This was a good read. Sorry for replying so late (you've posted this months ago), but I wanted to address it / ask questions.
1) Could you give examples of what you mean by the thesis, antithesis and synthesis? As an additional conditional, I say you cannot use Tolkien or Lewis. I'm asking this because a lot of time we revert to Tolkien's work as the prime definition, but it's kind of cheating if he's the only one that ever managed to do it. We have very few examples of pre-Tolkien 'fantasy' (proper), such as A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, the Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison and The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany. Any of those qualify for you? What about post-Tolkien?
2) What do you say is the path forward? How do we go from antithesis to synthesis in this case?
3) If we get in the details of worldbuilding/mythmaking for participative agency (something like role-playing games), I could lay out different ways of doing it:
- Christian World: A world akin to our own (either directly or indirectly) that's set in a post-Christ world. Sometimes you'll have low fantasy / historical fantasy in this category.
- Christianized Myth Making: The world is a christian creation, but Christ is not present. This is where I'd put Tolkien's works.
- Christian Story: The world is generally created as being separate, but the focus is on a story that is itself christian in themes, terms and values.
There's probably more categories and so on. But my point is that I'm curious as to where we can/should stand as subcreators. In each category I propose above, there is a distinct function of the subcreators in relation to its subcreation ("world", "myth", "meaning"), but also to myth-making itself as an activity. I was wondering if you had thoughts on this.
4) Related to all previous questions, what would be the boundaries of meaning-making vs entertainment making? How does one knows if he's doing one or the other? How does a "world" become a "myth", or a "meaning" becomes just "entertainment"?
I'm genuinely asking those questions btw, I'm just interested in this topic and how you view it.
Thanks so much for taking the time to consider this essay and pose these questions, David. I’ve taken a few days to try to formulate succinct answers (derived from my fairly amateurish and narrow scope of informal studies). Your questions mirror those which often instigate instalments in this series of essays (a series called ‘On the Way to the Beginning’ because it is following my own explorative thoughts as I edit a Fantasy story and prepare the first book for publication); so, some of your questions I do hope to continue to explore in this series. Anyway, I’ll take a brief stab at them now as well …
1) If I’m following your question correctly, you’re wondering about examples of stories by authors who are primarily concerned with sense-making in their stories (as outlined out in the thesis) and stories by authors primarily concerned with entertainment (as outlined in the antithesis) – the synthesis part of the essay was an attempt to fit the two approaches into a hierarchy. I’m sorry to say I have something of a gap in literary knowledge between translations of medieval/ancient fairy-tales and George MacDonald. I read ‘The King of Elfland’s Daughter’ about ten years ago, and as far as I can remember, it seemed like fairly traditional approach to sense-making Fantasy.
I would happily propose George MacDonald’s Fantasy as excellent examples of fairy-stories focused on sense-making (such as ‘Phantastes’, ‘The Princess and the Goblin’, ‘The Golden Key’ and ‘Lilith’). Going back further, the vast library of Irish, Scottish, Norse, Germanic and Breton fairy-tales are certainly stories crafted or maintained by people intent on myth-making or sense-making.
Post-Tolkien examples might include Vodolazkin’s ‘Laurus’ (though it may be a stretch to call this a fairy-story), Susanna Clark’s ‘Piranesi’, Deacon Nicholas Kotar’s ‘Raven’s Son’ and the Pageau brothers’ ‘God’s Dog’. Fantasy authors following a more entertainment-based methodology might include Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, Raymond Feist (perhaps with the exception of his book titled ‘Fairy Story’), George R R Martin, Scott Lynch, Christopher Paolini and many other contemporary Fantasy authors I’ve picked up but not been able to persist with and can’t now remember the names of. A few other contemporary Fantasy authors that I think maintain the traditional hierarchy a little better (but I’m still not entirely sure about) would be Brent Weeks, Urusla K Le Guin, Robin Hobb, J K Rowling, Cecilia Dart-Thornton and Patrick Rothfuss.
