From: "Ron Crown, St. Louis University" <crownrw@SLU.EDU>
Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v003.n001
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 09:03:40 


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]



> Uh, wouldn't "Mariolatry" be more connected to daughter Mary rather
> than mama?  (Or is mama's name also Mary?  If true, this would spanner
> the works a bit.)

Yeah, I guess I took the "mama dominating" part and made a mental leap to
Mama=Mary(ia) without checking to see if she is actually called Maria in
the story, bu I checked and she isn't.  Oh well.

In any case, the story doesn't appear to me to be simply reducible to
an allegory of the Catholic church (as nothing Wolfe does is reducible
to simple allegory; C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton he ain't).

Let me somewhat hesitantly make another suggestion for "source"
material; the Arthur death legends or a conflation thereof in the
island/cave combination.  Pretty thin, I know, but some have
suggested PEACE connections and I was wondering if anyone has
noticed any connections with CASTLEVIEW.

Ron Crown
crownrw@slu.edu