We are as dedicated as ever to continuing the golden thread, to unraveling the labyrinth, and to concluding this present cycle of four instalments - the Grail Cycle.

We have met the Grail Seeker in Issue 1.

We have grappled with the desolation of the failed quest in Issue 2.

Now there comes a time to find a path out. And it cannot be done alone.

Circumstances produce unexpected bed-fellows. Fellow victims of a rapacious government, like the dispossessed religious, become allies to be defended (often against their will), their fate taken as an augury of what was more generally in store…

— C.S.L. Davies, Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace.

Where last the Incidental Encyclical left its winding, golden thread, the world was in waste. Holy Empires lay in ruin because of the base act of betrayal which always twists and turns first in our own heart before biting the hand that fed it - our own hand. Camelot lay shattered. Merrie England is no longer courts and pavilions, castles and cities resplendent; the Matter of Arthur lies sleeping in barrow with the grass growing wild atop it. Another Matter now stirs in the minds of the dissipated and distant-flung denizens of England. The landscape itself reflects this change, and the stories which can no longer take place in the stone keeps and amidst fluttering tournament tents now must take place in the dark and mysterious places which heroes aforehand only rode through in haste, or else fought their way out of desperately. In Nottingham, dressed in Lincoln green — through Sherwood Forest to Barnesdale Wood — upon the West Riding of Yorkshire and about the dales - the names of these towns and wild places call up Robin Hood’s exploits and most memorable legends. This was the place for the yeoman myths, the substance of the common freeman’s parish play and of the country clark’s poetic homily.

It was not just in matters of Greenwood myth that outlaws strode the wolds and fens of wild northern wastes, however; Lincolnshire and Yorkshire were the site of many dissenting movements in English history. Swathed by the cloak of the Danelaw in the 9^th century, Yorkists rebelled against their new Viking jarls after losing their king in A.D.867. During the tightening throttle of a Norman yoke over a routed England, rebel legend Hereward the Wake conspired with northern bishops and yeomen to carry on a guerrilla campaign amidst the Lincoln marshes and northern wilderness until his betrayal in A.D.1071. And on the cusp of England’s remaking as a modern nation-state (and indeed in the very same generation as the printed tales of Robin Hood began to circulate), the north once more tried to resist the creeping shadow of a king’s oppressive reach when the people revolted against Henry VIII’s infamous reform of the Church.

Though perhaps a lesser known revolt in history, this event is the best documented act of public resistance from this pivotal century in early modern England.^⁠1 There are two distinct revolts from the years 1536-7, the latter occurring within a fortnight of its predecessor. First was the Lincoln Rising, beginning on October 1 in the same year Henry VIII promulgated his Ten Articles and began the infamous dissolution of England’s monasteries for his own enrichment. Over twenty thousand responded in protest to the spoliation of their churches and communities, though it is important to make absolutely emphatic that this was not the kind of revolt seen a century later in the English Civil War: no one called for the removal of their king. Indeed, the people still referred to Henry by the honourable title bestowed on him by the pope, ‘Defender of the Faith’ — though not, it should be noted, by the title ‘Head of the Church’.^⁠2 The Lincolnshire Rising was swiftly dealt with, and its leaders - among whom a shoemaker and a monk - were summarily executed in typically grisly fashion. This did not have the effect intended. By October 13^th, only some nine days after the Lincoln mob had dissipated, a new movement had been stirred. This was a rebellion known today - and named in its time - as the Pilgrimage of Grace. This name is not a euphemism for an otherwise brutal peasant uprising; the lawyer Robert Aske who lead the rebellion against Henry VIII and named it thusly insisted that those involved kept to the highest standard of behaviour. It is clear that by and large such a standard was kept; very little by the way of looting occurred and the revolt enjoyed clerical support that kept its pilgrims armed and fed. There were no orgies of violence, nor the grandiose toppling of a smooth, monolithic Ozymandian statue in favour of the myriad biting sands of desert; no desperate acts of damned rebels.

