Undertowers Thing: The Legimization of Fantasy

[Ephtariat]

Applying critical historicism to the historical development of Christian morality indicates that through Augustine Persian misogyny and contempt of the body became dominant in the West, defining Fantasy as woman’s body and associating it with adultery and sin. Tolkien’s point is to propose a notion and practice of fantasy as a Secondary World, not associated with the betrayal and divorce from the Primary World and reality, neither the reality of the physical world nor that of God. His purpose is the legitimization of Fantasy, and in order to do so he must remove any association with the Augustinian phantasia or adultery of the heart.

The “bestialization” of the female evil principle in Ungoliant and Shelob, almost the only female evil characters in the whole history of Middle-earth, is the final indicator that what Tolkien aims at is to dissociate women from adultery and evil, and indicate blame and sin to belong primarily and chiefly to men. Such a tendency in Tolkien’s writings explains a good part of their appeal to all readers, either because they agree with Tolkien, or because, while retaining a genderless view of sin, or because they do not believe in sin at all, they find it fascinating as a fantasy.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

It really is interesting stuff, @Ephtariat, though I will confess that reading this short version sent me back to the long one, and I still do not have my head around it.

What is required to shift the idea of fantasy from woman to secondary world? I mean, what are the key conceptual innovations that Tolkien needs to make to achieve this?

Also, is this contrast drawn by Aragorn a distinction between love and fantasy (in the old sense), or am I going off on the wrong track?

And yet, Éomer, I say to you that she loves you more truly than me; for you she loves and knows; but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan.

[Ephtariat]

@Hill The shift is not from woman to secondary world, but from adultery to marriage. Fantasy is not escapism any more, but escape. It is not "morbid delusion", but the consolation of happy ending.

[Ephtariat]

@Hill The Gawain-Poet talks of the Green Knight as fantoum and faierie. The alternative between fantoum and faierie is not unique to the Gawain-poet, but in his poetry the notions were declined in a peculiar manner, that might only find a parallel in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, when Bardus “wende al hadde ben a jape / Of faierie” [thought it all to have been a fairy trick], but actually “it was fantosme” [it was a phantom] (Confessio Amantis V: 5002-5003, 5011 in 1900: 378). Compare the Gawain-poet speaking of what he purports to have been an actual marvel with the usage of the expression in the lyric Whon men beoþ: “Þis world (…) nis but fantum and feiri” [This world is nothing but phantom and faërie] (line 28 in Furnivall 1862: 134). Another related pair indeed was that of fantom and dreem, as one reads in the fifteenth century Paternoster of Richard Ermyte: “Þus it fareþ by vs, vnfeifful wrecchis, þоuƺ we þоruƺ techyng of þe prechoures here of pe ioye of heuene pat God vs bihotiþ or of þe peyne of helle ƺif we mistake, [al] vs þinkiþ but fantom 7 dreem, ffor we noþer it fele ne it haue sene” [Thus it happens with us, unfaithful wretches, that, though through teaching the preachers we hear of the joy of heaven that God grants us or of the pain of hell if we misbehave, we think it all but phantom and dream, for we neither feel it nor have seen it] (Westminster School Library MS 3, fol. 38r). In Chaucer’s House of Fame one finds instead: “Fro fantome and illusion me save” [Save me from phantom and illusion] (493 in Robinson 1957: 354). Significantly, in his discussion with Éomer at the Houses of Healing Aragorn claims that Éowyn loves in him only “a shadow and a thought,” here echoing the fantom and dreem [dream] (not feierie) (LotR VI, v).

[Chrysophylax Dives]

OK. It is late here. I read carefully in the morning. Thank you!

[Ephtariat]

You're welcome!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Wow, I could not go to sleep on this. @Ephtariat, you are a diamond. You know, so much bad stuff has happened in my life since I wrote the preface for your OFS commentary that only just now have I woken up again to the potency of your Middle English explorations. You see - there was a reason to reduce the 3000 word post!

Significantly, in his discussion with Éomer at the Houses of Healing Aragorn claims that Éowyn loves in him only “a shadow and a thought,” here echoing the fantom and dreem [dream] (not feierie) (LotR VI, v).

But what are you saying? That in England in the 15th century fantom, dreem, and feierie could be synonyms but with subtle distinctions that could be - and later by Tolkien was - drawn out into a substantial reconception of 'fantom' by way of feierie?

