It is the herald, the forerunner, the wild voice crying in the wilderness that prepares the way for the Lord. To put it another way, each nation’s “haunting” plays the role of John the Baptist. Lewis believed that every nation possesses what he called a “haunting,” a “Logres,” which baptizes it with a unique inner life. As Lewis writes, “In every age and the little Logres which gathered round them have been the fingers which gave the tiny shove… to prod England out of the drunken sleep or draw her back from the final outrage into which Britain tempted her.” It is Logres which has always kept England grounded in her true identity. Anne’s, are seen as the heirs of Logres, which, in Lewis’ view, is the true lifeblood of England-of which Bragdon and the N.I.C.E. Ransom, who is the seventy-ninth Pendragon, and his confidants in the manor at St. In his novel That Hideous Strength, Lewis poses England’s essential struggle as the battle between Britain, (manifested in the tyrannical technocracy of Bragdon College) and Logres (the name for the kingdom of the legendary King Arthur). We become like the raven from Noah’s ark, forever flying freely over the waters, but finding no place to land.įacing what could be called my own literary crisis, C.S. To be the world of endless opportunities may elevate us on a pedestal, but to be forever elevated on a stage is more tragic than comic. A country that is home to everyone is also a country that is home to no one. Walt Whitman would have praised it as the “parade of democracy,” but I might put it a little more sardonically as a carnival of cultural simulacra. The meta-narrative of the archetypal immigrant sprung out of this reality and played an important role in securing America’s position as the theatre of the world-Hollywood and Broadway being our largest cultural contributions to the world stage. America is in reality a nation of immigrants. “The Myth of the Immigrant” is probably an accurate way of defining the American identity. The comic books claimed he was an alien, but there was nothing really alien about him. Was it my penchant for fantasy? Perhaps, but even Superman, my favorite childhood superhero, left something to be desired. But still, I felt that something fundamental was missing in the soul of American literature. Tom and Huck were certainly enjoyable, and enough of their adventurous spirits rubbed off on me to keep me in plenty of trouble. I asked my American literature professor, and he pointed me to the mythos surrounding “the immigrant,” “the frontier” and “the American Dream.” I think he was right, in a sense, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for.Īs a kid, I struggled to understand why books like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wind in the Willows, and Peter Pan were so much more meaningful to me than Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. What, or where, is America’s Logres? Who is the mythological hero that could guide the American identity the way Arthur guided Britain and inspired generations of English poets and artists?ĭuring my undergraduate years, I was in search for something that I could call the American myth. Sounds simple enough, if it weren't for Darkos, Maltazard's own son, hot on their tails.C.S. With the help of Selenia and Betameche, he hatches a plan to regain his usual size: all they must do is infiltrate Arthur's house through the pipeworks, catch an electric train from his bedroom to his grandfather's study and find an elixir that will make him grow back to his human size. Meanwhile, Arthur is still a Minimoy, and thus in a state where he's unable to fend him off. His goal is simple: forming an army of giant henchmen and ruling over the universe. Maltazard, the Evil M, is now 7 feet tall and evolving among the humans, causing terror wherever he goes.
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