Word: arthurians
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...epic adventure, but as part of a moral speculation in miniature. Bresson's ascetic attentions converge on the fateful romance of Lancelot (Luc Simon) and Queen Guinevere (Laura Duke Condominas) and extend beyond it to the end of the courtly tradition, as did the original Arthurian legends. What is missing is passion, a quality essential to such a subject. Without it, for all its frosty beauty, Lancelot of the Lake looks like a museum diorama of the Middle Ages...
...similarity to Arthurian legend is hardly coincidental, though Richard Tregaskis, the war correspondent (Guadalcanal Diary) and novelist who died last August, was writing about the ruler of a small island kingdom a millennium removed from Camelot. In telling of Kamehameha, the very real soldier who waged a 30-years' war (1780-1810) to create an Hawaiian nation, Tregaskis leaned indulgently on legends of the sort that defy time and locale. The Polynesians had neither calendar nor alphabet before English-speaking traders started settling in the islands in the 1780s. Knowledge of Kamehameha's early career is misty, accounts...
...Beowulf epic has once again risen from its grave; but even the Christians knew better than to resurrect the dead more than once. Still not content, Gardner spices his novel with allusions to Arthurian legend. And to all this he adds his own version of that classic Faulknerian tale of the decay of the proud and respected Compson family. It is all done in the same battered, albeit rigid, multi-consciousness point of view...
Fidelity to nature was not something new, but no one really expected the extent of the early Pre-Raphaelites' imitating nature. Their subject matter was drawn from the Bible, Greek mythology, and, true to their medieval inclinations, Arthurian legend. Stylistically some of the human figures might look like Botticelli angels or Cranach diptychs. Yet the landscape was always painstakingly drawn from real life. They used magnifying glasses to paint weeds properly; they waited patiently year after year for the return of the apple blossoms to complete a single canvas; they would spend nights painting by a small candle in order...
...Your cover story [Dec. 21] presented an excellent picture of Camelot in blue and gold, as well as a clear-cut portrait of our reigning King Arthur, the legendary Admiral Zumwalt. The Arthurian analogy is apt because the C.N.O., too, has his foot-dragging barons and feudal lords opposing his every reform. Only now they've taken the guise of middle-level brass who, having attained a predetermined goal, don't wish to make waves...