I Love a Parade

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Terra Australis

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Agincourt, Bayeux Tapestry, Dol Amroth, Forlong, Great Gate, Harold Godwinson, hauberk, Hirluin the Fair, Howard Pyle, huscarls, Imrahil, Langstrand, Lincoln Cathedral, livery, Lossarnach, Medieval, Minas Tirith, Morthond, N.C. Wyeth, Palermo, parade, Ringlo Vale, Robin Hood, spangenhelm, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tower of Gondor

“I love a parade, the tramping of feet,

I love every beat I hear of a drum.”

–Koehler/Arlen Rhythmania (1931)

Welcome, dear readers, as always. In the past, we’ve spent a posting or two discussing military aspects of The Lord of the Rings, from the look of the Rohirrim to the attack on Minas Tirith. In this posting, we would like to go back one step from that attack to consider what is a rather melancholy moment in the lead up to that assault.

Pippin and his newfound friend, Bergil, have come down to the Great Gate of Minas Tirith.

Here’s the gate from the films.

This immediately reminded us of places like the west door of Lincoln Cathedral.

Or the main door of the cathedral of Palermo.

Because he is now a member of the Guard of the Tower of Gondor, Pippin is allowed to pass through the Gate—and to take Bergil with him out to see and hear the following:

“Beyond the Gate there was a crowd of men along the verge of the road and of the great paved space into which all the ways to Minas Tirith ran. All eyes were turned southwards, and soon a murmur rose: ‘There is dust away there! They are coming!’

Pippin and Bergil edged their way forward to the front of the crowd and waited. Horns sounded at some distance, and the noise of cheering rolled towards them like a gathering wind. There was a loud trumpet-blast, and all about them people were shouting.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

What happens then is a kind of parade.

When we see the defenders of Minas Tirith in the films, they are all uniformly clad.

In our medieval world, this was highly unlikely, the best being that soldiers and servants might wear the colors/crest of the lord they served. This was called “livery”. Uniformity in clothing, weapons, and armor would be some time in the future.

What is coming up the road from the south are reinforcements, marching in a long column of units, and those units differ greatly in look. First are the men of Lossarnach, led by their lord, Forlong:

“Leading the line there came walking a big thick-limbed horse, and on it sat a man of wide shoulders and huge girth, but old and grey-bearded, yet mail-clad and black-helmed and bearing a long heavy spear. Behind him marched proudly a dusty line of men, well-armed and bearing great battle-axes; grim-faced they were, and shorter and somewhat swarthier than any men Pippin had yet seen in Gondor.”

To us, those axes make the men of Lossarnach sound like the huscarls, the bodyguard of an Anglo-Saxon king, like Harold Godwinson, whom we see depicted on the “Bayeux Tapestry”.

Their leader, Forlong, might be similar in appearance, wearing a type of helmet called a spangenhelm,

and protected by an early form of mail shirt called a hauberk.

After these, we see more units, but with little description—the men of Ringlo Vale “striding on foot”, so infantry of some sort, five hundred bowmen from Morthond, from the Langstrand, “a long line of men of many sorts, hunters and herdsmen and men of little villages, scantily equipped save for the household of Golasgil their lord”. After them, “a few grim hillmen without a captain”, and “fisher-folk of the Ethir”, all of which we imagine in their workaday clothes of hunters and shepherds and farmers and sailors, as depicted in medieval English and French manuscripts.

Next comes a unit which is perhaps wearing livery: “Hirluin the Fair of the Green Hills from Pinnath Gelin with three hundreds of gallant green-clad men.” We aren’t told how they’re armed, but that they may be in livery suggests that they may be better armed than some of the earlier contingents. (In fact, “gallant green-clad men” makes us think of Robin Hood—perhaps more archers?)

And, finally, folk we’ve discussed before:

“And last and proudest, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, kinsman of the Lord, with gilded banners bearing his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan, and a company of knights in full harness riding grey horses; and behind them seven hundreds of men at arms, tall as lords, grey-eyed, dark-haired, singing as they came.”

“knight in full harness”, as we talked about in an earlier post, probably meant, to JRRT, something from Howard Pyle or NC Wyeth, like this—

As for those “men at arms”, if they appear to be “tall as lords”, we assume that they’re on foot, which puzzles us a bit. “Men at arms” usually means “armored soldiers on horseback” in our world—perhaps with less armor than knights, but still cavalry (unless dismounted, to fight on foot, as the French did at Agincourt in 1415, for example). We see them, then, as looking like those dismounted cavalry, like these—

However they are armed and clothed, however, they are thought to be too few by those watching and, considering what Mordor eventually sends against them, they would not have been enough, if the brave Rohirrim and Aragorn’s reinforcement from the south hadn’t arrived in time. What would have happened if they hadn’t? A subject for very grim fan-fiction!

Thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

In Shining Armo(u)r

17 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods, The Rohirrim, Tolkien

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Agincourt, Anglo-Saxon, armor, Bayeux Tapestry, chain-mail, Crecy, Dark Ages, Embroidery, Howard Pyle, knights of Dol Amroth, Medieval books, medieval manuscript drawings, N.C. Wyeth, Norman knight, Pauline Baynes, Romans, sub-Roman period, Sutton Hoo, The Lord of the Rings, The Rohirrim, The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, Tolkien

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In a letter to Miss [Rhona] Beare, of 14 October, 1958, JRRT wrote to answer what was clearly a question about dress in The Lord of the Rings:

“Question 4. I do not know the detail of clothing. I visualize with great clarity and detail scenery and ‘natural’ objects, but not artefacts. Pauline Baynes drew her inspiration for F. Giles largely from medieval MS drawings—except for the knights (who are a bit ‘King-Arthurish’)* the style seems to fit well enough.” (Letters, 280)

To which he adds this footnote:

“*Sc. [= “Know/understand”] belong to our ‘mythological’ Middle-Ages which blends unhistorically styles and details ranging over 500 years, and most of which did not of course exist in the Dark Ages of c. 500 A.D.”

In the next paragraph he adds:

“The Rohirrim were not ‘mediaeval’, in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chain-mail of small rings.” (Letters, 280-281)

The Bayeux Tapestry (which should really be called the “Bayeux Embroidery”, since it’s actually a long piece of cloth with hundreds of figures and details stitched on to it, rather than woven into it) presents us with a detailed history of the invasion of England in 1066AD. The soldiers Tolkien is talking about look like this:

You can see what he means by “tennis-nets”—which should really look like this:

That chain-mail, then, looks like this:

And, at the bottom of this next illustration, you can see how it’s made:

We know, then, how JRRT envisaged the Rohirrim in its eoreds, marching towards Minas Tirith, but how did he imagine other soldiers, we’ve asked ourselves, and, in particular, the knights of Dol Amroth—the only soldiers specifically described as such in The Lord of the Rings?

