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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Essays Triologue: Kepler, Twain, Lewis By Susan Dorman, Sharon L. Bolding Apr 2024

Essays Triologue: Kepler, Twain, Lewis By Susan Dorman, Sharon L. Bolding

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

Review of Essays Triologue: Kepler, Twain, Lewis by Susan Dorman. A collection of essays in support of her creative writing endeavors, this review looks at the thematic and analytical structure of her academic research leading up to her creative writing publications concerning fantastic voyages.


The Archetype Of The Dying And Rising God In World Mythology By Paul R. Rovang, James Hamby Apr 2024

The Archetype Of The Dying And Rising God In World Mythology By Paul R. Rovang, James Hamby

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

No abstract provided.


Tarot And Other Meditation Decks: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Typology, 2nd Edition By Emily E. Auger, Laurel Stevens Apr 2024

Tarot And Other Meditation Decks: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Typology, 2nd Edition By Emily E. Auger, Laurel Stevens

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

Book Review: In the second edition of Tarot and Other Meditation Decks: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Typology author Emily E. Auger examines Tarot's relationship to art movements, literature, and film. This expansion on the first edition adds a more in-depth appendix, additional research to enhance the existing sections, and a new section focusing on the influence of the shadow on both Tarot itself and the other mediums Tarot influences.


Fantasy: How It Works By Brian Attebery, Glenn Gray Apr 2024

Fantasy: How It Works By Brian Attebery, Glenn Gray

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

No abstract provided.


In Memoriam: Peter J. Schakel, Janet Brennan Croft Apr 2024

In Memoriam: Peter J. Schakel, Janet Brennan Croft

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

Peter Schakel was a prominent Lewis Scholar and long-time member of the Mythlore editorial board.


In Memoriam: Richard Plotz, Janet Brennan Croft Apr 2024

In Memoriam: Richard Plotz, Janet Brennan Croft

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

Dick Plotz was the founder of the American Tolkien Society, which later merged into the Mythopoeic Society.


Some Observations On The Newspaper Reports On Tolkien’S Andrew Lang Lecture In 1939, Matthew Thompson-Handell Apr 2024

Some Observations On The Newspaper Reports On Tolkien’S Andrew Lang Lecture In 1939, Matthew Thompson-Handell

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

Observations about how newspaper reports were written and filed in the late 1930s lead to a reassessment of the contents of the “On Fairy-stories” lecture and its differences from the published version.


Dating The Dark Tower, Lee Oser Apr 2024

Dating The Dark Tower, Lee Oser

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

The compositional history of The Dark Tower is contested and complex, but newly discovered clues within the published work do not contradict Jonathan Himes’s well-informed hypothesis, that Lewis “worked on the story in stages between the late 30s and the mid 50s.”


Whatever Happened To The Princess Bride?: Thoughts For Further William Goldman Research, G. Connor Salter Apr 2024

Whatever Happened To The Princess Bride?: Thoughts For Further William Goldman Research, G. Connor Salter

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

This note considers why research on William Goldman, best known to fantasy fans as the author the the screenplay for The Princess Bride, has been sparse, and the potential to study him as a mythopoeic author.


“Hell Is Only A Word. The Reality Is Much, Much Worse”: Black Holes As Fantasy Gateways To Hell, Kristine Larsen Apr 2024

“Hell Is Only A Word. The Reality Is Much, Much Worse”: Black Holes As Fantasy Gateways To Hell, Kristine Larsen

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

While the genre of space horror is generically defined as simply space-based horror, there exist specific tropes that can be used to identify representative works. Among these are: (i) a relatively small ensemble cast, (ii) many of whom die over the course of the story; (iii) a secret corporate/political/military agenda and (iv) physical and psychological stresses due to the arduous process of space travel and related isolation. A subset of space horror adds metaphysical elements, drawing connections to Hell, more specifically a liminal space that Victor Turner terms the “betwixt and between.” As the region around and within the event …


Hell As An Exploration Of Sin: A Comparison Of Alan Moore’S Providence To Dante’S Inferno, Zachary Rutledge Apr 2024

Hell As An Exploration Of Sin: A Comparison Of Alan Moore’S Providence To Dante’S Inferno, Zachary Rutledge

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

In Alan Moore’s graphic novel Providence, Robert Black travels Lovecraftian New England and suffers a series of horrifying encounters—each an allusion to a Lovecraft story. These encounters contain direct references to various sins and taboos, thereby making explicit much of the sublimated sexuality in Lovecraft’s works. Therefore, Black’s journey constitutes not only a trip through Lovecraft’s mythology but also reads as a cataloguing of sins reminiscent of Dante’s passage through the levels of sin in Inferno. This paper identifies and explores the similarities between Dante and Black as examples of those who descend to the underworld along with a …


