ITM Readers: We're proud to bring to you this guest posting from a very important person!

Maken Melodye on #WhanThatAprilleDay16

by GEOFFREY CHAUCER [aka @LeVostreGC]

Goode Friendes and Readers of Yn The Middel, 

Yt doth fill my litel herte wyth gret happinesse to invyte yow to the thirde yeare of a moost blisful and plesinge celebracioun.

On the first daye of Aprille, lat us make tyme to take joye yn alle langages that are yclept ‘old,’ or ‘middel,’ or ‘auncient,’ or ‘archaic,’ or, alas, even ‘dead.’ 

Thys feest ys yclept ‘Whan That Aprille Day.’ For thys yeare yt ys: 'Whan That Aprille Day 16.' #WhanThatAprilleDay16

Ich do invyte yow to joyne me and manye othir goode folk yn a celebracioun across the entyre globe of the erthe. Yn thys celebracioun we shal reade of oold bokes yn sondrye oold tonges. We shal singe olde songes. We shal playe olde playes. Eny oold tonge will do, and eny maner of readinge. All are welcome. We shal make merrye yn the magical dreamscape of 'social media,' and eke, yf ye kan do yt, yn the material plane of the 'real worlde' as wel.

Ye maye, paraventure, wisshe to reade from the beginning of my Tales of Caunterburye, but ye maye also wisshe to reade of eny oothir boke or texte or scroll or manuscript that ye love. Ye maye even reade the poetrye of John Gower yf that ys yower thinge. 

What are sum wayes to celebrate Whan That Aprille Daye?

Gentil frendes, yf yt wolde plese yow to celebrate Whan That Aprille Daye 2016, ye koude do eny of the followinge. Be sure to use the hasshe-tagge #WhanThatAprilleDay16 on yower poostes of twytter and facebooke and blogge.

• Counte downe to Whan That Aprille Daye wyth postes and readinges.

• Maken a video of yowerself readinge (or singinge! or actinge!) and share yt on the grete webbe of the internette.

• Planne a partye at yower classroome or hous to celebrate oolde langages, and poost pictures to the ynternette.

• Read auncient langages to yower catte, and the catte shal be moost mirthful.

• Make sum maner of cake or pastrye wyth oold wordes upon yt, and feest upon yt wyth good folke and share pictures of yower festivitee. (And yet beware the catte that shal seke to ruin the icinge.)

• Yf ye be bold, ye maye wisshe to share yower readinge yn publique, yn a slam of poesye or a nighte of open mic. (Bringe the catte?)

• Yf ye worke wyth an organisatioun or scole, ye maye wisshe to plan sum maner of event, large or smal, to share writinge yn oold langages.

• And for maximum Aprillenesse, marke all tweetes and poostes wyth the hashtagge #WhanThatAprilleDay16 – remember the ‘Whan’ and ‘Aprille.’

What ys the poynte of Whan That Aprille Daye?

Ower mission ys to celebrate al the langages that have come bifor, and alle their joyes and sorrowes and richesse.

Ower mission ys to remynde folk of the beautye and grete lovelinesse of studyinge the wordes of the past. And eke ower mission ys to bringe to mynde the importaunce of supportinge the scolership and labour that doth bringe thes wordes to us. To remynde folk to support the techinge of paleographye and of archival werke and eek, ywis, the techinge of thes oold langages. To remynde folk of the gret blisse and joye of research libraryes and the gret wysdam and expertyse of the libraryans that care for them across the centuryes. To call to mynde the fundinge of the humanityes, the which ys lyke the light of the sonne on the plantes of learninge and knowledge. For wythout al of thes, the past wolde have no wordes for us. 

Ower mission ys also to have ynogh funne to last until next Whan That Aprille Daye. 

Note that thys event doth also coincide wyth Aprille Fooles Daye, the which ys fyne by cause we do love thes langages and alle who love are yn sum maner also fooles. 

Ich do hope wyth al myn herte that that sum of yow good folke will joyne me on thys April first for readinge and celebratinge and foolinge. Lat us maken melodye on #WhanThatAprilleDay16

Wyth muchel love and admiracioun

Le Vostre

GC

P.S. Some other links for hose who might be interested:

• Inaugural Whan That Aprille Day (in 2014): roundup at the Global Chaucers blog [with the General Prologue's opening lines in twelve modern languages]
  
• Middle English Texts Series (METS) countdown to Whan That Aprille Day in March 2014 [full twitter archive]
  
• Recitations in Old English, Latin, and Middle English by some of the bloggers at In The Middle on Whan That Aprille Day 2014 [listen online]

• A curated archive of tweets from Whan That Aprille Day 2015

Collective Nouns and Medievalist Collectivity: A Poem

by JONATHAN HSY

Briefly noted: If you haven't already, fill out MARY KATE's online survey about BABEL and "Creating Alternative Communities" (she's accepting responses until July 10). Check out KARL's recent posting as well!

I just got back from the amazing Gower-fest (i.e., Third International Congress of the John Gower Society) at the University of Rochester! Expect a blog posting about #JGS2014 very soon.

