The Aeneid with Rabbits

209 Pages·2016·2.51 MB·English

by  Hannah Parry

The Aeneid with Rabbits:
Children's Fantasy as Modern Epic

by

Hannah Parry

A thesis
submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington
in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Victoria University of Wellington
2016
Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks are owed to Geoff Miles and Harry Ricketts, for their insightful supervision of
this thesis. Thanks to Geoff also for his previous supervision of my MA thesis and of the 489
Research Paper which began my academic interest in tracking modern fantasy back to
classical epic. He must be thoroughly sick of reading drafts of my writing by now, but has
never once showed it, and has always been helpful, enthusiastic and kind.

For talking to me about Tolkien, Old English and Old Norse, lending me a whole box of
books, and inviting me to spend countless Wednesday evenings at their house with the Norse
Reading Group, I would like to thank Christine Franzen and Robert Easting. I'd also like to
thank the English department staff and postgraduates of Victoria University of Wellington, for
their interest and support throughout, and for being some of the nicest people it has been my
privilege to meet.

Victoria University of Wellington provided financial support for this thesis through the
Victoria University Doctoral Scholarship, for which I am very grateful.

For access to letters, notebooks and manuscripts pertaining to Rosemary Sutcliff, Philip
Pullman, and C.S. Lewis, I would like to thank the Seven Stories National Centre for
Children's Books in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Oxford University.

Finally, thanks to my parents, William and Lynette Parry, for fostering my love of books, and
to my sister, Sarah Parry, for her patience, intelligence, insight, and many terrific
conversations about all things literary and fantastical.

2
Abstract

Despite their apparent dissimilarity, children's literature and the epic tradition are often
intertwined. This is seen perhaps most clearly in the frequent retelling and repackaging of
epics such as Beowulf and the Odyssey as children's books. If there is potential for epic to
become children's stories, however, there is also potential for children's stories to become
epic, and a number of important works of children's fantasy have been discussed as epics in
their own right.

In this thesis, I examine the extent to which writers of children's fantasy can be viewed as
working in an epic tradition, drawing on and adapting epic texts for the modern age as Virgil
and Milton did for their own times. Looking specifically at key works of British fantasy
written post-WWI, I argue that children's literature and epic serve similar social and cultural
functions, including the ability to mythologise communal experience and explore codes of
heroism that are absorbed by their intended audience. Rosemary Sutcliff's retellings of epic
texts for children suggest the ways in which epic can be reworked to create new heroic codes
that are a combination of their source material, the values of their new cultural context, and
the author's own personal worldview. This potential is further explored through Richard
Adams's Watership Down, an animal story that functions in part as a retelling of Virgil’s
Aeneid with rabbits. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit uses the tension between epic and children's
fairy-tale to examine the codes at the heart of Norse and Anglo-Saxon epic, and suggest an
alternative that nonetheless allows for the glory of an epic worldview. Both T.H. White and
Sutcliff engage with the Arthurian myth and the Matter of Britain in ways that use children's
literature as a starting point for national epic. Finally, C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman each
make use of Milton's Paradise Lost (and, in Pullman's case, of Lewis's earlier work) to
produce very different fantasies that each look ahead to the end of epic.

Cumulatively, these books illustrate the manner in which children's texts provide a home for
the epic in a postmodern age in which many critics suggest the epic in its pure form can no
longer survive. The rise of scientific empiricism, combined with national disillusionment
following WWI, has been argued to have left epic's traditional worldview of myth, religion
and the supernatural impossible to be used without irony. Children's fantasy, ostensibly
addressed to “an audience that is still innocent” (Gillian Adams 109), allows authors to
3
eschew irony in favour of story-telling, and explore ideas such as courage, honour and
transcendence that lie at the heart of epic.

4
Table of Contents

Introduction 7

1. “This is the Story of Odysseus”: Rosemary Sutcliff's Adaptations of Epic for Children
16
Constructing the Hero in Beowulf: Dragon Slayer 17
The Wanderings of Odysseus and the Sutcliffean Hero 23

2. “A Modern Literature Whose Only Successful Epic is about Rabbits”: Richard Adams's
Watership Down 33
“This Rabbit Aeneid”: Connections between Adams and Virgil 37
Watership Down and the Foundation of a Kingdom 44

3. “A Little Fellow in a Wide World”: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit 54
“The World into which Mr Baggins Had Strayed”: Tolkien and Northern Epic 57
“Child of the Kindly West”: Bilbo as Children's Book Hero 70

4. Epic, Romance and the Matter of Britain I: T.H. White's The Once and Future King 82
Finding an Antidote to War 85
“The Joy of Life Which Belonged to his Boyhood”: Old England and the Fall 89
“The Maturest or the Saddest Phase” of Camelot: Epic and Tragedy 97

5. Epic, Romance and the Matter of Britain II: Rosemary Sutcliff, King Arthur and Historical
Epic 106
The King Arthur Trilogy: Arthur as “Hero-tale” 110
Holding Back the Dark: The Lantern Bearers and Sword at Sunset 117

