December meme (in February): pre-20th century literature

[melannen]

For the December Meme, skygiants asked for me to talk about my favorite pre-20th-century literature.

So on one hand, it's easy : I do not think I will ever quite make it all the way back out of Les Mis fandom.

Nor will I ever stop attempting to get people to read Hans of Iceland (if only because Hugo would so very much rather I didn't.)

But other than that it's harder than I expected - especially since I ran a panel on really old fandoms at con.txt! - because for most of my oldest fandoms, part of what draws me to them is that canon works differently when you have that much time; I like the fact that they have centuries of interpretations and reinterpretations built up, so that in going back to 'canon' it's hard to deny what's lost in taking the original as the 'real' thing and scraping off all the transformative work done on it. Even something as relatively concrete as Shakespeare - I like certain productions of the plays; I like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, and that everybody from now on who encounters MacBeth for the first time will remember Tolkien and think Shakespeare should have gone all-out on his prophecies; that my first exposure to the Bard was on Sesame street.

...Also it's hard because when I think of some of my very favorite old stories I go 'oh yeah, I should probably get around to reading the original at some point'. I am not. Actually. As well-read as I give off the impression of being.

In terms of really old literature - I keep coming back to Tao Te Ching, but I haven't yet found an English translation I like well enough I'd recommend it, though I've read six or seven; I keep coming back to Ecclesiastes/Qohelet, but I haven't read any translations from outside the Christian tradition so I don't know if the ones I have are really any good.

But! In honor of Shitposting February, there is one Very Old Fandom where I have Very Strong Opinions about the "canon", and that is that @$#P%@#$ Chretien de Troyes ruined Arthurian fandom forever with his annoying OC 'Lance-a-Lot The Perfectly Perfect' and his soap opera, and the only good stuff is the stuff that came out before Lancelot ate the fandom and ruined it. :P

So here, poall:

Poll #21253 Arthurian Canon Fight

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 65

View Respondents

Who is the best Knight of all the Knights of the Round Table?

View Answers

Gawain
19 (31.7%)

Percival
2 (3.3%)

Lancelot
1 (1.7%)

Galahad
4 (6.7%)

Gareth Beaumains
4 (6.7%)

Britomart
6 (10.0%)

Palomedes
2 (3.3%)

Tristan
1 (1.7%)

Valiant
0 (0.0%)

Dagonet
0 (0.0%)

Who is the best knight? It's Cavall! Yes you are! What a good knight.
8 (13.3%)

If you check the history books I think you will find it was Mordred
2 (3.3%)

Hank Morgan
0 (0.0%)

Kay (this option is just in case Kay takes this poll)
7 (11.7%)

You have clearly left out the actual best what is wrong with you
4 (6.7%)

Who was the true Grail Knight?

View Answers

Arthur
2 (3.5%)

Gawain
2 (3.5%)

Percival
6 (10.5%)

Bors the Younger
2 (3.5%)

Lancelot
0 (0.0%)

Galahad
15 (26.3%)

Elaine
9 (15.8%)

Henry Jones, Jr.
9 (15.8%)

Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film
9 (15.8%)

You have once again left out the correct answer
3 (5.3%)

Once this was made, all later Arthurian canon sucks.

View Answers

The Historia Brittonum
1 (2.0%)

The Historia regum Britannie
1 (2.0%)

Culhwch ac Olwen
2 (4.1%)

De Troyes' Lancelot
5 (10.2%)

The Vulgate Cycle
2 (4.1%)

Le Morte Darthur
6 (12.2%)

The Faerie Queene
1 (2.0%)

The Idylls of the King
0 (0.0%)

The Once and Future King
14 (28.6%)

The Mists of Avalon
12 (24.5%)

BBC's Merlin
5 (10.2%)

ETA: Also I forgot, what prompted this is that they just found some new Arthur fanfic! It's from after Lancelot but pre-Malory so it's still pretty exciting!.

Comments

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

You should have included Indiana Jones III in the final question. Or, if Henry Jones Sr. had a book title name checked, that.

King Arthur fandom, longer and more complicated than comic books. Slightly.

