The Letters of Tolkien have proved many times in the past to be a wonderful and incisive look, not only into the progression of his storyline, but into his feelings, doubts, and emotions. I look forward to this thread very much, and hope those members with the Letters Book, make an effort to bring to the table here, some illuminating topics.
For those who understand, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not, no explanation will suffice!
I came across this website, which I found to be a great asset. Here's how the author describes his site, with the link below:
This document is a compilation of Frequently Asked Questions, or likely-to-be-asked questions, about the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, all of which are answered (or at least addressed) by the Professor himself in his own words as published in Humphrey Carpenter's The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. There are no answers typed here—only the numbers (and in the case of very long letters, the page numbers) of the letters which address the question.
"They were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were believed to have strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of beasts and birds...but they were now few and rarely seen."
That's a very interesting website, Hilary! Although... I don't have the Letters... I don't know if I can find the book in my country or if the only way to get it is to buy it online. But I copied this FAQ-like guide, so it will prove really useful to me when, hopefully, I get the book one day. Thanks for the link!
Not finding a topic area that concerns other literature that may have been derived from Tolkien, or may have inspired him, I am placing the following piece here because it does utilize some statements from "The Letters." Desi, Stormrider, or any other responsible administrator: feel free to move this to a more suitable location if you have one in mind! (Andorinha: I think this fits in very nicely here!--Stormrider) ______________________
Like many other readers who devoured JRRT's Middle-earth volumes "The Hobbit," "The Lord of the Rings," and even "The Silmarillion" left my hungers for this sort of fantasy-history-epic entirely unsated. When the auxilliay volumes of HOME, as well as "The Lost Tales" and "The Unfinished Tales" proved "only" to be essays on the development of Tolkien's universe, or "merely" short pieces of brilliant descriptive prose and poetry, I began to look elsewhere for the lengthy, connected narratives I wanted most of all.
Roger Zelanys "Nine Princes in Amber" was good, and Ursula K. Leguin's "Earthsea Trilogy" was even better, but neither was quite "the ticket." So I turned to the vintage works of fantasy that became widely available in re-print form a few years after Tolkien made that genre respectable again (and remunerative!). Rider H. Haggard I knew from his Zulu epics, but I did not know he had tried his hand also at creating a "Nordic" epic of his own, "The Saga of Eric Brighteyes" -- an interesting work, but couched in a faux-archaic dialect that annoyed more than it amused; Leslie Barringer's Neustrian Cycle was better written than Haggard's essay in the ethnic-feudal romance tradition, but somehow it was, for me, always a distant, cold world, a place where the reader could not readily inject him/ herself; ER Eddison's Zimianian Trilogy was more colourful, and had a jolting sort of life to it that attracted me -- but even the flagship of this series, "The Worm Ouroboros," fell short of my post-Tolkien expectations. Only Hope Mirlee's "Lud in the Mist" was capable of sweeping me away, and enthusing me with a bright wonder that matched my first readings of "The Lord of the Rings." But, the places Mirlee's brilliant prose took me, while equally enchanting as anything in Middle-earth, were vastly different scapes, and while they were provocative of a unique set of images that I will always cherish, still it was not Middle-earth...
I then read a few books by William Morris, the pre-Raphaelite designer, craftsman-writer, socialist-utopian who is often credited with inventing "the medieval-flavored, imaginary world fantasy."* Here I found strong parrallels between Morris and JRRT in prose form, subject matter, character development, and the use of the North European "back-history" (as opposed to a Classical Graeco-Roman myth base, or a Christian Arthurian romance complex). It was not until I got a copy of "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien" (H. Carpenter ed.) that I leaned just how much Tolkien owed to William Morris.
