Thinking about The Greater Trumps (which I'll be rereading in the next few weeks), The Place of the Lion, and That Hideous Strength (not by Williams, but written in his style for his honor) and the significance of the single house outside the city where everything comes to a head. It should have been obvious, I suppose, but I hadn't thought the phrase 'outside the city' until I came upon some old college notes remarking on the importance of the city as a place of interdependence and coinherence. Picturing Anthony riding through the city on his flaming horse, then the car carrying Lothair out of the city and his daughter's strange vision... to a house on a hill, or in a valley, or between the trees, where the Fool dances or the fire rages or the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air flock with graven insistence. It always comes to a head outside the city.
because you were all wondering what I'm writing my dissertation on, here's a brief synopsis of my 'research context': When James Macpherson published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry in 1760, he went to great lengths to make the Fragments appear to be authentic remains of an ancient, heroic oral tradition. His reasons for this were largely political, and as such, influenced the content of the epics themselves. As an attempt to establish a particularly Scottish identity, the poems were quite effective. However, to do so required both a simplification and a manipulation of traditional mythology. Stripped of anagogical significance, the Ossian epics more or less represented an Enlightenment version of history, tradition, and mythic heritage. The stories themselves were changed by their very purpose and in turn changed the manner of representing myth in future narratives. Moreover, the emphasis on the Ossian epics as authentic tales from the past, as ‘fragments,’ served...
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