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[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Our next speaker is is, uh, living fantasy author.

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Um, we're going to have several Nicole Rana come speak to us.

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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.

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And she's an infill candidate right here at Oxford. And she explores the intersection of policy and human rights.

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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.

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So please welcome Sarah, uh, to come talk to us about Jen faith and oral folklore Decentring fantasy outside Christian allegories.

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Just so you guys can hear me. Okay, awesome.

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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,

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and we're actually wrongfully assuming that the Western canon is the only way to tell a story through the archetypes of Judeo-Christian,

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um, traditions. Even the way that we structure our plot, uh, is circumscribed.

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Uh, think of the hero's journey when you're actually telling a story.

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It's a model that's treated as quite universal, when in reality it's only one type of cultural imagination.

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So today, uh, I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to imagine differently.

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Because only then can we get richer stories. And in my talk today, I'll be using Northrop Frye's academic theory,

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where he assumes that all of literature and now, by extension, fantasy literature comes from biblical frameworks.

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And I'm going to challenge that. I remember sitting in class when I was listening to this theory,

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and I was quite baffled because I was like, this is not something that I subscribe myself to as a writer.

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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.

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And I had to tell myself to resist that until it the way that I thought was right.

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Um, and so in order to price theory, he argues that the Bible provides provides the central mythological framework of Western literature.

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Fantasy authors like C.S. Lewis leaned into this by reshaping biblical typology into critical allegories.

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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.

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I again used a case study of my novel Donna The Firebird, and critically, the Rich World Within.

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My book draws on Islamic law, cosmology, different types of angels and demons,

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and I challenge a lot of the assumptions that exist for those types of mythological,

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uh, existence, because a lot of that is derived from biblical frameworks.

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So much. Okay. As I said, um.

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Fried theory in Anatomy of Criticism identifies recurring motifs as central to Western myth.

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So for fry, the Christian allegory, especially the typologies, anchors and different types of motifs such as comedy,

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romance and even the tragic hero, these stories are seen as extensions of biblical forms.

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So a lot of times the Trinity is actually quite critical to these books.

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He also displays his biblical forms. Even if, you know, different fantasy books exist, and they say they draw on different types of mythos.

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He still argues that all of those books orbit the biblical framework.

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So he would argue that Lewis obviously very represents the, uh, biblical myth in the fantasy genre,

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but he actually puts that argument even more so that any type of literature in story,

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even if it's fantasy, even if it's not, is an extension of the Bible.

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So obviously, with C.S. Lewis, the Christ figure, Aslan is Fry's archetype of death and resurrection.

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How do I challenge that? A couple key ways. Firstly, in Dawn of the Firebird, I develop motif motifs that disrupt Fry's system.

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Fry's explanation of biblical archetypes like the fall, resurrection, the Trinity, and a Christ figure he sees as universal.

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In Don, I split the complex spectrum as different moral possibilities by challenging the idea of a fall, resurrection, plurality.

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So, as I said, fry sees angels and demons as displaced archetypes of the Bible.

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A lot of times in stories, a classic story, you see light versus dark.

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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.

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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.

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Instead, in Islam we see angels as follows servants of God.

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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.

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Similarly, you have the idea of demons or dark forces that exists within Dawn of the Firebird, but we have the idea of jinn.

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Those are smokeless fire beings that have free will.

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They still have souls, but they embody morally goodness, morally badness and ambiguity and temptation.

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So they're actually quite similar to humans. They could be devils, but they can also be good beings.

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There's three guys here motif that I challenge.

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So fry argues that that is a another type of allegory within storytelling that is obviously seen as a destructive force.

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It's something the character must overcome. And when a character dies, that's the end of their journey.

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Well, within Don, I actually challenge that. For example, that is actually seen as a sacred tradition within my book in the fantasy world.

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Martyrdom is actually seen as a pinnacle of the hero's journey.

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So if you die as a hero or your die in martyrdom, it's seen as, you know,

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accessing some type of higher, I guess, intellectual, soul, spiritual, um, reality.

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It's also a way to, uh, access divine justice within my book.

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So morally good characters Revere death because that's where heroes edge closer to the fulfilment of the Hero's cycle.

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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.

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Well, within Dawn of the Firebird, I challenge the story of Adam and Eve.

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I look at it through Islam's interpretation of that story within the Koran or other, uh, Abrahamic traditions.

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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,

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because a raven taught Adam Son how to bury the first murder of mankind,

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and actually use raven as a cultural symbol to accept and Revere death within my world.

