“Perfume came naturally from Paris…”

Open Letters, which bills itself as “a monthly arts and literature review,” is a good read, but it’s turning out to be of particular interest to the medieval-minded. Not only are they serializing Adam Golaski’s quirky translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and running a blog review of Runemarks, a novel for teens about what happens after Ragnarok, but the latest issue also includes an appreciation of Gregory, the 6th-century bishop of Tours, and his monumental History of the Franks.

Advising against modern smugness when evaluating the beliefs and behavior of medieval people, Steve Donoghue laments Gregory’s present obscurity:

In the past two hundred years, he’s had some half-dozen competent translators and many talented annotators. But he isn’t read anymore by the general public that was in his own day very much his target audience, and this is a shame. The darkness is still there, howling just out of reach, and faith is still a prickly, dangerous undertaking, and lavatories are still perilous places. We proceed now without one of our readier guides, at a time when every saint is needed.

Donoghue makes an enthusiastic argument for Gregory’s modern relevance, drawing an iffy contrast between Christian piety and medieval storytelling but rightly pointing out that one of the enduring appeals of the History is its author’s penchant for the memorable anecdote:

We should be grateful Gregory isn’t so pious that he can resist a good story — his History teems with them, most presented with a slightly wry bemusement that fits as naturally in our cynical age as it did in his more naïve one, that is, in fact, evergreen.

When we studied Gregory of Tours in grad school, my classmates and I had a great time comparing our favorite lurid incidents from Merovingian history. Donoghue’s article prompted me to mosey over to my bookshelf, grab my own shabby copy of Gregory, and find this episode on one of several earmarked pages:

Rigunth, Chilperic’s daughter, was always attacking her mother (Fredegund), and saying that she herself was the real mistress, whereas her mother ought to revert to her original rank of serving-woman. She would often insult her mother to her face, and they frequently exchanged slaps and punches.

“Why do you hate me so, daughter?” Fredegund asked her one day. “You can take all your father’s things which are still in my possession, and do what you like with them.”

She led the way into a strong-room and opened a chest which was full of jewels and precious ornaments.

For a long time she kept taking out one thing after another, and handing them to her daughter, who stood beside her. Then she suddenly said: “I’m tired of doing this. Put your own hand in and take whatever you find.”

Rigunth was stretching her arm into the chest to take out some more things, when her mother suddenly seized the lid and slammed it down on her neck. She leant on it with all her might and the edge of the chest pressed so hard against the girl’s throat that her eyes were soon standing out of her head. One of the servant-girls who was in the room screamed at the top of her voice: “Quick! Quick! Mistress is being choked to death by her mother!” The attendants who had been waiting outside for them to emerge burst into the strong-room, rescued the princess from almost certain death and dragged her out of doors.

The quarrels between the two were even more frequent after this. There were never-ending outbursts of temper and even fisticuffs. The main cause was Rigunth’s habit of sleeping with all and sundry.

That’s good stuff; outside of the sagas, medieval prose rarely offers a lovelier combination of trenchant observation, casual internecine violence, and deadpan Germanic delivery.

I don’t know if I agree with Donoghue’s claim that modern people are that much more lost for being unfamiliar with Gregory of Tours, but I do know that Gregory is a master of the sensational anecdote, the sort of episode that gets modern students thinking about the difference between behaviors that are typically medieval and traits that are universally human. For that, I’d count Gregory useful even if the old bishop hadn’t already taught me the most valuable life lesson of all: when a Merovingian matriarch offers you jewelry, don’t think twice; run.

“Put our product to the test, you’ll feel just fine…”

Miles O’Keeffe, his helmet of hair, and so many wasted thespians—that, in brief, is Sword of the Valiant. I wrote about this cinematic disaster back in February, when I revisited the movie and found it almost endearing: bad, yes, but usefully inscrutable.

But did you know that Sword of the Valiant was actually a remake? Yes: the 1984 travesty was a remake of a 1973 film written and directed by the same deluded people; it even starred some of the same unfortunate actors. For 35 years, the original movie roiled in the purifying fires of cinematic limbo—until something, probably the recent bestselling success of Simon Armitage’s translation of the original poem, prompted an ill-advised DVD reissue.

So the DVD came out two weeks ago, and Fortune did as Fortune does. For one thing, the Amazon product description mistakenly draws on the listing for a Gawain-related documentary. Worse, though, is the fact that—well, I’ll let the fresh list of one-star reviews tell you the rest of it:

I received this DVD from Amazon, the packaging and DVD label say Sir Gawain but the DVD itself is called “Pike Fishing in Winter” and features two guys pike fishing somewhere in England. At first I thought it was a joke, but pike fishing is all you get.