The actions that were undertaken by these rebels - or pilgrims, as Aske insisted they were - showed that the religion claimed by the uprising was not (as some scholars have claimed) just a veil for political motives. They restored almost a quarter of the monastics and other clergy ousted from religious houses by Henry’s edicts, and peacefully occupied the city of York.^⁠3 Of course, there was politics at play on some level - but the noble element was not there at the outset or foundation of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and in many cases had to be coerced into taking the pilgrim oath and supporting it.^⁠4 Likewise, though there was much rumour that fuelled the discontent which brought the commons to stand and march alongside their parish priest and local abbess, it was rumour built from a foundation real tragedies and destruction that had already occurred: 'the people saw many abbeys pulled down in deed, they believed all the rest [of the rumours] to be true’^⁠5, as one contemporary put it. Though the people may have felt it within their honest and holy right to protest the destruction of their communities and ways of life, the King did not take the dissent with a great deal of understanding.

An exemplary response of Henry VIII can be found numerous of many letters written that week to his privy councillors, such as the following to the Duke of Suffolk, written on the 19^th of October 1536. It is in full keeping with the contemporary popular image of the forgiving and loving husband we cherish:

“You are to take the said abbot and monks forth with violence and have them hanged without delay in their monks' apparel.”^⁠6

Indeed, though the pilgrims had sworn themselves to the King and to God in their oaths (which oaths were a requisite ritual of joining the pilgrimage), Henry seems to have viewed their movement as anything but apolitical:^⁠7

"How presumptuous then are ye, the rude commons of one shire, and that one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm and of least experience, to find fault with your prince for the electing of his counsellors and prelates?" Thus you take upon yourself to rule your prince.”^⁠8

For all of Henry’s railing and ranting, the pilgrimage ended peacefully. In early December, congregated at Pontefract Castle, Aske drafted twenty-four articles in response to the king’s ten; a mix of political, economic, and religious concerns evident among them. The king’s envoy to the rebels assured them that the king would convene Parliament in the North and that he would be sympathetic to their demands; Aske then convinced them to disband. This is not to say there were not later throes and pangs of unruly commoners and clerics when the demands were inevitably trampled on and ignored by the vindictive Henry. But it is important to emphasise that Robert Aske (though eventually executed) succeeded in getting the forty thousand assembled to disband and go home after their petition had been drafted and agreed to by a royal spokesman. When they disbanded, they took none of the political or economic matters into their own hands in waiting for the King to come and ratify their wishes; they did, however, continue to enforce the restored position of the monks and nuns of their communities to their religious houses.^⁠9

Though this unique incident may not be a well-publicised historical moment today, what is well-known is the eventual result of Henry’s break with Rome. The commoners and clerics who had swelled as the grassroots and bedrock of the Pilgrimage of Grace did not succeed, and the religion of the people was soon suppressed when landowners and gentry realised the economic benefit brought about by evangelical reforms.^⁠10 But that is the general drift of history, and while general drifts can make for the broad strokes useful in painting ideological narratives, it is through scrutiny and consideration on finer detail that the symbolism and structure of history is revealed. What exactly, in 1536, were the people resisting, and what was to come about? It would be incorrect to say ‘Protestantism’. Even the term ‘heresy’ was bandied about during the pilgrimage and the rumour-mill that preceded it was mostly used in a vague sense. What exactly, in this cultural, religious, and social climate, did a pilgrimage mean, and how did it address the issue they faced?

To answer the first question, I quote again from Henry himself. In a drafted letter to the Duke of Suffolk he commands the latter to address the people concerning their discontent over Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries:

“As to the suppression of religious houses we would have you know it is granted to us by Parliament and not set forth by the mere will of any counsellor. It has not diminished the service of God, for none were suppressed but where most abominable living was used, as appears by their own confessions signed by their own hands in the time of our visitations. Yet many were allowed to stand, more than we by the act needed; and if they amend not their living we fear we have much to answer for.”^⁠11

