The Sci Fi Catholic Yak Module
I look forward to your critique! I actually thought that much of Landscape with Dragons was well thought out. However, I do like some of O'brien's other work so I may be biased. I read your blog frequently, good stuff.
I think the comma thing is the fault of Ignatius Press, because I've seen it in a bunch of their other books, and I have yet to know the reason why.
That said, I really, really disliked Landscape with Dragons--partly on its own account, and partly because of the guru status O'Brien has attained among Catholic homeschoolers--and I look forward to seeing your critique. I thought that O'Brien had a fundamentally good point about the value of fiction as a way to illustrate and learn about inward realities, but the way he analyzes actual pieces of literature is (IMHO) appallingly simplistic.
O'Brien had a fundamentally good point about the value of fiction as a way to illustrate and learn about inward realities
Oh, sure he does. I'm not here to argue with that. I'm here to argue with his numerous self-contradictions, his villainizing of various authors whose work he poorly analyzes, and his using separate sets of standards to evaluate different writers, not to mention his criticisms of "some modern critics," who he never cites.
Oh, and his ignoring Tolkien's use of a tamed dragon (his biggest pet peeve) in "Farmer Giles of Ham," which O'Brien has apparently never read.
And his accusing Stephen R. Lawhead of doing something immoral when he writes stories in which people commit adultery, and then turning around and praising Arthurian romance.
Oh, I could go on....
And his heaping praise on Bud MacFarlane, Jr. Okay, I better stop now....
Or the fact that his insistence that a thing can always and only symbolize one thing only falls apart in the face of scripture, which says the devil is like "a roaring lion" and calls Christ the Lion of Judah. Not to mention the fact that Jesus himself said that the bronze *snake* in Numbers is a symbol of the Crucifixion.
Or the way he dismisses the use of dragons as a symbol of good in Eastern cultures by saying they don't know right from wrong anyway.
Or the way he hyperscrutinizes fantasy authors for anything that might remotely be considered occult, but turns a blind eye to the fact that Aragorn raises an army of the dead and commands them to do his bidding, hello.
(No, I didn't like Landscape With Dragons either, can you tell?)
Oh, and I had forgotten that he got on Lawhead's case for adultery. Which is ironic, since I thought the main weakness of Lawhead's Arthurian books was that they took all the adultery and incest out.
I have only read a few scattered selections of Bud MacFarlane, so I cannot comment on them, except that his prose was poor, and yet somehow less boring than Left Behind. (I tried to read Left Behind so I could comment on it, but gave up halfway through when I realized that the theological infodump was more interesting than the end of the world.)
Sentences that obviously a ask question and yet end with a period really bother me. Maybe you can mention these errors in some way, just for fun? :-D
And of course that's what I get for typing two things at a time. That should have read "ask a question."
Having thus lost my cred, I'm going off now to read some bad lit as penance.
As a software engineer, I spend 8+ hours a day thinking that quotation marks limit the absolute begining and ending of a string, and thus commas, which are unrelated to the string, and specify how the string embeds in the greater sentence, belong OUTSIDE the quotation marks.
I realize that this is not standard usage, but it's so obviously more logical that I'm willing to get all Noah Webster on this and set my own standard and let others follow.
"As a software engineer, I spend 8+ hours a day thinking that quotation marks limit the absolute begining and ending of a string, and thus commas, which are unrelated to the string, and specify how the string embeds in the greater sentence, belong OUTSIDE the quotation marks."
That's true in the software world, but in common speech and writing,
a. "Quotation marks," Histor said to himself as he typed, "have nothing to do with the beginning or ending of the sentence (i.e., string of words)."
b. Quotation marks exist to instruct readers to pronounce certain lines in a slightly different accent. Commas tell you to make a brief pause in your reading. At the end of a quote, you pause (,) then drop the accent ("). Which touches on another thing: commas aren't just used to position sentences, but to indicate brief pauses in general. They're supposed to go next to words, not next to symbols.
"I apologize for "getting all Noah Webster" on you, TJIC," said Histor, "but the prospect of having the world of software, ahem, screw up the pleasing aesthetics of literature prompted me to this huge reply."
Histor
Histor--ARGHHHHHHHHHH! NO!!! The use of a comma is dictated by grammar, not the use of a pause in a sentence when it is read aloud. Beating this out of teenagers who've been "educated" without grammar is almost impossible and causes drinking, hair loss, and despair among college professors.
I am not certain, but I think commas always being inside quotation marks is an American usage, while European usage is to have commas either inside or outside, depending on the grammatical context.
My doddering memory agrees with Peter--the British put punctuation outside the quotation marks at least sometimes, though I cannot remember how they do dialogue and I do not have a convenient British book lying near at hand. However, I do know that they use single (not double) quotation marks for dialogue, so Ignatius Press is still being weird.
Okay, now that I'm recovered from the shock of bad grammar first thing in the morning...I notice that there's none of this inventive punctuation nonsense in Ignatius' volumes of B16's writing. I can't help but wonder if the Pope's getting the editorial A-team and the fiction is getting the interns.
