#jane skene

[mask131]

The fantasy in modern Arthuriana (2)

This is a loose translation of Claire Jardillier’s article “Les enfants de Merlin: le merveilleux médiéval revisité” (The children of Merlin: Medieval magic revisited), for Anne Besson’s study-compilation.

II/ Wizards and witches

The fantastical elements within modern rewrites are often embodied in the most visible way by a few key characters. First and foremost among this magical cast is, of course, Merlin the enchanter, but also regularly the bard Taliesin, despite his lesser presence within the Matter of Britain. Taliesin indeed only appears obviously tied to Arthur within the Welsh sources, especially “Preiddu Annwn”, where he is part of the expedition led by Arthur to steal away the cauldron of resurrection from the Otherworld. We can make the hypothesis that is it because of the historical rewrites of the Arthurian legends that the character of Taliesin gained such an importance, since it is in the Welsh sources that he is most frequently seen, sources that modern rewriters especially love due to judging them more ancient and thus more “authentic” and more Celtic than the chivalry romances and knighthood romans of France and England. Since Wales resisted more strongly to the Saxon invader, then to the Normand influence, modern novelists like to use the “Mabinogion” and the Welsh poems to historicize their Arthur. Taliesin usually stays within his traditional role of bard, in accord to the historical and bibliographical information we have about him. While quite brief, these information naturally designate him as the symbol of the Arthurian legend within a “realistic” rewriting, as a character between the history and the myth.

[In the “Hanes Taliesin” mainly, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest and which follows her “Mabinogion” translations, we discover the two births of Gwyon Bach/Taliesin, is exploits as a bard within the court of prince Elphin, and some of his poems. The historical Taliesin seems to have been a bard at the court of Urien Rheged during the 6th century, and the poems attributed to him were preserved within the “Llyfr Taliesin” (The Book of Taliesin). It notably contains the famous “Cat Godeu” (Battle of the Trees) and the previously mentioned “Preiddu Annwn”. These Welsh poems, like many others, were translated and published by William F. Skene within his “Four Ancient Books of Wales”]

As such, within Fay Sampson’s “Daughter of Tintagel” cycle he becomes one of the five narrators that relate the life of Morgan. A first-person narration that give a voice to a secondary character of the medieval corpus is a fundamental trait of modern Arthurian literature : as such, we can hear Kai, Pelleas, Bohort, Rhys or Bedwyr, characters whose point of view is rarely given in legends, alongside the manifestation of more novel characters, such as Derfel, a shadowy warrior turned saint in the 6th century who narrates Bernard Cornwell’s “Warlord Chronicles”. [Respectively, Kai is heard within Phyllis Ann Karr’s The Idylls of the Queen and John Gloag’s Artorius Rex ; Pelleas within Stephen R. Lawhead’s Arthur and Courtway Jones’ In the Shadow of the Oak King ; Bohort within Dorothy Jane Roberts’ Launcelot my Brother ; Rhys within Gillian Bradshaw’s Kingdom of Summer ; Bedwyr within Catherine Christian’s The Sword and the Flame and Stephen R. Lawhead’s Arthur.]

Within Stephen Lawhead’s works, the role of Taliesin is more developed since he becomes the father, and so the precursor of Merlin (within Marion Zimmer Bradley’s, he is Merlin’s first incarnation). In his trilogy, the bard Talesin paves the way for Merlin, who will surpass his father in his role as the companion of the major hero, Arthur king of Britain. It is precisely this dimension that is often used by modern Arthurianists. [Stephen R. Lawhead wrote in reality five novels, the last two being a flash-back to episodes from between book 2 and 3. This Arthurian cycle is especially concerned with the questions of filiation, legitimacy and predestination. As such, Taliesin announces and foreshadow the coming of his son, a sort of messiah for the Britons, but Merlin himself works for the coming of Arthur, the savior of Britain as much on a spiritual level (the writings of Lawhead are distinctly Christian in tone) as on a political level. It is probably why we also see here a weird and exceptional element introduced, as Arthur is made the posthumous son of Aurelius, and not the bastard of Uther. Here Arthur is the product of an union blessed by the Church, and as such he descends from the first High-King, not from his replacement out of a “side-branch” of the family.]

