Post on 31-Jan-2023
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Susan Mary Jenkins
(Now Sue Bridgwater)
M. Phil Thesis: English.
“I will take the Ring”,
responsibility and maturity in
modern Fantasy fiction for children.
With particular reference to the
work of Joy Chant, Jane Louise
Curry, Alan Gardner and Ursula K
LeGuin.
Note; 2015
The thesis was submitted to the University of London and accepted in 1984. Some of its premises and conclusions may therefore have suffered due to the passage of time. This digital edition is in existence through the skilled transcription made by Jennie Linzell, whom I wholeheartedly thank for her professional work. Any textual errors are entirely my own.
I must also acknowledge the invaluable help of the late Humphrey Carpenter who, when the first submission of the thesis was referred, read it all and offeredsuggestions that helped me to turn it around.
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Susan Mary Jenkins
Abstract of thesis to be submitted for the degree of M.Phil in English.
Title:
“I will take the ring”; responsibility and maturity inmodern Fantasy fiction for children. With particularreference to the work of Joy Chant, Jane Louise Curry, AlanGarner and Ursula K. LeGuin.
Abstract:
Introduction; stating the purpose and scope of thethesis and its imagined readership. The first chapterexamines the nature of literary Fantasy; how it seeks toaffect the reader and some of the techniques it employ todo so. In the second chapter the ways in which childrenrelate to fiction are examined, particularly the extent towhich fiction may interrelate with other experiences instimulating and supporting the child’s growth to self-awareness. Chapter three considers the nature of therelationship between literary Fantasy and children,discussing especially the idea that there is some specialquality of such fiction that makes it particularly suitablefor or palatable to children.
The fourth chapter is a bridge between the threegeneral chapters and the author studies which follow. Itdefines closely the definition for the purposes of thethesis for “children” and “Fantasy fiction”, explaining theconcentration of the study on the Quest theme and on growthin older children and adolescents. Reasons are given forthe selection of the four authors chosen for study.
Chapter five examines the work of Ursula LeGuin andher use of magical symbolism to describe the growth tomaturity and responsible adulthood of her protagonist.Chapter six notes the shift in the writings of Joy Chantfrom the externalising techniques of Fantasy to a blending
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of these with the methods of realistic fiction. In chapterseven Jane Curry’s novels are examined in terms of theirtheme of identity and selfhood, related to the sense ofbeing in the right place or with the right people. Thelast chapter shows Alan Garner’s preoccupation in his earlynovels with the struggle of the merging self for a sense ofidentity.
In conclusion, the significance of the challenge isreiterated, and its relevance to the young reader’ssituation in his or her own life.
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ContentsPAGE
Introduction 4
Chapter One; Fantasy and the Fantastic in fiction. 7
Chapter Two; Children and fiction. 42
Chapter Three; Children and Fantasy fiction. 62
Chapter Four; “What are you like?” 81
Chapter Five; The shadow; Ursula LeGuin and the far side ofself. 88
Chapter Six; Renunciation and sacrifice; Joy Chant and thedoom appointed. 108
Chapter Seven; The sense of belonging; Jane Louise Curry andthe misfit. 135
Chapter Eight; The beginning place; Alan Garner and thedeeps of Time. 159
Conclusions. 180
Bibliography. 184
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Introduction
This thesis is intended as an introductory survey such
as might be useful to people who work with, or are training
to work with, young people and books. These include
teachers, librarians, students and parents. While the
thesis seeks to apply stringent literary critical
principles to the study of the particular authors chosen
for consideration, it should be noted that some emphasis
has been laid on an explanatory or apologist approach,
particularly in the first half of the thesis. As well as
seeking a definition of what Fantasy is and how it operates
on the reader, there is some attempt to explain that
Fantasy is a genre of “real” literature. It has seemed
necessary to adopt this explanatory tone to some extent
because of the widespread misconception that Fantasy is an
escapist and self-indulgent mode. In particular, such
stories as are considered here, that belong to the sub-
genres of Fantasy which draw on myth, legend and fairy-tale
as source material, are thought of by some adults as
unsuitable reading for young people. [1] It is hoped that
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this approach may elucidate for people who have no natural
personal taste for Fantasy, how and why it appeal to those
who do enjoy it, and the senses in which it may be
stimulating and challenging reading rather than escapist.
The first half of the thesis examines the critical and
theoretical background of literary Fantasy, and the ways in
which young readers experience fiction in general and
Fantasy in particular. In the second half there is a
critical examination of the works of four selected Fantasy
authors of the later Twentieth Century, with close
consideration of how their work relates to the life-
experiences of the older child and adolescent on both the
Fantasy and the realistic levels of their fictions. The
studies focus particularly on the parallels between the
Quest motif in Fantasy and the experience of growth within
the individual. The chief contention of the thesis will be
that the appeal of this type of Fantasy lies in its
emphasis on the importance of choice, commitment and
decisive action. By this challenging approach, Fantasy may
provide some individual with ideas about possibly valid
ways into life, rather than any form of escape. Recognition
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of possible routes for self-development, through the
observed experience of the Fantasy protagonist, is one way
of acquiring understandings and insights of the sort that
help people to grow up. The end result of reading Fantasy
is broadly the same as that of reading more realistic
fiction; both may lead to a broadening and deepening of
imaginative perception, which may be a valuable tool in the
job of gaining control over the social environment and over
the self. This at its lowest may, in Johnson’s words,
enable an individual “ ..... better to enjoy life, or
better to endure it.” [2] At best, it may enable a person
to develop awareness, confidence and responsiveness to a
degree that will significantly improve his or her chances
of establishing control over the circumstances and
developments of life. There are many contributory factors
in any person’s development of these qualities; this thesis
explores the idea that reading Fantasy fiction
constructively may be one among the many.
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Notes and references; introduction
1. This conclusion is drawn from the author’s personal
experience as a librarian with a special interest in
children’s books and reading. There is widespread
suspicion among adults of all social classes and
educational backgrounds as regards books which are not
about “real life” and which waste children’s time or
“fill their heads with rubbish”. There is a lack of
understanding of the value of the imaginative and
intuitive levels of perception. Some interesting
arguments in support of the value of the imaginative
approach are included in; Ursula K LeGuin, The
language of the night; essays on Fantasy and science
fiction (New York: Putnam, 1980).
2. Samuel Johnson, Review of “A free enquiry into the
nature and origin of evil” in Works of Samuel Johnson
LL.D (London: Hawkins, 1787) Vol X p. 245.
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Chapter 1; Fantasy and the Fantastic in fiction.
In 1978 Theodore Ziolkowski wrote;
“...........we can conclude that thefantastic is a mode whose effect is anepistemological perplexity stemming from themomentary irruption of the seeminglysupernatural into our world. In contrastfantasy is a literary genre whose effect isthe ethical insight stemming from ourcontemplation of an otherworld governed bysupernatural laws.” [1]
This neat definition unfortunately leaves open a good
deal that needs to be considered before we can look more
closely at the special topic of Fantasy in children’s
fiction. Only one year later Ruth Lynn published an
annotated list of Fantasy for children [2] which listed
thirteen categories of works as diverse as ghost stories,
time travel stories, and talking animal tales; many works
were listed under two or more of these headings; and many
of Lynn’s chosen headings were in themselves vague and
overlapping. “Travel to another world” is not very clearly
distinguishable from “alternative worlds and imaginary
lands”, nor is “Magic adventure” from “Witches, wizards,
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sorcery and magicians”. Besides this, in an article
published in 1973 Jane Mobley attempted a “definition” of
Fantasy fiction which began from unquestioned and indeed
unarticulated assumptions about the nature of such fiction,
so limited that the article is in fact a description of the
sub-type or division of Fantasy labelled by some critics
“sword-and-sorcery”. [3] So narrow is Mobley’s view that
she even presents, as a given condition of the entire
Fantasy mode, the lack of literary merit she perceives as
characteristic of much of the sub-genre she discusses;
“The sturdy ability of myth to surviveeven mediocre retelling is a part of fantasyfiction and should be considered incriticism of fantasy. Perhaps our aestheticstandards must be altered somewhat to allowthe inclusion of “function”. In fantasyfiction the characters could often gonameless, and they sometimes speak in theworst grade-B Hollywood fashion, yet theyact out the essential mana or magic andthat is what fantasy and myth demand”.
It seems we must explore between the rigidly narrow view
represented by Mobley and the vaguely all-inclusive view of
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Lynn, in order to satisfy ourselves that a bold definition,
such as Ziolkowski has been made, can indeed be justified.
Further, we must reach a clearer notation of the types of
Fantasy available to children today and the characteristics
of those types, especially of those to be given close
attention in the development of the argument of this
thesis.
In the [unattributed] Preface to the 1979 publication
Fantasy Literature; a core collection and reference guide,
there is a description of the diversity and confusion of
opinion in the field of Fantasy;
“Since the mid-1960’s there has been agreat rise of interest in fantasyliterature. The recent but widespreadpopularity of fantasy is evident in theproliferation of course offerings on thesubject in colleges and secondary schoolsand in the increase in the number of new andreprint titles published every year. Morecritical works are appearing devotedexclusively to fantasy. Major publishershave supplied the need for research tools byissuing reference works and special texts tomeet the demands of the scholar and theteacher. Along with this proliferation offantasy materials, both primary andsecondary, has arisen the need forbibliographical control of the literature.It was primarily with this point in mindthat the present volume was compiled”. [5]
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The author’s point about the upsurge in every kind of
Fantasy writing since the early sixties is easily confirmed
by examining the indexes to periodical and monograph
publications, which regularly include several entries under
“Fantasy” and related headings in the period after about
1960, while the heading scarcely appears at all in earlier
lists. The rest of this section will examine some of the
major publications on Fantasy published in this period, as
well as one or two earlier works which are relevant to the
search for a definition or description of Fantasy.
One of the authors examined by Ziolkowski in the
article, whose concluding summary heads this section, is
Tzvetan Todorov. [6] Todorov describes his book as “a
structural approach to a literary genre”; but in
Ziolkowski’s view Todorov does not establish the existence
of a genre that can accurately be labelled “the fantastic”.
Ziolkowski speaks of “.....fantasy as a literary genre and
the fantastic as a mode of perception .......” [7] Todorov
indeed seems to assign to what he calls “the fantastic”
both as an ephemeral existence within the bounds of any
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literary text in which it is employed, and a limited
historical existence.
“The fantastic is that hesitationexperienced by a person who knows only thelaws of nature, confronted by an apparentlysupernatural event”. [8]
Todorov sees this hesitation as affecting both character
and reader; and asserts that the resolution of the
ambiguity or hesitation is the end of the fantastic in that
particular work.
“At the story’s end the reader .......opts for one solution or the other, andthereby emerges from the fantastic. .......[which] seems to be located on the frontierof two genres, the marvellous and theuncanny, rather than to be an autonomousgenre”. [9]
Todorov’s terms marvellous and uncanny describe two of
the sorts of fiction more loosely labelled “Fantasy”. He
cites the works of Clara Reeve and Ann Radcliffe from the
Gothic horror genre as examples of the uncanny, since in
these the horrors are found to be attributable to human
machination and are to that extent naturalistic. For
examples of the marvellous he turns to the romances of
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Horace Walpole, MG Lewis and Mathurin; in these writers the
supernatural is conceived of as literally present. The
distinction drawn here is an important one and recurs
throughout the Fantasy field, some Fantasy tales being
explained as dreams or imaginings of their protagonists,
and some as actual experience. At this point it is also
important to note Todorov’s emphasis on the reader’s
reaction to Fantasy, “..... that ambiguous
perception .....” [10] that the story later resolves. This
will be seen to be directly relevant to the question of
children’s relationship to Fantasy. Todorov feels there
are a few texts that can be considered purely fantastic in
the sense of sustaining their ambiguity up to and beyond
the end of the story. The example he suggests is James’
The turn of the Screw. [11] in which it is impossible to decide
whether the two “ghosts” are exactly that or rather some
kind of hallucination on the part of the governess, the two
children, or all three. These three elements – ambiguity,
hesitation, resolution – are important in Fantasy that is
intended for children. Todorov’s insight into the way the
fantastic disappears when the hesitation is resolved,
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should be held in mind when considering the function and
value of Fantasy for children.
Meanwhile, it should not be forgotten that Todorov
also limited the fantastic to a specific period in
literature;
“It appeared in a systematic way aroundthe end of the eighteenth century ....... acentury later we find the last aestheticallysatisfying examples of the genre .....” [12]
Others of the writers considered in this section express
the opinion that the incidence of Fantasy and the fantastic
in literature is declining; this is in marked contrast to
what the author quoted (pp 9-10) above had to say about the
increase in the literature since the nineteen-sixties. The
contradiction may be explained by the failure of most
authors to give serious critical consideration to works
intended for children, and by the wide degree of variation
in individual opinions as to what may validly be considered
Fantasy, or indeed, what may validly be considered
literature. Todorov never seriously applied himself to the
question of what Fantasy is, although many of the points he
considers are in fact related closely to the search for
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such a definition. Other critics in the field have
considered more directly the nature of Fantasy and have
sought specifically for ways of defining it.
Eric Rabkin, in The fantastic in literature, [13] is said by
Ziolkowski to attempt to close the gap between Fantasy and
the fantastic, in that he sees the fantastic manifesting
itself in several literary genres while occupying a central
place in Fantasy works. [14] Rabkin’s definition of the
fantastic has a different emphasis from Todorov’s;
“One of the distinguishing marks of thefantastic is that the perspectives enforcedby the ground rules of the narrative world [myitalics] must be diametricallycontradicted”. [15]
Todorov suggests that “hesitation” occurs when the reader
encounters something that does not accord with the ground
rules of the objective or extra-textual world. Rabkin’s
confinement of the fantastic to what happens within the
text, necessarily leads to his excluding from the
definition of Fantasy that he evolves, many kinds of
stories, most notably fairy-tales, that by other standards
would be adjudged to be Fantasies. For Rabkin the finest
example of a Fantasy is the Alice sequence by Lewis Carroll
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[16], which “continues to reverse its ground rules time and
again”. This obviously does not hold true for works like
The lord of the Rings [17] or the Earthsea trilogy [18], in which
inner consistency of the imagined world is one of the
authors’ prime concerns. Yet these two works are among
those perhaps most likely to be named as Fantasies, by the
general reader. Rabkin himself partly qualifies his
definition when he says “..... a narrative world may itself
offer a diametric reversal of the ground-rules of the
extra-textural world .....” [19] He is here discussing what
he calls “escape literature”, which he sees as fantastic
but not quite Fantasy. Yet by carrying the concept of
“reversal” outside the textual world at all Rabkin shows
awareness of the need for a wider view than his original
definition allows.
“........ Fantasy, the genre whosecentre and concern, whose primaryenterprise, is to present and consider thefantastic. But in varying measure, everynarrative that uses the fantastic is markedby Fantasy, and offers us a fantasticworld”. [20]
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A natural development from this definition is the
sliding scale or continuum of literary types to which
Rabkin constantly refers once he has introduced it. This
consists of a horizontal line at the extreme right of which
is placed “pure” Fantasy [according to Rabkin] and at the
extreme left of which is placed “realistic fiction”.
Rabkin takes realistic fiction to be narrative whose main
concern is to represent as accurately as possible the
condition of everyday life. Close to the Fantasy end of
the line Rabkin places detective fiction and science
fiction; but neither fairy-tale nor Romance comes close,
since Rabkin feels these offer “.....a stable world that
does not produce continuing astonishment and does not
reverse its own ground-rules ....”. [21] Yet he admits
elsewhere that the “.... fairy-tale operates by a kind of
clarity that is the diametric reversal of the shades and
nuances of the extra-textual world”. [22] Despite Rabkin’s
efforts towards tidying up the untidy area of the
definition of Fantasy, he still leaves much that is vague.
His conclusion that
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“A real Fantasy uses the fantastic soessentially and so constantly that one neverescapes its grip into the security of afully tamed world for more than a moment”,[23]
is too purist to be wholly workable. Both it and the
continuum of more and less fantastic works that Rabkin
develops in order to sustain it are at odds with what the
publishers’ lists reveal of the reading public’s
expectations when the term “fantasy” is employed. The very
works of Romance and imitation fairy-tale that Rabkin
dismisses are dominant in the public imagination. And
Rabkin himself is constantly hinting at the possibility of
wider definitions, even noting towards the end of his book
that;
“A minimally fantastic work ofart ..... is still somewhat fantastic justbecause it is a work of art and thereforeoffers us a safe, controlled world in whichcaution is unnecessary and where we canafford to suspend disbelief”. [24]
But if fiction is by nature fantastic in that it offers
safety and control, what of Rabkin’s cherished concept of
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the diametric reversal of ground rules, of constant
surprises and unexpectedness, as the chief characteristics
of the fantastic? This muddled thought and the
dogmatically narrow nature of Rabkin’s neatly-contrived
model, combine to make his study less than helpful in terms
of providing an authoritative and flexible guide to the
nature of the works currently being offered to children and
adolescents as “Fantasy”. Yet the following quotation from
his book will serve both as a statement towards an
assessment of the value of that fiction, and as an
introduction to the next critic to be considered, W R
Irwin;
“Although the dictionary may define thefantastic as “not real or based on reality”,the fantastic is important precisely becauseit is wholly dependent upon reality for itsexistence”. [25]
Irwin’s The Game of the Impossible [26] is subtitled “A
Rhetoric of Fantasy” and it is to the nature of literary
Fantasy, rather than to the related topic of the fantastic
in literature, that he directly addresses himself. His
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characterisation of Fantasy as a game recalls W H Auden’s
description of poetry as “an ordered and meaningful game”
[27]; for Irwin does not imply that Fantasy is frivolous,
but that it achieves its serious purpose by deliberately
stepping outside or alongside the real and looking back at
it. To this extent it is like all games and make-believe.
He goes further than Rabkin (in 25 above) on the
relationship of Fantasy to reality;
“But until the reader has used thestory for some kind of critique of what itopposes, the experience that the fantasyenables is incomplete”.
Here Irwin refers us back also to Ziolkowski’s point
about “Ethical insight”. [29] Fantasy does have a serious
purpose; like realistic fiction it seeks to illuminate the
nature of the objective world, although it differs from
realism in its use of the objectively impossible, of
alternate worlds and weird social structures, alien beings
and imaginary situations, to achieve that illumination.
Indeed for Irwin, Rabkin’s suggestion that a story
“may ..... offer a diametric reversal of the real world”
[30] is the basic point about Fantasy, its chief
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characteristic and the reason that it has anything of value
to say to readers. Irwin says;
“Fantasy can, I believe, be perceivedas a distinguishable mode in prose fiction,more than the infusion of certain kinds ofmaterial into a variety of narrative modes”.[31]
This allows the much wider definition of Fantasy,
evidenced in publisher’s lists and librarians’ shelf-
arrangements, to begin to operate in the critical
assessments of such works and in the attempt to define and
order them. To narrow the definition is not to ease the
task, but rather to leave a lot of vexed questions as to
how to define and evaluate any works left outside the
carefully evolved and neatly expressed definition. One
does not really begin to evaluate, for example, The Lord of
the Rings, simply by evolving, like Rabkin, a system
according to which it is not a Fantasy or, like Irwin, a
system according to which it may be.
However, both these authors and the others to be
considered here do concern themselves with function and
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purpose of Fantasy as well as with the mechanics of
classification. Rabkin, referring to children although he
has not made them an important part of his study, has this
to say; “It is clear even to adults that at least for
children fantastic worlds are useful mirrors”. (My italics) [32]
This is in close accord with Irwin’s idea of Fantasy
as serious gaming, as a reaction against and comment upon
the real world that may help us more clearly to understand
reality. For Irwin, Fantasy relates to and comments upon
the deepest and most serious concerns of humanity;
“The propositions against which afantasist makes counter-demonstration arenot stereotypes of limited duration ........but rather general truths and conventions ofunderstanding reality so widely accepted asto be supra-historical”. [33]
Fantasy makes us look again at ourselves and at our
world. It also makes us look again at how we look at
ourselves sand at our world, and why. As Rabkin expresses
it “..... the problem of human knowing infects fantasies at
all levels .....”. [34]
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Having begun to glimpse some of the ideas current
about the serious nature of Fantasy, it is appropriate to
turn to the long essay by J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories.
[35] In spite of his use of the very specific term “fairy-
story” (which Rabkin would not see as Fantasy even though
Irwin would), what Tolkien has to say is in fact directly
relevant to the question of the nature and value and
purpose of Fantasy writing.
“The definition of a fairy-story .....does not ..... depend on any definition orhistorical account of elf or Fairy, but uponthe nature of Faërie; the perilous realmitself and the air that blows in thatcountry”. [36]
Behind this admittedly esoteric terminology, and
behind the style which more closely resembles that of
Tolkien’s own fiction that it does the more usual language
of criticism, lies a concept akin to Irwin’s. This is the
concept of Fantasy as an establisher of alternative
possibilities of social organisation or moral structures;
in short, of Otherworlds, derived from, related to and
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commenting upon the objective reality we live in. The
traditional Otherworld of Fairyland is merely one example
of the ability of humanity to imagine worlds other than our
own.
Tolkien firmly asserts the high seriousness of
Fantasy, emphasising the long endurance of the mode as a
narrative form that speaks deeply to humanity of individual
and social and spiritual concerns. He expounds this at
great length, articulating as central to the nature of
Fantasy things which the three later critics already
studied merely hint at.
“To make a Secondary World inside whichthe green sun will be credible, commandingSecondary Belief, will probably requirelabour and thought, and will certainlydemand a special skill, a kind of Elvishcraft. Few attempt such difficult tasks.But when they are attempted and in anydegree accomplished then we have a rareachievement of art: indeed narrative art,story-making in its primary and most potentmode”. [37]
[And further]“Fantasy ...... is, I think, not a
lower but a higher form of art, indeed themost nearly pure form, and so (whenachieved) the most potent”. [38]
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There is here a passionate commitment to Fantasy that
we have not found in the other critics. Tolkien is not
writing about a literary phenomenon observed from the
outside, but as a practitioner of the art of Fantasy
writing. (When On fairy-stories was first published only The
Hobbit [39] was extant, but an enormous body of the writings
already existed in manuscript). Besides this, Tolkien is
writing about things that relate to his own religious
beliefs; Fantasy is a high form of art because it re-enacts
the primal act of Creation. The creator of a secondary
world comes closest of all artists to imitating the act of
the Creator of the real world. Tolkien goes so far as to
say, “The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a
larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-
stories”. [40] Whereas Todorov, Rabkin and Irwin emphasised
the technical or methodological characteristics of Fantasy,
Tolkien goes more deeply into the experience of Fantasy for
both reader and creator, so broadening our view. The
effects of Fantasy are in practice inseparable from its
techniques; Todorov’s structural feature, hesitation and
resolution [41], links closely with Tolkien’s affective
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concept of “Recovery, Escape, Consolation”. Tolkien
perceives Fantasy as supplying the corrective to the sense
of being lost, of not knowing the truth about reality, that
Todorov labels “hesitation”. “Recovery .....” says Tolkien
“..... is the regaining of a clear view”. [43] He suggests
that “.....Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-
stories .....” [44] Here escape is a matter not of evading
reality or shirking responsibility, but of stepping aside
for a short time in order to gain a wider perspective, to
remember that “..... there are more things in heaven and
earth .....” [45] than the merely concrete. Consolation I
believe to be closely parallel to Todorov’s “resolution of
hesitation”, but as an effect of Fantasy that may carry
over into the reader’s own life-experience, rather than as
a structural device effective only within the limits of the
reader’s experience of the story. Of this effect, which is
for him as much spiritual as aesthetic, Tolkien says;
“..... the joy of the happyending ..... is not essentially “escapist”or “fugitive”. ..... It does not deny thepossibility of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow andfailure: the possibility of these isnecessary to the joy of deliverance; itdenies (in the face of much evidence, if you
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will) universal final defeat and in so faris evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse ofJoy, Joy beyond the walls of the world,poignant as grief”. [46]
In simpler language, Fantasy is encouraging or
exhortative, and can have an effect on the resolution of
actual doubts and fears in the reader’s life; the
resolution it achieves, in Tolkien’s view, thus going
deeper than the resolution of a problem set up by the
author of a text for the reader’s diversion or
mystification. The implication is of an underlying
positive or consoling tone to Fantasy which is not
suggested by the previous critics. Those who allow that
Fantasy involves some kind of judgement on the objective
world, have not gone so far as Tolkien does when he
suggests that the ultimate result of that stepping back and
looking, must be a strengthened resolve and a deeper hope.
But idiosyncratic as Tolkien’s view may at this stage
appear, there is evidence of agreement with it, implicitly
and explicitly expressed in both the theory and the
practice of the contemporary writers to be studied in later
sections of this thesis.
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George MacDonald’s influence both on Tolkien and on
Tolkien’s friend C S Lewis was very strong, both as regards
the theory and practice of Fantasy and, in Lewis’ case at
least, in terms of religious belief. [47] Although he was
of a different religious tradition from Tolkien,
MacDonald’s emphasis on the spiritual gives him a shared
belief with Tolkien in the high seriousness and moral
purpose of Fantasy. His brief article The Fantastic Imagination
[48] reveals also an awareness of some of the points raised
by Rabkin and Irwin about the nature and characteristics
not only of traditional fairy-tales but of “..... products
of the imagination .....” [49] or Fantasy writings, in
general. MacDonald leans towards Irwin’s view that
Fantasy worlds derive from the objective world and are
consciously made to differ from it. He also holds that the
imagined world must be consistent to its own inner reality,
rather than reversing expectation as Rabkin suggests. [50]
On the meaning of fairy-tales, MacDonald states;
“It cannot help having some meaning; ifit have proportion and harmony it must havevitality, and vitality is truth. The beautymay be plainer in it than the truth, butwithout the truth the beauty could not be,
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and the fairy-tale would give no delight”.[51]
MacDonald shares Tolkien’s conviction that Fantasy has
a moral purpose, one inextricably mixed with the functional
operation of the Fantasy in bringing pleasure to the reader
or listener. It is through the joy of the tale that the
“meaning” is conveyed. MacDonald feels the Fantasist’s aim
should be to “..... move by suggestion, to cause to
imagine”; there need be no direct statements of moral or
meaning. This is particularly relevant to the question of
children’s experience of Fantasy, and MacDonald refers
explicitly to the sharing of such tales by mother and
child. Both MacDonald and Tolkien agree with Irwin that
Fantasy has a moral purpose and further imply that the fact
of having something to say that is specifically “moral” is
an integral feature of the Fantasy mode.
C N Manlove’s Modern Fantasy; five studies [52] adds little
to the debate about the nature of Fantasy. In his
Introduction, Manlove supplies this definition;
“..... a fantasy is: a fiction evokingwonder and continuing a substantial and irreducible
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element of the supernatural with which the mortalcharacters of the story or the readers become on at leastpartly familiar terms”. [53]
There is nothing here that the previous authors would
want to quarrel with very violently; although it is put
together in slightly different terms, using “supernatural”
where Rabkin might use “fantastic” and Tolkien perhaps
“sub-created”. Yet Manlove’s book does differ
substantially from those already considered, in several
ways. Firstly, it devotes only the very brief Introduction
and Conclusion to any general consideration of the nature
of Fantasy, being concerned with the exposition and
assessment of the work of the five authors chosen for
study. Secondly, it is very much writer-orientated, with
far less interest taken in the technical workings or
devices of Fantasy, or its effect upon the reader, than in
the psychological study of the authors. The book might
more accurately be entitled, “Modern Fantasists”. Thirdly,
Manlove does not seem particularly committed to Fantasy nor
particularly to enjoy it. In this he is marked off from
the previous authors— not just the deeply committed Tolkien
P a g e | 32
—for all of them accept the basic premise that Fantasy is a
valid literary mode and a valuable one. Manlove, after his
studies of Kingsley, MacDonald, C S Lewis, Tolkien and
Peake, decides “.....not one of the people we have looked
at sustains his original vision .....” [54], and suggests
that this is inevitable because of the nature of Fantasy.
He feels Fantasy will not work in the modern age, that its
aims and methods are as like anachronistic, relying upon a
system of beliefs and assumptions that are meaningless in a
contemporary context. This is an interesting point of
view; providing a valuable corrective in its assertion of
the irrelevance of Fantasy after several writers who accept
the basic assumption of its relevance. For Manlove,
Fantasy is escapist in the pejorative sense, a self-
indulgence by the author. He reaches this conclusion by
studying each man’s Fantasy in the context of his stated
aims and ideals for his writing. Much attention is given
to what is known of the life and character of each writer.
Manlove perceived in each author both failure to sustain
the imaginative vision, and failure to achieve integration
of the personality. In each he finds indecisiveness and
P a g e | 33
inconsistency at both professional and personal levels of
their lives, so that their Fantasies become for him a
record of their personal weaknesses and failings. It seems
that personalities of this type, and the Fantasy mode of
writing in itself, are hard for Manlove to relate to.
Tolkien suggests that either one has a taste for this kind
of fiction, or one has not. [55] Manlove’s personal taste
does not seem to incline in this direction. Yet no
critical assessment of literature can hope to be totally
objective, and Manlove’s subjective distaste does not
invalidate his conclusions. He has revealed the greatest
dangers inherent in the Fantasy mode. These are; self-
indulgence, escapism in the negative sense of the flight
from reality, and an idealised or oversimplified view of
the past. The major writers Manlove considers are
relatively free from these faults in comparison with some
who produce Fantasy intended for children today; though
perhaps no Fantasist can hope consistently to avoid all the
dangers.
Another critic who shares Manlove’s dissatisfaction
with Tolkien is Christine Brooke-Rose. [56] Her book is
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rather muddled and rambling and she seems never to commit
herself to one particular view of what Fantasy is. Instead
she summarises the ideas of other critics, notably those of
structuralist persuasion. By far the clearest and most
useful part of A rhetoric of the unreal is her own analysis of The
turn of the screw. She displays very little sympathy for
Tolkien’s style of Fantasy, making several errors of fact
in her remarks on The Lord of the Rings. She seems to feel that
it would have been better if Tolkien had written a
different sort of book. To this extent she provides some
sort of support for Manlove, but her work fails to add
anything to the general definition of Fantasy.
Rosemary Jackson, in Fantasy; the literature of subversion
agrees broadly with Todorov, Rabkin and Irwin in terms of
definitions of Fantasy and the fantastic. Like Todorov,
she is particularly interested in the Gothic period, and
within it, in its dominant image of the double or other
self. On the wider question of what Fantasy does and how
it functions, she emphasises, as do both Rabkin and Irwin,
its essential dependence on the objective world;
P a g e | 35
“..... a literary fantasy is producedwithin, and determined by, its socialcontext. Though it might struggle againstthe limits of this context, often beingarticulated upon that very struggle, itcannot be understood in isolation from it”.[58]
It cannot be emphasised too strongly that, although
Irwin speaks of the fantasist getting outside the objective
world in order to comment upon it, this freedom is, as
Jackson emphasises, merely relative and totally dependent
upon the given contexts of the writer’s culture and
personality. The fantasist may say to the reader; “What if
we could escape the limits of everyday reality? Let us
imagine we have temporarily escaped those limits”. What
she or he cannot say is “Look; we have actually got away”.
Space exploration continues to lead to Mars, not to
Malacandra. [59] The critique of “reality” offered by
Fantasy fiction is no more objective than that offered by
socio-realistic fiction. Ursula LeGuin’s insight into the
human condition is not qualitatively different from Jane
Austen’s or George Eliot’s. The differences lie in the
techniques and devices of the literary modes used to
express those insights.
P a g e | 36
Jackson, although starting from a different set of
assumptions from the religiously-based ones of Tolkien and
MacDonald, holds almost as serious a view of the role of
Fantasy in life and culture as do the two Christian
thinkers. What she intends by her emphasis on “subversion”
in her title, is to bring out what she sees as a social
responsibility on the part of the Fantasist. To some
extent the Fantasist should be a revolutionary;
“The fantastic traces the unsaid andthe unseen of culture, that which has beensilenced, made invisible, covered over andmade “absent””. [60]
This is a highly purposeful approach, that expects
Fantasy to bring out into the open the repressions and
hypocrisies and self-deceptions of society, with a view to
ameliorating them. This emphasis leads Jackson to share
Manlove’s hesitation and doubt about the type of “.....
fantasy which is more properly described as faery or
romance literature”. [61] She sees in Tolkien and others
who write in this vein something of the attempt to retreat
P a g e | 37
from the difficulties of reality that Manlove hints at.
She quotes with approval Sartre’s remark;
“In a secular culture, fantasy .....does not invent supernatural religions, butpresents a natural world inverted intosomething strange, something “other” .....turning from transcendental exploration totranscriptions of a human condition”. [62]
Jackson shares Sartre’s implied apposition of
“transcendental” with “human condition”; she has earlier
used the term “transcendental” almost abusively, in her
discussion and rejection of the traditional mode of
critical writing on Fantasy. [63] Like Manlove, she has a
strong personal preference for certain forms of Fantasy and
fantastic literature, and finds it hard to allow any
validity to the modes chosen by authors who write according
to different priorities. She states;
“The moral and religious allegories,parables and fables informing the stories ofKingsley and Tolkien move away from theunsettling implications which are found atthe centre of the purely “fantastic”. Theiroriginal impulse may be similar, but theymove away from it, expelling their desireand frequently displacing it into religiouslongings and nostalgia. Thus they defuseany potentially disturbing, anti-socialdrives and retreat from any profound
P a g e | 38
confrontation with existential dis-ease”.[64]
In other words, these writers are self-indulgent and
irresponsible, failing to do what fantasists ought to be
doing. Jackson’s point of view can be understood and
agreed with up to a point; and certainly it is no adequate
answer to her objections simply to state bluntly, “I, for
one, have found that a confrontation with existential dis-
ease is exactly what (good) romance fantasy has provided”.
There is a gap here between the religious and non-religious
assumptions about life that must inevitably cause
misunderstandings in any area, not merely the literary. In
the light of this unease on Jackson’s part about romance,
it is ironical that I have seen in her earnestness towards
Fantasy a similarity with Tolkien’s and MacDonald’s
attitudes; yet it is there, though Jackson might not
perceive it. What needs to be said in defence of the
“transcendentalists” is that they are not writing in a
secular context and that for them the step into religion is
not a retreat but an engagement, not a way out of life but
a way in, not conservative but potentially revolutionary.
P a g e | 39
It all depends on how it takes you. Reactions to the
romance style of fiction are as deeply subjective as all
human reactions. From the first publication of The Lord of
the Rings, for example, the cries of acclaim and the cries of
“Rubbish!” have been equally loud. Edmund Wilson was
totally unable to perceive any good in it, W H Auden one of
the most notable of those who wrote in its praise. [65] All
one can conclude is that there are many different strands
of Fantasy writing, some more closely related to each other
than others; and that their aims and methods differ as
widely as do the reactions to them of both critics and
readers.
The last two decades have seen the publication of
hundreds of periodical articles on a wide range of general
and specific topics in Fantasy – too many for more than a
small selection to be considered here. Robert Branham’s
Principles of the imaginary milieu [66] contains some interesting
reflections on many of the points raised in the monographs
already considered. He is mainly interested in the nature
of the sub-created world and its relationship to the extra-
textual reality. One of his most relevant remarks,
P a g e | 40
especially as regards children’s relationship to Fantasy,
is that the landscapes and structures of the imagined world
are frequently made to embody moral and philosophical
argument. Also;
“Actions in Fantasy are the outgrowthsof characterised human motivation which,although not directly symbolic of earthlyconcerns, are universal in theirapplicability. The battle lines drawnwithin fantasy are indicative ofphilosophical division; represented materialmotivation is itself a value-set which infantasy must be recognised.
