18696. (Steven Muhlberger) Jousts and Tournaments ― Charny and the Rules for Chivalric
. . . . . Sport in Fourteenth-Century France
18697. (Geoffroi de Charny) Demands pour la joute, le tournoi, et la guerre [manuscripts
. . . . . edited by Michael Anthony Taylor, tr. Steven Muhlberger]
18698. (C. William Harrison) Calling Dr. Death [story] Read more »
Category Archives: B - READING - Page 23
READING – APRIL 2010
Posted by Phil Paine
on April 30, 2010
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Jousts and Tournaments
Posted by Phil Paine
on April 4, 2010
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18696. (Steven Muhlberger) Jousts and Tournaments ― Charny and the Rules for Chivalric Sport in Fourteenth-Century France
18697. (Geoffroi de Charny) Demands pour la joute, le tournoi, et la guerre [manuscripts edited by Michael Anthony Taylor, tr. Steven Muhlberger]
Rather than bug Steve for a copy, I put myself on a library waiting list for his study of the rules of jousts and tournaments of the Middle Ages. I was on the list for over a year, before it turned up, which shows that there is a significant audience for what appears, at first, to be an obscure topic. But I can see why, as the subject is dealt with in a logical, orderly fashion, and in his usual fine prose style. I particularly enjoyed the chapter in which he draws on his knowledge of the modern horsemanship scene to help imagine what the spotty historical record does not tell us. The original text of Geoffroi de Charny’s “Questions” in Middle French is included, with a translation by Steve.
READING – MARCH 2010
Posted by Phil Paine
on March 30, 2010
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18642. (P. F. de Moraes Farias) Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali: Epigraphy,
. . . . . Chronicles, and Songhai-Tuāreg History
18643. (Jacques Hureiki) Essai sur les origines des Touaregs ― herméneutique culturelle des
. . . . . Touaregs de la région de Tombouctou
18644. (Anthony Bourdain) Kitchen Confidential Read more »
Sunday, March 28, 2010 — A Lay of Ancient Toronto, Part 2
Posted by Phil Paine
on March 28, 2010
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When I received Dorothea’s book [see previous blog entry] from the University of Toronto’s compact storage facility.[1] I was rewarded in a way that I could not have guessed. In fact, the coincidence involved is so extreme that I hesitate to relate it, for fear of being thought a hoaxer. Read more »
18672. [2] (William Tenn) Of Men and Monsters
Posted by Phil Paine
on March 19, 2010
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William Tenn was one of Science Fiction’s sharpest satirists in the fifties and sixties. His short stories bit like blackflies. Of Men and Monsters was one of his only two novels, and it was expanded from a short story. It shows it, as the core story is still visible, and the end shows a distinct falling off in quality, with the satire disappearing so that there can be a conventional, plot-driven resolution. But never mind that. SF writers in that period had no social prestige, and very modest incomes; it was standard practice to inflate any successful short story into a “novel” that might pay the rent. But Tenn’s talent lay in beautiful, self-contained miniatures that did not lend themselves to expansion. Read more »
Sunday, March 14, 2010 — A Lay of Ancient Toronto, Part 1
Posted by Phil Paine
on March 14, 2010
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Steve Muhlberger has been more prolific in his blog, lately, and it has featured some fine pieces on the psychology of historians. Entries such as “Is the past another country?” among many, are well worth reading. I’m reminded of them when I re-shelve a nice little book that I recently found in a second-hand shop ― an 1882 edition of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. It’s just the sort of thing that delights anyone who is fascinated by the past. It’s inscribed twice by early owners. The first inscription reads: “Dorothea Thorpe, from Hughey Jnr., March 20, 1884″ The second reads: “Lavinia Mary Ford, from Dorothea’s Husband and in memory of her. Charnwood 18th October 1934, St. Luke’s Day”. These excite the historical imagination in me. Read more »
The Beggar’s Opera
Posted by Phil Paine
on March 7, 2010
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The Beggar’s Opera is a pointed example of unpretentious popular art long outliving the “serious” works of its day. In 1728, a rather unsuccessful English poet, John Gay, penned a satire of the upper class’s taste for Italian Opera, as well as the establishment politics of the day (then personified in First Lord of the Treasury, Robert Walpole). Using a kleptomaniac collection of Scottish and French folk-tunes, Gay conceived a fast-moving, tight-knit plot involving, instead of the usual operatic cast of Classical heroes and deities, the whores and thieves of the London slums. Read more »
READING – FEBRUARY 2010
Posted by Phil Paine
on February 28, 2010
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18576. (Steve Muhlberger) [in blog Muhlberger’s Early History] Population Crash in Europe?
.… . [article]
18577. (Steve Muhlberger) [in blog Muhlberger’s Early History] The Chronicle of the Good
.… . Duke and “Modern Times” [article]
Read more »
William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
Posted by Phil Paine
on February 15, 2010
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Musicians have long been attracted to William Blake’s interconnected poems known as the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Allen Ginsberg has asserted that a study of the rhyme and meter of the poems reveals that Blake intended them to be sung. They certainly have the feeling of English tavern ballads strangely mutated into moral and metaphysical meditations. This mixture of serious purpose and popular form is exactly the stuff that best suits American composer William Bolcom. Read more »
READING — JANUARY 2010
Posted by Phil Paine
on January 31, 2010
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18426. [3] (Elias Lönnrot) The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People [translated by Eino Friberg ;
. . . . . editing and introduction by George C. Schoolfield; illustrated by Björn Landström]
. . . . . [read previously in Kirby (1) and Bosley (2) translations]
18427. [2] (F. R. Kreutzwald) Kalevipoeg: An Ancient Estonian Tale compiled by Fr.R. Kreutzwald ;
. . . . . translation with notes and afterword by Jüri Kurman Read more »