OK, I'm going to give this another shot! Whenever I lose a long post I always see it as an opportunity to try to be more succinct...we'll see how well I do (after-the-fact EDIT: not so well...).
To be blunter, at least in what I have read of it it doesn't have much to say. Not that there is an absence of possible, even promising, material - tyrants, slaves, wild nomadic elves and halflings, etc. But I don't feel that it does much with them other than catalogue them.
That is one reason why REH's Conan, despite sharing many of the same tropes, is (at its best) better.
I agree with you although don't think it is a fair comparison. Dark Sun was created as an RPG setting for gaming, whereas Middle-earth and the Hyborian Age were created as the setting for stories, and more importantly alongside the stories as they were written. In other words, Dark Sun is more of a sandbox that you get to play in, so the parts can be a bit less aesthetically entwined, whereas Middle-earth is more of a living story world. As you say later on, the world
is the stories told within it, whereas a game world is a setting in which some stories exist, but primarily to serve stories-to-be-told.
When Tolkien denies that he is writing allegorically, he does not mean that his writing is devoid of meaning/symbolism. He is using "allegory" in the strict sense, of each element of the story standing for something else, and hence the sequence of events in the story actually telling some other story (in the very strictest sense of allegory, that would be a Biblical story).
And Tolkien is not writing on a "soapbox". It's not didactic. (Contrast eg Pilgrim's Progress, or even A Christmas Carol.)
I hear you and agree. He is clear, though, that he is not foisting any specific meaning upon the reader, but—as he said in
Letters—just trying to write a good story that the reader can see their own meaning to, if they want to.
I like Ursula Le Guin's differentiation of allegory and symbolism whereby the former is an equation of “A = B” while a symbol (A) could mean any number of things (B, C, D, etc) and its meaning is a co-creation of the author (or symbol) and the reader, whereas you either get the allegory or not.
But I think the key here is that Tolkien wasn't, at least for the most part, intentionally creating symbolic forms. Certainly his work is rich in symbolism, but he wasn't—for the most part and as far as I know—saying, “I want a character to symbolize Jesus, and another to symbolize Hitler,” etc. Certainly all of that informed his work, but he tried to draw from the wellspring of mythic imagination and allow that to issue forth in whatever way seemed vital and real
within the language of the story-world itself.
But Tolkien very obviously is trying to deal with a range of motifs, both Christian and non-Christian. He has at least two treatments of a Fall: the Noldor, and then Numenor. He has at least one treatment of an Incarnation: Gandalf. That is not to say that Gandalf is a figure of Christ - as Tolkien says, he is not writing an allegory.
I see this, but again, my sense is that he wasn't thinking “I'm going to work with these motifs” as much as he was tapping into a rich domain of imagination and myth, and from that motifs and symbolic forms arose - or rather, more accurately, from that Middle-earth was born, which we can read symbolically or as cultural motifs on a kind of analytical, meta-level. In other words, he led with a process of imagination, not intellection. Consciously working with motifs and even some degree of allegory might have been a part of his process, but I'm fairly certain it was secondary. It is a cart-and-horse thing.
Part of this depends upon the notion of "good story". As Tolkien conceives of a good story, it is not simply a sequence of surprising or superficially amusing events. A good story has a certain emotional heft. That heft comes from its deployment of, and allusion to, enduring cultural motifs.
Again, I agree. But to what degree did he work on that level, of “deploying” cultural motifs? I think that was quite secondary to his process.
I'm in no position to judge his intentions, not having read his letters or biographies. But it's virtually impossible to read Tolkien and not notice that he is a conservative Catholic.
And no one can write a creation story, two accounts of the Fall through disobedience to the divinity, and an account of an inspiring teacher being killed when he takes the burdens of past wrong upon himself (made manifest in the Balrog) and then returns in a higher form and leads the right-minded to triumph, simply by accident. These are explorations of Christian motifs, though divorced from a Christian framing.
Tolkien became prominent, academically, for his study of Beowulf, which is also a mixture of Christian and non-Christian elements.
