The Once and Future Blog

Satan. The devil. Lucifer. The Grand Evil. All speak differently, but each tells the same name - the chief demon of Christian belief. He is believed to be (in some sense) the origin of all temptation, sin, and evil, and seeks to corrupt man and bring him low, away from God. The idea of Hell, the land of dead sinners, was wrought around him, creating a prisoner for the most great of all sinners. Dante walks us through the fiery plane, guided by the poet Virgil, king of journeymen, and shows us the torments that lie within. At the very core, we find its most important prisoner. As we descend to the lowest planes of the Inferno, even our narrator comes to a loss of words at the fear shown within himself and throughout the plane. His description of the centerpiece, "the emperor of the sorrowful kingdom" Satan, almost lauds and laments his grandeur, and exposes the sheer monstrosity that lies at the darkest core of the universe. His three heads chew on the three greatest traitors...

Welcome to the first reading notes of the last week of the class! Today we're going to be discussing one of the most central works in Christian literature, Dante's Inferno. The Inferno has been the source of much Christian (or even beyond) mysticism and artwork since its creation in the Middle Ages, its longevity proving the strength of its writing and relevance to the religious mindset. One of the thoughts I had for my own storybook was to create a sampling of stories about psychopomps and liminality - those who guide you after death, and the realms between life and death. These stories have interested me heavily since I was younger, hearing stories about Charon, or the angels that guide lost souls, and the idea of Limbo and Purgatory. Dante's imagery is what he is most well known for. His descriptions of realms beyond our own goes right in with his narrative perspective - being the person dragged through the exterior realms personally by the legendary storyteller of jour...

Atop a quaint hill at the furthest end of the longest road in the kingdom sat a small cottage, wherein a small family of three lived. The father was old and gruff, with a beard down to his toes, and the mother was fragile and sweet, with a particular penchant for making the finest pies in the land. Their child, a single daughter, was a delightful, fair lass with the most elegant blonde hair in the whole of the kingdom. There they lived, beloved by the whole of the village around the hill, in peaceful harmony. One day in the village, residents reported that their livestock had been disappearing when they neared the hill to graze. None could find why such a thing was happening, so a pair of farmhands decided to keep watch over the grazing cattle during the night. The next morning, they were nowhere to be found. The folk of the village soon began to suspect the elderly couple atop the hill thereafter. As more and more livestock and villagers disappeared, the residents became angry. At l...

Today we return to the European Fairy Tale unit, as told by Lang. These enchanting tales are somewhere between strange, horrific, and quaint, and like most takes, provide a unique look into the minds and ideals of the people who first thought them up as tales and told them, in the purposes they serve and morals they espouse. The first story that caught my eye was the Cottager and the Cat, as a big cat person myself (and occasional midnight hermit). The story begins with an odd character, a terrible miser who manages to starve himself to death by not wanting to spend money on food. Personally, I'm the opposite - all of my money goes to food it seems. The man dies, and his son, the heir, receives an apparition in a dream telling him to abandon his father's ill gotten capitalistic gains, giving half back to the poor he stole it from and half to the sea, for whatever reason. He rescues six shillings from the sea, wanders to an old house, learns that cats exist, and buys a cat. Per...

Bluebeard For our final unit, we come to the stories and fairy tales that make up the canon that we in the western world know best: The stories of Europe. A majority of the people in the United States are European descended, thus most of the cultural tales hail from there. To that extent, I looked for a set of stories that could tell me new tales, instead of maybe alternative versions of what I knew already. The primary story that caught my eye this week was the tale of Bluebeard. The story grips you tightly right off the bat, with the peculiar man with the Blue Beard and his inane wealth. His story to marriage builds him up as a pretty decent dude, one who parties extremely hard, but nonetheless someone who just wants companionship (in the still weird old French male dominated way). Turns out he has some major skeletons in his closet (literally), and his wife (told not to go into the closet and does anyway because this is how horror movies happen) is scared nearly to death. When...

Britomart Once again we return to the enchanting and strange tales of Britomart from the Faerie Queene, an epic poem of gallantry and knightly honor. Britomart is a lady raised as a knight of honor herself, choosing to disguise herself as man in some occasions (due to the culture of the time). She sees the face of her destined lover in the mirror of the magus Merlin, and goes to seek him out. As a (precarious) lover of Arthurian/Troubadour tales, I was happy to find these stories to be a refreshing, almost not misogynistic corner of the canon, featuring a valiant, strong female lead (who is unfortunately still on a goal that revolves around heterosexual love, but you can only get so much). Despite my complaints to this, Britomart maintains her royal air and strong demeanor throughout the story, and displays knightly qualities beyond even that of the legends Lancelot and Gawain. She even tries to maintain this in spite of her falling in love with Artegall, more and more as each day ...