Tolkien - Subcreation

Having recently re-read LOTR I was reminded of the small "Tree and Leaf" book in which, among other things is Tolkien's article nbased on a lecture he gave on the subject "On Fairy Stories". In it he describes what he sees as the warrant for fantasy writing and what its essence is. Some of what he had to say may explains something of the huge appeal of LOTR. LOTR is like Marmite (or Vegemite for down-under readers) - you either love it or hate it. There are many people who dislike / hate / dismiss LOTR - as many as those who a) love the story as a story with all the elements of good and evil and heroism and failure etc. but also b) sense that this story has an influence on them - not just emotional but spritual (in the sense that it has effect on their spirits).


Tolkien was a devout Catholic ChristianHe believed in a benevolent Creator and Creation - he believed in the Biblical accounts of Creation and the decisive coming of the Creator into His Creation - birth, death and resurrection.

As a believer in a Creator and a belief that man was created in the image of His Maker and given dominion over the earth before the Fall, he believed that one of the divinely bestowed attributes that man had retained after the Fall was the ability to be a sub-creator. In the poem Mythopoeia he says

The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact.


Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.


Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.


That is the viewpoint from which he wrote LOTR. before he even began this undertaking he had written almost the whole history of Middle Earth up to and including the events of LOTR incuding a creation myth etc. That is why LOTR is so incredibly authentic. It is a story to immerse yourself in - and indeed Tolkien's aim was just that. He wanted to write a story which took place in a time and place that was completely different but credible because it was consistently different. Yes, it's fantasy but it's fantasy within a world that has a history and a rich history at that. He saw himself as a subcreator as described in the second stanza above - refracted light - one of many hues splintered from a single white. He distinguished between the primary world - the world in which we live - and a secondary world - the world of the story and considered the degree to which the reader became immersed and involved (enchantment) in the story the important thing. The key to that is the believability of the the secondary world.