[Marileangorifurnimaluim]

I've been reading this thread with interest, and once I saw Mr. U.'s name on it *bows politely* I knew we would be touching on subjects of mutual interest. (Mr. U, whilst occasionally we wind up on opposite sides of the table, what concerns us seems to fall into the same categories).

This has brought up more questions than answers for me.

..whereas in fantasy, the pool of archetypes and historical/mythological influences remains a static constant..

Doesn't this theory of an "Archetypal Devourer" imply that once, say, Beowulf was written, there was no need or room for the LotR, as those Archetypes were fully explored?
Or would that mean that there can only be one seminal work to dominate Fantasy until it loses its potency once sheer age, shifts in language and culture makes it unreadable to its intended audience?
Is that dominance simply because one work came first? And due to the fact it explores the same Archetypes, a second work on this naturally limited genre can only be inevitably compared to it?
Or is it due to the quality of the work itself?
If this dominance is due to the quality of the work, then the Archetypal Devourer theory is disproved, because the it is the individual work that is important, not the nature of the genre.

..and there is less receptivity to new styles and modes of storytelling.

This sounds more like an addiction on the part of the audience, to tell you the truth. An addiction to a particular feeling, or catharsis. If receptivity is the issue, and the "Archetypal Devourer" is not, than the audience for the genre is the real limitation if Fantasy.

Yet to argue against appropriation or a particular evangelical interpretation of the work does not push us into such a corner. There is a middle ground, one that empowers us as readers yet at the same time allows the author to be resolute and visionary.

I concur, but there is more than a middle ground, which is negotiation between convictions, rather, I'm minded of an image of water welling up from underground. On the surface, it would appear the water belongs to this or that piece of geography. In reality, the water is deeper and more profound than the geographical limitations we give it. That is not to say the geographical limitations are not important, they are necessary, in their context. But the truth we try quantify, if it is really profound, is going to supercede and over run the contexts we try place on it. I think this, rather than mere frustration with allegory, was what Tolkien as an artist was driving at when he refused to go along with the casual categorization of his writing. This begs the question if simple use of Archetypes is the only factor that sets the LotR apart in the Fantasy genre?

I think Tolkien had a sense for this kind of subtlety, as seen in his letters quoted recently in the Bible and Trilogy thread:

It was written slowly and with great care for detail, & finally emerged as ... a searchlight ... on a small part of our Middle-earth, surrounded by the glimmer of limitless extensions in time and space. Very well: that may explain to some extent why it 'feels' like history; why it was accepted for publication; and why it has proved readable for a large number of very different kinds of people. But it does not fully explain what has actually happened. Looking back ... I feel as if an ever darkening sky over our present world had been suddenly pierced, the clouds rolled back, and an almost forgotten sunlight had poured down again. As if indeed the horns of Hope had been hear again, as Pippin heard them suddenly at the absolute nadir of the fortunes of the west. but How? and Why?
I think I can now guess what Gandalf would reply. A few years ago I was visited in Oxford by a man whose name I have forgotten ... He had been much struck by the curious way in which many old pictures seemed to him to have been designed to illustrate The Lord of the Rings long before its time. ... I think he wanted at first simply to discover whether my imagination had fed on pictures, as it clearly had been by certain kinds of literature and languages. When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I had never seen the pictures before ... he fell silent. I became aware that he was looking fixedly at me. Suddenly he said: 'Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?'
Pure Gandalf! I was too well acquainted with G. to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said: 'No, I don't suppose so any longer.' I have never since been able to suppose so. An alarming conclusion for an old philologist to draw concerning his private amusement. But not one that should puff any one up who considers the imperfections of 'chosen instruments', and indeed what sometimes seems their lamentable unfitness for the purpose.

[ April 16, 2002: Message edited by: Marileangorifurnimaluim ]