5
6. An Epic Holiday: C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia 132
Narnia and the Fall: The Magician's Nephew and Paradise Lost 137
Paradise Gained: The End of Epic in Narnia 147

7. “Paradise Lost in Three Volumes for Teenagers”: Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials
157
“Eve Must Fall”: His Dark Materials as a Revision of Paradise Lost 163
“The Compulsion of the Form”: The Epic Form vs Authorial Intent 175

Conclusion 189

Works Cited 197

6
Introduction

At first glance, children's fantasy and the epic tradition seem to have little in common: one,
after all, is a genre written to entertain children, while the other is what the Renaissance
viewed as the “noblest literary form” (Tillyard 2). Yet the two are often intertwined. As Anna
Smol argues, citing Allen Frantzen, the influence of romantic historians who “linked past and
present in the paradigm of parent-child relationships, in which the present was the fulfillment
– the adult form – of the past” has often meant that the literature of the past becomes viewed
as appropriate for “those usually taken to be the simple and unlearned always in our midst –
children” (93). As such, epics are frequently directly retold and repackaged as children's
fantasy in the same manner as myths, folk tales and fairy tales. Besides these “straight”
retellings, a number of children’s and young adult writers draw knowingly on individual epics
to create new stories (Adele Geras’s Troy and Ithaka, for example, are set against the
backdrop of the Trojan War but deal largely with original characters), or to retell the old ones
from a different perspective (such as Clemence McLaren’s Inside the Walls of Troy, which
gives the Trojan War from the first-person perspectives of Helen and Cassandra). At its most
general, children’s literature and fantasy in particular seems simply to have what Lisa Scally
terms a “natural epic slant” (211). Many of the features identified with epic are equally
applicable to children’s fantasy: a cosmic scale, a setting in the distant past, the presence of
heroic and supernatural characters, plots pivoting on wars or quests (Martin 10), and even the
“persistent motif of travel, symbolic of a search for identity” (Merchant “Epic in Translation”
246).

The basic compatibility of the two genres, however, can also work in reverse, and if epic can
become children's literature, there is also increasingly potential for children's literature to
become epic. In her 2004 thesis on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, Scally
proposes that Pullman has written what Franco Moretti defines as a modern epic, and goes on
to consider children's literature as one of the possible locations of epic in a “pluralistic and
secular age” (212). Moretti argues that the ability of the epic to function as an “encyclopaedia
of a society's own culture” (cited in Scally 212) was lost with the rise of scientific
empiricism, which has left epic's traditional worldview of myth, religion and magic unable to
be taken seriously and thus epic itself only able to survive as ironic affectation. The true epic
impulse for Moretti resides in magical realism, a genre discussed also by Paul Merchant as he
7
similarly charts the effect on epic of the “sense of disintegration” and loss of old certainties
following World War I (“Epic in Translation” 257; 262). Scally sees children’s literature as
analogous to magical realism in its ability to engage with fantastic myths and serious themes
in a manner not otherwise permitted in a fragmented literary landscape, and in its potential to
revitalise an “impoverished postmodern adult culture” (222).

The fact that children’s fantasy has a relationship with the epic tradition does not necessarily
imply that children’s literature is a part of that tradition: as critical writers on the epic genre
agree without exception, the epic is notoriously difficult to define, and texts can contain
features generally considered “epic” without necessarily being epics themselves (and vice-
versa) (Martin 10). The idea that certain individual works of children's fantasy can be read or
categorised as works of epic, though, is one that has been addressed by a number of critics. In
particular, Scally's claim for His Dark Materials notably echoes that made by Gillian Adams
for Richard Adams's animal fantasy Watership Down. “Watership Down as Double Journey”,
citing as inspiration “a remark in the Times Literary Supplement about the sorry condition of
a modern literature whose only successful epic is about rabbits” (106), claims that Watership
Down is a novel that functions in two distinct ways for two different sets of readers: as a
“Virgilian epic journey which operates on a socio-political level” for a “college-educated
adult”, and as a “personal journey of a group of brave rabbits who form a composite hero
with whom [a child] can identify” (106). Drawing a number of convincing connections
between the book and both Virgil’s Aeneid and a wider epic tradition of heroes, shamans,
myths and underworld journeys, Gillian Adams argues that Watership Down as epic
successfully navigates “the problems [identified by Umberto Eco] faced by a writer who
wants to say certain things in a postmodern age which is no longer innocent” (109). As Eco
does in texts such as The Name of the Rose, Adams employs intertextuality, referencing
ancient texts that have been able to deal with his intended subjects without irony, and
distancing, setting his book within the microcosm of the animal world, in order to “speak
with high seriousness of courage, heroism, faith, honour, dignity, and transcendence” (109).
Adams, however, has used the form of a children’s book in order to do so, addressing “an
audience which is still innocent” and thus will not, like some adults, be “embarrassed by the
idea that animals can be heroic and honourable and clever and believe in, even be in contact
with, some power higher than themselves” (109). Like Scally, Gillian Adams raises the
possibility of children’s literature as not only a possible but a necessary location for modern
epic.
8
These critics are primarily arguing for individual works to be read as part of the epic
tradition, rather than for a connection between the epic tradition and that of children's fantasy.
Nonetheless, both arguments raise interesting questions about how the epic tradition can be
defined, and to what extent other writers of contemporary children's fantasy can be seen as
contributing to that tradition in the manner attributed to Pullman and Adams. In this thesis, I
examine the relationship between epic and children's fantasy by looking at the way in which
epic themes, structures and characters are drawn on and modified in young adult and
children's fantasy; in particular, British texts, and those published post-WWI. I also argue that
children's literature has become a home for epic themes in a literary landscape otherwise
often hostile toward their perceived simplicity and moral didacticism, and offers a possibility
for the survival of the epic tradition in a modern world.