We also have to note that modern rewrites love to tell what happened during the life of characters in the form of prequels – in this case, the youth of Merlin, which is rarely detailed in the Middle-Ages outside of his birth and his encounter with Vortigern. It was the case within Mary Stewart, the first author who was concerned with the wizard’s youth, and who sems to have deeply marked modern Arthurianists, since the same pattern can be found in other novels, including those of Stephen Lawhead. This concern with “what happened before” is not exclusively Arthurian, and can be seen within other contemporary sagas – Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Blueberry… It is a tradition as old as the various “Childhoods” texts of the Middle-Ages. [Mary Stewart wrote “The Crystal Cave”, “The Hollow Hills” and “The Last Enchantment”. As a proof of the intertextuality of Arthurian novels, “the last enchantment” is an expression reused and exploited by Bernard Cornwell in the last part of his trilogy, where a dying Merlin, entirely devoured by his own student Nimue, preserves a “last enchantment” to allow Arthur and a few others to escape the battle of Camlan]

Be it Taliesin or Merlin, the first way the question of the magic implants itself within the narrative device is about the relationship between the king and his wizard. The magical element is thus tied to the political power, weighed down by a reality which, if not historical, is at least coherent. This heirloom is directly tied to the medieval sources, even if it is not obvious at first. The idea of an Arthur raised as a boy by Merlin owes much more to T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King” than to the medieval texts, where only a slow and complex evolution allowed the association of those two characters now seen as undividable. [White’s work is a set of five novels, first published separately, then compiled as one work in the 50s, and to which the last novel, The Book of Merlin, was added in 1977. This work is a precursor of all the rewrites that happened from the 60s onward, especially the first book that tells of Arthur’s childhood and his education by Merlin. It was a best-seller, and the adaptation of this first novel into an animated movie by Disney (63’s The Sword in the Stone) amplified its impact]. Indeed, within Geoffroy of Monmouth, Merlin and Arthur follow each other in the text… but never meet. It was within later rewrites, Wave, Lawamon, and in the French “Lancelot-Graal”, that the king and the enchanter will develop a more intimate relationship, culminating within Malory’s Morte Darthur. [In Geoffroy’s tale, the two characters at least never meet within the context of the tale. A doubt is allowed since in most of the manuscripts, Merlin makes a brief apparition at the very end of the “Historia”, where an “angelic voice” talks to Cadwallader, telling him that “God wishes that the Britons stop ruling within Britain until the moment that Merlin prophesized to Arthur” ; this sentence implies that Merlin might have been the king’s prophet, a role that will become more and more obvious in later rewrites]

This is due to the two characters, Merlin and Arthur, originally belonging to two distinct traditions. Once they became connected thanks to Geoffroy’s Historia Regum Britaniae, the two characters got closer and closer, and gained many interactions, just as Merlin’s interventions became more and more fantastical. This is very clear when we look at an episode shared by all the medieval Merlinian tales: the moving of the stones of Ireland to create Stonehenge. Within Geoffroy’s, it is a mechanical process. Within Wace, an unexplained way. Finally, within Lawamon, it becomes a powerful spell that makes the stone “as light as feathers”. Modern authors follow this tradition and often reuse this episode, or a similar one, in what we can call “the motif of the dancing stones”. In the same way, within Lawhead’s novel, a child Merlin proves his powers to an assembly of druids by making the stones of a cromlech levitate. Stonehenge plays an important role for Cornwell: it becomes the place of a ghost-filled ceremony during which Merlin gives Excalibur to Arthur. Even among comic books, Merlin makes stones dance before amazed mortals. [It is within the first volume of the BD series “Merlin” by Jean-Luc Istin and Eric Lambert, “La colère d’Ahès” (The Wrath of Ahès). The dancing stones of Istin and Lambert are quite similar to the ones described by Lawhead, and the scenarist confessed having read the “Pendragon Cycle”. We find in this “Merlin” the same habt of syncretizing religions as within Lawhead’s works (father Blaise is a former druid, and offers Merlin as a symbol of the union of religions).]

