When running gags collide! So yeah, what we have here is Robert Henryson, a dude that basically just retold Chaucer stories, only worse and with crappy morals tacked onto the end of each tale. And do you remember way back when I was dissing Marie de France for spelling out explicitly what her stories were [...]
Ah, I love a good callback. Anyway, so yeah, the Wife of Bath’s tale is pretty much bullshit. I know it seems like I keep harping on this, but I can’t get over the fact that the rapist gets off scot free. Granted, that’s sadly realistic, but still. Not only does he get let off [...]
In all seriousness, I really had no idea what “The Wolf and the Sow” actually meant until I Googled it. I read the damn poem ten times and still couldn’t penetrate its moral. It was one of those “I know what these words mean, but in combination they make no sense” situations. Apparently, it really [...]
I’ve made it clear how much I love “Lanval.” It’s my favorite story in the Arthur myth; hilarious, sexy, fun, and dramatic, “Lanval” is just great. I mention this only because holy crap, do Marie’s fables suck. They’re really bloody terrible. I mean, I know they’re just her renditions of traditional oral fables – largely the [...]
And so ends the story of Lanval. I could’ve drawn an adaption of the entire story and been happy, but it’s probably best that I don’t dwell on any one work for too long – I’ve still got a lot of Anthology to go. In the original tale, the ending is a bit more dramatic [...]
“The king ordered his retinue To render up their judgment due. The long procrastination had, He said, made him extremely mad. “My lord,” they answered, “we have acted. But our attention was distracted By the ladies we have seen. But now the court shall reconvene.” There were actually two pairs of ladies to offer distraction. [...]
In the poem, Sir Gawain actually comes across as remarkably badass (and King Arthur comes off as an even bigger jerk than he was already). Basically, Arthur wants to put Lanval on trial, but before he can do that, he needs to summon his entire baronage to Camelot – essentially, all the great leaders of [...]
Despite being one of history’s greatest heroes, King Arthur is seriously an asshole so far. Honestly, he and his queen are just total douchebags. Other characters in this story end up being more sympathetic with time. Gawain, as we’ll discover, turns out to be an okay chap. But the mighty king whom the knights serve [...]
In my script for this comic, the title of the strip is simply “Guinevere Is A Whore,” which seems fairly accurate. She’s legendary, of course, for having an affair with Lancelot and subsequently sending Camelot straight to hell. In these early tales, however, she’s pretty much just the town mule. No fated and doomed romances [...]
If one takes a purely logical, dispassionate view of “Lanval,” only one conclusion can be reached: the fairy mistress is ridiculously horny. She’s mind-numbingly beautiful, incredibly wise, ludicrously rich, and impossibly magical. Yet, for all these things, she really, really just wants to get laid. Which is how we arrive at the beginning Lanval’s “adventure.” [...]
