‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

And there, I think, is the essential dividing line of this entire thread. Some do not believe in absolute Truth, and in that case, Tolkien's definition does not apply very well. Nor would Tolkien's story have a deep Truth to be revealed; everything becomes subjective and individualized. Others do believe in absolute Truth, and can accept Tolkien's definition of Faerie as a revelation of that truth, and see numerous demonstrations of Truth in each of his stories.

I doubt the two opposing views will come to agreement on that topic any time soon.

Uh oh…the nature of Truth and/or truth…I didn’t quite see this coming (but now that it’s here… )

Mark 12:30, you have raised what is probably the most central point to this whole discussion, for which I thank you mightily (*Fordim bows*): the conflict does seem to be between the idea of Truth in the singular versus a plurality of truths. I think, however, that there is a way for us to reconcile what you have characterised here as “two opposing views.” Rather than focusing on the relationship between “absolute Truth” versus an absolute plurality of truths we need to recognise that truth is, itself, a difficult and complex amalgam of the two. Perhaps better put, a truthful (truth-full) statement (or interpretation of a text) engages both the idea of absolute Truth in the singular and a plurality of truths.

My reasoning for this is based on the simple fact that to adopt either ‘position’ on its own without referencing the other is, in the end, impossible.

1) To claim that there is no Truth, only an unending and infinite series of entirely particularised and individual truths is to undo the concept of truth entirely. Falsehood is legion, whereas truth is always undergirded in some manner by singularity (we all speak of “the” truth). The very idea of truth necessitates that there be some point at which the journey toward truth stops at a single point.

2) To claim that there is only one absolute Truth is to deny the fact that we all of us use a wide variety of truths to explore and explain our everyday lives. The fact of birth is something that we can only explain through a variety of different, and entirely truthful ways: theological, biological, sociological, familial, personal, societal, moral, imaginatively, emotionally, etc. Which one of these truth-full descriptions of birth is The Truth? The really dangerous aspect of this approach is that once somebody begins to reduce the overwhelming complexity of human experience to a single absolute Truth…well, that’s where people like Hitler come from.

So where does this leave us? Faith in (or hope of) “the” Truth, in the singular, is necessary if we are to keep hold to the idea of truth at all (that is, to distinguish it from falsehood). But we cannot ever claim to have found or achieved any singular Truth without doing violence to all the other orders or kinds of truth in the world. The best we can do – and this is hard enough and wondrous enough to justify the attempt – is to speak or think or act truth-fully, which is to say that we do so in a manner that maintains our hope in Truth, without denying the plurality of individual truths.

So what has this to do with Tolkien? I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s a way to work through this enchantment quandry. As we interpret LotR we should not do so either to proclaim the singular Truth that it embodies (for that is to deny the other truths of other individuals, or, perhaps even worse, to deny ourselves the plurality of truths we all live with). Nor should we proclaim our own individual truth without any reference whatsoever to the idea or hope of a singular Truth embodied by the text that, in some manner, unifies our experience of the text with the experiences of other people.

Tolkien said that fairy-stories never end – “don’t the great tales never end?” Sam asks with great native wisdom. And that, I think, is the whole point. What Tolkien’s writings constantly remind us is that the absolute Truth of Middle-Earth must remain forever just beyond our grasp – but not beyond the limits of our imagination.

[The Saucepan Man]

I don’t know what to say to this. If something is wrong, it must be wrong in relation to something that is right, no? (Mister Underhill)

Well, perhaps. But not in a way that gives rise to any meaningful kind of interpretation. For example, if the interpretation of LotR as supporting the white supremacists' views is a "wrong" interpretation, then the corresponding "right" interpretation is that LotR does not support their views. Which, in my book, is not really a meaningful interpretation at all, but merely a negation of someone else's interpretation.

However, I don’t think we need to reference an outside, objective morality at all. I think every text has its own implicit morality. (Mister Underhill)

But that's just the point, isn't it? Whether a text supports or expounds any particular moral tenet may in itself be a matter of interpretation.

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. (Aiwendil)

Like Mr U, I fall between the two (although perhaps not in the same manner). As far as my own view of Middle-earth is concerned, I accept everything that is expressly or implicitly contained within the texts published within Tolkien's lifetime as true for that world. But I consider myself free to accept or reject anything else written by Tolkien, although I will generally be inclined to accept it. Of course, in discussions with others, I recognise that I will be bound by the "rules" of that discussion. So, if the discussion is directed towards establishing what Tolkien intended by a particular text, then I must accept that I am bound by what he himself has expressed as his intentions.

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?" (Aiwendil)

In law, tests based upon "reasonableness" are directed towards establishing a boundary between what is acceptable and what is not acceptable according to the concensus of the society applying the test. And so, I do not see this approach as being much different from an analysis of whether a particular interpretation is "right" or "wrong" by reference to how the majority within society would view it. The "reasonable man" (or the man on the Clapham Omnibus as he is sometimes known) stands for the consensus within his society.

And there, I think, is the essential dividing line of this entire thread. Some do not believe in absolute Truth, and in that case, Tolkien's definition does not apply very well. Nor would Tolkien's story have a deep Truth to be revealed; everything becomes subjective and individualized. Others do believe in absolute Truth, and can accept Tolkien's definition of Faerie as a revelation of that truth, and see numerous demonstrations of Truth in each of his stories. (mark 12_30)

I do not view it as nearly so clear cut as you suggest, Helen. "Absolute Truth" is in itself subjective, based upon a person's faith. Different faiths will have different ideas (often very subtly so) as to what precisely the "absolute Truth" entails. Whatever the particular faith of an individual, I still think that everyone's response to Tolkien's works will, to an extent, be subjective and individualised. And even those with no (or little) "faith" can still be inspired by his works, can still find their own individual "truths", and can still respond to Tolkien's portrayal of "Faerie". That said, I would still maintain that there is a level upon which we will all, if we allow ourselves, respond to the works in the same way, regardless of faith, politics, societal values, upbringing etc.

Davem, I agree wholeheartedly with much of what you say in your recent post. While we are reading the story, we should be caught up in it and should not waste time consciously analysing our interpretations of it as we go. And I don't think that you and Mr U are actually that far apart here. It is indeed the story, the characters and the events that they experience, as well as the landscape within which those events occur, which create the enchantment that we feel on reading the text. But I do thing that, to some extent, we are nevertheless subconsciously responding to the text and, in that sense, interpreting what it means to us, as we read it. Otherwise, I am not at all sure that we would undergo the enchantment in the first place.

The Legendarium is a series of stories, not just a setting. (Mister Underhill again - shamelessly overposting )

Yes, and it is both the stories and their settings which prompt our enchantment.

Now, anyone fancy summarising the various ideas raised so far on this thread?

[davem]

MR U

Quote:'davem, you seem to be equating “meaning” and "interpretation" with “allegorical meaning” and "allegorical interpretation". This is certainly not what I’m driving at; I don’t think others are either.'

The post wasn't directed at others her, but at those like Stormfront, ot Terry Donaldson, who do go beyond even applicability into allegory. Analysis of the 'Meaning' of a story is only possible when we have stepped back from the direct experience of the secondary world, & are attempting to account for our reactions to the story. At that point we are 'observers' rather than 'experiencers' of the secondary world. We are critics, classifyers, trying to work out which 'box' to put our experience in, which label to stick on it. Or worse, we're like Stormfront, asking 'What's in it for me? What can I get out of this that will be of use in the Primary world? It equivalent to strip mining, or mass deforestation for a quick buck. Like Frodo in Lorien we should simply experience the living tree, not see it as a source of timber to do something with.

Quote:' You also seem to be expressing the idea that enchantment and meaning are mutually exclusive. Here I disagree strongly. I am with Aiwendil: without plot and characters, where is enchantment? If LotR were a thousand pages of standing around at an Elvish picnic admiring all the otherworldly aspects of Faerie while pixie-dust sprinkled gently down on our heads, we’d be using words like “intensely boring” and “pointless” instead of “enchanting”. The much-referenced “On Fairy Stories”:Quote:
Stories that are actually concerned primarily with “fairies,” that is with creatures that might also in modern English be called “elves,” are relatively rare, and as a rule not very interesting. Most good “fairy-stories” are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches. (emphasis Tolkien’s)
The Legendarium is a series of stories, not just a setting.'

Yet this is exactly what we have in Smith, & Smith is far from boring or pointless. For me it is one of the most powerful & moving works Tolkien ever wrote. We are simply seeing a series of unconected scenes, & visions, with no connecting narrative - at least while we follow Smith through Faerie. Smith has very few 'adventures' in the sense the term is usually understood. He simply walks in Faerie, & things happen, in which he plays little or no active part. The point of the story - if there is one, is that merely wandering in Faerie is of value, & enchanting enough. I have to say that for me, Smith is more 'Tolkienesque' than anything else he wrote (does that make sense?). It is 'pure' Faerie, with no narrative drive as such, no 'quest'. All the rules are put aside & we are taken into Faerie more totally than anywhere else since the Lost Tales.

Aiwendil

I have to wonder about this 'denial' of an 'objectively existing faerie' realm. Especially from someone involved in a project to produce a 'coherent' Silmarillion - what are you doing if not trying to put together a vision of Middle Earth from lots of scattered & contradictory sources - so you must have some sense of what Middle Earth 'should' be like. You must have some sense of there being a coherent story, a coherent world - as if all the existing stories are 'windows' onto this 'Archetypal' secondary world.

Secondly, Tolkien believed in 'faerie', & spent his life trying to present it to us, so even if you don't like or agree with the idea you have to accept that that is the position Tolkien was coming from,& what motivated him. His original reason for beginning to write was not to 'invent' a new mythology, but to rediscover one that was lost. So He clearly believed that this mythological secondary world had once existed, & was still accessible, indeed that it was still around in some form - in traditional beliefs, stories, place names & partiularly in language.

There simply is, for many of us, a sense of familiarty with Middle Earth, a sense of 'recognition', of 'remembering' when we read the stories. What amazed me for a while was that non English people could even make sense of Tolkien's writings - Middle Earth seemed so purely 'English', reflecting the landscapes I grew up in & the people I knew. Yet that's not the case & people from all over the world respond to it. So what explanation can there be - what was I relating to & feeling at home with, if it wasn't my own background? It must have been something more 'universal', something which people from all over the world also felt a connection with. I won't get into the 'Monomyth' debate, as I've only read Masks of God once, a long time ago & my memories of it are vague, but I must side with Tolkien as regards the existence of Faerie, whatever that is.

[Mister Underhill]

SPM: For example, if the interpretation of LotR as supporting the white supremacists' views is a "wrong" interpretation, then the corresponding "right" interpretation is that LotR does not support their views.

I don’t agree here. The thinking isn’t complete. The right interpretation is not simply a negation: “does not support their views”. To refute a wrong interpretation, we should be able to show why it is wrong. It’s not x because it is y. I don’t want to delve too far into the particulars of Stormfront’s interpretation and refuting it. Perhaps you see what I mean.

Whether a text supports or expounds any particular moral tenet may in itself be a matter of interpretation.

Indeed. Though I think there are themes that, in broad stroke at least, will not be debatable. Also, I did not say that these themes will always be obvious or clear-cut, only that they would be there.

But I do thing that, to some extent, we are nevertheless subconsciously responding to the text and, in that sense, interpreting what it means to us, as we read it. Otherwise, I am not at all sure that we would undergo the enchantment in the first place.

When we read SoWM, for example, we begin to form interpretations about the characters, the events that happen to them, and their reactions to those events. Nokes’s reaction to the Fairy Star, to Alf, and so on, lead us to an interpretation of Nokes. We wonder, what is the meaning of the mysterious message give to Smith by the Fairy Queen? And the revelation that [SPOILER ALERT -- skip to the next paragraph if you've not read Smith...] Smith himself apparently is the Fairy King must also be interpreted. What does it mean?

