I figure we may as well discuss Tolkien's ideas about fairy tales, his essay "On Fairie Story," his idea of the "eucatastrophe," and other such things. I know Beren has already made mention of this, in relation to other series, but I thought we could discuss it in more detail here.

I've got my annotated, underlined copy of On Fairy-Stories ready at my elbow. This should be fun!

And I am reading The Faerie Queene right now, which is supposed to be solidly "in the tradition" of the fairy-story. But, as far as I can tell, Spenser made the tradition as much as he "followed" it, and it was influenced a lot by Greek poetry and mythology--or at least references that world a lot--and his other sources were Italian romances, which were also kind of trying to be "antiquated" but were making their own style as much as they were following anything. In graduate school I went on a bit of a wild goose chase trying to find all of these "fairy-stories" that were "traditional" and I did not have much luck. I read some of Spenser and thought, "Aha!" because he feels so much like C. S. Lewis in the Narnia Chronicles and his essays on literature. But I did not find a vast store of English medieval stories that felt like The Faerie Queene. There were a lot of tiresome allegories and church plays (that were shockingly sexist and racist) and Arthurian romances that were really not "romantic" at all, but were more like detailed fight scenes that Mel Gibson would love. I couldn't figure out what it was about any of this material that would have been particularly tickling to Tolkien or to Lewis. My current theory is that Narnia feels like The Faerie Queene because Lewis read and re-read Spenser all of his life. And Tennyson had to have had something to do with it too.

C. S. Lewis has a couple of essays on the topics of fantasy and fairy-tale. May we widen the discussion to include this other Inkling?

[quote="Luthien":1cro9tux]I figure we may as well discuss Tolkien's ideas about fairy tales, his essay "On Fairie Story," his idea of the "eucatastrophe," and other such things. I know Beren has already made mention of this, in relation to other series, but I thought we could discuss it in more detail here.[/quote:1cro9tux]

Oh, btw, if anyone hasn't read Tolkien's "On Fairie Stories," just pm me and I'll send it to you in pdf format.

Me too Otto's World, (focus on Fairie Storys) that is. As soon as I have reread the essay. Beren is kind enough to email me a copy.

I personally enjoy hearing about other peoples journeys. It gives me a much better idea of where they are coming from once the discussion is entered. It also establishes a kind of intimacy that makes it more difficult for people to demonize one another when disagreements arise. I find it much harder to yell at someone once I call them friend.

You are so right about many literature teachers and classes, they really know how to suck the joy out of reading and learning. I was fortunate that in High School I had a great Fantasy Lit. teacher. We read LOTR and wrote our own stories and he gave us sources to peruse on our own time (as an aside our Sci Fi Lit. teacher was also good and was a ringer for Isaac Azimov).

You are right on the money regarding Beowulf. Tolkien was largely inspired by The Ring Cycle of which Beowulf is a part. The professors you cite claiming that Victorians invented Romance are dead wrong. They merely redefined romance to a much narrower field. As you will discover perusing my friends website, the idea of Romantic Love was developed by the medieval troubadours and was at the time called Courtly Love. Romance was the term they ascribed to what we know today as Fantasy Adventure. Peoples before that time had little use for "romantic" love as marriages were mostly arranged for political and economic purposes, love be damned. As to the focus on food and sundries, you will note that both Lewis and Tolkien made such things an integral part of their "Fairie Stories".

As to the "rambling", knock yourself out, the conversations are much more fun this way.

Happy Holidays

[b:1htf66u5]Gandalfs Beard[/b:1htf66u5]

Tolkien talks about what he means by "Recovery."

[quote:25ak7n7d]We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses--and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining--regaining of a clear view. I do not say "seeing things as they are" and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say, "seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them"--as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity--from possessiveness. Of all faces, those of our [i:25ak7n7d]familiares[/i:25ak7n7d] are the ones both most difficult to play fantastic tricks with, and most difficult really to see with fresh attention, perceiving their likeness and unlikeness: that they are faces, and yet unique faces. This triteness is really the penalty of "appropriation": the things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands upon them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them.[/quote:25ak7n7d]
Otto's World speaking again. How very dragonish of us to hoard things and then not appreciate them. G. K. Chesterton said nearly exactly the same thing in his book [u:25ak7n7d]Orthodoxy[/u:25ak7n7d] in the chapter entitled "The Ethics of Elfland." Here 'tis...

[quote:25ak7n7d]...we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children, we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales--because they find them romantic. ... This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. [/quote:25ak7n7d]

Ooo! And here is Tolkien again, reinforcing this idea...

[quote:25ak7n7d]Fantasy is made out of the Primary World, but a good craftsman loves his material, and has a knowledge and feeling for clay, stone and wood which only the art of making can give. By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were enobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.

And actually, fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting. For the storymaker who allows himself to be "free with" Nature can be her lover not her slave. It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.[/quote:25ak7n7d]

It's me, Otto's World, again. I will leave off here, because I've lost the wind in my sail for doing this, and the material above is enough to start a discussion.

