@yiddishknights / yiddishknights.tumblr.com
best part of le morte is when malory stops the whole narrative to talk about his favourite barely relevant guy tristan and his wacky adventures for several hundred pages before cutting back to the original plot thread where it is later announced tristan and most of his friends died offscreen
King Arthur and Guinevere
Tristan and Iseult meet at the fountain, while King Mark, above, spies on them. Detail from an ivory casket panel, made by an unknown artist in Paris in the 1340s. Now in the Louvre.
King Mark Slew the Noble Knight Sir Tristram as He Sat Harping before His Lady La Belle Isolde, from The Boy’s King Arthur by N. C. Wyeth (1919)
do you have a list of the main/most common kingdoms/realms in arthurian literature ?
For this I would direct you toward The Arthurian Companion by Phyllis Ann Karr and The Arthurian Name Dictionary by Christopher W. Bruce.
They both describe many important locations and cite source texts in which they appear. You can then use keyword search to see how many times the name is used in the book to determine how common it is as it’ll be repeated in character descriptions. “Camelot” is mentioned 94 times in Companion and 160 times in Dictionary.
In the Dictionary, there’s a section of the introduction literally titled “Commonly Used Names” and lists some people, places, and things that’ll be repeated manifold, including locations such as Avalon, Camlann, Glastonbury, and Rome. These places won’t be given continuous description as the author assumes reader familiarity with them. So that’s a start on common kingdoms/realms for you.
Hope that helps. Take care!
We're reading Parzival in my Medieval German lit class this week and I thought you should know
Yay Parzival! I hope you enjoy my good friends Feirefiz and Cundrie.
(Also, I'm jealous that you have a medieval German lit class. Those are not super common at American universities; I had to teach myself Middle High German.)
people need to stop complaining about not having friends who want to do the activities they want to do. if you want friends who will joust with you to the death, then start challenging your friends to joust to the death. if you want a friend who will betray you after years of sworn service to you by having an affair with your wife, then get a wife and knight a guy you found in the lake. cultivate the friendships you want to have
Yvain: Knight of the Lion by M. T. Anderson | More quotes at Arthuriana Daily
Jaufre | More quotes at Arthuriana Daily
With the comic book logic that their world operates on? 100% reasonable idea, guaranteed to work.
OMG, guys. I've read it, and this scene is somehow EVEN WORSE than you'd think based on the extract. (With "worse", I mean "more unhinged", which basically just means "better".)
So this is from a 13th century somewhat more satirical/subversive text, which kind of explains it, but.
So Arthur and Friends are having a Big Celebration™, and of course whenever Arthur has a Big Celebration™, he refuses to eat until he witnessed a miracle (I'm so glad to see that it was not a Sir Gawain and the Green Knight invention!), but no miracle happens, and everyone is getting more and more hungry, so Arthur is like "let's just ride out and look for something". So everyone rides out.
They do find a convenient damsel standing in front of a mill, crying, because there is a monster inside eating all her grain, and Arthur is like "it's cool, I'll take care of this one alone". So he goes inside, and there really IS a big monster eating all the grain, and it just doesn't give a fuck about Arthur. Arthur tries to provoke it a little, it doesn't even look up. So Arthur does the "reasonable" thing, puts down his weapons, and grabs the monster's horns to pull it away from the grain. The monster still doesn't give a fuck, not sure it even notices, but it eventually has enough, and gets up to leave. Only that Arthur is stuck to the horns, like in the Golden Goose fairy tale, so he is kind of hanging there.
The knights see this, and panic, so they do the only thing they can think of, and follow the monster, hoping that something will eventually happen. The monster goes to sit on a big rock, Arthur is still stuck, the knights are still panicking, because he IS very high up, and what if he falls. Enter Gawain with this brilliant idea, that at least has the advantage of giving everyone something to do, instead of just standing around and panicking. So they all strip and pile up their clothes, and the monster comes down from the rock, and transforms back into a human, because apparently it was one of the knights of the Round Table who just happens to know how to shapeshift, and he's like "so, now you have seen a miracle, can we all go home please and have dinner".
And then everyone laughs and the knights all dress again in whatever random clothes they get their hands on, not caring which belongs to whom.
This is the FIRST thing that happens in the story. Like, the titular main character has not even been introduced yet. I'm really looking forward to reading the rest If it is anywhere near this quality, then it will be a VERY fun read.
ISN’T IT SO SILLY????? Generally when a text is named for a character, I want to post a quote that features them. But sorry Jaufre, this introduction to the court was too funny not to share.
Wait till you continue reading and discover this happens a second time.
(From the Uncompleted Fall of Arthur, by the one and only J. R. R. Tolkien)(LINK)
[....]
[....]
*(This is Lancelot mulling about his affair with Guinevere)
[....]
*(Above: The outlines for the conclusion of Lancelot and Guinevere's story, as reported by Chirstopher Tolkien)
questing
You be the judge of how my vintage wizard collection is materializing.
The Arthurian Companion by Phyllis Ann Karr | A Companion to Malory edited by Elizabeth Archibald | Illuminated Manuscript | La Tavola Ritonda | Tristano Riccardiano | Byelorussian Tristan | Merlin and The Sword (1985) | Palomydes' Quest by William Morris | The Post-Vulgate Quest for The Holy Grail | The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Alfred W. Pollard | Illuminated Manuscript | Sir Galahad Christmas Mystery by William Morris | Illustration by Florence Harrison | The Enchanted Cup by Dorothy James Roberts | Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot (2020) | Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory | The Book of Mordred by Peter Hanratty | Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley | The Romance of Tristan by Renee L. Curtis | The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
From Camelot to China | More quotes at Arthuriana Daily
King Artus | More quotes at Arthuriana Daily
The Marriage of Guenevere by Richard Hovey | More quotes at Arthuriana Daily
