Viewpoint: In Defence of 'Monks on the Make' - Glastonbury, Lies, and Legends
A story has been going around the British media this past week, springing from some new archaeological research which has been conducted at Glastonbury Abbey - A Clerk of Oxford writes in her latest blog. This research, a four-year project based at the University of Reading, sounds very interesting: it has explored the early history of a site which has long held a unique place in popular culture in this country, associated as it is with Arthurian legend and with an early, mythical origin for the British church. You can read about the research and some of its findings on the University of Reading website.
This is all great. But the way this story has been reported in the media this week has been troubling me, so I finally gave in to temptation and decided to blog about it. What I intend to do in this post is to look at how this story has been reported, to challenge some of the unquestioned assumptions which are apparent in that reporting, and to suggest some alternative ways in which one might think about medieval monasteries and the legends they told.
To read on visit the Clerk of Oxford blog here: http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/in-defence-of-monks-on-make-glastonbury.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+AClerkOfOxford+(A+Clerk+of+Oxford)