Rhinemouse:
Or the fact that his insistence that a thing can always and only symbolize one thing only falls apart in the face of scripture, which says the devil is like "a roaring lion" and calls Christ the Lion of Judah. Not to mention the fact that Jesus himself said that the bronze *snake* in Numbers is a symbol of the Crucifixion.
Or that Christians should be as cunning as serpents, but then again, unlike snakes, lions or dogs, we've never had the dragon used as a symbol of good in Christian iconography, have we?
Or the way he dismisses the use of dragons as a symbol of good in Eastern cultures by saying they don't know right from wrong anyway.
Chesterton would back him up on that.
Or the way he hyperscrutinizes fantasy authors for anything that might remotely be considered occult, but turns a blind eye to the fact that Aragorn raises an army of the dead and commands them to do his bidding, hello.
Um, good day? You seem to be confusing Aragorn's exorcising his family ghosts with some sort of necromancy.
Oh, and I had forgotten that he got on Lawhead's case for adultery. Which is ironic, since I thought the main weakness of Lawhead's Arthurian books was that they took all the adultery and incest out.
I'm not certain about the incest, but the adultery was definitely something that was put in, after the French got hold of the stories. So far as I'm aware, the very earliest Welsh/English iterations of the Arthurian legends had no adultery sub-plot.
Templar--you're dead-on about Arthurian lit. The author who intro'd adultery (Chretien de Troyes) made it plain that it was the idea of his patron. And the argument could certainly be made that in all of the mainstream Arthurian Lit., the consequences of adultery are entirely destructive.
But the early Welsh versions of the Tristan cycle do seem to include adultery (and the manly sport of speed deer gutting!!), even before Chretien and Marie. Hmmm... does that make Tristan a proto-Lancelot? Well, anyway, let that be a lesson to you: when sending an embassy to collect a foreign princess bride, NEVER NEVER send your most handsome, young, virile, unmarried, and expensive knight... unchaperoned, no less!!! You're only asking for trouble (and probably some gratuitous comma splicing as well!)
Um, good day? You seem to be confusing Aragorn's exorcising his family ghosts with some sort of necromancy.
Oh, no, no. Aragorn may have been exorcising his family ghosts, but he was doing it through necromancy. The guy called up an undead army, for cryin' out loud.
And Histor, I'm afraid Xena is right: commas have rules, and quotation marks have more to do with setting off quotations than with indicating a change in accent.
It's memorizing and applying all those dang comma rules that's the hard part.
I won't argue too much about the Arthurian legends; there's lots of them and lots of versions, but for the average layman, I think Le Morte Darthur probably gets to be the standard even if it is a convoluted, messy latecomer.
I suspect O'Brien read The Boys' King Arthur and assumed he knew all about the subject.
does that make Tristan a proto-Lancelot?
I very much think so. You know, if we leave out adultery and incest, that means Arthur's nemesis has to go back to being his boring ol' nephew instead of his bastard son sired on his sister, which is way more interesting, so don't tell me the addition of incest and adultery is always damaging to Arthurian legend.
Well, golly...looks like we finished bashing O'Brien right here in this combox. Guess I can move on to other projects....
NEVER NEVER send your most handsome, young, virile, unmarried, and expensive knight... unchaperoned, no less!!!
Alright! Add some chaperones and you've got the basis for a flopped harem manga!
Ah, Snuffles, that'd be a manga I'd come a long way to see!
Or the way he dismisses the use of dragons as a symbol of good in Eastern cultures by saying they don't know right from wrong anyway.
Phooey on that. The East depicts dragons the way it does because, generally, they're rain gods, not because Eastern people have stunted views of morality. Rain gods are capricious--mostly, they're beneficial, but sometimes, they're destructive.
Incidentally, if O'Brien really wants a universal to associate with dragons, the best one is not evil but water. Dragons are quite consistently associated with water. O'Brien only thinks they're universally associated with evil because he's quite selective regarding his "universal."
Smiter:
But the early Welsh versions of the Tristan cycle do seem to include adultery (and the manly sport of speed deer gutting!!), even before Chretien and Marie.
I meant adultery in regards to Guinivere. 
Dawson:
Oh, no, no. Aragorn may have been exorcising his family ghosts, but he was doing it through necromancy.
How so?
The guy called up an undead army, for cryin' out loud.
Whatever the nature of the act in question, I think you've let your dislike of O'Brien drive you into a rather bizarre position. If Tolkien's works depict a putatively heroic character employing necromancy, then than that should be a mark against Tolkien's book, not O'Brien's.
Come to think of it, I remember now that Tolkien was worried that he'd put "too much" magic in Lord of the Rings...
You know, if we leave out adultery and incest, that means Arthur's nemesis has to go back to being his boring ol' nephew instead of his bastard son sired on his sister, which is way more interesting, so don't tell me the addition of incest and adultery is always damaging to Arthurian legend.