JRRT writes of them as they enter Minas Tirith:

“And last and proudest, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, kinsman of the Lord, with gilded banners bearing his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan, and a company of knights in full harness riding grey horses…”(The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

“Full harness” means “complete armor”. When we think of the term, we think of something later than the Normans, who are, after all, just wearing a kind of very long ringed shirt. Here’s a useful chart to give you of an idea of what we mean.

So, since “full harness” doesn’t look like the Rohirrim, how might it look?

In Jackson’s films, we don’t believe that we ever see those knights singled out, as we see the Rohirrim. The best we could find was this picture of Faramir’s men about to mount a cavalry charge against what appears to be Osgiliath. (We’ve talked about this in a much earlier posting—one of the most unbelievable moments in the whole of Jackson’s work.)

This is a big picture, but the details, unfortunately, aren’t very clear. There are a few things, however, which we found rather odd:

although there appear to be a few lances with penons among them, most seem to be armed only with swords—a close-up weapon—which is why actual knights also carried lances—heavy cavalry came crashing down on infantry or slamming into enemy mounted men—or intended to—spearing right and left and then drawing swords (or using maces or battle axes)
a minor detail, but everyone seems to be wearing his sword on the right-hand side, which would have made it very hard to draw, unless all were left-handed men!
the helmets and armor seem very standardized, and we would believe that budgetary considerations probably influenced this uniformity—50 identical helmets were probably cheaper to make than 50 different ones—but such sameness reminds us more of Roman imperial troops than of any western medieval army we can think of.

We assume, then, that this is the film’s view of soldiers at least like Imrahil’s men, but when Tolkien wrote “a company of knights in full harness”: what might he have had in mind? We think there is a clue in that adjective “King-Arthurish”, which he uses of Pauline Bayne’s illustrations and in his footnote, where he refers to “our ‘mythological Middle-Ages”. What does he mean?

JRRT would have been about ten when Howard Pyle published his The Story of King Arthur and His Knights in 1903.

Here is how Pyle saw Arthur’s knights.

image9aknight image10asknights

Could this have inspired Tolkien’s view of Imrahil’s men? (Judge for yourself by following this LINK.)

Tolkien would have been nearly 30 when The Boy’s King Arthur, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth, was published in 1922,

but, if this were in among his children’s books, perhaps these illustrations might have given him ideas. (And here’s a LINK to your own copy, from the Internet Archive.)

These are two well-known sets of illustrations of Arthurian figures, both available in Tolkien’s early lifetime. If Arthur was real, of course, he would have lived, as JRRT was well aware, in what is called the “sub-Roman period”, c.500AD—at the beginning of the so-called “Dark Ages”– and he and his men would actually have looked like this:

But this is where “our ‘mythological’ Middle-Ages” comes in—little would have been known, when JRRT was writing The Lord of the Rings, of what such warriors would have looked like, although the spectacular Sutton Hoo find of 1939, with its splendid helmet, would have given an inkling, once restored.

Because such knowledge was lacking, however, the historical Arthur (if there was one) had been moved to the Middle-Ages and re-equipped as a military figure of a much later era, and we believe that, when Tolkien wrote “Arthurish” and “knights”, this is what he meant—and how we’ve always seen Arthur, not only from books (and lots of films) but also from the armor galleries in a number of museums, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

to the Higgins Armory in Massachusetts

to the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts

to the Tower of London.

And, as we’ve discussed before, Prince Valiant, has been an influence from childhood (talk about ‘mythological’ Middle-Ages!).

And so, in turn, we imagine—and we think that JRRT did, too–the “company of knights in full harness” to have been individuals, brightly clothed in heraldic colors, their armor that, perhaps, of Crecy, in 1346—

or Agincourt, in 1415.

And you, dear readers, what do you think?

Thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

A Longer Stretch

19 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by lebedusya1 in Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Achilles, Angelica Kauffmann, Athena, Bard the Bowman, Circe, cyclops, Dora Wheeler, English Longbowmen, Errol Flynn, Greek, Henry VIII, Heracles, His Dark Materials, John William Waterhouse, Laertes, Lord Asriel, N.C. Wyeth, Odysseus, Paris, Patroclus, Penelope, Philip Pullman, Philoctetes, Portsmouth, Priam, Robin Hood, Sparta, Stelmaria, Telemachus, The Amber Spyglass, The Golden Compass, The Illiad, The Mary Rose, The Odyssey, The Subtle Knife, Tolkien, Troy

Welcome, dear readers, as always.
In our last posting, our central focus was upon Bard the Bowman and what he might have looked like.

As we do so often, we tried to use something from the history of our world to help us to flesh out JRRT’s description. In this case, we looked at Henry VIII’s battleship (a carrack, in the vocabulary of the period), the Mary Rose, which sank during a naval battle with the French on 19 July, 1545.

The ship was raised in 1982 (you can see the large surviving section of the hull in the Mary Rose museum, in Portsmouth, England).

It was full of artifacts—and of crew.
Because she sank so suddenly—and in the middle of a battle—almost none of the crew of 400 and more escaped. One of those trapped was this man.

His was among the roughly 90 skeletons well-enough preserved to allow for forensic exploration. That exploration, and the subsequent brilliant reconstruction, brought back to life a man about 6 feet (182cm) tall, with a powerfully-developed upper body. His build, certain characteristic marks of stress, and the fact that over 130 longbows and several thousand arrows were found in the wreck, led the archaeologists to see this man as an archer. We, in turn, then used him as the body-model for Bard.
But “bowman/archer” to us, who are crazy for adventure, immediately brought back Robin Hood, first in what we believe to be his best 20th-century incarnation, Erroll Flynn,

in the classic 1938 film.

To which we would add N.C. Wyeth’s illustrations

for the 1917 Robin Hood.

Thinking about bowmen in adventure stories then took us back to the first big adventure story in western literature, the Odyssey, and its hero, Odysseus, who has two associations with bows, but who, oddly enough, is never depicted as an archer, but rather as a trickster, who uses his brains to escape everything from a one-eyed giant

to an enchantress, Circe, who has already turned a good number of his crewmen into ham-on-the-hoof.

One of our favorite illustrations of Circe is by John William Waterhouse, which he worked on from 1911 to 1915.

The leopards in this version of the painting (in another, apparently, they are bears) reminded us of the snow leopard which is Lord Asriel’s demon, Stelmaria,

in Philip Pullman’s trilogy

His Dark Materials, the three books being The Golden Compass (in the British edition, Northern Lights), 1995, The Subtle Knife, 1997, and The Amber Spyglass, 2000.

