Photos from a Korean Conference of Postmodern Medieval Modernists

Here are some photos from my most recent conference presentation. I only go these days if I'm invited, so I don't go to many - though I've gone to more than I anticipated back when I made this decision to go only if invited. Here's the first photo, one of the final photos, actually and obviously:

The Postmodern Medieval Modernist Gang

I'm in the back row, just left of center, wearing a cap. Now for the second photo:

Bae Kyung Jin and I Trying not to 'Wrecktify' a Right

Professor Bae Kyung Jin is the kind lady who invited me to present a paper at the conference, and we were trying to find the paintings I had located on the internet to use for illustrating the occasional instances of the peach as forbidden fruit. One image I had carefully located had simply vanished! We did without that slide into the fallen world . . . Next comes the man with all the questions, Professor Suh Hong Won:

Me Deferring to Genuine Milton Scholar

Professor Suh was kind enough to refer to the paper as a "work in progress" - and it became that over these last two weeks as I read and re-read the paper and made changes . . . subtle changes. By the bye, that lady on the screen is even offering a peach as the forbidden fruit, a painting used in the paper's section on T. S. Eliot's famous peach in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" even though no connection was proven . . . Here's what the brouhaha was all about:

Our Names in Lights

As you see, the paper was co-authored by me and Professor Salwa Khoddam, who couldn't make the trip from Oklahoma, "where the wind comes sweeping across the plains" . . . though I don't think that the sweeping wind was the sole good reason that she couldn't attend (and there's a poem in there somewhere). Finally, the real reason for going to these conferences anyway, as shown in the next photo!

Postmodern Relaxation

Well . . . this is the reason I go. If I can't have a career, I can at least have fun!

Sung-Il Lee: New Translation of Beowulf

Beowulf

(Image from Wikipedia)

I haven't dealt with Beowulf for some time now, but only a few days ago, a reader inquired about what had happened with an unpublished Beowulf translation that I'd praised a few years ago after hearing a brief passage read out at a Medievalist conference here in Seoul. Here's what the reader was referring to:

What! Have we not heard of the glory
Of the Spear-Danes' kings in olden days --
How the princes performed deeds of valor?
Not a few times Scyld Scefing seized
The seats of banquet from many a tribe,
Mighty opponents, and terrified the earls.
Since the time when he was found a deserted infant,
He grew up in tender care, soared to the sky,
And prospered with unparalleled honor, till
All neighboring nations over the sea came
To obey and pay tribute to him: a good king he was!

As noted on that same blog post, these opening lines of Beowulf were the translation work of Professor Sung-Il Lee, of Yonsei University. I had been waiting to hear more about this, specifically, its publication, but so much time had passed that I'd given up, for Professor Lee had retired and was rumored to have become a recluse, as I told the reader who contacted me.

If he did become reclusive, that seclusion must have been for a good cause, for I learned only yesterday that Mellen Press has published Professor Lee's translation:

Beowulf and Four Related Old English Poems:
A Verse Translation with Explanatory Notes

Lee, Sung-Il

Description

These modern verse translations manage to retain the verse rhythm of the originals. This volume includes explanatory notes and new interpretations of the original text.

Reviews

". . . a very good translation, fluent and generally idiomatic, and accurate in spirit to its original without being awkwardly literal."

-Prof. Derek Pearsall, Harvard University

"This is how the chain of bards who put [Beowulf] together might have chanted the poem had they spoken the way we do now. This is a masterful version and as close to an ideal translation as we can get."

-Gregory Rabassa, (Poet and Translator)

From the Foreword:

"If we still offered seminars on The Art of Translation, this would be a good centerpiece."

­-Prof. Robert D. Stevick, University of Washington

I now see why Professor Lee took his time -- he was translating four other Old English poems! From the evidence of these blurbs, I'd infer that the hundred dollar price is worth shelling out for the volume. Congratulations to Professor Lee.

I hope that the reader who contacted me with the query will check back soon and see the good news . . .

All is not darkness . . .

