Other worlds of wonder

Lubna Abdel-Aziz , Tuesday 14 Jan 2025

 Oz
Oz

 

Be it Wonderland or Oz, Middle-earth or Never Never land there is a world that exists in your own fantasy.
Mythical lands represent the boundaries of your own imagination, as we embody the thrill of the unknown to escape from reality and find our own comfort.
It is the function of humans to constantly envision a world other than ours. The question is how do fictional worlds come from? Do they come out of the blue or are there multiuniverses we hear, see, create, or form? We have never processed them in our experience, yet we create them constantly and out of necessity.
In this era of advanced technology we are still immersed in worlds of fairies and elves, witches and wizards, dragons and monsters.
Several contemporary authors are presently in pursuit of other creatures from other universes such as Patrick Rothfuss, Neil Gaiman, and leading New York Times best-selling author Jean Thompson’s book The Witch and Other Tales Retold, a haunting and deeply entertaining collection of fantasy creatures.
The pursuit of the unknown is infinite. It provides rich material for books, often adapted for stage and screen. They teach us lessons of love and innocence, courage and bravery, integrity and morals and always, always, the forces of good and evil.
Children’s stories are skilfully disguised as Red Riding Hood or The Hare and the Tortoise.
Storytelling is as old as man. Myths of ancient Egypt and others date back to 3000 BC and are still read and recalled. Fables of the Greek slave Aesop are as fresh today as they were 600 BC. Witty and amusing, their message is charmingly wrapped up in animal characters that are pertinent and appealing to this day.
The animal fables of Kalila wa Demna originated in India between 500 and 600 BC and were circulated widely in the Near East.
French poet Jean de La Fontaine (1668-1694) followed in their footsteps, portraying human behaviour in animal characters. La Fontaine treated subjects of power, greed and violence, like The Wolf and the Lamb and The Ant and the Grasshopper, still published and enjoyed by all.
Charles Perrault (1628-1703), also a contemporary of La Fontaine, collected a number of old fairytales of unknown origins. Classics like La Mere L’Oye, now famous as Mother Goose, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella were 700 years old before they were first published.
Folk literature handed down for generations before the invention of the printing press in the 1400s. As a result most authors prior to that are unknown or uncertain. What is certain is that myths, fables, legends, beliefs, and superstitions, whether ancient or modern, are equally enjoyed by children of all ages.
Fairytales transport us to envisioned worlds of good fairies and evil witches, as they always do in the real world. Evil spirits permeate a myriad books throughout our libraries.
Such is the account of the Arabian Nights, or A Thousand and One Nights, first written down most likely in Syria in the late 1200s. This intriguing tales of Sheherazade have kept sleepless readers for generations, captivated by the daring adventures of Sinbad the Sailor and the search of Aladdin’s Magic Lamp.
Be it east or west, north or south, the world of imagination share the same human instincts.
The 1800s saw the emergence of children’s literature as an independent entity. Talented authors and illustrators began creating children’s books intended to entertain rather than instruct — and the numbers have been growing steadily.
Besides Perrault and La Fontaine from France, we had the Brothers Grimm from Germany, Hans Christian Andersen from Denmark and Joseph Jacobs of written have all been adapted to movies for children. Film reaches more viewers of their classic works as we enjoy memorable creations of Beauty and the Beast, which became Disney’s box-office phenomenon and the eternal story of Cinderella, which always pops up in a variety of versions.
The Golden Age for Children’s Literature, (c1865-1926) as is often referred to, is rich with fantasy and whimsy as Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol, in 1865, a timeless work that is in print for the past 140 years. No less endearing is J M Barrie’s Peter Pan, 1911, which has remained a beloved favourite ever since.
The line between fact and fiction is as blurred as the line between man and child.
Authors aiming at writing for children never dreamed of adults gobbling up their works with equal relish. Daniel Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels are classics for both father and son.
Rudyard’s Just So Stories and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer are cherished by both mother and daughter.
Writers whose readers are not well-defined have ultimate appeal to all ages, like Louisa Alcott’s Little Women, P L Travers’ Mary Poppins, J R Tolkien’s Hobbits, not to mention Frank L Baum’s enduring The Wizard of Oz.
The Land of Oz was revived by the book Wicked, written in 1995 by Gregory Maguire. The leading character is not Dorothy but Elphaba, the Witch, who has green skin, sharp teeth, and a savage demeanour. Rejected by society because she is different, she becomes Wicked. The message is evident, complex, and poignant.   
A Broadway musical hit in 2014, now a hit movie in 2024, Wicked hopes to win gold at the Oscars.
Imagination opens vistas to worlds unknown.
The ability of man to traverse dimensions of one universe to multi universes is akin to magic.

“Those who don’t believe in magic never find it.”
Roald Dahl (1916-1990)


* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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