evening redness

In Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon, Brian Rosebury writes:

“By this point it should be clear that a theme is emerging from the analysis. If The Lord of the Rings stands at a tangent to the novel as a genre, it is not because of a general abstention from realism or archaism of style–neither of which can really be attributed to it–but because of a highly specific feature for which precedents are hardly to be found in the novel tradition: the complex, and to an extent, systemic, elaboration of an imaginary world” (25)

He goes on to say that even SF does not go so far in such world building, and I think that  it is likely true that no other fantasy goes this far either. However, it is precisely this point that is deceiving because we do noy, in fact, know everything about Middle-earth. If we do, we have to admit that there is actually very little to know, because we in fact know so little of, for example, the common people. If we do know everything, the world is not actually all that complex. If we don’t know everything, then we are deceived into believing we do. The issue here involves the idea that everything in Middle-earth can be known, is knowable, which is not even true of our own world (or planet, as it were, in Eugene Thacker’s terms).  What Middle-earth lacks is horror, the discovery of what should not be, what cannot be knowable according to prevailing ways of knowing.

This entry was posted on 26 July 2013 at 19:29 and is filed under Here at the End of All Things, The Generic, Writing with tags fantasy, Here at the End of All Things, horror, science fiction, sf, tolkien. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.