Thanks Otto's World , and thanks to Beren I have just received my email copy of On Fairy (Fairie) Story. I have just begun reading (re-reading after 25 or so years) and a couple of things popped into mind. First, Tolkien's point, that through Fantasy we can more readily digest information regarding our "reality", couldn't be more apt. A friend of mine, having seen the films and enjoyed them, nevertheless, could not understand why I find Fantasy/Sci Fi so much more enticing than General Fiction, i.e. "Realistic" fiction. I tried to explain that I felt you could get at much deeper truths regarding "Reality" through fantasy, with little success. Tolkien really hits the nail on the head. It was also nice to see a Chesterton quote that wasn't a Christian Apologetic (no offense intended, but people at a Narnia website have been throwing a lot of Chesterton quotes at me since I revealed I am a Nontheistic Pagan Agnostic). And that is also part of
what I find so enticing about Tolkien; he doesn't seem to have the trouble some Christians have with embracing their Pagan roots. As I read about Tolkien's views on Nature, with a capital N, this really seems striking.

Another point occurred as I was reading the beginning of Tolkien's treatise. He noted the apparent diminutization of Fairy creatures and stated that it was not necessarily so. He also, at the time of his writing was uncertain as to Why that was so (though he offers that perhaps it has something to do with the English mindset and love of things delicate). However, had he written his essay today, he would have had the more recent scholarship available to him. Scholars such as Rianne Eisler have shown that the diminutization (is that a word?) is a result of the spreading of Christianity through Europe. As Christianity became the dominant religion, the Old Gods and Goddesses and Nature Spirits were necessarily transformed into into smaller beings, stripped of their previous Majesty. Anyway, that is my 2 cents for now, and I hope I haven't offended anyone for I have the utmost respect for All religions.

Cheerio and Happy Holidays

[b:2vslw93b]Gandalfs Beard[/b:2vslw93b]

If I had continued with the Chesterton quote, it would have started to sound a bit preachy, so I didn't go there. Although, I think it's easy to go there in this discussion, because you're talking about TRUTHS, right? I think of Plato and the "Real World" of ideas and how fairy-stories can represent Ideas or archetypes or things that are otherwise hard to describe, like Loyalty, or Virtue, or Faithfulness, or Cruelty. I mean, in the Faerie Queene, there's a monster who vomits black bile-ish stinky stuff and pretty much uses it the way a skunk uses its spray, and it has a woman's upper body (which is probably like Ursula's from the Little Mermaid--really flabby and undular) and a serpent's tale, and hundreds of little eye-less frogs are her children and they hide in her mouth and when Red Cross Knight chops off her head, her little kiddies slurp up all of her black blood until they totally overfill their bellies until they explode. So she is supposed to represent Error. If a modern reader were to apply this to life, Error might mean George Bush and the neocons and the whole process of persuading people just enough to allow the Iraq war to happen. Some readers might say, "YES!! OH YES!! THAT'S exactly how much I loathe G. Bush and everything that has happened. It makes me so mad I want to pop. Nothing expresses my loathing better than that image." Or the fight with the Dragon can represent tackling one's biggest most oogey personal fears--like writing one's dissertation--you know, something that makes you break out in a cold sweat just thinking about it. These stories express that stuff best. I think so. And I think that's one point Tolkien is trying to make. I THINK.

I think Stephen King's books work that way too, and we aren't talking about dragons so much as horrible demons, but I think his fiction works in similar ways, expressing bad things that happen or evil through monsters or through really horrible people, because THAT'S how bad and personal it feels when something bad happens to YOU, right? It's an extreme exaggeration, expressing it through monsters, but that's what it feels like to your inner intestines, your heart, the part of you that decides when to sweat and when to raise up the hairs on your neck or when to start the tears and mucus waterworks flowing.

On another point, we really must define and discuss what Nontheistic Pagan Agnostic means, because that is quite a mouthful, and it sounds like it took some careful thought to come up with that title. But yes, Tolkien capitalizing the N in Nature suggests an awareness of or reverence for the idea of Nature personified. C. S. Lewis talks about the universe as a complex living thing--the stars as personages. There's a whole trail of writers who go with that. I was taught that they were called "Puritans" in England (not the Thanksgiving Plymouth Rock Puritans, but some other kind...I've never understood that) and also called "neo-platonists." Dante fits in that group too. I guess it was quite a battle at one time to allow the pagan stuff in to mix it with religious stuff--or it wasn't supposed to be okay to use any of that material at all, but these poets thought it was all just too beautiful to lose, even if (they believed) it wasn't TRUE. Milton tried to get around it by saying that pagan gods are angels. It's as if there was a period of literary prohibition, when artists had to pretend that there weren't goddesses and nymphs and such, but some people sneak and read their copies of Ovid or whatever, and make sure nobody saw them doing it.

I like Tolkien's metaphor about the "soup" where all kinds of traditions dump things in and it all gets mixed and influences everything else.

Oh, gosh, I sound BRITISH. Well Merry Christmas to you too. I'll have a smile on my face for the next 48 hours now. It's probably a "persona" I put on when I write. Thank you, though. I've read C. S. Lewis over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...because I like him and I think he's such a good writer. I always hope that it has rubbed off.

Thank you also for your definition of the nontheistic pagan agnosticism. So that means basically that you're open minded.

Oh, woops. Time to do some Christmas festivities. Back later.

Okay, as a memory marker, gonna respond to The Soup, and Parallel Universes.

