Quote:
Originally Posted by Gwathagor
3) What's wrong with fascism?  |
Everything?
I saw this thread and thought "Ah, at last, a discussion on how Tolkien's work can be compared with the likes of Eliot and Joyce." But no, it's about how 'modern' he was with a small m. Still, of course the aspects of the modern world and of modern culture are a major feature in Modernist literature.
It might be helpful to know what we mean by 'modernist'. Are we merely assuming Tolkien is 'old school' because he writes of Kings, Elves and people who live a simpler lifestyle on the technological scale of development? Or are we also considering what messages his work conveys?
Because on that latter point, Tolkien is an out and out Modernist - with a capital M.
Just taking one aspect of his work, his approach towards warfare, Tolkien is in the company of the WWI poets, of Peake, of Lawrence. He presents us with ordinary people who are confronted with a far-off war; they go out of duty, because their friends go, because they believe that in some small way, they can play a part. Unlike WWI, these ordinary people are not forced to go, and this war is one which needs to be fought (unlike about 99% of wars in real life!) as there simply is no diplomatic facility to reason with Sauron! However, even though this war is about as 'just' as any war can get, Tolkien doesn't give us returning muscular heroes. No, he brings us back broken people. He kills some characters. He shows us the consequences.
That's a major feature of Modernism. Questioning authority and the idea that war is inherently our 'duty' to take part in, a duty which will glorify us - that's something which has been passed down from the ancient Greeks but never came under serious questioning until the 20th century and Modernist thinking. Tolkien himself went through all of this - how could he not have come out of that madness without questioning it? It even shook his faith to the core - with the result that the god he created in his work was a terrible god, a truly omnipotent creation.
You could discuss many, many aspects of Tolkien's work in the light of Modernism - as scholars are doing (there was recently a TS seminar on Tolkien & Modernism) already. And I think Shippey has done some work comparing Tolkien to Joyce?
I'm afraid Brin and the Star Wars geeks et al have latched onto Tolkien's faith as making him some kind of pseudo-Lewis figure when this couldn't be further from the truth. It's grossly unfair to condemn Tolkien as a has-been in the literary stakes just because of his religion when he doesn't exactly beat you over the head with it but instead in his clearly Modernist take on a lot of aspects of human existence, he raises interesting questions.