The cycle of "mythic-ethnic-histories" composed by Morris in the late 1880s was, in fact, one of the richest sources of inspiration for a young Tolkien who was already, by age 14, desperately interested in combining the magics of the fairy tale with the semi-mythic narrative histories of northwestern Europe's ancient tribal folks. An intriguingly produced volume (Pre-Raphaelite cover art, almost square shape, and "near-runic" chapter headings), combining two of the Morris books that most impressed and influenced Tolkien now sits on my desk. "The House of the Wolfings" and "The Roots of the Mountains" will be receiving my closest attention through July as I further compare Morris to Tolkien.**
With my initial reading of LotR, I was immediately taken with JRRTs depiction of the Dead Marshes, the solitudes of those vast, sodden, charnel swamps that overlay the fields of an ancient, mighty conflict -- where now a gangrel nature, and the poisoning arts of a Mad Maia (Sauron) combined to cast a dreay but fascinating pall. So when I read Tolkien's "landscape commentaries" in Letter # 225, December 10, 1960, I was both surprised and enthused to find that he attributes the scenery of these haunting marshes to the descriptive inspiration of Morris:
"Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either plot or manner of its [LotR's] unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in 'The House of the Wolfings' or 'The Roots of the Mountains.' " (Letter # 225, p. 303)
I will be looking forward to discovering just which passages, penned by Morris, inspired JRRT's own lyrical descriptions of the deadlands that lie about the gates of Middle-earth's Third Age equivalent to Hell.
Only Hope Mirlee's "Lud in the Mist" was capable of sweeping me away, and enthusing me with a bright wonder that matched my first readings of "The Lord of the Rings." But, the places Mirlee's brilliant prose took me, while equally enchanting as anything in Middle-earth, were vastly different scapes, and while they were provocative of a unique set of images that I will always cherish, still it was not Middle-earth...
I then read a few books by William Morris, the pre-Raphaelite designer, craftsman-writer, socialist-utopian who is often credited with inventing "the medieval-flavored, imaginary world fantasy."* Here I found strong parrallels between Morris and JRRT in prose form, subject matter, character development, and the use of the North European "back-history" (as opposed to a Classical Graeco-Roman myth base, or a Christian Arthurian romance complex).
An intriguingly produced volume (Pre-Raphaelite cover art, almost square shape, and "near-runic" chapter headings), combining two of the Morris books that most impressed and influenced Tolkien now sits on my desk. "The House of the Wolfings" and "The Roots of the Mountains" will be receiving my closest attention through July as I further compare Morris to Tolkien.**
** More to William Morris, Two Books That Inspired J.R.R. Tolkien, presented by Michael W. Perry with a foreword, 2003, Inkling Books, Seattle.
Thank you for this, Andorinha. I have wanted to read some William Morris, however my library doesn't carry any. I put his work on the back burner of my mind for the someday, when I have lots of money and no other books to buy. You have inspired me to count my pennies and buy the books you suggested, right now...well, um...as soon as I get some more pennies. If I don't care for them, I could always donate them to my library. In the mean time I'll try to find Hope Mirlee's Lud in the Mist. Thanks, Lanhail
The foolish seek happiness in the distance. The wise grow it underfoot. ---James Oppenheim
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend; inside a dog it's too dark to read. ---Groucho Marx
One of the most important of the stimulii for Tolkien's "backstory mythology" -- those works that were later collected by his son Christopher and published as The Silmarillion -- was the grand epic of Finnish Nationalism, The Kalevala. In the volume of his collected letters (edited by his "official" biographer, Humphrey Carpenter) JRRT made it quite clear that he was "adapting" one of the Finnish "ballads" for his own tale of the mortal hero, Turin Turambar:
"I went and had an interesting talk with that quaint man Earp I have told you of and introduced him (to his great delight) to the Kalevala the Finnish ballads. ... Amongst other work I am trying to turn one of the stories - which is really a very great story and most tragic - into a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris' romances with chunks of poetry in between..." (Letter #1 JRRT to his future wife Edith Bratt, October, 1914).
The particular Runo, or ballad, Tolkien chose as the model for his "Turin" was "The Story of Kullervo."
I have often heard how influential the Kalevala was upon Tolkien's early mindset, but now that I am actually reading the massive, disjointed text of this Finnish epic (my momentary opinion only) I keep stumbling into startling revelations. Tolkien did not simply use the language forms of Finland in his Middle-earth writings -- Finnish grammar forms were used as the base of his Elvish Quenya -- but he also borrowed literary themes, and even the details of plot and story line from the sagas of this northern nation. There are many direct coorespondences of characters, motivations, and even actions between JRRT's tale of Turin and the incidents that plague the hapless Finn, Kullervo: the themes of incest, suicide by water, and suicide via talking sword, etc. etc. ...
