There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale

Verlyn Flieger

Description

Devoted to Tolkien, the teller of tales and co-creator of the myths they brush against, these essays focus on his lifelong interest in and engagement with fairy stories, the special world that he called faerie, a world they both create and inhabit, and with the elements that make that world the special place it is. They cover a range of subjects, from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings and their place within the legendarium he called the Silmarillion to shorter works like "The Story of Kullervo" and "Smith of Wootton Major."From the pen of eminent Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger, the individual essays in this collection were written over a span of twenty years, each written to fit the parameters of a conference, an anthology, or both. They are revised slightly from their original versions to eliminate repetition and bring them up to date. Grouped loosely by theme, they present an unpatterned mosaic, depicting topics from myth to truth, from social manners to moral behavior, from textual history to the micro particles of Middle-earth.Together these essays present a complete picture of a man as complicated as the books that bear his name-an independent and unorthodox thinker who was both a believer and a doubter able to maintain conflicting ideas in tension, a teller of tales both romantic and bitter, hopeful and pessimistic, in equal parts tragic and comedic. A man whose work does not seek for right or wrong answers so much as a way to accommodate both; a man of antitheses.Scholars of fantasy literature generally and of Tolkien particularly will find much of value in this insightful collection by a seasoned explorer of Tolkien's world of faerie.

Sujets

• Idioma inglés
• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Science fiction
• English
• Fantasy
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 17 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781631012884
• Langue: English

Extrait

There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale
There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale
More Essays on Tolkien
V ERLYN F LIEGER

