Thursday, February 19, 2009
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Last Blog
Man I am glad I kept a running journal throughout the class that made it easier for me to Blog when I needed to. Thanks for a wonderful semester and the great blogs from my peers. Can't wait to read more in Oral traditions!
Pullman and C.S Lewis
I don't think the His Dark Materials series made a good case for atheism in the first place. I didn't know Phillip Pullman intended to pit himself against C.S. Lewis but while I read the books they did make me start comparing with the Chronicles of Narnia. I was dissapointed. The characters were as rich, the worlds were as imaginative, but in the end His Dark Materials simply did not resonate. Whereas Lewis' tales touched me to the quick with profound truths, Pullman's were clever but in the end left more questions than answers. Lewis tells you how the world was created, how evil came into it, how the Creator defeated the evil, and what is to come. Pullman tells you that "religion" is oppressive and cruel, and that God is a sham. If Pullman was trying provide an atheistic counterweight to Lewis' Christian worldview he did not do a good job. Here are my reasons for thinking so:1. The religion he criticises isn't a true reflection of religion in the first place, it's his own take on religion. He set up a straw man to attack.2. The universe he depicts seems more pantheistic than atheistic. Everything is made from "dark material", particles that are somehow conscious, and when they die they dissipate into these particles again. There is a belief system in operation. In the story there is a atheistic scientist who was formerly a Christian, however as the story unfolds she comes to accept the pantheistic worldview because she starts to interact with the dark material and learn its nature.3. The whole story is about the battle of good against evil. If a pantheistic or atheistic worldview is being promoted, where does this concept of good and bad come from?My personal take-away from comparing Pullman with Lewis is that an atheist cannot write children's fiction. This is not a facetious observation. Three characteristics of children's stories are that 1) they are moralistic; 2) they are imaginative, i.e. creative; and 3) their purpose is for edification in some way or other. Where does an atheist draw right and wrong from? Don't atheists deal in proven facts rather than whimsy and fantasy? What words of encouragement would a true atheist have for others that does not mean imposing his own personal "truths" on them? No, there is no atheistic children's story because children with untainted minds are nearer to the Kingdom of God and cynical atheistic thoughts wouldn't appeal to them. While Pullman's intention to introduce atheism to children is reprehensible, it is ironic that in writing something that has to appeal to children he is forced to abide by the three characteristics of children's stories and thereby forced into a realm where atheists cannot survive.By the way, C.S. Lewis was himself an atheist who came to the conclusion that atheism did not fly. He then contemplated pantheism and Christianity, and in the end became a Christian
I thought this was interesting...Good job Tony Watkins
Secret history
A key bone of contention for Pullman is the issue of authority, which is of course why Pullman gives God the title of ‘The Authority’. There is a sense in which the Authority and the Magisterium are just manifestations of misused power. But given Pullman’s comments quoted above, it seems clear that he does have religion – rather than authority generally – in his sights. The Authority’s title distances him in the reader’s mind from the Christian God; it doesn’t feel like Pullman is talking about the same being. But in case we fail to make the connection, Balthamos spells it out:
The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, EI, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty – those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves – the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are. (AS p.33)
How can ‘God’ be an angel? In Pullman’s underlying ‘creation myth’, matter became conscious of itself and generated Dust. Some of it ‘condensed’ into the first angel – a being of pure Dust. This new being was fully conscious, and when he began to see other angels condensing out of the Dust he realised what an opportunity he had. Since he came first, he could tell the subsequent angels that he was God and had created them. The angels loved and obeyed him, but the Sophia (Wisdom), the youngest and most beautiful angel, discovered the truth about the Authority who subsequently expelled her. There was an angelic rebellion, but the Authority defeated it and imprisoned the rebels in one of the many worlds. The Sophia told them about the Authority’s lies to human beings (and conscious beings in other worlds), and the rebels escaped to bring enlightenment, wisdom and full consciousness to the poor creatures under the Authority’s rule.
This myth draws heavily on second century Gnosticism, but also inverts it. Gnosticism is all about gnosis – knowledge, in particular secret, esoteric knowledge open only to a privileged few. For the early Gnostics, the secret knowledge about reality was that the world was not created by God, but by an evil Demiurge (a lesser or false god); the true God is unreachable and unknowable. The Gnostics believed that matter is essentially evil, but Sophia, one of the angelic beings, managed to put a spark of true spiritual nature (pneuma) into human beings. Pullman doesn’t believe this but sees it as a good story with ‘immense explanatory power: it offers to explain why we feel . . . exiled in this world, alienated from joy and meaningfulness and the true connection we feel we must have with the universe.’[5] Where Pullman turns this on its head is in the attitude towards the phsyical. Gnosticism sees it as evil; Pullman sees it as something to be enjoyed and celebrated.