Firstly, having ordered this DVD I discover it isn’t the film advertised, but a 70 minute documentary. Secondly, when I put the documentary in to play, I get ‘Winter Pike Fishing with Mick Brown and Des Taylor’ …

I didn’t open it to play it, so I don’t know about the fishing others have mentioned, but the CD packaging itself indicates it is a documentary…

Not the 1973 Robert Hardy film. Mislabeled and mismarketed prior to release. I haven’t played it yet, so I don’t know if I got the pike fishing too.

In the words of Sir Gawain himself: “Oops.”

On the off chance any of those disappointed reviewers are still eager for a Gawain video fix, they should check out YouTube. They’ll find numerous versions of the romance, including: an award-winning Irish cartoon with a remarkable stained-glass sensibility (part one; part two; part three); a 1994 live-action mangling with a Green Knight right out of the original Star Trek (part one; part two; part three; part four); and—mirabile visu—an adaptation for paper-bag puppets.

All of the above are better than Sword of the Valiant—although mind you, I can’t promise that they’re any more satisfying than “Pike Fishing in Winter.”

“Plastic tubes and pots and pans, bits and pieces…”

The weekend is here, and hopefully yours will be sunny. If, however, you’re stuck indoors, enjoy these bits and pieces, which will edify and amuse.

Scott Nokes offers a primer on the impact of the printing press.

Steven Hart finds a dollop of wisdom in the memoirs of Martin Amis.

Kevin Holtsberry reviews The Voyage of the Short Serpent and finds it wanting.

Michael Livingston contemplates the ex-squirrel in his attic.

Frank Wilson suggests that T.S. Eliot might have enjoyed Cats.

Also via Frank, Buce spots Edith Wharton—yes, Edith Wharton—in an anthology of erotica.

At Old English in New York, Mary Kate offers a lovely excerpt from her translation of “The Wanderer.”

Brandon Hawk explains the Anglo-Saxon name “Wulfstan.”

“Silver people on the shoreline, let us be…”

O tacky Arthuriana, where would be without thee? Someone needs to tell NBC to return the sword to its stone and back away slowly. Rue this news from Variety:

NBC has acquired a series take on the Camelot legend called “Merlin” that will anchor the net’s winter Sunday sked at 8 p.m. FremantleMedia is distributing the series, which was produced by Elisabeth Murdoch’s Shine Group for the BBC. Shine recently acquired the Silverman-founded Reveille production outfit.

Cast of “Merlin” includes Anthony Head (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”). Skein just began production for the BBC, which plans to air it in the fall.

I may not be able to recall all of my Latin paradigms, or the year of the Battle of Lepanto, or what I had for breakfast this morning, but I do remember that American network TV has already limped down this benighted road.

Behold: “Mr. Merlin,” the 1981 series in which the famous wizard runs a garage under a false identity in San Francisco while taking an awkward teenage boy under his wing. (This same concept would be updated and relaunched two decades later under a new title: “To Catch a Predator” with Chris Hansen.)

You can see the pain-inducing promo for “Mr. Merlin” here and the opening credits here; fast-forward to the 8:19 mark.

Every few years, you can count on American television to dabble in this sort of half-hearted, quasi-medieval schlock. While you’re over at YouTube, don’t miss the opening credits for “Wizards and Warriors,” the 1983 series starring Jeff “Celebrity Rehab” Conaway and co-starring his hair, which is feathered like the plume of a mighty falcon. Or, if you can stand it, take another look at “Covington Cross,” the show you adored in 1992 if the Skye in your world was always the color of Ione. Then ponder “Merlin,” and despair…

“…when streams are ripe and swelled with rain.”

Each April, references to two poems burst forth like emerald weeds. The month begins with allusions to the opening lines of The Canterbury Tales, and I never mind reminders of Chaucer; but by mid-month, by tax day, even half-literate news anchors will have made eye-rolling references to The Waste Land as well. Yes, yes, April is “the cruelest month.” So we’ve heard. As April-themed allusions go, are these really the best we can do?

Although she’s not easily reduced to quotations and sound bites, let’s turn, this April, to Dame Edith Sitwell, the largely forgotten writer of the heaviest light verse in the world. If you’re familiar with Sitwell, you’ve probably read (or heard) her poem “Waltz,” an evocative ditty about fashion-fickle nymphs and other denizens of pseudo-pastorale:

The Amazons wear balzarine of jonquille
Beside the blond lace of a deep-falling rill;
Through glades like a nun
They run from and shun
The enormous and gold-rayed rustling sun;
And the nymphs of the fountains
Descend from the mountains
Like elegant willows
On their deep barouche pillows
In cashmere Alvandar, barège Isabelle,
Like bells of bright water from clearest wood-well.

