LLT 180 Lecture 4 Part 1

We had stopped when we were talking about collecting fumets, not a particularly interesting topic. I don't think that would be my pastime. We're trying to make fun. The idea is that questing while it's an important aspect of being a knight is not supposed to be particularly attractive. He's questing after these Glatisant. They are on page 23. You should remember Glatisant's name. One of the things that come up later is that finally the questing beast only stays healthy and alive as long as Pellinore's questing after him. Otherwise, it fades away and dies. So, to me I can't help but think of the Peter, Paul and Mary song puff the magic dragon, and how that is the same idea. I think what's important here is that the quest is almost like a dream. So, unless maybe we nurture our dreams if this is trying to tell us something as we read through this unless we nurture our dreams, unless we nurture our ideals that they fade away and die. So, we have to pay attention to them. You can sit a lot with this and look up vocabulary. Just to prove that I do they describe the questing beast toward the bottom of page 23. They say this beast about maybe 12 lines from the bottom has the head of a serpent and the body of a libbard. What the crud is a libbard? It's an old spelling variation actually of leopard. It's a body of a leopard. The haunches of a lion and he is footed like a heart. A heart is actually the male of a red deer. I'm not going to ask you to draw this on the test even though it might be interesting. He has a large, white dog that's helping him pursue the best. All of this is just kind of silly funniness. Pellinore certainly does not make questing sound like fun. It's kind of an arduous thing. Remember he's been about this for seventeen years, about as long as all of you have been about anything. It's been eight months since he's even seen the questing beast. We read here at the bottom of page 24 the poor fellow's voice had grown sadder and sadder since the beginning of the conversation. Now, he definitely began to snuffle. So, he is sad. This is not fun. It is the curse of the Pellinore. So, who can find the questing beast? Only the Pellinores. It is their family quest; it is their family beast. After wandering about after that beastly beast what on earth use is she anyway? So, the questing beast is a female. It seems suitable. I'm trying to be funny. First you have to stop to unwind a bracket, referring to his dog. Then, your visor falls down. Then, you can't see through your spectacles. Nowhere to sleep, never know where you are, rheumatism or sun stroke in the summer, all this horrid armor that takes hours to put on, which will be the case when we practice doing it. So, really what he's like on page 25 is a bed. If he could have a bed it would be a wonderful experience. So, if he were rich. Again, remember this is Arthur's first view of what it's like to be a knight, a knight on a quest. A lot of times as I read through this and try to think of clever, critical things to say simply on the side of the text I write ha, ha. Like this is just the silliest stuff. For example, we get in Pellinore just the opposite view of what we think a great heroic knight would be. The point here is he fell off his horse with a tremendous clang. When we see the tape on knights and armor they're going to make the point that to be a great knight the most important attribute was not to be necessarily a great athlete. You had to be able to control your horse. So, the first thing almost as early as people could walk who were going to become knights they learned horsemanship. The modern remnant of that are competitions in dressage, in other words being able to control your horse, teach them so they walk sideways, backwards, do different movements because these could be important in battle. So, the end of this chapter the point of this is to puncture our traditional image of how great a knight is. Wart now is in the woods. He awakens late. He's fallen asleep. He's going to find of course Merlin. We're going to meet Merlin. Merlin is going to become his tutor. He finds Merlin, an old man in a cottage. We quickly recognize Merlin when he is described for us at the bottom of page 28. So, all the traditional getup that we would expect of a magician and later the point is made there are a lot of magicians. So, it's hard for us to imagine, it's like if you read tales that the brothers grim collected. You notice that all these tales are of princes and princesses and things of that nature. When you think of Germany in the middle of the early 1800s there were like 365 self-governing entities. So, if we started thinking of Europe in olden times there were a lot more small areas. So, you might be in line at Albertson's and there's a princess in front of you and a duke behind you. Then, behind the duke there is a magician or a court jester. So, a lot more of these people simply existed in society than we might ever think of in modern society. So, Merlin is described on the bottom of 28 and the top of 29. How does Arthur react? I mean Arthur's going to have a lot of unique experiences. What is his basic response when he meets Merlin? Is he frightened? Yeah, he's curious. He doesn't ever seem how does he react to magic? How does he react to the strange stuff at Merlin's cottage? How would he be different from Kay? Kay would be freaked out by it. He's just like entranced by it. He's like this is neat stuff. So, he doesn't seem particularly scared of magic. It seems like this is kind of an ordinary world for him. Stuff that would bug me, for example after he meets Merlin what is the first thing