Many who read the Silmarillion have remarked upon the doom-laden hero, Turin, and find his motivations, his personality, and the deeds of his story to be strangely unlike the tone, or flavor found in most of the other tales related in that volume. There seems to be a decided roughness, and pessimistic darkness in Turin's Tale that stands out in strong contrast with such offerings as the "Lay of Luthien Tinuviel," or the saga of Earendil the Mariner. In fact, in my opinion, when all the Silmarillion tales are examined, the element of "primitive" folk-tale magic seems most evident, in the "Tale of Turin." In the Kalevala, the heroes often end up defeated, they frequently commit "misdeeds" themselves, and there is no clearly defined scheme of absolute good vrs. an absolute evil. Inanimate objects frequently have personae in the Kalevala, and they may even have the gift of speech -- and this may be the reason that JRRT has a "talking" inanimate object in his adaptation of the Kullervo Runos -- Turin's sword. Elsewhere, in all his writings, I think JRRT uses a "talking" inanimate object only once more -- the Troll's Purse in the Hobbit. So when one stops comparing the doom-laden, primitive flavored "Tale of Turin" with the rest of the Silmarillion, and instead compares it with the Kalevala's "Kullervo," then it becomes more understandable why Turin seems so different from the other Middle-earth texts, and their heroes. A youthful JRRT was borrowing more heavily from the "primitive-magical," Finnish epic at this early point in his writing career (1914); and it seems that only after his World War I experiences, he really started composing his later myths in his own style, a "smoother" style that was influenced ever more heavily by his Roman Catholic faith?
Thanks for getting this thread, on Tolkien sources, up and running Andorinha, and I hope to see more from you when you finish up your reading of Morris. (Just a friendly nudge!)
Thank you Heril! Still working on Morris -- more to come soon, I hope... And thank you, Lanhail, hope to get your own views on these "source books" for JRRT's creation after you've had a chance to read them.
"The germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala. It remains a major matter in the legends of the First Age (which I hope to publish as The Silmarillion), though as 'The Children of Hurin' it is entirely changed except in the tragic ending."
(Letter # 257, July 1964, p. 345)
I now have a copy of Keith Bosley's translation of The Kalevala, only 680 pages long (but not so many words on each page as would make up more than a half page of normal text, so I guess it's really only 340?). I am going to read it all the way through, just as an exercise in self-control, so I can stand around at c o c k* tail parties and brag about the deed. Seriously though, I went straight to Runo 31 to catch the Tolkien parallels you mention, Heril, and if the rest of work reads as well, 340 or even 680 pages should be a breeze!
I never before thought that the "gimmick" of "talking, inanimate objects" was a primitive magic device, usually found in less polished fairy tales, like those recounted by the Brothers Grimm -- so thanks for this concept, Heril. I do agree that it seems rarely used in Tolkien's main works, The Hobbit, and LotR, so that its prominent presence in "The Children of Hurin" seems anomalous at first glance. Now JRRT's use of this device makes sense (I think) as it is an integral part of the Finnish, "primitive" model he was trying adapt for his own purposes. In this regard, I thought the "childish-seeming" plaint of Kullervo was particularly apt for the "Doomed" Turin:
" 'Woe is me, a luckless boy woe, a boy down on his luck!"
Runo 33, "The Broken Knife" p. 459
Like Turin, Kullervo is not I think, a very endearing character, pride rules both these heroes, and they are equally rash and precipitate in their actions. I think Tolkien may actually have had to "tone down" some of the rage aspects found in Kullervo -- Middle-earth is a more "genteel" place, enthused with more chivalry than early Finland seems to have been. Turin slays a scoffing Elf, by running the fellow to his death, and (accidentally) he slays his best friend Beleg -- but Turin never goes to quite the anti-social extreme of Kullervo who slays (by setting his wolves and bears upon her) an old woman whose stony bread has broken his favorite, heirloom knife.
"... a wolf pounces upon her a bear bears down upon her. The wolf rips her face to shreds the bear yanked her foot sinews it bit half her calf broke her heel off her leg bone. Kullervo, Kalervo's son thus avenged the wench's taunts..."
