# Mistakes in classic literature
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 8, 2004, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227 "2004-05-08T21:43:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/1 "2004-05-08T21:43:29Z")
What mistakes are there in classic literature that you can think of?
Example: In Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, the main character strips naked, swims out to the wrecked boat, and fills his pockets with food.
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### Author:  [@Nightwatch\_Trailer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightwatch_Trailer)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/2 "2004-05-08T22:12:33Z")
In the poem “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats, the poet makes a reference to Cortez “discovering” the Pacific Ocean in America. Balboa was the discoverer, not Cortez.
I’ve heard that this “mistake” is intentional and adds somehow to the poem’s message, but I’m not convinced.
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### Author:  [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/3 "2004-05-08T22:19:31Z")
**Nightwatch Trailer** beat me to the Keats bit. And yeah, I don’t think it was intentional either, but if I were, say, a Keatsian scholar with a vested interested in making my man Johnny look good, I’d probably look for a way to say it was done on purpose too.
This isn’t really a mistake in literature, but rather a bit of widely accepted but shaky scholarship: There’s the famous line from Homer about “the wine-dark sea,” _epi oinopa ponton_. Unfortunately, the word _oinopa_ appears only one other time in surviving texts, when it refers to someone’s upper arm, so it’s pretty unlikely that it was actually intended to mean “wine-dark.” Hugh Kenner wrote a great essay on the long train of scholars’ shaky assumptions that led to its being generally accepted as “wine-dark” (the first of which being its similarity to _oinos_, of course).
Joyce makes fun of this in _Ulysses_ when Stephen Dedalus looks at the ocean and thinks, “The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.”
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### Author:  [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/4 "2004-05-08T22:22:43Z")
It’s not really fair to blame the author for this one:
In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s _Parzival_ (Perceval) said knight on his quest for the grail unwittingly meets his half brother Feirefiz who is a son of Parzival’s (white) father Gachmuret and Belakane, a black African queen. As a consequence he is… well… _spotted_. In Germany ca. 1200 this must have been the logical conclusion.
PS: I _love_ that book.
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### Author:  [@The\_Man\_With\_The\_Golden\_Gun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_With_The_Golden_Gun)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/5 "2004-05-08T23:08:44Z")
My favorite is in Shakespeare’s **Julius Caesar** where he mentions a clock striking the hour. The play takes place in ancient Rome, which didn’t have clocks.
From what I hear, Shakespeare is full of little anachronisms like that.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/6 "2004-05-08T23:14:24Z")
In one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Watson’s wife forgets Watson’s first name.
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### Author:  [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/7 "2004-05-08T23:36:17Z")
O. Henry’s short story _The Gift of the Magi_ begins with this assessment of the character Delia’s cash on hand:
> [@](#):
>
> One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies.
So what of the other $1.27? You’d have to have at least 2 cents’ worth of either additional pennies or half-cent coins. However, the latter were last minted in the USA some fifty years before the story was published in the early twentieth century, and probably could have been sold to a collector for more than face value, thereby ameliorating Delia’s poverty a bit.
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/8 "2004-05-08T23:37:17Z")
Not at all. His wife calls him James. Now, We know that his name is John H. Watson, and he has Scottish ancestry, so obviously his middle name is Hamish, which is equivalent to James.
Easy. :dubious:
Now, here’s one from another mystery novel, _The Nine Taylors_ By Dorothy Sayers. (This was a set book in my Eng Lit class when I was 16) During a class discussion of the plot I pointed this out… brief pause while they thought about it then they all went ‘y-e-a-h’. Nobody could answer this point
If Thoday didn’t know that the bells would kill Deacon, then what was the parrot talking about?
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/9 "2004-05-08T23:40:40Z")
> [@peter morris](#):
>
> Not at all. His wife calls him James. Now, We know that his name is John H. Watson, and he has Scottish ancestry, so obviously his middle name is Hamish, which is equivalent to James.
>
> Easy. :dubious:
Not easy: elementary.
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### Author:  [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2004, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/10 "2004-05-08T23:48:44Z")
**Sternvogel** , the U.S. Mint [produced](http://www.usmint.gov/faqs/circulating_coins/index.cfm?action=faq_circulating_coin#coinage) two-cent coins until 1873. “The Gift of the Magi” was published in 1905, 32 years later. I see coins in circulation from the 1960s fairly often; a 32-year-old coin seems plausible enough for the story.
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### Author:  [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/11 "2004-05-09T00:27:13Z")
> [@The Man With The Golden Gun](#):
>
> My favorite is in Shakespeare’s **Julius Caesar** where he mentions a clock striking the hour. The play takes place in ancient Rome, which didn’t have clocks.
>
> From what I hear, Shakespeare is full of little anachronisms like that.
You might get a kick out of Poul Anderson’s book **A Midsummer Tempest** , then; it’s set largely in an alternate universe where all Shakespeare’s plays are strictly accurate histories. So you not only get clocks in ancient Rome, you get Bohemia with a seacoast, Oberon and Titania as historical figures, etc. It’s a fairly amusing read, as I recall.
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### Author:  [@Tentacle\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tentacle_Monster)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/12 "2004-05-09T00:43:31Z")
> [@Revtim](#):
>
> Example: In Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, the main character strips naked, swims out to the wrecked boat, and fills his pockets with food.
