Manuscripts | Content Section

He Was the Man!

Posted on March 3, 2021 by Frank Brinkley

In 2007 I was invited to the critics’ preview of Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture Beowulf movie at the IMAX, Waterloo. I read the press pack’s inaccurate, ahistorical notes on the poem with such horror that the film critic Mark Kermode enquired why I was whimpering. I outlined the more egregious errors. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘either you […]

Wars of Words

Posted on March 3, 2021 by Frank Brinkley

For centuries, the spoken word in Arabic reigned supreme; scholars, poets, professional reciters, tribal historians and genealogists depended on their prodigious memories for declamation. As the Arabic script developed and written texts steadily came into prominence, a mistrust of the written word appeared. As Beatrice Gruendler shows in her superb history of the creation of […]

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