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J.R.R.
TOLKIEN and C.S. LEWIS:
Middle-earth
and Narnian Addenda to the "Good Books"
List
by Dr. Elisabeth A. Carmack
The
late Dr. John Senior, the profound classicist who compiled
the "Good Books" list used as an elementary
grades (Nursery-8th) literature reading list,
did not include books written after World War I.
In his book, The Death of Christian Culture,
he explained:
It
is commonly agreed also that both "great"
and "good" can be judged only from
a certain distance. Contemporary works can be appreciated
and enjoyed but not very properly judged; and just
as a principle must stand outside what follows from
it (as a point to the line), so a cultural standard
must be established from some time at least as distant
as our grandparent's. For us today the cutoff
point is World War I, before which cars and the
electric light had not yet come to dominate our
lives and the experience of nature had not been
distorted by speed and the destruction of shadows.
There is a serious question - with argument on both
sides, surely - as to whether there can be
any culture at all in a mechanized society. Whichever
side one takes in that dispute, it is certainly
true that we cannot understand the point at issue
without an imaginative grasp of the world we have
lost.
Since
Dr. Senior compiled and revised his list (mainly in
the 1970's and 80's), "our grandparent's time"
has shifted forward by several decades. It can reasonably
be argued that we need an "imaginative grasp"
of their somewhat more recent world, also now "lost,"
which the older works do not include, but which we
now stand outside of and so can judge with some objectivity.
Popular
books abound, from the recent, but already almost
forgot Stine horror stories to the more current
Harry Potter series. Mere sales volume
obviously bears no necessary correlation to quality
or enduring appeal. Only time will tell. Since few
children have read half (rarely even ten per cent!)
of the rich, time-tested and enduring classics appropriate
for elementary level students, there is no need to
delve into the relative merits or demerits of the
latest popular series, which change every few months
and are often "popularized" solely
on the basis of clever or expensive marketing,
peripheral toys, T-shirts or attractive movie deals.
We do not think such books should be selected and
read before the classics, however popular they may
seem to be for the day.
However,
there are two authors - J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis
- whose finest children's fiction, now time-tested,
most readers and critic's believe qualify to make any
children's reading list. Their works have that enduring
appeal, together with undeniable literary and
moral qualities so as to rate them as extraordinarily
good, if not great. We believe Dr. Senior would have
eventually added to his list these wonderful books
about enchanted realms connected to our own by a plethora
of enlightening metaphorical and allegorical symbols
and myths (unlike those, for example, of Stephen King
and Dr. Seuss), for the reasons cited here by his dear
friend and colleague, Dr. Dennis Quinn, who writes:
Mr.
[Stephen] King told us in his talk that the formative
reading of his early childhood was the Dr. Seuss
books. Although many defend both King and Seuss
as just "fun," others take King, at least,
seriously... King "smashes facades of
rationality and order, illusions of control imposed
upon a reality of chaos," a thesis not so far
from The Cat in the Hat. ...I argued that
fantasy is a symptom of decadence. The "other
worlds" of fantasy are substitutes for the
real world, imaginary worlds rather than imagined
ones that correspond to something in the real world,
enchanted realms to replace brave new wasteland
conspicuously despoiled of enchantments.
In
his Forward to Dr. Quinn's wonderful new book,
Iris
Exiled, A Synoptic History of Wonder
(click on title for more information), James
V. Schall noted the following about the enchanted
realms of Middle-earth by J.R.R. Tolkien and
Narnia by C.S. Lewis:
The
Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia would
arouse our wonder in a way Stephen King or
MTV do not. The reason for this difference, as Quinn
would intimate, is that what is discovered by the
wonder that Aristotle told us was the beginning
of poetry and wisdom is a world that is.
This is a world that might not have existed at all
or might have been otherwise through human
or divine choices that poets and artists can imagine.
They do not "create" other worlds, but
they can see how this world might have been
otherwise. Why the world that is remains ever
more fascinating than any other world is that it
remains a world full of Word, of words made flesh,
of what is not simply our own creations.
