Movable

Movable audio micro-course (transcript)

Three short podcasts about “Movable”. Listen with the interactive player.

Podcast 1 — Introduction & meaning

Narrator: Movable. An adjective and noun. Pronounced /ˈmuː.və.bəl/.

Narrator: Movable comes from move — from Old French mouvoir, from Latin movere, to move — with the productive suffix -able, meaning capable of being. Something movable being capable of being moved rather than fixed in place. The alternative spelling moveable — with the -e- preserved — being also correct in British English and the spelling Hemingway used in his memoir title.

Narrator: Movable feast is the key phrase in both religious and literary contexts. In the liturgical calendar, a movable feast is a religious celebration whose date changes from year to year — calculated according to a rule rather than fixed to a calendar date. Easter being the most significant movable feast in the Western Christian calendar, calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox — a system whose complexity generates dates ranging from 22 March to 25 April. The Easter date system producing the varying dates of all other movable feasts that depend on it — Advent Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Ascension, Pentecost.

Narrator: A Moveable Feast is the title of Ernest Hemingway's posthumous memoir of his time in Paris in the 1920s, published in 1964 three years after his death. The title being taken from a remark Hemingway apparently made to a friend — if you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. The memoir capturing the bohemian literary world of 1920s Paris — Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford appearing as vivid and not always flattered characters.

Narrator: In Scottish law, the distinction between heritable property (land and buildings) and moveable property (everything else) being a foundational division of property law. The equivalent of the English real/personal property distinction — real property being land, personal property being everything else.

Narrator: Movable. The Latin movement-capacity — from the complex Easter calculation to Hemingway's Paris feast to the lawyer's moveable goods — wherever things resist being fixed and retain the capacity to travel.

Speaker A: The Easter calculation being one of those mathematical-ecclesiastical puzzles worth understanding.

Speaker B: The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE deciding that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox — attempting to unify the various Christian communities who were observing Easter on different dates. The calculation involving both the solar calendar (the spring equinox, approximately 21 March) and the lunar calendar (the full moon) — the tension between the two creating a date that can fall anywhere between 22 March and 25 April. The Eastern Orthodox churches using the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, producing a different Easter date in most years — typically later by one to five weeks. The Computus being the name for the method of Easter calculation — one of the more complex pieces of arithmetic in the medieval church's calendar management.

Speaker A: A Moveable Feast being one of those literary memoirs with a complicated relationship to truth.

Speaker B: Hemingway's memoir being published posthumously, edited by his widow Mary and subsequently re-edited in a restored edition in 2009 with changes she had made removed. The accuracy of Hemingway's portraits of his contemporaries being debated — his characterisation of Scott Fitzgerald as alcoholic, pathetically insecure, and sexually anxious being particularly contested. Zelda Fitzgerald being portrayed as having deliberately sabotaged Scott's writing career. Gertrude Stein being initially warm but then falling out with Hemingway. The memoir capturing a world of expatriate writers and artists in 1920s Paris — the cafés of the Left Bank, the poverty and the artistic ambition — but filtered through Hemingway's retrospective reconstruction and scores-settling. The question of memoir truth being one of the most interesting in literary criticism.

Speaker A: The movable type printing press being one of those technological innovations that changed history.

Speaker B: Johannes Gutenberg developing movable type printing in Europe around 1440-1450, using individual metal type pieces that could be rearranged and reused rather than the block printing (whole pages carved from wood) that preceded it. The term movable type capturing the key innovation — the individual letters being movable and recombineable rather than fixed. The Gutenberg Bible of 1455 being the first major Western book printed with movable type. The technology reducing the cost of books dramatically, enabling the standardisation of spelling and grammar, facilitating the spread of literacy, and — in combination with the Reformation — transforming European society. The movable type press being one of the candidates for the most consequential invention in Western history.

Speaker A: The feast as metaphor for abundance and richness being one of those cultural figures worth noting.

Speaker B: The feast metaphor appearing across contexts — a feast of ideas, a visual feast, the feast of information. The underlying metaphor being that intellectual or aesthetic richness is like an abundance of food — overwhelming, pleasurable, satisfying. Hemingway's moveable feast extending the metaphor to the portable carrying of cultural nourishment — Paris being not just a place but a form of richness that could be taken away and enjoyed elsewhere, like provisions carried from a feast. The metaphor revealing how food and nutrition are fundamental conceptual templates for other forms of abundance and satisfaction in English and in the cultures English reflects.

