Davem wrote:
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It seems to me that there is perhaps a difference between the 'literary novel' & the story. At the extreme of the literary novel we have, say, Finnegan's Wake, a novel as much about language itself as it is about anything else. Perhaps we could put the folktale - especially the folktale as heard rather than read - at the other extreme. What I mean is that in the literary novel the focus is on the language - the text - while in the folktale the focus is on images.
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Certainly there are vast differences between folktales and works like
Finnegan's Wake. But I think there are two mistakes to avoid here. First, I don't think it's quite right to say that there is a literary vs. imagistic opposition between them. I think it is not trivial to note that
all literature (even spoken folk-tales) is, fundamentally, made of words. For a narrative art-form that is
really based on images, we'd have to turn to film. Comic books, too, I suppose. I also wonder to what extent the "focus on images" that you see in the folk-tale is an objective fact about the genre and to what extent it is simply the thing that
you as a reader react to most strongly.
The second potential mistake, I think, is to see a qualitative difference between two genres and to mistake it for a fundamental difference not only in the way the two genres
are but in the way they should be approached. It's fair enough to point out ways in which LotR differs from something like
Finnegans Wake. But what does that difference mean for us? Does it mean that we
must bring a different sensibility, a different analytic vocabulary, to LotR?
I would say, rather, that there are different ways to approach the work, each of which is valid. Or perhaps I should say
all of which are valid, for it seems to me that there is no choice to be made; all approaches are valid
simultaneously. I would say, in fact, that one indication that a work of art is great is that it can be approached simultaneously from a great many different ways.