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uberkeyzer posted:Fabulous job of summarizing a very tangled history -- this is a great resource. I think the last book was written around 1941, it just wasn't published until the whole thing was collected in one volume. There was also a fifth book written in 1941, The Book of Merlyn, which wasn't published until the 1970's. The Book of Merlyn is definitely worth reading once you finish The Once and Future King, even though large parts of it were later incorporated into the final published version of The Sword in the Stone.
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Apr 4, 2014 18:28
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The Once and Future King deserves credit for coining the "totalitarian principle": "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." This was later applied (with a different meaning, of course) to quantum physics.
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Apr 4, 2014 18:43
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I think my first memory of anything was the Disney cartoon.
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Apr 4, 2014 18:44
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That was a fantastic series of posts. At some point I need to find a copy of Le Morte d'Arthur, as the only Arthurian stuff I've really read is the Mabinogion.
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Apr 7, 2014 05:49
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This is amazing, thanks. I've always had a fascination with Arthurian themed stuff, I don't know why. I'm too lazy to have more than a varied knowledge of the subject, though, and all of this has really connected a whole bunch of dots in my head. Great book recommendations, too, I've got 2 books on order already.
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Apr 7, 2014 22:42
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This is an excellent thread, I've really enjoyed reading it. I have a friend who has a doctorate in Celtic languages, so I'll have to ask her if there's any news on the historical Arthur when I next speak to her. I am still digging for that Holy Grail paper, I'm a little annoyed that I can't seem to find it because I looked specifically at when the story arose and some of the modern-day adaptations of it. I did find my paper on food and drink in Egypt, though.
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Apr 7, 2014 22:54
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Sarrisan posted:Great book recommendations, too, I've got 2 books on order already. Cool! Can I ask which ones? Just curious what parts of the thread people found interesting enough to go do more reading. Alternatively let me know what you think after you've read them. I'm especially interested in what other people think of Howard Pyle -- I read his stuff so much as a child that it's hard for me to judge it objectively. Zola posted:This is an excellent thread, I've really enjoyed reading it. I have a friend who has a doctorate in Celtic languages, so I'll have to ask her if there's any news on the historical Arthur when I next speak to her. Hahha, I'm actually a little scared of what will happen the moment a professional historian finds this thread. I'm just an amateur who's read a few books here and there and then done a bunch of internet research, and a lot of what I posted is very controversial stuff. The biggest surprise I've had writing all this has been that no, like, actual real academic historians have come into the thread and torn my theories a new rear end in a top hat via a shower of j-store links. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think I'm right in everything above, and I tried to sortof "post the controversy" rather than make definitive statements, but I could be really, really wrong in a lot of details -- this is a BIG topic and I don't claim expertise, just hobbyist knowledge. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Apr 8, 2014 |
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Apr 8, 2014 20:44
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I have Tennyson on my reading list because it's sounds like it's as complete as Mallory while also being an excuse to read some poetry. And Sir Gawain and the Green Knight of course. I've never really read anything about King Arthur, so I want to start with a reasonably authentic version before checking out modernized versions like the Once and Future King.
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Apr 9, 2014 21:05
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If people are talking about contributions that can be made to the thread, I'm happy to provide translations from the Latin sources - ie Gildas, Nennius, Geoffrey - if something looks ambiguous in ye olde time shitte public domain translations and/or the modern ones and/or you don't want to pay up for modern ones which may or many not explain the ambiguous bits. Just don't make me translate whole books. 
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Apr 10, 2014 01:30
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So thanks to this thread I started re-reading Jack Whyte's Dream of Eagles Arthurian series, and was surprised at how homophobic it seems many years after I first read the books as a teenager. The author really has some issues with gay people 
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Apr 13, 2014 19:36
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Awesome thread. The Once and Future King has been my favorite book for years, and I'm interested in trying to read some of these others - specifically Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, based on your enthusiasm for it. I've read a chunk of Mallory but just got a little bored when I tried reading it last, so I need to give it another go sometime. I read The Death of King Arthur by Peter Ackroyd and really enjoyed it. It claims to be a modern-day retelling of Mallory. I can't comment on that for obvious reasons, but it was certainly more approachable. Reviews on Amazon aren't the friendliest, so it might not be good for other people, but I'd recommend it as - at the very least - a good read.
