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Literature in English, British Isles Commons™
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Articles 121 - 150 of 152
Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, British Isles
Tellers Of Dark Fairy Tales: Common Themes In The Works Of C.S. Lewis And Terence Fisher, Gabriel C. Salter
Tellers Of Dark Fairy Tales: Common Themes In The Works Of C.S. Lewis And Terence Fisher, Gabriel C. Salter
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
This article explores connections between C.S. Lewis and filmmaker Terence Fisher, notably how their works explore themes like the charm of evil, white magic’s dubious nature, and myth hinting at divine truths. By viewing these themes, Fisher and Lewis’s common views on fairy tales, and how feedback informed their work, scholars discover nuance in the perceived “Inklings versus secular British culture” dichotomy.
Tolkien And The Classical World, Edited By Hamish Williams, Larry J. Swain
Tolkien And The Classical World, Edited By Hamish Williams, Larry J. Swain
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
No abstract provided.
Tolkien, Cline, And The Quest For A Silmaril, Tom Ue, James Munday
Tolkien, Cline, And The Quest For A Silmaril, Tom Ue, James Munday
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
J. R. R. Tolkien has had a significant influence on American writer Ernest Cline. In Ready Player One (2011), the character Ogden Morrow invites Wade and his friends to his mansion, which is modelled after Rivendell from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films (2001- 03). Cline goes further in his sequel Ready Player Two (2021) by staging a part of Wade’s virtual quest on Arda I, the First Age of Middle Earth. In this paper, we focus on this episode and, in so doing, argue for Cline’s insights into how we approach fantasy. First, we attend to the …
Who’S His Daddy? Approaches To Merlin’S Father In Children’S And Ya Media, Michael Torregosa
Who’S His Daddy? Approaches To Merlin’S Father In Children’S And Ya Media, Michael Torregosa
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In the 1130s, Geoffrey of Monmouth originated the character of Merlin, setting him upon the world stage as a wonder-working youth fathered (in the tradition of Greek and Latin authors of the past) by a daemon. However, later writers of the Middle Ages, beginning with Robert de Boron, reconceived Merlin within a more Christianized world, altering his heritage and transforming his sire into a demon from Hell. This shift from benign daemon to malevolent demon has impacted the representation of the wizard of Camelot for centuries. Contemporary fiction for the page as well as for the screen has adopted and …
"Shivering Trees": Horror Monstrosity In Selected Stories From Tolkien’S The Silmarillion, Elise Mckenna
"Shivering Trees": Horror Monstrosity In Selected Stories From Tolkien’S The Silmarillion, Elise Mckenna
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In The Silmarillion, Tolkien used conventions of horror within the setting of Arda. To begin with, the entire world, which is monstrous, is in upheaval with mountains being raised and valley being delved, lanterns of light created, and huge beings walking the land. Then, these landscapes are torn down, the lights are smashed and go out, and new creatures of horror prowl the world. The differences between the portrayals of monstrosity on a grand scale border the grotesque and the sublime. Monstrous beings, Valar and Maiar, command the elements of earth, air, fire, water. They have pre-ordained roles that …
The Story, The Narrator And The Reader: Mediated Horror In C.S. Lewis’S Narniad, William Thompson
The Story, The Narrator And The Reader: Mediated Horror In C.S. Lewis’S Narniad, William Thompson
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In her introduction to Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children’s Literature and Culture, Jessica R. McCort defines horror for children and young adults as a hybrid genre, one having its roots in both the gothic and the nineteenth-century fairy tale. She explains that the exploration of dark forces in children’s books is often not limited to those tropes traditionally associated with the horror genre for adults: “Think of the books that are considered children’s classics. The best of them contain dark forces of one kind or another, as well as internal battles between the light and the dark: …
Environmental Horror And Restoration: Tolkien And Today, Jessica Dickinson Goodman, Caitlin Rottler
Environmental Horror And Restoration: Tolkien And Today, Jessica Dickinson Goodman, Caitlin Rottler
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
J.R.R. Tolkien never forgot the felling of a willow tree that had overlooked the mill-pool in Sarehole, nor how his former climbing companion had been left to rot in the grass. His horror at that small environmental violence bleeds through his works, from poems like “From the many-willow’d margin of the immemorial Thames” (1913) to the Party Tree in The Hobbit (1937) to a letter to The Daily Telegraph in 1972 when he decried the modern “torture and murder of trees.” This presentation will draw on the excellent foundations laid by Dinah Hazell, as well as the father-son pair of …
Nature And Horror In Tolkien’S Legendarium, Julia Bowers
Nature And Horror In Tolkien’S Legendarium, Julia Bowers
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Tolkien incorporates horror in his legendarium through the twisting of the natural world in order to signal upcoming dangers to his characters. This creates a dichotomy between the idyllic natural world that represents good in his works and the twisted natural world that has been tampered with by evil. Most of the focus on Tolkien’s portrayal of nature looks at the conflict between nature and technology; the natural world of Middle-earth is portrayed as more complex than merely all nature being good. His natural settings take on an eerie tone to convey a sense of horror to the reader as …
Charles Williams' P'O- L'U - The Cthulhu Connection, Eric Rauscher
Charles Williams' P'O- L'U - The Cthulhu Connection, Eric Rauscher
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
This presentation delineates the connections between horrific elements in the work of H.P. Lovecraft and the situation of P’o-L’u from Charles Williams.
