The Once and Future King - Read Along 3rd Qtr 2018

[Michele]

Newly wrote: "ok so aside from being the weirdest place I've ever seen the n word..."

The n word is in this book? I don't remember that. It seems a trifle anachronistic...

[Newly]

am I reading the right book? so cat boiling? what? this made me think about Alexei Sayle sketch.

[Ian]

Newly wrote: "am I reading the right book? so cat boiling? what? this made me think about Alexei Sayle sketch."

I may go into this later, probably on a different thread of the discussion (with Spoilers allowed), but White's family and friends thought the portrayal of Queen Morgause in "The Witch in the Wood" was based on White's mother -- with whom he did not get along, to say the least.

This aspect was cut down when White slashed "Witch" by about 50%, to turn it into "The Queen of Air and Darkness" in "The Once and Future King." But the cat sequence -- based on "traditional" magic beliefs, if I recall correctly -- was left in.

The reader is *not* intended to like Morgause at all.

There are problems with the whole of "Witch/Queen," including garbling the ethnic history of the British Isles to no particular good purpose, which, again, I'll probably go into on another thread.

[ALLEN]

Someone should write a book about how and why the source materials got edited down into the 1958 tetralogy we call ONCE AND FUTURE KING.

Is there a book that does that, Ian? I know it's kind of "meta" but so are books about the writing of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, or Hemingway's wives. I'm picking up vibes from all and sundry that there is probably no one category-killer book or article that covers this great mass of information, but if there is one I'll order it.

[Ian]

ALLEN wrote: "Someone should write a book about how and why the source materials got edited down into the 1958 tetralogy we call ONCE AND FUTURE KING.

Is there a book that does that, Ian? I know it's kind of "..."

Leaving aside Sylvia Townsend Warner's old biography of White (which I only dimly remember), far and away the most likely source for that information is Elisabeth Brewer's "T.H. White's The Once and Future King," in the "Arthurian Studies" series. The write-up indicates that it covers the history of the book(s), as well as of its medieval sources. The series in which in appears indicates that it is a serious, reliable, book, not someone's impressions immediately after reading White and some Malory. And certainly better than my recollections of "The Witch in the Wood."

Unfortunately, it is extremely expensive, at least as listed on several Amazon pages, e.g.
https://www.amazon.com/T-H-Whites-Fut...

Some of the series have been issued in Kindle and paperback editions, but so far as I can tell, not this one. So a library, or an inter-library loan, might be your best bet if you are really curious.

There is a whole book on White and women, "T.H. White's Troubled Heart":
https://www.amazon.com/T-H-Whites-Tro...

There is also a treatment of the book as an historical novel:
https://www.amazon.com/T-H-White-Matt...

Finally, there is an old (1974) Twayne's English Authors volume on White, which in memory was not terribly enlightening on the Arthurian material, since it also had to cover the rest of his output:
https://www.amazon.com/T-H-White-Tway...

I had hoped that the Internet Archive (archive.org), or, more likely, academia.edu would contain something useful, and free, but unfortunately a piece about White's childhood and his Arthuriana has not been uploaded on the latter -- just the title and an abstract.

[Newly]

Ian thanks for the incite because my cat loving overly sensitive behind was horrifed. seeing as a really dark ya mamma joke helps tremendously. thx m8.

[ALLEN]

Thanks, Ian. As seems to happen so much in this cybernetic age, data are plentiful and cheap but insight and informed opinion . . . not necessarily. Since i don't have an academic's research budget, I often find this frustrating.

And since what I'm looking for is indeed a kind of convenience, and not an outline-based overview (of the kind probably available in an old-line HC Encyclopedia Britannica), I've learned that frustration is inherent in these.

Oops! Forgot to get rich! Sorry, Mister President . . .

[Ian]

Michele wrote: "Newly wrote: "ok so aside from being the weirdest place I've ever seen the n word..."

The n word is in this book? I don't remember that. It seems a trifle anachronistic..."

It shows up in the ramblings of the mad hawk, Cully, when Wart is transformed into a merlyn (a raptor), as part of a whole string of anachronisms, like "bolshevik." (Cully's speeches are put together in part from famous "mad scenes" in English literature.)

