Andor
First Post
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.”
Speaking for myself, I find what you are discussing her critical to my really enjoying a book. Good authors will often speak of characters who were meant to play a certain role and at some point in the narrative sat up and decided to do something else. My favorite authors are the ones who let them do this and let the chips fall where they may.
I recommended Dianne Wynn Jones above, and when I was exploring her works I found many people raving about how great Fire and hemlock is. So I read it and was ... underwhelmed. On reading the authors own words about the book I realized why. It was a very tightly and deliberately crafted story, plotted out before the characters had identities of their own, and they were not allowed to stray from their tasks. Like actors working to a script and not being given leeway to explore the characters, it fell a bit flat for me. This is not, incidently, a problem I found in Mrs Jones's other works.
Well here you end the inquiry by saying "no such thing." I'm advocating for more of an open-minded, even agnostic (vs. closed atheistic) perspective. I'm not saying theistic or belief, but experiential-symbolic. My experience of sub-creation is that what Coleridge, Jung et al refer to is a living reality, regardless of how we interpret it. It could simply be deep mind beyond the surface waves of conscious thinking. Again, we don't have to posit a metaphysical or supernatural reality to recognize the existence of aspects of consciousness that are beyond the usual reach of the conscious intellect.
Again, I'm not saying that Tolkien didn't engage in "deploying cultural motifs," but that I think it was far less than central than you imply. But your outright discarding ("no such thing") of anything having to do with deep imagination, the collective unconscious etc, clarifies why you would hold such a view. Without the deep imagination etc, all we're left with is the workings of the conscious mind, of intellection, and imagination is reduced to Coleridgian fancy. My experience, and what I've read from others, disagrees strongly with this kind of reductionism.
I haven't read Coleridge, I suppose I should put him on my "to be read" list, but it's a long list. However while reading your quotes earlier in this thread I was reminded of a book called "Proust was a Neuroscientist" which describes how many modern explorations of the brain are often confirming, with more technical jargon, what earlier writers had reported. Coleridges divisions of the creative processes ring very true to what we know about creative processes in modern cognitive theory. Or, to quote another author "Creativity has deeper springs than does conciousness." As I mentioned, it is quite perceptible to the reader when an author does or does not employ the deeper creative process you mention.
That's one of the reasons I'm so fond of Lois Bujold as an author, since her approach to writing, while very scholarly and well informed, often consists of handing her characters horrible situations and then sitting back to see what they do, and that sort of organic, emergant process makes for a better book. IMHO. Aided of course by the fact that Lois is keenly aware that the reader is the authors partner in reading the book, rather than a passive observer. (Read "Dreamweavers Dilema" for her essay on this.)