Pullman’s myth also draws on Paradise Lost’s angelic war, Satan’s escape from his prison, and his tempting of Adam and Eve. By recasting God as the demiurge impostor, Pullman transforms him into the bad guy, and casts the rebels (including the Sophia) as the good guys. On this view, the Fall is a good thing (see chapters 10 and 11). This is an ideal scenario for Pullman: a materialist universe which has found its own wisdom fighting off the deceptions and impositions of a ‘god’ who is really nothing of the sort. Archbishop Rowan Williams points out that:
Someone [the demiurge or the Authority] is trying to pull the wool over your eyes . . . and wisdom is an unmasking . . . If you have a view of God which makes God internal to the universe, that's what happens.[6]
Williams is saying that if you see God merely as part of the physical universe, then you automatically see him as a deceiver. The historically orthodox Christian understanding of God and the universe only works if God is transcendent.
A key bone of contention for Pullman is the issue of authority, which is of course why Pullman gives God the title of ‘The Authority’. There is a sense in which the Authority and the Magisterium are just manifestations of misused power. But given Pullman’s comments quoted above, it seems clear that he does have religion – rather than authority generally – in his sights. The Authority’s title distances him in the reader’s mind from the Christian God; it doesn’t feel like Pullman is talking about the same being. But in case we fail to make the connection, Balthamos spells it out:
The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, EI, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty – those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves – the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are. (AS p.33)
How can ‘God’ be an angel? In Pullman’s underlying ‘creation myth’, matter became conscious of itself and generated Dust. Some of it ‘condensed’ into the first angel – a being of pure Dust. This new being was fully conscious, and when he began to see other angels condensing out of the Dust he realised what an opportunity he had. Since he came first, he could tell the subsequent angels that he was God and had created them. The angels loved and obeyed him, but the Sophia (Wisdom), the youngest and most beautiful angel, discovered the truth about the Authority who subsequently expelled her. There was an angelic rebellion, but the Authority defeated it and imprisoned the rebels in one of the many worlds. The Sophia told them about the Authority’s lies to human beings (and conscious beings in other worlds), and the rebels escaped to bring enlightenment, wisdom and full consciousness to the poor creatures under the Authority’s rule.
This myth draws heavily on second century Gnosticism, but also inverts it. Gnosticism is all about gnosis – knowledge, in particular secret, esoteric knowledge open only to a privileged few. For the early Gnostics, the secret knowledge about reality was that the world was not created by God, but by an evil Demiurge (a lesser or false god); the true God is unreachable and unknowable. The Gnostics believed that matter is essentially evil, but Sophia, one of the angelic beings, managed to put a spark of true spiritual nature (pneuma) into human beings. Pullman doesn’t believe this but sees it as a good story with ‘immense explanatory power: it offers to explain why we feel . . . exiled in this world, alienated from joy and meaningfulness and the true connection we feel we must have with the universe.’[5] Where Pullman turns this on its head is in the attitude towards the phsyical. Gnosticism sees it as evil; Pullman sees it as something to be enjoyed and celebrated.
Pullman’s myth also draws on Paradise Lost’s angelic war, Satan’s escape from his prison, and his tempting of Adam and Eve. By recasting God as the demiurge impostor, Pullman transforms him into the bad guy, and casts the rebels (including the Sophia) as the good guys. On this view, the Fall is a good thing (see chapters 10 and 11). This is an ideal scenario for Pullman: a materialist universe which has found its own wisdom fighting off the deceptions and impositions of a ‘god’ who is really nothing of the sort. Archbishop Rowan Williams points out that:
Someone [the demiurge or the Authority] is trying to pull the wool over your eyes . . . and wisdom is an unmasking . . . If you have a view of God which makes God internal to the universe, that's what happens.[6]
Williams is saying that if you see God merely as part of the physical universe, then you automatically see him as a deceiver. The historically orthodox Christian understanding of God and the universe only works if God is transcendent.
I agree with this article...I WANT A DAEMON!
