[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Your extreme examples would very likely not be allowed--that is, would be taken to court if published--in the realistic fiction you trumpet so much, at least in the countries which have laws against hate literature while also eschewing censorship, so those restrictions would also pertain to fantasy.

Exactly. And we're all fine with that. It would be illegal (though not everyone would consider all those examples to be 'immoral' - many athiests find Pullman's depiction of God & the Church perfectly fine, many believers not. Many white supremacists would find 'sub human' black people perfectly acceptable, if not simply 'true' according to their lights).

Thus, a line does exist as to what's acceptable & what isn't - 'Fantasy' as a genre does not = anything goes. We expect certain standards to be maintained, certain boundaries to be upheld. But are they simply 'negative' boundaries - 'Within these set bounds you may do as you please", or are there more 'positive' requirements? Has political correctness entered the secondary world? We know from what we know of Tolkien, the old school Catholic who attended Mass everyday, that homosexuality & adultery would (if they had appeared in his world) have been 'sinful' & that no 'good' person would have done either. Yet, if homosexual acts had been presented by Tolkien as 'Orcish' or immoral, would we have accepted that as being within those 'bounds' I mentioned earlier, or not? Probably at the time it was published they would have been, but nowadays not. So, Tolkien's presentation of war, specifically of death in battle, is not 'true'. Battles involving men dying on the end of sharpened metal implements of various ingenious designs were not as Tolkien depicted them. And Tolkien knew they weren't. More importantly, we nowadays, know they weren't. Yet, though we (or most of us) would not accept a depiction of homosexuality as sinful & as solely the province of 'bad' people, we do accept a sanitised & completely misleading depiction of warfare.

For instance, readers have the right to question, explore, and examine the choices a writer makes, but the significant issue is the grounds which determine the questionings, exploring or examining, because those grounds make the questioning more or less credible.

And who determines those 'grounds'? Who decides what questions can be asked & which questions (or perhaps questioners) are verboten? I cannot help feeling that that issue, too, is to be decided (as with what is acceptable in fantasy fiction) on subjective grounds. Either a question is valid (whatever the grounds it is asked on) - ie is 'logical', or it is invalid - therefore illogical & thus impossible to answer.

This ignores Tolkien's other criteria, of arresting strangeness, as well as overlooking Tolkien's insistence that LotR was not a veiled representation of WWII.

I don't see how an honest depiction of war excludes 'arresting sttrangeness' - it may even enhance it - the etherial beauty, the arresting strangeness, of Lorien would only be magnified by contrating it to the true horror of death on the Pelennor. And I don't see where WWII comes into it. Hacking someone with a broadsword will produce certain physiological effects which, being universal, & determined by the essential nature of the human body, are timeless, & not limited to events in WWII. In fact, I would say that the very use of implements such as swords & spears, as opposed to machine guns & hand grenades is sufficient in itself to seperate the War of the Ring from WWII.