But perhaps it’s harsh and inaccurate to swing the scythe like this -- I’m mostly just separating these authors based on whether I think they lean more towards myth-making or entertainment most of the time in their storytelling. Perhaps I don’t understand some deeply enough to see the sense they make; perhaps some just don’t make as much sense as others -- this may not exactly mean that they’re trying to entertain more than to make sense, but that’s how it appears to me. And, of course, if a Fantasy author is primarily concerned with sense-making, it does not necessarily follow that their story will be ‘good’ (it takes more than good intentions to tell a good story). Similarly, an author primarily intending to entertain might stumble upon some profound sense almost by accident or even against their will in parts of their stories.
2) The path forward for Fantasy storytellers, within the scope of this essay, might be to try to anchor themselves in good, sense-making stories, and to try to tell stories more focused on sense-making than entertainment. We should try to call people back towards these sense-making stories (this might mean promoting critics and reviewers who are interested in sense-making nearly as much as telling good stories), allowing stories that are primarily for entertainment to take their place as novelties for carnivals and Sabbath-days. This establishment of hierarchy would only work if people developed a deeper appreciation for more mythic stories.
3) I like your examples here. ‘God’s Dog’ and ‘Laurus’ might fit neatly into your first category, 'Christian World'. I would put most of Tolkien’s Legendarium in a ‘Pre-Incarnation’ category (in his drafts for the Silmarillion stories, he seems to set up some fascinating threads that point towards Numenor’s line of kingship leading to King David and Christ). I think Deacon Nicholas Kotar’s and Robin Hobb’s stories might fit into the third category, 'Christian Story', for the most part. It would seem to me that Lewis’s Fantasy and Science Fiction would fit well into your first category, 'Christian World', and that a ‘Christian Allegory’ category might be quite similar to the previous ‘Christian Story’ category. Because I’m thinking specifically about Fantasy, it seems neater in my mind to call the first category ‘Post-Incarnation Fantasy’, the second ‘Pre-Incarnation Fantasy’, the third ‘High Christian Fantasy’ and the last ‘Allegorical Christian Fantasy’. Father Dave’s campaign looks awesome!
4) As I wrote in the essay, I think sense-making usually involves entertainment and entertainment-making usually involves some level of sense-making; the distinction might just be one of hierarchy (is the primary goal of the story myth-making or entertainment?). I think a ‘secondary world’ might become more of a myth the more that people strip away the elements that don’t ‘make sense’ as they re-tell it, and it would become more entertainment-based the more it was retold with the intent to entertain or surprise through novelty.
Again, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to ask these questions, David. I hope I’ve clarified my thoughts well enough for now. More to come later in this essay series!
I understand better your point now, and sorry I was slow at getting it: what you mean is that's more a matter of hierarchy than duality. I get that, makes a lot of sense.
I also like your refinement of my categories: Pre-Incarnation Fantasy, Post-Incarnation Fantasy, High Christian Fantasy and Allegorical Christian Fantasy.
Now a follow up question on that to shake things up and provoke you a bit (friendly provocation, that is): where should we stand? Are these all equally valid? Because if it's a matter of hierarchy (sense-making > entertainement), I'm wondering which have the highest ground (aka is there also a hierarchy between various types of sense-making). Is God's Dog better than Tolkien's Legendarium? Is Narnia better than Raven's Son?
I won't lie I've been thinking a lot about this for a specific matter. I'm not a writer per se, but I've been creating, playing and running table-top roleplaying campaign for over 20 years now. Most of the time, my things have been mostly in the last two categories, if not straight up High Fantasy when I was younger. But I'm seeing more and more "value" in the first two nowadays, especially for the reasons you point out about sense-making. I'm running two campaigns at the moment: one taking place in 8th century France (Post-Incarnation Fantasy), and one in a fantasy world that's heavily focused on the story of Enoch and the Watchers, but "literalized" and expanded (so a mix of Pre-Incarnation and Allegorical).
I don't think there's a silver bullet, but I'd be really interested in having your input on that.
Obviously, from a wider Christian point of view, the biblical/liturgical stories form the pinnacle of the hierarchy. You can find this kind of analysis in Saint Basil’s ‘Address to Young Men’ (here’s a link to a great reflection from Deacon Nicholas Kotar on the address, and on discerning good Fantasy storytelling: https://thewoodbetweentheworlds.substack.com/p/the-suns-reflection-in-water). Following the biblical/liturgical stories, the next helpful indicator is probably the length of time that Christians have spent re-telling the story (the longer the monks spent copying out and preserving the story, the more sense it may have made for them). After that, we approach the pandemonium of ‘Post-Gutenberg Revolution’, modern and then postmodern storytelling.
