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Empire of Fantasy

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Re: Empire of Fantasy

#11

Post by goto11 »

meekmind wrote: post #8
oa335 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not a racist archetype? Good guys = white people from the north with British features and bad guys = dark people from the South with Middle Eastern features is in fact how the British thought of the world for hundreds of years... Tolkien and Lewis writings simply crystallized world views that were prevalent.

> how the British thought > crystallized world views that were prevalent They were prevalent because they were correct. It has nothing to do with race. By the standards of history, nothing between two civilizations is as well documented as the protracted conflict (14 centuries) between the West and Islam [0]. You might argue that this perspective is biased, and you may be correct, but even critics of that perspective…

The idea of "The West versus Islam" as a clash of civilization is pretty recent. Probably only appeared after the end of the cold war and gained steam after 9/11.

If you think of the crusades they were more like Roman Catholicism against Islam (and Judaism and Eastern Christianity). For example the crusaders attacked and plundered Constantinople which was Christian at the time - just not catholic.

England have certainly been to war with France more than it has been to war with "Islam".

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#12

Post by jariel »

goto11 wrote: post #11
meekmind wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how the British thought > crystallized world views that were prevalent They were prevalent because they were correct. It has nothing to do with race. By the standards of history, nothing between two civilizations is as well documented as the protracted conflict (14 centuries) between the West and Islam [0]. You might argue that this perspective is biased, and you may be correct, but even critics of that perspective…

The idea of "The West versus Islam" as a clash of civilization is pretty recent. Probably only appeared after the end of the cold war and gained steam after 9/11. If you think of the crusades they were more like Roman Catholicism against Islam (and Judaism and Eastern Christianity). For example the crusaders attacked and plundered Constantinople which was Christian at the time - just not catholic. England have certai…

The incursion of Islam, particularly by the Ottomans, was an long standing existential concern of European nations.

Remember the Ottomans took Constantinople in the 16th century (Capita of the E. Roman Empire aka Byzantium) and converted the largest Cathedral in the World into a Mosque.

The 'West' would have been referred to as 'Christendom' then, and the issue wasn't resolved until into the enlightenment, 1683, Battle of Vienna.

'Christendom v. Ottomans' is the original 'Cold War'.

One might argue that there are echoes in the Battle of Vienna in Lord of the Rings.

'Political Islam', as we've seen since the 1980's has basically nothing to do with any of that.

FYI a little known, crazy fact (which is likely but not infallibly accurate): you know your 'Croissant'? That delicacy was designed in Vienna by chefs in celebration of their victory in the battle, hence the crescent shape of the bread is literally the Islamic Crescent. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna [2] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/feb/23/a-short....

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#13

Post by gumby »

This is an odd essay, ignoring a couple of huge elephants in the pub room where the Inklings hung out.

Tolkien and Lewis were both deeply conservative (not Conservative), and represented a last, textual, gasp of the pre-Raphaëlite movement (for which they had both been born just a little too late).

And though they were friends, collaborators, and, as friends can be, competitors, there was one huge gulf between them: christianity. Tolkien loved and was a scholar of the pre-christian Sagas, which he felt were a deeply influential part of the English cultural underpinning. Middle Earth was a complex experiment in creating the Ursprung of that culture, but perhaps also a more English one.

While Lewis, upon seeing the success of The Hobbit, wanted to emphasize christianity as the core of the English culture. His novels, despite their settings (swords, no machinery, etc) and his conservatism, were very much 20th century in structure, sparseness, and the speed with which the plots developed: more Dorothy Parker than Thomas Mallory. But they were also unabashedly christian; deliberately not using christian vocabulary in an attempt to cast it as a universal truth.* In a way they were opposites.

* he was so convinced of the universalism of christianity that he simply presumed his readers would get it. Though I have spoken English all my life I had had no exposure at all to christianity when I read “The Lion, The Witch..” and so the whole scene where Aslan is killed, the stone table breaks and then aslan maybe returns just seemed strange and incomprehensible to me. I thought some pages must have been lost in a misprint of the book!

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#14

Post by goto11 »

mboto wrote: post #9
roca wrote: post #2

I thought I had read a lot about Tolkien and Lewis but I have never before read the theory that they consciously conspired together to inculcate generations of writers to rebuild English literature around medieval fantasy. Ingenious! Dismissing the Haradrim and Calormenes as racist archetypes is lazy, though. Tolkien and Lewis went out of their way to invalidate that interpretation.

I always thought that if you took the coastline of Turkey and created a mountain range out of it, you would have a basic representation of Mordor. Then took Gondor mainly based around the city of Minas Tirith, Rohan based mainly around Edoras etc. and you would have the Greek City states. Minas Ithil would be Troy or other overrun ex colonies of the early Greeks. And then you have the Haradrim et al and they look a l…

How about a map of Europe at the time of the invasion of the Huns? Mordor is the realm of the Huns, Rohan is the German tribes, Gondor is the Franks or perhaps the crumbling Roman Empire.