Delight In Horror’: Charles Williams And Russell Kirk On Hell And The Supernatural, Camilo Peralta
Delight In Horror’: Charles Williams And Russell Kirk On Hell And The Supernatural, Camilo Peralta
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Charles Williams has always been one of the more overlooked members of the Inklings, and the continued neglect of his poetry and “supernatural thrillers” suggests that he is not likely to experience a dramatic increase in popularity anytime soon. Similarly, Russell Kirk is an American historian who will always be better known for writing The Conservative Mind in 1953 than for any of the dozens of short stories and novels he wrote, many of which deal with ghostly or supernatural themes. In fact, Kirk acknowledged Williams to be an important influence on his fiction; this influence is perhaps most evident …
White Shadows, Black Riders And Restless Wights: Undead Horror Monsters In The Fantasy Worlds Of J.R.R. Tolkien And George R.R. Martin, Franz Klug
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
The proposed essay aims at comparing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Nazgûl and barrow-wights with the white walkers (also known as “the Others”) and wights from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. To begin with, the folkloric/mythological templates for these sub-created monsters would be scrutinized. The introductory ascription of source material would be followed by an analysis of these creatures as horror monsters and gothic elements within the fantasy worlds of Tolkien and Martin. This analysis would also be linked to addressing the question of how the gothic/horror genre influenced the fantasy worlds of both authors, and as in …
Adoring The Head Of Alcasan: Posthuman Horror And Anticipatory Corpse In Lewis’S That Hideous Strength, Mark Brians
Adoring The Head Of Alcasan: Posthuman Horror And Anticipatory Corpse In Lewis’S That Hideous Strength, Mark Brians
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
At the pinnacle of Lewis’ That Hideous Strength (2003) is the reanimation of the decapitated head of Francois Alcasan. The sheer biological persistence that is afforded to it by the biosynthetic technics of medicinal artifice, allows the head to be possessed by “macrobes”— maleficent spiritual beings imprisoned within the circle of the moon. The goal of this reanimation project is purportedly “the conquest of death […] to bring out of that cocoon of organic life […] the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick …
The Overlooked Vampire: Might Macdonald’S Lilith Be Repopularized?, A. J. Prufrock
The Overlooked Vampire: Might Macdonald’S Lilith Be Repopularized?, A. J. Prufrock
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Lilith (1895) is George MacDonald’s premier work of symbolic fiction. W.H. Auden asserts that Lilith is “equal, if not superior, to the best of Poe." A cursory reading of the novel reveals much in Narnia can be traced directly to passages. Why has MacDonald’s Lilith received so little commentary and why is it picked up and then put down by even avid readers of fantasy? Universalist theology and chauvinism have been blamed, but literary style is unarguably the main stumbling block. C.S. Lewis, who says of MacDonald, “I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not …
Tolkien As A Folk Horror Author, Monica Sanz
Tolkien As A Folk Horror Author, Monica Sanz
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Folk Horror, although being identified as a cinematographic genre quite recently, sinks its roots in an undeniable tradition of English writers who used English rural landscapes, ancient beliefs and culturally differentiated communities as humus for their prose and poetry. From the literary tradition of the 8th Century on, creatures and beliefs belonging to dark times have left their mark on our literature, traditions and folklore. Tolkien, as a philologist, was well aware of the hints and bits of these almost unknown legends and creatures left in our language, in the form of loose words, etymologies and fragmentary texts. In this …
Books Within Books In Fantasy And Science Fiction: “You Are The Dreamer And The Dream”, Phillip Fitzsimmons
Books Within Books In Fantasy And Science Fiction: “You Are The Dreamer And The Dream”, Phillip Fitzsimmons
Faculty Books & Book Chapters
This chapter discusses books that exist only within works of science fiction and fantasy—what the “List of Fictional Books” on Wikipedia calls a “fictional book” and what Claire Fallon calls “invented books” in her article for the Huffpost website, “Fictional Books Within Books We Wish Were Real.”
