Fantasy & the Real World: Tolkien’s Philosophy of Myth

Fantasy shows us ourselves in the light of the fullness of the natural and supernatural reality in which we find ourselves.

Does so-called fantasy literature have any relevance to the so-called real world? Such a question is worth asking and indeed answering but can only be addressed if we have a clear understanding of what constitutes fantasy and what constitutes reality. If we succumb to the reductionist presumption that fantasy is the absence of realism or reality, we will answer the question with a dogmatic negative before it is even considered. On the other hand, if we succumb to the equally reductionist presumption that reality is whatever the individual perceives it to be, we will answer that reality and fantasy are in the eye of the beholder, rendering the question ultimately meaningless. One man’s fantasy is, after all, another man’s reality and what right does anyone have to distinguish the one from the other. Who are we to judge?

The one reductionist perception demands the empirical and literal facts and nothing but the empirical and literal facts, making the perception of truth through allegorical signification impossible. If dragons can be shown to not exist in the realm of physical reality, beyond their figurative depiction in art, they are not real; they have nothing to teach us. The other reductionist perception might see dragons as a psychological projection of one’s own angst, or the devouring nature of one’s own addictions, but these are strictly personal and have no universal applicability. They are “my” dragons, not yours, and they only signify my “truths”, not yours.

Neither of the foregoing reductionist perceptions of the original question was in the mind and reasoning of J. R. R. Tolkien when he gave his famous lecture “on fairy-stories”. For Tolkien, a philologist and professor of languages at Oxford University, these perceptions were actually misperceptions about perception itself: “The incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval. The human mind, endowed with the powers of generalization and abstraction, sees not only green-grass, discriminating it from other things (and finding it fair to look upon), but sees that it is green as well as being grass.” The invention of the adjective, presumably at the very dawn of the use of language, was connected inextricably from the beginning with the telling of stories. For Tolkien, “no spell or incantation in Faërie is more potent” than the power of the adjective in bringing man’s perception of reality to light and to life. The adjective initiated “a mythical grammar”:

The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power … and the desire to wield that power in the world external to our minds awakes.

This power can “put a deadly green upon a man’s face and produce a horror” or it “may cause woods to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear fleeces of gold”. It may “put hot fire into the belly of the cold worm”. It is, therefore, at the very dawn of language, and therefore at the very dawn of man, that mythopoeia (the making of myths) begins: “But in such ‘fantasy’, as it is called, new form is made; Faërie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator.”

And yet does this radical understanding of “fantasy” or myth-making answer our initial question? Does such fantasy literature have any relevance to the real world? Might we not play devil’s advocate and say, as C. S. Lewis had proclaimed until he learned better, that “myths are lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver”. Isn’t fantasy merely gilding the lie, presenting it in a beautiful mask to beguile the gullible? After all, isn’t the lie as primal as language itself? As soon as man had gained the power to tell stories, he had also gained the power to tell false stories, manipulating reality to wield the power of the lie.

Yes indeed! Whatever power man can use, he can also abuse. This is as true of facts, as it is true of fantasy. Are there not lies, damned lies and statistics?

The fact is that fiction can be as true as any facts. Furthermore, it can be better at revealing reality. The prodigal son is a fictional character. So is his father. And his brother. And the pigs. Yet the story is so true that we don’t say the prodigal son is like us, we say that we are like the prodigal son. The fictional character, the figment of Christ’s imagination, is more real, though less factual, than we are. He is the archetype of which we are merely types.

Perhaps the greatest defense of the power of mythopoeia is the fact that Christ has sanctified it with his own parables. The work of imaginative fiction is a powerful conveyer of reality. Tolkien tells us that fairy-stories have the power to reveal the natural, the supernatural and to hold up a mirror to Man himself. Fantasy shows us ourselves in the light of the fullness of the natural and supernatural reality in which we find ourselves. Does fantasy have any relevance to the real world? You better believe it! What Christ has joined together let no man put asunder.

This essay was first published here in August 2021.

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