I really like that idea of parallel universes. Real actual physicists are thinking this? Because I just loooove that idea in the [u:26ubjxuo]Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew [/u:26ubjxuo]when Polly and Digory go into a kind of limbo land with all of those holes, and they can choose to jump into any number of ones and it just happens that they jump into Charn, and then into a not-yet-created Narnia. But they MIGHT have jumped into all kinds of different holes. What kind of a book would that be if some children got to stay longer and not have a witch grab them, but get to go back to the hole-place and try about 8 or 10 different places?

Yes, Tolkien talks about The Soup in his Fairy-Story essay. The whole background of what has come before us and been preserved and what we understand of it--it is all thrown into a pot and is cooking and we may, as cooks, ladle out what bits we want, but things have been influenced by other things. I try to explain to my kids about how, in The Old Days, when people had fewer books, that a lot of the same people read a lot of the same books, and so they could assume that their intended audience knew about the references they were making. For us it is like watching one of the Shrek movies and that the writers knew that we all would know enough about Little Red Riding Hood or Captain Hook or The Muffin Man or Disney theme parks so that the jokes would work. Although I think, you know, it is sad that a lot of these poets didn't know each other, even though we think of them as going together. Thomas More didn't get to read The Faerie Queene....although, of course, it would have offended him...I guess....but still. We're so lucky to be able to enjoy it all. That's probably one of the prime functions of an English teacher now...to keep some of the older bits floating around in the Soup from disappearing or to keep living people's taste buds cultivated enough to be able to still taste the older bits.

Tolkien said in a letter or in some essay or something that the LOTR was "fundamentally a catholic work" I think it was catholic with a small "c." I still don't know what that means, for sure, but it definitely means christian. I'm not sure, but I think Tom Shippey, in his book, [u:26ubjxuo]Author of the Century[/u:26ubjxuo], talks about Tolkien and Beowulf and that Tolkien admired the pagans of that time--or I guess it was those pagans on the edge, because the Beowulf poet is someone coming from a pagan culture that is just turning christian or that has just recently turned christian and probably hasn't totally swallowed the new metaphors whole-heartedly. But he thinks that those pagans are admirably brave--to look death in the face and have no hope of reward or any compensation for being virtuous, and still they fight for the good. They're like Puddleglum, from the [u:26ubjxuo]Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair[/u:26ubjxuo], who, grimly states that he will believe in Narnia and live like a Narnian even if there isn't a Narnia. There's that great sense you get in the LOTR movies that the war of the ring is an almost entirely hopeless endeavor, but they're going to do it anyway, by gum, because We Love the Shire!!! AAAAAA!!!! Take that, Grendel. Grendel's Mom. Darth Vader. You Balrog. Melchor, you suck.

Hi Otto's World, I'm tired and full of turkey, so I am unable to respond fully. As I really like CSLewis in Medieval Mode I shall have to check out that book. Yeah, it's amazing, up till very recently, Science writers like Fred Alan Wolff were practically alone in promoting the Hologrophic Hypothesis and Parallel Universe Theory. I saw a couple of TV documentaries with Michio Kaku and read a couple of articles in some science magazine in the last year or so revealing that most physicists are now (finally) looking at these models to solve some serious problems with String and Complexity Theories.

I'll have to get back to you on some of your other comments, but I must talk about Beowulf for a moment. I don't know if you've seen the recent Robert Zemekis CGI version. I thought it was brilliant (and definitely NOT for children under 11-13). What I found particularly amazing was how it illustrated the point you were just making. Moreso than any other version I've seen. Grendel and his Mother are portrayed in a much more sympathetic light. It goes right to the heart of the matter. As Christianity makes it's arrival, the Goddess, Grendel's Mother, is transmuted into a demon. And like any woman scorned (metaphorically speaking) she reacts in kind against what can now be viewed as an obvious betrayal. And Monstrous Grendel is in "reality" a frightened child bitter at being disowned by his all too human father. I could go on, but it would take an essay to go any deeper. As I said, it resonates with the points you were making. So one night, put the kiddies to bed and rent this version. It's been too long since I slogged through the original story for me to comment on any obvious alterations, but I think this film truly captures the spirit and depth of it.

Merry Christmas
[b:1m1zg70t]Gandalfs Beard[/b:1m1zg70t]

So, I'm rereading this great Tolkien commentary by Verlyn Flieger called Splintered [u:3ul8bsz5]Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World[/u:3ul8bsz5]. Really a great one, people. Like as good and as fruit-bearing to read as Tom Shippey's book, [u:3ul8bsz5]Author of the Century.[/u:3ul8bsz5] And s/he(?) says that Tolkien's essay on Beowulf--"Monsters and Critics"--is the dark side of the coin to his essay "On Fairy-Stories." Flieger asserts that Tolkien flip-flopped between extreme degrees of pessimism and optimism in his religious faith/worldview. There is a God, He is Good, and He desires our Good, and all things shall ultimately work for the Good and it is Glorious....except to live in this world and to look around you, you really wouldn't think so.

I was wrong in an earlier post. I attributed a point to Tom Shippey that was really made by Verlyn Flieger. Hmm...how to copy it without losing this in-progess post? Oh crumbs. Back in a sec.

Hi Otto's World, The CGI version of Beowulf is pretty gruesome and hard to watch in parts, but I have never seen another version that really goes to the heart of it like that version. Your Hilarious description is exactly on target with what I was saying. I am going to have to hit up the library for some of the books you are referencing. They sound intriguing, but it may be a while before I am able to converse knowledgeably on them.

