XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien, alt.fan.harry-potter   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   On Sun, 24 Oct 2010 13:43:45 +0200, Troels Forchhammer   
    wrote:   
      
   >I am curious about your statement that they (Tolkien and Lewis) are   
   >'reinventing and drawing on medieval and Renaissance materials without   
   >overly modernizing them as part of their subcreative process'. I get   
   >the impression that you are referring to a particular way of dealing   
   >with, or using, one's influences / sources. For Tolkien, whom I know   
   >best, I'd say that he not only respects the antiquity of his sources,   
   >but he also does not try to hide it, instead he uses that very air of   
   >antiquity to his own purposes in his work. Lewis also, in the Narnia   
   >books, does not try to modernize the source (or perhaps mediate between   
   >the source and the reader), but he doesn't (as I recall it) achieve the   
   >same air of a vast distance (in time) to the events he is describing   
   >(possibly because that is not his intention -- the events of these   
   >books are roughly contemporary with the books themselves (at least the   
   >events that, within the fiction, belong to the same dimension of time   
   >as does the book itself).  I am, however, not sure that this translates   
   >all that well to Rowling, who often uses more modern sources that have   
   >no need of mediation to the modern reader (to a very large extent, the   
   >elements Rowling borrow into her sub-creation from external folk-lore   
   >sources are still a part of the common tradit? that is known to her   
   >readers).   
      
   I've isolated this paragraph from the rest of what you said because I think   
   you are saying much the same thing as I said in another message in teply to   
   one of yours -- about Lewis and Tolkien (especially) using premodern sources,   
   and not trying to interpret them in a modern way, whereas Rowling takes modern   
   misconceptions of premodernity and builds her stories around those.   
      
      
      
      
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