“Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature” by Michael C. Drout.
“Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature” by Michael C. Drout.
First read: 28-01-2008.
Notes: Another brilliant installment :). Drout revealed interesting things like that fantasy literature is an exercise in nostalgia (Nos talgia = our house) for a place we can never go back to.
Tolkien sends me to sleep, even in movie form, but Drout loves him and it’s ready to tell you why he should be loved.
“Tolkien's characters always choose their own morals over the fate of the world. Good and evil. Is Golum the hero in his own story or is he so damaged he’s not even the hero of his own story?
“You don’t have to defeat all evil, you have to fight your own evil in your own turn to give a chance for the next generation to fight its own.”
Something that surprised me was that he said “monsters” weren’t someone still considered inhuman but something that could be killed, purposely made inhuman so it could be killed by supposedly good people. Fantasy today seems to be taking those monsters and finding their human traits, as if nothing could remain inhuman enough to be denied life.
I loved the distinction of “literature about need” and “literature about want”, the first being normally fantasy and the second mainstream. Drout explained that it was very different to want something (even happiness, freedom or justice) than to need it (food, water, warmth) and that the need made fantasy literature about something bigger, it raised the stakes, somehow.
First read: 28-01-2008.
Notes: Another brilliant installment :). Drout revealed interesting things like that fantasy literature is an exercise in nostalgia (Nos talgia = our house) for a place we can never go back to.
Tolkien sends me to sleep, even in movie form, but Drout loves him and it’s ready to tell you why he should be loved.
“Tolkien's characters always choose their own morals over the fate of the world. Good and evil. Is Golum the hero in his own story or is he so damaged he’s not even the hero of his own story?
“You don’t have to defeat all evil, you have to fight your own evil in your own turn to give a chance for the next generation to fight its own.”
Something that surprised me was that he said “monsters” weren’t someone still considered inhuman but something that could be killed, purposely made inhuman so it could be killed by supposedly good people. Fantasy today seems to be taking those monsters and finding their human traits, as if nothing could remain inhuman enough to be denied life.
I loved the distinction of “literature about need” and “literature about want”, the first being normally fantasy and the second mainstream. Drout explained that it was very different to want something (even happiness, freedom or justice) than to need it (food, water, warmth) and that the need made fantasy literature about something bigger, it raised the stakes, somehow.