Reviews for From Chaucer's Pardoner to Shakespeare's Iago: Aspects of Intermediality in the History of the Vice

The average rating for From Chaucer's Pardoner to Shakespeare's Iago: Aspects of Intermediality in the History of the Vice based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-12-07 00:00:00 Steven Wilson I had been wanting to read this volume for years, but honestly I was pretty disappointed with it. This is an unfortunate exercise in academic pedantry that really has nothing to do with either tragedy or ethics. I am especially fascinated by Hölderlin and Hegel, but the sections on these thinkers were quite uninteresting to me (as is the text in general, both stylistically and in terms of content and analysis). Leave it to an academic to make the questions of ethics and tragedy boring! I also found it bizarre how attracted the author is to Heidegger, even when he recognizes that the thinker in question was a Nazi sympathizer... Talk about a lack of ethics amidst massive tragedy.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-02-03 00:00:00 James Enderle It's medieval France, a time before TV, movies, sports. What did one do for entertainment? Tell stories of course! Bards and entertainers traveled the courts plying their trade, and in the 1200's the story of the Holy Grail was one of the favourites. Each one took the basic pagan tale, Christianized it of course, and made it his own, changing it freely to suit his audience. Several have passed down to us in written form, and the author attempts here to trace the connections back to the pagan tales for each. For example, the bloody spear which pierced the Lord perhaps arose from a spear that paralyzed an Irish chieftain which appears in older Irish stories. The name Pelles could be a derivation of the Welsh king Beli. That sort of thing. It is one historian's opinion of course, and I'm certain other equally scholarly types would disagree with certain points. But it is an interesting read, weaving the actual text with the analysis. Recommend it.