The mere physical make up of thefantastic genre thus provides an isolationof moral argument represented therein and aperceptual focus upon it once identified”.[67]
Branham here supports the view that fantasy has
something useful to say, some moral comment to make, about
the real world. He focuses upon the pervasiveness of the
moral objective within Fantasy, the way it conditions
landscape, plot and character. Examples that come to mind
are the expressive landscapes in Tolkien, the Desolation of
the Dragon and the barren approaches to Mordor; [68] and
Donaldson’s, expressive of the moral condition of its
inhabitants. [69] One should perhaps also refer back to
P a g e | 41
Jane Mobley’s reference to one of the potential weaknesses
of Fantasy; that characters may dwindle to mere symbols
under pressure of the author’s desire to embody in them a
moral vision. [70] This is a marked difference between
Fantasy and realistic fiction. The realist presents as
accurately as possible a carefully individualised
character, and guides the reader to draw from observation
of the character any general moral conclusions that may be
intended. The Fantasist is harder put to it to
individualise characters to any marked degree, as each
tends to embody some cluster of general characteristics or
moral principle. Thus Sauron embodies Evil and Gandalf,
Good; with the result that Sauron is not characterised or
individualised at all for fear of rendering him even in the
slightest degree “sympathetic”, while Gandalf has many
archetypal character-traits of the Merlin figure, of Odin,
and of the Wise Old Helper. [Admittedly these do combine into a
much more individualised character than Sauron! (2015)] [71]
Branham also supports Tolkien’s notion of “Recovery”
as an important function of Fantasy; the recovery of a
“clear view”. [72]
P a g e | 42
“The business of Fantasy is totransplant the idea intact to an aliensocio-cultural milieu, leaving its previousassociations behind”. [73]
Branham calls this process defamiliarisation, although it
might equally well be described as “familiarisation” or
“refamiliarisation”, since the aim is to confront the
reader directly with the idea, without the associations and
reservations that condition human response in the real
world. So we may see more clearly both the idea or ideal
and our own reaction or allegiance to it. As an
oversimplified example, if Gandalf = Good and Sauron = Evil,
then it is impossible to mistake which side we “ought” to
be on within the fictional world. This may carry over to
reinforce our sense of allegiance to “Good” in the
objective world. This is largely a question of reinforcing
learned patterns; we are not likely suddenly to decide that
Sauron is right after all, as the skill of the story-teller
has gone into weighting the balance in favour of “Good”.
If it is revolutionary at all, this particular Fantasy may
be so only in terms of strengthening or rendering more
forceful allegiances already held. Yet it may be possible
P a g e | 43
for this isolating function of Fantasy to cast a clearer
light upon an obscure moral area, to bring out into the
open and render less simplistic through the very act of
simplifying or polarising, some accepted tenant of everyday
morality. Such a story is The ones who walk away from Omelas by
Ursula K LeGuin. [74] There is no individualised
characterisation there and very little by way of plot; the
interest is in the imagined social structure of Omelas.
This fair and noble city is a haven for the arts, sports,
every cultural activity revered by humankind.
Unfortunately, LeGuin reveals, the continued existence of
this ideal city depends upon the confinement in isolation,
hunger, cold and neglect of one single child, one scapegoat
selected arbitrarily for a lifetime’s deprivation. Very
few people do walk away when they learn the basis upon
which their desirable life-style is maintained. Most
acquiesce for the sale of the status quo and its physical
and cultural delights. This isolation of an idea brings
alive in all its hypocritical complacence the acquiescence
of the majority within Western culture who know quite well
that their privileged life-style depends directly upon the
P a g e | 44
suffering and exploitation of millions in the less
developed parts of the world. Like the scape-goat child of
Omelas, these masses are pushed away out of sight, in areas
of our minds that are kept locked, like the child’s cellar.
Once this powerful story has forced the unlocking of the
mental door, it is hard to reassume the self-induced
blindness upon which depend complacency and equanimity in
the face of a real and enormous injustice. LeGuin has made
us admit to a moral double-think that we had hoped might
remain below the level of active thought. For some
readers, the shock of this self-confrontation is enough to
affect directly their awareness of conditions in the actual
sold around them and their reactions to those conditions.
A realistic writer would have striven to record for the
reader the minutiae of life in the Third World; the
Fantasist achieves her effect by encouraging in the reader
an imaginative leap into awareness of injustice by showing
the idea transplanted to the alien milieu, isolated and
bereft as far as is possible of the contextual associations
of everyday reality.
P a g e | 45
For certain people, though not for all, it is
precisely the imaginative approach that most deeply
stimulates thought. Marion Montgomery [75] writes of
“.....the imagination’s access to the deepest realities of
existence” [my italics]. She is referring to that ability
of Fantasy to isolate and make accessible to the reader
fundamental moral or spiritual issues that Branham
described. To some extent therefore, she is applying the
term “reality” to what is found in Fantasy rather than to
what is found outside it, applying something like the
Platonic idea of a higher or ideal reality beyond the
concrete or physical or social organism. Other writers
share this viewpoint, Helen Cresswell, herself a
distinguished writer of Fantasy for children, states;
“I have never been able to understandthe distinction that some people will insiston making between so-called fantasy and so-called reality. It seems to be that if weexperience something it is real and whetherit is fantasy or reality is beside thepoint”. [76]
P a g e | 46
This is very far removed from Todorov’s approach. His
concern was to analyse the effect and operation of a
transitory function within a literary text. Cresswell sees
the experience of Fantasy fiction as an integral part of
life-experience and therefore to be considered primarily in
those terms. Janet MacNeill, in an article recalling her
own childhood pleasure in the kinds of books that “.....
demanded not just a willing suspension of disbelief but an
appetite for it .....” [77], emphasises the same feelings
about the importance of Fantasy;
“Whatever else Fantasy is it isn’tescapism and it’s much tougher than whimsy.There must be in underlying truth whichjustifies it. Fantasy enriches fact: things thatare become much more solid when oneconsiders what they might be”. [my italics][78]
So Fantasy does not merely step outside “reality” and look
back at it; it interacts with reality and our perceptions
of reality, and may possibly affect at least our
perceptions; perhaps, through them, the structures of
reality. Katherine Stockholder, after showing that she
regards all fiction as to some extent fantastic, also
P a g e | 47
emphasises the function of Fantasy in the lives of
individuals;
“To read and involve ourselves inliterature, and to understand the nature ofour involvement, can be seen as a kind ofpractice in understanding ourselves”. [80]
It is in this area of understanding ourselves that
Ursula LeGuin, in her article “Fantasy, like poetry, speaks
the language of the night”, adds to the definition of
Fantasy a dimension we have not yet considered;
“..... written fantasy translates intoverbal images and coherent narrative formsthe intuitions and perceptions of theunconscious mind – body language,dreamstuff, primary process thinking. Thiswe all seem to share, whether we speakEnglish or Urdu, whether we’re five oreighty-five. The witch, the dragon, thehero; the night journey, the helpful animal,the hidden treasure ..... we all know them,we recognise them (because, if Jung isright, they represent profound and essentialmodes of thought). Modern fantasy attemptsto translate them into modern words”. [81]
So for LeGuin the Otherworlds of the Fantasists give a
pseudo-geographical, sociological and ideological location
to the contents of the subconscious; individual and
P a g e | 48
collective. This is why Fantasy is important and how it
works. When it steps away from the everyday, it steps into
the normally buried world of the unconscious, what is
denied and repressed in the individual and so, as Jackson
suggested, denied and repressed in society. What is
present to the senses is only one form of reality, one
aspect of human experience. Achieving and maintaining a
clear view necessitates taking account of the subconscious
dimensions of experience, and this is what Fantasy helps us
to do. Far from being isolated from reality, it serves to
bring out into the open a deeper reality whose vital role
in human psychic and social health or balance is not always
fully understood.
Having looked at some of the available criticism of
contemporary Fantasy, some of it written by people who
themselves are currently producing Fantasy fiction, it
seems useful to ask why both Todorov and Rabkin recorded
their opinions that Fantasy is a dying form. [82] This is
partly due to Todorov’s very narrow definition of the
fantastic in fiction, and partly to the limitation these
critics have set on themselves of leaving out of
P a g e | 49
consideration the large body of Fantasy work intended for
children. But even this very limited survey has borne out
the claims of the unnamed author of the preface to Fantasy
literature; a core collection and reference guide [83] that Fantasy is in
fact a lively and growing area of literary activity. The
answer to this paradox may perhaps be found in Tolkien’s
common-sense point that Fantasy is largely a matter of
taste. [84] If Fantasy is not important to you, or if the
dominant mode of Fantasy in the current literary scene is
not to your taste, then you will not accord it much
significance on your personal literary map. It is
perfectly possible for critics not to notice or admit to
the existence of Fantasy as a serious literary genre at
all, (or those of Children’s fiction, Science Fiction,
Westerns, Romances written to formula for the supposed
average housewife, or detective fiction). What is the
highest form of art to one is rubbish to another. For some
of the writers we have studied, Fantasy is a permanent
feature not only of fiction but of the human condition and
human psychology. For others it is an interesting enough
literary phenomenon to which we feel no deep personal
P a g e | 50
commitment. One cannot imagine Rabkin, competent and
informed though his work is, arranging as Tolkien did to
have himself buried under the name of a Fantasy character
of his own creation. [85] Nor is it necessary that he
should. Out of the varied approaches and philosophies we
have studied it should be possible for us now to summarise
the nature and content and function of Fantasy in a way
that will form the basis for practical criticism of the
works chosen for study later in this thesis. We should be
able to see to what extent we have gone “There and back
again” [86] in terms of the quotation from Ziolkowski that
opened this section.
Fantasy fiction, then, introduces to the reader’s
awareness, through the awareness of a character or directly
through the narrative, something which is by the standards
of the reader’s everyday experience unreal, impossible,
against nature, supernatural. This is most frequently done
by the creation of an alternative reality or Otherworld
within which all or most of the action of the fiction takes
place. Sometimes the unreal elements may irrupt into an
otherwise realistic fictional setting, instead. The
P a g e | 51
alternative reality relates by comparison and contrast with
the objective world. This comparison and contrast may
directly or indirectly affect the reader’s understanding or
perception of reality. There is often a strong moral, and
in some cases religious or philosophical concern, in a
Fantasy. The reader’s attention is focused back onto the
objective reality with the intention that she or he may
more clearly perceive and evaluate the moral issues extant
in society. Although charges of escapism have been
levelled against Fantasy, its defenders argue that it
provides a way into the understanding of life and perhaps
towards coping more efficiently with life. Some assert
that Fantasy is in fact the most effective fictional form
in terms of enabling individual growth and through that,
potential changes in society. This is said to result from
Fantasy’s tendency to deal not with the minutely
particular, as realistic fiction does, but with general,
universal, and eternal verities. It may be argued that
Fantasy deals directly with the unconscious levels of human
knowledge and experience and that these are necessarily
universal in their applicability. The conflict between the
P a g e | 52
two views – that Fantasy is escapist, and that it is the
least escapists of literary forms – is a very subjective
one and cannot be resolved here. It is and must inevitably
remain a matter of taste. What matters is the definition
of Fantasy as a genre or sub-type of fiction that seeks to
illuminate the conditions of human society by stepping in
imagination outside that society into a world in which
events and beings will be encountered that have no
counterpart in actual physical reality; although they may
be expressive of psychic realities or moral truths. This
definition does indeed accord well enough with
Ziolkowski’s;
“..... literary genre whose effect isthe ethical insight stemming from ourcontemplation of an otherworld governed bysupernatural laws”. [87]
Yet there is still one matter to be resolved before we
have a sufficiently broad and deep working model to refer
to when assessing particular works of Fantasy fiction now
available. None of the writers we have referred to has
undertaken to delineate the sub-types or divisions within
the Fantasy genre itself, although each has made references
P a g e | 53
indicative of an awareness of the existence of such
subdivisions. I have already mentioned the unsatisfactory
nature of the subdivisions proposed by Ruth Lynn. [88]
Fortunately, the bibliography Fantasy literature; a core collection
and reference guide [89] provides in its section “On Fantasy”
an acceptable system of subdivision and labelling of the
types of Fantasy. This will provide a structural framework
within which to characterise and place the works to be
assessed.
Firstly, Fantasy is [at the time of writing (21015)] divided
into “High Fantasy” and “Low Fantasy”. These are not
qualitative but methodological distinctions. “High”
Fantasy is that which is set in some secondary world, a
world imagined by the author specifically to serve as the
setting for the action of the Fantasy. Examples are
Tolkien’s Middle Earth and LeGuin’s Earthsea. “Low”
Fantasy is set in the primary or objective world, our own
world, and the “non-rational phenomena” that characterise
Fantasy fiction irrupt into the everyday scene. A famous
example of this is James’ Turn of the Screw. The secondary
worlds of High Fantasy may exist in imagined isolation from
P a g e | 54
the primary world, as does Earthsea, or there may be
provision by the author for movement of characters between
the two worlds, as between C S Lewis’ Narnia and England.
“The secondary world, then, with itsdiscernible though nonrational causality, iswhat characterises high fantasy. Lowfantasy, on the contrary, featuresnonrational happenings that are withoutcausality or explanation because they occurin the rational world where such things arenot supposed to occur. This aspect of lowfantasy is what accounts for its ability toshock or surprise the reader into horror orlaughter. ...... we are not concerned inthis volume with the horrors or laughter orlearning of low fantasy; rather, we areintent upon experiencing the “awe andwonder” (Tolkien’s terms) afforded by highfantasy”. [90]
The distinction made here implies a preferential
assessment, although not a qualitative one; the authors
have limited the scope of their guide to High Fantasy
because some limitation is essential in the terms of space,
and, by implication, because “awe and wonder” seem to them
more worthy of consideration than horror or humour. The
emphasis of tis present work will fall upon High Fantasy as
defined above, and upon Low Fantasies hat are concerned
rather with awe and wonder than with humour and shock.
P a g e | 55
Preference is unquestionably one of the factors at work in
the choice of that emphasis. However, a further
examination of the characteristics of High Fantasy will
reveal two more objective reasons for interest in it. In
terms of its literary descent and its contemporary
relevance, High Fantasy stands out as a significant and
coherent literary phenomenon worthy of serious
investigation. Something will be said in the next two
sections of this thesis about the contemporary relevance of
High Fantasy fiction to the lives of young readers. Here
it should be noted that the authors of the guide have this
to say about the literary origins of the genre;
“....... the two classes of highfantasy, based on the type of non-rationalcausality present, are myth fantasy(supernatural causality) and faery-talefantasy (magical causality).”
As examples here we might choose Tolkien for myth
fantasy, since the events in Middle-Earth are watched and
guided by the Ainur under the sovereignty of Eru Iluvatar;
with LeGuin for faery-tale fantasy, since Earthsea is
governed by magical causality with no evidence for the
existence of divine beings, and with rule in the hands of
P a g e | 56
the Mages who can to some extent control the forces of the
world. This mode of writing evokes and is built upon the
traditional forms of literary expression with which it
shares its labels and much of its technique, notably the
isolating of moral ideas and the externalising or
personifying in individual characters of various states of
consciousness or personality traits. The guide refers back
[92] to epic and romance as well as to myth and to
traditional folk and fairy-tales, explicitly connecting
them as part of one literary bent, one way of writing, one
way of approaching the task of making sense of reality
through fiction. Epics and romances are referred to as
“two of the older kinds of high fantasy”; perhaps a less
partial literary judgement might express this in reverse
and emphasise the degree to which modern High Fantasy is a
continuation of an ancient tradition that has its origins
in oral literature. Some Low Fantasy also draws on these
sources for its themes and motifs. I hope later in this
thesis to draw together the two strands of ancestry and
relevance in a discussion of the part this type of fiction
might play in the growth to self-awareness of the young
P a g e | 57
reader; bringing out at that time both formal and thematic
emphases. Meanwhile a working model has been adopted which
will facilitate the description and assessment of the texts
to be examined later in the thesis.
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Notes and references: Chapter 1; Fantasy and the Fantastic
in fiction.
1. Theodore Ziolkowski, “Otherworlds: fantasy and the
fantastic”. Sewanee Review 86 (1978) 121-129
(Hereafter referred to as “Otherworlds”) p (128).
2. Ruth Nadelman Lynn, Fantasy for children; an annotated checklist
(New York/London: Bowker, 1979)
3. Jane Mobley, “Toward a definition of fantasy
fiction”, Extrapolation 15 (May 1974) 117-128.
4. Jane Mobley, “Toward a definition of fantasy
fiction”, p (127).
5. Marshall B Tymn, Kenneth J. Zahorski and Robert H
Boyer, Fantasy literature; a core collection and reference guide (New
York/London: Bowker, 1979) p ix (Hereafter referred
to as Fantasy literature).
6. Tzvetan Todorov, The fantastic; a structural approach to a literary
genre (Cleveland/London: Case Western Reserve
University Press, 1973). (Hereafter referred to as
The Fantastic).
7. Theodore Ziolkowski, “Otherworlds”, p (124).
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8. Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic, p 25.
9. Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic, p 41.
10. Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic, p 76.
11. Henry James, The turn of the screw (New York, 1898).
12. Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic, p 166.
13. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1976).
14. Theodore Ziolkowski, “Otherworlds”, p (125).
15. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 8.
16. Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), Alice’s
adventures in Wonderland (London: MacMillan, 1865 (dated
1866) and Through the looking-glass and what Alice found there
(London: MacMillan, 1871 (dated 1872)).
17. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1954 – 1955).
18. Ursula K LeGuin, The Earthsea Trilogy (London:
Gollancz, 1971 – 1973).
19. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 42.
20. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 41
21. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 36.
22. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 56 - 57.
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23. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 218.
24. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 214.
25. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 28.
26. W R Irwin, The Game of the Impossible; a rhetoric of fantasy
(Chicago : University of Illinois Press, 1976).
(Hereafter referred to as The game of the impossible.
27. W H Auden, Letter to the author, dated 5th
December 1969.
28. W R Irwin, The game of the impossible, p 76.
29. Theodore Ziolkowski, “Otherworlds”, p (128).
30. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, P 42.
31. W R Irwin, The game of the impossible, P 58.
32. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 223.
33. W R Irwin, The game of the impossible, p 189.
34. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 37.
35. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories in Essays presented toCharles Williams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947)Page references to Tree and Leaf (London: George Allenand Unwin, 1964). The work was originally composedas an Andrew Lang Lecture, and was – in a shorterform – delivered in the University of St. Andrews in1938.
36. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories, p 16.
37. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories, p 45.
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38. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories, p 44.
39. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937). (Hereafter
referred to as The Hobbit). Page references are to the
3rd edition (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966).
40. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories, p 62.
41. See Chapter 1 (above) p 11.
42. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories, p 50-61.
43. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories, p 52.
44. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories, p 53.
45. William Shakespeare, Hamlet Prince of Denmark in
Complete Works (London: Oxford University Press, 1905
(reset 1943)), Act II, Scene V, p 878.
46. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories, p 60.
47. Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings (London: George
Allen and Unwin, 1978). Page references are to the
1981 Unwin Paperback edition. References to the
influence of MacDonald are on pages: 8, 13, 40, 65,
137, 158, and 234.
48. George McDonald, “The Fantastic Imagination”,
Signal 16 (January 1965) 26-32. First published as
the preface to an American edition of Dealings with the
fairies and reprinted in Signal from MacDonald’s
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collection of essays A dish of orts; chiefly papers on the
imagination and Shakespeare (Edwin Dalton, 1908).
49. George MacDonald, “The fantastic imagination”, p
(28).
50. Eric S Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, p 42.
51. George MacDonald, “The fantastic in imagination”,
p (29).
52. C N Manlove, Modern fantasy: five studies (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975). (Hereafter
referred to as Modern fantasy).
53. C N Manlove, Modern Fantasy, p 1.
54. C N Manlove, Modern Fantasy, p 258.
55. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories, p 33-43.
56. Christine Brooke-Rose, A rhetoric of the unreal: studies in
narrative and structure, especially of the fantastic (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981). (Hereafter
referred to as A rhetoric of the unreal.)
57. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: the literature of subversion
(London: Methuen, 1981). Hereafter referred to as
(Fantasy).
58. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy, p 3.
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59. C S Lewis, Out of the silent planet (London: John Lane
the Bodley Head Ltd., 1938). The name Lewis gives to
the planet Mars in this story is Malacandra.
60. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy, p 4.
61. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy, p 9.
62. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy, p 17.
63. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy, p2.
64. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy, p 9.
65. Edmund Wilson, “Oo, those awful orcs” The nation
(14th April 1953) 214-314. W H Auden, “Good and Evil
in The Lord of the Rings” Critical Quarterly 10 (Spring-Summer
1968) 374-375.
66. R J Branham, “Principles of the Imaginary Milieu”
Extrapolation 21 (Winter 1980) 328-337.
67. R J Branham, “Principles of the Imaginary
Milieu”, p (331).
68. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit p 216-217.
And
J. R. R. Tolkien, The two towers; being the second part of the
Lord of the Rings (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1954).
(Hereafter referred to as The two towers). Page
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references to the second (revised) edition (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1966). The approach to
Mordor is described on pages 239-240.
69. Stephen Donaldson, The chronicles of Thomas Covenant the
unbeliever (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1977
- ).
70. Jane Mobley, “Notes toward a definition of
fantasy fiction’ p (127).
71. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.
72. J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-stories, p 52.
73. R J Branham, “Principles of the imaginary
milieu”, p (333).
74. Ursula K LeGuin, The ones who walk away from Omelas in
The wind’s twelve quarters (New York: Harper and Row, 1975).
75. Marion Montgomery, “Prophetic poet and the loss
of Middle-Earth” Georgia Review 33 (Spring 1979) 66-83,
p (78).
76. Helen Cresswell, “If it’s someone from Porlock
don’t answer the door” Children’s literature in Education 4
(March 1971) 32-40, p (33).
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77. Janet MacNeill, “Enter fairies through a hole in
the hedge” Junior Bookshelf 31 (February 1967) 23-27.
78. Janet MacNeill, “Enter fairies through a hole in
the hedge” p (27).
79. Katherine Stockholder, “Fictions, phantasies and
reality; a re-evaluation” Literature and psychology vol 26
no 1 (1976) 17-30.
80. Katherine Stockholder, “Fictions, phantasies and
reality; a re-evaluation” p (21).
81. Ursula K LeGuin, “Fantasy, like poetry, speaks
the language of the night” World (21st November,
1976).
82. Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic, p 166 and Eric S
Rabkin, The fantastic in literature, chapter 11 and
Introduction p x.
83. See note 5 above.
84. J. R. R. Tolkien, On fairy-stories pp 33-43. Tolkien
argues that the response to the fantastic mode is
related to personal taste or inclination, and not to
age.
85. Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien; a biography, p 159.
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86. The subtitle of The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien.
87. See note 1 above.
88. Ruth Nadelman Lynn, Fantasy for children; an annotated
checklist.
89. Marshall S Tymn, Kenneth J Zahorski and Robert H
Boyer, Fantasy literature (See note 5 above).
90. Marshall S Tymn, Kenneth J Zahorski and Robert H
Boyer, Fantasy literature pp 6-7
91. Marshall S Tymn, Kenneth J Zahorski and Robert H
Boyer, Fantasy literature p 12.
92. Marshall S Tymn, Kenneth J Zahorski and Robert H
Boyer, Fantasy literature p7, 13, 14.
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Chapter 2: Children and fiction
This section opens with some general remarks on the
process of reading fiction, what happens when someone reads
a fictional work, how it happens and what the significance
of it is. The source for these remarks is an article by D
W Harding (1) whose main argument is a rejection of the
notion of “identification” as an adequate explanation of
what readers do when they experience fiction. Harding sees
the reader as an onlooker, observer and evaluator of the
imagined experience presented in a fiction, just as the
individual is an observer and evaluator of experiences from
the lives of others that may be reported in gossip or
conversation, or that may be directly observed. He allows
that there are four processes involved in reader response
that may be seen as related to the idea of
“identification”. These are; empathy, imitation,
admiration and recognition of similarities. Harding
rejects the view, which he finds over-simplistic, that the
reader “escapes into” or experiences vicariously, the life
imagined in the fiction, as a kind of alternative to direct
experience. He argues that fiction is a direct experience
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but that, like the observation of the experience of others,
it is of a different kind from the experiences in which an
individual engages personally.
“The process of looking on at andentering into other people’s activity, orrepresentations of it, does enlarge therange, not of the onlooker’s experience butof his quasi-experience and partialunderstanding. For it has to be rememberedthat the subtlest and most empathic insightinto the experience of another person issomething far different from having theexperience oneself”. [2]
What is so exciting about Harding’s approach to
fiction is that it provides an escape route from the well-
worn paths of argument about children; should children read
fiction at all? Does it affect them? Does it affect them
adversely? Is it escapist, a wish-fulfilling avoidance of
“real” life? Harding assumes the relationship between life
and art captured in Barbara Hardy’s telling phrase; “.....
life of which art forms a part rather than an imitation”.
[4] Too many writers have adopted an apologetic tone when
writing about children’s fiction, with the air of making
excuses on the children’s behalf and of justifying to
anxious adults the curious habits of the child who likes to
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read. This debate has been carried on for centuries in the
terms in which Plato and Aristotle first defined it. Plato
argued that art was a poor thing since it rendered only
pale imitation of life, which itself was a pale imitation
of ideal forms. Aristotle replied that art deserved a
higher valuation than that, insofar as it strove to
represent to humankind, for its contemplation and hopefully
its moral improvement, the ideal forms themselves. [5] Both
Harding and Hardy cut across this system of high-flown
oppositions to suggest, far more simply, that the
representation of remembered events is an aspect of
everyday human activity. It may range from the simple and
unselfconscious (gossip and holiday snaps) to the elaborate
and highly conscious (War and Peace and the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel).
The monographs and articles I shall use in the rest of
this section, therefore, will be those that have more to
say about children and fiction than the mere recycling of
that old, anxious debate. I hope to draw out positive
conclusions about the relationship between children and
their books, and to reveal the experience of fiction as a
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valuable and integral part of human experience rather than
some kind of optional extra which may suit some children
but must not be allowed to interfere with “real” life.
This means that many of the extant – and renowned –
monographs on children’s fiction are disqualified from
consideration here because of their approach to the
subject. Some are historical surveys [6] or discuss the
availability of “suitable” works for various age-groups [7]
or even undertake the serious literary criticism of junior
fiction [8]. None of these is quite relevant to this
section, which hopes to elucidate the interaction between
children and their books, or, more plainly, the effect upon
children of the experience of fiction. This will lay the
groundwork both for the succeeding section on children and
Fantasy fiction, and more generally for the whole thesis.
I will examine the notion of responsibility and maturity as
they are represented in certain kinds of modern Fantasy
fiction and the interaction of those representations with
the actual development of growing individuals. My main
emphasis will be upon two recent works. Nicholas Tucker’s
The child and the book [9] is a deepened and broadened summary
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of his periodical writings on the subject; Fred Inglis’ The
promise of happiness [10] is an idiosyncratic but profound
study of the ways in which books operate upon children.
Tucker adopts a developmental approach. He looks at
“….. the more typical ways in which children seem to
approach and make us of their stories at various ages …..”.
[11] To this end he follows closely throughout the book
Piaget’s theory of developmental stages, although he states
his awareness of the reservations expressed by some other
psychologists as to the soundness of Piaget’s initial
research techniques. Tucker’s emphasis is always on how
books may affect children at certain ages, not on which
books should be offered to then or what responses we should
ideally prefer them to have. His method is meticulous,
careful, never over-assertive, above all emphasising that
the adult trying to judge children’s’ experience of fiction
is doing so from the outside, and can never be dogmatic as
to how a particular book affects a particular reader, nor
why it does so.
Tucker believes [12] that from the earliest time at
which a child can be interested in representative arts, in
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the combination of words and pictures in books for those
aged one to three, these books serve a dual purpose.
Firstly they are confirmatory and reassuring, showing
imagined equivalents of objects, creatures and situations
that the child has actually met. This helps the child in
the important task of making sense of the impressions of
the world that crowd in upon its developing consciousness.
Secondly, books are challenging, presenting images of
possibilities and exotica that have not been met in direct
experience, and may not be for some time. For example,
many early picture books include pictures of cats. These
are familiar to many young readers in the European culture
group from the domestic scene. Another favourite inclusion
is the elephant, which may well not be seen, even at the
zoo, until the child is older. Thus the book experience
may help to engender in the child a more assured and
confident response to reality, an increased curiosity and
anticipation about life. There is no suggestion that books
lead the child away from life, no hint of escapism or
evasiveness; rather, that books interact with direct
experience, and help the child to grasp the accepted ways
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of experiencing and interpreting events within the culture-
group. Even picture-books are fiction, the experience of
them is Harding’s “quasi-experience”, but it has a valid
role to play in the fullness of the child’s life. So
Tucker supports the theory that observation of and
reflection upon imagined scenes is indeed a normal human
activity and contributes to the development of the
individual from the earliest days.
As the child grows and begins to have some
understanding of cause and effect, of the sequence of
events, then it will be able to understand stories,
fictions in the everyday sense of the word. [13] Children
from three to seven also enjoy both stories that show the
familiar world around them and stories that stretch the
imagination and ask them to step into different situations.
Tucker reveals at this point his acquiescence in the idea
of vicarious experience. He suggests that fiction helps
children to cope with their own emotions, fears and wishes
by showing them acted out in a safely distanced world and
in a format which renders them non-threatening. He cites
[14] the death of Babar’s mother in Brunhoff’s first book
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about the little elephant, as an instance of fiction
allowing the child to indulge its own hostility towards the
mother. Harding’s rejection of the idea of vicarious
experience or “identification” in fiction suggests a
reservation on this. [15] It seems more likely that the
child’s observation is at work on the fictional event as
upon the phenomena met in everyday life and that the
growing mind absorbs useful date from both sources. The
child learning about death, indeed, is more likely to do so
from a combination of fictional images such as this with
overheard memories from a parent’s experience or gossip
over the garden fence, than from direct observation of
death itself. All these observed quasi-experiences feed
into and are subordinate to the direct experience of the
young individual; there is no need to posit, as Tucker
does, such a deep personal investment in the events of the
story. Harding would perhaps argue here that the young
reader may well be led by the contemplation of this
fictional death to the realisation that mothers do in fact
die. What the deeper responses of any particular child may
be – from relief to terror- we cannot dogmatically state.
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Tucker himself, in praising the work of Beatrix Potter
as some of the finest extant for this age-group, makes much
of her lack of sentimentality and refusal to leave out of
her books the “nasty” facts above life. Peter Rabbit
experiences real terror because he knows that Mr McGregor
will kill him if he can, and that his own father was eaten
by the McGregors. Tucker states;
“Moments of fear have their place instories for the young ….. so long as theyare successfully contained by a plot thatends on a reassuring, consoling note. Foryoung readers, the expression of some oftheir own nameless, common anxieties on theprinted page may help to render them morecontrollable, though as always not allchildren will react in the same way”. [16]
If the observation of imagined characters and
situations is to add in a constructive way to the
development of the young, it must be the case that the
imagined scenes should not falsify in the sense of trying
to suggest that only good and pleasant things will be met
with in life. While needless and exaggerated violence in
children’s books is objectionable and weighs the balance
too heavily on the side of pessimism and despair, denial of
the truth of such plain facts as that people eat rabbits,
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is also wrong. Indeed, such a denial constitutes true
escapism, and fiction of that kind is to be avoided where
possible by those concerned with providing books for young
children.
Tucker’s next step on the developmental path is to
consider the relationships between young readers from seven
– eleven and their fiction. [17] This is the age at which
most children begin to read fiction for themselves, with
lessening intervention from adults. Tucker mentions the
“early need for the safe and predictable” [18] in this age-
group, as children learn to cope with the structure and
behaviour of stories, characters and language, to find
their own way into fictional worlds. He discerns among
children of this age a preference for what he describes as
“the heady world of domestic adventure”, which he explains
as “daydreams of independence”. [19] In developmental terms
this is the stage of “cognitive conceit”, of the child’s
inner conviction that children are superior to adults
“really”, even though in actual family life adults have an
irritating way of getting the upper hand. Harding would
support this, claiming that it is not negative or sterile
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escapism that children find in adventure fiction but that;
“What is sometimes called wish-fulfilment in novels and
plays can …… more plausibly be described as wish-
formulation or the definition of desires”. [20] In other
words, the contemplation in fiction of a state in which
children have more control over what happens to them than
the reader has, helps to shape and define in the reader the
inbuilt aspiration towards the adult and responsible state.
Although the privileges of adult status may be far more
apparent to the child than its duties and burdens, the
desire is a wholesome one. The striving towards greater
independence and self-reliance, and the struggle that may
involve, is a major component of the later parts of this
study.
Other characteristic features of fiction with a strong
appeal to this age-group are; a strong emphasis on action
and a concern with issues of good and evil. The latter is
usually presented in fairly simplistic or black–and–white
terms, with good characters readily distinguishable from
bad. The two characteristics are interlinked, for children
of this age have little comprehension of motivation or
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psychology, and judge the characters by their actions. Yet
there is no need for fiction for this age-group to be
stereotyped or dull.
“….. there will still be opportunityhere to start broadening concepts andintroducing more subtle ways of thinking atthe same time. Literature at any age canalways both confirm immature patterns ofthought and feeling and also suggest thatthese patterns may not always be sufficientand in themselves. Young readers, faced bythis choice, often choose stories that moreor less confirm them in what they think orfeel, but there is always the possibilitythat more subtle forms of writing may alsobe read or listened to from time to time”.[21]
Here Tucker refers again to the dual role of fiction
as both confirmation and challenge.
Turning to the early adolescent reader, aged eleven to
fourteen, Tucker suggests that there will be an increased
interest in more complex and subtle fictions, in accordance
with the individual’s own increased awareness of and
ability to reflect on, the complexities of personality,
circumstance and motivation in the world around. [22] The
questions of identity and self-awareness now appear, and
Tucker feels these to be the major preoccupations— although
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not always conscious or articulated— of this age-group.
What am I like? What are people like, and why? There is
an increased “realism” in books for this group, in the
sense of an increased verisimilitude, a greater number of
unresolved endings to stories, and an increasing tendency
to depict adults as manipulated by their circumstances and
environment rather than wholly powerful or wholly
contemptible.
The familiar pattern Tucker has established reappears;
fiction as confirmation and as stimulation. He quotes C S
Lewis on the excitement of one kind of fictional
confirmation;
“Nothing, I suspect, is moreastonishing in any man’s life than thediscovery that there do exist people very,very like himself”. [23]
Tucker then goes on to speak of exploration, of how
fiction enables the young reader to explore other times,
other places, the lives of people of other ages, classes,
or sex. He qualifies his remarks – as habitually
throughout this book – with the caution that reactions and
attitudes may possibly become fixed in very young children,
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and that possibly neither may be affected by direct or
observed experience by the time the child is into the late
teens. However, he does go this far;
“It does seem possible, therefore, thatreactions to literature can sometimes extendan individual’s habitual way of perceivingand assessing imaginative experience,…..[though] this is not to say that those whohave such experiences necessarily make useof their experiences in everyday life.While some psychologists have claimed tofind a connection between general“decentration” skills and practicalaltruism, factors governing everydaybehaviour may still be quite different fromthose other factors which help determinesensitive, widely embracing reactions toliterature. …..Even so, the possibleenlargement of the self still remains one ofthe most valuation potential gifts availablefrom books”. [24]
Any less non-committal assertion as to the effects of
fiction would have to be heavily subjective, and Tucker is
attempting to present possibilities and ideas as
objectively as possible. I may say that I “know” that
reading actively broadens my own children’s minds, or that
I “know” that most of the lovers of fiction with whom I am
acquainted are broadly humanitarian in outlook; I cannot
demonstrate this to be true. Still, Tucker’s book adds up
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to a convincing argument that children relate to fiction
not only in terms of “enjoyment”, but because there is a
meaningful interaction between the observations they make
through fiction and the direct experiences of their own
lives. The close correlation Tucker demonstrates between
the broad developmental stages and the preoccupations of
the fictions popular with each age-group, comes as near an
objective demonstration of the point as one can hope to
come. Tucker’s reluctance to adopt a dogmatic tone, the
reasonableness of his suggestions, is in itself subtly
persuasive, and leave the reader with the feeling that
there is probably something in it.
