Micro Mention "Analysis and Critique"

"Analysis and Critique: How to Engage and Write about Anything," from the great courses and taught by Dorsey Armstrong, is incredibly useful. On a separate note, Dorsey Armstrong, I hope you never discover how poor a student I actually am in making use of your lessons.

I love these courses because I love learning new things, and they appeal to my inherent laziness in not wanting to actually have to do homework and tests like in a real college class.

What you can expect to get out of this course is succinctly covered by its title, and if you fancy yourself a writer, I can't recommend it any more highly. I've listened to a few courses from Professor Armstrong now, and so far, I've always come away having learned something either useful or fascinating.

Micro Mention "Medieval Myths & Mysteries"

I once referred to the medieval period as the dark ages, which isn’t super relevant to this course “Medieval Myths & Mysteries” by the Great Courses, but I remember Dorsey Armstrong saying once not to do that, and I’ve guilt-wracked ever since.

On a more serious note, even though this is one of the shorter courses, it's got a lot to offer. I especially liked lecture 4 on King Arthur because you'd be hard-pressed to find any other figure than the legendary King of England, who is more mythologized. Whether or not there ever was a historical figure that the legend is based on is endlessly debatable. In any case, if he did exist, a lot of the stories attributed to him are embellished, and the best candidates lived in a time before a lot of the pageantry of kingship existed in England as we know it.

Micro Mention "King Arthur: History and Legend"

This course, from the great courses “King Arthur: History and Legend” by Dorsey Armstrong, is a real deep dive into the history, the legend, and the literature of King Arthur. If you go in for that sort of thing—like me—you should consider it.

Professor Armstrong gives you an in-depth look at the legendary King of England by first taking you through the ancient history of events and people who may have been the earliest things that shaped the Legend of King Arthur as we know it. It's interesting because it's a time right after the Roman Empire withdrew from England, well on its way to collapse. So, the people of England who formally saw themselves as Roman citizens now found themselves alone and surrounded by barbarians on all sides. Then, historical evidence suggests that a great leader, or maybe a couple great leaders, rose up to defend the people, and this could be the historical inspiration of King Arthur, but he bore minimal resemblance to how we would come to see him through the lenses of later stories about him and his knights' adventures.

The other part of this series examines all of the prominent stories that tell the Legend of King Arthur and how it evolved over time, with each period contributing to the legend.