1 00:00:02,450 --> 00:00:07,160 Hello and welcome to this episode of the Oxford Fantasy Literature podcast. 2 00:00:07,160 --> 00:00:11,270 I'm Catherine Ollie, a junior research fellow in mediaeval studies here in Oxford, 3 00:00:11,270 --> 00:00:15,320 and today I'm going to be talking a little bit about the role played by faith in 4 00:00:15,320 --> 00:00:20,570 fantasy literature and a warning here for spoilers for the following fantasy novels. 5 00:00:20,570 --> 00:00:26,870 James Islington Harness Trilogy and Tasha series Realm of Ash. 6 00:00:26,870 --> 00:00:33,020 My interest in this topic was sparked by a passage I read in James Islington the light of all that falls. 7 00:00:33,020 --> 00:00:42,470 The concluding novel in his laconic trilogy, The Central Conflict of his trilogy, revolves around a group of near immortals called the venerate, 8 00:00:42,470 --> 00:00:47,960 most of whom believe that they have been recruited by L. the great benevolent creator deity of 9 00:00:47,960 --> 00:00:55,730 Ellington's fantasy world to save that world from the corresponding evil deity or demon Shyamala. 10 00:00:55,730 --> 00:01:01,580 They believe that L has been trapped inside his creation by the machinations of Shamila, 11 00:01:01,580 --> 00:01:07,340 who has set the world upon a predestined course from which only the Venerate can free it, 12 00:01:07,340 --> 00:01:14,990 thereby liberating Al from the bounds of time in which he is encased and returning free will to the world. 13 00:01:14,990 --> 00:01:22,160 In pursuit of this goal, the Venerate have committed great acts of good as well as great acts of evil. 14 00:01:22,160 --> 00:01:31,490 But as their evil deeds begin to accumulate, some of them start to doubt that the entity that speaks to them and drives them on this mission is, 15 00:01:31,490 --> 00:01:42,440 in fact the benevolent L and begin to fear it is instead Shambhala deceiving them into thinking they are freeing Al whilst really encouraging them to 16 00:01:42,440 --> 00:01:53,120 widen a breach between worlds which will allow the evil of the spirit world beyond called the dark lands to flood the Earth with pain and suffering. 17 00:01:53,120 --> 00:01:59,600 And Islington takes a long time to confirm for the reader which of these two opposing views is the true one, 18 00:01:59,600 --> 00:02:09,410 leaving a sliver of doubt as to whether it is L or Shameless, whom the vendor which has been serving until quite far through the trilogy. 19 00:02:09,410 --> 00:02:15,470 In the course of his adventures, one of the book's main protagonist, Davian, meets a man called Ray Less, 20 00:02:15,470 --> 00:02:22,640 who has been exiled by the venerate for preaching against their belief in L and Damian is somewhat 21 00:02:22,640 --> 00:02:28,970 taken aback by the strength of Ray Letts conviction that the venerate are wrong about L. 22 00:02:28,970 --> 00:02:37,820 Something that Davion himself, though he considers the venerate his enemy, has not fully accepted or has not fully thought through that himself, 23 00:02:37,820 --> 00:02:44,570 and there follows a very interesting discussion between them as Riley sets out his rationale for objecting 24 00:02:44,570 --> 00:02:51,200 to the aims of the venerate and their desire to free out as they see it from the constraints of the world. 25 00:02:51,200 --> 00:03:01,010 And so they think restore free will. And he lays out his beliefs for Davion in the following words on pages three to five to three to six. 26 00:03:01,010 --> 00:03:06,440 Quote a world where all possibilities are promised is by necessity. 27 00:03:06,440 --> 00:03:13,880 A world in which God cannot take part. Cannot choose to accept the world in any way if he exerts his will. 28 00:03:13,880 --> 00:03:19,730 Even a fraction. He is, by definition, changing how things could have been. 29 00:03:19,730 --> 00:03:29,900 He is removing possible outcomes. They either venerate a trying to convince everyone that our creator wished to create a world in 30 00:03:29,900 --> 00:03:40,160 which he could not take part could not help guide or save in which he was functionally irrelevant, 31 00:03:40,160 --> 00:03:50,840 and he goes on again a few lines later. The L I believe in is not just the creator of this world, but inextricably tied to it. 32 00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:55,130 If he were to withdraw from it, it would cease to be as we know it. 33 00:03:55,130 --> 00:04:04,220 It would become a place where all the things we value, all things that have beauty and life and meaning are simply not possible. 34 00:04:04,220 --> 00:04:06,900 End quote. 35 00:04:06,900 --> 00:04:16,710 Relaxed, passionate defence of a God who would not quote abandon us to ourselves page three to seven but would rather intervene to help and guide, 36 00:04:16,710 --> 00:04:26,580 struck me as a rare occurrence in fantasy literature in that it is a depiction and I find it a convincing one of faith. 