Bruce N H
Active Member
Hi all,
Today I was listening to the Name of the Rose class 5 in preparation for class 6 this evening. In Day One - After Nones - William and Adso were in the scriptorium having a conversation prompted by Adelmo's illuminations. In class Corey was discussing the difference between imagination and fantasy - the first just meaning picturing something in your head in general (e.g. imagine an elephant) whereas fantasy is a subset where you picture something you've never seen, or something no one's ever seen (e.g. imagine a purple elephant with wings and a snake for a tail). Someone (sorry, I forget who) pointed out that Adelmo's fantastic drawings were all just real world objects, just all mixed up - a man with horse legs, or a horse with man legs. But that got me thinking, how would we categorize something like Jabberwocky. It's all very well and easy to picture a purple elephant with wings and snake for a tail. I know what elephants look like, I know the color purple, I know what wings look like, I know what a snake looks like - now just mash those together. But what do we do with "picture some slithy toves" - and while we're at it let's have them gyring and gimbling. Is that imagination, fantasy, or something else altogether?
And that brought me back to the church door (of course!). When Adso is looking at it he sees:
"all the animals of Satan’s bestiary, assembled in a consistory and set as guard and crown of the throne that faced them, singing its glory in their defeat, fauns, beings of double sex, brutes with six fingered hands, sirens, hippocentaurs, gorgons, harpies, incubi, dragopods, minotaurs, lynxes, pards, chimeras, cynophales who darted fire from their nostrils, crocodiles, polycaudate, hairy serpents, salamanders, horned vipers, tortoises, snakes, two-headed creatures whose backs were armed with teeth, hyenas, otters, crows, hydrophora with saw-tooth horns, frogs, gryphons, monkeys, dog-heads, leucrota, manticores, vultures, paranders, weasels, dragons, hoopoes, owls, basilisks, hypnales, presters, spectafici, scorpions, saurians, whales, scitales, amphisbenae, iaculi, dipsases, green lizards, pilot fish, octopi, morays, and sea turtles."
Note, some of those are just like "imagine an elephant" (e.g. tortoises, snakes, monkeys, etc.), others are more like the mashup of the purple elephant with wings etc (e.g. hairy serpents, brutes with six fingered hands), but still others are (as far as I know) more along the slithy tove line (e.g. what in the world is a dragopod?).
Bruce
Today I was listening to the Name of the Rose class 5 in preparation for class 6 this evening. In Day One - After Nones - William and Adso were in the scriptorium having a conversation prompted by Adelmo's illuminations. In class Corey was discussing the difference between imagination and fantasy - the first just meaning picturing something in your head in general (e.g. imagine an elephant) whereas fantasy is a subset where you picture something you've never seen, or something no one's ever seen (e.g. imagine a purple elephant with wings and a snake for a tail). Someone (sorry, I forget who) pointed out that Adelmo's fantastic drawings were all just real world objects, just all mixed up - a man with horse legs, or a horse with man legs. But that got me thinking, how would we categorize something like Jabberwocky. It's all very well and easy to picture a purple elephant with wings and snake for a tail. I know what elephants look like, I know the color purple, I know what wings look like, I know what a snake looks like - now just mash those together. But what do we do with "picture some slithy toves" - and while we're at it let's have them gyring and gimbling. Is that imagination, fantasy, or something else altogether?
And that brought me back to the church door (of course!). When Adso is looking at it he sees:
"all the animals of Satan’s bestiary, assembled in a consistory and set as guard and crown of the throne that faced them, singing its glory in their defeat, fauns, beings of double sex, brutes with six fingered hands, sirens, hippocentaurs, gorgons, harpies, incubi, dragopods, minotaurs, lynxes, pards, chimeras, cynophales who darted fire from their nostrils, crocodiles, polycaudate, hairy serpents, salamanders, horned vipers, tortoises, snakes, two-headed creatures whose backs were armed with teeth, hyenas, otters, crows, hydrophora with saw-tooth horns, frogs, gryphons, monkeys, dog-heads, leucrota, manticores, vultures, paranders, weasels, dragons, hoopoes, owls, basilisks, hypnales, presters, spectafici, scorpions, saurians, whales, scitales, amphisbenae, iaculi, dipsases, green lizards, pilot fish, octopi, morays, and sea turtles."
Note, some of those are just like "imagine an elephant" (e.g. tortoises, snakes, monkeys, etc.), others are more like the mashup of the purple elephant with wings etc (e.g. hairy serpents, brutes with six fingered hands), but still others are (as far as I know) more along the slithy tove line (e.g. what in the world is a dragopod?).
Bruce
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