For the longest time, I was a big fan of high fantasy. The Chronicles of Narnia were some of the first "grown up" books (i.e. more words than pictures) I ever read, and by the time I got to middle school, I was devouring Lord of the Rings, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books, and whatever Terry Brooks was writing at the moment (which I can now scarcely remember, such was Brooks's impact on me apparently). Sometime late in high school, I kind of fell out of the genre, though I still enjoy reading a good epic quest from time to time[1]. But anyway, the point is that I read a lot of that sort of thing.
One particular series that stands out in my mind is Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence, which is really the main event of this post. The more I think about this series, the more it feels to me like a complete anomaly in the high fantasy genre.
For those who don't know[2], The Dark Is Rising sequence is a series of five children's books (although they probably would have been classified as YA novels if such a distinction existed at the time) written in the '60s and '70s during the post-LoTR explosion of epic fantasy literature. The main premise of the books is this: throughout history two forces—the Light and the Dark—have fought for control over Earth. The Old Ones, an ancient order of protectors allied with the Light, have to collect five magical artifacts to defeat the Dark, which is (you guessed it) rising for one final battle in which the fate of the planet hangs in the balance, and in order to do so, the Old Ones recruit several British schoolchildren (among whom is Will Stanton, a sort of Chosen One) to help them save the world. Pretty standard high fantasy stuff, right? Well, sort of.
Now, there is a whole host of reasons why The Dark Is Rising stands out as a non-standard entry in the fantasy canon, but here's the one I want to focus on in this post: unlike almost every other fantasy series I read growing up, this series values its pagan influences over its Christian ones.
Pretty much every modern fantasy epic has two major influences on its storytelling and world-building philosophies: medieval Christianity and pre-Christian European mythology[3]. From medieval Christianity, we get the setting (castles, noble knights, etc.) and the overriding storytelling morality of absolute good vs. absolute evil (including the accompanying imagery—white=good; black=bad). From European paganism, we get wizards/druids, dwarves, magic rings, and pretty much all the other mythical trappings. Of course, that's an oversimplification of the factors at play in fantasy, but I do think (please correct me if I'm wrong) it's broadly accurate.
What ends up happening in most traditional fantasy sagas is that the pagan elements (aka the magic) work in service of Christian ones. Consider (as anyone must when discussing this genre) Tolkien. Lord of the Rings has pagan influences aplenty: magic items, monsters, cloaked figures who perform ancient ceremonies—all that comes from pre-Christian Norse and Celtic mythology; Tolkien even cribbed some of the names (Gimli, for instance) directly from Norse myth. But the storytelling ends to which Tolkien puts these influences to use are decidedly Christian. Lord of the Rings, with its redemptive plot arcs, corruptible humanity, and figures of pure good and evil, is an undeniably Christian work that uses its non-Christian elements as tools. The same thing happens in most other fantasy epics I'm familiar with. The individual components may harken back Norse, Celtic, or even Greco-Roman mythology, but the central philosophy and storytelling devices are more in-line with Christian thought[4].
Cernunnos, letting it all hang out
That's not really the case with The Dark Is Rising. Sure, the series has Christian influences (the books make frequent allusions to churches, King Arthur pops up in conversation from time to time, and iconography like crosses plays an important role in the plot), but as the sequence progresses, pre-Christian Celtic narratives crop up more and more. For example, Herne the Hunter (a folk figure often connected with Celtic deity Cernunnos) makes a prominent appearance in the second book, while the third book is entirely focused on a town's annual "greenwitch" offering, which seems to be a benign version (read: no killing) of the Druid wicker man tradition. By the fourth book, it's revealed that three powers (not just the Light and Dark) rule over the world, effectively doing away with binary morality. And these aren't just passing allusions; these are major mythological touchstones for the sake of themselves, without any sort of Christian endgame. By the end of the series, it's clear that The Dark Is Rising is first and foremost interested in ancient traditions that predate Christianity's arrival in the British Isles, and it uses its fantasy structure to build a story more in-step with those traditions than any Western ideology. In a way, it's reminiscent of the original Wicker Man movie, only without all the human sacrifice and horror—how a mostly Christian (or at least Western) premise gives way to an exploration of how ancient Celtic traditions override modern sensibilities.
In a way, The Dark Is Rising takes the medieval Christian tendency to appropriate pagan traditions for theological ends (just check out the historical origins of our Christmas and Halloween celebrations) and turns it on its head, using high fantasy, a genre typically associated with Christian mores, to explore old Celtic beliefs. That's pretty fascinating stuff, even if I for one identify much more (aka completely) with Christianity than Celtic paganism.
Not the bees... oh wait.
I feel like I need to end this discussion by reiterating that I haven't paid nearly as much attention to the genre recently as I did in my middle and high school years. If I ever was an expert on epic fantasy, I certainly am not one now. Furthermore, I've never been an expert on mythology. So take all these ideas with a grain of salt. This post is more of a rambling muse than a well-researched treatise on the subject. If any of you out there know more on either subject, I'd love to hear about it!
As always, I'm super willing to discuss anything you might bring up, and moreover, I'm sure I've said something reductive, stupid, or just plain wrong in the above paragraphs. So let me know what you think. Thanks so much for reading.
Until next time.
1] In fact, I just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which is pretty much a high fantasy novel set in the contemporary USA.
2] Judging from its ubiquity in libraries, I think there must have been a time when this series was at least semi-popular, but I rarely hear it discussed nowadays. Aside from a go-nowhere attempt to adapt the books into a series of movies with The Seeker (which I haven't seen but is by all accounts pretty lousy), I get the impression that not too many people pay attention to The Dark Is Rising sequence anymore. Maybe I just fly in the wrong circles, though, so apologies if I'm pretending like these books are more obscure than they are.
3] You could probably say, more accurately, that every modern fantasy epic has one influence, Lord of the Rings, and that Lord of the Rings is the one directly influenced by Christianity and paganism.
4] I'm not saying that fantasy authors always have Christian intentions or identify with the Christian religion (though that certainly seems to be the case with J. R. R. Tolkien and his fantasy co-conspirator, C. S. Lewis), but the conventions of 20th-century English-language fantasy do tend toward broadly Christian ideology, even if not in an explicitly theological way. Maybe a better way to put it is that they represent the generally Western way of thinking most closely aligned with Christianity. Even Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, as explicitly anti-Christian as it may be, still uses Western Christianity as a primary philosophical touchstone, if only to refute it.
No comments:
Post a Comment