by Stefan Ekman
27. Gary K. Wolfe, Soundings: Reviews, 1992–1996 (Harold Wood, UK: Beccon Publications, 2005), 23. From a review originally published in Locus #374, March 1992.
28. For a discussion on Weston’s influence on and a Fisher King reading of The Waste Land, see Marianne Thormählen, The Waste Land: A Fragmentary Wholeness (Lund: Gleerup-LiberLäromedel, 1978), 68–74.
29. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land. The Waste Land and Other Poems, ed. Helen Vendler (1922; New York: Signet–New American Library, 1998), l. 189, 191–92. Further references to the poem are given parenthetically in the text.
30. Thormählen points out that the “king my brother’s wreck” “could be a modified excerpt from Isis’ mournful chants” (71). Since, in Last Call’s mythical domain, Osiris and the Fisher King are linked to the same figure, that reading would still agree with the Fisher King reading the novel calls for.
31. Tim Powers, Earthquake Weather (New York: Orb–Tom Doherty, 1997), 194.
32. Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (1920; New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1957), 118–19.
33. Urban T. Holmes, Jr., and M. Amelia Klenke, Chrétien, Troyes, and the Grail (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 103; Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (1485; Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1996), 646 (bk. 17, ch. 5).
34. Arthur Groos, Romancing the Grail: Genre, Science, and Quest in Wolfram’s Parzival (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 145, 205–6. It is worth noting that Groos, citing an article by Brunel, claims that the leg wound of Chrétien’s Fisher King is, in fact, a wound to the genitals: “‘parmi les hanches ambedeus’ […] has a widespread meaning of ‘genitalia’” (145n3); see also C. Brunel, “Les Hanches du Roi Pêcheur (Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval 3513),” Romania 81 (1960).
35. Weston discusses the connection between Tammuz and Adonis and suggests a connection to the Fisher King figure (Weston, From Ritual, ch. 4). James Frazer also observes the Tammuz-Adonis link and includes further discussion on, e.g., Attis and Osiris; see Frazer, The Golden Bough, esp. chs. 29–42.
36. Weston, From Ritual, 114.
37. Barber persuasively argues that there is no “reflex effect” causing the desolation of the Fisher King figure’s realm—in the earliest Grail stories, the wasteland is simply the result of the ruler’s inability to lead his men into battle; see Richard Barber, The Holy Grail: The History of a Legend (London: Penguin, 2005), 205. “[Weston] emphasizes the Waste Land, which […] is a minor theme in all but the very late romances,” Barber claims, “and even in these romances it becomes important only because the writer was anxious to tie up the loose ends left by his predecessors” (Barber, Holy Grail, 249).
38. Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, The Sacred Isle: Belief and Religion in Pre-Christian Ireland (Woodbridge: Boydell Press / Wilton: Collins Press, 1999), 170.
39. In “Cath Maige Tuired” (The Battle of Maige Tuired), James MacKillop claims that this and similar Irish and Welsh tales are believed to be antecedents to the maimed Fisher King by some Arthurian commentators; see James MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 253.
40. MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, 253.
41. References to Lisa Goldstein, Tourists (1989; New York: Orb–Tom Doherty, 1994), are given parenthetically in the text.
42. Wolfe, Soundings, 209. From a review of Goldstein’s short-story collection Travellers in Magic, originally published in Locus #406, November 1994.
43. “palimpsest, n. and adj.,” 2a–b, OED Online, December 2011 (Oxford University Press).
44. See, e.g., Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs, Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 24–26; Charles W. Hedrick, History and Silence: Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late Antiquity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 109; and “palimpsest,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online: Academic Edition (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2010).
45. Hedrick, History and Silence, 93.
46. Five categories of palimpsests relevant to the field of archaeology are discussed by Geoff Bailey, “Time Perspectives, Palimpsests and the Archaeology of Time,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26 (2007): 203–10. An architectural palimpsest is described as “the partial erasing and constant overworking of sites and buildings over time. This can involve building over, within, above or alongside the previous or existing structure” in Tom Porter, Archispeak: An Illustrated Guide to Architectural Terms (London: Spon Press–Taylor & Francis, 2004), 135; see also Robert Cowan, The Dictionary of Urbanism (Tisbury, UK: Streetwise Press, 2005), 279.
47. A brief but well-reasoned overview of the subject, which may serve as a starting point for such an exploration, is provided by Roz Kaveney, “Dark Lord,” in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 250.
48. Examples of the former include the evil god Torak in David (and Leigh) Eddings’s Belgariad sequence (1982–84); the wrathful and destructive Rakoth Maugrim in Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry (1985–86); and the power-hungry Morgoth in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (1977). Examples of the latter include Voldemort in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997–2007); Darken Rahl in Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule (1995); and the Warlock Lord in Terry Brooks’s Shannara books (1977–present).
49. Including the White Witch/Jadis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew (1955), who is mortal but from a different world and with powers far beyond those of normal people; Arawn in the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander (1964–68), who is a supernatural character but not divine; and the Storm King in Tad Williams’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series (1988–93), who is an undead lord of the immortal Sithi.
50. And therefore easily parodied. Examples include Diana Wynne Jones’s The Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998), in which “Dark Lord” is just a role thrust upon a wizard to provide a suitable opponent for tourists from another world, and Mary Gentle’s Grunts (1992), in which the Dark Lord returns in a female body and announces that rather than conquer the world by military means, she will win by election. In “Another End of the Empire” (2009), Tim Pratt portrays a Dark Lord who decides to educate the children prophesied to overthrow him and finds himself adopting them and reforming his realm in the process.
51. Mendlesohn, Rhetorics, 50.
52. Texts that predate the emergence of generic fantasy, but that include the fantastic, and are of heightened significance to the genre. See Clute, “Taproot Texts,” 921–22.
53. Michael Alexander, ed., Beowulf (London: Penguin, 1995), l. 1357; cf. Beowulf: A Verse Translation, trans. Michael Alexander (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1973).
54. John Milton, Paradise Lost, in Paradise Lost: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism, 2nd ed., ed. Scott Elledge (1674; New York: Norton, 1993), 50 (bk. 2, lines 624–26).
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, “Några 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.
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