[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Our next speaker is is, uh, living fantasy author.
Um, we're going to have several Nicole Rana come speak to us.
She's the author of a forthcoming epic fantasy trilogy called the Dawn of the Firebird, and she's the acclaimed author of the novel Hope ablaze.
And she's an infill candidate right here at Oxford. And she explores the intersection of policy and human rights.
And her debut novel was selected as the library, make her debut book club pick and earn a Junior Library uh, Guild Gold Star standard.
So please welcome Sarah, uh, to come talk to us about Jen faith and oral folklore Decentring fantasy outside Christian allegories.
Just so you guys can hear me. Okay, awesome.
I think the greatest injustice in how we talk about stories today is that both we and our stories are constricted by the Western canon,
and we're actually wrongfully assuming that the Western canon is the only way to tell a story through the archetypes of Judeo-Christian,
um, traditions. Even the way that we structure our plot, uh, is circumscribed.
Uh, think of the hero's journey when you're actually telling a story.
It's a model that's treated as quite universal, when in reality it's only one type of cultural imagination.
So today, uh, I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to imagine differently.
Because only then can we get richer stories. And in my talk today, I'll be using Northrop Frye's academic theory,
where he assumes that all of literature and now, by extension, fantasy literature comes from biblical frameworks.
And I'm going to challenge that. I remember sitting in class when I was listening to this theory,
and I was quite baffled because I was like, this is not something that I subscribe myself to as a writer.
And as I came to write my book, Donna The Firebird, I had to use a lot of the assumptions that I was told was the only way to tell a story.
And I had to tell myself to resist that until it the way that I thought was right.
Um, and so in order to price theory, he argues that the Bible provides provides the central mythological framework of Western literature.
Fantasy authors like C.S. Lewis leaned into this by reshaping biblical typology into critical allegories.
I reject that notion. There are two sub points. Firstly, uh, I see that law and motifs do not have to exist in fried mythological structure.
I again used a case study of my novel Donna The Firebird, and critically, the Rich World Within.
My book draws on Islamic law, cosmology, different types of angels and demons,
and I challenge a lot of the assumptions that exist for those types of mythological,
uh, existence, because a lot of that is derived from biblical frameworks.
So much. Okay. As I said, um.
Fried theory in Anatomy of Criticism identifies recurring motifs as central to Western myth.
So for fry, the Christian allegory, especially the typologies, anchors and different types of motifs such as comedy,
romance and even the tragic hero, these stories are seen as extensions of biblical forms.
So a lot of times the Trinity is actually quite critical to these books.
He also displays his biblical forms. Even if, you know, different fantasy books exist, and they say they draw on different types of mythos.
He still argues that all of those books orbit the biblical framework.
So he would argue that Lewis obviously very represents the, uh, biblical myth in the fantasy genre,
but he actually puts that argument even more so that any type of literature in story,
even if it's fantasy, even if it's not, is an extension of the Bible.
So obviously, with C.S. Lewis, the Christ figure, Aslan is Fry's archetype of death and resurrection.
How do I challenge that? A couple key ways. Firstly, in Dawn of the Firebird, I develop motif motifs that disrupt Fry's system.
Fry's explanation of biblical archetypes like the fall, resurrection, the Trinity, and a Christ figure he sees as universal.
In Don, I split the complex spectrum as different moral possibilities by challenging the idea of a fall, resurrection, plurality.
So, as I said, fry sees angels and demons as displaced archetypes of the Bible.
A lot of times in stories, a classic story, you see light versus dark.
You see good versus evil and Islamic hate. Lord. In my book, I take a lot of the assumptions of these motifs and give it the lens of Islam.
So angels exist within my book, but they're not the same angels like the devil that fell from heaven and was a fallen angel.
Instead, in Islam we see angels as follows servants of God.
So in my book I put that idea and I show that angels are not the same type of fallen archetype that you see within biblical frameworks.
Similarly, you have the idea of demons or dark forces that exists within Dawn of the Firebird, but we have the idea of jinn.
Those are smokeless fire beings that have free will.
They still have souls, but they embody morally goodness, morally badness and ambiguity and temptation.
So they're actually quite similar to humans. They could be devils, but they can also be good beings.
There's three guys here motif that I challenge.
So fry argues that that is a another type of allegory within storytelling that is obviously seen as a destructive force.
It's something the character must overcome. And when a character dies, that's the end of their journey.
Well, within Don, I actually challenge that. For example, that is actually seen as a sacred tradition within my book in the fantasy world.
Martyrdom is actually seen as a pinnacle of the hero's journey.
So if you die as a hero or your die in martyrdom, it's seen as, you know,
accessing some type of higher, I guess, intellectual, soul, spiritual, um, reality.
It's also a way to, uh, access divine justice within my book.
So morally good characters Revere death because that's where heroes edge closer to the fulfilment of the Hero's cycle.
Similarly, I draw on the story of Adam and Eve, a classic story within the Bible, and obviously Frye sees it through the biblical framework.
Well, within Dawn of the Firebird, I challenge the story of Adam and Eve.
I look at it through Islam's interpretation of that story within the Koran or other, uh, Abrahamic traditions.
So within my book, I do take the story of Adam and Eve, but actually draw on the on the classic symbol of death, which is the raven,
because a raven taught Adam Son how to bury the first murder of mankind,
and actually use raven as a cultural symbol to accept and Revere death within my world.