With regard to the specific examples you’re asking about, I might be tempted to elevate ‘God’s Dog’ higher than Tolkien’s Legendarium simply because it is re-telling stories of Saints who are already solidly established and meaningful to the Christian tradition, but Tolkien’s Legendarium, on the other hand, is so deeply tied to established history, mythology and biblical story in its philology, and framed with such a clean conceit (see this previous essay in the series if you’re interested: https://peterharrison.substack.com/p/on-the-way-to-the-beginning-invisible) that it seems to make just as much sense as ‘God’s Dog’ to me. Like you, I might be tempted to see the ‘Pre-’ and ‘Post-Incarnation’ categories as higher on the hierarchy than the ‘High’ and ‘Allegorical’ categories (for this reason, I might see ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ as better than ‘Raven’s Son’), but really, the better distinction is probably still ‘which one makes more sense?’.
A campaign in 8th Century France sounds epic; stories about the Watchers, too (have you read Brent Weeks ‘Night Angel Trilogy’? A very dark, coarse read, but I think it’s playing with this premise in an interesting, redemptive, sense-making way).
Oh I'm really interested in checking out Brent Weeks!
It's interesting. I do tend to agree with your position of God's Dog > Legendarium for "conceptual reasons". However, I feel a counterpoint is that the Legendarium is more poetic about what it tells, and in a sense it can teach 'more' about Christianity than an actual christian story. What do you think?
As a further question then, what do you think is the role of the lower hierarchical stories? Let's take music for example. Liturgical music is the highest, so it's sung in church. After services, many parish will sing other sacred music that's not liturgical. Then outside of the church, in the Agape or at other meetings, people will sing other folk songs, with or without a direct religious theme. Etc. The further you go, the less hierarchical it is. BUT: there is a limit somewhere. If I take an extreme example, I don't think anybody would find extreme satanic metal proper for a Christian. If we translate this to stories, where does each type of stories belong, and where is the limit?
Also on another tangent, have you read the Heliand? It's kind of a fascinating case: it's about Christ, but it's not the Bible. It's almost allegorical (and fantasy at that!) because it depicts the event 'differently' so that people can get another meaning (e.g. so that germanic people can understand better the core message without the actual 'events' of first century Judea). I feel it's related to this discussion in a sense. It's nearer to God's Dog than to anything else in a sense. God's Dog 1200 years ago!
I see what you mean about Tolkien's Legendarium being able to teach more about the Christian story because it's more separated from it (I think Tolkien took issue with how explicit Christianity was in the Arthurian legends; overall, I believe he liked them and drew a lot of inspiration from them).
I like your example of how music is usually handled in a Christian community, and I do think stories should be approached in a similar way; there certainly is a limit somewhere. I have a friend who will purchase books they like and then white-out sentences that are unnecessarily vulgar or inappropriate -- an interesting way of trying to make a story make more sense. The limit might differ person to person in the same way that Saint Paul describes whether a person can safely eat foods sacrificed to pagan gods.
I haven't read the Heliand -- only other people writing about it, and it does sound fascinating! I'll have to check it out.
Thanks again for the reply. If you read the Heliand, I'm sure you'll make a Substack about it, so I'll be there to comment lol.
This was a nice exchange. I'll stop for now so it doesn't devolve into 20 comments. Would it be bold of me to ask you if you'd be interested in keeping in touch over this with some chat? I think Substack has a chat/personal message function, or I'm on Discord.
Thus aligns with where I have arrived in my own fiction writing. I am particularly enjoying magical realism as the genre that brings me closest to creating a world which allows for faith and spirituality to become tangible.
I can certainly see your love for myth-making in 'The Raising Up of Niccólo' -- one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much! I'll need to explore the genre of magical realism further ...
Tolkien's views, which you explored very well here, mirror my own.
Every time I visit a bookstore, I follow the same silly pattern: I spend about an hour, maybe 90 minutes in the fantasy and sci-fi literature sections, and then leave disgruntled. I give it a go each time, though, because I love fantasy stories. But I find it very difficult to reconcile with myself the fact that I have come to greatly dislike Fantasy as a genre.