Timeless Moments: Russell Kirk, Charles Williams, And Stephen King On The Afterlife, Camilo Peralta Apr 2024

Timeless Moments: Russell Kirk, Charles Williams, And Stephen King On The Afterlife, Camilo Peralta

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

What happens to us after death is one of the oldest and most difficult questions. Even the standard response of many Christians, that we go to either Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, can only partly satisfy, because while we experience the passing of time in a linear manner, those places are said to exist completely outside of time. How, then, can it make sense to speak of “going” to Heaven or Hell after death? Must we not always and forever be there—even during our lifetimes? Russell Kirk, a Catholic historian from Michigan who often speculated about the afterlife in his fiction …


Two Roads To Hell: Rebirth And Relevance In Musical Adaptations Of Katabatic Myth, Jarrod Deprado Apr 2024

Two Roads To Hell: Rebirth And Relevance In Musical Adaptations Of Katabatic Myth, Jarrod Deprado

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

The paper examines two myth-inspired musicals—The Frogs by Burt Shevelove and Stephen Sondheim and Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell—concerning journeys to the underworld that benefit society. Both musicals undergo adaptation and revision processes that reflect the political and social concerns of the day. The Frogs depicts Dionysus’ journey to Hades to bring back a poet (originally Euripides, now George Bernard Shaw). However, it was not until the 2004 Broadway adaptation that overtly anti-authoritarian messages were added, aimed at the Bush administration. As a “folk opera,” Hadestown retells Orpheus’ descent to the Underworld to rescue Euridice as a commentary on economic …


Denial And Acceptance: A Core Myth Of Orpheus And Eurydice In The Modern Lyric, Brian O. Murdoch Apr 2024

Denial And Acceptance: A Core Myth Of Orpheus And Eurydice In The Modern Lyric, Brian O. Murdoch

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

The story of Orpheus’s failed attempt to bring Eurydice back from the dead is a frequently used theme in literature and in the modern lyric in particular, and it has been the subject of sometimes excessively complex critical attention. One core of the myth, however, is the need for the living to face and to accept the fact of the death of someone close to them. Modern lyrics in different European languages—the heirs to the classical myth—make clear how Orpheus’s attempt to bring his wife back from Hades was always impossible, and that his reaction was thus a form of …


Orpheus And The Harrowing Of Hell In The Tale Of Beren And Lúthien, Giovanni Carmine Costabile Apr 2024

Orpheus And The Harrowing Of Hell In The Tale Of Beren And Lúthien, Giovanni Carmine Costabile

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

Critics have observed that Beren and Lúthien’s tale is a Christian retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The “Harrowing of Hell” tradition is widespread in Italy as attested by the mosaic of San Marco among others, but it is in France that the Ovid Moralized reconnects it to Orpheus who descended into the Underworld to save Eurydice (an already late antique parallel) and therefore attests a happy ending version of the story that can be found in medieval England and also in various classical sources, perhaps even in the original legend of Orpheus. The apocryphal Harrowing is also …


Tolkien, Augustinian Theodicy, And 'Lovecraftian' Evil, Perry Neil Harrison Apr 2024

Tolkien, Augustinian Theodicy, And 'Lovecraftian' Evil, Perry Neil Harrison

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

A number of scholars have commented upon Augustine of Hippo’s influence upon J.R.R. Tolkien’s portrayal of evil in his legendarium. However, in his seminal work J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey pushes back against this perception, noting that there are some forms of evil in the legendarium that do not adhere to the Augustine’s belief that evil is merely a “twisting” of good. This article argues that Ungoliant is one such exception to the Augustinian paradigm because of the uncertainty regarding her origins.This uncertainty complicates the Augustinian view of evil that permeates the legendarium and instead echoes …


Substance Abuse: The Symbolic Geography Of Hell In The Great Divorce, Richard A. Bergen Apr 2024

Substance Abuse: The Symbolic Geography Of Hell In The Great Divorce, Richard A. Bergen

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

Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a Romantic vision of evil energy that reaches to the heavens, a geographical representation of capacity and scope and perpetual cosmic change. On the other hand, Lewis’s vision of hell in The Great Divorce is that of a land without substance: a conurbation of addiction to mental maladies, an endless mental substance abuse, an emptying of presence, and a banal stasis to the journey of the soul. Many of Lewis’s sources and inspirations for The Great Divorce, similarly, portray hell as a land of paradoxical “seeming-largeness”, while having ontological smallness. Throughout …


Introduction To Special Issue: Fantasy Goes To Hell, Janet Brennan Croft, Erin Giannini Apr 2024

Introduction To Special Issue: Fantasy Goes To Hell, Janet Brennan Croft, Erin Giannini

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

No abstract provided.