By
contrast, in an article in Atlantic Monthly (Oct.
2001), Gregg Easterbrook notes the interesting fact
that the "the novelist and critic Philip Hensher,
a rising figure in the London literary establishment,
censured the Chronicles of Narnia as 'poisonous' and
'ghastly, priggish, half-witted' books." Why?
"Because they are intended to 'corrupt the minds
of the young with allegory.' What Hensher meant by corrupting
the young was exposing them by allegory to what he derided
as 'Lewis's creed of clean-living, muscular Christianity."
Never mind that one of Hensher's own books all but glorifies
the unnatural - pederasty. Hensher would abolish
any connection to the real, in favor of the unnnatural,
the unreal.
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Frodo
and Sam with the Elvish Queen Galadriel
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In
his essay 'On Fairy-Stories' Tolkien, taking
up the theme of connectedness and relevance to the world
that is, under the notion of "sub-creative art"
(i.e. within creation and related to it, not a "mere
magician's" entire substitute for the
natural) protested strongly, even passionately, that
there was a right to create sub-creativefantasy. He
believed this to be so even if, even though, fantasy
(the imaginative power) could be abused as noted above,
could become the making and worshipping of false gods,
whether literally (like Beelzebub, the 'Lord of the
Flies' of Golding's fantasy), or politically, in
the shape of 'social and economic theories' also
demanding 'human sacrifice.' But imaginative
creativity, including the realm of story-telling
art, is a human desire and power, a part of our nature
which cannot be taken away and should not be repressed
simply because some may abuse it:
At
the heart of many man-made stories of the elves
lies, open or concealed, pure or alloyed, the desire
for a living, realized sub-creative art, which (however
much it may outwardly resemble it) is inwardly wholly
different from the greed for self-centered power
which is the mark of a mere Magician. Of this desire
the elves, in their better (but still perilous)
part are largely made...The 'sub-creative' desire,
then, is legitimate"-
Tolkien
goes on to say, in a fragment of verse, such sub-creative
art is:
our
right...that right has not decayed:
we make still by law in which we're made
Whether
distinguished from sheer fantasy by labeling it "sub-creative
art," "corresponding to the world
that is," "connected," "metaphorical"
or "analogous," there is a real difference
between the fiction of Stephen King, Hensher,
Suess et al. from that of Tolkien and Lewis that
makes the latter worth reading and the former too
often merely "decadent escapism"
that ultimately is nothing but a vain effort to turn
away from the real to what is not, from being to non-being.
All fiction authors, as creative artists, are faced
with Hamlet's dilemma regarding whether their creations
ought "To be or not to be." Some
compromise - like Hamlet - and split the difference.
It is often a matter of degree.
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Scenes
from The Hobbit and Lord of
the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
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But
we cannot "not be." We are everlasting.
The real cannot be avoided, nor can our ties to it be
entirely severed, and there is a direct, mysterious
connection between matter and spirit, body and soul,
nature and the supernatural. Deny (from the Latin de
+ negare = to say no) it and one is merely
refusing the evidence of our senses and reason. What
is, is still out there, as real as ever, beckoning us
with beauty and wonder to use our imaginations,
hence fiction, to make some contact, some connection
with the awesome world of the spirit and the supernatural,
that will help guide us home and make us whole.
Aesop's fables, the parables of Christ, Tolkien's Middle-earth
and Lewis' Narnia tales help us make that connection.
We
therefore suggest that the following twelve (12) books
by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis be added to children's
reading lists:
The
Hobbit: or There and Back Again
by
J.R.R. Tolkien
The
Lord of the Rings
trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
(The Fellowship of the Ring; The Two
Towers; The Return of
the King)
The
Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis (seven volumes):
The
Magician's Nephew;
The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe;
The
Horse and His Boy; Prince Caspian;
The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader;
The
Silver Chair;
and,
The
Last Battle)
The
Screwtape Letters
by C.S. Lewis
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