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As I was saying, there are other types of archetypes that exist.

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Frye obviously assumes that canon and literature can only be told through written script, but I actually challenge that within Donna The Firebird,

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because for us to assume that literature in the canon can only exist in written script or be passed down through written script,

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is a critical assumption, because that's not how most canon outside of the Western, uh, canon exists.

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So within my book, I actually celebrate oral storytelling in my world.

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Tradition and culture is passed down through oral storytelling.

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And so Frye's model kind of enforces this archetype.

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His second, uh, key motif is actually Noah's flood.

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Uh, he looks at the flood as a kind of divine justice event.

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He also has other motifs like trees, gardens, even the idea of an apocalypse.

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It's seen as an imaginative power that supersedes and goes into other types of literature.

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So if you read other books, he actually sees every book representing those types of motifs within of The Firebird.

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Noah's flood also exists, but it exists again through Islam's interpretation of Noah's flood.

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Instead of this, instead of a big giant flood that was a source of divine punishment in Donner the Firebird, Noah's flood.

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No, uh, is seen as a localised flood and a kind of cleansing.

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So this is the story that I wrote. Exists to tell a different account than the Bible's interpretation.

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And it challenges Frye's assumption that all stories must come from the biblical canon.

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So critically,

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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?

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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.

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Du Bois talks about the idea of double consciousness. And I want you to take that into your writing.

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If you're a writer or even you're reading, it's the sense of seeing oneself through the eyes of a dominant culture.

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Decentring is about claiming authority to imagine differently.

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For example, when I was working on Dawn of the Firebird, my lovely editor Vicky, who's in the audience,

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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.

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I didn't have to derive it for something that already exists in the real world.

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I had the permission to imagine differently and to draw on, yes,

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my own religion and other types of cultural traditions without being an exotic oriental supplement.

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So if you're writing, especially if you're interested in cultures outside the biblical canon,

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then I actually implore you to do that, and I implore you to decentre a lot of that.

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Secondly, what's important is Western readers imagine myth only exists again in those biblical archetypes.

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But the critical harm of that is that you sidelined thousands and thousands of other traditions that exist in the canon.

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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.

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And it actually probably makes you a worse writer or worse reader, because you're only limiting yourself to one construct.

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And so what I want you to take away by this presentation is that you need to give yourself the permission to imagine differently,

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because only then can fantasy be a genre that blooms.

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Fantasy is beautiful because it's a veil to imagine and look at different, different moral spectrums,

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to look at different types of traditions and even the way that they have different value systems.

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And only then will you be able to enjoy fantasy as a genre.

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It is. Thank you. Hello.

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That was an incredible presentation. So thank you so much.

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I just want to say that first, um, I'm wondering about, um.

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Mythology that predates the biblical canon.

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And kind of your perspective on how even the biblical canon itself almost draws upon that in a way,

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and how, I guess, seeing it as a three part of before the biblical canon and after sort of,

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um, how the biblical canon itself has changed due to translations and, um,

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kind of just the culture that has surrounded it and how it has become from um.

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Something that was, um, so intertwined into, um, Middle Eastern culture and, um, all of that.

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Sorry, this is, like, so convoluted. Yeah. And how it has become, like, extremely, um, uh, Western in its culture, I guess.

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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.

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Obviously there were other types of religious cultures, Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, uh, Jainism, Buddhism.

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And I actually studied a lot of different scriptures from Buddhism in particular when I was writing Dawn,

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because Dawn takes place after Noah's flood, uh, couldn't just rely on the Bible or some.

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I had to try to look at different types of monotheistic cultures that existed before it.

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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.

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But obviously there are other scriptures that exist that have similar types of motifs, similar types of archetypes.

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Or imagine the story of Noah's Flood, Adam and Eve differently.

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One example like I'll give is, uh, if you look at Proto China, for example, uh, they actually worshipped a deity called D.

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It was a monotheistic deity.

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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.

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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,

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um, and stop them from being only seen as Western is for you just to write.

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Um, I wrote something in Noah's flood instead of something that takes place vaguely during Islamic period or in the Middle East,

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because I was like, I don't need to be constructed to the Middle East or South Asia.

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I'm allowed to write a story that takes place after Noah's flood,

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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,

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or in some made up world that takes place in the very beginning of human existence.

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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.

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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.

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I would just say, thank you very much. So fantastic talk.

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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.