 | Title: Rude Tales and Glorious Author: Nicholas Seare aka Trevanian aka Rodney William Whitaker whose other aliases include Beñat Le Cagot and Edoard Moran. Illustrator: William Bramhall Publisher: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. Pages: 207 Synopsis: (from the publisher) Picture a wintry night in a remote corner of Wales-- sleet and rain lashing the great stones of the castle of Dolbadarn. Within, imagine a baron sitting comfortably before a roaring fire with his wife, his fulsome daughter and their guest, the new clerick. But the Baron is restless. the clerick is a dull fellow, good only for 'confessing' the women in the upper chambers. What the Baron yearns for are stories. When a scurvy beggar and an ancient hag gain entrance claiming that they are in truth Sir Lancelot and the Fair Elaine, the Baron is only too glad to listen. Fortified by good food and drink, Sir Lancelot begins telling the tales of Sir Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table as they "really happened." We meet the Knights milling about trying to decide how to choose their King. Merlin, a bearded, sly old man with a magic act, announces that the matter will be settled by a contest called the Sword and the Stone. He contrives for his assistant, Arthur, to win not only the adorable Gwen, known for her generosity in granting her favors far and wide. We meet Sir Gay and Sir Gervais, each blinded by the beauty of the other, and the Black and Red Knights-- will they ever find out what the grail is? We meet the marvelous Percival and his "flaw", a physical distinction "like the clapper of a great bell", and we follow his travels that, despite his affliction, finally earn him his place at the Round Table. What brave deeds were done by these honorable fellows! These wonderful tales and more, so different from the ones in our history books, were penned in the fourteenth century by a forebear of the author, Nicholas Seare, who clearly has a sense of the ribald and satiric. Seare has at least seen fit to share them with us all. Medievalists will be edified, the general reader, amused and delighted. Nicholas Seare*, author of 1339 or So is a Welsh literature scholar. Reclusive in the extreme, little is know of his history or current activities. He lives in Caernarvonshire, Wales. * Nicholas Seare is actually the second pen name of a well-known author. |
I really, really hate it when the summary screws stuff up. If you're going to go that detailed into what the book is about, maybe you, publishers, could actually put in some effort into making sure that information is correct. Of course, doing that probably requires reading the book and I understand why any sane person would give up halfway.
So, I've gotta put the trigger warning for discussions of rape and sexual assault up here before the review even starts. The book basically reads like a badly told rape joke. So, there's going to be a lot of
You people are just lucky I'm doing this review alone. I almost invited Waldorf and Statler to come back and help me out. The only reason I was able to get through this book was by imaging them dryly yelling "Funny, Funny, Funny," every time
Warning for Spoilers and Trigger Warning for Discussions of Rape and Sexual Assault