Fred Inglis, by contrast with Tucker, adopts a
resolutely assertive and consciously subjective tone. He
takes it for granted that fiction affects the attitudes and
character of the children who read it and that that is why
adults expose children to it in the first place.
“It is the ancient, properjustification of reading and reachingliterature that it helps you to live well.No-one can be sure it will do this; no-onecan be sure his or her child will grow up tobe an excellent or happy person. But they
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want it, more or less passionately, and theydo what they can to make it possible.” [25]
The realistic stance must fall somewhere between
Inglis’ certainty and Tucker’s politic and deferential
caution. It must always be remembered that it is very
nearly impossible to prove or demonstrate what effect, if
any, the experience of fiction has on any individual, child
or adult. Tucker is perfectly justified in sounding the
note of caution throughout his book. It is important to
apply that caution as a corrective; but one may still allow
oneself to be inspired by the zeal shown by Inglis, that
produces a strong positive response in this reader at
least, even though that response is recognisably in great
part emotional and subjective and even though there are
plenty of areas of disagreement. Inglis should not be
considered more likely to be “wrong” simply because he is
more passionate and persuasive a writer. Enthusiasm may
have as valid a point to make as careful detachment.
So; Tucker allows that books very probably do affect
the children who read them, while Inglis insists that they
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do and that there would be very little point in exposing
children to them if they did not.
“The best we can do by way of acreative environment is to fill the shelveswith the best books and persuade children toread them”. [26]
It is obvious that Inglis, though not unaware of the
confirmatory aspect of fiction vis-a-vie direct experience,
emphasises far more in his book the challenging or growth-
inducing aspects of the reading experience. What does he
expect the effects of reading fiction to be?
“It sounds circular, as though I weresaying—as indeed I am—that to study what isexcellent helps towards excellence, butquite without my being able at any point tointerrupt the circle with a definition ofexcellence”. [27]
But as his argument develops, Inglis does clarify this
idea of growth towards excellence and the function of
literature in the moral development of the individual.
Before doing this, he echoes Harding’s theory of the
experience of fiction as an observational one, not a
vicarious or substitute one;
“…..novels are contiguous with everyday life.They are extensions of our conversations aboutthe world with our friends and neighbours”. [28]
P a g e | 84
This confirms the basic premium that fiction is a part
of life and not a mysterious, possibly undesirable, adjunct
to it. On this basis, Inglis’ idea that fiction affects
children is more acceptable, for the notion of a child
using fiction to deepen its understanding of life is much
less worrying than the picture of the child brainwashed or
manipulated by an overdose of “escapism”.
As Inglis begins to develop his theme, he starts to
use the term “identity” along with his chosen terms
“excellence” and “happiness”. He quotes neither Bettelheim
nor Piaget (some of whose theory is alluded to and
corroborated in Bettelheim’s work), and only refers briefly
to Piaget in passing. Nevertheless, much of what Inglis
concludes about self-development is strikingly borne out in
Bettelheim. The question of right and wrong, the moral
questions, the whole business of the expectation and
promise of happiness that Inglis takes as his title, is
bound up for him with the question of self-development. He
quotes a passage from Simone Weil which is obviously of
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profound significance for him, and which also links up with
what Bettelheim has to say;
“In a remarkable passage, Simone Weilsimply affirms a psychological frame of mindand an ethical truth. The corroborationrests in everyone’s experience:
‘At the bottom of the heart of everyhuman being, from earliest infancy until thetomb, there is something that goes onindomitably expecting, in the teeth of allthe experience of crimes committed, sufferedand witnessed, that good and not evil willbe done to him. It is this above all thatis sacred in every human being.
The good is the only source of thesacred. There is nothing sacred except thegood and what pertains to it.’
Faced with this corroboration, there isno need to become knotted up in very muchmoral or political philosophy. Nor does thematter rest in its being asserted by SimoneWeil that we expect, in some passive way,good to be done to us, and that thereforethis sacredness is another version of self-interest. Insofar as we expect good to bedone to us, we know we shall recognise itfor what it is (and will recognise thejustice of harm done to us if it is just).By the same token, if we do harm to otherswe shall know it and, somewhere inourselves, be deeply ashamed. This doesn’tmake ethics simply into the business ofidentifying motivation, and approving orcondemning it accordingly. \it is apeculiarity of the times that we are moreinterested in admired states of feeling thanin good and effective action. But Simone
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Weil is not commending a state of feeling;she is saying, nakedly, that we know whatthe good is when we see it, and are outragedwhen it is not done to us.
This is for her, and for this book, afixed point of experience. Indeed, it makesthe point at which morality and identitycross, first and last”. [29]
This crucial passage conditions much of what Inglis
has to say about fiction; for he contends that one of the
things fiction does for children is to confirm and expand
this expectation of and ability to identify what is true,
lovely and of good report. Also, the ideas given here
about identity are strikingly similar to Bettelheim’s in
his work about childhood autism, The empty fortress. [30] For
Bettelheim the very source of autonomy, of the self-
concept, is in the infant’s relationship with the mother or
other primary carer and its growing awareness of the
existence of the carer as a separate entity. This
awareness precedes and leads into the awareness of the
infant’s own separateness. Bettelheim shows how the
infant’s experience of care normally leads to the
expectation that “good” will be done to it, and to the
first ideas of what “good” is; namely the relief of hunger,
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distress and discomfort. It is when this profound, basic
expectation is consistently thwarted, for whatever reason,
that the autistic infant begins to reject or try to unmake
itself as a reaction to the impression it receives that its
self is “bad” and deserves only bad to be done to it. The
things that happen to use create ourselves in the first
place; the things that happen to us— among them
observations we make, and among those the reading of
fiction— go on shaping those selves. As Bettelheim says;
“….. to say that the self consists ofwhat one knows and can do must suffice.Certainly selfhood is not a state but aprocess of becoming. And when the struggleto realise the self is concluded, so isone’s life”. [31]
The process of becoming the self, bound up as it is
with the constant extension and redefinition of our
concepts of good and evil, is what Inglis sees as the basic
process of human life. This process is directly aided, in
Inglis’ view, by reading fiction and confronting the
situations presented in it.
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How does fiction help in the process of becoming?
Tucker has spoken of the child seeing in fiction both
confirmation of what is experienced directly, and
suggestions that there are different possibilities beyond
the familiar. Inglis carries this a little further when he
says;
“….. fictions stand to life asmetaphors to reality. They are an image ofalternatives and possibility. …… Thestories we tell are intended to make life inthe future”. [32]
But how can the experience of fiction help to make
life? How does it bring about its effect on the readers?
In his further study of children’s books and writers
Inglis confirms the usefulness of Harding’s suggested
explanation of how fiction operates. The terms Harding
chose to replace “identification” were; empathy; imitation;
admiration; recognition of similarities. Drawing partly on
his own memories of childhood reading and partly on
observation of his own children, Inglis perceives all these
responses at work in the young reader. Empathy with the
characters of fiction he believes to occur most readily for
children when the characters themselves are children. This
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is linked to and deepened by the awareness of similarities.
Admiration and imitation, although they may be inspired by
child characters, may well provide the child’s first way in
to the enjoyment of adult characters in fiction.
Remembering the comics he read in his youth, Inglis
remarks; “….. the hero remains consistently and
unselfconsciously admirable”. [33] He goes on;
“The essential structure is assertive –the hero tensed against the events. Inhimself he is finite and circumscribed –unconscious, so to speak, but all-powerful.He stands in the line of the chivalrous andknightly men who have embodied the centralvirtues of the West in its stories since theProvencal troubadours first took to theroad”. [34]
Admitting to aesthetic delight of this and of his more
serious childhood reading, Inglis insists that for him and
for other young readers there is also a moral and social
dimension to the response to fiction. The heroes and the
situations in which the reader observed them serve as both
example and exhortation, and as sounding-boards for the
conscious and unconscious growth of the individual’s own
attitudes. This belief also underlies many of the articles
in the periodical literature about children’s fiction.
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Relatively few of the hundreds of periodical articles
published each year on various topics within the general
field of children’s fiction are concerned with the question
of how fiction affects children, if it does so at all. Of
those that do attempt this topic, some are lamentably still
caught up in answering the perceived objections to the
reading of fiction that seem to float, as it were, in the
air of society. The writers of such articles adopt an
apologetic and explanatory tone. Further, such apologies
remain fixed in the terms of the Platonic/Aristotelian
debate. To objections that fiction is “untrue” they return
the high-sounding but less than explicit reply that it is
“truer” than fact. This line of defence, however
attractive to the committed reader or litterateur, is
merely exasperating to the adult seeing reassurance that
fiction is not going to incapacitate her or his children in
some way. The following brief survey concentrates upon
articles which accept that fiction does affect readers; and
particularly upon those that emphasise the
developmental/self-discovery aspects discussed by Tucker
and Inglis.
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Eric Kimmel [35] sounds a warning note about the basic
theme of this section, echoing Tucker;
“Most ideas about the affectivepotential of children’s books are based onassumptions which have not yet been proven.Ironically, it appears to be a commonpattern that the amount of objectiveevidence cited in an article seems to be ininverse proportion to the degree ofcertitude expressed by the author thatchildren’s books can or do mould a child’scharacter”. [36]
After surveying some of the—very scanty—existing
research into reader response and attitude changes, Kimmel
concludes that there may be very little permanent effect on
readers. He quotes J W Schneyer;
“One important element which needsfurther explanation is the influence of thehome, community and peer group inreinforcing or opposing the originalattitude”. [37]
This is in accord with Harding and Hardy; literature
is a part of life. As the sugar substitute only
contributes to weight-loss as ‘part of a calorie controlled
diet’, reading affects individual development only in
alliance with other environmental factors. This should not
be lost sight of, even if it cannot conveniently be
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constantly reiterated in a thesis primarily concerned with
books and reading. There is an important link here with
the critical conclusions in Section 1, that Fantasy is only
valid and valuable insofar as it interacts with the real
world. [NOTE (21015) An important investigation into the
question of how and whether reading affects readers is to
be found in Going home: an intuitive inquiry into the experience of reading
fantasy literature; Sheree Meyers Campbell, 2010]
Donal Biskin and Kenneth Hoskisson [38], in their
article on moral development, fall into the trap of taking
‘as read’ the effect upon children of reading;
“Since children’s thinking isinfluenced by the activities in which theyare engaged, the use of children’sliterature to stimulate moral thinking andmoral development has great potential”. [39]
Later in the article the authors support the
“observation” theory of fiction, although there is a
depressingly utilitarian tone to their suggestion that
“Children’s literature provides a richsource of examples of moral decisions forchildren to discuss. In discussions ofmoral dilemmas children can examinealternatives to moral judgements made bycharacters in the story”. [40]
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Behind this mechanistic approach can be seen some
understanding that fiction has to do in some ways with
morality and personal growth. One might wish to see
children and stories left to get on with the process with
less interference from adults, however well-meaning.
Roger Lewis [41] supports Tucker’s theory that
literature at once reinforces a child’s experiences and
encourages or stimulates the imagination into the
contemplation of things beyond what has already been
experienced. He speaks up for the validity of the
imaginative experience, suggesting that “….. feelings as a
way of knowledge are ignored…..” [42], and that fiction
extends knowledge partly through its operation upon the
feelings.
One of Aiden Chamber’s main points in The reader in the
book; notes on work in progress [43] is that an author can acquire
and deliberately make use of a certain degree of power over
the chid reader;
“Once an author has forged an allianceand a point of view that engages a child, hecan then manipulate that alliance as a
P a g e | 94
device to guide the reader towards themeanings he wishes to negotiate”. [44]
This goes along with Inglis’ firm conviction that the
only reason adults have for writing books for children and
persuading them to read them, is to have an effect upon the
mind of the child, further than the surface effect of
enjoyment. Penelope Lively also shows us that the child
may, however unconsciously, find itself having to confront
and respond to the meaning in a story.
“…. That step toward maturity a childtakes when it ceases to see people asstatic, frozen at a moment in time, but seesthem as changing and developing creatures….. it is a step aside from self, a step outof the child’s self-preoccupation, and,therefore, a step toward maturity. And itis a step that might come as often fromreading as from observation”. [45]
To accord more strictly with Harding, we might alter
Lively’s wording to read; “….. from reading as from direct
observation”. Yet the important idea is there, of
confronting something about reality in fictional form.
Lively does not push her case very hard. She says “Perhaps
books can help, just a little”. [46] Indeed. And in the
tumultuous process of growing up and away from childhood,
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Notes and references: Chapter 2; Children and Fiction
1. D W Harding, “Psychological processes in the reading
of fiction” British Journal of Aesthetics Vol 2, No. 2 (1962)
133-147.
2. D W Harding, “Psychological processes in the reading
of fiction”, p (145).
3. D W Harding, “Psychological processes in the reading
of fiction”, p (136).
4. Barbara Hardy, Tellers and listeners; the narrative imagination
(London: The Athlone Press, 1975) p 3.
5. David Daiches, Critical approaches to literature (London:
Longmans, 1956). Chapter 1: “The Platonic dilemma”
and Chapter 2: “The Aristotelian solution”.
6. a) Marcus Crouch, The Nesbit tradition; the children’s novel in
England 1940-1970 (London: Benn, 1972).
b) Frank Eyre, British children’s books in the Twentieth century
(London: Longmans, 1971).
c) Mary Thwaite, From primary to pleasure: an introduction to the
history of children’s books in England, from the invention of printing to
1900 (London: The Library Association, 1963).
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d) F J Harvey Darton, Children’s books in England: five centuries
of social life (3rd Edition revised by Brian Alderson)
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
(First published 1932. Second edition 1958).
7. a) Wallace Hildick, Children and fiction (London: Evans
Brothers, 1970).
b) Marjorie Fisher, Intent upon reading; a critical appraisal of
modern fiction for children 2nd Edition. (Leicester:
Brockhampton, 1964). (First published 1961).
8. a) Eleanor Cameron, The green and burning tree (Boston,
Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1962.
b) John Rowe Townsend, A sense of story; essays on
contemporary writers for children (London: Longmans, 1971).
9. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book; a psychological and
literary exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981). (Hereafter referred to as The child and
the book).
10. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness; values and meaning in
children’s fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
P a g e | 98
1981). (Hereafter referred to as The promise of
happiness).
11. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. Pg 7.
12. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. Chapter 1.
13. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. Chapter 2.
14. a) Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. P56.
b) Jean de Brunhoff, Babar the elephant (London:
Methuen, 1934).
15. See page 58 above.
16. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. P 62.
17. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. Chapter 4.
18. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. p 97.
19. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. p 104.
20. D W Harding, “Psychological processes in the
reading of fiction”, p (144).
21. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. p 131.
22. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. Chapter 6.
23. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. p 186.
24. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book. p 187-188.
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25. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness, p 4.
26. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness, p 6
27. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness, p16
28. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness, p17
29. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness, p 23.
Quotation from; Simone Weil, La personne et la sacré; écrits de
Londres (Privately published, 1951).
30. Bruno Bettelheim, The empty fortress; infantile autism and
the growth of the self (New York: Collier MacMillan, 1967).
Page references to the 1972 paperback edition (New
York: The Free Press, 1972. (Hereafter referred to
as The empty fortress.
31. Bruno Bettelheim, The empty fortress, p 37.
32. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness, p 31-32
33. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness, p 49
34. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness, p 49
35. Eric Kimmel, “Can children’s books change
children’s values?” Educational Leadership (28 November
1978) 209-214.
36. Eric Kimmel, “Can children’s books change
children’s values?”, p (209)
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37. Eric Kimmel, “Can children’s books change
children’s values?” p (213).
38. Donald Biskin and Kenneth Hoskisson, “Moral
development through children’s literature” Elementary
School Journal 75 (December 1974) 152-157.
39. Donald Biskin and Kenneth Hoskisson, “Moral
development through children’s literature” p (155).
40. Donald Biskin and Kenneth Hoskisson, “Moral
development through children’s literature” p (156).
41. Roger Lewis, “Fiction and the imagination”
Children’s literature in education 19 (Winter 1975) 172-178.
42. Roger Lewis, “Fiction and the imagination” p
(174)
43. Aidan Chambers, “The reader in the book; a report
on work in progress”, p (75).
44. Aidan Chambers, “The reader in the book; a report
on work in progress”, p (75).
45. Penelope Lively, “children and memory” Horn Book
XLIX, No 4 (August 1973) 400-407, p (400).
46. Penelope Lively, “children and memory”, p (407).
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Chapter 3; Children and Fantasy Fiction
“Actually, the association of childrenand fairy-stories is an accident of ourdomestic history. Fairy-stories have in themodern lettered world been relegated to the“nursery”, as shabby or old-fashionedfurniture is relegated to the play-room,primarily because the adults do not want itand do not mind if it is misused. It is notthe choice of the children which decidesthis. Children as a class – except in acommon lack of experience they are not one –neither like fairy-stories more, norunderstand them better than adults do; andno more than they like many other things.They are young and growing, and normallyhave keen appetites, so the fairy-stories asa rule go down well enough. But in factonly some children, and some adults, haveany special taste for them; and when theyhave it, it is not exclusive, nor evennecessarily dominant. It is a taste, too,that would not appear, I think, very earlyin childhood without artificial stimulus; itis certainly one that does not decrease butincreases with age, if it is innate”. [1].
Tolkien clearly feels the need to counter, in this
passage, what he sees as a widely-held assumption that
there is a special link between children and fairy-stories
and the related mode of Fantasy fiction. He argues that
this is a misassumption of recent origin in our society,
and that a taste for this sort of fiction, as for any other
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sort, should be seen as purely a matter of personal
preference and not related to age at all. That this
misconception is widespread is evident insofar as histories
and criticisms of children’s literature tend to include in
their surveys an assessment of fairy-tales and their place
in children’s reading [2]. Such assessments usually take
as given the suitability for most children of most fairy-
tales, and it is fashionable to pour scorn on those earlier
periods in which fairy-tales and other forms of Fantasy
were thought unsuitable for children because they were
“untrue” or escapist [3]. So the attitude Tolkien discerns
and deplores in society has a complex history, involving a
remarkable mixture of contempt and fear. Some adults seem
to argue that fairy-tales are “kid’s stuff”, childish,
beneath the serious consideration of adult readers; some,
that they are dangerous and pernicious and not to be given
to children without a good deal of bowdlerising to render
them harmless; and some, that they are ideal fictional
material for children, charming and delightful and somehow
specially suited to the requirements of the immature
individual. This mixed reaction suggests some
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irrationality in the adult response to fairy-tale and
Fantasy, which will be explored in a little more detail as
this section progresses.
Meanwhile, are fairy-tales and Fantasy fiction
especially good for children? Especially bad for them? Or
is there in fact, as Tolkien argues, no special link
between Fantasy and age? Is it possible that Tolkien has
overemphasised the lack of any special role for Fantasy
fiction in the child’s life, out of concern to defend
himself and other adult devotees of the genre from the
ridicule that may be met with from other adults. What
really concerns Tolkien is that the association with
children implies, in most adult minds, an assumption of
interiority in terms of literary seriousness, quality and
value. It is important to clarify this, with support from
other sources besides Tolkien, before proceeding. If there
is any special relationship between children and fairy or
Fantasy tales, that relationship has not grown up because
fairy-tale and Fantasy are easy, simple, lightweight or
cute, The strong adult reaction against them at certain
periods is itself evidence that Fantasy is powerful and
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effective. The strong liking for them on the part of
certain adults is further evidence that they are not
childish, whatever we may want to say later about their being
childlike. As Tolkien himself says;
“A real taste for fairy-stories waswakened by philology on the threshold ofmanhood, and quickened to full life by war.”[4].
C S Lewis supports his friend’s position in the essay On
juvenile tastes, in which he actually refers briefly to the
quotation that opens this section [5]. Lewis insists that
“….. juvenile taste is simply human taste, going on from
age to age …..”; but is forced to concede that certain
kinds of fiction have become associated in the public mind
with children when he adds;
“The right sort [of writers forchildren] work from the common, universallyhuman ground they share with the children,and indeed with countless adults. Theylabel their books “For Children” becausechildren are the only market now recognisedfor the books they, anyway, want to write.”[6]
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This recognition of a constraint in the market-place
compares interestingly with Lewis’s famous and much-quoted
remarks;
“……I wrote fairy tales because theFairy Tale seemed the ideal form for thestuff I had to say.” [7]
And“The third way (of writing for
children), which is the only one I couldever use myself, consists in writing achildren’s story because a children’s storyis the best art-form for something you haveto say.” [8]
Taken together, these three statements suggest that
while Lewis wrote fairy stories because he wanted to for formal
and artistic reasons, it was the publishing world that saw
them as children’s books. Whereas his Space trilogy [9] could
be published for adults under the acceptable Science
Fiction label, the Tales of Narnia [10] were slotted
irrevocably into the children’s book world. Although some
adults do read them, it must be the case that many would
never consider the possibility of doing so, which renders
slightly ironic Lewis’s;
“I was therefore writing “for children”only in the sense that I excluded what Ithought they would not like or understand;
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not in the sense of writing what I intendedto be below adult attention.” [11]
Intention on the author’s part is clearly not enough;
what is suitable for children and therefore probably “below
adult attention” may well be decided by outside pressures.
Tolkien’s own case further illustrates this. Both he and
Allen and Unwin thought of The Hobbit as a children’s story
as well as a fairy-tale or Fantasy [12]; the case of The
Lord of the Rings was less clear. Humphrey Carpenter [13]
devotes a great deal of space in his biography of Tolkien
to the long tale of this work’s writing and publication,
and it is obvious from his account that Rayner Unwin
perceived the book as somehow “odd”, not easily fitted into
a category, not readily definable as either an adult or a
juvenile fiction. It is also clear that there was a sense
in Unwin’s mind that he was taking a risk in publishing at
all, what in the event turned out to be a phenomenal
success, as much with adult readers as with children. So
the picture is evidently less simple than Tolkien’s first-
quoted remark would have us believe. Obviously he is right
to say that many adults like Fantasy – millions have
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enjoyed his own. Yet the association in the public mind of
such works primarily with children, persists.
Boyer and suggest [14] a practical approach to this
problem; a category of Fantasy literature to be labelled
“all-ages fantasy”. They point out that “….. adults have
begun to learn what children instinctively knew – that high
fantasy, when written well, is both entertaining and
serious literature”. [15] They hope that such a
categorisation by publishers, while not exactly reducing
problems of shelving and display in libraries or bookshops,
would help to root out “the still-lingering assumption that
if it’s fantasy, it is probably for children.” [16]
Gratifying though all this assertion of the seriousness and
importance of Fantasy may be, it still leaves certain
questions aside. The major one is this; given that any
special relationship between children and Fantasy is not
due to some inherent lack of value or seriousness in
Fantasy – to what may it be attributed? What is there
about Fantasy, and about children, to suggest that there is
more to it than Tolkien’s “They ….. normally have keen
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appetites, so the fairy-stories as a rule go down well
enough.” [17] would allow?
The idea that Fantasy is somehow specially suited to
children, that children may derive special benefits from
reading myth or fairy-tale, is shown by Ted Hughes [18] to
have a long and respectable history. His article begins
with Plato’s assertion that the ideal education for
children would consist in their studying the traditional
myths and tales of Greece, and not formal “subjects” at
all. This is a startling suggestion, and Hughes points out
that later philosophers, rejecting mythology itself as
fantastic nonsense, have avoided the question of why this
great thinker should feel as he did about it. [19] Hughes
himself then attempts some explanations of Plato’s idea,
discussing the power of story and the nature of the
imagination.
“…… stories think for themselves, oncewe know them. They not only attract andlight up everything relevant in our ownexperience, they are also continual privatemeditation, as it were, on their ownimplications. They are little factories ofunderstanding. New revelations of meaningopen out of their images and patterns
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continually, stirred into reach by our owngrowth and changing circumstances.” [20]
It will be obvious from this quotation that Hughes
does not look on story as mere entertainment or diversion,
but as a serious activity. He sees the mind that is
stocked with stories as having a distinct advantage in
coping with life, as the interaction between direct
experience and the pseudo-experience of the story-world
both enables the individual’s growth and explains it to
itself, makes it more self-conscious. The child with a
grasp of its culture’s stock of stories has a grasp of the
way things are perceived and evaluated by most individuals
within the culture group. This is a kind of learning that
operates entirely differently from the dogged acquisition
of facts about things. Hughes feels it to be neglected in
current educational theory, feels that imagination is
undervalued just as fiction in general and Fantasy in
particular are undervalued. Yet, he argues,
“This basic type of imagination ….. isour most valuable piece of practicalequipment. ….. Yet whoever spent half anhour in any classroom trying to strengthenit is any way? ….. Sharpness, clarity and
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scope of the mental eye are all-important inour dealings with the outer world ….. Butthe outer world is only one of the worlds welive in. For better or worse we haveanother, and that is the inner world of ourbodies and everything pertaining. It iscloser than the outer world, more decisiveand utterly different. ….. But ….. whyisn’t the sharp, clear, objective eye of themind as adequate for this world as it is forthe other more obviously outer world? …..[Because] the inner world is indescribable,impenetrable, and invisible. We try tograpple with it, and all we meet is oneprovisional dream after another. ….. Wesolve the problem by never lookinginward.”[21]
Hughes feels Plato’s position must have been an
awareness of the importance of individuals being able to
cope with the inner world of the self as well as with the
outer world. The imagination, stocked with stories and
images that carry and evolve meaning for the individual, is
the tool that must be developed in order to cope with the
inner world. But the inner world of the self is an
alarming place, irrational and quirky and frequently
avoided. Ursula K LeGuin points out in her article “Why
are Americans afraid of dragons?” [22]
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“….. fantasy is true, of course. Itisn’t factual, but it is true. Childrenknow that. Adults know it too, and that isprecisely why many of them are afraid offantasy. They know that its truthchallenges, even threatens, all that isfalse, all that is phony, unnecessary, andtrivial in the life they have let themselvesbe forced into living. They are afraid ofdragons, because they are afraid offreedom.” [23]
Plato, Hughes and LeGuin assign tremendous value to
the imagination, to the need for its development. And
because of this, they assert that there should be a major
part played in the life of the growing child, by
imaginative works of the kind usually labelled myth,
Fantasy, or imaginative fiction. Teaching a child only
material facts about the material world will not actually
help the grown individual to be fully adjusted to itself,
to the outer world, or to other people. The quality of
imagination gives insight into the self, into what it might
be like to be in the position of another person, into what
consequences are likely to follow from one’s actions. It
enhances awareness and flexibility of response. It is a
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catalyst in the drive towards maturity. Hughes goes on to
say;
“The inner world, separated from theouter world, is a place of meaninglessobjects and machines. The faculty thatmakes the human being out of these twoworlds is called divine. That is only a wayof saying that it is the faculty withoutwhich humanity cannot really exist. It canbe called religious or visionary. Moreessentially, it is imagination whichembraces both outer and inner worlds in acreative spirit.
Laying down blueprints for imagination of that sort is a
matter of education, as Plato divined.
“The myths and legends, which Platoproposed as the ideal educational materialfor his young citizens, can be seen aslarge-scale accounts of negotiations betweenthe powers of the inner world and thestubborn conditions of the outer world,under which ordinary men and women have tolive. They are immense and highly detailedsketches for the possibilities ofunderstanding and reconciling the who. Theyare, in other words, an archive of draftplans for the kind of imagination we havebeen discussing.” [24]
Hughes here draws together much that we have elicited
from Inglis, Harding and others as to the role of
imaginative fiction or Fantasy in the lives of individuals.
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He presents Fantasy as a powerful force for development of
individual human beings, more than adequately explaining
the fear and suspicion of Fantasy that we have seen
operating in some adult responses to fairy-tales and
mythology. If Fantasy gives us the means of self-
knowledge, then it also challenges us, and we may well
respond fearfully to the imperative request that we face up
to ourselves and deepen our responses to the outer world.
While mindful of all the reservations we have seen
expressed as to the actual effectiveness of the fictional
experience, we may yet reach the conclusion that there is
probably some sense in the suggestion that there are
certain stages of development at which most fairy-tales
will be appealing to and functional for most children,
irrespective of taste. Sharing Tolkien’s concern that the
suitability of such tales for children should not be
construed as a matter of their inferiority to “real”
literature, we may yet allow that Plato’s startling idea in
many respects holds true. Nicholas Tucker, in a chapter
written with his usual scrupulous fairness and caution,
with as many views as possible presented and weighed
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against one another, concludes “…..fairy-stories act as a
mirror wherein different members of an audience can see a
vivid reflection of some of their deepest and most
important areas of the imagination.” [25] With this image
of the mirror into the self in mind, we turn to the work of
Bruno Bettelheim.
Bettelheim’s classic study of fairy-tales [26] takes
much of its tone from his psychological background,
especially his work with autistic children. His
professional concern is with the growth and development of
the Self, with the healing of the damaged self-image or
self-awareness of the fugitive mind. Yet in spite of this
bias in his emphases, his book has much to say that is
valuable for our understanding of just what the experience
of fairy-tale and Fantasy fiction based on the fairy-tale
tradition might be expected to give to children.
Bettelheim’s developmental theory is based on Piaget’s, and
ultimately on Freud’s. He speaks of Oedipal conflicts, the
Ego and the Id, in his descriptions of the individual’s
growth towards maturity and integration. At various stages
in the individual child’s development, he argues, different
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fairy-tales or stories will best serve the needs of the
emerging Self. He says;
“For a story truly to hold the child’sattention, it must entertain him and arousehis curiosity. But to enrich his life, itmust stimulate his intellect and to clarifyhis emotions; be attuned to his anxietiesand aspirations; give full recognition tohis difficulties, while at the same timesuggesting solutions to the problems whichperturb him. In short, it must at one andthe same time relate to all aspects of hispersonality – and this without everbelittling but, on the contrary, giving fullcredence to the seriousness of the child’spredicaments, while simultaneously promotingconfidence in himself and his future.” [27]
Bettelheim feels that the fairy-tale mode is the one
that most consistently meets these requirements for most
children. This is because these stories, employing
universal symbols and carrying messages to the subconscious
as well as to the conscious mind, “…..start from where the
child really is in his psychological and emotional being.”
[28] They do not deny the “dark” or negative side of
experience, the inner conflict the child experiences
between the expectations of the outer world and the drives
of the inner. As LeGuin expresses it; “Fantasy, like
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poetry, speaks the language of the night.” [29] In other
words, the concern of these tales is directly with the
inner, subconscious life of human beings, and, says
Bettelheim, “ ……the unconscious is a powerful determinant
of behaviour.” [30] So any effect Fantasy may have on the
individual’s ability to cope with her own subconscious,
will have a corresponding effect on actions and
relationships; upon the outer life of the individual.
Bettelheim devotes most of his book to analysing and
explaining particular fairy-tales, according to this view
of their important function in the self-development or “ego
integration”. (p41) Space does not permit a detailed
account of all these analyses, but some of his most
important points should be noted. One of the most
important functions Bettelheim sees fairy-tales and fantasy
performing for children is what he calls “Bringing order
out of chaos”. [31] For the very young child, both observed
and direct experience of the external world is often
contradictory or confusing. Also, there are conflicting
impulses and feelings within the child. The drive towards
greater autonomy conflicts with the need for security. The
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strong impulse to love parents and siblings conflicts with
jealousy and resentment. Bettelheim suggests; “The manner
in which the child can bring some order into his world view
is by dividing everything into opposites”. [32] This is
exactly what the fairy-tale convention of Good and Evil
characters does for the child. Impulses from within that
are perceived as good and bad may be externalised and
projected onto the character. Aspects of other people –
such as the angry parent and the loving parent – which seem
to conflict, may similarly be distanced by being embodied
in Fantasy characters or motifs. As these disparate
elements are brought into harmonious relationship through
the moves of the story, the child perceives subliminally
the possibility of resolution in his or her own life.
Thus, the successful co-operation between the hero and the
insects in Grimm’s The queen bee signifies integration
between the selfish (id) desires of the hero and his
“higher (superego) impulses. [33] Or, to take an example
from modern literary Fantasy, Frodo’s acceptance of and
care for the maimed hobbit Gollum, signify his awareness of
and control over his own baser instincts. [34]
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In the struggle for inner integration and adjustment
to the conditions of the outer world that Bettelheim sees
as constituting maturity, fairy-tales may speak to specific
areas of experience. Jack and the beanstalk, for example, “……
tells mothers what little boys need to solve their oedipal
problems: …..” [35], while “Snow White’s story teaches that
just because one has reached physical maturity, one is by
no means intellectually and emotionally ready for
adulthood, as represented by marriage.” [36] Such clear-cut
parallels are seen by Bettelheim between almost every stage
of human development and some tale or other; although he
does stress that the operation of the story is through the
subconscious, and is not in any sense bleakly utilitarian
in his approach. He cites evidence of support for his view
of the efficacy of story as an aid to personality
integration;
“In a fairy tale, internal processesare externalised and become comprehensibleas represented by the figures of the storyand its events. This is the reason why intraditional Hindu medicine a fairy talegiving form to his particular problem wasoffered to a psychically disoriented person,for his meditation. It was expected thatthrough contemplating the story the
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disturbed person would be led to visualiseboth the nature of the impasse in livingfrom which he suffered, and the possibilityof tis resolution. From what a particulartale implied about man’s despair, hopes andmethods of overcoming tribulations, thepatient could discover not only a way out ofhis distress but also a way to find himself,as the hero of the story did.” [37]
This passage reveals Bettelheim’s understandable
preoccupation with healing and wholeness as they apply to
damaged or vulnerable individuals. Nevertheless, in the
book as a whole, he argues convincingly for the positive
effect of fairy-tale and Fantasy in all individuals’
growth. He emphasises that
“Fairy-tale motifs are not neuroticsymptoms, something one is better offunderstanding so that one can rid oneself ofthem. Such motifs are experienced aswondrous because the child feels understoodand appreciated deep down in his feelings,hopes and anxieties, without these allhaving to be dragged up and investigated inthe harsh light of a rationality that isstill beyond him. Fairy tales enrich thechild’s life and give it an enchantedquality just because he does not quite knowhow the stories have worked their wonder onhim.” [38]
Acting on Bettelheim’s suggestions, we may look
briefly at some of the common motifs of Fairy-tale and
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Fantasy and speculate on some of the meanings some of them
might carry into the experience of the reader or listener.
There are many tales in which two older siblings fail at a
task before the hero succeeds at it. We may perceive two
levels of thought here. In terms of relationship to the
outer world, this may help a child to cope with jealous
feelings towards siblings, by imagining a scenario in which
the inconsidered youngest is cleverer than the elders. In
terms of inner integration, the leaving behind of less
mature states of being may be reflected. A simple folk
version of this tale is The three little pigs; a refined literary
version is Ruskin’s King of the golden river. In both simple and
elaborated versions, the possible psychological
applications can be traced. [39]
From the earliest times, since the slaying by Marduk
of the she-dragon Tiamat [40], dragons have appeared in
Fantasy. Later dragons have symbolised the power of rain,
fire or whatever is powerful and barbarous in nature. [41]
Sigurd, Beowulf, Earendil, Bilbo Baggins, Ged the
Sparrowhawk; these and many others have measured themselves
against dragons. [42] It is noteworthy that the first
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three of these heroes engaged in physical combat with their
dragons, while the two last both employed cunning and
conversation (in Ged’s case with the addition of Magic).
