NonFiction: Guinevere - Norma Lorre Goodrich (#11)

Somehow I just cannot get myself excited to write about this book. Maybe because I have been some combination of too busy, too tired, or too cranky for the last few days. Maybe because, despite being about a topic I am fairly interested in I just couldn't get comfortable with the text. Maybe because I am just really freaking lazy sometimes.

Anyways, I find that with history books there is a fine line between baby talking to your reader, assuming that they know nothing, but nothing, about the topic and talking in complicated prose and assuming that your reader is also a Rhodes Scholar and knows everything, but everything about the topic. It could be that I haven't read a lot of scholarly history texts since my undergrad days, and even then with sufficient supplemental lecture material, but I found that Goodrich seemed to take the latter assumption. I felt like I was doing math again (definitely not a strong suit) and I was given a problem that went something like A = C so F is 5 and I was all huh? Where are all the steps in between that explain that enormous leap of logic? So I would go back and re-read more carefully in case I had missed something, but most of the time she really was actually randomly changing topics, or, and probably more the case, assuming that I had a vital piece of knowledge somewhere in my brain that I didn't actually have. And I don't blame the author entirely, I chose the book knowing that it would be a little heavy and assuming I could handle it, but I have to admit I was frustrated on more than one occasion.

I also felt like Goodrich didn't really come to any conclusions. She cited a lot of sources and demonstrated a lot of theories but just as you thought she was giving you an answer of sorts she would up and cite the exact opposite theory and a whole lot of source material to prove that too. I guess the point is that we can never really know 100% for sure what happened in the past, even the present is subject to interpretation, and you know, here are some possibilities. And I get that. But I wish she would have indicated in a foreward or something that she was going to spend the whole book being totally wishy washy. Because I wasted a lot of time going "Guinevere is blah blee? but I thought she just spent 2 chapters saying that she was Blee Blah. OH. ha ha. She is telling me that what we know about Guinevere is totally uncertain. Moving on. And also Grr."

Hovever, given all that, I did learn a few things and I managed to make a few scribblings about what I found interesting, as noted below:

*Lancelot is suspected to be descended from Joseph of Arimathea (or possibly even Jesus?)
*Arthur's Camelot is in Scotland (not Cornwall), known as "the key of Scotland" and thought to be of military significance. Camelot and the Round Table were part of Guinevere's dowry.
*There are rumors of 2 (possibly 3) Guinevere's ... The real Queen and a False Guinevere (who shared a father with the Real Guinevere) who drugged Arthur and convinced him that she was his rightful Queen.
*Guinevere was literate; Arthur was not.