Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons^™

Jewish Fantasy Worldwide: Trends In Speculative Stories From Australia To Chile, Edited By Valerie Estelle Frankel, Gabriel Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

In Jewish Fantasy Worldwide, edited by Valerie Estelle Frankel, authors examine a wide variety of speculative fiction written by Jewish authors. Particular emphasis is given to understudied authors and cultures (such as Jewish speculative fiction published in Australia and Eastern European countries). Several essays deal with the nature of Jewish identity (Holocaust remembrance's role for post-WWII Jewish writers, changing identity markers as agnosticism or secularism becomes more popular among Jewish authors).

In Memoriam: Mike Foster, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

The C. S. Lewis Correspondence Project, Bruce R. Johnson

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The C. S. Lewis Correspondence Project was organized for the purpose of making available to scholars and readers transcriptions of all extant Lewis letters. Its goal is to produce an electronic database of Lewis letters. The first priority of the Project is making available transcriptions of all Lewis letters which are not found in the three volumes of Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis. This will not occur quickly. The timeline on even this small aspect of the Project is likely years in the future as many logistical and technical issues must be resolved.

To The Editor, Charles (Chuck) Huttar

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

A response to “One Aims at the Officers First” by Ben Reinhart in Mythlore 40.2, #140..

Nine Tolkien Scholars Respond To Charles W. Mills’S “The Wretched Of Middle-Earth: An Orkish Manifesto”, Robin Anne Reid, Bianca Beronio, Robert T. Tally, Cait Coker, Cami Agan, Robert Stuart, Charlotte Krausz, Tom Ue, Helen Young

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

In spite of being written over three decades ago, Mills’s posthumously published “Manifesto” not only anticipates but transcends the majority, if not the totality, of the scholarship on Tolkien, race, and racisms which has been published since 2003. Scholars in philosophy and related fields familiar with Mills’s work will recognize that the essay was a “critical exploration of [how] a fictional racial hierarchy strikingly illuminates the ongoing influence of certain old racist ideas on our present day [sic] social realities.” Reid has invited a wide-ranging Tolkienists who have read the essay to respond, briefly, on the significance of the essay …

The Sun, The Son, And The Silmarillion: Christopher Tolkien And The Copernican Revolution Of Morgoth’S Ring, Kristine Larsen

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Among the most central of Tolkien’s myths is the creation of the Sun and Moon as the last fruit and flower of the Two Trees of Valinor. The death of the Trees is central in a long chain of events that directly leads to the later battles, kin slayings, and geological upheavals in Middle-earth. It is therefore curious that during the writing of The Lord of the Rings (and continuing into the later 1950s and 1960s), Tolkien began second-guessing himself, and became concerned with what he called “the astronomically absurd business of the making of the Sun and Moon.” Beginning …

"A Fearful Weapon", Verlyn Flieger

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The changes to Tolkien's cosmology introduced in "Myths Transformed" were not well received. Certainly their realism is a 180% turn for the man who declared unequivocally that "Fantasy remains a human right" (72). Have Tolkien's revisions, radical as they are, been “a fearful weapon” against his own creation? And if they have, how has the perception of that creation changed since the publication of Morgoth's Ring in 1993? Has Tolkien's weapon destroyed his imaginary world?

Mythos To Myth To Mythopoeia: A Cyclical Process, Ashna Mary Jacob, Nirmala Menon

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The paper predicates the prospects of mythopoeia in the mythical tradition. An authorial construction of mythopoeia, when internalized into the collective consciousness can evolve into mythos. This mythopoeia turned mythos in the course of time and space may regress into myth. The fragments of the myth may then result in the making of another mythopoeia. Mythopoeia to mythos to myth is a cyclical process in mythical tradition. The paper establishes this argument with J. R. R. Tolkien’s conception of mythopoeia. It explores similarities between mythopoeia and conlang. It contends that just as conlang can evolve as language, mythopoeia can also …

Negative Estrangement: Fantasy And Race In The Drow And Drizzt Do’Urden, Steven Holmes

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This essay introduces the concept of negative estrangement to help understand current cultural interventions into the norms of depicting fantasy races. First, this essay builds on Shklovsky’s concept of estrangement to describe the literary practice of negative estrangement, wherein artists craft “more evil” foes based on hybridized amalgamations of stereotypes to create antipathy toward a subject, be it monster or fantasy race. This practice is sometimes used in service of confronting the issue of race and racism, despite seeming to reify or rearticulate racist stereotypes.

This essay builds on Tolkien’s argument in favor of creating “more evil” foes to exemplify …

Otherworldly But Not The Otherworld: Tolkien’S Adaptation Of Medieval Faerie And Fairies Into A Sub-Creative Elvendom, Elliott Thomas Collins

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Through a comparative analysis of Lothlorien and the medieval stories of Lanval and Sir Orfeo, this article attempts to shed some light on how the inherently pessimistic and recursive nature of Tolkien's sub-creation affects his adaptation of medieval Faerie into a sub-creative elvendom born of the creative instincts of the elves. In doing so, the article also questions Tolkien's adherence to parameters of Faerie and characteristics of elves as laid out in OFS.

