Snowy Tower

Book excerpt: 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.