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A new instance of poxleber

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• A new instance of poxleber

• RE: A new instance of poxleber

  Koen G > 2 hours ago

  To summarize, we now know of two 16th century anti-clerical writers who use b/pox leber as a vulgar oath in satirical dialogues.
  
  Correction: they use (a spelling variation of) the full curse "so mir box leber".

• RE: A new instance of poxleber

  Bernd > 2 hours ago

  Yes, Niklaus Manuel did the same thing in Switzerland that Hans Sachs did in Germany. Both were Reformation dramatists (and comedians). Stylistically very similar. I wonder if they influenced each other.
  
  If we indeed accept the hypothesis that the VM poxleber scribe was influenced by the works of Manuel or Sachs, it must have happened after 1500. I think Sachs started becoming active after 1510, Manuel's works were printed from 1524 onwards. That of course doesn't mean the expletive wasn't known way before that.

• RE: A new instance of poxleber

  Koen G > 1 hour ago

  I still regard the expletive hypothesis as highly problematic, maybe even more so after this genre confirmation. 
  

  • LFD, Marco and myself are in agreement that the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. handwriting points to a period roughly contemporaneous with that of the radiocarbon dating. 
    
  • Both attestations have identical genres, which could not be further removed from the genre of "scribe's marginal annotation in an early 15th century codex".
    
  • The impact of the oath is not just that of "goddammit", which has lost all impact on us. To feel the impact, think of the must vulgar curses you can imagine in your language.
    
  • The 15th century reference to pox-swearing I found earlier is a strong condemnation thereof, in the spoken language of the commonfolk (does not mention "leber").
    
  • As far as I'm aware, the full expletive includes the "so mir" part (sammer, sommer, whatever). We don't know if anyone was yelling "pox leber!" in isolation. 
    
  • OCR heavily skews towards printed texts, increasing our chances to find the (still rare) 17th century uses. 
    

  
  And perhaps most importantly: even in the 16th century, "poxleber" is only used in dialogues. The author does not say "So mir pox Leber, ich liebe den Pabst nicht!". He has farmers say it, or even the decadent pope himself.

• RE: A new instance of poxleber

  JoJo_Jost > 41 minutes ago

  I was no longer concerned with the text above, but rather with the word "sommer boxleber" and with Hildegard von Bingen, who clearly identifies the pox liver as a remedy...
     

• RE: A new instance of poxleber

  Jorge_Stolfi > 26 minutes ago

  (1 hour ago)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  • LFD, Marco and myself are in agreement that the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. handwriting points to a period roughly contemporaneous with that of the radiocarbon dating. 
    

  
  I must note here that the comparative dating of the handwriting assumes that whoever wrote those words was using his customary contemporary handwriting, and not trying to imitate "old handwriting". You know why I think the latter was probably the case here.
  
  On the other hand, I think that the conclusions about the geographical range are significant, because the author of that text would hardly have known what the 15th century "French" or "Italian" or "East German" handwriting would be like, and would have no good reason to imitate those anyway.  He surely used used the local handwriting, more or less "oldified".
  
  All the best, --stolfi
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