Dragons are depicted, too, with ambivalence. They are at
once terrifying and magnificent. It seems likely that the
complex symbolism that has evolved over the years involves
both inner and outer meanings. Victory over a dragon may
stand equally well for control over some new tract of
wilderness or a new skill as for knowledge of and power
over the tumultuous impulses within the self, with their
potential for destructiveness as well as creativity.
The use of Magic in Fantasy is also linked with power
and control. The wish-fulfilling magic that would allow
its owner to do and be anything at all, without regard to
the demands of the outer world or the claims of other
individuals, is eschewed in High Fantasy. There is a great
emphasis on responsibility and the necessary limitations
the magician must impose on the use of power, and on the
“mixed blessings” that may result even when the mage is
carrying out his allotted tasks. Merlin, for example, was
fulfilling his duty when he put upon Uther Pendragon the
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outer semblance of Gorlois of Cornwall. From that act came
the birth of Arthur and the glories of the Round Table.
From it came also the “…… grete angur and unhapp<e> that
stynted nat tylle the floure of chyvalry of [all] the
worlde was destroyed and slayne.” [43] Gandalf was deputed
by high powers beyond the world to strip Saruman the White
of his Wizard’s staff and status. From this came Gandalf’s
assumption of leadership of the White Council and hope of
victory for the opponents of the Dark Lord. From it came
also the despoliation of the Shire at the hands of the
embittered Saruman. [44] And Ged is told explicitly, “To
light a candle is to cast a shadow …….. you must not change
one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know
what good and evil will follow on the act.” [45] All these
show the hazards and responsibilities of power as well as
its benefits; again, we may see reflected here the need for
integration between the desires of the id and the altruism
of the superego, as Freud’s terminology would put it.
To summaries the main points of our position; Fantasy
fiction is a fictional mode that employees the unreal or
impossible, that creates alternative worlds, in order to
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carry its themes or ideas into the readers experience.
There is some reason to suppose that it operates
successfully, for those readers who respond to it, because
it employs symbolism and structural conventions that
subliminally address the subconscious of the reader and in
this way feed into and reinforce the conclusions and ideas
the individual has gained from more direct experience or
from experience reported in more direct narrative modes.
Possibly at certain stages in life, particularly the more
intensive growth-points during childhood and adolescence—
although the possibility of or need for growth is in no way
confined to the years between childhood and adulthood— the
peculiar features of Fantasy and its way of operating may
make it a particularly appropriate way of helping growing
individuals to make sense both of their own inner
development and of the outer world. It is on the
assumption that there is at least some core of truth in
this notion, as attested by the various writers whose
opinions have been examined, that this thesis will proceed.
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Notes and references; Chapter 3; Children and Fantasy
Fiction
1. J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-stories in Tree and Leaf (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1964) pp 34 -35.
2. For example;
Nicholas Tucker, The Child and the Book; a Psychological and
Literary Exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981). Hereafter referred to as The Child and the Book.
Mary Thwaite, From Primer to Pleasure (London: The Library
Association, 1963. Second Edition 1972). (Page
reference to 1st Edition).
3. Mary Thwaite, From Primer to Pleasure. See pages 31-32 and
pages 63-64, where Thwaite records respectively the
attitudes of Locke and those of Rousseau, to fairy-tale
and Fantasy. She sets these within a history who
structure and thesis depends on the notion of the
gradual triumph of “enlightened” attitudes towards the
imagination, over such “negative assumptions” as those
of the two philosophers.
4. J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-stories, p 40.
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5. C S Lewis, Of other worlds; essays and stories (London: Geoffrey
Bles, 1966) (Hereafter referred to as Of other worlds). P
40.
6. C S Lewis, Of other worlds, p 41.
7. C S Lewis, Of other worlds, p 37.
8. C S Lewis, Of other worlds, p 23.
9. C S Lewis; Out of the silent planet (London: John Lane the
Bodley Head, 1938)
Perelandra (London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1943).
That Hideous strength (London: John Lane and the Bodley
Head, 1945).
10. C W Lewis;
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (London: Geoffrey Bles,
1950).
Prince Caspian (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1951).
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1952).
The Silver Chair (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1953)
The Horse and his boy (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1954)
The Magician’s Nephew (London: The Bodley Head, 1955)
The Last Battle (London: The Bodley Head, 1956)
11. C S Lewis, Of other worlds, p 37-38.
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12. Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien; a biography (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1977). (Page references to the
paperback edition (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1978) p183-186.
13. Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien; a biography p187-234.
14. Marshall B Tymn, Kenneth J Zahorski and Robert H Boyer,
Fantasy literature; a core collection and reference guide (New
York/London: Bowker, 1979). (hereafter referred to as
Fantasy literature) p24-29.
15. Marshall B Tymn, Kenneth J Zahorski and Robert H Boyer,
Fantasy literature, p24.
16. Marshall B Tymn, Kenneth J Zahorski and Robert H Boyer,
Fantasy literature, p25.
17. J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-stories, p34-35.
18. Ted Hughes, “Myth and education” in Writers, critics and
children; articles from “Children’s literature in education” (London:
Heinemann Educational, 1976) p77-94. First published
in Children’s literature in education 1 (March 1970). Original
source in; Plato The republic II. In; Edith Hamilton and
Huntington Cairns (Editors) The collected dialogues of Plato
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p623-
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624; “….. we begin by telling children fables, and the
fable is, taken as a whole, false, but there is truth
in it also …..”. It should be noted that Plato goes on
to advocate strict censorship and control by adults as
to which fables children are to be allowed to hear; so
that Hughes’ enthusiastic assertion of the positive
value of all fable and imaginative story for children,
takes on a rather different emphasis from that of his
source.
19. Ted Hughes, “Myth and education”.
20. Ted Hughes, “Myth and education”, p (82)
21. Ted Hughes, “Myth and education”, p (84-87)
22. Ursula K LeGuin, The language of the night; essays on Fantasy and
Science Fiction (New York: G P Putnam’s Sons, 1979).
(Hereafter referred to as The Language of the night). “Why
are Americans afraid of dragons? Is on p 39-45.
23. Ursula K LeGuin, The language of the night, p 44.
24. Ted Hughes, “Myth and Education”, p (92-93).
25. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book, chapter 3.
26. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment; the meaning and
importance of fairy tales (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976).
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(Hereafter referred to as The uses of enchantment). Page
references to the paperback edition (Harmondsworth ;
Penguin, 1978)
27. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 5.
28. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 6.
29. Ursula K LeGuin, The language of the night, p 11.
30. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p7.
31. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 74
32. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 74.
33. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p76-78
34. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the rings (London: George
Allen and Unwin, 1954-1955.
35. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 192
36. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 213
37. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 25
38. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, 19.
39. John Ruskin, The king of the golden river (London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1978). (I have not been able to trace the
date of the first edition; the earliest in the British
Museum Catalogue is the 2nd. Edition published in 1851)
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See also The water of life in The complete Grimm’s fairy tales, 2nd
Edition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p
449-445.
40. New Larousse encyclopaedia of mythology 2nd Edition (London:
Hamlyn, 1968) p49-54.
41. G Elliott Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon (Manchester:
Longmans Green, 1911). And Peter Hogarth with Val
Cleary, Dragons (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979).
42. Sigurd slew the dragon Fafnir. See; Kevin Crossley-
Holland, The Faber book of northern legends (London: Faber,
1977) p 97.
Beowulf was killed by a dragon. See; Fr. Klaeber
(Editor), Beowulf 3rd. edition (Boston: D C Heath and Co,
1950) lines 2538-2711.
Earendil slew Ancalagon the Black. See; J. R. R.
Tolkien, The Silmarillion (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1977) p 252.
Ged bound with magic the dragon of Pendor, Yevaud.
See; Ursula K LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea (London:
Gollancz, 1973). First published in the USA in 1968.
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This reference on pages 103-107 of the paperback
edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971).
Bilbo conversed invisibly with Smaug the chiefest of
calamities. See; J. R. R. Tolkien, The hobbit; or, there and
back again, 3rd Edition (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1966). Chapter 12.
43. Thomas Malory, Works edited by Eugene Vinaver (London:
Oxford University Press, 1954) p 4 and p 818.
44. J. R. R. Tolkien, The two towers, being the second part of the Lord
of the Rings 2nd edition (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1966), p 183-189.
The return of the king; being the third part of the Lord of the Rings 2nd
Edition (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), Chapter
8.
45. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea, p 56.
46.
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Chapter 4: What are you like?
This chapter is intended to serve as a bridge between
the general discussions about children and Fantasy fiction
that precede it, and the studies of specific authors that
form the second half of the thesis. I intend to specify
here the particular age-group of children, and the
particular kinds of Fantasy, that are to be the joint foci
of the assessment and exploration of these authors’ works.
The question that heads the section – “What are you
like” – is relevant to both these areas of concern. [1] It
its original application it referred to the
quest/adventure/testing motif prevalent in Mediaeval
literature. The implication was that although within that
tradition the tests set for a knight were mainly in the
area of physical prowess, that motif stood for a testing of
the whole nature of the person – “Who are you, and why?”
[2] Later, more refined examples of the genre such as Sir
Gawain and the green knight [3] show an awareness by the author
of the deeper dimensions of the quest theme, and articulate
moral and spiritual concerns quite consciously.
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Turning to Bettelheim, we find the same theme of self-
assessment and testing brought out in connection with
adolescent children;
“Adolescence is a period of great andrapid change, characterised by periods ofutter passivity and lethargy alternatingwith frantic activity, even dangerous behaviourto “prove oneself” or discharge inner tensions(my italics). This back and forthadolescent behaviour finds expression insome fairy tales by the hero’s rushing afteradventure ….. Many fairy tales stress greatdeeds the heroes must do to becomethemselves ….. Adolescents ….. Try to provetheir young manhood or womanhood, oftenthrough dangerous adventures.” [4]
So a parallel may be drawn between the quest of the
Fantasy hero – the journey undertaken and the task achieved
– and the search for self-development and self-
understanding by the adolescent. In both spheres the
concern is with proving the quality of the self, with self-
definition, with expanding the boundaries of the self.
Derek Brewer supports this view in his book on symbolic
story;
“A very large number of traditionalstories, though by no means all, are centredon the basic human experience of growing up.
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….. The male protagonist always has to leavehome. He goes on a quest …..”[5]
The quest motif is extremely ancient. The journey and
desire of Gilgamesh, which “antedate Homeric epic by at
least one and a half thousand years”, follow a pattern that
recurs in later literature. [6] Gilgamesh undertakes a
hazardous journey, and feels himself bound to seek the
answer to a particular question – what is death? Orpheus
seeks to rescue Eurydice from the realms of death, and his
mediaeval counterpart Oreo travels into fairyland to redeem
Herodias. [7] Beowulf travels to Hrothgar’s court to take
upon himself the struggle against Grendel. [8] The Knights
of the Round Table seek the Holy Grail in a spiritualised
version of the old testing motif. [9] Sir Gawain rides
towards what seems certain death and in the trial of his
faith achieves deep self-knowledge. [10] None of these
quests is in any sense a treasure hunt, or a game for the
sake of the game. Each has a high and an unselfish
purpose. They have common features hat survive into modern
Fantasy writing; the crossing of water, wandering in barren
lands, venturing into dark places underground in what may
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well be an echo of ritualistic death and rebirth
ceremonies. [11] Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, for example,
displays all these features; the Fellowship of the Ring
endures horror in the mines of Moria, and then comes to
haven in Lorien by crossing water. [12] Frodo and Same
cross the barren wastes of Mordor as Gawain wandered
through the hostile winter landscape on his way to find the
Green Knight. [13] The passage through adolescence, as
through any difficult or painful stage of life, may be
likened to a fearful passage through an unknown place in
the dark, and the acquiring of an integrated self may seem
to involve an experience like death and rebirth. Crossing
water may stand for a ritual cleansing away of the old
life; even Alice crosses water each time she enters a new
phase of her adventures beyond the looking glass [14].
So the selection of authors for particular study in
this thesis has been governed by these two factors.
Firstly, that the authors are addressing themselves to
adolescent or immediately pre-adolescent people; and
secondly, that the quest theme, reflecting the journey or
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struggle towards responsibility and maturity, should
structure or by implication underlie the fiction. Some of
the works chosen are High Fantasy, their action taking
place in an imagined Otherworld; some are Low Fantasy and
show magical causality operating within our primary world.
A few partake of characteristics of both kinds. What they
have in common is above all the making of a demand upon one
or more of the main protagonists; a demand that a quest
and its concomitant journey be undertaken; a demand that a
responsibility be accepted for something or someone other
than oneself or perhaps even antagonistic to one’s own
interests; a demand that the concepts of duty and
commitment be faced up to; or perhaps a compulsion of a
basically unwilling individual to the acting out of some
necessary ritual or duty in order to bring about a
specified end. It is for this reason that the commitment
of Frodo –“I will take the Ring” – has been chosen as a
title for the present study. [15] Frodo sees himself as too
small and weak for this heavy duty (i.e., too young for
it). He fears the consequences for himself, not only in
terms of physical danger, but increasingly as the quest
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proceeds, in terms of the irreversible changes in his
personality and attitudes that must result from the
experience. Yet the only possible response is “I will”,
because the overwhelming imperative is that the task shall
be performed. If the Ring is not destroyed, then a whole
culture will perish. It is an act of maturity, of
responsibility, of unselfishness such as the self-absorbed
child finds almost unbearably difficult, that carries Frodo
forward at this point. The act of commitment is itself a
step into maturity, one of many that he will make before
the quest is over. “What am I like?” is his question – can
I do this or not? The answer is; “I must, even though I do
not want to, do not want this to be the only solution to
the problem. I must strive to become a strong enough
person to bear this burden” – these are conclusions to
which many Fantasy heroes and heroines are forced to come.
And if Bettelheim is right, a similar experience comes to
each adolescent striving to become strong enough to take on
autonomous responsibility for his or her own life. Those
adolescent readers who respond to Fantasy may well be
finding there some confirmation and support for their own
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experience as they struggle to balance the demands of the
self for recognition and care, with the imperative need to
fit that self harmoniously and constructively into the
patterns and expectations of the outer world. Safety and
challenge; confirmation and suggestion of new possibilities
– these aspects of the experience of fiction are as vital
to the adolescent as to the smallest child reader. [16]
If these writers are alike in terms of their potential
audience and in their similarities of theme and structure,
they are also in many ways very different. Faced with the
impossibility of adequately surveying the whole field of
modern Fantasy for children, it is necessary to select
several writers who will hopefully illuminate some of the
many possibilities of the genre, and do so at once though
their likenesses and their differences. So, for example,
Jane Curry and Alan Garner write predominately in the Low
Fantasy mode, LeGuin and Chant in the High mode. Curry
writes for the lowest end of the age-range, LeGuin for the
oldest, while the other two show a steady progression in
their writing from the interests of the younger to those of
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the older adolescent. LeGuin and Chant reproduce
faithfully the ancient quest motifs of journeying, battles
both physical and magical, crossing rivers and enduring the
dark. Curry and Gardner by contrast show responsibility
and duty pressing in upon the individuals in their everyday
environment, just as magic breaks into the everyday world
in these low Fantasy texts. But for all the protagonists,
there is something that must be done; “Look if you like,
but you will have to leap”. [17] They cannot avoid the
events that will lead them into maturity.
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Notes and references; Chapter 4; What are you like?
1. D M Hill, Lecture on Mediaeval Romances given at
Bedford College in the Autumn Term of 1968.
2. W H Auden, “Under Sirius”, Collected Shorter poems (London:
Faber, 1966), p 345.
3. J. R. R. Tolkien and E V Gordon (Editors), Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight. 2nd edition revised by Norman Davis
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
4. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment; the meaning and
importance of fairy-tales (London: Thames and Hudson 1976).
Hereafter referred to as The uses of enchantment. (Page
references to the paperback edition (Harmondsworth :
Penguin, 1978), p 225-226.
5. Derek Brewer, Symbolic stories; traditional narratives of the family
drama in English literature (Cambridge: D W Brewer, 1980), p
7-9.
6. N K Sanders (Editor), The epic of Gilgamesh (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1964).
7. New Larousse encyclopaedia of mythology, p 198.
And
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Sir Orfeo, in Donald B Sands, Middle English verse romances (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966) p 185-200.
8. Fr Klaeber (Editor), Beowulf, 3rd Edition (Boston: D C
Heath & Co, 1950).
9. Thomas Malory, Works (London: Oxford University Press,
1954), p 625-741.
10. J. R. R. Tolkien and E V Gordon (Editors), Sir Gawain and
the green knight, 2nd Edition revised by Norman Davis
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
11. Some ceremonies of initiation into adulthood involve a
ritual burial and rebirth. One example is the wuwuchin
rite of the Hopi Indians. See; Frank Waters, The book of
the Hopi (New York: The Viking Press, 1963) p24, p137-
153.
12. J. R. R. Tolkien, The fellowship of the Ring; being the first part of
the Lord of the Rings 2nd Edition (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1966), Book II, Chapters 4 and 5.
13. J. R. R. Tolkien and E V Gordon, Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight.
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14. Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), Through the
looking-glass; and what Alice found there (London: MacMillan,
1871 (Dated 1872)).
15. J. R. R. Tolkien, The fellowship of the Ring, p 284.
16. Nicholas Tucker, The child and the book; a psychological and literary
exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), Chapter 6.
17. W H Auden, “Leap before you look” Collected shorter poems p
200.
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Chapter 5; The other half of Self; Ursula K LeGuin and the
Shadow
“Who sees the other half of Self, sees
Truth”. [1]
Ursula K LeGuin is a science fiction author of
international repute, and has published several novels,
collections of short stories, poems and essays, besides the
trilogy for adolescent readers which will be considered
here. [2] There is also a considerable body of critical
writing about her in the periodical literature, some of
which has been gathered into book form. [3] Her own
assessment and interpretation of her work is intelligent
and articulate and emphasises several important themes that
underlie both the science fiction and the junior Fantasy.
Two important strands in her ideology are the Jungian
concept of universal archetypes and the Taoist idea of
balance or equilibrium between complementary forces
throughout creation. These are interwoven in complex and
subtle ways that condition both the structures and themes
of her fiction. The Earthsea trilogy in particular
embodies her peculiar vision or awareness of the processes
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of human maturation in terms derived from these two systems
of thought. [4]
The Earthsea Trilogy is High Fantasy; that is, the
actions depicted in the stories take place in a Secondary
world of the author’s invention, and involve an irreducible
element of the “impossible” or “unreal”. Causality in
Earthsea is Magical causality, and the most powerful and
important members of that society, in the absence of an
heir to the throne, are those who wield the Art Magic. [5]
LeGuin asserts the importance of the Equilibrium at an
early stage in the trilogy, and is concerned to re-
emphasise it in the closing stages;
“The world is in balance, inEquilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changingand of Summoning can shake the balance ofthe world. It is dangerous, that power. Itis most perilous. It must follow knowledgeand serve need.” [6]
And;
“The word must heard in silence. Theremust be darkness to see the stars. Thedance is always danced above the hollowplace, above the terrible abyss.” [7]
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The similarities and differences between these two
quotations are important both thematically and structurally
in the Earthsea stories. In so far as they both assert the
same philosophy, the idea of balance, they state the
underlying philosophical or moral background against which
the development of the individual protagonists is worked
out. The first statement is made to the young Ged, when,
in his teens, he is too impetuous and self-willed to accept
or fully to understand what he sees as a restriction on
individuality and self-fulfilment. The second is made by
him many years later, for the instruction of the younger
Arren and as an expression of how completely the
Equilibrium and its imperatives have become part of his
personal growth and awareness. To this extent the two
quotations show how thoroughly bound up with each other are
the two concepts of maturity of the individual and the
maintenance or sustaining of the Equilibrium of Creation,
in LeGuin’s imagined world. On one level the whole Trilogy
could be seen as an illustration of how, in Inglis’ words,
“morality and identity cross”. [8] There is a profound
sense in which the identification of oneself as on the side
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of, as a supporter of, “good” or Light and through these of
Equilibrium, is equivalent to growing up, becoming mature,
autonomous, responsible. Although it seems to be the
immature and arrogant Ged that he is merely being asked to
fit his individual abilities and potential into a pre-
existing system without consideration for his personal
need; the mature Ged, the Archmage, can see the free-will
decision to fit into that system as a valid way into
maturity and freedom. He is able to embrace and contain
the paradoxes inherent in that notion. Superficially it
may seem that he has only consented to “behave well”
according to a preconceived and conventional system of
belief. The same might be said of Sir Gawain’s avoidance
of adultery or Frodo’s acceptance of the Ring. [9] But what
in fact the authors are trying to show in all three cases
is that the making real and vital and active within the
self of a value-system is a way to maturity, not
necessarily a “selling-out” to the system or a capitulation
on the part of energetic, revolutionary and reforming
youth. Both the value-system and the individual are
validated and revitalised by the meeting of identity and
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morality. Each individual’s insight and realisation
changes the system; the system provides the measure and
sounding-board for the emerging individual. There is a
close parallel and an unbreakable link between the two
decisions which LeGuin sees the merging individual
consciousness making. In the outer, social sphere, the
maturing person has to decide on his or her commitment to
the Light, and though that to the sustaining of the
Equilibrium. This, like the choices of the folk-tale or
epic hero, will involve a denial of self-interest and a
dedication to some quest or task of importance to others,
possibly to the whole society. Thus Gilgamesh seeks the
answer to the riddle of death because of his concern for
his people and his sorrow at his friend’s death. [10] Frodo
strives to destroy the Ring because the safety of all the
free Kindreds of Middle-Earth depends on that destruction.
[11] A closer examination of the Earthsea stories will show
this working itself out in the lives of the characters
depicted there. In the inner or psychic dimension too, the
themes of light and darkness emerge. LeGuin states clearly
in one of her essays, discussing Hans Andersen’s The Shadow;
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“The man is all that is civilised –learned, kindly, idealistic, decent. Theshadow is all that gets suppressed …..thwarted selfishness, his unadmitteddesires, the swearwords he never spoke, andthe murders he didn’t commit. The shadow isthe dark side of his soul, the unadmitted,the inadmissible. And what Andersen issaying is that this monster is an integralpart of the man and cannot be denied …..”.[12]
So within the individual there must also be an
Equilibrium; the dark, or in Jungian terms the shadow side
of the individual, must be in an active and constructive
balance with the light or conscious side. “Identity and
morality cross”; successful integration with society,
positive response to the moral or social imperatives
outside oneself, cannot be reached without integration
between the apparently opposed elements within the self.
The story of Earthsea is the story of the acquisition of
that balance and integration by three different
individuals. It also shows, in the personal stories and in
the wider adventures and descriptions of society, how the
balance may be threatened or disturbed and what the
consequences of that disturbance might be.
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LeGuin was expressly asked to write for younger
readers when she produced the Earthsea books. [13] She
records in the essay Dreams must explain themselves her own view
of what the trilogy is about and why its themes are
important for older adolescent readers. [14] She feels the
dominant theme of the first novel, A wizard of Earthsea, to be
that of coming of age, growing up. In The tombs of Atuan the
theme is more specifically the adolescent’s need to come to
terms with sexuality, while the third book, The farthest shore,
deals with acceptance of death. These themes are
undeniably important and will be discussed in due course.
But there are other patterns of theme and structure running
through Earthsea which should be considered alongside those
LeGuin has stated.
Firstly, the whole trilogy could be considered to be
the record of the life and deeds of Ged, a hero-epic
recording the three greatest turning-points in the inner
and outer growth of one who became the most powerful and
renowned human-being in his society. John R Pfeiffer has
argued this case most convincingly, and has indeed seen
many parallels between the larger story-of-Ged in the
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trilogy and the epic of Beowulf. [15] He cites specifically
the dominance in both works of the word “bright”; the force
of Wyrd in both; the setting by the sea and the dragon-
fights in both; and the alliterative and poetic prose
LeGuin employs which reminds him of the Anglo-Saxon poetic
technique. One might push much further the structural
parallel in the “triple essay” of Ged and Beowulf. Ged’s
dragon-quest in A Wizard of Earthsea, a doublet of his Shadow-
quest in the same book, stands with Beowulf’s fight with
Grendel. His descent, in The tombs of Atuan, into a dark
region associated with female forces, stands with Beowulf’s
confrontation with Grendel’s mother. And for both heroes
the last battle – Ged against Cob, Beowulf against the
dragon – is the inevitable confrontation with death.
But the Earthsea trilogy is not only “The deed of
Ged”. [16] In another sense all three novels are about
coming-of-age. The growth to self-awareness, inner
integration, and commitment to “something outside itself,
beyond itself, bigger than itself” [17], is delineated
three times; once in the story of Ged’s struggle with his
shadow, once in Tenar’s fight to regain her true self, and
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again in the story of Arren’s quest to the dark land where
he grows sufficiently in stature to fit the throne he is
heir to. In each case there is an imbalance or lack of
awareness in the protagonist that reflects or threatens to
contribute to an imbalance in the outer world. In each
case the protagonist must take positive steps to correct
both the outer and inner imbalances; by going on a quest,
by making a new commitment, by broadening his or her
awareness.
In the first story, Ged is too fiercely proud of his
undeniably great magical power; his could be said to be an
imbalance on the side of too much light. He cannot see the
need to wait and learn control and caution;
“…..surely a wizard, one who had gonepast these childish tricks or illusion tothe true art of Summoning and Change, waspowerful enough to do what he pleased, andbalance the world as seemed beast to him, and drive backdarkness with his own light.” (my italics) [18]
In a Christian context this might be seen as the
“ofermod” which was the sin of Lucifer and the downfall of
heroes in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. [19] LeGuin’s Taoist
system has its own answer to this urge to impetuous and
individualistic action;
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“……wu wei …… ‘refraining from activitycontrary to nature’, that is, from insistingon going against the grain of things, fromtrying to make materials perform functionsfrom which they are unsuitable, fromexerting force in human affairs when the manof insight could see that it would be doomedto failure, and that subtler methods ofpersuasion, or simply letting things alongto take their own course, would bring aboutthe desired result.” [20]
Ged’s quest for his shadow teaches him the futility of
over-violent action and self-assertion. He learns to
accept the dark side of himself, the destructive
possibilities that can only be effectively controlled by
humble acceptance of them and their integration into the
total personality. In the wider sphere of relationships
with the rest of creation, he learns the value of restraint
and of balancing the needs and desires and rights of others
with one’s own impulses. Clearly LeGuin feels that this is
a vital step in self-awareness for the adolescent to take.
The first stirrings of a real sense of the individual self,
of its potential power for effective action in society,
join with the energy and enthusiasm of youth to plunge
young people into what may be violent, aggressive and
rebellious activity. There is frequently a rejection of
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the values associated with tradition, such as Ged directs
towards his teacher. LeGuin tries to express for the young
reader the sense in which true maturity involves
establishing a sense of proportion, and in which discipline
and self-control are not self-repressive but self-
developing. Awareness of a sensitivity to the lives of
others, the attitudes of others, is a vital part of this.
The loyal friendship of Vetch and the way in which Ged
grows up sufficiently to allow himself to lean on that
friendship, gives moving expression to that idea. LeGuin
shows deep compassion for the suffering of Ged, but makes
it clear that he brings it on himself by his refusal to
cultivate these qualities of awareness and responsiveness.
She evidently feels that youth cannot be allowed to go on
being an excuse for the wilful abuse of power in a way that
brings harm to the young individual himself and threatens
harm to the rest of society. The Archmage Gensher sternly
tells Ged that he is in danger of being possessed by the
shadow [21]; of becoming a servant of evil. So Ged learns
that power – adulthood – carries with it responsibility and
duty, and that freedom itself is shaped by the necessary
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limitations each must impose upon his or her actions. The
Master Summoner puts this into words for him;
“ ….. the truth is that as a man’s realpower grows and his knowledge widens, everthe way he can follow grows narrower andnarrower; until at last he chooses nothing,but does only and wholly what he must do ……”[22]
Ged is still only nineteen years old at the end of A
wizard of Earthsea; but has come through his first battle for
identity and integration;
“…… Ged had neither lost nor won but,naming the shadow of his death with his ownname, had made himself whole; a man; who,knowing his whole true self, cannot be usedor possessed by any power other thanhimself, and whose life therefore is livedfor life’s sake and never in the service ofruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.” [23]
The story of The tombs of Atuan is the story of Tenar’s
escape from the service of the dark. Tenar is priestess of
the Nameless Ones, and is believed to be the reincarnation
of the One Priestess who has served these dark forces for
thousands of year. Her willing service to this cause,
which subsumes her to such an extent that she loses her
individual name and identity, becoming Arha, the Eaten One,
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shows that the imbalance in her nature is the opposite of
Ged’s. There is too great a dominance of the dark, the
negative, the passive. She is like the fairy-tale
protagonists described by Bettelheim, in an enchanted sleep
of paralysis of the will and loss of purpose. She is
Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. [24] Applying Bettelheim’s
schema, Tenar and Ged can be seen as embodying the two
characteristic features of adolescent experience, “……
periods of utter passivity and lethargy alternating with
frantic activity ……” [25] Her journey to adulthood is a
journey towards the light and towards accepting the
necessity of integrating the light with the dark; the
mirror image of Ged’s progress. In Taoist terms he is yin
and she is yang; he is the active, light, forward reaching
principle traditionally called masculine but present within
both male and female. She is the dark, passive, conserving
force traditionally called female but also present within
both females and males. The balance of these two forces is
the Equilibrium. Tenar lacks all confidence in herself,
all true sense of her own identity, and hides in the
darkness and apparent security of the only place she knows.
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Ged, who has never known these lacks in his own psyche,
breaks into her private world and literally takes her out
of herself, out of the dark, out of the Place of the Tombs,
to experience the fuller possibilities of life. So she has
help that Ged did not have; he is the only one of the three
Earthsea protagonists who is forced to learn though the
bitter pain of his own mistakes – which is perhaps what
gives him the authority and the strength to help in turn at
the emergence of adulthood of Tenar and Arren.
The imbalance within Tenar is linked with an imbalance
in society, the existence of which brings Ged to Atuan and
motivates the story. In Tenar’s keeping in the Treasury of
the Tombs is one half of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. This
arm-ring, missing for many years, is broken in such a way
that the Lost Rune, the Rune of Peace, is also broken where
it is engraved on the ring. Ged, having retrieved the
first half in a side-adventure during the Quest of the
Shadow, comes to try and retrieve the second and bring
peace to the lands of Earthsea. So at the climactic point
where Tenar willingly surrenders her half of the Ring to
Ged and helps him to re-join the Rune, there are many
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levels of symbolism coming into play. [26] Ged’s words
have many applications; “It is whole now as if it had never
been broken.”
On an obvious, surface level this refers to the
physical mending of the Ring itself; in terms of the wider
society, it is peace that has been restored to wholeness;
but in terms of the personal maturation of Tenar, it is her
identity that has been mended, restored, healed. Although
LeGuin does not describe or hint at any physical
relationship between Tenar and Ged, it is presumably the
sense in which Tenar’s healing is dependent upon her
response to Ged, that leads the author to assert that the
novel is “about” sexuality. It is essential that Tenar
trust Ged, that she respond warmly and positively to him,
if they are to escape from the Tombs and really give Tenar
the chance of a new life and the Ring a chance to function
properly as a force for peace and Equilibrium. [27] She
cannot imagine any other possibilities for herself; all
hinges on her being moved by her personal response to Ged,
as Sleeping Beauty is moved by the Prince’s kiss. In the
person of Ged Tenar confronts everything that is outside
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herself, bigger than herself, more important than herself.
It does not seem appropriate to speak of her as “falling in
love” with Ged. Nevertheless there is deep significance in
their relationship in terms of her personal growth to
maturity. A turning point comes shortly before they escape
from Atuan in Ged’s boat Lookfar. Tenar is assailed by fears
and misgivings and in a temporary revulsion against Ged,
prepares to kill him as he meditates. [28] This negative
reaction to her new freedom is psychologically accurate
according to the studies of Erich Neumann;
“In reality we are dealing with theexistential fact that the ego and individualthat emerge from a phase of containment,whether in a gradual and imperceptibleprocess of development or in sudden “birth”,experience the situation as rejection.Consequently we find a subjective experienceof distress, suffering and helplessness inevery crucial transition to a new sphere ofexistence.” [29]
Tenar is momentarily aware only that she has lost the
security of the familiar world of her childhood, and turns
on the person she sees as the instrument of that loss. The
next step for her is to learn the double nature of freedom
and maturity – the burden of responsibility for the self.
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“A dark hand had let go its lifelonghold upon her heart. But she did not feeljoy ….. She put her head down in her armsand cried …… she cried for the waste of heryears in bondage to a useless evil. She weptin pain, because she was free.
What she had begun to learn was theweight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load,a great and strange burden for the spirit toundertake. It is not easy. It is not agift given, but a choice made, and the choicemay be a hard one. The road goes upwardtowards the light; but the laden travellermay never reach the end of it.” (my italics)[30]
“A choice made”; a choice in which morality and
identity cross; a choice in which Tenar, by committing
herself to another person, and through him to the supra-
personal cause that he serves, forges another link in the
chain of her developing self, takes another step along the
road to maturity.
Tenar’s story takes the form of what I would label the
“quest-like” task. This is to say that she makes a
spiritual and moral journey within one physical location,
rather than a long physical journey such as Ged makes in
pursuit of his Shadow. By the time Tenar travels away from
Atuan, her significant journey from childhood into dawning
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maturity has already been made. This inner journey is
quest-like insofar as it involves commitment and a move
away from self-centredness. In The Farthest Shore, LeGuin
reverts to the structure of an actual physical journey, the
course of which reflects the growth to maturity of Ged’s
companion Arren.
Arren’s story is not one of the correction of an
imbalance; at the beginning of the book he is a pleasant
and attractive adolescent, warm and impulsive – he is moved
to swear fealty to Ged during their first conversation [31]
– open and sociable. LeGuin says of him;
“Arren was an active boy, delighting ingames, taking pride and pleasure in theskills of body and mind, apt at his dutiesof ceremony and governing, which wereneither light nor simple. Yet he had never givenhimself entirely to anything (my italics). [32]
The story of Arren’s growth is to be the story of
dormant potential released and developed. At the end the
boy becomes, as Ged in his wisdom foresees, the King. This
is significant on two levels. In order to restore lasting
peace on the outer or social level, there must be a king to
fill the throne that has been empty for eight hundred
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years. Identity and duty cross; in order to fill the
throne adequately, Arren must grow up – must give himself.
On the inner or psychic level, the business of becoming a
King in a fairy-tale or Fantasy stands for becoming adult,
integrated, for fulfilling one’s potential. Bettelheim
says;
“There are so many kinds and queens infairy tales because their rank signifiesabsolute power, such as the parent seems tohold over his child.” [33]
Arren is at first content to think of himself as a
servant or assistant to Ged in his quest to restore the
disturbed Equilibrium that threatens the existence of
Earthsea. He has, naturally, no awareness of the deeper
implications of the quest for himself in terms of personal
growth; and remains delightfully unaware of his public
destiny until the closing scenes of the story when Ged
kneels to him before the people. The reader is given an
early clue when a student at the school for Wizards on Roke
quotes the prophecy of Maharion, the last King; “He shall
inherit my throne who has crossed the dark land living and come to the far
shores of the day.” LeGuin packs into the story of the
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crossing of the land of the dead, both the meanings of her
tale. To cross the dark land living is to come to terms
with the knowledge of one’s own mortality. To inherit the
throne is to achieve maturity as well as to become king in
the literal, political sense. Balance is restored to
Earthsea by the same series of acts that establish for
Arren his understanding of the balance between life and
death and his own role in the unending cyclical pattern of
growth and decay.
