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The Mabinogion
The tales in the Mabinogion were actually a series of stories that were passed down over the centuries from storytellers until someone decided to put them all together around the twelfth century. Its contents draw upon the myths, legends, and history of Celtic Britain: four branches of a storyline set largely within the confines of Wales and the otherworld. Compiled from texts found in two late-medieval manuscripts – the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch – this collection was initially edited and translated by antiquarians William Pughe and Lady Charlotte Guest in the early nineteenth century. The tales comprise an ensemble of parts, the first four…
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OEDIPUS
We have all heard of Oedipus, either as the ‘tragedy’ or the ‘complex’. Oedipus has been around in some form or another for well over 1000 years now. His beginnings are with ancient Greek poet Homer in fragments, then with Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus and Euripides. It is, however, with Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King) that the name became legendary. The play begins in the court of Laius and Jocasta, the King and queen of Thebes, who are having trouble conceiving. Troubled by this Laius goes to see the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. The oracle prophesises that any son born to the couple would kill his father and…
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In Flanders Fields….
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. Lt-Col John McCrae (30 November, 1872 – 28 January 1918) was second-in command…
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Frankenstein
The origins began on a cold, rainy evening in Geneva while Mary Shelley, her not yet husband Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori sat around a fire sharing old German ghost stories. As a dare, the four writers embarked on a journey of self-discovery to create the most horrifying story that their minds could imagine. And so, in 1816 Mary Shelley began her work that would one day be known to all the world. The book “Frankenstein” was first published in 1818 as an anonymous author, it wouldn’t be for another 5 years that Mary Shelley’s name would be associated with the work. A new discovery about the creative…
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George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. I first encountered Lord Byron’s work “She Walks In Beauty” when I was an angsty teen. It quickly led me to his other works I would read and sigh over. The violent romance of it has an appeal that has never truly dimmed, and a note of melancholy that still wrings my much older than teenaged heart. Any one who wrote these words must have been a sensitive tormented soul,…
