Figures of Earth: A Comedy of Appearances
James Branch Cabell
A young swineherd rises to the rank of Count by following his own thinking and desires.To
Sinclair Lewis.
My Dear Lewis:
To you (whom I take to be as familiar with the Manuelian cycle
of romance as is any person now alive) it has for some while
appeared, I know, a not uncurious circumstance that in the Key
to the Popular Tales of Poictesme there should have been
included so little directly relative to Manuel himself. No reader of
the Popular Tales (as I recall your saying at the Alum when
we talked over, among so many other matters, this monumental
book) can fail to note that always Dom Manuel looms obscurely
in the background, somewhat as do King Arthur and
white-bearded Charlemagne in their several cycles, dispensing
justice and bestowing rewards, and generally arranging the
future, for the survivors of the outcome of stories which more
intimately concern themselves with Anavalt and Coth and
Holden, and with Kerin and Ninzian and Gonfal and Donander,
and with Miramon (in his role of Manuel’s seneschal), or even
with Sclaug and Thragnar, than with the liege-lord of Poictesme.
Except in the old sixteenth-century chapbook (unknown to you,
I believe, and never reprinted since 1822, and not ever
modernized into any cognizable spelling), there seems to have
been nowhere an English rendering of the legends in which
Dom Manuel is really the main figure.Well, this book attempts to supply that desideratum, and is, so
far as the writer is aware, the one fairly complete epitome in
modern English of the Manuelian historiography not included by
Lewistam which has yet been prepared.
Sinclair Lewis.
My Dear Lewis:
To you (whom I take to be as familiar with the Manuelian cycle
of romance as is any person now alive) it has for some while
appeared, I know, a not uncurious circumstance that in the Key
to the Popular Tales of Poictesme there should have been
included so little directly relative to Manuel himself. No reader of
the Popular Tales (as I recall your saying at the Alum when
we talked over, among so many other matters, this monumental
book) can fail to note that always Dom Manuel looms obscurely
in the background, somewhat as do King Arthur and
white-bearded Charlemagne in their several cycles, dispensing
justice and bestowing rewards, and generally arranging the
future, for the survivors of the outcome of stories which more
intimately concern themselves with Anavalt and Coth and
Holden, and with Kerin and Ninzian and Gonfal and Donander,
and with Miramon (in his role of Manuel’s seneschal), or even
with Sclaug and Thragnar, than with the liege-lord of Poictesme.
Except in the old sixteenth-century chapbook (unknown to you,
I believe, and never reprinted since 1822, and not ever
modernized into any cognizable spelling), there seems to have
been nowhere an English rendering of the legends in which
Dom Manuel is really the main figure.Well, this book attempts to supply that desideratum, and is, so
far as the writer is aware, the one fairly complete epitome in
modern English of the Manuelian historiography not included by
Lewistam which has yet been prepared.
Κατηγορίες:
Έτος:
2023
Εκδότης:
Standard Ebooks
Γλώσσα:
english
Σελίδες:
200
ISBN:
49955672ED7E9DA6EE41F266A0DEA7198F4F7C59
Αρχείο:
AZW3 , 778 KB
IPFS:
,
english, 2023