#Medieval Literature

[talesfromtheenchantedforest]

the great thing about medieval literature is that it returns us to a time when men were men and women were women, *insert gritty realism gif here*, featuring such important and eternal gendered characteristics such as

(M) Why Would I Learn To Think Critically When I Could Find a Random Damsel In The Woods To Tell Me What To Do

(F) Demands To Be Brought The Heads Of Her Enemies

(M, to F) Be Mean To Me, No, Meaner Than That

(F) Meticulous Maintenance Of Social Connections And Alliances Via Writing Letters

(M) Crying

(M) More Crying

(M) Even More Crying, While Being Held Tenderly By Brother In Arms

(F) Necromancy

(M) Meticulous Maintenance Of Social Connections And Alliances Via Mistaking Friend’s Identity, Attacking Him, Then Kissing And Making Up

(F) Expert Medical Practitioner

(M) Self-Care By Episodes Of Madness In The Woods

(F) Owner Of Haunted Castle

[hovelicher-unsin]

this sucks so bad i need to (remembers suicide jokes only make my mental health worse) find the holy grail

[dandelionjack]

starting a band called ‘courtly love’ we perform exclusively covers of hole (band) songs on medieval instruments dressed as knights and ladies from a preraphaelite painting. we’d be a hit at renfaires from year to year

[thefourofdiamondsart]

The king ran to embrace him;

more than a hundred times

he hugs and kisses him.

As soon as he got a chance

he gave him back all of his land;

he gave him more than I’m telling you.

“Bisclavret” by Marie de France, 12th C.

Prints available here!

[silver-peel]

Celebrating new year and ending of the quest:)🕯️🎄🪓

product of my recent green knight reread on holidays, save me erotic hunting scene...... Happy new year, hope everyone have a nice starting of the year!

for hardcore fans yes lady bertilak dress lowkey reference form manuscript (feat. burrito gawain)

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i don't have the words to articulate it at this moment but there's something about the way that people have specific expectations for "authenticity" and will dismiss anything that falls outside them as a mangled, anglicised version of the thing when actually that is the older and more traditional form of something, it just doesn't match their expectations. obviously in my personal experiences i'm mostly talking about medieval literature here especially medieval irish literature

sometimes this is as simple as spelling – i've had people argue that the name "finn" is anglicised and it should always be "fionn" to be Really Irish, but "finn" is an older spelling, glide vowels are later, if you wanna go real far back it'll be "find" (nd in place of nn is an older spelling pattern). or they'll hear someone say "ogam" and assume they're mispronouncing "ogham" due to lack of knowledge of irish and not consider the fact that medievalists tend to use the older form of the word. or they'll Well Actually you about "correct" terminology which wasn't standardised (and/or invented) until the 20th century

a lot of this is defensive and the result of seeing a lot of people ACTUALLY get this stuff wrong and have no respect for the language. in that regard i understand it, although it becomes very tedious after a while, particularly when people sanctimoniously declare something "inauthentic", "fake", or "anglicised" without doing enough research to realise it's not trying to be modern irish and is in fact correct for older forms of the language

more often however this search for the projected "authenticity" is ideological and has much larger flaws and more problematic implications. "this can't be the real story because it's christian" well... that's the oldest version of the story that exists and it postdates christianity in ireland by about nine hundred years, so... maybe question why you're assuming the only "real" version of irish stories can't be a christian one? this is especially true when it comes to fíanaigecht material tbh, but in general there seems to a widespread misapprehension about ireland's historical relationship with christianity (i have seen people arguing that christianity in ireland is the result of english colonialism which took their "true" faith from them... bro. they were christian before the "english" existed. half the conversion efforts went the other way. please read some early medieval history thank you)

however i also saw someone saying this about arthurian literature lately which REALLY baffled me. "we'll never have the Real arthurian stories only the christianised versions" and it was in the context of chivalric romance. buddy you are mourning something that does not exist. this "authentic" story you're looking for isn't there. that twelfth century story you're dismissing as a christian bastardisation is as "real" a part of this tradition as you're going to get

[sickfreaksirkay]

fuck man why even bother writing anything at all

[queer-ragnelle]

list of medieval literature with links to read.

i’ll continue to update with more texts, better scans, & different editions. enjoy!

[sissiarte]

Oh Gawain <3

This came to me in a vision and I had to draw it or I would explode. I honestly don't have an explanation enjoy

[cloverboyblue]

surveyed all the women in the kingdom both bond and free and it turns out what women want is, in fact, sir gawain

[fjorn-the-skald]

Alright, friends.

I just finished uploading some of my old academic coursework to my academia.edu page. I use my ‘real’ name over there, of course, so don’t be thrown off by that boring thing. But anyway…

For those interested in reading 7 papers from my graduate-school days (with the exception of 1 paper from undergrad), here’s what I just put up:

“Seeking Salvation: Christianity and Conflict in Thirteenth-Century Iceland” (2017)

“‘Governour and of Oure Tales Juge': Storytelling, Meditation, and the Behavior of the Host in The Canterbury Tales” (2017)

“Social Commentary in Njal's Saga: Law in the Presence of Feud” (2017)

“Cheese, Women, and Social Anxieties in Thirteenth-Century Iceland” (2018)

“Rewriting Romance: Honor and Reputation in Ívens saga” (2018)

“A Hilt in Violent Hands: Swords, Bonds, and the Monstrous in Beowulf” (2018)

“Ordinary Clothes in Unordinary Places: Gender, Cross-dressing, and Performing Masculinity in Medieval Iceland” (2019)

And, of course, there’s also my Master’s thesis.

