What does the sixpence = ?

[tar-ancalime]

And I thought when I clicked on this thread that I would finally get a lucid explanation of the old British currency! Shillings, guineas, half crowns?

Maybe it doesn't matter what the sixpence is--maybe all that matters is that the person looking for it in the dark lacks the self-referentiality of those who look for it in the light. For the person in the light, the search (and therefore the searcher) is important; for the person in the dark, the object being sought is the important thing. But that doesn't really square with modernism, does it? It's more like your garden-variety po-mo.

I'll crawl back into my cave now.

[Eluchíl]

Seems ironic that light, which is notoriously represented to be insightful or epiphanic, has driven the man away from where the penny may actually be.

Anyway, it seems to me that the sixpence would be something Tolkien lost along his way. Something that he lost in a dark period or place in his life. Something he couldn't get back in the light, or that the light couldn't show him, so he would have to go back into the dark and fight to get it back again. It feels very lonely and sad to me.

[Selmo]

I don't get it.

Shippey creates this allegory and then says he doesn't know what it means: " I am not at all sure what the sixpence may =, but Tolkien was out there in the dark, looking for it. "

It seems to me that it's Shippey who's in the dark, not Tolkien.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Perhaps this thread is a little too hung up on the sixpence. The point of the allegory is that the man who has lost a coin is looking for it in completely the wrong place just because that happens to be where the light falls. Modernism casts a light on particular aspects of literary endeavour, and if Shippey's sixpence, be that some sort of artistic truth, a window on the human spirit or other horribly abstract ideal, happens not to be in that place, then Modernism won't find it. Being out in the dark (more likely using the moonlight that Modernism had eclipsed for its followers), Tolkien probably had as much chance of finding sixpence as anybody else. Alternatively he could have found a half-crown, threepence, or an old button, just as could someone using the light. Shippey assumes that critics are looking for something (I seem to recall from his book that it was some sort of literary epiphany) in the wrong place, and that Tolkien, although he may have been equally off target, was at least looking in a different and more logical wrong place.

Humbug, say I. Tolkien was probably not looking for the same coin that an exponent of Modernism might want; in fact he may not have been looking for a coin at all. More likely he wasn't seeking anything in particular, just writing his stories his way, whilst exploring his own philosophy and beliefs through language and legend: it's surprising how few people really think about current critical theory while they write fiction. To adapt one of his own allegories, while others were knocking down the tower to mine for gold, Tolkien was looking for a view of the sea. Neither understood the point of what the other was doing.

As it happens, looking at the present through a filter composed of Christianity and medieval language, myth and literature was nothing particularly new in the 1950s. In fact it was nearly a century out of date: Tolkien's generation was born at the height of the Victorian craze for medievalism, and several of his contemporaries were drawing on the same influences. Clearest to me is Robert Graves, whose poem Dead Cow Farm draws on the creation legends of Gylfaginning. T.S. Eliot, who has enjoyed a lot more success than Tolkien in acceptance into high culture, also makes use of medieval literature in The Waste Land. Perhaps they were looking for the same 'sixpence', but more likely they were looking for cigarette lighters or lost cuff-links.

The upshot of all this is that Shippey's allegory doesn't stand up to intensive examination, but does it really have to? It's clearly intended to demonstrate why twentieth-century (and early twenty-first-century) critical thinking has tended to dismiss his subject, while many often well-educated people, such as Professor Shippey himself, attach to it a greater significance. For me, this sort of argument exemplifies the defiant and provocative tone of this entire book. Its very title invites controversy, and from what I know of the author, he can't have been unaware of that. As for the sixpence, I presume that it's still lying on the pavement undiscovered, presumably next to the solidus that Horace sought.

[The Saucepan Man]

Does it matter what the sixpence is? It's lost anyway.

And is it not rather sensible to search in the light, with a good chance of finding something else equally as valuable if not more so, than to search in the dark with little hope of finding anything?

And, finally, is it not just as reprehensible for Shippey to sneer at those who adhere to modernism as it is for the critics to sneer at Tolkien's use of fantasy?

[Bergil]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

Does it matter what the sixpence is? It's lost anyway.

And is it not rather sensible to search in the light, with a good chance of finding something else equally as valuable if not more so, than to search in the dark with little hope of finding anything?

And, finally, is it not just as reprehensible for Shippey to sneer at those who adhere to modernism as it is for the critics to sneer at Tolkien's use of fantasy?

The man with the pan clearly doesn't get it. Shhippey means (and I agree) that iff you're looking for a twonie you dropped in a completely different place then you dropped it because the light's better there, you let circumstances decide your actions, and pull you away from what you want to be doing (or what you're good at doing). In other words, if you go out and buy whatever CD is being advratised, you're "looking in the light", but that CD is most likely no good, so if you want to find some good music, you'll have to "look in the dark". Shippey is saying that those who apply modernism just because it's the latest thing are idiots, and saying Tolkien didn't write what he thought people wanted to read, he wrote what he wanted to write (I agree with both).

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Bergil

Shhippey means (and I agree) that iff you're looking for a twonie you dropped in a completely different place then you dropped it because the light's better there, you let circumstances decide your actions, and pull you away from what you want to be doing (or what you're good at doing).

Which (as Squatter suggested) is precisely where Shippey's analogy breaks down. Because the "modernists" are not looking for the same sixpence that Tolkien is. Nor, indeed, are they looking for a sixpence which they dropped in the darkness earlier. They are looking for something entirely different. And who is to criticise them for looking in the light for it? It might well be there. Shippey is justified in taking offence at the critics' derision of Tolkien's works. But he is entirely unjustified in deriding them for looking elsewhere for what they are interested in.

For my own part, I would rather look in the light for something that I can find and make use of than stumble around in the dark for something that I may never find and, even if I did, would be unable to discern properly.