Category: Spence

Eurocentric domination of popular Fantasy

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The Postcolonial lens of literature is one that highlights that of stories stemming from the Northern half of Europe, both though historical means but also cultural. Nordicism is a branch of Postcolonialism that specifically finds its way into fantasy literature through the means of mythology. While most fantasy attempts to make an original plot, many also rely on pre-existing mythological groundwork. The fantastical nature of mythology lends itself well to being used in these works of fiction though with that being said this practice is skewed heavily in modern literature. Norse mythology is a dominant factor within fantasy literature that leaves little room for creative ideas from outside of Northern Europe.

Incredibly famous cases of this exist such as Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which go so far as to act as an alternate ancient history to the actual world. These books were written with Norse creatures placed in major roles such as Elves, Dwarves and Orcs. These creatures can often be seen as caricatures for minority groups in the real world such as Dwarves being representative of the Jewish community. Tolkien made the creatures short with large noses and long beards but also gave them the quality of greed. The Dwarves constantly yearn to find more riches in their mines and increase their wealth. Not only this but often find themselves homeless, especially in the plot of The Hobbit where they have been cast away from their homeland. Orcs on the other hand are an unfortunate symbol of Africans. They are described as having dark of black skin but are given little respect throughout the story. They typically act in a hivemind manner due to their low intelligence and acting as soldiers with their brutish strength. Along with this Tolkien sticks to his main characters being white males while also only bringing in people of color as canon fodder for them. Tolkien’s equivalent of Asians and Africans are introduced as wicked men who have sided with a dark lord determined to take over the world. The characters are not used for a greater purpose and die in the process.

Works such as that of Tolkien’s are still consistently being shoveled out in the modern world as well. The Harry Potter books barrow from this idea by focusing in on strictly European mythology. The use of creatures such as Phoenixes, Goblins, Giants and Dragons (specifically western stylized dragons) proves this but not as much as the characters within the story. All of the main characters have been portrayed as white and strictly British even with the setting being well into the globalized time of the 1990s. Most characters of color are sidelined if focused on at all while the Eurocentric white character are given the starlight. This overuse of Eurocentric white washing of fantasy goes beyond just written literature though. It can also be found in popular games such as Dungeons and Dragons or Skyrim.

The fact is that modern fantasy is dominated and obsessed with the classic literature and culture of European roots above all else. White characters, often with British accents, fill the roles of critically acclaimed stories centered around a supposed escape from the real world but fail to move beyond a single continent. Perhaps other cultures should be given the opportunity to share their greatest works of fantasy and expand the genre such as African, Asian and Native American fantasy.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings. 50th anniversary 1 vol. ed., Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter

Idol Worship around Israel

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My seminar project is to look into the transition from polytheistic culture to a more modern monotheistic culture. I will be focusing this on Biblical scripture which will of course limit my scope to Judeo-Christian beliefs around the area of Israel.

One source which I would like to use is a book by Frank Stockton Dobbins called False Gods: Or, The Idol Worship of the World. The book focuses on the worship of Gods from polytheistic cultures around the world, many of which would be considered pagan in some degree. Dobbins is very interested in what pushes people towards faith in a more logical approach.

The way in which this source fits with the project I am trying to do is the ways in which it discusses overlaps of culture in neighboring regions. For the purposes of my research and subject I will be focusing on the Middle East and Israel in particular. As that is the heart of the Judeo-Christian belief in a geological stand point it makes sense that much of the idea of modern monotheism stems from this area as well. Dobbins is able to touch on this through discusses the surrounding Empires and Kingdoms that had a great deal of influence over the developing culture of Israel. One example that Dobbins has much focus on is Egyptian culture and their entire roster of Gods and mythology all to their own.

By using this source I can help to explain specific examples of crossover between Judeo-Christian beliefs and the Egyptian pantheon. I can look into what ways particular Gods had some characteristics rub off on the singular God of Israel as well as the many clashes between the two peoples. A huge example to be related to this subject is the Hebrew population living in Egypt for a time before being enslaved and highlighting that crossover. However, the book has its limits as it talks very little of monotheism and therefore leaves half of my subject out. This should at least get me half of the story I need to make the argument and further research.

