Here Be Dragons (46 page)

48
. Ibid., 78.

49
. Ibid., 217.

50
. John Clute,
Scores: Reviews 1993–2003
(Harold Wood, UK: Beccon Publications, 2003), 127.

51
. John Clute, “Polder,” in
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
, 772.

52
. Ibid., 773.

53
. Ibid.

54
. References to Tolkien,
The Lord of the Rings
, are given parenthetically in the text. The following abbreviations are used in the references: FR—
The Fellowship of the Ring
, TT—
The Two Towers
, RK—
The Return of the King
, Appx—appendices to
The Lord of the Rings
. Book and chapter are given in Roman numerals before the page reference.

55
. Tom Shippey,
J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century
(London: HarperCollins, 2000), 197.

56
. See, e.g., Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories,” 9–10.

57
. Shippey,
Author
, 198.

58
. Ibid.

59
. Shippey,
Author
, 199. See also Shippey,
Road
, 218.

60
. Flieger, “Taking the Part of Trees,” 155.

61
. Flieger,
Question of Time
, 110; cf. Tolkien to Naomi Mitchison, September 25, 1954, in
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien
, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 197.

62
. Clute, “Polder,” 772.

63
. John Clute, “Time Abyss,” in
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
, 947. According to Clute, “
The Lord of the Rings
[…]—once the immense backstory contained in
The Silmarillion
[…] and other texts is understood—seems to hover at the very lip of […] a profound T[ime] A[byss].”

64
. Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories,” 68.

65
. The following paragraphs are based on my discussion of Lothlórien's time in Ekman, “Echoes of
Pearl
,” 67–68.

66
. Flieger,
Question of Time
, 107–8.

67
. Paul H. Kocher,
Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), 98–99.

68
. Flieger,
Question of Time
, ch. 4.

69
. J. R. R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien,
The Treason of Isengard
, vol. 2 (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 367–69.

70
. Flieger,
Question of Time
, 107; cf. Tolkien and Tolkien,
Treason
, 369.

71
. Hammond and Scull,
Reader's Companion
, 718.

72
. Flieger,
Question of Time
, 100.

73
. References to Robert Holdstock,
Mythago Wood
(1984; London: Voyager-HarperCollins, 1995); Robert Holdstock,
Lavondyss
(1988; New York: Avon, 1991); Robert Holdstock,
The Hollowing
(1993; New York: ROC-Penguin, 1995); Robert Holdstock,
Gate of Ivory
(London: Voyager-HarperCollins, 1998) (originally published as
Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn
); and Robert Holdstock,
Avilion
(2009; London: Gollancz-Orion, 2010), are given parenthetically in the text. The novella “The Bone Forest” (1991), a prequel to the events in
Mythago Wood
, is left out of the discussion as it does not add much to the analysis.

74
. Mendlesohn,
Rhetorics
, 156.

75
. Marek Oziewicz, “Profusion Sublime and the Fantastic:
Mythago Wood
,” in
The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock: Critical Essays on the Fiction
, eds. Donald E. Morse and Kálmán Matolcsy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 81. He refers to
Mythago Wood
only, but the description is equally true for the other three novels.

76
. Clute,
Scores
, 179. Original publication is given as the
Washington Post
, October 1997.

77
. Mendlesohn,
Rhetorics
, 154.

78
. W. A. Senior, “The Embodiment of Abstraction in the Mythago Novels,” in
The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock
, 14.

79
. For a more comprehensive discussion of mythotopes, see Stefan Ekman, “Exploring the Habitats of Myths: The Spatiotemporal Structure of Ryhope Wood,” in
The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock
. The discussion about mythotopes here draws on this text.

80
. Clute,
Scores
, 178.