The David Oberhelman Collection Of Science Fiction, Fantasy, And Tolkieniana At Oklahoma State University, Phillip Fitzsimmons
The David Oberhelman Collection Of Science Fiction, Fantasy, And Tolkieniana At Oklahoma State University, Phillip Fitzsimmons
Faculty Books & Book Chapters
In September 2020 I drove to the Oklahoma State University (OSU) Stillwater campus to see “The David Oberhelman J. R. R. Tolkien Collection” exhibit, on display on the Edmon Low Library’s second-floor mezzanine in the Lisa and Mark Snell Gallery.
Esl Club Newsletter Contributes To Inclusiveness On Campus, Phillip Fitzsimmons, April Miller
Esl Club Newsletter Contributes To Inclusiveness On Campus, Phillip Fitzsimmons, April Miller
Faculty Books & Book Chapters
The SWOSU ESL Club Newsletter (https://dc.swosu.edu/esl) is one of the many activities that contribute to inclusiveness at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, in Weatherford.
Book Review: An Encouraging Thought: The Christian Worldview In The Writings Of J.R.R. Tolkien By Donald T. Williams, Phillip Fitzsimmons
Book Review: An Encouraging Thought: The Christian Worldview In The Writings Of J.R.R. Tolkien By Donald T. Williams, Phillip Fitzsimmons
Faculty Articles & Research
Donald T. Williams begins his book An Encouraging Thought: The Christian Worldview in the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien with the sentence, “I first read The Lord of the Rings in the summer of 1968, the summer between my junior and senior years of high school.” (p. 8 Kindle) This autobiographical fact launches the slim volume that shares Williams’s early discoveries that J.R.R. Tolkien was a Christian whose Christian worldview is expressed throughout The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and “On Fairy-Stories.”
The Romance And The Real: A. S. Byatt’S Possession: A Romance, Jordana Long
The Romance And The Real: A. S. Byatt’S Possession: A Romance, Jordana Long
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Demonstrates Possession’s mythic elements, in particular, how the encounter between the fictitious Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash and his daughter Maia in the novel’s Postscript constitutes Ash’s confrontation with Slavoj Žižek’s famous interpretation of the Lacanian Real. Building on Žižek, argues that Ash’s encounter with the Real actually springs from and mediates grace. This reimagining of the Real is an integral element of myth and introduces the mythic into Possession, giving it the qualities of a Romance.
On The Shoulders Of Humphrey Carpenter: Reconsidering Biographical Representation And Scholarly Perception Of Edith Tolkien, Nicole M. Duplessis
On The Shoulders Of Humphrey Carpenter: Reconsidering Biographical Representation And Scholarly Perception Of Edith Tolkien, Nicole M. Duplessis
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
In his obituary for Carpenter, Douglas A. Anderson reviews Carpenter’s “long and complex” involvement with the subject of his 1977 authorized biography, indicating that “with [Carpenter’s] passing it is time to begin to assess his changing perspectives on Tolkien and on his own Tolkien-related work.” Since its publication, Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien, which Anderson calls “an excellent book. . . unusually accurate more than a quarter of a century after it was written, despite many advances in Tolkien scholarship” remains a largely unquestioned authority, its influence so entrenched as to be virtually invisible. As a result, scholarship on Tolkien, from …
Gunslinger Roland From Yeats’S Towers Came(?): A Little-Studied Influence On Stephen King’S Dark Tower Series, Abigail L. Montgomery
Gunslinger Roland From Yeats’S Towers Came(?): A Little-Studied Influence On Stephen King’S Dark Tower Series, Abigail L. Montgomery
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
This essay has two major goals. Its general aim is to join the growing body of scholarship that takes Stephen King’s work seriously as literature in its own right and in conversation with other, traditionally canonical, works. This essay specifically does so by examining the apparent, though unreferenced, influence of William Butler Yeats’s poems “The Tower” and “The Black Tower” on King’s longest, strangest, most challenging and most self-referential work—the Dark Tower series. King references Yeats elsewhere in his fiction, and a rich, non-linear intertextuality connects the Dark Tower series to much of the rest of King’s work. Taking this …
Check Your Dashboard, Your Gauges May Be High!, Phillip Fitzsimmons, Janet Brennan Croft
Check Your Dashboard, Your Gauges May Be High!, Phillip Fitzsimmons, Janet Brennan Croft
Faculty Articles & Research
