Robert's comments
(member since Apr 07, 2009)
Robert's comments from the Arthuriana -- all things King Arthur ! group.
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Here Lies Arthur has a UK paperback edition - you can find it on amazon.uk. It's the weakest Philip Reeve novel I've read, though.
Correct - it was a corruption of thorn.
It's the other "th" sound but was dropped in the transition from Old to Middle English.
Thorn: þÞ.
Eth: Ð, ð.
You're thinking of "eth", which derives from the Runic alphabet. I think it had mostly dropped out of use once Old English developed into Middle English but I'm not certain on that point.
Yep - Chaucer died in 1400, well before the Great Vowel Shift started. There are dangers with Middle English words, though - many look the same as or similar to modern words but don't mean the same thing. An example would be "faith, hope and charity" where "charity" is nearer to modern "love" in meaning than to modern "charity". So without the assistance of glosses or a Middle English Dictionary it is easy to make mistakes.
Your schooling was defective on this point! There was something called The Great Vowel Shift that took about 100 years and ended approximately 1550. The outcome was Modern English. Malory was probably writing from about 1450 up to his death in 1470 - hence in the early part of the Great Vowel Shift.
Reading Shakespeare or the King James Bible with the original spelling only presents extra difficulties because spelling had not been fixed; multiple spellings of most words were common.
Middle English still used the letter "thorn" and it's vocabulary and pronouciation are not modern in the least - no silent letters, for example. Reading those texts in original spelling without any prior knowledge is not possible now, though one might be able to get the gist (maybe).
Maugre is a Middle English word - Malory was writing during the early part of the evolution from Middle to Modern English which finished about 1550.
Indeed - and Pellinore loves using fewmets to follow the Beast's trail....
Yes...matching the carefree life in childhood and the developing cares of adulthood and kingship. The pining and recovery of the Questing Beast is the last truely lighthearted episode.
Sort of off topic, but I love the way the Questing Beast in T.H. White's Once and Future King starts pining when Pellinore stops chasing it. Also I can't say "fewmets" with a straight face to this day.
"Fan fiction" for joust geeks is a pretty funny description! About the only thing I remember from the Book of Tristram is how many lances "shivered to pieces". T.H. White suggested something along the lines of Malory giving tournament results like newspapers report sports stats, I think - and that he wasn't gonna bother!
I wasn't suggesting that tournaments specifically derived from any specific oral tradition, but rather that what we today call "fiction" drives from oral tradition and that one of the purposes of both is to entertain the reader/listener.
I believe the Caxton printing was very popular. Most legends have their origins in the oral tradition which served the purpose of entertaining the listeners, amongst others.
One thing I learned is why Britain became de-forested; I used to think it was because all the old trees were cut down to build the Royal Navy vessels for the Spanish and Napoleonic wars but in fact it turns out that all the trees were needed to supply Tristram with lances because he kept shivering so many to pieces!
I still haven't finished the last two tales and given that I'm reading Piers Plowman right now I can't see me picking it up for a while yet.
Veronica - you picked out my two favourites from the five!
Taking a slightly different slant on the matter, the only genre I'm interested in is labelled "good books."
Taken as a whole, I feel that this series belongs in that genre. In my view, they vary in quality from okay to excellent, with none being bad.
Nikki and I have discussed this elsewhere, but the series, I think does offer slightly more to Welsh folk, or people who know Wales well. I also believe that many people who read a lot from childhood have favourite books that they hold in affection not only because of their literary merits but also because of strong personal associations unique to each individual. In my case, the Dark Is Rising sequence and the Earthsea books fall into this category.
I voted for these in the poll as an excuse to read them again....
I've added The Owl Service by Alan Garner - this book is based around the Blodauwedd story from the Mabinogion so its connection to Arthur is tenuous but it is so good that everybody ought to read it anyway!
Clara, could you provide details of the edition of Gawain and the Green Knight that you read? - I've been considering tackling it in the original myself recently.
Duntay said: "I think the theory is that Tristan legend is one of the oldest threads in the Arthurian legends, but there is some disagreement on its origin. It is certainly the prototype for the Guinevere/Lancelot/ Arthur love triangle."
Is it possible that the Llew Llau Guffes/Blodauwedd/Gronw triange from the Mabinogian is in fact the prototype?
Arthuriana -- all things King Arthur
