Curtis reviewed The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany
Review of 'The Gods of Pegana' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
While there are some humorous moments — such the chapter "Of how Imbaun Spake of Death to the King" ending with Imbaun being led away, "And there arose prophets in Aradec who spake not of death to Kings" (indeed, the procession of prophets who die itself is kind of funny) — they are not enough to offset the tediousness of the mock-serious scriptural tone that Dunsany adopts throughout the book. While I generally like irony and subtle humor, I could not shake the feeling the each chapter is a knowing half-wink by Dunsany asking, "See what I did there?" Yes, I see what was done, and while I don't deny the cleverness and insight behind the story (is it even a story? more like a collection of vignettes...), I am not a huge fan of stories that point out their own cleverness and insight.
A lot of people have praised …
While there are some humorous moments — such the chapter "Of how Imbaun Spake of Death to the King" ending with Imbaun being led away, "And there arose prophets in Aradec who spake not of death to Kings" (indeed, the procession of prophets who die itself is kind of funny) — they are not enough to offset the tediousness of the mock-serious scriptural tone that Dunsany adopts throughout the book. While I generally like irony and subtle humor, I could not shake the feeling the each chapter is a knowing half-wink by Dunsany asking, "See what I did there?" Yes, I see what was done, and while I don't deny the cleverness and insight behind the story (is it even a story? more like a collection of vignettes...), I am not a huge fan of stories that point out their own cleverness and insight.
A lot of people have praised Dunsany for his cleverness in coming up with his own cosmogony, something which (the claim is made) had not done before him but which has been repeated frequently afterwards by writers ranging from Tolkien to Terry Pratchett, and beyond. I think critics in general have not properly placed Dunsany's work here as a logical byproduct of the comparative religious studies taking place in the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries. Books like [b:The Golden Bough|408862|The Golden Bough, Abridged|James George Frazer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1174504446s/408862.jpg|16303733] brought together strange gods and goddesses from different lands, and I suspect for people like Dunsany, many of these gods seemed silly and obviously invented. This is not to say that The Gods of Pegana is an imitation of such comparative studies, but that they appear around the same time seems significant. I would have to look further into it, however, to know if there is a more direct connection.
I also think there is a loose, but important, connection between Dunsany's idea of an invented cosmogony and the creation of angelologies and demonologies, particularly in the medieval and renaissance periods. These types of hierarchies drew from classical and biblical stories, but there were many which seem to have simply invented new angels and demons, or given new powers and authorities to old ones. Such works arguably link back even further to things like Ovid's "Metamorphoses."
