Canons!

[theravenboy]

I don't know much about what canons are extant in the Age of Sail period; can someone else supply information there?

Texts that have been established as extant, canonically or millicanonically, in the DiRverse:

Shakespeare – all works
Dickens – all works
Geoffrey of Monmouth – all works
Chrétien de Troyes – all works
Sir Thomas Malory, Morte D’Arthur
The Mabinogion and associated texts
All poetry traditionally ascribed to Taliesin (written by Gwion!)
All classical literature and philosophy
All Christmas carols known in our universe

Robert Graves – all works (including, most importantly, The White Goddess)
Wordsworth – all works
A E Housman – all works
Yeats – all works
Dylan Thomas – all works
R S Thomas – all works (although in 1978, Thomas was still writing)
Charles Williams – Taliessin through Logres; The Voyage of the Summer Stars

Monty Python – all works produced by 1978

Texts that cannot exist in DiRverse:

Dorothy Sayers, the Peter Wimsey novels
Lois McMaster Bujold, the Vorkosigan books

Texts that may or may not exist in DiRverse – but if they do, Bran hasn’t seen them:

L M Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables and series
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera
Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time
Ellis Peters, the Cadfael Chronicles


Texts I don’t believe exist in the DiRverse, but I’m not sure:

C S Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia

None of the Dark is Rising characters have ever been canon-punctured. That is, they don’t know they are described in an accurate twentieth-century narrative in another universe. Folklore about Old Ones exists in the DiRverse and is known to John Rowlands, among others. Arthur, Guinevere and Merlin, of course, appear in all the stories, even though Merriman Lyon will be the first to tell you how inaccurate the stories are.

Comments

[genarti]

Other texts that can't exist: the Horatio Hornblower series, and Pirates of the Caribbean. (The movie, at least. The Disneyworld ride, pre-movie, is probably safe if we want it, since I don't think it involved any of the same characters before the movie was made.)

I have been vague whenever I reasonably/ICly can about whether a canon exists, if it's not plain that Will would have read it. I think Tolkien came up in such a fashion once, for example, though I can't find the thread now; I know Will hasn't read it, but I don't remember if I established anything about whether he'd heard of its existence.

I would vote no for the Wheel of Time books, at least, existing, and be in favor or Anne of Green Gables and The Secret Garden not existing either. It just makes things messy. (The Phantom of the Opera has a bit more grey area, since Meg is canon-punctured and cheerful, and Cadfael hasn't been around in ages. I have no objection to either of them being gone, though.)

[theravenboy]

Regarding Hornblower and Pirates:
...I knew that. *facepalm* Except that I'm fairly sure it's been established that Jack Sparrow appears, fictionalized, in books that Henry Wellard once read.

I don't really care whether Anne or Secret Garden exist. Either way, they're very much girl-books, and I don't think Bran would have read them in any case.

It occurs to me that WoT wasn't written at all in 1978 (was it? I'm not going to bother looking that up right now) but I'd have no objection to declaring that it never will be written in DiRverse.

For reasons involving conversations Gramarye and I had about Digory Kirke, I'd like to request that Narnia not exist in DiRverse at all.

[genarti]

Oh, yes, that's right. Dime novel, types of things. I'm not sure if the Young Jack Sparrow tie-in novel's plot was worked in as one or not. But dime novels about a historical character, however highly fictionalized, and if ever there was a movie about him I think it would be based -- at least theoretically and incredibly loosely -- on him, rather than made up out of whole cloth about the Disney ride. Even if the end product was the same.

Will's not likely to have read either Anne or Secret Garden either, no. And, no, WoT wasn't written in 1978 anyway -- I was thinking more for the future. Eye of the World came out in 1990, Amazon tells me, and that sounds about right.

And I have no objection to Narnia not existing in DiRverse.

[genarti]

--Ack, I lie. I knew Narnia set off a niggling memory of some sort.

Will and James had a conversation at one point fairly early in James' time at Milliways, in which they alluded to both Narnia and the Wizard of Oz as clearly fictional.

If we want to and no one else minds, though, I have no problems with retconning away the specific reference to Narnia and making it some other children's book involving a magical door and children going through it to defeat a wicked enemy. Heaven knows Narnia's not the only one of that sort.

[a_poor_guardian]

I like that conversation, but I would like to retcon the Narnia reference out if possible.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

A possible way to get around the Narnia mentions without retconning (pasted from thread with Gramarye below):

In DiRverse, Lewis still wrote the Narnia books, and included a Professor-figure that was transparently based off of a friend of his. The Professor in that Narnia-analogue has a different name, because Digory Kirke is a real person in DiRverse and Lewis had to change his name. The series is otherwise the same. Does that work?

[taishar_malkier]

This also works, yeah.

*too lazy to switch journals*

Either way, really.

[genarti]

Found another thread with the Narnia metaphor, this time with Aslan mentioned as well. So I think it might be simpler to go the route of just renaming Professor Kirke, yeah, although I'm still up for either.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Then so be it.

[gramarye1971]

*nods* That definitely works for me.

[gramarye1971]

1) It's canon that Miss Greythorne reads E. Nesbit's The Phoenix and the Carpet to a group of children at Greythorne Manor. With some generosity of spirit, I'd imagine that the rest of Nesbit's works exist in TDIR-verse as well.

2) I believe I've had Merriman mention (to Paul Schafer) that he knew Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) during Dodgson's time at Christ Church, Oxford. Presumably, he's at least heard of and possibly read Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and some of Carroll's other works.

3) I can't recall off the top of my head if Merriman's mentioned JRR Tolkien at all, either, but I think it's likely that he did in some context. However, if we're going to retcon Narnia as not existing in the world of the Sequence then I don't have any problem regarding any of Tolkien's works as not existing in TDIR-verse as well -- even if Tolkien himself might exist independently as an academic. Same for C.S. Lewis and any of his works. Or for most any other Oxford academic-author for that matter, unless there are specific objections.

4) Regarding the Ellis Peters books, the first Cadfael mystery (A Morbid Taste for Bones) was written in 1977, so it's possible that that series can be glossed over as well.

[gramarye1971]

And poking back through memories, it's a definite yes to Lewis Carroll as both an established person and author. Merriman and Moiraine talk about 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' shortly before the near-incident with Blodwen -- it's only as part of a few throwaway comments, but I knew I'd mentioned it somewhere.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I do like the idea of keeping Tolkien and Lewis as scholars but not as writers of popular romance. (I wonder if they got more academic work done in that universe!) For Lewis, we could also presume that Digory Kirke ... hey, I know. In DiRverse, Lewis still wrote the Narnia books, and included a Professor-figure that was transparently based off of a friend of his. The Professor in that Narnia-analogue has a different name, because Digory Kirke is a real person in DiRverse and Lewis had to change his name. The story is otherwise the same. Does that work?