Here Be Dragons (49 page)

Read Here Be Dragons Online

Authors: Stefan Ekman

BOOK: Here Be Dragons
6.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

55
. Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,”
Robert Browning's Poetry: Authoritative Texts, Criticism
, ed. James F. Loucks (1855; New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), st. 10:2–3. Further references to this poem are given parenthetically in the text.

56
. Tom Shippey, introduction to
The Wood beyond the World
, by William Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), ix; see also Shippey,
Road
, 184. In the latter work, Shippey also mentions that “Childe Rowland” is a story in Joseph Jacobs's
English Fairy Tales
from 1890 (346). This story takes Rowland to Elfland, however, rather than to any evil landscape. Edgar's line comes at the end of
King Lear
3.4.

57
. Astrid Lindgren,
Mio, My Son
, trans. Marianne Turner (1954, English trans. 1956; London: Puffin-Penguin, 1988), 88, 103. It is interesting to notice the many similarities—even on a fairly detailed level—between Lindgren's book and
The Lord of the Rings
, especially since the original Swedish edition of
Mio, My Son
was published in the same year as
The Fellowship of the Ring
: a small boy and his steadfast friend, the gardener's son, venture to the Dark Land to defeat a Dark Lord in his dark tower. For aid, they receive magical bread that sustains them, cloaks that hide them, and a special blade; and they avoid the black soldiers by entering the Dark Land through mountain tunnels.

58
. Milton,
Paradise Lost
, 10 (bk. 1, l. 63).

59
. Homer,
The Odyssey
, trans. A. T. Murray, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), bk. 10; Virgil,
Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI
, bk. 6.

60
. Glen Cook,
The Black Company
(New York: Tor, 1984), 240. The two following books of the series also introduce a male Dark Lord.

61
. Dickerson and Evans,
Ents
, 190.

62
. For a more thorough discussion on authorities in portal–quest fantasies, see Mendlesohn,
Rhetorics
, 12–16 et passim.

63
. Tolkien,
The Hobbit
, 183 [ch. 11].

64
. Tolkien,
The Silmarillion
, 151 [ch. 18].

65
. J. R. R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien,
The Shaping of Middle-earth
, vol. 4 (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 11, 26–27, 58–59.

66
. Randel Helms,
Tolkien's World
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 98.

67
. This is also the position of Dickerson and Evans,
Ents
, 186.

68
. John Garth, “‘As under a Green Sea': Visions of War in the Dead Marshes,”
Tolkien 2005: 50 Years of The Lord of the Rings
, ed. Sarah Wells, vol. 1 (Birmingham: The Tolkien Society, 2005), I:18–19. He mainly treats the Dead Marshes and Dagorlad in connection with Tolkien's experiences at the Somme, however, referring to an interview from 1968. The same interview (Keith Brace, “In the Footsteps of the Hobbits,”
Birmingham Post
, May 25, 1968) is cited in Hammond and Scull,
Reader's Companion
, 455, in connection to Dagorlad.

69
. J. R. R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien,
The War of the Ring
, vol. 3 (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 105.

70
. Dickerson and Evans call it “one of the lengthiest and most gruesome passages describing environmental degradation in modern literature” (186). They also argue persuasively that both Isengard and the Shire under Saruman offer more potent images because they strike closer to home for the reader (Dickerson and Evans,
Ents
, 193, 204).

71
. Swinfen,
In Defence of Fantasy
, 85.

72
. For further discussion on the felling of trees in
The Lord of the Rings
, see Flieger, “Taking the Part of Trees,” as well as Dickerson and Evans,
Ents
, 195–96, 211–13.

73
. Helms,
Tolkien's World
, 79; see also 81.

74
. Dickerson and Evans,
Ents
, 190; cf. RK, VI, ii, 897; iii, 916.

75
. For a similar discussion, see Dickerson and Evans,
Ents
, 191.

76
. References to Stephen R. Donaldson,
The Power That Preserves
(1977; New York: Del Rey–Ballantine, 1980), are given parenthetically in the text.

77
. W. A. Senior,
Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Variations on the Fantasy Tradition
(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995), 87–88.

78
. Senior,
Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles
, ch. 3. For his discussion of the rings, see esp. 85–97. A similar comparison can be found in the discussion on evil in Donaldson's Chronicles in Christine Barkley,
Stephen R. Donaldson and the Modern Epic Vision: A Critical Study of the “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” Novels
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), ch. 5.

79
. Senior,
Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles
, 79–80.

80
. Stephen R. Donaldson,
Lord Foul's Bane
(1977; Glasgow: Fontana-Collins, 1978), 38–41.

81
. Barkley,
Stephen R. Donaldson
, 148–49.

82
. Senior,
Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles
, 67.

83
. Ibid., 79.

84
. References to Robert Jordan,
The Eye of the World
(New York: Tor–Tom Doherty, 1990), are given parenthetically in the text.

85
. Dante,
Inferno
, xiii.

86
. Ibid., xiii, 11. 31 ff.

87
. Other parallels to nuclear weapons in Jordan's Wheel of Time series are discussed in the blog
The Thirteenth Depository
(Linda [pseud.], “The Age of Legends,”
The Thirteenth Depository: A Wheel of Time Blog
, March 26, 2002,
http://13depository.blogspot.com/2009/02/age-of-legends.html
).

88
. At least Gandalf implies that Sauron is behind the storm (FR, II, iii, 281), a point also noted in Senior,
Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles
, 88.

