Here you can find more information about the inspiration for this project and some of its results.
Inspiration
"The visions we offer our children shape our future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps." – Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
When Dr. Birrer and I met in the spring of 2007 to discuss what we’d like to focus our SURF project on this summer, we decided to study something that was personally engaging to us not only as critics, scholars, and educators, but as readers as well. Both of us had enjoyed reading Philip Pullman’s critically acclaimed His Dark Materials previously. This series, usually marketed to a younger audience, is not your average young adult literature; in the journey through parallel universes, Pullman challenges cultural discourses, describes the tripartite nature of the self, and explores narratives of power, death, and love.
Dr. Birrer and I were fascinated by the various mythologies and by the works of literature that Pullman draws on to create his worlds: figures from ancient Greek, Christian and Gnostic mythology are incorporated alongside significant references to the works of John Milton, C. S. Lewis, William Blake, Heinrich von Kleist, and countless others. The presence of angels, witches, armored polar bears and other fantastical creatures serves to highlight the attributes of humans that Pullman finds most fascinating: our natural curiosity and desire to explore, our eternal quest for knowledge, and our great capacity for both good and evil.
Of personal interest to me is the religious controversy embedded in Pullman’s books: his most villainous characters are agents of an oppressive, totalitarian Church called the Magisterium. Because Pullman’s trilogy is typically marketed as children’s literature, Pullman has gained great notoriety for his unapologetically atheist beliefs. When Dr. Birrer and I present our papers at the Fantasy Matters conference at the University of Minnesota this November, I will be delving into this controversy and how it is being addressed in the production of The Golden Compass into a major motion picture.
One rewarding component of this project was my exposure to texts
on a variety of subjects I would have never read otherwise, including works on
mythology, narratology, and fantasy literature. I was also able to begin
plans for how to incorporate His Dark Materials into different
classroom settings, which is invaluable preparation for a future teacher of
high school English. Dr. Birrer will be teaching a course on His Dark
Materials in the spring.
Our project took us through a number of fields
and subject areas. Here are a few of the most
important:
intertexts – texts referred to or drawn
from by Pullman in the series, including the poetry of William Blake, John
Keats, and John Milton; the works of Heinrich von Kleist and C.S. Lewis, the
Bible and the Apocrypha (particularly Gnostic
texts)
film - The Golden Compass movie is
being released by New Line Cinemas on December 7 2007, starring Daniel Craig,
Nicole Kidman, Sam Elliott, Eva Green and Dakota Blue Richards. The film is not
yet rated.
narratology – studying how and why stories
are told. In Pullman’s words:
“All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions... We don’t need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do’s and don’ts: we need books, time and silence. "Thou shalt not" is soon forgotten.’"
myth – its importance in literature and
culture; in this trilogy, Christian and Gnostic mythology are central. The
series draws heavily from John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, which is one of
the most famous depictions of the Fall of Man from the Garden of
Eden.
fantasy – how HDM resembles and differs
from other fantasy in style, themes, conventions; also fantasy as a black sheep
of “less literary” genres, like science fiction, young adult literature, and
children’s literature
In November, both Dr. Birrer and I will present papers at the Fantasy Matters Conference at the University of Minnesota. This conference is based on the belief that fantasy literature “plays an important role not only in popular culture, but also in the realm of literature itself.”
For more information about this conference, please visit their website at http://fantasymatters.org/index2.html.
Dr. Birrer will present a paper entitled "Theories of Subjectivity and Heroic Ethical Fantasy: Consciousness at the Nexus of Postmodernism and Humanism in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials." In her presentation, Dr. Birrer plans to address how the implicit depictions of quests for selfhood in heroic ethical fantasy might be read in ways that help bridge the gap between humanist and postmodernist understandings of subjectivity, which in turn highlight humans’ capacities to be agents of social change.
I will present a paper entitled "Compromise and Controversy: Bringing The Golden Compass to the Silver Screen." Pullman’s unapologetic atheism and his harsh portrayal of the evils of religion have drawn concern and ire from conservative Christians. Some suspect that this is the reason why changes have been made to the trilogy’s storyline in its first film adaptation: The Golden Compass, set to be released in December of this year. The oppressive, totalitarian Magesterium (with clear roots in the Roman Catholic Church of our world) is being tweaked into a more secular and less offensive dominating force. Fans of the series have complained in great numbers on online fan sites and message boards that they fear that Pullman’s message is being altered to placate the public, and thereby losing some of its inherently resistant essence. I will explore these fears and Pullman’s responses in my presentation as I discuss the process of turning The Golden Compass into a successful film with wide appeal.
Publishing
Dr. Birrer and I are also interested in publishing a His Dark Materials-related article in an academic journal or collection. If you have suggestions for a submission, please feel free to contact me and let me know. I can be reached by email at melissa.glasscock@gmail.com