It's the difference in perspective that I think is the problem. I see fantasy stories as portals into enchantment, mythopoeia and the human imagination. But in my view, Fantasy as a genre has been hijacked by reductivist thinking. The great fantasy stories are less seen today as triumphs of discovery and enlivening the heroic spirit—most of the talk is about magic systems, world-building, hard vs soft, high vs low, and basically treating myth like you might a kitchen pantry that needs organizing.
I don't know if Tolkien's view of fantasy as sub-creation is somehow the better perspective, but it is my own, and I don't often find that perspective on the shelves today. However, it is something I very much appreciate about much of the writing here. I love to see so many people giving it a go.
Very well said, James. I'm familiar with the bookstore pattern you describe; the gems are rare in the Fantasy and Sci-Fi section, and reductivism abounds. I do think Tolkien's view of sub-creation from a religious standpoint is a significantly more helpful way of thinking about Speculative Fiction but his essay 'On Fairy-Stories' was written quite early in his career and I often wonder about how his thoughts on the subject may have developed as he worked on 'The Lord of the Rings' and tried to complete 'The Book of Lost Tales'. It seems like there was certainly more to be said about his theory and methods of mythopoeia ... Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
You expressed so much of what I have been thinking with regard to storytelling and myth. Mathieu P.'s book is a perfect framework (very broadly, but also specifically in this case).
Indeed, Matthieu's book is incredibly insightful, and the macro- and microcosmic implications are probably nearly endless. Thanks for reading, Sam; I'm glad these ideas are coming across well in this form.
This was a good read. Sorry for replying so late (you've posted this months ago), but I wanted to address it / ask questions.
1) Could you give examples of what you mean by the thesis, antithesis and synthesis? As an additional conditional, I say you cannot use Tolkien or Lewis. I'm asking this because a lot of time we revert to Tolkien's work as the prime definition, but it's kind of cheating if he's the only one that ever managed to do it. We have very few examples of pre-Tolkien 'fantasy' (proper), such as A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, the Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison and The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany. Any of those qualify for you? What about post-Tolkien?
2) What do you say is the path forward? How do we go from antithesis to synthesis in this case?
3) If we get in the details of worldbuilding/mythmaking for participative agency (something like role-playing games), I could lay out different ways of doing it:
- Christian World: A world akin to our own (either directly or indirectly) that's set in a post-Christ world. Sometimes you'll have low fantasy / historical fantasy in this category.
- Christianized Myth Making: The world is a christian creation, but Christ is not present. This is where I'd put Tolkien's works.
- Christian Story: The world is generally created as being separate, but the focus is on a story that is itself christian in themes, terms and values.
- Christian Allegory: It can be 'on the nose' (1 for 1 of major figures and themes) like Lewis, but it can also be more 'structural' like what Father Dave (an orthodox priest playing D&D and other TTRPG) did with his fantasy campaign. I cannot link to everything, but this is an example: https://bloodofprokopius.blogspot.com/2018/12/mathetes-to-diognetus-chapter-7-part-2.html And here are some additional resources: https://bloodofprokopius.blogspot.com/2023/04/on-gods-and-rpgs.html https://bloodofprokopius.blogspot.com/search/label/Deities%20n%20Demigods https://bloodofprokopius.blogspot.com/2020/08/world-building-with-noahide-laws.html etc.
There's probably more categories and so on. But my point is that I'm curious as to where we can/should stand as subcreators. In each category I propose above, there is a distinct function of the subcreators in relation to its subcreation ("world", "myth", "meaning"), but also to myth-making itself as an activity. I was wondering if you had thoughts on this.
4) Related to all previous questions, what would be the boundaries of meaning-making vs entertainment making? How does one knows if he's doing one or the other? How does a "world" become a "myth", or a "meaning" becomes just "entertainment"?
I'm genuinely asking those questions btw, I'm just interested in this topic and how you view it.