Henry had done many things in 1536, and would go on to do many more, all of which were fundamentally the end of the world for countless communities and cities in England. Eamon Duffy’s magisterial book, The Stripping of the Altars, on the preceding century of English religious life and the effect the Henrician reform had on England is a seven-hundred page testament to each aspect of life that would have to find new support, or even entirely new foundations - or ultimately be destroyed - thanks to Henry’s actions and edicts of 1536. Already, within that year, enough had been prefigured in the Ten Articles, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the abrogation of feasts and seizure and even destruction of relics, that tens of thousands would rise against it. While summarising Duffy’s tome would be impossible, even the cursory list above displays how many parts of life were quickly stripped. The act of childbirth would change without the relics of maternal Saints like St. Anne to support pregnant women or those in the act of delivery. The economic life of towns would shift when gilds dedicated to furnishing churches to the honour of local saints found those days abrogated from the calendars, and the peasants likewise found their holidays stifled and were sent back to the fields. Entire sectors of the community would lose work and a role in parish life following the Chantry Act of 1547. And so on. The world turned over, and lain aside in a ditch, for the march of reform and progress.

But Henry’s attitude, and the attitude of Cromwell, and other of his agents in these sweeping reforms, towards those who reform would so confound was not as simple as that of an abolitionist. Indeed, many of Henry’s agents had to tread carefully in their reforming zeal around a king who had cut his teeth authoring vehement attacks on Luther in his youth. Yet even those with a more straightforward agenda of spoliation felt compelled to take a posture that has resonance with an attitude described in the previous issue of this magazine.

Why, indeed, do we consider now this historical event, the strangely un-revolutionary rebellion against a reformation? What a paradoxical thing the Pilgrimage of Grace was; perhaps even nullifying itself like a negative cancelling its like. No, it is here examined - and with some attention to its minutiae - because it is the template of the response to Wasteland. In that dangling quotation of Henry’s concerning the people’s ire at the closure of their monasteries, there is the deceitful graciousness, the poisoned charity of the very betrayal that births and later sustains the wasteland. We cannot face our own betrayals, so it is necessary to opiate ourselves with the sweet unction of a little death.

Rhetorically, Henry VIII’s reformation stands at the vanguard of tyranny in modernity. Henry and his agents make the same claim that Stalin and his cronies echo in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, which the Incidental Encyclical explored in its last issue. Henry states that the service of God is not diminished when the monasteries are closed, because he has only closed those which were not serving God. Henry and his agents make the same claim that Stalin and his cronies echo in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, which the Incidental Encyclical explored in its last issue. Henry states that the service of God is not diminished when the monasteries are closed, because he has only closed those which were not serving God.

This wonderful, simple pattern played out in the hands of Henry VIII’s agents just as it did in his scripted rhetoric. When Henry’s Chancellor Thomas Cromwell seized a relic or an icon from a parish, he gave assurances it would indeed be returned if it proved miraculous. Fair enough. Yet those who claimed to have seen miracles done by icons kept in Cromwell’s confiscated hoard - such as as one woman in Walsingham in 1538 - were put in the stocks, even despite the deep snow, to silence them.^⁠12 For as Cromwell was soon to demonstrate by producing a false icon with a mechanism that allowed its eyes to move, the miracles were tricks.^⁠13 This is the pantomime, village-square-demonstration forerunner of Hume’s fallacious argument against miracles devised centuries later: If a miracle were to happen ‘in real life’, it must be explicable through the laws of nature; but a miracle is something which is impossible according to the laws of nature: ergo, if a miracle were to happen, it would not be a miracle - merely something occurring as per natural law, or a lie.^⁠14

The same serpentine circle runs its way through the mechanics of tyranny all the way through to the present. Stalin’s interrogating agent claims that you - a good communist - are not being arrested for being any different to he (also, coincidentally, a good communist); you are not different to the other good communists and so because you know this (as well as he knows this, he, a good communist), you will not make a fuss at the trial, and you will readily accept the sentence and plead guilty; yes, this will prove that you are a good communist. Start with a premise that excludes any conclusion but your premise, and you have won - so long as you have force of arms to crush the honest dissenter about his day.

All miracles are deceitful until proven deceitful.

It is not enough to call a world uprooted a wasteland: the earth must also be salted, so that nothing again grows there.

All relics are false until proven false.

It is not long before the ideology reaches ad nauseam, not long at all!

