![]() There are individual hobbits that appear “spoiled” (or ‘bent’ to borrow from Lewis’ mythology), such as the Sackville-Bagginses or the Sandymans. The hobbits are good, almost Pelagian, although some of them can be better than others. To me, the single brilliant imagining of the race of hobbits brings his re-creation of the Good into sharp focus. Tolkien’s great achievement was the creation of a morally consistant parallel world. Indeed, inasmuch as fantasy literature dealt with Good and Evil at all, it was to offer an escape from the stultifying decayed-Evangelicalism public morality of the day into an earlier, more permissive world. There was no room for hobbits in Ouroboros. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros was thoroughly aristocratic both in tone and aspect, a sort of a High-Tory-on-LSD ‘romaunce’, peopled by proud-speaking haughty grandees entirely dismissive of the pettier sort of folk and their concerns. The resolution of her tale was a satisfying Hegelian synthesis between the quotidian comfort preferred by her Whig protagonists and the whimsy of the Jacobite fairie folk they so disdained E.R. Mirlee’s Lud-In-The-Mist incarnated no Manichaean vision of good and evil. Dunsany’s little fables were as likely to celebrate hashish eating as martial courage. James Cabell’s Jurgen was a flighty rascal. ![]() Prior to Tolkien, fantasy literature, what there was of it, was strangely amoral. Then, to hear some people talk, all writers of fantasy literature written since The Lord Of The Rings have slavishly followed Tolkien down the path of rewriting Paradise Lostaccording to their own moral vision. It is not nuanced enough to reflect the “real world”. The contrast between Good and Evil that Tolkien traces in his epics are as sharp as shadows on the moon. One of the most frequent objections to fantasy literature is that it lacks ‘depth’, that fantasy literature is an endless repetition of a “good vs evil” theme that resurfaces in book after book, series after series. In a way, it has been kind of an exercise in “comparative fantasy”. Since the commute began, I have been fortunate to acquaint and re-acquaint myself with some of the great names in imaginative literature JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, George Macdonald, Ursula LeGuin, Stephen King, Tim Powers, ER Eddison, Jack Vance, and many others too numerous to mention. There is a wealth of good stuff on audio, and it is a very good way to ‘catch up on your reading’, if you define reading loosely enough. Due to a change in my external circumstances, and the necessity of two hour commute (both ways) daily, I have been glutting myself on imaginative literature in the past few months.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |