tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4844458687369955274.post8600034965341908764..comments2018-07-15T00:14:54.349-07:00Comments on mapHead: True Lovenatcasehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18058664776852941599noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4844458687369955274.post-19380847307871756222009-04-11T15:23:00.000-07:002009-04-11T15:23:00.000-07:00Helen: Thanks, I did find an original of the Kubie...Helen: Thanks, I did find an original of the Kubie a few years ago and have a copy on the shelf. If nobody beats me to it, I'd still like to translate it some time...natcasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18058664776852941599noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4844458687369955274.post-50995992521472246112009-04-11T14:40:00.000-07:002009-04-11T14:40:00.000-07:00Tom der Reimer, by Wilhelm Kubie, is available fro...Tom der Reimer, by Wilhelm Kubie, is available from several booksellers on ABE, if you're interested. See http://user361.pre.apconsult.at/img/Kubie.pdf for more information about Kubie.<BR/><BR/>Helenhschinskehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10316478950862562594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4844458687369955274.post-54662381457361132042009-04-01T21:52:00.000-07:002009-04-01T21:52:00.000-07:00My paper on Thomas the Rhymer is posted here.My paper on Thomas the Rhymer is posted <A HREF="http://sites.google.com/site/nathanielhcase/bits-and-pieces/Rhymeressay2.pdf?attredirects=0" REL="nofollow">here</A>.natcasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18058664776852941599noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4844458687369955274.post-25204155433873872012009-03-25T15:43:00.000-07:002009-03-25T15:43:00.000-07:00I spent a lot of time with Tam Lin and Thomas the ...I spent a lot of time with Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer in college and after. They formed a framework in the courtship leading up to my first marriage. I'm interested to see the reference to Faerie-based novels I haven't seen; honestly I've been out of the loop for over a decade now.<BR/><BR/>I'll post my paper on the Thomases, which focuses on that "three roads" speech, soon.<BR/><BR/>I still stand by my saying the end was "unrealistically" hopeful. I know it had to be for the novel to succeed, but I think the "real" story doesn't end this way. Sadder and wiser and lonelier I fear is where this was headed, and rule-mongering can't alter that.<BR/><BR/>Cf. Jones' <I>Homeward Bounders</I>.natcasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18058664776852941599noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4844458687369955274.post-89927955292267772172009-03-19T10:16:00.000-07:002009-03-19T10:16:00.000-07:00An awful lot of writers about the land of Faërie, ...An awful lot of writers about the land of Faërie, and the inhabitants thereof, work on the premise that Faërie is a land of glamor and enchantment but no love. I think the ultimate example of this is Sylvia Townsend Warner’s <I>Kingdoms of Elfin</I>, an amazing work but one that most readers find quite chilling.<BR/><BR/>Michael Swanwick’s steampunk fantasies, beginning with <I>The Iron Dragon’s Daughter</I>, are faithful to the premise too, though not nearly as painfully. Poul Anderson’s gorgeous, romantic <I>Three Hearts and Three Lions</I> is another example.<BR/><BR/>And so, interestingly enough, are “Lewis Carroll”’s fantasies, <I>Alice in Wonderland</I> and <I>Through the Looking-glass</I>.<BR/><BR/>Of course this premise has roots in the old division between the world, Heaven, and Elfland: Elfland, in that scheme, is a paradise without God, and since God is love, a world without the one, even if a paradise, is still also a world without the other. Here it is in Child’s “Thomas Rymer”:<BR/><BR/>“<I>‘O see not ye yon narrow road,<BR/>So thick beset wi thorns and briers?<BR/>That is the path of righteousness,<BR/>Tho after it but few enquires.</I><BR/><BR/>“<I>‘And see not ye that braid braid road,<BR/>That lies across yon lillie leven?<BR/>That is the path of wickedness,<BR/>Tho some call it the road to heaven.</I><BR/><BR/>“<I>‘And see not ye that bonny road,<BR/>Which winds about the fernie brae?<BR/>That is the road to fair Elfland,<BR/>Whe[re] you and I this night maun gae.’</I>”<BR/><BR/>Some of the most interesting “high fantasy” works, though, succeed by finding some revelatory way to disrupt this premise, instead of simply following it faithfully. In Ellen Kushner’s haunting <I>Thomas the Rhymer</I>, for example, the hero, as a poet, can be happy because he confuses love and æsthetics. In the lead story in the current issue of <I>Fantasy & Science Fiction</I>, Sean McMullen’s “The Spiral Briar”, the lack of love in Elfland turns out to be caused by an attitude that can be spoken to.<BR/><BR/>The “sudden ‘turn’” that Tolkien rightly praised at the end of his essay “On Fairy-Stories” — a “turn” in which “we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for the moment passes outside the frame” — depends on a particular type of violation of the premise: one through which genuine love comes after hope is gone. The story Tolkien quotes to end his essay (“The Black Bull of Norroway”) illustrates the point:<BR/><BR/>“<I>‘Seven long years I served for thee,<BR/>The glassy hill I clamb for thee,<BR/>The bluidy shirt I wrang for thee,<BR/>And wilt thou not wauken and turn to me?’</I><BR/><BR/>“He heard and turned to her.”<BR/><BR/>I think it may be that <I>Fire and Hemlock</I> does this at the end, too — but only if we, as its readers, are ready to assume something that the novel cannot say out loud.<BR/><BR/>What do we have to assume? That because of Polly’s denial of the childish love relationship that has driven the story from beginning to end, an adult love of a different and deeper sort will now be freed to emerge. Inevitably, the emergence of that adult love must occur <I>outside the frame of the novel</I>, because what unifies the novel is the childish love, and if the novel were to move on to something else and incompatible its integrity would be destroyed.<BR/><BR/>Thus, if I may be permitted this interpretation, the novel depends for its ultimate height of magic on something it is not allowed to hint at. And in that it is like Polly’s victory itself — a remarkable and effective mirroring of invisible content by visible.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com