On Saturday, Tommie made a beautiful pun on the word "male," which, in the Middle Ages, could mean both "masculine" and "evil." This pun does not exist in modern English. Without it, the strip made no sense at all; with it, it became quite clever. Brother Lawrence is not a stupid man, my friends. He may be naive about the outside world, but he knows his wordplay.
Today, Margo comments that her boyfriend has "fallen off the edge of the earth."
The edge of the earth? Really? Isn't it now more usual to say, "He's dropped off the face of the planet"? The latter expression acknowledges Earth's spherical nature; the former assumes that it is flat. Margo is here speaking in a medieval or pre-medieval idiom. She does not know that the earth is round because as far as her creator is concerned, it isn't.**
Brother Lawrence, show yourself. We know you're out there. Don't be ashamed. You may not know much about much, but we appreciate your attempts to imagine the world outside your monastery, and we support you on your mental journey of discovery.* Good on you, holy Brother. Keep up the strange but inadvertently entertaining work.
*Just be careful not to fall off the metaphorical edge of the metaphorical earth.
**Okay, okay, okay. As voxindeserto has pointed out, I am buying into unwarranted stereotypes of medieval ignorance. Brother Lawrence would have known the earth was round. However, it is possible that his characters, as silly women, would have known no such thing. Thank you, voxindeserto, for presenting a better solution. I shall try to be fairer to my trio of monks in future.
2 comments:
Now, now. As an well-studied medieval person, surely Brother Lawrence must know that the Earth is indeed round, since all the Authorities agree on that point.
More likely, he's subtly hinting at how ignorant these strange, uneducated female creatures are, since they are not aware of that obvious fact. A little in-joke among (male) scholars, as it were.
Oh, all right, you got me. I have imputed ignorant, unlearned views to Brother Lawrence in order to further my own hypothesis. I am a bad scientist. Luckily, your hypothesis works even better. The guy really doesn't know much about women.
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