37 00:04:26,580 --> 00:04:30,780 Very rarely in my reading of fantasy have I come across such a thing. 38 00:04:30,780 --> 00:04:38,640 And let me clarify at this point that when I say faith here, I mean an expression of a personal and profoundly held belief. 39 00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:47,340 In contrast to simply the structures and dogma of an organised religious system, their religion certainly does not have to be a feature of fantasy. 40 00:04:47,340 --> 00:04:54,720 Writing in Tolkien's The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are good examples of books in which religion plays hardly any role. 41 00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:57,210 It has come to have a growing presence, 42 00:04:57,210 --> 00:05:08,830 and most fantasy works these days have some kind of imagined religious belief system or systems to flesh out their cultural world or multiple worlds. 43 00:05:08,830 --> 00:05:15,340 It's quite unusual, however, for these belief systems to have more than what I would call a fairly superficial impact 44 00:05:15,340 --> 00:05:21,400 on the characters motivations and actions in a culture of scepticism and relativism. 45 00:05:21,400 --> 00:05:27,400 Most writers depict religion from an omniscient, impersonal perspective in their work, 46 00:05:27,400 --> 00:05:32,710 viewing it as a cultural, particularly tourism, rather than an objective reality, 47 00:05:32,710 --> 00:05:37,090 rather like a sort of fictional anthropologist probing fantasy religions for 48 00:05:37,090 --> 00:05:43,570 understanding about their doctrines and rituals rather than seeking enlightenment. 49 00:05:43,570 --> 00:05:51,220 The interiority of religious belief or faith as a personal experience is rarely given much thought, 50 00:05:51,220 --> 00:06:01,060 and instead belief is often either two dimensional telling, rather than showing as by frequent allusions and invocations to the relevant fantasy gods. 51 00:06:01,060 --> 00:06:09,760 Or else it is insincere, with religion used as a front for other motivations, usually political or power orientated. 52 00:06:09,760 --> 00:06:17,980 And I would argue, in fact, that the fundamentally secular outlook of many fantasy characters in particular main characters in fantasy 53 00:06:17,980 --> 00:06:25,390 literature is one of the features that that jars most strongly against their mediaevalist setting, 54 00:06:25,390 --> 00:06:29,080 which harks back to a world shot through with faith and religion. 55 00:06:29,080 --> 00:06:36,350 A world in which that kind of divide between the religious and the secular had very little meaning. 56 00:06:36,350 --> 00:06:44,960 Why someone believes in a certain faith is very rarely explored in fantasy writing in a Song of Ice and Fire, for example, 57 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:51,710 we're never given any real insight into why Melisandre believes so completely in Rollo, 58 00:06:51,710 --> 00:06:57,320 even in the chapter written from her point of view in a Dance with Dragons. 59 00:06:57,320 --> 00:07:02,450 We must simply accept that she does for unspecified reasons. 60 00:07:02,450 --> 00:07:11,630 So while her behaviour is shaped by her beliefs, it's superficial in the sense that her beliefs rest upon for us a shallow foundation, 61 00:07:11,630 --> 00:07:19,940 and we cannot see how her faith is individually and personally inflected and how that feeds into her actions. 62 00:07:19,940 --> 00:07:26,330 Similarly, in David has Moon Tide quartette, which for a series that is all about religious warfare, 63 00:07:26,330 --> 00:07:32,360 contains strikingly few characters who hold a genuine belief in the religions that hat creates. 64 00:07:32,360 --> 00:07:43,790 All of which are closely based on real world examples. There's no interior explanation for or exploration of Ramita and Cashel runs of Mali faith. 65 00:07:43,790 --> 00:07:48,860 It's simply a product of her upbringing in LA, where she was born. 66 00:07:48,860 --> 00:07:54,470 And while her faith is occasionally challenged throughout the series by each of her husband's, for example, 67 00:07:54,470 --> 00:08:01,970 both of whom are religiously ambivalent or atheist, Ramita simply brushes these disagreements aside. 68 00:08:01,970 --> 00:08:11,050 They do not provoke her or, by extension, the author to reflect on her personal experience of her faith. 69 00:08:11,050 --> 00:08:16,930 So I was particularly struck by Islington, sudden sidestep into what you might call fantasy theology, 70 00:08:16,930 --> 00:08:22,720 where we get a sense of exactly why Ray Left believes in our the way that he does. 71 00:08:22,720 --> 00:08:32,230 And though it may initially seem to be a minor scene, I actually think Ray last words are key to understanding the laconic trilogy as a whole. 