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
Use the following links to download the PowerPoint for my presentation "Fantasies of History: Guy Gavriel Kay's Synthesis of the Historical Fantasy Novel" at MythCon 2014. I presented at 5:00 pm Sunday, August 1oth at Wheaton College, Norton, MA. Fantasies of History Presentation PDF Fantasies of History Presentation PPT Fantasies of History Presentation PPSX Fantasies …
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
You may know Guy Gavriel Kay as a historical fantasy novelist, author of River of Stars, a book that continues to be nominated for various awards. But did you know that he is also a poet? Beyond this Dark House is that obscure volume of poetry you might have remembered seeing just before the title …
"Tigana, let my memory of you be like a blade in my soul." -Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana . Alessan's mantra for his beleaguered nation, erased from history by the tyrant sorcerer Brandin of Ygrath, forms a central node in the theme of exile and memory in Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana. A novel set in the …
Continue reading Machiavelli and the Problem of Memory in Tigana
When Guy Gavriel Kay wrote his byzantine historical fantasy Sailing to Sarantium, he was stealing a title from a famous poem by William Butler Yeats: “Sailing to Byzantium.” After reading the novel last June, I took a close look at Yeats' poem to search for the items that might be said to have inspired Kay's …
Continue reading How did Yeats inspire Sailing to Sarantium?
“War begets war. Destruction begets destruction. On earth, a century ago, in the year 2020, they outlawed our books.” -Edgar Allen Poe, in Ray Bradbury's “The Exiles.” Edgar Allan Poe fights rocket men on a Mars mission to annihilate everything fantastic or non-realistic, in Ray Bradbury's short story “The Exiles.” Bradbury's short story stands with …
After the disaster of Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland continued to repress the rebellion, to put it lightly. Really, he opened the way up for genocide. Having captured Lord George Murray's orders to the Jacobites, which had been issued the day before the battle, he supposedly found a line that revealed the Jacobites were to …
Continue reading The Battle of Culloden Part. 3: The Bonnie Prince Escapes!
The Build-Up to my Honours Thesis I was in my second year at McGill University, struggling to find a mentor for my Honours thesis in English literature. I'm in an advanced program, and I needed it to graduate and to develop my own critical voice. Oh, the ambition! My mission was to write on fantasy …
Continue reading History as Fantasy: My Honours Thesis on Guy Gavriel Kay Summarized
Matthew Rettino 