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James Wynn · 16 Dec 2010, 18:07 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:07:13 -0600
Subject: (urth) (no subject)
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinm55HwP4w+L-irCaT40c8zW1PhQvevkqjun=i1 at mail.gmail.com>
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>>> Lane Haygood-
>>> But a straight 1-for-1 substitution (a la Lewis) would have been
>>> distasteful for Tolkien, who loved myths and the changes myths and
>>> languages go through as cultures meet and intersect, but hated
>>> allegory.
>> James Wynn-
>> Although Narnia was more tightly allusive than Middle Earth, Lewis
>> emphatically rejected the label "allegory" for it. He compared it to a stew
>> with lots of different familiar flavors.
> Lane Haygood-
> Case in point for why we should take author's self-assessment with a
> grain of salt.

I think the Cambridge lit professor had a point. IIRC he said that an 
allegory is a story with a series of locks, each with a key. He used 
Pilgrim's Progress as an example and Pilgrim's Regress surely applies as 
well. Now, the gods of the Whorl are closely analogous to the gods of 
Olympus and in many cases perform their deeds. I've argued emphatically 
that the plot of the novel is mapped over Robert Graves' telling of the 
deeds of Aristaeus with nods to references in Pindar, Herodotus, and 
Plutarch. But I wouldn't call tBotLS an allegory of Greek myth or even 
an allegory of the life of Aristaeus.

u+16b9

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