Skip to main content

This Blog and Me

About This Blog

Welcome and thank you for visiting my page.  I created this page as a learning guide for others, even as I am learning myself.  I found that the large volume of Arthurian literature was intimidating especially when you start adding different theories and even multiple versions of the same story.  I can't even think of a good parallel to compare it too.  Despite being intimidating ,there was something about the way it grows over time that appealed to me.  After reading a few stories, I was hooked.   I wanted to provide a way for others to learn and to help them sift through the mountains of stories, poetry, history, historical theory, commentary, and scholarly journals.  There was no road map to learning this material.  Even the books that purport to guide beginners get bogged down in scribal details and translation notes.  I felt there was a way to disseminate a nice amount of pertinent information with out overloading the average reader.  

My target audience is beginners and amateurs in Arthurian subjects.  I am an amateur enthusiast as well.  I want to make this known because I am deliberately not including every scrap of information on any given subject.  I am giving enough information to be explanatory and educational.  This page will not satisfy a lot of the better informed students and educators but I do accept constructive advice from anyone willing to follow along and help.

Because I do not have any intentions of creating a college level journal and my target is a general audience, I do not intend on listing sources in most cases.  I, of course, will give credit to certain authors when relaying their research or when addressing a certain book or journal.  However, some information may be relayed from any manner of sources and I may not always be able to identify certain translators, or products of independent research.  I will say that I will not be providing any independent research of my own and, as such, do not take credit for any translations, research, or ideas found within this blog.  If you are a scholar or educator and you feel I have marked something  inappropriately, please just let me know and I will take pains to correct it.  If you have something constructive you would like to add, I urge you to do so.  Maybe one day this can be a community of interested amateurs.  

I welcome comments and discussion on anything Arthurian.  I am not an expert and have not read everything. I can't even say I have read most, but I steadily move through the material on my own and am way ahead of this blog.    For that reason I welcome others to join regardless of your education level because the main function of this site is learning.  Also, because I hope to attract a disparate group of readers, I hope that all commentary remains constructive.  No "trolls" are welcome unless Arthur is slaying them. 

My name is Joe and I have a degree in computer animation/ interdisciplinary studies A.B. Studio Art from the University of Georgia.  I currently do nothing related to my degree but instead manage a small business in Georgia.  I am married and have a 3 year old boy and pursue Arthurian subjects for personal education and enjoyment, I enjoy writing and also continue (sometimes) to produce art the old fashioned way.

Thank you for visiting,
Joe

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Next Up: The Saints Lives.

Next Up:  The Saints Lives. The Saints Lives is not one book or or even a series of stories.  They are actually disparate tales of different saints by by different authors during the early 11th and 12th centuries.  They are interesting because they feature a version of Arthur who can sometime be seen as conniving, dishonest, vain, even as a rapist, which is quite apart from the noble, generous Leader you may be used to. I will discuss them soon in more detail.  For those of you who wish to read ahead I would advise to use Richard White's King Arthur: In Legend and History   (pp.12-21), rather than the Oxford Guide. White's version has pulled the excerpts relevant to the subject which will save you from having to read unrelated material or purchase unnecessary books.  Each saint only makes brief mention of Arthur, from about a paragraph to a page, so it will be a blessedly short read.  If you only have the Oxford guide, though it does not prov...
Post a Comment
Read more

Update: New Page Added!

Because subscribers are not updated when a new "page" is added to the blog, I have to create a blog entry to notify you.  A "page" is a resident link on the main blog Home.  This can be anything- such as a book list or a page of links...anything I want it to be.  In this case it is "how to best use this blog" whose purpose should be self explanatory.  I hope everyone finds it useful as I have given tips for every type of reader.  Here is a link if you would like to have a peek.   How To Best Use This Blog Thanks, Joe
Post a Comment
Read more

Upcoming works

Upcoming Works Hello everyone, I hope you all enjoyed your excerpt of Wace's Roman de Brut. Chretien de Troyes   If you purchased the Everyman "The Life of King Arthur,"  I recommend you hang on to it.  The second section by Lawman covers the same story but done much later in English with even more embellishments and we will be getting to it soon enough.  In the meantime we will be taking a break from the Brut tradition and exploring the beginnings of the French romance tradition as well as a small Welsh work described below. As I frequently like to do, we will be covering a small work before tackling a much larger work.  In this case we will be covering a short but very unusual Welsh work called the Dream of Rhonabwy from around  1159 - 1200. It's only about 12 pages long, so it should not be too much to handle. If you purchased the Oxford World Classics version of The Mabinogion, then you should have it already. I will list a link to t...
Post a Comment
Read more