{"id":14951,"date":"2013-03-21T05:30:17","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T09:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=14951"},"modified":"2013-03-20T21:47:19","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T01:47:19","slug":"lars-walker-on-christian-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2013\/03\/lars-walker-on-christian-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lars Walker on Christian Fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Friends, you simply must read the essay that friend-of-this-blog Lars Walker has written on Christian fantasy for The Intercollegiate Review<\/a> (edited by another friend-of-this-blog Anthony Sacramone).\u00a0 It\u2019s beyond excellent in its account of what fantasy is, what it does, and what\u2019s involved in writing a good one.\u00a0 It defies summary, so I\u2019ll just give you the beginning after the jump and encourage you to click over to the Intercollegiate Review<\/em> site to read the rest of it.\u00a0 (I would just add to his list of good Christian fantasy authors the name of Lars Walker.)<\/p>\n

by Lars Walker:<\/p>\n

In his essay, \u201cOn Fairy Stories,\u201d J. R. R. Tolkien, the greatest modern Christian fantasist, drove what should have been a fatal stake (perhaps of mistletoe) through the heart of the accusation that fantastic stories are \u201cjust escapism\u201d: \u201cWhy should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The accusation itself helps to explain why fantasy gets so little respect in our time (there\u2019s another reason; I\u2019ll get to it later). For the growing number of people who believe there is no world outside our present prison, any talk of sunshine, meadows, and mountains has to be plain denial, a way of fooling ourselves about our true situation. Materialists who write about Magic are likely (though not certain) to write about it badly. They shouldn\u2019t try it, for the same reason a Christian shouldn\u2019t try writing porn. It\u2019s hard to do well something you despise. This may also explain much of the truly bad fantasy that gets published today. The charge of escapism might be a sort of self-generating rot.<\/p>\n

In past generations, fantasy actually enjoyed pretty high status. What are Homer\u2019s Iliad and Odyssey but works of fantasy? Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy is a Christian fantasy in verse. So are Spenser\u2019s Faerie Queen and Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Shakespeare wrote fantasy (\u201cA Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream\u201d among others), and Bunyan\u2019s Pilgrim\u2019s Progress is an allegorical fantasy. Only the coming of the Enlightenment locked the door and turned the key on a literary form that had been plenty good enough for the Greeks and Romans<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a second reason why fantasy gets no respect. We (here I\u2019m speaking as a fantasy writer) have earned it. I\u2019ll make a confession here. I don\u2019t read much fantasy, and I read almost no Christian fantasy. I\u2019ve been burned too many times. You buy a book, hoping to experience over again the joys great fantasy can provide (for me, the Mines of Moria, the Ride of the Rohirrim, and the resurrection of Aslan provided the greatest moments of joy I\u2019ve ever experienced in literature), and what do you get? Wannabees. Wannabee Tolkiens, wannabee Lewises, wannabee (christened) George R. R. Martins.<\/p>\n

This springs (I think) from a basic misconception about fantasy\u2014one that shows how few Tolkien and Lewis fans have learned anything from their role models.<\/p>\n

Read the rest at The Christian Fantasy | Intercollegiate Review<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friends, you simply must read the essay that friend-of-this-blog Lars Walker has written on Christian fantasy for The Intercollegiate Review (edited by another friend-of-this-blog Anthony Sacramone).\u00a0 It\u2019s beyond excellent in its account of what fantasy is, what it does, and what\u2019s involved in writing a good one.\u00a0 It defies summary, so I\u2019ll just give you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2407,812,1259],"class_list":["post-14951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","tag-christianity-literature","tag-fantasy","tag-lars-walker"],"yoast_head":"\nLars Walker on Christian Fantasy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Friends, you simply must read the essay that friend-of-this-blog Lars Walker has written on Christian fantasy for The 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