You say 'Faeries' & I say 'Fairies'

[davem]

Originally Posted by drigel

And your premise is that this theme could not be fully reached without a more "noble" form of fairy, (i.e. - one that really didnt exist)? Or, in other words, can one from faerie experience eucatastrophe? The author could not figure out how to describe this without having to invent a new fairie, eh wot?

The interesting question is, while he did create a mythology in the Legendarium, can we say he wrote a 'fairy story'. A few people have referred to OFS as his creative manifesto, his laying out of the rules & the groundwork for true fairy stories. But is the Legendarium as a whole & LotR in particular, actually a Fairy story. Well, it obeys the 'law' in that it contains Eucatastrophe. But is that Eucatastrophe a Fairy tale one or something more, something deeper & more profound. It may well be that the type of Eucatastrophe he wished to depict required the kind of Faerie he created.

The Eucatastrophe we find in fairy stories is of an altogether simpler, more human & earthly kind - as in the story of The Black Bull of Norroway which he cites in the essay. But the kind of Eucatastrophe Tolkien was interested in (which could rghtly be called 'Evangelium') was far from that. It was the kind of Eucatastrophe to be found in his 'True Myth' (ie the Gospel) that he was concerned with. No fairy story that I know of reaches those kinds of 'heights'.

So, what do we actually have? Tolkien wishing to 'subcreate' a world where the equivalent kind & degree of Eucatastrophe found in the Gospels could occur. That could not happen in a tale of traditional Faerie, so he had to invent a new kind of Faerie where it could.

But I still have to ask, if that was his intention, why go to such lengths to involve traditional Faerie at all? Why not just do a 'Milton'? I suppose that he wanted to include Faerie because he loved it, to 'redeem' it. Yet in the very act of saving it he changed it beyond recognition.

In Smith he seems almost to be going back to traditional Faerie - almost, but not quite - after all, there is no real going back....