Happy New Year
[b:y3r3zv31]Gandalfs Beard[/b:y3r3zv31]

I have a story from Personal Experience to add to this. So, when I reeeeeaaally started to dig into C. S. Lewis the English Professor, I was newly married and in graduate school, not even in a program that focused on English Literature, but which required some lit courses for "breadth" and such. My husband was in the Army at the time, in a Cavalry (tank-ish, scout-ish, front-of-the-force-ish) unit, and Iraq invaded Kuwait out of the blue and our guys got suddenly sucked into it and sent to Saudi Arabia. Most of our friends were people from the unit, and, though hindsight, we all know that things turned out okay for the Americans, at the time our unit was supposed to "hold the line" no matter what and prevent the Iraqis from invading yet further and going into Saudi Arabia. Higher-ups told the medical people at the hospital to anticipate 75% casualties, and they told the guys to expect 50% casualties, and we family members, trying to be bottom-line realistic, "knew" for sure that they were going to suffer at least 25% casualties. Casualties = death to us, at the time, because it meant being burned up in an exploding armored vehicle. Not too many light flesh wounds in that kind of fighting. And we really didn't know how good the Iraqi Army was at the time, and there was constant speculation on the news and in news magazines, and ooooo....the Republican Guard....and we kind of imagined that they would be somewhat on par with the Americans and that it would be a tank battle with forces kind of sort of relatively equally matched.

ANYWAY, point being that we family members thought for sure that 1/4 of the men in our unit were going to come back dead, and we all knew each other, and we were young, and a lot of people had really LITTLE kids. So we would get together and support each other emotionally, but we were kind of thinking in the backs of our minds that some of our lot were going to be widows and orphans. You know how it is when you have a medical scare that is really scary because suddenly all of the doctors and nurses are REALLY nice to you?

Point being, it SUCKED. It was like Russian Roulette, thinking that deaths were going to happen for sure and it was just a matter of time. We never had to suffer the actual experience of having The Car (carrying casualty assistance officers in them who notify you that your loved one is dead) roaming the neighborhood, but we all thought it was going to happen. The Car...the Angel of Death....maybe coming to your door to ding the bell and being REALLY NICE to you. Me, newly married and big-time in luuuuuv, living in a house alone with my dog, sweating out the arrival of The Car. Or sweating how to be good for someone else if The Car came to their house. Ugh. So I just got a small taste of what it must have felt like to have lived during Vietnam or WWII or WWI. Just a tiny taste...like enough to feel a massive sense of respect for anybody who really had to deal with that for real and not just as a hypothetical.

Or a parallel experience would be to be alive during the Black Death, or even to be alive before antibiotics were discovered, or to battle cancer or to have a close loved one with cancer...or AIDS.

ANYWAY, I can testify that when life really sucks like that and there's darkness and uncertainty and random badness looming...like badness that you can't believe...that it's personal and viscious (which I think is a feeling that must come with a cancer battle) then the Realm of Faerie is a mighty fine place to visit.

I totally gobbled up everything I could find in our university library that had to do with Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. It was a rather Podunk town and the school was/is not very wealthy, and this was riiiiiight when the Internet was new and mostly in the idea stage rather than the wide-use stage. So the university library had quite a lot of books by C. S. Lewis the English Professor, but pretty much nothing of quality on Tolkien. So I didn't know about the books by Flieger or Tom Shippey. But yeah, I found excuses to keep reading anything by C. S. Lewis because it was profoundly comforting.

It isn't just the "happy ending" of fairy-stories, either. It's the idea that the True World is implicit in the Perilous Realm. There is more open acknowledgement of it. There's a Real Place behind this crummy broken place. Or there's a sense of what The Good looks like. Every time the hobbits take a bit of Lembas out of their packs and eat it, they are getting in touch with a memory of this Real World or The Good. "Not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall." What a relief--a drink of cold water--it is when Aragorn and Gimli and Legolas find the leaf pin on the groud. Their belts and brooches are reminders. When Sam is in the cave with Shelob and he has the phial of Galadriel. Or later, when the Shire has been burned and trashed, Sam plants the nut and carefully uses the dust from the box that Galadriel gave him, and up grow beautiful elven-blessed trees. All these things are tokens of The Good. You know, and it's well to keep your mind focused on those things, the way a woman in labor looks at a focal point while she does Lamaze breathing.

For me the timing of all of this was so great, because I had professors who totally sympathized with the suckage, and we just HAPPENED to have [u:2penpj81]The Consolation of Philosophy [/u:2penpj81]by Boethius in our reading list--which was also mucho comforting. The [u:2penpj81]Consolation[/u:2penpj81] works--the rhetoric of it--persuades by acting like a mathematical/philosophical/logical proof of the enduring solid real quality of The Good and the nothingness and temporariness and ultimate nonexistence/nonimportance of The Bad. You get to read it and think that there is nothing to be ashamed of in believing in The Good and that True Love Conquers All because it's all here in this complicated diagram and it has been proven to be true. Yes, there are happy endings, and you are not just indulging in wish fulfilment to believe in that.

That whole attitude is the worldview that supports the fairy-story.