Oh, I wouldn't say that the nephew is necessarily a boring figure in that sort of dynastic saga. There's a certain Ewok who for years has been spinning some positively fascinating theories of adultery and cuckolding concerning Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade and Anakin Solo...
Incidentally, if O'Brien really wants a universal to associate with dragons, the best one is not evil but water. Dragons are quite consistently associated with water. O'Brien only thinks they're universally associated with evil because he's quite selective regarding his "universal."
Isn't that a bit (okay, a lot) backwards? Dragons are, if anything, more consistently associated with fire, unless I'm greatly mistaken.
[[NEVER NEVER send your most handsome, young, virile, unmarried, and expensive knight... unchaperoned, no less!!! ]]
Where is this handsome, young, virile, unmarried, unchaperoned and expensive knight... I'd like to buy him a drink 
Unless he's like the Prince Charming in Shrek--then you can keep him....
Isn't that a bit (okay, a lot) backwards? Dragons are, if anything, more consistently associated with fire, unless I'm greatly mistaken.
Dragons and large serpents in folkore and mythology are typically guardians of springs, occupants of lakes or oceans, inhabitants of underground pools, and rain gods. One theory, probably out of date, traces all dragons back to Tiamat, the oceanic serpent/goddess.
Come to think of it, I remember now that Tolkien was worried that he'd put "too much" magic in Lord of the Rings...
Yeah, I've heard that too, but I don't think anything in The Lord of the Rings is out of line.
I think that the trope "dragons must always be seen as evil" is a dangerous one, because it justifies you making snap judgements on basis of appearance, instead of looking at their behavior.
The correct trope is "see how a dragon behaves before you call him evil". Same as with all fantastic creatures.
It is the same criterion I have with vampires. Are vampires always evil? Not necessarily - in fact Huff's Henry Fitzroy, a good catholic by the way, is quite the good guy, and you can tell by the way he behaves.
You cannot judge by appearances. Evil may look quite attractive (how else would you be tempted?) and Good may be, at first look unpleasant, or offend your standards of beauty. It is incumbent that you learn to look beyond it to choose well.
By the way, that is what the Scandal of the Cross was, that people were suddenly worshipping a criminal, justly executed for this sins, to the astonishment of all the right-thinking people.
On the subject of quotation marks,
their content is always a sentence, because this is what someone says. When the quotation mark ends, this means that they have stopped talking, and the proper punctuation there is a period, or ellipsis to indicate that they did not complete the thought. But it is ridiculous to try to incorporate what they say and what somoene else says (the author) and make a whole out of those different parts.
That's why I vote with the software engineer. Let it be clear who says what, who talks, and who has stopped talking.
And if grammar insists otherwise, then grammar is wrong.
Dawson:
Dragons and large serpents in folkore and mythology are typically guardians of springs, occupants of lakes or oceans, inhabitants of underground pools, and rain gods.
I think you're confusing dragons with sea serpents, a mite.
Yeah, I've heard that too, but I don't think anything in The Lord of the Rings is out of line.
Given your defense of necromancy in fiction on account of Aragorn's apparent use of it, I think I can see why he was concerned. All the more reason for me to make it explicitly clear that the use of "magic" is evil, if I ever get around to finishing that novel...
Adriana:
I think that the trope "dragons must always be seen as evil" is a dangerous one, because it justifies you making snap judgements on basis of appearance, instead of looking at their behavior.
I disagree. Dragons have no purpose in fiction beyond serving as a physical manifestation of evil, hence human concerns about appearances and snap judgements are irrelevant.
It is the same criterion I have with vampires. Are vampires always evil? Not necessarily - in fact Huff's Henry Fitzroy, a good catholic by the way, is quite the good guy, and you can tell by the way he behaves.
Bully for him. However, there's a considerable gulf between a once-human vampire and an inhuman dragon.
By the way, that is what the Scandal of the Cross was, that people were suddenly worshipping a criminal, justly executed for this sins, to the astonishment of all the right-thinking people.
"Justly executed for his sins"? Heh, that's a good one...
Really, I think you may be letting a sentimental attachment to fictitious flying lizards run a little wild.
Templar:
I do not say that Christ was justly executed for his crimes, only that that's the way it appeared to the right-thinking people of his time. Because why had he been executed if he had not been a criminal?
That's what happens when we are merely guided by appearances.
As for dragons they are
a) a fictional creatures, which being fictional can be made to fit whatever trope the author wishes.
b) very likely an animal (perhaps a late dinosaur), and as an animal quite constrained in his ability to choose between good and evil. To say that someone or something is always evil or always good, is saying that it cannot choose to be anything else. And a creature that cannot choose cannot be good nor evil, it just can be. Just like the shark in Jaws, who can only "swim, eat, and make little sharks".
Dangerous? Yes? Evil? Not unless you postulat free will, and with it the capacity not to be evil.
So, you can say that a dragon can only fly, eat, and make little dragons, and leave it at that.
Dragons also read manga, as this blog demonstrates.
