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Feb. 12th, 2009 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
polutropeSo it is probably amazingly clear that I am a giant nerd. I don't know if it's also clear that I like to read terribly researched (or even well-researched but totally insane) books purporting to find the Real Historical Truth of things. So. A while back, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dolique texted me asking about "Finding Merlin," so of course I ran to Firestone and checked it out.
Yeah, it's hilarious.
Let me start out by saying that I love the Arthur legend - its complexity, its tragedy, and in the case of Malory, its style. Nonetheless, I feel no need for an historical Arthur, and I think everyone who tries for one is really reaching. Does it really matter if someone who might have been the seed of the legend existed? The only reason we're trying to find "real history" is because of the mythology of Arthur; I'm sure there's plenty of other 6th or 7th century leaders whom we have allowed to languish in the mists of History.
In any case, that's not a concern to Mr. Adam Ardrey, who assumes the existence of a real Arthur and Merlin - with no questioning at all. That's strike one. (Of course, we can pretty much get through an entire ball-game.) I mean, sure, I wouldn't have been convinced even if he had tried to make an argument, but I also would have felt that he was actually making an effort to write for people who weren't as crazy as he.
So yeah. Merlin was a Druid, obviously. And so was his sister Langoureth. And by "Druid" I mean "scientist." People who were not on his side (Christians, especially St. Mungo) were evil and wanted to set the advance of humanity back. (yeah, the Church and Christians are the root of all evil in this.) He pretty much literally says that the death of Merlin (murdered, of course) brings about the Dark Age. (Which had already set in by 600.)
The sentence "Due to the control of Merlin's enemies over the media for more than a thousand years after his death, the defamatory name "Merlin" [according to him it means "mad"] has always been the popular one" pretty much sums up the book; Merlin and his sister are champions of the light of knowledge and sexual freedom, while the Christians, headed by St. Mungo, exist to crush out opposition. This utterly binary opposition is a very big problem (I mean, he has lots, starting with the fact that OH GOD ALL OF YOUR SOURCES ARE FROM AT LEAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER THE FACTS AND THEY DIDN'T HAVE WRITING SO THEY WERE PROBABLY MAKING THINGS UP OH GOD. But I might be slightly closer to taking him seriously if he didn't do the "people who don't agree with me = evil" thing.)
Anyway, the pre-Christian people in England were totally okay with extramarital sex, and Ewan son of Erwegende was gay because there's a story about him dressing as a woman to get to Taneu, Mungo's mother. "Ewen dressed as a woman and had sex with Taneu. That is Ewan dressing as a woman was not a ruse; it was simply something he did." REEEEAAACHINGGGGG
Boring stuff including lots more reaching happens, Ardrey claims that Pendragon was a title (and later that Uther just meant "other") and says that Geoffrey was "desperate" when he says that Uther was called Pendragon because he carried a golden dragon's head into battle, Merlin raised an army of people from the old ways (because there's a story that says that he lead rows of stags to avenge himself on his ex-wife, Arthur's father was the Scot Aedan.
Ardrey often says that a source is "believably matter-of-fact" and so there's no reason to suspect that he was making things up. The following is Herodotus: "Then after this, they say, certain Hellenes (but the name of the people they are not able to report) put in to the city of Tyre in Phenicia and carried off the king's daughter Europa;—these would doubtless be Cretans;—and so they were quits for the former injury." Pretty matter-of-fact, wouldn't you say? BUT HE'S TALKING ABOUT EUROPA, EVEN IF HE FILED OFF THE ZEUS STUFF PEOPLE THEN (I mean, clearly 9th century AD Britain is not 5th century BC Greece but they had similar historical ideas) MADE STUFF UP AND WERE MATTER-OF-FACT ABOUT IT.
Oh also the line "Mungo was against gay rights" made me laugh like a madwoman - a. it comes after a long, hell-and-brimstone rant against homosexuality and b. how can you be against something that doesn't exist?
He quotes a piece of dialog from the "Dialog of Merlin and his Sister" as proving that they had seen each other more than once. Why this is important I don't really remember and really don't care; what matters is that this is essentially equivalent to taking something that Diomedes and Odysseus said to each other and running with it as real history.¹
And then there's this passage. "The Iliad would have made more sense if Agamemnon and Achilles had quarreled over strategy...but this would not have pleased Homer's audience, so he introduced Briseis as a love interest and made her the cause of the strife around which the story revolved." Seriously? Seriously? You fail Homeric scholarship. Basically this means that he knows nothing about Homer except maybe that he's glanced through the Iliad once. Although Achilles does say that he likes Briseis, she was never ever the real point of his withdrawal (and Agamemnon's taking of her is a simple power-maneuverer. The point is the loss of time involved in Agamemnon's theft and she could just as well have been a tripod oh god what are you doing?
So anyway, there is a lot of reaching (what am I saying, the whole book's reaching) and a lot of jumping and quite a bit of MAKING NO GODDAMN SENSE.
