Thanks for sharing the Sayers/Lewis exchange. I have always felt that the unhealthy preoccupation with Lancelot and Guinevere is why there's no really great contemporary story about Arthur. Infidelity is rife in media (and I guess real life) - are we really supposed to buy that it caused the whole near-utopia of Arthurian Britain to implode? Bah! I remember reading that you were working on an Arthurian story a few years ago, and am glad to see it's release is imminent. I'm gonna go preorder it now!
When do we see the rise of a sophisticated tradition of representing leadership in fiction? What kind of society offers an audience hungry for that kind of story? How does the tragic tradition of heroic poetry oppose the kind of narrative trajectory we might otherwise look for in Arthurian stories now? Thanks for the provocative post, Lev.
Thanks for sharing the Sayers/Lewis exchange. I have always felt that the unhealthy preoccupation with Lancelot and Guinevere is why there's no really great contemporary story about Arthur. Infidelity is rife in media (and I guess real life) - are we really supposed to buy that it caused the whole near-utopia of Arthurian Britain to implode? Bah! I remember reading that you were working on an Arthurian story a few years ago, and am glad to see it's release is imminent. I'm gonna go preorder it now!
I share your impatience with the Lancelot/Guinevere storyline! It's not interesting anymore. In the book I give it a good hard twist.
When do we see the rise of a sophisticated tradition of representing leadership in fiction? What kind of society offers an audience hungry for that kind of story? How does the tragic tradition of heroic poetry oppose the kind of narrative trajectory we might otherwise look for in Arthurian stories now? Thanks for the provocative post, Lev.