Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)
Cauldron of Story

Tagged: Theme.

In his essay "High Fantasy and Heroic Romance" (1971 The Horn Book Magazine) Lloyd Alexander speaks of incorporating huge amounts of traditional material into his Chronicles of Prydain sequence (1964-1968); he calls this material – which includes names, places, Landscapes, echoes of historical Myths and Legends, and plot structures basic to High Fantasy – a Cauldron of Story, taking the term from the Second Branch of the Mabinogion. The phrase was also utilized in the description of Fantasy by J R R Tolkien, in "On Fairy-Tales", a talk delivered in 1939 and published in Essays Presented to Charles Williams (anth 1947) ed C S Lewis; Tolkien spoke of "the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story", as always boiling. [JC]

see also: Ocean of Story; Story; Twice-Told.