Merlin says to him on page 29 about line 15? "The aged gentleman put down his bucket and looked at him. Merlin's been muttering about having to haul up water and do all this stuff. We're going to find out later he's living according to White. He's living his life backwards. He says your name would be the Wart. So, here we are in the middle of nowhere and you run into somebody and they know your name. I'm gone; I'm far-gone. I'm running down the forest path. How does he respond? Yes, sir. He identifies himself. My name said the old man is Merlin. Now, if Merlin is living life backwards he's going to do what? He's going to keep becoming younger as the book progresses. They go to Merlin's place. Everything's marvelous in the sense of miraculous, unbelievable, magical. So, it is in the middle of page 30 here's the most marvelous room that he had ever been in. They described the contents in some great detail. We also have an owl. An owl traditionally is symbol of wisdom. The owl is going to be an important character again an aid and education for Arthur, which is important. The owl can talk. Its name is Archimedes. This magic world we read on about on 33 is just everywhere where Merlin is. Again, this idea is that he was expecting somebody. Later in the book I think it stated that Merlin was sent for Arthur. He was sent for Arthur's education. He has special magic for Arthur. He has special magic that he can only use to help educate Arthur. I've read this book more than once. It's very unclear. I think an interesting question when we get toward that part is well, if he has this special magic from whom does he have it. Who sent him? Why is Merlin here? I mean if you go back and believe in the divine right of kings did God did she send him? That is something to think about when we get to that point. Another thing, so he knew Wart's name and the breakfast table is already set for two. He knew Wart was coming. Now, that makes sense if Merlin is living life backwards. He knew what was going to happen. So, he could expect Wart. It gets kind of confusing in here and Merlin makes the good point about that. Why? In great big letters you see I wrote on the facing page why is Merlin here on page 34? What impresses Wart? About line six he said that Wart was so much impressed by the kindness of the old man and particularly by the lovely things which he possessed that he hardly liked to ask him personal questions. He finally does though. So, Wart feels comfortable. One of the things he's going to say is he feels comfortable with Merlin because Merlin treats him like an adult, like a person. He says about 14 lines down on 34 would you mind if I ask you a question. What's Merlin's response? It is what I am for. So, his function for Arthur is to answer those questions. Remember we're constantly here talking about education. Everything, whether it becomes a fish, hawk whatever he does, whatever Arthur is undergoing as we go through this first part of the book especially we're writing on him. We're developing him. We're making clear who he is. Merlin then explains why he's often confused. Merlin is going to be both a magical figure and a comic figure. He's always getting his incantations screwed up. He's transporting himself to the Bahamas or he's changing himself into a condor. He's always practicing his incantations and not doing very well. He is living life backwards we read on page 35. He says ah, yes how did I know to set the breakfast for two? That was why I showed you the looking glass. Now, ordinary people are born forwards in time. If you understand what I mean and nearly everything in the world goes forward too. That makes it quite easy for the ordinary people to live just as it would be easy to join those five dots into a w if you were allowed to look at them forwards instead of backwards and inside out. So, Merlin is trying to explain why he doesn't have Prozac with his cereal in the morning. He's just a little loony because he's confused. He just like has too much information so he can't remember if he's told somebody this. I don't think White does an exceedingly good job with being true to this idea of if we tried to apply that Merlin's living life backwards, how confused he would be. That's the premise he takes. "I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of time." So, thus he is often confused. He makes a point which when I read this sentence I become confused. I don't know why he wrote this sentence with the idea that you read it six times and you'd still be confused. So, you'd say okay, I get it. I'm confused. The paragraph that starts you see about 2/3 of the way down on 35. He said, "if you know what's going to happen to people and not what has happened to them it makes it difficult to prevent it happening if you want it to have happened." Now, that makes sense. In other words, you know you don't want that outcome but since you only know the outcome you don't know what caused the outcome. How can you prevent what will bring about the outcome. It's one of those things you read and think I better stop reading for tonight. Obviously my brain is fried. I've done too much homework. It's time for pizza and doing something else. Talk more about the owl that deserves respect and then they make their way to Arthur's. Merlin tells him I am going to be your tutor. So, that's the purpose of this whole chapter. Now, if you remember early on Hector said I guess I'm going to have to have a quest for a tutor. What basically happens here Arthur has been on this quest. This is his first quest so to speak. It's a quest to find a tutor. So, questions? So, they are back at Hector's in