XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien, alt.fan.harry-potter   
   From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   In message  richard e white   
    spoke these staves:   
      
   > Weland wrote:   
   >   
   >> On 10/11/2010 8:41 PM, Steve Hayes wrote:   
   >>>   
      
      
      
   >>> Another point of similarity, not specifically mentioned by   
   >>> Jason, but which can be seen, is that both Williams (in "Many   
   >>> Dimensions") and Rowling satirise British bureaucracy.   
   >>   
   >> Not peculiar to these two authors either.   
      
   No, hardly ;-)   
      
   Bureaucracy seems a common target of satire in any form of narrative   
   art -- whether film, comic-book (there's a delicious _Asterix_ that I   
   remember), poetry or prose (and possibly in other art-forms as well).   
   This seems more to be a tradition of artists ;-)   
      
   >>> And if it comes down to the "hidden building motif" common to   
   >>> Williams and Rowling, I remember a ghost story   
      
   >>> Perhaps both Williams and Rowling were influenced by that story,   
   >>> or others like it. And Lewis used a similar one in gateways to   
   >>> Narnia - now you see it, now you don't.   
   >>   
   >> House of Lost Play, Arthurian Romances, Christianity is built on   
   >> the assumption of an unseen world around us that we could see if   
   >> only we had spiritual vision...which saints do; Dickens even   
   >> shows us a whole world of spirits wandering around unseen....   
      
   I can see how the ieda of a spiritual world could translate into the   
   magical world both of Lewis and Rowling, but would you say that this   
   whole 'now you see it, now you don't' theme (at least as employed by,   
   say, Western fantasy authors) is derived from this Christian idea of   
   an unseen world?   
      
   >> folktales have hidden buildings and places.   
      
   aplenty . . . ;-)   
      
   >>> And when it comes to "the location of a supernatural world   
   >>> alongside (and usually invisible to) the humdrum reality of the   
   >>> hoi polloi" Alan Garner's children's books, especially   
   >>> "Elidor", do that too. That book would s urely make Garner an   
   >>> "honorary Inkling" too.   
   >   
   > If a spiritual vision is the center of the idea, then JKR's books   
   > don't fit.   
      
   Right, I quite agree.   
      
   And Rowling's books also doesn't have the same fundamental Christian   
   basis to them that do Tolkien's books and the Narnia books -- there   
   is, in my honest opinion, no sense of providence in Rowling's work,   
   none of the 'trust in God' that I get both in Lewis' Narnia books   
   and, far more subtly, in Tolkien's work. In both the Narnia books and   
   the Middle-earth books, the Christianity of the author is worked into   
   the causal basis of their sub-created world: trusting in providence,   
   for instance, actually does work in both worlds.   
      
   > "The red pyramid" might fit if a Christian view isn't required.   
      
   If we speak of the Inklings, then I do believe that the Christian   
   view would be required if any spirituality is a part of the   
   tradition. That is -- either the 'tradition of the Inklings' is   
   explicitly Christian, or there is no aspect of spirituality in it.   
      
   > So the question is it only a Christian unseen world which sets   
   > these writers aside, or is it just an unseen world?   
      
   And does even a 'Christian unseen world' set them apart? Or is this   
   such a common feature that it isn't defining of any particular group   
   of authors?   
      
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   Troels Forchhammer     
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