Part of what confuses me is that Fairy for Tolkien is bound up in our (mortal) enchantment and in his art (or at least LotR) the experience of enchantment is tied quite closely to that of dream. So each of these three terms - fantasy, dream, fairy - is an essential concept in 'On Fairy-stories'. But you are right about what Aragorn is saying - fantom and dream, not fairy.

Am I right that you are suggesting that Tolkien couples 'fantasy' and 'fairy' in a way that did no violence to earlier usages and yet redefined the very idea of fantasy? Essentially, he adds 'fairy' into the fantom and dream?

As in, 'fantasy' was associated (via Augustine) with sexual lust - adultery in the mind (which leads to the act), but Tolkien switches the association to fairies?

[Ephtariat]

I think that fantom is an illusion, while faierie is magic, not in the sense of the magician's operations, but as the occult power of fairies. Dream then is rather on the side of fantom, not faierie.

[Ephtariat]

Tolkien was surely aware of the original Greek sense of phantasia as 'apparition' (often of a goddess), as well as the philosophical sense as 'appearance' (that was soon contrasted with reality), and the deterior sense of Augustinian fantasy as adultery. Fantom derives from phantasia, but the Gawain-Poet in Tolkien's interpretation read the term with reference to the philosophical sense, an appearance not corresponding to reality, The philosophical sense was the one that gave rise to the Augustinian, so the Gawain-Poet is revolutionary because he contrasts the illusion not with reality, but with actual magic.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

So, the Augustian 'fantasy' is in keeping with the Greek sense, and now become firmly associated with the sexual fantasy. But the Gawain-poet opens the door to a very different idea of 'fantasy' connected now with magic (fairy). And Tolkien then takes what the Gawain-poet did all the way?

Just let me know please if this is about right before I proceed.

[Ephtariat]

Yes, I think that Tolkien was inspired by the Gawain-poet in his concept of faierie.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Applying critical historicism to the historical development of Christian morality indicates that through Augustine Persian misogyny and contempt of the body became dominant in the West, defining Fantasy as woman’s body and associating it with adultery and sin. Tolkien’s point is to propose a notion and practice of fantasy as a Secondary World, not associated with the betrayal and divorce from the Primary World and reality, neither the reality of the physical world nor that of God. His purpose is the legitimization of Fantasy, and in order to do so he must remove any association with the Augustinian phantasia or adultery of the heart.

OK. So would it be correct to say that (inspired by the Gawain poet) Tolkien redefined the Augustinian notion of fantasy by associating it with imaginative visions of fairies as opposed to women?

I recognize that this is only part of the story - that the real point concerns how the nature of woman is reconceived in this shift. But I want to be clear I have this part right. Thanks!

[Ephtariat]

I think that fairies represent women (and men) as they are supposed to be.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I am failing to communicate the handholds that I am seeking. Can you correct the following?

What I am hearing is a long history of the word 'fantasy', starting in ancient Greece but crucially connected by Augustine with sexual lust. And then an English tradition, which is basically the Gawain poet and then Tolkien, who redefine 'fantasy' by associating with fairies.

What I am asking, in the first instance, is if the key intervention in England is this connection of fantasy to fairies, which allows a new vision of fantasy, within which is a different image of woman? I just want to know if I have this right or am missing something.

[Ephtariat]

I think that what you say has its merits, since fairies are a medieval invention (or discovery? ). But what fairies (the French ones) brought about was a praise of adultery via courtly love, whereas the Gawain-poet refuses adultery without condemning fantasy. So the Augustinian association of fantasy with adultery is broken, and Tolkien may turn fantasy into a celebration of woman.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

OK. Makes sense. Can you elaborate a little on how the fairies brought about praise of adultery?