These are remarkable books—full of vivid characters and places-other-than-here-and-now, and we have read and reread them since they first appeared. If you haven’t read them, we would add only one proviso: there is a strong anti-religious theme throughout and some devout readers might have difficulty with Pullman’s views. If you are willing to imagine that this is a critique of beliefs in other worlds than our own, however, we would unqualifiably recommend them. (Our favorite characters are Lyra, the fierce and fearless heroine, and Iorek Byrnison, a panserbjorn, or armored bear. There is a film version, released in 2007, based upon The Golden Compass, which we enjoy, although it has simplified and changed certain elements in the original story.)

But back to Odysseus the archer…
In the story of Troy, the famous archer is Paris, the son of Priam, the king of Troy, who uses his skill to kill Achilles, the most famous and powerful hero on the Greek side (in this pot illustration, almost by accident!).

Paris, according to some accounts (there are a number of them and they can differ in all sorts of details), is then killed by Philoctetes, who has inherited Heracles’ bow. A prophecy lies behind that bow: it seems that it is a necessary element in the conquest of Troy.

When Heracles is suffering from a poisoned shirt, and builds a pyre to cremate himself

it is Philoctetes who is willing to light it and, in return, he receives Heracles’ bow. On the way to Troy, however, Philoctetes is bitten by a snake and left behind on an island.

In some versions of the story (including Sophocles’ play), Odysseus acts as the main agent for, initially, bringing the bow to Troy, and then for bringing Philoctetes himself. So far, that is Odysseus’ only connection with archery. He is depicted as clever—being part of a successful scouting expedition in which a Trojan ally is killed and possibly the creator of the wooden horse—but, otherwise, his main accomplishments lie in beating up a trouble-maker at a public meeting and, at the funeral games which Achilles holds at the end of the Iliad for his companion, Patroclus, winning a footrace.
This footrace, however, leads us from Troy westward, as well as backward in time.
For all that there are these two huge things called the Iliad and the Odyssey, they are not all of the Troy story. They themselves are just collections of smaller stories stitched onto a plot outline. In the case of the Iliad, that outline is very basic: a. Achilles leaves war; b. Greeks substitute other warriors for Achilles; c. Achilles returns to war. The Odyssey is actually even more basic: man tries to find a way to sail home from Troy. Along with these, there are fragments from other parts of the tradition and lots of separate tales which often act as back-stories, probably invented when the popularity of the Troy tale in general caused a demand for singers to supply more material—the ancient equivalent of fan fiction!
One of these back-stories explains why Odysseus wins at the funeral games: he must already have been a famous foot racer, as he wins his bride, Penelope, from her father, the king of Sparta, in a footrace.

Not long after that, having gotten Penelope pregnant, he is off to Troy and won’t return for twenty years.
In the meantime, Penelope gives birth to a son, Telemachus, who grows up fatherless and in a household increasingly besieged by young men who claim that Odysseus must be dead and demand that Penelope must marry again.

To delay being forced to accept one of these obnoxious toads, Penelope (our favorite in the story, along with Athena) claims that, before she can choose, she has to finish a shroud she is weaving for Odysseus’ father, Laertes. (That’s Telemachus, on the left.)

In fact, although she weaves by day, she un-weaves by night and continues to do so for three years before one of her maids tells the suitors what’s going on.

(This is a remarkable piece of work designed by the painter/designer, Dora Wheeler, 1856-1940.

It is not a painting, but, in fact, an embroidery—silk stitched into silk cloth—and a remarkable artifact—and, unfortunately, the only surviving one of its kind.)
In year 19, Odysseus comes home—disguised by Athena as an old beggar, to keep him safe until he can plot his revenge and gather allies. In the meantime, Penelope (who, to us, is as quick-witted as her wandering husband) announces an archery contest, the winner to—win her. Besides the trickiness of the target (having something to do with shooting through axes—scholars have argued over just how that works for years), there is the bow: it has such a pull that only her husband, she says, has ever been able to string it.

(This illustration is by another wonderful woman artist, Angelica Kauffmann, 1741-1807. Here’s a self-portrait.)

Needless to say, the suitors are unable to do it, but that dirty old beggarman can—and does—and then, with a little help from Telemachus and a servant or two—not to mention Athena—proceeds to slaughter the suitors and clean house.

So, remembering the Mary Rose archer (as well as Bard), can we now imagine Odysseus’ build? And, for that matter, Robin Hood’s?

Thanks, as ever, for reading!
MTCIDC
CD

Into Those Woods

17 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by lebedusya1 in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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A Midsummer Night's Dream, Athens, Burnham Wood, Caspar David Friedrich, Circe, Der Blonde Eckbert, Edmund Burke, Fangorn, forest, Gespensterwald, Grimm Brothers, Haensel and Gretel, Horace Walpole, Into the Woods, Ithilien, Jacob Grimm, John Bauer, John Walter Bratton, Lorien, Ludwig Tieck, Macbeth, Mirkwood, Misty Mountains, N.C. Wyeth, Nienhagen, Odysseus, Old Forest, Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas, Robert Frost, Robin Hood, Romanticism, Sir Walter Scott, Snow White, Steven Sondheim, Straparola, Teddy Bears' Picnic, The Castle of Otranto, The Fire Swamp, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, Tolkien, Treebeard, Waldeinsamkeit, Waverly, Wilhelm Grimm, Woses

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

There is an early-twentieth-century American popular song called “Teddy Bears’ Picnic”, by John Walter Bratton. This was first published, in 1907, as “The Teddy Bears Picnic: A Characteristic Two-Step”,

but in 1932, it acquired both its current title and lyrics, beginning,

“If you go down to the woods today,

You’re sure of a big surprise…”

Here’s a link, if you’d like to read more. And here’s a link to the first recording of the version with its lyrics, from 1932. WARNING: it has a catchy little tune!

This song came to us because we’ve been thinking about forests and their frequency and importance in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Woods have always been spooky places in folktales. Think of Haensel and Gretel, for example,

or Snow White,

or even the story of Odysseus and Circe, as Circe’s house is set deep in a forest.

Among our interests is Romanticism–both in itself because it’s in Romanticism that modern adventure stories really take off (for the supernatural, think Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, 1764; for historical, Sir Walter Scott, Waverly, 1814). The early Romantics were fascinated by the forest, both as a place of beauty and of fear. This is not surprising, for several reasons. First, they were influenced by the writings of Edmund Burke (1729-1797),

who published a famous essay, “Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” in 1757 (this is a 1770s reprint).

Burke was interested in human reactions to things which, basically, are either awe-inspiring (how about this?)

or beautiful

Awe-inspiring (to which may even be added a little terror– you, sharp-eyed readers have probably already noticed that there are the remains of a crushed ship in the ice in the first picture) is a sort of opposite of the beautiful– we say “sort of” because they can be related, which is why we chose two pictures by the same artist– our favorite early Romantic artist, in fact, Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

This brings us to this Friedrich painting:

There are lots of his paintings in which we are standing behind someone who is looking off into the distance– as in the one we chose for “the beautiful”. As you can see in the above, here we have a man contemplating a path into a snowy wood. (Which reminds us of a poem by the American poet Robert Frost, 1874-1963, and we can’t resist adding it here, just for the pleasure of it:)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

There is menace here (note the crow on the stump in the foreground…), and yet it’s beautiful. And tempting– and that’s part of the sublime, as well.

