Glass Island: Arthur and I, Three Thousand Years

Author: Feng Xiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-03-01
Features: The stories in this little book are drawn from the Arthurian legends and my personal experiences. The Arthurian legends are a treasure of medieval European literature and have been in the West, perhaps second only to the Bible and Shakespeare. To this day, they continue to be adapted and reinterpreted in various new and popular artistic forms—from Hollywood films and Broadway musicals to comic books and puppetry. This book tells nine stories, covering most of the main characters and mythic themes of the Arthurian legends: King Arthur and the "Earth Mother" Guinevere, the Lady of the Lake Vivian and the "Seer" Merlin, Sir Lancelot and the two Liones, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gisen and the Golden Child, the Holy Grail and the Fisher King, and the tragic division and sacrifice of the Knights of the Round Table for the sake of honor. In terms of the use and development of Western literary classics, Celtic/Greek mythology, historical, and religious texts, it can also be considered a secondary introduction to the Arthurian legends in China. However, I had no intention of writing a serious academic work. The central theme of the stories actually speaks to the vanity, illusion, pollution, and corruption that our increasingly globalized, McDonaldized, or "Mafia-ized" "post-posthuman" society faces every day: from Internet sorcery and genetic modification to love potion heresy.