As I was saying, there are other types of archetypes that exist.
Frye obviously assumes that canon and literature can only be told through written script, but I actually challenge that within Donna The Firebird,
because for us to assume that literature in the canon can only exist in written script or be passed down through written script,
is a critical assumption, because that's not how most canon outside of the Western, uh, canon exists.
So within my book, I actually celebrate oral storytelling in my world.
Tradition and culture is passed down through oral storytelling.
And so Frye's model kind of enforces this archetype.
His second, uh, key motif is actually Noah's flood.
Uh, he looks at the flood as a kind of divine justice event.
He also has other motifs like trees, gardens, even the idea of an apocalypse.
It's seen as an imaginative power that supersedes and goes into other types of literature.
So if you read other books, he actually sees every book representing those types of motifs within of The Firebird.
Noah's flood also exists, but it exists again through Islam's interpretation of Noah's flood.
Instead of this, instead of a big giant flood that was a source of divine punishment in Donner the Firebird, Noah's flood.
No, uh, is seen as a localised flood and a kind of cleansing.
So this is the story that I wrote. Exists to tell a different account than the Bible's interpretation.
And it challenges Frye's assumption that all stories must come from the biblical canon.
So critically,
what I want you to take away by this presentation is what is the point of talking about stories that exist outside of biblical frameworks?
Why am I telling challenging Freud's theory? Well, I want you to think about one of the most famous academics who was a Pan-African, um, sociologist.
Du Bois talks about the idea of double consciousness. And I want you to take that into your writing.
If you're a writer or even you're reading, it's the sense of seeing oneself through the eyes of a dominant culture.
Decentring is about claiming authority to imagine differently.
For example, when I was working on Dawn of the Firebird, my lovely editor Vicky, who's in the audience,
was the one who gave me permission and I needed to hear it to be able to imagine and challenge the cultures that I'm writing into my book.
I didn't have to derive it for something that already exists in the real world.
I had the permission to imagine differently and to draw on, yes,
my own religion and other types of cultural traditions without being an exotic oriental supplement.
So if you're writing, especially if you're interested in cultures outside the biblical canon,
then I actually implore you to do that, and I implore you to decentre a lot of that.
Secondly, what's important is Western readers imagine myth only exists again in those biblical archetypes.
But the critical harm of that is that you sidelined thousands and thousands of other traditions that exist in the canon.
So if my stories are being rejected because they go outside those frame book frameworks, that's not fair to the stories that can otherwise exist.
And it actually probably makes you a worse writer or worse reader, because you're only limiting yourself to one construct.
And so what I want you to take away by this presentation is that you need to give yourself the permission to imagine differently,
because only then can fantasy be a genre that blooms.
Fantasy is beautiful because it's a veil to imagine and look at different, different moral spectrums,
to look at different types of traditions and even the way that they have different value systems.
And only then will you be able to enjoy fantasy as a genre.
It is. Thank you. Hello.
That was an incredible presentation. So thank you so much.
I just want to say that first, um, I'm wondering about, um.
Mythology that predates the biblical canon.
And kind of your perspective on how even the biblical canon itself almost draws upon that in a way,
and how, I guess, seeing it as a three part of before the biblical canon and after sort of,
um, how the biblical canon itself has changed due to translations and, um,
kind of just the culture that has surrounded it and how it has become from um.
Something that was, um, so intertwined into, um, Middle Eastern culture and, um, all of that.
Sorry, this is, like, so convoluted. Yeah. And how it has become, like, extremely, um, uh, Western in its culture, I guess.
Yeah. So I think you point out something that's important, which is obviously the Bible wasn't the first book or Britain script to exist.
Obviously there were other types of religious cultures, Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, uh, Jainism, Buddhism.
And I actually studied a lot of different scriptures from Buddhism in particular when I was writing Dawn,
because Dawn takes place after Noah's flood, uh, couldn't just rely on the Bible or some.
I had to try to look at different types of monotheistic cultures that existed before it.
But you point to something which is important, which is that a lot of times people assume these stories only came and existed in the Bible.
But obviously there are other scriptures that exist that have similar types of motifs, similar types of archetypes.
Or imagine the story of Noah's Flood, Adam and Eve differently.
One example like I'll give is, uh, if you look at Proto China, for example, uh, they actually worshipped a deity called D.
It was a monotheistic deity.
And if you look at monotheistic cultures, they studied um and have similar types of kind of monotheistic, uh, I guess a divine like figure.
And those have existed for like, millennia. And so one way that we can try to stop the watering down of these stories, as you said,
um, and stop them from being only seen as Western is for you just to write.
Um, I wrote something in Noah's flood instead of something that takes place vaguely during Islamic period or in the Middle East,
because I was like, I don't need to be constructed to the Middle East or South Asia.
I'm allowed to write a story that takes place after Noah's flood,
and so you can actually combat a lot of that watering down by giving yourself permission to write those stories that take place in Adam's time,
or in some made up world that takes place in the very beginning of human existence.
If you try to limit yourself and look at historical sources and be like, oh, I must, I must only write like that, you're limiting yourself.
And so I really, you know, with the wonderful support of my team, was only able to do that because they accepted that story in its most original form.
I would just say, thank you very much. So fantastic talk.
You've really moved this on to the next stage of the summer school, and thanks to all of the speakers, it's like, okay.