"A Bleak, Barren Land": Women And Fertility In The Lord Of The Rings, Dylan L. Henderson

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Critics, and even the general public, have noted the absence of women in The Lord of the Rings, an absence so glaring that it could hardly be overlooked. Many feminist scholars have, as a result of this deficiency, denounced J.R.R. Tolkien, interpreting this lack of female characters as indicative of repressed misogyny. Others, however, have defended the author, pointing out that the female characters that do exist could be considered role models. This essay offers an alternative interpretation and contends that the absence of women in the novel, though potentially reducing its appeal to modern readers, reinforces one of …

Through Fire And Water: The Exodus Of The Gondothlim, Ethan Danner

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Despite being one of the earliest Middle-earth texts and a central component of the legendarium, J.R.R. Tolkien's Fall of Gondolin has received far less attention than the tale deserves. Building upon the works of David Greenman, Bruce Alexander, and Austin Freeman and their studies comparing The Fall of Gondolin to Virgil's Aeneid as well as Tom Shippey's monograph, The Road to Middle-earth, this article seeks to expand current scholarship surrounding The Fall of Gondolin by the examination of Exodus, as both a Medieval and religious text, as a potential source for the narrative structure, characters, and themes found …

“Or Break It”: The Cost Of Silmarils And Sworn Oaths, Alexander M. Bruce

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

As much as J. R. R. Tolkien valued the heroism expressed in “The Battle of Maldon,” with its record of warriors who died to maintain their oath, he challenged the notion of utter adherence to a sworn oath in The Silmarillion. The over-arching narrative of The Silmarillion tells of Fëanor and his seven sons who swear an oath to reclaim the three Silmarils from any “Vala, Demon, Elf or Man as yet unborn, or any creature, great or small, good or evil, that time should bring forth unto the end of days, whoso should hold or take or keep …

Editorial, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

Children’S Gothic In The Chinese Context: The Untranslatability And Cross-Cultural Readability Of A Literary Genre, Chengcheng You

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

As an emerging literary subgenre in the twenty-first century, Children’s Gothic challenges and blends the norms of both children’s literature and Gothic literature, featuring child characters’ self-empowerment in the face of fears and dark impulses. The foreignness and strangeness that pertain to the genre haunt the border of its translatability. Daniel Handler’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (1999­–2006), written under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket, poses a chain of translational challenges due to its linguistic creativity, paratextual art, and mixed style of horror and dark humor intended for a child readership. To investigate the interplay between Children’s Gothic and its (un)translatability …

"I'M Really Just Scared Of The White Parents": A Teacher's Perceptions Of Barriers To Discussing Racial Injustice, Shimikqua Elece Ellis, Christian Goering

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose - This study explores the perceived barriers that a Secondary English teacher faced when attempting to discuss racial injustice through young adult literature in Mississippi.

Design/methodology/approach- The authors rely on Critical Whiteness Studies and qualitative methods to explore the following research question: What are the barriers that a White ELA teacher perceives when teaching about racial injustice through The Hate U Give?

Findings- The authors found that there were several perceived barriers to discussing modern racial injustice in the Mississippi ELA classroom. The participating teacher indicated the following barriers: a lack of racial literacy, fears of discomfort, and an …

'Poor Unfortunate Souls': Acculturation And Reception Of Womanhood In Fairy Tales, Dalton C. Whitby

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

This essay examines traditional fairy tales, symbolized by Perrault’s “Blue Beard,” and contemporary ones, illustrated by Disney’s animated film Brave (2012), with the implementation of ideas from theorists Marcia Lieberman and Hans Robert Jauss, to demonstrate that dated conceptions of womanhood prevail in these stories and continue to be received and acculturate children today. Although it is reasonable to assume social changes brought on by feminism would echo in twenty-first-century fairy tales, an investigation of Disney's animated fairy tale films, the modern storyteller aimed at acculturating children, reveals that these stories subversively persist in presenting traditional ideas of womanhood, depicting …

Excerpts From An Anti-Standardized “수능”: A Design-Fictional Approach To Korea, Seo-Young J. Chu, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

"Excerpts from an Anti-Standardized '수능'” experiments with design fiction to disrupt overly rehearsed ways of thinking about Korea’s past(s), present(s), and future(s).

Warnings Against The Exploitation Of Children In Young Adult Dystopian Literature, James Henry Lambert

English Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

The works of Suzanne Collins, Koushun Takami, and Neal Shusterman present a unique subset of young adult literature in which young adults are forced to kill one another. My thesis argues that the presentation of child gladiators in these stories is a form of weaponization conducted by the fictional governments as deterrent weapons against the parents of these fictional dystopias. This weaponization is accomplished through the creation of spectacular events that are meant to draw the attention to the power of the government, also as a form of deterrence against rebellion. Next, my thesis demonstrates how the human body is …

Frights And Forests: The Hellish Landscape Of The Dark Forest, From Sleepy Hollow To The Forest Of Arden, Minna Nizam

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

This paper seeks to explore forest settings in fantasy, and its hellish landscapes. From the headless horseman in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, to the frights and horrors of mythical creatures in fantasy settings placed in forests. The purpose of this study is to dive deep into the fear of the forest, its early days in storytelling, to more modern renditions. Sources used will be primarily books, and texts within books, such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Lord of the Rings, and much more.