Davem -
This is an enjoyable thread, and I can definitely point to personal things that I felt "prepared me" to accept and love Tolkien.
The part of Middle-earth I first connected with was Tolkien's depiction of trees and the land, the Shire and Lorien especially. LotR became a crash course in appreciating the natural world. All the rest--characters, medieval texts, and the depths of the Legendarium-- only came later.
The reason I could see and appreciate that natural beauty was that I spent a chunk of my time in the sixties protesting environmental issues and rambling in the countryside through the Appalachian Mountains, along the shores of the Great Lakes, and then in south Wales and the West Country of England. When I read Tolkien, I could feel the grass poking up between my toes.
Yet, to be honest, when I first read this thread and saw the word "pre-baptism", part of me reacted the way Bethberry did.....
Quote:
|
So, first of all, could there be texts which in fact prepare us not to understand and accept those of Lewis and Tolkien? Is our reading such that we have to be purged of some of our tastes and familiar favourites before we can appreciate Narnia or Middle-earth? What are these texts? Are there truly sins in reading that must be purified?
|
I've always had this problem with Lewis. It's not just a matter of one thing preparing us for something else. And it goes beyond Bethberry's question of texts (though that is definitely part of it). I've always felt that Lewis is asking us to strip off a chunk of who we are, in effect to purge some of our "modern" tastes in order to comply with his perceptions of what the ideal reader should be. I get less of that sense from Tolkien. He seems to paint with a wider and less dogmatic brush. But even with Tolkien I sometimes catch just a whiff of that.
I remember once reading a passage --- can't say specifically where it came from -- in which Tolkien and Lewis were talking about themselves as the final "true" remnents of "Western Civilization"....the fact that they were two grand old men who approached texts and ideas from a different vantage point than the readers who would come after them and that meant they had a very different way of looking at things. I'm not even talking about Christianity here, though that could be part of it. Rather they were talking about an acceptance and appreciation for "traditional" western culture and having a certain kind of education. At the time, the discussion rubbed me the wrong way a bit and I still have that image in my head when someone talks about somehow "cleansing " us to prepare for something else.
Probably a crazy reaction. I don't know if anyone else has had a response like that.