What breaks the enchantment?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Mormegil

How does one go about dropping all of the "baggage"? I just find it improbable that one would be expected to do that. If you know of a way please tell me. I try and supress all of my primary world views but I just don't see that it's entirely feasible. Which leads me to my next question.

I accept that we can't do that completely, my point is that we have to try to do it as far as we possibly can. We need to know ourselves well enough to recognise what baggage we are carrying, so that we are less likely to project it into the text, or worse, onto the author.

If the author's intent is to enchant us, then is it not his or her responsibility to do so with our baggage in mind?

But how could an author know what baggage each of us is carrying & so take steps to deal with that? It doesn't matter how good the book or movie is, we can still break, or have broken for us, the artist's spell if we choose, or if circumstances conspire against us.

The point I was making was that if, say, Tom Bombadil breaks the spell for some readers but not for others, if the style of TH breaks the spell for you but not for me, or the approach taken in JTCR breaks the spell for Bb but not for another reader, then we can't blame Tolkien for failing in his intent to enchant, because the spell has worked on some readers & that proves its efficacy. If it fails with other readers it cannot be because of a failure on Tolkien's part. If every reader had the spell broken by TB, or the style of TH, then it would be a failure of the author.