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#on fairy stories
starspray · 2 months
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lightthewaybackhome · 3 months
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The radical distinction between all art (including drama) that offers a visible presentation and true literature is that it imposes one visible form. Literature works from mind to mind and is thus more progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular. If it speaks of bread or wine or stone or tree, it appeals to the whole of these things, to their ideas; yet each hearer will give to them a peculiar personal embodiment in his imagination. Should the story say ‘he ate bread’, the dramatic producer or painter can only show ‘a piece of bread’ according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own. If a story says ‘he climbed a hill and saw a river in the valley below’, the illustrator may catch, or nearly catch, his own vision of such a scene; but every hearer of the words will have his own picture, and it will be made out of all the hills and rivers and dales he has ever seen, but specially out of The Hill, The River, The Valley which were for him the first embodiment of the word.
JRR Tolkien
This is something Tolkien wrote in the notes from On Fairy-Stories explaining his view of why fantasy stories are better left to books instead of plays and movies. I think it might be why he was so reticent about letting LOTR be made into a movie.
But, I think it captures one of the great joys of reading and imagination. I love movies and TV shows, but there is a unique magic found in reading a book, and I think this captures part of that magic.
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autailome · 10 days
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Fantasy as subcreation in the Tolkien legendarium
-from Splintered Light by Verlyn Flieger
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anipologist · 2 years
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Just out of reach…
Tolkien’s works are appealing for many reasons, the loyalty, the friendships, the ability to move one to tears of either joy or sorrow, to see the world around you with a new wonder like Bilbo heading out into the unknown…
But I think (and feel free to disagree) the subtlest and most magical draw is that it could be true. There’s this ever present feeling that the seas are truly bent and Valinor hangs on the horizon just out reach but if one is very lucky one might just stumble onto that straight path find your way into fields of unfading elanor.
Part of it is the way he frames things, as though some where in his book hoard he actually has the Red Book or the Athrabeth complete with cheeky footnotes from Sam on Aragorn and Arwen. But it also permiates every page he wrote, the layers of history he built up in Arda, the slow changing of languages, even differing accounts of the great tales lend themselves to that magic thought that they were really told and retold and that glimpse of something not quite there in a forest or the light lingering a little too long on the water is actually the footsteps of elves, hobbits and ents, that odd rock formations that are just slightly too shaped are from the hands of dwarves.
And that magic that Tolkien and few others could ever work makes you believe that fairytales just might be real…
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skyeventide · 2 years
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finished reading tolkien's On Fairy Stories, final thoughts
fundamental text for anyone who wants to deep dive into Tolkien's understanding of his own work. I would also call it a staple text for anyone who'd like to do analysis of fantasy as a modern literary genre, since a number of things that are relevant to it are already touched upon in this 1939-1947 essay, including fantasy as a "children genre"; it contains (un)surprisingly contemporary discoursing over their appropriateness and some bits and pieces almost anticipate the satanic panic.
for reference this is where the concepts of sub-creation, "Faerie", and eucatastrophe (the sudden joyous turn) come from and are explained.
grab an annotated edition (I used Flieger&Anderson and it's pretty good). Tolkien doesn't have good citation practices (he sometimes mentions names without reporting what they said, or uses a quote without correctly attributing it, etc.), and more often than not references tend to be obscure unless you have a very good grasp of context.
fantasy as a genre has been called protean (changing, shapeshifting) (as opposed for example to science fiction taking on the definition of promethean, after Mary Shelley's frankenstein). hard to define as a genre, hard to delimit and describe (Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy, Rogers&Stevens). tolkien too does a lot of describing in the negative (fairy stories are not x or y, what remains counts as fairy story).
conclusion is really painfully Christian, in that the fairy story of the gospel according to tolkien enters the real world and is therefore the ultimate eucatastrophe on which the rest is modelled. the kind of literary strategy that comes from this belief is actually discussed fairly at lenght in the essay The Lords of the West: Cloaking, Freedom and the Divine Narrative in Tolkien's Poetics (Pezzini) for anyone interested.
something I find super interesting is that On Fairy Stories mentions things that will read as extremely familiar to anyone who's read the Silm and other works in his legendarium that were published posthumously. there's a reference to the two trees at a certain point. but none of that was published when this essay came out. he's referencing his own stories, but readers at the time would have had no external reference of their own to connect to it.
at one point he describes Shakespeare as "a playwright who ought, at least on this occasion, to have written a story, if he had the skill or patience for that art." which is like. incredible.
would I recommend it, yes if you're big into the workings of lit theory, or really so deep into Tolkien that you wanna see what he has to say on his own stuff and how his theory connects to his fiction. otherwise, might not really be for you.