Runo 33, p. 465
Strong stuff! Stronger than Tolkien, raised up in a "gentler" Victorian - Edwardian era, was used to. I wondered in reading Tolkien's tale of Turambar, "The Children of Hurin," just why Turin seemed to be so "dammed" that the Curse of Morgoth would be so effective over him. In The Kalevala a rougher, tougher, more self-centered Kullervo may be deserving of the punishments he eventually receives -- but Turin's "crimes" never seem sufficiently horrid to make his similar punishment understandable. But if JRRT was still trying to remain largely faithful to The Kalevala model he was imitating, then I think it does make sense. Turin -- bound up with/ in the fate of Kullervo -- pays for the crimes of the Finnish hero as much as for his own!
In Runo 35, the rough Kullervo, a lusty fellow (though not entirely absent from it, physical, sexual lust is something not seen often even in Tolkien's rawer Silmarillion, ) propositions several maidens who reject him before he comes, unknowingly, upon his hapless sister.
" 'Get up, maid, into my sleigh lie back on my furs!'
But the maid says from her skis she gives tongue from her skiing: 'May doom come into your sleigh disease lie back on your furs!' "
Runo 35 - p. 477
"He rumbles along... and meets a maid [another one] ... he orders his words: 'Come into my sleigh, fine one the land's choice, on my travels!'
But the maid says back the leather-shod raps: 'Tuoni come into your sleigh and Death upon your travels!' "
Runo 35 - p. 478
In contrast, Tolkien gives his Turin a more "courtly romantic" appeal -- in fact the girls, human, and elf alike really seem to go for Turin Turambar. Meanwhile, Kullervo (I suppose the fury of his lust mounting as he meets rebuff and frustration at every propsition) finally resorts to the base tactic of rape with the third maid he meets:
" 'Step, maiden, into my sledge dear, under my quilt to eat some of my apples to nibble some nuts!'
But the maid says back and the tin-breast snaps: 'I spit, wretch, upon your sled tramp, upon your sleigh! 'Tis chilly under the quilt dismal in the sleigh.'
Kullervo, Kallervo's son... grabbed the maid into his sleigh and snatched her into his sledge dumped her on his furs and rolled her under the quilt. There the maid says this the tin-breast quarrels: 'Let me get out, give a child her freedom...' "
Runo 35, p. 479
Kullervo, does not relent, but when he later finds out he has raped his sister and driven her to suicide "in a smoking whirlpool," he is driven by shame to suicide himself. In his case, Kullervo is clearly at fault, he refuses to control his temper, his lusts, and in a raw way, he administers in his suicide a punishing justice for this failure, this lack of self discipline.
In JRRT's more politely "civilized" version, there is no act of rape to further compound the guilt of the hero, but, to remain true to the themes he was borrowing, Tolkien still had to find some way of making the eventual, double suicide of the hero and his sister seem a valid pair of reactions. Here, Tolkien did not feel he could use the device of rape to make his version of the accidental mating of brother and sister sufficiently shocking to produce a double suicide, so he used instead the ensorcellment of the Dragon Glaurung. Under the memory-clouding influence of Glaurung's "glamour," Niniel falls in love with Turin, he impregnates her. A psychologically traumatizing series of events, to be sure, but not necessarily fatal in consequence? After all, they are both "Dragon Bewitched" at this point, and not fully responsible for their actions. But then, to make plausible the sudden horror that deranges Niniel's mind to the point of self-destruction, Tolkien has Glaurung abruptly remove the protecting confusion of his spell. The heightened shock of so sharp a revelation of their incest seems sufficient explanation for Niniel's action, and after her death, a similar, sudden onset of horrified awareness sends Turin, "understandably," to his own doom.
I think it is very interesting to see how Tolkien takes his original sources of inspiration, and reworks them to suit his own sensitivities, his own value system!
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*LOL! I see there is a censor mechanism here that is rather bizarre in its automatic responses! A "c o c k tail party" is interestingly retranslated as a "thingy-party!" And the perfectly polite d a m n becomes d**m! I wonder what one gets if one dares write "The horns of Rohan sounded with the dawn, just at c o c kcrow!" Will it be "thingycrow?" Let's see: thingycrow. Yep, "thingycrow," well it is good to know that the human brain is still better than its cybernetic equivalent - so far!
Last Edit: Jul 7, 2004 16:25:53 GMT -6 by Andorinha
Post by MerlintheMad on Jul 7, 2004 19:41:57 GMT -6
You people impress me. No poet connoisseur am I, far from it. But I found what you have said very interesting.