Besides their interest in Burke, the early Romantics were also deeply interested in folktales. People had been collecting and publishing such things in early modern Europe since at least Straparola in the 16th century, but, from the Romantics, we have the work of these two men, highly-intelligent brother-scholars, the Grimms, Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859), whose work, either in itself on in adaptation, is known throughout the whole western world.

The story of Haensel and Gretel comes from them, in fact (as does Snow White). Because of a famous short story by Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853),

“Der Blonde Eckbert” (maybe “Fair-haired Eckbert” in English?), there is a word in German for this fascination for the woods, Waldeinsamkeit, meaning something like “The Sense of Being Alone in the Forest”. Like “sublime”, this word has a wide range of feeling to it, including that sense of aloneness/being alone/loneliness/ mixed with the pleasure of being alone in the forest. In the story, the word is contained in a little poem sung by a strange bird, which begins:

“Waldeinsamkeit

Die mich erfreut

So morgen wie heut

In ewger Zeit

O wie mich freut

Waldeinsamkeit.”

“Aloneness in the forest–

That delights me,

As today so tomorrow

In eternal time

Oh how it delights me

Aloneness in the forest!”

In the case of JRRT, however, although he was well known to be quite passionate in his love for trees, forests in his work do not always appear to be places for pleasure. (And how can we not be reminded of that moment in the film, The Princess Bride, when the hero and heroine are at the edge of the Fire Swamp, a kind of haunted wood,

and the hero, Westley, says, “It’s not that bad. I’m not saying that I’d like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely”– and only a moment later the heroine, Buttercup, is attacked by a spurt of flame from the ground itself?)

Out first wood in The Hobbit is the one into which several of the dwarves disappear, captured by three rather dimwitted trolls.

When we look at this and at other JRRT illustrations, we are reminded of the world of the Swedish illustrator, John Bauer (1882-1918), some of whose fairy tale forests bear a certain strong similarity in their regularity.

What’s surprising is that, in northern Europe, there actually appear to be stands of wood which actually look very like this. Here’s Nienhagen, in northern Germany.

It’s a beechwood (one of JRRT’s favorite trees and ours, too– remember this big beech from N.C. Wyeth’s Robin Hood illustrations?

Nienhagen has another name, however, Gespensterwald, “Ghostwood”, and, seeing this next picture and comparing it to Bauer’s paintings, we imagine that you’d agree with us that this is an appropriate nickname.

Across the Misty Mountains, we come to Mirkwood, with its disappearing Elves, sleepy stream, and giant spiders– hardly an inviting place.

The forests of The Lord of the Rings are a bit mixed. There is the Old Forest, which is so hostile that is has to be kept off with cutting, burning, and a hedge and, in its depths, there is Old Man Willow, who almost swallows several unwary hobbits.

Then there is Lorien, a place of safety and healing for the Fellowship.

And, last, there is Fangorn, with its Ents, especially the thoughtful and ultimately sympathetic Treebeard.

These are principal woods– there are also the woodlands of South Ithilien, there Faramir

and his rangers lurk, as well as the unnamed wood where the Woses live, but it’s the people there who are the focus of the story, not the forests.

This sense of a wood being dangerous goes far beyond fairy tales and even JRRT, of course. Shakespeare has several puzzling forests– as in the wood outside Athens in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

or the traveling Burnham Wood in Macbeth

And there is even the wonderful Steven Sondheim musical, Into the Woods (1986), in which going into the woods has a magical/metaphorical side.

But we’ll leave you where we started– with JRRT– and a single tree…

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC,

Killer Monks (and Friars)

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Baze Malbus, Bo staff, Canterbury Tales, Chirrut Imwe, Cluny, Dauntless, Friar Tuck, Friars, Geoffery Chaucer, Guardians of the Whills, Howard Pyle, Jahng Bong, Jedha, Little John, monastery, monks, N.C. Wyeth, Nijedha, quarter-staff, religion, Robin Hood, Rogue One, Scarif, Star Destroyer, Star Wars, stormtroopers, Tae Kwon-Do, Temple of the Kyber, the Force, The Force Awakens, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Today, for the first time in some time, we are not visiting Middle-earth. Instead, we are visiting our earth, as well as another planet or two.

Recently, we saw Rogue One,

which, in our opinion, was a bit more coherent than The Force Awakens, but which still—again, our opinion—like Force, had too many players and too many planets. For us, this has always been the danger of fantasy fiction, when plot overwhelms character, as—and aren’t we opinionated in this posting?—in the Harry Potter series.

The first volume was a pleasant twist on the traditional school story, a genre which dates at least as far back as Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857).

by Thomas Hughes.

We thought that that first book had a number of potentially interesting characters—Hermione, the Weasley twins, Snape, Hagrid—but, as the books piled up and the plot became more complex and more and more characters appeared, there was less and less, it seemed to us, of those interesting original figures. And many of the characters who were there, seemed much sketchier.

In the case of Rogue One, we thought that two of the most interesting were the two Guardians of the Whills, rather like monks

Chirrut Imwe

and Baze Malbus.

These two had been attached to the Temple of the Kyber in the city of Nijedha on the desert moon Jedha.

The Empire has arrived, however (hard to miss the Star Destroyer Dauntless in this picture, isn’t it?), to seize all of the kyber crystals on Jedha (used originally to power Jedi light sabers) to fuel the superlaser on the new terror weapon, the Death Star.

In the process, the two monks have been driven from the Temple, which has been pillaged, and now appear to be living on the street. Chirrut believes in the Force, while Baze seems to believe in his very large gun. Chirrut, who is blind, first shows his skills in an amazing scene where, surrounded by stormtroopers, he makes short work of them with his fighting staff, which resembles the Jahng Bong or Bo Staff used in Tae Kwon-do, among other Eastern weapons and martial arts.

As everyone who has seen Rogue One (and, by now, many who haven’t, we’d guess) knows, the two don’t survive the attack on Scarif

and this made us wish we had seen more of them, not only in this movie (perhaps them ejected from the Temple—which wouldn’t have been easy!), but in another Star Wars story, in which they were the main characters. So many questions: how did they meet? Why does the one believe so fervently in the Force and the other does not? What did they do before Nijedha? Were they always monks? If not, how did they become so? How and where did they train?

Seeing fighting with that Bo Staff immediately prompted us to think of much earlier figures with a similar weapon: Robin Hood, who fights, on a log over a stream, his soon-to-be-lieutenant, Little John, with quarter-staves.

