The magic of 'once upon a time'.

What is  the lure, the magic, in the words 'once upon a time.'?

Is it the sense of lost purity and grandeur, deep wisdom that has been forgotten, Arcadia spoilt, the debased or diminished stature of modern humankind; of us  having passed a Golden Age, a Dreamtime, when children honored their parents.

In 'once upon a time' there is the chance for an audacious retellings of what is arguably one of the two or three primal human stories: the narrative of Innocence, Experience, and, straddling the margin between them, the Fall.

'Once upon a time' traffics in the wistful - the unassuageable ache of the imagined past.

Ths words evoke a  kind of magic formula for invoking the ache of this primordial nostalgia

Any list of the great British works of 'once upon a time must begin with the epic fantasy of Milton's' Paradise Lost, with its dark lord, cursed tree, invented cosmology and ringing battle scenes, its armored angelic cavalries shattered by demonic engines of war.

 

But most typical works of contemporary epic fantasy have (consciously at least) followed Tolkien’s model rather than Milton’s, dressing in Norse armor and Celtic shadow the ache of Innocence Lost, and then, crucially, figuring it as a landscape, a broken fairyland where brazen experience has replaced the golden days of innocence; where, as in the Chronicles of Narnia, where in this 'once upon a time' it is always winter and never Christmas.”