‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Aiwendil]

Enchantment and Faerie

Note: This is a very long post, for which I apologize, and while I was writing it several other people posted.

I wonder if I am the only one that is a little bewildered by all this talk of "Faerie", and "windows to Faerie". I think it may be a good idea to pause and consider what is really meant by these things, and whether they have the kind of broad application that is being ascribed to them.

davem wrote (some time ago):

I think so much of Tolkien's capacity for creating the sense of 'enchantment' in his readers comes down to this - we don't feel he is 'revealing' new things to us so much as 'reminding' us of things we have forgotten. So rather than being amazed by our encounter with a completely unknown 'new' world, we feel at once 'at home' in Middle Earth.

I suppose this may be called the "enchantment thesis": what is so enchanting about Tolkien's works is that they remind us of, or give us access to, a "place" with which we all have some sort of subconscious connection.

As something of a logical extension of this idea, we come to the "Faerie" or "Perilous Realm" bit. The idea here seems to be that, once again, there is a "place" to which we have some kind of subconscious access, and that the primary function of fantasy is to "open a window" or "provide a road" to that place for the conscious mind.

Thus, the Legendarium, Smith, Roverandom, etc. become various alternative routes to this place called Faerie. Davem puts it like this:

If both Smith & Roverandom are windows onto Faerie (& the 'Little Kingdom' of Giles, we must also suppose), & if the inhabitants of Faerie even speak to us, & show us visions of their world, then the precise limits & definitions fade & vanish, & we are left with enchantment.

From this vantage point, it is easy to see the concept of "canon" (in its more restrictive meaning) becoming weakened. Again, Davem phrases it nicely:

Would Tolkien have thought 'canon' more important than this enchantment - probably not by the time he came to write Smith.

Perhaps in Smith Tolkien was dismantling his 'canon' & throwing open a 'window' to let in the air of another world, having realised that his 'Tree', the Legendarium which he had worked on all his life was just one tree in the forest of Faerie that Smith wandered in.

Mark12_30 appears to reject the anti-canon argument but to accept the Faerie argument:

I doubt he would have abandoned the cohesiveness that he was seeking for Middle-Earth (a magnificent road into Faerie) just because he had found and described two other roads (Roverandom, Smith.) I think he still pressed towards Eucatastrophe, that moment of truth shining through his myth(s) to the one true myth.

The first question I find myself asking is what exactly this "Faerie" realm is supposed to be. Are we to take all this literally and suppose that there is a real place called Faerie, of which we all have (for whatever reason) some kind of knowledge? Obviously, that would be quite absurd. We cannot really think that Tolkien had visions of some parallel universe; he was not really discovering already existing facts about his characters - he was, when we come down to it, inventing them.

It must, then, not be a real place but rather an imaginary one - one, perhaps, that is subconsciously imaginary. But if this is the case, the very notion of Faerie appears to be in danger - for why should different people all happen to have subconsciously imagine the same thing?

The only possible answer to that question is that various influences, both genetic and cultural, cause us each to formulate the same (or very similar) subconscious concepts.

And I can more or less accept that explanation. The trouble with this is twofold, however. First, it depends on a conjecture about the very complicated relationship between societal dynamics and neurology/psychology. Second (even supposing that conjecture is true), it inevitably deals with the concept of Faerie on an individual basis, as something that exists in this individual's mind, and in that individual's mind, etc. - rather than simply as a single entity, distinct from the individuals. To speak of Faerie simpliciter, rather than "this person's Faerie" and "that person's Faerie" becomes rather a dubious thing.

But supposing that this account is nonetheless valid, we still ought to ask to what extent this window to Faerie contributes to the value of a work of fantasy, and to what extent the value of fantasy depends on it.

This is where all the talk about Smith of Wooton Major and Roverandom and Farmer Giles of Ham makes me a little uneasy. Are these really just alternative roads to Faerie? Is the primary fucntion of fantasy just to act as a portal to this pre-existing imaginary realm?

