The dryad a novelJustin H. McCarthyOmniClassics · Literature
The dryad a novel
Justin H. McCarthyA cynical soldier and an idealistic knight enter a Greek woodland where an ancient dryad still holds power.
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About the book
Simon of Rouen walks toward Athens concerned with an empty purse and his prospects for employment. The young knight he meets regards the same landscape through poetry and romance. Their conflicting temperaments enter a setting where Greek myth has not entirely yielded to the medieval rulers of the country: Argathona, a dryad, belongs to the forest in a way neither traveler can initially understand. Her encounter with Rainouart joins love and enchantment to the demands of a mortal world shaped by ambition, conflict, and chivalric promises. McCarthy places the romance around the turn of the fourteenth century, blending historical atmosphere with deliberate fantasy. Simon's appetite and skepticism provide a recurring counterweight to the lovers' idealism and to the persistent beauty of the greenwood.
- Mortal and immortal love
- Idealism and cynicism
- Myth within history
Why read it
The contrasting responses of soldier, knight, and dryad make the forest a meeting place for three distinct ways of understanding life.
English Harper & Brothers text published March 1905
Contents and reading sections
- Section 1
- Section 2
- Section 3
- Section 4
- Section 5
- Section 6
- Section 7
- Section 8
- Section 9
- Section 10
- Section 11
- Section 12
- Section 13
- Section 14
- Section 15
- Section 16
- Section 17
- Section 18
- Section 19
- Section 20
- Section 21
- Section 22
- Section 23
- Section 24
- Section 25
- Section 26
- Section 27
- Section 28
- Section 29
- Section 30
- Section 31
- Section 32
- Section 33
- Section 34
- Section 35
- Section 36