[davem]

Originally Posted by Lush

Furthermore, to suggest that our "ancestors" (which ones are we speaking about anyway? Mine are the Varangians. What are yours?) had no concept of philosophy or politics is beyond belief. Aristotle? Plutarch? Plato? Cyrrill and Mefodious? Wu Zeitan?

I was going further back than that. Aristotle & Plato certainly are 'modern thinkers' (though we do know Plato was an initiate of the Mysteries). What we do know is that all our ancestors saw the world differently to the way we see it. They may have had their equivalent of politics & philosophy, but these were aspects of a magical worldview. They weren't detatched from the natural world as we are. Any reading of Jung for instance will confirm that the same stories, reflecting the same worldview, were common among them.

Finally, I'm not quite sure how a good dose of critical thinking on the subject of, say, the Faerie Queene somehow renders how myth impotent and unimportant. One can reduce almost anything to an abstract, but I am surprised that you would accuse me of this kind of reductionism, indeed, tell go as far as to tell me what I am and am not thinking about and what my purposes are. Whatever it is you're reacting against when you write these posts, I think it has little to do with me.

Come on, I'm not accusing you of anything. I was attacking a certain modernist (or post modernist, or whatever it is, or whatever all those particular definitions actually mean) approach to myth & fairystory, which attempts to tell us what they mean. Whatever they might mean to us we can in no way say that's what they meant to our ancestors. Or what they will mean to our decendents. Its like the way people talk about the 'ignorant past', implying that we know more than our ancestors, that we've 'sussed them out' & know better. As Bob Stewart has pointed out, we are living in what our decendents will very probably call their ignorant past.

Kate Atkinson is writing the postmodern fairy tale, which does place the fairy tale into the framework of the novel. Having said that, accusing Atkinson of making theory "bigger" than fairy tale is, in my opinion, a misinformed sort of decision. One of the reasons why I admire Atkinson so much is that I think she treats myth with a whole lot more respect than some of the few other writers out there. I think myth is a living part of life to Atkinson. I don't know if that necessarily makes her a "true" fairy tale writer, and I don't care. She's working with a medium that she knows best, that suits her best, but I think she does it beautifully and with much love and respect to the rich tradition of myth that she draws upon.

I don't think I actually accused Atkinson of of making theory bigger than fairy tale is. I was referring to the reductionist approach in general. If I could be accused of generalising about 'our' ancestors, I think any modernist (or post modernist, or post post modernist) theory which attempts to provide little boxes into which all fairy stories, folksongs & modern novels can be neatly fitted is bound to be, in the end, an abject failure.

Davem, if you don't want to explain and analyse, that's perfectly fine with me. I don't think that it has to be a choice between one and the other, though. The intellectual level is a part of the overall experience, and an important part, in my opinion.

We can analyse as much as we like - it exercises the brain - but the experience of the stories is the only really important thing, & the only thing we will actually learn from.

I disagree, up to a point. I think theory helps us to sort out our most powerful responses to the things we encounter in life. I would agree with you that encountering the goddess/the magical does ultiamtely render all our attempts to explain and to analyse useless. But we have these tools at our disposal for a reason. We cannot forever remain in a spiritual ecstasy; and analysing and explaining help guide us on our way from one revelation to the next.

Direct experience will, of course, lead us, if we are thoughtful beings, to attempt to explain & analyse that experience. What I'm saying is that the experience should come first, not the analysis. When you've had the experience you can then go on & construct your own 'theory' if you want. Going in already armed with someone else's theory, which tells you, before you've had the experience, what it all means, what's important, will very likely leave you unaffected by the whole thing, or worse, affected in the wrong way. Your story of the monk & the woman, if viewed through the eyes of feminist theory, is likely to be reduced to no more than yet another male attack on women. Yet myths & legends from all over the world have this 'ambiguous' figure of a woman who is either beautiful & becomes ugly (cf the Fairy Queen in the Romance of Thomas the Rhymer) or ugly & becomes beautiful (the figure of Sovereignty in Irish myth, or the Loathly Lady in the Gawain story).

And finally, although I'm really enjoying this discussion, & I hope you're not feeling too embattled, I have to go along with Alatar:

And the more that I read, the more I feel that I have no clue what Lush is asking for. Glad to help, but not sure what to do .