Redirection...

For a brief summary of my honors thesis that in turn led to another post pontificating on general thoughts on neomedievalism and its implications for our culture, head over to Point of Know Return: Part I and Part II. Please feel free to leave comments there or extend your comments into a responsive post here.

Where have all the mead halls gone...

...and where are all the bards?

Pop-culture references aside, I have recently realized that thinking about mead halls saddens me.

Why?

Perhaps it is because I am a dreamer with an eye inclined to the heroic, the fantastic, and the charm of things old-worldly. Or perhaps I am wishing for what the mead halls represent: pride, togetherness and a fine oral tradition. Either way, the buildings are no more.

In their steads we have fast food restaurants, diners and the various and sundry bars and pubs. No more does the community get together because they are a community and share that bond. The annual chicken barbeque is close enough. Lost in individual lives, food is tasty but serious meals are a waste of time. Our time-charged consumermobiles drive us from point to point, picking up burgers on the way.

Being a self-proclaimed writer of sorts, I find this disheartening on a number of levels. One is the fact that everything has managed to balance the appearance of being dynamic with a static and homogenized reality that nothing actually seems to happen--nothing worth immortalizing. Birth, growth, school, work and death, with a light chance of success and a smattering of relationships. Another is that, by downplaying the importance of meals and togetherness, individually and as a whole, the would-be bards are ostracized to dark corners and holes to dig up materials for the next contest or open mic night. The bard becomes disconnected rather than immersed, tolerated rather than welcomed.

Food cannot be blamed for it all, though I maintain it plays its own role in the problem. It is also that, in the race to win any more, a body needs so much information with immediacy and in abundance. We have ready access. With food, knowledge and even networked relationships flying hither and yon at the speed of irradiated humming birds, the attention span slips slowly thorugh mechanized processers, diminishing. Bards, for all of their love, interest and care for their communities, have no place here. The places closest to their beloved halls are regular bar stools or the table set aside for the coffee regulars in some small-town diner. Through there has never been such a capacity for communication, people have become distant and dazed. Some lose the ability for apt face-to-face discussions, while others never are given the chance to learn.

Never before has the village that raises the child been so hands-off. In disconnecting ourselves, we have lost our feel for the underlying themes and strings that bind humans together. Ye olde truths and tales from the bard are become relics--shiny baubles and memories of past eras. How quaint.

It seems that communications galore have closed off our minds. People no longer talk with the stars or walk with the gods. The man who swam in the sea last week has met no mermaids and has slain no krakkens.

Like he said...

Hey All,

Pop over to Point of Know Return for a refreshing read of an old standard.

Thanks to Leslie for the loan of the Hitchhiker's Guide omnibus--earth was just detroyed, and I'm sure there's much fun ahead.

What will be our next task?

Credits, Rolling!

These are the members of Riddle 47. Left to right we have Dr. Mark, our fearless leader; Brandon, our actual obsessor; Mandy, our leading femnist scholar; Janie, our resident horse lover and psych person; and me, also known as Leslie, the token daydreamer.

These people are brilliant. Heed what they say and ponder it. You can even laugh sometimes--don't worry. They haven't figured out how to kill you with their brains.

...yet...

[Picture by me. I'm also the token doodling fool.]

The first shall be last...

Well, I don't think God had procrastination in mind when He wrote that one... but since I was the first to suggest this and the last to post, I thought it an appropriate title.
So I'm finally taking the time to recommend books, since I've been shamed into it. They are all pretty light-hearted, since that's what I'm in the mood for currently.

1. The Prisoner of Zenda. This is a classic gothic romance, and a favorite of mine, but not at all a serious book. If you don't already know the plot, it is as follows: English man (highly superior by nature) travels to foreign country and while walking into the woods, comes face to face with the soon to be crowned king. Astonishingly, they look exactly alike! That night (the eve of his inauguration), the king is kidnapped, so that the evil man next in line for the throne can take over in his absence. Englishman steps in, and is inaugurated under the pretence of actually being the king. Being naturally superior (he is an Englishman, after all), he is a very good king...but will he help restore the throne to the rightful king?