Thanks so much for taking the time to consider this essay and pose these questions, David. I’ve taken a few days to try to formulate succinct answers (derived from my fairly amateurish and narrow scope of informal studies). Your questions mirror those which often instigate instalments in this series of essays (a series called ‘On the Way to the Beginning’ because it is following my own explorative thoughts as I edit a Fantasy story and prepare the first book for publication); so, some of your questions I do hope to continue to explore in this series. Anyway, I’ll take a brief stab at them now as well …
1) If I’m following your question correctly, you’re wondering about examples of stories by authors who are primarily concerned with sense-making in their stories (as outlined out in the thesis) and stories by authors primarily concerned with entertainment (as outlined in the antithesis) – the synthesis part of the essay was an attempt to fit the two approaches into a hierarchy. I’m sorry to say I have something of a gap in literary knowledge between translations of medieval/ancient fairy-tales and George MacDonald. I read ‘The King of Elfland’s Daughter’ about ten years ago, and as far as I can remember, it seemed like fairly traditional approach to sense-making Fantasy.
I would happily propose George MacDonald’s Fantasy as excellent examples of fairy-stories focused on sense-making (such as ‘Phantastes’, ‘The Princess and the Goblin’, ‘The Golden Key’ and ‘Lilith’). Going back further, the vast library of Irish, Scottish, Norse, Germanic and Breton fairy-tales are certainly stories crafted or maintained by people intent on myth-making or sense-making.
Post-Tolkien examples might include Vodolazkin’s ‘Laurus’ (though it may be a stretch to call this a fairy-story), Susanna Clark’s ‘Piranesi’, Deacon Nicholas Kotar’s ‘Raven’s Son’ and the Pageau brothers’ ‘God’s Dog’. Fantasy authors following a more entertainment-based methodology might include Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, Raymond Feist (perhaps with the exception of his book titled ‘Fairy Story’), George R R Martin, Scott Lynch, Christopher Paolini and many other contemporary Fantasy authors I’ve picked up but not been able to persist with and can’t now remember the names of. A few other contemporary Fantasy authors that I think maintain the traditional hierarchy a little better (but I’m still not entirely sure about) would be Brent Weeks, Urusla K Le Guin, Robin Hobb, J K Rowling, Cecilia Dart-Thornton and Patrick Rothfuss.
But perhaps it’s harsh and inaccurate to swing the scythe like this -- I’m mostly just separating these authors based on whether I think they lean more towards myth-making or entertainment most of the time in their storytelling. Perhaps I don’t understand some deeply enough to see the sense they make; perhaps some just don’t make as much sense as others -- this may not exactly mean that they’re trying to entertain more than to make sense, but that’s how it appears to me. And, of course, if a Fantasy author is primarily concerned with sense-making, it does not necessarily follow that their story will be ‘good’ (it takes more than good intentions to tell a good story). Similarly, an author primarily intending to entertain might stumble upon some profound sense almost by accident or even against their will in parts of their stories.
2) The path forward for Fantasy storytellers, within the scope of this essay, might be to try to anchor themselves in good, sense-making stories, and to try to tell stories more focused on sense-making than entertainment. We should try to call people back towards these sense-making stories (this might mean promoting critics and reviewers who are interested in sense-making nearly as much as telling good stories), allowing stories that are primarily for entertainment to take their place as novelties for carnivals and Sabbath-days. This establishment of hierarchy would only work if people developed a deeper appreciation for more mythic stories.
3) I like your examples here. ‘God’s Dog’ and ‘Laurus’ might fit neatly into your first category, 'Christian World'. I would put most of Tolkien’s Legendarium in a ‘Pre-Incarnation’ category (in his drafts for the Silmarillion stories, he seems to set up some fascinating threads that point towards Numenor’s line of kingship leading to King David and Christ). I think Deacon Nicholas Kotar’s and Robin Hobb’s stories might fit into the third category, 'Christian Story', for the most part. It would seem to me that Lewis’s Fantasy and Science Fiction would fit well into your first category, 'Christian World', and that a ‘Christian Allegory’ category might be quite similar to the previous ‘Christian Story’ category. Because I’m thinking specifically about Fantasy, it seems neater in my mind to call the first category ‘Post-Incarnation Fantasy’, the second ‘Pre-Incarnation Fantasy’, the third ‘High Christian Fantasy’ and the last ‘Allegorical Christian Fantasy’. Father Dave’s campaign looks awesome!
4) As I wrote in the essay, I think sense-making usually involves entertainment and entertainment-making usually involves some level of sense-making; the distinction might just be one of hierarchy (is the primary goal of the story myth-making or entertainment?). I think a ‘secondary world’ might become more of a myth the more that people strip away the elements that don’t ‘make sense’ as they re-tell it, and it would become more entertainment-based the more it was retold with the intent to entertain or surprise through novelty.
