Three for Friday
A medieval perspective on life in our time
A spoof by Ray Bradbury to begin. At the core of this very short story is a beautifully composed meditation on the mystery of existence which makes the turn at the end all the more surprising and darkly funny.
In the first passage from Sir Gawain and The Green Knight that I quoted on Tuesday occurs a strange word, ‘wodwo’:
Sumwhyle wyth wormez he werrez, and with wolues als, Sumwhyle wyth wodwos, þat woned in þe knarrez,
The word is translated in various ways, W.S. Merwin gives us ‘trolls’ but Hughes takes the mystery of the word as a means to probe identity and meaning. Placed at the end of the collection with the same title the innocence of the poem’s voice is hard won and delightful.
But what shall I be called am I the first have I an owner what shape am I what shape am I am I huge . . .
Chivalry is a word much used and now despised but in its original form it had a distinct purpose, chiefly to control the rampaging knights of the Crusades. It encompassed courtly love which gave rise to the long and ever popular genre of romantic stories where love is a matter of life and death.
In this essay Laura Ashe outlines the background to the tradition.
Is the modern taste for medievalism hokey (think Game of Thrones and its offshoots) or does it tell us something new about our own times?