billybookblog

*contains spoilers* Candide begins with a real event, an earthquake that (actually took place in 1755 and) rocks the foundations of Lisbon, and continues on with the many others that set off the fictional twists and turns of the plot. Candide, our hero, is the ultimate tabula rasa, and upon this white sheet our storyteller Voltaire (born François-Marie Arouet in 1694) projects many philosophical quandaries: fate, luck, coincidence, God(s), love, innocence, practicality, harmony, work, idleness, the value of money, time… All of these notions are raised and put to the test (if not entirely answered) as the naïve Candide escapes the constant threat of death at the hands of barbarism and religious zealots in search of his beloved Cunégonde. We have the foolish but self-assured Pangloss, the doggedly loyal and pragmatic Cacambo, the wise and practical elderly woman, and the downtrodden Martin, who aptly counters Pangloss’s foolish optimism with a yet equalled foolhardy dissatisfaction. What...

*contains spoilers* Unlike ‘The Canterbury Tales’, which (granted, came later) was written in a modern-layman pleasing Middle English, ‘Beowulf’, a text written some time between the seventh and tenth centuries, appears in its original form in Old English/Anglo Saxon. Much has been made of the supposed origins of the text, but what has so far been surmised is that it is a healthy conglomerate of historical events and old tales like so many of the beloved Greek myths. The manuscript from which the story is taken was picked up early in the previous thousand years and passed from generation to generation where, eventually, it was discovered to have survived a house fire (though part of the parchment was burnt, meaning that unfortunately lines 2,226-31 are scrappily guessed at in every translation). This however only adds to the magic one feels from the piece, as the reader transcends the ages and disappears into an ancient land of Danes and dragons, where warriors swear allegiance to thei...

*contains spoilers* Geoffrey Chaucer was the lucky son of an also lucky wine merchant who found himself the beneficiary of a wealthy (and dead) relative’s fortune. The young Geoffrey was therefore not obligated to pursue the life of a merchant like his father, and instead rose to newer heights and served as a diplomat for the Crown after mastering French, Italian and Latin. After retiring from his lucrative career and settling down in Kent in the early 1390s, Chaucer then set about completing his masterpiece, and the subject of my latest blog, ‘The Canterbury Tales’. ‘The Canterbury Tales’ is told, much like Boccaccio’s, Petrarch’s, and Dante’s works were, in the vernacular, and so it is presented to us in the Middle English of its time and place instead of the traditional Latin or French. Because of this, the text can be read by the modern layman fairly well in its original form, though there are editions available that provide the text in updated translations for the modern reader ou...