We find back here what we said before: the historicized Arthurian literature of the 60s-80s greatly deprived the medieval text of their fantasy, and since the 80s-90s we have a slow re-appropriation of the medieval magic within novels that still, however, wish to be historical. In other terms – the stones are dancing again, but they are always dancing in a mentioned 6th century.

Before Lawamon, Merlin only acted during the lifetime of Aurelius and Uther, before disappearing for no reason after Arthur’s birth. However, the encounter between those two historical characters was too tempting to be avoided, and we can see a true shift between Geoffroy and Malory (for example), which today leads to the many tales in which Merlin acts as the teacher, tutor, or even adoptive father of Arthur. This filiation is helped by two elements. On one side, that is an elliptic moment covering Arthur’s childhood in medieval texts, and we go from him as a baby to him as a young fifteen-year old king. [We find within Lawamon the beginning of an explication: child-Arthur was raised by elves at Avalon. This idea was reused by Parke Godwin within the novel “Firelord”.] On the other hand, we can see that all of his next of kin die around the same time. In front of this absence of parents, it is very tempting to remove Ector (the father of Kay and the tutor of the royal child in the tradition) and put in his place a more familiar and impressive character, Merlin the wizard.

We talked before of the habit of “prequels”: the cyclical temptation of modern novels, which in a way mimics the Arthurian medieval tradition of a condensed and fractioned writing of the whole Arthurian legend (usually in three volumes), favorizes the writing of the origins, of the “before Arthur”. The introduction of Merlin, but also of Taliesin, proves this attraction for what Anne Besson calls an “Arthurian prehistory”. For Stephen Lawhead, the link between the various generations (Taliesin, father of Merlin, Merlin spiritual father of Arthur) insists upon the greatness and the predestination of the king of the Britons, the bearer of Light. Even when the Arthurian tale is limited to a single novel, it is not unusual to see it begin with the generation before Arthur: it was the case with Victor Canning’s “The Crimson Chalice”, where a third of the novel follows the events that led to Arthur’s birth (even though here Arthur’s parents are named Tia and Baradoc, and bear no resemblance to Igraine or Uther).

To all the reasons described above, we must add the fictional temptation of having characters coexisting to allow a powerful confrontation. But this temptation also bears a prevalent trait of the modern Arthurian fiction, and of its dialogue with the sources. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see a rearrangement, to various degrees, of the links that traditionally unite the characters. As such, in most sources Ygerne is the wife of Gorlois and the mother of Arthur, but she can be his half-sister and the mother of Medraud within Rosemary Sutcliff’s “Sword at Sunset”. The same Ygerne becomes Gorlois’ daughter, not his wife, in Stephen Lawhead’s work, as the author plays with the writing of the myth, has his Merlin-narrator laugh about the mad rumors that circulated about the siege of Tintagel “I have even heard it said that Ygerna was Gorlas’ wife – Imagine that!”). The marvelous does not escape this kind of more-or-less extreme shifts: the case of the female characters, of their relationship to magic, and of their role within history is especially revealing.

#arthuriana #fantasy #arthurian novel #fantasy novel #arthurian literature #translation #merlin #king arthur #taliesin #magic #arthurian rewrites #merlin the enchanter

[alesbush]

Anullo!

Teksa sot ndoqa protesten e ish-shkolles sime per te drejten e vazhdimesise se saj me kaluan shume kujtime te viteve me pare kur aktet e atyre nxenesve qe sot i cenonet permbushja e endrres se tyre ne ate kolegj ,ne i beme si pjese e diteve te ndryshme sensiblizuese e perkujtuese.

E nis me posterat e bukur qe kishin shkruar me dore. Ne aktivitete te ndryshme ne organizoheshim ne forme te tille dhe mundoheshim qe ne fund puna jone te ishte cilesore dhe autentike.