We'd probably all agree that The Lord of the Rings is a greater work than any of the three I just mentioned. But why? If these are all just windows into Faerie, why should any window be better than any other? I suppose one could answer that The Lord of the Rings provides us with greater access than the others; the others are perhaps like little peepholes and arrowslits while LotR is a wide window. But again, I'd ask: why? What makes LotR a wider window than the others? Is it its length? Surely not; if Roverandom had happened to be 1,000 pages, that would not make it LotR's equal. Is it that Faerie is depicted more accurately, more vividly, in LotR? This sounds a bit more plausible, but I still don't like it. Roverandom paints a very vivid portrait of its own mythical world, within the limited space it has.

I think the real answer is that the greatness of a work of fantasy is not simply related to the degree to which it gives us access to Faerie. If The Lord of the Rings were just about Hobbits having tea, and Elves singing songs, and Dwarves gathering gold, and Dunedain patrolling the countryside, it would not be particularly good.

It is not enough simply to provide a window to Faerie.

Of course, I can't deny that milieu is a significant factor in the attraction of works like The Lord of the Rings. Nor can I deny that this notion of a place called Faerie has some validity. I am as enthralled by images of eagles circling overhead, of columns of horse-riders disappearing into the distance, of long and winding roads (though not Phil Spector's orchestration . . .), or of dark sylvan glades, as the next person. But when I think of The Lord of the Rings, it is not these generic images that first come to mind. It is, rather, the Balrog stepping forward onto the Bridge of Khazad-dum, the Nazgul being swept away in the flood at the ford, Eowyn plunging her blade into the Witch-king. I think first of images specific to Middle-earth.

This brings to mind a related point. Suppose we are indeed to think of Faerie as a place, albeit an imaginary one lurking somewhere in the subconscious. The images brought to mind by one of these "windows to Faerie" must then be supposed to be actual images of this imaginary place. But the place called Middle-earth is simply incompatible with the village of Wooton Major; they cannot simply be superimposed without contradictions arising between them. So if Faerie really is a single imaginary place, then neither Middle-earth nor Wooton Major can be it (or at least, they cannot both be).

I think it would therefore be advisable to drop the "place" analogy. Faerie is not a place, real or imaginary; it is rather a complex of ideas and associations. There are no facts about events in Faerie, or people in Faerie. There are only various ideas and images, many of them contradictory, that may collectively be called Faerie.

I think it is a mistake to overemphasize the function of fantasy as providing a window or portal to Faerie. This tends to treat a given work only as a means to gain access to that realm, rather than as something worthwhile in itself; it undervalues the individual work. Fordim and Bethberry touched upon this point a while back. Fordim wrote:

This is why I would resist any simplification of a figure like Shelob into something like an archetypal spider, when the ‘real’ (that is, subcreated) history of her is much more interesting and revealing.

And Bethberry:

Fordim, I would agree with you that to emphasise the archetypal quality over the exquisite details of Tolkien's individualising of the characters is reductive. That has been the problem it seems to me with the structuralist approach to narrative variants. It does not account for readers prefering one version over another. At some point we have to acknowledge and appreciate Tolkien's artistry--just what is it that has made us prefer his story over the archetypes of other fantasy writers?

While I think that the Faerie associations have a lot to do with LotR's appeal to me, I find I am chiefly interested in - dare I say it - the plot and (as a close second) the characters. I am chiefly interested in those things that Tolkien invented.

All of this reminds me of my reservations about the monomyth business of Joseph Campbell, which largely arises from Jung's archetypes. It's not that I don't think that the archetypes have value. Certainly, there are themes that appear again and again in the myths of very different cultures. The monomyth is a useful tool for analyzing these similarities. Where people go astray, I think, is when they assume that the monomyth is the whole story; that all myths are essentially the same, just variations on a single plot.

This kind of thing happens a lot with regard to Star Wars (probably because Lucas acknowledges that he was heavily influenced by Campbell). Someone will equate Anakin/Vader with, say, Satan, or Oedipus, or MacBeth, as if all these characters were fundamentally the same. In such discussions, I always point out that the fundamental progression of the Anakin/Vader character - miraculous birth; becomes champion of good; falls; becomes champion of evil; is redeemed - is something that exists in no other stories that I'm aware of.