I should emphasize one thing, though: these are simply class papers—‘mere’ coursework, if you will. They are not academic articles, for they never underwent the scrutiny of peer review required for such a ‘lofty’ status. As such, they cannot be used as sources in ‘proper’ academic work. So…don’t cite them in your papers, if you happen to write one. You can mention them, I suppose…but they won’t have much weight, I fear.

I’m only sharing them because they’ve done nothing but collect dust since I turned them in for grading and, to be quite honest, are still insightful probably? Regardless of their ‘lowly status,’ I think people may—may—be able to learn something from them and, most importantly, think more deeply about certain topics. I want them to engage people’s minds, help people view certain passages or historical ‘truths’ differently.

If that happens for even one of you, I’d be a happy skáld indeed.

So, with far too much said, I hope someone enjoys my past academic toils.

— fjörn

[paganimagevault]

Restoration of Hungarian appearance 9th-10th C. CE

From ProudAndTorn: "These Pagan Ugric people made a strong impression. As Persian geographer Ahmad ibn Rustah wrote,

“These Magyars are a handsome people and of good appearance and their clothes are of silk brocade and their weapons are of silver and are encrusted with pearls."

- Ahmad Ibn Rustah, The Book of Precious Records (10th C. CE)

...

Abu Hamid al-Gharnati, who lived in Hungary for three years around 1130-1155 CE, in his chapter on Hungary gives the description of a girl "beautiful as the moon, with black hair and eyes, and skin as white as camphor".

Al Masudi's description from 943 CE: "These people are the handsomest, the most numerous and the most warlike of all".

[hovelicher-unsin]

i made something!

[maniculum]

Perlesvaus (Evans translation)

So I'm taking another stab at reading the Sebastian Evans translation of Perlesvaus, for... reasons. Or the High History of the Holy Graal, as he titles it -- funnily enough, the people who put out this reprint apparently looked at the title, said "we're not doing that", and spelt it Grail on the cover.

Despite the bizarre choices in diction, it's still pretty fun, and I want to share some particularly entertaining bits of this text with y'all. (For those of you who aren't up on the two different translations of Perlesvaus and don't know what I mean by "bizarre choices", the Evans translation is from 1898 but pretending to be from, like, 1498.)

N.B.: Marginal notes in red are from the last time I tried this -- they stop showing up roughly a quarter of the way through the book, because that's when I decided to buy the Bryant translation instead.

I just find this funny because "who cares?" strikes me as such a modern thing to say. To me it is a phrase that seems most natural coming from a teenage character in late-20th-century media. But nope. "Who careth?"

This is here just for the bizarre scene. We have three women coming into the throne room (riding mules directly into the building, by the way). One is carrying a severed head decorated with silver and gold. Another has "a pack trussed behind her with a brachet thereupon" -- you can see from the notes that I had to look up "brachet", found out it was an old word meaning roughly "female scent-hound", and then had the mental image of this woman carrying around a beagle in a baby-bjorn.

Again something I find funny. Gawain just leaping through the air to interpose himself between the horses and this hermit, like he's trying to take a bullet for them. This is entirely because he is 100% certain the hermit will handle the saddles incorrectly, and when the hermit assures him he actually does know how this stuff works, Gawain calms down & lets him do it.

This is, for my money, one of the funniest things in all of Perlesvaus, which is saying something because it is a bonkers text. This lady rolls up and provides that description, and the hermit recognizes who she's talking about. Like, "oh yes I did see a knight with a heart of steel and the navel of a virgin". I want to give this description to a sketch artist. (I kind of want to throw it at an AI just to see what it comes up with, but you know. I don't want to encourage the machines.)

This time I'm nit-picking the translation, because that strikes me as a misplaced modifier. Obviously it's meant that Gawain is unaware of events, but the sentence is constructed to make it sound like it's referring to the building itself, which is of course unaware because it's a building and isn't aware of anything. (Also, side note, I like the phrase "as methinketh!")

One more, and I'm leaving this for now...

Here is a case where I was going to complain, but on further examination, I must hand it to Evans. I assumed that he was just randomly archaizing, but I looked it up after uploading this photo, and according to the OED, this was a valid alternate spelling of sovereign from the 17th to the 19th century. (Interestingly, the latest attested example on the OED is from 11 years before this translation was published, meaning this is evidence it was in use slightly longer than the OED entry would suggest -- does anyone know if there's still a way to submit instances of a word to the OED?)

[thefourofdiamondsart]

All green bedight that knight, and green his garments fair 🌿

prints of this piece are available here!

this illustration is a result of all the love the Arthuriana tumblrinas left on my other Sir Gawain illustration as well as my Bisclavret illustration! thanks for all the lovely tags everyone 💚

[nocnitsa]

Tristan Fighting with a Dragon (Illustration in 'The Roman by Tristan and Iseult'), illustrated by Robert Engels, ed. of Art, Paris