If you’re looking at those lines and thinking “What?”, your reaction is understandable—but take a minute, read the poem aloud, or maybe listen to it echo in your head, before you decide you don’t like it. Most poets are highly conscious of diction, but Sitwell was the rare poet who obsessively focused on sound, rhythm, and onomatopoeia almost entirely at the expense of concreteness and clarity. With the typical Sitwell poem, how it sounds is often what it’s about.

That’s why it’s a particular pleasure to discover, among Sitwell’s late works, a poem called “The April Rain,” in which she uses her distinctive style and abstruse allusions not simply to please the ear, but also to evoke springtime and the innocence of young love.

“Such is our world, my love,” declares a boy to a girl, “[a] bright swift raindrop falling”:

The sapphire dews sing like a star; bird-breasted dew
Lies like a bird and flies

In the singing wood and is blown by the bright air
Upon your wood-wild April-soft long hair
That seems the rising of spring constellations—
Aldebaran, Procyon, Sirius,
And Cygnus who gave you all his bright swan-plumage…

As she develops the symbolism of the raindrops, Sitwell falls back on the wistfulness so typical of her lifelong work:

Such are the wisdoms of the world—Heraclitus
Who fell a-weeping, and Democritus
Who fell a-laughing, Pyrrho, who arose
From Nothing and ended in believing Nothing—fools,
And falling soon:
Only the April rain, my dear,
Only the April rain!

That fool-begotten wise despair
Dies like the raindrop on the leaf—
Fading like young joy, old grief,
And soon is gone—

Forgot by the brightness of the air;
But still are your lips the warm heart of all springs,
And all the lost Aprils of the world shine in your hair.

I doubt Sitwell’s closing lines will join the ranks of quotable April verses, but “The April Rain” is a charming poem nonetheless—a reminder that when we discuss the month in poems, it ought to be known as much for its sounds as for its more obvious scents.

“If you’re in the swing, money ain’t everything…”

Blog, and you open yourself to charges of unseriousness; blog frequently, and your prejudice shines before all. Because we Americans tend to cite each other’s work and link to each other’s blogs, I worry that casual readers and newcomers to the field will wrongly assume that writing about the Middle Ages is a purely American phenomenon.

In the interest of combating such base parochialism, here are some notable accomplishments in medievalism by non-Americans, all of whom deserve credit for insights that no American could approximate.

The French uncover new evidence for Carolingian education of women.

Canadian scholars reconstruct a medieval village.

A Latin teacher from England explores a connection between Glastonbury and Canute.

Some lads from the West Midlands explore the history of Eastnor Castle.

A Swiss scholar expands our understanding of vampire legends.

The descendant of a Roman historian dramatizes pagan backsliding in the Middle Ages.

A Swede elucidates questions 50 through 64 of the first part of the Summa Theologica.

“Go right to the source and ask the horse…”

In Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale,” a knight enters the court of Genghis Khan upon a steed of brass, one of several gifts from “the kyng of Arabe and of Inde”:

This steede of bras, that esily and weel
Kan in the space of o day natureel—
This is to seyn, in foure and twenty houres—
Wher-so yow lyst, in droghte or elles shoures,
Beren youre body into every place
To which youre herte wilneth for to pace,
Withouten wem of yow, thurgh foul or fair;
Or, if yow lyst to fleen as hye in the air
As dooth an egle whan hym list to soore,
This same steede shal bere yow evere moore,
Withouten harm, til ye be ther yow leste,
Though that ye slepen on his bak or reste,
And turne ayeyn with writhyng of a pyn.
He that it wroghte koude ful many a gyn.

At the Tartar court, they’re amazed! Confused! Dazed! Bemused!

Swich wondryng was ther on this hors of bras
That syn the grete sege of Troie was,
Theras men wondreden on an hors also,
Ne was ther swich a wondryng as was tho.
But fynally the kyng axeth this knyght
The vertu of this courser and the myght,
And preyde hym to telle his governaunce.
This hors anoon bigan to trippe and daunce,
Whan that this knyght leyde hand upon his reyne,
And seyde, “Sire, ther is namoore to seyne…”

Yes, you read that right: not only can the brass horse fly, it can also dance.

So why am I all hung up on the dancing brass horse? Because it was one of the first things I thought of when I watched this video of the “Big Dog” from Boston Dynamics.

Of course, Chaucer’s lusty bacheler describes a steed of endless wonders: if you turn a key inside its ear, the horse becomes invisible, too. So when Boston Dynamics releases another, more perplexing video claiming to be showing off its stealth robot horse, you shouldn’t be surprised—even if Chaucer might have been. Life, were it by aventure, or sort, or cas, imitates The Canterbury Tales.

“It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few…”

Want to be a writer? Want to be a better writer? At the end of a busy week, here are some useful posts by authors, agents, editors, and critics—perfect reading for a quiet, sunny weekend.

