Bruce N H
Active Member
Hey all,
The algorithm just fed me this article: Why Medieval Artists Doodled Killer Bunnies in Their Manuscript Margins
It's fairly short. I figured members of this community would find it interesting. It touches on things we've done in three points:
- In the Mythgard Academy study of the Name of the Rose, on day one After Nones, William and Adso visit the scriptorium. There they see the fantastical illustrations of Adelmo (the first victim), and there is discussion of them as "Figures of an inverted world, where houses stand on the tip of a steeple and the earth is above the sky." This article discusses these illuminations of homicidal rabbits as "drolleries ... outlandish scenes that often reversed the dynamics of the real world." The author claims these violent rabbits were relatively common as marginalia and there are three illustrations from medieval texts.
- Of course MA also read through Watership Down, and General Woundwort could easily show up in one of these marginalia.
- Finally, we also read Mallory's Morte d'Arthur, and at the end of that class watched Monty Python's Holy Grail, which has the ultimate killer bunny, where "death awaits you all, with nasty big pointy teeth!" Corey made the point that the Pythons were drawing on a lot of real medieval literature in Holy Grail, and we discussed several points where the sketches in the movie directly drew on episodes from Mallory. I wonder if one of the Pythons had actually scene some of these medieval illustrations of violent bunnies and that was the inspiration for the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.
Anyway, I'd point you to that article. It's a pretty quick read.
Bruce
The algorithm just fed me this article: Why Medieval Artists Doodled Killer Bunnies in Their Manuscript Margins
It's fairly short. I figured members of this community would find it interesting. It touches on things we've done in three points:
- In the Mythgard Academy study of the Name of the Rose, on day one After Nones, William and Adso visit the scriptorium. There they see the fantastical illustrations of Adelmo (the first victim), and there is discussion of them as "Figures of an inverted world, where houses stand on the tip of a steeple and the earth is above the sky." This article discusses these illuminations of homicidal rabbits as "drolleries ... outlandish scenes that often reversed the dynamics of the real world." The author claims these violent rabbits were relatively common as marginalia and there are three illustrations from medieval texts.
- Of course MA also read through Watership Down, and General Woundwort could easily show up in one of these marginalia.
- Finally, we also read Mallory's Morte d'Arthur, and at the end of that class watched Monty Python's Holy Grail, which has the ultimate killer bunny, where "death awaits you all, with nasty big pointy teeth!" Corey made the point that the Pythons were drawing on a lot of real medieval literature in Holy Grail, and we discussed several points where the sketches in the movie directly drew on episodes from Mallory. I wonder if one of the Pythons had actually scene some of these medieval illustrations of violent bunnies and that was the inspiration for the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.
Anyway, I'd point you to that article. It's a pretty quick read.
Bruce