Tag: Walter Map

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In this slightly belated Father’s Day episode, we return to the snarky wit of Walter Map as he explains why it’s so hard to be the man of the house.

Today’s Text

• Map, Walter. De Nugis Curialium. Translated by Montague R. James, historical notes by John Edward Lloyd, edited by E. Sidney Hartland, Cymmrodorion Record Series, no. 9, Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1923.

References

• Jones, Kathleen W. “Mother’s Day: The Creation, Promotion and Meaning of a New Holiday in the Progressive Era.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 22, no. 2, Summer 1980, pp. 175-196. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40754605.

Audio Credit: Young Frankenstein. Directed by Mel Brooks. 20th Century Fox, 1974.
Image Credit: Detail of a feast from a Flemish Prayer Book (15/16c). Wikimedia Commons.

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• MP3 Audio48 MB

This episode we continue with Walter Map’s De nugis curialium and learn that politics really is hell.

Today’s Texts:

• Map, Walter. De Nugis Curialium. Translated by Montague R. James, historical notes by John Edward Lloyd, edited by E. Sidney Hartland, Cymmrodorion Record Series, no. 9, Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1923.
• Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by A.T. Murray, Harvard University Press, 1919. [at Perseus]
• Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book, translated by Paull Franklin Baum (1963). Available at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_Riddles_of_the_Exeter_Book/59

References:

• Bartlett, Robert. England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings: 1075-1225. Clarendon Press, 2000.
• Brooke, C.N.L. Introduction. De Nugis Curialium: Courtier’s Trifles, by Walter Map, edited and translated by M.R. James, revised by C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors, Clarendon Press, 1983.
• Turner, Ralph V. “The Reputation of Royal Judges under the Angevin Kings.” Albion, vol. 11, no. 4, Winter 1979, pp. 301-316. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4048542.
• Echard, Siân. “Map’s Metafiction: Author, Narrator and Reader in De nugis curialium.” Exemplaria, vol. 8, no. 2, 1996, pp. 287-314.

Image: Sarcophagus in Vatican Museums featuring images of Sisyphus, Ixion, and Tantalus. Photo by Dan Diffendale (used under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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• MP3 Audio39 MB

This episode we dive into Walter Map’s De nugis curialium for a satirical lesson in administrative chaos, choler, and corruption, and also how generally terrible we are.

Today’s Texts:

• Map, Walter. De Nugis Curialium. Translated by Montague R. James, historical notes by John Edward Lloyd, edited by E. Sidney Hartland, Cymmrodorion Record Series, no. 9, Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1923.

References:

• Brooke, C.N.L. Introduction. De Nugis Curialium: Courtier’s Trifles, by Walter Map, edited and translated by M.R. James, revised by C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors, Clarendon Press, 1983.
• Horace. De Arte Poetica. Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, translated by H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard UP, 1929.

Image: Detail of demons carrying off a monk from The Hague, KB, 71 A 24, fol. 27v