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 “20th 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.
[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 “20th 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 “20th 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
“20th 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.
