Malory —
A lot of us agreed today on how Malory’s telling of stories we have previously read by French authors (The Knight of the Cart, The Death of King Arthur from Vulgate Cycle) were a bit distant and a little dry. I certainly felt that way at least. Even though the events of the narratives were [...]
That quote of course comes from what is perhaps the finest episode in Simpsons history, namely the golden age great “Homer the Heretic.” For any of you unfortunate enough not to know what I’m talking about, God appears to Homer to confront the yellow sloth about his newly formed religion, whose tenets largely consist [...]
There seems to be quite a divide between virginity expectations for women and men in the Arthurian tales. How many times have daughters of lords been offered to knights before being married to them? Virginal women or not virginal does not seem to be very important in Arthuriana, even adultry is questionably maybe OK within [...]
It’s been said that the idea of vernacular epic was first formalized by literary historians and philologists (i.e. early linguists and folklorists) in the nineteenth century, which is also traditionally the era of the rise of modern nationalism. This connection is not accidental, “epic” literature like the Chanson de Roland, and even Beowulf (which has [...]