(Image from Wikipedia)

A review by Steven D. Greydanus of The Secret of Kells in Christianity Today gives very high marks to this animated film about a twelve-year-old orphan named Brendan who lives in the ninth century in an Irish monastery where he is being educated by his uncle, Abbot Cellach, as a manuscript illuminator who wishes to complete the stunningly beautiful Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the four gospels -- and those high marks are awarded despite the film's perceived theological shortcomings, in Greydanus's view:

It must be admitted that The Secret of Kells somewhat short-changes Brendan's Christian world in relation to Ireland's lingering paganism. The Faerie world is matter-of-factly depicted as living, magical and powerful; Christianity is mundane and limited. In the Irish countryside Brendan encounters spirits both charming and terrifying (Aisling the fairy, the bloodthirsty dark god Crom Cruach) -- but he sees nothing to evoke the extravagant miracles of the saints that are equally a part of Irish lore. The film teases us with the alleged powers of the Book -- said to have the power to blind sinners who gaze upon it -- but when this is put to the ultimate test, it is the sinner, not the book, that has the upper hand.

Putting such Catholic scruples aside, Greydanus otherwise praises the film, noting that this "animated indie weds the design sensibilities of traditional Insular art with the stylized simplicity of such contemporary retro animation as 'Samurai Jack'," as can be readily seen for yourself by clicking on the "Trailer" at the film's website.

I suppose that I shouldn't say more since I haven't seen the film, but this looks like one for the whole family, so I'll be keeping an eye out for the DVD so that my wife and I can watch it at home with our two kids.

Perhaps it'll inspire En-Uk to produce more art . . .

Hellbender Salamanders: Etymology?

Salamander Alchemy

(Image from Wikipedia)

One longstanding, albeit erroneous belief about salamaders is that they can imperviously withstand the flames of even very hot fires, as I learned in my history-of-science days, thereby prompting my speculation yesterday:

I wonder if "hellbender" has some connection to old beliefs about salamanders. They were believed impervious to fire, able to live in flames, and therefore somehow linked to the devil. But I'm just guessing. Anybody know the etymology?

I've tried to find evidence, though the links are only tenuous, but here's some information from an online Medieval Bestiary:

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 10, 86): The salamander is a shaped like a lizard, but is covered with spots. A salamander is so cold that it puts out fire on contact. It vomits from its mouth a milky liquid; if this liquid touches any part of the human body it causes all the hair to fall off, and the skin to change color and break out in a rash. Salamanders only appear when it rains and disappear in fine weather. (Book 11, 116): It is fatal to drink water or wine when a salamander has died in it, as is drinking from a vessel from which the creature has drunk.

Augustine [5th century CE] (City of God, Book 21, chapter 4): If the salamander lives in fire, as naturalists have recorded, this is a sufficiently convincing example that everything which burns is not consumed, as the souls in hell are not.

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 4:36): The salamander alone of animals puts out fires; it can live in fire without pain and without being burned. Of all the venomous animals its strength is the greatest because it kills many at once. If it crawls into a tree it poisons all of the fruit, and anyone who eats the fruit will die; if it falls in a well it poisons the water so that any who drink it die.

The site then helpfully links to images from bestiaries. One image from the Museum Meermanno (Hague, Netherlands) has a manuscript dating from 1450 that shows what appears to be a serpent in a tree offering an apple to a man:


The text, however, identifies this creature as a salamander: "Een salamandra vergiftigt de appels in een boom; een man eet een vergiftigde appel" (translation: "A salamander poisons the apples in a tree; a man eats a poisoned apple"). The Medieval Bestiary website describes the scene in this way:

Museum Meermanno, MMW, 10 B 25 (f. 43r) shows the salamander as a snake spiraling up an apple tree; the snake has an apple in its mouth, making the scene very similar to some manuscript illustrations of the temptation of Eve. A man holding an apple stands near the tree, a hand to his head and looking sick.

The belief that salamanders could live in fire, the remarks by Augustine about salamander-like souls in hell remaining unconsumed by hellfire, and the pictorial connection between salamanders and Satan all suggest that further investigation into the etymology of "hellbender" with respect to bestiary books and alchemical texts could prove fruitful.

Perhaps some Medievalist could supply more information?

Chaucer: "And thou shalt make hym couche as doth a quaille"

Chaucer's Clerk

"And thou shalt make hym couche as doth a quaille"

Canterbury Tales, "Clerk's Tale," line 1206

(Image from Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Page)

Two days ago, I quoted an email from my Aunt Pauline to my daughter, Sa-Rah, in which the word "quaille" was used:

I hatched about one hundred and fifty quaille for Velna . . . they sure are growing and she loves them . . . . these are birds.

I remarked on this spelling:

Quaille, as Aunt Pauline explains -- in case Sa-Rah doesn't know -- are birds. When my aunt says that she 'hatched' the quaille, she means that she used a brooder, a box-like structure often heated by lights. That word "quaille"' must be an Ozark variant for "quail," possibly a holdover from "quaille" in Middle English.

