Teaching by example and hyperbole

Medieval fantasy was more than an exploration of imagined worlds

King Arthur fighting the Saxons in the 14th-century manuscript known as the ‘Rochefoucauld Grail’

The modern reader often dismisses the dragon-slaying and sword-pulling of the Middle Ages as mere escapism, a flight from the mud and plague of reality.

But this view is a profound anachronism, though the mud and the plague were as real as it gets.