Fantasy

[Bêthberry]

Well, Tolkien's depiction of fantasy eschewed an explicit depiction of Evil. We don't get much explication of Sauraman, of how he fell to his power-tripping ways, nor really of his alleged magnificant eloquence (Gandalf's verba jousting with him not withstanding). Most of LotR focusses on the members of the Fellowship and their efforts and their response to Evil. Perhaps Tolkien's sanitised battle scenes are part of this deliberate decision not to focus upon evil but upon what is required by those who choose good.

At the same time, it is worth thinking about how war has been 'covered' in history. How often in history has it been said that war has been glorified in order to persuade men to fight--pro patria gloria and all that? Hasn't it been an element of the twentieth century that people began to examine, acknowledge, publicise just how horrible battle is? Or perhaps that began with the American Civil War? Look at all the public monuments to war and see the difference between tradition monuments and modern ones. Perhaps this is Tolkien's traditionalism coming to effect and his distaste for the modern emphasis on ugliness.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Perhaps Tolkien's sanitised battle scenes are part of this deliberate decision not to focus upon evil but upon what is required by those who choose good.

.....Perhaps this is Tolkien's traditionalism coming to effect and his distaste for the modern emphasis on ugliness.

But it still leaves us with evil & ugliness of war being presented as, if not 'good' at least glorious...

Does aesthetics justify lies? Tolkien knew first hand what death on the battlefield was like ('animal horror') & yet do we get that from his stories?

Or are we meant to? Do his Elves, Men (& Orcs) die suffocating in mud & choking in their own blood -

death must often have come by way of suffocation – the air squeezed from your body under the weight of men behind you, jammed in the mangle of battle. The pressure and the impetus came from the army that wasn’t yet fighting shoving and heaving.

, do they butcher each other

The weapons of choice are daggers and maces. Men with iron sallets buckled to the backs of their necks, so they can’t be yanked forward to offer a spine stab, stare wide-eyed through slits, straining and flailing with short, maddened blows and ache-tensed muscles into the faces of men inches in front of them.

but Tolkien, for aesthetic reasons, chose not to mention it?

In short, are the battles in M-e as gross & brutal as Towton but the horrors glossed over by Tolkien so as not to shock or traumatise the reader, or, in his 'Secondary World' are those aspects of war absent? Are Tolkien's battles 'fantasy' battles or real ones - & can he justify such 'fantasy' battles, where grief, loss & 'pain' are undeniably present as well as glory & chivalry, but where the real ugliness & brutality of war

the two armies, screaming obscenities or just howling like mad dogs, slithered together

are absent?

How would a reader with no knowledge of actual warfare (either by personal experience or by historical study) take Tolkien's battles - does Tolkien actually contribute to the pro patria gloria idea - intentionally or otherwise? Yet if he does, is that OK because he's writing fantasy?

[bilbo_baggins]

Originally Posted by davem

How would a reader with no knowledge of actual warfare (either by personal experience or by historical study) take Tolkien's battles - does Tolkien actually contribute to the pro patria gloria idea - intentionally or otherwise? Yet if he does, is that OK because he's writing fantasy?

I have to say I believe that Tolkien's depiction of battles do contribute to idea of pro gloria patriae in the minds of fresh readers. Whether this is intentional is not as easily answered... honestly I have no clue. Obviously, Tolkien did not include the grossly vivid concepts of battle that he had personally witnessed, but I believe that he did not mean to intentionally delude younger readers into believing battle to be a purely beautiful and noble event, either.

Contributing to the idea of noble war is not wrong in any way. Some might take offence at the possible delusion of otherwise ignorant readers, but there are many poems, classical and modern, that glorify battle (although the trend in modern poetry seems to paint a truthful picture of battle). Just because Tolkien's genre is fantasy does not change his right as an author to depict battle in any way he pleases. In fact, if the reader would only understand that it is fantasy, then the author should logically be given even more liberty to "lie" about such things.

Originally Posted by davem

...When does fantasy become lying?

Isn't fantasy the epitome of lying? All fantasy lies at some basic level, and I don't believe that lying about wars or battles somehow changes the premise of fantasy, or the justification of lying in that genre. You could say that at some point, fantasy becomes absurdity, but introducing nobility in a battle scene is not absurd, by any means.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by bilbo_baggins

Isn't fantasy the epitome of lying? All fantasy lies at some basic level, and I don't believe that lying about wars or battles somehow changes the premise of fantasy, or the justification of lying in that genre.

Indeed. I do believe it has been said in the past that 'poetry never lieth, because it affirmeth not' or something to that effect.

[davem]

Tolkien's Mythopoea http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/mythopoeia.html is clear on his own position - that Fantasy is not (or should not be) about lies

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers bencath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

[bilbo_baggins]

Originally Posted by davem

Tolkien's Mythopoea http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/mythopoeia.html is clear on his own position - that Fantasy is not (or should not be) about lies

Hmmm, this is very good. Tolkien himself has made the point, I believe, that man does not inherently lie, and that he should not be a Grima Wormtongue as it were...

But the second bold section in your quote states that it is our right to fill our world with fantastical creatures, etc. Either Tolkien is promoting mass hallucination and belief in his construction of M-e, or, we have to admit that his works are, on a basic level, a deception. To say that his works are about lies is wrong, I admit. I should choose a better way of phrasing it. Perhaps I can't even phrase it properly...

... because the dragons and Elves are breathing down my neck. It was no deception!

[davem]

Perhaps, in spite of what Tolkien states in Mythopoea, Fantasy (in the sense of creating a Secondary World) is about creating a world in your own image - one where the woods are peopled by Elves, where the gods walk, & where battles are simple, straightforward affairs of good against evil & where those on the side of right ultimately win out.

(Or where 'God' is a senile, useless spirit from whom humanity can attain liberation in order to be free to build the 'Republic of Heaven'). Perhaps it really is no more than wish-fulfilment, however an author attempts to justify it with philosophical/theological theorising. The likes of Towton never happened in M-e because Tolkien didn't want it to. Which means that no fantasy (Secondary World) is superior to any other (other than in the quality of its creation, & its believability). To argue that Middle-earth is in someway 'superior' to the world(s) of HDM in a moral or ethical sense is pointless, because both Secondary Worlds are ultimately simply the head trips of their respective creators. Setting limits/restrictions on what may be included in a fantasy world is ultimately to attempt to set limits on what a human being feels he or she lacks. Both Tolkien & Pullman are responding to a perceived 'wrongness'/lack in the Primary world by creating a Secondary World in which that wrongness is put right.

And yet, the question still remains - do writers of Fantasy have an obligation to reflect certain Primary World realities (from the horrors of war to the dangers of smoking)?