This series of events, the story of the novel, serves
to carry forward both tales at once. On one level LeGuin
traces God’s quest to re-establish the balance that the
evil mage Cob has destroyed. This theme in itself is a
complex one and reveals how far from simplistic is LeGuin’s
understanding of psychology. For within this strand of the
story, Ged himself is seen to be still learning, still
failing, still striving towards the elusive maturity and
growth that Arren assumes so great a man must have achieved
long ago. In fact, the imbalance in the Equilibrium must
be said to be Ged’s responsibility. It was he who, in a
fit of resurgence of the arrogant pride that in his youth
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released the Shadow, punished Cob for summoning the spirits
of the dead by driving him into the place of the dead. [34]
Cob’s resultant terror of death is what leads him to open
the gap between the lands of the living and the dead in his
desperate search for immortality. So it is Ged’s personal
quest to restore the imbalance Cob has created.
For Arren, as for Tenar, growth is stimulated and
developed in terms of a deep personal response to Ged.
Indeed, all three young protagonists could be said to grow
through love for Ged. Ged learns, in subsuming his
negative shadow into himself, the vital importance of self-
acceptance, of self-love. Tenar is initially attracted
more to Ged himself than to the idea of freedom from her
enclosed life in the dark. Arren passionately devotes
himself to Ged; and the story of the evolving love he feels
for the mage, of its maturing, is the story of his own
developing awareness. There are several stages in this
love-story. Arren, like Tenar, goes through a period of
disillusionment during which he rejects Ged and feels let
down or cheated by him. He has to face up to the human
limitations of his hero, and learn to accept him as he is.
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This rejection episode is much more strongly developed than
is the corresponding one in Tenar’s story. Arren’s misery
and sense of loss are very deep. In both episodes Ged is
lying helpless, at risk because of his companion’s hostile
attitude. Whereas Tenar almost stabs Ged while he is in
meditation, Arren leaves him unattended and feverishly ill
from a wound sustained in the course of the quest. [35]
This is an example of LeGuin’s use of the folktale
technique of externalising aspects of one personality in
various characters. She blends this with the realistic
novelist’s method of representing distinctive individual
characters, but at times the externalising is obvious.
Ged’s helplessness while the two young people go through
their periods of darkness and despair strongly suggests
that Ged here stands for the positive and growth-seeing
principle within them which is paralysed by fear of the
unexpected turn of events that has laid on them the awful
duty of taking responsibility for themselves. [36]
There are three key moments in Arren’s relationship
with Ged that express clearly his growth and development.
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When he first swears allegiance to Ged on Roke, LeGuin
records;
“But now the depths of him werewakened, not by a game or a dream but byhonour, danger, wisdom, by a scarred faceand a quiet voice and a dark hand holding,careless of its power, the staff of yew thatbore near the grip, in silver set in blackwood, the Lost Rune of the Kings.” [37]
This is genuine emotional response, but along with the
fervour of adolescence it displays the idealisation, the
loading onto the individual person of all kinds of symbols
of impersonal concepts like honour and wisdom, that typify
hero-worship. Ged is a great man; but at this stage he
seems to Arren to be greatness embodied, to be perfection.
To follow him will be enough. Arren has to unlearn this
and the process is painful.
“He looked at his companion.Sparrowhawk, breathed uneasily, as when painmoves under the surface of sleep not quitebreaking it. His face was lined and old inthe cold shadowless light. Arren looking athim saw a man with no power left in him, nowizardry, no strength, not even youth,nothing. He had not saved Sopli, nor turnedaway the spear from himself. He had broughtthem into peril, and had not saved them.Now Sopli was dead, and he dying, and Arren
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would die. Though this man’s fault; and invain, for nothing.
So Arren looked at him with the cleareyes of despair, and saw nothing.” [38]
But there comes a third time when Arren looks at his
friend, and this time he sees a good deal;
“He stopped, but in his eyes as helooked at Arren and at the sunlit hillsthere was a great, wordless, grieving love.And Arren saw that, and seeing it saw him,saw him for the first time whole, as he was.
“I cannot say what I mean,” Ged saidunhappily.
But Arren thought of that first hour inthe Fountain Court, of the man who had kneltby the running water of the fountain; andthe joy, as clear as that remembered water,welled up in him. He looked at hiscompanion and said, “I have given my love towhat is worthy of love. Is that not thekingdom, and the unperishing spring?” [39]
Arren’s new understanding of his friend, like his
eventual accession to the throne, is seen as a restoration;
he recalls the first moment of his love for Ged, and feels
again what he felt then. But now he is more self-aware,
and his love is more balanced. He feels for Ged as he
really is, not for the idealised Ged he first saw. And the
whole of this moment of insight is charged with Arren’s new
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awareness, learned from Ged, of the inevitability of death,
of its part in the Equilibrium as the opposite pole to
life. Learning that the two can only exist in and through
each other, he learns to transcend them, moving beyond
despair at the thought of mortality to an informed and
conscious alignment of himself with optimism and growth.
He has learned to give himself to something, and in so
doing has achieved self-knowledge and self-control.
Ged spends himself, spends the last of his magic
power, in restoring the balance to Earthsea and the King to
his throne. His return to his homeland of Gont at the end
of the trilogy completes the overall pattern of balance and
equilibrium that LeGuin has written into the structure of
the novels. The tombs of Atuan forms a still centre to two
tales of arduous journeying. In the first novel Ged
travels into the uttermost East to confront the shadow, and
Manlove points out that the shape of this journey is a
figure Nine, a significant figure in Earthsea where power
is in the hands of the Nine Mages and bound up in the Nine
Runes. Conversely, the final journey is to the farthest
West to battle with death, and the shape of this journey is
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a figure Six, an unwinding of Nine and so suitable to the
spending of the power that the young Ged was developing in
A Wizard of Earthsea. Manlove finds many other interesting
points of balance and contrast between the two “active”
novels and their stance on either side of the “passive”
Tombs of Atuan. [40] All these serve to reinforce the message
that the prime need in both individual and societal growth
is for balance and integration. The path to maturity is
not represented by LeGuin as easy; but the ultimately
triumphant note of the trilogy sets it forth as inspiring
and attractive, and for some adolescents may provide
encouragement during a turbulent period of life;
“….. Ged had neither lost nor won, butnaming the shadow of his death with his ownname had made himself whole …..”[41]
“Who sees the other half of self seestruth”. [42]
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Notes and references; Chapter 5; The other half of
self
1. Ann Cameron, Daughters of Copper Woman (Vancouver:
Press Gang Publishers, 1981) p45.
2. Fiction (other than the Earthsea Trilogy) by Ursula
K LeGuin:
City of Illusions (Berkley: Parnassus Press, 1967.
The compass rose; short stories (New York: Harper and Row,
1982)
The dispossessed (New York: Harper and Row, 1974)
The eye of the heron (London: Gollancz, 1982)
The lathe of heaven (New York: Scribner, 1971)
Leese Webster (New York: Athenaeum, 1979)
The left hand of darkness (New York: Walker, 1969)
Malafrena (London: Gollancz, 1977)
Orsinian Tales (London: Gollancz, 1977)
Planet of exile (New York: Ace Books, 1966)
Threshold (London: Gollancz, 1980) – published in New
York in the same year under the title The beginning
place
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Rocannon’s World (New York: Ace Books, 1966)
A very long way from anywhere else (London: Gollancz, 1976)
Published earlier in the USA by Athenaeum Press,
New York, as Very far away from anywhere else
The Wind’s twelve quarters; short stories (New York: Harper
and Row, 1975)
The word for world is forest (New York: Berkley-Putnam,
1976)
Poetry and Criticism by Ursula K LeGuin
The language of the night; essays on fantasy and science fiction (New
York: Putnam, 1980)
Hard words and other poems (New York: Harper and Row, 1981)
Wild angels: poems (New York: Capra Press, 1975)
3. The two most significant collections of criticism that
I have seen are in the volume Ursula K LeGuin; voyager to inner
lands and outer space, edited by Joe de Bolt (New York:
Kennikat Press, 1979) and the journal Extrapolation, no
21, Fall 1980, which is completely devoted to articles
on LeGuin.
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4. The Earthsea Trilogy consists of;
A wizard of Earthsea (New York: Parnassus Press, 1968)
References to the 1971 paperback edition
(Harmondsworth: Penguin).
The tombs of Atuan (London: Gollancz, 1972) References to
the 1974 paperback edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
The farthest shore (London: Gollancz, 1973) References to
the 1974 paperback edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
5. Ursula K LeGuin, The farthest shore, p 9.
6. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea, p 56.
7. Ursula K LeGuin, The farthest shore, p 135.
8. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness; meaning and value in
children’s books (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981) p 23.
9. J. R. R. Tolkien and E V Gordon (editors), Sir Gawain and
the green knight, 2nd edition revised by Norman Davis
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967) Part 3.
J. R. R. Tolkien, The fellowship of the ring; being the first part of
the Lord of the Rings, 2nd edition (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1966) p 284 (Hereafter referred to as The
fellowship of the Ring).
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10. N K Sanders, The epic of Gilgamesh (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1964) p 94-104.
11. J. R. R. Tolkien, The fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter
2.
12. Ursula K LeGuin, The language of the night p 60-61.
Hans Christian Anderson, The Shadow, in Fairy tales and other
stories (London: Oxford University Press, 1914) p297-310.
13. Ursula K LeGuin, The language of the night, p 51.
14. Ursula K LeGuin, The language of the night, p 55.
15. John R Pfeiffer, ‘But dragons have keen ears; on
hearing “Earthsea” with recollections of “Beowulf”, in,
Joe de Bolt, Ursula K LeGuin; voyager in inner lands and outer space,
p115-127.
16. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea, p 11.
17. Ursula K LeGuin, The language of the night, p63.
18. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea, p 57.
19. The fall of the angels, line 262.
The battle of Maldon, line 89.
Both in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon reader, 15th edition edited by
Dorothy Whitelock (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1967).
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20. Elizabeth Cummins Cogell, ‘Taoist configurations’, in,
Joe de Bolt, Ursula K LeGuin; voyager into inner lands and outer
space p 153-179. This quotation on page 166 taken by
Cogell from Joseph Needham, Science and civilisation in China, 5
Vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954-173),
Volume 2, p 68.
21. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea, p 79.
22. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea, p 85.
23. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea, p 199.
24. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment; the meaning and
importance of fairy-tales (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976).
(Hereafter referred to as The uses of enchantment). Page
reference to the paperback edition (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1978) p 225-236.
25. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 201-214.
26. Ursula K LeGuin, The tombs of Atuan, p 121-123.
27. Ursula K LeGuin, The tombs of Atuan, p 128
28. Ursula K LeGuin, The tombs of Atuan, p 147.
29. Erich Neumann, The great mother; an analysis of the archetype, 2nd
Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963
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(1st edition 1955)). Reference to the 1972 paperback
edition. (Princeton: University Press) p 67.
30. Ursula K LeGuin, The tombs of Atuan, p 149.
31. Ursula K LeGuin, The farthest shore, p 15.
32. Ursula K LeGuin, The farthest shore, p 15.
33. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, 205.
34. Ursula K LeGuin, The farthest shore, p 86.
35. Ursula K LeGuin, The tombs of Atuan, p 147-148 and The
farthest shore, p 118-124.
36. Ann Wilson, Magical thought in creative writing; the distinctive roles of
fantasy and imagination in fiction (Stroud: The Thimble Press,
1983). Discussion of externalisation is found
throughout this book, and the chapter (2) on Jane Eyre
is particularly interesting in this respect.
37. Ursula K LeGuin, The farthest shore, p 16.
38. Ursula K LeGuin, The farthest shore, p 121.
39. Ursula K LeGuin, The farthest shore, p 181-182.
40. C N Manlove, ‘Conservatism in the Fantasy of LeGuin’
Extrapolation 21 (Fall 1980) p 287-297.
41. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea, p199.
42. Ann Cameron, Daughters of Copper Woman, p 45.
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Chapter 6; Renunciation and sacrifice; Joy Chant and the
doom appointed.
Joy Chant is an experienced librarian with a
professional and academic interest in children’s books and
in folklore and legend. Her thesis for the College of
Librarianship, Wales, published in 1971, reflects this
background; its theme is Fantasy and allegory in literature for young
readers. [1] The thesis is slight, disappointingly so by
contrast with the vigour and power of her first Fantasy
novel, Red moon and Black Mountain, published in the previous
year. [2] The novel itself, despite its virtues, is
distinctly flawed in execution; and the study of Joy
Chant’s work is the study of a steady – and recently
accelerated – development in both the theory and practice
of her art. Joy Chant’s publishers now describe her as a
writer and mother; and many of the changes in emphasis
between her early and her later work reveal a deeper
insight and experience in Chant herself. [3] Identity and
growth are constant themes in her work, persisting through
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quite considerable changes of style and worked out in terms
of steadily evolving ideas which show a growing interest in
the process of change and self-development in older
adolescents and young adults.
The title for this section is taken from an article by
Chant, about Tolkien. [4] Chant’s work is in many ways
comparable to Tolkien’s, although it is independently
conceived, not derivative. She has created an imaginary
world, Khendiol, in which all her novels are set, as
Tolkien created Middle-Earth. After Red moon and black
mountain Chant abandons even the pretence of a “frame”
story, and instead of bringing characters from our world by
magic into Khendiol, concerns herself directly with the
indigenous peoples of the imagined world. There is textual
evidence for a Christian background to her work, to its
moral thrust, which is in fact more obviously present in
the texts than is Tolkien’s. Like Tolkien – and like
LeGuin – Chant knows all about what Inglis called “the
point at which morality and identity cross”. [5] To each of
her main characters there comes a crucial point of
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decision, a point at which the needs of society impinge
inextricably upon their own needs and desires, and which
can only be resolved by their growing to meet the need.
Should they not be capable of that response, then at least
one other person, and possibly the whole of society, will
clearly suffer. Each decision leads the character to enter
upon a quest or upon the fulfilment of what I have
designated a ‘quest related task’ [6], a kind of inner
journey or duty. And this is what Joy Chant has to say
about the quest theme in Fantasy;
“…… the duty of characters in a Questis not action, but suffering. They respondto events, they may precipitate them, butthey do not form them, for they areundergoing an ordeal, a testing and ajudgement, and much of the dramatic tensionarises from that fact. Their strugglerefines or destroys them, but it does notessentially change them.” [7]
However relevant or irrelevant this may be to a
consideration of Tolkien, it is certainly vital in
considering Chant’s own work. This hint of passivity or
fatalism, of the individual predoomed to fulfil a certain
role in events, dominates her early work. Indeed, her
characters in the first two novels seem much more pressured
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by the force of circumstance than do Tolkien’s. The reader
is less aware of their having any real choice in the
matter, despite explicit statements from the author that
they have. Kiron, for example, makes much of the value of
Oliver’s commitment (he is using Oliver’s adopted name);
“…… someone like you, Li’vanh, someonewho offers himself freely and without need,who has everything to lose and nothing togain – he is immeasurably stronger.” [8]
Oliver is never wholly convinced of this, and his own
reflections just before his battle with Fendarl are far
more fatalistic;
“He had talked himself into completestillness; what would be would be, and therewas no more for him to do but play hispart.” [9]
Consciousness of the importance of the individual’s
decision to follow a particular course is written into
every line of LeGuin’s trilogy. In Chant’s case, this
realisation evolves in and through her writing and comes
fully into prominence only in the third novel, When Voiha
wakes. It seems likely that the reason for this difficulty
Chant experiences lies in what she herself calls “…… the
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motifs of struggle and doom latent in all nurtured by our
North European culture and Judaeo-Christian beliefs ……”
[10]. Wyrd, fate, the doom appointed, can dehumanise
characters in Fantasy fiction; an extreme example of this
is Penny in Red moon and black mountain, whose blue eyes make
her “the doom appointed” for the evil Kunnil-Bannoth, [11]
but who is indeed totally passive and dependent here and
throughout the book. She truly is unchanged by her
experience. Yet despite Chant’s assertion, her other
characters are changed – caused to grow in awareness and
strength – by their experiences, as in fact are Tolkien’s.
All the Hobbits “grow”, even Bilbo … “…you are not the
hobbit that you were”. [12] Merry and Pippin even become
physically taller. [13] Sam grows enough to carry Frodo
physically and morally to success and to govern the Shire;
Frodo grows beyond Middle-Earth entirely. [14] In Chant’s
works, Oliver, Mor’anh, Rahike and to a lesser extent
Nicholas and Mairilek, are plainly wiser, more mature, more
aware of themselves and others, more firmly settled into
and in control of their own identities, at the end of their
stories.
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Before examining more closely these stories of
growing, some general remarks on religion and the
supernatural should be made. Religion, organised and
personal and as the understructure of morality, is of
supreme importance throughout Chant’s work. There is a
perceptible shift, however, from book to book, in the
manner of its presentation and expression; and this runs
parallel to the shift in Chant’s handling of character and
maturation. In Red moon and black mountain there is a
superfluity of supernatural vehicles; the High Gods, who
are equivalent to Jehovah and the Archangels; the Star-Born
and their Magic; the Wild Magic; the Earth Magic; the
Mother Goddess; Vir'Vachel her daughter; Iranani the
Dancing Boy and other Gods of the Khentors (and of other
peoples too); the Niamhurh (elves); the Terhaimurh (sea-
sprites); the Borderer, a kind of nature-spirit-cum-Father
Christmas figure reminiscent of Tom Bombadil and Borrobil
[15]; a moon-Goddess linked with the white moon, an evil
power linked with the red Moon, a race of talking Eagles
allied to the Star-Born; many of these are beautifully and
powerfully evoked, but not all are strictly necessary to
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the plot or the ideas of the novel, and Chant abandons much
of this machinery in the next book.
In The grey mane of morning, [16] the Gods of the Khentors
are powerfully present, but there is no cluttering up of
the symbolism with other belief-systems. Kem’nanh, the
chief God of the Khentors, appears in a physical embodiment
on one occasion, and is expressly the guiding force of
Mor’anh’s life throughout, but there is no sense of a
multitude of spiritual and magic forces pressing in on the
human action and working out in a vastly complex
interweaving of strands and plans. The Moon Goddess Nadiv,
guide of Mor’anh’s sister Nai, is a supportive influence,
confirming Mor’anh in his sense of destiny.
When Voiha wakes [17], the third novel, presents a
community with a strongly organised religion and
individuals to whom faith in the Gods is a natural part of
life. But in this book the Gods do not appear directly, and
the struggles for moral direction and purpose, the
struggles for identity, are wholly internalised. The
religious sense of right and wrong is a strong factor in
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the struggle, and the wider sense of the need or demands of
society and other individuals interlinks with the personal.
Yet there is a refining away of the outer trappings of
Otherworld or High Fantasy so extreme as to lead to the
question – how far is this book a Fantasy at all?
Turning now to Red moon and Black Mountain; there can be
no question but that this is High Fantasy of great power
and beauty, carrying embodied in its symbols and incidents
and characters a deep moral and spiritual meaning. It has
the flaws one might expect of a first novel; it is
indisciplined and overwritten, suffering not only from the
overabundance of mythological figures described above but
from an inconvenient splitting of the action between three
protagonists; a fondness for elaborate set-pieces such as
the battle of the eagles [18] and the encounters between
Nicholas and various other world beings [19], which are
magnificent but tend to delay the action; and a too
persistent use of elaborately poetic phraseology which
distracts by its very virtuosity. All these faults are
corrected by Chant in her later work; and even in this
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first novel they do not seriously detract from her
achievement.
To begin with the crux of the novel; Oliver’s
commitment to the cause of Good;
“But the oracle said only ‘by the youngtiger shall your death come’. So moreenchantments he made, with more hard-wonpower, and armoured himself against all thatis under sun or moon, against every creatureof Khendiol, and went again to the oracle –but this time it was silent. So he can beslain by no creature of Khendiol. None ofyou could face him; do not try. It would beuseless.”
And Li’vanh [Oliver] was taken from the world, and for
him all grew still. The talk went on, but he no longer
heard. He felt himself to be the pivot of a vast wheel,
the focus of the attention of the universe. He stood
alone, face to face with a knowledge he did not want,
hearing the beginning of a call he wished to flee.
“The young tiger. No creature ofKhendiol.” And then another voice. “Awarrior in ten thousand”.
No, he thought. No. No!
But he had heard, and he knew, and wasalone in a moment grown deep and ringing, asif echoing to a great gong-note. He did not
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see the Council; he did not hear the voices.He saw only the choice before him and heardonly the unmistakeable summons.
He stood up.
“Kiron!” he said loudly, interruptingin a voice hardly his own.
“I am no creature of Khendiol, and mencall me the Young Tiger. I think”, he said,his throat grown tight and dry, “that thisfight is mine”. [20]
“The point where identity and morality cross”. There
are many other references that may be listed here as
parallel moments of commitment, symbolic of an increase in
stature and ability, a growth to maturity;
Frodo; “I will take the Ring.” [21]
Tenar; “I will come with you.” [22]
Gilgamesh; “……. I will go as best I can tofind Utnapishtim ……” [23]
Gawain; “I wyl to đe chapel, for chance đatmay falle;” [24]
Ged; “Master; I go hunting.” [25]
Beowulf; “……cwaeo, he guocyning oferswanrade secean wolde, ……” [26]
All of these incidents serve to reinforce the
implication behind Oliver’s personal moment of truth; that
the outer pressure of society’s need, the mere existence of
a task that must be done, can evoke the sense of identity,
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the realisation of one’s power to make moral choices, the
realisation of one Self.
What use does Joy Chant make of the methodology of
Fantasy in her presentation of morality, and of identity?
The adventures that befall Oliver embody in symbolic
form and on a contracted time-scale the progress of an
adolescent through a crucial period in the development of
self-awareness and self-confidence. His being snatched
away from Earth into Khendiol stands for his departure from
the secure conditions of childhood, his entry into an
unknown region where he can scarcely remember his parents
or his home or any of the familiar features of his life.
[27] His training in weapons and warfare stands for the
internal re-equipping of the self to cope with the demands
of adulthood. The combat with Fendarl, like Ged’s with
Yevaud and the Shadow, symbolises his coming to terms with
weaknesses – here represented by fear – and negative or
potentially evil impulses – here embodied in Fendarl
himself – within his own psyche. The return to our world,
preceded by a clear recalling of his parents on the night
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before the battle [28], signifies a re-emergence into
normal life, but on new terms. Bettelheim shows that this
patter is common in folk-tales that are concerned with the
adolescent experience;
“…… this development is fraught withdangers; an adolescent must leave thesecurity of childhood, which is representedby getting lost in the dangerous forest;learnt to face up to his violent tendenciesand anxieties, symbolised by encounters withwild animals or dragons; get to knowhimself, which is implied in meeting strangefigures and experiences.” [29]
Having passed through all these stages, Oliver is
oppressed with a sense of loss, of failure mingled with the
success. He feels cheated and despairing;
“The ache of loss became a pain andtears burned his eyes. Yet in his shame andgrief there was a seed of anger, for itseemed to him that in some way he could notunderstand he had been cheated. He had beenready to make an offering of his fear, andmaybe even of his life; but something hadbeen taken which he had not offered,something which could not be regained andwould be missed forever. He felt anoppression, as if part of his life hadended.
So he went at last to his rest, whereinlay the only healing for him. But the thingwhich he had lost he never did regain,
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though what it was he never would have said.Perhaps it was his youth. For Li-vanh wasone who had looked upon the darkness in hisown heart, and he must henceforth live hislife in the knowledge of that darkness andin the fear of himself.”[30]
This seems a pessimistic conclusion, contrasting
markedly with LeGuin’s triumphant celebration of Ged’s
achievement in facing “the darkness in his own heart” and
thereby reaching the fullness of his strength and self-
awareness. [31] It is a clear example of the syndrome
described by Neumann, whereby each emergence into a new
stage of life is characterised by a sense of loss, even of
abandonment and betrayal, for the growing individual. [32]
At this stage in the story it seems that Oliver has
suffered for others but has gained little for himself that
is worth the suffering and loss.
Chant, however, allows a relief and a transcendence to
enter the story in a coda in which the Christian ideology
behind it comes more clearly to the fore and through which
one is made forcefully aware that there is a deep
significance in the fact that the novel begins with the
word “Easter”. [33] Oliver goes on to take a step which
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only his mature, tempered self would have the strength to
take, and the Christian story of death and rebirth is acted
out within a context of the worship of the Mother Goddess.
Vir’Vachel, Earth-Goddess daughter of The Mother, is
angered by the destruction of the natural world that
results from the war of the Star-Born and their allies,
against Fendarl. She demands reparation in the form of the
sacrifice of a young man from each of the wandering tribes
of the Khentorei, Oliver’s adopted people. This means that
fifty youths will die, and one likely candidate is Oliver’s
foster-brother Mnorh, an especially gifted and beautiful
boy. [34]
Oliver, meanwhile, is tormented by his sense of no
longer belonging in Khendiol, now that his task is
fulfilled, and puzzled as to how he is to get home. His
brother and sister have already been returned by the God
Iranani who called them into Khendiol; he is told he must
find his own way back. [35] The shock of realising how the
pattern of events is shaping, is even greater for him than
the original realisation that it was his Quest to meet
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Fendarl in battle. “…… someone had to go, and he could not
stay.” “He knew that he was not being called to this; that
even the High Lords did not ask it of him. But it was there to
be done by someone.” (my italics) [36] On the surface this is
still rather fatalistic, as if Oliver is being manipulated
into the right position to solve the problem as he was in
the case of Fendarl. Then Chant makes it clear that this
is a conscious act of a mature individual; Oliver, having
decided to offer himself as the required sacrifice,
reflects;
“He would do it. Whether fromdefiance, or love of his people, he did notknow, but he would do it. He would do morethan had been required of him; and spent andweary though he was, somehow that made himthe winner.” [37]
This is not fear of the self, but mastery of the self
and triumph over the fear of death. The echoes are not
only of Ged’s victory, but of the Christian original that
inspires Chant here. The three most relevant quotations
from the words of Christ are probably these;
“Whoever tries to gain his own lifewill lose it; but whoever loses his life formy sake will gain it.” [38]
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“The greatest love a person can havefor his friends is to give his life forthem.” [39]
“The Father loves me, because I amwilling to give up my life, in order that Imay receive it back again. No-one takes mylife away from me. I give it up of my ownfree will. I have the right to give it up,and I have the right to take it back.” [40]
Here Chant has come via the Christian tradition to a
conclusion about self-hood and growth that is in essence
the same as that to which LeGuin came within the Taoist
system. Both assert that there is a paradoxical sense in
which the commitment of the self to something outside the
self is at once the means of achieving self-knowledge and
control; and a sign that this step into maturity has taken
place. Autonomy is linked with duty and responsibility; on
his way to death, Oliver thinks – “No one was compelling
him to do this. He could go back, and let the other die.
The choice was his.” [41] In fact there is no real choice
for the newly matured, caring, self-denying Oliver; he
“cannot” allow the others to suffer. Yet his own strength
of will is what has brought him to this deliberate
renunciation of his will.
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Oliver is clearly here a Christ-like figure, and also
recalls the Young King, the Corn-King sacrificed for the
people. [42] And in some systems of belief, there have also
been rituals which have consciously embodied the
subconscious parallels between the emergence into
adulthood, and the dying into rebirth and new life. Young
people on the brink of adulthood undergo ritual seclusion
and re-emergence in token that the old self has died and
the new, mature person has been born. [43] The final scenes
of the book bring out the significance for Oliver himself
of all that he has undergone to win self-knowledge and
strength.
In a brief time spent with the God Iranani, before
returning to his own world, Oliver learns what he has
gained as well as what he has lost;
“All that you have lost shall berestored, and all that you have gainedremain untouched.”
Then Oliver met his eyes steadfastly,and said “Young Lord, your words aregracious. But I have gained knowledge thatwill not leave me, and I know that you speakyour truths too easily. There is something
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I have lost which you cannot restore, andthat is innocence.”
There was an appreciative leap oflaughter in the young one’s eyes, but heanswer gravely, ‘And have men sunk so far,that the best they can hope for isinnocence? Do they no longer strive forvirtue? For virtue lies not in ignorance ofevil, but in resistance to it.’
Oliver bowed his head. ‘And what haveI gained?’ he asked.
‘What does silver gain in the fire, andiron in the forging?’ [44]
Chant can hardly claim that Oliver’s Quest and
achievement have not essentially changed him. The God’s
words proclaim that he has changed, by growing into greater
strength and knowledge. Insofar as a fictional character
may be said to have a “future” when the end of the work is
at hand, Oliver has a bright one. Chant implies that he
goes back into the world especially blessed and prepared
for the adult life he is entering upon. Iranani promises
him “…… new life, and heart to enjoy it.” [45] So confident
is Oliver that he refuses the drink that will bring
forgetfulness, realising that the pain of loss is
outweighed by the joy of gain. He walks clear-eyed back
into his own world; “There was no return. He had come
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through a door which only opened one way.” [46] This is the
door out of childhood. Chant shows what a triumph the
passage through this door can be. A Christian hymn
appropriately exhorts its hearers to; “Lay hold on life,
and it shall be/Thy joy and crown eternally.” [47] Chant
has shown Oliver growing up to the point where he can do
so. Beneath the exciting adventure story that lies on the
surface of this subtle and complex work, are levels of
encouragement for the adolescent reader that may well help
more than a little; for Joy Chant has the power to inspire
and uplift, without overt preaching or moralising. She has
presented in action Bettelheim’s statement; “The only way
to come into one’s own is through one’s own doing.” [48]
The external, moral problem of the operation of good
and evil impulses in society is presented by Chant
according to the traditional Fantasy mode described by
Mobley and Branham in the articles discussed in Chapter 1
of this thesis. [49] Moral abstractions are personified
and concretised; conflict in war is the conflict of
principles. Fendarl is dehumanised, impersonal like
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Tolkien’s Sauron; he is the principle of evil as it
operates at this point in the history of Khendiol. Chant,
like Tolkien, carries over into her sub-creation some of
the traditional figures of Judaeo-Christian mythology under
other names. Lucifer, called by Tolkien, Melkor and then,
in his fallen state, Morgoth, appears in Khendiol as Ranid,
He Whose Name Is Taken Away. Marenkalion the Defender, who
stand against Ranid, is Michael the Archangel. How far
this specifically Christian underlaying will be
comprehensible to readers is impossible to ascertain. What
is certain is that Chant makes Oliver clearly aware of it,
clearly aware of the nature of the Allegiance he claims;
“And in a single moment of rendinghorror he knew whom it was he saw. Fendarl’smaster; the great enemy; He Whose Name Is TakenAway, that Prince of Heaven whom he had alwayscalled Lucifer, Star of the Morning.”[50]
So Chant suggests that the battles the adolescent
fights within the self – that self-signified in Oliver’s
case by the whole world of Khendiol – are the same battles
all individuals and societies fight, however private and
unique they may seem to each new soul that learns to fight
them.
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In her next novel, The grey mane of morning, Chant again
takes up this theme of the struggle of individuals and
societies for identity, purpose, and moral direction. The
novel records events in the early history of one of the
tribes of the plains people, the Khentors, who in Red Moon
and black mountain became Oliver’s adopted people. Mor’anh,
the hero of the second novel, is priest and Lord’s son of
the tribe called the Alnei. He is destined to lead his
people into new way of living and of relating to other
peoples; and to the Khentors of later times, the Hurnei who
adopt Oliver, he is a great hero of legend and his very
name is used as an exclamation or oath. Besides being
priest, Mor’anh is Har’enh of the God Kem’nanh, protector
of the tribe – he is the one to whom the God speaks. Later
in the book, he is told by Kem’nanh that he is the God’s
own son, begotten by him in human form upon his mother, the
priestess Ranuvai. The pattern of Mor’anh’s life is the
pattern described by Lord Raglan in 1934 as the typical
pattern for the traditional hero. [51] He does not, in the
course of the story, pass through all the twenty-two stages
elaborated by Raglan, but as the story ends in his young
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manhood and with his triumph, this is not possible. Those
points to which he does conform, or nearly conform, are:
1. Mother; Raglan says the hero’s mother is a Royal
virgin; Mor’anh’s is
Priestess of the Moon Goddess and wife to the chief
of the tribe.
2. His father is a king; Mor’anh’s earthly “father” is
chief.
4 & 5. He is reputed to be the son of a god and the
circumstances of his conception are unusual.
Mor’anh’s fathering by a stranger to the tribe was
against custom; and the stranger is later identified
as the god.
8. He is reared in a far country. Mor’anh grows up in
the tribe but makes an unprecedented journey to a far
country where he broadens his ideas and strengthens
himself.
10. He returns to his kingdom. Mor’anh’s return is of
great significance to his people.
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11. He wins a victory. Mor’anh frees his people from the
Kalnat.
12. He marries – though Mor’anh breaks the rule by
marrying a humble girl who loves him, not a princess.
13. He becomes king – Mor’anh succeeds his father as
chief.
This gives Mor’anh a score of nine out of the twenty-
two points, which is a fair correspondence when Raglan can
apply only nine to Elijah, eleven to Apollo, twelve to
Joseph, and only sixteen even to King Arthur [52]. Mor’anh
is one of the hero-figures who appear in the legends of all
peoples, carrying with them in some way the story of their
people’s growth to a sense of collective identity or
nationhood. Chant is concerned to present clearly the
inner growth of the hero to an understanding of his own
identity and to a confidence in his own powers; but this is
inextricably bound up with the crucial point in the history
of his people which it is his main task, as chief, to
oversee. The public commitment is the private growth.
Identity and morality again cross – the question; “Who am
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I?” cannot effectively be answered without the related
question; “What ought I to do?”.
Mor’anh’s story is a story of enormous changes coming
to a society that has been static for longer than any of
its members can recall. “Years past reckoning had it been
so, for generation upon generation beyond the reach of
memory.” [53] Mor’anh’s divine awareness is the catalyst
for the changes, his insight and broader vision carrying
the people into areas of behaviour that have never seemed
to them before to be possible, desirable, or necessary.
The good and the evil aspects of their nomad life have
always been accepted without question. Mor’anh is slightly
out of step with this from the beginning; “Right from the
womb it seemed the Gods had marked him: ……” [54] His
closest friend Hran knows quite well that “……Mor’anh’s mind
could go where Hran’s could never follow; …….” [55] But
Mor’anh is not spared the necessity for growth and
development within himself; he has to mature to the point
at which he can wield his full powers confidently and lead
the tribe assertively, in order to carry out his purpose.
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For example, while the annual tribute paid to the Kalnat
troubles Mor’anh, while he thinks about it more
questioningly than the rest of the tribe, still his anger
and his desire for action are not aroused until the custom
inflicts a personal injury upon him. When his beloved
sister Nai is taken forcibly by a Kalnat man for a
concubine, the turning-point comes for man and tribe;
“In a silent passion of range andgrief, he closed himself in the Inner Tentof the God. There he beat at Kem’nanh’s earwith his fury and his pain, storming at thegreat God until far into the night, cryingout against his loss, until the smotheredhatred in his heart seared him with agony,and from his bitterness was pressed a colddesire for revenge.” [56]
This personal agony is the motive force of social and
economic revolution. All previous tributes, even previous
thefts of women, have been accepted fatalistically by the
tribe as just part of life’s pattern. Awe of the Kalnat
induces fear and the strong desire to avoid trouble. Other
individuals in the tribe cannot comprehend Mor’anh’s
ability and desire to “lay hold on life” and attempt to
reshape destiny. As Mor’anh’s obsession leads them further
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and further from the traditional ways, beginning to turn a
hunting people into a fighting nation, his father protests;
“‘I want my tribe safe, my peoplesafe,’ whispered Ilna. ‘I want the world asI have always known it.’” [57]
Mor’anh’s changing awareness is changing everything
that his people had believed to be immutable.
