The Reading List was a tad chagrined when Braveheart swept the Oscars. How could men with blue faces storming fortresses in kilts top Emma Thompson’s exquisite Sense and Sensibility? Yet so emphatic was the Academy’s verdict that the Reading List felt chastened and reminded of the enduring entertainment value of exuberant killing fueled by motives low and high. Highlights of a millennium of mayhem include:
The Song of Roland, anonymous. The 11th-century epic grandly recounts the ambush of Charlemagne’s rear guard by Saracens as the army leaves Spain. The noble Roland, too proud at first to summon help, realizes too late the French have been betrayed.
Titus Andronicus, attributed to Shakespeare. Earliest and bloodlest of the histories. The title character has lost 21 sons in battle and personally dispatches another and a daughter on stage. Don’t miss Tamora, Queen of the Goths, commanding her sons to rape and mutilate a Roman maiden; later the mother is served their heads up in a pie. Gruesome from first scene (“Alarbus” limbs are lopt, and entrails feed the sacrificing fire . . .”) to last (“Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him . . .”).
The Scottish Chiefs, by Jane Porter. The story of William Wallace, of Braveheart fame, and an 1810 best-seller, even before the hugely successful Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott. Your parents or grandparents may have been given the edition splendidly illustrated by N. C. Wyeth, back when young people were nourished on romantic tales of patriotic valor.
