Gladio Free Europe

Renowned Caucasus correspondent Alexander Thatcher joins Gladio Free Europe from the land Anatolia for the first of several episodes examining the historic bronze-age context of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
Written in the 8th or 7th century BC but set a half-millennium before, the Greek epic cycle recounts events that were ancient even to an Iron Age audience. While the historicity of the mythic Trojan War cannot be proven, scholars from the days of Schliemann onward have proven that the city of Troy really existed. In its heyday, this archaeological site in Anatolia was closely involved with the affairs of the early Mycenaean Greeks as well as the great empire of the Hittites.
Identified shortly after the discovery of Troy, the Hittites were a civilization previously only known to western culture due to a few references in the Hebrew Bible. Not attested in any of the chronicles of the Greeks or Romans, the Hittites would be the first great civilization known primarily through archaeology. The decipherment of Hittite texts at the turn of the 20th century led to two shocking revelations: that these Hittites led an empire stretching from the Aegean down to Canaan, the greatest power in the Bronze Age Mediterranean after the New Kingdom of Egypt. Second, it was proven that their language was Indo-European. These discoveries would reorient the western understanding of the ancient past, and cause some Europeans to project their own image onto the Ancient Near East.
Alexander Thatcher helps Liam and Russian Sam contrast the various nationalist and mythological narratives of the Bronze Age with what we actually know about the Hittites and their fascinating society. Recent breakthroughs in archaeogenetics and completing linguistic models provide fascinating insight into how the Hittites emerged in the deep past, and to what extent they were related to the Greeks of the west and the Semitic peoples of the east. Also discussed are the mysterious disappearance of one Hittite prince, the existence of an obscure Levantine kingdom of apparently Indian origin, and of course, the infamous Hittite legal code with its very specific attitudes toward certain interactions with horses.
While the Hittites are not mentioned once in Homer, their fall around 1177 BC may be the most dramatic episode of the famous Bronze Age collapse. This episode and its follow-up look at what the Iliad and the Odyssey can tell us about the folk memory of this catastrophic event, and to what extent the Greeks themselves were implicated.

At the court of a French princess in the middle of the 12th century, an obscure poet named Chrétien de Troyes would begin to write and distribute fanciful stories of the Knights of the Round Table. In doing so, he would propel the figure of King Arthur to an unforeseen level of fame and create the medium of fiction as we know it. 
Following the previous discussion of earlier lore surrounding Arthur, and his potential historic basis, this episode of Gladio Free Europe explores the literary development and legacy of the Arthurian Romance. Liam and Russian Sam pick up with the release of Britain's first bestseller, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fanciful Homeric pseudo-history, Historia Regnum Britanniae. As this book and its account of King Arthur spread across Europe, many derivative texts would be composed in prose and verse, sometimes elaborating further on King Arthur and his court. 
During the reign of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose vast territories included England and half of France, the brilliant court poet Chrétien de Troyes would synthesize the matter previously chronicled by Geoffrey and his predecessors with the poetic and heroic traditions of France. In Chrétien’s five Arthurian stories, the tone and themes of the older Song of Roland would be applied to the deeds of Arthur and his knights to create a genre of literature entirely its own. The works of Chrétien and his followers would illustrate the chivalric values idealized by the aristocrats of the high and late Middle Ages. King Arthur’s knights are valiant fighters, but also passionate lovers, merciful Christians, and fully-realized humans, exhibiting an interiority not seen in any European literature since classical antiquity. 

The chivalric romance would spread out of the French-speaking courts of England and France into popular circles across Europe, leaving a mark on the literature of Norway, Italy, Islamic Andalusia, and the Jewish diaspora. Chivalric romance, and Arthurian stories in particular, would become Europe’s first tradition of popular fiction and remain eminently popular until the end of the chivalric age itself. These stories were read not only for entertainment, but also for moral instruction. For good or ill, chivalric ideals such as courtly love and the knightly quest would impact the real behavior of the medieval warrior elite.  
By the later Middle Ages, Arthurian stories would become more solemn and meditative, particular in Arthur’s own land of Britain. After the carnage of the Wars of the Roses, a knight and prisoner named Thomas Malory would compose Le Morte Darthur, a sprawling biography that would become the most famous Arthurian work of all time. Written without any of the whit and whimsy as earlier French stories, this text would effectively conclude the chivalric romance tradition and define the legacy of King Arthur for centuries. 
Following a long period of neglect, the artists and aesthetes of the Victorian age began to reappraise the works and values of the Middle Ages, with particular attention to the mournful chronicle of Thomas Malory. Writers such as Walter Scott and Alfred Tennyson would create new works in the chivalric tradition. Arthurian and medieval scenes would be of sudden interest to the painters of the 19th century, in particular the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood that included John William Waterhouse. This Victorian medievalism took many forms, and was at times associates with earnest progressive politics as well as deeply reactionary yearning for an imagined period of innocent morality and unquestioned hierarchy. Although Chrétien may not be a household name (unless your household is the French royal court) his contributions are everywhere. In all popular division, but in particular the modern genre of medieval fantasy, the images and themes first popularized by Chrétien de Troyes would rise again, as was prophesied of King Arthur himself.

