During my quest for gay wizards in vintage fantasy (see my previous posts), I stumbled upon a document online, a philosophy doctorate thesis from 2007 called "Queer Spelling: Magic and Melancholy in Fantasy-Fiction".
It is quite an interesting piece. There is a section about the vocal nature of magic in fantasy literature that I will reproduce below:
Ā«Ā SpellĀ Ā» comes from the Anglo-Saxons root as āSpeechā and both refer explicitly to discourse ; yet both can also signal a piece of time, a moment, a hesitation, a charm, a backward or sideways glance. Chaucer was actually one of the first English writers to use spell in the sense of enchantment, since it had originally been used to signal discourse (such as the heroic boasts or speche in Beowulf). We cast a spell like casting a net, and a spell always involves descriptive rather than imaginary powers: we describe in coherent, elegant detail what we want to occur, and if our will is in the spell, then what we desire comes to pass. Nearly every fantasy novel within the āquestā subgenre, popularized by Tolkien and continued by Eddings and Jordan, contains a magic-system that operates along these descriptive and grammatical lines. In The Belgariad, magic is called āthe will and the wordā, since characters summon up a reserve of psychic energy and then pour (cathect) it into a sign, a word. In traditional fantasy serials like Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms, wizards commit verbal spells to memory, infusing the words with hyper-cathected energy. Once the words are spoken, the energy is gone, and all memory of the spell vanishes from their mind, like mystical anamnesis. This is Raistlinās particular struggle with melancholia, which I will discuss in Chapter Four.
Gandalf speaks āsecret signsā, runes, mumbled incantations that the hobbits can never fully understand. Ged, the Arch-Mage of Ursula K. Leguinās Earthsea series, learns the true-name of every living thing, and by knowing the name he gains power over the thing; he simply has to speak the name, the word, and the āthingā falls under his control (he runs into trouble later when someone learns his true-name). Merlin, in Maloryās Morte dāArthur, makes the mistake of falling in love (or lust) with Nymue, only to have his own magic words used against him when he is trapped in a crystal cave. Finally, in Diane Duaneās Young Wizards series, magic is ordered and conveyed by an infinitely complex dialect, aptly, āThe Speechā: a language with a name for everything, living and non, sentient and inanimate. Spells are accomplished not by simple words flung into the proverbial darkness, but through flawless description, a dictation of terms and possibilities that resembles a physics experiment. If one syllable is wrong, if the spellcaster confuses the nominative with the dative case, or forgets an accent, gravity could reverse itself, or the universe could stop expanding.
The document is filled with little interesting passages highlighting the "queerness of fantasy", passages that can become a tight-rope exercise when the author wants to talk of a gay metaphor or subtext dealing with a character they have to point out they know is not queer in any way (like Gandalf).
Here are two extracts, for example:
Like witches, homosexuals must be recognized if they are to be controlled ; but to recognize too quickly or too easily, to associate oneself too intimately with the enemy, can risk exposure ā it takes one to know one. Similarly queer subjects must cast a spell of mimicry and mimesis in order to survive in a world that excludes them, but if they cast the spell too well, they risk annihilating themselves, and if they cast it too poorly, they risk a potentially fatal exposure themselves. A wizardās mournful sight allows her to look beyond the grid of human relations, and this is a lonely vantage point. Every wizard, at some point, wishes for the simplicity of being normal ; of being named, counted and ordered within an institutional structure.
[ā¦]
But wizards are also exiled, strange, outlawed, peculiar. They work on the world but not necessarily in the world, since the world (even the fantastical medieval world, with all of its meticulous structural designs and laws) refuses to accept them. Even in fantasy, the wizard is queer ; so the wizard, in a sense, [ā¦] makes the fantasy queer.
It is the "magic is inherently queer" talk that can be found around, from literature studies to mythology analysis. The thesis is also very central on the idea of melancholy, claiming the fantasy wizard is by definition a manifestation of melancholy and tying it to their queerness (basically a pretty and educated way to say wizards in classic fantasy books were the "sad, suffering, miserable gay" type of gay). There is this interesting description of the inherent gloom of fantasy wizardry:
All wizards have an aspect of sadness to them, a āstyleā of mourning. Gandalf mutters to himself, sticks to the shadows, smokes his pipeweed ; Raistlin clutches his staff, cowers from any human touch, sees death in everyoneās face ; Marron, the boy-wizard of Chaz Brenchleyās Outremer novels, is terrified of his own power, wounded and violated by the magic that colonizes his body ; even Seregil, the master-thief of Lynn Flewellingās Nightrunner trilogy, is a wizard of sorts, a charmer of locks and weaver of lies who nonetheless experiences lack and theft wherever he turns, even as he is forced to steal from his own house, his Heimlich.
Also there is an entire chapter dedicated to comparing the brotherhoods of wizards and the drag queen sisterhoods? Reading Gandalf's journey and evolution throughout the Legendarium through the lense of the Houses from "Paris is Burning?" And speaking of readings, comparing reading out of spellbooks with the actual "readings" of the shows? It is... It is this type of bold move you know is definitively not it but is too wild not to go along and makes a lot of sense when you find the right angle.
