Agent Of L.I.B.R.A.R.Y.

TangognaT

October 16th, 2003 at 8:11 pm

beware falling helmets

in: books

Sometimes when I am filled with anger, I like to visualize a giant plumed helmet falling out of the sky to smite my enemies.

This is a product of reading The Castle of Otranto, one of the first gothic novels. You have to love a book that features a paragraph like this in its opening chapter:

The first thing that struck Manfred’s eyes was a group of his servants endeavouring to raise something that appeared to him a mountain of sable plumes. He gazed without believing his sight.

“What are ye doing?” cried Manfred, wrathfully; “where is my son?”

A volley of voices replied, “Oh! my Lord! the Prince! the Prince! the helmet! the helmet!”

Shocked with these lamentable sounds, and dreading he knew not what, he advanced hastily, - but what a sight for a father’s eyes! - he beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers.

And it just gets worse for Manfred after that! The horror!

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