Mythgard Academy

Week 1: Lofty Goals, and worthy news, and an auspicious date (mark it well, Saturday, October 16, 2021, Signum Webathon!) precede our inaugural dive into this new book. In the late 1950s, JRRT reworked the structure of Arda. He removed his flat earth and introduced Valian Years. What was the point? Not just math, surely. At last, we have the introductory 'Concerning Elves' material that will shape...

Welcome to Luna, here is your narrator, Mannie, a free born, old cobber with one arm who’s not on Authority’s payroll. Look him up and down. He comes from complicated Loonie heritage, belongs to a line marriage, has a clear attitude against Authority and Warden, and a subtle attitude against Terra and Earthworms. He switches arms and jobs with resilience, faces extreme hardships on Luna or Terra,...

Week 24: And so we finish our tour of Hell and arrive at the crux of the world where we find Dante has been affected deeply by his travels at all three levels of his allegorical structure, and where Dante again faints, and where we also strengthen our understanding of the Medieval knowledge of World Geography. In Virgil’s capable hands the inversion principle moves us through Satan’s nether parts...

Week 23: Where Dante succumbs to the lure of base arguments and wishes he was merely in a dream. And where a bugle blast messes with Dante’s vision, and towers become giants, and not nice ones either. And Dante’s absolute terror returns and his wish to be anywhere else but the road to Hell. But Virgil trades Dante’s fame card for a ride in Antaeus fist into the dark, frozen well. There Dante’s hub...

In which we complete our tour of the Malebolge with a rather crowded tenth pouch

In which we meet people with various kinds of bodily integrity issues.

Week 20: Where we call bologna on Dante’s talent curbing and clearly see the simple summer simile. Where with Ulysses we pass the columns, and the poles, and founder on the shores of Mount Purgatory having found the earth round. Where we hear that one cannot logically be absolved before, or during, the commission of an evil deed or counsel. Sorry, not sorry, or something like that, Minos judges. A...

\Week 19: A Place Among the Classics In the seventh pocket of the eighth circle, the fraudulent thieves are beset with snakes. Dante calls them all serpents, but some have six legs, and some none; some are caliente, peppercorn serpents, and some are winged, fiery dragons; some are smoking, and some are boring. Later, while describing the transformations from snake to thief and thief to snake, Dant...

Guess what sin is punished by snakes. And cyclical incineration.

Week 17: Now into the second half of the Malebolge, we look back at the closing line of Canto 21 and The Comedy's lack of humor. Then on to Canto 23, where Aesop’s frog and mouse story is called upon to warn Dante against trusting too closely the partnership of Demons. And Virgil luges Dante down the rocky slope, making a quick escape from pocket 5 to 6, where they try to hide among the lead-lined...

Tonight we encounter some really ... unexpected demons. What under the earth is going on here?

Week 15: We revisit the Baptistery of San Giovanni and notice the inversions in Dante’s destroying holy furniture to save a life while the popes destroy lives to save holy money for themselves. But what is with all the feet? And do you think Boniface saw the funny side of his little cameo, or would he be depressed in determinism like his predecessor having perverted the mechanism of forgiveness an...

Dante Finds Himself Among Friends Week 12: There are no poor people in rings 8 and 9 of the 7th circle of Hell, but no one sees clearly either. Dante condescends to walk and talk with his old teacher Brunetto and stops to let three wealthy Florentine nobles ask for news from home. But everything about this tableau is inverted and full of oblique references. For more information about the Mythgard...

Week 13: At the waterfall edge of the 7th circle Dante gives up his belt to conjure a ride. What is the truth which seems a lie? Poetic allegory of course. For Dante breaks the 4th wall to give his poem a name, Comedy, and to swear that he saw a beast swim in the air up the waterfall. Geryon is the impossible thing, but that’s ok, he’s a fraud. No, he’s The Fraud and through his depiction we see t...