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Old 09-29-2006, 10:04 AM   #18
Lalwendė
A Mere Boggart
 
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Lalwendė is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Lalwendė is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aiwendil
What is meant by "reflect Faerie"? I think that this is a point worth considering very carefully.

Faerie is, after all, not a real place that can be accurately or inaccurately described (I fear I'm straying in the direction of the dreaded C-thread, but I shall boldly press on). Faerie may, in a sense, be "real" insofar as it refers to a massive complex of cultural and psychological facts; but to speak of representing Faerie itself as distinct from human perception and interpretation thereof (i.e. as something "out of most people's comprehension") seems to me to be meaningless.
It's real alright. That's what I mean by beyond comprehension, as most people don't understand Faerie and how to recognise it, even less how to get there. Tolkien might have been there - there is a tantalising echo in SoWM where Smith sees the warriors step down from their boat that came from somewhere beyond his comprehension. I know where there are slips into Faerie, blurs in time and consciousness, they're all over the place. It's beyond rational thought.

Quote:
Of course, without resorting to talk about Faerie itself, we can ask about amorality in existing fairy-stories. There are two important questions we ought to ask. First, does Tolkien's definition of a 'fairy-story' say anything about amorality? Second, do existing specimens of fairy-story uniformly exhibit amorality?

The answer to the first question is clearly "no". Tolkien doesn't even use the word "amoral" or "amorality" in the essay, and he certainly doesn't posit this as a criterion for fairy-story. Insofar, then, as we are investigating whether Tolkien's fiction conforms to his views on fairy-stories, the matter of amorality is irrelevant.

The second question is more interesting. Certainly there are a great many amoral fairy-stories; and I would agree that Tolkien's work is unusual in this regard. But I think that the amorality of fairy-stories has been somewhat overstated. There are, after all, important examples of fairy stories that are not amoral, and even some that are highly moral. Look at "Beowulf" or, even better, "Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight".
I agree, however, our readings of the Saxon and medieval texts must be tempered by bearing in mind that these may have been transcribed by Christians who obviously wouldn't be amoral! To get to those amoral tales you need to find the tales not sanctioned by the Church, those preserved by the ordinary people. Even Beowulf isn't entirely without the chaos of Faerie. And I have to question if specifically Christian writings (which Beowulf isn't, although written down by someone of the early religion) would really get to what Faerie is - it would be like reading a Hindu tale in order to try and understand the nature of Jesus.

Quote:
I must disagree. Ungoliant is evil. One can, of course, play all kinds of games along the lines of "the Silmarillion is a biased account" (though I confess that what it might mean for a fictional story to be fictionalized is unknown to me). But if we are talking about Tolkien's work, you have to accept that Eru is good and Ungoliant is not.
Hey, what about Reader Response? I can think of Eru as evil if I want! Anyway, just check out some of the text that we found as it at the very least suggests that Tolkien began with a distinctly amoral character for Ungoliant. Note also that she is exploited by Melkor, and Tolkien states that nobody knew where she came from, not the Elves nor Melkor; she came from The Void, she was not an Ainur nor was she an animal, she just was.
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