four. Merlin is introduced to Hector. They talk about white magic. Now, on top of page 39 this is one of the points that I think is confusing as far as if White's trying to be consistent with this idea that Merlin is living time backwards. So, when he has these recommendations who are the recommendations by on top of 39? One is by Aristotle. So, if he's living life backwards why shouldn't his recommendations be by Einstein by people who would make no sense if they were genuine recommendations? So, we have to assume they then were trying to make logic sense out of what White's done that Merlin's just produced these. They are not really genuine in any way. He's just fulfilling what Hector wants. He does some magic. Hector does hire him. Kay never gets anything. The proper son, the real son of Hector he's okay but he's just you know. Later in the book they'll have a conversation about can birds speak. They get in this involved discussion about do birds have language. It turns out that they say they have social structure and language and everything. After they have this really meaningful conversation with Arthur and Merlin and Archimedes. At the very end of that chapter Kay comes in and he's all excited because he just shot some birds. So, he's just kind of always a little bit out of sink with the rest of the book. They say about Kay they tried to put him in perspective kind of a nasty statement. I hope nobody ever writes this about anybody in a letter of recommendation. At the very end of chapter 4 on page 40 about 7 lines from the end he says referring to Kay. He says he was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it. Gosh, that's pretty harsh, pretty sad commentary. What is the present like as we move into chapter 5? Again following the death of Uther we're going to have might is right. That's what the whole first transformation into a fish is about. We're showing what a supreme despite is like, showing what society can be like. So, here out in the boonies and this is truly the boonies we have the castle of the forest savage. This story it says what at the beginning of the five deals with dealt trouble times. As Arthur is growing up he is insolated from this chaos. He is insulated from what's going on by the fact that he lives in the boonies. However, they do come there. The bad times come. Everybody who is subject to Sir Hector comes into the castle. They describe this castle. I don't know. It seems to be a great popular thing to do. Last spring from the gifted center in Springfield after I had the suit of armor they were doing a feature thing on medieval days. So, stupid Larry they called me up. They said would you come and bring your armor. I said oh, sure. They said well, how many days will you come? I said what do you mean. They said well, we bring different classes in from Springfield. So, actually it'd be great if you could come in four days in a row. They said what a lot of people do is they come one day. They film it. Then we show the film to other people. Having kids myself I thought that kind of stinks. That means the same kids always get to see the live presentation. Everybody else always gets to see the films. So, stupidly I said oh, I'll come four days in a row. I think that's just fair. What was interesting about that when she called me up. She asked me what I needed. She said she was going to give me directions on how to get to the classroom. She said what kind of learner are you? I thought that is really weird that you want to start categorizing people based on what kind of learner they are. Anyway, when I read something like this I start playing mental games with myself about can you draw this. So, obviously they start off and they said the exterior of the castle has twelve towers. You don't have to do this on the test. So, if you think about that works really well if you're drawing it. There are four corners, not they'll be just like this. This is some math puzzle for grade one. So, if you have four your can just fill in four more. It's a big castle. The castles are in the middle of the walls. Then, there's a moat out here. Then, there's an interior castle within the exterior walls, which again has a series of round walls. This would be a later castle. This wouldn't be like a castle in the early medieval times or Hector won the lottery or something. This is way too nice. It's very elaborate. They use terms and of course there's a drawbridge. So, there's a moat. They're going to talk about the moat. So, across the moat there's a drawbridge. Then, there's always that gate where you can trap people and pour bowling oil on them or put trap doors on them or crush them with logs whatever you want to do with them that we're going to read about later too especially in Erik. When they use the term keep when we talked before about what the early medieval castles look like. You have seen Braveheart. A lot of you have seen Braveheart. The castle at the beginning of Braveheart where they killed after Mel's honey gets her throat slit. Mel comes back and kicks butt. Then, they go on to the castle the regional big dude. When they get to it what does it look like? It looks like Fort Apache or something. I mean it's a wood fort. That was what early castles were like unless somebody was someplace for a long time. If you remember once they broke through the outer defenses they went to this elevate area. There was wooded in again. That would be your keep. So, your keep was the area where the lord would stay. So, it was just an area within the exterior part of the castle. So, some of this terminology I'm not going to ask you about. You might leaf through your dictionary some.