I'm not a Tolkien scholar but I have read his
Letters and the Humphrey Carpenter biography (many years ago), and I'm fairly certain that these influences were largely not intentional (which, again, is more intellection than imagination).
It is clear that the events of Nazi Germany and the World Wars had an influence on the writing of
The Lord of the Rings – how could they not? Just as how could any semi-aware writer today not be impacted by terrorism, the energy and environmental crisis, corporate hegemony, etc? But again, there is a difference between being influenced by one's cultural milieu and consciously crafting story around real events. My sense is that, for the most part, the motifs and allegory in Tolkien's work was more a matter of influence seeping through than conscious intention.
The plant is, after all, a product of the soil it is grown from.
I don't think there is any disupte that Tolkien, like Coleridge, is a conservative romantic.
But I think your account of Coleridge is slighly incomplete. For instance, your characterisation of Coleridge leaves it open that REH is writing in the same mode, but of course REH's fantasy is about as far from Tolkien's, and from Coleridge, as it is possible to get whilst still using some of the same tropes of swords, kings and wizards.
Coleridge thinks that, at least in the right conditions, the right person is able to access truths. The notion of "truth" here is crucial: it is subect to constraint. On Coleridge's account, the imaginings of a colliery worker, however sincerely recounted, are not accessing truth, because the social/cultural/economic situation of that worker will have utterly distorted his/her access to what is deeper. (For more on Coleridge, I refer you to Raymond Williams' "Culture and Society".)
I was perhaps referring to a different, if related, element of Coleridge's work – his taxonomy of the imagination. Here's a quote from
Biographia Literaria:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge said:
The IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealise and unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.
At the risk of sounding like an elitist, I would say that most fantasy is derived from fancy – that is, it deals with “fixities and definites.” It is similar to the idea in RPGs of “re-skinning.” A lot of fantasy is just that – re-skinning old ideas in new forms, which is the process of Coleridge's fancy.
Primary imagination is more of a mystical perception and participation with the world, which is less relevant to our discussion – and perhaps more controversial. But what Coleridge calls “secondary imagination” is very relevant to the topic at hand, and what I refer to when speaking of imagination, or deep imagination, mythic imagination, deep myth, etc.
Where I see Tolkien and Howard more similar than, say, Howard and Dark Sun, is that both Tolkien and Howard engaged secondary imagination in a rather strong way – the worlds they created were richly atmospheric and alive; they felt both familiar but quite different. Very few authors, in my opinion, are really able to capture the same kind of depth and atmosphere – some that come to mind being Le Guin, Patricia McKillip, and perhaps Steven Erikson.
But most authors create fantasy worlds that feel more fanciful, more the product of intellection than imagination, more like our own world with fantasy trappings and re-skinning. There is nothing wrong with this, and some of it can still be quite excellent from a story or literary standpoint. But in terms of sub-creation, the
art of sub-creation, there is often a quality of the “set” being paper-thin. To me it comes down to the degree to which the world truly comes alive, feels real – for certainly that is a quality of the secondary imagination, as Coleridge put it (“essentially vital”).
Take Brandon Sanderson, for instance, who is a skilled craftsman of fantasy worlds and fiction. I can admire his work, yet rarely get the sense of "deep imagination" - which is almost a mystical tingling, a nouminous quality of mystery and wondering and otherworldliness which is impossible to truly describe, but one knows when one feels it. Sanderson's work feels...normal, of his world.
But going back to your example of the colliery worker (which I had to look up what “colliery” meant), I would personally say that any experience of the noumenal, or of the world at all, is always “distorted” or colored by our own subjectivity; this is a key component to postmodernism, an era of thinking after Schopenhauer lived. Unless we're talking about Zen satori, in which the world is (allegedly) perceived as it truly is, we always see the world as we are, not as it is (to quote Anais Nin). The colliery worker could have authentic experience of God (or whatever), but interpret it into language and imagery derived from his own cultural and familial “database.”
