kristi wrote:This is all far beyond me. I just assumed the Calormenes were meant to be reminiscent of the Pre-Islamic Arabic culture found in 1,001 Nights.
Though Arabian Nights is one part of it, minus its monotheism, the Tarkaans and Imperialism hardly come in there.
And as previously said, the Tisroc dynasty starting with Tash is very reminiscent of Uppsala, where Odin started a dynasty - and a cult of himself.
Ajnos wrote:The Arabian Nights type culture is what I've always thought of as the inspiration for the Calormenes, Kristi. Lewis actually makes reference to Arabian Nights in one of the Narnian books (I forget which one).
Arabian Nights is clearly inspiring female culture in Calormen, but not Tash worship per se.
Ajnos wrote:Another lovely poem, Swan. (I need to get my headphones to listen to your song, so I'll tell you what I think once I've done that)
I am sorry I have neglected Swanwhite's poetry in my comments, but they are delightful.
Ajnos wrote:It seems odd today but I remember reading in The History of the Hobbit that although dragons were known and formed part of medieval folklore, their status as staples of Fantasy (and the characteristics we associate with them today of cleverness and lust for gold and enchantment and goldsickness) were really (re)introduced in the 20th century by Tolkien with the writing of the Hobbit and those who followed him. So I guess in these days it would be possible for an educated boy like Eustace to not know about dragons if he were only reading "factual" books.
Dragons were sufficiently familiar to readers of E Nesbit - in one story a dragon gone good becomes the first cat.
There are dragons in Fritz Leiber, and I presume in Robert E. Howard too. There are dragons when 19th C romantics retold Arthurian or Volsung legends. And so on.
And even now, someone really avoiding fantasy could not know what a dragon was - except for all the omnipresent imagery which make it impossible to ignore it.
Ajnos wrote:Lewis is good at not telling us quite everything about his characters and the background to his stories. And he does this especially in the Dawn Treader where we are introduced to so many new people whose stories are never told and places whose histories are never recorded. When I was younger, this kind of thing would annoy me: I would want to know more; more detail, more writings by Lewis etc. But now I appreciate the mystery which adds to the authenticity of the story and also makes it part of a much bigger grander tale of which we are old told only part. The rest is left up to the imagination, and Lewis encouraged readers to use their imagination in that way. ... These open stories, of course, provide ample opportunity for fan fiction (I’m kinda tempted to do something about the Goldwater one if I find some spare time).
I suppose the kind of person who would be annoyed is the kind of person who would write fan fiction.
EDIT : the images of Dragon Island are lovely!
EDIT : answering Hobbit. Lovely picture of an unlovely critter.
hobbit_of_narnia wrote:I thought I'd mention, too, how much I love the line, "But all the time Drinian was steadily steering to the starboard, like tiresome people in cars who continue at forty miles an hour while you are explaining to them that they are on the wrong road."
40 miles = 60 km. Fastest cars could go back then, or a security regulation?
hobbit_of_narnia wrote:And I just noticed this last time I read the chapter (you'd think I'd have noticed it sooner), and I don't know if anyone else has already thought this through and come up with an explanation. But why would have the lords have had Narnian "Lion" and "Tree" coins? I'd have thought the Telmarines would have introduced their own monetary system, with its own coins, when they took over Narnia, especially considering how they hated Aslan and the woods. And the seven lords left the Narnian shores before the reconquering of Narnia...
Just a thought.
Telmarines might have used the monetary system already in place, especially if useful in trade with Archenland (what happened to Archenland during the Telmarine times between Caspian I and Caspian IX/Miraz, btw?) and therefore, indirectly via Archenland, with Lone Islands.
EDIT, back to Hedgepickle:
Ajnos wrote:It is perhaps “none-of-our-business” what actually happened to them (would you like to have your failures and tragedies told? As Aslan says to Aravis “No one is told any story but their own.” But again, as I said before, it is fun and a good exercise of the imagination to speculate.
Aslans' words to Aravis might have some mystical meaning as no one really fully undestands another person (novelists and fan fiction writers do exercises in trying but do not succeed), or it may have been, I sometimes fear, a piece of bad Protestant theology in the Anglican author.
Protestants do not believe in canonising saints - we Catholics believe we actually ARE told what happened to quite a lot of someone else people, by the miracles God makes on their behalf to show they are in Heaven and praying for us.
And any symbolism of woods or of Aslan might have been simply ignored. In the coins, that is.
NOT liking to have all one's failures told is one reason for liking fiction - where paper people who can't be hurt by the readers (only by other paper people) expose their failings. However, it is a decent trait to extend that empathy to paper people as well.