During the conference banquet, some of the conference participants were wondering if there's a collective noun for Gower scholars, and Brian Gastle joked that it should be called a "recension of Gowerians." On the last day of the conference I expanded Gastle's joke on twitter and Facebook and other people began submitting their own suggestions for other collective nouns for medievalists.

Culling from these discussions, I've composed this poem (taking my lead from KARL's earlier posting about medieval collective nouns):

Medievalist Collectives: A Collaborative Poem

A troop of Anglo-Saxonists
A roundtable of Arthurians
An orientation of cartographers
A compaignye of Chaucerians *
A gathering of codicologists
A circle of Dante scholars
A pageant of early drama scholars
An underappreciation of Early Middle English scholars
A garter of Gawain-Poets
A recension of Gowerians *
A rabble of grammarians
A tempest of Kempists *
A regiment of Hoccleveans *
A fair field of Langlandians
A reduction of Lydgateans *
A tournament of Malorians
A peregrination of Mandevilleans
A massacre of Martinists #gameofthrones
A Pandaemonium of Miltonists
A wonder of monster-theorists
A choir/quire of musicologists
A raze of Ockhamists
An orthography (ormography) of Ormulists *
A necklace of Pearl-Poets
An errant (errancy) of romance scholars *
A Swerve of Shakespeareans
A fellowship of Tolkienists
A torture of Websterians

* ALTERNATIVES: A parliament of Chaucerians; a pride (or romp) of Gowerians; a roaring of Kempists; a Series of Hoccleveans; a tedium of Lydgateans; a quadriga (or flamboyance) of Ormulists; a quest of romance scholars; a moot of Tolkienists. Collectively authored by H. Barbaccia, R. Barrett, @Exhuast_Fumes, A. Farber, C. Fitzgerald, B. Gastle, @GrammarRabble (note the GR tumblr feed and new blog!), J. Hsy, M.K. Hurley, A. Mittman, C. Perry, S. Rajendran, R. Rouse, C. Thomas, R. Utz, A. Walling, R. Wakeman, and M. Worley.


[EDITED July 6: adding Early Middle English scholars, Ormulists, romance scholars]

Academic Failblog

by JONATHAN HSY

Greetings ITM readers: This special guest posting proposes a great idea for a new blog (dreamed up by Asa Mittman and Shyama Rajendran). Here's what Asa writes:

ACADEMIC FAILBLOG

The conclusion to my dissertation is clever. It is sharp and witty and pulls together many of the strands that run through the work, as a whole. It is also simply wrong. I bungled the etymology, and conflated a few Old English terms that I ought not have -- those macrons get me every time. Luckily, I sorted all this out before it became my first book, Maps and Monsters. Since hardly anyone (thankfully) has read the dissertation version, hardly anyone knows about my error, there. I benefited from having figured it out, but nobody else has benefited from this error.

The recent BABEL conference contained many moments of brilliance, as have been evoked by Jeffrey and Mary Kate and Eileen and Steve Mentz and Maggie Williams.

It was, though, not an unmitigated success. There were moments of failure, of stumbling and faltering, of awkwardness and outright error. And this is how it ought to be. If we are serious about embracing experimentation, we must also be willing to accept that not all experiments succeed.

In his plenary on "How the Hippies Saved Physics," David Kaiser discussed Neils Bohr, who was famously wrong in his model of the atom. While he was utterly mistaken about how atoms are composed, his errors were generative, spurring a generation of physicists and their research.

In discussing this subject, Shyama Rajendran and I came to wonder about the utility of being wrong. In the sciences, when an experiment fails, the results are often published so that the scientific community can benefit from the errors, can learn from the errors, be they algebraic or conceptual. In the humanities, we are less often demonstrably "wrong," since much of what we offer is interpretive rather than factual. You might disagree with my reading of the Donestre in the Beowulf Manuscript's Wonders of the East, but you would be hard-pressed to conclusively invalidate it. Still, we falter and fail all the time. However, many of us in the humanities are still in our 19th-century paradigm of the lonely scholar, toiling in the solitude of a garret, perhaps with a glass of absinthe at the elbow. And so our failures are solitary, which renders them of less use than they might otherwise be. When I head down a wrong-headed path, I (hopefully) learn something. But you don't, unless I share my failure with you.

Shyama and I therefore propose to create an Academic Failblog, as it were, a place for any and all of us to post our scholarly missteps for all and sundry to read and learn from. These might be related to research, teaching, job searching or any other aspect of the academic world. We have bandied about a few titles:

[Grandiloquent]: "Before the Phoenix Rises: Swimming in the Ashes of the Humanities."

[Goofy]: "Faceplanting: Tripping Over the Scholarly Cracks."

[Self-Abusing]: "Head, Meet Desk"

Ben Tilghman offers "Fumblr."

Mary Kate Hurley suggested "Scholarly Facepalms."

All are probably wrong, but perhaps one or more is productively so.

Shyama and I offer this post to accomplish three things: First, to see if there is interest in such a venture. Second, if so, to garner suggestions for titles. Finally, assuming 1 and B go well, to get the discussion rolling forward, so that when we have the site up and running, we have a stable of eager participants. What say you? Care to stumble with us?