A Justification of Sorts

I am a historian of the Renaissance or early modern period who has, privately, long given up any pretence of studying the period for any other reason than that the language it throws up regularly cracks me up. This blog is merely my means of sharing the joy of these discoveries with someone who might appreciate it (you'd be amazed how unimpressed fellow researchers can be and with how seriously librarians and archivists take this 'silence' business). As trivial as this endeavour may be I hope that it at least wastes some of your boss's time and helps to make the horrors of modern life more bearable. Early modern people were great believers in books of little homilies and sayings about how to lead a virtuous life but, when you get to know them, you realise that the contents of these books were only wishful thinking - an ideal that no-one lived up to. You see, theirs was not a time of repression, manners and 24-hour surveilance, no! They lived in a world where you called a turd (and frequently many other things) a turd; enjoyed liquid lunches safe in the knowledge that their bosses would too; could have passionate altercations in the street without some pesky do-gooder in a uniform getting in the way; and hardly ever had to bathe! Of course, our nanny-state now affords us greater protection from the horrors of disease, sexual harrasment and animal-cruelty but it is, none-the-less, sometimes nice to roll in the mud of a more straightforward time...