Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

Lee Berman · 16 Dec 2011, 13:30 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:30:57 -0500
Subject: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
Message-ID: <SNT123-W50ECAE6E13A6F40B0B1A23CFA00 at phx.gbl>

>Dan'l Danehy-Oakes: You are absolutely correct, I meant "religious morality" and should
>have said so explicitly.

Ah, well, not really. I understood but I'll confess that I just wanted an excuse to 
further discuss Tolkien with someone who knows more than I do about the subject. :- )

>Antonio Pedro Marques: The discussion was about what it looked like on the _surface_. If 
>you only find out at the end of the story that a character seems to fit a fairy tale, 
>then the fairytaleness isn't really part of the scenery, is it?

Scenery! That's an interesting point. For me, it was fairly early in BotNS that the S & S/
fairy tale aspects hit me. What came later (much later) was the recognition of real religious
content in the story, albeit with an intensely gnostic flavor. 

For years I had wondered why Wolfe put "gnostic symbols" in the Witches Tower. The problem
was my own limited knowledge of gnosticism. The impact of Alexander's brief but mighty 
empire on all levels of Western culture can't be ignored, including religion. Our legends of
witches, vampires, manbeasts shapeshifting gods, monsters etc. can be traced back to that time 
period, in that part of the world.

But anyway, does the fact that my realization of the religious aspect of BotNS came later mean
it is not a religious story? Or even that religious trappings are not part of the scenery?

>Maybe for me s&s is a more restricted thing than for others. I think of Conan the Barbarian 
>rather than LotR as the prototype. I'm not even sure I find LotR all that s&s, given the serious 
>'historical' feeling I get from it, nor the Hobbit, given its (deceivingly) children's-tale style.

Great observation and recognition Antonio. Perhaps I am not alone in having assumed that LotR was
more of a prototype or archetype of S & S while Conan is more of a cheap comic book derivative.
A cultural bias? Conan (like Tarzan) is a European character created by an American, while LotR seems
somehow more authentic and refined- high brow British characters created by an Englishman.

But, a check online about Robert Howard, the creator of Conan (and who pre-dates Tolkien), produces 
this blurb:

>With Conan and his other heroes, Howard created the genre now known as sword and sorcery, spawning 
>a wide swath of imitators and giving him an influence in the fantasy field rivaled only by J. R. R. 
>Tolkien and Tolkien's similarly inspired creation of high fantasy.

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