Risking a very small spoiler: (view spoiler)[ It appears a second time in a mention of Tristram's attitude toward Sir Palomides, the "paynim" knight. The whole passage is hostile to Tristram, by the way; the use of the word may or may not be intended to be significant in this regards. (hide spoiler)]

[ALLEN]

I am not apologizing for, defending or condoning use of the "N" word, but it also pops up in the movie version of DAMBUSTERS (mid-to-late 1950s) because the pilot's black Spaniel was given that name. When Brits from that era tried to explain to Americans why they didn't consider the usage offensive, they would usually explain that the particular very-dark-brown-but-not-really black color had that name. Americans, then and now, found that not a terribly great rationale.

[ALLEN]

Ian, would it be fair to say that, denotatively if not connotatively, "Paynim" could mean simply "Gentile"?

[Ian]

A quick note before leaving: "Paynim" is of course medieval-ese for "pagan," usually used (unfairly) for Moslems. "Gentile" might be a fair equivalent, except for the association with "not-Jewish" to many.

But White, for some reason, made Palomides come from British-ruled India -- or that is where he gets his style of English. And in British usage, I've seen the n-word extended to slightly darker-skinned Asians.

More on Palomides later.

[Melanti]

ALLEN wrote: "When Brits from that era tried to explain to Americans why they didn't consider the usage offensive, they would usually explain that the particular very-dark-brown-but-not-really black color had that name. ..."

I think that came up when we were discussing And Then There Were None. It's original title was too offensive by American standards and it had to be renamed for the US editions.

[ALLEN]

You are so erudite! Bless you Ian, I cannot pretend to your breadth of learning, but sometimes I think that people who like to know things for the sake of learning more things are a dying breed.

Actually, I hadn't yet sussed out (until you tactfully pointed it out just now) that "Paynim" meant "Pagan." In fact, I was shocked to learn of some of the many variants of "Guinevere," which I only learned when OaFK was in its preparatory stages here.

(My excuse is that I took Humanities instead of Brit Lit in 12th grade).

BTW, you may know that U.S. Mormons (eta) used to refer to most Christians as "Gentiles."

[ALLEN]

PS: Wasn't T.E. White himself a child of Empire; i.e., born in India?
Are academics and folklorists still quarreling over whether his globe-trotting idioms were (a) provincial, (b) Imperialistic, (c) too cute by half, or (d) inspired?

I have no horse in this race, as the current saying goes.
But I do like OaFK.

[Ian]

ALLEN wrote: "BTW, you may know that U.S. Mormons refer to most Christians as "Gentiles." ... "I was shocked to learn of some of the many variants of "Guinevere..."

As to Gentiles, yes. But the probability of confusing a great many readers that way strikes me as marginal. But maybe not.

As to Guinevere, I think I left out at least one Middle English variant, "Gonnore," and possibly others. She is also called "Winlogee," which may be Breton in form, on a twelfth-century cathedral in Italy (Modena). So her name-recognition in the Middle Ages seems to been less than one would expect.

But other characters' names also went through transformations.

For one of the most prominent, Gawain, we also find Walwanus, Gauvain, Gawein, Gwalchmei, and Walewein, as listed in the heading of the main article in The Arthurian Encyclopedia. And on the Modena carving already mentioned, he is Galgavinus. (Which is close to some of the spellings in manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth, e.g., Gualgauinus, but also Gwal-, Wal-, etc.)

The name may have come from Scotland, and the character doesn't seem to belong to the earliest Welsh traditions of Arthur, although, as noted, he shows up in Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the "History of the Kings of Britain," during the 1130s. But, again according to the "Arthurian Encyclopedia, "Walwanus" and variants already appeared as personal names in documents from the continent in the eleventh century.

And "Gwalchmei," or "The Hawk of May," used as his name in Welsh versions, also does not seem to be very early: it first appears as the equivalent of Gawain in Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and could have been dredged up, or invented, for the purpose of making a novel character sound familiar.

[George P.]

ALLEN wrote: "BTW, you may know that U.S. Mormons refer to most Christians as "Gentiles."

I've lived in Utah for 40 years so I can attest to this, although I seldom hear it; "non-mormons" is more commonly used now. When I first came here I thought gentile meant non-jewish.

[Ian]

George wrote: "When I first came here I thought gentile meant non-jewish. ..."

That is still the main dictionary definition, and the Mormon usage is sometimes already classed as "historical" -- a point on which I have no means of checking.

In some contexts, it is also used to mean non-Christians (as was suggested as an alternative for "paynim").

The word apparently shows up in English in the fourteenth century, already meaning "non-Jew" (according to Merriam-Webster), but I have no idea how widespread it was at the time.

