There's nothing wrong with enjoying such narratives -- we'd be obliged to jettison the entire Arthurian mythos and huge chunks of American popular culture if there were -- but it never hurts to remind ourselves that it's not just their magical motifs that makes them fantasies.
The logic of this sentence escapes me completely. What if indulging in the mythos of King Arthur is indeed problematic?
Just consider the last part of the story - that the king might return from his lake and restore its beautiful, perfect kingdom? There's a similar myth in Germany, not about King Arthur but about about Emperor Barbarossa waiting in the mountain Kyffhäuser to restore his realm. Heine makes fun of this myth: he visits the emperor in his mountain and tells him that nowadays kings get guillotined. The emperor is shocked about this respectlessness (not only killing the king, but also how it was done), and Heine decides that we don't really need an emperor, neither to liberate nor to reign us.
Heine was wise, refuting the old myth, and history would have taken a better course if more people had listened to him.
So, yes, maybe there is something wrong in the Arhurian mythos and indulging in it (at least in certain ways, and dreaming of a simpler life is such a problematic way), and maybe there is something deeply wrong with the ideals of Lord of the Ring.
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Date: 20 Feb 2011 12:55 pm (UTC)The logic of this sentence escapes me completely. What if indulging in the mythos of King Arthur is indeed problematic?
Just consider the last part of the story - that the king might return from his lake and restore its beautiful, perfect kingdom? There's a similar myth in Germany, not about King Arthur but about about Emperor Barbarossa waiting in the mountain Kyffhäuser to restore his realm. Heine makes fun of this myth: he visits the emperor in his mountain and tells him that nowadays kings get guillotined. The emperor is shocked about this respectlessness (not only killing the king, but also how it was done), and Heine decides that we don't really need an emperor, neither to liberate nor to reign us.
Heine was wise, refuting the old myth, and history would have taken a better course if more people had listened to him.
So, yes, maybe there is something wrong in the Arhurian mythos and indulging in it (at least in certain ways, and dreaming of a simpler life is such a problematic way), and maybe there is something deeply wrong with the ideals of Lord of the Ring.