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Apr 14, 2014 04:37
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Good lord, this is a fantastic thread. Thanks for the write-up, Alloy. A few of the books I've read (Cornwall, White, Bradley) but a lot of these I haven't, especially Stewart and Tolkien, somehow. I really appreciated all of the background notes, they were genuinely fun to read. I've got Gawain and the Green Knight ordered pretty much based on your endorsement of the book, so, bravo.
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Apr 15, 2014 05:06
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Tangentially related, I have run across this: http://expositions.bnf.fr/livres/armorial/ I cannot read french, but it appears to be an illuminated book that was used to help identify who was who in armor. Its really beautiful to look at and gives some basis for where some of the images of Arthur and his knights come from. Plus, I mean just look at these guys:  
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Apr 15, 2014 05:32
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Stravinsky posted:Tangentially related, I have run across this: Oh that is neat. There seems to be a lot of "subtext" in these images, too, if we can still use that word for images. For example, the Archbishop of Reims is illustrated in full armor and bearing a sword, even though he was a noncombatant; there are separate illustrations for the "Duke of Normandy" and the "King of England," even though the King of England claimed that title; whereas most of the French knights, even the bishop, are depicted charging forward, the King of England is depicted from behind (i.e., in flight) with his sword in a defensive position. edit: I figured out precisely what the book is. http://www.idtg.org/archive/1509-the-great-armorial-of-the-golden-fleece/ I think you're right to connect it with more modern imagery, too. Pyle's illustrations especially are full of those same big flying splashes of cloth. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Apr 15, 2014 |
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Apr 15, 2014 14:17
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Spoilers Below posted:If you're looking for a pretty faithful modern retelling of these stories, Evangeline Walton wrote a fantastic tetralogy that's (in my opinion) been ignored and overlooked for way too long. She's an amazing fantasy writer that just never got the recognition of her contemporaries, had a brief renaissance in the 70s when Ballantine wanted more fantasy to publish after Lord of the Rings and Gormenghast, but has since kinda fallen off the radar again. With the Mabinogion, people always recommend Lloyd Alexander, and for good reason because his books are very good, but he changed so much from the original tales that they rather quickly stop being the Mabinogion. But if you want to know what the Welsh King Arthur would have been like, but without struggling through ancient poetry, Walton's got you hooked up. I finally got around to finishing up this collection. You're right, it's a really good re-imagining of the Mabinogion. The only problem with it is only a problem from the perspective of this particular thread -- because it's just the core Four Branches of the Mabinogi, without all the other stories that typically get included with them as "The Mabinogion", there's little mention of Arthur at all except for a couple of passing references. As a modernized re-telling of ancient myths though it's excellent; maybe not quite on the same level with works like Mary Renault's The King Must Die but drat close. I'd definitely second your recommendation and agree these are undeservedly forgotten. One interesting thing I realized reading this is that the section in T.H. White's Once and Future King where Merlin turns Arthur into various animals actually *does* have precursors in the welsh Mabinogion -- Math turning Gwydion into various animals and so forth. So I wasn't completely accurate when I said above that White was basically just modernizing Mallory. Now I need to go re-read and re-evaluate. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Apr 20, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 19:01
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What a great thread. Thanks for making it. Arthuriana is a huge tradition and it's impressive you managed to provide a relatively comprehensive introduction! I recently read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (having been familiar with the story, of course) and yes, it's really good. Coincidentally I also read Marie de France's "Lanval" which isn't that great; it's nicely told and constructed, but it's not much more than an anecdote and the characters are flat. The translation by Alfred David is appalling, though. Also Roger Lancelyn Green's childrens' book is great for kids, and just one of a series dealing with various mythologies - there's also Greek and Egyptian ones, off the top of my head.
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Apr 20, 2014 06:40
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Bumping this because Mary Stewart just passed away:quote:I was sorry to hear that Mary Stewart is dead, at the age of 97. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/05/mary-stewart-1916-2014-an-appreciation
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May 18, 2014 18:20
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I'm glad you bumped this because I wouldn't have found the thread otherwise, and it's been a great read. I'm going to see about getting hold of the Stewart books, I think. I've read Malory and TH White and the Mists of Avalon, so that's probably my next stop. The most recent Arthurian retelling I read was The Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff. It left out a lot of the magical elements and had a deep preoccupation with horse-breeding. I liked it enough to finish it but it didn't inspire me to seek out the rest of the series it's apparently spun off from.
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May 18, 2014 23:40
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All things considered, despite the above recommendation of Marion Zimmer Bradley, I should probably acknowledge that there may be some reasons to avoid reading her work.
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Aug 7, 2014 21:05
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