Home » Posts tagged 'fake books'
Tag Archives: fake books
8. Arthur, at his Conception. Sir Beckett de Ford.
A philosophical treatise dealing with the problematic nature of the tripartite God being made flesh. Considers the problem of the dead king being at once an incarnation of God on Earth and the pre-figuration of his descendant.
The writing questioning the essence of God on Earth and King on Earth extends the definition of both God and Monarch outwards from singularity into a totality of presence. de Ford argues that should a King arrange a room on such a way that pleases him aesthetically, that room is then part and parcel of the thing– and because he argues that the King is a kind of God, any room so designed must be an extension of Godhead.
The work is also noted for asides the author has ascribed to various prominent thinkers, though the authenticity is suspect even for the casting of Socrates in a defense of philosophical writings. More suspect are the interpolations assigned to Arthur, ratified by Merlin, and claimed as ‘directive letters’ to his court. It is believed these asides are the complete invention of Sir Ford, though critic Matthew Arnold disagreed. He praised the book for insisting that each thing in the formed world, rather than the ideal of Plato, if well made and well thought consists of the same sweetness and light he found in the ancient Greeks. Specifically, Arnold wrote:
“We must not fall into the trap, however usually convincing, of believing in the stories of Arthur as a mystical light among the darkness. We must not continue this sad state of finding ourselves only in a perpetual age of dismal darkness. Rather, with that understanding of beauty– as Arthur himself writes in de Ford’s work– we know that the difficulties of the time were only of the light confronting other light. The country, and indeed the universe, is best put to the understanding that the Quest for total enlightenment, containing truth and indeed beauty as equals, is the entire endeavor civilized humanity is engaged in undertaking.”
Most importantly, however, the book opens with the often quoted line, “the King is dead, long live the God”, though most who have made use of the quote ever reverse the saying.
4. The Economicks of History. John Milsparre.
A drama in the great Elizabethan tradition, which proposes to take up the study of all of history through a look at a banker named Joham who has discovered a small draft that enables him to stay “unaged endless through and for all un-ending time”.
While navigating a typical romantic plot of bride-switching and love-hate relationships picked up later and improved by William Shakespeare, the main character relates how he has developed into a very wealthy man. The drama ends with a love triangle resolved in a way almost pre-figuring the comedies of Billy Wilder, where having vowed to use up his money to try everything, Joham agrees to marry a cross-dressed younger man (who scholars of the history of costuming say resembles nothing so much as the young Elizabeth). The play ends with the oft quoted lines
“I’ve lived a thousand lives, and loved so many more,
and learned no perfectness in those adored”.
Milsparre was drawn and quartered after the premiere performance, an event possibly attended by both Shakespeare and Marlowe, as it is presumed to have happened near the Mermaid Tavern. One rather brutal critic attributed this killing not to the political and satirical commentary the play raises, but rather to the dreadful misuse of the meter within the text.
2. “The Star-Dream”
Often times lifting whole sections liberally from “The Dream of the Rood”, this work reverses the script and begins with what first appears to be Christ upon the Cross. Abruptly, the scene shifts. There is much scholarly debate as to whether this poem is received in full. With many agreeing there are omissions and indeed strange and anachronistic additions to the text, which was liberated from a mystical library during a conflagration in the last century.
It appears that the next part of the text owes more to the mystical traditions of the late seventeen hundreds onwards, with the equation of Christ to a woman, and further developing the metaphor of the rose into a metaphor of dropping blood. The major character in the poem, who remains unnamed, is take captive during battle and dragged at midnight towards the top of a hill where his enemies force him to view a stone that is variously called the sangas, the cynig, or the syngung stone.
Often times, the poem will repeat the name of the stone in a kenning that extends beyond the usual tradition and is tripartite, with each line extending or commenting upon the kenning in the previous line. After repeated viewings of the stone, with the prisoner made to look upon it at midnight, the scene shifts back into the telling of the crucifixion story, before ending shortly thereafter.
It is unknown whether the ending, which comes in the middle of the line, just after the traditional caesura of the
1. Céostan
A repressed telling, written certain years after Beowulf, containing the battles of a mainly female warrior clan in direct opposition to the invading Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. Instead of the heroic journey and eventual death due to hubris proposed in the earlier poem, this telling of the classic story of a band against outsiders suggests a quiescence to the eventual fact of loss.
The death count within even the existing fragments is thousands upon thousands before the titular heroine is defeated at last. But she does not remove from life without inflicting a grievous wound on her opponent. She does not gloat, nor does she relish the victory, as it is pyrrhic at best: all her allies are gone and her land is dead.
In a compelling final installment, she rips out the heart of her victim and eats it to absorb his life, memories, and wisdom.
A Short Catalog of the Alternate Canon
Si Dieu n’existant pas” the old Voltaire sawhorse goes, “il fraudait l’inventir.” Such is the case with the Alternate Canon of English Literature. Indeed, in many places it is far easier to identify the truth (always lower case, subjective– as how can beings in the process of self-observation ever exit and exist as a class above, as an Ur-object of the process?) only by teasing out the contradictions of the un-truth that exists within. For that reason, the editors of this list have spared no expense in building an alternate list of classic Literature. Where the works are obscurantist, they are also hermeneutic. Where they are unavailable, this list ensures a short description. Where the work is preposterous to the observer bound by a slave’s devotion to the assumption that “the truth shall set you free”, you will find the higher assertion that it is better to know for sure the lie than worry about the truth.
This slender, annotated list, is a sleek companion to comment upon and enhance the classical canon of literature. By no means does it intend to detract or propose a true alternative. Without a mainstreaming, there is no alternation. But this alternate canon comes closer to the platonic ideal through the simple and repeatable fact that none of these works exist, per se, and are therefore as close as humanly possible to human forms.
This list begins in the far reaches of history, with companion works to “Caedmon’s Hymn” and Beowulf, and stretches to approximately the end of the world, which by all proper historical measurements happened at least twice in the current century. In the interest of veracity, this list takes up the well-documented argument that the world ended on or around the start of the two thousandth year. It is there, and with those late entries into the canon- minor though they all are- that this list ends.
-The Editors.
A Short Catalog of the Alternate Canon 