History in the present, presence in History

In studying the historical imagination in fantasy novels and the place of fantasy novels in history, I am particularly interested in a detailed study of how the historical in the reality of the reader is re-imagined in the reality of the text. Each writer must create their fantasy world using elements from our reality, creating the fantastic element of the text by presenting each familiar element in any number of degrees askew from the original, allowing consensual reality to be challenged[1]. In identifying the different realities and ideologies of history and searching for their fantastical echoes in the text, I propose that historical imagination in the text is intrinsically linked to the historical reality of the reader and thus illuminates history in the presence, and has its own unique presence in history.

The strength of Susan Cooper’s novels of The Dark is Rising sequence for young readers is that the historical imagination is so powerfully integrated into the immediate reality of the novels and readers. History is influential both as the book is read, and when it is not; it creates and destroys characters, realities and time borders, reaching into the reality of the novel through people, places, objects and knowledge that can be found in the world of the novels’ reader. The historical imagination of the book connects the reader to the text by a shared past that intervenes actively in the text and ensures the reader will look for history’s touch in their own lives.[2]

The historical imagination of the novel lives in the present reality of the reader in the use of the familiar to illustrate the historical. Within the novel family, peers, mentors and enemies are historical characters in their own right, and objects that populate the reality and the imagination of the reader become historical artefacts. The novel has a presence in history through its use of multiple layers of history, and the travel between them, to conceptualise spheres of influence and historical causality. The different concepts of time within the novel can be linked back to the reality of historical influence, and the manner of time travel illustrates the lessons gleaned from the study of history. The underlying morality and human agency of the novel develops throughout the series and creates evolving frameworks of ideology through which to view the historical elements of the narrative.

Each book in the series requires the young protagonists to connect with the history of Britain as it happens in their own world beyond their sight, as it happens in a parallel time closely intertwined or directly linked to their immediate reality, and as it happened in the past to which they can travel to influence the future. These historical threads create a multi-layered narrative that embraces the new concepts of history that were emerging in the decade that Cooper was writing. The sense of history in the book is so richly evoked because historical time is malleable, and historical causality can be influenced.

In the sequence, the most prominent power of the Old Ones used by both the Light and the Dark is the manipulation of time. Throughout the books time is escaped, frozen, stolen, melded, observed and banished by the Old Ones of both sides. Within the narrative these manipulations of Time allow the history of the struggle, the weapons and the people of both Light and Dark to exist in loops of Time that result in each skirmish, object or choice resonating powerfully within the narrative. This creates a sense of living history, a sense of the interconnectivity of the elements of history, the lasting effect of the choices that create history[3]. Merriman assures Will towards the end of the series that ‘we will strive … across the centuries, through the waves of time, touching and parting, parting and touching in the pool that whirls forever.’

These loops of history, which create a less linear and more malleable sense of history, parallel the increasing trend in the decade in which the books were written of the challenging of linear, great man historical theory. With the move in the Sixties and Seventies to look for the alternative histories of women and minorities, to look into the spaces left by records and sources and extrapolate the missing and lesser-recorded histories, a more malleable concept of time is entirely appropriate.[4] To the readers of Cooper’s books the turning points of history can rest in the everyday smithy, the local tales of a fishing village, the petty politics of farmers and the right judgement of a single every-man[5].

The movement of characters and objects between the layers of history in the narrative create a feeling that historical causality can be influenced by participants and foci. The loop of cause and effect that holds Will and the Walker, the displacement of Bran in Time, the gypsy caravan’s parallel states and the Battle on Mount Badon happening in one place but in all Times, create a sense of history that tightens the links between the past and the present. Within the narrative history is recorded, studied, revised and created on many levels and implies an ever evolving history.

Characters that exist in multiple times and move between times in the narrative create in the books a history that is literally changing on two levels, changing in its present and changing in its past or future. Will is the crisis that allows Hawkins to be remade as the Walker, but the Walker starts Will on the quest that will lead him inevitably to Hawkins. The history in the narrative becomes so strongly circular from this point onwards that with Bran; born in the past, raised in the future and key to saving the world in both times, the internal logic of the circular narrative history is fully realised. The narrative places history as an evolution that is so strongly linked that a participant can change both past, present and future with their actions[6], and Merriman’s first lesson to Will is that ‘all times co-exist, and the future can sometimes affect the past, even though the past is the road that leads to the future.’