[melannen]

I was trying to limit it to no more than two options per century! Mists of Avalon is a pretty good benchmark for the end of all the reasonably-good mid-20th-century stuff.

[ambyr]

Sorry, I cannot put the date after which all Arthurian canon sucks earlier than the 1980s, because you will pry my Sutcliff Arthuriana out of my cold dead hands.

[melannen]

Sutcliff gets an exception in my book because she (mostly) ignores the Lancelot stuff. :P (Although I haven't re-read it in ages and I think I'm getting bits of Sutcliff mixed up with other historical-renconstruction-y ones.)

[the_rck]

I think my first King Arthur was the Disney Sword in the Stone or some sort of adaptation of/riff on A Connecticut Yankee.

I’m not setting a line to define when the fandom went bad. Possibly it’s pining for the fjords, but I’m pretty sure it will return when the realm is most threatened.

[melannen]

I'm waiting to see if anyone picks Nennius as when it went bad!

I have no memory of my first Arthuriana. Possibly there was something in a fairy tale book when I was small? A Connecticut Yankee (read out loud by parents) was my first long-form version, I'm pretty sure.

[jainas]

Actually you have once again left out the correct answer for "Once this was made, all later Arthurian canon sucks" because the correct answer is very obviously the french tv series Kaamelott. :D

[melannen]

I repeat what I said above: I was trying to limit it to two per century at most, you'll have to pick the closest benchmark. :P

[kore]

BRITOMART <3333

[melannen]

There needs to be more Britomart! I keep having to read GoT Brienne fic despite avoiding GoT because it's the closest I can get to Britomart.

[watersword]

There is no benchmark because I have not yet written my Gawain novel, which will OBVIOUSLY be the high-water mark.

[melannen]

I did realize belatedly that I had left no option for people who feel it has not yet been ruined. :D I am sure your Gawain novel will fix everything and make it good again!

[seekingferret]

I keep coming back to Ecclesiastes/Qohelet, but I haven't read any translations from outside the Christian tradition so I don't know if the ones I have are really any good.


Kohelet is weeeeeeird, man...

[melannen]

I read it when I'm super-depressed and then I feel better that someone was just as depressed for pretty much the same reasons as me 2500 years ago! And yet humanity hasn't collectively given up and quit in the interim, so take comfort.

[copperfyre]

I think my first Arthuriana was The Once and Future King, so I have a soft spot for Kay forever after that. And then I think it was probably Sutcliffe and Mary Stewart, both of whom I imprinted really hard on, Bernard Cornwell, and a host of vaguely Arthurian things (like The Dark is Rising) and that weirdly specific sub-genre of Ninth Legion + Arthuriana (which I guess we can point to Sutcliff for?).

I'm afraid I am unable to vote for when Arthurian Canon went downhill because I also have a ridiculous soft spot for BBC Merlin, so it looks like I'm working on the principle that I have no taste and am just easily won-over.

Also I agree with your general thoughts on old canons - I adore the layers on them!

[melannen]

BBC Merlin is an odd one actually because in some ways it tries to turn all the way back to Geoffrey instead of re-treading Malory once again. Which I like!

White definitely does the best Kay.

[primeideal]

I think you will find it is "romance is stupid and if you mess with my friends I will write silly songs bashing you" Dinadan who is the greatest.

Around middle school I would go through spurts of being into Arthuriana every so often, the library had this big illustrated book (I think loosely adapted from Malory) that was cool.

[melannen]

Didadan is pretty great!

Arthur is one of the fandoms I go in and out of periodically.

[sophia_sol]

Somehow I never got a comprehensive introduction to Arthuriana as a young person despite being deeply invested in mythology and folk/fairy tales. I haven't ever read or watched the entirety of any of the standard tellings or retellings! I probably couldn't tell you anything salient about any beyond the most pop-culturally-familiar few characters. Is there a place you'd recommend starting?

(I do have multiple of Heather Dale's arthuriana filks memorized so like, I guess that's something?)

[melannen]

If you want to know the standard story, based closely on Malory and retold for modern readers by a very good writer in a way I think you'd like, you want The Once And Future King by T. H. White. That's probably the best starting point over-all, and everything since then has either been heavily influenced or deliberately avoiding the influence.

