Elizabethan England's most celebrated poet and playwright, in underground kind of way, was Christopher Marlowe, although he was soon eclipsed by Mr. Will Shakespeare, whose popular plays would define the mainstream for centuries to come. It was the 90s. The 1590s to be precise. Marlowe was at the height of his powers, writing the politically …
Continue reading 5 Reasons Why Christopher Marlowe is an Elizabethan Hipster Poet
Embedding myself in the novels and poetry of Michael Ondaatje this semester in an MA seminar taught by Prof. Robert Lecker, I could not help but notice the similarity between the thematic/artistic concerns of the author of The English Patient and Guy Gavriel Kay. Both are great writers and both are Canadian. Upon first glance, …
Continue reading 6 Similarities between Guy Gavriel Kay and Michael Ondaatje
Old Norse heroism seems to be in vogue these days, given the popularity of Thor and the film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, which is steeped in Norse mythology. Furthermore, the classic literature of the North has been gaining academic readerships ever since the publication of the Penguin collection The Sagas of Icelanders in …
I’m participating in the Battle of Five Blogs in celebration of the release of the third Hobbit movie.
Or thereabouts. A very serious sounding business, isn’t it?
Well, we have fewer enemies and more allies than Peter Jackson’s crowd. We also have fewer extras and less CGI–though some of us may CGI a little for dates on the weekend.
But we are each of us bloggers who think and write about J.R.R. Tolkien and other Hobbitish topics. We are individually excited about the release of The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, and some of us have been blogging and tweeting all things Hobbit for a few days now. Now it’s time to go head to head (to head, to head, etc.).
There are six of us in this Battle of 5 Blogs. Don’t worry: this will be less confusing that about 1/3 of the film. Here are the bloggers (see the bios and twitter handles below):
Sørina Higgins of The Oddest Inkling
Crystal Hurd of CrystalHurd.com
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Before jazz became what it is today, before it was mainstream, Buddy Bolden blew his cornet in the streets of New Orleans. No recording of his music survives. A famous musician in his time, his genius and the threat of vanishing into silence tormented him. The quest Michael Ondaatje undertook in 1976 to discover the …
Continue reading Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
In Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana and John Crowley's Love and Sleep,part of his Aegypt sequence, characters born with cauls are summoned in the middle of the night to walk among the dead. Kay calls these individuals Night Walkers. Their story stretches back to real-world superstitions about children born with a membrane around their heads. This …
Continue reading Ember Nights in Guy Gavriel Kay and John Crowley
I counted it a significant turn of good fortune that I had just finished reading Rawi Hage's novel Cockroach when it almost won this year's Canada Reads competition (Joseph Boyden's The Orenda took first prize). It took me 5 years to get around to reading it. Nonetheless, this author—whose book I am reviewing Friday—has had …
Happy New Year to all my followers! Today, I continue my series on J.R.R. Tolkien with a tribute to Tree and Leaf, one of his lesser known works--a book that contains an implicit New Year's message. . What's your New Year's resolution? Chances are, if you've made one at all, you've made a decision regarding …
Continue reading Turn over a New “Tree and Leaf” this New Year with J.R.R. Tolkien!
I hope you all had a merry Christmas. Now, while you're still warm with Christmas feeling (perhaps you are snug by the fire with a cup of hot cocoa, or a drink of rum and eggnog, experiencing a similar but not altogether identical feeling of warmth) let me take you down to Memory Lane to …
Continue reading 13 Things I Learned Writing My First Novel: Battles of Rofp
The Vinciolo Journal turns 1 year old January 5th, two days after J.R.R. Tolkien's Birthday, so in celebration of both events, I am making a series of Tolkien-related posts. This is the first of several ... 7 ways Saruman resembles Queen Elizabeth's court astrologer and geographer John Dee. . In comparing these two figures (the …
Matthew Rettino 