<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">When I spoke of the Catholic modernists, I should have been more precise. The modernists all have weird spiritual proclivities. Eliot wasn't technically a Catholic either. I should have clarified what I meant: They all have a mystical bent, believe in strong authority, and are inspired by myth, myths, and mythic worldviews, and the middle ages. This leads to the accusation of fascism (correct in Pound's case, dubious in Eliot and Tate's, completely inappropriate in the case of Tolkien and Lewis) and to the strong stroke of nationalism and ethnic myth-making in these authors. Wolfe definitely shares these preoccupations. See <a href="http://www.thenightland.co.uk/MYWEB/wolfemountains.html">http://www.thenightland.co.uk/MYWEB/wolfemountains.html</a>; an essay on the importance of Tolkien which begins with the sentence "There is one very real sense in which the Dark Ages were the brightest of times, and it is this: that they were times of defined and definite duties and freedoms." In this, he echoes a Chestertonian defense of the Middle Ages and Catholic civilization. I also see in Wolfe an implicit defense of Neo-Feudalism and a strongly relgion-centric worldview. <div>Pound was a bad fascist; he didn't understand that it depended upon the same assumptions that modernity did, and paid the price for it--he failed to see the 'real' problem on which his contemporaries easily picked up; not just any mythos is good enough, there has to be real sticking power and it has to based in some kind of transcendent truth/experience and allow also for the intuitive human good. Fascism of course fails utterly at providing this, but Tolkien & Eliot's strong ethnic (non-racial) Traditionalism and mystical monarchism worked fine. This is what I'm writing on for my dissertation, and I thought about including Wolfe although he's a little out of the time period. It's coming back though, these mystical traditional neo-feudal myth-making monarchist distributist Catholic artists. </div><div><br></div><div>On Dan'l Danehy-Oakes note: Distributism is the Catholic economic theory; Marxism's assumptions about "the way stuff works" are absolutely not compatible with the Catholic vision of humanity--nor is fascism, or hyper-capitalism for that matter. Both depend on a pseudo-scientific reading of humans--Catholics sort of aren't up for that. Distributism (championed by Chesterton and Belloc, later by Eliot and the Southern Agrarians in America) fulfills the requirements of Catholic anthropology while seeking to correct the culture-killing nature of transnational corporate capitalism. Look it up, tell me what you think. </div><div><br></div><div>Also, Wolfe is probably aware of Distributism and is a Catholic in good standing with the Church. <a href="http://ironicalcoincidings.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/inheriting-tolkien-pt-2-gene-wolfe/">http://ironicalcoincidings.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/inheriting-tolkien-pt-2-gene-wolfe/</a></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>R</div><div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Apr 5, 2013, at 1:44 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><div>Yes I see- ephemeral and illusory promises instead of reality. </div> <div> </div> <div>I think it is Wolfe's dualism that creates so many interpretational tangles for some, and that the things you mention are a part of that difficulty.<br><br>--- On <b>Fri, 4/5/13, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <i><<a href="mailto:danldo@gmail.com">danldo@gmail.com</a>></i></b> wrote:<br></div> <blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(16,16,255) 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><br>From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <<a href="mailto:danldo@gmail.com">danldo@gmail.com</a>><br>Subject: Re: (urth) Thecla's "Identity"<br>To: "The Urth Mailing List" <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>Date: Friday, April 5, 2013, 11:33 AM<br><br> <div id="yiv362369795"> <div dir="ltr">The enmity between Communism and Christianity stems from Marx's belief that religion was used to keep the proletariat in line, to lure them away from their just rights with the promise of (as the song says) "pie in the sky by and by." Or, as long as I'm on songs, songs like Bob Marley's "Get Up Stand Up" put it very well. <div><br></div> <div>Mind you, I'm a Catholic liberal, so I have a bias in these things.</div></div></div></blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table>_______________________________________________<br>Urth Mailing List<br>To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net">urth@urth.net</a><br>Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net">http://www.urth.net</a></blockquote></div><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>Ross Arlen Tieken</div><div>Religious Studies</div><div>Rice University</div><div><a href="mailto:ross.a.tieken@gmail.com">ross.a.tieken@gmail.com</a></div><div>(361) 407-0100</div></div></div> </div><br></div></div></body></html>