If you arrived at a crossroads, would you take the right or the left fork? We are faced every day of our lives with choosing a path. Once our decision takes us onward, we cannot return. The past that once was--and the path we might have chosen instead--grows more and more distant with each 'Y' …
Tag: Elizabethan era
5 Reasons Why Christopher Marlowe is an Elizabethan Hipster Poet
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 …
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Love & Sleep by John Crowley
The sequel to John Crowley's Aegypt (The Solitudes), Love & Sleep continues the story of Pierce Moffet's quest to write his history of histories, a book that in which he will propose that there is more than one history of the world. He must decide what to do with the posthumous, unfinished manuscript of historical …
Ember Nights in Guy Gavriel Kay and John Crowley
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 …
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Aegypt: The Solitudes by John Crowley
Pierce Moffet wants to find a compelling book idea for a nonfiction history book. He discovers that the reason we think gypsies can tell fortunes is not because they came from Egypt (or even India for that matter), but because our ancestors thought gypsies came from Aegypt, a dream-Egypt sprung from the European imagination. In …
Was the Renaissance “Swerve” a historical fantasy?
In the novel I am presently reading, Aegypt: The Solitudes by John Crowley, the main character, a historian academic named Pierce Moffet, comes across the realization that "there is more than one history of the world." Furthermore, the "world is not the same as it once was." This radical change in human history supposedly occurred …
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The Year’s Best Fantasy, eds. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
It's like fantasy tapas, or if you prefer, a buffet: fantasy short stories contain all the excitement and inspiration of a novel, in a way that requires less commitment. Instead of reading a five-course fantasy series of 900+ pages, you can hunker down for a 10- or 20-page adventure. And while you're at it, eat …
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7 Ways in which Saruman is like John Dee
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 …
King Arthur Conqueror of the Arctic? Historical Fantasy and Early British Imperialism
John Dee was Queen Elizabeth I's court astrologer, mathematician, and geographer--and he might have become the first lord of the North American territory we now call Canada. Dee is known as a "Renaissance man" for the breadth of his knowledge and for his tendency towards the occult. On a trip to the Continent, he supposedly …
Top 10 Things I Learned While Studying English Literature at McGill University
Is it even possible to canonize all the things I have learned in my three and a half years studying literature at Canada's best university to 10 items? I believe my critics will be able to deconstruct the bejesus out of this list. They'd probably base their argument on how I privilege my subjectivity over …
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Matthew Rettino 