Wednesday, October 18, 2006

RenFaire Odds/Ends

I meant to do a ten things list on this topic but never got around to finishing it, and as the first item will go out of print soon, I thought I'd better post it now:

One of my favorite print magazines, Renaissance, is celebrating their 50th issue by featuring biography articles on the top 50 mystics, schemers, visionaries, scoundrels and bizarre men and women of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This is a neat issue for anyone, especially if you write in or about those time periods.

For some insight on what it was like to live in Tudor-era England, Renaissance -- The Elizabethan World features an online and .pdf download of Life in Elizabethan England: A Compendium of Common Knowledge 1558-1603.

Daniel Traister has put together one of the most comprehensive links pages out there to online Renaissance Literature texts and studies, including a lot of Shakespeare-related links.

VoS, a website for humanities research, has pages of excellent links for Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Lit, Renaissance & 17th Century Lit and a lot more.

2 comments:

  1. When I first started writing, I wanted to do historical romance because I'd lived in a little English town that even in modern times had history everywhere you loked, including the remains of a castle used by John of Gaunt as his hunting lodge.

    Anyway that book still isn't finished (I got bogged down in research) but one of my favorite reference books is PRIVATE LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY Illustrated Letters of the Paston Family edited by Roger Virgoe ISBN 1-55584-270-4. Amazon has used copies http://www.amazon.com/Private-Life-Fifteenth-Century-Illustrated/dp/1555842704/ref=sr_11_1/104-9061854-3692729?ie=UTF8

    I found it invaluable for insights into every day life, the then current politics and most importantly getting the flow and cadence of the language (though obviously written words are more formal than spoken).

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hear those Ren fairs are a blast. Never been myself but sounds fun.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.