I read this whole book (for a change) it totally blew me away to read the story of St.George, i even read some on St.Georges day. The book is apparently recovered with OCR technology or something. I find it really interesting but was hard to place the character of the whole thing, it was very violent indeed. Full of noble chivalry and great deeds but also quite arrogant in many ways. Has my vision been blurred by modern culture, what am i seeing here? I suppose in a way we all feel in our hearts the depth of the past by whatever means. So is this just the flower of some chaotic by gone era? Is it the Terminator 2 movie of its time? It was a fun read and highly recommended it.
Thanks for the recommendation, w! Will have to check this one out!
Although I’m sure there was some poetic embellishments here… both great violence and chivalry existed to a high degree in certain earlier ages, and that is something most moderns would quake and recoil at.
I also think chivalry was less in practice in Richard Johnson’s day, but there was a fond resurgence of desire to return to those noble thoughts and actions in this period. Just look at Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece, published at nearly the same time, Don Quixote. This book is precisely about a fatalistic desire to regain the great moral codes and lost chivalry.
(What a great book, that is, by the way. Hilarious, yet sad. So noble and pure, yet deluded. But who’s sad and deluded, Don Quixote, or the society surrounding him that has lost these qualities?)