The dark souls of academia

Odradek · 2018-06-04 23:45:12

Fragment from The Drangleic Cycle: A Very Short Introduction. Chapter Four: Religious interpretations

The Drangleic Cycle holds a particular importance in the cosmological and philosophical views of both the Church of the Deep, and Draconism. The former views the Cycle as a prefiguration of Aldrich's enlightenment and teachings, while the latter views the unknown author of the Cycle(Believed by Draconists to be more likely Magerold of Lanafir than Cale, though see Voss(992) for a Draconist view of the Mauglinite authorship theory) as either a Draconist, or someone with strong Draconist sympathies.

Draconist scholars tend to favor the Vendrick manuscript as being the canonical and earlier version, while Aldrichite scholars view the Aldia manuscript as canonical. Indeed, the Aldrichite view has Aldia himself as a kind of failed or proto-Aldrich, drawing near to the Deep Enlightenment, with some early Deacons of the Deep viewing the Chosen Undead as a tutor of Aldrich himself(mostly notably Deacons Xix and Tinefy).

The Draconists, on the other hand, see the Aldia manuscript as a later forgery and the Vendrick manuscript as canonical. The Drangleic cycle, in this view, serves as a forceful demonstration of the folly of greed and ambition in the persons of the Old Ones and the ultimate wisdom of the Draconic Mysteries as expressed in the celebrated Shalquoir, Vendrick, and Ancient Dragon dialogues found within the Drangleic Cycle...

Odradek · 2018-06-04 23:45:48

Fragment from The Drangleic Cycle: A Very Short Introduction. Chapter Six: The Politics of Drangleic

In recent years several prominent literary critics(most notably Normaer in his book The New Iron King)

see the Cycle as an early predecessor to left-wing Karlist thought. This reading, which sees the author of the Cycle as engaging in a radical critique of the politics of the world he lived in via barbed satire in the Old Ones division of the Cycle. The Old Iron King is the prototype of the capitalist robber baron, squeezing his workers dry by forcing them to labor in a literal castle of fire, or to mine poison from the earth, and setting loose spiked chariots and wild dogs on those too weak or rural to work in the mines or iron foundries. The Rotten is a charlatan religious figure, providing false hope to the wretched of the earth and a dream of unity that is, in fact, only a shambling pile of corpses. The Duke of Tseldora is capitalist scientist, funding research only to enrich and empower himself, and eventually being destroyed by what he himself created. Finally, the Lost Sinner is a cautionary tale of romanticizing the losers in any given war between capitalist and feudalist governments.

Though intriguing, this line of thought is fairly anachronistic as even the most ambitious historians of predecessors of Karlism do not see it arising in any significant form until 532 in Catarina, more than a millenia after the Cycle is believed to have been penned...

Salix Babylonika · 2018-06-05 19:45:24

a good thread

Odradek · 2019-01-14 01:26:46

Bump to remind myself

The dark souls of academia

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