Over at Empty Mirror magazine I’m featured with my essay on Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale and David Maurer’s The Big Con, which (among other things) inspired The Sting. Check it out and take a look around: they feature a lot of smart, offbeat and interesting pieces that include fiction, non-fiction and art. Interdisciplinarity #FTW!
Tag: Chaucer
Collisions
I shared my Inspirations Song List today as I’d updated it (Songs that Inspired Stories), then joked that I should make a list of stories that started from collisions. Not literally — although I do have one or two of those — but collisions of ideas. Example: later this month Empty Mirror will publish my…
#WhanThatAprille16: Riddle 20
Jumping into spring: it’s the time when folk long to go on pilgrimages and in addition to seeking the blissful holy martyr, medievalists like to share their love of language with the world. Thanks to Chaucer Doth Tweet, the event this year is called #WhanThatAprille16 so check out the hashtag for more audio delights. Here’s…
When Worlds Collide
Our brains like to label things and categorise them neatly. We can ‘unsee’ things we’ve seen if they don’t fit our categories. But we vary in how much we do this: at one end of the spectrum is the rigid labeling that leads to racism and xenophobia, at the other end lies an inability to…
Disreputable Magic
My thoughts have turned perhaps inexorably to the intersection of crime and magic in the Middle Ages, as my interests seem to intensify where they overlap. Or it just amuses me as I turn my mind to other topics to exercise different muscles in my head (so to speak). Missing Strange & Norrell (the series;…
VexMosaic & Medieval Masculinities
Today I’ve got an essay up at a new site, VexMosaic, along with folks like the esteemed Alasdair Stuart. What is VexMosaic, you ask? Good Speculative Fiction transforms “what is” into “what could be”. It vexes, disturbs, and inspires us, becoming a catalyst for new ways of thinking that expand our awareness and subvert the…
It’s Valentine’s Day
If you hate the holiday, blame Chaucer. If you enjoy it, here’s a lovely poem. As I often find myself far from my beloved, it comes to mind when ever I travel. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning By John Donne As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of…
I’m Sensing a Theme
We have a couple of feeders at the house. Yesterday we were suddenly deluged with a huge flock of these guys. I’m thinking the red tail that’s been hanging around might want to tell a few friends. Otherwise it’s going to be a lot of pies! Birds seem to have become a theme of late….
K. A. Laity 