Weird Medieval Animal Monday

Over at Per Omni Saecula, Jenn brings us Weird Medieval Animal Monday, every Monday. You should check it out, religiously. You should particularly check out this week's profile on the wolf.

Particularly weird is the advice given to those who encounter wolves:

If a wolf sees a man before the man sees the wolf, the man will lose his voice. If the man sees the wolf first, the wolf can no longer be fierce. If a man loses his voice because the wolf saw him first, he should take off all his clothes and bang two rocks together, which will keep the wolf from attacking.

Says Jenn:
I can't help but thinking this was a big medieval prank. Some scribe got bored copying manuscripts all day and wanted to see if he could get people to take their clothes off and bang rocks together.

So there you go. You now know what to do, should you encounter a wolf this Halloween.
Also, since wolves are doing the rounds of the medieval blogs, Dr Nokes has put up a link to an online translation of Marie De France's Bisclavret, which is a werewolf story. Bisclavret is pretty darn cool. It's certainly the most fun thing I ever did in my French literature course last year. (I did love the medieval part of that unit... while everyone else was struggling to understand french textbooks on basic medieval history, I had a nice easy time- all it required of me was that I match up my english medieval vocabulary to the words on the page.) So, if you're procrastinating, or you're short of a supernatural tale for Halloween, you know where to go now.

(no subject)

Two weeks ago, this quote put the fear into me:

a dream (or nightmare?) in which an academic treatise comes to life, the terms of its discussion assuming physical form in the strange logic of the dream.
-Kathryn L. Lynch, "The Book of the Duchess as a philosophical vision: the argument of form", Genre 21, 279-305 (292)

I'm happy to say, I was not chased through my dreams by reality and fiction, or anything else from a Chaucerian-dream vision.

To make up for it, though, I spent last night dreaming about AElfrician chastity. Yes, that's right. Other people have interesting sex dreams, I dream about AElfrician chastity.

The Art of the Love Letter

In celebration of a new fiction anthology Four Letter Word, the Times Online are kindly emailing you love letters, if you sign up. Margaret Atwood's letter has already been sent (I'm sorry I missed it). Next on the list is Neil Gaiman. We all know Gaiman is a sexy sexy man, and has one hell of a warped mind. Should be fun.

A one-sided story in love emails by Lionel Shriver can be read here.