The ability of individual characters to be any combination of past historical influences, contemporary historical revisionists and means of historical re-interpretation in the future is a powerful image of a historian re-reading history, of facts being reinterpreted and historical theory challenged[7]. Cooper allows her history to be flexible enough that the same person, for example in Merriman’s dealings with Hawkins, can make a decision that influences his life, live the price of that decision and plan his future around the good and evil of the decision’s legacy. The books create a history that is open to re-evaluation of the past, the present and the future of the recorded historical facts.

Cooper enables travel between layers and time by utilising encoded rituals, places, objects, concepts and people who are distinct players in historical and folk traditions of the British Isles[8]. These links between the many historical realities create the rules of engagement between the time layers travelled and the travellers, and often follows the old folk rules of magic and marvel[9]. The power and status of the encoded objects hold meaning in the novel and allow the text to be linked to the reality of the reader by making the familiar historical.

The encoded objects in the series are traditional objects of power; grails, swords, horns, books, totems, musical instruments and shields, which were culturally powerful in the times of their creation. In their own time and texts these objects are recorded because they held power in their own right; signs of wealth, protection, knowledge, music and magic. In our time they hold historical significance because they have come to us preserved through the intervening generations, preserved in both text and reality. Thus the encoded objects in the narrative function as they do in the reality of the readers, signifying the ability of certain objects with specific cultural power to remain historically relevant no matter what time they are in[10].

The rituals throughout the series hold the layers of history in a cohesive whole as the rule of time begins to become more malleable in the narrative. As the series progresses the ritualistic observances develop a complexity that begins to bridge layers of time confidently within the narrative. The rituals move from the isolated and small rituals of Christmas and Twelfth Night, through the more localised yet intense Greenwitch, to the formal rituals of Initiation and Quest in the last two books. The Christmas and Twelfth Night rituals allow Will to travel for brief periods through time, while the Greenwitch haunts the reality of Jane, as well as the Old Ones, with a powerful historical presence. The Initiation of Bran and Will within the Welsh mountains and the Quest[11] through the Lost Land bring together even more numerous layers of time and strands of history to further strengthen the narrative’s commitment to the connectivity of time.

Along with rituals, some of the fantastical characters within the books are present both literally and literarily in the lives of the readers of the series. Christmas, Bonfire Night, Halloween and the many localised and similar rituals still alive in every culture are joined by Arthur, Merlin, Herne the Hunter, the Wild Hunt, Tethys, the milgwn, the afanc, the Mari Llwyd, as well as the Smith, the Lady and the Rider[12]. Within every culture there are Kings and Magicians, ambivalent Hunters and Rulers of the Waves, malignant and zombie creatures and familiar folk characters. Cooper’s narrative is alive with familiar traces of history, but in assigning them characters, motivation and plotlines she allows each discreet historical trope to exist in multiple layers of time[13], the familiar populates the narrative while the narrative populates the familiar.

Within the narrative time and history are navigated and controlled by tangibly historical objects, actions and legends that are part of everyday life for all readers of the books, although most specifically British readers. While the foci are distinctly British, almost every culture has the equivalent of the long observed ritual impervious to modern disruption, the folktale that lives on in a local area or an ancient object that is used as a key to evoke another time[14]. Cooper turns remnants of history present in our modern times into direct gateways to the time of their creation, taking them out of their isolation in the modern era and turning them into a focus for a gaze back into history[15].

Cooper’s characters are allowed to view and participate in history, result from manipulations of history and fulfil pivotal roles to shape history. The causality of her history is deepened by these layers of power and determinism in the text; human feelings and human and non-human morality are incredibly important in the formation, living and retelling of history within the narrative[16]. Throughout the texts Cooper limits overt moralising, and when she does allow her characters to articulate the reasons the Light and the Dark exist, she deals with some important themes of historical interpretation.

