From Rags To Riches, Or How Undergarments Improved Medieval Literacy

Alpha Galileo ^ | 7-6-2007 | University Of Leeds

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Larry Lucido]

Well, duh! Who doesn’t read better while wearing underwear?

[ClearCase_guy]

Writers were as desperate to get their work published in medieval times as they are now.

Did medieval writers resort to cheap "hooks" involving underwear in order to make their work more eye-catching?

[Terabitten]

Not sure... but Roman writers certainly did.

I remember reading from a Roman writer in high school Latin (don’t remember which one) who went into great detail about seeing a lady’s ankle at the Coliseum — it was apparently quite lurid at the time.

[NonValueAdded]

What goes around, comes around

[Syncro]

This pretty much discounts that story about it being torture to put underwear on the captured terrorists’ heads.

They were just given something to read.

[Xenalyte]

I don’t know about that, but our research has indicated that online gamers play better without pants.

[Beagle8U]

” In the 13th century, so it is thought, as more people moved into urban centres, the use of underwear increased – which caused an increase in the number of rags available for paper-making.” “

This explains why the pages of old books are yellow and or brown and smell.

[wildbill]

There’s a great PBS series called “Connections” where a very witty professor from Stanford(?) traces the connections between ordinary and some extra-ordinary inventions that cause a leap forward in our technological future.

One of the things he mentions is rags being available for papermaking—but he posits that the surplus of rags came from the die-offs in the middle ages to plague rather than new fashion in underwear.

I suppose that would be a deathly rags to literary riches story.

[I still care]

Ok, can we posit a correlation between more literate societies and ones that wear underwear?

And the first person that makes a crack about the Scots is out.

[gcruse]

I’ve found much of literature to be a pantload.
Thanks, blam, this stuff is faskinating, as Popeye would say.

[Bacon Man]

I'm not wearing any pants. Film at 11.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

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[Monkey Face]

Why on earth would someone “suddenly” want to wear underwear?

[weegee]

“as more people moved into urban centres, the use of underwear increased – which caused an increase in the number of rags available for paper-making.”

I wonder what books/newspapers were printed from the Clintons’ discarded undewear (you recall that they deducted it from their taxes).

[Born to Conserve]

No, no, no! It was the Chinese who invented paper and printing and underwear! The Chinese invented everything good, including Western Civilization.

[OSHA]

They were just given something to read.

LOL One word....."I"

[MARTIAL MONK]

And the first person that makes a crack about the Scots is out.

I know better than to make nasty cracks about nasty cracks.

[Romulus]

Ovid gives advice about one way to get a glimpse of a lady’s leg in the first book of Ars Amatoria. He doesn’t mention the Colosseum, which wasn’t built for another 100 years.

As for what was considered lurid at the time, the answer is Not Much. The Romans weren’t puritans, you know.