This forum was closed on October 1st, 2010. However, the archives are open to the public and filled with vast amounts of good reading and information for you to enjoy. If you wish to meet some Wardrobians, please visit the Into the Wardrobe Facebook group.

Alcasan = The Head?

Open the pod bay doors, Hnau!

Alcasan = The Head?

Postby No Inkling » January 31st, 2006, 7:36 pm

User avatar
No Inkling
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Jan 2006

re: Alcasan = The Head?

Postby Theo » January 31st, 2006, 11:46 pm

According to my little pocket Arabic dictionary, "head" in Arabic is ra's.

As far as I can tell, I don't think the name Alcasan means anything in particular. It's a vaguely sinister-sounding (faux-)French name for a vaguely sinister Frenchman. :)

Also, having that guy be named "Head" would be a name-symbolism even cruder than what we already have in THS.
User avatar
Theo
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 777
Joined: Nov 2005
Location: Uppsala, Sweden

re: Alcasan = The Head?

Postby No Inkling » February 1st, 2006, 1:50 pm

Okay, then, that settlers the Arabic question. But I'm not convinced that the name is arbitrary. I've googled it, and there are lots of hits...it is a real word; I just don't know which language.

Perhaps it is unlikely that Lewis is being THAT blatant with the name, but in a novel with characters named Frost, Weston, Wither, and Fillostratto, surely there is some significance in a severed head named Alcasan.
User avatar
No Inkling
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Jan 2006

re: Alcasan = The Head?

Postby Theo » February 2nd, 2006, 12:08 am

User avatar
Theo
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 777
Joined: Nov 2005
Location: Uppsala, Sweden

Re: re: Alcasan = The Head?

Postby Monica » February 6th, 2006, 1:51 pm

User avatar
Monica
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 273
Joined: Oct 1996

Re: re: Alcasan = The Head?

Postby Stanley Anderson » February 6th, 2006, 4:16 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
User avatar
Stanley Anderson
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 3251
Joined: Aug 1996
Location: Southern California

re: Alcasan = The Head?

Postby minst9 » February 8th, 2006, 3:24 am

Does this help? ;)

Jerusalem Delivered: An English Prose Version
by, Torquato Tasso
Translated by Ralph Nash

Reviewer: extollager from Mayville, ND United States, writes...

C. S. Lewis relished this epic poem -- see his essay "Tasso" in his book of essays on medieval and Renaissance literature. I wonder if Tolkien also had read it, as a number of scenes reminded me of the Siege of Minas Tirith, etc. For those who want to move on from the authors and works that everyone knows influenced and/or impressed Lewis (and Tolkien?) such as Chesterton, George MacDonald, et al., Tasso may be recommended. I wonder if Lewis didn't get the idea for the severed head, of the criminal Alcasan, who seems to speak, but is really manipulated by a devil, and which the heroine of That Hideous Strength sees in a dream, from Tasso, where a Fury from hell makes a severed head talk (deceivingly) in a dream to one of the Christian warriors. The gruesome descriptions are similar, and Lewis even calls Alcasan "the Saracen"; and Alcasan certainly could be the name of one of the Saracen knights in Tasso. Who knows...?

I got this reader review from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0 ... 90-6501934
minst9
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Feb 2006


Return to The Space Trilogy

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered members and 16 guests

cron