The series develops it sense of morality and historical causality from a simplistic spectrum of black and white absolutes[17] to a more nuanced sense of human and natural laws that create more shades of distinction. This growing sophistication of the internal laws and norms of the series allows the different historical elements to signify more complex concepts[18]. It also echoes the changes in ideologies that surrounded the writing of the book, allowing a more inclusive climate of complex history.

In the first two books the morality of the characters is judged in degrees on a linear relationship between the Dark and the Light. The battles fought and won are in a climate of absolute loss or absolute victory and the rules governing the interaction of the warring elements are conventional. In the first two books the evil nature of the Dark is very clearly encapsulated in anti-social behaviour, lawlessness and an uncomplicated motivation of domination and destruction. The goodness of the Light is evident in co-operation, upright demeanour and pure altruism and goodness. The two poles are absolute, ‘at the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark is great black pit.’ Cooper herself admits that this is a result of inexperience with characterisation[19], but it helps to show that while she had a vision for the many historical elements that would populate her narrative, their effectiveness in illuminating the whole is more comprehensive when linked to a more complex historical morality.

The third book signals a departure from the simple morality of the first two novels with a rebel Dark Lord and an ambivalent natural Goddess. The Painter of the Dark is a rebel against a force that had seemed monolithic to the characters and the readers until that point, and suggests that adhering to one absolute ideological position does not eliminate divisions within the followers of this ideology. The feeling of splintering is exacerbated when the ambivalence of Tethys and the uncaring rules of the Wild Magic are introduced. The reader becomes aware that the Light and the Dark are not the only true and right ideologies present in the world, but simply two of many ideologies that could be held in a world ruled by overarching universal laws[20].

The interaction between the Light and the Dark, Wild Magic and the ultimate ruler, High Magic, is exemplified when the Light tries to persuade one aspect of the Wild Magic to choose a side. Trying to persuade Tethys to lend him aid, Merriman argues that the Wild Magic can help him despite its ambivalence because it ‘has neither allies nor enemies … if you may not help us, yet it is not right for you to hinder us.’ Tethys counters that because of her ambivalence she is ‘not permitted to help either Light or Dark to gain any advantage’ and thus he must rely on his own merits to gain what he wants. The extremes of the Light and the Dark become less absolute and more faceted when they come in contact with the universal laws. The Light and the Dark become more influenced by immutable governing forces than their own inherent rightness, more reliant on historical forces to lend them power than the inherent ambition of individual Old Ones[21].

The fourth and fifth books further develop the morality of the narrative with a foregrounding of the influence on humans of absolute ideologies. Human feelings and motivations become the battleground of the Light and the Dark, and human weaknesses and strengths are employed as weapons in the more complicated quests of the last two books. Each time Caradog Pritchard is described, Cooper is very clear to say that he is not a creature of the Dark, but his nature brings him closer to the Dark, as John Rowlands nature brings him closer to the Light. Neither man is wholly of the pole that he is inclined towards, but neither is indifferent to the call of the ideology that is closest to their inclinations. The Grey King tells Will that Caradog is ‘a man so wrapped in his own ill-will [he] is a gift to the Dark from the earth’, and Will replies ‘There are such men, of an opposite kind, who unwittingly serve the Light too.’ This focus on human agency in history and ideology in the series could be seen to be a result of the individualisation of historical narratives, the increasing presence of individuals in the grand narratives of history[22].

The development of the morality and historical ideologies of the series mirror the changes in the interpretation of history in Cooper’s lifetime. Her books start out as linear histories of battles with polarised opponents, gradually introduce problematic concepts of ambivalent forces and the internal ideological struggles and finally embraces the role of individuals in the formation of history[23]. By moving her narrative and its many historical elements through changes in historical interpretation, Cooper’s readers experience a reinterpretation of historical causality and ideology[24].

Cooper also articulates some inspirational concepts on how the individual can be a positive influence on history; after an encounter with a racist Mr Stanton tells his children that ‘you can’t convince them and you can’t kill ‘em. You can only do your best in the opposite direction’ and at the end of the series Merriman reminds those going back into the world that ‘the evil that is inside men is at last a matter for men to control’, now beyond the abstract powers of the Light and the Dark to influence. By putting the power to set the morality of the world in the hands of humans, not absolute ideologies, Cooper is ending the series on a note of hope and noble intentions, intertwined with the historical lessons from the other elements of the text[25].

Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series is a deeply historical text, using extensive manipulation of catalogues of historical characters and times to create ideologies that reflect the historical reality of the reader’s consensual reality. Within the narrative history is the present, never separated by more than a loop of time that can be traversed by any number of encoded objects or actions. The narrative as experienced by the reader is present in history through its use of familiar historical elements, leaving the reality of the reader coloured by the passage of the narrative. Although not outrageously challenging, the text does credibly present a sense of history that allows the reader to approach their own historical reality from a different perspective[26].

Bibilography

Goodrich, P., ‘Magical Medievalism and the Fairy Tale in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence’, Lion and the Unicorn, 12:2, 1988: Dec, p. 165-177.

Price, D.W. (ed), History Made, History Imagined: Contemporary Literature, Poiesis, and the Past, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Roberts, G. (ed), The History and Narrative Reader, London, Routledge, 2001.

Scott, C., ‘High and Wild Magic, the Moral Universe, and the Electronic Superhighway: Reflections of Change in Susan Cooper’s Fantasy Literature’ in S.L Beckett (ed.) Reflections of Change: Children’s Literature since 1945, Westport, Greenwood Press, 1997, p. 91-96.

Spivack, C., ‘Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising”’ in B T Lupack (ed.), Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 139-160.

Swartz, P.C., ‘The Waking of the Sleepers: Legendary Aspects of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Series, A [Re]Examination’ in D Bice (ed.), Elsewhere: Selected Essays from the “20^th Century Fantasy Literature: From Beatrix to Harry” International Literary Conference, Maryland, University Press of America Inc, 2003, p. 95-110.

Thompson, R.H., ‘Interview with Susan Cooper’ in B T Lupack (ed.), Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 161-170.

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[1] Price argues that historical fictional narratives ‘employ the poetic imagination as a means of questioning history, which, in turn, produces a counter memory or counter narrative to the popular and uncritically accepted referent that we take to be the historical past.’ Price, D.W. (ed), History Made, History Imagined: Contemporary Literature, Poiesis, and the Past, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1999, p. 3.

[2] Swartz notes that Cooper believes that ‘the books themselves are not based on the Arthur legends but rather that the legends enter the stories as they are needed’, Cooper uses history as an active character in the narrative. Swartz, P.C., ‘The Waking of the Sleepers: Legendary Aspects of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Series, A [Re]Examination’ in D Bice (ed.), Elsewhere: Selected Essays from the “20^th Century Fantasy Literature: From Beatrix to Harry” International Literary Conference, Maryland, University Press of America Inc, 2003, p. 97.

[3] The series is a narrative of time manipulated by humans, giving them an agency over history that parallels Roberts’ proposal that ‘History [as explained by Vico] … because it is made by humans, can be known; and this knowledge is transmitted through the construction of narratives of the memory of the past.’ Roberts, G. (ed), The History and Narrative Reader, London, Routledge, 2001, p. 36.

[4] This study of streams of specific history by a group usually not recorded follows Nietzsche’s theory that ‘critical history is a form of revisionist history, a means by which a people can forge it’s own identity and liberate itself from characterisation that appear in dominant forms of historical presentation.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 3.

[5] Such power in the hands of those not usually so visible in historical narrative is an ‘existentialist standpoint in which everyday perceptions and experiences of historical reality is a crucial informant of the theorization of narrative.’ Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 8.

[6] This idea of influencing times that are not the present allows historical fictional narratives to ‘intend for their poietic histories to cause us to rethink the past and reconsider what we might plan for our future.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 4.

[7] Scott proposed that ‘the structural complexity of Cooper’s manylayered world, with it’s amalgam of legend created from the dissolution of time and space boundaries, is repeated at many levels, including the creation of a contemporary moral and social philosophy’ that allows for historical revisionism. Scott, C., ‘High and Wild Magic, the Moral Universe, and the Electronic Superhighway: Reflections of Change in Susan Cooper’s Fantasy Literature’ in S.L Beckett (ed.) Reflections of Change: Children’s Literature since 1945, Westport, Greenwood Press, 1997, p. 92-92.

