"Genuine fairy-story" ?

[Aiwendil]

Lalwende wrote:

'Evil' characters may not necessarily be shown in a 'moral' way. In some tales we might see a character doing horrible things but who is the hero.

Yes, I very much agree. In fact, this is the chief characteristic of the 'amoral fairy story'. But I don't know if I'd call these characters 'evil' - for in the amoral fairy story there is really no such thing as good or evil.

In any case, the point I was trying to make here was that a story can include scores of frightening, wicked characters and still be 'moral' - as indeed Tolkien's stories do.

What though, could be more serious than life and death?

Life and death were not the 'gross' elements that Tolkien wished to purge. On the contrary, he claimed that LotR was about death. It was, rather, the amorality and, as you put it, 'bodily fluids' that he (apparently) did not enjoy, and consequently left out of his own work. And it is these elements that, in my experience, tend to render a story less serious.

I actually find the amoral tale more perilous but at once more comforting than the moral tale (of any culture) which has a 'message'.

I think we may be talking at cross-purposes. By 'moral' tale I don't mean one that 'has a moral' or message. I mean one in which there are moral characters and, at least implicitly, some moral system. I don't think that Tolkien's work has a message, but it is very clearly moral.

Finding Beowulf more adult than the Kalevala (I presume you mean mature and the Kalevala is juvenile?) is a matter of taste. To a Finnish reader nothing could be more serious than the Kalevala. Tolkien didn't make such distinctions between them. Fair enough if its just your taste.

The Kalevala was probably a bad example - though it is to some extent amoral (Vainamoinen and the rest do some things that one could not imagine a good character from Middle-earth doing) it is not the best example of the 'amoral fairy story'.

But my point was this: a work that is not about amoral characters and bodily fluids is quite capable of being serious; Beowulf, Gawaine, and the Silmarillion are prime examples.