In davem’s excellent post about 'A Shop on the Edge of the Hills of Fairyland' (#154), he describes quite eloquently a key quality of the appeal of the picture: the questions about story elements and characters that it evokes: “...why would a shop be there, what does it sell, who to, & who would run such a place? There's a whole story there in the title, & its almost like, on some level, we feel we 'know' that story, but just can't quite remember it, & desperately want someone to remind us how it goes.”

davem: Yet this is exactly what we have in Smith... We are simply seeing a series of unconected scenes, & visions, with no connecting narrative... The point of the story - if there is one, is that merely wandering in Faerie is of value, & enchanting enough.

Hmm... ‘the point of the story’? Do I detect meaning? Interpretation? But you save yourself with the escape hatch of “-if there is one”.

I agree in a sense that SoWM is more dreamlike, more like a poem, though I think the story does indeed transmit meaning. Tolkien’s own words betray him. In letter 299, he applauds the sentiment that “To seek for the meaning [of the story] is to cut open the ball in search of its bounce.” Yet in the same letter, only moments later, he says: “But the little tale was (of course) not intended for children! An old man's book, already weighted with the presage of bereavement.” Here we already have hints of meaning and intention.

I personally feel that SoWM is, at least in part, a dramatization of the ideas, sentiments, and philosophy found in On Fairy Stories, and is one of the more autobiographical – dare I say allegorical? – pieces that Tolkien ever wrote.

Nevertheless, I do sympathize with your sentiment that a story is meant to be experienced rather than dissected, at least while you’re reading it. And I get that reading a story versus talking about a story is a little bit like the difference between dancing and talking about dancing. One is the experience, one is talking about the experience. But I think the thing that distinguishes a good story from a purely sensual – but meaningless – experience, like an amusement park ride, is that stories do have meaning. They say something, even if it’s something that affects us on such a primal level that no words can ever express it adequately. A story is its own expression.

This post is already too long, so here I’ll just tip my hat to Fordim for building a very thought-provoking bridge between Truth and truth.

[The Saucepan Man]

Just a quick one to respond to Mister U.

I don’t agree here. The thinking isn’t complete. The right interpretation is not simply a negation: “does not support their views”. To refute a wrong interpretation, we should be able to show why it is wrong. It’s not x because it is y.

Yes, I agree that when we seek to refute a "wrong" interpretation, we do get into meaningful interpretation. But there will be any number ways of interpreting the text to do this, and so we get into territory where there is no one interpretation which can be objectively shown to be "right". Which is what I meant when I said that it does not follow from the fact that an interpretation is "wrong" that there will be one corresponding "right" interpretation, save for the meaningless negation.

[davem]

MrU

Clearly there is an allegorical dimension to SoWM - Tolkien even makes a stab at interpreting the allegory of the Human world - though not of Faery (at least not in any passage quoted by Fleiger. He writes:

'The Great Hall is evidently in a way an 'allegory' of the village Church; the Master Cook with his house adjacent, & his office that is not hereditary, provides for its own instruction & succession but is not one of the 'secular' or profitable crafts, & yet is supported by the village, is plainly the Parson & the Priesthood. 'Cooking' is a domestic affair practised by men & women: personal religion & prayer. the Master Cook presides over & provides for all the religious festivals of the year, & also for all the religious occaisions that are not universal: births, marriages, & deaths'

But is this interpretation 'canonical', or an attempt to impose a primary world relevance on the secondary world - my point (probably badly expressed) was not that secondary worlds like Middle Earth have no meaning - of course they do - but that whatever meaning they have is, or should be, limited to that world, & that we shouldn't take that meaning 'out' of that world & attempt to impose it on this world, which is what Stormfront & others are trying to do. There is a 'meaning' to Frodo's Quest, the story of the Numenoreans obsession with racial purity has a relevance, & can teach us something - but [I]only/I] about Middle Earth, not about this world. (Though having said that, what Tolkien shows in this instance is that an obsession with such ideas of racial purity & bloodlines brings disaster, & if anyone was looking for it, they could find a very insightful analysis of Fascism & its disastrous effects in the Akallabeth - but that is to miss the whole point, & make the story into something it wasn't meant to be - so, MrU, though even with this point I may be seeming to contradict my own argument, I will 'save' myself again . The point I'm making is that Stormfront don't even seem to understand what Tolkien has written, & they are not making a 'one to one' connection between the Numenoreans & their own 'philosophy', because they are interpreting the Numenorean thing as 'pro' racial purity, when it is actually 'anti' that position).

If we take another piece from the essay, Tolkien describes the geography of SoWM -

'The Forest lies on the western edge of Wooton Major, whose one Inn bears over its door a stone with a worn & faded carving of three trees & the inscription 'Welco to the Wode.'....The western villages of the country, among them the Wooton's & Walton, were originally main points of contact between Faery & this country of Men; they had been at an earlier period actually within the forest borders, as their names signify.' (Wooton comes from Old English wudu-tun- 'town in or by a wood', & Walton, a village even samller than Wooton Minor, from weald-tun,' town in a wood or on a wold' ).....Walton, even deeper in the forest than Wooton Minor, is evidently still the point of entry into Faery for those humans who venture there.'

I would say that this description of the geography of SoWM should be treated as 'canonical', even though it is not included in the story, because it limits itself to the secondary world, & is not aimed at making the story 'relevant' to this world. It is not 'meaningless', but any meaning it has is limited to the world of story(='Faerie' - hope everyone has realised I'm not using the spellings Faery & Faerie interchangeably - Faery is the world Smith travels in in SoWM, Faerie is the 'world' Tolkien is exploring, the world of 'fairy story' as such).

There may, as you say be an allegorical dimension to the story. Tolkien gave two possible ones - an old man's story about 'letting go', & one about the relationship of the Church to the community. But it works without those interpretations, & works better in my opinion without them, because they blur the lines between the worlds. SoWM is very definite in its seperation of the Faery & the world of Men. Allegory attempts to make the two worlds one, to make the secondary world into nothing more than a 'clever' description of this world (awkward phrase, but its early, & I hope you get what I mean), & denies its autonomy. Sadly, this is a trap the older Tolkien fell into more & more often. It is based on a mistaken belief that stories must be 'relevant', must have a meaning in & for the primary world, to have any worth. But secondary worlds should be self contained. There should be 'crossing points', places where access is possible, but there should also be limits, boundaries, which some things don't, cannot, cross. The Monsters should stay there, & not come here - I've never come across a believeable story of Dragons or Elves existing in this world, for instance, it always feels 'wrong' when a writer says they have. Its a bit like historians 'discovering' the real King Arthur, then go on to present us with a fifth century warlord - no Guinevere, no Lancelot, no Grail - so, we can have a 'real' Arthur, but the price is the loss of all the magic, of everything that made us want him in the first place.

In the same way, the 'meaning' of the stories set in the secondary world should stay there, because it can only come through stripped of its secondary world magic.

That's not to say the magic of itself can't remain with us when we return to this world - it can & should. As I said before, the beauty & the magic of the secondary world can make this world seem more beautiful & magical, even if that is simply the effect of memory of the secondary world overlaying the primary world, but the two worlds are just that - two seperate, bounded worlds.

And that's more than enough for now

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

davem, you wrote:

but that is to miss the whole point, & make the story into something it wasn't meant to be

I think the question I would like to have answered (and, I hope I'm not off-base when I say that this is the same issue that has bedeviled your conversations with Saucepan Man on this topic) is just how do you/we know what the story was "meant to be"? If, as you are arguing, the meaning of the text is entirely internal to M-E, then how can we access that and bring it 'out' into our Primary World? Are we in some kind of direct communion with the author? Or are we back to the claim that 'we' all 'just know' what it's 'about'?

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

...there is no one interpretation which can be objectively shown to be "right".

I think even at this generalized level (“Stormfront’s interpretation” can be broken down into a set of more specific interpretations, presumably), we can formulate a positive refutation, even if it’s hard to articulate. LotR is not about racial purity and white superiority because a central theme of the book is the cooperation of a group of racially diverse people, who, in the course of their adventures, break down walls of bigotry and prejudice that divide them.

We might be able to refine that through conversation, but I think you’ll probably agree that my interpretation is headed in the right direction.

davem, an interesting post. I’ve never read Fleiger, so that’s the first I’ve seen of that explanation. I’ll leave SoWM alone for now except to say that I’m a bit surprised that you would cite a story clearly intended to have allegorical meaning – deliberately meant to relate to “our world” – as an example of “pure Faerie”.

Originally Posted by davem

In the same way, the 'meaning' of the stories set in the secondary world should stay there, because it can only come through stripped of its secondary world magic.

Are you still talking about allegorical type meanings? If there’s no meaning that we can relate to our own lives and situations, what Tolkien called applicability, then a tale may serve to give us a few hours’ reading enjoyment, but won’t have much more impact. I would argue that a large part of LotR’s enduring appeal lies in its profound depth of meaning.

[davem]

Fordim\

I don't mean that we can't try & relate what we experience in Faerie to our lives in the primary world, what I mean is any 'meaning' or 'relevance' we may find is entirely subjective, & events & characters in the secondary world have no direct intentional relationship to the primary world - because that would be to treat the secondary world merely as an allegory of the primary world. Applicability is subjective. What I find applicable will not necessarily be what you find applicable. Applicability is subjective, Allegory is 'objective' - in the sense that the 'meaning' is imposed by the author of the story, & that 'meaning' is always the author's intended meaning. So, while Stormfront may find support for their racial ideology in LotR, it was clearly not the intent of the author to put it there. LotR was not written as a Nazi allegory, so Stormfront cannot claim to be such. So there is no intentional meaning written into LotR. The 'meaning' of the story lies in the story, not outside it, in the primary world. Stormfront are effectively claiming to find a primary world relevance in Middle Earth, which was not put there by the author. Middle Earth in that sense has no relevance to this world, & from the point of view of this world, the story is 'meaningless'.

(note, it is not without internal meaning, & when we enter into Middle Earth we will find it meaningful - there are reasons why the characters do what they do - they don't behave randomly - but the reasons they do what they do are inspired by events & circumstances to be found within the secondary world, not in the primary world. So whatever the Numenoreans' reasons/motivations for their claims to superiority within Middle Earth, those reasons have nothing to do with the reasons/motivations put forward by Stormfront for their claims to superiority, because that world is that world & this world is this world. If any member of that organisation could prove scientifically that they are decended from Elros then their claims would have to be considered - though we could point out to them that the Numenorean's sense of superiority lead repeatedly to disaster, from the fall of Numenor down to the loss of Arnor & the Kin Strife & beyond, so the ideal of 'racial superiorty' is something they should consider forgetting. We could also declare them undesirable aliens, & tell them to get back to their own world & stop making nuisances of themselves in our world).

As to what we can bring back from Faery, well, we can only bring back memories, which may inspire us to make ourselves & our world a 'better' place. But applicability is not about 'bringing something back' as such, because that's about doing something with what we bring back. I can say 'well, seeing Aragorn's struggle has inspired me to do such & such' but all I have brought back with me fro Middle Earth is the memory of Aragorn. How I apply it is down to me, & any meaning I have found in it, any rfelevance for my life here, is all down to me. The 'experience' was given to me, the meaning I find in it is all my own. Tolkien is telling me a story, not what it means - or if he does try & tell me what it means he is changing his role, from storyteller to teacher, & making his tales into allegory - which he has said they are not. So, again, any 'meaning' we think we have found in Tolkien's stories is our own - as Aragorn tells Boromir that if a man finds peril in Lorien its because he brought it there himself. If we find meaning or relevance for the primary world in Middle Earth then we are the ones who imposed it. We may learn something there which we didn't know before, which may change the way we think about ourselves & our world, but that discovery would be our own, & whatever it means the meaning is our own - applicability, not allegory. I've come to lots of realisations about myself & the world through 'applying' examples form Tolkien's stories to my own life, but that's 'me', not Tolkien.

