The Deorhord: An Old English Bestiary, by Hana Videen This followup to The Wordhord was a lovely read. Videen uses her wordhord format to write a bestiary, explaining how medieval people loved to used animals as examples of Christian ideas. Plus I always enjoy learning about Old English words, because they are often cognate with both modern English and with Danish. Deor (animal), which in English evolved into deer , is also related to Danish dyr (animal). Videen has sections of everyday animals, 'wonder' animals (such as elephants), creatures that especially symbolized good and evil, and just plain mysteries. The good animals are the lion, deer, phoenix, and panther, and the evil ones are the whale, snake, dragon, and wolf. The mysteries are usually taken from Alexander the Great's writings about his conquest of India; one sounds kind of like a crocodile, except that it has a head like the moon and also crocodiles were well-known. Another...
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 ...
My 14yo asked me to hide the cover The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth , by Robert Graves Oh, wow. I could talk about this fabulously nutty book all day! I had no idea when I picked it up what I was getting into. The short version: Graves was looking for evidence of a European-wide goddess-worshiping Ur-religion that he believed existed before all that male god patriarchy stuff came along. He found his material in myth and poetry, and claimed that bards and poets disguised their lore by deliberately mixing it up. All true poetry is based on the Triple White Goddess as Muse, and no monotheist can be a true poet. Graves, being a true poet, realized all this through poetic intuition. Now the long version: This is 500 extremely dense pages of speculation about myth, poetry, and ancient tribal movements, presented as plain fact deduced by intuition and research. It's from the same school of...scholarship...as The Golden B...
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