72 00:08:32,230 --> 00:08:36,460 The narrative arc of Tale come at the most prominent member of the Venerate 73 00:08:36,460 --> 00:08:42,430 throughout the series is a journey towards the most pivotal moment in his life, 74 00:08:42,430 --> 00:08:51,370 the moment which sowed a seed of doubt in him, causing him to question the direction of, as it turns out, the false L. 75 00:08:51,370 --> 00:09:01,270 And indeed that scene, which sets out how out on the road that he walks over the course of the books constitutes the very final scene of the trilogy, 76 00:09:01,270 --> 00:09:05,290 emphasising that the most important struggle in the books has not been the 77 00:09:05,290 --> 00:09:10,360 protagonist fight against shaman life than those of the Venerate still loyal to him, 78 00:09:10,360 --> 00:09:18,910 but has been the interior struggle of Tao Kama himself, a struggle that is spiritual rather than actual. 79 00:09:18,910 --> 00:09:26,620 And in a series that has doubt as such a central theme relaxed exposition of faith in spite of personal suffering, 80 00:09:26,620 --> 00:09:34,330 in spite of doubts that he too has experienced emerges as a kind of interpretative key to the whole trilogy. 81 00:09:34,330 --> 00:09:42,280 Elevating it, I think from a highly traditional fantasy narrative of Good vs. evil into something that's a bit more nuanced about 82 00:09:42,280 --> 00:09:51,950 the symbiotic relationship between faith and doubt and the world changing consequences of profound personal belief. 83 00:09:51,950 --> 00:10:00,950 And I'd like to turn briefly before finishing to another novel, which likewise locates power in the person of the Believer and in their faith itself, 84 00:10:00,950 --> 00:10:06,410 rather than seeing it as invested solely in the deity being venerated, 85 00:10:06,410 --> 00:10:12,590 Tasha Suri's realm of Ash contains a scene in which the heroine Arwa confronts a nightmare. 86 00:10:12,590 --> 00:10:18,620 This is a kind of demonic creature intent upon provoking massacre in a pilgrim camp. 87 00:10:18,620 --> 00:10:23,630 And while the nightmare infects the camp with a sort of preternatural fear, 88 00:10:23,630 --> 00:10:28,910 the residents of the home for widows in which the nightmare has been hiding are spared 89 00:10:28,910 --> 00:10:35,340 because they have unwittingly been offering the nightmare prayers and tokens of worship. 90 00:10:35,340 --> 00:10:40,740 Worship had power, so he writes Page three, five, eight, and when this knowledge, 91 00:10:40,740 --> 00:10:47,190 Arwa is able to save the camp in a similar attack by another nightmare later in the novel is 92 00:10:47,190 --> 00:10:53,760 likewise fended off by an act of collective prayer on the part of the travelling pilgrims until, 93 00:10:53,760 --> 00:11:01,830 as Suri describes it. Quote The fear remained, but it was quiet, so very quiet, 94 00:11:01,830 --> 00:11:11,070 all but thought again of a tide against the shore of the way a river of voices could wear and nightmares bone smooth given time. 95 00:11:11,070 --> 00:11:15,270 And that's from Page three eight two, as in Islington, to work. 96 00:11:15,270 --> 00:11:23,520 Story highlights here the power of faith, rather than just the power of the gods, which is actually something quite different. 97 00:11:23,520 --> 00:11:27,900 She highlights the power of faith to affect real world change, 98 00:11:27,900 --> 00:11:36,780 and she's quite particular about faith rather than ritual being the wellspring emphasising that the pilgrims all quote had different prayers, 99 00:11:36,780 --> 00:11:41,970 their letter names and mantras and songs jumbled together in a great cacophony of noise. 100 00:11:41,970 --> 00:11:44,730 Page three eight one to two. 101 00:11:44,730 --> 00:11:54,330 So once again, as with Islington, the light of all that falls, these small scenes prove pivotal to the novel's main narrative arc, 102 00:11:54,330 --> 00:12:03,360 which concerns finding a remedy for the curse, which lies over the Ambon empire because it's in these acts of prayer and worship. 103 00:12:03,360 --> 00:12:13,380 The hour ultimately finds what she calls quote a slow way through the dark page four and four, which offers a remedy for the empire's ills. 104 00:12:13,380 --> 00:12:21,900 That does not entail further exploitation of its people, but relies instead upon their faith. 105 00:12:21,900 --> 00:12:30,150 Both Islington and Surrey find and explore the larger power inherent in seemingly small personal acts of faith, 106 00:12:30,150 --> 00:12:39,510 and it's obvious doubt demonstrating that it is possible to treat faith seriously in fantasy while maintaining a fully imaginary world, 107 00:12:39,510 --> 00:12:45,240 i.e. without needing to make their work an allegory of any real world religious belief. 108 00:12:45,240 --> 00:12:52,920 And thereby they bring, in my opinion, an extra and much needed dimension to the fictional worlds that they create. 109 00:12:52,920 --> 00:12:55,082 Thank you so much for listening.