10 for entertainment, 1 for scholarship? IDK
---
¹ I'm sure someone's done this. If they have, I never want to know about it.
dolique texted me asking about "Finding Merlin," so of course I ran to Firestone and checked it out. Yeah, it's hilarious.
Let me start out by saying that I love the Arthur legend - its complexity, its tragedy, and in the case of Malory, its style. Nonetheless, I feel no need for an historical Arthur, and I think everyone who tries for one is really reaching. Does it really matter if someone who might have been the seed of the legend existed? The only reason we're trying to find "real history" is because of the mythology of Arthur; I'm sure there's plenty of other 6th or 7th century leaders whom we have allowed to languish in the mists of History.
In any case, that's not a concern to Mr. Adam Ardrey, who assumes the existence of a real Arthur and Merlin - with no questioning at all. That's strike one. (Of course, we can pretty much get through an entire ball-game.) I mean, sure, I wouldn't have been convinced even if he had tried to make an argument, but I also would have felt that he was actually making an effort to write for people who weren't as crazy as he.
So yeah. Merlin was a Druid, obviously. And so was his sister Langoureth. And by "Druid" I mean "scientist." People who were not on his side (Christians, especially St. Mungo) were evil and wanted to set the advance of humanity back. (yeah, the Church and Christians are the root of all evil in this.) He pretty much literally says that the death of Merlin (murdered, of course) brings about the Dark Age. (Which had already set in by 600.)
The sentence "Due to the control of Merlin's enemies over the media for more than a thousand years after his death, the defamatory name "Merlin" [according to him it means "mad"] has always been the popular one" pretty much sums up the book; Merlin and his sister are champions of the light of knowledge and sexual freedom, while the Christians, headed by St. Mungo, exist to crush out opposition. This utterly binary opposition is a very big problem (I mean, he has lots, starting with the fact that OH GOD ALL OF YOUR SOURCES ARE FROM AT LEAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER THE FACTS AND THEY DIDN'T HAVE WRITING SO THEY WERE PROBABLY MAKING THINGS UP OH GOD. But I might be slightly closer to taking him seriously if he didn't do the "people who don't agree with me = evil" thing.)
Anyway, the pre-Christian people in England were totally okay with extramarital sex, and Ewan son of Erwegende was gay because there's a story about him dressing as a woman to get to Taneu, Mungo's mother. "Ewen dressed as a woman and had sex with Taneu. That is Ewan dressing as a woman was not a ruse; it was simply something he did." REEEEAAACHINGGGGG
Boring stuff including lots more reaching happens, Ardrey claims that Pendragon was a title (and later that Uther just meant "other") and says that Geoffrey was "desperate" when he says that Uther was called Pendragon because he carried a golden dragon's head into battle, Merlin raised an army of people from the old ways (because there's a story that says that he lead rows of stags to avenge himself on his ex-wife, Arthur's father was the Scot Aedan.
Ardrey often says that a source is "believably matter-of-fact" and so there's no reason to suspect that he was making things up. The following is Herodotus: "Then after this, they say, certain Hellenes (but the name of the people they are not able to report) put in to the city of Tyre in Phenicia and carried off the king's daughter Europa;—these would doubtless be Cretans;—and so they were quits for the former injury." Pretty matter-of-fact, wouldn't you say? BUT HE'S TALKING ABOUT EUROPA, EVEN IF HE FILED OFF THE ZEUS STUFF PEOPLE THEN (I mean, clearly 9th century AD Britain is not 5th century BC Greece but they had similar historical ideas) MADE STUFF UP AND WERE MATTER-OF-FACT ABOUT IT.
Oh also the line "Mungo was against gay rights" made me laugh like a madwoman - a. it comes after a long, hell-and-brimstone rant against homosexuality and b. how can you be against something that doesn't exist?
He quotes a piece of dialog from the "Dialog of Merlin and his Sister" as proving that they had seen each other more than once. Why this is important I don't really remember and really don't care; what matters is that this is essentially equivalent to taking something that Diomedes and Odysseus said to each other and running with it as real history.¹
And then there's this passage. "The Iliad would have made more sense if Agamemnon and Achilles had quarreled over strategy...but this would not have pleased Homer's audience, so he introduced Briseis as a love interest and made her the cause of the strife around which the story revolved." Seriously? Seriously? You fail Homeric scholarship. Basically this means that he knows nothing about Homer except maybe that he's glanced through the Iliad once. Although Achilles does say that he likes Briseis, she was never ever the real point of his withdrawal (and Agamemnon's taking of her is a simple power-maneuverer. The point is the loss of time involved in Agamemnon's theft and she could just as well have been a tripod oh god what are you doing?
So anyway, there is a lot of reaching (what am I saying, the whole book's reaching) and a lot of jumping and quite a bit of MAKING NO GODDAMN SENSE.
10 for entertainment, 1 for scholarship? IDK
---
¹ I'm sure someone's done this. If they have, I never want to know about it.