Dobbins, Frank S. False Gods; or The Idol Worship of the World. A Complete History of Idolatrous Worship throughout the World, Ancient and Modern. Describing the Strange Beliefs, Practices, Superstitions, Temples, Idols, Shrines, Sacrifices, Domestic Peculiarities Etc., Etc., Connected Therewith. Blackall.

Elevator Pitch Revised

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X: The subject I would like to look further into is the Torah concerning the characterization of God. While looking back it seemed as though I should stick to just one character or book of the story that seems to be too limiting.

There is a gradual realization of God as a deity/character over the course of the Torah. The book of Genesis begins the writings of God and has an early conception of his identity. This development began with the idea of monotheism from a world that was filled with polytheistic cultures. Judaism had its beginnings with Egyptian and Canaanite Gods before leading into times with Babylonian and Assyrian Gods as opposition. These other cultures had an influence over the eventual monotheistic culture that spans Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Y: The Question I want to ask is how did the Textual Scripture show this transition from polytheistic cultures into a monotheistic culture? How is the Bible itself able to make slowly more distinct images and rules of God being a singular being that isn’t supported by a cast of other deities?

Z: This Question would help to answer the early characterizations of God. It would help to explain why there is a distinct difference in God in his early scripture as being mistake at times for one of many or having different personalities assigned to him. This can also be easily seen in God’s early actions being much more violent than his later actions.

One source I would like to use aside from the King James Bible is a book called False Gods; or the Idol Worship of the World by Frank Stockton Dubbins. The book discusses idolatry or the worship of other Gods which makes for a great point to be made about God’s characterization in Biblical scripture. One of the first establishing parts of God being a singular God is when he is confronted with his people worshipping God’s other than himself. This subject should make for a bulk of the transition but not all of the idea needed.

Dobbins, Frank S. False Gods; or The Idol Worship of the World. A Complete History of Idolatrous Worship throughout the World, Ancient and Modern. Describing the Strange Beliefs, Practices, Superstitions, Temples, Idols, Shrines, Sacrifices, Domestic Peculiarities Etc., Etc., Connected Therewith. Blackall.

Accuracy vs. Bias

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When looking into the principles of New Historicism the idea of a writer’s biases seems to hold a significant amount of weight. There seems to be a clear distinction between the ideas of accuracy versus bias and the value they have. In a more traditional form of writing or reading the idea would be to find an accurate story or depiction of a time period or culture. This is what gave texts values because they would work as a representation of their subject matter. Despite this there still exists inaccuracy within texts discussing historical events or set in the past. New historicism takes advantage of these inaccuracy by asking what they bring to the text. If a writer chooses a particular time period and brings to the table a number of things that seem unlikely to happen or down right would not have happened, then what is that saying about the time it was written? New Historicists take into account that these things would not have happened but instead look at the text through an almost double lens that asks about the time period being represented as well as that of the time the text was written. What is the purpose of these changes and what does the presence of bias tell about the time of publishing?

A text that represents these inaccuracies would be The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. Boyne writes a story taking place during the holocaust following a young boy through their journey under the Nazi reign. Boyne manages to create an atmosphere of bleak outlooks on life but also keeps to story telling conventions for the most part. When writing a fictional story there are typical rules that most writers stay within to create a cohesive story that this novel in particular attempts to hold to. These unsaid rules help to make a more enjoyable experience for the reader. In reality life is much less rule based on cares less for what makes a good story. In reality victims of the holocaust had their stories cut short and that’s just part of cruel reality. On the other hand, there’s the similar text, Night, by Elie Wiesel that also tells the story of a young boy during their journey through the holocaust. This text differs though because the author is not just the author, they’re the main character. Wiesel wrote about his own experience in the holocaust therefore taking away the idea of a creative work of literature and becoming a historical account of someone’s life.

The questions that arise here are why did Boyne write in so many particular situations to his novel? What creative liberties did he take for the sake of storytelling? Why did he write his novel in the first place when so many novels exist based on the holocaust already? These questions can be placed against Wiesel’s novel as well to get a more accurate view of the second world war. This could also be used to better understand the 2000s as a decade and how the memories of the holocaust had aged over roughly sixty years.

Boyne, John, 1971-. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas : a Fable. New York :David Fickling Books, 2006.

Wiesel, Elie,Wiesel, Marion.Night. New York : Hill And Wang, 2006. Print.

