Thursday 23 March 2017

Three Kinds Of Interactions With The Supernatural

Narratives in which:

the gods are real and come on stage, e.g., Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword;

the gods are real but remain off stage although their effects are felt, e.g., Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys;

the gods are real according to the characters, e.g.:

"...a stranger met might be anything from an outlaw to a wood-sprite or a godling in disguise."
-SM Stirling, A Meeting At Corvallis (New York, 2007), Chapter One, p. 15.

Norman Arminger role plays Norman brutality, complete with a tame Church, whereas the Dunedain role play Tolkien heroics, complete with references to that author's invented mythology. This plus Wicca make them "...Satan-worshippers...'" (p. 5), according to the "Normans."

Poul Anderson shows us Normans in Sicily, wrote Norse-derived heroic fantasy independently of Tolkien and also wrote some post-disaster fiction.

2 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Or, instead of a pagan "godling," you might meet an angel. See the Book of Tobit in the OT featuring Tobit's Tobias being befriended by an angel sent by God to assist his family. Albeit, I understand that book to be a midrash designed to tell us an edifying story or teaching revealed doctrines using that literary form.

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Drat! I omitted "son" after "Tobit's" in the first sentence above. I need to be more careful typing!

Sean