[the_old_crowd] Re: Understanding Goat's Law [BLOATED]

ewe2 ewetoo at ewe2_au.yahoo.invalid
Fri Jun 24 11:29:57 UTC 2005


On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 08:46:15AM +0200, Aberforths Goat / Mike Gray wrote:

> I wanted to pick up on the distinction between primary and secondary
> reality. I think this kind of discussion tends to get muddled because
> we're actually dealing with several different kinds of differences:

[snip instructive epistle of 3 of the 4 Goat Differences]:

In a way you've managed to precs Tolkien's seminal work "On Fairy Stories",
which criticism is still trying to discount. This is often the trouble with
Tolkien, and by extension much of the so-called "fantasy" genre.

> (I think almost all fantasy ficiton has something of this sort, because
> almost - though, I think, not quite - all fantasy fiction recounts a
> characters journey of discovery from an outer world into an inner world.
> But in some forms it is much stronger. For example in Tolkien's books
> you could call the Shire the outer world, everwhere else the inner
> world. Bilbo's journey makes this distinction clearly. In the later LotR
> books, it is more difficult to maintain.)

But the point of having "incompleteness" is also to suggest a completeness and
the sense of a world in which we are immersed. His technique of interlacing
the storylines also suggests, to me, an attitude of the complementary nature
of the inner/outer perspectives. JKR is more concerned, I believe, that we
take more of the WW journey towards appreciation of Muggle perspective, with a
view to an "aha!" moment for want of a better metaphor. Sort of like the War
of the Ring from the Gondorian perspective until the King returns. Notice that
we have a parallel with comparative "outsiders" an integral part of
reconcilling the apparent dualism.


> Difference 4:

I would submit this difference is used by JKR as a tool for advancing the plot
and manipulating the readers expectations; possibly by making us aware of this
distinction, she is in effect setting us up for something.

> Moreover, it's the presence of all this complex thinking in categories
> like natural/supernatural, real/unrreal, possible/impossible, and
> bad/neutral/good that leads me to think that most successful authors of
> fantasy are people who care deeply about religious questions - since
> religious faith is *also* intrinsically connected to these kinds of
> questions. On these grounds I think that people who write fantasy tend
> to be interested in religious questions in about the same way that
> people who write historical fiction tend to be interested in history.

Frank Herbert's Dune series is interesting in this context. Unlike Rowling, he
exposes the socio-economic and religious structure, to say nothing of the
historical perspective, but his religion appears to be based in
biological/ecological themes. In a way, he works towards the same ends as
other fantasy authors from the opposite angle.

> And finally, for what it's worth, I think Goat's Law applies most
> strongly to authors whose understanding of the supernatural/natural &
> lower/higher relationships in our primary world is informed by an active
> religious orientation. In this case they are unlikely to depict
> *positive* religious practice anywhere in the secondary world - but
> particularly not within the secondary world's "inner" reality. 
 
I see it as the difference between success and failure of a fantasy-setting.
Many commentators have a hard time accepting that a Roman Catholic Tolkien
could write such an apparently "nonreligious" book, but it seems to me a
failure of their perception. Whereas Lewis, who wears his religious heart on
his sleeve, may succeed in terms of clarity of his position, but for me fails
in the story-telling.

> Vive la difference!
> 
> But no baaaaa, since I'm at work,

et vola! baaaaaas for you! (in my unofficial capacity as pretend sheep).

> 
> Mike (who hopes that this hasn't confused anyone else anywhere near as
> badly as it has confused him.)
> 

No, you've only encouraged me, which is probably a worse result :)

-- 
sed awk grep cat dd ..Im a luser baby ,so why don't you killall -kill me.





More information about the the_old_crowd archive