What breaks the enchantment?

[davem]

I've said I don't have any problem with 'applying' whatever the reader finds applicable. But we enter into a difficult area - what about the 'application' of racist theories, or the 'application' of the atomic bomb to the Ring, or the 'application' of WW2 generally to LotR?

I suspect most of us would have some dispute with any of these 'applications' - particularly the first.

The danger with 'application' is that it can merge subtly into allegory, so that the Ring becomes seen as 'nothing but' the bomb - Shelob 'nothing but' Lilith, or Saruman 'nothing but' Newton, etc. If we are careful to keep the 'applications' seperate from the meaning there won't be a problem - we may even gain some insight into ourselves & what the text means to us. But as I say, there is a danger that we give too much weight to our applications to the point that they become 'necessary' to our understanding & the story we're reading is placed 'in the service' of another story.

If the Secondary World is well enough constructed then it will not require such input from the Primary World - if it does, then it has not been well enough put together & the author has failed to enchant us. Also, the more aware we are in our reading of theses applications, the more we will be distracted, pulled out of the Secondary World into the Primary world, because the necessary dividing line will be lost.

The similarities are what cause comparisons at all, and might not knowledge of Lilith reveal things about Shelob?

Well, will it 'reveal' things - ie, give us insight into Shelob as Shelob, a character in Middle earth, or will it simply be a conflation of the two, so that in the end we end up with no clear sense of either. Apart from general similarities, how much alike are they? Of course, these 'applications' are useful as a kind of 'shorthand' in discussing the text with others (like the fractals image) but we have to use them carefully when it comes to applying them to our own reading as we read.