Elevator Speech: Transition from Polytheism to Monotheism

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X: The subject I would like to look further into is the Torah or more specifically the story of Moses. This would be across all books that tell his story rather than limiting myself to any specific book as they would be an incomplete section of a larger story. The subject within the Torah I would like to explore is God’s characteristics as a deity. There is often the pointed-out difference between God in the Torah and God as depicted in later Christian texts. The two almost seem to be entirely different Gods based on their temperament toward humans and even those they claim as their people. The God of the Torah has many violent tendencies, not only toward enemies of his people but on many occasions toward his own people. He is often known for smiting and punishing those who have done wrong and constantly reminds the Israelites of his power to perform such violence. The later Christian depiction of God in comparison is far more forgiving and known less for his violent deeds on humanity. He is often considered a symbol of peace even when religion can be taken to extremes.

Y: The question about this subject is “How was the early depiction of God in the Torah influenced by characteristics of Gods from other neighboring religions, especially those of Egypt, in the transition from polytheism to monotheism.

Z: This would help to explain the wide range of characteristics God takes on throughout the Bible as a whole and show the progression of his traits. This question would help to show the transition from Gods with more human-like qualities and faults to the often angelic or heavenly depictions that are present in modern day. This would over course be looking at religion in a strictly literary sense and not taking into account the beliefs behind such texts.

Work Cited

Coogan, Michael David, et al., editors. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. Fifth ed., Oxford University Press, 2018.

Reader Response as Adaptation

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The concept of Reader Response as a literary theory relies on personal interpretation of individual works. Rather than letting an already standing singular truth about a work dominate the reading of the work, reader response lets each reader bring their own vision of the work to a discussion, although it is made clear that vast departures from what is specified in the text are viewed as less credible or valued as an interpretation. This aspect of reader response sounds similar to productions of a literary text into some other medium. The idea of taking a novel and turning it into a play, musical or even movie seems to rely on reader response to keep the same story original across all mediums it put in as well as the different variation of those same mediums.

Taking a novel that has been adapted more than once such as It by Stephen King allows for wiggle room to be made in each interpretation of the same story. It was originally published in 1986 with a story following multiple characters across a large gap of time. In the original novel, as well as the television miniseries, the story jumps between the late 50s and early 80s for its setting. The recent film adaptation of the novel instead makes a clear two-part story, the first set in the late 80s with the later half set in the mid-2010s. While this change in setting is drastic as it pushes the events of the novel forward by roughly thirty years, the same basic story is told. Changing the setting proves to only be a stylistic choice made by the writer and director of the film for the sake of their own personal vision of the film as well as relatability to a modern-day audience.

Along with this the characters change slightly in appearance between the three versions of the story, for example Pennywise. In the original novel Pennywise is described more like a modern colorful clown that has been the norm for clowns throughout must of the last century. In the current film adaptation, he is seen in a more Victorian era outfit with muted colors and a large collar. The most color placed onto the character is on its head with red paint detailing on the face and bright orange hair. While this outward appearance is different from what Stephen King originally wrote, this again takes into account that reader response doesn’t rely on any one truth. The author only writes the book or work of literature and after that point it is up to each individual reader to make their own reality out of what is written, and it is expected to always have variation between readers. No one can limit the interpretations of each reader, or director of a film. No one person has a final say on what is “correct” for a work of literature, even if they are an instructor or even the author. The community as a whole can decide something is too far off from what is meant to be part of a story. This would be like if a film adaptation of It were to replace Pennywise or the actual Creature with more traditional killer with no cosmic horror qualities. This would sort of creative liberty would change the core of the story revolving around an intangible antagonist.

King, Stephen. It: a Novel. Scribner, 2019.

The Quests and their meanings

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Looking at literature through the lens of structuralism allows the audience to make easy access of knowledge found in the text through means of categorization. Even without meaning to, audiences may find themselves naturally sorting out aspects of a work of literature due to prior knowledge. People may find certain stories to find the same patterns and steps as they have seen in other cases, such as in the case of movies for example. Structuring a movie based on what aspects the plot shares with other movies before it. This in turn can allow the audience to trace story archetypes back to their origins. Taking something such as The Quest type of story allows itself to be lent to fictional work ranging in time periods and intended audience.

