5 literary mysteries that have never been solved
Yes, literature is full of grisly crime scenes, unexplained disappearances, strange and otherworldly manuscripts, deaths with no known cause, and much more gory stuff than one could imagine. However, literature has enough of these things in non-fiction terms as well. Intrigued? There are several real-life mysteries in literature and things related to it that we will just never know what really went down. Here is a look at five literary mysteries that have never been solved.
Why can no one read the Voynich Manuscript?
Experts think the Voynich Manuscript was written in the 15th Century. Though no one really knows who wrote it, historians believe it came from Central Europe. Furthermore, experts aren't even sure what language it's written in. A recent study found that the writing is likely Hebrew. However, the same study said the document may also be in Malay, Arabic, or Amharic. Others think it was likely written in code. Most experts think a substitution cipher was used. In this method, a person can encode a message by switching some letters of the alphabet with made-up characters.
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How did Edgar Allan Poe die?
The death of American writer, poet, and literary critic on October 7, 1849 has remained mysterious. The circumstances leading up to it are uncertain, and the cause of death is disputed. On October 3, Poe was found delirious in Baltimore, Maryland, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died at 5 a.m. on Sunday, October 7. He was 40 years old. Nobody knows how Poe came to be in this condition.
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Where is Shakespeare's missing play?
The 'History of Cardenio', often referred to as merely 'Cardenio', is a lost play, known to have been performed by the King's Men, a London theatre company, in 1613. The play is attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher in a Stationers' Register entry of 1653. The content of the play is not known, but it was likely to have been based on an episode in Miguel de Cervantes's 'Don Quixote' involving the character Cardenio, a young man who has been driven mad and lives in the Sierra Morena. There have been multiple claims of people finding the script to 'Cardenio' over the years, but none of them can be conclusively declared to be authentic.
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Why did Agatha Christie disappear for 11 days?
In 1926, Christie disappeared for 11 days. The famed murder mystery writer was in the midst of a divorce from her first husband Archie Christie and was dealing with the aftermath of the death of her mother. On December 3, she left her home and the next morning her car was found abandoned nearby. She was later found at a hotel in Yorkshire, England, registered under a different name and with no memory of her last 11 days. Christie's own autobiography makes no mention of her disappearance.
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Who is the author of 'Beowulf'?
'Beowulf' is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. However, the author of 'Beowulf' is unknown. It is possible that the poem was composed by and transmitted between several different poets before it was preserved in a single manuscript that dates to about 1000.
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