So, MrU quote:

' If there’s no meaning that we can relate to our own lives and situations, what Tolkien called applicability, then a tale may serve to give us a few hours’ reading enjoyment, but won’t have much more impact. I would argue that a large part of LotR’s enduring appeal lies in its profound depth of meaning.'

Where does that depth of meaning lie - in the secondary world or in ourselves? LotR will mean nothing to some, less than nothing to others, be nonsense to others still. And to some of us it will contain profound truth. But all that meaning & profundity (& beauty & sorrow & longing) are all contained in Middle Earth, & only exist for us in this world if we bring back our memories & experiences of that place, and then apply them to ourselves & our world. And the way in which we apply them will determine whether we end up with 'profundity' or nonsense, or something deeply wrong & dangerous. We may learn from our time in Middle Earth, but Middle Earth is not there to intentionally teach us anything - certainly not about this world - it may teach us about itself, & we may find a way to apply what we learn there to this world, but that wasn't the' intention of the place & people' we encountered there.

Who says SoWM was intended to have an allegorical meaning - & even if it did, can we say that's all it is - that its just an allegory & nothing more. In fact, as I said, Tolkien only offers an allegorical explanation for the 'human world' of Wooton Major. If he had intended the story simply as an allegory & nothing more, why not just tell the story of that place & leave out what happens to Smith in Faery? Faery in the story is not an allegory. What allegorical meaning could the episode with the Elven Mariners have, or the Birch tree (yes, I know Shippey attempted to 'decode' that particular episode, but without any success IMO), or Smith's dancing with the Faery Queen? What allegorical meaning is there to our sense of wonder, yearning & loss of something we can't even remember, which comes through when reading the story? If SoWM was written as an allegory its a very bad one, because no-one so far has been able to come up with a one-to-one correspondence between it & the primary world. It may have allegorical parts, scattered here & there throughout it, but the problem with allegorical fairy stories is that the 'magic' they appear to contain, or give access to, is not true enchantment, because when you translate the allegory the magic disappears. Smith moves us precisely because it is not allegorical as a whole. As a whole it is something else, & whatever that 'something else' is, it will never be translated into the language of this primary world, because it is what it is & can't be translated into something else, because it wasn't written to disguise the 'truth' but to reveal it.

[Aiwendil]

Mister Underhill wrote:

To clarify my own feeling slightly, I’m not really “concerned” about analyzing “enchantment”. If I were, I probably would have quit the Downs years ago. I merely observed that the analysis, for me, doesn’t get me any closer to understanding why or how it works.

Ah. I'm sorry for mischaracterizing your view.

Davem wrote:

I have to wonder about this 'denial' of an 'objectively existing faerie' realm. Especially from someone involved in a project to produce a 'coherent' Silmarillion - what are you doing if not trying to put together a vision of Middle Earth from lots of scattered & contradictory sources - so you must have some sense of what Middle Earth 'should' be like. You must have some sense of there being a coherent story, a coherent world - as if all the existing stories are 'windows' onto this 'Archetypal' secondary world.

I think that there is a coherent story to tell about Middle-earth. Actually, I think that there are many mutually contradictory coherent stories to tell about Middle-earth. Middle-earth surely is an imaginary place. But "Faerie" cannot simply be Middle-earth. If Faerie were literally equal to Middle-earth, it could not also be the Faery of SoWM or the Little Kingdom of Farmer Giles or any other such place. My point was that "Faerie", if it is a meaningful term at all, does not refer to some self-consistent place, real or imaginary.

Secondly, Tolkien believed in 'faerie', & spent his life trying to present it to us, so even if you don't like or agree with the idea you have to accept that that is the position Tolkien was coming from,& what motivated him. His original reason for beginning to write was not to 'invent' a new mythology, but to rediscover one that was lost. So He clearly believed that this mythological secondary world had once existed, & was still accessible, indeed that it was still around in some form - in traditional beliefs, stories, place names & partiularly in language.

First of all, I must point out that while Tolkien was an extremely intelligent and talented person, he was not infallible. That he held some opinion does not mean that that opinion is necessarily correct.

However, I do not think that my views on this matter contradict Tolkien's.

Let's try to be clear about one thing: Tolkien did not literally think that he was rediscovering a lost mythology in the Silmarillion. He did not expect ancient records to turn up containing the original version of the Turin legend any more than he expected the shards of Gurthang to be unearthed by archaeologists. What he did perhaps think was that he was reconstructing certain ideas that had existed in ancient mythologies, or inventing ones that could very plausibly have existed.

Let me point out that I never denied that "Faerie" is a meaningful, or even important, concept. What I argued was that:

1. Faerie is not literally a real place.
2. Faerie is actually not so much a place, real or imaginary, as it is a set of images, moods, ideas, and associations.
3. The primary purpose of fantasy is not to provide a window to Faerie; rather, the purpose of Faerie is to provide a kind of power to fantasy.

Yet this is exactly what we have in Smith, & Smith is far from boring or pointless. For me it is one of the most powerful & moving works Tolkien ever wrote. We are simply seeing a series of unconected scenes, & visions, with no connecting narrative - at least while we follow Smith through Faerie. Smith has very few 'adventures' in the sense the term is usually understood. He simply walks in Faerie, & things happen, in which he plays little or no active part. The point of the story - if there is one, is that merely wandering in Faerie is of value, & enchanting enough. I have to say that for me, Smith is more 'Tolkienesque' than anything else he wrote (does that make sense?). It is 'pure' Faerie, with no narrative drive as such, no 'quest'. All the rules are put aside & we are taken into Faerie more totally than anywhere else since the Lost Tales.

I will not touch the issue of allegory in Smith - save to mention that I see it as at least quasi-allegorical in intention.

But as for "pure Faerie without adventure" being sufficient - it works well enough within the context of this work, but how much longer could Smith be before it became dreadfully boring? And how many works like Smith could one tolerate before one hungered for a book in which something actually happens?

To be honest, while I did enjoy Smith, it is far from my favorite work by Tolkien. I much prefer Giles. To me, the chief value of Smith seemed to lie in its consideration of Faerie as such, sort of as a meta-fantasy or disguised piece of literary theory more than as a work of fiction in its own right.

[davem]

Aiwendil

I don't think we can ask 'how much longer could Smith be before it became dreadfully boring?'

Because SoWM is complete as it is. It isn't an edited down version of a longer story. Its rather like asking how much bigger a canvas could Leonardo have used for the Mona Lisa, how much more of the landscape could he have painted before the central figure lost its impact?

The objective existence in some form of Faerie is the issue at the heart of this discussion in some ways. What do we mean by 'objective' in this sense. Faerie is not a 'place' with a geographical location, or even a definite psychological one.

In the Beowulf essay Tolkien gives his reason for Beowulf's last fight being with a Dragon, not a human foe. The Dragon in the story is both a 'real' physical threat, & a 'symbol' of something else - of 'Death'. Its supernatural or mythical nature means it is more than a physical enemy. So, it represents the threat of death & the idea, the 'archetype' of Death. So the poet is presenting us with an old man going to face his own death in battle with a physical threat, & at the same time, with 'Man' facing the inevitability of 'Death'. One overlays or underlies the other. But they are two things - subjective, Beowulf confronts the Dragon, & objective, 'Man' confronts 'Death'.

In The Fall of Gondolin Tolkien is doing the same thing. Subjectively it is the Somme, Objectively it is 'War'. The battle of Beowulf with the Dragon allows the poet to explore the 'Archetypal' confrontation with Death. FoG allows Tolkien to explore the Archetype of War. Yet once he begins this 'exploration' he crosses over into 'Faerie' & possibly finds more than he was looking for. Through the horrors of the Somme he finds a way into Faerie, & he provides a way for us to follow.

So these 'Archetypal' (not used in the strictly Jungian sense) realities are 'facts' of human experience - as are birth, love, sacrifice, etc. Tolkien sees the Somme through 'enchanted eyes', & is able to see into the underlying reality of Human existence. We could argue that the 'general' in this sense is 'truer' than the specific - because the fight with the Dragon is only one way to present the confrontation with Death, but we will all face Death. And we will have to face it in our own way.

The secondary world, of story, myth - Faerie - goes on forever, & obeys its own laws, has its own meaning, which affects us, but is not 'for' us. We experience these underlying facts through 'story', by entering into the secondary world, but the story, the underlying facts of human life carries on, whether we know the story or not. So Faerie is 'objectively' real. The individual stories are not literally true - Middle Earth exists only in our imaginations, but what it refers to, wat it points us towards, is an objective 'reality', which was around before we appeared on this planet, & will be around long after we 'pass beyond the circles of the world'.

This in no way requires us to believe in God, an afterlife, or anything at all 'supernatural'. We will die in the end, whether we go on to anything else or not. But Faerie is more 'real' than we are, because it is the Human story, which will go on as long as there are humans, while we are only around temporarily - in this world at least.

When you say 'The primary purpose of fantasy is not to provide a window to Faerie; rather, the purpose of Faerie is to provide a kind of power to fantasy.'

I'm not sure. Faerie has no 'purpose' at all - if by that you mean that its simply 'for' us, to provide raw material for the primary world enterprise of making up stories. We can, of course, tell stories about Faerie, but to say that's all its for is like saying that Death only exists to provide us with dramatic incidents for our fictional dramas. For me it would seem to be the other way around. Death is an inescapable 'fact', & that's why we include it in our stories.

So, (quote) 'And how many works like Smith could one tolerate before one hungered for a book in which something actually happens?

To be honest, while I did enjoy Smith, it is far from my favorite work by Tolkien. I much prefer Giles. To me, the chief value of Smith seemed to lie in its consideration of Faerie as such, sort of as a meta-fantasy or disguised piece of literary theory more than as a work of fiction in its own right.'

I think a very great deal 'happens' in Smith - which is not to say those happenings are 'for' anything - not in the primary world, but they don't have to be - why should they be. Faery doesn't exist only for Smith, or the inhabitants of Wooton Major, or even for ourselves reading the story. They simply 'happen', & we are told about them, & we can apply what we learn from thinking about them, if we choose to thiink about them, or desire to 'learn' anything - which is far from the point of Faerie, which doesn't exist to 'teach' us anything.

To call it 'a disguised piece of literary theory more than as a work of fiction in its own right.' is to miss the point - what is Tolkien the 'literary theorist' telling us through the events Smith witnesses - The Birch, the arrival of the Elven Mariners, the Faery Queen dancing with her maidens? I'm the exact opposite as regards Smith - from the first time I read it I was deeply moved - especially as I read an edition which included Pauline Baynes's illustrations. I've only been as powerfully struck by the evocation of Faerie twice - when I first read The Hobbit, & when I read the Cottage of Lost Play.

[HerenIstarion]

davem

Sadly, this is a trap the older Tolkien fell into more & more often

Well, I'll risk being called visionist (which I am not), but I'd say (in this lining up with mark:12-30, if I were to understand her post as she meant it), that in his late years (as in his young years, I'd say, but more obvioulsy so in later writings) Tolkien was not so much trying to conform his secondary world to the primary world, but to the Absolute Truth (call it Primary World with capitalization if you will). I may also risk being a bit platonic, but I assume that it may be said that both secondary world [sub]created by the writer, and the primary world we live in are images of some other more 'real' word, and there is such a thing as Absolute Truth (to use Mr. U (even if unconscious) support: If something is wrong, it must be wrong in relation to something that is right, no?. Yes. And for something to be true or untrue, or proved to be true or untrue, it must be measered against something which is True. And the thing we measure something against is not, by definition of the process itself, equal to things measured. To add up to the soup, I will draw Kant to my support too, with his 'moral law inside me' maxim

I do not intend to present you with the idea that Tolkien was some kind of a medium 'recording' things he have seen in a vision. I know he has been inventing his places and characters. In this I line up with Aiwendil, I believe. What I'm driving at may be listed as follows:

1. Talking about 'moral tenets' - all human race has moral code which is basically the same (whatever minor differences amounting to different cultures, major evaluation is the same - kindness and bravery are valued everywhere, and cowardice and treachery are vices everywhere likewise etc.)

