... fantasy is not founded in Christian themes so much as it is rooted in distinctly Anglo-Saxon mythology. And not just the mythology of the Medieval, feudalistic period, but the pre-Christian myths of the faerie-folk as well.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
The roots of fantasy ...
... Fantasy and the Anglosphere — The League of Ordinary Gentlemen. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with Kain on most points, and I think his insight that fantasy is more Anglo-Saxon than Christian is right on the mark.
ReplyDeleteMyers' views, on the other hand, seem incredibly wrong-headed, not to mention ignorant of the actual fantasy genre. He seems to have done all his reading of fantasy through a lens of pre-existing ideas (a habit I find he often does, as do many other critics with pre-existing theories about literature). For one thing, Tolkein openly wrote about his sources, all of which were pre-Christian from the British Isles; simply because Tolkein was one of the Inklings, along with Lewis and Charles Williams, does not make his fantasy inherently Christian.
If one claims that the "battle of good vs. evil" is an inherently Christian trope, one shows ignorance of the religions of the Middle East that pre-dated Christianity, and influenced its development, including Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Much of the "good vs. evil" material so common in Judeo-Christian myth is actually Zoroastrian in origin. Patterns within patterns.
This separation of genres by religious overtones seems pretty specious. It ignores a lot of exceptions to its thesis, as others have pointed out, and its formulation seems to be possible to make only by those who haven't actually read much within the genres in question. Harlan Ellison would be scathing about the over-simplifications in play here.
Although I am not a man of letters...it seems to me that we must at least consider what CS Lewis actually said, and while I don't know the provence of the quote attributed to him in the link (and am too lazy too look it up) I do know that CS Lewis wrote an entire book called An Experiment in Criticism (1961), where he explicitly addressed both myth and fantasy.
ReplyDeleteHe most assuredly did not discuss any of this in terms of Anglo Saxon nor Christian tradition or thought. As to myth, he said, they are extra literary and numinous. As to fantasy, in the sense he saw it, it generally is simple escapism for the unliterary reader.
So myth is the word Lewis used, not fantasy, and myth he saw as beyond a cultural setting -- directly opposite to the link's premise...
Let's at least be accurate, people