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Originally Posted by Bb
Wouldn't this statement suggest that even those expurgaters were merely involved in the (not so fluid ) fluid retelling of fairy tales, retelling them in ways they saw fit for their culture and society? If, after all, fairy tales did function in the very sociological manner you describe (being warning messages from mums to daughter, to children about strangers, explanations of creation), why cannot later redactors see fit to tell their versions.
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Well let's be honest and a bit blunt - many of these modern versions weren't adapted to 'fit', they were simply Bowdlerised, as Tolkien himself points out, reduced to mere nursery tales.
The point that's being missed is that Fairy Tales are not literature, as in books wot we study in skool, they are oral tales. And oral tales, like oral language, belong to the Speople who tell 'em, not to the clever folk who come with them sinister pens 'n' paper 'n' write 'em down.
We know its not possible to find ur-texts as how could we if they're oral tales? Tolkien says so too.
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Originally Posted by Bb
Also, to dismiss Tolkien's essay because it may be largely ignored in the world of fairy tale scholarship is not an analysis of his ideas, but rejection by reputation. After all, his literary work was largely ridiculed and ignored for decades by the literary academics, so it wouldn't surprise me if his other work has also been ignored. That doesn't mean he does not have something to offer, it merely means that current scholars are going off on other directions. Which they have a right to do. But it isn't necessarily grounds for rejecting Tolkien's ideas out of hand.
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His work hasn't been largely ridiculed, in fact there's a huge industry now of criticising Tolkien to varying degrees of usefulness. And I don't dismiss OFS, just pointing out that its not commonly used.
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Originally Posted by Bb
After all, he is one scholar who championed story as story. He did not 'defend' fairy tales as history or myth or taboo. He championed narrative as an essential element in human imagination and that's very worthy of discussion.
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Agree with that. After all the hot air we blow, the most crucial element is story.