Book Rampage

My Gothic + Medieval stories rampage started with

1.George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin
(Classic Victorian children's book and fantastic to read. 'Cause the protagonists of the novel are an 8 year old princess and a 12 year old boy-miner named Curdie who work together to save each other and the people from the Goblins)

which then led to

2. the sequel, The Princess and Curdie

(which was damn sad and terrifying in how greedy men were, that they tried to kill the good king, how the townspeople were all suspicious of and hated and envied each other and even though the evil people were eventually removed and the town flourished in peace again, greedy men again caused the downfall of what was otherwise a prosperous country.
And the country was no more.

Makes you think of what will happen to Singapore in the future and the state of mankind.
Darn was it depressing.)

3. Phantastes

(apparently George MacDonald's "fairy romance for adults" that had a huge impact on C.S. Lewis and J.RR Tolkien.

Boy, was it pointless.

It was about a young man named Anodos who one day finds himself in fairyland where the world merged with his room. And he wanders on and on, frees a beautiful woman from white marble, searches for her, has lots of false leads, gains his shadow which is supposedly a bad thing 'cause the shadow is like an evil reincarnation of himself that follows him around, finds the woman and then realises that she's married to the knight who saved his life. Then he returns home.)

4. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, was the next book

It's a Gothic Novel so expect lots of heart-stopping dread filled moments but the mystery is incredibly exciting along with it's premise of Identity theft in the Victorian Era and a mad woman.

+ the whole case is seen in different viewpoints so that women have a say. And the characters are pretty solid since each chapter is narrated by a different character. Marian Halcombe is without a doubt one of the most solid woman characters created that I've read in the long time. She doesn't claim to be pretty but she's got a nice figure and loads of smarts and independence.

5. OH then I read The Well at the World's End by William Morris.

I seem to have a thing going for Morris-es. HAHA anyway it's sad how William Morris is known more for designing wallpaper than for writing books.

The book was alright but it was written based on Medieval romances. So while it had adventure and chilling tales of cities like in The Princess & Curdie, how the people made slaves of women and sold them in markets, it also had romance

(warped but that's how it is i guess- Ralph falls in love with 2 beautiful women. He meets Ursula first, then forgets all about her when he meets the Lady of Abundance- I guess you can't resist with a name like that- then when the Lady dies, he turns to Ursula)

and tons of middle-englishy language. Eg. both women are "passing fair" and there are loads of "forsooth"s, "nay"s, "yea"s and how the men were "passing wroth".

Actually,
I THINK I CAN PULL OFF A CONVERSATION WITH SMATTERINGS OF MEDIEVAL ENGLISH.
Anyone want to try with me?

And the situations described are just plain scary but exciting. Again, the book made an impact on Lewis and Tolkien. There's a King Peter and a Gandalf (who's evil in TWWE by the way)

6. Then I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Which is a Gothic novel and frightening not because of the monster, but the extent to which men go to look for knowledge and what terrible things they create from this knowledge, at the expense of innocent lives. Sounds like an atomic bomb, but really is a monster who kills people because he was angry at his creator. Still scary. Sounds like Hitler. (if you can put your finger on that)

Anyway, another thing to learn from it is that social exclusion can drive people crazy. It's frightening how the monster was driven to murder because his rage and anguish at being cast away by society (and the very first friends he tried to make) and beaten 'cause of his terrifying looks.

How much does it take for a being to be accepted in the society we have today?

Sure we can talk about free love and equal rights but is human society really as inclusive as we like to think it to be?

GAHH all these questions in my head

7. And then The Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Sir James Knowles.

I was pretty disappointed in this one 'cause Sir Knowles is a freaking prude. All the knights are so darn clean and upright even if they've sinned. I guess i shouldn't have been surprised by how much religious and moral overtones there were in the book especially when it came to choosing which book to download: STORIES of King Arthur (Sir Malory Thomas) Or LEGENDS of King Arthur.

I went with Legends and was confronted with a whole lot peesh of uprightness and chivalry. The ladies weren't powerful except if they were enchantresses. the only cool one was Linet/ Lynete who scorned Sir Gareth or was it Gaheris but she was made out to be so spiteful. Loads of manly patriachy in this one. And war. Guinevere was a
bitch

It's safe to say that i was disappointed. 'cause it just made me more confused as to whether or not the stories I'd read before were correct or not.
After much confusion and upon finishing the book, I went to wiki and realised that there was no one accurate story because so many authors had added on to it and made the stories there own.

The tale of Tristam and Iseult wasn't tragic in this book. I was waiting for them to die together but they didn't. And what's more I realised that this tale was about courtly romance so fashionable during the middle ages therefore the author would have written it to suit the demand for that period. And was therefore a junked up version of a tragic story. Like Romeo and Juliet without the rhyme.

SO HAPPY IT MADE ME.

That is, when I realised that I didn't have to take the stories literally 'cause they were written and re-written by many others throughout the course of more than a century. And the conflict within me between wanting to think it somewhat true and a load of bull, got resolved.

But I still want to know the accepted version so I'm reading Thomas Malory's le Morte d'Arthur (in English) based on Gerald Morris' advice. I just hope it's not in french.

And not as disappointing.

"Twenty-five years ago, in college, I read several of the medieval romances about King Arthur and his knights and discovered to my astonishment that they were all good. All my previous experience with King Arthur had been in obnoxious children's retellings in which all the knights were cleft-chinned paragons of oppressive nobility and virtue. As for the ladies, they were even worse- simpering wraiths of soppy sentimentality. It was all enough to make one root for dragons.

But, I found, the original stories of Arthur's courts were nothing like that at all. The medieval romances of Chrétien de Troye and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur and the like were filled with real people and recognizably human characters who struggled with recognizable problems. In the real Arthurian legends, honour was not about keeping the rules of some code of chivalry. Honour meant standing by friends, admitting mistakes, forgiving insults, and keeping your word- even if it cost you dearly to do so. I immediately began planning how I would retell those stories to a new generation."

-Gerald Morris
(now you see why I like him so much)