As for modern usage, the King James Version, which was pretty influential in some limited spheres of English (like this one) seems to have used "gentile(s)" for non-Israelite nations in the Old Testament, and for non-Jews, collectively or singly, throughout the New Testament, although the exact expression "Jews and Gentiles" appears there only in Romans 2 (according to a computer search).

I would suspect that the KJV had a strong influence on this usage during the long period in which it was, for all practical purposes, *the* English Bible.

The Latin etymology is interesting, but not especially pertinent, unless one wants to go back into St. Jerome's Latin translation (the Vulgate) for precedents. I'll leave that to someone else.

[Ian]

The other day I promised a bit more on Palomides the "paynim." (White's preferred spelling: Palamede is apparently a standard spelling outside Malory.) The result is a bit rambling, and longer than I anticipated, as the evidence is complicated.

Palomides seems to have appeared first in the original "Prose Tristan," and been kept in the second, expanded, version (that, used by Malory), as the pursuer of the Questing Beast. He appears as such in other, later, French Arthurian romances.

(These include a vast "Roman de Roi Artus," or "Compilation" with a complicated bibliography, but for once written by someone identifiable, and with a separate claim to fame. This was Rusticiano da Pisa, a late-thirteenth century Italian who wrote in French -- this being the prestige language for vernacular prose. As noted in "The Arthurian Encyclopedia," Rusticiano is most notable for having written down the adventures and observations of Marco Polo, while they were prisoners together -- also using French, instead of any variety of Italian, whether Tuscan, as spoken in Pisa, or Venetian, Polo's native speech.)

Malory initially (in Caxton's Book One) connects the Questing Beast to King Pellinor(e) [also various spellings], as did White in "The Sword in the Stone," but Malory later (Book Nine, Chapter Twelve) gives the role to Palomides. (As mentioned above, this role was in the "Prose Tristan" romance he was using for part of the story).

In Malory and the older sources, Pellinore and Palomides are both formidable knights, and do not resemble White's comic characters -- but at least he was being even-handed in handing out the laugh lines.

White had noted the inconsistency, and, having introduced the motif in one form in "The Sword in the Stone," then had the problem of switching the quest from one knight to the other, a problem first faced in "The Witch in the Wood"/"Queen of Air and Darkness." (Malory had off-handedly mentioned that Palomides took up the quest, with no explanation of just *why* he took up the seemingly pointless pursuit that I can find, other than Pellinore's death leaving the role vacant.)

According to the "Arthurian Encyclopedia," the quester of the Beast in Spanish and Italian versions of the story is instead Sir Perceval (son of Pellinore in the later traditions, such as Malory, and thus in White). This may be an old tradition: a creature very like the Questing Beast shows up in one of the Old French verse continuations of Chretien de Troyes' unfinished but influential "Perceval, or, The Story of the Grail," although it quickly dies, and then is explained as an allegory by a convenient pious hermit.

Palomides (Palomydes in Caxton and the Winchester Manuscript) is called a "paynim" several times in Malory, and also a Saracen (various spellings), but nothing much seems to be made of it -- although there is something hostile about "paynim" as applied to a few other characters. Difference of color also doesn't seem to be involved, or, if it does, I don't remember it, and haven't found it in a searchable Kindle edition of Malory. (Maybe I'm not using the right search terms.)

(Curiously, a "Moorish" relative of Perceval shows up in two continental works, albeit without the Beast, Wolfram of Eschenbach's Middle High German "Parzival," and the short Middle Dutch "Moriaen," where it seems to be an interpolation in the Lancelot-Grail cycle. The latter was translated into English by Jessie L. Weston, as "Morien," which is available as a free Kindle book. I've reviewed the available translations of Parzival on Amazon -- if anyone is interested, I can provide the links to them, although they all cover pretty much the same ground in the same way.)

Anyway, there is no visible precedent for White's portrayal of Palomides as chattering away in Indianized English, in its fullest form, in "Witch in the Wood," awkward "Office English," with some slang ("Golly") possibly from boy's books. It is just one of White's comic anachronisms.....

[ALLEN]

George wrote: "ALLEN wrote: "BTW, you may know that U.S. Mormons refer to most Christians as "Gentiles."

I've lived in Utah for 40 years so I can attest to this, although I seldom hear it; "non-mormons" is more ..."

Thanks for the correction and update, George!