2. The existence of such uniformity is not explainable without drawing on Absolute Truth resources.

3. The primary world itself is less true in relation to Absolute Truth, for every event in it has to be measured against it and the level of its conformity to be found out (the whole Freedom of Will/Choice issue hangs on these hinges).

Now, having the general postulates, I will move on to more concrete maxims:

4. Tolkien was trying to bring his secondary world in conformity not with the primary world, but with the Absolute Truth, which took considerable effort, and brought an end to it being self contained.

5. What has been called Faerie throughout this thread, to me seems like just another mirror (as our world is mirror too) of the same Absolute Truth. Again, I do not intend to indicate that Faerie as Faerie is real place, with that particular mountain and this particular river placed indeed as drawn by JRR Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien on their home made map, but as the reflection of concepts. So again I'm with Aiwendil here up to a point, but another point may be added – the whole aim of fantasy (as of other arts too), is not to open a window, but to reflect the Truth, to be a mirror. As cherubs are calling to eaceh other, so, as no creature can contain the greatness of the Creator all in itself, we have to tell each other about Him.We should be grateful to Tolkien for telling us such a strong word of it.

6. In this context, the unifromity, or self contained substance of any [sub]created secondary world is of less value that its relation to the Absolute Truth. And that is why Tolkien was leaning so heavily on the concept of Eucatastrophe

Hence it is to be concluded, that:

A) Some interpetations may be indeed more right, and others more wrong
B) The way of judging the rightness/wrongness of the intepratation lies indeed with the consensus of the society, general 'reasonable man' (what was the name of the chap on a bus?)

I would briefly add that enchantment much discussed here may be subsequent to all three given reasons indeed, but it all comes down to the Absolute Truth in the end. (And well, call it universal archetypes who will, I will stick to Absolute Truth rather) Going back to clause 5 of my statements above, it may be said that some that do not fall in for fantasy, have some other ways to the Truth, as good and as justified as fantasy/Faerie may be.

PS. Well, I'm afraid I've just pushed this thread in "Finding God in JRRT" direction, but I do believe that without such a concept there is not way of understanting Tolkien. Appreciation, love, enjoyment – yes. Understanding – no.

Disclaimer – the Post Scriptum does not state my claim of having absolute understanding myself, I just have a feeling that my efforts are in the right direction, in a sense as in clause A of a conclusion

[Mister Underhill]

Excellent post, HI. I think you're on to something with your thoughts about absolute truth. This is an intuitive thing and I'm just thinking my way through this, but I think that absolute truth can form a dividing line between an author and his work. That sounds kind of weird and no doubt will provide good fodder for satire at a certain party, but, at the risk of being skewered, let me try to explain through example:

In Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Lucas introduced the idea of "midi-chlorians", microscopic lifeforms that communicate with the Force. The degree to which any individual will be "strong in the Force" has to do with his midi-chlorian count -- the more of these microscopic symbionts he has in him, the more in touch with the Force he will be.

With me so far? Now, the introduction of this story element didn't wreck the internal consistency of the Star Wars "secondary world" -- strictly speaking there's no reason why it shouldn't work as a story element -- but many fans rebelled against it (myself included). Why? Well, speaking only for myself, some connection to truth that I sensed in the original conception of the Force seemed to be reduced to an accident of biology. Now, any person could only be in touch with the great spiritual energy of the universe to the extent that he is infected with these little parasitic germs. Lucas had undermined the Truth of his own legendarium.

So, tying this back to the question of "canonicity", this may be an example of how a story is a separate thing from its author, and how his authority even in a world of his own creation is incomplete and subject to truth.

Or it may only be an example of how I am a dork who thinks too much about stories.

[mark12_30]

Are the midichlorians more spiritually attuned than the Jedi? And how long are the midichlorians in training before they're knighted?

Yeah, I hated midichlorians too.

As far as my experience goes, the only people who seriously lay claim to *possessing* absolute Truth are those who haven't been pursuing it for very long or very seriously. Those who have spent a significant amount of time pursuing it, realize that (a) the more they obtain, the more they learn is out there that they don't even know how to pursue; and (b) what they do think they know, they see only "through a glass darkly" and not in its fullness. So believing *in* absolute Truth and choosing to pursue it is quite different than claiming to *have* it.

Given the through-a-glass-darkly vantage, hence the worth in holding up several different mirrors to try and catch those through-a-glass-darkly glimpses from different perspectives. Hence, LotR and SoWM, and even (in that Book you're not supposed to name on this board) different parables on similar topics that hilight different points.

[davem]

H-I

If we take this underlying 'true' level of reality to exist we can say it is the 'Archetype' from which this reality takes its form. Or that this reality is an imperfect image of that reality. So we can bring in Christianity - 'Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in Heaven' - so we pray that this reality will be brought in to line with the divine, perfect reality. Or we could bring in the Hermeticists, with their dictum of 'As Above, So Below'. There is a theory that the positioning of the three pyramids at Gizeh was intened to 'reflect' the stars in the belt of Orion. So there is a sense that this world is not 'perfect' yet & has to be brought into line with some 'ideal'.

The question then arises as to whether Faerie could be said to be some kind of underlying 'blueprint', between the Archetype itself, & this world. So, when we enter Faerie we move a step closer to the 'primary' world - which in this case would not be this world. The 'divine' world would be the 'primary' world, Faerie the 'secondary' world, & this world, the physical, would be the third in the sequence. Which would make the 'secondary' world 'truer' than this one, being 'closer' to the 'primary', Archtypal reality. So the sequence could be expressed theologically as this world = the body, Faerie = the Soul, & the Archetypal world = the Spirit.

Of course, we could put a different case - this world is closest to the Archetypal, ideal, world, & Faerie is a distortion of this world, in which case it would have to be brought into being as close a 'reflection' of this world as possible.

The problem with this alternative is that Faerie deals in absolutes, or 'archetypes' - Death, Love, Beauty, Ugliness, etc, which in this world are never experienced in their 'pure' forms. So, Faerie must be closer to Ideal reality, than this world. And we're back 'by a commodius vicus of recirculation' to Plato.

So, when Aiwendil states that a fantasy which showed us only a sequence of images of Faerie would be boring, he is saying that that 'closer' we approach this Ideal, the more bored we will become And that if we ever got to Heaven we'd be bored rigid.

[mark12_30]

davem wrote:

The question then arises as to whether Faerie could be said to be some kind of underlying 'blueprint', between the Archetype itself, & this world. So, when we enter Faerie we move a step closer to the 'primary' world - which in this case would not be this world. The 'divine' world would be the 'primary' world, Faerie the 'secondary' world, & this world, the physical, would be the third in the sequence. Which would make the 'secondary' world 'truer' than this one, being 'closer' to the 'primary', Archtypal reality. So the sequence could be expressed theologically as this world = the body, Faerie = the Soul, & the Archetypal world = the Spirit.

davem, that's a fascinating opening.

Considering your list, I'd suggest an alternative view:
body is analogous to the physical realm
the spirit is analagous to the Truth
and the soul is analogous to our concepts-- which include archetypes, Faerie stories and Myth, and parables, and every other way in which we imperfect beings try to grasp (or grasp at?) the Spirit, the Truth.

[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

I don't think we can ask 'how much longer could Smith be before it became dreadfully boring?'

Because SoWM is complete as it is. It isn't an edited down version of a longer story.

I agree that it's complete as it is. The logic of the argument up to this point is as follows: Mr. Underhill and I argued that pure Faerie is not enough; there must be plot as well. You argued that Smith demonstrates that pure Faerie, without adventure, is in fact enough.

The claim I was trying to make by asking how much longer Smith could be without becoming boring was that Smith is a special case. Yes, pure Faerie without adventure is enough to sustain a short work like Smith that is, as much as anything else, a meditation upon fantasy and Faerie. But in general, for longer works or for works that are not primarily concerned with the art of fantasy, plot and adventure are needed (I would say, in fact, that they are the most important aspect).

Faerie is not a 'place' with a geographical location, or even a definite psychological one.

Agreed - this is more or less what I was arguing.

So Faerie is 'objectively' real.

I agree. I did not argue that it is not real. I only argued that it is not a place.

I'm not sure. Faerie has no 'purpose' at all - if by that you mean that its simply 'for' us, to provide raw material for the primary world enterprise of making up stories.

You're right; I was careless with my wording. But I stand by the sentiment, which is that in the context of fantasy literature, Faerie is used as a means (a very powerful one) to an end; it is not the end itself.

I think a very great deal 'happens' in Smith

Did I misunderstand you earlier, then? I thought that as an argument against the claim that "pure Faerie is not enough; things must actually happen" you pointed to Smith as an example of pure Faerie sufficing without plot.

I agree that Smith is not plotless. But it is a kind of minimalist plot, so I was willing to accept it as, approximately, an example of pure Faerie without incident.

To call it 'a disguised piece of literary theory more than as a work of fiction in its own right.' is to miss the point - what is Tolkien the 'literary theorist' telling us through the events Smith witnesses

Do you deny that it is, at least in large part, literary theory? If so, then why do you then inquire into Tolkien's role as a literary theorist? If not, then why am I missing the point?

I happen to think it's rather good literary theory, if it comes to that. My point was that it is not very typical of fantasy literature, nor even of Tolkien's work. I'll grant that Smith may be more or less a "window to Faerie" - but I think that it is the exception.

HerenIstarion wrote:

Well, I'll risk being called visionist (which I am not), but I'd say (in this lining up with mark:12-30, if I were to understand her post as she meant it), that in his late years (as in his young years, I'd say, but more obvioulsy so in later writings) Tolkien was not so much trying to conform his secondary world to the primary world, but to the Absolute Truth (call it Primary World with capitalization if you will).

I must say that all this discussion of "Truth" with a capital T makes me a bit uneasy. What is meant by it? Perhaps this is obvious to others, but I am perplexed. "Truth" as I understand it is a property of certain propositions (those propositions that are not false). It is a logical term.

Obviously, this is not the way in which it is being employed here. What, then, is it supposed to mean?

I suppose it may mean God, or heaven, or something like that. If that is indeed the case, I think it would be much more clear simply to say so.

If, then, I understand this correctly, the claim at hand is either that 1. the "Faerie" element that we detect in fantasy is in fact a reflection or image of God/heaven/"Truth" or 2. the first claim is true and, additionally, to achieve such an image is the primary purpose of fantasy.

Now, being non-religious, I obviously disagree with both of these claims.

The trouble is that there's not much more to say than that. I do not think that I fail to fully appreciate Tolkien's work because I don't subscribe to this notion of "Truth". Nor do I think that my appreciation of it is due, unbeknownst to me, to some subconscious acceptance of this "Truth".

And I think that the whole conjecture of "Truth" as the real identity of "Faerie" must be left at that, unless one whishes to enter into a debate on theological claims (which presumably one does not).

[The Saucepan Man]

I must say that all this discussion of "Truth" with a capital T makes me a bit uneasy.

You and me both, Aiwendil.

It was precisely this concern which led me to question Helen's division of the thread between those who believe in "absolute Truth" and those who do not. Because every person is the product of different upbringings, social and cultural influences, experiences etc, every person's beliefs will vary to one degree or other. Certainly amongst those of different faiths and those who have little or no religious beliefs, but also the values of those who share a faith can vary quite considerably from one person to another. So I cannot accept that any one person is able to say that their a belief in an "absolute Truth" is any more "right" than another person's belief in the same concept, or indeed than the values of someone who does not strive for this "absolute Truth".

