This summer I went to see The Beaux’ Stratagem at the National Theatre, one of my favourite London haunts. The play, which was first performed in 1707, less than two months before the death of its author, the Irish playwright, George Farquhar, is a late Restoration play. Continue reading “Venison Pasties”
Tag: venison
Food for Stories
The fact that the pilgrim characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales tell their stories in the hope of winning a free meal suggests the heightened importance of food in medieval literature. Continue reading “Food for Stories”
Festivities at the Medieval Court
As I promised in my last post, this post is going to be dedicated to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a late 14th century chivalric romance. Written by an unknown author, the poem is thought to originate from the North East (the dialect of Middle English used suggests an author from Lancashire, Staffordshire or Cheshire). It is written in alliterative verse, with words in the same poetic line repeatedly beginning with the same consonant sound, a type of poetry that seems to have originated in Germany in 4th century BC. Anglo-Saxon poetry, including Beowulf which I wrote about in this post, was also frequently alliterative.
Continue reading “Festivities at the Medieval Court”