Trolling around the internet, I located this use of the word "quaille" in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, where it appears in his rendition of "The Clerk's Tale," specifically, in the "envoy" (i.e., concluding stanzas"), where the clerk advises wives not to be too submissive to their husbands, unlike the 'long-suffering' Griselda. See line 1206 of the passage below, which includes the word "quaille" in a conveniently interlinear arrangement providing both the Middle English and Modern English versions:

Ne dreed hem nat; doth hem no reverence, 1201
Fear them not; do them no reverence, 1201

For though thyn housbonde armed be in maille, 1202
For though thy husband be armed in mail, 1202

The arwes of thy crabbed eloquence 1203
The arrows of thy spiteful eloquence 1203

Shal perce his brest and eek his aventaille. 1204
Shall pierce his breast and also his neck-guard. 1204

In jalousie I rede eek thou hym bynde, 1205
In jealousy I advise also that thou bind him, 1205

And thou shalt make hym couche as doth a quaille. 1206
And thou shalt make him cower as does a quail. 1206

Chaucer was writing in the late 14th century, over 600 years ago, but as I've noted before, Ozark dialect has retained old meanings and old words, so it may even have kept some older spellings . . . or my aunt might have picked up this spelling of "quaille" from her high school Chaucer many years ago.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates this use by Chaucer to 1386, though it cites "Thou shalt make hym couche as doth a quaille" as line 1150 (OED Compact Edition, Volume 2, page 2381D).

The word "quaille" looks like a borrowed word, and a check of online dictionaries confirms this. In The Free Dictionary by Farlex, we find this: "Middle English quaille, from Old French, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *coacula, of imitative origin." The Online Etymological Dictionary is more informative, telling us that the word entered English around 1300, via Old French, which also provided the spelling "quaille":

c.1300, quayle, from O.Fr. quaille, perhaps via M.L. quaccula (cf. Prov. calha, It. quaglia, O.Sp. coalla), from a Gmc. source (cf. O.H.G. quahtala "quail," Ger. Wachtel), imitative of the bird's cry.

Interestingly, the word seems to have originated in the Germanic tongue despite coming into English by way of Latin and French.

And that's as far as I have time to investigate this unusual spelling, but if anyone knows other cases of the spelling "quaille" in English, whether Medieval or Modern, please let me know.

Asked to Join a Plowman's Society...

Beautiful Dreamer

William Langland

Piers Plowman Manuscript

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

(Image from Wikipedia)

Well, way back in high school, I did belong to the Future Farmers of America (Motto: "Plowmen dig thy earth!"). I even had a lovely, blue-suede jacket with the letters FFA embroidered in golden thread, and I, my wine-buddy Bruce Cochran, and two other friends all went as FFA members to represent our school at the dairy-products-judging finals in the state competition hosted by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

But that ain't it. Nuh-uh!

Rather, last year, I published an article on universal salvation in Piers Plowman, titling it "Kinsman as 'Redeemer' in Piers Plowman, Passus 18," which was also published last year in volume 14, issue 1, of the MEMESAK journal.

In these hyperkinetic, cybernetic, internetic days, word eventually gets around.

Thus, in September of this year (2007), I was asked by Dr. Lawrence Warner -- Co-Editor of the Yearbook of Langland Studies and Lecturer of Middle English for the Department of English for the University of Sydney -- if I could supply an abstract to the article.

Yes, I could, so I did:

In Passus 18 of Piers Plowman, William Langland implicitly affirms universal salvation. The paper investigates what might lie behind Langland's position, which contradicts the Church's official teaching of limited salvation. At least three things may influence his views on kinship: the biblical concept of the kinsman-redeemer; Anselm's theological opinions on salvation; and Anglo-Saxon culture's emphasis upon kinship obligations. The third influence seems the strongest, for Langland has Christ implicitly affirm universal salvation because all of mankind are his blood kin. The Anglo-Saxon cultural factor would therefore appear to provide the key to understanding Langland's belief in universal salvation.

Dr. Warner promised that, for my assistance, "The community of P[iers] P[lowman] scholars would be very grateful!"

