Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2278560" data-attributes="member: 4937">You mean people can't be bad writers, or do you mean that people can't have incoherent, contridictory and vague notions about things that are abstract?Well, good.  Then by all means hold it in low regard by leaving a thread discussing genre conventions.  It's indeed a 'useless' discipline, that's why they call it a 'liberal art' instead of a 'practical art'.   But, since I'm not posting to this board as part of my job, and merely for recreation it hardly seems important that it is a 'useless' thing.Who said anything about needing 'overarching themes'?  Overarching themes have nothing to do with my definition, its just merely interesting how often they appear.   Site one concrete example of me taking tenous links and inflating them to ludicrous proportions.   Oh, good grief.  Show me one example of me doing this despite the author's stated intentions.  Are you saying that Clint didn't intend for the supernatural hints in 'High Plains Drifter'?  Are you saying that ERB didn't intend to satirize religious extremism?  Are you saying the Larry Niven was completely unaware of the modernist sentiments behind 'The Magic Goes Away'?  What other examples in this thread have I done?Here we go with the ridiculous assertions about my background again.Fine, then I wish you would eshew any involvement in a methodolical approach to defining literary genera.No, in my mind you are not only blind to obvious textual symbolism, you are blind to the text.  It's not like I'm making complex arguments about the meaning of the work, nor is a complex meaning a requirement for meeting the rather simple definition I gave.  Where am I trying to make it up?   It's not like we are talking about deeply hidden things.   If you want deeply hidden meaning, then lets talk Tolkein, and I assure you that I won't be putting anything in thier the author didin't intend because we have lots and lots of letters about his own works.At last something we agree on.Within the context of the story, Rand al'Thor isn't a stand in for Christ - he is Christ.   Rand al'Thor isn't a christ figure.  He's the bloody eternal savior sent into the world by its creator to redeem it by the shedding of his blood.So what????I would prefer to stay out of religious discussions.   It's your idea that the ties have to be 'deep' (whatever that means).  It has nothing to do with mine.So you say, but I believe I've already covered this.  It doesn't matter so much why the author is choosing to use fantasy elements, or even if the author intends to say anything.</blockquote>

Verification