Tolkien's Definition of Faërie-Stories Part 7: The Need to Escape from this World & Why Adults need Faerie Stories/Fantasy/Fairy-Tales Also

The Analysis Continues

Last time I tackled the Children’s Lit and troubles with the agenda side of the industry, but this time it’ll be a pure article focused entirely on the essay. Now as any and all people who’ve kept track of these articles know they are following in the shoes of the likes of

Eric Falden

and

Clifford Stumme

who both published the premiere essays on Tolkien’s own essay analysing the Genre which he called Faerie Stories.

Now without further ado let’s dive right in. Last time what was also analysed was the nature of Suspension of Disbelief, with Tolkien pursuing this theme for a few more pages, notably he analyses Lang, a leading expert at the time’s writings on the topic. We’re going to skip ahead but needless to say it hammers the point home that children are often associated with Faerie-Stories and Suspension of Disbelief among other such ideas.

“I have said, perhaps, more than enough on this point. At least it will be plain that in my opinion fairy-stories should not be specially associated with children. They are associated with them: naturally, because children are human and fairy-stories are a natural human taste (though not necessarily a universal one); accidentally, because fairy-stories are a large part of the literary lumber that in latter-day Europe has been stuffed away in attics; unnaturally, because of erroneous sentiment about children, a sentiment that seems to increase with the decline in children.”

This paragraph arrested my attention at once. It’s a good one (as with most of Tolkien’s paragraphs).

Fairy-stories should not be specially associated with children which is to say that they should be associated with the human race at large rather than just kids. What also interests me is that Tolkien was already noting in the middle of the 20th century the decline in birth-rates (so go have babies everyone, and tell them and read to them fairy-stories!).

The Necessity for People to Grow up

“If we use child in a good sense (it has also legitimately a bad one) we must not allow that to push us into the sentimentality of only using adult or grown-up in a bad sense (it has also legitimately a good one). The process of growing older is not necessarily allied to growing wickeder, though the two do often happen together. Children are meant to grow up, and not to become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder, but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive. But it is one of the lessons of fairy-stories (if we can speak of the lessons of things that do not lecture) that on callow, lumpish, and selfish youth peril, sorrow, and the shadow of death can bestow dignity, and even sometimes wisdom.”

Here Tolkien speaks out against Peter Pan Syndrome, as he stresses the importance for people to grow up. Everyone has their appointed place in life and their appointed journey, so that they must move forward no matter what.

This is how life works, all must carry on and grow out of childhood. Modernity has attempted to shunt men and women into the eternal role of children (hence the ‘child-free lifestyle push by the Media) but this isn’t natural. Children must become adults and adults must become in time parents so that they might carry on the legacy of their parents. There are of course exceptions however no child should remain forever constrained to the infantilizing role.

“Very well, then. If adults are to read fairy-stories as a natural branch of literature—neither playing at being children, nor pretending to be choosing for children, nor being boys who would not grow up—what are the values and functions of this kind? That is, I think, the last and most important question. I have already hinted at some of my answers.”

This is Tolkien’s continuing exploration into the topic of the nature of Faerie-Stories namely that they are as I’ve been hammering time and again these past few years; Literature.

“First of all: if written with art, the prime value of fairy-stories will simply be that value which, as literature, they share with other literary forms. But fairy-stories offer also, in a peculiar degree or mode, these things: Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, Consolation, all things of which children have, as a rule, less need than older people. Most of them are nowadays very commonly considered to be bad for anybody. I will consider them briefly, and will begin with Fantasy.”

The goal to this particular kind of Literature is not to simply make one giggle, sigh longingly or otherwise gasp but instead to help the readers and audience escape. This is first and foremost the role of all Fantasy Fiction.

If one cannot convince in a proper manner the readers to escape from the primary world to the secondary one, than the writer will have failed. It is a sad fact that quite frankly not all writers know how to do properly especially those in the mainstream.

When the characters of Harry Potter leave to go fight with Voldemort, does anyone know for the life of them why they didn’t resort to bringing along a shotgun or glock? I mean they had access, means and it wouldn’t have been too hard to slip it past everyone, take a shot and clear up a few death-eaters the traditional English way.

The fact that we might catch ourselves thinking this says a lot about the problems that the story faced.

It isn’t just Harry Potter though that has this problem. As you could well imagine there’s some in the New Pub sphere who have this exact difficulty. Some times it’s only momentary such as in the romantic scenes in Erik Waag’s first Skaarde novel, and at other times it’s a perpetual problem (as with a number of other authors).

The very best of authors make Verisimilitude into a veritable art-form. it is something that all authors of Mythic Fiction must learn if they are to properly help their readers escape.

The question though remains; escape to what? And from what?

Why none other than from the Primary World to the Secondary one.

Escapism Dangerous or Necessary?

This is a very heated topic especially in recent years and as I was just discussing in to-day’s podcast recording with

Uncouth Barbarian

there’s something integral to escaping for a few hours. It might seem minor to some people, but to those like myself it’s of the utmost importance.

You see there’s something heady about escaping to another world, one in which justice is present, where the righteous triumph and evil is punished. But it’s more than that, what I love most to escape to is a world full of Wonder and Enchantment.

You see the good guys don’t always win, and I need that even in the Secondary World I’m escaping to. You see I want it to be like Middle-Earth or the Hyborian Age or our own Medieval Period. You see these times and places were in a lot of ways more just, sure but the good didn’t always triumph, and yet there was a sense that the Divine, the Balance of the universe was present.

The trouble is that we’ve become so Dis-Enchanted that we have lost our way in Modernity. We no longer believe in anything except decadence and hedonism. Things which ought to be regarded with disdain, and yet most people don’t do this. The thing about the Escapist element to Fantasy Fiction is that it is a great way of recapturing the Wonder that once existed in the world.

It is also a great way to explore diverse philosophies, diverse ideas and worlds that are monumentally different from our own. These things, the trials and tribulations of people extremely removed from our own Primary World are hard to endure without occasional flights of fancy.

We need to escape much of the time simply because we are trapped in a way within this world and held fast as prisoners of a system that is as uncaring as it is cruel. This is why we Authors of Fantasy must create the best possible worlds we have and try to root our stories as much in the realm of Medieval and Classical Fiction so that we might transport you Dear Readers to another time and place. It is integral because without some measure of Escape and the witnessing of Good, of the Divine and of the Truth of the Human condition and of Wonder as the Medievals/Ancients perceived it we are much emptier and a sadder people.

So it’s not a matter of whether we should want to escape but rather that we need to do so every once in awhile.

Do please consider if you’ve the means contributing to our own battle to bring back Wonder to this world by supporting Steelheart Anthology even if it’s just 7$.

**********

The yearly Subscription will be kept down to a mere 7$.

Also Crown of Blood has a new edition, with maps, character bios and more!