If you want something that historicizes it a little more rather than just relying on Malory as canon (like a lot of more recent versions seem to be doing) then I suggest the Sutcliffes, starting at either Sword at Sunset or Sword in the Circle.

If you want to start with old primary sources, Culhwch ac Olwen is in the Mabinogion so it's (relatively) easy to find good versions of, and it's fun and very Celtic. (Malory's original isn't bad, mind; it's perfectly readable in the original in a modernized spelling edition and the language it's in is beautiful, it's just so full of soap opera nonsense about people's favorite badly-characterized OCs. :P)

If you want a little bit of everything, there were a series of anthologies in the 90s that mixed everything from very recent stories to stuff from Golden Age magazines to Victorian retellings to translations of medieval sources. I only have the first two, but I really liked them, and they covered pretty much the whole gamut up through when they were published.

[luzula]

My favorite Arthuriana is actually Jo Walton's The King's Peace and The King's Name. They are awesome!

[melannen]

I had not actually known she'd done Arthuriana! Cool.

[lannamichaels]

Fricking Lancelot. Once he showed up to be Arthur's Bestie, they decided to take some perfectly fine knights and make them bad, because, hey, need strife, right?

[melannen]

It's textbook "let's make everybody worse so my OC will shine! And then the Queen falls in love with him!" isn't it.

"My name is Sir Lancelot duLac, Knight of the Cart, son of Elaine of Benoic and I'm really good at jousting with a lance (that's how I got my name) and I carry a white shield with three red stripes (for the the strength of three men) and a lot of people think I look like St. Sebastian (an: if you don't know who he is get outta here!) I'm not related to Elaine of Corbenic but I wish I was because she's a major fucking hottie. I'm a knight but a verray, parfit, gentil one. I have pale white skin. I'm also a very religous and I'm a member of an order of chivarly called the Round Table at Camelot in England where I'm the greatest knight of them all (I'm seventeen.) I'm Romantic, in case you couldn't tell, and I wear mostly black. I once went mad and lived in the forest as a wild man for a year, out of the pains of love. Today I was wearing shining armor. [cut for description down to the very last pauldron]. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of Orcadians stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them. "Hey Lance!" shouted a voice. I looked up. It was... Queen Guinevere! "Whet's up Queen?" I asked. "Nothing," She said shyly. But then, I heard my friends call me and I had to go away.

That's basically him, right?

[landofnowhere]

Who here has read Gerald Morris's The Squire's Tale Arthurian YA series? I only read one of the later books, but I remember some of my peers being into them.

[landofnowhere]

My actual foundational Arthuriana were Jim Weiss's audiotape version and a kid's book version that is probably really hard to retrace now.

[landofnowhere]

Oh, and I like Chretien, but his Lancelot story is my least favorite of his -- the main thing I remember of his is the introduction, which is TOTALLY NOT FLATTERY


Since my lady of Champagne wishes me to undertake to write a romance, I shall very gladly do so, being so devoted to her service as to do anything in the world for her, without any intention of flattery. But if one were to introduce any flattery upon such an occasion, he might say, and I would subscribe to it, that this lady surpasses all others who are alive, just as the south wind which blows in May or April is more lovely than any other wind. But upon my word, I am not one to wish to
flatter my lady. I will simply say: "The Countess is worth as many queens as a gem is worth of pearls and sards." Nay I shall make no comparison, and yet it is true in spite of me; I will say, however, that her command has more to do with this work than any thought or pains that I may expend upon it.


(My favorite is Cliges, which is actually mostly set in Greece anyway.)

[melannen]

I don't actually mind Chretien in general, I just wish he'd stuck to canon and not gotten everybody obsessed with his favorite OC. :D

[princessofgeeks]

I know very little about this except Mary Stewart and the musical! And now I'm fascinated!

[melannen]

Arthurian fandom. Is. A lot.

But yeah basically it's 1000 years of people reading previous Arthurian fic where somebody's OC is the Best Knight In All The World, writing new Arthurian fic except their OC is a better knight than the last one, wait just enough that the new fic is accepted as canon, repeat.

