20-06-2005, 19:13
Les références qui suivent ne sont pas de la "littérature" mais des essais. Lorsque Tolkien est mentionné ponctuellement, je cite, sinon, je donne les références que tous peuvent consulter sur Google print.
§1
« More recently, J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings took his four hobbits through the “Old Forest”, a dark, dank, misty place, which cast gloom and dread over the travelers. Its tree trunks of innumerable shapes and sizes were covered in moss, with writhing and interlaced roots, but no undergrowth, save for hollows, where the bushes were thick and matted. Passage through the forest was easy enough, despite the rarity of paths, but the hobbits were rapidly lost and disorientated. When they encountered a glade, they felt charmed and cheerful after the abominable forest. When they lay down to sleep, the hobbits were attacked by a hoary old willow with gaping fissures in his trunk. When they retaliated with fire, a wind seemed to rise, as if ripples of anger were spreading though the forest. »
George F Peterken, Natural Woodland: Ecology and Conservation in Northern Temperate Regions, Cambridge University Press, 1996, 522 p., p. 25
§2
« “Political ecology”, in the sense of politically located ideas of environment and of the “right” relationships of humans to and within “it”, has existed unconsciously from the moment people started to imagine environmental utopias and dystopias. It can be traced from Virgil’s The Georgics (29 BC), through the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), to the “Shire” and “Mordor” of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. »
Political ecology : Science, Myth and Power, édité par Philip Anthony Stott et Sian Sullivan, Oxford University Press US, 2000, 276 p., p. 2.
§3
« Unconsciously, the human realm is denied in favor of the world of pure technics. Man, the tool user, grows convinced that he is himself only useful as a tool, that fertility except in the use of the scientific imagination is wasteful and without purpose, even, in some indefinable way, sinful. I was reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s great symbolic trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring [sic.], a few months ago, when a young scientist of my acquaintance paused and looked over my shoulder. After a little casual interchange the man departed leaving an accusing remark hovering in the air between us. “I wouldn’t waste my time with a man who writes fairy stories.” He might as well have added, “or with a man who reads them. »
Loren Eiseley, « The Illusion of the two cultures » (1964), dans Essays in context, édité par Sandra Fehl Tropp, Ann Pierson D'Angelo, Oxford University Press US, 748 p, p. 355.
§4
« Regardless of the definition of “fantasy”, however, it is clear that literary fantasy and the fantastic (whether these two terms refer to one thing or two distinct things) have a great deal to do with questions of theology and religion. How they are connected will vary depending on the definition of “fantasy” that is chose. Rabkin’s widely accepted view holds that fantasy (or the fantastic) involves the reversal of normal understanding of reality. In that case fantasy is, as J. R. R. Tolkien also argued, an act of “sub-creation” (Tolkien 1966:49). The human power of subcreation is finally dependant upon our understanding of the reality of the “primary” or empirical world, even when we seek to deviate from that reality in the most striking ways. Tolkien defines the fairy story as a form of evangelium, the “good news” or gospel of human salvation and recreation (1966:58-9). In other words, within a theological framework, human fantasy narratives imitate the creative power of God (Tolkien 1966:75). This view is more than a little reminiscent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1920) well-known description of the creative imagination as that aspect of the human spirit which is the image of God (although Coleridge assigned a lesser role to “fancy”, his word for fantasy). (…)
[6] (…) many scholars and other readers view fantasy as an escape from the grim day-to-day realities of our “primary” world to the joys of a “secondary world” (Tolkien 1966:60), in which good ultimately triumphs over evil through magic or other supernatural power. Tolkien indeed stresses the positive value of the escape and consolation provided by fairy stories. Theses stories are opiates, although Tolkien does not use that word. As anyone who has suffered prolonged and unavoidable pain can attest, opiates are sometimes necessary. However, no one would maintain that any person who requires an opiates is a healthy person. Fantasy is thus for this view a symptom of something very wrong with the primary world — perhaps one could say its “ungodliness”. »
[6] (…) many scholars and other readers view fantasy as an escape from the grim day-to-day realities of our “primary” world to the joys of a “secondary world” (Tolkien 1966:60), in which good ultimately triumphs over evil through magic or other supernatural power. Tolkien indeed stresses the positive value of the escape and consolation provided by fairy stories. Theses stories are opiates, although Tolkien does not use that word. As anyone who has suffered prolonged and unavoidable pain can attest, opiates are sometimes necessary. However, no one would maintain that any person who requires an opiates is a healthy person. Fantasy is thus for this view a symptom of something very wrong with the primary world — perhaps one could say its “ungodliness”. »
Violence, Utopia, and the Kingdom of God: Fantasy and Ideology in the Bible, édité par George Aichele, Tina Pippin, Routledge (UK), 1998, 176 p., p. 3, 6.
