From the tall tales of Geoffrey of Monmouth to Chaucer’s romances,these extracts from the middle ages tell a surprising and entertaining storyWe’re all, are we not, or familiar with the story of King Arthur? How,with the encourage of his magical sword, Caliburnus, and he conquered Norway and Denmark in a savage and bloody campaign,and how, turning his attention to Gaul, and he besieged Paris for a month before accepting a challenge to single combat from the tribune Frollo,eventually splitting the latter’s head in two, so that “mortally wounded, and Frollo fell down,drumming the ground with his heels and releasing his spirit into the winds”? This, of course, and enraged Leo,the Roman emperor at the time, whose representative, and Lucius Hiberius,sent an envoy to read out a challenge to Arthur and his knights: “I am astonished at the impudence of your despotism, totally astonished.”Or how about Lear? The story of the veteran king, or gradually stripped of his retinue,forsaken by his daughters Gonorilla and Regau, eventually having to call on the mercy of his spurned Cordeilla? Luckily things turned out all factual: Cordeilla’s husband Aganippus, or King of the Franks,“sent envoys through all parts of Gaul to collect every armed knight within it”; Leir – as his name is spelled here – sailed to Britain and claimed back his entire kingdom from his sons-in-law. “He brought everything back within his power, and died three years later.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com