medieval literature Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

How an Obscure Character in the ‘Iliad’ Gave Us the English Word ‘Pander’

In the Iliad, Pandaros, son of Lykaon, is a Lykian archer who is allied with the Trojans. In Book 4 of the epic, the goddess Athena tricks him into firing an arrow at the Akhaian king Menelaos, which breaks a truce between the Trojans and Akhaians and causes fighting to resume. Pandaros briefly shows up again in Book 5 when the Akhaian warrior Diomedes knocks him from his chariot, and he quietly disappears from the epic after that. He’s a fairly minor character, and most people have never heard of him. Even if you’ve read the Iliad, there’s a decent chance you don’t remember him.

Many people may, therefore, be surprised to learn that there is a common word in English derived from Pandaros’s name: the verb pander. The fact that Pandaros is the source of this word may be even more surprising to people because the word’s meaning—to appeal to the base desires or prejudices of a particular person or group—has nothing to do with anything Pandaros does in the Iliad or in any other ancient source. The story of how we got from Pandaros the Lykian archer in the Iliad to the English word pander is a very strange one, which involves Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and. . . pimps.

Tucker Carlson Is Using Controversy about Literature Classes to Promote Fascism

There is something of a culture war going on right now over which books students should be assigned to read in literature classes. I’ve been meaning to write an article on this subject for over six months now, but, until now, I haven’t had time. Sadly, I’ve been so insanely busy with the many other things going on in my life that I haven’t had much time for researching and writing articles lately. Now, however, recent events have compelled me to write an article about a different aspect of the controversy than I originally planned.

Many of my readers are probably already aware of Tucker Carlson. He is a far-right political commentator who has a long and well-documented history of promoting white supremacist, fascist, misogynist, and xenophobic ideas. He has his own show on Fox News called Tucker Carlson Tonight and, on 14 May 2021, he did an entire segment about the literature class controversy titled “Classic literature out. Sexual propaganda in.”

In this segment, Carlson first protests the removal of works that he considers “classic literature” from English syllabi and then pretends to be absolutely scandalized by the reading of explicit passages in young adult novels that have been approved for students to read in one public school in Loudoun County, Virginia. Carlson frames the controversy using a standard fascist narrative that misrepresents the issues and ignores many demonstrable facts, including the fact that many works of so-called “classic literature,” including many works that are often read in schools, are just as sexually explicit as the works he protests against—or, in some cases, even more explicit.

Good and Bad Reasons to Learn Latin

You often hear people talk about the “practical benefits” of learning Latin, such as being able to understand legal, medical, and scientific terminology, expanding your vocabulary, and gaining a better understanding of English grammar. These certainly are real benefits to learning Latin, but, to be honest, at least on their own, they aren’t really very good reasons to learn the whole language, for reasons I will explain in a moment.

There are plenty of apologists for Latin out there who often try to justify learning Latin by listing these supposed “practical benefits” to learning Latin that apply to most people. The problem is that, if these benefits are the only reasons you are studying Latin, and you have no real interest in the Latin language or in reading Latin literature, then learning a whole new language may not really be worth it. There are, however, still very good reasons for learning Latin; they just don’t necessarily apply to everyone.