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Sull'Autore

Carolyne Larrington is Professor of Medieval European Literature at University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of The Women's Companion to Mythology (1997), King Arthur's Enchantresses (2006), The Land of the Green Man (2015, Bloomsbury Academic) and Winter is Coming (2019, Bloomsbury Academic), mostra altro among others. mostra meno

Opere di Carolyne Larrington

Opere correlate

Il canzoniere eddico (1000) — Traduttore, alcune edizioni2,666 copie

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Data di nascita
1959-09-05
Sesso
female
Nazionalità
UK
Attività lavorative
St. John's College

Utenti

Recensioni

I am an unabashed Game of Thrones enthusiast. I have not (yet) learned High Valerian, and I haven't actually read the books though I've collected them all from OpShops, but from the time we watched the first HBO episode out of simple curiosity, we were hooked. And so when I stumbled on Oxford University's TORCH Book at Lunchtime featuring a presentation of 'All Men Must Die' by Professor Carolyne Larrington, I reserved its predecessor Winter is Coming at the library. And discovered at Goodreads that Jennifer at Tasmanian Bibliophile at Large had read it already, seven years ago when it was first released.

Winter is Coming (2016) interrogates GoT Books 1-5 and Seasons 1-5, so All Men Must Die: Power and Passion in Game of Thrones (2021) is its sequel, but unlike Winter is Coming which has a lot of love at Goodreads, All Men Must Die seems to have disappointed the diehard fans.

Whatever about that, I found it fascinating to read in Winter is Coming about the ways in which the series draws on history, mythology and medieval literature tropes. The book is segmented into an Introduction and five chapters which explore the Known World and its power bases in the North, the West and the East. But despite their differences, these power bases have much in common, much of which is derived from the medieval world.
The cultures of the Known World, mostly but not exclusively framed by the norms of Westeros, share a good number of deep-seated cultural beliefs: about rank and gender, about honour and face, hospitality, justice, weapons and the habits of dragons. (p.9)

(Which are, as we see in the end, amoral weapons of mass destruction wielded in the pursuit of power.)

BEWARE: SPOILERS

Outsiders of low status play crucial roles in the GoT narrative. This is a world where Rank, Birth and Honour determine life chances from the outset, and everyone — even Shagga (the low-status leader of the Stone Crows) announces his lineage at the moment of introduction. In the old English epic poem, Beowulf the narrator makes repeated references to Beowulf's father Ecgtheow, which evokes memories of his deeds and makes his son acceptable to the King of the Danes. So it is in GoT.
Bloodline is everything for the members of the Great Houses, and their relative standing is determined by the length of their history. p.15)

Yet Lord Varys rises from a childhood as a castrated beggar to the Small Council, despite having no land, no House, and only an honorific title. Lord Baelish is a newbie. He only inherited his land and title recently and he's a social inferior with the derisive nickname 'Littlefinger' but he rises to be Master of Coin. Bronn is only a sellsword (a mercenary) but his friendship with Tyrion Lannister is for sale at a critical moment, enabling him to rise without any lineage. And then there's Jon Snow...

(And that's because Jon Snow has Honour despite his dubious lineage!)
Membership of a lineage endows nobles with what is perhaps the most important constituent of individual characters: their sense of personal honour. Honour — particularly for a man — revolves around keeping his word, not allowing others to insult him and remembering the history of his House. If he is a bastard, he begins at a disadvantage; if he has no surname, for example, his chances of acquiring honour are very limited indeed. Theon is excluded from some of the responsibilities which go with membership of House Stark, by reason of his ambiguous status — one that's revealed only gradually in the early episodes of Season One. His position as a hostage compromises his sense of honour, particularly in the face of his father's unyielding view of what constitutes Greyjoy honour, with terrible political and personal consequences. (p.19)


To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/04/07/winter-is-coming-2016-by-carolyne-larrington...
… (altro)
 
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anzlitlovers | 5 altre recensioni | Apr 7, 2023 |
This collection was born out of a literary experiment curated by Professor Carolyne Larrington. Eight female authors were provided with a British folktale and asked to write a contemporary retelling with a feminist twist. In line with the oral tradition they were inspired by, the stories were first produced as podcasts. Now augmented by two further stories commissioned from Irenosen Okojie and Imogen Hermes Gowar, they are being issued in book form by Virago, the indefatigable publisher of books by women.

The list of authors involved in this Angela-Carteresque project is a roll-call of some of the finest contemporary writers in the English language. It is interesting to note how the subject-matter provides a unifying thread among the featured works, despite the variety of styles and approaches. An appendix at the end presents the folktales upon which the commissioned authors worked their contemporary magic.

