The Ups and Downs of Being a Dyslexic Academic

Chaucer’s Alphabet Poem. From Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter 239, f. 81r.

«And ‘a’, and ‘b’, and ‘c’ … xyz, xy with esed, and per se, Tyttle Tyttle Tyttle than Est and Amen.» 

This string of alphabetic letters and puzzling interjections comes from a medieval manuscript, London, BL MS Harley 1304. It probably looks like gibberish, or reminds you of the incomprehensibility of the written page you felt when you were learning to read. But for a medieval child, these marks had meaning: aside from the alphabetic letters, the ‘esed’ tells a child how to say the letter ‘z’, while the ‘and, per se’ (‘and, just as it is’) provided a key to the & symbol included at the end of the traditional alphabet. Every word and name, however odd, had a meaning, but they also remind us how easily written culture can become strange and incomprehensible.

I’ve been meaning to write a post…