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highlyeccentricSomeone presented a very august paper at Leeds, and the bloggers have run away with it, and now our modern literate culture is all based on underpants.
Check it out at Got Medieval
It's not as if there were piles of soiled underwear lying around the towns of medieval Europe, covering all the available surfaces, thoroughly stinking up the place, until someone finally said, "I know, we'll make paper out of them, that'll solve that problem," and then with all the paper lying around, people started reading and writing out of self defense. Then, bam, we had ourselves a Renaissance in celebration.
And also at Unlocked Wordhoard
I want to suggest that the rise of underpants wearing was driven by a market in used underwear, so that the medieval person could say, "well, I'll invest in this underwear because I know I'll be able to recoup a small part of that investment later when I sell it to be made into books."
Yes, that the new meme! Increased literacy caused people to wear underpants, not visa-versa! And I already have proof: Paris Hilton, known non-underwearer, is also not a very literate person. I, on the other hand, read a great deal, and I wear underpants every day. Indeed, when my children were illiterate, they wore diapers, not underpants, but now that they are literate, they wear underpants.
Check it out at Got Medieval
It's not as if there were piles of soiled underwear lying around the towns of medieval Europe, covering all the available surfaces, thoroughly stinking up the place, until someone finally said, "I know, we'll make paper out of them, that'll solve that problem," and then with all the paper lying around, people started reading and writing out of self defense. Then, bam, we had ourselves a Renaissance in celebration.
And also at Unlocked Wordhoard
I want to suggest that the rise of underpants wearing was driven by a market in used underwear, so that the medieval person could say, "well, I'll invest in this underwear because I know I'll be able to recoup a small part of that investment later when I sell it to be made into books."
Yes, that the new meme! Increased literacy caused people to wear underpants, not visa-versa! And I already have proof: Paris Hilton, known non-underwearer, is also not a very literate person. I, on the other hand, read a great deal, and I wear underpants every day. Indeed, when my children were illiterate, they wore diapers, not underpants, but now that they are literate, they wear underpants.