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“As any Game of Thrones fan knows, being a knight has its downsides. It isn’t all power, glory, advantageous marriages and gifts ranging from castles to bags of gold.
Sometimes you have to fight a truly formidable opponent.
We’re not talking about bunnies here, though there’s plenty of documentation to suggest medieval rabbits were tough customers.
As Vox Almanac’s Phil Edwards explains, above, the many snails littering the margins of 13th-century manuscripts were also fearsome foes.”
70 instances of man-on-snail combat <— I’m dying!
“That idea became @subwaybookreview, the social media movement that recently reached a new milestone: its five-year anniversary. Subway Book Review’s premise? Beutter Cohen photographs and interviews people reading printed books on the subway about what they’re reading and how they’re living life, and shares the often unexpected stories on social media, namely on Instagram. While its main mission is to help its 225,000 social media followers discover new books, places and people, Subway Book Review delves deeper and shows us to never judge a person by their book cover. Beutter Cohen has become a documentarian of the underground and someone who is dialed into the American and international cultural scene.”
Cool.
“Much of the work in Monsters I Have Been is what Liu calls “Frankenpo,” a style of his own creation that chops and mixes multiple texts into one body. The poem “Stomach me, delicious world” is a Frankenpo, and according to Liu’s notes at the back of the book, combines “the screenplay of Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together (1997) + screenplay of Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004) + article ‘Confucius on Gay Marriage’ in the Diplomat + New York Times article ‘Court in Hong Kong Invalidates Antisodomy Law from British Era.’”
Liu’s poems are experimental and strange; they demand that readers move through the pages without a guide—and many times without a speaker. Like specimens in a mad scientist’s laboratory, they are raided parts dropped into glass containers of formaldehyde for our viewing. But what are we looking at, and what does the scientist want us to do with the pieces? We sit down with our tea, and Liu begins to explain.”
Really interesting read that left me super curious and with questions.
Source : Why Knights Fought Snails In Medieval Manuscripts: Critical Linking, May 15, 2019