[8] Goodrich classes these as ‘specific borrowings’ from medieval history. Goodrich, P., ‘Magical Medievalism and the Fairy Tale in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence’, Lion and the Unicorn, 12:2, 1988: Dec, p. 166.

[9] These encoded actions and objects are legitimate historical elements as Price argues that ‘all histories grow out of mythic structures that make it possible for us to narrate our experience.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 4.

[10] Drout notes that Cooper’s Anglo-Saxon sources carry ‘coded meanings at a level that is not immediately apparent but that nevertheless operates to exercise ideological control of the text.’ Cited in Spivack, C., ‘Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising”’ in B T Lupack (ed.), Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 141.

[11] The quest motif being a ‘structural parallel’ with medieval ideas. Goodrich, ‘Magical Medievalism and the Fairy Tale’, Lion and the Unicorn p. 167.

[12] Goodrich describes these characters as ‘heroic figures … contemporary adaptations of legendary heroes’ Goodrich, ‘Magical Medievalism and the Fairy Tale’, Lion and the Unicorn, p. 167.

[13] In relation to these folk characters Cooper asserts that ‘it is never possible to say, this character is precisely this … because nothing is precise in myth.’ Thompson, R.H., ‘Interview with Susan Cooper’ in B T Lupack (ed.), Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 165. This allows her to use ‘blurring of identity’ in the series, creating characters that are more universal. Swartz ‘The Waking of the Sleepers’ in Bice Elsewhere: Selected Essays from the “20^th Century Fantasy Literature, p. 97.

[14] A concept of universal elements of the fantastic in history is argued by Price that ‘all cultural institutions – grow out of the metaphoric structuration effected by imaginative universals that in and of themselves are fables.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 37.

[15] Price supposes that ‘a recreation of the past, therefore, would be the projection of the future in the past.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 3.

[16] Swartz believes that Cooper’s view on the influence of humans on history is illustrated in the series by the ‘necessity of mortals even to the powers of the High Magic … [for example] without mortals the Greenwitch would not exist.’ Swartz ‘The Waking of the Sleepers’ in Bice Elsewhere: Selected Essays from the “20^th Century Fantasy Literature, p. 98-99.

[17] The episodic nature of the first book is similar to Furet’s ‘problem oriented history’ cited in Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 12.

[18] Evans in Children’s Novels and Welsh Mythology: Multiple Voices in Susan Cooper and Alan Garner charted the change of narrative voice from ‘the voice of the implied author’ to the ‘close observer’ to ‘high language’. Cited in Spivack, ‘Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising”’ in Lupack Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, p. 140-141.

[19] Thompson, ‘Interview with Susan Cooper’ in Lupack, Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, p. 168.

[20] The move to a more structured sense of the opposing poles illustrates Burke’s theory that history deals ‘not only with the sequence of events and the conscious actions of the actors in these events. But also with structures’ as cited in Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 12.

[21] This theme can be paralleled with Kiser’s ‘large-scale structuralist history in which human agency is only a secondary feature.’ Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 13.

[22] As supported by Olafson and Lemon who argue ‘that central to the discipline of history is the narration of human conduct.’ Cited in Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 11.

[23] The 1960’s saw a debate in which Gallie proposed that ‘fundamental to historical understanding … is the capacity to follow a sequence of experiences, actions and contingencies across time’, which implies a change in the study of history from the episodic nature of events to a more human-action driven understanding. Roberts, The History and Narrative Reader, p. 3.

[24] The readers can apply reinterpretation to their reality as the historical narrative has encouraged ‘the focus on the formation of values, both in the actualities of the past and in the construction of the narrative about the past.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 4.

[25] Scott notes that in the series ‘the relativity of human perception and the power of human emotion provide the energy that drives her world … the power of human perception … [breaks] through the wall that divides the worlds [of the Old Ones and mortals].’ Scott, ‘High and Wild Magic, the Moral Universe, and the Electronic Superhighway’ in Beckett Reflections of Change p. 93.

[26] Allowing the reader to ‘reconfigure the past through narrative structures that cast light and shadows in new directions and bring before our eyes new ways of conceiving the past.’ Price, History Made, History Imagined, p. 5.