Okay, hee hee...C. S. Lewis writes about fairy-stories too, and here are some excerpts from his essay, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children" publised in the book Of [u:32qdltdm]Other Worlds: Essays and Stories[/u:32qdltdm]. They address the idea of fantasy and escape and consolation and whether these are healthy.

Regarding whether such stories are meant only for children, he says, [quote:32qdltdm]Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table[/quote:32qdltdm]

Then he says that the fairy-story genre is often attacked for [quote:32qdltdm]giving children a false impression of the world they live in. But I think no literature that children could read gives them less of a false impression. I think what profess to be realistic stories for children are far more likely to deceive them. I never expected the real world to be like the fairy tales....The dangerous fantasy is always superficially realistic. The real victim of wishful reverie does not batten on the [i:32qdltdm]Odyssey[/i:32qdltdm], the [i:32qdltdm]Tempest[/i:32qdltdm], or the [i:32qdltdm]Worm Ourobros[/i:32qdltdm]: he (or she) prefers stories about millionaires, irresistable beauties, posh hotels, palm beaches and bedroom scenes--things that really might happen, that ought to happen, that would have happened if the reader had had a fair chance. For, as I say, there are two kinds of longing. The one is an [i:32qdltdm]askesis[/i:32qdltdm], a spiritual exercise, and the other is a disease. [/quote:32qdltdm]

[quote:32qdltdm]A far more serious attack on the fairy tale as children's literature comes from those who do not wish children to be frightened....none of my fears came from fairy tales...Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, [i:32qdltdm]phobias[/i:32qdltdm]. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can't bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the Ogpu ( ) and the atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage....And I think it possible that by confining your child to blamless stories of child life in which nothing at all alarming ever happens, you would fail to banish the terrors, and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable. For in the fairy tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones; and the terrible figures are not merely terrible, but sublime. It would be nice if no little boy in bed, hearing, or thinking he hears, a sound, were ever at all frightened. But if he is going to be frightened, I think it better that he should think of giants and dragons than merely of burglars. And I think St. George, or any bright champion in armour, is a better comfort than the idea of the police.[/quote:32qdltdm]

Sorry Otto's World, most of my spare time over Christmas has seen me embroiled in a probably pointless (though nonetheless entertaining) debate on Narniaweb.com. You may be interested in my first post on the thread there called Are the Chronicles of Narnia Christian Books. It is a short essay I've had in the can for some time and was delighted to upload when I discovered Narniaweb in November. Little did I know what a can of worms I had unleashed. The debate has spilled over into several threads on that site and has currently evolved into a debate on the Nicean Council, Gnosticism and Church Canon...Wheeew!! I have enjoyed reading your posts whilst also reading the Tales of Beedle the Bard and the essay this thread began with. It really is a stunning Synchronicity as Beedle the Bard deals with precisely the topics on this thread. I don't have much time at present, but there is so much to respond to. I will return as soon as I am able to.

[b:65dwkw1y]Gandalfs Beard[/b:65dwkw1y]

Okay, I'm back for a bit. I will try to comment on some of your posts Otto's World. First, I must say it is always amusing when someone on the web dashes the image of them that I form in my head. I originally pictured you as a male parent sneaking away to his computer to post when he could. I am sure I couldn't [b:yt0e70j2]possibly[/b:yt0e70j2] seem like a stereotypical Sci Fi/Fantasy geek in his mid 40s living in his mother's basement (it's actually a room in her house). Though I did have my own retail business until the economy destroyed it in April.

Segue into your points on tragedies. I agree with Tolkien, Lewis and you that the realm of Fairy is not so much escapist as consolatory. Through characters we come to love we experience their pain and sufferings as if they were our own; and the joys as well when they overcome their trials and tribulations. They give me hope that happy endings are possible when life itself seems darkest. Though it is noteworthy that the "endings" of TLOTR and Chronicles both are somewhat bittersweet. Though Lewis, like Tolkien, didn't care for allegory, he just couldn't help himself. When I first finished the Narnia series as a child, I didn't get that New Narnia was like the New Heavens and New Earth of the Bible. And to this day I prefer to think of it in modified terms. The description of going "further up and further in" and "layers of Narnia like an onion" (to paraphrase) after many years of study seem to me very Hindu/Buddhist. In fact both the Last Battle and the Magicians Nephew are, I think, more strongly influenced by Eastern Traditions than Christianity--intentional or not. Sorry for the aside.

On Tolkien's part, [b:yt0e70j2]his[/b:yt0e70j2] bittersweet ending has the Elves and Wizard leaving Middle Earth to return to their realm, and Magic is fading as the age of Men begins. I always found that terribly sad. Some have argued that this also meant that Frodo Gandalf and the Elves are dead and are actually going to heaven. This seems much more unlikely than Lewis's ending where Lewis does, in fact, specify his characters are actually dead and are now in the life beyond. Tolkien was much better at keeping allegory out of his stories. And as some of your quotes and Tolkien's essay testify, Tolkien see's the Fairy Realm as a "real" place distinct and entirely seperate from the Christian Heaven. I must say I have always been a bit puzzled how he squared that with his religion. But it seems to have a lot to do with both his and Lewis's fondness for Medievalism. In a way, Medievalism almost suggests that Jesus the Christ was a [b:yt0e70j2]fulfillment[/b:yt0e70j2] of Pagan desires. But wouldn't this then make their view of Christ a Pagan Christ, much as suggested by the research in Holy Blood, Holy Grail (the inspiration for the Da Vinci Code)? I honestly can't be 100% certain on this point, but I think it does mean that the Modern American Christian (huuuge generality) notion of Lewis and Tolkien being Christian the same way that they are, is mistaken. Once again, to all readers of my posts, I am in no way trying to offend. It is largely more Conservative American Christians that operate under this assumption; and they, like everyone are entitled to their opinions.

