Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Review of David McCooey's 'The Book of Falling'

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  Three reasons why you should read David McCooey’s poetry. (This review originally appeared in The Brazen Head, September 2023) David McCoo...
Thursday, September 21, 2023

Culhwch and Olwen.

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  I have loved this story since I first read the Jones and Jones translation many decades ago. Now I'm working my way slowly through thi...
Friday, September 1, 2023

Jeremy Hooker, Diary of a stroke. Shearsman (2016)

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Jeremy Hooker, Diary of a stroke. Shearsman (2016)   Memory, narrative and identity.    Are your memories like the panel of a cartoon, that’...
Monday, July 10, 2023

Transformation, magic, the conception of Arthur, a digression.

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  At some point, things that people accepted as real pass into their stories, and survive only as ‘something that can happen in a   story’. ...
Thursday, June 29, 2023

What's great about Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur

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My attempt to explain why I admire Malory's book, and why I've been rereading it since the late 1970s, is published on The Brazen He...
Tuesday, June 27, 2023

The Conception of King Arthur. Transformation, magic, belief. 2/3

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What  is  the audience being asked to  believe when Uther becomes Gorlois?   The first Branch of the Mabinogion illustrates two types of cha...
Wednesday, June 14, 2023

The Conception of King Arthur. Transformation, magic and belief.1/3

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      The story of Arthur’s conception may have been Geoffrey of Monmouth’s invention. (See previous posts about how was King Arthur's f...