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Originally Posted by davem
Has anyone else wondered whether we should use a better term than 'conceit' for this question. It seems to carry connotations of falseness, or of an unnecessary addition, which can (possibly should) be ignored.
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What about
notion instead?
What is odd is that the idea of it all being a translation has registered very little on me, yet I get just the same sense of enchantment and always have had. I see small gardens crowded with flowers and straight away think of Samwise, and I see gnarled old trees and think of Old Man Willow; it was and is all very much real to me too. On my first reading I had noticed that the story was supposed to be drawn from the Red Book but soon, I forgot all about that as I went into the tale and got lost. I liked the thought of the Red Book though, and I even had one of my own to scribble ideas for tales in, but it was never important to my being able to lose myself in Middle Earth.
What interests me is whether it really is vital to our love of Middle Earth. If Tolkien had told me in no uncertain terms that it was all just a fiction then I would still have loved this world he created, but maybe not as deeply; that would have been incredibly intrusive. But for me, it seems he didn't need to maintain or even create a conceit. I wonder if I was set up for this from being brought up on weird and wonderful tales, both fairy tales and real world tales but told as though they were myths. I find I can lose myself in any sort of story quite easily, and if there are no stories to be had, I make my own up in my head and lose myself in those.
The Hobbit, where I started, does not begin with a conceit, just that immortal line "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." So, does that show that we don't necessarily need a conceit? Maybe it could explain why some readers enjoy LotR more than The Hobbit? That the conceit does work and that it does indeed help readers to lose themselves more thoroughly?