Yes, Tolkien is Wonderful, but...

[Bêthberry]

Like some here I find classifications and categories limiting, yet they can also provide themes and topics which spur discussion, so for that reason I won't engage in any denouncing as humbug those who use the term. After all, many writers I greatly enjoy and respect apply the term to their own writing (and qualify it!) as well as those bogey men the critics, so who am I to deny a creative writer the opportunity to describe his (or her) own work in an expansive, enlightening way?

Originally Posted by Fea

The Lord of the Rings. Part of me is begging to say fantasy. C'mon, Middle Earth? Trolls, Elves, Dwarves... Hobbits? Magic Rings and dragons.

Except for the key argument that Middle Earth is Earth as it was back in the day; this argument is supported by the statement in, I believe, the Intro of The Fellowship in the simple comment that Hobbits slip away unnoticed these days in crowds because they have a natural ability to be unseen (magical realism) and humans are inept. Though you get characters like Eomer crying out on the fields of Rohan that "Wow, we live in a crazy world, where legends old folks told me show up with wings on their feet," you also get him accepting that orcs are a natural part of Rohirric life. The belief and disbelief in specifics of what another culture would call the supernatural follows logical human trends: you tend to have more faith in what's been ingrained in you since birth. Tolkien's use of psychological norms and his references to our Earth argue Magical Realism.

This is an intriguing idea, that Tolkien began one way and then worked against that. Yet it seems to me that a crucial element is missing so that we cannot call Middle-earth magic realism.

It is true that the forms and rules of Middle-earth conform to those of our daily world. Tolkien went to pains to explain elvish magic as not magic but heightened art and perception. His Foreward suggests that hobbits could still exist except they hide themselves from us. Yet what Tolkien's vision lacks is the unexplainable or the marvellous. It could simply be my reading of M-e, but I don't think that in any way the rationalism which underpins it is ever destablised or distorted. Our contemporary world view is never challenged or threatened by Tolkien's vision. Yes, he objects mightily to the satanic mills and the power hungry but at the heart of his vision remains an empowerment of rational and objective depiction. After all, Eru grounds his Legendarium, and so there remains a particular sense of orderedness to his mythology. Reality is not distorted in Tolkien, but expanded to explain balrogs, orcs, rings of power, suspension of time. Despite all our discussions here there is little in Tolkien that remains inexplicable or unexpected, not even eucatastrophe.

Perhaps I feel this way because the Ring is so much a material object. If evil in Middle-earth didn't have this materialism, then perhaps I would feel Tolkien more akin to, say, Garcia Marquez. After all, Tolkien's imaginative creation began with his creation of languages, and he followed the objective rules of language development which his academic training taught him. His invented languages are all explicable and there is little of the frustration, wonder, awe, unknowingness of babel in them.

I probably haven't read as many writers who through fair means or foul are lumped into this group as Fea or the rest of you have, but what I have read gives me a sense that the relationship between people and the world is mysterious and that people's perspectives are often derived from their historical and social milieu. Indeed, there is a sense in many of these writers that wonder and awe remains an essential element of our experience, that not all of the world and time can be rationally explained. Tolkien desired dragons and he made a place for them in his world. They are believable--that's what his idea of sub-creation is all about. If they weren't, then he would be a magic realist.

Of course, the term is as wide and diverse as all the authors who are included under its rubric. I'm sure Downers can stretch it to all kinds of dimensions.