Two Short Things by William Morris

By -
While I was on my trip I read a couple of short William Morris pieces on my tablet.

The Defence of Guenevere is a poem containing Guenevere's speech at the moment when she is about to be burned for adultery.  She tells the story of her relationship with Lancelot, from the moment she first saw him.  At the same time she repeats over and over:

Nevertheless you, O Sir Gauwaine, lie, 
Whatever happened on through all those years, 
God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie.


I also read a paper titled The Ideal Book, which contains Morris' ideas about how books should be printed: their layout, spacing and typography, the kind of paper that ought to be used, the size, and how illustrations or ornaments ought to look.  It's quite short and rather interesting, especially when he goes off on a bit of a tangent about the need for a really good English Black-Letter type that would be both easy to read and artistically tolerable.

The funny thing about this little essay was that it had been set and printed as a learning exercise (I presume from the inscription) at an arts and crafts college.  As far as I can tell from reading a digital scan of the original, the student carefully followed Morris' rules as best he could.  I can't say I really think the result is artistically wonderful.  Oh well.



I have also started reading The Well at the World's End, a knightly adventure which will probably take me quite a long time.  It's written in a Victorian pseudo-medieval style that goes rather slowly.  Also Morris named his young hero Ralph, which does not sound very heroic or knightly to the modern American ear.  This really bugs my Russian sister-in-law, who thinks that Ralf is a very nice name (and I must say that using an F instead of a PH really helps!), but I can't help having grown up watching Happy Days all the time.

Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more