In Red moon and Black Mountain, everything that happened
to Oliver, in the sense of apparently external events,
could be interpreted on another level as symbolising
subconscious growth and change actually taking place in the
“real” world. In the case of Mor’anh, Chant employs a
mixture of this symbolic, folkloristic method of presenting
her hero’s maturation, and a more naturalistic mode. Two
of the signs of Mor’anh’s increased maturity are his
meeting face to face the God Kem’nanh; and his long journey
into Lelarik of the Cities, a journey which requires him to
develop new skills none of his people has ever needed
before. So unimaginable to the Alnei are the lands beyond
the Great Plains that a tremendous degree of courage and
self-confidence, of belief in the purpose he holds, are
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necessary to Mor’anh before he can achieve this feat. And
from this newly-grown individuality and decisiveness come
generations of development. Mor’anh wins for his people
not only the short-term benefit of better arms to fight the
Kalnat, but a whole new growth of trading and cultural
exchange between themselves and the people of Jemaluth.
All this is straightforward narrative, character revealed
by action. By contrast, the confrontation with the God is
pure myth, heavy with symbolism pertaining to self-
knowledge and awareness and maturity. In facing Kem’nanh
[58], Mor’anh is facing the truth about his own nature, as
Ged did in the Eastreach and Frodo on Mount Doom. [59] He
is learning both his true individual identity and the
purposes that are possible to or incumbent upon that
identity. Like Ged and Oliver, he learns at once who he is
and what he is supposed to do – and the inextricable link
between those two;
“For you were not born of desire butwill, and by design, and the design was notmine …… because the Alnei and the Khentoreineed a lord at this time who is more thanjust a man. …… It is the wild magic I putinto your hands: power over winds, and over
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beasts, and the spirits of men, and muchbesides. …… The Wild Magicians will needstrong spirits. …… That is why I put myblood into the Alnei, whom I have chosen tobear this burden. You will be first amongthe Tribes, Lords of the Plain; and everyman of the Alnei so long as the Tribeendures, shall call himself the Son ofMor’anh.” [60]
Mor’anh’s chosen, divine nature concentrates into
itself an extreme example of how personal identity and
group or public or moral identity cross. To know one’s
father is to know something about oneself, one’s own
nature. To be told one’s capabilities, to have it
suggested that one can and should carry out certain
difficult and dangerous tasks which will benefit others, is
to gain an even clearer picture of who and what one is. To
find that one is really of noble or divine birth is a
common motif in fairy-tale and folk-tale, and signifies
coming into confident awareness of one’s own identity and
to adult status. Bettelheim cites the example of The Goose
Girl, whose true identity was concealed for a long time but
who came triumphantly into her rightful place in society;
this signifies, he suggests, the achieving of a sense of
the autonomous self. [61] Here as in the case of Mor’anh,
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the public, social, status identity – princess – is
expressive of the integration or maturity of the private
self. Mor’anh is the Lord, the chosen one; the chosen one
is Mor’anh. His growth and his people’s development into a
new stage of social evolution are bound together. Unlike
the other hero-figures we have studied, Mor’anh does not
experience a single stark moment of realisation and
commitment; Chant presents a more naturalistic process of
gradual maturing, with the shocking experience of Nai’s
abduction and the supernatural encounter with Kem’nanh
woven into it. In her next novel, which is still
technically a fantasy in many aspects of its structure and
form, she carries this naturalism further still.
When Voiha wakes [62] is set in the land of Halilak, a
country within Joy Chant’s invented world of Khendiol. To
this extent at least the work must be classified as a High
Fantasy; and its further characteristic of embedding in its
events and in the relationships between its characters much
that is symbolic of philosophical and moral questions,
confirms this view. Yet there are profound differences
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between this and Chant’s earlier work, which must be
examined before considering the similarities of theme and
idea.
These profound differences might be summed up in a
shorthand way by saying that When Voiha wakes resembles the
work of Ursula LeGuin, while the two earlier novels more
closely resemble the work of Tolkien. More specifically,
in the adult novels of LeGuin, which are classified as
Science Fiction, there is very little use of the outer
trappings of that genre – hardware such as space vehicles
and their motive power, and futuristic scientific
achievements are kept to a minimum. Within the genre,
LeGuin chooses to concentrate on relationships and social
structure; the pressure on the individual of the
constraints of her or his particular society. This is
exactly what Chant does in her third novel. It could be
argued that both women could equally well have made this
sort of exploration within a naturalistic setting; the
Fantasy element is not strictly irreducible. It is pared
to a minimum. Chant’s two earlier books employ magic and
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supernatural motifs and devices as does Tolkien; there is
more evidence of the relationship of their writings to
fairy and folk-tale, and other early literary forms that do
not rely on realism, such as Romance.
Yet Chant retains her former interest in identity,
self-awareness, and the challenge of society – and the form
which that interest takes in this third novel is such that
she does derive one great benefit from retaining the
Fantasy form. She can establish exactly the kind of
society she needs in order to throw into relief the
question of gender and identity; how important a strand in
the weaving of the self-image it may be, that a particular
society sets a particular value on certain qualities in its
male and female members. The question could have been
explored within a realistic novel set in contemporary
Britain; but Halilak is a Matriarchy, and many of Chant’s
points are made simply through the fact of that inversion.
There are matriarchies in the objective world; but the
Fantasist’s power to shape her sub-creation exactly as is
necessary to the theme of the fiction, works for Chant
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through When Voiha wakes to establish in clear polarisation
the gender questions she is concerned with.
Other points of difference in this novel as compared
with its predecessors are the elimination of direct
manifestations of the supernatural; and the far greater age
of the protagonists. Rahike is twenty-eight and a mother;
her lover Mairilek is twenty-four. Romantic love is an
important element in the story. Yet Chant is still
concerned with change and growth, acknowledging that the
turbulence of adolescence is not by any means the last
trial of our identity or our moral allegiance. And
although the Gods are not physically present, they are
still in evidence – in female manifestations; Iranani the
Dancer is Karinane in Halilak and the pressure to do good
according to an inward sense of right is very strong.
Morality and identity cross for Rahike as for Ged, Oliver
and Mor’anh. She too has to consider the demands and needs
of the society in which she finds herself. There is none
of the dramatic fatalism of Oliver’s situation, no splendid
moment of commitment to a noble cause. There is no sense
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of a sudden and irreversible turning-point in the history
of the nation such as Mor’anh’s career embodies. But there
is the possibility of change in the pattern of society in
Rahike’s own land of Naramethe, of a shift in the structure
of the world as her people have always accepted it, and
because this is bound up with the pattern of her personal
life it is she who has to be the first of her people to
accept the novelty, to embrace it rather than turning away
in fear. And to do this even though it brings her personal
sorrow, Rahike has to take a step into greater maturity.
She would have considered herself mature enough at the
opening of the story. In this land ruled by women, Rahike
is among the leaders of society, a skilled administrator
who has been appointed Young Mistress and will succeed the
Mistress as ruler at the latter’s death. She has a fine
house and beloved little daughter. She acquires a handsome
young lover – there are no marriages, for the men live
apart in the Men’s Town – and seems to have everything she
could wish for. But she falls deeply in love with young
Mairilek, and he with her. So he confides to her his love
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and great gift for music; and this leads her into the area
of novelty and the forbidden. Music has no status or
official recognition in Naramethe, and Mairilek is seen as
a useless and possibly even dangerous character by the
other men and by many of the women. He does not fit into
the traditional pattern of his society, and no-0ne knows
what to do with him. Before they become lovers, even
Rahike reflects;
“The Craft-Laws were men’s mysteries,and no affair of hers, but she knew musicwas not a craft. And a man must be acraftsman. Such a passion as Mairilek’s wasfolly: was worse: was dishonourable; and shesaw the justice of the low esteem hesuffered.” [63]
Here Mairilek’s uniqueness, his individuality, are
seen to have no scope for expression within the confines of
his society. This has happened to characters in Chant’s
earlier work, but always to women. In’serrina the
Enchantress was not allowed to remain an Enchantress when
she married a man who was not of the Starborn; duty
involved conformity even at the cost of self-fulfilment
(Red Moon and Black mountain). Runi, a young girl of the
Alnei, is rejected by her people and becomes bitter and
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spiteful because she will not marry and subordinate her
will to a husband’s. There is simply no place for an
unmarried woman of mature age within the tribal structure
(The grey mane of morning). All the heroes we have considered
– Ged, Frodo, Oliver, Mor’anh, Gawain – have acceded to the
need and ideals of society, but in the sense of bringing to
that society the gift of their strongly developed selves,
not in the sense of giving up individuality. They have
helped society to grow in and with their own growth.
Rahike is to do this too; and to help Mairilek overcome the
constraints as In’serrina and Runi could not. The
inversion of the male/female position in When Voiha wakes, so
that it is the man who is supposed to be contented with the
limited role assigned him by society, helps to point up
more strongly Chant’s ideas about the potential
constrictions any society may place on the individuals
within it,. In extreme cases there may be no scope for
true individuation at all. “He can only choose from what
is offered. What real choice has he?” asks Rahike when she
has come to see the truth about Mairilek’s situation. [64]
Other women cannot accept this insight; Rahike has taken a
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major step in learning to see what life must be like for an
oppressed group within a society. Her own position of
power and authority is great enough to enable her to
manipulate events to her own benefit. She might have
called upon the sacred names of custom and tradition in
order to bind Mairilek to her. But it is she who has the
courage to go against custom, encouraging the timid young
man to take the enormously daring step of leaving Naramethe
to join a group of wandering musicians whose Master will
foster his great talent. This is done at tremendous costs
to herself; she is expecting Mairilek’s child – though he
would never have known of his paternity, as the mystery of
conception is one of the facts kept from the men by the
women. Yet he would have shared and enhanced her joy in
the child. She loses a great deal by this self-sacrificial
act;
“The road that led him from her wasalso the road that led to his craft-brothers, and to the glory that belonged tohim. He would walk lightly again. Alreadyhe had the love that would heal him, consolehim for what he had lost. Maybe he wouldnever love another woman, but he would havewhat he had always loved most. While she:
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she knew she was maimed. ……For her springwas over, and the time of flowering wouldnever come again.”[65]
In Rahike’s story Chant has remained true to her own
idea of the Quest Fantasy as “ …… an ordeal, a testing and
a judgement.” [66] But with the abandonment of the
externalising, folkloristic techniques of the two earlier
books, she has moved into an area into which she never took
Oliver or Mor’anh; the everyday, the ambivalent, the
undramatic. It is the closing phrase of this novel that is
most telling; “Her heart rose, and she pushed it down:
learning the lesson he had learned as a small boy: enduring
reality.” [67] In the light of this new concern with the
everyday, in whatever society, real or imaginary, it will
be interesting to see whether Joy Chant’s future work
continue to hold to any Fantasy techniques at all.
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Notes and references: Chapter 6; Renunciation and
sacrifice.
1. Joy Chant, Fantasy and allegory in literature for young readers
(Aberystwyth :
Collect of Librarianship, Wales, 1971).
2. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain; the end of the house of
Kendreth (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970).
(Hereafter referred to as Red moon and black mountain) Page
references to the Unwin Paperback edition. (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1982).
3. Conversation with Julia Merritt, Messrs George Allen
and Unwin, Hemel Hempstead, on May 9th, 1984.
4. Joy Chant, “Niggle and Numenor” Children’s Literature in
Education 19 (Winter 1975) 161-171.
5. Fred Inglis, The promise of happiness; meaning and value in
children’s fiction (Cambridge University Press, 1981) p 23.
6. See page 98 of this thesis.
7. Joy Chant, “Niggle and Numenor”, p (162-163).
8. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, p 211.
9. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, p 215.
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10. Joy Chant, “Niggle and Numenor”, p 168.
11. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, p 120-123.
12. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit or there and back again 3rd
Edition (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966) p
233-234.
13. J. R. R. Tolkien, The return of the King; being the third part of
the Lord of the Rings, 2nd Edition (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1966) p 233-234. (Hereafter referred to as The
return of the King.)
14. J. R. R. Tolkien, The return of the King. P218-219, p 377;
p 309.
15. Tom Bombadil may be found in; J. R. R. Tolkien, The
fellowship of the Ring; being the first part of the Lord of the Rings, 2nd
Edition (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966). Chapters
6 and 7 of Book 1.
Borrobil features in; William Croft Dickinson, Borrobil
(London: Croft, 1944).
16. Joy Chant, The grey mane of morning (London: George Allen
and Unwin 1977).
17. Joy Chant, When Voiha wakes (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1983). An Unwin Paperback original.
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18. Joy Chant, Red moon and black mountain, Chapter 3.
19. Joy Chant, Red moon and black mountain, Chapters 11, 13,
14, 15, 16.
20. Joy Chant, Red moon and black mountain, p 187
21. J. R. R. Tolkien, The fellowship of the Ring, p 284
22. Ursula K LeGuin, The tombs of Atuan (London: Gollancz,
1972). Page references to paperback edition
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974). P 122.
23. H K Sandars (Editor), The epic of Gilgamesh
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964) p 94.
24. J. R. R. Tolkien and E V Gordon (Editors), Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight, 2nd Edition revised by Norman Davis
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967) line
2132.
25. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea (Berkeley: Parnassus
Press, 1968). Page reference to the paperback edition
(Harmondsworth: Penguin 1971) p 146.
26. Fr. Klaeber (Editor), Beowulf, 3rd Edition (Boston: D C
Heath and Co, 1950) lines 199-200.
27. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, p46.
28. Joy Chant, Red moon and black mountain p 215.
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29. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment; the meaning and
importance of fairy tales (London: Thames and Hudson,
1976). Hereafter referred to as The uses of
enchantment. Page references to the paperback edition
(Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1978) p 226.
30. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, p 234.
31. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea p 198-199.
32. Erich Neumann, The great mother, an analysis of the archetype,
2nd Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1963). Page references to the paperback edition
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972) p 67.
33. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, p 13.
34. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, p 254-261.
35. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, p 256.
36. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, 262-263.
37. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, 264.
38. The Gospel according to St John, Chapter 10, v39.
39. The Gospel according to St John, Chapter 15, v13.
40. The Gospel according to St John, Chapter 10 v17-18.
41. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain, p 271.
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42. James George Frazer, The golden bough; a study in magic and
religion Abridged edition (London: MacMillan, 1922).
References to the paperback edition (London: MacMillan,
1957). See;
Chapter xxiv – The killing of the divine king.
Chapter’s xxix-xxxv – Adonis and Attis.
Chapter’s xxxix-xl – Osiris.
43. Frank Waters, The book of the Hopi (New York: Viking
Press, 1963) p 24 and p 137-153.
44. And 45. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain. P 275.
46. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain. P 277.
47. The Methodist hymnbook (London: Methodist Conference
Office, 1933) Hymn number 490.
48. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 140.
49. Jane Mobley, “Towards a definition of fantasy
fiction”, Extrapolation 15 (May 1974) 117-128. And R J
Branham, “Principles of the imaginary milieu”,
Extrapolation 21 (Winter 1980) 328-337.
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50. Joy Chant, Red moon and Black Mountain. p 230.
51. Fitzroy Richard Somerset, Fourth Baron Raglan, “The
hero of tradition” in; Alan Dundes, The study of folklore
(Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice- Hall, 1965) p
142-157. The essay was originally given as an address to
the English Folklore Society in June 1934. In 1936, it
was slightly revised to form the core of a book entitled
The hero: a study in tradition, myth and drama. Raglan’s summary
of the hero’s career is on p 145 of The study of folklore.
52. Fitzroy Richard Somerset, Fourth Baron Raglan, “The
hero of tradition”, p 148-150.
53. Joy Chant, The grey mane of morning, p 21.
54. and 55. Joy Chant, The grey mane of morning, p 22.
56. Joy Chant, The grey mane of morning, p 39.
57. Joy Chant, The grey mane of morning, p 143.
58. Joy Chant, The grey mane of morning, Chapter 21.
59. Ursula K LeGuin, A wizard of Earthsea, p 198.
J. R. R. Tolkien, The return of the King, p 223-225.
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60. Joy Chant, The grey mane of morning, p 167-168.
61. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 137-143.
62. Joy Chant, When Voiha wakes, see note 17 above.
63. Joy Chant, When Voiha wakes, p 23.
64. Joy Chant, When Voiha wakes, p 126.
65. Joy Chant, When Voiha wakes, p 167-168.
66. Joy Chant, “Niggle and Numenor”, p (19).
67. Joy Chant, When Voiha wakes, p 168.
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Chapter 7; The sense of belonging; Jane Louise Curry and
the Misfit.
Jane Louise Curry is an American academic who has,
since 1968, published many works of Fantasy for young
readers. The majority of her works are intended for the
age range between nine and fourteen, but one or two are for
younger children from about seven. [1] Her achievement in
these works is uneven; and she has written many different
kinds of Fantasy, so that this section will not be a
critical survey of all her work to date – some of it being
still unavailable in this country, in any case. The works
selected for close examination are the three novels that
seem to me to illustrate most clearly the importance of the
identity-maturity theme in Fantasy, and its relationship to
the Quest motif.
All those of Curry’s works of fiction that I have seen
are classifiable as Low Fantasy; that is, Fantasy in which
the action is set in the objective world and the strange or
alien elements are introduced upon the scene, breaking into
the characters’ everyday lives. She has produced time-
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shift novels (or ghost stories) [2], novels with miniature
human beings in them, of the Lilliput school [3], one
mystery adventure in which the “magic” is actually
explained away in the denouement [4], one novel based on
the Arthurian legends [5], and a whole series of works
which ambitiously seek to draw together the Celtic
mythology of Curry’s own Welsh ancestors with her mythical
history of Pre-Columbian America [6]. This latter series
is the most important both in terms of excellence and in
terms of interest with regard to the
Challenge/Quest/Identity theme.
Curry has brought together Amerindian and Celtic
mythology, archaeology, history and legend with her own
speculation, to build a complex mythical history that dates
from before the beginning of the current age up to the
nineteen-seventies. These stories always involve magic,
many of them involve time-shift, and in most of them the
race of Elves is featured, either as main characters in the
story or as influences in the background. Through all of
them, too, runs the theme of selfhood and identity, bound
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up with its related theme of duty and commitment. But in
some of them Curry has failed to develop enough tension or
depth to her stories, because of the basic error of
involving too many protagonists. In these overcrowded
books [7] Curry hints at many issues vital to the identity
theme – race, class, education, gender – only to find that
she has not space to develop them in any depth. Callie,
for example, in The daybreakers feels herself a misfit on
many counts; she is black, cut off from her old home in the
South, and struggling with a quick temper that involves her
in quarrels with family and friends. But Callie’s whole
class becomes involved in her adventures in ancient Abaloc,
and there is no room for more than perfunctory surface
reference to these matters in the rest of the book. In the
single-protagonist books [8], Curry weaves the themes so
that the action is genuinely expressive of what is
happening inside the young protagonist. This is why these
three novels make the most rewarding reading, and the most
worthwhile studies, of all her works. Indeed, Curry
herself seems to feel the lack of emphasis and development
in the “crowded” books, since there is a pattern of
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repeated themes following though the novels that form the
Abaloc series. In chronological order of publication –
although not chronological in terms of the imagined events
– Curry makes half-hearted use of a theme in one novel and
then much more direct use in the next. Miggle Arthur in
Beneath the hill feels at odds with her family, but little real
use is made of this; while Eilian, in The Change-child, is the
centre of the action and the external events she is
involved in are bound up with the theme of her discovery
and acceptance of her true self. The children in the
crowded novels cannot be sufficiently well isolated as
individuals within the text, for much real growth to self-
awareness to take place. Callie in The Daybreakers is
unhappy, but after this unhappiness has functioned as a
channel for the kings of Cibotlan to reach the present day,
we are not shown its resolution though any inner growth in
Callie. Dewi in Over the sea’s edge, however, undergoes deep
self-examination and is fully aware of how his attitude to
himself and the world has changed to become more accepting
and more positive. In the next novel in the series Curry
seemed to have broken out of the pattern. The watchers,
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which picks up themes from earlier books in the series,
especially alienation, identity and self-knowledge, is a
single-protagonist novel centring on Ray Siler, and makes
great use of Ray’s inner state and its resolution, in the
working out of the plot. Unfortunately, its successor The
Birdstones is a return to the use of a multitude of child
characters, not all of whom are ever clearly individuated
for the reader, let alone in terms of their own self-
awareness.
It remains generally true, however, that Curry handles
the Low Fantasy mode very well. There are senses in which
it is a more difficult genre to work in than is High
Fantasy, since the writer has less freedom to create a
background against which to set characters and plot. Much
of the work must depend on the techniques of the realistic
writer and seek to delineate a convincing contemporary
society. To hold the balance between this and an equally
convincing imaginary society of Elves or of the far past is
very difficult. Some writers take drastic ways out; Susan
Cooper, for example, to my mind seriously mars her sequence
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The dark is rising by the device of forgetfulness. That is to
say, her magically-empowered characters are able to make
the “ordinary” people forget anything supernatural that
they may have witnessed. As a result no-one grows or
develops at all, and much of the mythic power of the folk-
lore mode Cooper employs is wasted. Curry gets round this
problem neatly by running parallel strands of experience
though all her stories. The single-protagonist novels in
particular are notable for their skilled use of adult
characters, realistically related to the children and often
themselves experiencing growth and change. There is always
a problem in the society depicted, a “real” problem which
engages the adults but which the children alone fully
perceive as being linked with an underlying supernatural
situation. To select one example; the adults in Beneath the
hill think they are facing the problem of the despoliation
though modern technological methods of mining, of a
beautiful tract of land. The children see the link between
the greed of the modern contractors and the ancient spirit
of evil that the elves tell them of. Family life and
sociological trends in modern America are convincingly
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presented; yet there is also hauntingly beautiful evocation
of the Otherworld of Celtic legend and enough blending to
make it clear that experiences with that Otherworld stand
in Curry’s novel, as they did in the ancient tales, for the
experiences of the deeper levels of the mind. Faery is
employed as a metaphor for the underlying states both of
individual consciousness and of the social structure. This
skilled dual usage is revealed very clearly in the three
single-protagonist novels chosen for closer study.
The change child, set in Wales at the turn of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, clearly illustrates
both the use of the techniques of Low Fantasy; and the use
of the metaphor of the Other world encounter to point up a
time of growth in consciousness and self-awareness in a
particular individual. Eilian, the child of the title, is
at odds with her surroundings in many ways. Slightly
crippled in one foot, red-headed, and given to the making
of songs and poems, she is regarded with suspicion by
neighbours as a probable changeling; that is, a child left
by the fairies in exchange for a human child. She is
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thought of as odd. Since her own mother shares in this
opinion to some extent, and is only half-joking in her own
application of the term “changeling” to Eilian, the girl
has a rather low opinion of herself. She has comfort from
her father’s love and her grandmother’s care; but there is
still bitterness to cope with. Even her father says; “……
it’s foolishness for a girl to wish to be a poet at all,
that only a man can be a bard and compete for prizes at the
Eisteddfodau ……” [10]. No-one completely understands or
accepts her nature or her aspirations. Therefore she
cherishes within herself a compensatory self-image that
involves some idea that she might actually be special,
might have fairy blood in her, even though in everyday
conversation she explicitly states, more than once, “I am
no changeling!” [11] Bettelheim points out that this is one
of the compensatory images that children adopt for
themselves and find in fairy-tale;
“The feeling of inferiority isdefensively turned into a feeling ofsuperiority.
The pre-pubertal or adolescent childmay say to himself, “I do not compete with myparents, I am already better than they are;
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it’s they who are competing with me.”……………. Every child at some time wishes thathe were a prince or princess – and at times,in his unconscious, the child believes he isone, only temporarily degraded bycircumstances.” [12].
Eilian’s circumstances change twice during the novel,
and although the cause of these changes, in terms of the
“real” world, is the trouble between her father and the
Rastall family over the inheritance of Plaseiran, the
journeys constitute a quest-related experience for Eilian.
She is forced in the course of it to learn to value other
individuals and to give weight to their needs; to accept
responsibility for her actions; and to be reconciled to the
limitations and the potential of her own nature. She has
to make a choice of allegiance, a commitment, which is
related to the moment of dedication of the hero in a High
Fantasy. While the outer problem of the inheritance is
being worked out in plots and lawsuits, Eilian’s growth is
being worked out in a visit to Faery which, in the terms of
the novel, “really” happens, but can be shown to have much
in common with the traditional tales in which every action
is expressive of some psychological trait or condition of
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the protagonist. Both these come together at the end of
the book to reconcile Eilian with her mother, whose own
attitude has become gentler as a result of her improved
fortunes, so that she is ready to meet the advance of the
more understanding Eilian.
At the level of the Fantasy plot, then, there is much
traditional material, carrying out its traditional
function. In fact Eilian thinks she may be going into
something like fairy-land on her first journey to stay with
her grandmother’s troop of thieves, who are known as the
Red Fairies. She is “enchanted” by them in the everyday
sense of being very much in love with the idea of them, and
she makes a kind of commitment to them in her heart on
first meeting.
“There were laughs and greetings andkisses, and in the light of the lanterns theirhair shone gold and their eyes gleamed silver.Eilian tightened her arms around her uncle’swaist until he could feel her heart poundingfrom excitement. “Maybe I’ll never go home,”she thought. “Maybe, maybe this is the truehomecoming.” Mam and Dad seemed dim shadowsin a heavier world.” [13]
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This romantic hope is knocked flat by Eilian’s
eventual discovery that the Red Fairies are in fact robber;
that Uncle Emrys is weak and under his mother’s thumb; and
that her dear Grandmother is plotting to sell her to Simon
Rastall against her father’s wishes. (He has said that no
considerations of peace about the contested inheritance
will induce him to let Eilian be married off to a man who
does not care for her). The Red Fairy identity, which she
had hoped to adopt, is not the answer to her problems. She
learns to see the people she has been living with as
flawed, ambivalent, ordinary individuals, the normal
mixture of good and bad. This is an important step on the
way to discovering her own autonomous identity. Having
brought her to a point where she is vulnerable to such
influences, the story now takes her into Faery, to find
herself; to see the complexities of the truth about
herself, as she has seen it about Emrys and Mamgu and the
others.
Eilian goes into the forest under the guidance of
Goronwy, the boy who has always seemed quite ordinary, but
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now turns out, confusingly, to be one of the Fairy-folk
after all. On the realistic level the forest functions as
a refuge for the injured Emrys, who is in danger of arrest
if he does not go to ground. On the psychological level,
the forest is filling its traditional role as a symbol of
wandering in the unconscious, exploring the self, often at
risk – expressed as the danger of going mad – but with the
hope of making useful discoveries about oneself. Two
traditional examples of this are the mediaeval tale of Sir
Orfeo, who wandered bereft of reason until his music healed
him and he was reconciled to his wife Herodis; and Malory’s
Lancelot who ran made for two years in the forest; a token
of his inability to cope with the pressures of Guenever’s
possessiveness. [14] In both these tales the fact of being
lost in the forest stands for a wandering in the inner word
of the unconscious self. Eilian is not lost, but guided by
the care – and criticism – of Goronwy. She passes through
the forest with him, is aware of his sense that she is
letting herself down by her self-absorbed attitude, and
here comes to her realisation about the importance and
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uniqueness of other Selves; “I only let him be Uncle, she
though, not Emrys. …… But now he was his own ……” [15]
In the next confrontation, with the Fairy Kind, Eilian
finally meets the truth about herself. Again, this
parallels the experience of Orfeo and other traditional
figures in folk-tale who enter Faery and are changed by
their meeting with its powerful figures. [16] Eilian
learns, ironically enough, that she is indeed of Fairy
blood; but the learning is an ambivalence of bitterness and
pleasure. For on the personal level, she sees that there
is a sense in which this makes no difference. Her growing
conviction, for example, that she may make a good singer
but has not as much skill as a poet as she had hoped, is
not affected either way by this. And painfully, on the
wider level, her coming functions as the fulfilment for the
Tylweth Teg of a prophecy that they must leave Middle-Earth
for the fairy kingdoms over sea. So the fact of Eilian’s
being who she is has brought mixed results; joy to Goronwy,
who loves her; pain to the Tylweth Teg, who lose their
ancient home; and to herself, the continuing need to make
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the effort to accept herself and learn to accept others.
There is no side-stepping that effort for self-acceptance,
however colourful one’s ancestry or multifarious one’s
talents. And so Eilian’s act of commitment is an act of
commitment to herself and to a positive attitude to that
self; the commitment, in fact, that has been symbolised in
the High Fantasies we have studied, by the act of
dedication to a Quest or cause. Just as those heroes
learned to mobilise the strengths in themselves in order to
defeat evil enemies, Eilian is taught by the Lady Wintida
that her answers are also within;
“Eilian was muddled. ‘Change is notgood then?’ she ventured doubtfully.
‘On the contrary, child. All that isgood comes through it. But it is no suddenshift played on you, for what is growth butchange and transformation? To fear it is toinvite decay, but to live in hope it beimposed upon you by some kindly fate is tolive a fool.’
‘I do not understand. Am I sofoolish?’ No sooner had she said it than athought brushed past Eilian of the achingsameness, the dreaming–of –when–things–would–be–differentness, of so many of her days.
The lady smiled. ‘Only in thinking wecan give you love and peace if you have not
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tended the seeds of these things in your ownheart.” [17]
Less dramatically than Ged, or Oliver, Eilian has seen
that she can and must come to terms with the contents of
her own heart. For her there has been discontent and
unhappiness, rather than the combat with an externalised
symbol of the dark side of the self that the High-Fantasy
protagonists faced. But the text confirms that Eilian’s
journey has been a kind of quest for the self and a process
of integration; her father reflects, when she has returned
to their new home; “It is the real child’s come home.” [18]
He sense that she is in some way more truly herself, more
balanced and self-aware, than before her adventures. And
Curry closes the novel with an age-old symbol of
psychological and spiritual stability; the symbol of the
tree.
“’And I have brought a cherry tree,’said Eilian, ‘which I must plant tomorrow.’”[19]
The theme of reconciliation to the self and the device
of providing two levels of motivation for the action of the
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story, carry over into Over the sea’s edge. For Dave/Dewi as
for Eilian, his physical journey stands for his
psychological and spiritual exploration of himself. For
the others in the story, there are plenty of “realistic”
reasons for the journey across the ocean and though the
forests of Pre-Columbian America. For Madauc, to a greater
degree than for Emrys or any of the other adults in either
novel, there is also an increase in self-knowledge and a
shift in expectations of and attitudes to life. This runs
parallel with Dewi’s experience and serves to underline it.
The identity problem is brought to the fore in this
novel in a startling way; two characters actually do change
identity by means of a time-shift effected by a magic
talisman. Instead of this being reversed at the end, as
might perhaps have been expected in a children’s novel, the
changeover holds, and it is to the new identity that Dave-
who-becomes-Dewi is gradually reconciled. Less attention
is paid to Dewi-who-becomes-Dave, but we do see at the end
that he is also reconciled to his new life. At the
beginning of the story, Dave feels himself a misfit in his
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life in modern Ohio, unhappily aware of his lack of the
academic skills and enthusiasm that his father wants him to
have. He feels he is, in a sense, the wrong person, that
he cannot please his father by being who he naturally is.
He longs for adventure and physical activity;
“I don’t WANT toStructure My Personality Around a Positive Goal. I want to ……sail down to the gulf of Mexico on a raft and explore awilderness and ride with a banner in the wind and ….. andknow how to live on trapping and acorns and nuts and berriesor whatever, and ……” [20]
Meanwhile in the year 1170 the Welsh boy Dewi longs
fiercely for the life of a scholar, for all the things Dave
rejects. The longing and the discontent together are
channelled through the silver pendant from ancient Abaloc
that Dave finds in a cave along the Ohio (at once “before”
and “after” he (as Dewi) left it there – Curry deals
skilfully with these complications of Time). One night,
the boys change places in their sleep, so that each awakes
to what he thought he wanted. The action of the story
largely concerns their struggle to accept the selves they
find themselves to be; the unavoidable task for each
growing individual. It is significant that at the end of
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the story, when each has found peace, each is shown to have
done so by integrating into the chosen identity a measure
of the self that was formerly rejected. Dave-who-was-Dewi
– referred to as Dave from now on – learns at the end to
relax some of his obsessive drive for academic success and
to enjoy relaxing on the river like Dewi-who-was-Dave
(hereafter called Dewi). Dewi learns that his book-
learning can serve a useful purpose in keeping records of
Madauc’s new community in the New World. The pattern is of
the integration of various traits in the self, not of being
able to reject some in favour of others. In fact the story
makes greatest sense if the two boys are treated as the
folk-tale motif of the Two Brothers, whose interdependence
signifies the need for integration between the two opposing
principles within the self. Bettelheim says;
“The stories on the “Two Brothers”theme add to this internal dialogue betweenid, ego, and superego another dichotomy: thestriving for independence and self-assertion,and the opposite tendency to remain safelyhome, tied to the parents. From the earliestversion on, the stories stress that bothdesires reside in each of us, and that wecannot survive deprived of either: the wish tostay tied to the past and the urge to reach
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out to a new future. Through the unfolding ofevents, the story most often teaches thatentirely cutting oneself off from one’s pastleads to disaster, but that to exist onlybeholden to the past is stunting; while it issafe it provides no life of one’s own. Onlythe thorough integration of these contrarytendencies permits a successful existence.”[21]
Many of these implications and nuances are embedded in
the story of Dave and Dewi. The new Dave tries to limit
himself to one aspect of himself, concentrating upon his
scholarship to such an extent that, ironically, even his
father is alarmed and urges him to ease his pace. Allowing
the other aspect of himself back in, Dave finds he can
relax and feel safe; imagination is allowed its place
alongside Mathematics and Latin. “…… he never grew so old
that he made the mistake of forgetting that dreams hold
their share of truth.” [22] The new Dewi, by contrast,
tries to get back to his former state and rejects the new;
“I have to get back. He felt the olddaydream – the one about an adventurous lifewhere every tomorrow held its own surprise –blow away in a black wind that took hischildhood with it. He wanted only to besafe.” [23]
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When each boy is reconciled to the existence in
himself of elements of the old and the new identity, he
finds peace. This finding of peace by the two brothers,
each in his proper place, signifies in the folk-tale the
establishment of integration in the one personality,
different aspects of which the two brothers symbolise.
Dewi, like Eilian, accepts himself.
On the Fantasy level of the story other traditional
motifs are used. Like Eilian, Dewi crosses water and
travels through a dense forest on his way to confrontation
with the truth about himself. That he crosses the ocean
rather than a stream, and that the forest exists in a
remote past so alien to Dewi that it might almost be an
Otherworld itself, serves to intensify the image of rebirth
to a new phase of existence. Crossing water signifies the
end of one stage and the beginning of a new one; a
symbolism employed, for example, in the Christian rite of
Baptism. [24] Dewi’s supernatural experience differs from
Eilian’s. She was led to reflect inwardly on her own
attitudes and behaviour, while riding through the forest to
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face the King of Faery. [25] He confronts his other self,
walking in the forest in a surreal mist, and each is
confirmed by this experience into his sense of belonging in
and intending to stay in the new identity; in other words,
is confirmed in the sense of self. [26] After this the
fleeting contacts between the two are broken off. Neither
retains any desire to be other than he is, although Dave
has still to overcome his terror at the very thought of
anything from his past life in Wales, and Dewi to make a
step towards true independence that involves ending both
his reliance on Madauc and his acceptance of Madauc’s dream
as his own. This comes about through a truly Fantastic
confrontation reminiscent of High Fantasy. Dewi and Siona,
one of the Elvish/Indian people of Abaloc, witness the
destruction of the evil priest Neolin at the hands of the
Being who is the embodiment of Evil throughout the Abaloc
series. The children- they are still only thirteen or
fourteen – are not actively involved in the turning out of
the Sun-Serpent Katoa from Ebhelic, but for Dewi the
awareness of the existence of such evil is a turning–point.
