eucatastrophe: piercing joy that brings tears

[mark12_30]

Kuruharan, littlemanpoet, Squatter, Marilangesundheitimaluim, and Rimbaud,

This all brings me around to take a harder look at the various definitions of eucatastrophe, and re-promise myself to read On Faery Stories while I'm on vacation next week! But Maril's discussion of character threads makes a great deal of sense to me. I guess my next question is, if eucatastrophes are supposed to be relatively rare in any given story, including in the story-thread of one individual, what is the difference between eucatastrophe and "simple", window-into-the-truth revelation? Frodo, for example, sometimes swims in revelation. Sometimes so does Sam. Does the frequency of it make it not-a-eucatastrophe, even though it's different each time? If so, why?

Taking another favorite story of mine as an example: The Golden Key by George MacDonald. The more one reads the story, the more revelations surface each time. Which of them are eucatastrophes? By the definition given in the letters, many of them could be. By Maril's definition, looking at the whole story as a set of stories, there could be one or more eucatastrophe(s) per chapter. And sometimes I think in MacDonald, that that is so.

Ay, me!! By the way, Maril, thanks for getting me going on that whole revelation/renewal/purgation/release thing. It had been a while since I'd reviewed that, and it was time. (I hope you all survived it.)

--Helen