Comments | alanajoli: Guest Blog: Geoffrey Ashe (excerpt)

alanajoli

Guest Blog: Geoffrey Ashe (excerpt)

Jun 19, 2009 11:11

I've had the good fortune, since my first trip to England in 2000, to have stayed in contact with Arthurian scholar Geoffrey Ashe and his wife (a scholar in her own right, and former professor) Pat. When I first began working at Gale, I was given the project that I now manage as a freelancer: coordinating the autobiographical essays to be featured ( Read more... )

mythology, glastonbury, geoffrey ashe, england trip

Comments 6

princessdarky June 19 2009, 16:55:40 UTC

i like this, facebook-style.

cody and i had a discussion when we were doing our art projects about what constitutes myth; he declared that one of the mabinogian myths didn't count, in a way only cody can. but anyway, i do think the 9th century cut-off to be interesting. are the stories of camelot and such included in his book? because i really don't think those count as myth. they're not so heavily divorced that you can't find the archetypes, but they have far too strong a connection to chronological time, which for me is what separates myth from legends and fairy tales and whatnot.

the picture is hilarious, mostly because of several distinct groupings going on.

alanajoli June 19 2009, 18:13:48 UTC

You should go back in my guest blog tag and check out Mark Vecchio's definitions, which he kindly allowed me to post. Mark talks about Arthurian "myth" as being in the "legends" category, rather than mythology. I think it comes down to where your definitions break up: I tend to build an order of degradation (if you will ( ... )

caitrin June 20 2009, 00:22:38 UTC

Oh, hey, it's us! Thank you for your postcard. I was so excited to get it.

(Is Mark still using his same SR e-mail address he always had? I haven't talked to him in way too long...)

alanajoli June 20 2009, 01:32:29 UTC

We were so cute back then... ;) I'm so glad you liked the post card! I was thinking about our old gang quite a lot over there.

Yep, Mark still has his OCaptain e-mail. Fire away!

breathingbooks June 20 2009, 06:53:09 UTC

P.S. I'm trying something new by linking to an assortment of booksellers rather than falling back on B&N (where I do the majority of my shopping). Any thoughts on that?

I shop at Amazon.

lyster June 23 2009, 19:52:05 UTC

Good on you for staying in such close touch with people you've met on travels. That's really hard for me.

On the broader topic of myth -- have you read Karen Armstrong's A Brief History of Mythology yet? I was given a used copy a few weeks ago & read it yesterday; I don't know how much of the stuff that's there you've seen before, but it's a good, short refresher on the history of the mythos-logos divide.