Speaker B: Build a Next.js the Easter calculation and how the church determined the date of movable feasts for a history teacher — documenting Easter computus and movable feasts, reviewing Easter, computus, and church history, generating a movable Easter framework, and producing a movable feast guide.

Speaker A: Easter computus documented with history education analysis so teachers explain both the rule — how the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) established Easter as the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox (21 March), how this produces dates between 22 March and 25 April — and the history: how the computus was one of the most complex mathematical tasks of the medieval church (requiring coordination of solar and lunar calendars), how the Julian/Gregorian calendar split (1582) created different Easter dates for Western and Eastern churches (still producing different dates in most years), how the dependent feasts (Ash Wednesday 46 days before, Ascension 39 days after, Pentecost 49 days after, Advent Sunday linked to Christmas) all move with Easter, and what the Easter date controversy (the Quartodeciman controversy) reveals about early Christian diversity.

Speaker B: Design a Django Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and its portrayal of 1920s Paris literary life for a literature teacher — documenting A Moveable Feast, reviewing Hemingway, Paris, and literary history, generating a movable Hemingway framework, and producing a movable literary memoir guide.

Speaker A: A Moveable Feast documented with literature education analysis so teachers explain both the memoir — how Hemingway wrote it in 1957-1960, how it was published posthumously in 1964, how a restored edition in 2009 reversed changes made by his widow Mary — and the literary portraits: how Fitzgerald is portrayed as insecure and alcoholic (with a celebrated scene about penis size anxiety), how Gertrude Stein is initially warm and mentor-like then falls out with Hemingway, how Ezra Pound is portrayed with affection, how the memoir captures the Left Bank cafés, the poverty and artistic ambition of the Lost Generation — and the truth question: how posthumous memoir blurs between memoir and retrospective score-settling, and what the memoir reveals about the 1920s Paris expatriate literary world (Shakespeare and Company, the Dôme, the Select, La Rotonde).

Speaker B: Create a Svelte movable type printing and how Gutenberg's invention transformed European society for a history teacher — documenting Gutenberg's movable type press, reviewing Gutenberg, printing press, and history, generating a movable press framework, and producing a movable printing history guide.

Speaker A: Gutenberg's movable type documented with history education analysis so teachers explain both the innovation — how Gutenberg developed cast metal movable type in Mainz around 1440-1450, how individual letters could be rearranged and reused (contrasting with block printing where whole pages were carved), how the Gutenberg Bible (1455) was the first major Western book printed this way — and the consequences: how the cost of books fell dramatically (from years of scribal labour to days of mechanical printing), how the Reformation was enabled by the rapid printing and distribution of Luther's 95 Theses (1517) and Bible translations, how printing standardised spelling and grammar across regions, how literacy spread, and what Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change argues about printing as the defining technology of the early modern period.

Speaker B: Build a Vue the movable/heritable property distinction in law and what counts as personal versus real property for a law teacher — documenting movable and heritable property in law, reviewing personal property, real property, and law, generating a movable property framework, and producing a movable legal guide.

Speaker A: Movable property documented with law education analysis so teachers explain both the distinction — how English law divides property into real property (land and interests in land: freehold, leasehold, easements, covenants) and personal property (everything else: goods, money, intellectual property, choses in action) — and the Scottish variant: how Scots law uses the heritable/moveable distinction (heritable: land and buildings, passing to heirs; moveable: everything else), how these distinctions affect succession on death (real property passing according to different rules from personal property in English law historically, though this has been substantially unified), and what categories of property (aircraft, ships, intellectual property, crypto assets) create classification difficulties that reveal the boundaries of traditional property law concepts.

Speaker B: Develop a React Native the -able suffix and how Latin -abilis creates adjectives of capability in English for a linguistics teacher — documenting the -able suffix, reviewing -able, Latin, and word formation, generating a movable suffix framework, and producing a movable -able guide.

Speaker A: -Able suffix documented with linguistics education analysis so teachers explain both the source — how -able (from Latin -abilis via Old French -able/-eable) forms adjectives meaning capable of being or worthy of being the base verb's action: movable, readable, breakable, washable, adorable, capable, comparable — and the patterns: how -able attaches to native English verbs (movable, breakable) and Latinate bases (capable from capere: to take), how -ible is the variant used with Latin-derived bases that already have -ission or -ive forms (reversible: revert/reversion, edible: eat/edition), how the -able/-ible distinction helps spelling (if you can remove the suffix and have a recognisable verb, it is usually -able), and how the suffix's productivity means new words are formed regularly (scalable, searchable, swipeable) as new technologies create new capabilities.