Norma Lorre Goodrich (1917–2006)
Author of The Medieval Myths
About the Author
Works by Norma Lorre Goodrich
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Associated Works
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Goodrich, Norma Lorre
- Legal name
- Falby, Norma Therese
- Other names
- Howard, Norma (Nom d'alliance)
- Birthdate
- 1917-05-10
- Date of death
- 2006-09-19
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of Vermont (BA | 1938)
Columbia University (Ph.D | 1965) - Occupations
- historian
biographer
professor
author
academic administrator - Organizations
- Scripps College
University of Southern California - Awards and honors
- Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (Fellow)
- Relationships
- Howard, John Hereford (husband)
- Short biography
- Norma Lorre Goodrich was the pen name of Norma Therese Falby, born in Huntington, Vermont. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1938 and continued her studies at universities in France, where she lived for many years. In 1965, at age 48, she earned doctoral degrees in French and Roman philology from Columbia University. She became a prolific author and an Arthurian scholar known for her unconventional theory -- introduced in a 1986 book titled King Arthur -- that King Arthur was a real person, not a myth, and that he was Scottish, not English or Welsh. Dr. Goodrich was a professor of French, comparative literature, and writing for 45 years at the University of Southern California and the Claremont Colleges.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Huntington, Vermont, USA
- Places of residence
- Claremont, California, USA
- Place of death
- Claremont, California, USA
- Burial location
- Riverside National Cemetery Riverside, Riverside County, Californie, Etats-Unis (Concession 2A 0 1031)
- Associated Place (for map)
- California, USA
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Reviews
This is an incomprehensibly bad book. It took me a long time of reading a paragraph or two at a time to finish it. The author is erudite and she has done tons of research. But her writing style seems to be: (a) go to a well-stocked university library; (b) take notes from a whole shelf of books tangentially related to Arthur or the Holy Grail; (c) type notes into a word-processor; (d) publish typed notes. The author, no joke, references things like this (p. 271): "The French dictionary and show more encyclopedia Peitit Larousse (1967) defines Graal and/or Saint Graal (p. 1,394) as 'the eternal vase' that...." blah blah blah. No joke. No footnotes, endnotes, etc. She says she read in this one book on this one page that. And she does this ad infinitum. She just throws her notes into heaps of paragraphs, grouped into rough chapters, that have no real thesis. There is no real thesis to her book. I learned lots of cool things about some grail lore and some of the great grail romances, but, the author never really tells us anything on her own, or what her damn point was, even in her misnamed "Conclusion." And, she inserts herself, her thoughts, and her opinions into the text at random points. Take this gem, from pp. 246-247: "That light especially warns a backward country like the United States. Here in America women were granted the vote long after those in European countries, and here, in 1990, women are considered minors, not equal to men before the law." First of all, she's dead wrong on the voting, as several European countries did not grant women the right to vote until after the U.S. Her vaunted France did not grant women the right to vote until 1944! So that's just wrong. Second, she's dead wrong on the law, as in no place in the West, and no place in the United States in 1990 were women "considered minors and not equal to men before the law." (Yes, the E.R.A. did not pass, but that doesn't mean anything she said right there is legally correct in any fashion.) How can one trust an author who makes numerous such errors and asides in the book. A star-and-a-half for the reams of interesting info from someone who's read the texts and the literature, but, all-in-all, a worthless drudge of a read with no point and little value. show less
Ooooh boy! I sincerely hope that Dr. Goodrich did not rest her professional reputation too firmly on this book. It represents a very genteel strain in Arthurian Scholarship that kicks in to the frilly side of "The Lady of Shallot", and obviously is not extinct yet. The only originality in it is her definition of a Trebuchet as a military engine that was used, not as a missile weapon, but as a wrecking ball! In addition she attempts to define a medieval town as a specific location because "It show more had a tower and a strong wall". Medieval town planners would not regard that as a description of one place only: I know I don't!
I think this is a bad book if you are looking for good information about Arthur, or the Medieval myth of Arthur. I'm not even going near the Merlin book by the same author. show less
I think this is a bad book if you are looking for good information about Arthur, or the Medieval myth of Arthur. I'm not even going near the Merlin book by the same author. show less
The dust jacket of Guinevere bills Norma Lorre Goodrich as the world's most important living Arthurian scholar — dust jackets, of course, are completely unbiased sources. Maybe I'm missing something, but this book does not lead me to believe anything of the kind. In fact, in the end I was reduced to skimming, her egoism was so off-putting. She claims that she is qualified to do an unbiased study of Guinevere because she is an American (excuse me?), and later describes thirteenth century show more poet and translator Layamon as "an ignorant, ugly English monk." All questions of manners aside, how does she know he was ugly? It's clear that she is more interested in hurling insults his way than sticking to the facts.
This lack of good taste wouldn't be as troubling if her scholarship were less dubious. She often contradicts herself, as when she says that the "best source for this story of Guinevere is the voluminous Prose Lancelot manuscript," then writes on the next page, "Nothing in the Prose Lancelot comes very close to Guinevere's real life, marriage, betrothal, and alliance." If that is true, why does she regard it as the best source for these very events? And how does she know what Guinevere's life was really like? This is a problem throughout the book, in which she makes truth claims without explaining her reasoning process or providing citations. She seems bent on treating the Lancelot-Guinevere love story as fact (while denying any sexual relations between them) yet never offers an argument as to why he is left out of all the chronicles and doesn't appear until the French romances. Later she mentions a marriage contract between the queen and Arthur, of which I had never before read, yet fails to provide a reference.
Far from living up to the claims made by this book's dust jacket, Goodrich scarcely comes across as a professional. show less
This lack of good taste wouldn't be as troubling if her scholarship were less dubious. She often contradicts herself, as when she says that the "best source for this story of Guinevere is the voluminous Prose Lancelot manuscript," then writes on the next page, "Nothing in the Prose Lancelot comes very close to Guinevere's real life, marriage, betrothal, and alliance." If that is true, why does she regard it as the best source for these very events? And how does she know what Guinevere's life was really like? This is a problem throughout the book, in which she makes truth claims without explaining her reasoning process or providing citations. She seems bent on treating the Lancelot-Guinevere love story as fact (while denying any sexual relations between them) yet never offers an argument as to why he is left out of all the chronicles and doesn't appear until the French romances. Later she mentions a marriage contract between the queen and Arthur, of which I had never before read, yet fails to provide a reference.
Far from living up to the claims made by this book's dust jacket, Goodrich scarcely comes across as a professional. show less
I was very interested to read this book. I love Goddess religions and the more ancient a subject the author discusses, the better. But something didn't feel right about this book. It felt like every other page, an alarm bell went off inside with a message telling me 'the author didn't prove what she just said,' 'the author is extrapolating but didn't want me to notice her slide into extrapolation,' or 'I'm not sure the evidence you provided really supports the conclusion you drew.' She comes show more to fascinating conclusions; I don't know if I believe what she says. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't. show less
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