The long-established academic journal, Mythlore of the Mythopoeic Society, began using the editor’s platform of the SWOSU Digital Commons in 2017. The executive editor, Janet Croft of Rutgers University, will discuss the differences between her former way of managing submissions, reader reviews, and producing a predominantly print journal to doing the work digitally using the editor’s platform of the Institutional Repository. She will describe advantages and disadvantages to using the platform. This is an opportunity for Institutional Repository administrators to ask concrete questions about the learning curve and experience of a seasoned journal editor who has made the transition to …
Book Review: Of Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind The Writings Of C.S. Lewis. By Donald T. Williams., Phillip Fitzsimmons
Book Review: Of Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind The Writings Of C.S. Lewis. By Donald T. Williams., Phillip Fitzsimmons
Faculty Articles & Research
Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind the Writings of C.S. Lewis is both exciting and engaging in its exploration of Christian thought in general and Christian themes in particular, found in the fictional and nonfictional works of C.S. Lewis. This book would sit comfortably on the shelf with other first-rate Evangelical Christian interpretations of the works of individual Inklings, such as Ralph Wood’s The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-Earth or the works of Matthew Dickerson including his Narnia and the Fields of Arbol: The Environmental Vision of C.S. Lewis. Like the authors of these books, Donald …
J.R.R. Tolkien, Romanticist And Poet. Julian Eilmann. Translated By Evelyn Koch, Kris Swank
J.R.R. Tolkien, Romanticist And Poet. Julian Eilmann. Translated By Evelyn Koch, Kris Swank
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
No abstract provided.
C.S. Lewis And Christian Postmodernism: Word, Image, And Beyond. Kyoko Yuasa, Peter G. Epps
C.S. Lewis And Christian Postmodernism: Word, Image, And Beyond. Kyoko Yuasa, Peter G. Epps
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
In C. S. Lewis and Christian Postmodernism, Kyoko Yuasa has managed to advance the cause of careful reading and discussion of Lewis’s novels as contemporary cultural artifacts, rather than mere ciphers for apologetics or mere fluff for children, for both Japanese and American audiences. This is no mean feat, not only in terms of translation but also in terms of trans-Pacific discourse, and Yuasa deserves great credit for the accomplishment. Her close reading of several of Lewis’s major fiction works in a comparative frame she derives from works by Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, and John Fowles yields …
The Unlikely Milliner & The Magician Of Threadneedle-Street [Article], K. A. Laity
The Unlikely Milliner & The Magician Of Threadneedle-Street [Article], K. A. Laity
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature
Susanna Clarke uses the tarot in her novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell much as she uses history: twisting it to open up spaces for magic and playfulness. She offers modifications on the traditional Tarot de Marseille that accurately predict the narrative events, yet deftly obscures the outcomes by leading the readers (and the characters) to jump to the wrong conclusions. Laity’s analysis of the Tarot readings performed by Childermas and Vinculus shows that Strange and Norrell enjoy mastery in magic, only to find that that mastery brings great suffering to others and also isolates them from the world as …
Was Faramir Gandalf’S Chosen Ring Bearer? Or Is This The Beginning Of My Own Work Of Fan Fiction?, Victoria Gaydosik
Was Faramir Gandalf’S Chosen Ring Bearer? Or Is This The Beginning Of My Own Work Of Fan Fiction?, Victoria Gaydosik
Faculty Articles & Research
Good afternoon and thank you for sharing your interest in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The title of my talk, as specified in the program distributed via e-mail, is the question “Was Faramir Gandalf’s Intended Ring Bearer?” But there is also a further sub-title omitted from the program that hints at the larger problem of interpreting and appreciating literary works: the subtitle continues, “OR Is This the Germination of a Piece of Fan Fiction?” So I have a double purpose today: I wish to explain some puzzling aspects—puzzling to me at least—of Faramir’s construction as …
Owen Barfield And "Is Man A Myth?", Phillip Joe Fitzsimmons
Owen Barfield And "Is Man A Myth?", Phillip Joe Fitzsimmons
Faculty Articles & Research
No abstract provided.
Glimpses Of Lost Home In The Works Of J.R.R. Tolkien And Owen Barfield, Phillip Joe Fitzsimmons
Glimpses Of Lost Home In The Works Of J.R.R. Tolkien And Owen Barfield, Phillip Joe Fitzsimmons
Faculty Articles & Research
No abstract provided.
The Palantíri Stones In J.R.R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings As Sauron’S Social Media: How To Avoid Getting Poked By The Dark Lord, Phillip Fitzsimmons
The Palantíri Stones In J.R.R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings As Sauron’S Social Media: How To Avoid Getting Poked By The Dark Lord, Phillip Fitzsimmons
Faculty Books & Book Chapters
No abstract provided.