Medieval poets' assumptions about their audience have been on my mind a lot lately. Literary riddles (to which the Anglo-Saxons were addicted) seem like a good lens to look at those assumptions with—after all, there's not much point in a riddle only its author knows the answer to.

A question to ponder: Is the support of 1,000 True Fans better than the here-today, gone-tomorrow affections of a quarter million or more Lesser Fans?