Randy Hoyt has written at length on two types of thinking: mythos and logos. This is a fascinating subject for me, and I’ve begun exploring it recently, most notably in this post at The Rabbit Room and to a lesser extent in this post here.
Randy concludes that mythos and logos are complementary ways of thinking, and I agree. I’m inclined, with Clyde Kilby, to give mythos the priority:
Myth is necessary because reality is so much larger than rationality. Not that myth is irrational, but that it easily accommodates the rational while rising above it.
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Issue 8 of Journey to the Sea is out! It contains three articles, one of which is written by our own Dave Jones. He’s written before on Batman here at the Hog’s Head, and you’ll find more of his thoughts here, along with an essay on Shiva, Lord of the Dance, and one on Northern Mythological Traditions in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.
Amy (my wife) and I are working our way through Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. Neither of us have watched it before and we’ve both been very impressed with the quality of the writing, characters, acting, production and story arc.
I’ve also been identifying many themes, story devices, character types and situations that HP and BTVS have in common: [click to continue…]
Today is J.R.R. Tolkien’s 117th birthday. Since the theme here has been fairy tales lately, here are a couple of Tolkien quotes that get to the heart of it.
On Myth:
“History often resembles myth, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff.” ~ “On Fairy-Stories”
On Eucatastrophe:
Endings of this sort suit fairy-stories, because such tales have a greater sense and grasp of the endlessness of the World of Story than most modern “realistic” stories…. In its fairy-tale-or other world setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. ~ “On Fairy-Stories”
Samwise Gamgee on being in stories:
What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven’t we? I wish I could hear it told! Do you think they’ll say: Now comes the story of the Nine-Fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom? And then everyone will hush, like we did, when in Rivendell they told us the tale of Beren One-Hand and the Great Jewel. I wish I could hear it! And I wonder how it will go on after our part. ~ Samwise Gamgee, The Return of the King
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