You say 'Faeries' & I say 'Fairies'

[davem]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

It now begins to seem to me that Tolkien the modern made Faery acceptable to a modern, and therefore, scientific mind. Our contemporary imagination, having been baptized by Tolkien, has thereby been freed to move beyond the scientific mind to Faery as it is/was.

Which means, in a sense, that as the Star was to Smith, allowing passage to Faery, and as Faery was to Wootton Major, so Tolkien's Middle Earth is for us, allowing our minds to conceive of Faery as it is, and thus Faery can be to us as it was to Wootton Major? I don't know, but I hope so.

Perhaps what Tolkien did was to make Faery 'acceptable' not the modern, scientific, mind but to the minds of people who, whether they are Christians or not, are products of 2,000 years of Christianity & have grown up with a Christian worldview.

In traditional. pre-Christian belief, there was no Satan, no personification of moral evil - there was life & death, good & bad, but no Good vs Evil. Tolkien 'Christianises' Faery by introducing Morgoth, a fallen Angel, & introduces a (Judeo) Christian element which from then on determines & defines that Faery as a Christian one - it couldn't have been otherwise once he'd made that decision.

The consequence was that Middle-earth would become the battleground in a moral war. Rather than the battle being an eternal one between light & dark, order & chaos, summer & winter which never ends, it becomes an extended war which will one day end in the victory of Good over Evil. There will be winners & losers.

We have all, Christian or not, absorbed that worldview, & so would have expected it, I suppose, in the Faery that Tolkien gave us. Yet, it is not traditional Faery - it is, for whatever (good?) reasons Tolkien had - an invention of his own. As I've repeatedly stated, though, what interests me is why he staked such a claim to traditional Faery (particularly in OFS), & presented himself as a writer within the tradition. He may have acted as a mediator between Faery & modern readers brought up in a Christian world, but was that his intention - is that how he saw his role? Did he think of himself as someone opening a door to traditional Faery, so that we could enter into that 'pre-Christian' world, 'freeing' us from Christian 'indoctrination' - or did he actually want to make Faery Christian - or at least make us see it in that way, as 'the best introduction to the Mountains'? Was he using Faery for his own, evangelical, purposes- we know that that was his original motivation (one only has to read Garth's book) but was that desire something he left behind?

I think its clear that Lewis desired to use Faery to evangelise (the Narnia stories at some points are little other than 'parables' designed to inspire/encourage their readers to be good Christians) - did Tolkien intend the same thing? I think its clear from his letters that if he didn't exactly intend it, he would not have been upset by the prospect.