Saturday 15 August 2020 — Discussion of A Glastonbury Romance, Chapter 19, The Pageant

(Thanks to Sherborne School archives)
HELD ONLINE by ZOOM 15:00 BST (Max 1.5 HOURS to 16:30)
In place of this year’s postponed conference we offered members the opportunity of participating in a discussion by Zoom video link of A Glastonbury Romance, Chapter 19, The Pageant.
This discussion enabled us to examine how JCP develops through the medium of Mr Geard’s ‘religious circus’ important themes that weave their way through the whole book: the Passion of Christ, Nature, Cymric mythology, self-sacrifice, the endurance of pain, and the conflict of good and evil.
The Sherborne Pageant of 1905 (see inset caption) is likely to have contributed to JCP’s portrayal of the Glastonbury pageant in his novel. As a page on the Sherborne School archive shows, his younger brother Will Powys took part in an episode of it. He appears in costume in a group photo.