Kete e realizonim sepse vrisnim mendjen per ore te tera ,nuk kishim telefona smart gjate gjithe kohes ne dore perkundrazi merrnim mendime ,vepronim si nje skuader. Dikush tek laboratori i kompjuterave ,dikush te merrte lejen e smart bordit e dikush nga jashte te na blinte cte ishte e nevojshme.

Me pas pashe qe ata vendosen ne token e Ministrise se Arsimit dhe Kryeministrise medaljet e trofete e fituara teksa i hoqen nga qafa.

Ata ne qeveri nuk e dine cfare pune behej per te fituar ato medalje e sa rrihte zemra ne momentin kur na thirrnin ne skene per ti marre plot lumturi e per tu krenuar teksa i thonim prinderve e te dashurve tane te tjere per arritjen tone.

Ne nuk mjaftoheshim me argjend dhe bronz por donim gjithmone te arten, prandaj revolta e atyre nxenesve sot eshte pak nga cfare meritoni ju sepse ata kane aftesite e duhura te kerkojne shume me shume,o shtet i dashur qe jeta ju ra si nje jackpot ne kurriz te te mireve te vertete qe i lini ne prapaskene gjithmone.

Marshimi i tyre me kujtoi diten kur realizonim klipin e festave te nentorit. Ishim nje turme e madhe qe kishim zene korsine e bicikletave ne rrugen qe kalonte nga shkolla jone.

Njerezit na shihnin me adhurim teksa ne duart tona mbanim flamurin shqiptar per te cilin brohoritem ne ate video-mesazh se jemi krenare.

Sot ajo turme ishte jo me flamuj por me postera,pankarta,medalje dhe trofe sepse shteti per te cilet ata jepnin mesazh se jemi krenare sot po mjaftohet duke i postuar tek pronaret e shkolles te cilet paskan shitur shkollen, prone e cila eshte e juaja o qeveri e dashur.

Ata nxenes mesuan gjuhen e shenjave per tiu bashkuar sensiblizimit tuaj teksa ju i mbyllet shkollen ,valle duhet tju mesojne dhe qe nje ndertese e dhene nen nje kontrate qeraje nuk mund te shitet?!

Serish teksa i pashe te organizoheshin para Kryeministrise me kujtuan nje dite tjeter te viteve ne kolegj ku ne diten e Tokes ne shkruajtem kete fjale me trupat tane qe nga lart te kapej imazhi i shkrimit per sensibilizimin e mbrojtjes se Tokes sone.

Sot ata formuan fjalen "ANULLO", ne si nxenes te asaj shkolle gjithmone ishim pro vendit tone ,pro planetit tone por me nje flete ju i hodhet ne kosh ,i shkelet te gjitha dhe ata serish me edukaten me supreme ju kerkojne ju te beni ate qe eshte e drejte e jo te justifikoheni pa vend.

Ju dhuruan nje medalje qe kerkon jo mund por stermund qe kabineti i qeverise sone me meritokraci po te sfidohej nga dija e nxenesve te shkolles sone do mbetej e humbur.

E llogaria qe thate ti kerkohet drejtuesve te shkolles , me plot goje duhet thene "Ah sikur te kishit te tille drejtues e mesues...

Jane per tu marre shembull nga te gjithe koleget e tyre per punen dhe mesazhin qe percjellin te nxenesit duke na motivuar ,qendruar prane e duke na mesuar te luftojme per te drejten e jo te bindemi ndaj te pa drejtes ,jo te bejme sikur nuk degjojme e te mos flasim.

Ata ju folen dhe ne gjuhen e shenjave ,ata u drejtuan "I nderuar Z.Kryeminister!", ata ju dhane nje medalje te arte ju si dhe me qindra vleresime shtetit tone kur jashte vendit brohoritej "Albania" nen perfaqesine e kolegjit tone.

Firma juaj sot nuk eshte e vlefshme pergjithmone por institucioni me drejtuesit dhe stafin qe na edukoi ne do jete i vleresuar perjete nga ne ,qofshin ata nen emrin e kolegjit qe po mbyllni apo jo.

