What does the sixpence = ?

[Bêthberry]

I'd like to turn this thread back to an earlier comment lmp made on it.

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

On page 221 of Author of the Century, Shippey relates Northrop Frye's five literary modes:

• myth - the characters in a work are 'superior in kind both to other men and to the environment of other men' ... the 'hero is a divine being and the story about him will be myth'
• romance - characters are superior only in 'degree (not kind) to other men, and again to their environment'
• high mimesis - (tragedy or epic) - where the heroes and heroines are 'superior in degree to other men but not to natural environment'
• low mimesis - level of the classical novel - characters are on a level with us in abilities, though maybe not in social class
• irony - we see ourselves looking down on people weaker or more ignorant than us

Now, I've lately been doing some reading other than Tolkien--don't laugh, some of us do escape his lure from time to time!--some of which has to do with how we understand language. And I've been wondering about this last description of irony. Does Shippey really describe Frye's sense of irony as "looking down on people weaker or more ignorant than us?" 'Cause I really don't see that as Frye's or the more common understanding of irony.

Here's a couple of online definitions: Cambridge online ; Dictionary.com.

This might ramble a bit, and I'm not sure where it's going, but I wonder about this idea that irony involves words which mean other than they first appear to mean.
This is just an extension of all literary language, which is non-literal, much like metaphor itself. It also might suggest deceit in some hands, of course, and that might itself be something absent from Tolkien. (Hmm, this could get us into that old 'poetry never lies' thing.)

So, I've been thinking, this kind of irony, how common is it in Tolkien's art? How common are metaphors, for that matter?

Maybe it is the absence of this kind of literary language which drew the ire of critics? After all, the modernist writers were heavy on irony and detachment. Is it possible that Tolkien, in aspiring to write a history for his fantasy, in fact created a style which ran against the main tendency of story, to create non-literal language? Could those critics have been spooked by Tolkien's attempt not at fantasy but at making fantasy appear real, historical, literal?