The Great Escape

At this point I like Tolkien's urge to escape from world weariness into fantasy, or 'fairy stories' as he calls them. I'm sick of exams right now, even though I've only written two . Rather I should say I'm sick of ventriloquism, or seeing and feeling good knowledge fall prey to mass production--becoming tawdry imitations. The sad part is I'm guilty of contributing to the system--by regurgitating knowledge with an apathetic mindset at my history exam, almost like a hack telemarketer or salesmen. For the exam I wrote what I consider a penny epic: ranging from the Carolingian Period (8th/9th) to the beginnings of the Indsturial Revolution (circa 18th century). What few good issues I could raise I learned from reading outside of the course--Heng's Empire of Magic and Viv's Caribbean History course. So I focused on various ideas of nationalism and economy. My basic ideas were : (1) Charlemagne's attempt to revive the Roman Empire, and the connections he forged with Rome/Italy. (2) Urban II's militant attempt to unite Christendom with the Crusades, resulting in new everything--trade routes, goods, cultural experiences with the Mediterranean AND Islam. (3) The stumble, or dip in the fourteenth century--Black Plague and famine, into civil wars in the fifteenth--like the War of the Roses--that nearly sundered Europe. (4) The discovery of the New World, which basically saved the European economy, forging new ideas of nationalism and economy--yet seeming like an extension of the Crusades--at the expense of natives as Europeans were simultaneously tearing each other apart with the Reformation-inspired wars, etc.

With those wild, scattered thoughts I give you the words of the master of golden age fantasy from "On Fairy Stories". This tract is his greatest gift--gospel for 'fantasy' writers--and blackest plague for the post-modern world:

But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the wilfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses— and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

ADDENDUM: It's interesting to compare Tolkien's need for a bucolic rural paradise--Eden to the subject of this brilliant book: The Modern Satiric Grotesque: And Its Traditions by J.R. Clark. The book is simply brilliant. I'd say it is to satiric and grotesque literature what Maureen Quilligan's brilliant book: Language of Allegory is to Allegory. So where do we escape now--the loo?