Among the best stories are those which let the original material speak for itself, albeit in a changed context. Natasha Carthew’s The Droll of the Mermaid, based on The Mermaid and the Man of Cury, retains many of the elements of the legend which inspires it and, with its song-like run-on phrases, evokes the cadences of the spoken word. Kirsty Logan returns to her beloved Scottish myths in Between Sea and Sky, an adaptation of the folk song The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry. I would have expected Imogen Hermes Gowar to write a story about mermaids. What she comes up with in The Holloway is, instead, a clever contemporary take on a Somerset folktale about a drunken, abusive farmer who gets what he deserves at the hand of the pixies. In The Sisters, Liv Little gives a queer twist to a London legend (originally) about two brothers who fought a duel in Tavistock Square for the hand and heart of a woman they both loved.

This project has a meta-fictional element to it, and two of the stories take this to a heightened level. Eimar McBride’s The Tale of Kathleen is a relatively unembellished version of a folktale from Ireland which pits against each other Christian belief and fairie traditions. What McBride brings to an otherwise “straight” account is a strongly opinionated present-day narrator, who keeps intervening with ironic commentary about the story. I felt that the strident anti-Catholic rhetoric actually lessened the impact of the original by highlighting and underlining what is more subtly conveyed in the folktale. More successful, in my opinion, is Daisy Johnson’s A Retelling. Johnson blurs the distinction between the author and narrator, starting off with an auto-fictional description of the writer’s research about the tale of the Green Children of Woolpit, before things get decidedly uncannier. I remember reading the story of the Green Children as a little boy, and Johnson’s retelling evoked the same nightmarish, claustrophobic yet strangely thrilling feelings that the tale had first instilled in me many years back.

In her preface, Larrington states that many of the stories “are in dialogue with ‘folk-horror’ or the ‘new weird’”. Although these terms are notoriously hard to define and classification is difficult, I would struggle to describe this as a “folk horror” collection. This does not mean that there isn’t terror aplenty in these stories, especially body horror mediating female experiences of trauma associated with pregnancy, childbearing and miscarriage. In this context, Emma Glass reinvents the Welsh legend of the Fairy Midwife in the disturbing The Dampness is Spreading whereas Naomi Booth’s Sour Hall unexpectedly turns a legend about a pesky boggart into a searing condemnation of male violence and abuse.

Some stories infuse these British tales with a welcome dose of cultural diversity. Irenosen Okojie’s Rosheen is based on the Norfolk tale of The Dauntless Girl, but the eponymous protagonist is Okojie’s creation. The daughter of a Trinidadian father and an Irish mother, Rosheen leaves Killarney in the 60s to seek her luck on a farm in Norfolk. The horrors she faces there are much darker than the almost comical accounts found in the original and are conveyed in Okojie’s characteristically ultra-weird style (I can’t shake off the image of dangling severed heads). Mahsuda Smith is represented by The Panther’s Tale, which combines an anecdote linked to a Midlands’ aristocratic family’s coat of arms with shapeshifting legends drawn from the author’s Bengali folk heritage.

Folktales provide commentary on some of our timeless needs, desires and fears. Hag is ample proof of the fact that, in the right hands, the themes of time-honoured stories can still resonate with readers (and listeners) today.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/08/hag-forgotten-folktales-retold.html
… (altro)
 
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JosephCamilleri | 2 altre recensioni | Feb 21, 2023 |
My first dip into Norse Mythology was Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology, which, to my mind, was the perfect introduction. This book was an excellent next-step - a little bit more in-depth, a little more of an academic bent, without being dry or boring.

Larrington gets off to the best possible start by including, on the very first page, a pronunciation guide to Old Norse, covering the extra letters of 'eth (ð)' and 'thorn (þ)', as well as the various diphthongs, æ, ö and ø. I immediately bookmarked this page, because I referred back to it a lot. Having given the reader this guide, Larrington then proceeds to refer to the gods and heroes by their original Old Norse/Icelandic names/spellings, so Thor is þórr; Odin is Óðinn. This authenticity might annoy some readers, but I appreciated the exercise - hopefully some of it will stick now that I've used it for 200+ pages.

The layout of the chapters is as close to chronological order as is possible. Larrington uses the first chapter to discuss her main sources, and then goes on with the creation of the world, the order of the gods and giants, the heroes, ragnorök, and the rebirth of the world. Interspersed throughout are the myths that Gaiman's readers will recognise, as well as a fair few more, with a bit of commentary as to the historical background, modern day evidence, and a nod to the possible motivations and bias of Snorri Sturluson, the author of the Prose Edda, the earliest known written form of the Norse myths.

At only a little over 200 pages, this book is short on the commentary and long on the myths, so it's likely not aimed at someone with a-better-than-beginner knowledge of Norse mythology. There are also a generous number of illustrations and photographs (b/w) sprinkled throughout the text, showing images through the ages that illustrate the various myths.

