DOCSLIB.ORG

Here Lies Arthur Phillip Reeves

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Here Lies Arthur Phillip Reeves HERE LIES ARTHUR PHILLIP REEVES Picture taken from google images SUMMARY • Here Lies Arthur is an adolescent novel about a girl named Gwyna who we first meet as a servant who is running for her life from an attack on her home as everyone around her dies. She meets Myrddin, who takes her back to the small area he was staying at and he convinces her to help him convince the general Arthur that he is getting a sword from a lady in the water. Not knowing what else to do, Gwyna follows through with the plan and waited until Arthur comes to the water, to pass up the sword. From there, she thought she was going to die because no one needed her anymore, but Myrddin keeps her, but has her act like a boy to keep her safe. • Over the years she learns how to act like a boy and travels with Myrddin and Arthur’s caravan as they try to get Arthur more power. To help with this power, Myrddin is able to talk Arthur to marry Guinevere. As she grows older, she can no longer hide who she is as well and so she then has to learn about how to act like a woman which Myrddin uses this advantage by having her become one of Guinevere’s ladies in waiting. Through her time helping Guinevere, she learns that Bedwyr and Guinevere start having an affair and Arthur finds out by Myrddin and not only kills Bedwyr, but Guinevere and Gwyna run away. At the end of the novel, Gwyna not only sees Myrddin pass away, but helps to end the circle of Arthur’s reign by placing his sword back in the lake like he asks while he dies in battle. She continues to travel to keep the story of Arthur going in order to create her own path. STORY TELLING AND THE TRADITION • Myrddin spins stories about Arthur to make him look good • • Green Giant • • Uther and Igraine • • Excalibur and Caliburn • People lie/ exploit tradition to get their way • • Gwyna and Peredur’s gender • • Crooked priest DISGUISES • In Here Lies Arthur the main character Gwyna disguises herself in two ways. She disguises herself as a boy and as a Pagan water spirit, acting as the Lady of the Lake. Both of these disguises, or rather, transformations, are at first fashioned by Myrddin; he disguises her as the Lady of the Lake for his own gains and then later disguises her as a boy to save her life. When she matures, she has to transform back into a girl, once again prompted by Myrddin. These transformations parallel those undergone by the Wart in the Sword in the Stone; the transformation into the Lady of the Lake even benefits Arthur as well as Myrddin. Additionally, both the Wart • and Gwyna are essentially both Myrddin's pupils. However, unlike the Wart, two does not learn how to use the magic of transformation himself, Gwyna manages to master the “magic” of transformation or disguise (as well as his art of storytelling) for her own ends. It is for this reason and others that she is primarily a embodiment of the character Nimue. Although Myrddin has a familial love for Gwyna instead of the infatuation for Nimue, he still does love her greatly, and her mastery of the magic of transformation is what leads to his demise. After years of living of the woman, Gwyna takes the disguise of a boy (or in this case, young man) by herself for the sake of helping another character, Peri. Merlin disapproves, as she's going into war territory, but she ignores him. During the time she's spends helping Peri, she also demonstrates complete mastery of the magic of transformation by at one point using the Lake Lady disguise to help bolster Peri's spirits. After that, she becomes a boy again. • When she returns to Myrddin, he is on his deathbed and he dies within the day, driven to frailty and sickness and death out of worry and concern for her when she left him. After his death, she buries him in the hollow of the tree, similar to the version of Nimue and Myrddin's story where Myrddin is trapped inside a tree. After this point she once again (though inadvertently) uses the magic of disguise on the battlefield, where Arthur mistakes her for Myrddin. She accepts the role, using it to fulfill Arthur's dying wish, and then turns his death into a story that she can use by telling to earn money, thereby continuing to use a skill of Myrddin's to make a life for herself and Peri, even though she has left behind the magic of disguise and at the end is living as a woman. GENDER ROLES • In this novel, the main character, Gwyna, switches gender frequently, resulting in a gender neutral character. She can and does represent both of the societally stereotypical gender roles throughout the book. Gwyna switches gender at the beginning of the novel in order to stay with Myrddin and to stay alive. This switch saves her from an otherwise hopeless and hapless life. Gender switching is a matter of life or death in this novel. Becoming a boy saves her life, placing men's lives above female's lives in the society. Men are fed and cared for, as they keep up strength for battle, a young slave girl would have been left behind with no shelter or food. HOWEVER. The character Peri also switched genders from male to female in order to save his life in the war-torn society.... These gender switches are done secretively and involve taking on the full appearance and gender stereotypes, allowing them safety and new world-views. • These switches are logical, methodical, and necessary. HOWEVER. Later in the novel, Gwynefar and Bedwyr switch stereotypical gender roles (ie, masc=strong, fem=weak) and this results in challenging the morals and hierarchies of their society and, inevitably, their deaths. Peri and Gwyna's gender bending allows them the opportunity to see life on both ends of the spectrum and allow them for a more diverse and complete understanding of how their society works as a whole. For Gwyna, it also allows her character an easier time at narration. Through living in both roles, she can more "accurately" depict how both genders work in society and perceive the events around them. This also allows her to read as a very gender neutral character which appeals to many different young adult lit readers. However, being a neutral character can also cause the novel to be a little uninteresting and dull at times. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Exploring Stories