This is an illustration by N.C. Wyeth from the 1917 Robin Hood,

but there is an earlier edition of the stories of Robin Hood by Wyeth’s teacher, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883).

And here is a version of the aftermath of that scene on the log with Little John.

Robin has another encounter with water and a fighter when he meets a friar beside a stream. A monk is a man who enters a religious community called a monastery and spends his life working (and praying) within its walls.

Western medieval Europe was full of monasteries, like this, at Cluny, in France.

Friars, on the other hand, traveled within their appointed district, called a “province”. Here is a friar from an early (beginning of the 15^th century) illustrated version of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Because friars were much less strictly governed, they gained a folk reputation as tricksters and high-livers, and the trickster shows through when Robin Hood forces a friar (he will become Robin’s friend, Friar Tuck) to carry him across a stream—and the friar dumps him before proving that he’s also an expert swordsman. Here’s an illustration from the 1883 Pyle version.

As we thought about it, by combining Little John’s skill with the quarterstaff with Friar Tuck’s wits and courage and holy orders, we could see a possible inspiration for Chirrut Imwe.

If you know the old Robin Hood stories and you’re seen Rogue One, what do you think?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

When One Door Closes.4

30 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by lebedusya1 in Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Maps, Uncategorized

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Alfred Lord Tennyson, Cirith Ungol, doors, Gilbert and Sullivan, Gondor, Grond, Hobbit door, James Fennimore Cooper, Minas Morgul, Minas Tirith, Morannon, Mordor, N.C. Wyeth, Nazgul, Orodruin, Princess Ida, Shelob's Lair, The Last of the Mohicans, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess, The Siege of Gondor, Tolkien

Welcome, as always, dear readers. In this posting, we’ll complete our survey of doors and entryways and what happens at them in The Lord of the Rings.

We began this series a little while ago when we got to thinking about Bilbo’s remark to Frodo that: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.”

Bilbo had learned this the hard way when Gandalf had come to his door and he had embarked upon an adventure he, originally, had no desire to be part of.

gandalfvisitsbilbo

In three postings, we’ve followed the story through doors and entryways from that moment all the way to the moment when Gandalf blocks the Lord of the Nazgul from entering Minas Tirith through its ruined main gate.

In the process, we have come to see that doors and entryways seem to come in two forms: first, there are doors which lead to safety; second, there are doors which lead to danger. We’ve added other elements, natural entryways, like fords and bridges, and the fact that many of the entryways have challenges and challengers barring the way.

In a moment of cheerful intellectual cruelty, we ended the last posting at that crucial moment in “The Siege of Gondor”, in which Grond, the battering ram of the armies of Mordor, has, with the magical aid of the Lord of the Nazgul, broken down the gate and that Lord is about to enter the city, when he meets Gandalf as the challenger:

“ ‘You cannot enter here,’ said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. ‘Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!’ ”

And, just at that moment, “Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.”

[We wondered, by the way, if that “Great horns of the North wildly blowing” was an accidental or deliberate allusion to a lyric from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s

poetic criticism of the idea of women’s education, The Princess (1847),

in which we find the line “The horns of Elfland faintly blowing”—here’s the whole poem:

from The Princess: The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The splendour falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story:

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river:

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow for ever and for ever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

This then formed the basis of an 1870 play by W.S. Gilbert, which he converted, with his collaborator, Arthur Sullivan, into an operetta, in 1884.]

Gilbert and Sullivan Cartoon.jpg

For the Aragorn and company half of the story, we see the arrival of the army of Gondor and its allies at the Morannon as the last door.

morannon.1.gif

Here, there are, in fact, two challengers/challenges. First,

“When all was ordered, the Captains rode forth towards the Black Gate with a great guard of horsemen and the banner and heralds and trumpeters…They came within cry of the Morannon, and unfurled the banner, and blew upon their trumpets; and the heralds stood out and sent their voices up over the battlement of Mordor.” (The Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

In return,

“There came a long rolling of great drums like thunder in the mountains, and then a braying of horns that shook the very stones and stunned men’s ears. And thereupon the door of the Black Gate was thrown open with a great clang, and out of it there came an embassy from the Dark Tower.”

In both cases, it goes without saying that this is a door to danger, the difference being that those from Gondor want those within to come out so that, by defeating them (though they have little hope of this), those from Gondor can enter, while those within the gate want to prevent their entry (except, perhaps, as prisoners).

As we turn to the other half of the narrative, we begin at the same gate, where Gollum has brought Frodo and Sam.

Here, there is no easily visible challenger, just the forbidding nature of the gate, but it is still not an entryway to safety, as, on the other side is an inhospitable landscape, populated by Sauron’s vast armies, constantly on the move, as we see in later chapters. As well, from those later chapters, we gain the sense that Frodo doesn’t believe he’s going to return from Mordor anyway.

Seeing no way to enter, Frodo pushes Gollum to lead them south and, with a diversion to Faramir’s base behind a waterfall (which, to us, is reminiscent of a similar hide-out in James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

—and how can we resist mentioning that, in 1919, N.C. Wyeth illustrated an edition?)

they arrive at the southern entryway to Mordor, the pass with Minas Morgul at its western end and Cirith Ungol at its eastern.

The challengers of Minas Morgul are the Lord of the Nazgul and a vast army, on their way to attack Minas Tirith, but these are skirted, as Gollum guides the two hobbits around the site and up on a perilous climb—and into Torech Ungol, Shelob’s Lair. Safety? Gollum wants the hobbits to think so. Danger? With Shelob as a challenger, what else?

Even as Sam drives Shelob off, however, he loses Frodo, paralyzed and cocooned, and is faced with an inner door closed by the orcs as they withdraw. Climbing over it, he moves forward, cloaked by the ring, to look out towards Orodruin and the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

cirith-ungol2

And, with this, we have finished our survey.

Unless, of course, we consider two more events.

First, there is what happens at Mount Doom, where Gollum is the challenger, and the door, such as it is, leads to safety for Middle-earth, but not for Sam and Frodo.

And, finally, at the edge of the Shire, in “The Scouring of the Shire”, where the returning hobbits meet with the followers of “Sharkey” at the bridge. Those followers, brain-washed by fear of “The Chief” and his “big man” followers, attempt to deny what should be a door to safety to Frodo, Merry, and Pippin, as the three had expected, but which leads, in fact, to conflict and open violence before their return home is safely accomplished.

