Creative anachronism resources

September 16, 2004 12:51 AM

Greg Lindahl presents scans and transcriptions of several early modern texts at his website: for example, there are partly-searchable facsmilies of John Florio's New World of Words, an Italian-English dictionary published in 1611, and, from the same year, Randle Cotgrave's Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. Also, there are manuals on swordsmanship, dance, cookery, brewing and needlework.
posted by misteraitch (7 comments total)

Critique: too useful, not controversial enough for Metafilter! I am joking. Thank you, I love this kind of thing. It's exciting to think that scholars will someday be able to share high-res facsimiles of all such materials in the world. It's like that ad: "We have all the manuscripts from all the great libraries in the world, available all the time to everybody." Herr Lachmann in heaven is beaming down on us.
posted by hairyeyeball at 3:07 AM on September 16, 2004

I suppose I could bring it down a notch by adding that Florio's dictionary contains the earliest-known definition including the word 'fucke'...
posted by misteraitch at 3:44 AM on September 16, 2004

I suppose I could bring it down a notch by adding that Florio's dictionary contains the earliest-known definition including the word 'fucke'...

Well now, that's more like it!

No, really, these are wonderful links, misteraitch. I'm really enjoying the last bunch, especially the cookery and the swordsmanship manuals. I love it when people have nice, generous scans online - ones that we can actually see. You have a penchant for finding great scans of wonderful old things.
posted by iconomy at 7:27 AM on September 16, 2004

Great post, misteraitch.
posted by homunculus at 10:41 AM on September 16, 2004

I've only begun to scratch the surface of all this, and I'm fairly in awe. Right now I'm reading "The Devil and Eugénie", which is hilarious. I'm also always a little entranced by food history - but Viking Foods? How cool is that? And just in case one ever needs to prepare a feast at which are kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, counts, countesses, princes, princesses, marquis, marquises, barons, baronesses and lords of lower estate, and nobles also a great number, this will be invaluable. This happened to me just last weekend, and I ended up serving tuna casserole. If only you had posted this earlier!
posted by taz at 11:16 AM on September 16, 2004

For more manuals on swordsmanship, see this thread.
posted by homunculus at 11:32 AM on September 16, 2004

Mille gramercè -- le báscio le máni!

(As Florio would have me say.)
posted by languagehat at 12:21 PM on September 16, 2004