    Exploring Stories Overview Beyond Booked Up aims to inspire a love of reading in Year 7 and 8 students through engagement with high quality writing across a range of formats. Exploring Stories is the Beyond Booked Up autumn term resource for Year 8 students. This resource includes a range of ways to explore the story of King Arthur. The tale of King Arthur is one of the most enduring stories in Britain’s history. The various legends, along with the limited historical evidence, have combined to leave an indelible and intriguing narrative legacy. From 12th-century manuscripts, to 21st-century film and television, King Arthur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table have been reimagined and retold for over 800 years. Exploring Stories aims to support students to develop a love of reading by delving into these exciting myths, using a wide range of texts, forms and genres. This CD-Rom resource features a rich variety of extracts that are designed to provide a fun and accessible route into discussions about storytelling. Learning Objectives: Exploring Stories provides a great opportunity for students to widen their reading experiences by engaging with a range of different texts, forms and genres. Specifically, the Exploring Stories resource is intended to support students to: • develop a love of reading through exploring different forms of storytelling • increase familiarity with a wide range of books, including myths and legends Resources: The CD-Rom contains extracts from a range of different versions of the King Arthur story, with a focus on the retellings of the sword in the stone, Excalibur and the Lady in the Lake.
    [Show full text]
  • King Arthur and His Knights
    King Arthur and his Knights by George Gibson 1/23 Contents Chapter One: Young Arthur............................................................................3 Chapter Two: The sword in the stone............................................................. 4 Chapter Three: Britain has a King...................................................................5 Chapter Four: Excalibur.................................................................................. 6 Chapter Five: Arthur meets Guinevere........................................................... 7 Chapter Six: The five Kings............................................................................8 Chapter Seven: Lancelot............................................................................... 10 Chapter Eight: The Holy Grail...................................................................... 12 Chapter Nine: King Arthur goes to Aralon................................................... 14 Track 1: Was King Arthur Only a Legend?.................................................. 16 Track 2: Before Arthur's Time...................................................................... 17 Track 3: Knight............................................................................................. 18 Track 4: Page, Squire, Knight....................................................................... 19 Track 5: Castles.............................................................................................20 Track 6: Old Castle of Great Interest...........................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Who Was King Arthur?
    Exploring Stories – King Arthur Lesson 1 – Who was King Arthur? Learning objectives Students will learn to: • develop their understanding of King Arthur and Arthurian legend • explore the significance of different types of media texts in the representation of Arthurian legend • develop their understanding and analysis of the graphic novel form. Resources - Graphic novel extract: Excalibur: The Legend of King Arthur by Tony Lee and Sam Hart - Comic book extract: King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Marcia Williams - Google images (Arthurian Legend) - Mind map template Possible additional resources: - Disney’s The Sword in the Stone (opening clip), available on YouTube - King Arthur trailer (2004), available on YouTube Starter Put up several different images relating to King Arthur and Arthurian legend on the whiteboard as students enter the room. Typing ‘Arthurian legend’ into Google images, for example, provides a wide variety. You could have the images timed to rotate on a PowerPoint. Consider showing as many different types of images as possible from historical paintings/drawings to more modern animation and film images. Elicit from students what they know about the content of the images. They could write down their thoughts to begin with on a blank piece of paper or on the mind map template provided. Then discuss as a whole group. Subsequently, you could then ask students to consider the different types of media that have been shown (eg film image, cartoon image, modern painting, historical drawing) and the ways in which Arthurian legend has been represented throughout history. You could ask students whether they think the type of media influences the type of representation in any way.