81
. Mendlesohn even goes so far as to claim that Steven is not important to the story of the forest, that he is part of an imported narrative rather than a tale native to the forest. Although her argument is rather persuasive, I would suggest that all narratives in the forest are, in some respect, drawn from outsiders, even when they are only part-outsiders, as in the case of Jack and Yssobel in
Avilion
(also see the
episode with the World War I infantryman [
Mythago Wood
263–77]). See Mendlesohn,
Rhetorics
, 156.

82
. Umberto Eco,
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Advances in Semiotics)
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 80.

83
. Penelope Reed Doob,
The Idea of the Labyrinth: From Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 19.

84
. Doob,
Idea of the Labyrinth
, 18.

85
. Eco,
Semiotics
, 81.

86
. Ibid. However, Aarseth questions whether Eco's net is a labyrinth at all; see Espen J. Aarseth,
Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 6.

87
. Eco,
Semiotics
, 81.

88
. Paul Kincaid, review of
Avilion
, by Robert Holdstock,
SF Site
, 2010,
http://www.sfsite.com/01b/al312.htm
.

89
. Clute,
Scores
, 178.

90
. Paul Kincaid, “Of Time and the River: Time in the Fiction of Robert Holdstock,”
Vector
260 (Summer 2009): 9.

91
. References to Terry Pratchett,
Pyramids
(1989; London: Corgi, 1990), are given parenthetically in the text.

92
. Andrew M. Butler,
Terry Pratchett
(Harpenden, UK: Pocket Essentials, 2001), 33.

93
. It should be noted that with the introduction of the History Monks, especially in
Thief of Time
(1994) and
Night Watch
(2002), the nature of time in the Discworld universe developed in quite a different direction from
Pyramids
.

94
. Clute, “Polder,” 772.

95
. David Langford, introduction to
Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature
, 2nd ed., eds. Andrew M. Butler et al., (2001; Baltimore: Old Earth Books, 2004), 11.

96
. Clute, “Polder,” 772.

97
. Richard Mathews actually claims that time travel—explicit or implicit—is as important to fantasy as space travel is to science fiction; see Mathews,
Fantasy
, 26.

98
. Suvin appears to use this term to refer to high fantasy found near the center of Attebery's fuzzy set, but he muddies the terminological water somewhat by referring to
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
, where Clute, in fact, sees little use for the term and suggests that it is a marketing euphemism for Sword and Sorcery; see John Clute, “Heroic Fantasy,” in
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
. It is possible that Suvin sees no difference between the (portal or) quest-driven fantasy of Tolkien and the immersive fantasy of, for instance, Michael Moorcock or Fritz Leiber.

99
. Darko Suvin, “Considering the Sense of ‘Fantasy' or ‘Fantastic Fiction': An Effusion,”
Extrapolation
41, no. 3 (2000): 226–27.

100
. Swinfen,
In Defence of Fantasy
, 81.

101
. Manlove,
Modern Fantasy
, 10. Note that the definition as it stands on p. 1 erroneously uses only “the supernatural.” The error is corrected in Colin. N. Manlove, “On the Nature of Fantasy,” in
The Aesthetics of Fantasy Literature and Art
, ed. Roger C. Schlobin (1975; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 16.

102
. Manlove,
Modern Fantasy
, 3; cf. Manlove, “On the Nature,” 19.

103
. Manlove, “On the Nature,” 29.

104
. W. R. Irwin,
The Game of the Impossible: A Rhetoric of Fantasy
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 9. Some writers have introduced “meta-rules” for how the internal rules are allowed to change; see, for instance, Lyndon Hardy's
Master of the Sixth Magic
(1984), a sequel whose plot focuses mainly on how the rules for magic of the previous novel can be changed.

105
. Doležel,
Heterocosmica
, 128–29.

106
. Ibid., 131.