And so, while I would agree that there are "wrong" interpretations of Tolkien's works (judged by societal norms, although those will vary from one society to another), I would maintain that (apart from the negative counterparts of such "wrong" interpretations), there is no obectively measurable "right" way of interpreting them.

Certainly, I cannot agree with H-I's proposition that:

without such a concept [God] there is not way of understanting Tolkien. Appreciation, love, enjoyment – yes. Understanding – no.

since that is akin to saying that, unless one happens to hold a particular belief, one cannot truly understand Tolkien's works. Instinctively, for me, that just seems wrong.

[Lord of Angmar]

Certainly, I cannot agree with H-I's proposition... ...since that is akin to saying that, unless one happens to hold a particular belief, one cannot truly understand Tolkien's works. Instinctively, for me, that just seems wrong.The Saucepan Man

I hope I am not misrepresenting your view, HerenIstarion, when I say that what you meant by:

without such a concept [God] there is not way of understanting Tolkien. Appreciation, love, enjoyment – yes. Understanding – no.

was not that you must believe in a (Christian... Catholic) God to 'understand' Tolkien, but that you must realize that Tolkien held strong beliefs in the existence of such a God, and that an omnipotent God is present in Middle-earth, to fully understand where Tolkien is coming from in his writing. In other words, you could 'appreciate' the ending of The Lord of the Rings with Gollum 'accidentally' falling into the fires of Sammath Naur, but to fully understand the scene as it was intended by the author, you must realize the presence of a Divine Providence in Middle-earth.

This all ties back in with the question of, "Should the author's intention factor into our reading experience and individual interpretion?", but I haven't the time to give any real (or original) input on the subject.

[The Saucepan Man]

I apologise, H-I, if I mischaracterised what you were saying.

... you must realize that Tolkien held strong beliefs in the existence of such a God, and that an omnipotent God is present in his writings, to fully understand where Tolkien is coming from in his writing.

I certainly do not have any difficulty with that as a proposition, provided that the distinction is made between understanding "where Tolkien is coming from" and understanding the text itself. I was talking about the latter in putting forward my view that, subject to what is expressly or implicitly stated in the text (and I would include the concept of "providence" here) there is no one "right" way of interpreting (or understanding) his works.

[Lord of Angmar]

I was talking about the latter in putting forward my view that there is no one "right" way of interpreting (or understanding) his works.

I agree wholeheartedly. I am also skeptical that there is any wrong way to interpret a piece of fictional writing. Joyce Carol Oates said that, as a writer, she had no relationship with her writing after it had been published. Her self as an author, she said, was a person she did not know, a person who did not exist except in her writing. I believe that fictional writing, once published, should be considered the only primary source on the story told within its pages. Whatever a writer may say about his or her intentions before, during or after the writing should not sway the reader's interpretation. If the story cannot stand on its own to uphold the values that the author tried to imbue it with, then it should be open to any interpretation the reader reasonably sees in the course of his/her private reading. The reader should even, God forbid, be allowed to present his/her interpretation in a public forum without fear that anyone (besides, I suppose, the author speaking directly to the reader in a public medium) will proclaim it a blanketly "wrong" interpretation.

Sorry for the awkward wording and, perhaps, nonsensicality of this post; just my one and a half cents on the subject.

-Angmar

[davem]

Aiwendil

Perhaps I should have been more careful with my wording. When I said:

I think a very great deal 'happens' in Smith

I meant a very great deal happens to Smith, (ie a great deal happens in(side) 'Smith' the person), spiritually, internally, as a result of his experiences, but that's from his own conclusions about his experiences. Smith (ie a kind of 'everyman' figure, the 'wanderer in Faerie') is changed - the question though is whether he is changed by what he experiences, or by what he learns from his experiences - because he could have had all those experiences & been left unchanged; he could have been so caught up in himself that he didn't even realise he had passed into Faerie. So, just being in Faerie won't necessarily teach us anything. We have to take the 'ore' we find there & turn it into 'gold (or 'Iron', if we're a 'Smith' )

When you ask: 'Do you deny that it is, at least in large part, literary theory? If so, then why do you then inquire into Tolkien's role as a literary theorist? If not, then why am I missing the point?'

I only deny that it is solely, or even 'mainly' literary theory. I think we can read it on that level, & will find a good deal about literary theory. My point though, is that its a lot more than that, & the most important simension of the story is not the literary theory it expounds. It is not an allegory of a particular literary theory, becuase too much of it, especially the episodes in Faerie, cannot be 'translated into anything else. They simply 'are'. They don't 'mean' anything in relation to the human world. The battle from which the Elven mariners return has nothing to do with Smith's world. Smith is told by the Birch to leave Faery & never return. So Faery & its inhabitants clearly see themselves as part of a self contained reality, & they are not doing anything 'for' the human world.

Helen

I think you're probably closer to expressing what I meant with my analogy. I have to say it came to me as I was writing it, so I wasn't able to 'step back' from it & analyse it. Thanks.

[HerenIstarion]

Absolute Truth re:

Mere logic. Suppose I present you with two statements:

1. To rob is good
2. To rob is bad

How do you judge the truth of each statement? You may say you measure it against the public consensus on the subject. But that is halfway only – where did such a consensus came from? It may be argued that it originated back in prehistorical time as thing good for society and coming from herd instinct. But why each individual robber should prefer good of society over his personal good he may obtain by robbing some other member of said society? In case the latter originates from instinct of self-preservation? When judging to rob or not to rob, even if both originate from instincts, the person making the choice is appying some standard, against which he measures the 'rightness', or 'truthfulness' of his immediate action. But the thing against which some other thing is measured, is bound to be something else. Further it may be argued, since the differences of such a standard are very minor from society to society, it is universal. I profess I hold it comes from God, and is Absolute Truth but I do not object to it being called Primeval Archetype too. But now I seemingly start to pass beyond Tolkien discussion.

Now, being non-religious, I obviously disagree with both of these claims.

My apologies for sounding like forcing religion on you. I did not intend to preach. And thanks Lord of Angmar for washing me clean of inquisitor's name . This being Tolkien discussion thread, I'd rather come back and stay inside boundaries of Eruism indeed, whatever my personal views on the subject.

1. the "Faerie" element that we detect in fantasy is in fact a reflection or image of God/heaven/"Truth" or 2. the first claim is true and, additionally, to achieve such an image is the primary purpose of fantasy.

Clause 1 re: Both yes and no, it depends (I will explain myself below)
Clause 2 re: Both yes and no - the primary purpose is the imitation of the Creator and application of one's inherent, innate subcreative ability, i.e. applying one's likeness as well. Reflecting of an Image may be the purpose only conciously - i.e. when the author intends to do so. Otherwise glimpses are accidental.

But, unless I sound preaching on you again, I would make a reservation pointing out that here (I believe) I'm more or less recounting Tolkien's beliefs and intentions (thus bringing us back to canonicity of the intentions vs published text issue). So:

On Fairy Stories

Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite.
I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

[italic emphasis Tolkien's, bold emphasis mine]

and

Mythopoeia


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 one 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 sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which were made

* * *

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.

emphases mine

So, the fairy element may be well reflection, and may be not, it depends on authors intentions. But even if authors intentions were far from reflecting anything, it may nevertheless reflect something accidentaly. That's were interpretations come in. But, though I agree with:

If the story cannot stand on its own to uphold the values that the author tried to imbue it with, then it should be open to any interpretation the reader reasonably sees in the course of his/her private reading

I'm inclined to hold that, once author's intentions are known, it is not good to stick to differing interpretation. If Gandalf said he has forgot, and Tolkien explicitly backed him up in his letters, why do not believe him, indeed?

[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

It is not an allegory of a particular literary theory, becuase too much of it, especially the episodes in Faerie, cannot be 'translated into anything else. They simply 'are'. They don't 'mean' anything in relation to the human world. The battle from which the Elven mariners return has nothing to do with Smith's world. Smith is told by the Birch to leave Faery & never return. So Faery & its inhabitants clearly see themselves as part of a self contained reality, & they are not doing anything 'for' the human world.

This is really picking at minor details now, but I disagree. For here the literary theory is about Faerie. If one felt a need to write in the allegorical equal signs, "Faerie" (the place in Smith) would be equated with "Faerie" (the real Faerie, whether a place or not). It is essential to the literary point that Faerie be self-consistent and not an allegory for the primary world.

The Saucepan Man wrote:

Certainly, I cannot agree with H-I's proposition . . .
since that is akin to saying that, unless one happens to hold a particular belief, one cannot truly understand Tolkien's works. Instinctively, for me, that just seems wrong.

Exactly. However, if we interpret it as Lord Angmar suggests:

[it] was not that you must believe in a (Christian... Catholic) God to 'understand' Tolkien, but that you must realize that Tolkien held strong beliefs in the existence of such a God, and that an omnipotent God is present in Middle-earth, to fully understand where Tolkien is coming from in his writing.

then it is quite a different matter, and I suppose I agree with it.

HerenIstarion wrote:

Absolute Truth re:

Mere logic.

Sorry, but I don't think that it's mere logic, if I am correct in understanding the argument as:

1. There are certain propositions the truth-values of which do not logically follow from facts about the world.
2. Nonetheless, we know the truth-values of those propositions.
3. Therefore, there must be a transcendental source for our knowledge of the truth-values.

You ask:

Suppose I present you with two statements:

1. To rob is good
2. To rob is bad

How do you judge the truth of each statement?

I would not judge the truth-values until I was told the precise meaning of the terms being employed.

The trouble with your syllogism is 2. The correct deduction from 1 is that in fact we cannot know the truth-values of those statements. Moreover, you cannot prove 2 since, by your assumption, the truth-values you claim to know do not follow from facts about the world.

I fear that we are beginning to veer into philosophy of meaning here, a subject with which, if not restrained, I am liable to add several pages to the thread. So I will cut myself off at this point.

I'm inclined to hold that, once author's intentions are known, it is not good to stick to differing interpretation.

There are two quite different matters here. First, there is the author's intention with regard to the content of the primary text, with which subject much of this thread has been concerned. Second, there is the author's beliefs about literary theory; this is what we are dealing with in "On Faery Stories". I certainly don't think that we are obbliged to agree with the author about literary theory (indeed, if it were so, we could never enjoy the works of two different authors with different views on the subject).

As it happens, though, I agree with most of what Tolkien says about fantasy, as far as I understand it. I don't think that the truth of theological claims is at all essential to his point. He seems to understand the "eucatastrophe" as an actual glimpse of the "truth" about God, etc. I think it can be understood just as well as a fictional glimpse of a fictional truth - a fiction that nonetheless is extremely appealing and has a great deal of psychological impact.

[mark12_30]

You ask:

I would not judge the truth-values until I was told the precise meaning of the terms being employed.

Aiwendil, here you lose me.

Words mean what they mean.

I suppose one could postulate as many exceptions to the rule "to rob is bad" as one could "to kill is bad." And yes, I will argue *for* the concept of a Just War even though I think Killing is bad. (I bring this up **only** for an example , not to start another entire side-debate... egads. ) So, okay, I'll argue for Just War even while I state that Killing is bad. Call me conflicted. But I still don't want anybody to rob me and I don't want anybody to kill me either.

Killing is bad; having to do it for an overwhelming Reason doesn't make it Good. Same with robbing.

Nor do I see that Aragorn (returning to Tolkien for just a moment) would agree with you. How does it go? "Good and evil have not changed, nor are they one thing among men and another among elves and dwarves."

Good is good.

[Aiwendil]

Aiwendil, here you lose me.

Words mean what they mean.

Yes, words mean what they mean, but saying that neither defines the word in question nor gives an account of what "meaning" actually is. But I really don't think that this is the place to get into the philosophy of meaning.