Not necessarily. He could have stuffed the food between his buttocks.
It’s Nature’s pocket.
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/13 "2004-05-09T01:00:46Z")
A Christmas Carol.
So, Scrooge hates Christmas. The ghosts decide to show him the error of his ways.
First they take him back to his chuildhood and show him that he had to work at Christmas while all the other children were having fun.
Then they show him a few years later, the only woman he ever loved ran out on him at Christmas.
Then, they bring him to the present, and show him Bob Cratchett and his family starving to death at Christmas.
Then they take him into the future and show him Tiny Tim dying at Christmas, and himself dead and unmourned.
All of this teaches him that Christmas is really a happy and jolly time after all.
Does this make sense to anyone?
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/14 "2004-05-09T01:18:07Z")
> [@The Man With The Golden Gun](#):
>
> My favorite is in Shakespeare’s **Julius Caesar** where he mentions a clock striking the hour. The play takes place in ancient Rome, which didn’t have clocks.
>
> From what I hear, Shakespeare is full of little anachronisms like that.
To sort of hedge my answer, I believe I read about a form of striking waterclock used in eother Greece[Athens?] or Egypt that struck the hours. Will have to look it up and pray there is something about clypedestras online=) If I have luck, I will do a follow up post=)
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/15 "2004-05-09T01:22:20Z")
> [@The Man With The Golden Gun](#):
>
> My favorite is in Shakespeare’s **Julius Caesar** where he mentions a clock striking the hour. The play takes place in ancient Rome, which didn’t have clocks.
>
> From what I hear, Shakespeare is full of little anachronisms like that.
Bingo=) found it…of course I misremembered the name but i managed anyway=)
[http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/early.html](http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/early.html)
More elaborate and impressive mechanized water clocks were developed between 100 BCE and 500 CE by Greek and Roman horologists and astronomers. The added complexity was aimed at making the flow more constant by regulating the pressure, and at providing fancier displays of the passage of time. Some water clocks rang bells and gongs; others opened doors and windows to show little figures of people, or moved pointers, dials, and astrological models of the universe.
So we could have a clock strike an hour=)
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### Author:  [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/16 "2004-05-09T01:25:13Z")
Shakespeare also had Caesar & co. wearing doublets.
Speaking of clothing, I read somewhere that in DeFoe’s time, the word “clothes” referred only to outer garments like coats and jackets, so Crusoe didn’t really strip naked–he was still wearing his pants.
If you think it sounds kind of lame, I agree.
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### Author:  [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/17 "2004-05-09T01:28:59Z")
> [@Tentacle Monster](#):
>
> Not necessarily. He could have stuffed the food between his buttocks.
>
> It’s Nature’s pocket.
Really gives new meaning to “What’s it got in its nasssty little pocketses?”
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### Author:  [@5\_time\_champ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/5_time_champ)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/18 "2004-05-09T01:42:58Z")
> [@The Man With The Golden Gun](#):
>
> My favorite is in Shakespeare’s **Julius Caesar** where he mentions a clock striking the hour. The play takes place in ancient Rome, which didn’t have clocks.
>
> From what I hear, Shakespeare is full of little anachronisms like that.
IIRC the other 2 anachronisms in **JC** are references to the Virgin Mary and chimminies.
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### Author:  [@pesch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pesch)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/19 "2004-05-09T02:01:40Z")
> [@Dr. Rieux](#):
>
> Shakespeare also had Caesar & co. wearing doublets.
>
> Speaking of clothing, I read somewhere that in DeFoe’s time, the word “clothes” referred only to outer garments like coats and jackets, so Crusoe didn’t really strip naked–he was still wearing his pants.
> If you think it sounds kind of lame, I agree.
[Not so fast, there.](http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n08/woot02_.html)
This is from a review of “Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in 17th Century England.” It’s dense in places, but here’s the relevant graf:
> [@](#):
>
> Take nakedness. One may doubt whether early modern English men and women were ever naked. In the mid-17th century Quakers went ‘naked for a sign’, but they often turn out to have been wearing sackcloth coats - ‘naked’ here means without shoes, hats or outer garments. Men and women both wore smocks, and you could be ‘naked in your smock’. (There was no ‘underwear’, so everyone was naked under their smocks.) People did not take their clothes off to go to bed, but they did take off their hats (if they were men) and coifs (if they were women); thus a brother and sister were suspected of incest when they were discovered in bed together, ‘both bareheaded’. John Donne was exploring a metaphysical extreme of sensuality when he wrote a poem in praise of ‘full nakedness’: a poem which describes his lover’s clothes, but not her body, and in which his hands rove in unexplored places, like those not of a husband, but of a midwife. Whether Donne himself ever saw and touched a fully (or stark) naked body, the point of the poem is surely that his readers will scarcely be able to imagine anything so strange. Renaissance artists had rediscovered the classical nude two centuries before, but Donne was (I suspect) the first Englishman to propose going naked to bed.
So it may be that Defoe didn’t make a mistake after all.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2004, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mistakes-in-classic-literature/244227/20 "2004-05-09T02:13:52Z")
In _King Solomon’s Mines_, the ceremony of the witch hunt takes place during a full moon. The next day there’s a total eclipse of the sun, which can only happen at the new moon. That was a quick fortnight.
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