LMB Book Club: On Fairy Stories

[Lennidhren]

Please vote for the best time to meet next weekend and discuss the essay "On Fairy Stories." The essay can be found in the collection "Tree and Leaf" published by itself, or in that collection within the anthology "The Tolkien Reader." So seek those out at your local library if you don't already have the essay!

Feel free also to post questions you have about the essay, or suggested discussion topics, in this thread before the in game meeting.

[gaiagil]

"On Fairy Stories" is also included in The Monsters and the Critics and other essays which is widely available.

Gaiagil

[thenerdwriter]

And it can also be found in The Perilous Realm.

[Elcie/Sounjah]

Thank you once again for letting me sit in on the book club today. I really enjoyed it and hope it gets me to read more often.

As for On Fairy Stories I am finding different things when I google for it.

http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf
This is 27 page document, and since it is supposed to be an essay I assume this is what I need to read.

I dont have access to a library at the moment so need to try and get this online either by download or purchase/shipping

[Lindorieh]

Red-Red wrote:

Thank you once again for letting me sit in on the book club today. I really enjoyed it and hope it gets me to read more often. As for On Fairy Stories I am finding different things when I google for it. http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf This is 27 page document, and since it is supposed to be an essay I assume this is what I need to read. I dont have access to a library at the moment so need to try and get this online either by download or purchase/shipping

Yes, this is it. It is quite a long essay, and dense. We may want more than one week to discuss it.

Lindorieh

[Lennidhren]

Oh good, so there is an online version! It is a long essay; I am fine with splitting the discussion into two weeks...not least because I'd like more time to prepare for the Silmarillion. Let me look at the essay and see what a good place would be to divide it, unless anyone has a suggestion for that.

[Lindorieh]

We should also read the poem "Mythopoeia", in which Tolkien talks about subcreation, an important element in "On Fairy Stories".
http://ettinsmuir.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/poetry-friday-mythopoeia-by-tolkien/

I think we should split "On Fairy Stories" at the section "Fantasy" on page 15 of the PDF version linked above. Why? Because that's what the Tolkien Professor did in his podcast course on Tolkien. Good enough for me!

Lindorieh

[Lennidhren]

I am thinking the section titled "Fantasy" (starting on p. 15 of the pdf version linked above) is a good place to divide the essay if we want to do half of it this week and half next week.

Also, hurray for Dunedain Radio, which just played the Tolkien Professor's introductory episode, reminding me that this episode contains a nice discussion of the topics in "On Fairy Stories"! Have a listen, it will make the essay much more comprehensible:

http://www.tolkienprofessor.com/lectures/intro.html

Also, in case anyone needs a translation of the Latin phrase "Abusus non tollit usum" thrown in on p. 18 of the pdf version...it's "Abuse does not do away with [proper] usage," i.e. just because someone misuses something does not mean the thing is not valuable in its proper usage. :-)

[Lennidhren]

*chuckle* It seems Lindorieh and I were thinking along the same lines simultaneously! Dividing at "Fantasy" it is, then.

Let's group "Mythopoeia" with part 2 of the essay, which is the shorter portion of it.

Also, the vote so far is unanimous for Sunday at 5pm. So Sunday it is! Note it's an hour *later* than usual this week...hopefully we won't intrude too much on SNS time!

I'm working through OFS myself and it is certainly different fare from "The Hobbit," so I encourage you all to come to the meeting prepared with questions you want answered! I am going to prepare some discussion questions along the lines of how Tolkien's ideas in this essay relate to his own works of fiction, I think.

[Andeon]

don't know exactly how I'll fit in with "on fantasy" and "mythopia"...but I'm definitely in on the Silmarillion - I'll make an extra special effort to attend those readings, and am definitely looking forward to some writing excercises as well - i'm getting a little pudgy around the fiction - time to shed some adjectives, stretch those metaphors, and burn myself down to a fitter, trimmer, sexier body...of Literature!

[Lennidhren]

Here we go with some discussion topics for this weekend, "On Fairy-Stories" part one!

1) Tolkien defines Fairy-stories as those concerned with Faerie, that is the "Perilous Realm," rather than with fairies or elves. E.g., "Most good 'fairy-stories' are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches...Faerie cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible....Faerie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic--but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific, magician." Given this description of the genre, which of Tolkien's own works, or what aspects of his works, can be described as Fairy-stories?

2) Tolkien uses the terms "fairy" and "elf" in describing the inhabitants of Faerie, the Perilous Realm, and the latter term of course makes one think of his own race of Elves in Middle-earth. Do Tolkien's Elves belong to the realm of Faerie as described in this essay? If so, how well is this concept of elves maintained (or not maintained) in LOTRO?

3) Tolkien identifies the virtue of fairy-stories as including "the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires" such as "to survey the depths of space and time" and "to hold communion with other living things." How do his own stories satisfy such desires?

4) Consider Tolkien's discussion of philology: "Language cannot, all the same, be dismissed....But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is more potent....When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter's power--upon one plane, and the desire to wield that power in the world external to our minds awakes....But in such 'fantasy,' as it is called, new form is made; Faerie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator." How does this confidence in the power of Language relate to Tolkien's own writing process and to themes in his stories? And how is it reflected in-game?

...possibly more to come tonight; I have to go run Latin club now...

[Meneladan]

This essay is like triple fudge with Red Bull added to me. Oi! Hard to read through without going off on tangents in my thinking.

And the long poem Mythopoeia! I am so glad it is available for all of us to read. I have it in the collection Tree and Leaf. There is the 'battle-cry' there is the life-motif. For me and all of those who ". . . keep an inner fastness where their gold, impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring to mint in image blurred of a distant king."