I guess those aren't really asides . In any case, I think the ideas of Lewis and Tolkien are as influenced by their Paganism as much as their Christianity (with my bias, perhaps moreso). I think I'll reflect a bit and reread your posts, Otto's World, before continuing. I think you made some other cogent points I would like to address. I hope you had a jolly Christmas.

[b:yt0e70j2]Gandalfs Beard[/b:yt0e70j2]

GB wrote:[quote:1v3uir5k]it is always amusing when someone on the web dashes the image of them that I form in my head. I originally pictured you as a male parent sneaking away to his computer to post when he could.[/quote:1v3uir5k]
Oh, crap. Shouldn't have given so much of my identity away. The Inklings never let any girls hang out with them in their group. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Yes, GB, but did you ever hear of Edith Tolkien going to an Inklings meeting? I don't know. Sure, she got to be called "Luthien" on her tombstone, but she didn't seem to be included with the boys' group activities. Kind of the way Arwen pretty much gets left out of the action during most of LOTR as does Rosie Cotton. Okay, there's sympathy for Eowyn, but still. Yep, pretty much gets stuck having to sneak in through the back door with Pippin.

I found and read your essay about C. S. Lewis and Tolkien being Pagan, and guess WHAT??!! I have a [b:2txm0azs]BOOK[/b:2txm0azs] to recommend for you. [I'm going to change my screen name to Hermione, I think.] it's by Michael Ward, and it's called [u:2txm0azs]Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis[/u:2txm0azs]. Ward claims to have "cracked the code" of the Narnia books, arguing that each chronicle has, as its underlying theme, one of the seven planets. I'm pretty excited to have found this book, quite by accident, a Barnes & Noble. It does explain and enrich the understanding of why certain seemingly tangiential or random characters or elements are introduced into different books.

Jupiter = The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Mars = Prince Caspian
Sun = Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Luna = Silver Chair
Mercury = The Horse and His Boy
Venus = The Magician's Nephew
Saturn = The Last Battle

I'll briefly sum up his arguments for the first two planets, just to give you a taste. So Jupiter = Jove, which = [i:2txm0azs]jovial[/i:2txm0azs] and [i:2txm0azs]by jove![/i:2txm0azs] Jupiter is the kingly planet. But kingly in a really super generous sense--like The Ghost of Christmas Present, surrounded by turkeys and red velvet and ermine. Ho ho ho...merry Christmas. (Father Christmas, Always winter but never Christmas, Aslan is the King, Lion king of beasts). Mars is the martial planet, and Prince Caspian is full of the warrior ethic and being battle hardened or tough or experienced or skilled, the knightly ideal, chivalry, Reepicheep...but Mars has another side. He is also potent in the sense of being fertile (you know, male symbol, arrow, poke a hole, plant a seed) and so that's what all of the extra stuff about growing things and dryads and Bacchus and Silenus are about. Oh, what the hey, you're dying to know what the other 5 are about, aren't you? The Sun is about goldenness, Luna is silver, and mutable, and represents the layer between heaven and earth, or the veil between the two. Mercury is extreme and quick, light of foot, messenger. Venus is perfect for the creation story where everything is so prone to growth they plant a toffee an it grows into a toffee tree. Saturn is dry and old and pessimistic and hard. Each book is flavored by or shows the characteristic of one of the planets, which shows one (different) face of Aslan. Lewis doesn't tell us this secret though, because he wants the metaphors and allusions to work their magic on us without making it an overt thing.

It's really well-researched and impressive. It's what got me motivated to try to read [u:2txm0azs]The Faerie Queene[/u:2txm0azs] again, because it talks a lot about the kind of worldview that Spenser would have had. You know how a lot of commentary on Lewis is a little on the fluffy side? This guy knows his stuff, and hasn't just read C. S. Lewis, but has read the things that C. S. Lewis studied and loved, and so can surmise with quite a lot of credibility what Lewis might have been thinking.

Oh, so much to read. But you would probably really like this one...especially if you know something about what the planets are meant to symbolize.

Where have you read controversy about the [u:33wc51t8]Planet Narnia [/u:33wc51t8]book?

Hi Otto's World, I'll have to be quick because I'm off to check out a job lead. On the controversy, I honestly can't remember now, come to think of it. It may have been online or mentioned in a book review I read recently in the S F Chronicle, or even a more local weekly paper. The controversy seemed to be over 2 points. First, that Lewis didn't do allegory so it can't be possible. Well, as I've noted previously, be that as it may, Lewis just couldn't help himself and Tolkien was much better at the whole "applicability vs allegory" thing. Second, many Christians have jumped all over it claiming it's a Da Vinci Code style fraud; to which I would say: "Pish posh, let's examine the evidence first".

