Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur

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This week, Jonathan Geltner joins Chris to talk about J.R.R. Tolkien's unfinished King Arthur poem, The Fall of Arthur, indulging in discussions of medieval literature 

Among other things, we discuss:

• Why you should never tell an author that they must finish a work (thanks a lot, R.W. Chambers!)
• The plot of The Fall of Arthur
• The Arthurian "chronicle" tradition in medieval literature (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Layamon, and the Alliterative Morte Arthure
• Who is the historical Arthur?
• The Britons versus the English
• What "Wales" means
• Tolkien's not-so-cordial dislike of French
• Tolkien's focus on the natural world
• Lancelot and Gawain
• Tides as time in Tolkien
• Guinever as fay-woman
• Old English prosody in The Fall of Arthur
• Images and phrases in this work that prefigure LOTR
• Mordred's agents: The first Black Riders?

Sorry for the late posting!

Next week, we'll be talking about Jonathan's essay--a thought experiment about what would happen if we had to restart civilization with only Tolkien's work.  Feel free to read it here before we discuss: The new transcendentalism (III): fragments or foundations? (substack.com)

Feel free also to follow Jonathan at Slant Books, and to purchase his debut novel, Absolute Music.