Taking a popular story such as the Harry Potter books create a world in which a hero emerges and begins a quest to defeat an antagonist. This basic version of the story is in no way original as it can be found in earlier works of literature such as Star Wars (The original movie or the Book written by George Lucas). A hero emerges and crosses a thresh hold. They are then taken in by an elder character with more experience and go on to defeat the antagonist. Even earlier than that and perhaps even more closely aligned with the Quest story type is The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. Characters are sent out from their home, not in search of an item, but of a location. They take an object that it of great importance to another location in order to quell of large-scale conflict by destroying it, and in the process defeating an antagonist. All of these stories can indeed be boiled down to fairly similar plot structures that all seem to hit the same beats in their story type. A villain emerges, a hero emerges, they cross the point of no return and end with the defeat (at least temporally in some cases) of the villain.

Many of these simple stories can be traced back to far older literature such as the story of Beowulf. In the story of Beowulf there is a clear-cut skip to the antagonist being evil just because and the hero being the hero because the story said so. Even further back than this would be the stories present in the Bible. One can take the story of Moses and fit it into the steps all the other stories mention before followed. Although, while these are the same type of story being told multiple times and hit the same beats, they differ in many ways. Structuralism misses out on the ability to look deeper into a text and therefore misses out on the individual difference between each of these stories. Each one mentioned has its roots in the time and place in which it was created. The Bible and its stories, specifically the story of Moses reflects the values of Jewish and Christian heritage and relationship with God. On the other hand, the same story being told in The Lord of the Rings follows similarly but highlights the everyday people who are caught up in conflicts larger than themselves. While Structuralist thinking can help to make connections between works of literature, it ignores the deeper principles of the works covered and therefore misses much of the subjects that would otherwise be discussed in a close reading of said stories.

Loss of Satire

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When going through the concept of New Criticism and its replacement of Biographical-historical criticism, it mainly sets the common rule of interpreting only the text itself. This rule is put in place to view literature through a purer lens, looking only at the literature, thus cutting off connected subjects such as history. This intends for scholars to deeply think about the words on the paper without being distracted by all manner of related content. This unfortunately does not allow for all works of literature to be analyzed in a proper manner as some simply do not fit well into this form of literary theory, as shown in Brooks’ History without Footnotes, where even the title implies a lack of context. In the essay he quickly addresses the problem of some of the poem’s last few lines, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”. The line creates a paradox that doesn’t fit well into New Criticism not only for the fact that it is a self defining definition with no end but also that it leaves the poem in a state of ambiguity despite leading up to such an end.

This type of breaking of the system brought to mind other works of literature that would achieve something similar, one such work being A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. Since New Criticism strictly deals with the text and chooses to cut out all accompanying context, the main focus of this essay is lost in translation. Swift writes about the problem of “beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms” (Swift). Swift states how poverty is the overall problem which is leading to many mouths to feed but no food to do it with. Swift follows that up with a proposed solution to such a problem saying “[Children], instead of being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding, and partly to the cloathing of many thousands” (Swift). Swift’s proposal ends up being exactly as he describes, eat the children and make clothes from them and while this is sickening it is easily explained through biographical-historical context. Swift was known for his satirical essays and therefore was not serious at all about his proposed solution. The entire essay is meant to be a longwinded effort to poke fun at the standing government’s treatment yet responses to the growing problem of Irish poverty in the early eighteenth century. Without the context of what Swift is known for writing and the history behind the situation he writes about the essay loses much of its meaning.

Looking through the essay using New Criticism will still allow a scholar to study the literary techniques used and the many complexities of the work, sure, but lacks its main points. Satire becomes far more difficult to detect using New Criticism as nothing plainly states its use in the essay and leaves the reader to a more surface view of the work. Works may be taken literally that were not intended to be and to bring in the intentions of the author to find such a singular meaning would break a core rule of New Criticism.

Brooks, Cleanth. “History without Footnotes: An Account of Keats’ Urn.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 52, no. 1, 1944, pp. 89–101.

Bruggink, Eric. “A Modest Proposal.” Public Contract Law Journal, vol. 28, no. 4, 1999, pp. 529–543.

John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Bartleby.com, http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html , Accessed 5 November 2009.