Empire of Fantasy • Hacker News Board

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#21

Post by throwawaytolk » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

goto11 wrote: post #16

wott wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

You are the one revising history. The christiaindom vs islam story is well evidenced in history. you cannot disentangle western culture from the christian foundations upon which it rests.

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#22

Post by gumby » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

arc0 wrote: post #19

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.

Thanks, yes: Tolkein was quite a catholic (a bit oddly, given his upbringing -- perhaps due to his deep conservatism?). I had not known he had converted Lewis! That might explain Lewis' desire to write his explicitly catholic books.

That being said, apart from one letter in which he talked about christian influence, Tolkein was enamored, and his philological work concentrated on, Northern European pre-christian languages and cultures. Remember the Inklings recited the Sagas in old Icelandic at his encouragement. There are no popes, even by metaphor, in Middle Earth; no transubstantiation nor rebirth. In fact the destruction of the ring restores nothing.

It was in the intent and structure of their work that there was a gulf. I certainly didn't intend to imply that they were in any way personally estranged (though Carpenter wrote that T was a miffed at Lewis' success with his much less complex books).

Lewis's fiction (the Narnia books, Hideous strength etc) may not have risen to the level of "propaganda" in its modern sense, but they were explicitly intended to be at least "persuasive writing". I don't see Tolkein's as that at all.

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#23

Post by roca » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

ck425 wrote: post #3

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.

Can you share more info on how they invalidated the idea that the Haradrim and Calormenes are racist?

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/503737-it-was-sam-s-first-v...

Aravis is a Calormen, but a heroine and joins Shasta in an interracial marriage. And while it's true that Narnia is an idealized culture (like Gondor under its good kings) and therefore portrayed as superior to Calormene culture, Lewis is willing to elevate an aspect of the latter above English culture when he writes "In Calormen story-telling is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays."

I don't think Tolkien or Lewis wholly escape the charge of racism; I think few people do, in their time or ours. I think they consciously resisted the idea that the English were some kind of master race.

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#24

Post by jfengel » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #22

arc0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks, yes: Tolkein was quite a catholic (a bit oddly, given his upbringing -- perhaps due to his deep conservatism?). I had not known he had converted Lewis! That might explain Lewis' desire to write his explicitly catholic books. That being said, apart from one letter in which he talked about christian influence, Tolkein was enamored, and his philological work concentrated on, Northern European pre-christian langu…

Tolkien's work shows influences of both the sagas and his own Catholicism. Often, they began with the North European influences and reconceived them in his own world-view. Most prominently, the story of Turin Turambar is inspired by the Finnish Kalevala, but became very different over decades of rewrites. Due to his son's lifetime of effort, we have an extraordinary wealth of information on the evolution of his work.

The universe containing Arda is very different from ours, but Tolkien used it to work out his philosophy of what humans mean in the universe. The Elves are bound to the world, but Men have the "gift of death" and get to go beyond it. The analogy to Heaven is too facile; what's really being explored is the problem of evil, suffering, and the fear of death. It's all an explicitly pre-Christian world, before the sacrifice of Christ and salvation, which allows him to dispense with the trappings of Christianity to look at the real nature of humans (as viewed through the eyes of a people who don't have that gift of death).

All of that is much, much more subtle than Lewis's simple allegories. (Tolkien famously wrote that he "cordially detested" allegories, though he indulged in them once in a while as well.) Reading Tolkien's influences deeply requires a Middle Ages mind-set, both medieval Catholic and pagan views.

None of that is necessary to enjoy, appreciate, and even study his books. But we have the luxury of being able to read the works as they developed, and that gives us an almost unique insight into the multiple worlds that influenced them.

Re: Empire of Fantasy

#25

Post by knolax » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

throwawaytolk wrote: post #21

goto11 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

You are the one revising history. The christiaindom vs islam story is well evidenced in history. you cannot disentangle western culture from the christian foundations upon which it rests.

Ah yes who could forget famous Christians like Aristotle and Caesar.