§5
« Hence the United States got bad technocracy. But how many Americans would want J to live in a “good” technocracy, a well-oiled totalism really capable of driving society relentlessly toward a preprogrammed future? Modern mythologists have always imagined such a system with horror : Frank Kafka’s The Castle, Mary Shelley’s Frankestein, Karel Capek’s robot world of R.U.R., George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The lesson is always that the technocratic promise is either a cheat or a nightmare, that to wield total power, even with the best of intentions, would be our undoing. In short, we dream of a system that gives us all we want but could not bear to live in a system powerful enough to do so. »
Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, 555 p., p. 447.
§6
« The iconoclats, as John Damascus saw it, were too intellectualist in their religious stance. “Do not insult matter,” he protested, “for it is not without honour. Nothing is to be despised that God has made. That is a Manichaean error.” Icons make explicit the innate holiness of the material world, and call down God’s blessing on all human artistic creativity. The iconographer serves as the priest of creation, transfiguring it and rendering it articulate in praise of God. He acts as a “subcreator”, in J. R. R. Tolkien’s phrase, as a “maker” after the image of God the Maker. In the words of St Theodore the Studite, “The fact that the human person is made in the image and likeness of God means that the making of an icon is in some way a divine work.” »
Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, édité par John McManners, Oxford University Press, 2001, 768 p., p. 143.
§7
« According to Hobbes, individuals have passions. They sense and reason, but they also will and want. They want status, property, and the like. In Hobbes’ view, this is human nature, the character of man in his natural state.
Unfortunately, property and power are scarce. Want causes competition and conflict. Humans left to their own inclinations soon degenerate into war of “everyman against everyman.” (This view of human nature, incidentally, continues to be expressed in British literature, still reflecting the Hobbesian philosophy. In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, boys left on a tropical island rapidly degenerate into fighting without justice or compassion. The Orcs in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings personify this human tendency exaggerated into a disgusting tribe of monsters. And, of course, this Hobbesian view of human nature lies behind the so-called “conservative” perspective in Anglo-American society.) »
Unfortunately, property and power are scarce. Want causes competition and conflict. Humans left to their own inclinations soon degenerate into war of “everyman against everyman.” (This view of human nature, incidentally, continues to be expressed in British literature, still reflecting the Hobbesian philosophy. In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, boys left on a tropical island rapidly degenerate into fighting without justice or compassion. The Orcs in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings personify this human tendency exaggerated into a disgusting tribe of monsters. And, of course, this Hobbesian view of human nature lies behind the so-called “conservative” perspective in Anglo-American society.) »
James L. Peacock, The Anthropological Lens: Harsh Light, Soft Focus, Cambridge University Press, 2001, 174 p., p. 12.
§8
Margery Hourihan, Deconstructing the Hero: Literary Theory and Children's Literature, Routledge (UK), 1998, ? p. , pp. 32, 52-53, 65
§9 Article de Jonathan Langford, « Why the Academy Is Afraid of Dragons : The Suppression of the Marvelous in Theories of the Fantastic », pp. 51-64 dans
Science Fiction, Canonization, Marginalization, and the Academy, édité par Gary Westfahl, George Slusser, Greenwood Press, 2002, 192 p.
§10 Tolkien (“On fairy Stories”) : pp. 26, 29-30, 36-37, 55-57, 61, 63 ; SdA : p. 80).
The Fantastic Sublime: Romanticism and Transcendence in Nineteenth-Century Children's Fantasy Literature, David Sandner, Greenwood Press, 1996, 168 p.
§11 (sur l’Évasion et la position de Tolkien à ce sujet)
Heidi Slettadahl MacPherson, Women's Movement: Escape As Transgression in North American Feminist Fiction, Rodopi, 2000, ? p., p. 28-32
§12 pp. 153-156 : Critique qui n’est pas sans rappeler sur certains point celle que fit Smadja 20 ans après
Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, Routledge (UK), 1981, 224 p.
S.