The Search for Yim Wing Chun and Ng Moy I propose to speak on fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold. And overbold I may be accounted, for though I have been a lover of fairy-stories since I learned to read, and have at times thought about them, I have not studied them professionally. I have been hardly more than a wandering explorer (or trespasser) in the land, full of Wonder but not of information. J.R.R.Tolkien. “On Fairy Stories.” 1939. These are the words with which J.R.R. Tolkien, the distinguished author and professor of English, began the 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St. Andrews. The entire essay is well worth reading. Tolkien had devoted considerable thought to the growth and evolution of stories and he was well aware that they take on a life of their own. If we were to substitute the words “martial arts mythology” for “fairy stories,” the preceding quote sums up many of my feelings toward the subject at hand.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 02:25:44 +0000