All traitors are traitors until proven traitors.

And so on. It is the beautiful, tautological, innocence of the presumption and the verdict rolled into one:

GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY

So much for But what of the response? What was a pilgrimage to the people of 15^th and 16^th century England? Why was it a significant act that some forty thousand might understand its meaning well enough to not only join it, but to participate in an almost entirely non-violent uprising of commoners lasting several months - and then to have the capacity for disbanding without immediately burning down the very next thing in sight? Eamon Duffy in his essay The Dynamics of Pilgrimage in the Late Middle Ages summarises the attitude of many testators composing their last wills during this time, who made provision for others to undergo pilgrimage on their behalf: “The point of the pilgrimage is not the journeying, but the pardon it secures.”^⁠15 Duffy states this to contrast the prevalent, overly twee understanding of pilgrimage that might be prevalent among the readers as it is in some scholarship. Yes, there was a journey; the movement beyond the familiar into a liminal space occurred. But the point that is so clearly the focus in many lay wills that provision for, and clerical documents that prescribe pilgrimage in late medieval England, is simple. The point is not to be forever wearied, to be lost and wandering perpetually, to be wide-eyed at the world in all its unfamiliarity without relief. The point is to come home, to be re-integrated and shriven, to be whole.

True, the Pilgrimage of Grace had all manner of strangeness about it, all manner of the liminal. As Davies writes,

Naturally a movement drawn from a vast tract of country from the Lincoln- shire wolds to the Cumberland fells, and embracing all ranks of society, contained within it a number of contradictions.^⁠16

This was a movement started by the mediators - the clerics - who stood not just between men and God but between ranks of social order, too. It was first taken up by the commons, and in this was like the prior Lincolnshire Rising begun by a monk and a shoemaker. It even gained the support of the nobles, and coerced some others; it restored places that were once halls of prayer and centres of community when they had been made instruments of private ownership and title, extending the king’s direct support base and the landholding of the gentry against the middlemen and commons. It began because of real grievance and because of rumoured grievance all bundled into one. Dying men might join because they wondered who would continue to say Masses for them should the reforms not be stopped, living men might join because they had a duty to continue seeing Masses said for fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. Not merely bonds of familial piety, social order, class division, religious community, and agricultural calendar were wrapped up in this, but the most liminal margin of all in the late medieval world; that bond and barrier between living and dead.

There are many more historical details that might be brought out to highlight the liminal symbolism of the Pilgrimage of Grace, which is the liminal symbolism of pilgrimage in general. One might mention the moveable bridge the pilgrims had with them. Or that at its head was a lawman breaking the law. Or that the banner under which it marched blazed with the five wounds that marked the death of a God - a God who had raised Himself to life again. Or, perhaps most strangely, of the final oath sworn when the Pilgrimage disbanded and they tore off the badges depicting those five wounds:“We will all wear no badge nor sign but the badge of our sovereign lord.”

Some pilgrims would go home. Some pilgrims, incited by rumours, would feel unsure of the shaky agreement Aske had extracted from the king’s emissary Lord Norfolk. Some of these would seek and find an unlikely and final leader: the Protestant Sir Francis Bigod. Not only was he not marching to preserve what the commons and their clerics were fearful of losing, but he in fact had been a suppression commissioner. Bigod had joined the pilgrimage in resistance to the idea that the sovereign could be the head of the English Church; if not the pope, then at least a suitable archbishop.^⁠17 Bigod gave Henry VIII and in particular Norfolk a readily taken exit from any demands supposedly acquiesced to at Pontefract Castle. The 800 commoners still following an increasingly desperate Bigod more than a month after Aske had ratified the twenty-four articles of the Commoner’s Petition were enough to claim that the agreement of the commoners to disband had been broken. Henry was able to move against what was now a treacherous uprising, and summarily captured and executed two hundred and sixteen of those who had participated. Aske and several abbots, who had been most at risk during Bigod’s escapade and pathbreaking, were among those hanged in 1537.

Ultimately, the Henrician reform would give way to Edward’s campaign, and then to the brutal outbreak of true Catholic-Protestant violence under Mary and Elizabeth. And English history would enter modernity like many other European powers in this baptism of reformation bloodshed as the lines became drawn between formal denominations.

