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Tag Archives: Tamora Pierce

Small Talk

02 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Tags

Assyrians, Charles Goodyear, cyclops, David and Goliath, Death Star, Egypt, Ewoks, Greeks, Hetep Senworset, Hobbits, Jack and the Beanstalk, Kelandry of Mindelan, Lachish, Medieval, Odysseus, Polyphemus, Protector of the Small, Romans, Sling, slingers, Slingshot, Smaug, Star Wars, Tamora Pierce, thrush, Tortall, Vulcanized, Woses, Yoda

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Sometimes, ideas for posts come from something we’ve seen in a movie theatre or something we’re reading or even from something we’re teaching or studying.  Sometimes we employ the Sortes Tolkienses.  And sometimes things just seem to fall into our hands.  And that’s where this post comes from.

We were moving a bookshelf and something literally dropped into our hands, a boxed set of books by one of our favorite YA authors, Tamora Pierce.

image1protector.jpg

As you can see from our image, the series is called “Protector of the Small” and is about the life of Keladry of Mindelan, who lives in Pierce’s imaginary Tortall, where it is possible—just possible—for a girl to become a knight.  Through the four volumes, Kel gradually works her way from pre-page to knighthood and, is always the case with TP’s books, there are both surprises and interesting and not always predictable difficulties along the way, as well as an ultimate humanity which makes her books such satisfying reading.

It wasn’t the actual books, however, which got us to thinking, but the word “small” in the series title.  How often, in our favorite adventure stories, it’s a case of small versus big

image2mouseelephant.jpg

and, very often, the big thinks that that’s all which counts—think of the fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk” for example.image3ajackgiant.jpg

For all that the giant is huge and menacing in the story, he’s vulnerable as he climbs down the beanstalk and Jack’s quick thought–to cut down the stalk even as the giant descends–makes quick work of the oversized (but perhaps overconfident—and underbrained?) creature.

image3bdeathofgiant.jpg

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we have the Biblical story of David and Goliath.

image3dandg.jpg

Goliath is not only huge, but armored, and David is a boy who has only his shepherd’s staff, a sling, and five stones from a river bed, but it’s all he needs.

A sling is an ancient weapon

image4sling

This is from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom town of Hetep Senwosret, c. 1895BC.  The Assyrians were still using the weapon more than a thousand years later, as this scene from one of the Lachish reliefs (c.700BC) shows.

image5assyrians.jpg

The Greeks had slingers

image6aspendosslinger.jpg

as did the Romans

image7roman.jpg

as did medieval westerners.

image8medieval.jpg

Slings shouldn’t be confused with slingshots, by the way.  (Or “catapult” if you’re one of our British friends.)

image9slingshot.jpg

This is the weapon of choice of the cartoon character, Dennis the Menace.

image10dmenace.jpg

These are a modern invention which requires a large rubber band (an “elastic”) to propel the missile and such rubber bands can only come from the 1840s and beyond, when the process of heat-hardening rubber (“vulcanization”) was patented by Charles Goodyear.

image11chasgoodyear.jpg

For us, then, the image of Ori in P Jackson’s film armed with a slingshot

image12oriwithslingshot.jpg

goes into our catalogue of anachronisms, like the steam engine whistle, the popgun, and the tomatoes in The Hobbit.

But, as we were saying, small David has no fear of big Goliath, as one of those stones from the riverbed stuns the giant warrior, allowing David to use Goliath’s own sword to cut off his head.

image13dandg.jpg

In ancient Greek tradition, Polyphemus the Cyclops obviously thinks his size will allow him to consume all of Odysseus’ men—and then Odysseus, too, saving him for last as a “guest gift”.

image14poly.jpg

Big body, however, doesn’t necessarily mean big brain as Odysseus gets the Cyclops drunk and then blinds him with his own staff.

image15blinding.jpg

Then, he uses the Cyclops’ own sheep as escape vehicles for himself and his men.

image16escaping.jpg

Small versus big is a major theme in Star Wars, from the fact that the gigantic Death Star has a single ventilator duct which makes it vulnerable

image17deathstar.jpeg

to attack by a single fighter,

image18xwing.jpg

to the ferocious Ewoks,

image19ewoks.jpg

and, of course, Yoda, with his famous question.

image20yoda.jpg

And then there are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where the world of the small and tough seems to be everywhere, from the hobbits

image21hobbit.jpg

to the dwarves

image22dwarves.jpg

and even to the Woses.

image23woses.jpg

Their opponents are suitably large—trolls,

image24trolls.jpg

dragons

image25smaug.jpg

wizards

image26saruman.jpg

to the biggest evil in Middle-earth (although it’s not clear, really, how big he is, physically).

image27baraddur.jpg

But there’s someone even smaller in The Hobbit who, because of that size, perhaps, is left behind, but is crucial to the story:  the elderly thrush

image28thrush.jpg

who informs Bard the Bowman just where to fire that black arrow which never fails him—and doesn’t this time, thanks to the bird.

image29deathofsmaug.jpg

We were sorry that his part was completely removed from The Battle of the Five Armies, but perhaps this was, in fact, one of the few times when the small hero lost to the big–studio.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

PS

Here’s a LINK to an amazing demonstration of just how accurate the sling can be.

