On Tue, 26 Mar 1996, Jeremy Blackman wrote:

On Tue, 26 Mar 1996, Ranma al'Thor <ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu> wrote:

Sure!  I've read the Mists of Avalon.  Fun stuff, and one of the best
depictions of some of the mythic aspects of the book.  Unfortunately,
some aspects of that book struck me as way too cheesy, plus Bradley works
too much on the assumption that Christian =Stupid or Evil.

( Thinks about the Inquisition, various native people slaughtered or
forced into beliefs not their own, etc...and refrains from commenting.)

(Thinks about human sacrifice, ceremonial rape, worshipping rocks, 
burning temples, sacrificing to idols, Carthaginian mothers tossing their 
babies into furnaces, Romans executing people for refusing to worship the 
emperor...)

Pretty much we can find that almost all thought systems have lead to 
crimes on the part of their adherents...

However, we're dealing with a Christian...or more accurately, 
Christianized Myth cycle...While it would be ridiculous for every 
Arthurian author to simply update Malory's Prose, there are certain 
elements of the Cycle which are important and shouldn't be casually 
discarded or reversed as in this case.

No, seriously, John...I have nothing against Christianity, my own beliefs
being an offshoot thereof.  BUT as a history major/fanatic, you oughta
know that history doesn't paint a great record for Christianity in terms
of tolerance...and it's NOT realistic that if Christians came in contact
with this older, but quite different, belief system that le Fay and the
others follow, that they wouldn't perceive them as heathens and therefor
'the enemy'?  While there is a lot of historical inaccuracy in there, I
think the 'Christian' reaction is, rather unfortunately, fairly on-target.

History doesn't paint a great picture in terms of religious tolerance for 
anyone...But that's off-topic to this list.

My problem here isn't with the character's perceptions. I'd expect Morgan 
to be biased...but the author is another story...I get irritated when 
people take some element of the story and stamp all characters bearing 
that element as Pathetic or actively evil.  The christian characters in 
the story are at best Pathetic, if not actively malevolent or 
hypocritical...which is contrary to the spirit of the Arthurian legends.  

Now, when a story is told from the perspective of a character, that 
complicates distinguishing between Authorial point of view and Character 
point of view.  So maybe I'm wrong, and Marion Zimmer Bradley didn't 
intend to be Anti-Christian...But I doubt it.

And since Christianity is very much woven up into the Arthurian Myth 
Cycle, that ultimately made this an inferior work of Arthurian 
craftsmanship, IMO.

But I'm not the god of Literary Criticism, so I'll shut up now.
  

John Walter Biles :  MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas         
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu   http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~ranma/falcon.html 
                            http://www.dhp.com/~wraven/john/index.html
"He's a try hard homie... those idiots who hang around wearing baggy pants 
and have hats on the top of their heads (not *on* their heads) who just 
go 'Yo, man' all the time, hanging around in groups. Bleh."--Caroline 
Seawright, speaking of an obnoxious person.