'Golden Compass' author Philip Pullman inspires thrills -- and wrath
By CLAIRE DEDERERSPECIAL TO THE P-I
A writer sits quietly at his desk. He imagines a little girl. Something about her inspires him. He begins to write. The girl is joined by other characters: an explorer father; an ice-queen mother; a band of sea-faring Gypsies; a polar bear dressed in armor; a witch preoccupied with politics. The man sends these characters racing across the Arctic, up in hot-air balloons, through university halls, and down into abject dungeons. He's a British middle school teacher with a couple of mid-list novels under his belt, and he doesn't know that he's creating a universe that will bring down the wrath of Christians -- and thrill readers all over the world.
Philip Pullman published "The Golden Compass" in 1995. It's the first volume in the richly imagined trilogy of children's books called "His Dark Materials," which includes "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass." The trilogy follows Lyra -- an urchin who lives in a universe not unlike our own -- as she battles the totalitarian forces of the Magisterium, a global religious consortium.
The series has drawn three distinct readerships. It was first picked up, unsurprisingly, by young adults. With her sharp tongue, stout heart and impressive gift for lying, Lyra makes a pretty delicious preteen heroine. She starts life as the ward of Jordan College in Oxford, but her peaceful existence comes to an end when neighbor children begin to disappear. Mysterious adults are snatching kids off the street and spiriting them, it is whispered, to an ominous fortress far in the North. When they take Lyra's best friend, Roger, she decides she must save him. And so her propulsively plotted journey begins.
By her side every step of the way is her daemon, Pantalaimon. The daemon is Pullman's most charming invention. In Lyra's world, each human has a constant animal companion. This daemon is more than a pet; it embodies the human's very soul. For readers not long past the age of horse worship and kitten adulation, the notion of the daemon has proved irresistible.
Word of mouth spread, and adults became avid Pullmanites as well. The New York Times called the books "Harry Potter for grown-ups." Britain's prestigious Whitbread Prize was given to the final novel, the first time the prize ever was awarded to a children's book. Adults have been drawn, in part, by Pullman's gorgeous, imagistic prose. He writes fantastical scenes in a genuinely moving way, as when Lyra tends the wounds of Iorek Byrnison, king of the armored polar bears: "So the small human bent over the great bear-king, packing in the bloodmoss and freezing the raw flesh till it stopped bleeding. When she had finished, her mittens were sodden with Iorek's blood, but his wounds were stanched."
This kind of immediate, detailed writing has converted readers (like myself) who normally won't have anything to do with fantasy.
Pullman also demonstrates an appetite for big, challenging themes. He scavenges mythology and history for material: One page might subtly steal from Oedipus, the next from survivors' stories of the Holocaust, the next from Milton. Pullman isn't afraid to wrestle with the meaty stuff of good and evil, and good hardly ever turns out to be on the side of the church. His villains are religious hypocrites; his heroes are self-determined freethinkers.
This conflict reaches a climax in the final novel, when Lyra achieves her destiny, which involves killing God himself. This last bit of plotting brought Pullman another audience: Christians, who have pilloried the series. Now "The Golden Compass" has been made into a film, and Christians -- or at least their highly vocal, self-appointed representatives, such as the Catholic League -- have undertaken a campaign to boycott the film. (Is it just me, or does the name the Catholic League conjure up some shady, diabolical organization from a 1950s comic book?) They've flooded Amazon and other Web sites with posts, wherein they warn parents that Pullman is an "atheist!" and that in the final novel of the series "the children actually kill God!"
I, for one, find this outcry strangely moving. Not that I agree with these bossy handwringers; quite the opposite. But the fact that they care so much seems to me astonishing. It's a story worthy of Pullman himself: A man alone at his desk conjures a vision of a universe so free and happy that it terrifies perfect strangers.
By CLAIRE DEDERERSPECIAL TO THE P-I
A writer sits quietly at his desk. He imagines a little girl. Something about her inspires him. He begins to write. The girl is joined by other characters: an explorer father; an ice-queen mother; a band of sea-faring Gypsies; a polar bear dressed in armor; a witch preoccupied with politics. The man sends these characters racing across the Arctic, up in hot-air balloons, through university halls, and down into abject dungeons. He's a British middle school teacher with a couple of mid-list novels under his belt, and he doesn't know that he's creating a universe that will bring down the wrath of Christians -- and thrill readers all over the world.