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In the sixth century, the island of Britain was quite possibly the most miserable place on earth. A decades-long combination of civil war, imperial neglect, seaborne savagery, and the great freeze of 536 contributed to a level of deprivation beyond all living memory. But although the Britons had lost their paved roads, well-oiled trade networks, Latin school system, and even their land, they still held onto their hope. They called this hope Arthur.
This episode of Gladio Free Europe is the first in a series on the Arthurian cycle, the body of legends and literature that would become medieval Europe’s most significant popular culture. Starting with the unanswerable question of the historic Arthur of the sixth century, Liam and Russian Sam explore the emergence of Britain’s most recognizable literary icon and most valiant king. This episode of Gladio Free Europe situates Arthurian literature in its various contexts, from Welsh and Breton oral traditions deeply rooted in the stories of the ancient Celts to the French-language courtly literature of High Middle Ages. Together, these various ancient and medieval influences combined to create the most iconic genre of medieval literature, and one which contributes exert a profound influence on fiction today — the chivalric romance.
From the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the middle 12th century to the publication of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur at the close of the 15th, the romance was the defining vernacular literature of medieval Europe. These stories, produced to entertain and to pacify a violent aristocratic class, are both a fascinating look at the values of their time and some of the most amusing and exciting works of fiction produced before the printing press. The first part of this series connects the earliest known references of the legendary Romano-British Arthur to the literary King Arthur of the High Middles. Listen to this episode to learn how the Angevin Empire of Henry II was essential for the development and proliferation of the Arthurian romance, as well as the dark, smelly secret behind Merlin’s name.

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Just over one thousand years ago, an unknown scribe committed to vellum a fantastical tale of swordsmen and sea monsters, set not in contemporary Anglo-Saxon England, but instead in the distant swamps of Denmark, hundreds of years in the past and hundreds of miles away. In doing so, they would open a portal to one of the most mysterious and murky periods of European history. In this episode of Gladio Free Europe, Liam and Russian Sam return to the mighty mead-halls of the Migration Era for a discussion of Beowulf, the greatest work of Old English and one of the most fascinating documents of the early medieval world.

The poem is effectively without parallel. It is a full-length heroic narrative written in Old English, whose eponymous protagonist is attested nowhere else. Though other works in this genre had been created, its sole survival and rediscovery made it the national epic of the English people, often compared to Homer's Iliad in both theme and content. As it was popularized in the early 19th century, the poem became useful to British, German, and even Danish nationlists who sought to use their ancient and medieval heritage to justify present-day political ambitions. But Beowulf does not belong to any existing society. Instead, it is an early medieval document of an idealized antiquity, possibly analogous to the role of King Arthur's Camelot to later medieval Englishmen.

Beowulf provides a unique view into the Anglo-Saxon imaginary, illustrating how a deeply Christian population reckoned with their pagan past, and how the insular descendants of North Sea migrants understood their relationship to an ancestral home. But beyond its anthropological value, Beowulf is a mature reflection on ephemerality and loss. The setting, Heorot, is the most glorious of mead-halls, yet the audience knows from the start that it shall one day burn. Beowulf and King Hrothgar are the best of men, yet even their virtues cannot prevent the ruin caused by mankind's own doomed nature. The concept of wyrd, fate, features prominently in the poem.

Despite not having a direct influence on the culture of high medieval and early modern England, Beowulf has profoundly shaped contemporary English literature. Its heroic narrative, prefiguring chivalric romance and King Arthur stories by several centuries, would inspire the career of J.R.R. Tolkien and shape the contemporary understanding of early medieval Northern Europe. Comparative studies with Norse and German literary works help us understand more fully the cold, courageous, and sometimes cruel world of early Germanic-speaking peoples. Most importantly, it is one of the most engaging and entertaining pieces of early fiction. Everybody, whether a proud Sea-Geat or a descendant of Cain, ought to read Beowulf.

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At the dawning of the 20th century, new songs of an ancient nation rang across the world. Yiddish, the native language of the Ashkenazi Jews, had assumed the status of a literary standard and was at the center of a political movement demanding freedom and dignity for its speakers. Though the events of this century would not allow this, Yiddish endured. The Jewish language survived the rise of fascism and nationalism, persisting even through the murder of millions of its speakers in the Holocaust. Today, in spite of all, Yiddish is a living and growing language.
Alaskan Yiddish scholar Wilf returns to Gladio Free Europe to discuss the continuing history of one of the world’s most remarkable languages. This episode charts the course of Yiddish history from the 17th century onward, beginning with the diarist Glückel of Hamelin and moving through the social transformations of early modern Jewish life, including reactions to the failed Messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi and the transformations of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. During this time, Yiddish remained under scrutiny from both Jews and Gentiles. Disparaged as less holy than the Hebrew of the scriptures or the standard German of the newspapers, it was not until the 19th century that significant numbers of educated Jewish people came to embrace their native tongue.
Writers and folklorists such as Mendele Moher Sforim and Sholem Aleichem took part in a broader movement of ethnographic reflection, embracing the Yiddish language at a time when its use was strongly politicized. Yiddish came to be associated with the celebration of the Jewish diaspora and all it stood for. The language would be a medium of communication for many political causes, perhaps mostly prominent labor radicalism and social reform. Yiddish-language theater, music, and cinema would spread out of Eastern Europe to all corners of the Jewish world. In the 1920s Yiddish would become the native language of nearly a quarter of New Yorkers.
But just a their language was coming into its own, the rise of political antisemitism would inflict new horrors on the Jewish people. World War 2 and the Nazi Holocaust would destroy the traditional homeland of Yiddish, and very nearly wipe out its speakers. But despite this unprecedented tragedy, Yiddish would endure. As it had been a hundred years ago, Yiddish is often considered a symbol of a diasporic culture opposed to nationalist visions that disparage the diaspora. The ongoing revival of Yiddish, in both secular and religious circles, connects the modern world with the old Jewish shtetl and keeps alive a cultural and literary tradition as brilliant and as dignified as German or English or Chinese or Hebrew. Perhaps most importantly, Yiddish gives us some of the most charming concepts and expressions in the human lexicon, such as chutzpah and “the alrightnik.”
Yiddish Cinematheque