[littlemanpoet]

Aiwendil

I think it's a mistake to make too much of postmodernism's reaction against modernism. For all the reaction there's been, the great works of the 'modern' period are pretty much still considered great by postmodernists. And I wonder in what way modernism promised to deliver goods by means of science and machines. Science and machines were never supposed to improve art. As for the real world: there have been both positive and negative effects of technology. But I don't really see a huge change in attitude toward technology between modernism and postmodernism.

Postmodernism is admittedly a conundrum. I don't profess to know the ins and outs of it, which is why I qualified my statement with "in part". The goods modernism promised to deliver through science was Progress such that human life would constantly get better; wars were supposed to cease - note President Woodrow Wilson's famous name for World War One - 'The War to End All Wars'. By the middle of the 20th century the horrors of Nazism and Bolshevism and WWII itself, not to mention the horror of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, forced this rosy view to be at least qualified. Progress for the sake of progress no longer looked so possible; this is, in fact, an aspect of the mindset into which LoTR was published. People were ready for something better than what Progress had turned out to be. I've only hinted at the various aspects of this Progress-ism. It was also supposed to make religion obsolete.

Suppose (to take an absurd but informative example) it were discovered that Hamlet had been accidentally typed by a monkey. Would you then deem it 'not art'?

G.K. Chesterton has said something to the effect that the very absurdity of the supposition is its own explosion. Simply, there is no way a monkey, let alone ten thousand monkeys, would ever accidentaly type Hamlet or anything else of artistic merit. Subcreation - art - is the provenence of humanity.

It is also completely possible to create one's own world populated with one's own deities that has its own archetypes and spirituality. This is (minus the role-playing) what Tolkien did. Or should we condemn him for mixing up dragons and Dwarves and Elves and pagan deities and Catholic theology?

I don't know that anyone is talking about condemning dungeon masters or the dungeons and dragons systems. Rather, I was pointing out the flaw of a disconnection with the past of which AD&D is just one example.

I see no reason not to study modern literature, nor why such study cannot exist alongside study of the classics. What's wrong with Lord of the Flies? I thought it was actually one of the better pieces of modern literature.

I should clarify. The reason, Aiwendil, for my 'ahem' was because I think Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm are excellent works. I was watching my own argument seem to unravel before my eyes - until I recalled for myself that even GOOD choices (or at least SEEMINGLY good choices) necessitate the choice AGAINST something else, and the choice in favor of Golding and other modern writers, valuable in themselves, became a choice AGAINST the classics. I wish that the choice had been against something less valuable - but I admittedly can't think of what that something might be...

Must run again.