We are enslaved to the past. So when is it best to forget it?
Category: Essays
Why Writing the Other is Always Radical (Part I)
Photo by Ali Arif Soydaş on Unsplash Writing the other is an inherently political act, especially when the dominant culture wants to turn the other into a “them.” An “us” is a person of dignity with whom we can empathize and recognize as a human being. An “us” is someone we can relate to and …
Continue reading Why Writing the Other is Always Radical (Part I)
The Critical Irrealism of Borges’s Aleph
Borges throws doubt on the very ability of language to represent reality.
TTL 3: “The Vision of the Empire” — by Matthew Rettino.
Here is Post #3 in the Series on Taliessin through Logres! Please visit the INTRODUCTION to this series first, and here is the INDEX to the other posts in the series. Today’s post is about “T… Source: TTL 3: “The Vision of the Empire” -- by Matthew Rettino.
9 Ways Guy Gavriel Kay Stole Productively from Joy Chant’s Red Moon and Black Mountain
The last example is a direct lifting from Chant--or as I prefer to think of it, a scene that was stolen productively.
Underworld as Otherworld: Combined and Uneven Development in Charles de Lint’s Urban Fantasy Fiction
While a text asking you to believe in fairies and spirits might seem flaky, seeing as this gives us no solid program to reclaim the city, such faith does awaken the desire to see the postmodern, uneven city restored from its ruins
What are the Seven Pillars of Wisdom?
I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me [...] (ln. 1-4)
Could the Artificial Paradise of the Assassins be a Fairy Otherworld?
A tradition of viewing Paradise as an Otherworld exists in Middle English literature. Why not the artificial paradise of the Assassins described in The Book of John Mandeville?
Pacifism and Kenneth Morris’s The Chalchiuhite Dragon
Lately my blog posts have been slowing down because of the attention I'm giving to my research assistantship with Professor Robert Lecker at McGill University--we're researching the history of literary agents and agencies in Canada. As such I have not had the occasion to post about my experience of MythCon 2015 as I did with MythCon …
Continue reading Pacifism and Kenneth Morris’s The Chalchiuhite Dragon
Are there Canadian Dragons?
Are there Canadian dragons? And if there are, what are they like? Canada is far too young a country to have ever had a population that naively believed in dragons of the European variety. By the time Europeans settled the land, dragons were known to be myths, creatures of the imagination. Besides, leathery wings and …
Matthew Rettino 