2. The Crocodile in the Sandbank, by Elizabeth Peters. This is the first book in the Amelia Peabody series. The main character, Amelia Peabody is an intrepid, bloomer-wearing, feminism spouting, Victorian Englishwoman who has just inherited a tidy sum of money, and spurning matrimony, decides to travel the world. On the way she picks up a "fallen woman" in Rome and the attracts the attentions of a reanimated mummy in Egypt. The series spoofs all kinds of books, from the detective mystery, to the Victorian comedy of manners, to the Prisoner of Zenda-type romance (in fact, I think in one of the later books, she actually reads the Prisoner of Zenda). Underneath the spoof, however, Elizabeth Peters manages to weave in a lot of the concerns of feminism and postcolonialism, especially in the later books (in fact, the middle couple books in the series are my favorites).

3. Speak. by Laurie Halse Anderson. Ok, so this isn't lighthearted. And you may have all read it already, but I suddenly felt the need to recommend it. This is one of the best adolescent books I have ever read, and if you haven't read it, you need to. It would be diffucult to do justice to the plot in just a little blub, so I'll just let you look it up on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Speak-Laurie-Halse-Anderson/dp/014131088X/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-9490063-3798440?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174528455&sr=8-2


Bonus: since I waited so long, I decided to give you a bonus (on a slightly more scholarly level)-- the introduction to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Also, under the topic of medieval stuff, I just finished taking notes from Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England, by Corinne Saudners, and it was really interesting, if a bit gruesome.

You might not run across these...

Three books, not already read or discussed by the R47 crew. Well, here are three you may not have run across: a Swedish novel, a work of theology, and a Lewis novel (OK, we may all have read it--but not discussed it).

Den keltiska ringen by Bjorn Larsson. I read books in Swedish when I can to keep from losing touch with that language. This novel is available in translation, though I have no idea how good the translation is. The novel's narrator is an unrooted Swede who lives alone on a sailboat in a Danish harbor. A chance meeting on a ferry, and unsought custody of a doomed Finnish sailor's log book send Ulf and his loner friend Torben (a bookworm with an interest in all things Celtic) on a dangerous sail across to North Sea into a series of near-fatal encounters with political and religious branches of a pan-Celtic revival. It's a pretty good adventure--pushes the limits of my nautical vocabulary in Swedish, so I'm glad I didn't have to translate it. As I was finishing the book, I caught an article in a Swedish newspaper reporting a resurgence of Scottish separatism. Once gain, fiction is prophetic!

Flame of Love by Clark Pinnock. This book is a theology of the Holy Spirit. I'm glad I read it because it forced me to think about the role of the Spirit in the trinity. It is contains some beautiful articulations of Arminian theology's wide and geneours vision of God's grace. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Trinity (1) , Creation (2) and (especially) Universality (6).

Until we have faces by C.S. Lewis. So maybe everyone has read it already. I think I had started it a couple of times, but I decided to see it through when I was sick an couple of weeks ago. I'm glad I finished it this time, and find it interesting on a couple of levels. I'm mostly intrigued by Lewis' handling of myth. Someday I would like to read it with a group; the episode where the narrator discovers the shrine to the "newly godded" Psyche would be fun to discuss.

Three Books...

In response to the challenge, I give three books, with a little explanation for each. I couldn't decide to recommend only fiction or nonfiction, so I gave three books, each in a different category -- one fiction, one theological, and one literary criticism -- all three of which have affected my thinking. Consequently, this is the order in which I first read them.

1) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
A novel about a non-conformist architect, this novel follows the protagonist and the main antagonist in their parallel lives. Based mostly on Rand's ideals of Objectivism (her self-made philosophy), this book is a full of story, literary greatness, and provocative concepts to make the reader think.

2) Four Views on Hell edited by William Crockett
Based on Christian views of Hell, this book explores the four major ways of approaching the subject: literal, metaphorical, purgatorial, and conditional. Each chapter is written by the proponent of one of the views, followed by brief responses by each of the other three writers. A good book for anyone interested in Christian theology/philosophy, especially the nature and views of Hell in Christian circles.

3) Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays by Northrop Frye
Four essays on critical thought, drawing on much previous criticism and the tradition of literary history. These four essays touch on historical, ethical, archetypal, and rhetorical criticism as Frye looks at Western literature as forming one great arc of tradition -- difficult to summarize in short, but worth the read for anyone interested in literary theory.