Queering The Family In Zoraida Córdova’S Labyrinth Lost, Rebekah Rendon Feb 2024

Queering The Family In Zoraida Córdova’S Labyrinth Lost, Rebekah Rendon

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova focuses on Alex Mortiz, a Mexican-American bruja and her journey to a fantastical otherworld to rescue her family. Alex begins to understand the love and unity that exists in her own blood family, while forging new relationships, thereby creating a found family, or queered family. The topic of this paper addresses queerness and found family dynamics in Labyrinth Lost. While many scholars have written on themes in fantasy and magical realism texts by Latino/a and Hispanic authors, these genres tend to be under-researched in literature for young adults. My argument analyzes Labyrinth Lost as emblematic …


Queen's Pride: A Queer Reading Of Star Wars Character Padmé Amidala, Madeleine Loewen Feb 2024

Queen's Pride: A Queer Reading Of Star Wars Character Padmé Amidala, Madeleine Loewen

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Ever since Luke Skywalker and Han Solo first appeared onscreen together in 1977, LGBTQ+ Star Wars fans have harnessed the power of queer reading to write themselves back into a galaxy far, far away, despite Lucasfilm’s long-term disapproval of such practices. Nonetheless, there exists little scholarly literature on queerness in the franchise, and even less on the potentially sapphic characters. Queen Padmé Amidala, first introduced onscreen in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, proves a surprising—but no less salient—queer figure in Star Wars. From her intimate relationships with her handmaidens, to her experimentation with gender performativity, to her quiet yet intense …


Queerness In Hirohiko Araki's Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Minna Nizam Feb 2024

Queerness In Hirohiko Araki's Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Minna Nizam

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

This paper will explore Queerness in the series Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. The presentation/paper will dive deep into the queer aspects of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, examining tropes throughout the series and its LGBTQIA+ representation. We will be delving into queer protagonists, queer side characters, and LGBTQIA identities present throughout the anime/manga. We will explore the relationships each main character of the franchise has with side characters, to analyze queerness and queer subtext. Quotes and posts/comments made by the series creator, Hirohiko Araki will be used as evidence to prove that the series is in fact Queer with its LGBTQIA …


Queer Paths Toward Home: Kinship In Speculative Fiction, Audrey Heffers Feb 2024

Queer Paths Toward Home: Kinship In Speculative Fiction, Audrey Heffers

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

How are we related? Queer(ed) families—typically framed through terms such as Found Family, Chosen Family, or Family of Choice—are more often formed by agency and voluntary participation than they are by legal or genetic connections. For the purposes of this paper, kin will be defined by affect, behavior, and declaration. The three fictional texts—Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden, Life of Melody by Mari Costa, and I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane—will serve as a basis to illustrate how kinship is defined, particularly in queer speculative narratives. Speculative fiction allows for particular metaphors of power. These metaphors …


Introduction To Eleanor Arnason, Works & Reception, David Lenander Feb 2024

Introduction To Eleanor Arnason, Works & Reception, David Lenander

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Eleanor is a guest of honor at next summer’ s Mythcon 53, and I’ve been reading her work for many years. I think her novel, and the associated short stories of Hwarhath Stories, provide a fine set of texts for your purpose. There are also queer aspects to many of Eleanor’s other books and stories, for instance in To the Resurrection Station, and some of her shorter fiction. I would certainly review the existing critical literature, and also present some critical comments and reflections on reception of Arnason’s work, and suggestions for further study.


The Gay Bat Of Gotham: Depictions Of Common Queer Stereotypes And Tropes In The Dc Comics Character Batwoman, Tim Lenz Feb 2024

The Gay Bat Of Gotham: Depictions Of Common Queer Stereotypes And Tropes In The Dc Comics Character Batwoman, Tim Lenz

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Expansive superhero comic book universes can be thought of as collective, accretional works of Mythopoeia, generating modern mythologies of fantastical characters while also drawing inspiration from ancient myths of the primary world. The DC Comics’ character Batwoman was initially introduced in 1956 as a love interest of Batman/Bruce Wayne, in part to combat scandalous allegations of Batman’s homosexual tendencies towards his young male sidekick Robin. In 2006, writers Greg Rucka, Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, and Mark Waid reinvented the Batwoman character for modern audiences as the alter ego of ‘Kate Kane,’ Bruce Wayne’s cousin, who was a lesbian of Jewish …