Noting that American writers tend to eschew the adverb, Kevin Wignall ponders a famous passage in which adverbs get things done.

New York Times readers debate the seven deadly words of book reviewing.

Kevin Holtsberry proposes Small Book Appreciation Week.

Richard S. Wheeler builds characters out of beliefs.

BookEnds readers point out books they’ve judged by their covers.

Steven Hart highlights vital advice for novice authors.

Leslie Pietrzyk identifies her best posts about the writing process.

Meg Gardiner summarizes “a few things that make writing ring false.”

“He koude rooste, and sethe, and broille, and frye…”

Here at the “Quid Plura?” household, it’s beginning to smell a lot like Easter. The cucumbers are sliced, salted, and sweating their immersion in sour cream and dill. The pierogies wait to wallow in bacon fat and onions, the carrots soon will be bobbing in sos beszamelowy, and the green beans are destined to encounter a honey-and-almonds concoction I haven’t quite invented yet. Kielbasa in sweetened beer sauce shall serve as a snack. Lo, I see the line of my people back to the beginning, clawing frantically for defibrillators…

Anyway, what better time to pause from epicurean giddiness and give you an update on Charlemagne in the news?

Looks like activists plan to disrupt the awarding of the Charlemagne Prize to Angela Merkel at Aachen on May 1. I can’t recall similar recent disruptions of the ceremony, but I’m amused by their call to “reject Charlemagne as symbol of Europe.” In many ways, the EU already did that.

Speaking of the EU, they’ve announced the national winners of the Charlemagne Youth Prize. I like the title of the Czech project: “Together we conquer the world.”

News flash: John McCain is not a descendant of Charlemagne. (News flash: Neither am I. Can I have worldwide press coverage too?)

If you live in Maryland, you can now buy a collectible doll of Charlemagne’s daughter Gisela; the doll accompanies a series of books for young girls about medieval life.

Charlemagne’s name also popped up recently in stories about condom sales in Fulda and Macedonian independence, as well as in a Washington City Paper article about, er, our local lost tribe of Israel.

Dziękuję, Google News—bock bock!

The tap-tap-tapping of the typewriter pays…”

For the past 16 months, I’ve relentlessly hawked my own book—which, in case you hadn’t heard, is now available in a compact, affordable paperback and even a Kindle edition—but as I glance over at my blogroll, I see an impressive roster of authors, novelists, and scholars whose productivity I admire and whose work deserves attention and praise.

Michael Drout at Wormtalk and Slugspeak is the author of How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Cultural Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century, an intriguing study of the Benedictine Reform. He also edited The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, to which a certain D.C.-based blogger contributed the first and last word on Tolkien and postage stamps.

Alexis Fajardo, the cartoonist who created the all-ages comic Kid Beowulf, has an online shop full of goodies, including Book One of Kid Beowulf, a preview of Kid Beowulf and the Song of Roland, and an anthology of mythological action tales.

Matthew Gabriele at Modern Medieval is the editor of the forthcoming The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade, a collection of articles I am rather eager to read.

My Garden State broheim Steven Hart is the author of The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America’s First Superhighway. He also wrote a much-needed piece debunking the hallowed George Lucas-Joseph Campbell connection.

Michael Livingston, who teaches medieval lit at The Citadel, is a prolific writer of short stories. He also edited John Gower’s In Praise of Peace and The Siege of Jerusalem for the invaluable TEAMS Middle English Texts series. (His intro to The Siege of Jerusalem is an enlightening primer on a highly unpleasant medieval poem.)

The very busy C.M. Mayo, who divides her time between D.C. and Mexico, has written a traveler’s guide to literary Mexico, an award-winning story collection, and a forthcoming novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire.

My pal Scott Nokes at Unlocked Wordhoard co-edited Global Perspectives on Medieval English Literature, Language, and Culture, a new collection of articles about such wide-ranging subjects as Chaucer, Narnia, and the Popol Vuh.

Last fall, I met Work-in-Progress blogger Leslie Pietrzyk at a fundraiser in Virginia. She’s the author of two lovely novels, A Year and a Day and Pears on a Willow Tree. (The latter, which focuses on several generations of Polish-American women, recently won the Jeff’s Mom Seal of Approval, an honor not lightly bestowed.)

Alan Sullivan, the poetic helmsman of Seablogger, co-translated a strong and highly readable version of Beowulf for Longman.

The authors at Contemporary Nomad have more books to their credit than I can list, but I particularly recommend the haunting series of Eastern European spy novels by Olen Steinhauer, who writes literary fiction disguised as genre fiction.

I hope you’ll decide to learn more about these hard-working writers; please support their efforts by purchasing some of their books.