Tag: literature
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The Porous Self: Recovering Enchantment in Epic Fantasy
One of the most challenging tasks in writing epic fantasy inspired by ancient or medieval Europe is remaining faithful to the spirit of the age while avoiding the tendency to filter everything through a contemporary worldview. To some extent this is impossible. We can’t help but be people of our time, nor can we fully…
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Elegy and Decay: A Review of Guy Gavriel Kay’s “Children of Earth and Sky”
If you’re unfamiliar with his work, Kay writes highly literary, deeply researched epic fantasy based on specific periods of medieval history. He prepares for his novels by spending time in the locations where his books are set—or almost set, since they’re fantasy—places like the south of France, Venice, or Istanbul, and reading up on primary…
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Medieval Monsters: Grendel
Few works of medieval literature are as central to the “monster canon” or as influential on modern fantasy as the Old English epic Beowulf. The poem offers not one but three monstrous antagonists for its hero to confront. Beowulf is an Anglo-Saxon poem, and while the manuscript dates to the tenth or eleventh century, the…
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Medieval Monsters: The Draugr
Vampires. Mummies. Zombies. The undead are everywhere in modern horror and fantasy, from Salem’s Lot to The Walking Dead. But they’re far from a recent obsession. Long before even the nineteenth-century Gothic novels of Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, we find the undead represented in the folklore traditions of every culture—the Ro-Langs of Tibet, the…
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Medieval Monsters: The Green Knight
If you’ve ever taken a first-year English course at university, I’m willing to bet that you’ve encountered Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This fourteenth-century romance is one of the most well-known works of medieval English literature and a classic entry in the Arthurian corpus.
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Medieval Monsters: Bisclavret the Werewolf
Of all the monsters of Western folklore, the werewolf is among the most iconic and enduring. From the ancient Greek lycanthrope, to the Roman versipellis, to the “man-wolf” of medieval Europe’s Germanic and Celtic peoples, to the Early Modern witch-hunts, to its widespread presence in modern popular culture, the werewolf has enjoyed near-constant popularity throughout…
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Medieval Monsters: The Giant of Mont St. Michel
If you consume even a small amount of modern fantasy, you’re probably used to seeing monsters in a vaguely medieval setting. It is common to see knights, princesses, and peasants living alongside and/or doing battle against a range of fantastical creatures: dragons, ogres, giants, trolls, orcs, elves, dwarves, and more. Medieval Europe has become, in…
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Five books that will help you understand medieval Britain
In an older post, I talked about why I think writers of fantasy and historical fiction should read primary sources to understand the period from which they are taking inspiration. In this post, I’m going to provide some examples of what kinds of sources writers should be reading.
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Inside the Anglo-Saxon Shield-Wall: Exploring the Battle of Maldon
The year is AD 991 and a Viking army rages across east England. Led by the fearsome King Olaf, the warrior crews of ninety-three longships pillage the undefended lands of the Anglo-Saxons and plunder the town of Ipswich. Riding to meet them is Earl Byrhtnoth, commander of the Anglo-Saxon army of King Æthelred. It has…
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Why fantasy writers should read old books
If you’re a fantasy writer and you’re interested in creating secondary worlds that feel authentic to the period you’re taking inspiration from, I think the best thing you can do is read primary sources. That might look like epic literary works such as Beowulf or the Epic of Gilgamesh, social satires like The Canterbury Tales,…