[davem]

Originally Posted by Bb

It seems to me that any sense of fantasy which is so heavily based on the virginal or naive first reading has to be doomed to a kind of linguistic fall unless one can account for new meanings which come to the imagination upon subsequent readings.

I don't think its about basing our sense of fantasy on 'on the virginal or naive first reading'. Its about (for me) finding new depth & meaning within the secondary world rather than attempting to supply that depth & meaning from an external source - ie the Primary world.

This rather fits the Tolkien letter you referred to earlier, that he had not initially seen things in Galadriel that he later saw (or had pointed out to him). So, if Tolkien had a sense of coming closer towards discovering the story rather than inventing it, why cannot the reader also have this experience, as the two are joined in the act of subcreating?

This should be our goal on re reading any text, but we should look to the text itself (& the supplimentary work by the author) & our own speculations & surmises about it rather than attempting to find 'relevant' connections outside it - if we want the enchantment to deepen. If we bring in too much of the primary world we may find that the secondary world isn't strong enough to hold it & it will start to unravel - this is our part in the co-creation of the secondary world. We have to assist in the building of it, rather than simply standing around, looking at things & saying 'You know, this is really such & such - I think I'm being had!.'

In his continuing 'meditations on Galadriel Tolkien 'realised' that she was a kind of Virgin Mary figure in the sense that they shared certain symbolic attributes, but she never became merely an allegory of Mary. She could always stand alone as a figure within Middle earth.

Now, I'm not saying its not interesting to make connections between Middle earth & the primary world - I've indulged in that kind of play myself, but while it can be entertaining what I've found is that it takes me away from the actual experience, the 'enchantment'. Its fine to say 'This reminds me of so & so' - in fact, we can't help but be reminded in some cases, but to go beyond that & say 'This must equal that, they're the same thing' is asking for the spell to be broken.