    [Show full text]
  • Challenging Teenage and Young Adult Reading in the UK: the Novels of Philip Reeve
    Challenging teenage and Young Adult reading in the UK: the novels of Philip Reeve. Professor Jean Webb, Director of the International Forum for Research in Children's Literature, Institute of Humanities & Creative Arts, University of Worcester, UK. September 2013. The UK and American market in young adult and teen fiction is very buoyant with a considerable number of new books each year, not to mention those which are published in the American market and are available in the UK. I have therefore decided to focus on the work of Philip Reeve who is a particularly outstanding author who has won or been nominated for a number of major awards, including winning the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for No Such Thing As Dragons (2009). Reeve’s novels are wide ranging and challenge the thinking of teenage and young adult readers. His work includes science fiction in his Mortals Engines series (2001-2006) to heroic legend in Here Lies Arthur (2007) and touching on the essential components of fairy tale in No Such Thing As Dragons (2009). Reeve is a brilliant storyteller who challenges his readers to think whilst engaging them in a complex and evocative adventure. To date there has been very little academic consideration of his work. The extant book reviews do little other than re-tell the story to attract readers, yet Reeve makes his readers think about the contemporary world through imaginative and unusual situations raising practical questions about responsibility for the environment in his Mortal Engines series and philosophical and moral questions in Here Lies Arthur and No Such Thing As Dragons.
    [Show full text]
  • The Court of Camelot Arthurian Pantheon
    The Court of Camelot Arthurian Pantheon “YET some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross. I will not say it shall be so, but rather I will say: here in this world he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse: Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus (Here lies Arthur the once and future king). “ - Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory “So there’s a few floors of military police, six confirmed sorcerers, a couple dozen spartoi, and an elite squad of werewolf warriors? I thought you said this was going to be hard.” -Joe Ortega, Lancelot OVERVIEW The gods often concern themselves with stories of creation, of times before men, when the divines and titans shaped the fabric of the world. If you look for primal tales at the dawn of eternity, keep looking: you will not find them here. The stories of Camelot are the stories of heroes, of those bound by fate and those who conquered it. The first court of Arthur was made up of Scions of the Welsh and Irish Pantheons, with a few from even stranger heritage. They gathered together in Britain to protect mortal men from wicked fairies, dragons, and the incursions of foreign Scions and Titanspawn. As their legend grew, so too did the breadth of their cause. At the height of their power, Arthur and his fellows took a solemn oath upon the Round Table.
    [Show full text]
  • From Le Morte D'arthur Sir Thomas Malory Early 1400S–1471
    Medieval Romance Video link at from Le Morte d’Arthur thinkcentral.com RL 2 Provide an objective Romance by Sir Thomas Malory Retold by Keith Baines summary of the text. RL 3 Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements Meet the Author of a story. RL 4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in early 1400s–1471 the text, including connotative Sir Thomas Malory meanings. RL 5 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how He pleaded innocent to all the charges, to structure specific parts of a text and his guilt was never proven. It is contribute to its overall structure and meaning. possible that his outspoken opposition to the ruling family provoked enemies to accuse him falsely in some instances. Writing from Behind Bars Malory wrote Le Morte d’Arthur while serving a series did you know? of prison terms that began in 1451. He Sir Thomas Malory . finished the work in prison in 1469. • completed Le Morte At the end of the book, he asks that d’Arthur while in readers “pray . that God send me good Newgate Prison deliverance. And when I am dead, I pray in London. The legend of King Arthur is one of the you all pray for my soul.” • spent more than ten years in prison, accused most popular and enduring legends in The Arthurian Legends The first edition of violent acts. Western culture. Most English-speaking of Le Morte d’Arthur was published readers have been introduced to the in 1485, fourteen years after Malory’s Arthurian legend through Le Morte death.