Interesting debate, but mostly trivial. The use of a dragon in literature doesn't have to symbolize anything. Why would it? Who defines the laws of literary symbolism? Certaintly symbolism is due to much interpretation and varies drastically due to culture and circumstance...
If dragons symbolize evil in one place so be it. If they symbolize benevolence in another so be it. The important thing is that the culture is able to show some truth through it, and in lieu of actual dragons, I think we can forgive people there varied interpretations.
The big issue here is that Christians associate dragons as evil because of the symbolism in the Bible, that associates the Devil, Anti-Christ, Evil with serpents, and dragons. However, it also makes a symbol of a fruit as sin. Am I know to condemn Veggie-Tales for making veggies into Christians, because of the Apple conundrum in Genises?
I think the biggest reason the Dragon, Serpent, Devil symbol is in the Bible is that it was written by Jewish (inspired obviously, but nontheless human) authors who recognized snakes as dangerous and sneaky, and the devil and dangerous and sneaky....Are snakes evil? No. Gah....Neither are apples....Symbols people.
In sub-creation, magic is a toughy though, and I'm still wrestling with it...I love Tolkien, Lewis...But sometimes the amount of magic in their works is unsettling to me. I'm also fickle though. Aragorn def. practiced necromancy which I thought was weird...But it isss a sub-creation, so if Tolkien wanted to make certain necromancy acceptable in his world is that moral? I don't know. Would it be moral to make stealing, or impurity, or murder just in sub-creation?
Finally....The Adultery issue... Surely it is moral for adultery to be included, and incest... Ever read the Old Testament? To say they are moral, obviously wouldn't be good. But to have them as plot points is just honesty....
sorry for all the spelling and grammar errors...im rushed....plenty of homework to do...Pax.
I didn't have time to fully develop my arguments on this, so my early apologies.
Since you say that O'Briens criticisms of various authors are inconsistent authors, does O'Brien mention that Lewis and Tolkien spent much of their younger (and later) years immersed in Norse mythology? Lewis documents his own obsession extensively in Surprised By Joy. Both authors certainly heavily drew from this background in their respective works. In fact, as I understand it, one of Tolkien's aims was to make a mythology for his country that he felt it lacked.
Don't get me wrong. I love the works of Lewis and Tolkien, and I also like some of the author authors he mentions, including Rowling. I'm all for reading sci-fi and fantasy. Having also grown up as a conservative Baptist kid, who is now a conservative (still) Baptist adult, I've delt with a lot of criticism from fellow believers, loved ones and *cough* otherwise, about my love of fantasy. So, this sort of thing hits a nerve.
I think because of the Harry Potter hooplah, some believers have gone to great pains to "sanitize" the fiction of Lewis and Tolkien (and Rowling, for that matter) in the eyes of their peers. If you try to make everything in their respective novels mesh with Biblical Christianity, well, at some point, those arguments are going to break down. After all, even in Lewis and Tolkiens works there are gods, magic, wizards, etc.
I guess I'm just trying to say that I hope that O'Brien doesn't completely dismiss this, because it's just being willfully different or dishonest. I also think that it's dangerous for parent's to buy into O'Briens analysis wholesale. Even when my son is old enough to begin read Rowling, Lewis, or Tolkien, I plan to some discussions with him about the material.
Now...I'm going to contradict myself a little and address the Aragorn/ necromancy issue.
I personally never even considered of Aragorn's interaction with the dead men of Dunharrow as act as necromancy. For one thing, Tolkien treated necromancy as evil and something that is forbidden. For instance, one of Sauron’s titles, at least in The Hobbit, is “The Necromancer.” I don't think Tolkien would have been comfortable drawing a parallel with Sauron the deceiver and one of the main heroes of the story.
Also, Aragorn doesn’t summon the Dead Men of Dunharrow in any occultic sense, certainly not in the same way that Sauron would. His army invades their territory, a place where they already have dominion. Any other mortal venturing there dies, as is made plain in the novel. Aragorn, being the Heir of Elendil and Isildur, the Returning King alone has the power to command these ghosts to uphold an oath they made to his ancestor. In a sense, by Tolkien's rules, at least, Aragorn has the inherited "right" to make these ghosts submit.
Anyway...that's just how I saw it. It doesn't bother me anymore than Gandalf's use of magic, which can also be explained away
Adriana:
I do not say that Christ was justly executed for his crimes, only that that's the way it appeared to the right-thinking people of his time. Because why had he been executed if he had not been a criminal?
Political expediency. The magistrate found no fault with him but was compelled to execute him to appease the mob.
That's what happens when we are merely guided by appearances.
I would agree with you, in that I believe that you're allowing the appearance of dragons to guide you.
As for your assertion that 'the trope "dragons must always be seen as evil" is a dangerous one, because it justifies you making snap judgements on basis of appearance, instead of looking at their behavior', let me say this: I am in agreement with Allan Bloom when he observes that young men and women, boys and girls, are attracted to the beauty of heroes whose very bodies express their nobility.
