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Blessed readers
'Hot off the printing press' is how you refer to it in your twenty-first-century world, or at least that's what I've been told. Here in my alternate eleventh-century dimension, I have another four hundred years or more to wait for the printing press to be invented, and in the meantime I wear my fingers to the bone working the vellum. But I never complain. Complaining, however, seems to be the order of the day in this marvellous new book for all you blessed children out there: You Wouldn't Want to Be an Anglo-Saxon Peasant. The book is written from the perspective of a young ceorl's son in seventh-century England. So that's back-breaking work, a famine and murderous feuding, though I will just say that it's not complete gloom and doom; our young hero does make some wise, essentially Christian, choices to bring some respite to everyone's God-cherished soul. I do feel compelled to inform all my dear readers that the life of an Anglo-Saxon monk would rival any peasant's in terms of real hardship. You have no idea, blessed ones, how tough it is sticking to all the rules! I will, by the way, be starting a new series of posts on the Benedictine Rule, which governed monastic life in late Anglo-Saxon England. So much to look forward to! Finally, in case you're wondering why I'm promoting this particular book, well I really have no choice. My alter ego, Dr Chris Monk, worked as a consultant for the publishers, Salariya, and so I am, regrettably, obliged to promote almost everything with which he's involved. He's quite the demigod, I'll have you know! You can click on to the image above to go to the publisher's website or the button below to buy the book. Please note, the book is not released in the USA until March 10, 2016. Back with a bang, the Anglo-Saxon Monk continues his Harley Psalter guessing game. The Utrecht Psalter, Psalm 3: Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32 (Rheims, c.830), folio 2v, detail. All images from the Utrecht Psalter that appear in this blog are by permission of the Utrecht Library. Please click on the image to go to the online digital facsimile. Blessed children,
How can I have been so neglectful? More than a month has passed since I sent you my last spiritual missive via this blog, and I can only beg your forgiveness, et cetera, et cetera. Well, to show you the depths of my repentant heart, I thought it most appropriate to plunder the well of my spiritual waters and bring you the third in my on-going series of Harley Psalter charades. Nothing quite like an insightful gamble through the Psalms, now is there, beloved? For those of you who have not managed to keep abreast of all things charades, I will refrain from publicly shaming you and merely offer you a reminder of what it's all about. Now pay attention: The eleventh-century Harley Psalter is an English copy of the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter, produced in the ninth century. Each of the Psalms in these great manuscripts is cleverly illustrated by focusing on individual words or phrases that appear in the text. So what you see is not 'narrative art', in the traditional sense, where a story unfolds visually (by way of example, you might think of illustrated scenes from the Old Testament in medieval manuscripts, or your own modern comic strips), but rather you get to participate in the artist's game of 'which-bit-am-I?' Hence, the art historian William Noel coined the phrase ‘medieval charades’, which is what you're about to play now. Oh yes you are! The Anglo-Saxon Monk is disgruntled over the depiction of thegns in the new British adaptation of the epic Beowulf. Blessed readers,
No one, I assure you, has ever charged me with the iniquitous sin of immoderate fantasizing. (The odd bout of prurient daydreaming during my childhood Latin lessons doesn’t count.) This monastic capacity to withhold oneself from the greater excesses of mental wandering does not mean, however, that I am devoid of imagination. Let me make it abundantly clear, beloved ones, that we Anglo-Saxon monks love a bit of mental playfulness, as any reader of the Anglo-Saxon riddles will attest (though please don’t read the rude ones.) So this brings me to the matter at hand, one of very great concern to many of you as twenty-first-century consumers of ‘medieval fantasy’. In case you haven’t noticed, Beowulf is back! Well, at least in the land of my origins; inhabitants of USA will have to wait until January 23rd. Yes, you can sit down on a Sunday evening (I’m between prayers, so it’s allowed) and avail yourself of Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands. That’s Beowulf, the greatest piece of early medieval literature – without exception – revisited, retold, and, as the official ITV press release informs us, re-imagined. Now, beloved, that’s allowed. It’s fine, as far as I’m concerned, to take core elements from my favourite epic and create a new story for the scops to sing. Admittedly, in this case, the creative use of those core elements amounts to little more than the redeployment of three names: Beowulf (our beloved superhero), Hrothgar (the aging king) and Heorot (the name of Hrothgar’s hall). But I can cope with that; I don’t necessarily need a narrative which actually resembles that of the original poem in order to be entertained. You may, however, feel deceived by this treatment of our Old English masterpiece, but not me. You may rail against its apparent indifference to the real Beowulf, but, blessed readers, this is the world of medieval fantasy drama; or, as described by ITV in its original press release, this is actually ‘a Western set in the Dark Ages of Britain’s mythic past’. So we were warned – though I have no idea what a Western is. Yet even as I defend the right to completely hijack the name Beowulf for the sake of creative imagination, I still find myself annoyed. Why? Well, we all have our limits, don’t we? And for me, blessed readers, it’s the fact that the wizard-like devisers of this Beowulf don’t seem to know what a thegn is (you may be more familiar with ‘thane’). Now, beloved, I really can suffer, with little unbalancing of my emotional or spiritual equanimity, the copious amounts of anachronism shovelled forth in much medieval fantasy that comes our way, but please, please get the representation of one of the primary figures of early medieval societies right! Please! So what is a thegn? Since Beowulf is an Anglo-Saxon poem, I will primarily deal here with Anglo-Saxon definitions, but I will also dwell a little on the Viking thegn, since the world of Beowulf in the original poem is set in Scandinavia. So, blessed children, here is my list of nine things about thegns that I know you will be dying to know (ten things would be so yesterday, beloved), along with my occasional expressions of disapprobation at how thegns are depicted in Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands: |
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