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mmoossDec 2024

> In my very religious upbringing I wasn't allowed to read fairy tales. The danger being not able to classify which stories truly happened and which ones didn't.

Thanks for sharing. You might be interested: JRR Tolkien, 'fairy tale' author, was also a/the leading scholar of Old English (Anglo-Saxon), related languages, and the culture and myth around them - including 'fairy tales'; and he was a devout Catholic.

How could he write (and study) such ungodly material? He wrestles with the question multiple times, but if you are interested, I strongly recommend On Fairy-stories, an essay based on a lecture. It covers far more ground than this question, but it's worth reading anyway. I'll append a spoiler below.

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[SPOILER]

There's more to it than this, but it's a wonderful vision:

"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,[1] 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 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. ..."

[1] "The Art is here in the story itself rather than in the telling; for the Author of the story was not the evangelists."

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wolverine876Mar 2024

JRR Tolkien knew Lang's work very well and Tolkien's essay On Fairy-stories was originally presented, in an earlier version, as the (annual?) Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of Saint Andrews in 1939.

The essay is not only an incredible work itself, but has quite a bit to say about Lang, and remember Tolkien was a leading scholar as a day job. Tolkien writes, regarding the study of myth, "Philology has been dethroned from the high place it once had in this court of inquiry." My edition's editors, Verlyn Flieger and Douglas Anderson, flesh out that story:

"And Andrew Lang, as Tolkien well knew, was the man who pushed philology off its throne. Lang found and ruthlessly exposed the logical fallacies in using philological evidence to support the solar theory, turning for his own answers to another new discipline, anthropology. Lang and his supporters (like Muller he was not alone in the fight) proposed that rather than the degraded remnants of natural forces the problematic elements in the tales were the survivals of animal-worship and animistic magic. Lang's Darwinian assumption that fairy-stories were leftovers from the childhood of human development led to the corollary assumption that the tales were therefore leftover fare for human children, who would in the course of time, like the human race in general, mature into adulthood and put away childish things."

Another tidbit: Lang's Green Fairy Book was published the year Tolkien was born and it contains the story, "The Enchanted Ring". In it, the young protagonist is given a ring that makes them invisible but also very powerful, if they never make bad use of it ...

But such treasures of knowledge can lead us to trick ourselves: Tolkien probably didn't read the book that year (how precocious was the young JRR?) and Richard Wagner wrote Der Ring des Nibelungen - featuring a similar corrupting magic ring - before the Green Fairy Book came out. Tolkien despised Wagner, and likely all got their myths from somewhere prior.

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wolverine876Aug 2023

> He wasn't a systematic thinker, but tended to write what sounded good at the moment without much regard for consistency with what had been written before. He had to do a lot of later editing to remove logical conflicts in his stories. Remember that the impetus for his fiction was to create a world in which his created languages could live.

What is the basis of that? It doesn't match what I've read Tolkien saying. Tolkien knew exactly what he was doing, was a leading scholar in the field of myth, and thought very deeply about it. If you want to understand, read his essay On Fairy-stories.

> no good postmodernist would object to modern readers finding meanings in literature that weren't consciously in the author's mind.

What does that means specifically? Who are you referring to? What is the basis of that? What does it have to do with this discussion?

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hprotagonistJul 2022

Tolkien's lecture/essay from 1939 (ominous!), "On Fairy Stories", remains a delight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Fairy-Stories

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wolverine876Feb 2022

> I wish I could read it again for the first time :-)

On one hand, there is nothing like it and I wish I had that unmatched emotional surge again, like a drug! On the other, I get much more out of LOTR now than the first time - a more sublime, but still incredible experience.

> 98% just sounds like bullshit.

Well that's circular, not evidence. 'I hate Chinese food, and 98% of it tastes terrible!'

I wish I could find a way to say this without sounding like a condesceng a--, but I truly mean it genuinely: There is really something there, that I think (without presuming) you are missing - something incredible, life changing, intellect expanding to an incredible degree. It gives access to not just one idea, but the entire world of art in incredible technicolor that few see. If you decide to, maybe start with the Tolkien book below. Or I recommend the London Review of Books - the art and book reviews, not the political stuff - there are people with an unabashed, unhesitating passion for art.

> Maybe JRR Tolkien just wanted to write a great story!

Maybe it's a secret code of the Illuminati. The evidence says strongly otherwise: read On Fairy-stories by Tolkien [1], which is pretty short, absolutely stunning, and where he lays out much of his approach to art. Tolkien was also an all-time leading scholar of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) - arguably as important in that field as in fantasy fiction, a two-domain genius - and studied much of historic myth, which he read in their original languages; he studied and thought more about it than almost anyone who lived.

And what is a 'great story'? Obviously, the LOTR is much more to people than a fun plot, as is all art. I don't think a great story exists that isn't more, or people wouldn't experience it as great. And like a great bottle of wine, many will miss out on much of it if they don't learn to understand it. If you limit your experience to a fun plot, that's your choice but your loss, like going to a musuem and never leaving the lobby.

[1] Get the recent edition, ~2008 or 2014; the fantastic editor's notes explain many of Tolkien's references that come from deep in his knowledge of myth.

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brundolfApr 2021

Tolkien was famously against the idea of allegory in fiction (in stark contrast with his friend C.S. Lewis). All parts of an author's life are going to influence his creative works - that's just inevitable - so I'm sure you could find some things that might be traced back to his religion. But you could say the same thing about his experience fighting in WWI, for example. I highly doubt there were any intentional references or parallels.

I recommend reading his essay On Fairy-stories to get a window into the role he sees fantasy as having. Interestingly he does tie it in with his faith at a meta-level: he sees it as a sub-creation within the larger creation; himself a sub-creator. But the hallmark of that sub-creation is for things to be different and separate in key ways. I don't think he would reduce his work to being a mere echo of his beliefs, even partially, beyond abstract themes like good and evil and hope.

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