tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post3351922476866011638..comments2024-03-28T21:32:26.550+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: What to say to kids about fantasyBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-31174436456182199822011-11-09T04:04:48.205+00:002011-11-09T04:04:48.205+00:00Reading "Leaf by Niggle" and "Smith...Reading "Leaf by Niggle" and "Smith of Wooton Major" would provide a good grounding in the theoretical basis behind Tolkien's work and fantasy more generally. <br /><br />However, these works are less interesting in themselves than his major creations. That being said, there is probably no better way to answer the questions of what fantasy is supposed to be and what is its nature/goal.JRRT Readernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-57772015509912652652011-11-05T00:11:51.151+00:002011-11-05T00:11:51.151+00:00Sometimes I think the purpose of a work like the L...Sometimes I think the purpose of a work like the Lord of the Rings is to keep some small ember burning deep in the ashes, until the current storm has passed, so that the great fire may be lit again one day.<br /><br />It has worked this way in my own life...Danielhttp://outofsleep.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-21587622145971763272011-11-04T23:29:39.947+00:002011-11-04T23:29:39.947+00:00the scene in PRINCE CASPIAN where the green witch,...<i>the scene in PRINCE CASPIAN where the green witch, usurper of an underground world, convinces by means of a morphine fume Puddleglum and the children that the surface world is illusion</i><br /><br />Not everyone is a mystic.<br /><br />But if you are a mystic, and you are trying to explain your outlook to a non-mystic, quoting that scene often helps.<br /><br />Aside from spiritual mysticism, of course, there are psychic phenomena. <br /><br />I am not sure if our host, Dr. Charlton, is willing to concede that paranormal phenomena exist. I don't know his opinion of the various peer-reviewed journals in which parapsychologists publish.<br /><br />For example, the SSE has put many copies of their journal online.<br /><br />http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/articles.html<br /><br />If parapsychology is real, then children who enthuse about The Lord of the Rings might be yearning for practical, down-to-earth careers as parapsychologists.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-52191739131478686472011-11-04T23:23:37.534+00:002011-11-04T23:23:37.534+00:00Very nice essay!
This expresses something I have ...Very nice essay!<br /><br />This expresses something I have felt for a long time, but had trouble explaining it myself. So thank you for doing such a wonderful job with this essay!<br /><br />I also really like how you point out that even the fantasy characters of LOTR didn't think their world was enough for them! Very good point!<br /><br />@John Wright<br />I see you have made your way to this blog, it's certainly worth your time! Quick comment though, the Narnia tale you were referring to is not "Prince Caspian", but "The Silver Chair". And I clicked on your name and it took me to an old blog of yours that I didn't even know existed, go figure.Manwenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-69889714659281858052011-11-04T19:56:40.742+00:002011-11-04T19:56:40.742+00:00Lewis also rather wryly deals with the modern dema...Lewis also rather wryly deals with the modern demand that fantasy be disregarded as unreal in the scene in PRINCE CASPIAN where the green witch, usurper of an underground world, convinces by means of a morphine fume Puddleglum and the children that the surface world is illusion, the sun merely an exaggerated lamp, the Lion an exaggerated cat. <br /><br />Puddleglum, that august theologian, replies that if Narnia is fantasy, it has the reality of drab under-earth 'beat hollow'. He asks the witch why, supposing surface and heaven and Lion and sun to be make-believe, their make-believe is richer and stronger than her reality, if reality is all that there is?<br /><br />The modern distrust of fantasy was at its peak when Lewis wrote. In those days, no sober gentleman would dared have been seen reading science fiction or fairy tales. Experimental fiction, realism, degradation, quotidian tales of persons smaller than life were all the rage. In our modern Science fiction soaked environment, is it well to recall that there was a time when political pundits (for example) did not make references to Star Wars or Mordor.John Wrighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15492341011399861469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-47083831963640861852011-11-04T16:59:08.150+00:002011-11-04T16:59:08.150+00:00I found the whole landing-on-the moon project very...I found the whole landing-on-the moon project very dull: I'd read about it, and better than it, in science fiction novels years before.deariemenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-77885343590501567772011-11-04T16:43:17.652+00:002011-11-04T16:43:17.652+00:00Children haven't sorted out the world, yet, wi...Children haven't sorted out the world, yet, with its myriad complexities. Adults behave as if they have. Children believe adults are omnipotent and wise. Adults encourage them believe this. <br />Children, then, manufacture a world they can understand: one lacking cause-effect. One lacking consequence. An imaginary world. <br />How could a child know that adults do exactly the same thing?The Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04323413604073160469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-20253257571159265482011-11-04T14:37:04.155+00:002011-11-04T14:37:04.155+00:00Thanks Kristor.
You have, of course, gone straig...Thanks Kristor. <br /><br />You have, of course, gone straight to the source. <br /><br />I think I should put a disclaimer at the head of this blog: <br /><br />"Anything here which is both true and interesting may safely be assumed to come from Tolkien, Lewis or Seraphim Rose..."Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-39625555245429015852011-11-04T12:57:00.151+00:002011-11-04T12:57:00.151+00:00Thank you, Bruce, for the gift of this essay.
Ou...Thank you, Bruce, for the gift of this essay. <br /><br />Our innate apprehension that the world is haunted, and the child’s inquiry into whether the haunting is real, and our deep longing for its facticity, and to be able somehow to find ourselves awakened in a really haunted world, are all operations of what Lewis called sehnsucht. Wikipedia’s entry on the word is simply wonderful:<br /><br />“Lewis described Sehnsucht as the "inconsolable longing" in the human heart for "we know not what." In the afterword to the third edition of The Pilgrim's Regress he provided examples of what sparked this desire in him particularly:<br /><br />That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.[3]<br /><br />It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify. Furthermore there is something in the experience which suggests this far off country is very familiar and indicative of what we might otherwise call "home".”<br /><br />We are all children of Moses, strangers in a strange land. If that homeland we miss is in fact utterly missing, then are we truly bereft, and lost. <br /><br />The last chapters of The Last Battle are Lewis’ attempt to describe how our sehnsucht will at the end of all things find its final, full satisfaction. Narnia ends, and the reader who has loved it well enough to get to the last book in the series cannot but bitterly mourn its passing. But then the children whose lives have ended in their native Britain find that Narnia and Britain have both been caught up and continued, and their lives both renewed and ennobled, in a larger, deeper world that somehow includes and integrates them both without confusion. The children find that they have godlike powers, while yet being only, if yet more truly and wholly, their homely old selves, their truest selves. All their old friends are there with them, from all times and places, likewise renewed and enlarged. No good thing of the worlds that had ended – the children see that from the perspective of this new Narnia/Britain that all worlds have already ended – has been lost, nothing true or worthy has failed to find resurrection. And the new Narnia/Britain is twice as real, twice as vivid, rich, concrete and material as the old. <br /><br />The death of Narnia is real, but its resurrection is even more real.Kristornoreply@blogger.com