The Kent State University Press
Kent, Ohio
© 2017 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2017000823
ISBN 978-1-60635-308-0
Manufactured in the United States of America
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Flieger, Verlyn, 1933- author.
Title: There would always be a fairy tale : more essays on Tolkien / Verlyn Flieger.
Description: Kent, Ohio : The Kent State University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017000823 (print) | LCCN 2017001133 (ebook) | ISBN 9781606353080 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781631012884 (ePub) | ISBN 9781631012891 (ePDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892-1973—Criticism and interpretation. | Fantasy fiction, English—History and criticism. | Fairy tales—History and criticism. | Middle Earth (Imaginary place)
Classification: LCC PR6039.O32 Z6466 2017 (print) | LCC PR6039.O32 (ebook) | DDC 823/.912—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000823
In loving memory of Vaughn Howland, who pushed me to do this book .
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Style, Usage, and Abbreviations
Note to the Reader
P ART O NE : “A P ERILOUS L AND ”: D EFINING F AËRIE
“There Would Always Be a ‘Fairy-tale’”: J. R. R. Tolkien and the Folklore Controversy
But What Did He Really Mean?
Re-creating Reality
War, Death, and Fairy Stories in the Work of J. R. R. Tolkien
Eucatastrophe and the Dark
P ART T WO : “F AËRIE B EGINS ”: T HE N UTS AND B OLTS OF S UB-CREATION
Words and World-making: The Particle Physics of Middle-earth
Myth, History, and Time-travel: The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers
Politically Incorrect Tolkien
The Jewels, the Stone, the Ring, and the Making of Meaning
Making Choices: Moral Ambiguity in Tolkien’s Major Fiction
P ART T HREE : “A RRESTING S TRANGENESS ”: M AKING I T D IFFERENT
The Forests and the Trees: Sal and Ian in Faërie
How Trees Behave—Or Do They?
Myth and Truth in Tolkien’s Legendarium
Fays, Corrigans, Elves, and More: Tolkien’s Dark Ladies
P ART F OUR : B OILING B ONES ; S ERVING S OUP
Tolkien, Kalevala , and Middle-earth
Tolkien’s Celtic Connection
Tolkien’s French Connection
Drowned Lands
Voyaging About: Tolkien and Celtic Navigatio
Permissions and Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
Thanks go to the members of the Tolkien Symposium, who for nigh on thirty years now have listened patiently and criticized constructively as I tried out my ideas on them. Further thanks go to the wider audience of participants in conferences on Tolkien and fantasy, who have done the same. Thanks above all to J. R. R. Tolkien, whose unparalleled imagination got me started seventy years ago.
Finally, my thanks to the late Vaughn Howland, always, for everything.
Introduction
The title for this book and the titles for each individual section are drawn from that gold mine for Tolkien scholars, his wide-ranging yet highly focused, erudite and idiosyncratic essay “On Fairy-stories.” As much, in its own way as his fiction, Tolkien’s essay is a testament to his enduring love for fairy tales and to his bedrock belief in their value. “On Fairy-stories” is both detailed and discursive, but at its core is Tolkien’s challenge to the myth theory of nineteenth-century anthropologists, philologists, and folklorists that fairy tales were naïve or “primitive,” or represented the “childhood” of humanity and its personification of natural forces as gods. With his customary confidence in his own ideas, Tolkien argued that this was “the truth almost upside down.” It was not the phenomena that gave rise to the gods, asserted Tolkien; rather, it was the gods, in their humanity and personality, who were needed to give life to the phenomena. His dictum, with the hammer-wielding Norse thunder god Thórr as his example, gave me my title. “ [T]here would always be a ‘fairy-tale’ as long as there was any Thórr. When the fairy-tale ceased, there would be just thunder, which no human ear had yet heard” ( MC 124; my emphasis).
In making this sweeping, over-the-top assertion, Tolkien was consciously going against the critical grain, privileging the character over the phenomenon and championing the story over the theory. We need the story, he said, in order to know the phenomenon; without the story we have no key to what is going on. If we don’t have a name for what we hear, we don’t know what we are hearing. Thus, we may hear it as a god whose name means “thunder” or call it the sonic boom of expanding air. Either will do. What is essential is that we give it a name, for it is the name that generates its own story.
Tolkien regarded humans beings as involuntary story-tellers, not just able to tell stories, but unable to not do so. “To ask what is the origin of stories,” he said, “… is to ask what is the origin of language and the mind” ( MC 119). For him, these three components—mind, language, and story—were one inclusive concept. Together they formed a web of interlocking and reciprocally vibrating strands that wove the tapestry of story. As long as there existed a perceiving human mind and the language to weave that mind’s expression, there would always be a story, a fairy tale. Tolkien’s intellectual life was dedicated to that principle, and his imaginative life was dedicated to its practice. This book is devoted to Tolkien the teller of tales and cocreator of the myths they brush against. It is concerned with his lifelong interest in and engagement with fairy stories, with the special world (which he called Faërie) they both create and inhabit, and with the elements that go to make that world the special place it is.
As with its predecessor, Green Suns and Faërie , the essays in this book were mostly written to fit the parameters of specific conferences or anthologies, sometimes both together. I have not revised them, although (again like Green Suns ) I have tried to group them loosely by theme. They are in essence an unpatterned mosaic whose tiles touch a variety of subjects from myth to truth, from social manners to moral behavior, from textual history to the microparticles of Middle-earth. When I assembled the individual pieces, however, what I saw taking shape was a more coherent picture than I had anticipated, a picture of a man as complicated as the books that bear his name; a man in love with the past, acutely aware of the present, and wary of the future; an independent and unorthodox thinker who was both a believer and a doubter, able to maintain conflicting ideas in tension; a teller of tales both romantic and bitter, hopeful and pessimistic, in equal parts tragic and comedic. a man whose work does not seek for right or wrong answers so much as a way to accommodate both; a man of antitheses, as his biographer Humphrey Carpenter described him. I hope you will like him. I do.
Style, Usage, and Abbreviations
Any scholarly discussion of Tolkien’s work, both nonfiction and fiction, poses problems of style, problems that are complicated by several additional factors. First, Tolkien was not himself consistent in his treatment of certain terms and coinages, even within a single work. Second, such inconsistencies have been complicated by variations in the many editions of his work. Third, differences in style and spelling conventions between British and American English have added yet another dimension of complexity. And finally, the treatment of terms also must reflect their function in specific contexts. When Tolkien discusses Faërie, for example, he capitalizes it to indicate the specific meaning he has given the word, and also italicizes it when he is discussing it as a term, rather than as a concept. While it is probably impossible to achieve complete consistency, I have adopted the following conventions. Direct quotations from Tolkien and others are, of course, reproduced exactly as written. In treating the terms he used or created for the creatures peopling his own world—for example, elves, men, dwarves, hobbits, orcs, ents, and huorns—I have followed his lead in capitalizing them when they are being used to refer to the people or race, but lowercasing them when they are referring to specific subgroups or individuals belonging to those peoples or races. Words given specific meanings by Tolkien (such as Faërie ), together with his own coinages (such as eucatastrophe and dyscatastrophe ), retain his choice regarding capitalization. However, terms used by others as well as Tolkien, such as fairy tale, fantasy, primary world , and perilous realm , are spelled and capitalized, except in direct quotation, according to American scholarly style convention. Moreover, italics (except in direct quotation, where all italics are the author’s own unless otherwise indicated) are reserved for discussions of words as terms or to express emphasis. I have applied similar conventions in the discussion of the work of other authors, such as Philip Pullman.
The wide selection of editions of Tolkien’s fiction likewise has implications for usage. This is particularly true of The Lord of the Rings in all its various editions—one-volume, three-volume, trade paperback, mass-market paperback, faux leather, deluxe edition, illustrated edition, all with differing paginations. This broad selection makes for a scholar’s dilemma—which edition to cite and how—and a bibliographer’s nightmare. The usual way is to cite the hardcover second edition, and—since even one-volume editions of The Lord of the Rings still carry the titles of the original three volumes, and are divided into six books—to list volume title, book number, chapter number, and page number. Thus a reference to or quotation from the opening lines of