Falconry - Literature and Film

Literature and Film

• In the ninth novel of the fifth day of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, a medieval collection of novellas, a falcon is central to the plot: The nobleman Federigo degli Alberighi has wasted his fortune courting his unrequited love until nothing is left but his brave falcon. When his lady come to see him he gives her the falcon to eat. Knowing his case she changes her mind, takes him to husband and makes him rich.
• The seventeenth century English physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne wrote a short essay on Falconry.
• T.H. White was a falconer and wrote The Goshawk about his to attempt to train a hawk in the traditional art of falconry. Falconry is also featured and discussed in The Once and Future King.
• In Virginia Henley's historical romance books, "The Falcon and the Flower", "The Dragon and the Jewel", "The Marriage Prize", "The Border Hostage" and "Infamous", there are numerous mentions to the art of falconry, as these books are set at dates ranging from the 1150s to the 16th century.
• The main character, Sam Gribley, in the children's novel "My Side of the Mountain" is a falconer. His trained falcon is named Frightful.
• Stana Katic, the Canadian actress who plays Detective Kate Beckett on Castle, enjoys falconry in her spare time. She has said that, "It gives me self-respect."
• In the book and movie The Falcon and the Snowman about two Americans who sold secrets to the Soviets, one of the two main characters, Christopher Boyce, is a falconer.
• In The Royal Tenenbaums, Richie keeps a falcon named Mordecai on the roof of his home in Brooklyn.
• In James Clavell's Shogun, Toranaga, one of the main characters, practices falconry throughout the book, often during or immediately before or after important plot events. His thoughts also reveal analogy between his falconry and his use of other characters towards his ends.
• The 1985 film Ladyhawke involved a medieval warrior who carried a red tail hawk as a pet, but in truth, the hawk was actually his lover who had been cursed by an evil bishop to keep the two apart.
• In The Dark Tower series, the main character, Roland, uses a hawk named David, to win a trial by combat in order to become a Gunslinger.
• "The Falconer" is a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live, featuring Will Forte as a falconer who constantly finds himself in mortal peril and must rely on his loyal falcon, Donald, to rescue him.
• Gabriel García Márquez's novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold's main character, Santiago Nasar, and his father are falconers.
• Hodgesaargh is a falconer based in Lancre Castle in Terry Pratchetts Discworld book. He is an expert and dedicated falconer who unluckily seems to only keep birds that enjoy attacking him.
• Fantasy author Mercedes Lackey is a falconer and often adds birds of prey to her novels. Among the Tayledras or Hawkbrother race in her Chronicles of Valdemar, everyone bonds with a specially bred raptor called a bondbird which has limited powers of speech mind-to-mind and can scout and hunt for its human bondmate.
• Crime novelist Andy Straka is a falconer and his Frank Pavlicek private eye series features a former NYPD homicide detective and falconer as protagonist. The books include A Witness Above, A Killing Sky, Cold Quarry (2001, 2002, 2003), and Kitty Hitter (2009).
• In Irish Poet William Butler Yeats's poem, "The Second Coming", Yeats uses the image of, "The falcon cannot hear the falconer" as a metaphor for social disintegration.
• American Poet Robert Duncan's poem, "My Mother Would Be a Falconress"
• The comic book Gold Ring by Qais M. Sedki and Akira Himekawa features falconers and falcons.
• C. J. Box's Joe Pickett series of novels has a recurring character, Nate Romanowski, who is a falconer.