Also it was one of those things that screwed with my head when I went to a seminar once on actual medieval tournaments and it turned out that most of them were literally King Arthur LARPs. The Age of Chivalry was just a bunch of rich fanboys getting REALLY REALLY into their roleplay characters. It was like White Wolf in the 90s except with better weaponry and fewer Denny's.

[cadenzamuse]

First exposure, I think, was the Disney Sword in the Stone, which is still my favorite Disney movie. I actually liked it better than the original T.H. White--less Deliberate Whimsy, and less gloom.

Gerald Morris is probably why I got focused on Gawain, and "The Lady of Shalott" is kind of my favorite Romantic semi-deconstruction of Lancelot. (I'm not sure if Tennyson meant it to be as down on Lancelot as I read it? But oh well, it's good.) Steinbeck's unfinished The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is probably my favoritest favorite even if it has Lancelot.

[melannen]

Honestly I expected someone to come in here and pick a fight with me about Lancelot! But so far nobody's taking me up on it.

[skygiants]

There is no point after which 'all later canon sucks' because batshit Arthuriana is the gift that keeps on giving! The one where they're all kids in boarding school! The one where Guinevere packs up the entire lake and moves to South America!!

(STILL looking forward to my Arthurian reincarnation office sitcom, SOMEONE GIVE IT TO ME.)

I'm so proud to see that Kay somehow managed to tie with a dog in the polls, what a good worst best knight.

[melannen]

Is the South America one the H. Warner Munn books, or is there more than one where they end up in Mesoamerica???

(I'm pretty sure I've read that as a novel-length BBC Merlin AU, if that would do...)

I am not getting the results I expected in that first poll! But they are excellent results. They're all good knights, Brent!

(I feel like I now want there to be a story where some sower-of-discord wants to run a test to choose the best knight at Camelot in order to inflame rivalries, and being the wise king he is, he figures out a way to make sure Cavall wins. Because nobody could argue with that! Who's a good knight of Camelot, who is?)

[alatefeline]

I think I need a couple new old fandoms, how exciting.

[melannen]

It's the fandom that never ends!

[dhampyresa]

Once again I am reminded of how many people I know named after Arthurian knights. How many knights to a Round Table, just checking?

[melannen]

I feel like I once actually watched a documentary about how many knights you can fit around a Round Table. Like, they actually looked at diameters and the limits of Medieval building techniques to figure out the max possible number of knights if they wanted to be roofed?

Ah, it was a Time Team special about King Edward's LARP Round Table! I think you can get up to a few hundred before it gets completely untenable, if you're willing to go Late Medieval.

[lilfluff]

Well if you want bleep-posting and picking fights and disliking new stuff (for varying degrees of new):

Sir Not Appearing In This Film is clearly the Best Knight, just try to change my mind!

[melannen]

I am afraid via this post I have fooled myself into really wanting the story of how Sir Not Appearing achieved the Grail, rescued his King, and saved Albion. While not appearing in the film.

[carmarthen]

1. Bedwyr

2. I don't care about any versions with the Grail in them

3. With the cavaeat that I do like quite a lot of genuinely recent Arthurian stuff, as long as it doesn't have too much medieval French stuff in it I JUST IMPRINTED HARD ON MARY STEWART OK

/heretical opinion to end all heretical opinions

(Also I have a weird soft spot for the ridiculous 2004 King Arthur movie and ridiculous historical conspiracy theories like the Sarmatian one.)

[melannen]

1. Bedwyr is from Sutcliffe, isn't he. I really need to get around to re-reading those.

2. Not even the one Sir-Not-Appearing doesn't appear in? :( I used to not like the Grail story but it's been kind of growing on me as I get older and tireder.

3. I feel like I should probably read the Mary Stewart someday.

Also, THANK YOU for being the first person to pick "you didn't include the right answer" and then actually tell me the right answer!

[mindstalk]

True Grail Knight: Saber

:p

[melannen]

Congratulations, you found one I had to google! :D

[polarisnorth]

This is blatant The Squire's Tales erasure.