Mythlore articles from March 2008

Mythlore archives from March 2008

Editorial.(Editorial)
March 22, 2008... IN THIS ISSUE OF MYTHLORE, we begin with an appreciation of Inkling George Sayer, author of Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times, widely regarded as one of the best biographies of Lewis to date. Mike Foster includes personal reminiscences of his...

"That most unselfish man": George Sayer, 1914-2005: pupil, biographer, and friend of Inklings.(Biography)
March 22, 2008... GEORGE SAYER IS A SUPERB EXAMPLE of one of the greatest blessings of an academic life: a student who becomes, in time, a good friend. His 1988 biography of C.S. Lewis, Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times, is rightfully respected as the best of the...

Selected Sayer Holdings at the Wade Center.(George Sayer)(Author bibliography)(Brief article)
March 22, 2008... Edited or translated by George Sayer: Age Frater: a Portrait of a School. Edited by George Sayer. Foreword by Sir John WheelerBennett. Oxford: The University Press, 1965. 72pp, 24 leaves of plates. Doms, Hubert. The Meaning of...

Tolkien's linguistic application of the seventh deadly sin: lust.(J.R.R. Tolkien)(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... IN A LETTER TO NAOMI MITCHISON, J.R.R. Tolkien complained that "[s]ome reviewers have called the whole thing [The Lord of the Rings] simple-minded, just a plain fight between Good and Evil, with all the good just good, and the bad just bad"...

Song as mythic conduit in The Fellowship of the Ring.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... Elrond knew all about runes of every kind. That day he looked at the swords they had brought from the trolls' lair, and he said: "These are not troll-make. They are old swords, very old swords of the High Elves of the West, my kin. They were...

"The homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son": J.R.R. Tolkien's sequel to "The Battle of Maldon".(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... J.R.R. TOLKIEN INTRODUCED "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son" as "a piece plainly intended as a recitation for two persons, two shapes in 'dim shadow', with the help of a few gleams of light and appropriate noises and a chant at...

Two views of Faerie in Smith of Wootton Major: Nokes and his Cake, Smith and his Star.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... SMITH OF WOOTTON MAJOR, like many of Tolkien's other works, is a fairy tale. (1) It is about both Faerie (the region) and fairies (the fantastical creatures); though in Tolkien's own understanding of the word, the latter is not a qualification...

Putting away childish things: incidents of recovery in Tolkien and Haddon.(J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Haddon)(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... AT FIRST, LEARNING TO DRAW is primarily a process of deliberate forgetting. An untrained draughtsperson sees their subject as an entire thing--a chair, a ball, a hand--and commits a visual representation of the entire thing to paper. The...

What the spirit knows: Charles Williams and Kenneth Burke.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... Introduction KENNETH BURKE WAS THE INITIATOR AND CODIFIER of many great critical ideas of the twentieth century. Although Burke's religious faith, or lack of it, is less readily obvious than Williams's, he made religious terminology...

Witches, Wives and Dragons: the evolution of the women in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea--an overview.
March 22, 2008... The Book of the Dark, written late in the time it tells of, is a compilation of self-contradictory histories, partial biographies, and garbled legends. But it's the best of the records that survived the dark years. Wanting...

Nice, good, or right: faces of the wise woman in Terry Pratchett's "witches" novels.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... "I just make it up in my head; it's up to you buggers in the universities to tell me what it means." (Pratchett, quoted in Butler 56) Terry Pratchett is one of the most commercially successful fantasy writers of recent decades. It's said...

The Christian parody in Sara Paretsky's Ghost Country.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... SARA PARETSKY IS KNOWN mainly for her novels about a Chicago private detective named V.I. (Victoria Iphigenia) Warshawski. Warshawski, as the narrator of her adventures, comments at one point: Neither of my parents had been religious....

Six characters in search of Shakespeare: Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Shakespearian mythos.(William Shakespeare)(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... WHAT IS THE BEST MODERN ANALOGY for understanding the nature of Shakespeare's theater--is it television, with its democratic appeal and focus on popular entertainment? Or is it film, which shares with theater a marriage of sound and vision, but...

Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... TOLKIEN AND SHAKESPEARE: ESSAYS ON SHARED THEMES AND LANGUAGE. Ed. Janet Brennan Croft. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2007. 327 pp. $35.00. ISBN-13: 978-0-7864-2827-4. (Orders www.mcfarlandpub.com or 800-253-2187). THIS LATEST ANTHOLOGY...

The Evolution of Tolkien's Mythology: A Study of the History of Middle-earth.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... THE EVOLUTION OF TOLKIEN'S MYTHOLOGY: A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH. Elizabeth A. Whittingham. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2008. 220 pp. $35.00. 978-0-7864-3281-3. (Orders www.mcfarlandpub.com or 8002532187). TOLKIEN'S WORKS...

Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... CHARLES WILLIAMS: ALCHEMY AND INTEGRATION. Gavin Ashenden. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2008. xii + 275 pp. $55.00. ISBN 978-087338-781-1. ASHENDEN'S IS A BASIC BOOK on Williams's neo-Rosicrucian and Q'abalistic...

The History of the Hobbit. Part One: Mr. Baggins; Part Two: Return To Bag-end.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT. PART ONE: MR. BAGGINS; PART TWO: RETURN TO BAG-END. John D. Rateliff. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. ISBN 978-0618968473, 978-0618969197. Hardcover. 905pp. $70.00. [Also available in a boxed set with the 70th...

Past Watchful Dragons: Fantasy and Faith in the World of C. S. Lewis.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... PAST WATCHFUL DRAGONS: FANTASY AND FAITH IN THE WORLD OF C. S. LEWIS. Ed. Amy H. Sturgis. Altadena, California: The Mythopoeic Press, 2007. 222 pages. $20.00. ISBN 978-1-887726-11-5. THIS, THE MYTHOPOEIC PRESS'S SEVENTH BOOK, is a...

Letters.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... Ethan Campbell's & Robert Jackson's interesting article on "'Good, Not Safe': Structure vs. Chaos in Narnia and the Writing Workshop" (Mythlore 99/100) comments that the creatures in Lewis's list of evil creatures witnessing Aslan's death come...