On the subject of feminism, I suppose I've been engrained with a lot of "first wave" feminist notions. But I must say, I have found the attitude that "women won't fight, therefore they deserve less respect" puzzling -- as, generally speaking, men are the ones that put women on the pedestal to begin with. Probably starting with Paleolithic men instinctively protecting the survival of the species, and marvelling at the ability to bring life into this world. In Bronze Age times, women became property and men were protecting their "property rights", which has really only declined since the advent of women's suffrage. Rianne Eisler has written some excellent books on the Sacred Feminine and the history of "Dominator style vs Cooperative style" (or something like that) forms of governance. Sorry, the names of her books escape me at the moment. I really must be off now, but I'll check back in this evening.

[b:ql8fn9xo]Gandalfs Beard[/b:ql8fn9xo]

Ugh...thank HEAVENS you are uprooting the feminism thread and putting it into its own pot. Eeew. I guess it IS a big topic in Tolkien--or at least in discussion about Tolkien. So...back to the Fairy Tale theme!!! Sort of. I really do think that this relates--at least to the idea of where the rich imaginative images come from.

So I found the following by Michael Ward, author of [u:ohiorz69]Planet Narnia[/u:ohiorz69], who gives a much better teaser taster of his book than I did. (This came from the following website: http://booksbycslewis.blogspot.com/2008 ... avens.html)
[quote:ohiorz69]C.S. Lewis secretly based the Chronicles of Narnia on the seven heavens. The imagery associated with each planet provided him with his symbolic raw materials. The planetary symbols govern the shape of each story, countless points of ornamental detail and, most importantly, the portrayal of the central character, Aslan.

Here is a brief summary of how the Chronicles relate to the planets

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ’ Jupiter
Jupiter was the best planet and Lewis’s favourite. Jupiter was the planet of kingship, and this story is a clash between the children’s destiny as kings and queens of Narnia, under the ’King of the Wood’, Aslan, and Edmund’s mistaken attempt to become king under the evil White Witch. Jupiter brought about "winter passed and guilt forgiven", according to Lewis’s poem, ’The Planets’, and in this first Narnia Chronicle the White Witch’s winter passes and Edmund’s guilt is forgiven.

Prince Caspian ’ Mars
Mars is famously the god of war and this is a war story, a civil war to drive out the usurping King Miraz. Less famously, Mars is a god of woods and forests ’ Mars Silvanus, as he was known. Hence the continual use of arboreal imagery and the appearance of ’silvans’ at the final battle, who never appear in any other Chronicle. Reepicheep is a ’martial’ mouse; Miraz frets over his ’martial policy’. The chesspiece found at the start of the story is, naturally, a knight.

The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader' ’ the Sun
A story about a journey towards the rising sun. Aslan flies out of the sunbeam towards Lucy as an albatross; he appears in the room when she utters the spell to make invisible things visible; he is seen shining as if in bright sunlight, though the sun has in fact gone in, on Goldwater Island. Gold, of course, is the sun’s metal. The killing of dragons on Dragon Island is drawn from Homer’s Hymn to Apollo, where the sun-god Apollo is Sauroctonus, the lizard-slayer. (Compare Tolkien’s villain, Sauron.)

The Silver Chair ’ the Moon
Aslan only appears in person in his own high country above the clouds and has to be remembered by way of signs and in dreams below in Narnia where the air is thick. The structure of the book reflects the great lunar divide that existed in medieval cosmology between the translunary realm of certitude and the sublunary realm of confusion. The lost Prince Rilian is a lunatic, bound to a chair made out of the Moon’s metal, silver. The horses Coalblack and Snowflake are derived from the steeds which pull the Moon’s chariot in Spenser’s Faerie Queene.

The Horse and His Boy ’ Mercury
Cor and Corin are based on Castor and Pollux, the horseman and the mighty boxer of Homer’s Iliad and stellated as Gemini, The Twins, a constellation in the house of Mercury. As separated but then reunited identical twins they represent "meeting selves, same but sundered", as Lewis puts it in the lines about Mercury from ’The Planets’. Shasta becomes a fleet-footed messenger. A Narnian lord wears a steel cap with little wings on either side of it, a clear reference to the petasus, Mercury’s hat.

The Magician's Nephew ’ Venus
Venus is the fertile planet associated with laughter, motherhood, beauty, warmth, and the apple grove of the Hesperides. Hence this story of the birth of Narnia and the healing of Digory’s mother with a magic apple taken from the Western garden; hence also "the First Joke"! The wicked Jadis is what Lewis elsewhere called "Venus Infernal", the anti-Venus; she is based on the goddess Ishtar, who was especially worshipped in Nineveh. That is why Jadis calls Charn "that great city", an allusion to Jonah 1:2; 3:2.

The Last Battle ’ Saturn
Aslan does not appear at all until all the characters are dead, reflecting the nature of Saturn, the planet of (apparent) ill-chance and treachery and death. Aslan is here the deus absconditus, the God who is felt only in abandonment. Father Time with his scythe is a mythological character based on Saturn. In a surviving Narnian typescript, Father Time is named ’Saturn’, but Lewis amended this to ’Father Time’ before publication in order to keep his planetary theme more carefully hidden.

