General Chapter and Story Notes

The White Hart is, at its core, a measured mixture of history (Celtic, Romano-British, and Anglo-Saxon), archeological conjecture, Anglo-Saxon epic poetry, the preternatural, and pure imagination. It is also influenced by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the archetypal figures of Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious, and the theories of Lawrence Kohlberg and Kazimiez Dubrosky on moral development and ‘positive disintegration’ (the twins of the story).

Very little definitive information survives about 6th and early 7th century Britain, and what does is often very sketchy and/or rewritten to please various political or religious points of view. It is into those historical vacuums and alternative views that this story is inserted – into a history that might have been.

The Anglo-Saxon view of the world was based on cycles and circles; thus, The White Hart spirals around many sub-stories that circle and intertwine with each other like a knotwork design. And like knotwork, some readers may enjoy tracing the convoluted paths the tale takes, linking one element to another until the very end. Many times such a reader will be left to wonder if an off-hand comment is just that, or the first breadcrumb on a trail that will lead deeper into the heart of the story. Such foreshadowing will often allow the reader to understand ‘things’ before the characters themselves.

The White Hart follows the broad themes found in Anglo-Saxon literature: the warrior hero, vengeance, boasting, religious and cultural conflict, riddles, and an epic poem or story. It also includes the elements of Anglo-Saxon literature including the use of:

- interlacing story elements that develop in a circular or looping fashion;

- ‘in media res’ and flashbacks as a non-linear story-telling device;

- compound or hyphenated words to create new words/images;

- ‘caesura’ pauses (the use of ellipses and dashes in the story) to bring attention to thoughts or actions;

- kennings or metaphors to describe common things, e.g. ‘sky-candle’ means sun;

- metonymy – a part of an object or idea stands for the whole, e.g. Washington means the federal government;

- epithet – describing the same thing in differing ways to enhance the description;

- repetition of words or phrases as a poetic or alliterative effect;

- imagery; and

- alliteration and assonance.