Philip Pullman published "The Golden Compass" in 1995. It's the first volume in the richly imagined trilogy of children's books called "His Dark Materials," which includes "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass." The trilogy follows Lyra -- an urchin who lives in a universe not unlike our own -- as she battles the totalitarian forces of the Magisterium, a global religious consortium.
The series has drawn three distinct readerships. It was first picked up, unsurprisingly, by young adults. With her sharp tongue, stout heart and impressive gift for lying, Lyra makes a pretty delicious preteen heroine. She starts life as the ward of Jordan College in Oxford, but her peaceful existence comes to an end when neighbor children begin to disappear. Mysterious adults are snatching kids off the street and spiriting them, it is whispered, to an ominous fortress far in the North. When they take Lyra's best friend, Roger, she decides she must save him. And so her propulsively plotted journey begins.
By her side every step of the way is her daemon, Pantalaimon. The daemon is Pullman's most charming invention. In Lyra's world, each human has a constant animal companion. This daemon is more than a pet; it embodies the human's very soul. For readers not long past the age of horse worship and kitten adulation, the notion of the daemon has proved irresistible.
Word of mouth spread, and adults became avid Pullmanites as well. The New York Times called the books "Harry Potter for grown-ups." Britain's prestigious Whitbread Prize was given to the final novel, the first time the prize ever was awarded to a children's book. Adults have been drawn, in part, by Pullman's gorgeous, imagistic prose. He writes fantastical scenes in a genuinely moving way, as when Lyra tends the wounds of Iorek Byrnison, king of the armored polar bears: "So the small human bent over the great bear-king, packing in the bloodmoss and freezing the raw flesh till it stopped bleeding. When she had finished, her mittens were sodden with Iorek's blood, but his wounds were stanched."
This kind of immediate, detailed writing has converted readers (like myself) who normally won't have anything to do with fantasy.
Pullman also demonstrates an appetite for big, challenging themes. He scavenges mythology and history for material: One page might subtly steal from Oedipus, the next from survivors' stories of the Holocaust, the next from Milton. Pullman isn't afraid to wrestle with the meaty stuff of good and evil, and good hardly ever turns out to be on the side of the church. His villains are religious hypocrites; his heroes are self-determined freethinkers.
This conflict reaches a climax in the final novel, when Lyra achieves her destiny, which involves killing God himself. This last bit of plotting brought Pullman another audience: Christians, who have pilloried the series. Now "The Golden Compass" has been made into a film, and Christians -- or at least their highly vocal, self-appointed representatives, such as the Catholic League -- have undertaken a campaign to boycott the film. (Is it just me, or does the name the Catholic League conjure up some shady, diabolical organization from a 1950s comic book?) They've flooded Amazon and other Web sites with posts, wherein they warn parents that Pullman is an "atheist!" and that in the final novel of the series "the children actually kill God!"
I, for one, find this outcry strangely moving. Not that I agree with these bossy handwringers; quite the opposite. But the fact that they care so much seems to me astonishing. It's a story worthy of Pullman himself: A man alone at his desk conjures a vision of a universe so free and happy that it terrifies perfect strangers.
Class Presentations
I love the presentations I have seen so far in our class. The first group seemed to take a very scholarly approach to Baum and THe Wizard of Oz. I loved the history about why the story starts in Kansas. I loved that there is an animal called a lyger...who would have thought!
THe second group seemed to go more along the lines on what we are doing in our class presentation. That is all I can say so I won't spoil it. If I do have one piece of advice DO NOT EAT BEFORE YOU COME TO CLASS UNLESS YOU WANT TO WEAR IT!
THe second group seemed to go more along the lines on what we are doing in our class presentation. That is all I can say so I won't spoil it. If I do have one piece of advice DO NOT EAT BEFORE YOU COME TO CLASS UNLESS YOU WANT TO WEAR IT!
Class Presentations
I love the presentations I have seen so far in our class. The first group seemed to take a very scholarly approach to Baum and THe Wizard of Oz. I loved the history about why the story starts in Kansas. I loved that there is an animal called a lyger...who would have thought!
THe second group seemed to go more along the lines on what we are doing in our class presentation. That is all I can say so I won't spoil it. If I do have one piece of advice DO NOT EAT BEFORE YOU COME TO CLASS UNLESS YOU WANT TO WEAR IT!
THe second group seemed to go more along the lines on what we are doing in our class presentation. That is all I can say so I won't spoil it. If I do have one piece of advice DO NOT EAT BEFORE YOU COME TO CLASS UNLESS YOU WANT TO WEAR IT!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