Again, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to ask these questions, David. I hope I’ve clarified my thoughts well enough for now. More to come later in this essay series!
Thanks for the reply!
I understand better your point now, and sorry I was slow at getting it: what you mean is that's more a matter of hierarchy than duality. I get that, makes a lot of sense.
I also like your refinement of my categories: Pre-Incarnation Fantasy, Post-Incarnation Fantasy, High Christian Fantasy and Allegorical Christian Fantasy.
Now a follow up question on that to shake things up and provoke you a bit (friendly provocation, that is): where should we stand? Are these all equally valid? Because if it's a matter of hierarchy (sense-making > entertainement), I'm wondering which have the highest ground (aka is there also a hierarchy between various types of sense-making). Is God's Dog better than Tolkien's Legendarium? Is Narnia better than Raven's Son?
I won't lie I've been thinking a lot about this for a specific matter. I'm not a writer per se, but I've been creating, playing and running table-top roleplaying campaign for over 20 years now. Most of the time, my things have been mostly in the last two categories, if not straight up High Fantasy when I was younger. But I'm seeing more and more "value" in the first two nowadays, especially for the reasons you point out about sense-making. I'm running two campaigns at the moment: one taking place in 8th century France (Post-Incarnation Fantasy), and one in a fantasy world that's heavily focused on the story of Enoch and the Watchers, but "literalized" and expanded (so a mix of Pre-Incarnation and Allegorical).
I don't think there's a silver bullet, but I'd be really interested in having your input on that.
Excellent! Glad I could elaborate a bit.
Obviously, from a wider Christian point of view, the biblical/liturgical stories form the pinnacle of the hierarchy. You can find this kind of analysis in Saint Basil’s ‘Address to Young Men’ (here’s a link to a great reflection from Deacon Nicholas Kotar on the address, and on discerning good Fantasy storytelling: https://thewoodbetweentheworlds.substack.com/p/the-suns-reflection-in-water). Following the biblical/liturgical stories, the next helpful indicator is probably the length of time that Christians have spent re-telling the story (the longer the monks spent copying out and preserving the story, the more sense it may have made for them). After that, we approach the pandemonium of ‘Post-Gutenberg Revolution’, modern and then postmodern storytelling.
With regard to the specific examples you’re asking about, I might be tempted to elevate ‘God’s Dog’ higher than Tolkien’s Legendarium simply because it is re-telling stories of Saints who are already solidly established and meaningful to the Christian tradition, but Tolkien’s Legendarium, on the other hand, is so deeply tied to established history, mythology and biblical story in its philology, and framed with such a clean conceit (see this previous essay in the series if you’re interested: https://peterharrison.substack.com/p/on-the-way-to-the-beginning-invisible) that it seems to make just as much sense as ‘God’s Dog’ to me. Like you, I might be tempted to see the ‘Pre-’ and ‘Post-Incarnation’ categories as higher on the hierarchy than the ‘High’ and ‘Allegorical’ categories (for this reason, I might see ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ as better than ‘Raven’s Son’), but really, the better distinction is probably still ‘which one makes more sense?’.
A campaign in 8th Century France sounds epic; stories about the Watchers, too (have you read Brent Weeks ‘Night Angel Trilogy’? A very dark, coarse read, but I think it’s playing with this premise in an interesting, redemptive, sense-making way).
Thanks for the reply.
Oh I'm really interested in checking out Brent Weeks!
It's interesting. I do tend to agree with your position of God's Dog > Legendarium for "conceptual reasons". However, I feel a counterpoint is that the Legendarium is more poetic about what it tells, and in a sense it can teach 'more' about Christianity than an actual christian story. What do you think?
As a further question then, what do you think is the role of the lower hierarchical stories? Let's take music for example. Liturgical music is the highest, so it's sung in church. After services, many parish will sing other sacred music that's not liturgical. Then outside of the church, in the Agape or at other meetings, people will sing other folk songs, with or without a direct religious theme. Etc. The further you go, the less hierarchical it is. BUT: there is a limit somewhere. If I take an extreme example, I don't think anybody would find extreme satanic metal proper for a Christian. If we translate this to stories, where does each type of stories belong, and where is the limit?