Ata qe ju i fajesoni sot bene kilometra per nxenesit e tyre qe te vizitonin vendin ku jetonin me plot deshire e gezim teksa ju qytetin tim keni preferuar ta vizitoni dhe me transport ajror se nuk duronit rrugen.

Kolegji Mehmet Akif eshte i gjithe Shqiperise e jo vetem i vendit ku eshte pozicionuar ndertesa e tij ,ashtu si dhe emri i tij nuk perkon vetem ne institucion arsimor por dhe familje.

Faleminderit mesuesve tane!!!

#

[davidosu87]

Here is my written review of a movie that was covered on Side Quest Podcast. This is a solid update to a cult, classic slasher/franchise that I thought worked for some of the changes that were made. Not all of it does though, but those are pretty minor to me. What did you think of this remake?

#silent night deadly night #silent night #steven c. miller #jayson rothwell #malcolm mcdowell #jaime king #donal logue #remake #slasher #christmas #comedy #mystery #thriller #canada #united states #rick skene #ellen wong #andrew cecon #courtney-jane white #horror #horror film #horror films #horror movie #horror movies #horror fan #horror fans #horror review #horror reviews #horror reviewer #film review

[unabashedlandoperastatesman-blog]

Po sikur Dante te mos jete nje vizionar ?!

Ne pergjithesi nje vision eshte I shkurter , dhe eshte thuajse e pamundur qe nje vision te zgjas aq shume sa c’eshte pershkruar ne “Komendine Hyjnore”.

Po sikur te ekzistoje vertet nje vazhdimesi pertej kesaj jete , pavarsishte qendrimeve apo bindjeve tona te ndryshme?! Nese do te pyesja nje besimtar rreth ekzistences se jetes pas vdekjes , jam shume shume e sigurt se e vetmja pergjigje qe do te merrja do ishte positive. Sipas fes-e ekziston nje jete e dyte pas shuajtjes se jetes ne kete bote. Ata besojne se shpirti meshirohet por jo me ne trup por ne frym. Besojne se ekziston parasja dhe ferri qe jane te kundertat e njera tjetres.

E nese do te pyesesh nje ateist , e vetmja gje qe mund te degjosh prej gojes se tij eshte se kto gjera jane perralla , pjese e imagjinates tone.

Teksa lexoja Danten reflektova per shume gjera. Edhe pse e gjitha skene e shkruar ne Komedine Hyjnore ishte nje fantazi e ndikuar me se shumti nga doktrina e fe-se ,

Fale tij kuptova se ende une nuk jam vone per te ndaluar veten time drejt jeteses ne ferr.

[pastdaily]

Maya Angelou And Jane Birkin Talk About Free Love, Abortions And Changing Social Values In 1970 – Past Daily Weekend Gallimaufry – Maya Angelou, Jane Birkin, Russ Meyer, William Friedkin, Bob Crane - Kup's Show - March 26, 1970 - Gordon Skene Sound Collection - Even though 1970 seemed a little late to talk about it, the subject of free-love, single parents, abandoning marriage, birth...

#academy-of-american-poets #albert-einstein #alexander-wang-designer #apple-inc #arkansas #barack-obama #maya-angelou #phenomenal-woman #sydney #united-states

[naishtedikur]

Teatrit Profesionist, “Skampa” Elbasan

Teatrit Profesionist, “Skampa” Elbasan

Teatri “Skampa”, eshte nje nder institucionet me te rendesishme kulturore ne Shqiperi. Ky institucion se bashku me Teatrin “Migjeni” te Shkodres, “Aleksander Moisiu” i Durresit dhe i rretheve te tjera si ai i “Andon Z. Cajupi” te Korces, “Petro Marko” i Vlores, “Bylis” i Fierit etj jane pararoja, pasuria jone kulturore kombetare ne kete gjini, trupat profesioniste e te cileve kane vene ne skene…

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#“Skampa” Elbasan #Teatrit Profesionist

[anderson4t]

Per ju ketu jane hitet e reja shqip 2019 me muzik shqip te fundit 2019 me kenget e zgjedhura shqip ne Youtube nga kanalet e njohura te artisteve nga ata me te miret ne skene. Hitet e fundit shqip 2019 jane po ato lista qe ishin edhe ne vitin e kaluar dhe vetem se permbajn edhe kenget hitet 2019 qe jane publik koheve te fundit.