    [Show full text]
  • IBBY Honour List 2008
    IBBY Honour List 2008 1 IBBY Honour List 2008 The IBBY Honour List is a biennial selection of The Honour List has become one of the most Great care is taken to provide up-to-date infor- The IBBY Honour List 2008 is the result of excel- outstanding, recently published books, honour- important activities of IBBY. For many National mation about the authors, illustrators, transla- lent cooperation between the IBBY Secretariat, ing writers, illustrators and translators from IBBY Sections the selection process presents a welcome tors and their publishers, including the subject the participating National Sections who selected member countries. opportunity to study and review the production and language indexes. Even though space and the entries and prepared the nominations, and of children’s and juvenile books in their coun- funds are often limited, it is our wish to provide the publishers of the nominated books who The fi rst Honour List in 1956 was a selection try on a continuing basis. Moreover, it offers a as much information as possible in a concise way donated seven copies of each title for exhibitions of 15 entries from 12 countries. For the 2008 unique opportunity to the member countries, and to promote access to the books. and the permanent collections. We wish to thank Honour List, 59 countries have sent 169 nomi- especially those with less well-known languages, all of them very much indeed. nations in 48 different languages. to present their best books to an international We wish to sincerely thank our colleagues of the audience. The exhibition of Honour List Books International Youth Library in Munich for their We gratefully acknowledge the support of Grupo Selected for the 2008 list are 69 entries in the is shown at conferences and fairs around the invaluable cooperation and support in prepar- EDEBÉ, Barcelona, Spain for sponsoring the print- category of Writing; 54 in the category Illustra- world and the catalogue is translated into differ- ing this catalogue.
    [Show full text]
  • Mortal Engines Themes
    Mortal Engines Themes: War and violence; progress; consumerism and the class system; the appropriation of history; the destruction of the planet; living with disfigurement; love, ethics and mercy. Summary: London is a beast on wheels: a future city like you've never known before. After the apocalyptic Sixty Minute War, the world's surviving cities turned predator - chasing and feeding on smaller towns. Now London is hunting. But something deadly is hiding on board. And we don’t mean the scarred, angry girl with the knife… Set in a blasted future of moving cities, stalking robotic hunters and apocalyptic weapons, Mortal Engines is one of the defining children’s books of the past two decades. Did you know? Philip Reeve originally worked as an illustrator, doing cartoons for the Horrible Histories and Murderous Maths series. His other books include Railhead, Larklight and Here Lies Arthur, for which he won the Carnegie Medal. Mortal Engines won the 2002 Nestle Smarties Gold Award, while the fourth book in the sequence, A Darkling Plain, won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. Philip Reeve has also written a trio of prequel novels, the Fever Crumb Trilogy, set before the Mortal Engines books, but intended to be read after them. Mortal Engines is now a major film directed by Christian Rivers and co-written by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame. Mortal Engines was partly inspired by the road-building movement of the 1990s, when the countryside was swallowed up by cities and towns. Philip Reeve is also inspired by Charles Dickens, who clearly influences his vivid characters and dramatic use of landscapes.
    [Show full text]
  • Le Morte Darthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table Pdf, Epub, Ebook
    LE MORTE DARTHUR: KING ARTHUR AND THE LEGENDS OF THE ROUND TABLE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Keith Baines,Thomas Malory,Robert Graves | 552 pages | 02 Feb 2010 | Penguin Putnam Inc | 9780451531490 | English | New York, United States Le Morte DArthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table PDF Book But this was such a drag. My Preferences My Reading List. Read more White's The Once and Future King first. It's a great edition of the text with excellent secondary materials and essays. I just recently finished reading "Le Morte d'Arthur", and it was an interesting experience. In he was granted a pardon by King Henry VI , returning to live at his estate. It is perhaps the most important, most known work, but it occupies a weird middle position between modern adaptations, of which there are seemingly millions, and considerably older works, of which there are also quite many. It's always fun to read Thomas Malory books. But for the most part Malory combines his traditional motifs together dexterously, enlivening larger stories with innumerable episodes, creating a raucous forward momentum. Of course, he and Sir Gawain lead their armies against Launcelot, but only because of Sir Gawain's insistence and counseling since Launcelot mistakenly kills his two brothers. The code of the realm he built forces him to listen to Gawain and he can only weep for Launcelot and Gwynevere. He fought in World War II, and after his discharge, he turned to his main interest, poetry. Galahad also draws the sword from the floating stone, establishing him as the best knight in the world, but also accepting the sword's curse — that it will later cause a grievous wound.
