Mythlore articles from September 2007

Mythlore archives from September 2007

Editorial.(Editorial)
September 22, 2007... MYTHLORE HAS REACHED a major milestone. This is our 100th issue since our founding in 1969. In its original format Mythlore was edited by Glen GoodKnight (issues 1-17 and 24-84) and Gracia Fay Ellwood (issues 18-23). Ted Sherman changed the...

"Deep lies the sea-longing": inklings of home (1).
September 22, 2007... WHEN ELWIN RANSOM takes the name Fisher-King and the office of Pendragon, when England becomes Logres and a remote part of Venus becomes Avalon, we realize that the Arthurian myth has come to resonate more deeply in C.S. Lewis's creative work...

The centre of the inklings: Lewis? Williams? Barfield? Tolkien?(C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and Christopher Tolkien )
September 22, 2007... Introduction ONE ISSUE FREQUENTLY DEBATED among Inklings scholars is the question of which member served as the center of that group. Most often, people claim that C.S. Lewis is the center, that he is in some sense responsible for the...

"Good, not safe": structure vs. chaos in Narnia and the writing workshop.
September 22, 2007... NO ONE MORE EAGERLY ANTICIPATED last winter's release of the blockbuster film The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe than the students at our small Christian liberal arts college in midtown Manhattan. The movie brought into our writing classrooms...

Letters to Malcolm and the trouble with Narnia: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their 1949 crisis.
September 22, 2007... IN THE EARLY SPRING OF 1949, C.S. Lewis read part of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, still in manuscript, to J.R.R. Tolkien. Expecting enthusiasm from his longtime friend and colleague, he received instead what would remain Tolkien's...

Sacral kingship: Aragorn as the rightful and sacrificial king in The Lord of the Rings.
September 22, 2007... IN DISCUSSING ARAGORN, Verlyn Flieger notes that: The concept of the king as healer derives from the early Celtic principle of sacral kingship, whereby the health and fertility of the land are dependent on the coming of the...

Archaeology and the sense of history in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth (1).
September 22, 2007... Sense of History and Sense of Place ENCOUNTERS WITH RUINS are found in the earliest expressions of English literature, so it is not surprising that J.R.R. Tolkien would also include such scenes in his own fiction. For example, the dragon's...

The enigma of Radagast: revision, melodrama, and depth.
September 22, 2007... Where Does Radagast Come From? THE LORD OF THE RINGS is set in Middle-earth, but is not coextensive with it. There is much in Middle-Earth that is barely explored in the text of The Lord of the Rings. What Tolkien called "the vast...

Tolkien as a child of The Green Fairy Book.(J.R.R. Tolkien)
September 22, 2007... IN HIS ESSAY "On Fairy-Stories," Tolkien identified himself as one of Andrew Lang's intended audience (39)--he was born in 1892, in the same year as The Green Fairy Book, the third in Lang's series of 12 "color" anthologies of fairy tales. In...

Imitative desire in Tolkien's mythology: a Girardian perspective.(J.R.R. Tolkien, Rene Girard)
September 22, 2007... IN HIS BOOK THE EVERLASTING MAN, Chesterton cautions his readers about those students of mythology who claim to have discovered the key to unlocking the meaning of myths: There are too many keys to mythology, as there are too many ...

Maldon and Moria: on Byrhtnoth, Gandalf, and heroism in The Lord of the Rings (1).
September 22, 2007... "You cannot pass!" [Gandalf] said. With a bound the Balrog leaped full upon the bridge. Its whip whirled and hissed. "He cannot stand alone!" cried Aragorn suddenly and ran back along the bridge. "Elendil!" he shouted. "I am with you,...

At home and abroad: Eowyn's two-fold figuring as war bride in The Lord of the Rings.
September 22, 2007... RAISED IN THE COMPANY of great warriors, in a society that has taught her to glorify the battle-arts, Eowyn, Lady of Rohan, seems an unlikely choice as a participant in The Lord of the Rings' single romantic storyline. Noble, cold, and stern,...

Pagan beliefs in The Serpent's Tooth.
September 22, 2007... THE YEAR 1991 WAS A GOOD TIME for works inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear. Most readers have heard of, or read, or seen the movie of, Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres--after all, her novel won the 1992 Pultizer Prize for fiction. But another...

Nazis, mythology, and totalitarian minds in Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night.
September 22, 2007... THERE WERE MANY Darwinian eugenicists in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century and one, Fritz Lenz, justified his race eugenics by calling on Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, and his science, to formulate Nazi race policy. This same...

Milton, Spenser, and the Chronicles of Narnia: Literary Sources for C.S. Lewis's Novels.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... MILTON, SPENSER, AND THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: LITERARY SOURCES FOR C.S. LEWIS'S NOVELS. Elizabeth Baird Hardy. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007. vii + 188 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-7864-2876-2. (Orders 800-253-2187 or www.mcfarlandpub.com.) ...

C.S. Lewis: life, works, and legacy.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... C.S. LEWIS: LIFE, WORKS, AND LEGACY [Four Volumes]. Edited by Bruce L. Edwards. Westport: Praeger (An Imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group), 2007. Hardcover. 1416pp. $300.00. Set ISBN 978-0-275-99116-6. IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN TEN YEARS...

The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... THE COMPANY THEY KEEP: C.S. LEWIS AND J.R.R. TOLKIEN AS WRITERS IN COMMUNITY. Diana Pavlac Glyer. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2007. 293 pp. $45.00. 978-0-87338-890-0 WITH THE PASSING of the generation that included Owen Barfield,...

Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... ROOTS AND BRANCHES: SELECTED PAPERS ON TOLKIEN. Tom Shippey. Berne and Zurich: Walking Tree Publishers, 2007. Softcover. 432pp. $24.20. ISBN 978-3905703054. ANY EXCUSE TO REVISIT the essays of Tom Shippey, arguably the world's preeminent...