[Ephtariat]

Through fairy marriage, that could be contracted by married people without fear of being condemned as adulterers. Aisling Byrne wrote an article on historical cases of (presumed) fairy lovers where the human lover was married, or even a priest (there's even a Pope, Sylvester II), and yet his (or hers) was not considered a case of adultery because it did not involve another human lover. Byrne implied that presumably fairy love was a way to justify adultery, and I think that in this sense it can be connected with courtly love, that was even theorized as adulterous, on the basis that love cannot exist within marriage. The connection between fairy love and courtly love was made by other scholars, I've heard (CS Lewis reports so in his Allegory of Love), but I've not been able to identify those early scholars, whereas nowadays the thesis was only supported by Jean Markale, whose scholarly status is disputed. But the thing is, nowadays everybody goes with the theory of Arabian inspiration of courtly love, and it's true that Arabs were in Spain, so close to France, but well... I mean, French people ARE Celts! Aren't Celtic sources, wherein fairy loves thrived, way easier an explanation of origin?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

OK. So I get all that (and am in no position to comment on the origins of Courtly Love). The fairy love idea is neat - I had not heard of it before, yet it makes sense (and is quite funny). But onwards...

So the Gawain poet tells a story in which the fairy is a woman who tempts Gawain and Gawain resists the temptation. Can you begin to explain - just with the Gawain poem - how the image of woman is chan ging here (if it is)? I want to get clear on what Tolkien starts with and then consider what he then adds or changes.

[Ephtariat]

The fairy in SGGK was only testing Gawain's loyalty and had no intention of actually having a relationship with him. The Gawain-Poet considers marriage to be indissoluble both for man and woman and indirectly hints at the fact that Camelot falls because of Lancelot and Guinevere. If all knights and ladies behaved like Gawain and the fairy, the realm would prosper. That's consistent with both Chaucer (who describes actual consummations of adultery but condemns them) and with Gower, who recommended faithful marriage in Confessio Amantis. Tolkien is inspired by them but his strategy is different: he altogether erases adultery from the Legendarium. Elves do not love people who are already married and Men instead can but actually never do it. Tolkien's silence on adultery is so eloquent that I consider it an indirect statement of purpose: "Fantasy is NOT adultery, but a faithful relationship of marriage between the Subcreation and actual Creation". It is faithful because it contains elements of Creation, but it is a relationship, not an equation, since Fantasy remains other from Creation.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

OK. So far I don't see anything inherent to shift the status or idea of women. It seems more like an indirect consequence of rejecting adultery. Or is there something more?

[Ephtariat]

Woman was condemned by Augustine and followers as the cause of adultery. Middle English poets question the association (Chaucer explicitly). Tolkien makes the last move and erases adultery altogether, thus implying that we shouldn't consider woman responsible of adulteries at all. On the contrary, all sexual abuses in the Legendarium fall under man's responsibility, to be condemned alongside idolatry. Idolatry is Tolkien's way of indirectly thematizing adultery, as the two sins are equivalent in the Bible. But even Tolkien's idolaters are almost exclusively males, with the exceptions of a few Numenoreans Queens who are seduced by evil through their men. Tolkien paints a consistent picture that hints at disculpating woman from the original sin, and in doing so his works precur contemporary feminist theology.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Btw, for what it is worth the encounter of Galadriel and Frodo seems to me an eloquent demonstration of your thesis. Each want what the other can give, but no Ring changes hands and each carries on as they know they must, their only consolation being that they have done the right thing.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Woman was condemned by Augustine and followers as the cause of adultery. Middle English poets question the association (Chaucer explicitly). Tolkien makes the last move and erases adultery altogether, thus implying that we shouldn't consider woman responsible of adulteries at all. On the contrary, all sexual abuses in the Legendarium fall under man's responsibility, to be condemned alongside idolatry. Idolatry is Tolkien's way of indirectly thematizing adultery, as the two sins are equivalent in the Bible. But even Tolkien's adulterers are almost exclusively males, with the exceptions of a few Numenoreans Queens who are seduced by evil through their men. Tolkien paints a consistent picture that hints at disculpating woman from the original sin, and in doing so his works precur contemporary feminist theology.

Yes! I am starting to get it. The key is the notion that women are responsible for male lust - a notion which I find quite alien and needed you to spell out before I saw its importance.

OK. I want to get on to original sin, and also idolatory. But don't rush into it yet, please. I want to absorb this last post of yours a bit more.

[Ephtariat]

The scene in Lothlorien is explicitly indicated by Tolkien to involve (a temptation to) sex. So, you're definitely on the right track. It's not a case if, paraphrasing Galadriel herself, I titled my forthcoming book "The Mirror of Desire Unbidden".

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Where does Tolkien point to sex with regard to the Mirror scene?

