Dan'l
I found your post in a search on Tracking Song, which I just reread for the 10th (or so) time.
I completely agree with your last remark, and I think Tracking Song is a perfect example of how Wolfe merges mythological material with his Catholicism. This, because the story incorporates Native American modes of thinking and speech and concepts of human connections with nature and the world, but is no more /about /that than Wizard Knight is about Merlin and Arthur.
Dave
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Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
Hello Matthew!
Yes, there are quite a few running images and themes in GW's work, aside from the obvious genes, wolves, roses, and rosemary, which are almost more signatures than thematics. (How cool to have a name you can do that with! I can't figure out how to work a danl or a danehyoakes into my attempts at fiction...)
Another that appears frequently is a communion feast, which can
be either sacramental or blasphemous, or, sometimes, both. (I think, for example, that the feast of the Liege of Leaves is generally a blasphemy but becomes a sacrament on the occasion of Severian's presence.)
Another that gets some discussion at times >kaff, kaff< is the recurrent image of blue-green world pairs: Ste.Anne/St.Croix, Urth/Lune, Blue/Green. Probably others, but those are the most significant.
One I push at that nobody else seems to see or agree with: the embedding of non-Christian cosmologies into a larger Christian cosmology, which itself is frequently ambiguous.
Cheers,
--Dan'l