Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

Yesterday I was just browsing some stuff on the web and I Stumbled across a blurb about the death of Frank Frazetta. Wow, How did I miss that? He passed away two months ago. (May 10, 2010). I was shocked at his passing but also shocked that I didn’t know about it.

 Well, this morning I was out for a run and thinking about the website and work and what I was going to do today. My thoughts returned to Frazetta and that old Don McLean song just popped right into my head. You know, American Pie. One of the critical lines in the song is “The Day the Music Died” and it occurred to me that the day Frazetta died is the day the Colors died. Pretty much as simple as that.

His work breathed a certain life into the writing of many famous authors including the Conan series by Robert E. Howard.

You see, the genre of epic fantasy is a simple one. You take a man and set him against tremendous odds. Then see if he has the metal to overcome everything. That pretty much sums it up and Frazetta did the same thing with his paintings. The compositions were simple, usually 1 character and one beast, and the tension was palpable. How will our hero fare in this situation was the question being asked. He created wonderful visual representations of what the books were all about.

 I decided to do a little tribute to him for my fantasy guide website and while looking up his paintings and book covers I was shocked to discover how many of them I owned. I wonder how much of my reading in the genre was influenced by his covers. Evidently a lot. And I wasn’t the only one. He did the cover for a Robert E. Howard book called “Conan the Adventurer”. That book went on to sell ten million copies which in the late 60’s was an unheard of success. It could be considered the “Twilight” of the sixties.

 Frank Frazetta - Movie Poster - 11 x 17

I have posted a new article and a new Guide on my fantasy guide website.

Fantasy is definitely my favorite genre and I have written a couple of new articles about it. The first article is about the sub genre of Swords and Sorcery which is of course the domain of Conan (which pretty much how it got its start) You can learn more about the early years of S & S here: About Swords & Sorcery

And, I have written a guide explaining how the whole genre of fantasy got it’s start. I show you the very first works and then go on to show you how the genre changed over its first hundred years. There are a lot of remarkable books that came out of these early years and if you are a fan of fantasy they should be in your collection. You have probably heard of some of them but you might be surprised by others. The Guide to the birth of and early years of Modern Fantasy.

This Guide to the beginnings of fantasy is part 1 of a series of 3 which are the early years, middle years and modern years.  the early years range from the first official entry in the genre ( 1872) to the publication of The Hobbit in 1937. The middle years range from the Hobbit in 1937 to Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Shannara in 1977. The Modern years are from 1977 to the present.

I have been researching some new medieval stuff (reading through some books) for my latest series of articles and I have run across some interesting and fun facts about medieval life. Thought I would share them with you. Some of this stuff is really amazing. it is really something to peek into the actual lives of people during the Middle Ages.

Medieval Crafts

You have probably well familiar with some of the medieval crafts of the middle ages like the StoneMason, Blacksmith, Armorer, Miller etc but I have turned up some very interesting lesser known, but no less interesting, crafts. here is a list of some of them:

• A Cooper - This is the profession of Barrel Maker
• A Cartwright - Cart Maker
• Hayward or HedgeWarder - HIs duty was to inspect the fences and hedges around the meadows or gardens. And, A blast from teh Haywards horn signals the beginning of mowing or reaping.
• Bailiff - Was hired by the lord to be his general overseer
• Reeve - Was elected by the Peasants to be their representative
• Brewer - Would make various alcoholic beverages, He would hang a green branch over his door which would signify that the brew was ready.  I read an interesting anecdote about a brewer who made a bad batch of brew and was punished for it. They made him drink some of his brew and they poured the rest over his head. This is an official case. I wonder if the bailiff was involved in that.

Some very interesting books:

• Treatise on Manners and Domestic Economy  For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School (Project Gutenburg has this work for free download)
• The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry: Compiled for the Instruction of His Daughters (1370)
• Ordinances of Chivalry written by the Knight Hugh de Tabarie in the 12th Century
• Medieval People by Eileen Power ( Medieval people by Eileen Power )
• Life on the English Manor: A study of Peasants Conditions  by HS Bennett ( Life on the English Manor: A Study of Peasant Conditions 1150-1400 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Series)   )
• The Art of War in the Middle Ages AD 378 to 1515 by CWC Omen ( The Art of War in the Middle Ages, A.d. 378-1515   )

I received a press release about an interesting new book that is coming out in July

Here is the release:

“I’ll be honest, I see a lot of people join because their real life sucks. You can come here and be anybody.”

–Lord Duncan the Monster

Whether they’re bored office stiffs, housewives, or disgruntled war vets, the armor-clad members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) like to get beat up the old-fashioned way. Boasting more than 30,000 members worldwide, and over 16 “Kingdoms” in the United States alone, the eclectic eccentrics of the SCA participate in a variety of rigorous medieval battle simulations. Suburban Knights is a series of portraits of these 21st-century warriors, in costume and in character as their knightly alter egos.
 
From 2003 to 2005, internationally renowned photographer E. F. Kitchen photographed and interviewed the fighters of the SCA on location at their battles. Kitchen’s unique approach dispensed with technologically sophisticated cameras, and she instead used a tripod-mounted, 8×10 bellows camera with exclusively handmade and antique lenses. The results are appropriately hoary, sepia-tone images of these fierce warriors lost in time.
 
Suburban knights willfully escape from the 21st-century and into the realm of the SCA, where one can come face to face with the formidable armor and lance of a knight calling himself “Nissan Maxima.” Warriors are icons for an idealistic code of behavior extolling power and virtue. The men and women of the SCA capture a bit of this past glory for themselves, and while a majority of the portraits obscure the faces of these knights, under their thick armor, their features couldn’t be made clearer.
 
E.F. Kitchen’s photographs are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art among others. Her work has been published in books including The Greatest Alum Covers That Never Were (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, 2003), and Flora Photographica (Simon & Schuster, 1991), as well as periodicals such as the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Angeles Magazine, and View Camera. She is based in Venice, CA.

Leo Braudy is a professor, and the author of From Chivalry to Terrorism (Vintage, 2005), and The Frenzy of Renown (Vintage, 1997), among other books. He is also the coeditor of the Film Theory and Criticism anthology. His most recent book is On the Waterfront (British Film Institute, 2008) in the BFI Film Classics series, and he is currently working on a book about the intertwined history of Hollywood and the Hollywood sign

This book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com: Suburban Knights: A Return to the Middle Ages (Powerhouse Books)