But yes. I think it is my reading of this scene in LotR that leads me to suspect that your thesis about adultery and idolatory and women is on the right track. I don't fully get what you are saying, but the encounter of Frodo Baggins and the Lady Galadriel is a case study in chastity, as well as northern courage.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I do have some objection to your framing, I think. For sure, it is correct to say that there is no adultery in Tolkien's stories. But there is precious little sex of any kind. You will say (I guess) that the Elf-maid - mortal unions are at the very heart of the imagination of everything, and I would agree. But adultery is only one way of framing these unions, and perhaps not the most obvious. Or at least, I've long considered them not at all in terms of adultery (or idolatory) but rather in terms of mixed-race unions.

[Ephtariat]

One should take into account the fact that Tolkien in his 1965 interview to Denys Gueroult stated:

Denys Gueroult: Did you deliberately exclude sex from the book [The Lord of the Rings]?
Tolkien: No, but after all these are wars and a terrible expedition to the North Pole, so to speak.
Denys Gueroult: But other writers have occasionally allowed their characters to digress if it be digression in this way.
Tolkien: Surely there’s no lack of interest as I… (…) Wouldn’t you have thought that Galadriel… every character is tempted at some point. Wouldn’t you call Galadriel’s temptation and what she says about herself significant?
(Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. ‘Interview with Denys Gueroult.’ News from Bree 13, 1974, pp. 5-7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yCKXfz_wL8 )

[Ephtariat]

It is also necessary to recall Clyde S. Kilby’s testimony, as he stated:

“I was invited to dinner with some of the faculty at Christ Church and afterwards one member asked me if The Silmarillion had any sex, in the modern sense, in it. Next day I mentioned this to Tolkien and, to my surprise, he said he had written a couple of sex stories, though he did not volunteer to show them to me. Readers of The Lord of the Rings know of the moving account of love between Arwen and Aragorn, and when The Silmarillion is published we shall have others of the same sort, but they are vastly different from what we call sex stories today” (Kilby 1976: 83, n. 6)

Undoubtedly, the tale of Beren and Lúthien was one of such stories in Tolkien’s opinion.

[Ephtariat]

I don't consider relationships between Elves and Men as actual adulteries (they are certainly not sinful), but they are related to the subject of adultery both in the sense that their critics might accuse them of an equivalent of adultery, and in being inspired by fairy unions that may be actual adulteries (if one of the members of the couple was married).

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Thank you for the Galadriel quotes! Yes, that is quite clear.

But I am getting further from you on the theme of adultery, I think. For sure, these particular stories are sex stories (as Tolkien would have it). The question is what kind of sex stories? As a first category or label, I would say they are explorations of the very, very ancient theme of miscegenation, sexual coupling between different ethnic groups or races. I can kind of see how in ancient imaginations these themes were likely bound up in notions of idolatory and also adultery, but that seems secondary to me.

[Ephtariat]

I think that Tolkien would rather have considered it under the label of exogamy, as in Frazer's "Totems and Exogamy". Not to say that Tolkien was frazerian, of course, but those were the discussions back then...

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I think that Tolkien would rather have considered it under the label of exogamy, as in Frazer's "Totems and Exogamy". Not to say that Tolkien was frazerian, of course, but those were the discussions back then...

Yes, but that is because you look away from much of the Old English layer of Tolkien's thought, by which of course I mean Beowulf.

[Ephtariat]

https://www.etymonline.com/word/miscegenation

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Nu? Meaning, what is your point?

[Ephtariat]

That miscegenation is a concept born out of a racist polemics. It has a negative connotation that Tolkien would not make his own. Instead exogamy is a neuter term, and it does not have racial connotations, since it simply signifies an union outside one's social group, both if it is a group connotated by ethnic features and in the case it is not.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I think your vision fails to extend back in time to the heathen Germanic traditions that Tolkien was teasing out of the oldest Germanic texts. Consider this old story of the Goths told by Jordanes.

A king of the time of the migration of the Goths to the Black Sea expelled all the witches from his camp. The banished women went into the desert, met the evil spirits of the waste, had sexual intercourse with them, and so was begotten the loathsome race of the Huns.

Tolkien holds up this old Gothic story in his commentary on Beowulf. He is teasing out the meaning of the word helrūn, which is applied to the monster Grendel. Tolkien declares it “more than likely that dark ancient legends, concerning the origin of imagined evil beings, and of actual outlaw-folk and hated enemies of alien race, were associated in pagan Old English with the ancient word hell-rūn” (Beowulf T&C 168-9).

