[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

Does there really need to be amorality in Fairy tales? I rather think Tolkien makes a good point by saying that human fairy tales are about humans in Fairy, not about Fairies; Fairies wouldn't write stories about Fairy since they live it. Humans are inescapably moral beings, thus their Fairy Stories must be moral stories, regardless of whether Fairy is itself amoral.

Well if we hope in any way to reflect Faerie then yes, a tale does have to reflect the amorality of Faerie, as that's the nature of the place/concept - its somewhere outside the rules, beyond the law and out of most people's comprehension. If humans are inescapably moral (and some might argue we are at root simply apes with the evolutionary benefits of walking upright, having opposable thumbs and having a varied diet) then the writers of Faery tales might put a moral 'spin' on them. In fact its probably right that there are moral spins on all Faery tales written by humans as we only have our own understanding of the world on which to base our writings of encounters with Faerie. Therefore if we take a particular moral stance then we might put that spin on our stories to a greater or lesser degree.

This of course is without considering the purpose of the tale. Are we talking about Hansel and Gretel, which serves the purpose of teaching children not to stray from the path and end up in strangers' houses? Or are we talking about Bluebeard which teaches young women about predatory men and how to bring them to heel? Or are we talking about Tam Lin which simply relates a juicy tale of a pair of lovers and how the pregnant girl extricates her lover from the clutches of the Faerie Queen? The last type of tale does not really have a specific moral message (you could find one but then you'd have to smash up the story so much it would lose it's sense of Faerie magic), and is probably there to satisfy the human urge for narrative. Adventure, peril, love and sex. A lot of Faerie Tale is there to entertain simply, like an old fashioned version of the mdoern soap opera.

Originally Posted by lmp

However, Tolkien's Middle Earth, with all of its Fairies (Elves) is not in the least amoral. It seems to me that a rather important question, along with those that have been raised already, is NOT "Was Tolkien wrong?", but "Why did Tolkien make his Fairy Realm moral?"

We have already found that the tale Tolkien created was not an amoral one, and it is possibly due to his wish to create a myth that was "purged of the gross", as to be honest, Faerie Tale is not about redemption or hope or joy or any of those things, its about danger, wicked fun, dreams, bodily fluids and death. Many of the tales are about parents murdering or abandoning their children, about predatory men, periods, adultery, and all kinds of other stuff that Tolkien did not write about (well not much anyway, The Children of Hurin is another matter...). I'd love to have put Tolkien and Angela Carter in the same room and sat back and watched the fur fly.

Originally Posted by lmp

But not morally ambiguous.

Ungoliant most defintely is ambiguous, check out the evidence in the Spiders thread that Bethberry and myself found.

Originally Posted by Fordim

I suppose in the end the single more important act of Recovery accomplished by his tales is an appreciation of language and of its importance and power that is lamentably absent today. With characters like Gandalf, Galadriel, Bombadil and Treebeard insisting on the importance of words and language, it’s pretty clear that words are not just a vehicle for communication but whole worlds of meaning in their own right. If I might be permitted a rather elaborate and self-conscious metaphor: he reminds a world now committed to the idea that words are coal-carts of a time when they were seen as rich mines.

Of course Tolkien made great use of language, its origins and meanings, and this is a great interpretation of Recovery, but you've spoiled it now by saying that this appreciation of language is 'lamentably absent today' as that's just wrong! You could have a whole army of modern writers after your blood, and in the front line would be the poets with their pitchforks, closely followed by a lot of other writers of the most unlikely kind. For example the copywriters who bend, twist and turn words to get the exact phrase which will both catch the eye and be deep with alternate meanings. I've written speeches and believe me, those words are not used as 'coal-carts', every single word and where it is placed counts, and I mean seriously counts; the top speech writers are cherished as finding a brilliant one is like finding moondust.

For me the sense of Recovery is in the sense that Tolkien created his mythology to dedicate to England. He did indeed gather up a sense of Englishness, encapsulating so much of what our language means to us, our tales and most of all, our land, redolent with history and the people who walked it before us. As Tolkien's narrative unfolds (and lets's be frank, the narrative is the most important factor, lets not damn the poor professor into Pseud's Corner, he was above all an exceptionally gifted storyteller, of the most magical kind, and that gift is an intangible one) we are taken along and see the things we'd not noticed before. We see the trees, the foxes, the barrows, the ruined forts, the elusive Elves, we see what was all around us all along and we hadn't bothered opening our eyes to really seeing before. There's the Recovery for me. And it worked in a very real sense as after reading his work, I Recovered all the stories about this country that had slipped form my notice and might well have remained that way.

Originally Posted by Bethberry

Some time ago I posted on the Downs that a later reading of LotR made me see that the quest is about Death. (Yes, this was years before a prominent Downer made a similar recent claim. ) But then, I thought it was merely my personal circumstances which inspired this reading. Now I have—at least to my satisfaction—a philological argument to support that reading.

Standing outside Time is something we all, as mortals seek to do (even if we have accepted Death already, as I have, I've already seen what it's like!) as the torment of being trapped in time, in a temporal existence sometimes makes us feel we are limited. That's why we like History and why we like the opposite, Sci-Fi. It allows us an escape of the here and now of the cubicle and the morning bus ride and the bills. We can walk with our ancestors or our descendants.

davem didn't make the claim about Death, Tolkien did. That's what it's about, and what as I said on davem's thread, I suspect all fantasy is ultimately about. What's interesting is the way that the different writers deal with it. Tolkien deals with it by trying to take us outside time, but he also tells us that whatever we think, one day we will all be dead and in the ground with the worms. Pullman deals with it by telling us to do things with our lives and not wish them away, to have true tales to tell the Harpies when we die.