The key, I feel, is being aware of one's own subjectivity, one's “distortion” or “coloring.” When we aren't aware of it we conflate our own subjective interpretation with “what is,” and this begets fundamentalism of whatever kind (I would argue that we are all fundamentalists to some degree, if only of our own subjective viewpoint!).
But this also gives us the joy of individuality, of artistic expression. Tolkien's plumbling of the imagination yields different results, a different vision, than Le Guin's - or my own, or yours.
I don't accept Coleridge's account of the epistemology and metaphysics of artistic creation.
Somewhat similarly, I don't accept accept Schopenhauer's account of musical composition as a type of unmediated access to the noumenal. So while I greatly admire Wagner's work - especially the Ring and Parsifal - I don't think Wagner's own theory of his composition of them is correct.
Out of curiosity, what do you disagree with? Is it the quasi-mystical implications? Or something else?
So whatever Tolkien's subjective experience in writing about Galadriel and Lothlorien (which, as I said above, I say nothing about), what it is in fact is an attempt to produce a story of a fairy queen - very well known in the mediaeval and post-mediavel literary tradition that Tolkien was an expert on, and infuenced by - which fits within the framework of a modern (though not modernist), and hence essentially naturalistic, novel. My own view is that in this respect it is a great achievement.
Notice my bold emphasis. What do you mean by “in fact?” Are you talking about the structure of the narrative? It seems you are saying something more, because you use the phrase “an attempt to” - meaning, you are saying that Tolkien is “in fact...attempting to.”
To me this smacks too much of an objectivist view on his work, whether your own self-referential viewpoint or towards some other outside, “objective” standard or perspective.
That said, I don't disagree with your perspective – I just think that you are, again, emphasizing an aspect of Tolkien's work that, for him I think, was quite secondary. What was primary for him was plumbing the depths of imagination and the source of European mythos and bringing into being a living, breathing world of story and language.
It's not just "internal consistency". It's "external consistency". That is, consistency with the cultural motifs upon which Tolkien draws. If Tolkien's account of elves was internally consistent, but failed to be consistent with the tradition of fairy stories, then his work would have failed.
I think that is an external reading, one from a kind of literary criticism point of view -and not one that Tolkien focused on. I think he focused on the living vitality and trueness
within the sub-creation, not the meta-level of motif that you are focusing on. In other words, I don't think he ever, or rarely, asked: “Does Galadriel fit with the cultural motif of the fairy queen in a naturalistic setting?” But he may have asked, so to speak, “What would Galadriel really have done and said? How would she act?” Or even more accurately, he would have let Galadriel act and speak as
she wished, not as he wanted her to. In other words, he discovered the mythic, imaginal being or form of “Galadriel” and let her roam freely within his linguistic-imaginal field, but never, ever, sought to tame her and make her obey “external consistency of cultural motifs.”
Furthermore, "Middle Earth" is not primarily a catalogue. (Which already differentiates it from many, lesser, RPG worlds.) It is a set of stories: Beren and Luthien, Turan Turambar, Gandalf's labours, Aragorn's restoration, the destruction of the ring. And these stories aren't arbitrary, and haven't been authored just to demonstrate internal consistency. (Indeed, there are certain oddities in respect of internal consistency - eg the well-known failure to use the eagles to fly to Mordor. This shows Tolkien prioritising story, in a rich sense of that word that inclues themes as well as events, over mere consistency.)
Yes, very well said. I like your emphasis on the stories rather than the “things” or elements. I'd like to see more RPG worlds focused on the stories of the world rather than the objects within it.
I have extracted some passages from "On Fairy Stories" that I take to reflect what I am saying...
I can't possibly respond to every quote, although it is interesting that I can interpret those same quotes in a very different light, one that supports my “imagination first” perspective on Tolkien. For instance, the quote on Elves – that they “
are not primarily concerned with us, nor we with them. Our fates are sundered, and our paths seldom meet. . . .” To me this points to the living, even autonomous quality of Middle-earth, that Elves obey their own laws – not those of Tolkien's intellection or our modern cultural motifs. We may see cultural motifs in Elves, and Tolkien's work, but it is secondary and “after the fact” of the story-world itself.