That whole matter is only tangentially related to the subjects at hand, anyway (or so I think). The point is that I don't accept HerenIstarion's syllogism as logically valid, and I don't think that such a refusal makes me any less qualified to appreciate Tolkien's work.

[HerenIstarion]

The point is that I don't accept HerenIstarion's syllogism as logically valid, and I don't think that such a refusal makes me any less qualified to appreciate Tolkien's work.

Yes, of course, I never intended to imply such a thing, Eru forbid!

As for my syllogism, not going too far or too deep, I was implying that all human beings (as well as in Tolkien's world all Free People do - the pin-point quote provided by Helen up there) have built-in standard of Good and Evil (different codes of conduct of different cultures being consequent to one and the same standard), which can not be explained away without drawing in outside nature Consciousnes/Power/God to have such a standard be derived from. All actions/choices humans do are measured against such a built-in scale (And usually with mere statement, as Helen put it, of good is good). If that statement of mine is true, than to rob/not to rob syllogism is easily solved by comparing both to that inherent standard.

[davem]

Though I may be contradicting earlier statements of mine, something occurs:

Accepting 'Faerie' to be a different 'state' of perception, if it is a state that we can all access, it has 'objective' existence. This leads to the question of what, exactly, it is - but we can only theorise about that, & those with a religious bent will offer religious speculations.

A more interesting question in the context of this thread is how we judge the 'canonicity' of Tolkien's Faerie. Do we base our judgements about what is 'correct' in Tolkien's vision, ie, which versions of the stories & which of Tolkien's interpretations of them we include as 'authoritative' & which we reject, on what Tolkien does with what he finds & Faerie & brings back to us & presents as Middle Earth (or Faery), or do we base our judgement on how accurately he reports Faerie to us?

We could decide that everything in LotR is 'canonical' & cannot be questioned, because it is the account Tolkien gave us - but statements about Faerie made in it may conflict with the 'truth' of Faerie - maybe he chose not to accept something he found there because it conflicted with some tenet of Catholicism - was there any self imposed restriction on what he reported to us? And if there was, which side do we come down on.

In other words, are we looking to Tolkien to provide us access to Faerie, & perhaps through Faerie, access to something beyond that - as Niggle's painting could provide a viewer with a glimpse of the 'real' place it depicted, yet that place was seen in the end to be merely 'the best introduction to the 'Mountains', & its over those Mountains, in the end, that we must go. Or is Tolkien's Middle Earth to be taken as Art, a thing in itself, which has a value solely in & of itself? Or, to boil it down, should we see the Legendarium as being 'for' something - either for something in this world (to teach us about this world, our place in it & how we should live) or as a pointer to the Road' out of this world (the way over the Mountains), or should we simply 'experience' it as having no meaning beyond itself?

If the first, then Tolkien could be way wrong, even in LotR, in his statements about Middle Earth - which is not to say he is wrong, merely that we would be reading the story as a kind of 'guide book', or a map which we consult before undertaking a journey somewhere other than Middle Earth, & we could consult other maps & guide books at the same time & try to find where all the different versions agree, & where, if at all, they disagree. So, Faerie is an objective place or state we are seeking to enter into, & possibly pass beyond the writer of the guidebook(s), the drawer of the map(s).

If the second, then the Journey is not to somewhere 'beyond' Middle Earth, but into & through Middle Earth itself - so that the book 'Lord of the Rings' is 'Niggle's painting', & the Mountains & beyond is our experience of Middle Earth as we read it, & it points the way to nothing beyond itself. But then we get stuck, because Tolkien is using ancient symbols, myths, traditions. He is dealing with 'eternal' themes - death, love, sacrifice, beauty & those things are what strike the deepest chord in most of his readers, so we are forced to ask whether what we are responding to is simply Middle Earth itself, or what it points us towards, & requires us to confront - or at least offers us the opportunity to confront.

It leaves us with the question, 'Is Tolkien's Legendarium 'canonical' in terms of Faerie, or isn't it? Should we require it to be? Well, if Faerie is objectively 'real' & a 'state' closer to ultimate 'Truth' than the 'reality', physical & psychological, which we currently inhabit, & if we see Tolkien's work as if not the 'best' then at least a good 'introduction to the Mountains', then it should be as 'canonical', as 'true' a depiction of Faerie as possible, & we should reject anything in it which doesn't correspond to the 'known' of Faerie (known through the original legends, symbols & stories), & hold up to strict scrutiny any 'new' things which Tolkien has introduced. If it is a tower built to enable us to look out on the Sea, then we will require that it has been built within sight of the Sea, not a thousand miles inland, & that it is tall enough, & has windows facing in the right direction. Of course, maybe the Sea doesn't exist, or maybe what we will find when we reach the top of the tower stairs is a painting of the Sea, inspired by the idea of the Sea, not meant to show us the way to the Sea, but simply there to be experienced as a work of art in its own right.

Tolkien can't have it both ways - he can't claim on the one hand that fantasy (including his own creation, presumably) is about seeing 'in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world' - ie, claiming that it points us towards something greater, more 'real', 'truer', & at the same time denounce the 'purposed domination of the Author', & leave it all up to individual interpreatation, or 'applicability', because if the first claim is true, & it is to show 'a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world' then the author is required to do that as accurately as possible, may be wrong, can & should be contradicted, & so Tolkien himself, even in his 'canonical' writings may be completely wrong, & other's may be right. If the second statement is correct - that it is not about the purposed domination of the author, but rather about 'applicability' then whatever the writer of the story says is 'true' for the world he has created, & the story reveals nothing - least of all the 'far off gleam or echo of evangelium' - unless the reader chooses to interpret it in that way - & any reader's interpretation is as valid as any other, & none of them, including the author's, has any more weight, or claim to the 'truth' than any of the others.

As I said, I may have contradicted earlier statements of mine here, but these are my current thoughts, as they've come to me as I've written them.

[The Saucepan Man]

I was implying that all human beings (as well as in Tolkien's world all Free People do - the pin-point quote provided by Helen up there) have built-in standard of Good and Evil (different codes of conduct of different cultures being consequent to one and the same standard), which can not be explained away without drawing in outside nature Consciousnes/Power/God to have such a standard be derived from. (HerenIstarion)

My personal opinion is that this in-built moral code (which itself varies from society to society and within societies over time) can be explained by reference to the evolution of human society (an argument which you anticipated but dismissed, H-I), but I won’t go into that here since it is an issue which I debated at length with Mister Underhill (among others) in the http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=508&page=1&pp=40&highlight=philos ophy) ]Lord of the Rings and Philosophy[/URL] thread.

However, I am not sure it matters that much which rationale one adopts as the basis for morality, since I think that we can all accept that are basic moral values which (exceptions and caveats aside) we can all subscribe to. And, while Tolkien’s tales do affirm and exemplify these values, we do not need to read the texts to be aware of them. For example, I think that we can all agree that killing is wrong, without needing to read LotR to tell us that. So I do not think that it is this moral code that “Faerie” puts us in touch with. Rather, in my view, it is something much deeper and more primordial. That said, I still I haven’t really got a handle on exactly what it is or why it should enchant us so. And perhaps, for reasons already stated, I shouldn’t try.

Tolkien can't have it both ways - he can't claim on the one hand that fantasy (including his own creation, presumably) is about seeing 'in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world' - ie, claiming that it points us towards something greater, more 'real', 'truer', & at the same time denounce the 'purposed domination of the Author', & leave it all up to individual interpreatation, or 'applicability' … (davem)

That seems to me to be a very pertinent point to raise, davem, since Tolkien does, as you suggest, appear to make both claims in his writings. I haven’t got the Letters to hand, but I was reading them last night and came across two extracts that very much supported the latter view. One was a quick comment to the effect that LotR is about nothing except for itself. The other, in a letter to his Aunt I think, concerned Leaf by Niggle. He set out the ideas that he had in mind when writing it and then went on to comment that (while they might be of interest to his Aunt) they should have no bearing on the reader’s appreciation of the story itself.

If I was to try to reconcile the conflicting views that you have highlighted, davem, then I would speculate that, while he had a settled view (based upon his beliefs) of what it was that he experienced in “Faerie” and hoped that readers of his tales would experience the same, Tolkien nevertheless recognised that he could not impose that experience on his readers, since they will be free to interpret it in whatever manner seems appropriate to them.

[mark12_30]

Meaty stuff, davem.

I think it's both more complex and more simple than that.

Faerie tales (of any kind) transport the reader out of *this* world into a secondary world, with its own rules, so that when the Truth permeates the fabric and the reader tastes it, it is acceptable and has appeal. The reader embraces it and likes it. As, when Tolkien made Good Beautiful. In this world, despite our skepticism, good is beautiful, if you have the heart to see that; and spending time in his world has enabled lots of young teen fans to set aside skepticism and choose good where they otherwise would not. (See the many and varied posts in Novices and Newcomers to this effect.) Having encountered Truth in a faerie story, the hope is that when the reader returns to *this* world, he will recognize that truth, in our example that goodness as desirable (and good) when he sees it here, and it will appeal to him as it did in the other world. And in the lives of many teen fans (and elders) this is beautifully effective.

In order for that to succeed, Tolkien does not have to create The World Of Faerie. He has to create a world into which faerie can permeate. But that world has to be consistent-- or we lose trust. Aragorn has to be Aragorn; Gollum has to be Gollum; and Elves have to be Elves-- or *we* lose trust in the storyteller, and our skepticism kicks in. We might as well have stayed in *this* world.

One major point of parables, myths, faerie stories, is that in entering into them, we set aside our skepticism.

Old Testament: look at Nathan describing the Old Man’s one precious lamb, and the rich man who took it from him instead of taking a lamb from his own plentiful herd. David's guard was down, and he was furious at the rich man on behalf of the Old Man who only had one precious lamb. David condemns the Rich Man as heartless and cruel. When Nathan says, "That's what you did to Uriah when you took Bathsheba, " David is pierced to the heart. Why? Because his guard was down, his skepticism was inactive.

There were dozens of ways to tell that parable. It didn't have to be an old man; it didn't have to be a lamb. It could have been a little boy with a pet bird, or whatever. But the point was, David's guard was down, and he was vulnerable and open when the truth finally struck.

Now-- if the parable had been inconsistent *within itself*, or had given itself away as overtly moralizing: "Listen, David, and I'll tell you how you really sinned with Bathsheba--” David’s guard would have been up and the truth wouldn't have gotten through to his heart.

This is why I look at consistency for each story. Smith has to be consistent within itself, cover to cover. Roverandom has to be consistent within itself, cover to cover. Or our skepticism rears up, and we harden our hearts before the Truth can penetrate. Lord of the Rings has to be consistent within itself, or the spell is broken. Generally speaking, when the spell breaks, our heart closes.

That's why I think you COULD write a good (great!) Trotter story. Make it consistent from cover to cover; make me believe in Trotter, that he is who he is (not a surrogate Aragorn!), he lives where he lives, he does what he does. And then if Faerie invades, if Truth shines through, I might be open to that glimpse beyond-- beyond Trotter, beyond where he lives, into Truth.

Going back to your post:

In other words, are we looking to Tolkien to provide us access to Faerie, & perhaps through Faerie, access to something beyond that - as Niggle's painting could provide a viewer with a glimpse of the 'real' place it depicted, yet that place was seen in the end to be merely 'the best introduction to the 'Mountains', & its over those Mountains, in the end, that we must go.

I think we should look for that in any good faerie story.

Or is Tolkien's Middle Earth to be taken as Art, a thing in itself, which has a value solely in & of itself?

While it's true that a work of art has a value in and of itself, it's not true that therefore it has no transcendent value.

