[davem]

Originally Posted by alatar

Exactly! Maybe he skipped over all of the real life gore and mud because he wanted to, maybe not so much in the way of the lesson, show a world where even war wasn't as ugly, and that the good prevail, and that hope springs eternal.

And isn't that what fantasy's all about? Escape from reality?

And Tolkien's opinion:

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion. For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen. OFS

For Tolkien fantasy is not an 'anything goes' genre. It has its basis in, is founded on, primary world reality. It does not reject scientific fact - where it departs from them it does so for logical reasons -

"If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion."

Tolkienian fantasy has its basis in cold hard facts - it is not an anything goes genre. If it was he would not have spent so much of his life creating Middle-earth. Hence, when such 'cold, hard facts' are omitted they are omitted for a reason. A world 'where war isn't ugly' is a world which is not based on the 'cold hard facts' that Tolkien insists on. In fact, such a world is exactly the kind of 'morbid delusion' that he condemns.

Fantasy has also an essential drawback: it is difficult to achieve. Fantasy may be, as I think, not less but more sub-creative; but at any rate it is found in practice that “the inner consistency of reality” is more difficult to produce, the more unlike are the images and the rearrangements of primary material to the actual arrangements of the Primary World. It is easier to produce this kind of “reality” with more “sober” material. Fantasy thus, too often, remains undeveloped; it is and has been used frivolously, or only half-seriously, or merely for decoration: it remains merely “fanciful.” Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of human language can say the green sun. Many can then imagine or picture it. But that is not enough—though it may already be a more potent thing than many a “thumbnail sketch” or “transcript of life” that receives literary praise.

To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.OFS

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

I like that disclaimer, alatar. When it comes to depictions of "realism," I don't need graphic details of word or image to understand the reality. When I hear that a bomb struck a building full of people, for instance, I don't need to be told the details of what happened to the building and their bodies to know the kind of carnage that ensued, and feel horrified by it. Perhaps other people do.

But what if a writer included such an event in his story, but implied that the people died quickly & peacefully, & left behind neat, unmutilated corpses?

One can certainly write about an invented world where Pixies ride around on purple unicorns & the sun shines all day long & no-one is ever unhappy. And that would be 'fantasy' as well. But it wouldn't be Tolkienian fantasy. When one chooses to write about war, about battlefields, about men killing each other, then doesn't one have (if one is writing Tolkienian fantasy, with its roots in cold hard facts & 'the perception of scientific verity' & where if the sun is green its green-ness must be given a justification) an obligation to ground that killing & dying in cold hard facts as well?