It is the same with The Lord of the Rings (and the Silmarillion, for that matter). Take the Ring. I cannot think of another myth with a symbol quite like it - an artifact of immense power that is absolutely evil and will corrupt all that use it; a thing, moreover, that encapsulates the tension between two very different views of evil. This is not just a piece of Faerie; it is something peculiar to Tolkien.

I suppose that what I'm getting at is this. If we accept the semi-cliche that works of fantasy are windows into Faerie, we ought to combine it with another cliche: that the journey is more important than the destination. I would say that, rather than the value of LotR lying in its revelation of Faerie to us, the value of Faerie lies in its contribution to the greatness of such things as LotR.

A few other miscellaneous points:
Davem wrote:

Would Tolkien have thought 'canon' more important than this enchantment - probably not by the time he came to write Smith.

I think that, partially as a consequence of what I said above, this cannot be the case - for the value of the work lies in itself, not in providing a road to Faerie. In any case, Smith was published in 1967, and Tolkien continued to work on the Silmarillion material (with all appearances of intending to finish it) until shortly before his death.

Davem wrote:

There is a real danger of breaking a thing to find out what it is made of, of breaking the enchantment by attempting to find out too much about the spell & the one who cast it.

Mark12_30, The Saucepan Man, and Mr. Underhill have all expressed similar concerns (about analyzing the Letters, about the Letters analyzing the text, and about analyzing "enchantment", respectively).

I must say that while I think I understand the fear, I don't share it. First of all, we are breaking nothing. Whatever we may say or think, the texts will still exist as they always have. This may seem an obvious and insignificant point, but I think it is important. There is a very real difference between actually breaking something and merely analyzing it.

I have always felt that if the work in question is truly a good one, analysis can never do any harm to it. The enchantment, the spell of Faerie, or whatever you want to call it, is stronger than that. It is not something that scurries away as soon as you say its name. If a work is in fact great, then analyzing it can only deepen one's appreciation for it. And I think that Tolkien's work is great.

Nearly all of us here have engaged in a good bit of analysis of Tolkien's work over the years. Has anyone ever actually found that on re-reading LotR (or anything else), one's enjoyment of the work had been tarnished by over-analysis?

To return to the original topic of the thread: there has been some recent discussion of the validity of interpreting the text. Davem nicely encapsulated the question:

Does this 'widen' the concept of 'canonicity' to include not only what Tolkien wrote, but also what he 'meant'?

I don't have all that much to say about this, but I will make one point. I think the assumption has been that there are more or less two possibilities: either the "canon" is what Tolkien meant or there is no canon and we are free to interpret the text in any way we like. Each view has its difficulties. If it is Tolkien's intentions that matter - well, we can never really know what those intentions were. Moreover, this would mean that no work is self-sufficient; it can only be understood at all in the context of the author's letters, etc. On the other hand, the second view seems to give absurd interpretations the same validity as any others. The white supremacist "interpretations" of LotR are indeed an unpleasant example.

I think that there is a third way. A more useful thing to ask than "what did the author mean?" is "what would a reasonable person have meant?" That saves us from trying to divine Tolkien's state of mind but also allows us to say of certain views "that just doesn't make sense". It allows us to look at the text in itself without clearing the way for bizarre interpretations.

Of course, "reasonable person" is the difficult point, and I don't pretend that this is a simple prescription. But I think it works in principle, and allows us at the very least to dismiss the white supremacists.

What value do the Letters have in such a case? First of all, they obviously have intrinsic value in telling us about Tolkien as a person and an author, regardless of whether we equate Tolkien's meaning with the meaning of the text. But they also have value with regard to the text. For despite the fact that in this view, the meaning of the text is not defined as the intention of the author, we cannot escape the fact that it was Tolkien that wrote those words. If we presume that he was something like a reasonable person, then clearly he will, simply as a practical matter, have very great insight into the texts. His letters then have the same sort of value as anyone else's writings on the Legendarium, but they probably have a greater degree of value as a result of the circumstances of the writing of the texts.

Sorry if this post comes across as long and rambling; it was written with a multitude of interruptions.