My interests in "Letters" is far more prosaic: I like the details he supplies as to his reasons for making up his races the way he did. I have always taken especial delight in his description of orcs (page 274); and have hypothesized from that, that JRRT imagined the "squat" eastern races of the steppe to be the modern day remnant of what was (once upon a time) a distinctive, monstrous race.
I also enjoy the Professor's quips about moderns behaving in ways that rival Mordor for evil and debasement. Especially during the War, his letters to Christopher bear quite the stamp of disgust and irritation with the ways of the world.
At times, Tolkien is so lucid that his gifts almost read like prophecy. This quality in TLOTR (reinforced by many things that he says in Letters) has tempted me to hypothesize (yet again) that God uses the Fantasy genre of the apocalypse, to prepare our own "real" world for our own apocalyptic last battle with the forces of evil which try tirelessly to enslave us all. In that sense, TLOTR could be defined as a book of scripture, with warnings for us that penetrate the soul and effect changes in the lives of those who truly read Tolkien's master work. And, like scripture, TLOTR is to be interpreted by the things the author said elsewhere (i.e. Letters), to establish the "truth" of the writings.
Andorhina, I believe that annoying word filter can be shut off as an option. I am not really sure how, so perhaps one of our site managers can chime in here with the answer!
For those who understand, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not, no explanation will suffice!
Some time ago I found The Kalevala in a site where there are a lot of other literature and non-literature works as well. I'm afraid I haven't read it yet, daunted by the size of it and by the fact that I'll have to read it on the screen, as I can't possibly print almost 500 pages of a Word document.
In the Tolkien section of this site there are also other works that inspired Tolkien, like The Elder and the Younger Edda (Icelandic epic poetry), the Germanic Nibelungenlied, Heimskringla or The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway, and Beowulf.
I found very interesting the short explanatory text under the Eddas:
These Icelandic collections of epic poetry are key sources for the study of Norse mythology. Our plane of existence is called 'Middle Earth' in this mythology. Tolkien also took many of the names of key characters from this text; particularly one sequence early on in the Voluspo, including Gandalf, and all of the Dwarves from the Hobbit. Also found in the Eddas is the forest of Myrkwood; Bilbo's party traversed the vast Mirkwood forest in the Hobbit.
Gandalf is also a character of the Heimskringla Sagas:
Gandalf was the name of the last king to rule over Alfheim, He was killed by Harald Harf*gra in the year 866. Gandalf gets mentioned in The Ynglinga Saga, Halfdan, the Black Saga, and Harald Harf*ger's Saga.
In the same page there is also "The Wood Beyond the World" by William Morris, the author mentioned by Andorinha.
I found a website that has many of William Morris' works! My pennies haven't accumulated as fast as I would like, so this is a good alternative. etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/m/morris/william/ Lanhail
The foolish seek happiness in the distance. The wise grow it underfoot. ---James Oppenheim
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend; inside a dog it's too dark to read. ---Groucho Marx
I have just noticed that TR does not have a specific topic forum for the "minor" works of Tolkien, material like his 1939/ 1947 essay "On Fairy Stories." The closest, relevant venue seems to be here on the "Letters" forum, as Tolkien did also discuss the ramifications of his essay in Letters # 89, 96, 153 etc -- see index, p. 486 for relevant passages.
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In 1938, shortly after the publication of his "children's" fairy story, The Hobbit, Tolkien was asked to give one of the annual Andrew Lang lectures and he chose to devote his hour or two of presentation to the attempted re-definition of the basic term "Fairy Story." It is interesting to note that the definition he created for this lecture would take into account his personal preferences regarding just what he thought a Fairy Story should be. Having received some criticism of a negative sort regarding the "childishness" of The Hobbit, it seems JRRT was determined to make his next work a definitely "adult" oriented piece of writing. As the LotR developed between 1938 and 1954, many of the basic ideas he addressed in 1938 with his essay "On Fairy Stories" would be put into effect.