The painting of St. Catherine in The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is a beautiful work of art, a magnificent example of The Painter's Craft in and of its own right. The lighting is superb; the colors are effective; the woman's clothing folds realistically; her facial expression is realistic. The building is realistic. The storm outside is realistic. The crucifix looks like a real crucifix. Yes, it has value as a Painting, as Oil On Canvas; it is a painter's example of How To Do It Right.

But-- it also pierces my heart, with desire, with hope, with longing, with passionate faith. Very few works of art in this world have affected me the way that painting has.

So-- Tolkien's statements (that seem to conflict):

Tolkien can't have it both ways - he can't claim on the one hand that fantasy (including his own creation, presumably) is about seeing 'in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world' - ie, claiming that it points us towards something greater, more 'real', 'truer', & at the same time denounce the 'purposed domination of the Author'

Yes he can-- because he is not after the author's domination. He is after the interaction between the heart of the reader and that encounter with Truth. And the Truth is beyond the author's control; the Truth transcends the author.

The author can drive the bus, he can know the road, he can stay on schedule; but it is the passenger who must have open eyes to see, and be receptive and open to the sights he sees. If his eyes are closed because of horrible driving, that's the driver's fault. If his eyes are open and he sees a glimpse of Truth-- the driver can only take credit for helping the passenger feel secure enough during the bus ride that he doesn't have to close his eyes.

(Saucie, we cross-posted...)

[mark12_30]

A scattered afterthought:


The domination of the author in allegory is due to the one-on-one correspondence, indicating that the author chooses where the reader is allowed to look. That tends to actually limit the truth that can be revealed. A faerie story like LOTR, or Sil, or Beowulf or Sir Gawain, in removing this one-to-one, opens up the view. (struggling...)

Allegory is as if the bus driver curtained all the windows but one, or (even) mounted a periscope on the bus, and offered the passenger the opportunity to look out of it in a certain direction. It forces the passenger to trust the bus driver much, much more. Or, it opens the heart less.

[davem]

(Bear with me, I'm trying to clarify things for myself as much as add to the debate )
And yet we are still left with the question, is Tolkien 'using' Faerie for 'ulterior motives'? Or to put it another way, is he using Faerie to 'evangelise'? Is his purpose to get us to see that far off gleam of evangelium. Jung has been accused of putting his own spin on the Alchemical texts he used, in order to confirm his own theories - which was valid, because he was a physician, & was concerned with curing his patients, not an investigator of the history of science.

But was Tolkien an 'evangelist' (or at least an 'apologist' like Lewis), making use of Faery to convert us to his beliefs - he almost goes as far as to say this in regard to LotR, when he said it was 'consciously' revised to make it conform to Catholic teaching - or was he attempting to offer us a glimpse into Faerie?

We have a 'canon' of Faerie literature, myths, legends, fairy stories, folklore. I could cite the Eddas, the Mabinogion, the Kalevala, the Irish legends of Cuchulain & Finn MaCool, the Arthurian cycles, on through Kirk's Secret Commonwealth, & down to collections like Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands & Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica, just to name a few that spring to mind. What they give us is a 'traditional' account of Faerie, which in many ways doesn't correspond to Tolkien's vision. We are left asking what Tolkien's motivation was - to add to that 'canon' or to use it to achieve his own ends (cue sinister organ music).

My own feeling is that Tolkien is attempting to 'Christianise' the traditions he found, so that his stories would 'reveal' what he felt to be the 'truth'. He is not giving us pure, unalloyed, traditional Faerie, but a version of it, for a specific purpose, for all his protestations of opposition to 'the purposed domination of the author'. One example would be his Elves. In traditional accounts Elves, or Fairies (the Irish Sidhe) do not have 'souls'. Many of the Irish saints who appear in the stories state this clearly. But this is not simply an expression of the Orthodox position. They aren't depicted as having what we could call 'moral' souls. They are fickle, cruel, callous, highly dangerous, & will steal human babies from their cradles. They have to be kept on side by gifts of food, & pacified by being praised - they are called 'Fair Folk' less for their beauty & more to keep in with them. They can, for all Tolkien disliked the idea, appear very small, hiding among flowers, & singing silly songs. They don't have immortal souls, & there are numerous accounts of Fairy funerals. In other accounts they are the souls of the dead, & their land is the land of the Dead. Of course, they could also be incredibly beautifulNone of this is in Tolkien's writings. His Elves are his own creation, not traditional at all. They are a kind of (at least in origin) 'perfect' humanity, what Humanity could, or should be.

So Tolkien is using some aspects of the Tradition, & changing others, & introducing brand new creatures & ideas as well. The question is, what is his motivation? To give us a believable, convincing secondary world, or to present us with a 'parable' aimed at converting 'those with ears to hear'? One thing often lacking in traditional tales of fairies is any moral sense, of good & evil. Yet Tolkien's Faerie is a moral world, & in this he is 'dominating' us, he is telling us that good & evil have always existed among Elves & Dwarves, - maybe among the ones inhisFaerie, yet in Faerie as we have recieved it through traditional accounts, they haven't. These traditional Elves & Dwarves are not 'human', & we can see that through their lack of morality.

So we come back to the question of what Faerie is - some underlying 'state or reality' between this world & ultimate 'truth'? But which Faerie fulfils that role - Tolkien's or Tradition's? If it is Tolkien's then the Legendarium is simply a 'parable', & Tolkien is attempting to dominate us; if Tradition's, then 'truth', of which this Faerie is a 'reflection', is not exactly what a Christian would consider to be 'Heavenly', as there is a definite lack of morality involved!

I suppose this brings earlier statements of mine about the nature of Faerie into question, & I may have to change my spots! Faerie becomes not a coherent 'state' or reality underlying this one, but a source of images, stories, concepts, which an author is free to make use of for whatever purpose he chooses - but if he makes such choices, he is choosing for a reason, & has something to say, a position he wants to put forward, & whether he intends it or not, he is to some extent 'dominating' the reader.

Yet, this doesn't explain the sense of 'recognition' which inspires us - not just in the things of Faerie, but in the sense of 'rightness' & 'wrongness' which permeates Middle Earth, so it seems there is something of an objective nature there which his stories put us in touch with, which makes us feel 'Yes, I knew it was like that!'. So we can say that what Tolkien is giving us is not Traditional Faerie, but it is something like 'Truth' which has not changed.

[The Saucepan Man]

... as I have to dash.

But was Tolkien an 'evangelist' (or at least an 'apologist' like Lewis), making use of Faery to convert us to his beliefs - he almost goes as far as to say this in regard to LotR, when he said it was 'consciously' revised to make it conform to Catholic teaching - or was he attempting to offer us a glimpse into Faerie?

Clearly, at least by the time that he came to revise LotR, he was concerned to ensure that his work were consistent, as far as possible, with his beliefs (and, in that sense, his vision of "Faerie" was no doubt different to that presented in much mythology and folklore). But I don't get the impression that he wrote them with the conscious intention of converting his readers to his beliefs. He recognised (as I think he was bound to do) the reader's absolute freedom to interpret them as he or she sees fit.

[Aiwendil]

Davem wrote:

A more interesting question in the context of this thread is how we judge the 'canonicity' of Tolkien's Faerie. Do we base our judgements about what is 'correct' in Tolkien's vision, ie, which versions of the stories & which of Tolkien's interpretations of them we include as 'authoritative' & which we reject, on what Tolkien does with what he finds & Faerie & brings back to us & presents as Middle Earth (or Faery), or do we base our judgement on how accurately he reports Faerie to us?

but statements about Faerie made in it may conflict with the 'truth' of Faerie - maybe he chose not to accept something he found there because it conflicted with some tenet of Catholicism - was there any self imposed restriction on what he reported to us?

Again, Middle-earth is not Faerie. Looking for a coherent story of Middle-earth (the sort of thing that the Revised Silmarillion project is doing) is quite a different thing from looking for a coherent picture of Faerie (whatever that may mean). I think there is no such thing as "accurately reporting Faerie" since Faerie is not a self-consistent place. Nor is it quite right to imagine Tolkien peering into Faerie and writing down what he saw.

Or is Tolkien's Middle Earth to be taken as Art, a thing in itself, which has a value solely in & of itself? Or, to boil it down, should we see the Legendarium as being 'for' something - either for something in this world (to teach us about this world, our place in it & how we should live) or as a pointer to the Road' out of this world (the way over the Mountains), or should we simply 'experience' it as having no meaning beyond itself?

This is part of what I was getting at earlier. I would choose your last option - Middle-earth has no meaning beyond itself, if by "beyond itself" we mean "other than itself". It is simply art, with value in itself. Its value derives neither from "meaning" within our world nor from its access to Faerie.

But then we get stuck, because Tolkien is using ancient symbols, myths, traditions. He is dealing with 'eternal' themes - death, love, sacrifice, beauty & those things are what strike the deepest chord in most of his readers, so we are forced to ask whether what we are responding to is simply Middle Earth itself, or what it points us towards, & requires us to confront - or at least offers us the opportunity to confront.

I don't think that this is a problem. Tolkien said that Allegory and Story converge in Truth, so that the better an allegory is, the more easily it can be understood merely as a story in its own right, and the better a story is, the more "applicability" it will have to the real world. Now by "Truth", Tolkien may have meant "religious truth". But I don't think that religion is necessary to the idea; "Truth" can merely mean the observed facts about our world.

If Middle-earth - or any fictional place - is to function as the setting for a story, it must be believable. And naturally, believability or self-consistency is tied in a way to realism, since the real world is by default the most self-consistent, the most believable world. Good story -> self-consistent setting -> believable setting -> realistic setting -> applicability to the real world.

I think this is the solution also to your dilemma:

Tolkien can't have it both ways - he can't claim on the one hand that fantasy (including his own creation, presumably) is about seeing 'in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world' - ie, claiming that it points us towards something greater, more 'real', 'truer', & at the same time denounce the 'purposed domination of the Author', & leave it all up to individual interpreatation, or 'applicability'

First, I think we ought to replace Tolkien's talk of "evangelium" here with a more general "truth" (and, again, it does not matter to the structure of the argument whether this is religious or scientific).

If indeed the claim, then, is that good fantasy shows us truth, then it is not at odds with his denunciation of the "purposed domination of the Author". For if good stories must be, to a certain degree, like the real world, then good stories will naturally reflect truth, even without the purposed domination of the author. This is what I think he means by "applicability" - that characteristic of good stories whereby, despite being written without any intention of allegory, they contain themes and similarities to the real world that we can pick out.

I think Mark12_30 is saying something similar:

The domination of the author in allegory is due to the one-on-one correspondence, indicating that the author chooses where the reader is allowed to look. That tends to actually limit the truth that can be revealed. A faerie story like LOTR, or Sil, or Beowulf or Sir Gawain, in removing this one-to-one, opens up the view. (struggling...)

In other words, in a simple allegory, the author puts the themes and parallels in first, and constructs the story to fit them. The result is that the parallels are always straightforward and always simple. X in the story means A in reality, Y means B, etc. But in works written primarily as stories in themselves, the themes arise haphazardly and less straightfowardly - and, if the story is good, more realistically. I do think that pure allegory has certain advantages, but obviously this natural characteristic of the themes in a pure story is a point in its favor.

Where I think I may disagree with Mark12_30 (though I'm not sure whether I interpret her post correctly) is that I do not think that this applicability is the purpose of fantasy. I don't think that fantasy exists in order to expose us to certain truths; I don't think that the reason for the self-consistency of a story is that it allows us to swallow the truths it reveals to us. I think that the value of a story is the story itself, as a work of art to be experienced and enjoyed; the self-consistency, the applicability - all are tributary to this.

Davem wrote:

The question is, what is his motivation? To give us a believable, convincing secondary world, or to present us with a 'parable' aimed at converting 'those with ears to hear'?