That is beyond the scope of the story of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and it is beyond the structural place at which the Incidental Encyclical now finds itself: in the wake of tyranny and betrayal, and of language itself being turned into a circle, what direction should one travel? What the pilgrims of 1536 did achieve, before it was subverted and subjugated, was a real challenge to the tyranny of Henry VIII. The king’s legitimacy had come to rest on his right to govern the church, having himself declared he did not accept the Pope’s authority over him (and by extension his authority under the Pope). The hierarchy of normal rule had been broken, and all over a divorce that was nothing but scandal to the commons and gentry across England. The religious reform had become Henry’s sole remaining channel of legitimacy: to reform the abuses of the church as its new head would establish him outside the old hierarchies as a new power answerable to none. But a forty-thousand strong response did, if for only a month, force an answer. The Pilgrimage went out in order to come home again, and to be whole again, and in that very act resisted the very idea of reform and Henry’s legitimacy through it. The commons wanted to come home to what was known, so they went out en masse. And if they failed as a whole because a part of them were untrue to their oath, it was only because the tyrant was too great in that moment. It was not because the pilgrimage was wrong. A pilgrimage is the only way forth from the waste.

And so as pilgrim this issue the Incidental Encyclical will go: there and back again.

For to meet all manner of

Queer Bedfellows.

¹ Davies, C. S. L. “Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace” in A. Fletcher and J. Stephenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 1985, p.60

² Ibid, p.76

³ Bridgen, S. New Worlds, Lost Worlds: the Rule of the Tudors (1485-1603). Penguin Books: London, 2000. p.129

⁴ Davies, C. S. L. “Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace” in A. Fletcher and J. Stephenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 1985, pp.75-76 and elsewhere in the chapter.

⁵ Ibid, p.75

⁶ 'Henry VIII: October 1536, 16-20', in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 11, July-December 1536. Edited by James Gairdner (London, 1888), p.304

⁷ Regarding the Pilgrims’ oath to the king: Bridgen, S. New Worlds, Lost Worlds: the Rule of the Tudors (1485-1603). Penguin Books: London, 2000. p.128

Regarding the requisite nature of the oaths: Davies, C. S. L. “Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace” in A. Fletcher and J. Stephenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 1985, pp.75-76 and elsewhere in the chapter.

⁸ 'Henry VIII: October 1536, 16-20', in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 11, July-December 1536. Edited by James Gairdner (London, 1888), pp.302-303

⁹ Knowles, David (1979). The Religious Orders in England. Cambridge University Press. p. 330

¹⁰ Davies, C. S. L. “Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace” in A. Fletcher and J. Stephenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 1985, p.87

¹¹ 'Henry VIII: October 1536, 16-20', in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 11, July-December 1536. Edited by James Gairdner (London, 1888), p.304

¹² Duffy, E. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580. Yale University Press. 1992. Chapter 11.

¹³ Ibid

¹⁴ This is not an exact representation of Hume’s logic as Hume’s actual logic on the non-existence of miracles just spends more time to get to the same evidentiary fallacy. If you don’t believe me, take a Logic class. Hume clearly didn’t, but even if he had there’s no causal proof it would have improved his philosophy.

¹⁵ Duffy, Eamon. Royal Books and Holy Bones: Essays in Medieval Christianity. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. Chapter 15: The Dynamics of Pilgrimage in the Late Middle Ages.

¹⁶ Davies, C. S. L. “Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace” in A. Fletcher and J. Stephenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 1985, p.58

¹⁷ Altazin, Keith, "The northern clergy and the Pilgrimage of Grace". LSU Doctoral Dissertations, 2011. 543. https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/543 p.242

Bibliography:

Altazin, Keith, "The northern clergy and the Pilgrimage of Grace". LSU Doctoral Dissertations, 2011. 543. https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/543

Bridgen, S. New Worlds, Lost Worlds: the Rule of the Tudors (1485-1603). Penguin Books: London, 2000. p.129

Davies, C. S. L. “Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace” in A. Fletcher and J. Stephenson (eds), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 1985, pp. 58–88.