Or these: “
[T]he magic . . . must in that story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away.”... “[T]he fairy story . . . cannot tolerate any frame or machinery suggesting that the whole story in which ["marvels"] occur is a figment or illusion.”
All of this points to the idea of Middle-earth being “real.” Or as Le Guin put it, “Fantasy isn't factual but it is true.” If Tolkien had started and worked from intellection and cultural motifs, it would have been “a figment or illusion” - it would have been fancy. But what he did was connect with deeper imagination and (co-)create mythic forms through which the deep imagination could shine with brilliance and life.
Or: “
Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker. . . .”
He couldn't have made a more Coleridgian statement if he tried!
That is, fairy stories - and Middle Earth as one of them - are outside a Christian framework (not having entered the primary world and thereby "raised to the fulfillment of Creation"). They deal with nature. But humanity (as conceived of by Tolkien) is intimately located within the (supernatural) world of Christianity, and fairy stories are made by humans. Hence fairy stories serve a different purpose from the study of nature - the way in which they deal with nature satisfies some other aspect of human well-being. But insofar as they deal with nature they are not arbitrary, and are not bound simply by requirements of internal consistency.
I completely agree. Perhaps we mean something different by “internal consistency.” Or rather, I would say that even “internal consistency” implies too much intellection, rather than the envisioning and expression that is the secondary imagination.
And here we can see how it is that fairy-stories deal with nature. They connect us to fundamental, permanent things. Things that move us to tears. Particularly within Tolkien's romantic, conservative framework, nothing could be further from the arbitrariness of a fantasy that treats novelty as the sole desideratum and internal consistency as the sole constraint on novelty. So far from being an end-in-itself, a fairy story (particularly for modern peope surrounded by "insignicant and transient" things) is a fundamental way in which humanity makes contact with what matters to humanity.
I think here we are coming much closer, the semantic gap narrowing...I might pick a nit and replace “permanent” with “archetypal,” for the former has a solidity and fixity to it, while archeypal is more symbolic, flowing and dynamic.
Now as I indicated above, I personally am not an adherent of Tolkien's or Coleridge's aesthetics. So I think explaining why Tolkien's fantasy is better than so much else would have to be approached in a different way. But the two constraints I mentioned in my earlier post - external adequacy (ie honouring some conception that is already alive in the culture), and serving some larger purpose beyond mere world-creation and cataloguing - are in my view certainly part of it.
Certainly! If I were to try to sum up what I am trying to get at, it is that the approach that Tolkien takes—which is aligned with Coleridge's view of imagination—is envisioning, discovering, diving into a deep imaginative well that is perhaps synonymous with Jung's collective unconscious, a world of eternal and archetypal forms that are unmanifested until we breathe them into life and story. Middle-earth is so vital and beloved because he dives into, emerges and writes from this “deep imagination,” rather than fancifully re-arranging and structuring “fixities and definites,” whether we're talking hackneyed fantasy tropes or cultural motifs.
Are you familiar with Carl Jung's Active Imagination? The idea is that you enter a space of consciousness where you can “talk to” some deeper part of your self (whether a guiding spirit or simply your own subconscious mind, the ontological interpretation isn't important). While in the process of Active Imagination, you just let the words and ideas flow out – kind of like stream of consciousness writing. You don't stop and say, “what does that mean? What is the motif or trope at work here?” Later on, you might do that – you might interpret and find meaning in the imagination. But the point is, the process of imagination itself is not deliberate in the same way that intellection is; or rather, if it is deliberate, it is from a deeper source of will. It isn't only passive, but it is more
receptive – opening to and expressing that which comes from some deeper place which, when viewed from the perspective of the conscious mind, seems Other, even if, in reality, it is merely the implicit, unmanifest aspect of ourselves.
OK, done. For now!
Plus the names are pretty Western (I mean, so long as you see Fantasy Italy/Germany as Western, and I imagine you do!). It's also certainly relatively new and good-hearted in the way some of those you mention are (if a bit grittier - along Leiber-ish lines).