Paying No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

08 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Beowulf, Cloacina, Connacht, Grendel, Heorot, Horatius, King of Leinster, Lembas, Lord Chesterfield, Mac Da Tho, Mordor, Odysseus, Penelope, Tamora Pierce, The Lord of the Rings, The Odyssey, The Wizard of Oz, Tolkien, Ulster

Behind-the-Curtain.jpg

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always, to our blog. In this posting, we want to consider something usually invisible, but, at the same time, for reader/listeners, always there in adventure stories.

Think for a moment about your day. And how filled it is with requirements of the body, from sleep to washing to eating to—yes, you see where we’re going.

PoplarForestPriviesRob.jpg

(And we can’t see this 18th century outhouse—sometimes called a “necessary” or a “privy” then—without thinking of part of a letter by the famous 18th-century essayist/letter-writer Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773).

Philip_Stanhope,_4th_Earl_of_Chesterfield.PNG

Who wrote a series of affectionate and very worldly-wise letters to his illegitimate son. In one of them he had the following advice—

“I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, carried them with him to that necessary place, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained, and I recommend you to follow his example…. Books of science and of a grave sort must be read with continuity; but there are very many, and even very useful ones, which may be read with advantage by snatches and unconnectedly: such are all the good Latin poets, except Virgil in his Æneid, and such are most of the modern poets, in which you will find many pieces worth reading that will not take up above seven or eight minutes.”

earlyeditionofhorace.jpg

Cloacina was the patron goddess of the ancient main drain of Rome. Here’s an image of her shrine—

Coins-venus-cloacina.jpg

and here’s her drain

Domitian-Cloaca-Forum.jpg

But, as we were starting to say, things of the body, ordinary things, are almost entirely ignored both in traditional adventure and in modern versions. In fact, it’s a bit of a shock to see, in some of Tamora Pierce’s YA novels (a big favorite of ours), that people actually use a latrine.

tpiercebooks.jpg

When we look at JRRT, for example, whose works we’ve often tried to set into a medieval context, we never see what one would have seen in such a context, whether behind a farmhouse

garderobe1.jpg

or in some place grand.

garderobe.jpgGarderobe,_Peveril_Castle,_Derbyshire.jpg

We began with the least common possibility, but this is as true for other functions—usually taken for granted, except for specific reasons. Sleep, for example, is very often employed simply as a way to show the passage of time during an adventure—and, in worlds without googlemaps, Siri, and perhaps even signposts

HauntedForest_sign.jpg

it’s a very natural and easy way to mark time and distance simultaneously.

samandfrodoasleep.jpg

Eating can show the same—think of Sam hoarding lembas as he and Frodo trek towards Mordor—

leaf-lembas.JPG

JRRT then uses it to show urgency, as well—what will they do in Mordor, when it runs out?

602_NASMITH_Across_Gorgoroth_02.jpg

Of course, eating—in the form of feasting, in particular—can provide a major plot element.

Think of Heorot, the feasting hall, in Beowulf, for instance,

heorot.jpg

where feasts are ruined until Beowulf defeats their ruiner, Grendel.

Stories_of_beowulf_head_of_grendel.jpg

Or the endless feasting of the suitors in the Odyssey

greekfeastpaestumdivertomb.jpg

as they eat up everything which makes Odysseus the lord of his lands, besides trying to steal his wife, Penelope.

JohnWilliamWaterhouse-PenelopeandtheSuitors(1912).jpg

Here, eating and drinking take on a greater significance in that they are symbolic of the slow destruction of Odysseus’ household. They also provide a great setting for his reappearance and then, with the help of Athena, his massacre of the suitors in one of the wildest revenge scenes we know. It has quite a number of illustrators, from ancient

Mnesterophonia_Louvre_CA7124.jpg

to Victorian

odysseus-kills-the-suitors1.jpg

to modern—and our favorite, for the way it’s being shown from the angle of Odysseus’ patron, Athena

peterconnollysuitors.jpg

And then there is the feast, held in the rath of the king of Leinster, Mac Da Tho, which has to be one of the zaniest scela in Old Irish literature. Leinster’s most powerful neighbors, Ulster and Connacht, are at dinner, but there is a sudden difficulty over who will carve the pig.

Pictish_symbol_stone_from_Dores Wiki Commons.JPG

Like so many of the stories of the so-called “Ulster Cycle”, it is full of over-the-top violence and grim humor as both powers struggle to gain the honor of carving and therefore having the right to award the curadmir, the “hero’s portion”.

