Back again

The other day I got a ping indicating that someone had actually read my post from last November on the Norman Conquest and popular history.

How does anyone find anything in blogspace?

Well actually I myself have stumbled on a number of interesting things via Google Alerts and other devices.  So there may be a point to putting stuff out here after all!

But I don’t have time at the moment. I’m going to an event celebrating a new book by my minister and his son.

Later tonight or tomorrow,  if my resolve doesn’t fade too soon I’ll put up some reflections on the new Pew report on religion, and stuff like that.

Why Arthur

A nice paper by Michel Bur at the 1980 Battle Conference traces the connection between the house of Champagne and that of Normandy, culminating in the reign of King Stephen – don’t forget that Blois and Champagne had only recently diverged; add to this the fact that until her mother ran off with Henry of Anjou and started having sons, Countess Marie, wife of Henry the Liberal, was presumptive heiress to Aquitaine… All this leads to the role of family politics in the patronage given to Chretien of Troyes’ Arthurian narratives: British legend as a counterpiece to the Capetians’ cult of Charemagne, and also replacing the Norman connection now usurped by the Angevins…