All in all a delightful resource for me, and an engrossing way to while away a cold and windy afternoon snuggled up on the couch with the cats.

(Read for Booklikes-opoly square #32, The Nordic Express)
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
murderbydeath | Jan 26, 2022 |
This collection was born out of a literary experiment curated by Professor Carolyne Larrington. Eight female authors were provided with a British folktale and asked to write a contemporary retelling with a feminist twist. In line with the oral tradition they were inspired by, the stories were first produced as podcasts. Now augmented by two further stories commissioned from Irenosen Okojie and Imogen Hermes Gowar, they are being issued in book form by Virago, the indefatigable publisher of books by women.

The list of authors involved in this Angela-Carteresque project is a roll-call of some of the finest contemporary writers in the English language. It is interesting to note how the subject-matter provides a unifying thread among the featured works, despite the variety of styles and approaches. An appendix at the end presents the folktales upon which the commissioned authors worked their contemporary magic.

Among the best stories are those which let the original material speak for itself, albeit in a changed context. Natasha Carthew’s The Droll of the Mermaid, based on The Mermaid and the Man of Cury, retains many of the elements of the legend which inspires it and, with its song-like run-on phrases, evokes the cadences of the spoken word. Kirsty Logan returns to her beloved Scottish myths in Between Sea and Sky, an adaptation of the folk song The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry. I would have expected Imogen Hermes Gowar to write a story about mermaids. What she comes up with in The Holloway is, instead, a clever contemporary take on a Somerset folktale about a drunken, abusive farmer who gets what he deserves at the hand of the pixies. In The Sisters, Liv Little gives a queer twist to a London legend (originally) about two brothers who fought a duel in Tavistock Square for the hand and heart of a woman they both loved.

This project has a meta-fictional element to it, and two of the stories take this to a heightened level. Eimar McBride’s The Tale of Kathleen is a relatively unembellished version of a folktale from Ireland which pits against each other Christian belief and fairie traditions. What McBride brings to an otherwise “straight” account is a strongly opinionated present-day narrator, who keeps intervening with ironic commentary about the story. I felt that the strident anti-Catholic rhetoric actually lessened the impact of the original by highlighting and underlining what is more subtly conveyed in the folktale. More successful, in my opinion, is Daisy Johnson’s A Retelling. Johnson blurs the distinction between the author and narrator, starting off with an auto-fictional description of the writer’s research about the tale of the Green Children of Woolpit, before things get decidedly uncannier. I remember reading the story of the Green Children as a little boy, and Johnson’s retelling evoked the same nightmarish, claustrophobic yet strangely thrilling feelings that the tale had first instilled in me many years back.

In her preface, Larrington states that many of the stories “are in dialogue with ‘folk-horror’ or the ‘new weird’”. Although these terms are notoriously hard to define and classification is difficult, I would struggle to describe this as a “folk horror” collection. This does not mean that there isn’t terror aplenty in these stories, especially body horror mediating female experiences of trauma associated with pregnancy, childbearing and miscarriage. In this context, Emma Glass reinvents the Welsh legend of the Fairy Midwife in the disturbing The Dampness is Spreading whereas Naomi Booth’s Sour Hall unexpectedly turns a legend about a pesky boggart into a searing condemnation of male violence and abuse.

Some stories infuse these British tales with a welcome dose of cultural diversity. Irenosen Okojie’s Rosheen is based on the Norfolk tale of The Dauntless Girl, but the eponymous protagonist is Okojie’s creation. The daughter of a Trinidadian father and an Irish mother, Rosheen leaves Killarney in the 60s to seek her luck on a farm in Norfolk. The horrors she faces there are much darker than the almost comical accounts found in the original and are conveyed in Okojie’s characteristically ultra-weird style (I can’t shake off the image of dangling severed heads). Mahsuda Smith is represented by The Panther’s Tale, which combines an anecdote linked to a Midlands’ aristocratic family’s coat of arms with shapeshifting legends drawn from the author’s Bengali folk heritage.

Folktales provide commentary on some of our timeless needs, desires and fears. Hag is ample proof of the fact that, in the right hands, the themes of time-honoured stories can still resonate with readers (and listeners) today.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/08/hag-forgotten-folktales-retold.html
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
JosephCamilleri | 2 altre recensioni | Jan 1, 2022 |

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Natasha Carthew Contributor
Irenosen Okojie Contributor
Kirsty Logan Contributor
Eimear McBride Contributor
Naomi Booth Contributor
Daisy Johnson Contributor
Mahsuda Snaith Contributor
Emma Glass Contributor
Liv Little Contributor

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Opere
19
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1
Utenti
682
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#37,083
Voto
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14
ISBN
57
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