davem: in light of recent events on this thread, I shall fight the urge to give you some negative rep for having tempted me with the link to that article.
What in the world is there else to say. . .
There's been a lot of interesting responses so far, but I remain intrigued by a certain area of silence; I accept that you all sense or gain a 'reality' from
LotR, I do too,
but is it real in the same way that other other works of non-fantasy are real? I shall put my neck out there with
Mithalwen's and argue that it is not real in the same way, not at all.
I don't think that the reality of Tolkien's art is like the reality of Shakespeare's (to continue the comparison) simply because Tolkien is so much more in control of the reality of his world than was Shakey. The Denmark of
Hamlet is not the 'real' Denmark, but the people and situations that inhabit it are real. A hobbit with a magic Ring is simply not real in any place other than in the art of Tolkien. Both works are real, but I have a bigger slice of the reality in a work of art that
reimagines the primary world rather than imagining a secondary world.
I'm not trying to argue that this is good or bad, just that there's a different relation between art and reality with Tolkien -- I would almost say with any work of fantasy, but I think that in this regard, Tolkien might actually be unique.
Imladris you wrote (quite disconcertingly for me) that
Quote:
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and then there are people who hate it (because it is opposite of their truth -- it is against that which they think is true -- it conflicts with their world view).
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I find this disconcerting, because apparently I am to hate
LotR????? I don't say this for rhetorical effect, but simply because, well, Tolkien's views do conflict with my own, in just about every way. (Well, OK, he and I are closer together than I am with, say, the author of the article that davem has cited above, but that's hardly a fair comparison; I have more in common with a turnip than with the author of that article. . .but I digress). I still find the same sort of reality in the book that I find in works with views that are more like my own, but this is natural and to be expected: most of the real people, cultures and practices in the world are not run according to my view of things! That’s the neat thing about truth and reality: we can all have different truths, but we all share the same reality.
And that’s where I come back to Tolkien: do his works share the same reality? Or are they ‘merely’ very pleasing tales, divorced from reality? Or do they create a new or different reality, that in some way is connected to our own?