[ALLEN]

Ian wrote: "The other day I promised a bit more on Palomides the "paynim." (White's preferred spelling: Palamede is apparently a standard spelling outside Malory.) The result is a bit rambling, and longer than..."

Ian, as always, you are amazing! Thank you for your kind efforts.

[Newly]

so am I the only person reading this book? I'd love a chat about it.

[ALLEN]

Newly, if you'd skim the 72 prior messages you'd see that any number of us have read THE SWORD IN THE STONE and usually all of THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING.

This thread, from what I can see, does not run on neo-Socratic lines. Can you give us an idea of how far you've read to date and what pleases you / surprises you / annoys you, or that you just find hard to understand?

OaFK is a highly sophisticated "kid" book -- in many respects a sly adult satire on Medievalism and War that sophisticated English children of the era (postwar Britain) could read without getting lost, or corrupted.

[George P.]

I'm near the end of "The Ill-Made Knight" but I see we're not supposed to discuss this section for another week, so I'll be back then, as I don't really have any comments to make about the Queen of Air and Darkness section.

[ALLEN]

George, this is a good time to ask a question or raise an issue about:
THE SWORD IN THE STONE. (A trivial conceit, but wasn't that the one in which the barn owls chanted?)

I am also surprised hear of so many people reading SWORD IN STONE book prior to the here-and-now who don't realize that "Wart" is not pronounced "worrt" but "wahrt," which rhymes with "Art."

[Newly]

great because I have hit a wall with this story. I feel like I'm missing something. I'm at the part where the little boys murder the unicorn. no I'm not a vegetarian but this wasn't hunting. why did they kill the unicorn? I get they wanted maternal attention but the dismemberment

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

George wrote: "I'm near the end of "The Ill-Made Knight" but I see we're not supposed to discuss this section for another week, so I'll be back then, as I don't really have any comments to make about the Queen of..."

You can discuss anything on the book over in the entire spoiler thread.

[ALLEN]

Newly wrote: "great because I have hit a wall with this story. I feel like I'm missing something. I'm at the part where the little boys murder the unicorn. no I'm not a vegetarian but this wasn't hunting. why di..."
... Mod Katy wrote: "You can discuss anything on the book over in the entire spoiler thread."
Katy's right -- I'll reply there. - ALLEN

Newly George and others, see HERE: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Newly]

he's gonna kill the old king with the beast is he? don't tell me but I like that guy and his two crazy beast impersonating friends.

[Newly]

okay so made it to the incest bit and I gotta say didn't see that coming. white is confusing me so hard. its creepy that he sexualized motherhood. tres bizarre. I mean this guy was into milfs way before it was cool. did king Arthur really bone these kids mom in front of them? please tell me I missed something. because it seems like king Arthur woke up to a strange woman in his room. she is standing in front of four wild looking kids folding a piece of human tape. his reaction is bow chicka wow wow. are you kidding me? what?

[George P.]

I rather enjoyed The Ill-Made Knight section, though it did jump around a lot it seemed, unlike The S in the S book which seemed more cohesive. Seems funny to see Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenevere call ea other Lance and Jenny. I understand that White was going for some anachronistic humor/ charm, but I wonder if he didn't push it too far sometimes and lose a consistency of style that a story needs.

[Newly]

George wrote: "I rather enjoyed The Ill-Made Knight section, though it did jump around a lot it seemed, unlike The S in the S book which seemed more cohesive. Seems funny to see Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenevere c..."
I think you have nailed exactly why I'm not completely ga-ga over this story. I didnt realize how much I expected a much more cohesive story. I'm really having trouble this writing style. Not to say that I'm not gonna finish it but just keep getting trips up on his imagery. He is much more of an absurdist than i was expecting.

[ALLEN]

I'm a little off-kilter right now. Is discussion for the first three books of OaFK (SWORD IN THE STONE, QUEEN, ILL-MADE KNIGHT) at its end? If so, will the remaining book follow? With or without hiatus?

Sorry to be so frazzled but I've had some downloading problems lately. : (

[Kimberly]

I believe we're still in the middle of the discussion for The Ill-Made Knight (although I'm still stuck in the middle of The Queen of Air and Darkness)… Looks like the 4th book discussion begins on September 3 according to the schedule.

[ALLEN]

Labor Day! How fortuitous! Thanks for clearing it up, Kimberley!

[Newly]

I finished it! Thanks so much for this buddy read. I would never have finished this book if not for you fine folk!

[ALLEN]

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but the fourth and final book of OaFK is my favorite of them all.