[27] It gives him a set of allegiances, the choice of which
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indicates his new self-awareness and confidence. In
deciding that he is against Katoa, that he feels at home
in Abaloc, and that he has an affinity with Sion —who later
marries him—Dewi is deciding who he is and that he is happy
with who he is. The theme of choice between good and evil
is not as strongly developed nor as clearly externalised as
in High Fantasy, but it is there and is linked with the
identity theme. Dewi’s rejection of Katoa is underlined by
Madauc’s alignment alongside Abaloc against the power of
Cibotlan, which is corrupted by Katoa. [28] Madauc rejects
the role of plunderer he had cast himself in, and finds
contentment instead in the role of voyager and discoverer,
eventually, like Dewi, settling in the new land as a symbol
of his contentment with his new, developed self.
Finding a place that feels like home reflects the
finding of peace within oneself; and this motif, together
with others from these two stories is repeated in the last
novel to be studies, The Watchers. In terms of both the
realistic writing and the Fantasy elements, Curry displays
here a greater depth and power in the realisation of
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character and the dramatic tension of events, than in any
of her earlier works. The Fantastic events are much more
thoroughly bound up with the hero’s psychological state and
his growth in awareness; there is a need for a willed
commitment on his part to the cause of Good that increases
the functional validity of the Fantasy element. The
particular sector of modern society that Curry chooses to
evoke, the cut-off world of the Virginia mountain hollows,
is fascinating in itself and skilfully handled in order to
express the writer’s concern about many aspects of
contemporary life. And that concern in itself is
effectively expressed though the Fantasy as well as on the
realistic level. This is a classic example of how well Low
Fantasy can work, at its best.
Surface events that motivate the action in the story
are, that Ray Siler is not wanted by his stepmother, and is
sent to live with his mother’s “kin” in Twilly’s green, and
isolated mountain hollow. Ray feels rejected and
resentful; he is a strongly convincing portrait of an
alienated working-class adolescent, sullen and suspicious
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and heavily profit-motivated. All is not well in the
Hollow, although there is a warm and loving welcome for him
there. Almost all the large extended family is living on
“Welfare” (Social Security), one young man has been killed
and another emotionally damaged by the Vietnam War, one of
the younger girls, Bonnie, longs to leave the Hollow and
seek fame and the comforts of the modern world as a singer.
The children are unhealthy. Modern culture is cutting off
the old ways at the roots and putting nothing in their
place. As the plot evolves on the “real” level, we learn
that these simple, unworldly folk have been cheated out of
the ownership of part of their land and that the whole
community may be destroyed by Arbie Moar’s greed. His
greed, apparently, for the coal that underlies the
mountain.
Meanwhile, on the symbolic and supernatural level,
things have been developing in parallel. Reverting to a
symbol she used fairly successfully in Beneath the Hill, Curry
revitalises it to even greater effect. The idea of dark
forces underlying surface appearances, both in terms of
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individuals and in terms of society, is expressed in the
image of the mining that undercuts the green and daylit
Earth. This carries on the realistic level the expression
of selfish human greed that destroys the environment in the
name of efficiency and greater profit. It also carries the
psychological meaning of the dark levels of the individual
psyche, that can destroy if not integrated. And the mine
is also the location of Katoa, [29] the Ancient Serpent who
embodies all spiritual evil and violence and
destructiveness. So the three levels of operation of the
story all centre on the mine.
Fortunately, three people are aware of the inner or
spiritual dimension to the problem and of those, two have
some chance of doing something about it. Mary-Mary, Ray’s
learning-disabled little cousin; Ray himself, vulnerable
through his misery and the sheer fact of being adolescent;
Delly, damaged by his war-experience in Vietnam; these
three are able to see something of a past drama centred on
the Shrine of Katoa, which is called up to be re-enacted
around them because of the disturbances of the current
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situation. This gives them the clue to the inner story
they are involved in, and Ray and Delly are able to fight
the battle on that level even while their uncles stand up
to the forces of modern bureaucracy with shotguns and a
road-barrier.
Ray is pulled back into the past because his unhappy
and violent emotions link him with the boy Ruan, who in 330
AD betrayed the secret of the Shrine to the evil Queen
Tekla, and whose remorse and misery echo Ray’s. Ray is in
danger of being used by Arbie Moar, as Ruan was by Tekla,
to reveal the location of the Shrine, so that Moar can
unbind the Serpent, who has taken him over as an instrument
to bring about his release. Delly can see into the past
because he is the Watcher. Although the lore and knowledge
of the folk of Twilly’s Green is diminished almost to
nothing, it becomes clear as the story develops that in the
days when it was called Tul Isgrun, they were a proud race,
of mingled Elvish and Indian and Welsh blood, perhaps even
partly divine if the Aldar, who were among their ancestors,
originated like Katoa in the Third Age of the world, the
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age before our current one. In the past they possessed
power enough to bind the serpent in Tul Isgrun, and to keep
watch over him there. Today, Delly can only contrive to
blow up the mine, so destroying the double threat of
destruction by mining and destruction by the release of
Katoa. Yet he has fulfilled his duty, and Ray learns to
respect the quiet-spoken cousin he had always thought a
little odd. Ray learns some other things as well; and
these are the things that make this so much as novel about
identity.
Bettelheim says, in a discussion of Hansel and Gretel;
“Hansel and Gretel” ends with the heroes returning to
the home from which they started, and now finding happiness
there. This is psychologically correct, because a young
child, …… cannot hope to find happiness outside the home.
If all is to go well in his development, he must work these
problems out while still dependent on his parents. Only
through good relations with his parents can a child
successfully mature into adolescence.” [30]
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Although Bettelheim is here discussing pre-adolescent
children, younger than Curry’s three protagonists in the
novels we are considering, what he has to say about
reaching home has a good deal of relevance. Each of the
three young people has to overcome the feeling of not
really belonging anywhere. Only Eilian follows the Hansel
and Gretel pattern of returning to the family home, and
even that is in a new house with a slightly improved Mam.
But all three have an experience of having at last reached home.
Dewi in Abaloc and Ray in Twilly’s Green both feel that
they have found somewhere to belong, somewhere they can fit
in, and with a kind of parent-substitute in the Tribe or
extended family. The plot of The Watchers, from Ray’s point
of view, is the story of his reconciliation to himself and
his situation through his gradual commitment to the cause
of Good, the cause of the struggle against Katoa and what
he stands for.
When Ray arrives in Twilly’s green his resentment
against his father for sending him there predisposes him to
resist the spontaneous love his family offers; “It tempted
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you to stretch and yawn and sprawl your legs out on the
broken-backed sofa, and ray set his mind against it like a
wary half-wild dog.” [31] Determined to resist assimilation
into the new environment and to get back to the old one,
Ray at first sees Moar – although he cannot like or trust
him – as a potential ally, simply because he is willing to
pay Ray for any interesting fragments, relics of Katoa,
that he can pick up in the Hollow. And Ray is desperate to
acquire enough money to buy a bus ticket for home. So,
like Ruan, he lines up on the wrong side at first. It is
in spite of himself that he begins to respond positively,
on the outer level to the love of the family and on the
inner to the secrets of his inheritance that he finds in
the old books at the Gare, on the gravestones, and in his
relatives’ fading memories. It is uncharacteristic
behaviour for Ray to be interested in such matters. It is
the craving for identity and belonging that motivates him.
A sense of beauty and ancientness is awakened in him, and
the old profit-motive begins to die, when he first comes to
the old Gare. Uncle Penn has suggested that if the secret
of the old house got out, the tourists would get in;
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“And run up a few gift –shops and aColonel Chicken’s Barn, Ray thought. TheTwilly’s’ Greeners would end up weavingbaskets of white oak splits and stitchingquilts for the tourists. There was nothingreally wrong with that, but somehow it madehim shiver. The thought of all this beautyand stillness shattered by the shrieks ofsmall bored children and the satiny stonedefaced by others, dismayed him. He had donethat himself once, making a furtive scratchy I-was-here in a courthouse corridor in AppleLock.
But not here. Never here.” [32]
This was a special place, the right place and
time for Ray to begin to look at himself and reassess
himself; some of what he is expressing here is a sense of
possession and of belonging – “This is my place”. From
this point on he begins to function naturally as a member
of the community of the Hollow, and to forget about going
home. When his father sends him a ticket for home, he
decides not to use it. His allegiance is shifting. [33] By
the time the crisis comes and the older men are lined up
against the forces of the law on the road up to the Hollow,
Ray is aware enough to perceive the strength of what is
going on on the other levels of action.
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“Whatever was going on, it had beentrying to play itself out from the day he hadfirst climbed the long hill into Twillys’green: the past pressing into the present;some old defeat seeking to complete itself.And something – Ray was frightened what itmight be – was expected of him.” [34]
Gradually Ray works out what has been happening and
how his own negative attitudes to himself and to everything
around him have helped to precipitate events. He realises
that he has changed and that the change is bound up with
events in Twillys’ Green;
“…… his universe had shifted underfootand overhead. It was changed and so was he,and it was not just the sense, so unexpectedand so deep, of belonging; …… It was as if hehad something to do here or undo.” [35]
All this, the personal struggle for identity, the
legal battle for the land, and the spiritual struggle
against Katoa, comes to a head when Bonnie, Delly and Ray,
preparing to blow up the mine, are assaulted by temptation
in the form of promises from Katoa, promises of all their
wishes fulfilled. Ray breaks out of his struggle against
this insidious attack “…… to the bewildering knowledge that
none of the old aches hurt anymore.” [36] He has overcome
resentment and self-absorption, and achieved self-
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acceptance. In allying himself with Good, not so much for
his own sake as for the sake of his family, he has broken
free of his earlier, restricted Self. His story ends, like
Eilian’s, with an image of planting and growing, as Ray and
his Uncle plan a garden in the area of land that has been
saved from destruction;
“He could not have been happier if hehad been Ruan, come home at last after twiceeight hundred years.” [37]
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Notes and references; Chapter 7; Jane Louise Curry
1. The following is a chronological list of fictional
works by Jane Curry; I have not been able to obtain all
of them; works marked * have not been viewed:
Down from the lonely mountain; California Indian tales (London:
Dobson, 1968).
Beneath the hill (London: Dobson, 1968)
The sleepers (London: Dobson, 1970)
The daybreakers (London: Longmans, 1970)
The change child (London: Dobson, 1970)
Over the sea’s edge (London: Longmans, 1970)
The housenapper (London: Longmans, 1971)
(Originally published as Mindy’s mysterious miniature
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970)
The ice ghosts mystery (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1972)
The lost farm (London: Longmans, 1974)
The watchers (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1975)
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* The magical cupboard (New York: Athenaeum Press, 1975)
* Parsley Sage, Rosemary and time (New York: Athenaeum Press,
1975)
Poor Tom’s ghost (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1977)
The Birdstones (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1977)
The Bassumtyte treasure (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1978)
* Ghost Lane (New York: Athenaeum Press, 1979)
* The wolves of Aarn (New York: Athenaeum Press, 1981)
2. The sleepers
The daybreakers
Over the sea’s edge
The watchers
Poor Tom’s ghost
The Birdstones
The Bassumtyte treasure
3. The housenapper
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The lost farm
4. The ice ghosts mystery
5. The sleepers
6. Beneath the hill
The change child
The daybreakers
Over the sea’s edge
The watchers
7. Beneath the hill
The daybreakers
The birdstones
8. The change child
Over the sea’s edge
The watchers
9. Susan Cooper, The Dark is rising;
Over sea, under stone 1st edition (London: Cape, 1965).
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2nd edition (London: Chatto and Windus, 1974)
The dark is rising (London: Chatto and Windus, 1974)
Greenwitch (London: Chatto and Windus, 1974)
The grey King (London: Chatto and Windus, 1975)
Silver on the tree (London: Chatto and Windus, 1977)
It is interesting to note that Cooper’s recent novel
Seaward (London: The Bodley Head, 1983), which is High
Fantasy and involves the Quest motif, strongly
emphasises the themes of growth, responsibility, and
maturity, while still employing the motifs and devices
of Celtic mythology that she uses in the earlier works.
10. Jane Curry, The change child p35.
11. Jane Curry, The change child p 20.
12 Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment; the meaning and
importance of fairy tales (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976)
Hereafter called The uses of enchantment. References to
the paperback (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978) p204-205
13 Jane Curry, The change child p 51.
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14 ‘Sir Orfeo’ in; Donald B Sands (Editor), Middle English
verse Romances (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1966)
Sir Thomas Malory, Works, edited by Eugene Vinaver
(London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p 594-610
15. Jane Curry, The change child, p 99.
16. An early, anonymous version of the visit to the ruler
of Faery is the ballad ‘Thomas the Rhymer’ in; The New
Oxford book of English verse edited by Helen Gardner (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1972) p 353-356. A literary
treatment of the same theme is J. R. R. Tolkien, Smith
of Wootton Major (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967)
17. Jane Curry, The change child, p 111-112.
18. Jane Curry, The change child, p 131.
19. Jane Curry, The change child, p 139. The symbolism of the
tree is examined in detail in; Roger Cook, The tree of life:
image for the cosmos (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974)
20. Jane Curry, Over the sea’s edge, p 8.
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21. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 91; see also
the section on the theme of the two brothers, p 91-96.
22. Jane Curry, Over the sea’s edge, p 183.
23. Jane Curry, Over the sea’s edge, p 28. Note that this is
yet another example of the pain and loss involved in
growth, as described by Neumann; see; Erich Neumann,
The great mother; an analysis of the archetype (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1955 and 1963). References
to the paperback edition (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972), p66-67.
24. See, for example, The Methodist Service Book (London:
Methodist Publishing House, 1975) p A8; “We pray that
this child, now to be baptised with this water, may die
to sin and be raised to the new life in Christ.”
25. Jane Curry, The change child, Chapter 8.
26. Jane Curry, Over the sea’s edge, p 76-77.
27. Jane Curry, Over the sea’s edge, p 149-156.
28. Jane Curry, Over the sea’s edge, Chapter 14.
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29. Katoa owes his name and some of his nature to the
legends of the Hopi Indians. According to the legends,
Katoa was the Serpent of the First World – there have
been Four Worlds in the cycle of creation. See; Frank
Water, The book of the Hopi (New York: Viking Press, 1963)
p 12-14. The other association called up by the
serpent form is the Lucifer/Satan story of the Judaeo-
Christian tradition. See; J M Evans, Paradise lost and the
Genesis tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968).
30. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 165.
31. Jane Curry, The watchers, p 24.
32. Jane Curry, The watchers, p 132.
33. Jane Curry, The watchers, p 150.
34. Jane Curry, The watchers, p 168.
35. Jane Curry, The watchers, p 178.
36. Jane Curry, The watchers, p 223.
37. Jane Curry, The watchers, p 235.
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Chapter 8; The beginning place; Alan Garner and the deepsof time. [1]
Ever since the publication, in 1960, of his first
Fantasy novel for children Alan Garner has attracted the
attention of critics, teachers, librarians and children to
an amazing extent. In his excellent book on Garner, Neil
Philip includes a “select” bibliography of articles,
essays, reviews and criticism, running to just over four
closely-printed sides. [2] Some of this critical interest
has been hostile, and particularly within the world of
children’s books there has been much debate on whether or
not the books, particularly the later ones, are suitable
for children to read. There are fears that Garner includes
too much sex, too much violent emotion, and too much
“difficulty” in language and plot for younger readers.
Parallel with this debate has run the attempt to define
Gardener’s works in terms of Fantasy – is, or is not, any
particular work a Fantasy, and if so is it a “good”
Fantasy? Philip is at pains, in his preface, to dissociate
himself as far as possible from the definition debate;
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“Everything Alan Garner has publishedhas been published for children. This simplefact has seriously distorted criticism ofGarner’s work; …… My concern, therefore, willbe with the words on the page and with thespace between the words. Only when thequality of the words is established does thenature of their audience become more than amatter for parochial concern. …… It seems bestsimply to leave the books to be enjoyed bythose who enjoy them, adults or children, andto judge them on their purely literaryqualities.” [3]
Philip’s study of Garner’s work is carried out in
accordance with this statement of intention; but in drawing
on his book as a major source for this section, I will
necessarily take what may seem, in these terms, the
retrograde step of looking at the related questions of how
far the books chosen for study are Fantasy, and how far
they are specifically related to the needs of a young –
particularly an adolescent – readership.
Philip begins his first chapter;
“Alan Garden hasnot simply produced a number of books but acoherent oeuvre, in which every book is acomment on and refinement of its predecessors.The books cross-refer and intertwine, and thesame themes, blighted love, isolation,confrontation with the Godhead, redemption,recur throughout. In particular, the books
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are held together by myth, and by an abidinginterest in the nature of the mythical.” [4]
And he later quotes Garner as saying;
“It is the same story every time onlyin different guises.” [5]
This incontrovertible fact about Garner’s fiction,
which carries over also to describe his various
compilations of traditional material and his other works,
makes it difficult to justify the selection of a number of
his works for special consideration. Yet within the terms
of this thesis, some selection must be made. I have
therefore excluded from close consideration those of
Garner’s works which are not original prose Fantasy with an
apparent intended readership between the ages of ten and
eighteen. [6] It must be remembered, however that this
separation is to some extent an artificial one, and that
Garner’s editorial work in the field of Folk-tale is
closely linked with his fiction; Neil Philip illustrates
this persuasively in his fourth and sixth chapters. Even
more artificial, it may seem, is my decision to limit
discussion of Garner’s published fiction to three works;
Elidor; The owl service; and Red shift; with only brief
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reference to The weirdstone of Brisangamen, The Moon of
Gomrath and The stone book quartet. [7]
Briefly, while the first two novels are undoubtedly
classifiable as Low Fantasy, they do not concern themselves
with growth and development within the child protagonists.
The children respond to situations, but do not grow because
of them. Neil Philip comments;
“The main criticisms to be voicedagainst these early books are self-evident.Firstly Colin and Susan are little more thanciphers. The flatness of the childcharacters, Garner tells us in ‘Coming toTerms’, was the result of a deliberateartistic policy: ‘The children are my ownmistake, but it was done deliberately. Iwanted them to be camera lenses through whichwe look and do not become involved because Iwanted to look at the external primary coloursof the fantasy.’ By the end of The moon ofGomrath Garner was aware of the failure ofthis idea; his growing dissatisfaction withhis bland creations is illustrated by hisfirst ending for that book, in which theMorrigan approaches Colin ‘& wrung the littlebugger’s neck’”. [8]
By contrast The stone book quartet, although it is
undeniably about identity and self-acceptance, cannot be
said to expound those themes through the traditional
devices of Low Fantasy. There is still mysticism there,
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what Philip calls “…… a constant sense of something more,
something greater, behind the events described, an
alchemical transmutation of the dross of everyday into the
gold of every day.” [9] Yet the books remain outside the
genre of Low Fantasy.
This leave the three “middle” books; Elidor; The owl service;
Red shift; and the last of these in itself a borderline case
worthy of an author who is obsessed with boundaries. These
three seem to me to fulfil, to a lesser or greater extent,
the criteria of Low Fantasy as it is used to explore the
nature of identity and of wholeness of personality;
maturation; the search for autonomy and integration. It is
on the basis of this assumption that they will be studied.
Philip confirms this view;
“Garner is one of the most able of thewriters who have sought in the last twentyyears to explore the disjointed and troubledpsychological and emotional landscape of thetwentieth century through the symbolism ofmyth and folklore: myth is used as adiagnostic tool in the examination ofcontemporary ills. Central to Garner’swriting is a concern with patterning, withrepetitive cycles of experience, which he hasexplored by structuring his stories around
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myths and legends. Although the use ofmythology has become less overt in his laterwork, and the magical trappings of the earlierbooks, plundered willy-nilly from whateversource came to hand, have been discarded, mythis still the energy source which powers hiwriting. The patterns have simply becomebarer, and more essential, until in Red shift itis well-nigh impossible for the reader todiscern beneath the complex narrative schemethe story of the ballad of ‘Tam Lin’ on whichGarner assures us the book is based.” [10]
Reading Elidor, it is still possible to trace quite
easily the mythical and legendary sources of the motifs
employed; the wasteland and the maimed King are from the
Grail legend, and the adventure which opens the book is
based on the story of Childe Roland (see note 13 below).
Elidor fits into the genre perhaps best described as modern
fairy-tale; a story employing many of the techniques of the
traditional tale. Indeed, although this is Low Fantasy
like all Garner’s works, it comes nearest to employing the
methods of High Fantasy, in taking its characters into an
otherworld at the beginning. Most of the action, however,
takes place in the objective world, specifically in
Garner’s own childhood home. Philip quotes Garner’s
reasons for choosing Low Fantasy;
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“In an article written in 1968 Garnerexplained why he wrote about magic and thesupernatural impinging on the real worldrather than writing self-contained fantasiesof the Tolkien type ‘If we are in Eldorado andwe find a mandrake, then OK, so it’s amandrake: in Eldorado anything goes. But, byforce of imagination, compel the reader tobelieve that there is a mandrake in a gardenin Mayfield Road, Ulverston, Lancs, then whenyou pull up that mandrake it is really goingto scream; and possibly the reader will too.’”[11]
Garner believes that the force of the magical elements
will be stronger if they can be seen to affect events in
the objective world. In this Curry’s practice is similar,
but even at her most powerful Curry does not write with
Garner’s power and authority. Like Curry, Garner is aware
of the significance of place, of the need to belong, to
find the right place, to fit into and to accept oneself.
Poignancy is heightened in Garner to a tragic pitch by his
protagonists’ ultimate failure to win the battle for self-
acceptance and self-control. There is triumph at the end
of Elidor, but it is qualified, mitigated by grief.
Philip does not find in Elidor any clear concern with
“social maturity” [12] Yet I feel the book to be very much
concerned with Roland and his search for identity, meaning
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and purpose in his life, and that this does involve some
exploration on Garner’s part of the themes of
responsibility and selflessness as indicators of emotional
and social maturity and of personal validity. There is
even a crucial amount of commitment for Roland that stands
with the taking of the Ring as a moment – admittedly less
heightened and grandiose in treatment than the Tolkien
incident – of dedication to a cause. Roland agrees to go
into the mound of Vandwy to recover the treasures of Elidor
for Malebron; but he gets the courage for this from his
sense of loyalty to others. His brother and sister are
trapped in the mound, and he feels he has no choice but to
rescue them. Hence any dedication to the cause of “Good”
here is unconscious and bound up in the specific act of
rescuing his loved ones. It is only later than Roland
begins to conceive of himself as in some way allied with
Malebron in the battle between light and dark forces in
Elidor. Nevertheless a quest has been undertaken, and in
very traditional terms; to go into the Magic place – the
place of death, the dark tower, the underworld – and rescue
the good that is trapped there. In this quest, Roland is
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successful. He rescues Helen from the equivalent of
Elfland, just as his original in the ballad does. [13]
But this is a beginning, not an end, to Roland’s
story. It is no part of tradition for the hero to be
followed into his future life in the real world and for the
reader to see him struggling with the consequences of his
commitment. Curry, for example, leaves her protagonists in
the single-protagonist works with an implied “happily ever
after” once the sense of belonging has been achieved.
Chant does the same in her two earlier, more traditional
novels. LeGuin shows use the mature Ged in action – and
repeating his mistakes – in her trilogy, but this is
intended for older readers than is Elidor. Garner, in a
book written so lucidly as to be accessible to a very young
readership, gives us a protagonist who, on completion of
his heroic quest, has hardly begun to come to terms with
himself, with the negative and destructive side of his
psyche, or with his place in the family that is the chief
element in his social context. The conflict between good
and evil that is happening in Elidor comes back with Roland
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into the heart of the family; where it becomes obvious to
the analytical reader at least, that the whole thing is an
embodiment of what is going on within Roland.
Here Garner is making greater use of folktale
technique than may be immediately obvious. He takes us
back to LeGuin’s assertion that Fantasy is about, that its
actions take place in, the unconscious mind. [14] On one
level of interpretation, Elidor is Roland’s unconscious
dimension. Malebron, the maimed King who rules in this
wasteland, is the dark side of Roland. He has power, but
is crippled. He is ambivalent, the representative of the
light or good force in Elidor, yet demanding and
manipulative of the children, uncaring of their individual
needs. He is expressive of Roland’s own sense of not
belonging, of being odd, of being undervalued. (Note that
Malebron tells him that here, in Elidor, he, the youngest
and the weakest, is the strongest and most significant).
This is clear evidence that the land of Elidor and the
figure of Malebron are externalisations of the type used in
folktale and in High Fantasy, of aspects of Roland. A
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comparison may be drawn between this and the extent to
which Oliver Powell’s adventures in Khendiol are struggles
with his own subconscious, and Fendarl an embodiment of his
Shadow or dark self. [15] Garner then carries this
externalisation over into our dimension. Leaving behind
the Otherworld and its King, he next embodies Roland’s
disturbed state of mind in the peculiar happenings that
take place around him because of the presence in our world
of the treasures from Elidor. The burial of the treasure
in the garden signifies Roland’s attempts to repress his
still unresolved feelings of self-doubt and resentment.
The misbehaviour of the electrical objects in the Watson
household becomes, according to this reading, a kind of
poltergeist manifestation of Roland’s strong repressed
emotion. Garner uses this theme again at the beginning of
The owl service, and the literature of the subject suggests
that such manifestations are indeed chiefly associated with
young boys and adolescent – specifically menstruating –
girls. [16] There is a good deal in Roland of the despised
youngest son of three, who in fairy tales of the
traditional kind would be fated to come out on top in a
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blaze of glorious self-justification. [17] Less
optimistically, Garner shows how Roland’s desperate
attempts to make himself important only bring trouble on
himself and others. It is even partly true that Elidor is
saved in spite of, rather than because of, Roland’s efforts
in the second part of the story.
Back in the real world, Roland becomes passionately
enamoured of the idea of himself as the champion of Good,
the ally of Malebron, dedicated to the salvation of Elidor.
He sees himself, as it were, as the hero of a children’s
quest story, with a high destiny to fulfil. This runs up
against obdurate reality in the face of the other
children’s cynicism about or fearful rejection of the
otherworld experience. This is part of a pattern in his
life;
“’Come off it, Roland. You’re always
imagining things.’ That was a family joke.”
[18]
It is on this family tradition that the others rely.
Nicholas falls back on the idea of mass hallucination,
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David on coincidence, as explanations of their experience.
Helen simply tries to avoid the subject. This rouses
Roland in two ways. The best side of him is inspired by
the thought that he is the only one loyal to Elidor and the
only one who can protect his unheeding family. He performs
an act of self-giving love in order to break down the door
between Elidor and his home, and so save his family from
invasion and attack. [19] At this point he does achieve a
high degree of self-awareness and accepts that the
existence of this door is his responsibility, that he has a
duty to unmake it. Unfortunately, he is not mature enough
to be aware of his own mixed motives or the dark impulses
in himself. He believes he clings to Elidor for Elidor’s
sake; but partly he clings to it for reasons of self-
validation, to make himself feel important. And it is the
urge to be important in his sibling’s eyes that leads him
into an act of hubris parallel with Ged’s in releasing the
Shadow. Determined to make the other three see that he is
right, he forces them to look at the partial Evil from
Elidor. And the four children are trapped into becoming
the means by which the men can enter this world.
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“ ‘I didn’t mean it,’ said Roland. ‘Ionly wanted to show you – so you’d know.’ [20]
Ged’s sentiments exactly. And Roland, like Ged, has
allowed out into his relationships with the world and other
people, something from the darkness of his inner self which
is destructive and self-seeking. Much of this story
converges on the issue of Roland’s identity and nature and
what he should become. It is a story of the need for
maturity, the struggle for self-realisation and acceptance,
rather than of its achievement. Even the other children
are to some degree externalisations of Roland’s feelings,
of other aspects of the completed self that he has not yet
integrated. David’s common-sense; Nicholas’ attempts to
live without taking account of the inner dimensions of
experience – “I thought if we dropped this Elidor business
we’d be all right” [2] – Helen’s instinctual, loving
response to Findhorn that causes him to sing, while
Roland’s anguished cries only betray him to death; all
these have to work together at the climax, in order to save
Elidor. Again this is the technique of folktale or High
Fantasy, the collaboration of four characters standing for
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the achievement of integration within the protagonist. But
that achievement is here portrayed as makeshift and
temporary.
There has been much discussion of the ending of Elidor.
Philip describes it as “ambivalent” and speaks of “a strong
sense of loss, of anti-climax, of wrongness.” [22] Elidor
is gloriously safe; but Findhorn the Unicorn – an aspect of
Roland? – is horribly dead. Does this mean, as Philip
suggests, that Roland is irreparably damaged by his
experience, a forerunner of the next two protagonists of
Garner’s works, Gwynn and Tom? Or might it be only that
Garner has seen that no victory is without its price? That
if Roland has come to terms with his darker side, he has
also paid for it as Ged paid with his scars, Frodo with his
finger and his peace of mind, and Oliver Powell with his
innocence? Neumann too records the sense of loss that
comes with every gain [23]; and on that basis it could be
argued that this is a genuine instance of a Fantasy
adventure embodying a growth experience. No doubt it will
continue to be argued the other way. At any event, this is
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undoubtedly a book about the formation of the self-concept
and about the changes and developments necessary in the
individual if she or he is to cope adequately with
relationships and events. To that extent it puts to Roland
the traditional question; “What are you like?” Garner’s
presentation of a protagonist who cannot face up to this
question, is his original and personal use of the
traditional framework.
“The owl service” says Philip definitely and unhelpfully,
“is not a Fantasy, but a novel about human relationships, a
tripartite examination of the destructive power of
possessive love”. [24] In fact the book seems to operate on
both levels, as is typical of Low Fantasy. On the
realistic or surface level, there are novelistic techniques
employed and on the mythic level the symbolic and
externalising elements of Fantasy are present. The levels
are so skilfully blended as to be almost inextricable. On
every level, the book is a
“…… story of the damage people do eachother, not only through evil in themselves,but through the unhappy combination of
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circumstances that throws otherwise harmlesspersonalities together.” [25]
In this passage Garner is explaining that he perceived
this to be the story of the Mabinogion tale, ‘Math son of
Mathonwy’, that forms the mythic basis for the novel, when
he first saw it. [26] So The owl service could be described as
telling a contemporary story within the framework of the
myth, in order to bring out at once the timeless relevance
of the myth and the symbolic significance of the events of
"ordinary" lives. Timelessness, the sense in which the
basic realities of human life remain unaltered by time and
surface conditions, is one of Garner’s themes; Alison says
to Gwyn;
‘ “I don’t know where I am.“Yesterday”, “today”, “tomorrow” – they don’tmean anything. I feel they’re here at thesame time: waiting.”’ [27]
To the sense of the insignificance of time, Garner
adds his strong sense of the significance of place. The
Welsh valley of Llanymawddwy is a kind of reservoir for the
trapped emotions of the original three protagonists, Lleu,
Gronwy and Blodeuwedd. Huw is fatalistically aware of it,
telling Gwyn;
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“Lleu, Blodeuwedd and Gronwy Pebyre.They are the three who suffer every time, forin them the power of this valley is contained,and through them the power is loosed”. [28]
On the Fantasy level the myth is being used to express
the tendency in human love for possessiveness and jealousy
to cause damage to human personalities. The possessive
love of Arianrhod, mother of Lleu, forces him into the
relationship with Blodeuwedd, which is a failure and leads
to his death and later to that of his rival, Gronwy. On
the realistic level this is repeated in the brooding
presence offstage of Margaret, the mother of Alison, whose
dominance and need to control her daughter’s life and
relationships trigger the resentments of class, education
and sexual jealousy in Gwyn, the modern embodiment of
Gronwy. In one sense the novel could be conceived of as
the story of one maturing consciousness and its
relationship with mother-figure. Carolyn Gillies sees the
Triple Aspect Moon Goddess, the Great Mother, behind the
triangulations in all Garner’s novels up to and including
Red shift. [29] Neumann explains the various aspects of the
Goddess as expressive of the ambivalence, within the
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psyche, of the Mother archetype, particularly of the
oppositions of caring and possessiveness perceived in the
same mother-figure by every immature individual. [30] Neil
Philip notices Garner’s tendency to present a “……
narrowing, limiting image of woman as either earth mother
or world bitch ……”. [31] It is against the image of the
mother than the growing individual first begins to conceive
of its own identity, of its existence as a separate self.
[32] And Ravenna Helson, quoted by Philip, refers to The owl
service in these terms;
“The characters represent differentforces within the personality, and acompelling sense of the interrelation of theseforces permeates the story”. [33]
Philip is sceptical about this, but Gillies quotes
Garner himself as saying that in the original myth “……
Gronw is Lleu and Lleu is Gronw ……” . [34] So on the
realistic level, the story is one of three teenagers who
are each in difficult relationships with their respective
mothers; but on the mythic level, represented by the
Mabinogion theme and is intrusion into modern life, it is
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one of the male personality struggling to emerge into a
state of autonomy and integration but thwarted by its
inability to cope with the feminine – at once the feminine
side of itself and the external relationship with women
that has been conditioned and distorted by the relationship
with the actual mother and the resultant archetype of the
female within the individual. Just as in Elidor, the mythic
framework is expressive of what is going on in the
unconscious. It is not possible to fix on one of the young
protagonists as a centre, such as Roland provided, and say
that the other characters or situations are
externalisations of the inner state of that one character.
There is no whole character from which the others can be
projected. The male protagonist is wholly externalised in
Gwyn and Roger, and to a lesser extent in Huw and Clive.
The need is for integration; control; acceptance and
awareness of the powers within the self – the valley – and
how they may be channelled for good rather than for
destructiveness. The young male’s own capacity for love
may be either a giving or a taking force. Until someone is
willing to give, the pattern cannot be broken. Huw voices
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the fear that it never will, that the spirit of Blodeuwedd
will be compelled always to manifest itself in the
destructive owl embodiment rather than in the gentleness of
flowers.
“ ‘She is coming, and will use whatshe finds, and you have only hate in you.’Said Huw. ‘Always and always and always.’”[35]
Although the release of hatred does at least purge the
valley of its sickness, until next time, it cannot prevent
the repetition of the tragedy, whereby each time one of the
males involved is killed. It cannot finally heal the
valley – the inner self. Blodeuwedd “wants to be flowers”;
the female principle tends towards beneficence, towards
caring; but she needs a self-giving response to meet her
efforts. Roger provides it and breaks the pattern. Where
his original, Lleu, hid behind a stone to try to avoid the
spear of Gronwy – the symbol of the suffering consequent
upon Lleu’s own actions – Roger stands humbly before the
taunting of Gwyn, accepting by implication his own guilt
and his awareness of the consequences of his own
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destructive attitude towards Gwynn. He breaks out of what
has been a state of extreme self-absorption to reach out to
Alison and save her from destructiveness; the owl
manifestations give way to flowers.
