Version 2 Complete - Progress Update - 12 March 2014

Greetings,

Well it looks like I have come to the end, or at least for now. I have completed the version 2 of both the modern version and Elizabethan version of my fencing manual. I am hoping that sometime in the not too distant future that I will be able to post links to both versions on this blog for your reading, however that will not be today. I also have no doubts in my mind that this project is not finished and that there will be a version 3 of this project produced.

It has been an interesting process from version 1 to version 2. In many ways the most interesting step was the divergence element which I have noted previously. This is the point where there was a distinct divergence between the modern version and the period version. The modern version began to take more the shape of a lesson book with diagrams and information in a more easily digestible form including diagrams of elements of the manual. The period version on the other hand, developed more complexity in the language and also distinct changes in grammar and typesetting. This means that the words in the one are quite definitively not the same words as in the other, however they do both deliver the same information.

This difference in form though similarity in intent is the reason why this project was started in the first place. There are many people who shy away from sources of the medieval and Renaissance periods because the language is different from the modern. The information on many subjects is there just waiting to be found within the pages of these documents but the language and its format often scares people away from using it. It is this fear that was the original reason that this project was started.

This project is designed to present two manuals which describe the same things, but using different language, one older than the other. This was to demonstrate that while the language may be different the information which is found in it is the same. Rather than having to work out how weapons were used from some guess-work we can read what was written in the period, the trick here is to find familiarity with the language and this project was designed to do just that. The fact that it taught me a lot about the Elizabethan language and Early Modern English in the process which I was able to present in this blog was just a bonus.

Cheers,

Henry.