So in place of miscegenation I would be happy to substitute necromancy, with the suggestion that what is going on with the Elf-human unions is (somehow) conceived as an opposite of this necromancy. But the necromancy is all about breeding with 'others'. The issue is not adultery but intercourse with a monster, which can only beget more monsters.

[Ephtariat]

Tolkien in your quote says "imagined evil beings", meaning he didn't believe either in them nor in their origin story. Those are just garbled human accounts that can't be trusted. Nobody has children from demons either in the real world (assuming you believe in demons) or in the Legendarium (apart from the aborted notion of Morgoth's son from an Orcish woman). Of course Orcs and Trolls reproduce but there are no Half-Orcs, and the notion that a Hobbit in Bree is "goblinish" rather depends on his traffics than on his supposed being born like that.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I find your resistance fascinating. Please do note that I am not (to my mind) denying the significance of your ideas about adultery and idolatory. It is only you seem to want it all Middle-English while I suggest that the point is to perceive the continuity of tradition that Tolkien perceived and wished to underline from Beowulf to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

I'm not going to argue this further unless you really wish to proceed into this older realm of thought because you (not me) will all too soon step into the grounds you detest of Enoch and the Watchers. But Tolkien's famous 1936 lecture on Beowulf rests upon the notion of pagan-Biblical 'fusion', and the fusion is visible precisely in the intersection of this story told by Jordanes and the sort of reverse parallel found in the idea of Cain begatting monsters, which is how the Beowulf-poet reads the Bible.

[Ephtariat]

I get that, but I don't agree that Tolkien was inspired by that understanding. Possibly the key to Tolkien’s understanding is found in William of Auvergne, who in the thirteenth century argued that demons are incapable of procreating by questioning the nature of the cambiones, or changelings:

I must not pass over the little children [parvulos] whom the ignorant people call cambiones, and of whom the most ignorant old-wives’ tales [vulgarissimi sermones aniles] report that they are the sons of incubi demons substituted by the demons with women so that they may be brought up by them as if they were their own sons, for which reason they are called cambiones, from cambiti, that is “having been exchanged,” and substituted with female parents in place of their own sons. They say they are skinny and always wailing, and such milk-drinkers that four nurses do not supply a sufficient quantity of milk to feed one. These appeared to have remained with their nurses for many years, and afterwards to have flown away, or rather vanished. Thus I say that my earlier pronouncement [about the inability of demons to procreate] needs no modification: for it is easy for evil spirits to take on the appearance of this kind of child and seem to be exchanged with humans, whenever divine goodness permits things of this kind. [. . .] That children of this kind seemed for so long almost to have drained the breasts of nurses or consumed other kinds of nourishment was therefore only a deceptive vision and not the truth, which is why they vanished, leaving no trace of their former existence (cited in Green 2016: 114)

In C.S. Lewis’s 1943 novel That Hideous Strength, besides, Dr. Dimble tells Jane that Merlin is “the really interesting figure. Did the whole thing fail because he died so soon? Has it ever struck you what an odd creation Merlin is? He’s not evil; yet he’s a magician. He is obviously a druid; yet he knows all about the Grail. He’s ‘the devil’s son’; but then Layamon goes out of his way to tell you that the kind of being who fathered Merlin needn’t have been bad after all. You remember, ‘There dwell in the sky many kinds of wights. Some of them are good, and some work evil’” (Lewis 1945: 21). Indeed Merlin himself is called a conjoun, Middle English for cambion, in the 13th century Middle English poem Of Arthour and of Merlin:

Merlin’s mother is threatened with being buried alive for fornication since she cannot produce a father for her son (Of Arthour and of Merlin follows Robert de Boron, rather than Geoffrey of Monmouth, in making Merlin’s father a devil). The precocious child (he is two years old at the time) defends his mother in court by turning the tables on the judge—“Ich wot wele who mi fader is / Ac þou knowest nouϞt þine ywis” (lines 1063–64); he then reveals that her accuser is the son of a local priest (line 1104). The judge responds by calling Merlin himself a conjoun (line 1071), and the judge’s mother adds that no one but a conjoun would believe him (line 1110). (Green 2016: 125)

