Bertilak of the High Desert is a largely comic modern day re-telling of the medieval Arthurian fable, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, set in the American Midwest. Gowan Suhr, son of Art Suhr, must travel to the high desert badlands of Western Nebraska to find a man named Green, and in so doing resolve conflicting claims to 2000 acres of Cathar County farmland. Art's Mother pledged the land to Green, only to break her promise before dying. Outraged at the loss of the land, Green and his daughter Morgan interfere with Gowan's plans to marry Gwen, and in so doing force Art to make a new and deadly deal. Only by honoring his Father's promise and surviving Russian roulette can Gowan preserve the family land. Gowan and his friend Forrest set out to find Green, while Morgan and Gwen separately travel west to find a man named Bertilak, transporting as they do an all-white Charolais bull named Mordred.
NEXT TIME YOURE DEAD, EXPECT BIG CHANGES IN THE AFTERLIFE AS THE UNDERWORLD GETS ITS FIRST FASHION MAKEOVER IN MILLENNIA For three months in late 2043 an expedition of eight people (most of them alive) entered the afterlife on a special assignment to come up with ways to improve it. They were commissioned by the Lord of Death himself, some call him Hades, and joined by a uniquely qualified spirit who knew that landscape well, the famous magus known as Merlin. It turns out hes served as the top Underworld guide to many cultures since death began, and he wrote The Tibetan Book of the Dead about how they do things there in the Bardo. Their job was to come up with ways to make death and the afterlife experience easier. Nothing there was working right anymore, nobody understood the place, people were getting lost and confused, complaints were mounting, and all this was slowing up Earths progress and the daytime life of living humans. The team included Blaise, a mysterious wisecracker who spends a lot of his timeoff-planet, mostly in the Pleiades; Edward, a sensible Boston book editor; Frederick, once a mythology professor but now a freelance Gnostic; Philomena, his wife who ascended into a Light body ten years earlier; Matthew, a reclusive meditator who consorts with Thunderbirds; Pipaluk, a very old shaman from Greenland; Tommy, teenager who died 20 years ago and now knows the Land of the Dead firsthand; and Merlin, explainer of Mysteries and everyones favorite afterlife guide. Nothing is exempt from their Bardo retrofit. No job is safe; no way of doing things is secure. Everything about the afterlife will change. Next time youre there, expect toremember more, stay awake longer, and not take all those strange spirits accosting you seriously. Who knows? You might even like it.
Supernatural Adventure from a Master of Modern Fantasy The magical King of the West has been killed in California, and his assassin is one of the multiple personalities in the head of Janis Cordelia Plumtree—but which one? One of them is a streetwise pickpocket. Another is dead, and can only speak in quotes from Shakespeare. And another seems to be the unquiet ghost of her father. And there are many others. Sid Cochran is a one-time winemaker who blames his wife's suicide on the wine-god Dionysus, and believes that Dionysus is now pursuing him. Cochran and Plumtree escape together from a mental hospital in Los Angeles, and—pursued by ghosts, gangsters, and a crazy psychiatrist—set out for San Francisco and the wine country to try to restore the dead King of the West to life. But the god Dionysus himself is a player in this perilous game—and not on their side. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). About Tim Powers: "Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card "Other writers tell tales of magic in the twentieth century, but no one does it like Powers."—The Orlando Sentinel ". . . immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World “Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction “On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford "On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert “Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.” Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site "Powers creates a mystical, magical otherworld superimposed on our own and takes us on a marvelous, guided tour of his vision."—Science Fiction Chronicle "The fantasy novels of Tim Powers are nothing if not ambitious . . . Meticulously researched and intellectually adventurous, his novels rarely fail to be strange and wholly original."—San Francisco Chronicle
A groundbreaking examination of ecological thought in medieval England. While the scale of today’s crisis is unprecedented, environmental catastrophe is nothing new. Waste and the Wasters studies the late Middle Ages, when a convergence of land contraction, soil depletion, climate change, pollution, and plague subsumed Western Europe. In a culture lacking formal scientific methods, the task of explaining and coming to grips with what was happening fell to medieval poets. The poems they wrote used the terms “waste” or “wasters” to anchor trenchant critiques of people’s unsustainable relationships with the world around them and with each other. In this book, Eleanor Johnson shows how poetry helped medieval people understand and navigate the ecosystemic crises—both material and spiritual—of their time.