A child should not have to worry over distinguishing whether or not an ugly thing can be good, and an adult should be more than capable of avoiding "snap judgements on the basis of appearance".
As for the idea of Catholic vampires, that brings up another issue I have with the corruption and inversion of traditional symbolism. Vampirism is traditionally supposed to be visited upon witches, murders and those who have refused absolution before death. To put it plainly, vampires are the damned, and to make one a sympathetic protagonist is simply repugnant.
a) a fictional creatures, which being fictional can be made to fit whatever trope the author wishes.
Actually, I think their being fictional assists the "utterly evil" characterization. They're giant, fire-breathing winged lizards, not numbered amongst God's creations, but rather a warped, corruption of them, after the manner of Morgoth and Sauron's minions.
Peter:
Dragons also read manga, as this blog demonstrates.
I rest my case.
If dragons symbolize evil in one place so be it. If they symbolize benevolence in another so be it. The important thing is that the culture is able to show some truth through it, and in lieu of actual dragons, I think we can forgive people there varied interpretations.
At last, wisdom. There are no dragons, so there is no reason an author shouldn't feel free to use them in any way he wishes.
Templar, dragons in the Bible (all but one of them, found in the Greek Esther) are depicted as evil because they are descended from the Near Eastern Combat Myth, in which the dragon--in its association with water--is an emblem of the primordial ocean of chaos. The symbolism there is a relic of the biblical culture, not a hard-and-fast rule of ultimate reality.
I agree with those who say this argument is silly, but we must have it anyway because we have to deal with O'Brien on the one hand, who insists dragons must be evil and then bashes non-Christians, and Cornelia Funk on the other hand, who insists dragons must be symbols of benevolent nature and then bashes Christians. This is all foolish! Dragons are whatever a writer makes of them and nothing more. If he makes of them a symbol of evil, fine. If he makes of them a symbol of nature, fine. If he makes of them a child's playmate, fine. We should worry about real laws of morality instead of making up new ones. There is nothing I tolerate less than the man who invents his own moral rules and then acts appalled when he discovers others aren't following them.
Jeremy, regarding the necromancy issue, I bow to your arguments and accept your correction.
There are no dragons, so there is no reason an author shouldn't feel free to use them in any way he wishes.
Sure there is. It's called "precedent".
Templar, dragons in the Bible (all but one of them, found in the Greek Esther) are depicted as evil because they are descended from the Near Eastern Combat Myth, in which the dragon--in its association with water--is an emblem of the primordial ocean of chaos. The symbolism there is a relic of the biblical culture, not a hard-and-fast rule of ultimate reality.
To quote Robert Heinlein's Mr DuBois, it works.
Dragons are whatever a writer makes of them and nothing more.
Oddly enough, for the last few thousand years, what the writers of Western culture have made of them is unadulterated evil. That this old and fine tradition has been recently and popularly inverted is, I think, cause for some concern, as is the current glamour-Goth depiction of vampires as the ultimate bad-boy boyfriend, as opposed to the bloated, ambulatory corpses of folklore.
Jeremy, regarding the necromancy issue, I bow to your arguments and accept your correction.
I must admit, I feel somewhat vindicated.
Templar, if you're going to tell fantasists how to use their fantasy tropes, at least your facts straight.
On the relationship of dragons and water, I suggest you see Ingersoll's Dragons and Dragon Lore.
I suggest also you consider this quote from Medieval Folklore: "The diversity both of the sources of dragon motifs and of the genres, themes, and linguistic and national traditions within which these motifs were elaborated in the Middle Ages has led Lutz Rohrich to conclude that no single unifying formulation can possbly summarize medieval folklore related to the dragon. As a figure of folklore, then, the medieval dragon should be regarded as an amalgamation of indigenous Germanic and Celtic motifs with Christian biblical theological symbolism laid on a foundation of Middle Eastern, Anatolian, and Illyrian cosmogonic and mythographic concepts."
Remember also the seraphim, that is, winged serpents, who serve God. Remember also that one of the two dragons in Esther (11.6) represents Mordecai, one of the story's heroes (10.7).
And consider this quote from 17th-century naturalist Edward Topsell, whose bestiary includes Macedonian dragons, which "are so meek, that women feed them, and suffer them to suck their breasts like little children."
Consider also the dragon on the arms of Pope Gregory XIII.
As for your vampires, the handbook of vampirism is still Stoker's Dracula, wherein you will find that good Christians, too, can become vampires, and that when their animated corpses are exterminated, their souls are freed to go to Heaven. Vampirism is not visited on the damned only. Also, Stoker lays the groundwork for the vampire-as-boyfriend idea; his Dracula is intelligent and innovative enough to work around the taboos that vampirism has placed on him. All you have to do is grant him the tragic villain personality of a character like, say, the Phantom of the Opera, and you have the basis for a vampire romance.
Incidentally, vampires don't exist, either, except as wannabe Goth blood-fetishists, who don't count, so relax a little bit here. We are, after all, talking about fiction.
