Don't you wish you were here too? Look at it! It's like out of a...well, fantasy book. The mixture of new and old. Amazing. Anyway. Today we started off discussing Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories." We didn't read the whole thing, just excerpts. Some people had very strong reactions to it, thinking he sounded like a pompous elitist. I wouldn't go that far, but Tolkien certainly had very particular ideas on what fantasy was.
Showing posts with label tolkien. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tolkien. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
AGTO Day Three: The Seminar
Don't you wish you were here too? Look at it! It's like out of a...well, fantasy book. The mixture of new and old. Amazing. Anyway. Today we started off discussing Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories." We didn't read the whole thing, just excerpts. Some people had very strong reactions to it, thinking he sounded like a pompous elitist. I wouldn't go that far, but Tolkien certainly had very particular ideas on what fantasy was.
AGTO Day Two: The Seminar
On Monday, after a hearty English breakfast, the seminars began. Literature and the Fantastic is being lead by Maria Cecire, a Rhodes Scholar whose doctorate is in connecting classic texts to children's fantasy literature. The seminar will be mostly discussion based, starting with Tolkien and Lewis, then moving to Pullman and then to more contemporary authors like J.K. Rowling and yes, there will be talk of Twilight.
Maria gave us a packet of the facsimile of the original Lewis Carroll manuscript (just the first few pages) which was then called Alice's Adventures Under Ground. It is written in his own hand with his own illustrations. We talked about things that struck us, and how Alice's voice is mature for child, which makes sense since Victorian children were expected to be little adults, but she still acts like a child, not thinking, just dashing ahead. We looked at how Lewis Carroll was playing with words, physics, and twisting everyday school lesson for the amusement of the Liddells, who he was telling the story for.
Maria gave us a packet of the facsimile of the original Lewis Carroll manuscript (just the first few pages) which was then called Alice's Adventures Under Ground. It is written in his own hand with his own illustrations. We talked about things that struck us, and how Alice's voice is mature for child, which makes sense since Victorian children were expected to be little adults, but she still acts like a child, not thinking, just dashing ahead. We looked at how Lewis Carroll was playing with words, physics, and twisting everyday school lesson for the amusement of the Liddells, who he was telling the story for.
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