“A little later in Of Arthour and of Merlin, the well-known story of Merlin’s discovery by Vortigern’s messengers shows Merlin himself using the term conjoun to deflect questions of legitimacy. The messengers are seeking “a child with no father” for a sacrifice and overhear one of Merlin’s playmates mocking him for just this shortcoming: ‘Merlin schoke his heued and louϞ / He was of fiue winter eld / And he spac wordes swiþe beld / Yuel þe bifalle þou conioun! / Þou hast yseyd to loude þi roun. (lines 1214–18) [Merlin shook his head and laughed; he was five years old and he spoke very boldly: Evil befall you, conjoun, you have spoken your secret too loudly.]” (Green 2016: 125-126). In Riga’s interpretation, Gandalf is seen as Tolkien’s reworking of Merlin:

Traditionally, Merlin's ambivalence as a figure poised between good and evil is traced back to his origins as the son of a demon father and a virtuous mother. Although his baptism in Robert [de Boron]'s version makes him an emissary of Christ, even here Merlin plays dubious roles as pander and deceiver who literally kidnaps young Arthur from the child's mother and helps Uther Pendragon to blackmail her into silence. In the Vulgate and especially the Post-Vulgate, the evil of his origins haunts him. Niniane, in the Post-Vulgate, rejects him and kills him mainly because he is the "devil's son." Merlin's potential for good and evil is thus situated in his half-infernal, half-divine origins which continue to influence his behavior and destiny. Tolkien, by contrast, shifts the focus from the two forces at war in Merlin's birth to the freedom of choice granted to Gandalf as one of the Istari (Riga 2008: 32-33)

Although such a view need not be mistaken, we may see how Tolkien also shifts the focus from Merlin’s fatherhood by a demon to the Hobbits’s unknown origins. This is shown by the fact that the Hobbits are associated with Gandalf, and also because their unexpected virtues parallel child Merlin’s in their being exceptional, involving a special kind of wisdom that, even though inferior to Merlin’s omniscience, manifests itself at the right time. Examples are Bilbo’s intuition of the last riddle to ask of Gollum in the cave under the Misty Mountains, or Frodo’s insight that he is the one who should take the Ring to Mordor, at the Council of Elrond, or that he would better leave the Fellowship, when he is on Amon Hen. In another parallelism, Gandalf instructs Aragorn just as Merlin instructs Arthur, and the Hobbits are key to Aragorn’s ascent to the throne of Gondor, just as Arthur’s coronation depends on Merlin. One is left to wonder whether Merlin’s role in the conception of Arthur, a supernatural conception resembling the story of Ariston in Herodotus, as well as the legends surrounding the conception of Alexander the Great, also institute a parallel between the origins of Hobbits and of Aragorn, in which case the Halflings could be Half-Elves from unrecorded unions.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

As I said, I find your resistance to the Old English ideas fascinating.

[Ephtariat]

To me birth is as sacred as death, and probably more. I confess you I already struggle with accepting the Christian idea of the transmission of original sin by procreation, imagine if I could conceive the notion of a being who was born evil... But the latter is theologically unjustifiable, and indeed Tolkien says that even Sauron was good in the beginning, just as Melkor... I mentioned the reproduction of Orcs and Trolls earlier but actually that was a problem for Tolkien, just for this reason...

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I have the sense that we are not making contact on the Old English necromancy = sex with monsters. Tolkien declares a 'fusion' of this notion of necromancy with the Bible at the heart of Beowulf. You dismiss this as relevant to Tolkien's stories, but I am not sure you understand the idea of the 'fusion' - can you spell out what he means? It would seem to me that the transformation of this pagan Old English necromancy by way of the Biblical fusion of the Anglo-Saxon poet into the breeding of Orcs by Sauron and Saruman is another side of your thesis, albeit an older side. The very idea of the Necromancer is rooted in ancient notions of sex with monsters, yet appears as the Ring and the Eye, images brimming over with underlying sexual meaning. At the same time, necromancy is in Tolkien's stories a twisting of the true traditions and point of view (as magic is to enchantment in OFS) and so in the chaste Elf-maid - mortal man unions we (somehow) have an opposite of these ancient stories of copulation with monsters of alien race.