Precedent?
is that a reason?
Have you seen the racial stereotypes that populated entertainment in the nineteenth and twentieth century?
Have you seen the Protestant stereotypes of the Whore of Babylon, and the wicked priests who use confession to seduce women?
There is plenty of precedent for them. Does that make them untouchable?
Find me a dragon, a real live dragon, and then we'll identify it as good, bad, or just plain morally neutral, like all animals. But as long as they are fictional, and live in our imaginations, I object you trying to dictate what my imagination should and should not do.
By the way, what would you call a book that inverted the Lord of the Rings, and made the Sauron figure the good guy?
"By the way, what would you call a book that inverted the Lord of the Rings, and made the Sauron figure the good guy?"
POssible answers include:
Heresy
"Paradise Lost"
The Democratic Party
Christ and Satan B? (No, that's not inverted, sorry)
The trailer of the opera of the dream of the roodishlingenheimenkeit, by Wagner...
Stop me any time.
Find me a dragon, a real live dragon, and then we'll identify it as good, bad, or just plain morally neutral...
It so happens I've been described as all three!
Dawson:
I suggest also you consider this quote from Medieval Folklore:
And this demonstrates that dragons were not generally symbolic of evil how...?
Remember also the seraphim, that is, winged serpents, who serve God.
Remember also that the identification of the seraphim as winged serpents is pure conjecture. They are described merely as winged spirits of flame.
Remember also that one of the two dragons in Esther (11.6) represents Mordecai, one of the story's heroes (10.7).
That's rather singular, isn't it? I'm not familiar with the passage but I rather doubt it's a case of "dragon = symbolic good" as you seem to be implying.
Sorry, it looks as though I'm going to have to break up my response a bit.
To continue:
And consider this quote from 17th-century naturalist Edward Topsell..."
Umm, yes, and...?
Seriously, I've no idea how a fanciful travelogue excerpt invalidates the general usage of dragons in Western/Christian folklore.
As for your vampires, the handbook of vampirism is still Stoker's Dracula, wherein you will find that good Christians, too, can become vampires, and that when their animated corpses are exterminated, their souls are freed to go to Heaven.
Stoker is the beginning of the problem to which I refer.
Adriana:
Precedent?
is that a reason?
More at the evidence of a reason.
Have you seen the racial stereotypes that populated entertainment in the nineteenth and twentieth century?
Certainly, but what have they to do with dragons?
Find me a dragon, a real live dragon, and then we'll identify it as good, bad, or just plain morally neutral, like all animals.
I suspect that were I to find a real, live dragon, I should be forced to kill it that I might continue breathing.
The point is that I'm giving exceptions to your generalization in order to suggest that there is no reason to take the generalization as an iron-clad rule binding fantasy authors. A fanciful travelogue is a legitimate source for a fantasist, as is a fanciful hagiography, a pagan legend, or an author's unique idea.
I am not implying dragon = symbolic good, but rather dragon = symbolic whatever is appropriate to the context.
The identification of seraphim as winged serpents is not mere conjecture; more on this later.
(And who is Dawson?)
The point is that I'm giving exceptions to your generalization in order to suggest that there is no reason to take the generalization as an iron-clad rule binding fantasy authors.
That is as may be, but the question of "why?" immediately comes to mind. Why abuse traditional symbolism in the name of authorship? I mean, I could write a story about a heroic pope who takes an inverted cross as his symbol, and justify it on the grounds that Peter was, according to legend, crucified upside down, but I imagine that many readers would feel rather distinctively uncomfortable by it.
The identification of seraphim as winged serpents is not mere conjecture; more on this later.
As I understand it, it's a guess made on the basis of linguistic similarities, but the seraphim themselves are never described as serpents unless I'm greatly mistaken.
(And who is Dawson?)
A convenient stalking horse.
People who know something about grammar (like the editors at Ignatius Press), know that Ignatius Press largely follows the British method of punctuation being placed within quotation marks if it is part of what is being quoted or referred to. Go here for more info. There are various reasons why Ignatius Press follows this practice, one of them being that it is preferred by Fr. Joseph Fessio, who founded IP (and who studied in Europe for many years). Frankly, it makes for a more exact reading, which can be helpful when dealing with involved works of theology. There are some exceptions to this with IP for various reasons. For the record, I work for Ignatius Press, so take it as you will, but the editors at IP are excellent.
Carl:
There is a very good reason for that rule. Quotation marks indicate that the sentence or sentence fragments are embedded into a different sentence with different grammatical structure.
He said "I am here"
This parses equally as
He said something. The quotation is the equivalent of the direct object of the verb, and any puctunation of the main sentece should be outside it, as it would be ridiculous to put a comman beteen the letters of something
He said somethin,g. sounds ridiculous, no?
When that something is replaced by a complete sentence or sentence fragment, then that embedded sentence or sentence fragment should have its appropiate punctuation, which is the punctuation it would have it it was not embedded.
