[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Oh how wonderful, Bêthberry – an itemised list of questions for me to answer! [*Fordim drools on his keyboard*]

I shall tackle them (best I may) one by one:

First, it seems to me that you are suggesting a poetics for fantasy that differentiates it from realistic (for want of a better word) fiction. Do you intend this?

Yes, I rather I suppose that I am; but in this I am merely following in the (much larger) footsteps of Professor Tolkien, and the theories that he laid out in “On Fairy-Stories”. The reasons for this are best to be found in his writings, but I shall attempt to delineate my own below.

Second, are you making this claim for all writers of fantasy, or just Tolkien? On what basis do you or would you eliminate other writers?

For the moment I am merely theorising about what I’ve found in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth without having given any thought to other fantasy writers – so I shan’t attempt to address the issue of “eliminating” them quite yet.

However…

It does strike me that of all the fantasy novels I’ve read, Tolkien has been the most (but not the only) successful subcreator. This is due, I think, to two things. First, by the time he came to write TH and LotR, he already had a vast storehouse of works to draw on. The ‘reality’ of Middle-Earth pre-existed the historia he generated in response to that reality. This gives M-E an authenticity that other subcreated worlds lack. In essence, he created a narrative to suit a world that already existed; in all the other fantasy novels I’ve read, the world was created to serve the purpose of the narrative. Second, Tolkien began his subcreation from the point at which all reality (or realities) are created – with language. Everything in M-E is the result of his experiments in language creation. One of my favourite quotes from Letters (and I can hear Saucepan Man falling out of his chair with undignified mirth at my expense as I cite this!) is in a letter to Christopher from 1958:

“Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and whether it was an ‘allegory.’ And I said that it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen sila lúmenn’ omentielmo.”

To quote a text that is probably quite familiar to many of the people participating in this thread: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Third, you will have to run by me again your point that since our reading of Middle-earth has no reference to our 'real' world, we are totally dependent upon the author for giving it credibility. This seems to me to overlook many other forms of narrative which aren't 'based' on our real world. How do we read ancient texts of early mythology? Or even translations from other cultures which would not, at least on first read, have this already-known distinction between Primary and Secondary worlds.

I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I feel as though we are, “totally dependent upon the author for giving it credibility.” As I stated in an earlier post, the way I see my relation with LotR is a kind of process as I strive for my “absolute freedom” while simultaneously acknowledging the “presence” of Tolkien. I’ll use your Brighton Rock example to try and explain better:

Catholicism, for the sake of my analogy, is a big blanket that surrounds and wraps up in it Graham Greene, myself and Brighton Rock. This blanket has existed for a very long time and is the product of many weavers. Mr. Greene and I both are equally able to pick threads out of it, add to it, or attempt to tear it. We are both equally able to pull the blanket about the novel as we read it, or, alternately, to lift the novel out of the blanket and read it in another light.

Now, with LotR, things get more complicated. Tolkien, LotR and myself are still surrounded by the blanket of Catholicism…as we are by the other forms of ‘external’ codings/beliefs/genres (discourses?) that you ask about above. But there’s another blanket as well to contend with: the blanket of “Eruism” (Saucepan Man has shamed me into putting the “” back on that). This blanket was made by the author of the text, and as such, it does not surround me, but the text and Tolkien. In order to ‘get at’ LotR I have to accept that blanket as-is, for the reasons I’ve already gone into above. And this blanket has interpretative implications (Providence is a ‘real’ and historical force; Good and Evil are discreet forces in a bipolar relation; divinity is immanent, not transcendent).

It’s not that M-E has no reference to the ‘real world’, it’s just that its primary moral/interpretative referent is also subcreated: Eruism. And Eruism is as real as Frodo, the White Mountains, Trolls and Treebeard.

In essence: I can lift LotR ‘out’ of the blanket of Catholicism, but the blanket of Eruism is another matter – it’s a cloth-binding stitched onto the very boards of its covers

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An aside: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been posting to this thread. It has been one of the most singularly rewarding experiences of my intellectual career, and I sincerely hope that this is only the beginning!

Quick Note to THE Ka: this thread was indeed my first post to the discussion forums (although I have been rpg-ing for a while), but the credit for the quality of the conversation must go entirely to the posters. Let me just say it loud and proud:

I love the Barrow Downs!

(Is there a special room reserved for people like me at Betty Ford?)