By 1947, the year in which the oral presentation of his essay "On Fairy Stories" received its final editing and its publication, JRRT's work on LotR had progressed sufficiently for him to realize that it now represented something quite different when compared with the general run of fantasy fiction currently available to the English speaking (reading) world. Being an academician, it occurred to him that he might at some time need to explain just what his text was: "pure fantasy," "adventure fantasy," "surrealist escapism," "fictional history," or what? The LotR, so far as it had gone by this date, was not precisely a continuation of The Hobbit, nor was it exactly a continuation of his fragmentary, Elder Age mythologies. It did not even fit into the same genre as the historical-fantasies of William Morris, nor was it comfortably placed in the realm of Classical Mythology. Just what was it!?
Tolkien decided that it was a Fairy Tale, and his seminal paper "On Fairy Stories," was produced to defend his choice of this genre. In actuality, Tolkien's decision to call his LotR a "Fairy Tale" was based upon the primary consideration that it took place in a Farie Realm, a world where magic lived, and was accepted as a real, physical component of the fabric of existance. So, JRRT was writing Fairy Tales -- what -- like Thumbellina, The Little Mermaid, Snow White and her Dwarfs? Well, no, not quite. While Tolkien had no aversion to using the term "Fairy Tale," he did have several strong objections to using it as it was then populary conceived. Somewhere along the line, The Fairy Tale, he asserted, had become associated with a children's nonsense form of entertainment, sometimes morally instructive, but primarily meant only to tease and please a youngster's mind. Tolkien decidedly did not want his LotR work regarded as mere childish play, he was himself a grown-up, and in his own estimation LotR was a grown-ups' book.
Consequently, being an able academician, Tolkien simply redefined the term he most wanted to use -- Fairy Tale. In part, such an effort of re-definition was both allowable and necessary because there was no universally accepted meaning for the term as late as the 1960s. Perhaps, among mythologists, mythographers, folk loricists, fantasy writers, ethnologists, lexicographers (etc., etc.) there still is no dominant definition available?
At any rate, this lack of general consensus meant that JRRT could validly re-craft the meaning of the term, Fairy Tale, to largely suit his own purposes. The first thing he did in this regard, was to remove the "childishness" from it: "the association of children and fairy stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is being misused."
Traditional Fairy-story collectors, like the Brothers Grimm and H.C. Andersen, would no doubt have protested that JRRT was going too far in his attempts to drag the Fairy Tale entirely out of the nursery. They would, no doubt have pointed out to Tolkien that the term may suitably fit a number of different expressions -- there could easily be "adult" Fairy Tales, and "children's" Fairy Tales, and probably some tales that would admirably suit both audiences simultaneously (Tove Jannson's Moomintrolls?).
But Tolkien had a crusading aspect to his character, and he was not in the mood for compromise. He felt he was in fact waging an uphill battle in his attempts to re-deploy the term Fairy Tale so that it suitably covered his "adult" book LotR -- so he pushed boldly on. His four part scheme of definition (Fantasy, Recovery, Escape and Eucatastrophic Consolation) was excellently suited for the LotR, but it would not work well with such Fairy Tale classics as Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz (movie version) or even many of the tales found in The Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Arbitrarily, Tolkien divorced, for example, all dream sequences from the Fairy Tale rubric. This apparently suited his own temperment wherein he wanted his type of Fairy Tale to be presented as an historically accurate, close representation of an alternate reality -- but NOT so alternate as to be an "unreal" dream.
It will be interesting, in the future, to see just how successful Tolkien's attempted re-definition will become. He certainly has many imitators who try to model their own published fantasies on the root elements we find in the "adult" fairy tale, LotR. He also was one of the first 20th century writers to make general "escapistic literature" a respectable article. But, I think it likely that his attack upon "dream-sequences" will not be widely accepted -- too useful, especially in the Hollywood context. Nor will his "eucatastrophic consolation" category receive much currency, I think (too bound up with Christian teleology?) -- but, he certainly has legitimized the Fairy-Tale-Fantasy genre as a suitable vehicle for adult expressions in fiction writing!
A superior thread, Stormrider! Vintage TR stuff whose heady wines have my head reeling! I'll be digesting the arguments made there for a while, and then return to this present site to see what might be made of this discussion. THANKS!!!
Stormrider: Could you please move a copy of the old TR files on "Fairy Tales" to some appropriate place here at the "new" TR? I am engaged with several others in a study of the "Fairy Tale" phenomenon, and I'd like to continue select aspects of this research here.