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L'Espérance

"[…] Et devant l’ennemi la profonde espérance Repeignit l’avenir aux couleurs du beau temps Vous n’irez pas plus loin disait-elle Barbares Votre pas est semblable à l’ancienne foulée Dont ma légende garde empreinte dans ses blés Je suis comme jadis et la borne et la barre […] Vous n’irez pas plus loin que mes amours fauchées Vous n’irez pas plus loin que le cri des guetteurs Le triomphe est mortel ici triomphateurs C’est ici que toujours finit la chevauchée"

— Aragon

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

On rainy days, this gnome works diligently on his Skyrim fanfic.

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

Ces posts sur Ségurant, très bon exemple d'à quel point le documentaire présente une image trompeuse de ce corpus de textes et de ce qu'on en connaissait avant… Sur le fond, un article qui aborde toutes ces histoires (avec force diagrammes, tableaux, etc.) : https://sursus.ch/tout-comprendre-a-segurant/ Faudra qu'on le traduise en anglais. Je peux aussi répondre à des questions précises.

The missing Arthurian knight - rediscovered in 2019

Well the title is a slight lie - the missing knight wasn't rediscovered in 2019, it was earlier than that, but he didn't became public until 2019.

So what's this "missing knight" about? Well as the title says. There was a knight part of the Arthurian myth, and he had been missing ever since the Middle-Ages, and he was only recently rediscovered.

Or rather, to be exact - there was an Arthurian novel centered around a knight that existed and was a famous and well-known part of the Arthurian literature in the Middle-Ages, but that completely disappeared, and was forgotten by culture (as much popular culture as the scholarly one). Until very recently.

This rediscovered novel has been a hot topic of all Arthuriana fans in Europe for a few years now - and yet I do not see much talk about this onto this website, despite Tumblr being a big place for Arthurian fans?

So I will correct this by doing a series of posts about the subject. And this post will be the first one, the introduction post presenting to you "Ségurant, le chevalier au dragon" ; "Segurant, the knight of the dragon". A French medieval novel part of the Arthurian literature (hence the "chevalier au X" title structure - like Lancelot, the knight of the cart or Yvain the knight of the lion from Chrétien de Troyes), the reason this story was forgotten by all medievalist and literary scholars is - long story short - because it never existed in any full manuscript (at least none that survived to this day). It was a complete story yes, with even variations apparently, but that was cut into pieces and fragments inserted into various other manuscripts and texts (most notably various "Merlin's Prophecies").

The novel and the Knight of the Dragon were rediscovered through the work of Emanuele Arioli, who rediscovered a fragment of the story while looking at an old manuscript of a Merlin Prophecies, and then went on the hunt for the other fragments and pieces scattered around Europe, until he finally could compile the full story, that he then published in 2019, at the Belles Lettres publishing house, in 2019.

Arioli reconstructed the text, and translated it in both modern Fench and Italian for scholarly and professional editions (aka Honoré Champion in Fance, a reference for universities)...

... But also for a more "all public, found in all libraries" edition - the famous 2019 edition at Les Belles Lettres.

And not only that, but he also participated to both a comic book adaptation with Emiliano Tanzillo...

... and an adaptation as an illustrated children novel!

Finally, just a few weeks, the Franco-German channel Arte released a documentary about the reconstitution and content of this missing novel called "Le Chevalier au dragon: Le roman disparu de la Table Ronde". (The Knight of the Dragon - The missing novel of the Round Table). The full documentary is on Youtube in French for those that speak the language, here. And in German here for those who speak German.

Unfortunately there is no English version of the documentary that I know of, nor any English publications of the actual text - just French and Italian. But hey, I'll try to palliate to that by doing some English-speaking posts about this whole business!

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

Gnome Sweet Gnome ❤️

(Obviously inspired by Poortvliet's gnomes)

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

Interregnum 🔥🌞🌄

The red sun sets, the dark sun rises, and fire with it. The tide of history has turned. All past victories, torn down by undead forces, melting them to crown themselves. But a better day might come…

Inspired by republican and socialist allegories, updated for the times.

Details :

Inspirations :

(Allegories of the Republic/Freedom from revolutionary France : Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Pierre-Nicolas Legrand, Jacques Réattu, Antoine-Jean Gros, notice the level, symbol of equality)

(Allegories of the Republic from 1848 : Frédéric Sorrieu, Armand Cambon, Ange-Louis Janet, unknown painter)

(Various socialist allegories)

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

Recent paintings around the Venoge river, trying to improve

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

Haven't posted my drawings here for a while now

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

Cleaning these arthurian drawings (40 to go)

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

Mordred is not very fond of these hermit memos he keeps getting

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

[Mortal Kombat theme played by alphorns]

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

Not really! See this video discussing this very issue or its script:

🎃 http://bit.ly/2e98Y95 [Google Docs] 

🎃 http://bit.ly/2eSorMy [Web version]

Did Halloween really come from the pagan Samhain?

Why would a Church, from the 400′s to the 900′s (and beyond), who was fighting heretics and pagans on one side of the world, allow for a very pagan holiday to creep into their religion, theology and ideology from the other side? Would St. Patrick have allowed this? Is there any actual evidence during the said times of theologians, popes, or saints, who have given credit to the origin of Halloween, or rather All Hallow’s Evening, being Samhain? 

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

Tis the season

_Samhain and the Origins of Halloween_

Halloween! A festival whose roots are often said to be in the gaelic feast of Samhain (pronounce “sowin” or be mocked!) be it by horror movies or a lot of people on the internet — which as we know are the most trustworthy sources of knowledge! But is it true? Isn’t Halloween simply the eve of All Saints Day? Well in this video we look at what medieval irish literature or modern folklore can tell us about the origins of the holiday, to discern — if possible — the pagan from the christian and scholarly myth from history.

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

pp. 19-23 from the current chapter, one page to go

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Dumb stuff I thought about when someone from those Joseph Campbell books pieced together with his old lectures mispelled Mircea Eliade’s name into Mitch Ayadi.

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

This is a weird smarter-than-thou factoid considering Caliburn is just the welsh name, and this “two swords” only started with the (”Post-Vulgate”) Suite du Merlin, or Merlin-Huth. See this article in french. 

Further, the sword Arthur has before breaking it against Pellinor is not really called attention upon, nor really named. 

In Chrétien de Troyes, Excalibur is just the name of Arthur’s sword, which he lends to Gawain in the Conte du Graal, and it being given by a fairy lady or even the drawing from the stone, is not there yet.

It being pulled from the stone (or rather an anvil) comes from the end of the prose Merlin, linked to Robert de Boron, and was incorporated into the Vulgate cycle, where, again, Gawain uses the sword a few times.

(Escalibor used by Gawain in Chrétien and by Lancelot in the Vulgate cycle -- here the Bonn manuscript because in Micha’s edition for example, he uses Galehaut’s sword!)

It’s really only with the Merlin-Huth that we got a proper focus on the sword, become the exclusive property of Arthur. 

And of course, it became part of the Malory canon, hence the success of the factoid. But I think english speakers should realize that arthurian legend goes beyond Malory, and that the fluctuating canon is part of the strength of this litterature, not a ripple that should be ironed away by being the smartest.

Do you ever hear someone say something about your field of interest that is wrong and you have to stop yourself from physically cringing but you gotta stay strong and cool cause you don’t wanna be ‘That NerdTM’?

[ambrosiusmerlinus]

a few pages I’ve finally lettered recently