What breaks the enchantment?

[Bêthberry]

Busy days make keeping up with this thread difficult, but here is a stab.

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Your mention, Bêthberry, of George MacDonald, is appropo to the idea of reader as co-creator with the author. But what this necessarily means is that Middle-earth as it exists in your imagination, and Middle-earth as it exists in mine, are at variance with each other, to what degree no one can say. Is yours better than mine, or mine better than yours? Of course not! As we converse about them, your M-e informs mine and mine informs yours, and understanding and appreciation grows. This happened for me most recently in regard to an insight Lalwendê had, regarding the apparent ability of Sauron and his Nazgul to unbody a spirit then torment that spirit, not allowing it to escape into death. When I first read her insight I thought "Nonsense!" But as I saw more and more references to it in my own readings of LotR, I realized that Lal was right, and that my own understanding of this point had been enhanced, against my initial inclination!

Let's go back to your comment on one of these threads about the connotations the word 'buccolic' has for you. This is a personal shading of the word which derives from your personal experience of reading the word in various contexts. It is not 'wrong' because it might deviate from other people's connotations of the word, as it has been created out of your reading experience. Not everyone has this same personal experience. Yet, in reading the context of your use of the words, people can come to understand your shading. And, as you read the context of another person's use of buccolic, you will, as the good reader you are, come to understand his or her use of the word. This variation in connotation is part and parcel of how we learn and use language. In fact, it is even given a special name in linguistics: "idiolect", to distinguish it from 'dialect.'

So, I would extrapolate, that everyone's reading of Middle-earth will contain differences, some slight, some larger, some very large, depending upon the distance between the communities of language to which each reader and the original author belongs. Learning a 'foreign' language is not a matter of making equivalences between words of the two languages, but of coming to understand the culture that produces the second language, knowing its similarities and differences from the native language. But in fact all language use, even of our own native tongue, involves this translating. And it is a translating that is not solely personal, but partaking of the interpretive community which uses that language.

It is somewhat similar, I think, to the Catholic Church's use of symbols and ritual to express meaning. Those symbols and rituals have different referents in different languages, but the participants will find congruency. (This is somewhat different from the Protestant approach, which to my mind is far more literal-minded, but that is another debate.)

Behind George MacDonald's theory was his belief that God orders the universe, and that ultimately all things will point to the divine meaning. This was I suspect also the unifying source for Tolkien's sense that ultimately we will be drawn to understand the fuller spiritual meaning in his tale. But Tolkien was happy for readers to take what they can from his tales, for he had faith that ultimately full or replete understanding would become available. This is why, I think, it is ill-advised to say there is only one way of reading a text. It think texts create their readers as much as readers create the text, and in that interchange, as you have suggested in your understanding of Lal's point about Sauron, lies how meaning is created. Perhaps we focus too intently on 'enchantment' as a complete surrender to the subcreated world, for always there is this inherent fuller meaning pointing to how the subcreated world will change us in the primary world. I don't think enchantment always has to mean some kind of pentecostal (I mean that in the orignal sense of Pentecost, what the English call Whitsuntide, rather than the pentecostal used by certain sects to reflect the emotive nature of their religious experience) burning of tongues with hot coals.

Originally Posted by Saurreg

I heed your urgent call not to infer and deduce wild allegories that are not in the works at all. I personally think that people who make such wild accusations have chips on their shoulders and their own demons to exorcise.

While you are, of course, entitled to your opinion, I wonder what the benefit is of ascribing to people who don't share your opinion some kind of psychological problem or difficulty. What is the value, on a discussion forum, of characterising those who don't agree with you, negatively? What good will it do to reach understanding? Those who agree with your opinion will simply agree while those who disagree will not be persuaded to come over to your opinion since you, perhaps without realising it, insult them.

Your point also begs the question of "what is in the works". Tolkien himself was always discovering more of 'what was in his works'.

However, your example of the unfortunate English class studying MacBeth is a perfect example of what I am trying to explain.

Originally Posted by Saurreg

Our literature text was Macbeth and our teacher was an English woman. She tried her best to make us read into the play in her point of view and understand the commonly interpreted themes in it, but us Asian students were unable to do so no matter how hard we tried. To us, all her analysis and explanations were unconvincing at at times irrelevant to what we thought. It was an exasperating period for both sides and we were finally reduced to the state of her simply reciting her notes and points of each scene and us scribbling them down and memorizing for the exams.

Those of us who memorized and regurgitated the contents of our brains score pretty well for the paper. The braver lot who tried their very best to appreciate the play and then write down their own thoughts on the discussion questions fared poorly - even though we all latter agreed that those poor souls' answers made more sense than the Cambridge model answers.

Here was your English teacher telling you what the text meant based on her interpretive community and based on her sense that there is one definitive way to understand the text. Unfortunately, this approach fails to consider how time, place and cultural differences affect our readings because they affect our use of language.

And, by the by, I never, ever said Shelob was Lilith or was only Lilith. What I suggested was that elements of that legend partly inform her as well as informing Galadriel, Arwen, and Eowyn. But I have further thoughts to say about that chapter, which I will reserve for the Chapter by Chapter thread.

So, all in all, it seems to me with come up with some differing ideas about enchantment:

1) It occurs only once, the first reading, when we fall wholly and not-consciously thinking into the seeming reality of the subcreated world. In other words, the only way to experience this jcr is to first be enraptured.

2) It can be broken when elements remind us too forcefully of the primary world OR of the nature of writing as a created construct.

3) We can posit a concurrent, ongoing relationship between the subcreated world and the primary world, such that we don't have to hold the jcr in waiting until the reading is concluded.

4) We can posit a different form of reading theory that isn't so dependent upon this kind of Pentecost of experience.

What I think is of crucial value in Tolkien's defense of fantasy was less his arguement, based as it was on his Faith, but that he defended it as important to human nature at a time when it was relegated to the insignificant realms of children's literature. He made us aware of the importance of dragons in our imaginative lives, and, by extension, in our normal, waking lives.

Wow, this is a long way away from the thread's beginning. Sorry if I've rambled on.