That is the only logical course.
Why rail against precented, Templar?
Because precedent by itself has been known to be grievously wrong. Precedent is valuable only as it does not contradict more recent knowledge.
Would you look kindly on the albino assassin in the Da Vinci Code if I could show you the precedent of sinister Vatican envoys in sensational literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?
When it comes to animals - as the dragon might well be - the branding of certain creatures as evil can bring enviromental disaster, because those "evil" creatures: snakes, bats, owls, do a valualbe service of keeping down the vermin that plague us. You would think twice about calling a snake evil had you seen that Steve Irwin show in which he showed and infestation of mice, and how snakes kept the population down.
(By the way, I would have loved a Steve Irwin show about dragons "ain't he a beauty?").
Adriana, let me put it this way: shall we recognize abortion, divorce, prostitution, drug-use, recreational body-modification and the homosexual "lifestyle" as good and harmless things, because historical precedent declared them to be evils?
Going by your logic, we must, simply because precedent says otherwise, and precedent, to your mind, must needs always be wrong.
Templar:
Precedent may be right, and precedent may be wrong.
After all, if you went by precedent, you'd have to agree that human sacrifice and slavery were right, because there was plenty of precedent that said so.
I can imagine the horror of god-fearing aztecs when they were told that morals had changed, and that you no longer had to give living hearts to the idols. Everything went to pot afterwards
(actually there are some accounts that sexual morality took a dive after the Spanish conquest. After all, you start falling off on your religious duties, you start falling off on other things).
Drunkenness also rose...
All because those Spaniards broke precedent and said not more sacrifices.
Adriana, let me put it this way: shall we recognize abortion, divorce, prostitution...as good and harmless things, because historical precedent declared them to be evils?
This is why I never like this argument, even though I believe it needs to be had (and started this blog to have it): we start talking about trivial things as if they're important and important things as if they're trivial. Dragons are trivial.
Templar, four things and then I think I'm about finished with this: First, as I've been telling you, the precedent here cuts more than one way. You've got the dragon as symbol of Satan, dragon as symbol of pride, dragon as guardian of treasure hoard, dragon as plot device for hero to defeat, dragon as emblem of cosmic chaos, dragon as generic apocalyptic image, dragon as whimsical rain god, dragon as creature people mistakenly believe real, and more recently, dragon as silly buffoon, dragon as color-coded semi-divine role playing artifice, and a host of other precedents. Your claim, and O'Brien's claim, that the dragon is and can only be one thing, is false.
Second, we're talking here about speculative fiction, which, as a rule, violates precedents. Both fantasy and sf exist to push you outside your regular experience and preconceptions. Authors unwilling to do that shouldn't be writing speculative fiction; if they do write it, it will inevitably be bad. If I write a story in which a dragon decides he'd rather give gold away than keep it, or hoard chocolate eclairs instead of jewels, what is that to you? Show me the moral law I have violated.
Third, one of my exceptions to the rule you are trying to lay down comes directly from the Bible. For a Christian, on a matter like this, that ought to end the discussion.
Fourth, I wonder if you apply this arbitrary rule to any mythical beings besides dragons and vampires. In the popular mind, unicorns have come to represent purity, but I can show you a medieval bestiary in which this creature has a more rapine nature. If I choose one image of the unicorn over the other, or if I choose another altogether, can you say I have violated a moral law? How should I, who can't read your mind, know which image of the unicorn will offend you? People like Michael O'Brien make careers out of being offended. They sell books based on their professional offended-ness.
When I was a young boy, my dream world involved, among other things, a group of friendly talking dinosaurs. According to O'Brien, I was dabbling in Satanism, though I certainly never knew it. My first attempt at a novel, written for a very specific nine-year-old girl, involved a friendly dragon. I fretted a good deal over the content of that book because I wanted to keep it appropriate for the audience, and I cut out parts I would have liked to have kept, but it never so much as entered my mind that there was something immoral about my cutesy dragon characters. Had I never heard of O'Brien, it
...never would have entered my mind, yet according to O'Brien, I crossed a line "a Christian will not cross." Balderdash.
Adriana:
Precedent may be right, and precedent may be wrong.
After all, if you went by precedent, you'd have to agree that human sacrifice and slavery were right, because there was plenty of precedent that said so.
Ah, but I’m not going by precedent, but by a precedent. The precedent that uses a pastiche of numerous characteristics that humans find fearful or disgusting to describe embodied evil.
Dragons are trivial.
Nothing is trivial. As P.G. Wodehouse had it, “You can either pretend that nothing matters and make a sort of musical comedy, or accept that everything matters.”
Your claim, and O'Brien's claim, that the dragon is and can only be one thing, is false.
