Canterbury Tales
-
On 17 April 1387, as part of the annual St George’s Day festivities, it was before the court of Richard II that Chaucer first performed his masterpiece, the Canterbury Tales. It was clear even then that he’d produced a very important work, but it’s only today that we appreciate it to the full—and are still…
-
We all know that pinpointing Easter in the medieval period is awkward – well, it’s awkward in any period, come to that. I want to know exactly when Easter Day fell in 1394. But do all the clever-clogs sites agree? Nope. They say they give you the correct date, but one of them had moved…
-
“….During his life and in the years following his death, Pedro [I of Castile, 1350 to 1369] became a central figure in a wide range of historical narratives composed in Castilian, French, English, Catalan, Latin, and Arabic. These accounts present contrasting depictions of Pedro; however, as it is well known, the lasting image of…
-
There is something that has always puzzled me about Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: if there were up to thirty pilgrims (which is what’s reckoned) how on earth could one of them (at a time)tell a tale that the other twenty-nine could hear? In the text Chaucer has his pilgrims point out places they’re passing, so it…
-
Rightly or wrongly, when someone has had a shock, it’s often the impulse of those around him/her to offer a “stiff drink”. This usually means spirits, although I admit that in Britain a cup of tea is as likely “to do the trick”! The spirits thing appears in novels and films, and is well…
-
Long before Gourmet Magazine went out of business in 2009, collapsed under too many overwrought articles on bovine emissions, it had been an intellectual colossus in the culinary world. From the 1940s through the ’60s, it featured lush travel articles on world cuisine venturing into far-flung places such as Persia, Bhutan (“a taste of Shangri-La!”)…
-
Well, I confess I only know a few of these, and am disappointed that one of my personal favourites, Kingdom of Heaven, doesn’t make this list.
-
Today in 1495, Jasper “Tudor”, Earl of Bedford died …
-
It is always a pleasure to visit the sumptuous J. Pierpont Morgan Museum and Library located in the Murray Hill section of New York City. Built in 1906, designed by the esteemed architectural firm of McKim, Meade and White, it is breathtakingly beautiful as well as a unique source of medieval riches, housing one of the smallest…
-
The topic of pilgrimages recently came up & I thought to write about the history of & recent resurgence of one of the most popular pilgrimages in the Middle Ages, the Camino de Santiago. There are many different routes leading to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, but the most popular is the one almost…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 