[Bêthberry]

If one accepts the statement I quoted above--that poetry never lies because it never affirms anything--and if one accepts that by poetry Spenser meant all literature--then the answer would be simple. A fantasy writer, as a writer of all literary forms, is bound only by the quality of his or her sub-creation, by the aesthetic demands required to create a 'great reading'. 'Lies' just doesn't cut it in this perspective. In fact, I would suggest that the Mythopoeia poem isn't about lies at all but about the quality of sub-creation, that creativity and artistic vision has its own drummer and is not beholdin' to any other kind of vision.

The problem for Tolkien arises, I think, when he elaborates upon his Legendarium by calling it a prehistory of our world. That then invites comparisons between Middle-earth in the Third Age, First Age, Second Age, etc, with our world. The denizens of the earlier ages are similar to mythological types in other early world literatures. What Tolkien appears to have been wanting to depict, at least in LotR, is the 'moment' when that mythological world fades away into a world more in conformity with our 'Seventh Age.' It is the time when the elves, dwarves, dragons, orcs fade away, even though Tolkien suggests that hobbits still exist with a highly developed ability to hide from our view. It is possible that his difficulty in writing or completing stories for the Fourth Age relates to this loss, that the really inspiring aspect for him was the waning of this mythological time.

For Tolkien, a world perspective which does not allow for wonder, imagination, creativity, the ferment of ideas, as much as a moral stance which allows one to differentiate among the Lobelias, Frodos, Boromirs, Grimas, and Gollems, must remain essential. It is a perspective which grants constant vigilance against human error, which recognises that humans are so prone to aspects of power that they can easily fall into error. That concept of human psychology is absent from much in "progressive thought" that grants to mankind--usually the males of the species--the absolute right to totally dominate other human beings and the natural world. One doesn't need idealism or God or gods to understand that humans are prone to their own self satisfaction which can have disasterous consequences. In fact, Tolkien's poem Mythopoeia suggests that when men replace God/the gods with their own pitiful power tripping--"head tripping" in davem's words-- by thinking that a name is what makes a thing exist, they fall into error. This might not be a caution against human willfulness which Pullman acknowledges, but the baddies in Pullman are every bit as prone to this Tolkien error as any villian in Tolkien.

There's enough evidence in our Primary world, from environmental abuse to domestic abuse to technological abuse of knowledge to suggest that a world view which asks us to question our own claims to power/divinity is not writing fantasy as wish fulfilment. Sometimes, it is easier to see things in front of our own noses if they are coloured to appear different. That then puts the 'onus' as it were, on the reader to interpret.