With that, we complete the pattern and here is our chart:

Entryway	Source	Challenger	Challenged	Outcome
Bilbo’s door	The Hobbit	Bilbo	Dwarves	Bilbo is tricked into hospitality
Beorn’s house	The Hobbit	Beorn	Gandalf	Beorn tricked into hospitality
Goblin cave	The Hobbit	Goblins	Bilbo	Escapes by use of the Ring
Mirkwood	The Hobbit	Elves	Dwarves/Bilbo	Bilbo rescues dwarves with Ring and barrels
Lonely Mountain (Back door)	The Hobbit	Smaug	Dwarves/Bilbo	Understanding the inscription, Dwarves open the door
Lonely Mountain (Front door)	The Hobbit	Dwarves	Men, Elves, Goblins	Battle of the Five Armies—eventual settlement
Bilbo’s door	The Hobbit	Hobbits	Bilbo	Bilbo’s things are up for auctions—Bilbo gets most things back
Ford of Bruinen	The Lord of the Rings	Wraiths	Frodo/Elves	After Frodo’s challenge, elf magic overwhelms wraiths
Moria (west gate)	The Lord of the Rings	Elves of Hollin	Fellowship	Gandalf discovers password—the group enters
Lothlorien (western side)	The Lord of the Rings	Elves	Fellowship	Challenged by elves, but allowed to enter
Edoras	The Lord of the Rings	Rohirrim	Gandalf et al.	Challenged by gate guards, but allowed to enter
Meduseld	The Lord of the Rings	Hama	Gandalf et al.	Challenged, but allowed to enter
Helms Deep	The Lord of the Rings	Aragorn	Orcs/Wildings	Aragorn warns them of their danger
Isengard	The Lord of the Rings	Merry/Pippin	Gandalf et al.	Greeted and offered food, drink, and smoke
Paths of the Dead	The Lord of the Rings	Oath-breakers	Aragorn at al.	Allowed to enter, but followed—leave safely
Morannon	The Lord of the Rings	Sauron	King Elessar et al.	Sauron’s army appears for battle
Morannon	The Lord of the Rings	Sauron	Frodo/Sam/Gollum	No way of entry—the three head south
Minas Morgul	The Lord of the Rings	Lord of Nazgul	Frodo/Sam/Gollum	Entry blocked by Lord’s Army
Torech Ungol	The Lord of the Rings	Shelob	Frodo/Sam	Gollum escapes, Frodo paralyzed by Shelob
Cirith Ungol	The Lord of the Rings	Orcs	Sam	With Ring as aid, Sam enters
Mt. Doom	The Lord of the Rings	Gollum	Frodo	Gollum gains Ring, but perishes in fire
Shire bridge	The Lord of the Rings	Hobbits	Frodo et al.	Hobbits climb over gate, guards run

Because this material becomes increasingly complex, there is always the possibility that, as thorough as we try to be and as inclusive, we’ve missed something. If so, we’d be glad to hear from our readers!

Thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

From Tobago to Lothlorien 1

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, Literary History, Maps, Narrative Methods

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Alexander Selkirk, Daniel Defoe, Der Schweizerische Robinson, Johann David Wyss, Juan Fernandez, Lothlorien, N.C. Wyeth, Robinson Crusoe, shipwreck, Swiss Family Robinson, Tobago, treehouse

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always. This posting began years ago for one of us with this comic book.

As the cover states, this is a version of a novel, Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe (1660-1731),

first published in London in 1719.

In the story, Crusoe is shipwrecked,

off the Orinoco River, in northeast South America (probably the island of Tobago, which is joined with the island of Trinidad).

Fortunately, for Crusoe, although there are no survivors, the ship remains afloat for some days

And he is able to ferry ashore a large supply of important items, including weapons and ammunition and even some animals.

robinson-crusoe-rowing-to-safety-on-a-raft-after-being-shipwrecked-from-adventures-of-robinson-bridgeman-images.jpg

He spends years on this island and has all sorts of adventures, but what interested one of us when we first read it was the absolute coolness of how Crusoe built up a rudimentarily comfortable world from being marooned and, potentially, without hope. (In fact, tradition says that, when pirates marooned—meaning intentionally abandoned– a member of their band, it was with only two things: a bottle of rum and a loaded pistol, as in this N.C. Wyeth—)

Mentioning Wyeth, you, if you are a regular reader, will know that our favorite version of the story is Wyeth’s own, from 1920.

Defoe tells us that Crusoe lived in a cave and built huts, but, for us, what was really interesting was, after thinking seriously about pirates and cannibals, he built a stockade—like this real one, Fort Necessity, built under the orders of George Washington, in 1754.

or this imaginary one, used in Stevenson’s Treasure Island (first published in book form in 1883).

0_8a62b_11562dfa_orig

It is understood that a major source for Robinson Crusoe was the story of a real man, Alexander Selkirk,

who had had to make a life for himself on Juan Fernandez, a Pacific island, in 1704-09.

Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe are then sources for Treasure Island.

A book upon which Robinson Crusoe had an even stronger influence (the title alone tells you all) was Der Schweizerische Robinson (usually, in English, Swiss Family Robinson) by Johann David Wyss, published in 1812.

Johann David Wyss.jpg

Instead of a lone Englishman, Wyss’ story is about a sturdy Swiss family of father, mother, and four boys, who, just like their namesake, Robinson, endure shipwreck, but are granted the same advantages of a ship which stays afloat long enough to provide weapons and supplies and livestock and an empty island in a tropical climate.

We grew up on the Disney version of this (1960), which is, as is so often the case with Disney movies made from novels, wonderfully memorable visually, but with many changes to the original plot, not all of them, in our opinion, either justified or even necessary. What has stuck with us, however, is the wonderful scenes of the family stripping the ship

and, what we remember most (and wanted most) was the treehouse in which the family lived.

In the Wyss book, they had originally lived there, but had moved to a cave, after the mother had had an accident. So many rooms on so many levels had made us long for something like it (we still do!), but it also made us wonder about Tolkien’s Lothlorien, some of which is also perched in trees. But more on Lothlorien and its look in our next posting.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Last Mohican, First Novelist

07 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, Films and Music, Heroes, Literary History, Military History, Narrative Methods

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Baron Dieskau, British, Carillon, Daguerre, Deerfield, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses, Fort Duquesne, Fort Edward, Fort Niagara, Fort St. Frederic, Fort William Henry, French, French and Indian War, General Webb, James Fenimore Cooper, Lake Champlain, Lake George, Lake Ontario, Lt. Col. Munro, Mark Twain, Marquis de Montcalm, Matthew Brady, N.C. Wyeth, Native Americans, Oswego, St. Frederic, The Last of the Mohicans, Ticonderoga

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

This is our 104^th posting, making exactly 2 years of maintaining our blog, Doubtfulsea.com. When we began it, we had visited lots of other blogs, but we had no clear idea of what we wanted for ourselves. Our name came from our first novel, Across the Doubtful Sea, available from Amazon and Kindle, but we planned, from the beginning, to cover much more than the subject matter of our novel (among other things, French and English exploration of the Pacific in the 18^th century, as well as Polynesian settlement). In consequence, during our two years, we have had postings on a variety of subjects, mostly about adventure/fantasy, often with an historical element, often with a focus upon the work of one of our favorite fantasy authors, JRR Tolkien.

