Metafiction, Myth and Language: A World in Words (and Pictures)

 Recent tutorial discussions having inspired me to try reciting - performing - some of the Saga , earlier tonight I gave it a go. Four passages, of varying length and dramatic import, were tested out, to see how they might be presented in a live, public-facing environment.  So here follows a short reading of the 'Song of Haeleth of the Dawn's Light', which I think is my favourite 'poem-within-the-poem' if only for its deeply sincere elegaic tone, and the fact it was inspired by a Celtic, rather than Germanic, source - in which an elegy is sung for a brave swordswoman of the Ylfu people, Haeleth. Her vengeful sister, Gwearyffeth, has more than a hint of Gwalchmai (the Welsh prototype of Sir Gawain) about her. Inspired by the 12th Century Welsh bardic song 'The Killing of Hywel ab Owein' (Peryf ap Cedifor, 1170): And now for the beginning of the whole thing...   In classic Old English formulaic fashion, the story begins not with the central character

Looking back over some of the modernist poetry we studied in Semester 1's Humanities class, I've continued to apply more radical visual structures to the poetic text, using words and their placement as a means of enforcing certain feelings or concepts for the reader: for example, during an earlier scene where the main character struggles up the rocky path to her home at a pivotal moment, separating each word describing the journey onto a line, spaced out from the previous, and following, words to suggest a tricky series of steps (compounds and phrases such as 'rock-tripped', 'thorn-pricked', 'branch-beaten' enforcing the difficulty of the climb). And, in the climactic battle - the main emotional thrust of which is not the overall victory of the allies, or the defeat of the tyrant king and queen - but the loss of the main character's best friend, the effect of which reaches its pinnacle in the third page below, signifying almost unbearable isolation a

 A few thoughts (and collected fragments of research) regarding oral, written, and recorded texts and stories… Whilst the printed text of the Gyldlandsaga can best be described as an ‘epic saga’, I decided to deconstruct the meanings of both those descriptive terms (both of which can also be used as nouns). Namely: epic ( derived from) Epos < L. < Gk. epos = “word, song”; stem of eipein = “say” → early unwritten narrative poetry celebrating incidents of heroic tradition. saga < O. Norse (Icelandic) 2. Partly after G. “sage” – mythical story, handed down by oral tradition; historical or heroic legend. (Source: The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 3 rd . ed., BCA, 1988). The interesting connection here is the oral nature, or unwritten aspect of [what has become] the text. The origins of the epic are in song – that which is spoken or sung – and numerous references to songcraft are made throughout the text. Several times, Sigfri recites (or sings) to an audience; a

  The Ylfu – the ‘elves’ of my world – whilst ensconced in their mighty subterranean barrow beneath their ancient city Dofran (the OE name for Dover, complete with ‘steadfast white sea-walls’), are more precisely informed by Welsh culture, especially the bardic tradition, which underlines the poetry recited in the court of Yldfreah (the name which our narrator gives to the Ylf-lord – his name literally ‘Old lord’, which is more of a title really – cf. the Old Norse fertility god, Freyr, and probably one given to him by the narrator as a reference to his own linguistic culture). Hence the very Welsh-derived lament which the Ylfish bard Meloth sings in honour of the leader of Gifli’s expedition: 'The Song of Haeleth of the Dawn’s-Light' ‘Seven we were, and seven we fell, seven in strength, by honour bound now none but names, now none remain, to light the lands of multitudes. For while we stood, we held our ground and seven by seven foes in rage could not bear battle at our shield

    New addition to the ever-growing library arrived yesterday: The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature , primarily for J. D. Niles' often-cited essay Pagan Survivals and Popular Belief, which covers many areas of folklore in the Anglo-Saxon period, although the other contents look to be invaluable in terms of background research, also. One of the most exciting aspects of writing this epic poetic work - and developing its background and narrative themes - is its sheer dynamism and fluidity, where new research, interests and readings have been able to feed directly into its development and suggest new directions, stories, parallels, and reference points, especially those gathered through the Old English Texts  Semster 2 Humanities module. For example: The Ruin directly influenced the ubi sunt nature of the heroes' arrival in the land of the Ylfu, (the elf-like race who have lived in voluntary exile beneath the earth for countless generations), and exposed the illusor

(A change to today's planned post, since for some reason Blogger (Google) has chosen not to allow me to upload any images. Instead, some written reflections upon one of the themes during the main narrative - that of the land itself, not just specifically of the small, mythical nation 'Gyldland' of the title, but of all land everywhere - including ours.) The title of chapter XXIV, ‘The Visitors’, is a deliberate ploy: at first, as it is presented, a trio of hostile animal and bird-headed spirit-beings announce themselves to King Hodar’s camp at night in a blaze of baneful light, bearing dire warnings. Yet as the chapter concludes, it is clear who the real ‘visitors’ truly are – the heroes themselves, and by extension all sentient races, who have merely ‘lease’ upon the land which has been defended and guarded by these nature spirits ‘since day first dawned’. The lives of kings and heroes are temporal – the land is eternal, and so its guardians. While rather unfairly picking

What's this all about? Basically, the documentation of my 2021 final project for my MFAAH Master's degree. “Myth is a type of speech” (R. Barthes, 'Myth Today' in Mythologies ). If my work has a narrative, then it is one of narrative itself – sometimes multiple narratives, sometimes competing, unreliable, questioning, contradictory, and ambiguous. At times, meta-narratives; stories within stories, inside re-tellings of tales perhaps familiar or else new. And one of my most cherished kinds of ambiguous narrative is myth. Myth, as an oral body of knowledge initially, is therefore speech. And in written form, embedded, it is capable of being analysed, quoted, paraphrased, interpreted, mis-interpreted, bastardized and corrupted. The language I use to disclose my myth-makings are related, though separate; at once distant and unknowable, yet simultaneously tangible and everyday: English, and its antecedent, Old English – in which copious amounts of our modern English (and Sco