Читать книгу Defending Middle-earth: Tolkien: Myth and Modernity - Patrick Curry - Страница 12

We shall also consider The Lord of the Rings as literature. That involves considering why Tolkien chose ‘fantasy,’ with its affinities with fairy-tale and myth, as the appropriate form and strategy; and why the wisdom of that choice has been so roundly confirmed by readers, although ignored or condemned by critics. There is also the question of comparable books. I shall suggest that there are indeed a few other works of literary myth, or ‘mythopoeic’ fiction, which also reveal its true power, feed the soul, and escape the modernist critical compass. There are others, also apparently ‘fantasy,’ which are completely different. Here I am obliged to be unkind to some sacred cows: from the pernicious productions of The Walt Disney Company, and pseudo-fairy-tales like The Wizard of Oz, to some of the authors and critics now canonized by literary feminism.

Given how unavoidably subjective and personal it must be, compiling lists of ‘great’ books is a game we can all play. I have no doubt that The Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature, even if not always for purely ‘literary’ reasons. But I am not too concerned to persuade the reader to agree; just to realize that it is fully deserving of affection and respect, and even some passionate attention. Written with love, learning, skill and sacrifice, it is a cry (as someone once said of religion) from ‘the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions,’ but also something more. It offers not an ‘escape’ from our world, this world, but hope for its future.