I reckon that I'm now one of those scholars, an expert in things Medieval, for I've now received an email from Dr. Warner's co-editor for the Yearbook of Langland Studies, Professor Fiona Somerset, who teaches Medieval Literature in the English Department at Duke University:

You're receiving this email because you've done work in Langland studies and have been suggested for membership by a current subscriber. We are writing to invite you to join the International Piers Plowman Society (IPPS), a membership that includes subscription to the Yearbook of Langland Studies (YLS) . . . . Your Society membership includes other benefits in addition to receipt of the journal. One is access to an electronic, searchable version of
the Annual Bibliography at [the IPPS website].

I'm tempted to join, now that I'm a scholar and all -- and in things Medieval, at that! But I'm not really much of a Langland scholar, having published only this one article, and I know that I'd never find the time and money to attend a Plowman conference since I must leap various hurdles even to attend such international conferences as those hosted by societies for Milton or Biblical Studies -- in which I'm arguably more of a scholar -- so I likely won't join this Langland society.

Still . . . it was nice to be recognized for something.

Proof that you can learn something from anybody...

19th-Century Depiction of Geoffrey Chaucer

But is it really him?

(Image from Answers.com)

... even if you might not exist.

Truly asiduous readers might recall my blogging from Singapore in the summer of 2005, when I was attending a Society of Biblical Literature conference and presenting a paper on the concept of "holiness" in Mark's Gospel. At that time, I was told of rumors that I didn't exist, to which I responded:

My nonexistence has been greatly exaggerated.

Somebody thinks that I don't exist. No, not here at the conference, where nobody is yet conflating me with the docetic Christ. Rather, it's somebody whom I've never met . . . but maybe that goes without saying. If I had met him, he'd have to believe in my existence, right?

Jeffrey Gibson informs me that a certain Geoff Hudson has been emailing various scholars to alert them to the 'fact' that I am actually an alias for Gibson.

I won't waste my time trying to prove Mr. Hudson wrong. But if you various scholars out there are willing to attest to my existence as the genuine Horace Jeffery Hodges attending this SBL Conference in Singapore . . . well, have at it.

I guess that nobody managed (or tried) to prove my existence to Mr. Hudson, for I received an email from him only yesterday in response to a note that I had posted to one of the biblical studies listserves that I participate in. The listserve had been discussing a certain Gnostic Gospel of Judas and using the acronym GoJ for convenience. I'd previously done a lot of work on Gnosticism and the Gospel of John, so at one point, when a scholar named Hindley referred to the Gnostic GoJ, I got my signals crossed and asked why he though that the Gospel of John was Gnostic. Hindley reminded me:

Jeffrey: That stood for Gospel of Judas, the subject of the post. THAT gospel, I'm sure, most everybody will agree is "Gnostic".

Notice that he called me "Jeffrey" rather than "Jeffery." That was enough for the apparently ever-alert Geoff Hudson, who sent me an email:

I am surprised you have not complained that Hindley has spelt your middle name incorrectly. So why doesn't he call you Horace? May be he knows your real name is Jeffrey -- his Freudian slip, or senior moment, may be?

I replied to this as succinctly as I courteously could:

You have me mixed up with someone else.

To which, Mr. Hudson retorted:

So it seems did ... Hindley who called you Jeffrey. As a long-standing member of the group, he should have known better, shouldn't he?

I could see where this was going -- into an endless string of emails -- so I replied as politely (and briefly) as possible:

I won't try to convince you of my identity, for I recall you making a similar confusion a year or two ago. Have a Merry Christmas anyway.

And I hope that I've seen the end of this. Meanwhile, I have Mr. Hudson to thank for teaching me a new expression: "senior moment."

To be precise, he didn't 'teach' me, for he used the expression without explaining it, leaving me baffled. Because I'm living in Korea, where Koreans often use the word "senior" to refer to somebody above them in Korea's hierarchical society, my initial, unreasonable thought was that Mr. Hudson was suggesting that Hindley had called me "Jeffrey" out of some sort of Confucian evaluation of my hierarchical position relative to his -- but I wasn't sure if this put me above or below Hindley. Who was the 'senior'? Who the 'junior'?

In re-reading Mr. Hudson's email, however, I realized that "senior moment" must be an analogous to "Freudian slip" and that it must be a fixed expression.

So, I Googled it and found the answer on a webpage hosted by the Macmillan English Dictionary:

The term senior moment was coined in America in the mid-nineties, but has become more widely used in the UK during the past couple of years. Originating with specific reference to seniors or senior citizens -- people aged sixty or over -- it has now entered more general use and can be applied in any situation where someone experiences a momentary lapse of memory, regardless of their age. The term highlights the idea that our brains simply weren’t built to cope with the information overload and stress generated by life in the 21st century. An absent-minded activity, like putting cornflakes in the fridge or milk in the cupboard, can also be referred to as a senior moment.