This is a nice way of putting the question I was attempting to answer in the previous paragraph (and before) - I would choose your first option. But - and I suppose this is an important reservation - I would alter "a believable, convincing secondary world" to "a good story". As I said before, I don't think that LotR would have been great art if it had just been about Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, etc. going about their daily lives. The setting of the story if of great - even critical - importance, but it is nothing without plot.

Of course, this may be mere semantics. For I suppose that by "secondary world" one could mean not just the place but the history - the sequence of events, in which case the term has plot built into it.

I suppose this brings earlier statements of mine about the nature of Faerie into question, & I may have to change my spots! Faerie becomes not a coherent 'state' or reality underlying this one, but a source of images, stories, concepts, which an author is free to make use of for whatever purpose he chooses

Agreement! This is what I was getting at with my "not a place" arguments.

but if he makes such choices, he is choosing for a reason, & has something to say, a position he wants to put forward, & whether he intends it or not, he is to some extent 'dominating' the reader.

Well. In a sense, every author must "dominate" the reader - for the author chooses exactly what words the reader will read. But when Tolkien speaks of "purposed domination" I think he means something much stricter - the author's domination of the "applicability". I suppose that allegory is just applicability that is utterly dominated by the author. An author can choose which images, which concepts to put into a book without dominating the applicability. You do have a point though - every author, in choosing which words to use, which images to present, etc., must to some extent dominate the reader. But, like many things, I think this is a matter of degree.

[Son of Númenor]

I have a quick question about a topic that is not currently at the forefront in the discussion on this (wonderful) thread, but it does pertain to it:

What does everyone define 'interpretation' as? It seems to me that interpretation can only be applicability or allegory - what Primary World ideas we ourselves get from reading about things from Faery & Middle-earth, or what ideas Tolkien intended for us to get out of it. I could apply things from Professor Tolkien's work to my own life which he did not 'intend' for me to apply, & someone could say, "But Tolkien didn't mean for you to interpret it like that!" Well, unless I the reader am given the responsibility of deciding what to take out of the work & what not to take out of it, I am essentially making my mind subordinate to the mind of the author, and in doing so submitting myself to the "domination" of the author, whether purposed or circumstantial. The only way to be free as a reader is to interpret the book any durn way you want. Just make sure you don't get your interpretation mixed up with what the author intended.

[Lyta_Underhill]

OK, I'm going to do something I almost never do, and I'm only doing it because it is 2:30 a.m. and I will stay up all night if I don't finally set down some backed up thoughts from page 4 and back (yes, I've only made it that far--please forgive me if I'm running over old ground!). Anyway, a few points to address (perhaps simply rhapsodize upon:
The penultimate straw, as it were, was probably the dogged efforts of Heren Istarion to advise us readers to step inside the story, and then to lay down three rules of 'canon' as such. The final straw came from eLRic's reply:

ElRic post 146: In response (to H-I’s post 145):
A: This statement can not be falsified, Tolkien wrote the books didn't he
B: Tolkien was the only true witness of ME, and his writings on it are the only sources of ME we have. Nobody else could see into Tolkien's mind and witness ME.
C: No other writings are sources, they are deductions of sources.

My own response flowering from this post: (Re: Pt. B. The ‘true’ witness) it seems inevitable that a reader is tempted to look into the accounts of the witness and try to see beyond his eyes, into the ‘eyes of the world,’ the flow of this subconscious shared reality, or archetype, if you please. I also get the feeling that Tolkien consciously understood this tendency, not only in his habit of writing, as Saucepan and Aiwendil note: as ‘reference to the fiction that the two stories were authored by different sub-created authors,’ but also as a thematic tone in “Leaf by Niggle,” in which the necessities and slings of practical living destroy all but a sliver of the larger vision, and all the outsiders can see of the great vision of Niggle’s Tree is the one Leaf, and it is enshrined as a work of incomparable art. The expressed Tree in progress, however, is lost in the splintering effects of life and death and those left behind grope to regain the splendid vision that they glimpsed once without comprehension and now hunger to find again. I think of the episodes of the histories of Middle Earth as individual leaves in Tolkien’s Great Tree vision, and, I suppose, like davem said earlier, I could not conceive of melding them all together into a single giant leaf that would encompass the whole tree at the same time. But, like Maedhros has said before, there is great enlightenment and value to the one making the effort to give a personal order to many disparate elements and create one ‘version’ of the Silmarillion that is pleasing to oneself. I think of it sort of as raking up Tolkien’s ‘leaves’ and placing them in one’s own personal bag.

Davem post 154: So, 'Archetypes' or something more like Niggle's experience - was the Tree created as a 'gift' for Niggle, or was it there all along, & the 'gift' he speaks of simply the 'unconscious' knowledge he had all along of that 'real' (truly real) tree?

This speaks to another remove of my comments above: Niggle’s expressed Tree is his rendition of the ‘real’ tree, and “Leaf by Niggle” is the viewer/reader’s interaction with Niggle’s vision. In a sense, it puts the ‘true’ vision at second remove, but tantalizes us with the suggestion that there is a nearly realized vision inside Niggle and the only remaining fragment is seen in his one extant “Leaf.” Perhaps, by studying every vein and hue of the leaf, one could glimpse the greater vision through Niggle’s own vision (which is only a fragment or 'gift' of something even greater)? In this sense, I perceive Tolkien as a ‘clear light’ that shines for those to see who can. Thus, I suppose, at this moment, I would come down on the side of “what Tolkien wrote is canon; all else is interpretation.” But I would not say the interpretation has less value, for it reflects his vision through the eyes of another, eventually giving one a ‘holographic’ view if enough eyes are queried, albeit of one man’s vision, a sub-created reality, but a profound and worthy vision to gather ones thoughts about.

Davem post 144: So 'canon' comes second to enchantment, & the vision is more important than what is 'actually' seen. But that 'vision' is the vision of a single artist, & it encompasses what that artist has been able to include, at different times, from different 'angles' with many differing reasons over his long life, for what he chose to look at, & how he was able to see it.

I think davem beat me to it fair and square!

Heren Istarion post 156: C) third thing there is to be added - Niggle's 'talent' - i.e. sub-creative ability. Or, he may have been painting real 'true' tree of which he has had glimpses, but maybe he have been creating 'true' tree by painting glimpses of it before he went on his journey. And I rather lean to the latter option.

It is always interesting to speculate, isn’t it? Obviously, the extant ‘leaf’ resonated in this way with others, thus passing on, in a small and suggestive way, the greater vision. In another feat of illustrative explanation, I might liken it to arriving at the great destination through one particular vortex opening out onto a vast landscape beyond imagining that could not, IMO, be encompassed in anyone's "one true vision."

Bethberry:
Oh, this is fun, Mr. Underhill. Why, look at the number of views for threads on page 1 of The Books. This Canonicity thread, at the time of my writing, has 2339 views

Probably most of them are me trying to catch up! I must sleep now, but I will continue to attempt to catch up with this fascinating and fast moving thread!

Cheers!
Lyta

[davem]

Aiwendil

Just a short note on the idea of Faerie.
The problem I still have is that while this 'state' may not be logically 'coherent, he ideas & symbols which we find there are consistent. Faeries/Elves throughout all the stories show consistent & recognisable behaviour, Archetypal images are consistent, so I'm still stuck with the idea of it bering simply a source of random images - though of course they could be used that way, but if an author does use them in that way, he is writing outside the 'tradtion'. But Tolkien set out to 're-create' a 'lost tradition', to reconstruct what our ancestors had lost. So was there a point at which he deliberately rejected that idea & decided he would use the traditional images for his own purposes - ie in order to 'reveal to us a far off gleam of the gospel'? Or did he ever really intend to simply 're-create' the ancient mythology of England, was his intention always to write with another purpose in mind?

We know that the TCBS was inspired by what they thought of as 'Medieval' values in art. poetry, music, that they were inspired by Christianity, by patriotism, the idealisation of woman, etc. What drew them together was this 'medieval' Christian ideal. So could this be what Tolkien is being an 'apologist' for, even an 'evangelist' for in his writings, that particular worldview? If so, then maybe all that 'mythology for England' stuff was not about a scholarly attempt to give us back exactly what we had lost, but actually to present us with a TCBS-ite 'mythology' for the England of Tolkien's own day, with the intention of combatting what they considered the 'vices' of the modern world.

But if that was the case Tolkien is on pretty shakey ground in claiming his there is no 'meaning' in his stories, or at least no intentional 'meaning' for us in the 'primary' world, because what he is doing is attempting to change the way we think & behave, to change our philosophy & worldview, our whole value system, make us all into his 'ideal' medievals, his fellow TCBS-ites. Yet clearly, he was intelligent enough to know that the 'real' medieval world wasn't like this 'ideal' he, Wiseman, Gilson & Smith held to - so he was actually trying to invent, create from scratch, an ideal medieval world, using whatever he found lying around.

All of which makes him an Artist, rather than an archaeologist, a creator rather than a discoverer, & on with a very specific agenda, which he had stuck with from his schooldays. So everything he wrote, was written for a purpose, with a goal in mind - changing the way we think about the world. But then how come we can read the stories & experience them as having an internal 'reality', & don't feel we're being 'preached at'? Does it mean that Tolkien failed in what he was attempting, but succeeded in doing something he hadn't set out to do at all?

(long 'note' - who was it who put at the end of a letter that 'this letter is long, because I didn't have time to make it short'?)

[mark12_30]

Tenacious davem. "If you seek for her as hidden treasures..."

Originally Posted by davem

But if that was the case Tolkien is on pretty shakey ground in claiming his there is no 'meaning' in his stories, or at least no intentional 'meaning' for us in the 'primary' world,

Wasn't that statement of his (oft repeated) more in response to "Is the Ring the A-bomb? Is Sauron, Hitler?" I don't interprest that statement to mean "My stories will never transcend." Totally different statements. IF you read "On Faery Stories", he *expected* a good tale to transcend. But that is totally different than preaching or allegorizing. When a story transcends, the reader is brought to a place where Truth is revealed. But in a faerie story, (vs allegory) the author releases control of Which Truth to the combination of Reader and Truth.

I don't think Tolkien would have denied (at all!) that he was reaching for transcendance in his stories. What is eucatastrophe if not that?

because what he is doing is attempting to change the way we think & behave, to change our philosophy & worldview, our whole value system, make us all into his 'ideal' medievals, his fellow TCBS-ites.

THis is different, by the way, than saying he wanted to convert us all to catholicism.

So everything he wrote, was written for a purpose, with a goal in mind - changing the way we think about the world.

Yes. He says that is what Faery stories are good at.

But then how come we can read the stories & experience them as having an internal 'reality', & don't feel we're being 'preached at'? Does it mean that Tolkien failed in what he was attempting, but succeeded in doing something he hadn't set out to do at all?

If you read On Faery Stories, what you describe is exactly what he says a faerie story should be As quoted by H-I:

If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth.

[The Saucepan Man]

Davem, I may not be following you entirely, but I simply cannot see the logical basis underlying your assumption that Tolkien was intentionally preaching at his readers in a conscious attempt to convert them to his beliefs. Just because he had certain beliefs and made his writings consistent with those beliefs, it does not follow that he was intentionally trying to sell those beliefs to his readers. Indeed, when he started out, he never even imagined that he would have any readers, other than friends and family.

Edit: And can someone please explain to me what this "Truth" is that we are supposed to transcendentally be brought to when reading Tolkien's works? It appears to have been eluding me entirely all these years.

[davem]

SmP

This is what happens when you post in your lunch hour, with no access to the books you need! I must stop doing it. Basically, as Garth shows with numerous quotes in the Great War volume, the TCBS did feel they had something equivalent to a 'divine' mission to bring the world (or at least the English ) back to what they believed we had been. They would do this through Art. literature, poetry, music, & if necessary, through their example of self sacrifice in the war.

I will dig out relevant quotes when I get home - they may surprise some people.