Duffy, E. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400-c.1580. Yale University Press, 1992.

Duffy, Eamon. Royal Books and Holy Bones: Essays in Medieval Christianity. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. Chapter 15: The Dynamics of Pilgrimage in the Late Middle Ages.

'Henry VIII: October 1536, 16-20', in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 11, July-December 1536. Edited by James Gairdner (London, 1888), British History Online, accessed May 19, 2025, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol11/pp284-314

Knowles, David. The Religious Orders in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1979.

Stay tuned for more leviathan-themed content in the coming weeks, as well as the full release of Issue 1 for 2024, coming soon!

Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex has been one of the most celebrated example of ancient tragedy for over two thousand years - so it’s no easy task to write about, considering the amount of discussion that has taken place over it in that time. Editors Samuel and Levi tackle the task with a summary of the narrative and a discussion on how it fits in to the present theme of the magazine.

In this very first bonus episode of 2024, Samuel inquires into one of Levi’s fields of study: the legacy and history of the Proto Indo-Europeans. Levi provides information as to how we know of this ancient group of wide-ranging horseback warriors, and Samuel considers how Levi’s insights tie into the project of the classics and the magazine as a whole. Join us in this one-of-a-kind quest to understand the offerings of a range of different disciplines - linguistics, archaeology, and genetics - and see how even modern inquiries follow ancient patterns of storytelling.

{Edit: this re-upload features improved audio thanks to regular listener Jake Welch, who offered to improve the quality and remove some of the sounds of the car - our heartfelt thanks to Jake!}

In our final podcast discussion of our first year as a project, editors Samuel, Levi, and Michael discuss the works covered in our upcoming issue: Strife Within. From the familial turmoil of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, to the contradictory rhetoric of Plato’s Symposium, and through the depths of customs and games displayed in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the theme on which we conclude this year’s Journey Up is unfolded in its myriad aspects.

Join our discussion by messaging us on socials to get access to the Incidental Encyclical Discord server, where we do live readings, give updates on the progress of each issue, and talk with readers and contributors alike about the works and themes covered each quarter!

In this special episode of the podcast, editors Samuel and Levi are talking about their favourite Christmas story: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, by the anonymous Pearl Poet of the 14th century. It’s an Arthurian romance that comes to us from late mediaeval England, featuring headless horsemen, knightly deeds, seduction, and witchcraft. And all of it taking place in the most wonderful time of the year - Yuletide. But what’s even more special is that this episode is our first video podcast, available to watch on YouTube as well as listen via the Substack podcast feed.

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and hope to hear from you all through our socials, or our Discord server, to join the discussion leading up to our final issue of our first year as a publication!

With Issue 3 of the Incidental Encyclical soon to be released, we bring you this unique instalment of the podcast. Not only is it slightly longer than normal, but it also features for the first time some in-person discussion - discussion that covers the work of Australia’s only Nobel Prize-winning author, Patrick White, and his novel, Voss. We also have special guest to the podcast Jack Summerhill to explain indigenous land management in Australia, which bridges the discussion of ‘Wisdom in Desert Places’ from the works of exile, Seneca’s “Letter to Hevlia” and the medieval hagiography of Simeon Stylites.

=

In preparation for the release of the second issue of the Incidental Encyclical - Troubled Seas - we bring you a roundtable of our contributors talking theme, classics, mythos and meaning. Our own Proteus,* Harry, joins us to break down the seminal essay from the new issue outlining the symbol of seafaring in myth, literature, and life - and from there we examine how each of the classics we’ll be highlighting in the upcoming written edition fulfil the outcomes of the seafaring story. Join our translation columnist Levi as he breaks down hospitality in the Odyssey, hear from satire columnist Edwyn as he discusses absurdity and solitude in Hemingway, and consult the opinions of editors Michael and Samuel as they discuss the implications on us post-moderners today of the Seafarer’s message of desolation.

* in Homer’s Odyssey, Proteus is the shapechanging master-of-all-forms; the Old Man of the Sea who must be consulted by a hero to find his way through troubled seas.