Scholars solved a 130-year literary mystery and it hinged on one word

Summary

A medieval literary puzzle which has stumped scholars including M.R. James for 130 years has finally been solved. Cambridge scholars now believe the Song of Wade, a long lost treasure of English culture, was a chivalric romance not a monster-filled epic. The discovery solves the most famous mystery in Chaucer's writings and provides rare evidence of a medieval preacher referencing pop culture in a sermon. The breakthrough, detailed on July 15 in The Review of English Studies, involved working out that the manuscript refers to 'wolves' not 'elves', as scholars previously assumed. Dr James Wade and Dr Seb Falk, colleagues at Girton College, Cambridge, argue that the only surviving fragment of the Song of Wade, first discovered by M.R. James in Cambridge in 1896, has been "radically misunderstood" for the last 130 years. "Changing elves to wolves makes a massive difference," Seb Falk said. "It shifts this legend away from monsters and giants into the human battles of chivalric rivals." James Wade said: "It wasn't clear why Chaucer mentioned Wade in the context of courtly intrigue. Our discovery makes much more sense of this." "Here we have a late-12th-century sermon deploying a meme from the hit romantic story of the day," Seb Falk said. "This is very early evidence of a preacher weaving pop culture into a sermon to keep his audience hooked." "Many church leaders worried about the themes of chivalric romances - adultery, bloodshed, and other scandalous topics - so it's surprising to see a preacher dropping such "adult content" into a sermon,"said James Wade. For the first time, the researchers have identified the great late-medieval writer Alexander Neckam (1157-1217) as the most likely author of the Humiliamini sermon. The 800-year-old document is part of MS 255, a Peterhouse Cambridge collection of medieval sermons. Discoveries made 130 years apart In 1896, M. R. James was looking through Latin sermons from Peterhouse's library in Cambridge when he was surprised to f...