89
. Tolkien's anti-industrialism is brought out even more plainly in Peter Jackson's movies, where the servants of Sauron are portrayed as engineers. A typical example would be when Jackson's ents flood Isengard by tearing down Saruman's dam rather than (as in Tolkien's text) damming the river themselves—destroying technology that harnesses nature rather than building such a harness themselves.

90
. Pratchett,
Wyrd Sisters
, 127.

91
. Mendlesohn,
Rhetorics
, 3.

92
. Peter Barry,
Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 260.

APPENDIX A: METHOD FOR THE MAP SURVEY

1
. In the construction of this study, I am much indebted to the careful description of methodology provided by Helena Francke,
(Re)creations of Scholarly Journals: Document and Information Architecture in Open Access Journals
(Borås, Sweden: Valfrid, 2008), ch. 5.

2
. Attebery,
Strategies
, 12–14. See also
chapter 1
.

3
. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions: Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records,
Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records
(Munich: K. G. Saur, 1998),
http://www.ifla.org/files/cataloguing/frbr/frbr.pdf
.

4
. Baker, “What We Found,” 239.

5
. For the nonrepresentativeness of convenience samples, see Chava Frankfort-Nachmias and David Nachmias,
Research Methods in the Social Sciences
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), 184.

6
. November 7, 2007. SF-Bokhandeln has stores in Sweden's three largest cities as well as a web store at
http://www.sfbok.se
.

7
. See Clute, “Taproot Texts,” 921–22.

8
. G. H. Jowett, “The Relationship between the Binomial and F Distributions,”
The Statistician
13, no. 1 (1963), and Mikael Elenius, “NÃ¥gra metoder att bestämma konfidensintervall för en binomialproportion: en litteratur-och simuleringsstudie [Some methods to determine confidence intervals for a binomial proportion: A literature review and simulation study]” (C-essay [bachelor's thesis], University of Gothenburg, 2004), 7; cf. Francke,
(Re)creations
, 186–87.

Bibliography

Aarseth, Espen J.
Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature
. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Alexander, Michael, ed.
Beowulf
. London: Penguin, 1995.

Andersson, Petra.
Humanity and Nature: Towards a Consistent Holistic Environmental Ethics
. Acta Philosophica Gothoburgensia 20. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2007.

Armbruster, Karla, and Kathleen R. Wallace, eds.
Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism
. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.

Attebery, Brian.
The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin
. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.

———.
Strategies of Fantasy
. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Bachelard, Gaston.
The Poetics of Space
. 1958. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Bailey, Geoff. “Time Perspectives, Palimpsests and the Archaeology of Time.”
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
26 (2007): 198–223.

Baker, Deirdre F. “What We Found on Our Journey through Fantasy Land.”
Children's Literature in Education
37 (2006): 237–51.

Balfe, Myles. “Incredible Geographies? Orientalism and Genre Fantasy.”
Social and Cultural Geography
5, no. 1 (2004): 75–90.

Barber, Richard.
The Holy Grail: The History of a Legend
. London: Penguin, 2005. Bardowell, Matthew R. “J. R. R. Tolkien's Creative Ethic and Its Finnish Analogues.”
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
20, no. 1 (2009): 91–108.

Barkley, Christine.
Stephen R. Donaldson and the Modern Epic Vision: A Critical Study of the “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” Novels
. Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy 17. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009.

Barry, Peter.
Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory
. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.

Bates, Daniel G.
Cultural Anthropology
. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1996.

Beowulf: A Verse Translation
. Translated by Michael Alexander. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1973.

Berggren, J. Lennart, Alexander Jones, and Ptolemy.
Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters
. Ptolemy's text originally from second century A.D. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Black, Jeremy.
Maps and Politics
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Blake, Erin C. “Where Be ‘
Here Be Dragons
'?”
MapHist
. April 1999.
www.maphist.nl/extra/herebedragons.html
.

Booth, Wayne C.
The Rhetoric of Fiction
. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Bradley, Raymond, and Norman Swartz.
Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic and Its Philosophy
. Oxford: Blackwell, 1979.

Branch, Michael P., and Sean O'Grady, eds.
Defining Ecocritical Theory and Practice
. The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, 1994.
www.asle.org/site/resources/ecocritical-library/intro/defining/
.

Branham, Robert J. “Principles of Imaginary Milieu: Argument and Idea in Fantasy Fiction.”
Extrapolation
21, no. 4 (1980): 328–37.

Breivik, Gunnar. “Religion, livsform og natur [Religion, way of life, and nature].” In
Økologi, økofilosofi
[Ecology, ecophilosophy], edited by Paul Hofseth and Arne Vinje, 82–90. Oslo: Gyldendal, 1975.

Brennan, Andrew.
Thinking about Nature: An Investigation of Nature, Value and Ecology
. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Brier, Bob, and Hoyt Hobbs.
Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians
. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Brooks, Terry.
Magic Kingdom for Sale/Sold!
1986. London: Futura, 1987.

Browning, Robert. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.” 1855. In
Robert Browning's Poetry: Authoritative Texts, Criticism
, edited by James F. Loucks, 134–39. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.

Brunel, C. “Les Hanches du Roi Pêcheur (Chrétien de Troyes,
Perceval
3513).”
Romania
81 (1960): 37–43.

Other books

Whisper of Scandal by Nicola Cornick
Temptation to Submit by Jennifer Leeland
King’s Wrath by Fiona McIntosh
36 Exposures by Linda Mooney
Dragons Prefer Blondes by Candace Havens
Fly by Night by Ward Larsen
Semper Human by Ian Douglas
The Beginning Place by Ursula K. Le Guin