This book contains a collection of essays dealing with different re-workings of the Arthurian myth. The papers trace the Arthurian myth, inquiring into its origins in Ancient Rome, and pointing out influences from the Dark Ages up to the present. Reference is made to oral tradition, visual narrative and iconic messages in manuscript illumination, the myth in medieval chivalry and the decay of the latter. Parallelisms are drawn with Christian figures and beliefs, with Irish literature and Gaelic mythology, and with novels and films. The methodological approaches and points of view show great diversity: from an inquiry into the historical sources of the myth, to comparative literature, inter-textuality, feminist criticism, analysis of cinema up to a refreshing practical classroom exercise.
A comprehensive encyclopedia of characters, places, objects, and themes found in the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round table. Draws from all significant source between Gildas' De Excidio Britanniae written about 540 AD and Tennyson's 19th-century Idylls of the King, including versions from throughout Europe. The entries range from a short identifying sentence to nearly ten pages for the king himself. Each is referenced to a source, which are presented in a endtable showing author and tit date, form, and langua description; keywords from the entries; and recent editions, a vital bit of information such references usually neglect. The cross-referencing is fairly good, often done as a full entry identifying a name as a variant of another, so the lack of an index is not a problem. Distributed in the US by Taylor and Francis. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
“Morpurgo's dramatic telling captures the vitality of the tale as well as its beauty and mystery.” — Booklist (starred review) Welcome to a medieval world full of sword fights and shape-shifting, monsters and magic, and timeless characters both gallant and wonderfully human. Written anonymously in the fourteenth century, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is retold in its entirety by Michael Morpurgo in a lively and accessible narration that captures all the tale’s drama and humor. Vivid illustrations by the celebrated Michael Foreman infuse this classic tale with dragons, swords, and medieval pageantry.
Nothing inflames the language gripers like a misplaced disinterested, an illogical irregardless, a hideous operationalisation. To purists these are 'howlers' and 'non-words', fit only for scorn. But in their rush to condemn such terms, are the naysayers missing something? In this provocative and hugely entertaining book, Rebecca Gowers throws light on a great array of horrible words, and shows how the diktats of the pedants are repeatedly based on misinformation, false reasoning and straight-up snobbery. The result is a brilliant work of history, a surreptitious introduction to linguistics, and a mischievous salute to the misusers of the language. It is also a bold manifesto asserting our common rights over English, even as it questions the true nature of style.
So you think eccentric France means frogs' legs and pigs' trotters? Think again. Piers Letcher takes you to places where you can feast on forgotten vegetables, saddle up for national donkey day, or gorge yourself at the world tripe championships. He also reveals the truth behind France's most colorful characters, including Coco Chanel, Joan of Arc, Mata Hari and the Marquis de Sade. This latest addition to the Bradt eccentric series makes fascinating reading for those looking to discover the hidden side of France, as well as for armchair travelers who delight in the extraordinary. Feeling adventures? Try your hand at pig-squealing, or brave the Rhone Valley's Crocodile Farm; Romantic? Visit the Lovers' Wall in Montmartre, or Provence's hidden Paradise; Festive? Indulge yourself at the Palais du chocolat, or take a Champagne cure; Or just plain curious? Check out the country's most unusual towns, gardens, hotels and restaurants.
Humankind has always been fascinated by the world in which it finds itself, and puzzled by its relations to it. Today that fascination is often expressed in what is now called ‘green’ terms, reflecting concerns about the non-human natural world, puzzlement about how we relate to it, and anxiety about what we, as humans, are doing to it. So called green or eco-criticism acknowledges this concern. Greenery reaches back and offers new readings of English texts, both known and unfamiliar, informed by eco-criticism. After considering general issues pertaining to green criticism, Greenery moves on to a series of individual chapters arranged by theme (earth, trees, wilds, sea, gardens and fields) which provide individual close readings of selections from such familiar texts as Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, Chaucer’s Knight’s and Franklin’s Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Langland’s Piers Plowman. These discussions are contextualized by considering them alongside hitherto marginalized texts such as lyrics, Patience and the romance Sir Orfeo. The result is a study which reinvigorates our customary reading of late Middle English literary texts while also allows us to reflect upon the vibrant new school of eco-criticism itself.
