We don't always see eye to eye

[rozk]

But China Mieville is the right stuff when writing, but also when reading, fantasy and manages to turn a discussion Tolkien into one of the best manifestos for fantasy writing that I have come across in a while.

Yes, to all of it. That's what we are trying to do and that is why Tolkien is the Inescapable Father even for those of us who would rather sever a digit than write a quest fantasy.

Tnanks to supergee and andrewducker

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

His observation on Classicism is naive, though. That is a culture that hasn't existed outside a very narrow band of schools for a long time and not at all in any university I know of. Tolkien himself was a beneficiary of the first moves to break away from a classics-dominated mode, which began in the nineteenth century with people like John Mitchell Kemble and can be traced in the novels of William Morris, E R Eddison and even Hilda Lewis before him.

He may be overstating his case, but...

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic is still rather the poor relation to Classics at Cambridge, or at least it was 10 years ago. I

Re: He may be overstating his case, but...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

ASNC is my home department. But Mieville is assuming that the classics that is taught is still dominated by gods and literature in the 19th century style. The emphasis moved away from that kind of reverence a long time ago.

Re: He may be overstating his case, but...

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

It was mine too, 1995-1998.

China was at Cambridge too around then, apparently, though I never met him and I don't know what he studied.

Re: He may be overstating his case, but...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Excellent. ASNaCs should stick together. (I'm Kari, btw, one of David Dumville's ex students)

[rozk.livejournal.com]

And of course China's and Tolkien's version of classical mythology is a very old-fashioend one that doesn't include Harrison's sense of the cthonic terror of it, let alone more current ones.

I am not planning to do much with the gods of Greece and Rome in the present plan for RHAPSODY, though they may well turn up a bit in the Alexandria segment. I know that Norse stuff will probably show up in volume 3. The point about both, though, is to make them your own and not be baffled by the weight of tradition.

We are probably there now, with classical stuff, in a way that earlier generations were not.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

Yay, China!