Farah Mendlesohn: Diana Wynne Jones
Jan. 28th, 2007 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI have been reading Farah Mendlesohn's book on Diana Wynne Jones: a gift, and a very generous one, since it is aimed at an academic market, and priced accordingly. I'm not qualified to evaluate it as an academic text: but as a general reader, a fan of Diana Wynne Jones with no background in the study of children's literature or the theaory of fantasy, I found it organised, illuminating and - despite a certain amount of technical vocabulary - comprehensible. I was bewildered only by the glimpse it gave of a whole wider world of critical thinking on these subjects whose existence I had not suspected.
My own approach to criticism starts from the individual text and remains close to it; as an undergraduate I used to explain that I was too lazy to read the critics (a joke - because the conventional assumption was that it was easier to let the critics do the heavy lifting, and then reproduce the fruits of their labours - which was nonetheless absolutely true). Watching Farah Mendlesohn dealing efficiently with a canon of 45 books made clear the shortcomings of that approach. She selects the themes she wants to consider (the classification of fantasy, say, according to whether the fantastic element breaks into a realistic world or is encountered in its own, fantastic, world, or the nature of time) and uses those novels which best illuninate her argument. At times this feels a little abstract (as with all the best criticism, I occasionally longed to put the book down and go and re-read its subject), but the patterns it draws out are fascinating. It was intriguing, too, to notice which of the novels reappeared from chapter to chapter, which were subjected to a single in-depth analysis, and which were mentioned only in passing: A Charmed Life was the only one of my favourites to be passed over comparatively lightly.
I picked up a number of pointers to things to look out for in future readings; a great desire to re-read (and maybe a shift in my priorities for re-reading); and the reassurance that I am not alone in finding the ending of Fire and Hemlock opaque.
My own approach to criticism starts from the individual text and remains close to it; as an undergraduate I used to explain that I was too lazy to read the critics (a joke - because the conventional assumption was that it was easier to let the critics do the heavy lifting, and then reproduce the fruits of their labours - which was nonetheless absolutely true). Watching Farah Mendlesohn dealing efficiently with a canon of 45 books made clear the shortcomings of that approach. She selects the themes she wants to consider (the classification of fantasy, say, according to whether the fantastic element breaks into a realistic world or is encountered in its own, fantastic, world, or the nature of time) and uses those novels which best illuninate her argument. At times this feels a little abstract (as with all the best criticism, I occasionally longed to put the book down and go and re-read its subject), but the patterns it draws out are fascinating. It was intriguing, too, to notice which of the novels reappeared from chapter to chapter, which were subjected to a single in-depth analysis, and which were mentioned only in passing: A Charmed Life was the only one of my favourites to be passed over comparatively lightly.
I picked up a number of pointers to things to look out for in future readings; a great desire to re-read (and maybe a shift in my priorities for re-reading); and the reassurance that I am not alone in finding the ending of Fire and Hemlock opaque.
