HISTORICAL
FICTION
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YOUNG
ADULT
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Excalibur
1981 film, dark, realistic Arthurian movie and Philip Reeve's stated
inspiration for Here Lies Arthur.
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Medieval depiction of Merlin
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BOOK
ILLUMINATIONS
From Merrimon Book Reviews
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Here Lies Arthur
by Philip Reeve
An
Arthurian story that diminishes women to nothingness
Told in first person narrative from
the lost girl-child discovered by master story teller and trickster
Myrddin, HERE LIES ARTHUR
recounts the familiar Arthurian story from a new, unusual perspective
from the finding of Excalibur to the last days of the Arthurian
kingdom. Gone are the chivalric codes of honor and behavior. Philip
Reeve replaces Camelot with a tale of a rag-tag band of men led by a
rather barbaric power-hungry leader whose glory is built upon stories
rather actions. Lancelot is stripped away as is the classic grail
quest. HERE LIES ARTHUR
demystifies the Arthurian legends by reducing the elements down to the
"truth," as it reveals the tricks of Merlin alongside the explanation
behind the stories that become legend.
I chose to read this book from a profound love of medieval Arthurian
literature. One aspect I particularly love about Medieval literature
and especially Arthurian literature is the way in which an author
reshapes a story, changing elements to create a new tale. In HERE LIES ARTHUR, the clever play
on the myths of war and the stories of heroism versus the realities of
war is one of the more intriguing themes explored. The author makes
great points about the art of story telling versus the truth that
speaks to the power of the story as a motivator and the art of
storytelling.
The portrait of Arthur is rather barbaric. All chivalry of the later
romance tradition is stripped away. Mryddin is story-teller, a
trickster (which he is often even in the medieval traditions). Arthur
is a man only concerned with himself and grabbing power and money. He
is a wife beater and he plunders treasures from the church. The church
itself is ridiculed for the greed of the priests, a common theme of
medieval literature itself. HERE
LIES ARTHUR, however, remains mostly on the level of ridicule
whereas medieval literature targets corruption itself more than the
church as a whole. The medieval Arthurian tradition (both the romance
and the chronicle traditions) are themselves reinventions of an earlier
period and some scholars do go back to the pagan roots of elements of
the stories. While the portrayal of the church in HERE LIES ARTHUR does fall in line
with the general tone Philip Reeves creates in Arthur's less than
savory character, there is no counterbalance as there is with some of
the other deconstructions of the Arthurian myth.
Despite my love for the changing shape of the Arthurian tradition, I
found myself deeply disturbed by this book and the way in which this
story was retold. Page after page, for almost 300 pages, the reader
hears over and over and over about girls versus boys. The girls and
women are diminished over and over again with direct gender statements
of how women are nothing, ghostly, their lives too small for stories.
The narrator is a girl who Myrddin (Merlin) disguises as a boy, who
later becomes a girl and the vice-versa with Peredur who is a boy
sheltered by his mother and made to dress like a girl to keep him safe
from war (which to some degree comes from the Perceval tales). Of
course this level of gender play extends to the male author name
speaking through the voice of a girl who hates being a girl who acts
like a boy and is a boy until she matures. Perhaps the author means to
deconstruct the gender paradigms but HERE
LIES ARTHUR does so at the expense of readers who are pummeled
with anti-girl, boys are cool, and boys will be boys statements. Even
though there is a special moment at the end that reaches beyond these
statements, by the time a reader gets there, s/he has been so saturated
by the nothingness of women that it loses its power. This book might be
intriguing for a medieval feminist scholar to analyze ---- but is this
book really meant for a young adult audience? This modern retelling is
more misogynist in tone than any medieval text I have read (quite a few
and in the original languages). Even if the author meant to deconstruct
misogyny by this play of gender, I just cannot imagine a woman or a
young adult girl reading these statements over and over without feeling
diminished. Should boys be encouraged to read this either? Does
diminishing women really make boys stronger and more like men? The
young adult classification of this book seems inappropriate.
Publisher:
Scholastic (November 2008)
Reviewed by Merrimon,
Merrimon Book Reviews
Courtesy of Amazon Vine
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