Tree and Leaf
April 3rd, 2008 by abreche1I love Lord of the Rings and reread the novel every December. That said, I will say that Tolkien can be a fairly dry writer. Still, he makes some interesting points in this article about challenging the assumptions connecting fantasy literature with children. I happen to enjoy reading fantasy a great deal and am drawn, like Kathy, almost exclusively to series that I can become invested in and that have fleshed out worlds to explore. I think Tolkien’s assessments about the value of fantasy stories in general are compelling and certainly describe my engagement with fantasy literature.
At the same time, when it comes to his works in particular, I was drawn to them at a very young age and return to the stories yearly not only to explore the world one more time, but also because of nostalgic associations reading Lord of the Rings brings. The direction the class went in today with regard to using vaguely intellectual reasons to justify enjoyment of certain texts, especially fan texts, is also relevant to my own experience. Whenever I mention LotR to someone I don’t really know, I first bring up my respect for Tolkien as a philologist and his work in devising the languages and cultural history of his world before I mention liking the story itself. Because of that childhood nostalgia and that noticeable shame about my LotR fandom, I wonder to what extent I have absorbed the pervasive assumptions of a link between childhood and fantasy. What other activities and texts (particularly ones with large fan followings) are similarly associated with childishness? I mean childishness in particular and not just fringe and strange…
Posted in Musings | 1 Comment »
I find the association between childishness and fantasy very strange because I did not become interested in fantasy as a genre until high school. That said, I think that one of Tolkien’s points is that in the modern world, fairy-stories are modified to suit children. Many traditional stories, like the Little Mermaid, have been completely whitewashed and infatilized. The public only thinks of the watered down version. Also, people make a mental distinction between fairy-stories (such as the Beauty and the Beast) and mythology. Its probably another high-culture, low-culture distinction, but I think childishness is associated with “fairy tales” not mythology. I’m not convinced there is any actual difference between the two except connotation. The removal of fairy tales from mythology probably allows greater infatilization and thus the association with childishness.