As you think about your favorite heroic or adventure story, consider the above—where can you see body care/body functions? Then, to take it a step farther: where does anyone ever sneeze? (We can think of one special one, but what can you come up with?—Hint: see Odyssey 17…)

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

A Pirate’s Life

24 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Villains

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Tags

Barbary Coast, Captain Blood, Captain Hook, Corsairs, Errol Flynn, Gilbert and Sullivan, Howard Pyle, Jack Sparrow, Jolly Roger, mariners, Napoleonic Wars, Narnia, Peter Jackson, Pirates, Scharb, shipbuilding, Tamora Pierce, The Black Pearl, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Tortall, Treasure Island, Umbar, USS Philadelphia, xebec

“Oh, a pirate’s life is a wonderful life,

A-rovin’ over the sea,

Give me a career as a buccaneer

It’s the life of a pirate for me…”

Wallace/Penner, Peter Pan (1953)

 

Dear readers, welcome, as ever.

Being clever, you can tell immediately where this posting is going to go. Yep, the corsairs of Umbar.

A corsair is another word for pirate. And, when we think “pirate”, first there’s the late-19th-early-20th-century work of Howard Pyle.

Pyle_pirate_handsome.jpg

 

And the silly pirates from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance.

piratesofpenzance.jpg

 

And Long John Silver, from Treasure Island.

longjohnsilver.jpg

 

 

And then there is Captain Hook and the Jolly Roger.

TigerLilyandHook.jpg

 

 

And Errol Flynn in the 1935 movie, Captain Blood.

1023_captblood.jpg

 

And who could forget Jack Sparrow and The Black Pearl?

Captain-Jack-captain-jack-sparrow-14117613-1242-900.jpg

blackpearl.jpg

We think that Tolkien has something rather different in mind, however. Let’s start with a little history.

Umbar’s past in relation to Gondor is summed up by Damrod in “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”:

“ ‘Aye, curse the Southrons!’ said Damrod. ‘Tis said that there were dealing of old between Gondor and the kingdoms of the Harad to the Far South; though there was never friendship. In those days our bounds were away south beyond the mouths of Anduin, and Umbar, the nearest of their realms, acknowledged our sway. But that is long since. ‘Tis many lives of Men since any passed to and fro . Now of late we have learned that the Enemy has been among them, and they are gone over to Him, or back to Him—they were ever ready to his Will—“ (The Two Towers, Book 4, Chapter 4,“Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”)

Damrod’s mistrust is confirmed by what Beregond says to Pippin in “Minas Tirith”:

“…There is a great fleet drawing near to the mouths of Anduin, manned by the corsairs of Umbar in the South. They have long ceased to fear the might of Gondor, and they have allied them with the Enemy, and now make a heavy stroke in his cause. For this attack will draw off much of the help that we looked to have from Lebennin and Belfalas, where folk are hardy and numerous.” (The Return of the King, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”)

As Damrod has said, Umbar is to the far south.

map-of-gondor-and-neighbors2.jpg

Here is a view of it as imagined by the Czech artist, Scharb.

thecityofumbar.jpg

To us, this resembles cities along the southern Mediterranean coast, especially as seen in old engravings of the Barbary Coast.

Old_algiers_16th_century.jpg

Take, for example, this copperplate of Tunis, from 1778.

tunisengraving.JPG

 

There are all kinds of ships depicted here, from three-masters to a galley, in the center, to a small xebec, to the far right.

The galley seemed once to be the characteristic ship of the pirates of the Barbary Coast, coming from earlier Turkish galleys.

Galley1500ca.jpg

 

What the Czech artist appears to have picked up upon, however, is something from P. Jackson’s third The Lord of the Rings film, in which the xebec

Xebec L80 - 01.jpg_0_1024x769.jpg

 

is the model for the corsairs’ vessels.

corsairMastSails.jpg

 

Jackson’s corsairs look like this (including Jackson himself, mugging to the left).

jacksonandcorsairs.jpg

The crews of actual Barbary ships probably looked more like this:

21c27fb9a0a7cdf4d123d6e12bcbbd83.jpg

This makes perfect sense, as these are North Africans, and very tough people, as European mariners came to know. Their swift, daring ships attacked any vessel which might bring them profit.

barbary-pirate-galleon.jpg

The young United States first paid them tribute to keep them away from US ships.

tribute.jpg

But, as the government somewhere found the money, it began a shipbuilding program to provide the country with its first national navy.

buildingthephiladelphia.jpg

This particular ship was the ill-fated USS Philadelphia, which ran aground and was captured by the pirates.

philly.jpg

captureofthephiladelphia.jpg

It was destroyed, however,

destructionofthephiladelphia.jpg

in a daring raid by Stephen Decatur, seen in this miniature.

stephendecatur.jpg

The United States fought two wars against the Barbary pirates, 1801-5 and 1815, doing a great deal of damage to the pirates.

USS-Enterprise-barbary-war.jpg

Ultimately, however, it was a combination of governments and navies, including the US, the British, and the Dutch, which put a stop to piracy in the southern Mediterranean after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.

Decatur_Boarding_the_Tripolitan_Gunboat.jpg

So, like Scharb, we took the idea from JRRT that Umbar was in the far south and, influenced by our experience, not only of the Barbary pirates, but of Narnia and the country called Calormen

Baynes-Map_of_Narnia.jpg

and of Tamora Pierce’s “Tortall” with its Carthaki southland,

Tortall_1.gif

we imagined the corsairs to look like this.

barbarypirates.jpg

So, dear readers, what do you think?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

 

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