I am currently reading The Sundering Flood by William Morris. It was dictated from his deathbed and published posthumously in 1897. The novel is important as a work of proto-fantasy fiction; although it is strongly influenced by medieval romance, it differs in being set in an entirely imaginary alternative world.
The work is written in a somewhat tortured pseudo-medieval style which can be irritating particularly at first. One of the great pleasures of reading works written in Middle English is the sometimes startling freshness and directness of phrase.
It tells of the adventures of a young man Osberne a shepherd boy in a remote village which is cut off from its nearest community by an impassible channel of water - the "Sundering Flood". The boy early shows his prowess and hardihood by the slaying of wolves that harried his family's flocks. He also meets a young girl, a shepherdess who lives on the other side of the Sundering Flood so the two can only communicate across the abyss. There is a strong pastoral tone to their early innocent meetings, strongly reminiscient of Longus' Daphnis and Chloe. Osberne also has a mysterious otherworldly ally, wierdly called Steelhead, who gives him sword and arrows of supernatural deadliness and accuracy. Although Osberne is only a young man, his fame grows as his high deeds mount but things are brought to a head when his girlfriend is carried off by raiders. Osberne leaves his farmstead on a quest to recover the maiden and this leads to his serving under a noble knight and aiding him in his wars (once he is convinced they are just wars and that the innocent will be spared from slaughter). True to his socialistic principles, Morris depicts the farmers' son refusing the offer of a knighthood and also aiding his patron in ridding a neighbouring kingdom of its king and setting up a commonwealth run by guilds. He is no closer however to finding Elfhilda and after five years of having no news of her is ready to give up and return home. I shall see what happens next.
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