Also on another tangent, have you read the Heliand? It's kind of a fascinating case: it's about Christ, but it's not the Bible. It's almost allegorical (and fantasy at that!) because it depicts the event 'differently' so that people can get another meaning (e.g. so that germanic people can understand better the core message without the actual 'events' of first century Judea). I feel it's related to this discussion in a sense. It's nearer to God's Dog than to anything else in a sense. God's Dog 1200 years ago!
Brent Weeks is rough but worth it, I think.
I see what you mean about Tolkien's Legendarium being able to teach more about the Christian story because it's more separated from it (I think Tolkien took issue with how explicit Christianity was in the Arthurian legends; overall, I believe he liked them and drew a lot of inspiration from them).
I like your example of how music is usually handled in a Christian community, and I do think stories should be approached in a similar way; there certainly is a limit somewhere. I have a friend who will purchase books they like and then white-out sentences that are unnecessarily vulgar or inappropriate -- an interesting way of trying to make a story make more sense. The limit might differ person to person in the same way that Saint Paul describes whether a person can safely eat foods sacrificed to pagan gods.
I haven't read the Heliand -- only other people writing about it, and it does sound fascinating! I'll have to check it out.
Thanks again for the reply. If you read the Heliand, I'm sure you'll make a Substack about it, so I'll be there to comment lol.
This was a nice exchange. I'll stop for now so it doesn't devolve into 20 comments. Would it be bold of me to ask you if you'd be interested in keeping in touch over this with some chat? I think Substack has a chat/personal message function, or I'm on Discord.
Keep up the good work, I like reading your stuff.
Thus aligns with where I have arrived in my own fiction writing. I am particularly enjoying magical realism as the genre that brings me closest to creating a world which allows for faith and spirituality to become tangible.
I can certainly see your love for myth-making in 'The Raising Up of Niccólo' -- one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much! I'll need to explore the genre of magical realism further ...
Thanks Peter! Tbh sometimes a life of faith feels like living in a magical realism story...
Tolkien's views, which you explored very well here, mirror my own.
Every time I visit a bookstore, I follow the same silly pattern: I spend about an hour, maybe 90 minutes in the fantasy and sci-fi literature sections, and then leave disgruntled. I give it a go each time, though, because I love fantasy stories. But I find it very difficult to reconcile with myself the fact that I have come to greatly dislike Fantasy as a genre.
It's the difference in perspective that I think is the problem. I see fantasy stories as portals into enchantment, mythopoeia and the human imagination. But in my view, Fantasy as a genre has been hijacked by reductivist thinking. The great fantasy stories are less seen today as triumphs of discovery and enlivening the heroic spirit—most of the talk is about magic systems, world-building, hard vs soft, high vs low, and basically treating myth like you might a kitchen pantry that needs organizing.
I don't know if Tolkien's view of fantasy as sub-creation is somehow the better perspective, but it is my own, and I don't often find that perspective on the shelves today. However, it is something I very much appreciate about much of the writing here. I love to see so many people giving it a go.
Very well said, James. I'm familiar with the bookstore pattern you describe; the gems are rare in the Fantasy and Sci-Fi section, and reductivism abounds. I do think Tolkien's view of sub-creation from a religious standpoint is a significantly more helpful way of thinking about Speculative Fiction but his essay 'On Fairy-Stories' was written quite early in his career and I often wonder about how his thoughts on the subject may have developed as he worked on 'The Lord of the Rings' and tried to complete 'The Book of Lost Tales'. It seems like there was certainly more to be said about his theory and methods of mythopoeia ... Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
You expressed so much of what I have been thinking with regard to storytelling and myth. Mathieu P.'s book is a perfect framework (very broadly, but also specifically in this case).
Indeed, Matthieu's book is incredibly insightful, and the macro- and microcosmic implications are probably nearly endless. Thanks for reading, Sam; I'm glad these ideas are coming across well in this form.
Fascinating connections. The stuff about bone and blood and wine is fascinating.
Thanks for reading, Katie! Matthieu Pageau has some incredible insights in his book, applicable across so many parts of life.
I guess I’d better start reading it! It’s on my shelf! Thanks for showing what he does in the book.