    [Show full text]
  • Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep
    Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep www.davidficklingbooks.com Utterly Dark.indd 1 13/04/2021 13:01 Also by Philip Reeve Mortal Engines Quartet Mortal Engines Predator’s Gold Infernal Devices A Darkling Plain Railhead Trilogy Railhead Black Light Express Station Zero Fever Crumb Trilogy Fever Crumb A Web of Air Scrivener’s Moon Mortal Engines ‘Expanded Universe’ Night Flights The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines Goblins Series Goblins Goblins vs Dwarves Goblin Quest Larklight Series Larklight Starcross Mothstorm Other Novels No Such Thing As Dragons Here Lies Arthur With Sarah McIntyre Oliver and the Seawigs Cakes in Space Pugs of the Frozen North Jinks and O’Hare Funfair Repair The Legend of Kevin Kevin’s Great Escape Kevin and the Biscuit Bandit Kevin vs the Unicorns Utterly Dark.indd 2 13/04/2021 13:01 Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep Philip Reeve Utterly Dark.indd 3 13/04/2021 13:01 UTTERLY DARK AND THE FACE OF THE DEEP is a DAVID FICKLING BOOK First published in Great Britain in 2021 by David Fickling Books, 31 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2NP Text © Philip Reeve, 2021 Cover and inside art by Paddy Donnelly 978-1-78845-237-3 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 The right of Philip Reeve to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
    [Show full text]
  • Heirs of the Round Table: French Arthurian Fiction from 1977 to the Present
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Heirs of the Round Table: French Arthurian Fiction from 1977 to the Present Anne N. Bornschein University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Medieval Studies Commons, Modern Literature Commons, and the Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons Recommended Citation Bornschein, Anne N., "Heirs of the Round Table: French Arthurian Fiction from 1977 to the Present" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 836. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/836 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/836 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Heirs of the Round Table: French Arthurian Fiction from 1977 to the Present Abstract While the English-speaking tradition has dominated the production of Arthurian-themed materials since the nineteenth-century Arthurian Revival, there is evidence that the publication of modern Arthurian fiction in French has enjoyed a major upswing over the past few decades. Notable contributions include Michel Rio's Merlin-Morgane-Arthur trilogy, Jacques Roubaud and Florence Delay's ten-volume cycle Graal théâtre, a half-dozen fantasy novels about the origins of the Arthurian world by Jean-Louis Fetjaine, and medievalist Michel Zink's young adult novel Déodat, ou la transparence. Such texts are deeply anchored in the medieval tradition, invested in co-opting the flavor of medieval source texts at the level of narration as well as plot. Textual genealogies are frequently thematized in modern French Arthuriana by authors who credit a medieval parentage, whether through a narratorial intervention or paratexual references.
    [Show full text]
  • The Death of King Arthur: the Literary Evolution of a Myth
    Ouachita Baptist University Scholarly Commons @ Ouachita Honors Theses Carl Goodson Honors Program 2000 The Death of King Arthur: The Literary Evolution of a Myth Heather M. Lyon Ouachita Baptist University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/honors_theses Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Lyon, Heather M., "The Death of King Arthur: The Literary Evolution of a Myth" (2000). Honors Theses. 130. https://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/honors_theses/130 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Carl Goodson Honors Program at Scholarly Commons @ Ouachita. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons @ Ouachita. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Introduction: The History of a Literary Figure Around 1151, Geoffery of Monmouth, a priest at St. George's college in Oxford, completed a work known as The History of the Kings of Britain (Geoffery, Forward). Geoffery researched older texts and manuscripts in order to present what he considered an accurate account of Britain's history. In this work, Geoffery introduced King Arthur to the English and French as one of the greatest kings of Britain. His work would serve as the foundation for the French chansons de geste, or romances of chivalry, which in turn influenced Sir Thomas Malory's Marte Darthur (1469). Malory's work wpuld go on to serve as the model for countless retellings of the Arthurian legend. Using this foundation, authors such as Alfred Lord Tennyson and T.H. White would go on to build critiques of the problems in their societies.
    [Show full text]