Now, in this last of our second year, we want to look at a person often viewed as the first important American novelist of the early 19^th century, James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), and his most famous book, The Last of the Mohicans (1826). James-Fenimore-Cooper

(A footnote: Cooper lived long enough that, the year before his death, he was the subject of an early photograph, using the Daguerre process, by Matthew Brady, 1822-1896, who, in a decade, would become the most famous photographer in the US because of his work documenting the American Civil War, 1861-1865.)

daguerreotypejfc

mathewbrady

DaguerreProcess4

Cooper had a long and very successful career as a novelist, beginning with a social novel, Precaution (1820), but his greatest fame came from his long series based upon US historical subjects and perhaps the most famous of all, that set in the world of the French and Indian War (1754-1763), and the book we want to focus upon,

French_and_indian_war_map_svg

The Last of the Mohicans.

lastofmofirsted

The subtitle, A Narrative of 1757, immediately suggests a specific event of the war, the siege and fall of the British Fort William Henry in August, 1757.

The fort had been built at the head of Lake George as a counterbalance to two French forts, Ticonderoga (called by the French, “Carillon”) and St. Frederic, on Lake Champlain, the lake to the north.

French_and_indian_war_map_svg

All of these forts—and more—were part of the competition between the British and French to control the northeastern part of North America. This struggle had begun in the later 17^th century and had long been a proxy war in which colonial settlers and Native Americans had struggled across many miles of wilderness, raiding each other throughout the years. Here is one of the most famous raids, that of Deerfield in 1704.

deerfield1 deerfield2 deerfield3

In the early 1750s, the French had increased the potential tension by building a new series of forts in what is now western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, soon to be countered by British forts.

French_British_Forts_1753_1758

In 1755, as the war heated up, the English planned a three-pronged attack against Ft. Duquesne, Ft. Niagara, and Ft. St. Frederic (called “Crown Point” by the English).

French_and_indian_war_map_svg

duquesne

ftniagara ftstfrederic

The advance against Ft. Duquesne was defeated, that against Niagara never took off, and that on St. Frederic was blocked by a French attack on the English (actually New England colonial) army at the head of Lake George.

1-battle-of-lake-george-1755-granger

This then became the site of Ft. William Henry.

Fort-William-Henry-Museum

Because the European population of New France was so small in contrast to that of the English colonies—about 70,000 versus more than a million—and because the royal government in Paris had little money to spend (or chose to spend) on the colony, the first two French military commanders, the Baron Dieskau (1701-1767) and the Marquis de Montcalm (1712-1759)

montcalm

chose an aggressive strategy, aiming to keep the British as far from the center of New France as possible. Although his men were eventually driven off and he was wounded and captured, Dieskau did halt the expedition against Ft. St. Frederic. The next year, 1756, Montcalm destroyed the English forts at Oswego, on the south shore of Lake Ontario, which could have served as staging areas for attacks east and west.

Lake_Ontario_map

Then, in 1757, he mounted the attack on Ft. William Henry which forms the background story for Cooper’s novel.

To do so, he stripped central New France of its regular troops and militia

Historex Card 862 French Infantry 1750 - 1760

and augmented them with Native Americans, for whom he felt no sympathy.

montcalmnatams

Against such a force, the English commander, Lt. Col. Munro, had a much smaller number of British regulars

brituniformsfiw

and colonial troops, based in the fort itself and in a nearby camp.

Plan_of_Fort_William_Henry_on_Lake_George

In the 18^th century, besieging a town or a fort was a very formal endeavor. Forts and towns were constructed to resist attack, often having multiple walls, ditches, and outer forts, the walls being covered in earth to resist the destructive power of an enemy’s artillery.

fortress-cross-section

Before an attack, the attacker was required to send a messenger in, demanding surrender. In some cases, seeing overwhelming forces and having no promise of relief, a garrison surrendered.

surrender of detroit

To attack meant beginning with a series of trenches just outside the artillery range of the defenders, then, through zigzagging, 06 Vauban's Siege Technique.png to approach closer and closer until:

the attacker’s artillery had knocked a big enough hole in the enemy’s walls that they were rapidly becoming defenseless

siege_image6

there was the immediate danger of an assault

redoubt10

In the case of Ft. William Henry, there was only a dry ditch, then exposed timber walls.

Fort-William-Henry-Museum

The French summoned Munro to surrender, he refused, and the French began the siege.

frenchsiegeline

When the French guns had badly damaged the fort and there was no chance of help from General Webb, at Ft. Edward, to the south, Munro surrendered.

surrender of Ft. William Henry

Trouble then began when Montcalm’s Native Americans felt cheated of the plunder which they had expected and, when the paroled column of soldiers began to move southward, it was attacked by them. Montcalm and some of his officers intervened, but they were unable to do more than slow the plundering and killing before some 200 fell. (There has been a great deal of argument as to numbers—it appears, for example, that others had been carried away, either to be ransomed later, adopted into tribes, or ritually murdered, as was the custom among some Native American groups. For the best modern account, see Ian Steele, Betrayals, OUP, 1990.)

01french_lg

Cooper’s novel, an adventure/romance, uses the fort and siege as its center. Main characters move towards the fort, are in it at the time of the surrender, and are involved in the disaster after it. As might seem inevitable by now, our favorite edition is that illustrated by N. C. Wyeth in 1919.

51504

And here is a selection of the illustrations.

0_8f6d0_9b893fc5_orig 0_8f6d2_797c6459_orig 0_8f6d4_4ef48676_orig

the-last-of-the-mohicans-9781442481305.in02 titlepage

There have been numerous films made of the book, the earliest (at least US one) being a silent, dating from 1912. For us, the most colorful was the one which appeared in 1992, with Daniel Day Lewis as “Nathaniel Poe” (a slight change from the books’ Natty Bumpo). This version made many changes to the original story, including a love interest between Poe and one of Munro’s daughters, Cora, but, for us, it also had four rather spectacular scenes: the ambush of a company of redcoats in the forest by Native Americans,

ambushinforest

the French siege of Ft. William Henry,

frenchsiegeline

the British surrender,

surrender of Ft. William Henry

and the final “massacre”.

ambush2

And so we begin our third year of blogging with our next posting. We have, as always, lots of ideas for those postings, which we hope you will enjoy.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

In 1895, Mark Twain published a comic critique of Cooper’s writing ticks. Entitled, “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses”, it can be read at http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html.