The legends in the Niebelungelied is from this time.

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#15

Post by wott »

goto11 wrote: post #11
meekmind wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how the British thought > crystallized world views that were prevalent They were prevalent because they were correct. It has nothing to do with race. By the standards of history, nothing between two civilizations is as well documented as the protracted conflict (14 centuries) between the West and Islam [0]. You might argue that this perspective is biased, and you may be correct, but even critics of that perspective…

The idea of "The West versus Islam" as a clash of civilization is pretty recent. Probably only appeared after the end of the cold war and gained steam after 9/11. If you think of the crusades they were more like Roman Catholicism against Islam (and Judaism and Eastern Christianity). For example the crusaders attacked and plundered Constantinople which was Christian at the time - just not catholic. England have certai…

You never heard of the 8th century Arab invasion of (present) Spain and invasion attempt of (present) France? It came as a conclusion of a century of Muslim conquests and attacks, and left just 2 small pockets in Asturias and the Pyrenees. They were quickly repelled from most of France (after coming as North as Poitiers or perhaps even Tours on the West flank, and as North as Burgondy on the East flank) except from a bit of the Mediterranean coast, but it took over 700 years to reclaim all Spain. The West (or North, or Europe) versus Islam and vice versa is really nothing new.

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#16

Post by goto11 »

wott wrote: post #15
goto11 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of "The West versus Islam" as a clash of civilization is pretty recent. Probably only appeared after the end of the cold war and gained steam after 9/11. If you think of the crusades they were more like Roman Catholicism against Islam (and Judaism and Eastern Christianity). For example the crusaders attacked and plundered Constantinople which was Christian at the time - just not catholic. England have certai…

You never heard of the 8th century Arab invasion of (present) Spain and invasion attempt of (present) France? It came as a conclusion of a century of Muslim conquests and attacks, and left just 2 small pockets in Asturias and the Pyrenees. They were quickly repelled from most of France (after coming as North as Poitiers or perhaps even Tours on the West flank, and as North as Burgondy on the East flank) except from a…

Sure you can group historical conflicts in many ways. If you say group all conflicts between Britain and opponents from continental Europe into a single conflict, surely you get a more protracted conflict than "West vs Islam", since you have at least 2000 years of conflict.

The "West vs Islam" is just a particular inane categorization since you are contrasting a geographic area with a religion. You could categorize the Reconquista as Christianity against Islam (and Judaism), and this is how it was framed at the time, but how can it be "the West" against Islam? It is a post-cold war construct to justify a certain ideology, not a meaningful way of understanding history.

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#19

Post by arc0 »

gumby wrote: post #13

This is an odd essay, ignoring a couple of huge elephants in the pub room where the Inklings hung out. Tolkien and Lewis were both deeply conservative (not Conservative), and represented a last, textual, gasp of the pre-Raphaëlite movement (for which they had both been born just a little too late). And though they were friends, collaborators, and, as friends can be, competitors, there was one huge gulf between them:…

Wasn't Tolkien a lifelong, devout Catholic, who himself inspired Lewis's conversion to Christianity? I don't think it was a gulf between them.

Tolkien famously rejected the Vatican II reformations, and continued to respond to the priest in mass in Latin, rather than the vernacular.

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#20

Post by throwawaytolk »

goto11 wrote: post #11
meekmind wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how the British thought > crystallized world views that were prevalent They were prevalent because they were correct. It has nothing to do with race. By the standards of history, nothing between two civilizations is as well documented as the protracted conflict (14 centuries) between the West and Islam [0]. You might argue that this perspective is biased, and you may be correct, but even critics of that perspective…

The idea of "The West versus Islam" as a clash of civilization is pretty recent. Probably only appeared after the end of the cold war and gained steam after 9/11. If you think of the crusades they were more like Roman Catholicism against Islam (and Judaism and Eastern Christianity). For example the crusaders attacked and plundered Constantinople which was Christian at the time - just not catholic. England have certai…

This is just ... not even approaching the truth. only by studiously ignoring history and cherry picking facts could get to your arguement.

Christianity vs islam is a long theme in our history.

You badly misread the crusades as well - the crusaders and the byzantines collaborated. In fact, the byzantines welcomed the crusaders and often helped them in military matters - the crusaders states were used as a buffer from the armies of islam.

The crusaders did attack and plunder constantinople, but this was after the first crusades ; in fact, a couple decades before the sack Latins were sold into slavery and massacred by the byzantines. Reading a single event and turning it into a pattern for latin and byzantine relations in the era is at best sophomoric and at worst dissembling.

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