Your counter-claim being that the dragon is many things, or is it that the dragon is two things? Help me out here. I’ve no problem with “dragon as symbol of Satan, dragon as symbol of pride, dragon as guardian of treasure hoard, dragon as plot device for hero to defeat, dragon as emblem of cosmic chaos, dragon as generic apocalyptic image” and neither, I suspect, does O’Brien (though that is of little if any significance to my position), so long as the dragon is evil. According to you (seemingly), this means that I insist that dragons must be “one thing”, which would logically mean that your insistence on good and good and evil dragons would mean that you believe that dragons must be two things and two things only, unless we include morally ambiguous dragons and bump it up to three things and three things only.
Disregarding that though, for the moment, let me address this: You say that speculative fiction exists to push boundaries. I can’t help but feel that the statement is flawed in some way, but since I’m obviously not in sound enough mind at the moment to put my finger on exactly what the sliver in my brain driving me mad about it is, I’ll leave it at that for the time being.
I’m not a fantasist. By nature, I am an historian (if a very inexperienced and fallible one still in training). My concerns are with precedents and traditions, what has been and what is as opposed to what may be, and so if you say to me “why not?” my first and most immediate response will be “why?” Why should a dragon give freely of itself or hoard pastry? To do so dismisses the very things that make the figure of the dragon significant in the first place, much as the casual romanticization of vampires has reduced them from figures of actual horror to a slightly more glamorous version of Lovelace from Clarissa, so what good is there to be had of subverting traditional imagery? All human things exist and occur for meaningful reasons and so I can’t help but be somewhat concerned over this seemingly blithe dismissal of what had become until very recently the accepted usage of dragons in Western fiction, coming as it does with the denigration of the figure of the knight, and more generally, a rejection of Christianity in much of Western society.
...means that I insist that dragons must be “one thing”, which would logically mean that your insistence on good and good and evil dragons would mean that you believe that dragons must be two things and two things only...
No, the point I'm trying to get at is that it need not be anything.
Ah, but who decideds what precedents are right and which are wrong? The precedents you like are right, of course, and the precedents you do not like are wrong?
Pardon me if I do not bow to your own subjective view of things. Subjective for subjective, I prefer my own.
I would rather have a Steve Irwin dragon, a fearsome beast, but one that has its place in the general ecology, and like all creatures, which has its own needs and desires which may sometiems clash with that of other creatures' needs and desires, but can only be called evil through the subjectivism of the observer.
No, the point I'm trying to get at is that it need not be anything.
Nonetheless, it would seem to follow.
Adriana:
Ah, but who decideds what precedents are right and which are wrong? The precedents you like are right, of course, and the precedents you do not like are wrong?
That seems to be how you're approaching the issue. I prefer a slightly more circumspect approach, however.
I would rather have a Steve Irwin dragon, a fearsome beast, but one that has its place in the general ecology, and like all creatures, which has its own needs and desires which may sometiems clash with that of other creatures' needs and desires, but can only be called evil through the subjectivism of the observer.
Then you've stripped the dragon of all of its significance, and reduced it to the level of a National Geographic television special. Congratulations.
There is much to learn from a National Geographic special.
Humility is one of those things, the humility to recognize that other creatures do have their own priorities and desires, which for them are valid, and that your own desires are not a moral law.
This is the comment Eamon de Valera made to Churchill, that the needs of England were not a moral imperative to which everyone else must bow.
Snuffles and I are now talking about concocting a serial Catholic vampire romance; he really wants it set in a Catholic high school, though I'm thinking of older characters and audience. The trials and tribulations of a vampire maneuvering through a school full of Christian icons could be interesting, though, especially when he falls in love with a girl who wears a big honkin' crucifix.
D.G.
You could have the vampire ask Henry Fitzroy for advice, which would be
"there is no reason for you not to be a Catholic. The sins that were valid when before you became a vampire are still valid now. If you feed without harming your sources, and if you do not use your powers to harm the innocent, then by all means, join the Catholic Church, and wear your own crucifix, as I do. Remeber to pray, and go to confession at least once a year."
Ah, but how does the vampire wear a crucifix when it repels him, or worship when such things as holy water burn him and he is unable even to speak the very name of our Lord? Therein lies the dilemma for a Catholic vampire; what do these repulsions mean for his relationship with God?
That dilemma is undeniably an artificial one, but sf and fantasy always, to some degree, deal with artificial dilemmas, which they can use to reflect (with more or less success) on real issues and dilemmas. I think this could form the basis for an intriguing work of Christian fantasy. At the very least, the work would be forced to avoid the pitfall of pat solutions for simple problems, a pitfall quite common in Christian spec fic.
Well, for Henry Fitzroy the problem does not exist. He has no problem whatsoever with speaking the name of God, nor praying, nor wearing a crucifix.
At one point in the first book, after a demonic invasion has been thwarted by the arrival of Easter, he goes down on his knees and prays both in Thanksgiving, and to make double sure.
If he ran across a vampire who had the problem, he'd probably point out that it was psychosomatic.
Oh, I didn't catch the reference here. You're referring to Blood Ties, right? Silly me.
Yes. And to the Tanya Huff's blood books in which the show is based. One of the jokes of the books is that Henry is a better catholic than most of the people he runs across.
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