Macmillan even provided a humorous anecdote as an example, "A True Senior Moment":

An elderly couple had dinner at another couple’s house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen.

The two elderly gentlemen were talking, and one said, 'Last night we went out to a new restaurant, and it was really great. I'd recommend it very highly.'

The other man said, 'What's the name of the restaurant?'

The first man thought and thought and finally said, 'What's the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know ... the one that's red and has thorns.'

'Do you mean a rose?'

'Yes,' the man said, then he turned toward the kitchen and yelled, 'Rose, what's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?'

So, that's a senior moment! I have those all the time. And the expression was coined in America in the mid-90s and resided there before emigrating to the UK more recently. Interesting. Either I've missed it completely in my long absence from the States and the long time since my last UK trip, or I heard it but have suffered a long senior moment since then, for I really don't recall the expression.

Anyway, Mr. Hudson -- if you really are Mr. Hudson -- a hat tip to you for the inadvertent but fascinating English lesson.

Vernard Eller: A Pearl ... for the Brokenhearted

The Vernard Eller Collection

(Image Borrowed From House Church Central)

Five in the morning, Seoul time, and all of Korea must be up right now watching the Korean soccer team play France in the World Cup. I can hear my wife and daughter cheering and groaning -- mostly the latter, for Korea has fallen behind 1-0.

I'm being an ugly foreigner, sitting here in my study, blogging obliviously on ... on the 14th century and the anonymous Pearl Poet. If Korea loses, however, I can offer consolation for the brokenhearted...

Speaking of which, that seems to be the subtitle of an online translation of Pearl by a certain Vernard Eller, an intellectual Christian with a variety of interests who made his spiritual home in The Church of the Brethren, a denomination that traces its origins to the pacifist tradition of Radical Reformation.

Eller was a prolific author of Christian books, even penning one on Christian sex titled The Sex Manual for Puritans! The tone is rather 'tongue-in-cheek' -- for instance, he tells us in a chapter on "The Climax" that "[t]he boin-n-ng" lasts about "[f]ive seconds at most."

I think that he's referring to the male's experience of boinging.

By any objective measures, such a boing is not very long. Fortunately, time is subjectively stretched and dilated at such moments, so the boing can seem to last as long as six seconds.

But I'm getting off-topic. I meant only to note that --

Breaking News at 5:40 a.m. Seoul Time: Korea has just tied the score! Dae Han Min Guk! Tsuh-Tsuh, Tsuh-Tsuh, Tsuh! Dae Han Min Guk! Tsuh-Tsuh, Tsuh-Tsuh, Tsuh! Dae Han Min Guk! Tsuh-Tsuh, Tsuh-Tsuh, Tsuh! Oh Pilseung Korea! Oh Pilseung Korea! Oh Pilseung Korea! Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh! Boin-n-ng!

-- Vernon Ellis translated the Pearl Poet's great pearl poem as A Pearl ... for the Brokenhearted to give "counsel ... [of] the Christian gospel for the brokenhearted, ... comfort for our own grief."

I find fascinating that contemporary, Protestant Christians stemming from the Radical Reformation would turn to a Medieval Catholic text in an obscure English dialect for spiritual consolation, but perhaps the twilight of our times has brought the owl of Minerva to her flight...

Pearl Poet: William F. Klein's Review of Condren

Logo Borrowed from:

The Medieval Institute College of Arts and Sciences

Western Michigan University

Product of the Scholarly Publishing Office

University of Michigan Library

and

Digital Library eXtension Service

Thanks to Ian Myles Slater for pointing the way to The Medieval Review, which offers a free online review of Condren's book by William F. Klein, of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. For the ignorant among us (and that includes me), Ian helpfully adds:

For those not familiar with it, TMR, formerly Bryn Mawr Medieval Review, is "a moderated distribution list," run by and for medievalists. It offers a searchable collection of reviews going back to 1993.

I didn't know all that, but as my older brother, Pat, once remarked to me in a well-honed putdown, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio." This applies in spades to my knowledge of Medieval numerology.

Klein's review is useful not because he shows that Condren is right or wrong, for he admits: "That his analysis is sound I cannot claim or argue. His book will have to make its own way in the world." But he is impressed enough to add: "At this point we must give Condren the benefit of our doubt." Why is Klein willing to do this? Because he believes "that Condren's study of the manuscript does in fact display a structural design that cannot be other than utterly intentional and that everyone who would like to claim knowledge of the manuscript and the poems should read his book."

