Medieval Comic Tales

In the time I have for recreation I chose the collection of Medieval Comic Tales edited by Derek Brewer to fill the hours before bed for a few evenings, and found it more than satisfactory for entertainment.

The book is categorised by nation and includes a selection of interesting or historically significant tales alongside those which appear to be solely entertainment. Like our own world, the medieval was a lewd and earthy one, which these tales illustrate. I don't recommend them for anyone of particularly morally squeamish ideas. Sometimes, the poor morals are an example of the way we aren't to live. Sometimes the rampant extramarital affairs of men and women seem to be expected or encouraged. The themes of the tales and the way they appear may be familiar to those who read fairy stories or modern fantasy. An observing mind will take notice of the fact that the human intellect remains what it was, half a millennia ago. As our nature is static, so is the palette from which we draw our stories: life and the oddities of survival.

I liked it because it was easy to read, the stories are all very short, and the introduction is a helpful treatise on the endurance and inspiration of comedy by a Cambridge man (the editor) so you know it's good. It's under two hundred pages and they flow quickly. While some are of dubious morality, others are strictly Christian, and others are fun, funny, or exciting. Coming from this current prejudiced era I found myself in surprise at the innovation in plot and character, a fact which should have simply affirmed an existing belief: that as we humans are not in a constant upward climb as some would suggest, our capabilities would be undiminished in antiquity as they are today.

I imagine the tales told by a storyteller of intimate acquaintance; we are sat beside a fire in a hall that evokes the same authenticity as the words being read (or rather spoken from memory, should we be so fortunate); there's a wolfhound of some sort stretched by the warming glow at our feet, and so it continues whilst steam rises from a cup of something indistinguishable but importantly hot. If that image is appealing, pick a copy up when you get the chance. It's a title worth sitting on any shelf, and not one I would be ashamed to be seen in ownership of by man or beast.

The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward

One could spend many hours searching for a work of study on any period of history to equal Desmond Seward's summation in 265 pages of the Hundred Years War. For those who, like me, struggle to gain any lasting knowledge from some of the world's most boring treatises on a subject that should have more fire and inspiration than any other (namely, history written by dull historians), this coverage of an endlessly confusing era of important English and French drama flows more smoothly than any novel and wastes not a single word.

For the first time in my life I feel as if I have a grasp of the time period, the events, and the genealogy that surrounds this often spoken of but rarely understood series of conflicts. From Edward IIIs strong, if unjust, action at the start in 1337 to Henry VIs weak finish in 1453 we have a well-researched, unclogged perspective on the politics of the war, the effects on all classes during both the troubled peacetime and years of conflict, as well as religious or otherwise objection or promotion of the stunning atrocities committed by both peoples on each other, or themselves.

What I'm trying to say is that having read this book I feel that I understand what happened and why it happened, to the extent of our knowledge based on the sources that have survived. Seward writes with talent and clarity, and has such a grasp of things himself that, like a well-written novel, we know he's not giving us everything he knows—just everything that we need to know. He's the sort of historian who seems very trustworthy; like any history it should be taken with the grain of salt that comes by reading other sources, especially those primary to the case. Some things seem a little too simple in his retelling of it, and that may be because our expectations surpass the situation's reality, or that it has been simplified more than is healthy.

I am not yet a historian, and certainly not one with a knowledge of the War like Seward; I could not attempt to pass judgement for or against it in any informed way. But I do know that there is much to be gained from this book and that it takes little effort to pick it up; the only difficulty is putting it down before it's finished.

I wish my report could be less glowing; after all, it's the negative things we say that set us out as truly critical thinkers, as the great brains of the age we inhabit...but having wracked my brain all I can say is that I wish it were longer, and I wish he wrote books on every subject. If I sound at all like a giggling teenage fangirl, there may be some simplistic truth to the thought. I don't really mind, to be honest.

Artur, Gwenwhyvawr and Myrddin: Ancient Britons of the North

I'm not actually writing about King Arthur, Guinevere, or Merlin. Though no doubt, given the subject of the book I'm about to review, they will come up.

I've been doing research for a project I was assigned on a module I'm taking at University, which led me to a pursuit of King Arthur. I stumbled across this book and, finding it easy to read, got through it whilst on the bus going down to Cardiff on Saturday.

I found dozens of books in our library alone with as many solutions to solving the mystery surrounding this legendary king; since the middle of the 19th century writers have puzzled over it, and every solvent appears true till put to the scrutiny of another.

Alexander and William McCall, Alex and Will I'll call them, are two passionate brothers with an interesting proposition that, if nothing else, is engaging and easy to get a handle on. For this reason alone I recommend the book as a study into a more reasonable look at King Arthur than you are likely to get out of the cinema (even those wretched excuses for films purporting to be realistic, whether 2004's King Arthur or the 2007 The Last Legion), or in any work remotely linked to fiction.

Not being a scholar in the subject, nor having vastly undergone a study in the existing solutions that counter Alex and Will's, I cannot say whether, in the light of other critics their logic holds up. They do, however, present a believable genealogy linking Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Camelot, and Avalon complete with dates, historical evidence through the centuries, and compounding folklore.

The McCall's propose that Arthur was not a king but a successful war leader and son of Aidan, King of the Dalriada in 6th century lowland Scotland. He was 3/4ths Briton, and through matrilineal descent had charge of the lands pertaining to his British mother's side of things, including land called Camelon and Avalond, whose names betray certain similarities to later legends. Even Mordred is accounted for, and several of Arthur's knights. Given the time period he was in it is inaccurate to attribute our later ideas of 'kingship' upon a people or group of peoples who would have been bereft of the very notion.

Alex and Will present a good case; certainly compelling, and plainly written enough that, despite some confusing family back and forths become, in the end, a negotiable web. They tend to repeat certain things over again in different ways and various sections of the book; once in a while this is tedious. Mostly it serves to job an ailing memory such as my own.

As much as I would recommend any book, this one passes, in my humble opinion, the sharpest muster. Whether you like their interpretation or throw it out entirely due to actual or emotional reasons, it provides a wide background to early Britain through the eyes of chroniclers often ignored or passed over due to more prominent successors.