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40. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
This month's Bibliogoths book, and we've not yet met, so I won't say much.
This was a re-read for me. I loved it just as much this time as I did the first; I always say the mark of a good writer is someone who makes you care about people and situations that you normally wouldn't.
41.The Stations of the Sun: A history of the ritual year in Britain by Ronald Hutton
That's the same Prof Hutton that does the occasional public talk in the Bristol area. This is the scholarly edition of the talk he gave last Hallowe'en at the cemetery. It's a synthesis of the extant historical accounts of how the British (and to a lesser extent, the Manx and Irish) have celebrated seasonal festivals and holy days through the ages. Hutton convincingly rubbishes the claims of earlier folklorists (who were allergic to doing things like read actual primary sources) that most of the ritual year is a hangover of a pan-Celtic, pre-Christian world.
This book is very long, and dense, and at times does read like a laundry list. I know from my own work that such is the price to pay for being the first person to systematically study a topic. It's definitely worth reading, even though the pattern for most of the festivals examined is the same: records first appear in the later middle ages and rituals & celebrations are well established by Tudor times. They mostly survive the Reformation of Henry VIII, but are stopped by the more ideological Reformation of Protectorate of the Duke of Somerset, revived under Mary, and gradually eroded under Elizabeth. Things were mostly dour and miserable under the Stuarts until the Restoration; then it all gets quite complex. The short version of the decline of most seasonal customs is that most of them revolved around poorer people begging for money or food to perform the rituals/customs, and there was often an element of Misrule, both of which became unacceptable as the 19th century wore on. However, many customs were moved from a public place to the family home (for example, Christmas becomes a family rather than a community celebration in the Victorian era) at this time. And now they are being revived as community celebrations in many places.
This month's Bibliogoths book, and we've not yet met, so I won't say much.
This was a re-read for me. I loved it just as much this time as I did the first; I always say the mark of a good writer is someone who makes you care about people and situations that you normally wouldn't.
41.The Stations of the Sun: A history of the ritual year in Britain by Ronald Hutton
That's the same Prof Hutton that does the occasional public talk in the Bristol area. This is the scholarly edition of the talk he gave last Hallowe'en at the cemetery. It's a synthesis of the extant historical accounts of how the British (and to a lesser extent, the Manx and Irish) have celebrated seasonal festivals and holy days through the ages. Hutton convincingly rubbishes the claims of earlier folklorists (who were allergic to doing things like read actual primary sources) that most of the ritual year is a hangover of a pan-Celtic, pre-Christian world.
This book is very long, and dense, and at times does read like a laundry list. I know from my own work that such is the price to pay for being the first person to systematically study a topic. It's definitely worth reading, even though the pattern for most of the festivals examined is the same: records first appear in the later middle ages and rituals & celebrations are well established by Tudor times. They mostly survive the Reformation of Henry VIII, but are stopped by the more ideological Reformation of Protectorate of the Duke of Somerset, revived under Mary, and gradually eroded under Elizabeth. Things were mostly dour and miserable under the Stuarts until the Restoration; then it all gets quite complex. The short version of the decline of most seasonal customs is that most of them revolved around poorer people begging for money or food to perform the rituals/customs, and there was often an element of Misrule, both of which became unacceptable as the 19th century wore on. However, many customs were moved from a public place to the family home (for example, Christmas becomes a family rather than a community celebration in the Victorian era) at this time. And now they are being revived as community celebrations in many places.