I'll leave Klein's review to my readers to read, but I would like to quote here Klein's quote of Condren's own "Afterword":

The implications of the highly wrought strategy we have been discussing, in which mathematics serves as a revealing analogue to metaphysical matters, might be stated in various ways depending on the context one wishes to emphasize. To a mathematician the conversion of a measuring system based on fours into a system based on fives requires the magic of an irrational number that leads to infinity if applied repeatedly. To a medieval theologian the New Law expands and enriches the Old Law through the advent of Christ, whose teaching, if continuously applied, in turn translates the New into eternal salvation. To a poet there is little difference, for his epiphany comes in recognizing the parallel between mathematics and theology and in realizing poetry's power to make palpable what otherwise would be ineffable. Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight have a foot in both the four cornered world and the world that supersedes it. The duodecimal basis of the former, the four fitts of the latter, and the worldly concerns of both suggest the sphere of Purity and Patience. The 5 square prime number of stanzas in both Pearl and Gawain, the fifth Platonic solid suggested by the former, and the latter's pentangular emblem, five-line bob-and-wheel, and power of regeneration imply the abode of the Pearl maiden. Above it all lies the manuscript's astonishing representation of elegant coherence. The profound congruence of the universe with man's theological and moral concerns, and with all that lies on his too-much-loved earth, unfolds before us with subtle simplicity. The disciplines of the quadrivium--arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy--have been drawing their lines unwaveringly toward the judgment on which will depend the eternity, not only of the characters described in its lines, but also on every reader humbled by this manuscripts exquisite beauty. ( Edward I. Condren, The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet: Beyond Phi, page 147)

This certainly demonstrates that Condren has thought long and hard about the potential implications of the numerical relationships that he believes himself to have found. If he's right, then his book is brilliant -- and the Pearl Poet even more so.

This is the sort of book that my old history of science professor John L. Heilbron would find fascinating, given his interest in the confluence of mathematical astronomy and Christian theology in the The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories.

The Pearl Poet and Condren's Golden Section

Thanks to Wikipedia, I now have a greater understanding of the famous Golden Ratio and some questions for Professor Condren (not that he's reading my blog).

On the left above, you can see Wikipedia's image of a rectangle containing (almost) the Golden Ratio:

The dimensions of the gray rectangle are in the ratio 144/89 = 1.6180, very nearly the golden ratio, thought by many to be a most pleasing ratio for a rectangle.

On the right above, you can see Michael Lahanas's image of a line whose segments show the Golden Ratio, which is explained as follows:

A line is divided into two segments AG and GB. The entire line AB is to the AG segment as AG is to the GB segment.

The Golden Ratio is an irrational number that is today expressed by the following formula:




I hope that this is visible, but if not, go to this image on Wikipedia if you haven't already done so.

As an irrational number, the Golden Ratio can be given a decimal expansion for as far as one wishes: 1.61803398874989484820....

We now approach my question. Condren states the following in his post on Drexel University's Math Forum (June 1999):

The line counts of the four poems [in the Pearl Poet manuscript] are, respectively, 1212, 1812, 531, and 2531. This highly artful arrangement, minus the signature twelves in the first half and signature 31s (the tenth prime as the Middle Ages reckoned primes) in the second half, gives us two halves of 3000 lines each. More intriguing still, the two outer poems divided by the two medial poems give the Golden Section.

Okay, if we add 1212 and 2531, we get 3743, and if we add 1812 and 531, we get 2343. If we then divide 3743 by 2343, we obtain 1.59752454118.... That's not especially close to the Golden Ratio. So, let's try again without the "signature twelves" and "signature 31s" -- a move that already raises some danger signals for me, but okay. If we add 1200 and 2500, we get 3700, and if we add 1800 and 500, we get 2300. If we then divide 3700 by 2300, we obtain 1.60869565217....

That's closer but still no cigar. We can round off Condren's mean and the actual Golden Mean to 1.609 and 1.618, respectively. That's pretty close, but not the same. If we round off a bit more, we get 1.61 and 1.62. Closer yet, but still not the same. If we round off one more time, we get 1.6 and 1.6. The same ... finally.

At this point, I'd need to know two things:

1. What was the Medieval approximation for the Golden Ratio?
2. Why does Condren drop the "signature twelves" and the "signature 31s"?

I presume that Condren has some answers, but for now, I'm even more skeptical than I already was.