Heroic Fantasy

La saga des Chevaucheurs du Vent est née indépendamment d'une relation consciente à François Brousse, auquel ce nouveau colloque rend une nouvelle fois hommage. Elle s'est inscrite de prime abord dans une perspective anthroposophique. Le motif le plus saillant de la trame romanesque en est sans doute cette dualité au sein des forces des ténèbres qui s'opposent à l'humanité et à ses héros. Je parle des forces que Rudolf Steiner qualifie « d'arhimaniennes », en référence au côté sombre d'Ahura-Mazda, et des forces « lucifériennes ». Dans Les Chevaucheurs, la graphie d'Arhiman est décomposée en trois syllabes « Ar-i-Mâhn » suggérant, si l'on veut, la triple influence de ce dernier sur les trois canaux énergétiques Ida, Pingala, Suchumna ou les trois énergies Yin, Yang et divine. Lucifer n'est nommé qu'à travers des périphrases comme le « Voleur de Lumière » ou « le Serpent des nuées » qui sont autant de titres pompeux manifestant le suprême orgueil de cette entité tout en caractérisant son action. L'aventure que constitue la rédaction du premier volume de cette saga que j'ai intitulé « L'héritage d'Eliumangar » a intégré des thèmes plus particulièrement chers à François Brousse. L'exemple le plus manifeste en est sans doute l'aventure initiatique de Geirya. La jeune héroïne traverse en effet des épisodes parfois incongrus qui permettent de décrire des éléments iconographiques ou plus largement symboliques des archétypes du tarot et son aventure se déroule à travers des mondes parallèles étranges ; son retour étant décidé par les Seigneurs Juges du Karma. Ce roman d'inspiration anthroposophique et broussienne s'inscrit dans la veine de l'Heroic Fantasy anglo-saxonne.

Romania is not so far away, but it is such a long way to go there and for Romania to come here. They are in Europe with all the other romance-language countries of Europe, but it has not adopted the Euro - YET??? - but Serban Enache has a position of his own on the subject. Get out of the Euro, which Romania cannot do of course.

That's why he is a heretic: he defends for others a religion he cannot defend for himself: he definitely cannot get out of the Euro, and he does not know really all the pleasure it would bring him. Look at the exhilarating banquet of sweetbreads and tough meats they are trying to chew in England - note Scotland, not Wales and not Northern Ireland who did not want to have that Roman orgy - before ever being able to digest them. Brexit means Brexit, doesn't it? And particularly "breaxing" all your teeth and dentures on the Bone of May while dancing around the Maypole on the Village square on the village green.

Enjoy Serban Enache and his literature.

Published in Vincent Ferré (ed.). 2010. Médiévalisme. Modernité du Moyen Âge. Paris: L’Harmattan, 61-71.
Abstract: The (popularly conceived) Middle Ages and (heroic) fantasy share a number of characteristics, such as settings in pre-technological and pre-bureaucratic worlds where men were not yet alienated from their fellow human beings and where things were more ‘authentic’. However, next to these ‘surface parallels’, we can identify a deeper underlying reason for the close affinity between the Middle Ages and (heroic) fantasy, which is due to the identification of medieval romance as the medieval literary genre per se, and the participation of (heroic) fantasy in this tradition.

The protagonist or, perhaps, more properly, ―the hero, regardless in what sort of categories we are going to speak about him/her (popular, anthropological, critical or genological), appears as one of the key ele-ments of the modern exomimetic (Zgorzelski 2004: 32) genre conven-tion of Secondary World Fantasy (subsequently abbreviated to SWF). This is suggested even by the very name of the genre variation of ―heroic fantasy, which, actually, is frequently used by various critics and re-searchers to refer to rather diverse collections of fantasy texts, at times encompassing the whole of SWF. However, even if the term ―heroic fantasy is applied to only one specific genre variant of SWF, as is the case in this study, the issue of the protagonist – or the hero – very much con-cerns all other historical genre variants and types of SWF. In other words, the presence of the hero (howsoever described) seems to be in-herent to the genre structures as such. This assumption might be sup-ported by a large bulk of critical work partly or entirely devoted to the description of fantasy heroes. However, most of such articles take cul-tural or critical literary positions; they focus, for example, on anthropo-logical significance of fantasy heroes or their similarity to various myth-ical figures, and analyse them in a broader cultural context. What seems to be lacking, is a more theoretical discussion of the protagonist – the hero – as an integral element of the genre which entails analysing him/her in relation to all other significant elements of textual structures.

HISTORIA, LEYENDA Y MITO EN LA RECONSTRUCCIÓN ALEJANDRINA DE LION OF MACEDON, DE DAVID GEMMELL

Verónica Rafaelli
CELYC-IdIHCS-UNLP
2011

Artículo publicado en Revista Digilenguas, Año III, N.º 10, diciembre de 2011. Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. ISSN 1852-3935. Disponible en línea en http://www.lenguas.unc.edu.ar/Digi/.


RESUMEN
David Gemmell, el novelista inglés especializado en fantasía heroica, dedicó dos de sus obras al tratamiento del fascinante personaje de Alejandro III de Macedonia, el Magno, en la historia y el mito: Lion of Macedon (1992) and Dark Prince (1993). La reelaboración histórica que hace el autor postula una explicación ficcional supernatural para la naturaleza peculiar de la personalidad y la conducta de Alejandro; coherentemente con gran parte de la bibliografía del autor, el rol del héroe asume una importancia central como el abnegado guerrero que lucha contra un destino trágico predeterminado que afecta la suerte de toda una civilización. Esta reelaboración resulta un terreno fértil para la reflexión sobre la naturaleza del hombre en situación de poder.

ABSTRACT
David Gemmell, the English heroic fantasy novelist, devoted two of his works to the treatment of the fascinating character of Alexander III of Macedon, the Great, in fact and myth: Lion of Macedon (1992) and Dark Prince (1993). The author's narrative take on history aims at positing a supernatural fictive explanation to the peculiar nature of Alexander's personality and behaviour; in line with the main body of works by the author, the role of the hero takes on central significance as the self-sacrificing fighter against a predestined tragic fate which affects an entire civilization. This recreation invites the reader to ponder over the nature of man in a position of ruling power.