Chwedl Gymaeg a Llenyddiaeth Gyfoesol: (Welsh Myth and Contemporary Literature

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Chwedl Gymaeg a Llenyddiaeth Gyfoesol: (Welsh Myth and Contemporary Literature Volume 19 Number 3 Article 8 Summer 7-15-1993 Chwedl Gymaeg a Llenyddiaeth Gyfoesol: (Welsh Myth and Contemporary Literature Kath Filmer-Davies Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Filmer-Davies, Kath (1993) "Chwedl Gymaeg a Llenyddiaeth Gyfoesol: (Welsh Myth and Contemporary Literature," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 19 : No. 3 , Article 8. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol19/iss3/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Contends religious discourse has migrated to the fantasy novel, and fantasy “invades so-called realistic novels”; examines “this theological aspect of writing applied to fantasy”; discusses several contemporary fantasies based on Welsh myth. Additional Keywords Fantasy—Criticism and interpretation; Fantasy—Sources; Fantasy—Theological aspects; Welsh myth This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol19/iss3/8 J^YTfrl-ORe issue 73 SUCDCDCR 1993 PA.Q 6 53 © veD ^sg a '®}/.po^3'OL ( W eLS^ CDYTt) AKlD CONT6CDPORARY U T6RA TU R6 ) k^Tp piLcneR-Davies t does not need a degree in theology nor skll in ance of this theological aspect of writing applied to fantasy rhetoric to argue that what the world needs literature, and last, I want to look at several fantasy works now is not so much love, but hope. Nearly using Welsh myth and story to provide the consolation of, every time any one of us opens a newspaper if not beauty, enlightenment and comfort, then at least or tunes into the television or radio news, we are greeted with hope. And if not at top speed, then in a slow and steady displays of hopelessness brought about by the actions of our way which promises that the hope they offer will endure own Ibid — war, terrorism, injustice, unemployment. to and beyond the turn of the century. Our various gods have become incarnate and are being If the nineteenth century saw a growing tension be­ crucified. The saviours of a past age, science and technol­ tween faith and doubt, the ebbing sea of faith has all but ogy, have become demons in ours. But this paper is neither dried up in Western culture. Christianity seems to make the aboutfin de siecle angst nor about retrospective breast-beat­ news mostly by desperately striving to keep up with the ing. What I hope to do is to show what is happening for times, so that ancient truths are forgotten or so ruthlessly certain writers of fantasy, who are turning to the mythic updated that they are unrecognizable. If ever a century past to revitalize their vision for this and for a future age. witnessed the withdrawing God, it is this one. But the In doing so, they are in the business of theology, for they withdrawal of faith and a lack of feeling God's presence offer comfort and hope. and purpose leaves humanity with a need to fill the void, a hunger and thirst which cries out for relief. To some I have argued elsewhere that there has been a decided degree, literature, as Matthew Arnold predicted, has pro­ slippage of theological discourse into fiction, especially vided a quantum of solace for abandoned humankind. fantasy fiction. While churches are emptying, fantasy bookshops are filling. It is to the writers of fantasy that The American critic, Nathan A Scott, observes that: many readers are turning, for such writers temper theol­ a radically secular literature may have a profoundly ogy with thrilling stories of quests, adventures and ro­ fruitful religious function to perform. For, by the very mance. Of course, it might be said that is precisely what resoluteness with which it may plunge us into the Dark, readers will find in the Bible, but not everyone is able to it may precipitate us out of our forgetfulness, so that, view the Bible in quite the same way as they do contem­ in a way, our deprivation of the Transcendent may porary literature. itself bring us to its Mystery. (208) Kurt Vonnegut was well aware of the theological im­ Even the post-modernist critic, J. Hillis Miller has observed perative of the writer. In his novel Cat's Cradle he writes that that twentieth-century literature could transcend nihilism, " When a man becomes a writer, I thinkhe tales on a sacred the absence of the withdrawing God, by presenting a obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and com­ divine and immanent presence. He writes: fort at top speed" (145). But such production is not accom­ If any spiritual power can exist for the new poetry it plished ex nihilo. Rather, as Coleridge has said and Tolken must be an immanent presence. There can be for many has echoed, writers must recreate from elements already writers no return to the traditional conception of God available to them. Fortunately for us, there is a wealth of as the highest existence, creator of all other existences, mythic lore awaiting the masterful touch of the storyteller. transcending his creation as well as dwelling within it. If there is to be a God in the new world it must be a Some of the most insightful fantasy has emerged from presence within things and not beyond them. The new retellings of W elsh mythic stories, and in this paper I want poets have at the farthest limit of their experience to look at several books which draw upon Welsh mythic caught a glimpse of a fugitive presence, something traditions to offer hope of various kinds to children and shared by all things in the fact that they are. This adults of the late twentieth century. I will concentrate on presence flows everywhere, like the light which makes children's literature a little, since it is through children's things visible, and yet can never be seen as a thing in eyes that we see, and with their minds that we will be itself. It is the presence of things present... (186) thinking, not merely toward 2000 but beyond it. If we are looking for "a presence within things" we come This paper, then, is in three parts. First, I want to look close to the belief in an immanent God which informs the at the way in which religious discourse has slipped, into fantasies of George MacDonald. In his novel Lilith, he has the genre of fantasy, and how fantasy itself invades so- his character Mr. Vane realize, after pursuing redemption called realistic novels; next I want to look at the import­ and individuation, that PA.QG 54 issu e 73 sucncneK 19 9 3 ^lYTt>LORe I lived in everything, everything entered and lived in hemerus thought), not diabolical illusion (as some of me. To be aware of a thing was to know its life at once the Fathers thought), nor priestly lying (as the philos­ and mine, to know whence we came, and where we ophers of the Enlightenment thought), but, at its best, were at home — was to know that we are all what we a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling are, because Another is what he is! (245). on human imagination. (Lewis 188n) And now we are walking on firm ground. If God is a Myth is neither static nor unchanging; it is a creation of transcendent being, we have little to know of him and little individual humans, although it might be adopted by a to do with him in the business of everyday life. But if, whole society and culture. It springs, as Tolkien suggests, through literature, we become aware that "the kingdom of from the Secondary Imagination, a concept he borrowed God is within us," if we become aware of the light which from Coleridge. According to Coleridge, the Secondary makes all things visible illuminating our lives and those of Imagination is that faculty which recreates perceived ele­ all about us, if we know where we are at home, then we ments of the created world; it, like the Primary Imagina­ have inestimable treasure. I think that there is a certain kind tion, is "a repetition in the finite mind of the infinite I AM" of fantasy literature which gives us this experience. (Coleridge, Biographia Literaria Ch. XIII). Tolkien goes fur­ ther. Recreation, or to use his term, Subcreation, is the It does so by coming to terms with twentieth-century divine faculty wakened in humans, and in exercising it, we angst — the results of buffeting by global and local war­ are most like God; in that is our ancient, lost lordship fare, human injustice and natural disasters. Fantasy does regained. Here is Tolkien's poem, Mythopoeia, written for not turn from the skepticism that pervades the external a defiantly unconverted Lewis who was then arguing that world, the disillusionment with traditional Western reli­ "Myth is lies breathed through silver." Not so, said Tolkien: gions or the myriad religious sects offering some variation upon the themes of mysticism, New-Age self-actualiza­ Dear Sir, I said— Although now long estranged, tion, crystal power and the like, all of which offer at first Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
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