STTL

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Literary History

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A Midsummer Night's Dream, Adventure, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Anthony Hope, Arthur Rackham, Cinderella, Fairies, N.C. Wyeth, Nathaniel Hawthorne's Wonder Book, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Rip Van Winkle, Sleeping Beauty, The Dolly Dialogues, The Wind in the Willows, To the Other Side, trees

Welcome, as always, dear readers. This is a special day, so we have added an extra entry this week. 77 years ago today, on 6 September, 1939, 5 days after the beginning of World War 2, Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) died.

Beginning as a clerk for the Westminster Fire Office (an insurance company, founded in 1717) who took art lessons,

Rackham first shared illustrations with Alfred Bryant for the 1893 To the Other Side,

but his biographers tell us that it was his next book project, the illustrations for Anthony Hope’s The Dolly Dialogues,

which convinced him to put all of his energy into book illustrations, his focus from then until his death, in 1939.

A man dedicated to his art, Rackham turned out multitudes of images for books as varied as Rip Van Winkle (1905—also illustrated by N.C. Wyeth, another favorite of ours, in 1921),

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906),

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1907),

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1908),

and The Wind in the Willows (published posthumously in 1940).

And his methods included the absolutely striking Cinderella (1919) and The Sleeping Beauty (1920), in which the illustrations are done almost completely in silhouette, as if the figures and scenes were designed for shadow plays.

Throughout, the themes of wonder and the fantastic/grotesque interested him the most and, for us, a major feature is his trees, of many types, but often haunted things with eyes and mouths.

02-arthur-rackham-imagina-1914-frontispiece

From William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1908

From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book, 1922

“Come Now, a Roundel” from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1908

From Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, 1940

From William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1908

From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book, 1922

Although he was cremated, we still want to offer him a typical Roman farewell, sometimes found inscribed on Roman tombs and the title of this posting: Sit Tibi Terra Levis—“May the earth lie light upon you”. (Literally, “May the earth be light to you”)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Jacobites

17 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, Literary History, Military History, Narrative Methods

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Anne, Aughrim, Boyne, Catriona, Charles II, Culloden, Elizabeth II, Falkirk, George I, George II, Glenshiel, Highlanders, Jacobites, James II, James III, Kidnapped, Killiecrankie, Lowlanders, Mary and William, N.C. Wyeth, Prestonpans, Prince Charles, Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland, Sir Walter Scott, The Black Arrow, The Old Pretender, Treasure Island, Underwoods, War of Austrian Succession, Waverly, Young Folks

Dear Readers, welcome, as always.

We’re taking a break from JRRT in this posting and looking at another favorite, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel, Kidnapped,

which was first serialized in what must have been a remarkable Victorian children’s magazine, Young Folks (1871-1897, with various titles), as it featured Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1881-1882) and The Black Arrow (1883), as well.

It has been published and republished numerous times since its original appearance (just google the title), but, if you read us regularly, you’ll already know our favorite edition is that published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1913 and illustrated by N. C. Wyeth (although we agree with the critics that his Treasure Island, 1911, is even better). Here are a few of the illustrations to give you an idea—these are much moodier than those for Treasure Island, we think.

The actual title is based upon 18^th-century models, where a great deal of the plot may be teasingly outlined beforehand. We won’t give it all to you, but it begins: Kidnapped Being the Memoirs of David Balfour in the Year 1751 How He Was Kidnapped and Cast Away; His Sufferings in a Desert Isle; His Journey in the Wild Highlands; His Acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and Other Notorious Highland Jacobites…

“Jacobites” if you are not acquainted with the term, means “followers of/those loyal to Jacob (that is, James)” and the Jacob/James story marks a turning point in the history of the British Isles.

The story begins when Charles II of England dies in 1685 without leaving a legitimate heir.

The throne then goes to his younger brother, James II.

James was a very unpopular king, for some very complicated reasons, and he was driven from the throne in 1688 by a conspiracy which included members of Parliament, some of his army, and his daughter, Mary, as well as his son-in-law, William the Stadthoulder of the Netherlands.

James didn’t go very easily and there was war in the British Isles from 1689 to 1692, with three major battles, Killiecrankie in Scotland (1689),

the Boyne, 1690,

and Aughrim, 1691, both in Ireland.

Although James II’s forces lost, that did not end the matter, however. James II died in exile in 1701, but his son, the potential James III (called by his enemies “The Old Pretender”, meaning “claimant to the throne”), continued the struggle, being involved in three major attempts at taking back the monarchy.

In the meantime, Mary and William had both died and Mary’s younger sister, Anne,

who succeeded them, as well. To keep both religious and family continuity, it had been agreed that, since Anne had no surviving heirs, her second-cousin, George, the Elector of Hanover (a country in what is now western Germany) and his family would inherit the throne, which George did, in 1714, as George I of England.

That continuity worked so well, in fact, that he is the direct ancestor of the present queen, Elizabeth II,

(We just couldn’t resist including this– even royalty don’t take reigning totally seriously, it seems!)

Not a year later, there was a plan to take the throne by invading Scotland, raising an army of Lowlanders and Highlanders alike, and marching on London. There was one inconclusive battle, at Sherriffmuir, in 1715,

but, even with the arrival of James-the-possible-third,

the whole thing fell apart. And something similar happened with the next attempt, in 1719. Modest Spanish support was not enough and the Jacobite army failed at Glenshiel

and things subsided into a cold war until 1745. During the intervening years, the struggle between Britain and France, begun in the days of Louis XIV (ruled 1661-1715) had intensified, with France supporting James II and his son as proxies. In 1745, the latest war, the so-called “War of the Austrian Succession”, had been going on since 1740. This was a much more complex pan-European war, but, with Britain and France backing different candidates for the throne, there was a good opportunity for a further attempt on the part of France to destabilize her old opponent. Thus, when it was proposed that the dashing young son of James, Prince Charles (1720-1788),

backed by a small French army

(with another waiting in the wings for an invasion of southern England), should land in Scotland and raise the country against the government of George II, the Old Pretender agreed.

Unfortunately for their cause, this ended as the other attempts had, in failure—and this was the final failure. After one great victory, at Prestonpans in 1745,

and a smaller one at Falkirk, in early 1746,

the plan failed at Culloden in April, 1746,

and this was the last grand attempt. As the inspiration for literature in the romantic period, however, it was extremely successful, beginning with Sir Walter Scott’s

Waverley, published anonymously in 1814.

Regularly regarded as the first great historical novel, it was the beginning of great commercial success for Scott, as well as the beginning of a process which turned Scotland’s past into the basis of an entire cultural industry, of which Kidnapped (1886) and its sequel, Catriona (1893) formed a small, but prominent part and is still with us today in the US (and elsewhere) in Scottish festivals and bumperstickers.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

We can’t conclude without including Stevenson’s “Requiem” (from his collection Underwoods, 1887),

which we’ve always admired and which is on his tomb in Samoa, where he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1894.

doubtfulsea

~ adventure romance fantasy

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