Mythic Writers Blog

Hmm…I just noticed that I didn’t post my vacation notice for last week. Oops! So…I was on vacation last week. I’m back now. Ahem…

On Saturday, I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. It was a great movie—I enjoyed it immensely and came out filled with visions of epic battles, towering ruins, soaring cliffs. All the good things a movie should leave you with. I also came out with a question or two about myths and mythic fiction.

Prince Caspian fills the bill for mythic fiction. Magic, magical creatures, people crossing between worlds. It should clearly be in the mythic fiction category, right? Probably. I can’t quite give an unequivocal “yes.” What gives me pause about putting this into the mythic fiction category i the time period the protagonists are from. Obviously, they were modern people at the time C.S. Lewis wrote the original book. But for me, right now, their 1940s era British world is nearly as much of a mythical place as is Narnia. Can something that might be considered mythic fiction grow outdated because of one of its elements and no longer fit into the mythic fiction category? Or if something is mythic fiction, is it always going to be mythic fiction? (I know. Here we are, back at that definition thing again. I can’t help myself. I just enjoy poking at it.)

So, on to my opinion. I can go two ways with this. One way tells me that the important part is the crossing from some sort of acknowledged “real” or mundane world into a mythical realm or having that mythical realm or its elements cross into a real world. This seems like a fairly reasonable part of the mythic fiction definition, and if this is the way of things, then obviously Prince Caspian is mythic fiction.

But what if people cross from a futuristic world filled with artificially intelligent robots and flying cars into a faery realm? Would that still be mythic fiction? What if they cross from a realm where magic spells work but there are no magical creatures into a realm where there are dragons and faeries and trolls but no magic?

These are actually really intriguing ideas. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other, at least not yet, but seeing the movie stirred all of these ideas in my head, so I thought I’d share. I may keep poking at these ideas later, but for now that’s all I have.

More on Wednesday…