[Ephtariat]

Actually necromancy means divination of the future by communication with the spirits of the dead. At least that's the original meaning of the word, from Greek nekros, 'dead', and mantike, 'divination'. Probably you mean black magic, but I don't think that the fusion of the Bible with Germanic Paganism is understood by Tolkien as having to do with actual monsters or demons. I think he understands the monsters as allegories of human vices, and that is the sense in which I told you I read Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics as consistent with the W.P. Ker lecture on SGGK: in both cases, you have to do with adultery and idolatry, either "externalized" through monsters or internalized in Gawain's mind. Of course Tolkien says he's fascinated by the idea of actual monsters and real dragons, but that's because it is easier to wield a sword and slay an abomination than having to fight an inner battle with one's own mind, in my opinion. It is easier to fight an open enemy than a hidden enemy. Indeed in Letters Tolkien says that he imagined an age of myth when evil was incarnate, but the problem is that while he imagined it he himself couldn't see how to reconcile it with Christian theology and even with his own idea of evil as a corruption intervening later on a creation made to be entirely good instead of evil as an original principle.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Well, listen. You have not yet rose to my challenge and spelled out what Tolkien means by the 'fusion' that is the heart of his argument at the British Academy in 1936. Until we are clear what we are talking about I find it hard to take seriously your criticisms of what I am talking about.

On necromancy. The Necromancer in his Dark Tower. This is Sauron. He is the Necromancer. The question to ask is why the maker of the One Ring has a title that derives from Greek and, as you say, concerns the practice of trafficking with the dead to gain knowledge of the future?

But in general, there is space between us on a few fundamentals. For what it is worth, and outrageous as it may be for me to pull this one on you, but on the two most basic that I am so far aware of it is I who have the mainstream of Tolkien scholars on my side. The consensus seems to be that Tolkien utterly and wholesale rejected allegory, a position I would qualify, but only a little, but you would cast aside. And there appears to be a growing feeling that Beowulf is absolutely central to Tolkien's storytelling imagination. Again, here I welcome your work because it seems clear to me that you point at some Middle-English stuff concerning fantasy, love, and chivalry that is seen by almost nobody else. But it also seems to me a mistake that you do not integrate your insights with related explorations of the Old English. That you do not appears to follow from a range of presumptions that you hold that I neither validate nor criticize because I simply do not quite grasp them, but I discern them in the way you approach these questions in terms of realism - did Tolkien believe in angels, in demons, in copulation with either as a possibility? I certainly do not deny a realism in Tolkien's inquiries, but I have a sense that you miss something about both Tolkien's academic inquiries and their relation to his storytelling, and the storytelling itself. You likely think I go over the top in praising the members of this site. But those who do not post in Lore but write stories have something to teach scholars of Tolkien who do not write stories. In the first instance, Tolkien is interested in the 'fusion' of pagan notions of the genealogy of the Huns and the Biblical story of Cain as illuminating the craft of an Anglo-Saxon storyteller.

[Ephtariat]

Let me spell this out more clearly because I think we did not understand each other:
1) Tolkien chiefly liked in Old English paganism the idea that defeat was not a reason not to fight. That's the whole point of his whole argument on monsters: monsters (and what survives of paganism in his works) are important because they allow the Beowulf-Poet (and Snorri Sturluson, and the other medieval authors both Old English and Norse) to qualify their notions of Germanic heroism in the context of Christianity. In other words, the fusion you are looking for has monsters at its centre not in their origins, but in their function: they allow an author just converted to Christianity to save in the Christian frame what was most important of pagan Germanic culture, that is what is clarified by Christianity as the Consolation of Fairy-stories, that does not deny dyscatastrophe but only final universal defeat. I hope this is clear.
2) Apart from what I just said, Tolkien sympathized with the naivety of the Beowulf-Poet, who wrote absurd stuff such as that Elves descend from Cain, and with the naivety of the Anglosaxon period (and the early period of Old Norse conversion), stating absurd ideas such as sex with demons or that someone may have been born evil. He sympathized with them because he appreciated both how wrong they were and that they were not aware of their wrongness, but sincerely subscribed to what their flawed understanding of what Christianity was. Like the German king who is reported to have said that if he had been with his men before Jesus's cross they would have saved him. I mean, it makes no sense, but you appreciate the intention.
3) By comparison, and also in and by itself, Middle English represents a period wherein the Christian theological notions had been processed and made their own by intelligent people such as Chaucer and the Gawain-Poet, which means that Tolkien could relate to these authors much more closely in his own Catholicism. Their views could way more easily correspond with his own, their reasoning could way more easily be applied to Tolkien's life. When Tolkien writes about the Beowulf-Poet, you get the idea he's deciphering a text written in an ancient language. When Tolkien writes about Chaucer and the Gawain-Poet, you feel like he's talking about his neighbour.
4) Yes, I'm against the consensus of Tolkien scholarship. Hadn't I already told you?
5) Concerning realism: I believe in historical criticism, which means that a literary work is a key to its historical context and author, and conversely the historical context and author are key to the understanding of a literary work.
6) I published a whole fantasy trilogy in Italian: Chronicles of Arlen (no, it's not at all like Narnia, thanks for asking). The English version of the first novel is forthcoming as soon as the proofreader sends me the proofs.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