#hitet2019 #shqip 2019 #hitet e reja #hite shqip 2019

[ajkunballettheatre]

Viza Amerikane dhe baleti. Per te kuptuar me qarte, ju mund te keni degjuar histori si mund merrni nje vize. Ajkun Ballet Theatre ka punesuar kercimtare nga shume vende te ndryshme. Dolores Garcia e cila eshte sekretaria e bordit te drejtorve, deshiron te jap ca keshilla. Gjeja me kryesore eshte te gjesh nje Sponsor sic eshte nje kompani baleti e cila duhet te jete e stabilizuar dhe me nje korrektesi me ligjin amerikan, ne qofte se eshte ajo qe ju kerkoni. Kompania duhet t'ju siguroj servisin si dhe materialet per te siguruar kete servis. Ju duhet qe te keni kualifikim e duhur si kercimtar. Ne kete menyre procesi nuk do te jete shume i veshtire me qofte se ju i permbaheni ketyre kerkesave. Protokolli vazhdon me tutje ne qofte se ju punoni mire dhe me nje plan. E para: ti duhet te jesh i informuar per kohen qe te duhet per te pergatitur te gjithe dokumentacionin per USCIS qe eshte zyra e emigracionit. E dyta: duhet te behesh "familjare" me procesi . E treta: ne qofte se ju keni veshtirsi me anglishten ju mund te kerkoni ndihme ne faqen www.uscis.gov ju nuk mund te goboni atje, sepse ata jane njerzit qe vendosin per vizen tuaj. E katerta: te jeni Real me pretendimet qe keni. Ju duhet te kualifikoheni per nje nga vizat qe jane te gatshme per artiste, kjo varet nga ju me ane te edukimit tuaj, sic eshte karriera juaj dhe korrektesia ne pergatitjen e dokumentacionit te duhur. Dhe ne fund eshte nje proces shume i thjeshte. Faktet jane te gjitha te shkruara online dhe ju mund te merrni asistencen e perkthyer ne shume gjuhe, kjo eshte vetem per tju ndimuar. Ne deshirojme te shikojme Talentin tuaj ne skene Dolores Garcia Ajkunbt Sekretarja e Bordit. (at Ajkun BalletTheatre)

[naishtedikur]

PARODISTET E VLORES: “HUMOR NE JETE DHE NE SKENE”

PARODISTET E VLORES: “HUMOR NE JETE DHE NE SKENE”

“Si mbijetuam?” Rrefime nga jeta artistike e humoristeve vlonjate. Netet romantike ne bregdetin jugor te Vlores sjellin nje perqasje prej zgjimi enderror. Me terheq edhe mua si ne çdo vere spektakli turistik i parodisteve, qe thyen rutinen e ketyre mbremjeve te qeta detare, ku ndihet duhma e lehte e valeve. Shetitjet e tyre turistike, siç dua t’i perkufizoj, jane nje spektakel i filluar nga skena…

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#PARODISTET E VLORES: “HUMOR NE JETE DHE NE SKENE”

[pastdaily]

Jane Kennedy – Activist In The Service Of Moral Values 1975 – Past Daily Reference Room – Jane Kennedy - Activist - CBC Radio Documentary - 1975 - Gordon Skene Sound Collection - Jane Kennedy is a name not immediately familiar to a lot of people, and only a bit more familiar to people who remember the Vietnam War era and the Protest movements which sprung up because of it. But...

#afghanistan #aiken #american-legion #asahi-shimbun #associated-press #south-carolina #united-states #united-states-navy #viet-cong #vietnam #vietnam-war