Martin Shaw 
Snowy Tower 
Parzival and the Wet Black Branch of Language

In Snowy Tower, Dr. Martin Shaw continues his trilogy of works on the relationship between myth, wilderness, and a culture of wildness. In this second book, he gives a telling of the Grail epic Parzival. Claiming it as a great trickster story of medieval Europe, he offers a deft and erudite commentary, with topics ranging from climate change and the soul to the discipline of erotic consciousness, from the hallucination of empire to a revisioning of the dark speech of the ancient bards. Ingrained in the very syntax of Snowy Tower is an invocation of what Shaw calls ‘wild mythologies’ — stories that are more than just human allegory, that seem to brush the winged thinking of owl, stream, and open moor. This daring work offers a connection to the genius of the margins; that the big questions of today will not be solved by big answers, but by the myriad of associations that both myth and wilderness offer.

关于作者

Martin Shaw leads a bustling schedule of lectures and workshops across Britain and the United States, and is principal teacher at Robert Bly’s Great Mother Conference in Maine, and a contributor to the Dark Mountain Project in the U.K. Shaw has worked extensively and often collaboratively with Robert Bly, Coleman Barks, David Abram, Caroline Casey, and Malidoma Some. He is regarded internationally as one of most exciting new teachers of the mythic imagination. Bly describes him as a true master one of the very greatest storytellers we have.” He lives in Devonshire, U.K.Coleman Barks is a renowned poet and the bestselling author of The Essential Rumi. He was prominently featured in both of Bill Moyers’s PBS television series on poetry, ‘The Language of Life and Fooling with Words.’ He taught English and poetry at the University of Georgia for thirty years, and he now focuses on writing, readings, and performances.