1) Tolkien chiefly liked in Old English paganism the idea that defeat was not a reason not to fight. That's the whole point of his whole argument on monsters: monsters (and what survives of paganism in his works) are important because they allow the Beowulf-Poet (and Snorri Sturluson, and the other medieval authors both Old English and Norse) to qualify their notions of Germanic heroism in the context of Christianity.

In other words, the fusion you are looking for has monsters at its centre not in their origins, but in their function: they allow an author just converted to Christianity to save in the Christian frame what was most important of pagan Germanic culture, that is what is clarified by Christianity as the Consolation of Fairy-stories, that does not deny dyscatastrophe but only final universal defeat. I hope this is clear.

Right. I do understand that you are saying this. What I read is what I take to be the consensus on Tolkien on Beowulf. It is what gave us Peter Jackson's trilogy, and in the literature is exemplified by Tom Shippey. I dissent.

You begin: "Tolkien chiefly liked in Old English paganism the idea that defeat was not a reason not to fight. That's the whole point of his whole argument on monsters..." As a matter of fact this is incorrect. That is not what Tolkien chiefly liked. It is what W.P. Ker chiefly liked, and Tolkien's business in his lecture was to show that there is more in the old poem than the northern courage found in any heroic lay. Tolkien proceeds by pointing to the Anglo-Saxon's references to Cain, which references are further clarified in his (2014) commentary as he discusses the black magic (as you put it) that is inherent in even as brute a monster as Grendel. That black magic has to do with Grendel's mother, who Beowulf meets next, and a father.

[Ephtariat]

That Tolkien treats the Beowulf-Poet's absurdities on Elves and Cain is not an argument to justify belief that he agreed on such nonsense. He treats it precisely because it makes no sense. I completely disagree.

[Ephtariat]

Also, concerning the "consensus": can you point out where Shippey references On Fairy-stories in treating Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics? I think you're missing my whole point by conflating me with Shippey (and by conflating Tolkien with Ker).

[Ephtariat]

Letter 236 to Rayner Unwin, 30 December 1961:

As far as old English goes ‘dwarf' (dweorg) is a mere gloss for nanus, or the name of convulsions and recurrent fevers; and ‘elf' we should suppose to be associated only with rheumatism, toothache and nightmares, if it were not for the occurrence of aelfsdene 'elven-fair' applied to Sarah and Judith!, and a few glosses such as dryades, wuduelfen. In all Old English poetry ‘elves' (ylfe) occurs once only, in Beowulf, associated with trolls, giants, and the Undead, as the accursed offspring of Cain. The gap between that and, say, Elrond or Galadriel is not bridged by learning.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Letter 236 to Rayner Unwin, 30 December 1961:

As far as old English goes ‘dwarf' (dweorg) is a mere gloss for nanus, or the name of convulsions and recurrent fevers; and ‘elf' we should suppose to be associated only with rheumatism, toothache and nightmares, if it were not for the occurrence of aelfsdene 'elven-fair' applied to Sarah and Judith!, and a few glosses such as dryades, wuduelfen. In all Old English poetry ‘elves' (ylfe) occurs once only, in Beowulf, associated with trolls, giants, and the Undead, as the accursed offspring of Cain. The gap between that and, say, Elrond or Galadriel is not bridged by learning.

Indeed!

;)

On the references you request - I am not sure exactly what you are asking. Maybe I am missing your whole point conflating your position and these others. All I wish to point out is you are not demonstrating much (if any) comprehension of 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' (1936), the key text in any discussion of Tolkien and Beowulf.