4. NATURE AND CULTURE

1
. For instance, Christopher Manes, “Nature and Silence,”
The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology
, eds. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (1992; Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), vx; Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” (1967),
The Ecocriticism Reader
, 14; Lynn White, Jr., “Continuing the Conversation,”
Western Man and Environmental Ethics: Attitudes toward Nature and Technology
, ed. Ian G. Barbour (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1973), 62; Frederick Turner, “Cultivating the American Garden” (1991),
The Ecocriticism Reader
, 41 (referring to Lévi-Strauss); Herbert N. Schneidau,
Sacred Discontent: The Bible and Western Tradition
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 58, and René Dubos, “A Theology of the Earth” (1969),
Western Man and Environmental Ethics
, 44–45.

2
. Attebery,
Fantasy Tradition
, 186.

3
. Andrew Brennan,
Thinking about Nature: An Investigation of Nature, Value and Ecology
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 88. See also the discussion in Turner, “American Garden,” 40–54.

4
. Kate Soper,
What Is Nature? Culture, Politics, and the Non-Human
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 1.

5
. “nature, n.,” esp. 14b, 9c,
OED Online
, December 2011 (Oxford University Press).

6
. “nature, n.,” 11a,
OED Online
.

7
. Soper,
What Is Nature
?, 15. Such a distinction also agrees with what Andersson defines as the basic concept of nature (for a nature-centered environmental ethics), that nature “has not been anthropogenically affected”; see Petra Andersson,
Humanity and Nature: Towards a Consistent Holistic Environmental Ethics
(Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2007), 71.

8
. Brennan,
Thinking about Nature
, 88. He admits to the circularity of the definition.

9
. Keekok Lee,
The Natural and the Artefactual: The Implications of Deep Science and Deep Technology for Environmental Philosophy
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999), 82–83.

10
. David Kaplan and Robert A. Manners,
Culture Theory
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 3.

11
. Alfred Louis Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn,
Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions
(Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, 1952), 149, n4a.

12
. Peter Worsley, “Classic Conceptions of Culture,”
Culture and Global Change
, eds. Tracey Skelton and Tim Allen (London: Routledge, 1999), 13.

13
. Daniel G. Bates,
Cultural Anthropology
(Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1996), 5.

14
. Bill McKibben,
The End of Nature
(London: Viking, 1990), 9–42, 55. Keekok Lee discusses McKibben's position in terms of Lee's seven senses of “nature”; see Lee,
The Natural and the Artefactual
, 86. For an overview of the so-called end-of-nature thesis and its treatment by supporters of a nature-centered environmental ethics, see Andersson,
Humanity and Nature
, 74–79.

15
. White, “Historical Roots,” 3–4; Turner, “American Garden,” 40.

16
. Marcus Tullius Cicero,
The Nature of the Gods
, trans. P. G. Walsh (44 B.C.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 313 [2.152].

17
. See, e.g., Turner, “American Garden,” 48. Reflections on this subject derived from hands-on experience can be found in Michael Pollan,
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
(New York: Grove Press, 1991).

18
. Andersson clarifies the distinction between
nature
(which I refer to as
wild nature
) and
wilderness
: the former is “all (biotic) entities and processes that are unaffected by human beings” while the latter is “natural landscapes”; see Andersson,
Humanity and Nature
, 81.

19
. Verlyn Flieger similarly defines
nature tamed
as “nature cultivated according to human standards”; see Flieger, “Taking the Part of Trees,” 154.

20
. For a comprehensive discussion of this conundrum, see Andersson,
Humanity and Nature
, ch. 5.

21
. White, “Historical Roots”; White, “Continuing”; Manes, “Nature”; Dubos, “Theology.” For an alternative view, see, e.g., Lewis W. Moncrief, “The Cultural Basis of Our Environmental Crisis” (1970),
Western Man and Environmental Ethics
.

22
. Gen 1:28 (KJV).

23
. Manes, “Nature,” 21; Michael T. Ghiselin, “Poetic Biology: A Defense and Manifesto,”
New Literary History
7, no. 3 (1976): 497. Cf. Aristotle,
History of Animals
, 8.1.