Thanks to Lisa, I’ve been apprised of a ‘lovely tantalizing bit’ of woman-on-woman sexuality. It’s from the tale of Niall Frossach (a king in the mid-eighth century, High King from 763 CE), from the Book of Leinster, folio 273b-274a, lines 35670-35711 (Vol. 5, p. 1202). Also, apparently, in Liber Flavus Fergusiorum and a late version […]
Read more "Playful mating with another woman"I’ve been reading Beowulf again, this time Crossley-Holland’s translation. I’m struck by its similarity to episodic television drama. (Radio drama too, of course, but apart from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, radio serials were before my time.) For example, halfway through, around line 1270, we get a recap, a Previously on Beowulf the Grendel Slayer […]
Read more "retconning beowulf"I’ve just found this (thanks to Lisa Gold, researcher extraordinaire): http://www.intute.ac.uk/ Intute is an annotated collection of web resources for education and research, created by a network of UK universities. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites and write detailed descriptions. This site contains over 120,000 resources in the arts and humanities, health and life […]
Read more "wonderful research resource"Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum is holding an exhibition, “Anglo-Saxon Art in the Round.” For all of us who can’t actually get there, here’s an audiovisual introduction to the show. http://mediaplayer.group.cam.ac.uk/components/com_mediadb/ASSETS/mediaplayer-3-15/mediaplayer.swf I think it would be marvellous to hold something like this in one’s hand. One of my most treasured possessions is a string of 73 Roman […]
Read more "anglo-saxon in the round"I just got the latest edition of British Archaeology, which is stuffed with wonderful articles on Hadrian, Hadrian’s Wall, and the Antonine Wall. I was also thrilled to find a free DVD in the magazine, short films of Roman frontiers from all around the world–then crushed when I found it wouldn’t play in my whatever-this-region-is […]
Read more "Hadrian: his show, his wall, his boyfriend"Hild is still prepubescent, but I’m already turning my research attention to sexuality. (In writing terms, I need to have facts about four years ahead of character and plot development so my unconscious brain can be knitting things together without having to worry about taking things to places my conscious brain later finds impossible.) So […]
Read more "The Beautiful Sin"
Gemæcce 