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surrexi · 1 year
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But the "consolation" of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it. At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the ooposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite--I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.
The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially "escapist," nor "fugitive." In its fairy-tale--or otherworld--setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denises (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
-- JRR Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories"
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Is there any essential connexion between children and fairy-stories? Is there any call for comment, if an adult reads them for himself? Reads them as tales, that is, not studies them as curios. Adults are allowed to collect and study anything, even old theatre programmes or paper bags.
J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories”
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fugamalefica · 10 months
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For some reason, I only read about Tolkien's Secondary Belief concept a few days ago, and it is completely in alignment with how I have always enjoyed fiction and still do. Suspension of disbelief, on the other hand, has always seemed counterproductive and overly empiricist to me. How are you going to enjoy art to the fullest when you begin with suspension, which is negation, something that takes away rather than add, something temporary, unnatural, and hence, fickle? Why insert the non-fictional world where it does not belong?
Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
A real enthusiast for cricket is in the enchanted state: Secondary Belief. I, when I watch a match, am on the lower level. I can achieve (more or less) willing suspension of disbelief, when I am held there and supported by some other motive that will keep away boredom: for instance, a wild, heraldic, preference for dark blue rather than light. This suspension of disbelief may thus be a somewhat tired, shabby, or sentimental state of mind, and so lean to the “adult.” I fancy it is often the state of adults in the presence of a fairy-story. They are held there and supported by sentiment (memories of childhood, or notions of what childhood ought to be like); they think they ought to like the tale. But if they really liked it, for itself, they would not have to suspend disbelief: they would believe—in this sense.
- On Fairy-Stories by J.R.R. Tolkien
I need to read more of his essays.
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het-stille-woud · 2 years
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Each leaf, of oak and ash and thorn, is a unique embodiment of the pattern, and for some eye this very year may be the embodiment, the first ever seen and recognized, though oaks have put forth leaves for countless generations of men.
- JRR Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories”
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Cross-fandom Delights
In the first section of On Fairy-stories Tolkien quotes from Thomas the Rhymer:
“O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset wi’ thorns and briers?
That is the Path of Righteousness,
Though after it but few inquires.
“And see ye not yon braid, braid road
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call it the Road to Heaven.
And see ye not yon bonny road
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the Road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.
Of course roads and paths have always had a Tolkienian bent for me, but narrow roads (preferably across single logs in the dark) also have other meanings to me now, as do broad thoroughfares…
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audreythevaliant · 2 years
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I got to this part in “One Fairy-Stories” today. So Lewis really did put a lamp in Narnia because of Tolkien! I had heard that, but I didn’t think it was true.
Well, Mr.Tolkien I’ll have you know that all street lamps have become magical to me since reading Narnia, and I was very excited to have one outside my window when I moved houses. It’s the same thing he said a page before:
“And actually fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting.”
I guess Tolkien was just really, really against street lamps.
*Adds that to the list of questions I want to ask him one day, after I ask about the polar bear costume party*
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gatorinator · 29 days
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“Walrus on your doorstop” this “fairy’s more unrealistic” that my professor just uttered the sentence “there was one day I found a real octopus in my backyard” this man hasn’t left Utah his entire life. How was there an octopus in his backyard in Utah. He then said “I do not have time to elaborate we need to cover a lot today in class” GIRL WHAT DO YOU MEEAN
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lightthewaybackhome · 3 months
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Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.
JRR Tolkien
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cognito-mode · 9 days
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Dragon Feminism, Part 1: Fourth Wing and Romantasy Indulgence
I wrote a blog post about the state of fantasy, indulgence, and adventure in this, our Dragon-Girl Era. To tip my hand, I'm skeptical of how much Fourth Wing and offerings on its level have to offer either to fantasy readers or to women readers more generally.
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lashaan · 4 months
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Tales From the Perilous Realm by J.R.R. Tolkien
Title: Tales From the Perilous Realm. Writer(s): J.R.R. Tolkien.Artist(s): Alan Lee. Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Format: Hardcover.Release Date: November 17th, 2008.Pages: 403.Genre(s): Fantasy.ISBN13: 9780547154114. My Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3.5 out of 5. “All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as…
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skyeventide · 2 years
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On Fairy Stories, JRR Tolkien
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