This parallels Ged’s moment of triumph over the dark
forces in himself, in the East Reach. Garner’s treatment,
however, does not involve the drawing together of the two
sides of the self into a harmonious relationship. Gwynn is
left, hurt and desolate, as Findhorn the unicorn was left
bleeding to death as the negative side of Roland’s
achievement in self-development. In Garner, the cost of
growth is always tremendous pain, damage that can never
truly be healed. Something dies for the good of something
else, so that something else in the psyche can live. The
image is perhaps more of overcoming and striving to leave
behind what is too immature to be of service to the new
self, than one of integration of all the elements of the
self. Here one thinks of Gillies’ reference to the death
of the surrogate King, or dark twin. [36] It is as if the
dark side must suffer and die as a punishment, an expiation
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of guilt. This holds true for the sacrifice of Oliver in
Red moon and Black Mountain; the death of Gollum in The Lord of the
Rings; the death of Findhorn and the collapse of Gwyn into
hatred and bitterness, in Garner. [37] While the Taoist
concept of the balance leads LeGuin to posit the
possibility of harmony within the self, the Judaeo-
Christian tradition has produced more images of self-
control and self-doubt. Nevertheless, even Garner’s
tragically painful image of triumph won at great cost,
still sounds a note of victory; Roger’s self-conquest is
allowed to result in the moving beauty of the end of The owl
service;
“And the room was full of petals fromskylight and rafter, and all about them afragrance, and petals, flowers falling, broom,meadowsweet, falling, flowers of the oak.”[38]
Patterns in human behaviour can be broken through, and
true individual awareness may come. Roger, impelled by
love for Alison, is moved to accept responsibility and duty
towards others. He has begun to grow up; he has achieved
his quest.
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Of Red shift, Neil Philip says;
“The book’s basic premise is that themost important, and the most difficult task inlife is the establishment of loving contactbetween two people, the breaking down ofbarriers ……. This private, internal struggle……” [39]
This is quite true, and renders the Fantasy level of
the book more important than it might appear at first
glance. Firstly, the theme of the struggle of the young
male for identity, against the backdrop of the tension
between himself and his mother, is carried over into this
book from The owl service and is very aptly expressed in the
‘Tam Lin’ theme of the beloved young man enthralled by the
Queen of Elfland. The jealous “queen o’ Fairies” [39] is
one embodiment of the possessive mother, as is Tom’s mother
on the realistic level of the story. Secondly, the love-
theme is itself important; Bettelheim explains the
significance of the marriage with which so many traditional
fairy-tales end;
“All the stories considered so farconvey that if one wishes to gain selfhood,achieve integrity, and secure one’s identity,difficult developments must be undergone:hardships suffered, dangers met, victories
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won. Only in this way can one become masterof one’s fate and win one’s kingdom. Whathappens to the heroes and heroines in fairytales can be likened – and has been compared –to initiation rites which the novice entersnaïve and unformed, and which dismiss him attheir end on a higher level of existenceundreamed of at the start of this sacredvoyage through which he gains his reward orsalvation. Having truly become himself, thehero or heroine has become worthy of beingloved.
But meritorious as such self-development is, and while it may have oursole, it is still not enough for happiness.For this, one must go beyond one’s isolationand form a bond with the other. On howeverhigh a plane his life may proceed, the Iwithout the Thou lives a lonely existence.The happy endings to fairy-tales, in which thehero is united to his life’s partner, tellthis much. But they do not tell what theindividual must do to transcend his isolationafter he has won his selfhood. …… Merely beingoneself is not enough …… One becomes acomplete human being who has achieved all hispotentialities only if, in addition to beingoneself, one is at the same time able andhappy to be oneself with another. To achievethis state involves the deepest layers of ourpersonality. Like any transmutation whichtouches our innermost being, it has dangerswhich must be met with courage and presentsproblems which must be mastered. The messageof these fairy stories is that we must give upchildish attitudes and achieve mature ones ifwe wish to establish that intimate bond withthe other ……” [41]
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I have quoted this at length because of what it has to
say in confirmation of the trends within Fantasy writing
that I have been trying to illustrate in all four author
studies; and specifically because of what it has to say
about Tom and Jan in Red shift. Yo some degree the lover
trapped in Elfland, needing to be rescued by his beloved is
the over-protected boy with the dominant mother. This time
the protagonist is asked to prove his maturity by his
attitude to his beloved; and the modern time-strand of the
story, he fails, crippled by self-pity and anger, punishing
Jan for what the mother has done to him. Macey and Thomas,
in the earlier time-levels, have a greater respect for the
feminine and for their loved ones. This is signified by
both of them handling the votive axe with the respect
demanded by the woman, while Tom disposes of it without any
idea that he will hurt Jan by doing so. Also, Macey
refrains from sexually abusing the Maiden, and so survives
where his comrades die; while Thomas overcomes resentment
of his namesake’s rape of Margery to such an extent that he
is even able to welcome the idea that she may be pregnant
with Venables’ child. Tom can only see Jan’s brief affair
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with another man as an offence against himself. Loyalty to
their women rescues the two earlier men; self-absorption
leaves Tom trapped in his enchanted state, a sort of manic-
depressive condition which stands for enchantment in
Elfland as do Macey’s rages and Tomas’s fits. Tom blames
Jan for telling her parents about this; but it could be
argued that like Blodeuwedd, “She wants to be flowers”; it
is Tom’s bitterness that makes him see her as owls.
It is worth mentioning one dimension that Bettelheim
does not cover; namely that the union between a male and a
female character in a folk tale may on one level stand for
the reconciliation with the opposite principle within the
individual; anima in the male and animus in the female.
However, successful integration on this level and
successful relationships are inextricably bound up, and
both strands of meaning must be present in any folk-tale or
Fantasy which, like Red shift, is concerned to explore this
aspect of maturation.
In Red shift Garner is undoubtedly leaving behind the
traditional techniques of Low Fantasy; yet they are still
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there in a residual form, and still operating powerfully on
some levels. Philip’s concluding remarks on Garner might
stand usefully as concluding remarks on the other authors
and works we have studied, confirming LeGuins’ comments
quoted on page 38 above. [42]
“He is concerned with the traversal ofboundaries within the self, with therefinement of consciousness. Through themanipulation of history, of the myths whichare man’s [sic] spiritual history and of themetaphysics of time and space he enlarges ourunderstanding of the human condition ……Essentially, he seeks in his work to reconcile‘the natural forces in the world and thehidden forces in ourselves’” [43]
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Notes and references; Chapter 9; Alan Garner
1. The beginning place is the American title of a novel by
Ursula LeGuin which explores the theme of finding an
identity and employs the motif of a special magical place
lying on the borders of our world and another dimension.
(Threshold (London: Gollancz, 1980)). The phrase is used
here to indicate the importance in Garner’s world-
picture of the locality in which an individual grows up
and the effect upon the individual of the accumulated
associations and forces held within the place. “The deeps
of time” is an expression repeatedly used by Tolkien
to convey an impression of the immensity of time that may
have passed between events; here it is used to indicate
Garner’s feeling that time is in some senses irrelevant;
that the deeps of Time are all simultaneously present to an
individual in a particular location. One example is
in; J. R. R. Tolkien, The two towers 2nd Edition (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1966) p 115. “Telchar first
wrought it in the deeps of time.”
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2. Neil Philip, A fine anger; a critical introduction to the works of Alan
Garner (London: Collins, 1981). (Hereafter referred to
as A fine anger).
3. Neil Philip, A fine anger, p7-8.
4. Neil Philip, A fine anger, p 21.
5. Neil Philip, A fine anger, p 150.
6. Folk-tale collections edited by Alan Garner; The Hamish
Hamilton book of goblins (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969).
The guizer; a book of fools (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975).
Alan Garner’s fairy-tales of gold (London: Collins, 1980).
(Omnibus edition of four tales originally published
separately by Collins in 1979.)
The lad of the gad (London: Collins, 1980).
7. Original prose fiction published by Alan Garner between
1960 and 1979;
The weirdstone of Brisangamen (London: Collins, 1960).
The moon of Gomrath (London: Collins, 1963).
Elidor (London: Collins, 1965)
The owl service (London: Collins, 1967)
Red Shift (London: Collins, 1973)
The stone book (London: Collins, 1976)
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Tom Fobble’s Day (London: Collins, 1977)
Granny Reardun (London: Collins, 1977)
The Aimer Gate (London: Collins, 1978)
8. Neil Philip, A fine anger p 41-42. Quoting from; Alan
Garner ‘Coming to terms’, Children’s literature in
education 2, July 1970, p 15-29.
9. Neil Philip, A Fine Anger, p141.
10. Neil Philip, A Fine Anger p 21.
11. Neil Philip, A Fine Anger, p 25
12. Neil Philip, A Fine Anger, p 62.
13. Childe Roland in; Joseph Jacobs, English fairy tales
(London: Bodley Head, 1968) p 74-99 and p 303-309.
14. Ursula K LeGuin, ‘Fantasy, like poetry, speaks the
language of the night’ World, 21st November, 1976.
15. Joy Chant, Red moon and black mountain (London: George
Allen and Unwin, 1970).
16. Benjamin B Wolman (editor) Handbook of parapsychology
(New York: Van Nostrand Rheinhold, 1977) p 385-387.
17. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment; the meaning
and importance of fairy- tales (London: Thames and Hudson,
1976). Hereafter referred to as The uses of
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enchantment. Page references to the paperback edition
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978). p 75-78.
18. Alan Garner, Elidor, p127. Page references to the
paperback edition (London: Collins, 1974).
19. Alan Garner, Elidor, p 106.
20. Alan Garner, Elidor, p 127.
21. Alan Garner, Elidor, p 129.
22. Neil Philip, A fine anger, p 47.
23. Erich Neumann, The great mother; an analysis of the
archetype 2nd Edition (Princeton : Princeton University
Press, 1972) p 66-67 – deprivation as part of the
maternal function of the female and the resultant sense
of loss involved in any growth experience.
24. Neil Philip, A fine anger, p 72.
25. Carolyn Gillies, ‘possession and structure in the
novels of Alan Garner’ Children’s literature in education
18 (Fall 1975) 107-117. Quotation from; Alan Garner,
‘A bit more practice’ Times literary supplement children’s
books (June 6th, 1968) 577-578.
P a g e | 290
26. T Ellis and J Lloyd (editors), The Mabinogion (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1929) Math son of Mathonwy is
on p 100-132 of Vol I.
27. Alan Garner, The owl service, p 68. Page references to
the paperback edition (London: Collins, 1973).
28. Alan Garner, The owl services, p 72.
29. Carolyn Gillies, ‘Possession and structure in the
novels of Alan Garner’, p 110- 111.
30. Erich Neumann, The great mother; an analysis of the
archetype, Chapter 3. This chapter explains how the two
aspects of the female - nurturing and transformative –
are perceived by the male as positive and negative and set
up ambivalence in the male reaction to the female
principle.
31. Neil Philip, A fine anger, p 154.
32. Bruno Bettelheim, The empty fortress; infantile autism
and the growth of the self (New York: Collier Macmillan,
1967). Page reference to the paperback edition (New
York: The free press, 1972) p 37.
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33. Ravenna Helson, ‘Through the pages of children’s books’
Psychology Today 7 (November 1973) 107-117. Cited in;
Neil Philip, A fine anger p 74.
34. Carolyn Gillies, ‘Possession and structure in the
novels of Alan Garner’, p 114. Quoting from; Alan
Garner ‘Coming to terms’.
35. Alan Garner, The owl service, p 154.
36. Carolyn Gillies, ‘Possession and structure in the
novels of Alan Garner’, p 115. For the king of the Wood
see; James G Frazer, The golden bough; a study in
magic and religion, abridged edition (London:
Macmillan, 1922), especially chapters I, XXIV, and XXV.
Also a novel on the surrogate theme; Marion Campbell, The
dark twin (London: Turnstone, 1973).
37. Oliver’s sacrifice is in; Joy Chant, Red mood and black
mountain, the end of the house of Kendreth (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1970). Chapters 30 and 31.
The death of Gollum is in; J. R. R. Tolkien, The return
of the King, being the third part of the Lord of the Rings
2nd Edition (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966). P 224.
Findhorn’s heath – Alan Garner, Elidor, p 158-159.
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Gwyn’s failure – Alan Garner, The owl service, p 152-
155.
38. Alan Garner, The owl service, p 156.
39. Neil Philip, A fine anger, p88.
40. Tam Lin in; Helen Gardner (editor), The new Oxford book
of English verse, 1250-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1972) p 356-361.
41. Bruno Bettelheim, The uses of enchantment, p 278-279.
42. See note 14 above.
43. Neil Philip, A fine anger, p 156.
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Conclusions
“Any poetry which aims at being a
clarification of life, must concern itself
with two questions ….. Who am I? …… Whom ought
I to become?” [1]
This thesis has sought to demonstrate, by examination
of relevant literary theory and by study of selected
examples, that one of the chief concerns of Fantasy fiction
is to provide clarification of life, particularly with
regard to those questions of actual and potential identity
and achievement that Auden cites here. The study has shown
that the adventures of the protagonists of Fantasy present
externalised and concretized parallels for the internal
journey and struggle of the growing individual. So the
function of Fantasy as fiction is similar to that of the
realistic mode; it is in technique and method that the two
differ. Both present to the reader observations upon human
behaviour, precedents, and models of possibilities that
might be realised as the individual grows. But while
realistic fiction seeks to present fictional worlds that
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resemble as closely as possible the world that readers
objectively experience in their own lives, or know to exist
within the framework of the objective world, Fantasy is
concerned to present directly to the reader the events and
conditions of the internal world. By means of symbols and
motifs derived from myth, legend and folklore it seeks to
allow the reader some insight into the psychological and/or
spiritual nature of humanity. It tends to involve some
emphasis on the idea that self-development is a duty and a
responsibility for every person, and one key symbol for
this is the motif of commitment, of positive response to a
challenge, especially where that challenge involves
difficulty for the protagonist and benefit for others. The
fact of involvement in such action is some kind of proof or
outward sign of maturity;
“Look if you like, but you will stillhave to leap.” [2]
Auden’s assertion here is almost a threat, implying
that one will somehow be compelled to plunge into
independent action. Yet it also carries some of the
feeling that comes to Fantasy protagonists, of a deep
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relief at the prospect of action, even of dangerous action.
Involvement matters; it is important as a sign that one is
capable of responsible action. It shows that one is
growing up.
The four authors studied have all made use of the
Fantasy mode to convey some of their insights into the
processes of maturation and individuation in human beings.
LeGuin reveals through the symbolism of magic, the
incontrovertible need for self-discipline and self-control,
through deep self-knowledge. Garner reveals the struggle
for the sense of identity, against the background of the
ancestral place and its associations, and against the
sometimes constrictive love of the mother-figure. Chant
shows the extent to which fulfilling one’s role in society
can be expressive of the needs and urges of the self, and
how far it may restrict people. Curry shows how the
feeling of belonging in a particular place and with
particular people can express a person’s sense of what he
or she is like and what things in life are most important
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to them. None of these four allows escapism; all remain
true to this idea;
“…… successful fantasy uses the“other” to explore the familiar, not to escapefrom it. And to do that well requires a rigidgrip on the familiar, so that the distortionintroduced by the fantasy element involves anextension, not a diminution of understanding.”[3]
It is the possibility of this extension of
understanding that underlies the claim made for Fantasy
fiction by its devotees; that it may have a beneficial, not
a deleterious effect, upon its young readers. One final
quotation will help to underline the nature of the choice
faced both by the Fantasy protagonist and by the individual
on the path towards individuation;
“How will you look and what will you do when the basaltTombs of the sorcerers shatterAnd the guardian megalopodsCome after you pitter-patter?How will you answer when from their qualming springThe immortal nymphs fly shrieking,And out of the open skyThe pantocratic riddle breaks –“Who are you and why?”
For when in a carol under the apple-treeThe reborn featly dance
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There will also, Fortunatus,Be those who refused their chance ……”. [4]
The refusal Auden describes is the restricting of life
to narrow limits and goals, which in many results from
circumstance, but in some results from fear on the part of
the individual of the effort and possible pain involved in
evolving onto a higher level of consciousness. Yet
increasingly, self-confident awareness of one’s inner
identity is important in a society whose traditional
economic and social structures are shifting to such an
extent that many of the old external pegs on which an
identity and a sense of purpose could be hung – occupation,
position within the family – are disappearing. It becomes
increasingly important to know who you are, and why. The
achievement of the sense of self depends on the combination
of a great many factors, and the reading of fiction in a
creative and constructive manner is, obviously, only one
such factor, and only for some individuals. Yet that key
symbol of commitment and involvement, taken from Fantasy
fiction, still holds much of the truth about the
predicament of the human soul seeking for purpose and
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direction; for if we are not willing to take the Ring,
whatever form it takes in our own lives, there may be very
little hope of our ever finding the way.
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Notes and references; Conclusion
1. W H Auden, The dyer’s hand (London: Faber, 1963) p
345.
2. W H Auden ‘Leap before you look’ in Collected shorter
poems (London: Faber, 1966) p 200.
3. Neil Philip ‘Fantasy; double cream or instant whip?’
Signal 35 (May 1981) 83-90.
4. W H Auden ‘Under Sirius’ in; Collected shorter poems p
243.
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Bibliography
This is divided into two main sections: fiction, which
here includes poetry, drama, folklore, legend and
mythology; and non-fiction, being works of criticism or of
general background interest. Each section is subdivided
into works of primary importance, and those of secondary
importance. Where a work has not been treated in the text,
a brief note explains its inclusion in the bibliography,
except in cases where the title is self-explanatory.
Arrangement is by alphabetical order of author’s surname,
with the surname of the editor or the first word of the
title substituted where appropriate. Within each author
heading, works are arranged in chronological order of
publication.
Section 1: Fiction
A) Primary Material
CHANT Joy;Red moon and black mountain; the end of the house of Kendreth (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970).
The grey mane of morning (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1977).
P a g e | 301
When Voiha wakes(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983)
CURRY, Jane Louise;The change child(London: Dobson, 1970).
Over the sea’s edge(London: Longmans, 1970).
The watchers (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1975).
GARNER, Alan;Elidor(London: Collins, 1974).
The owl service (London: Collins, 1967).
Red shift (London: Collins, 1973)
Le GUIN, Ursula Kroeber;A wizard of Earthsea (London: Gollancz, 1971).
The tombs of Atuan (London: Gollancz, 1972).
The farthest shore (London: Gollancz, 1973).
The wind’s twelve quarters; short stories (London: Gollancz, 1976)
P a g e | 303
B) Secondary material
ANDERSEN, Hans Christian;Complete fairy tales and stories, translated by Erik Christian
Haugaard (London: Gollancz, 1974).
AUDEN, W H;Collected shorter poems (London: Faber, 1966).
De BRUNHOFF, Joan;Babar the Elephant (London: Methuen, 1934).
CAMERON, Ann;Daughters of Copper Woman (Vancouver: Press Gang Publishing, 1981).
CAMPBELL, Marion; The dark twin (London: Turnstone, 1973)
CARROLL, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson); Alice’s adventures in Wonderland (London: MacMillan, 1865 (dated 1866).
Through the looking-glass and what Alice found there (London: MacMillan, 1871 [dated 1872]).
CHANT, Joy;The Starborn (short story) in; Maxim Jakobowski (Editor) Lands of never: an anthology of modern fantasy (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983).
COOPER, Susan;Over sea, under stone (London: Cape, 1965).Second edition (London: Chatto and Windus, 1974)
The dark is rising
P a g e | 304
(London: Chatto and Windus,
Greenwitch(London: Chatto and Windus, 1975).
Silver on the tree (London: Chatto and Windus, 1975).
Seaward (London: The Bodley Head, 1983).
CURRY, Jane Louise;Down from the lonely mountain;California Indian tales (London, Dobson 1868).
Beneath the hill (London: Dobson, 1968).
The sleepers (London: Dobson, 1970).
The daybreakers, (London: Longmans, 1970).
The housenapper (London: Longmans, 1971). American title Mindy’s
mysterious miniature (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970).
The ice ghosts mystery (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1972).
The lost farm (London: Longmans, 1974).
The magical cupboard (New York: Atheneum Press, 1975).
Parsley Sage, Rosemary and time
P a g e | 305
(New York: Atheneum Press, 1975).
Poor Tom’s ghost (Harmondsworth : Kestrel, 1977).
The Bassumtyte treasure (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1978).
The birdstones (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1978).
Ghost lane (New York: Atheneum Press, 1979).
The wolves of Aarn (New York: Atheneum Press, 1981).
DICKINSON, William Croft;Borrobil (London: Croft, 1944).
DONALDSON, Stephen;The chronicles of Thomas Covenant the unbeliever (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1977
- ).
ELLIS, T and LLOYD J. (Editors)The Mabinogion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1929).
GARNER, Alan;The weirdstone of Brisangamen (London: Collins, 1960).
The moon of Gomrath (London: Collins, 1963).
The Hamish Hamilton book of goblins (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969).
The guizer; a book of fools
P a g e | 306
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975).
Tom Fobble’s day (London: Collins, 1975).
The stone book (London: Collins, 1976)
Granny Reardun (London: Collins, 1977).
The aimer gate (London: Collins, 1978).
Fairytales of gold (London: Collins, 1980).
The lad of the gad (London: Collins, 1980).
GRIMM, Jacob and GRIMM, Wilhelm;The complete Grimm’s fairy-tales 2nd Edition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975).
JACOBS, Joseph;English fairy-tales (London: The Bodley Head, 1968).
JAMES, Henry;The turn of the screw (New York: 1898).
KLAEBER, Fr.;Beowulf 3rd Edition (Boston: D C Heath and Co, 1950).
LE GUIN, Ursula Kroeber;Rocannon’s World (New York: Ace Books, 1966).
P a g e | 307
Planet of exile (New York: Ace Books, 1966).
City of illusions (Berkeley: Parnassus Press, 1967).
The left hand of darkness (New York: Walker, 1969).
The lathe of heaven (New York: Scribner, 1971).
The dispossessed (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).
Wild Angels: poems (New York: Capra Press, 1975).
The word for world is forest (New York: Berkeley-Putnam, 1976).
Orsinian tales (London: Gollancz, 1977).
Leese Webster (picture book) (New York: Atheneum Press, 1979).
A very long way from anywhere else (London: Heinemann Educational, 1979). American title Very far away from anywhere else.
Malafrena (London: Gollancz, 1980).
Threshold (London: Gollancz, 1980).American title The beginning place (New York: Harper and Row, 1980).
White Donkey (short story) in; Triquarterly 49 (Fall, 1980) 259-261.
Hard words and other poems
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(New York: Harper and Row, 1981).
The compass rose; short stories (New York: Harper and Row, 1982).
The eye of the heron; stories by Ursula K LeGuin and others(London: Gollancz, 1983).
LE GUIN, Ursula Kroeber (Editor);Nebula Award Stories 11 (London: Gollancz, 1976).
LE GUIN, Ursula Kroeber and KIDD, Virginia (Editors);Interfaces (New York: Eerdmans, 1980).
LEWIS, Clive Staples;Out of the silent planet (London: John Lane and Bodley Head, 1938).
Perelandra (London: John Lane and Bodley Head, 1943).
That hideous strength (London: John Lane and Bodley Head, 1945).
The lion, the witch and the wardrobe (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1950).
Prince Caspian; the return to Narnia (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1951).
The voyage of the Dawn Treader (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1952).
The silver chair (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1953).
The horse and his boy (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1954).
P a g e | 309
The magician’s nephew (London: The Bodley Head, 1955).
The last battle(London: the Bodley Head, 1956).
MALORY, Thomas;Works, edited by Eugene Vinaver (London: Oxford University Press, 1954).
GARDNER, Helen (Editor);New Oxford Book of English verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972).
RUSKIN, John;The King of the golden river 2nd Edition, (London , 1851).
SANDARS, N K (Editor);The epic of Gilgamesh (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964).
SANDS, Donald B (Editor);Middle English verse romances (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966).
SHAKESPEARE, William;Complete Works (London: Oxford University Press, 1905 (Reset 1943)).
SOUTHEY, Robert;Poems, edited by Maurice H Fitzgerald (London: Oxford University Press, 1909). (Southey’s poem Madoc was one of Curry’s sources for the “history” of Cibotlan in her Celtic/Pre-Columbian series of novels).
TOLKIEN, John Ronald Reuel;The hobbit; or, there and back again
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(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937). 2nd (Revised) Edition, 1951.
The fellowship of the Ring; being the first part of the Lord of the Rings (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1954).
The two towers; being the second part of the Lord of the Rings
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1954).
The return of the King; being the third part of the Lord of the Rings (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955).
The adventures of Tom Bombadil; and other verses from The Red Book(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962).
Tree and Leaf (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964). (Contains the long essay On fairy stories).
Smith of Wootton Major (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967).
The Silmarillion (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1977).
TOLKIEN, J. R. R. and GORDON, E V (Editors);Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2nd Edition revised by
Norman Davis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
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Section 2 – Non-Fiction
A) Primary Material
ALDERLEY EDGE, its neighbourhood, and the legend of the wizard (Manchester: E J Marten, 1972). (One of Garner’s sources for his first two novels).
AUDEN, W H;‘Good and evil in The Lord of the Rings’, Critical Quarterly10 (Spring/Summer, 1968) p 374-375.
BENTON, Michael; ‘Detective imagination’, Children’s Literature in Education 13 (1974) p 5-12.
BETTELHEIM, Bruno;The empty fortress: infantile autism and the birth of the self (New York: The Free Press, 1972).
The uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy-tales (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976.
BISKIN, Donald and KOSKISSION, Kenneth;‘Moral development through children’s literature’, Elementary School Journal 75 (December, 1974) p 152-157.
BRANHAM, R J;‘Principles of the imaginary milieu’, Extrapolation 21 (Winter, 1980) p 328-337
BREWER, Derek;‘The interpretation of dream, folktale and Romance
with special reference to Sir Gawain and the Greene Knight’, Bulletin of the Modern Language Society 4, LXVII (1976).
Symbolic Stories(Ipswich: D S Brewer, 1980).
BROOKE-ROSE, Christine;
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A rhetoric of the unreal: studies in narrative and structure, especially of the fantastic
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
CARPENTER, Humphrey;J. R. R. Tolkien; a biography (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1977).
The Inklings; C S Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and their friends(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978).
CHAMBERS, Aidan;‘The reader in the book; notes from work in progress’,Signal 22 (May, 1977) p 64-67.
CHANT, Joy;‘Niggle and Numenor’, Children’s literature in education 19 (Winter, 1975) p 161-171.
CHUANG TZU;Complete works, translated by Burton Watson (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1968)(Named by LeGuin on a postcard to the author as her most important Taoist source).
CLISSOLD, Stephen;The seven cities of Cibola (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1961). (One of Curry’s sources for “Cibotlan”).
CRESSWELL, Helen;‘If it’s someone from Porlock, don’t answer the door’,Children’s literature in Education 4 (March, 1971) p 32-40.
CURRY, Jane Louise;Letter to author, 22nd January, 1978.
DAICHES, David;Critical approaches to literature (London: Longmans, 1956).
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DEACON, Richard; Madoc and the discovery of America (London: Muller, 1967).
DE BOLT, Joe (Editor)Ursula K LeGuin: Voyager to inner lands and outer space (New York: Kennikat Press, 1979).
EXTRAPOLATION 20 (Fall, 1980).
GARNER, Alan;‘A bit more practice’ Times Literary Supplement (June 6th, 1968) p 577-578.
‘Coming to terms’ Children’s literature in education 2 (July, 1970) p 15-29.
GILLIES, Caroline;‘Possession and structure in the novels of Alan
Garner’ Children’s literature in education 18 (Fall, 1975) p 107-117.
HARDING, D W;‘Psychological processes in the reading of fiction’ British Journal of Aesthetics Vol 2, no 2 (1962) p 133-147.
HARDY, Barbara;Tellers and listeners; the narrative imagination (London: The Athlone Press, 1975).
HELSON, Ravenna;‘Through the pages of children’s books’ Psychology today 7 (November, 1973) p 107-117.
HILL, Donald M;Lecture on Mediaeval Literature given at Bedford
College, Autumn Term, 1969.
HUGHES, Red;‘Myth and education’
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Children’s literature in Education 1 (March, 1970) p 55-70.
INGLIS, Fred;The promise of happiness; value and meaning in children’s fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
IRWIN, W R;The game of the impossible; a rhetoric of fantasy (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1976).
JACKSON, Rosemary;Fantasy; the literature of subversion (London: Methuen, 1981).
KIMMEL, Eric;‘Can children’s books change children’s values?’Educational Leadership 28 (November, 1970) p 209-211.
LE GUIN, Ursula Kroeber;‘Creative spirit and children’s literature’Wilson Library Bulletin 53, no 2 (October, 1978) p 166-169.
‘Dreams must explain themselves’Signal 19 (January 1976) p 3-11.
LE GUIN, Ursula Kroeber;‘Fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the
night’World (21st November, 1966). (Reprinted in The Language of the Night – see below).
LE GUIN, Ursula Kroeber;The language of the night; essays on Fantasy and science fiction (New York: G P Putnam’s Sons, 1980).
LEWIS, Clive Staples;Of other worlds; essays and stories (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1966).
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LEWIS, Roger;‘Fiction and the imagination’Children’s literature in education 19 (Winter, 1975) p 172-178.
LIVELY, Penelope;‘Children and memory’Hornbook XLIX No 4 (August 1973) p 400-407.
MACDONALD, George;‘The fantastic imagination’Signal 16 (January, 1975) p 26-32. (First published in 1908 as the preface to an Americanedition of Dealings with the fairies. Reprinted in Signal from MacDonald’s collection of essays A dish of orts; chiefly papers on the imagination and on Shakespeare (Edwin Dalton, 1908).
MCNEILL, Janet;‘Enter fairies through a hole in the hedge’ Junior Bookshelf 31 (February, 1967) p 23-27.
MANLOVE, C N;‘Conservatism in the fantasy of LeGuin’Extrapolation 21 (Fall, 1980) p 287-297.
MANLOVE, C N;Modern fantasy, five studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
MOBLEY, Jane;‘Towards a definition of fantasy fiction’Extrapolation 15 (May, 1974) p 117-128.
MONTGOMERY, Marion;‘Prophetic poet and the loss of Middle-Earth’Georgia Review (Spring, 1979) p 66-83.
NEUMANN, Erich; The great mother; an analysis of the archetype (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955).
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NEW LAROUSSE Encyclopaedia of mythology (London: Hamlyn, 1968).
PHILIP, Neil:A fine anger: a critical introduction to the works of Alan Garner (London: Collins, 1981).
PHILIP, Neil;‘Fantasy: double cream or instant whip?’Signal 35 (May, 1981).
PLATO; The collected dialoguesEdited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961).
RABIN, Eric; The fantastic in literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
RAGLAN (Fitzroy Richard Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan) The hero of tradition (London: The Folklore Society, 1934). (Reprinted in; Alan Dundes The study of folklore (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965)).
STOCKHOLDER, Katherine;‘Fictions, phantasies and reality; a re-evaluation’Literature and psychology 26, no 1 (1976) p 17-30.
TOLKIEN, J. R. R.On fairy-stories in Essays presented to Charles Williams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947). Also in Tree and Leaf (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964). (Originally an Andrew Lang Lecture delivered in shorter form at the university of St Andrews in 1938).
TODOROV, Tzvetan;The fantastic: a structural approach to a literary genre
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(Cleveland/London: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1973).
TUCKER, Nicholas;The child and the book: psychological and literary exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
TYMN, Marshall B, ZAHORSKI, KENNETH J and BOYER, Robert H;Fantasy Literature; a core collection and reference guide (New York/London: Bowker, 1979).
WILSON, Ann;Magical thought in creative writing: the distinctive roles of fantasy and imagination in fiction (Stroud, Gloucestershire: The Thimble Press, 1983).
WILSON, Edmund;‘Oo, those awful orcs’The Nation(April 14th, 1953) p 312-314.
ZIOLKOWSKI, Theodore;‘Otherworlds; fantasy and the fantastic’Sewanee Review 86 (Winter, 1978) p 121-129.
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B) Secondary Material
ASHE, Geoffrey;Camelot and the vision of Albion (London: Heinemann, 1971). (Included for its references to the Wasteland and the maimed King – p 115-117 – which are among Garner’s sources for Elidor).
AUDEN, W H;The dyer’s hand (London: Faber, 1963). (Some of the essays in this book, particularly ‘The poet and the city’, consider the question of the function of poetry, and by extension that of fiction, in other people’s lives).
Letter to the author, December 5th, 1969.
CAMERON, Eleanor;The green and burning tree; on the writing and enjoyment of children’s
books (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Co, 1962).
CHANT, Joy; ‘Attracting the reader’Times Literary Supplement 4042 (September 19th, 1980) 1028.
Fantasy and allegory in literature for young readers (College of Librarianship, Wales, 1971).
The high kings; Arthur’s Celtic ancestors (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984).
BEER, Rudiger RobertUnicorn; myth and reality (New York: Mason/Charter, 1977).
COOK, Roger;The tree of life; image for the cosmos (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974).
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CROSSLEY-HOLLAND, Kevin;The Faber book of northern legends (London: Faber, 1971).
CROUCH, Marcus;The Nesbit tradition; the children’s novel in Britain,
1940-1970 (London: Benn, 1972).
CURRY, Jane Louise;‘On the elvish craft’Signal 2 (May, 1970) p 42-49.
DARTON, F J Harvey;Children’s books in England 3rd Edition revised by Brian
Alderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). (First
published in 1932).
DORSON, Richard M;The British folklorists; a history (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968).
ELIADE, Mircea;The myth of the eternal return (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). (Philip cites this as relevant to Garner’s theme of
timelessness).
EVANS, J M;Paradise Lost and the Genesis tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968).
EYRE, Frank;British children’s books in the Twentieth Century (London: Longmans, 1971).
FISHER, Marjorie;
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Intent upon reading; a critical appraisal of modern fiction for children 2nd Edition (Leicester: Brockhampton Press, 1964).
FRAZER, James George;The golden bough, Abridged edition (London: MacMillan, 1957).
GOOD NEWS BIBLE; today’s English version (London: The Bible Societies/Collins, 1976).
GRAVES, Robert;The white Goddess; a historical grammar of poetic myth (London: Faber, 1948).
HILDICK, Wallace;Children and fiction; a critical study in depth of the artistic and psychological factors involved in writing fiction for and about children (London: Evans Brothers Ltd, 1970).
HOGARTH, Peter; with Val Cleary;Dragons (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979).
JOHNSON, Samuel;Works of Samuel Johnson LL D (London: Hawkins, 1787).
LYNN, Ruth Nadelman;Fantasy for children: an annotated checklist (New York/London: Bowker, 1979).
MANLOVE, C N;The impulse of fantasy literature (Kent State University Press, 1983).
METHODIST Hymnbook(London: Methodist Publishing House, 1975).
NEEDHAM, Joseph;Science and civilisation in China, 5 Volumes, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954-1973).
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SMITH, G Elliott;The evolution of the dragon (Manchester: Longmans Green, 1911).
THWAITE, Mary;From primer to pleasure: an introduction to the history of children’s books in England, from the invention of printing to 1900 (London: The Library Association, 1963).
TOWNSEND, John Rowe;A sense of story: essays on contemporary writers for children (London: Longmans, 1971).
WATERS, Frank;The book of the Hopi (New York: Viking press, 1963).
WEIL, Simone;La personne et la sacré; écrits de Londres (Privately printed, 1951).
WESTON, Jessie L;From ritual to Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920) and (Bath: Chivers Press, 1980).(A study of the Grail Legend that includes details of the Wasteland and the maimed King – see Gardner, Elidor).
WHITELOCK, Dorothy (Editor);Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon reader 14th Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
WILSON, Anne;Traditional Romance and tale; how stories mean (Ipswich: D S Brewer, 1976).
WOLMAN, Benjamin B;