Queering The Problem: Destabilizing Normative Tropes In Jonathan Stroud’S Lockwood And Co. , William Thompson Feb 2024

Queering The Problem: Destabilizing Normative Tropes In Jonathan Stroud’S Lockwood And Co. , William Thompson

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Holly Munro, the office assistant come agent in Jonathan Stroud’s young-adult series Lockwood and Co., is the sole character in the five books to hint at living in a queer relationship. Lockwood and Co. is a small agency in London, fighting against the Problem, the nightly recurrence of ghosts and specters. In The Empty Grave, the final book in the series, Holly and Lucy Carlyle are crouched in the kitchen at 35 Portland Row, waiting for an attack of a group of thugs on the house. Holly and Lucy are nervously exchanging confidences, and Holly makes the point that Antony …


“Foul In Wisdom, Cruel In Strength”: Gendered Evil In Tolkien’S Legendarium, Alicia Fox-Lenz Feb 2024

“Foul In Wisdom, Cruel In Strength”: Gendered Evil In Tolkien’S Legendarium, Alicia Fox-Lenz

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In “The Feminine Principle in Tolkien,” Melanie Rawls creates a framework for reading masculine and feminine drives in the characters of Tolkien’s legendarium. Feminine characteristics are inward-facing, focused on the self and inner life, whereas masculine characteristics are outward-facing, focused on affecting the wider society. Shelob and Sauron are used as two examples of the negative expression of these gendered drives: Shelob being so inwardly focused she only devours, and Sauron being so outwardly focused he cares only for world domination. However, other than his outward focus, Sauron doesn’t neatly align with the other negative masculine traits — he is …


Roundtable: Diversifying Our Mythopoeic Bookshelves, Grace Moone Feb 2024

Roundtable: Diversifying Our Mythopoeic Bookshelves, Grace Moone

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

2024 is a year in which we’ve all been encouraged to be intentional about reading diversely, and seeking out stories and authors whose perspective differs from our own. During this roundtable discussion, we’ll touch briefly on why diversifying our reading matters, discuss strategies for finding diverse books in mythopoeic genres, share some of our favorite book recommendations, and ask attendees to share some of theirs. This discussion will also be open during the upcoming meal break.


More To The Hobbit Than Meets The Eye: Locating The Feminine In Tolkien’S World, Pieter Conradie Feb 2024

More To The Hobbit Than Meets The Eye: Locating The Feminine In Tolkien’S World, Pieter Conradie

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Fantasy is finally learning to embrace its power to create and celebrate queerness. Works such as The Forever Sea by Joshua Philip Johnson and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon feature queer leads, revealing creative capacities to imagine worlds where queerness is at the centre. But something mighty queer is already present in 1937 at the very dawn of modern fantasy. Following emerging interpretations of The Hobbit, I argue that the hero, Bilbo Baggins, exhibits significantly queer characteristics. In this deconstructive reading, Bilbo’s gender will first be reversed, arguing that his domesticity, intense emotional responses and his …


Keynote With Taylor Driggers - Cruising Faërie: Further Notes On Queering Faith In Fantasy Literature, Taylor Driggers Feb 2024

Keynote With Taylor Driggers - Cruising Faërie: Further Notes On Queering Faith In Fantasy Literature, Taylor Driggers

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

In Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature (2022), I argue that fantasy affords sexually marginalized people the ability to re-vision Christian theology in queer ways, thanks to its fixation on strange bodies, its longing for other worlds, and the ways in which both of these may reflect back on theological narratives of incarnation and salvation. Yet this project raises further questions that remain unresolved: namely, how might the framework of Christian theology constrain, as well as illuminate, queer imaginaries? If fantasy allows us to envision livable lives for ourselves as unruly bodies, just what forms of relating may those lives entail? …


Merging Worlds—Tarot As Ekphrasis For Creative And Reflective Writing, Jacob Budenz Feb 2024

Merging Worlds—Tarot As Ekphrasis For Creative And Reflective Writing, Jacob Budenz

Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)

Although ekphrasis is most commonly posited as a poetic tool—poetry responding to visual art—the practice of ekphrasis at its heart is a merging of worlds in which an artist of any medium interprets a work in a different medium. Likewise, a Tarot reader interprets imagery and symbolism through the medium of speech, applying old archetypes and images to unique, new problems or questions. In this workshop, I will present on the medium of ekphrasis as a poetic form using W.H. Auden’s poetic interpretation of Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, itself an iconic work of mythopoeic ekphrasis. Then, I …