I stumbled upon this secret theme when I was researching C.S. Lewis’s writings as part of my work at the University of St Andrews. It was easily the most exciting thing that has happened to me while holding a book in my hands. This unifying scheme reveals that the Chronicles are not the hodge-podge that Tolkien thought them to be, but very carefully imagined stories. The Narnia books are built out of the seven symbols which Lewis had studied throughout his professional career, those ’spiritual symbols of permanent value’ which he considered to be ’especially worth while in our own generation’.

---------------------------------

Dr. Michael Ward is a minister in the Church of England and the author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2008). He is the co-editor of Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why it Matters What Christians Believe (SPCK/Hendrickson, 2007) and of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis. His website is http://www.planetnarnia.com

For more details about Narnia and the seven heavens, please see a longer article in Touchstone magazine.[/quote:ohiorz69]

Thanks So Much Otto's World. These sections you have put up go a long way to confirming a lot of what I was getting at. I would go on a bit more, but I have just put up a lengthy post on the much needed Feminism thread. A glitch caused me to lose the entire thing and I had to do it all over again from scratch . Anyway have a great New Year to you and the rest of the gang.

[b:34ww9ce3]Gandalfs Beard[/b:34ww9ce3]

UGH!!! I just lost my post!! growl, rage,
Paracelsus is mentioned in the Harry Potter Lexicon http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/books/op/rg-op14.html with a link to The Catholic Encyclopedia, which gives a load of info you probably don't want, and not enough of the kind of info you DO want.

The Rowling reference is in [i:2dkceiee]Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix[/i:2dkceiee], chapter 14, "Percy and Padfoot," page 281 in the hardcover American edition.
I'd risk typing it, but I already lost it once, so here's this for now.

I don't understand why "gnome" would be linked to "knowledge" by the "gnostics," because the gnostics believed, as you say, in the split categories of matter and spirit. Unless "knowledge" is distinct from "inspiration" or "revelation"... I'm trying to make the connection. Products or matters experienced by the mind can be categorized into levels, and some are more "earthy" than others? Knowledge is a lower level, based on what can be verified by observation of the material world? I dunno. I'm trying to understand.

[i:2skiv7rs]Sophistry[/i:2skiv7rs] is a big rhetoric term because Plato speaks disparagingly of the Sophists, who would use their argument skills in the service of anything, the way a lawyer today may take a case to defend a guilty person who can pay for a good lawyer. Though I had a teacher at the graduate level who called himself a sophist, or who admired the sophists. He believed in teaching the techniques of rhetoric not so that people could learn to be "good men, speaking well" but so that his students would be wary listeners. There IS no necessary "good" from everyone's point of view, and so it is dangerous to try to train "Good men to speak well" or to train only those who are virtuous to speak well, because all kinds of people know how to speak well. It is up to us to judge the good from the bad. It is useful to recognize the tricks so that we recognize when somebody is playing on us like a fiddle. Appealing to our desires and emotions.

Since we are talking about "G" words and earthiness, I wondered about Gollum from LOTR and the Jewish [i:2skiv7rs]golem[/i:2skiv7rs], which is, I guess, a man made out of clay, without a spirit. There's a Simpson's episode on utube about a golem. Frankenstein's monster would be a kind of golem, if I understand it right. An animate human-shaped body that does not have a spirit. Maybe it's just a coincidence, or maybe it is supposed to add to the idea of Gollum's wretchedness...now much he has lost his humanity. Living in the roots of a mountain, taking on the earthness, the his divine spark is almost competely snuffed.

Yes, Indeed Otto's World, the Gnostics were dualists, believing that matter was lowly,created by an Evil God. This is exactly part of the separation I was talking about. But we must remember that medievalism was the beginning of a return to Pagan thought. The separation was beginning a repair job that would ultimately result in Einstein's theory. Tolkien was quite the philologist, looking deep into the roots of language and inspiring my own Philological Quest. I have always been fascinated by the similarities of certain words, and sought their root sources. I think Tolkien himself noted in the section I referred to, on the connection between Knowledge and Earth as it pertains to Paracelcus possibly inventing the usage of Gnome to mean Earth-dweller. But Tolkien was uncertain because the science of phlilology at the time was itself uncertain as to whether the term "Gnome" existed before Paracelcus. Regardless, the Oxford English Dictionary contains both definitions; and if indeed Paracelsus invented the word, then he is the one that gave it both definitions -- thereby repairing a split that had existed for thousands of years.

As to the Gnostics themselves, despite their split, they were onto something; and eventually in the higher orders of Gnostic Cosmology the dualism resolved into a form of Monism (as it does in Eastern Cosmologies). So if we examine the words purely from a linguistic view, as Tolkien did we can see the connections clearly: Gnosis/Gnostic/Knowledge/Gnome -- These are all words with the same root; the spelling changes (due to whether it is from Greek/Latin or Germanic forms),but the sound is the same. Likewise with Sophia/Sophisticate/Sophistry: Sophia was Muse, a spirit of knowledge -- feminine and earthy (there is a resolution of the dualism right there). Those that portray Gnostics as [b:h79hrytl]merely[/b:h79hrytl] dualistic are misunderstanding in the same way they misunderstand the nature of Yin/Yang -- also a resolved dualism/monism. To continue: Sophisticate -- a person of knowledge. And finally; Sophistry -- a form of rhetoric that twists knowledge into pretzels.

I think I will post at this point before my computer glitches.