Given epic's overlap with myth, fantasy and folk-tale, it seems important first to define what
distinguishes the epic as a narrative mode. While Peter Toohey's statement that virtually
anything can be regarded as epic seems over-inclusive, critical examinations of what exactly
constitutes an epic do seem to support his identification of epic as “the most capacious of
genres” (31). With the exception of Toohey, though, who considers comic or parodic epics as
viable epics in their own right, critics generally agree that epic is characterised by a “high
seriousness and elevated style” (Griffin 21; also Tillyard 6; Dixon 24; Martin 10; Reichl 63),
the presence of great heroes who are superior to common men and yet mortal (Griffin 18;
Toohey 34), the presence of gods and supernatural beings (Griffin 16), and the use of
formulaic phrases and recurrent motifs (Martin 10). Although original classical and Anglo-
Saxon epics are in verse, most agree that the genre can easily shift forms, with both Catherine
Bates and Merchant acknowledging modernist texts such as Joyce's Ulysses as well as works
of contemporary fantasy as working in an epic tradition (Bates ix, Merchant The Epic 24).
More important, in Richard Martin's words, is the idea that epics play “a necessary role that
transcends genre” (9). The origins of classical and Anglo-Saxon epic arguably lie in the need
for a “book of the tribe” (Merchant The Epic 21), and serve at once as a record of custom and
tradition, a means to glorify heroes believed to be the ancestors of the audience, and a source
of popular entertainment (Griffin 13; Toohey 33; Reichl 57; Merchant 21). As such, a
traditional epic “sorts through and makes comprehensible important communal experience”
(Toohey 33), retelling known stories that transform history through “oral tradition, legend
building, myth-making, and poetic licence” (Riechl 57). E.M.W Tillyard defines this function
9
as “choric”: while not necessarily national, “the epic writer must express the feelings of a
large group of people living in or near his own time” (12).

In general, “high seriousness” is not considered a feature of children's literature, and
children's fantasies are rarely characterised as possessing an “elevated style”: in fact, the shift
from the epic register to the demotic register and the effects of this shift on meaning is one of
the issues of adapting myth into children's stories discussed by John Stephens and Robyn
McCallum in their book Retelling Stories: Framing Culture (11-12; and throughout). Despite
this, the style of epic as well as the subject matter is often discussed by critics as a feature of
children's literature. Without intending any wider implications, Maria Nikolajeva defines the
traditional mode of narration for children’s literature as “epic; that is, based on typical epic
narrative structures, telling a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, with a clear-cut
plot, a permanent setting, a set of characters with pre-determined roles, an unambivalent
message and moral” (“Exit Children's Literature?” 225). Even more surprisingly, the
comparisons occasionally work in reverse, with critics of the epic using children’s fiction to
illustrate a particular point about the way in which epic functions. Dixon’s 1912 book English
Epic and Heroic Poetry, for example, described the epic’s transmutation of “passions and
wounds and death … into objects of tranquil and delighted contemplation” as mimicking the
pleasure of a “child’s fairy tale” (23-24), while Griffin’s more recent article describes the
relation of the heroes and heroines of epic to their ancient audience as that of “the adults that
we saw with the magnifying gaze of childhood, when we ourselves were young” (16).
Without it being overtly examined, there seems to be an assumption that epic shares with
children's literature a narrative simplicity and focus on story over character that perhaps
partially accounts for its perceived suitability for children. This has sometimes been exploited
by more sophisticated authors who are thus able to use a shift from an otherwise demotic
register into the “elevated style” of epic at key moments as a sign of a shift into “high
seriousness”, as noted of Tolkien's The Hobbit by C.S. Lewis (“The Hobbit” 81) and
Pullman's His Dark Materials by Scally (210).

One of the most commonly identified features of the epic genre is what Bates characterises as
its ability to “refer back to and revise what went before” (ix). Wilkie argues that “the great
paradox of the epic lies in the fact that the partial repudiation of earlier epic tradition is itself
traditional” (cited in Scally 211), while Merchant describes one of the “main
characteristic[s]” of the original epics as “the ability to generate successors ... Not only do we
10