Language has played a crucial role in the history of our world, but in most fantasy, it is often mentioned only in passing. It’s easy to see why: writing fictional languages is hard, and making them seem realistic is even harder. But it’s a topic worth thinking about, especially for those writers who like to… Continue reading Language in Fantasy
Anyone who's studied the English canon has likely been exposed to the famous daffodils in "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." William Wordsworth was undoubtedly passionate about the natural world in general--it featured prominently in his poetry, and, together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, he was grouped rather disparagingly as one of the… Continue reading Death of the Author: An Analysis of Wordsworth
It's a song commonly played to ring in the New Year, bidding farewell to the old. Across the English-speaking world, it's used for graduations, for funerals, for any major transitional period in one's life. As a result, pretty much everyone is familiar with the tune. But growing up, I never knew anyone who was actually… Continue reading Dialects in Literature: A Look at Robert Burns
Damien Concordel is a French-born author, blogger and language coach, fluent in 5 languages and communicating in a 6th. In this post he shares what he's discovered are the very practical aspects of how best to learn and practice a language. Original post In my previous post on this topic I laid out my credentials… Continue reading The Practicalities of Learning Languages
Today, Iceland is a massively literate country, the most literate in the world, and authors and writers are celebrities. Almost everyone in Iceland is a writer, and many Icelanders will publish a book at some point in their lives. It’s something in the blood, I think, as well as something in the culture, and in the spring water.
Before we go spelunking into history, a little background: I have a middle grade time travel adventure book called The Eye of Ra, in which the main characters, John and Sarah, find themselves in ancient Egypt. For the next book we’re scheming, my boys and I did some brainstorming around a story “with swords.” I… Continue reading Stuck in the Middle with Romans
Hey guys! Interested in hearing me talk about everything from vikings to blood feuds to copywriting? Check out the Keeping Up with Joe podcast, run by fellow writer Joseph Anderson, for insight on myth, history, linguistics, and more. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nNSaJjsK15VvWfGmo0FGd Extremely grateful to be featured on the podcast. Big thank you to Joe and Sarah for… Continue reading Podcast: Germanic Myth & Copywriting with Joseph Anderson
Epic poems have incredible staying power both as literary achievements and as historical resources. The Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf is one of the foremost examples of this. Despite its mythological themes, the story offers historians a rare insight into Anglo-Saxon ideals of masculinity, heroism, and society. At the same time, it presents literary scholars with a… Continue reading History through Poems: Examining Beowulf
There is an inherent interconnectivity between epic literature and cultural identity. Nationals epics typically have their roots in an oral tradition, painting a romanticized portrait of the distant past. This rose-tinted view of cultural history leads to a skewed sense of identity--a perception of an original and "pure" society, untainted by outside cultures. It is… Continue reading Transnational Epics: How an Indian Epic Became Popular in 19th-Century Germany
𝕻𝖔𝖕 𝖖𝖚𝖎𝖟: 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖎𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖋𝖔𝖓𝖙? At first glance, many folks in the English-speaking world would probably call it "Old English," but that name isn't really accurate—the Old English language predates this style by a few centuries, and the calligraphic hands used to write Old English were entirely different. Its real name… Continue reading A Brief History of Fraktur
