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
Tag: The Lord of the Rings
MythCon 46: The Arthurian Mythos Part III: Attebery, Politics, and Worldviews
Sunday 2 August 2015 was the date of my long-awaited presentation on Charles de Lint's multicultural utopia. Although this post will not include a copy of my presentation--that will be for next week, when I will discuss the final day of lectures at MythCon 46--I do include a significant panel involving the inestimable Brian Attebery, one of the key scholars …
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MythCon 46: The Arthurian Mythos Part II: Race, Raciness, and the Fifty Shades of Charles Williams
For this post I apologize immediately for the title and would like to state that most (the greater half anyway) of this post will be concerned with how Tolkien treats race in his fiction--not how Charles Williams is racy. The lurid revelations about Charles Williams, 'The Oddest Inkling,' that have now come forth were just impossible a) to ignore and b) …
MythCon 46: The Arthurian Mythos Part I: On Satyrs, Derrida, and Names of Power
Every Friday over the next couple of weeks I will be posting notes that I made during this year's Mythopoeic Conference at the Hotel Elegante in Colorado Springs, CO. I presented a paper there on Charles de Lint and had the occasion to reacquaint myself with the much of the same gang from the last MythCon …
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A Battle of Five Blogs — Why I would have filmed The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in the North
With the release of The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies in theatres this week, some of my MythCon friends and I decided to participate in A Battle of 5 Blogs. We will all be posting about the movie, which concludes Peter Jackson's trilogy. Although I have heard rumours of Jackson's plans to make The …
MythCon 45 Day 3: Postmodernity at MythCon
Sunday morning at MythCon, and I took it easy, only getting to "Harry Potter as Dystopian Literature" for 10:00. Kris Swank framed Harry Potter not only in terms of the latest dystopian craze in YA fiction (Divergent, The Hunger Games), but also with the dystopian tradition of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. The Dolores Umbridge-corrupted …
MythCon 45 Day 2: Where does fantasy fit?
Day 2 of MythCon began Saturday morning. After breakfast, I really came to appreciate how many people had come to Wheaton College. In addition to seeing many of the faces I saw on Friday, Corey Olsen, the Tolkien Professor, was there. Allow me to explain one thing about this guy: I first listened to his …
Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever: Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson
Beware! Leper unclean! shout the crowds. Don't touch me! responds Thomas Covenant, the antihero of Stephen R. Donaldson's memorable epic fantasy trilogy. In this exchange, which Convenant repeats in his mind like a mantra for his sanity, Donaldson summarizes the conflict of his protagonist. Despite being unlikeable, Covenant tends to garner your empathy. He's a …
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The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I, by Stephen King
What do you get when you combine Tolkien and the Western? Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Meet Roland, the last gunslinger. He's Aragorn meets John Wayne. A solitary man “wandering but not lost,” he carries two six-shooters that were once his father's pistols. His single quest, which he pursues with an instinctual audacity, is summarized …
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Are Tolkien’s Ideas Still Alive in Our Postmodern Twenty-First Century?
J.R.R Tolkien, born this day in 1892, would be 122 if he were alive today, one of the oldest people in the world. Alas, his physical body perished 2 September 1973, even though his textual body lives on, with much thanks to the continued labours of Christopher Tolkien, his son and editor. I would love …
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Matthew Rettino 