Y OF ú z n THE WORLD IS CHANGING: ETHICS AND GEI\RE DEVELOPMENT IN THREE T\ryEI\TIETH.CENTURY HIGH FANTASIES Kerrie Anne Le Lievre Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Discipline of English University of Adelaide December 2003 TABLE OF COI{TENTS Title page 1 Table of contents.... 1l Abstract... 111 Declaration ....................... v Acknowledgements """"""""""" vi 1 Introduction .1 1.1 Key Concepts ............ 2 t.2 Parameters 2T 1.3 Theoretical Approaches ...... 25 t.4 Overview.. 29 2 'The Structure of the \üorld': Narrative, Historiography and Ethics in Three High Fantasies ...' 32 3 'The Shadow of the Past': The Tragic Hero, the Transcendent Impulse and the Secondary World'....'."... 69 4 'A Silver-Haired Stranger': The Orchestrator and the Ethical Transition 101 5 'It Must Be So, When Things are in Danger': Heroic Action and Cosmic Order inThe Lord of the Rings '.' ..135 6 'Roke Guides, But it Can't Rule': Alternatives to Heroism in the Earthsea Cycle 17l 7 'Yoar I Never Expected': Action, Transformation and Balance in The Riddle-Master's Game ...208 I Conclusion: 'The World is Changing' ...243 9 Bibliography......... ...249 9.1 V/orks Cited ...249 9.2 V/orks Consulted... ...2s7 11 ABSTRACT This thesis examines three genre high fantasy texts pubiished between 1954 and 2001: J. R R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea cycle and Patricia A. McKillip's The Riddle-Master's Game. The emphasis is on examining how the three texts use a common set of structures to articulate a developing argument about forms of human engagement with the physical world in the face of environmental crisis. Using theories of literary ecology andnanalive paradigm, I examine the common structure shared by the three high fantasies and the weight of ethical implications it carries. The texts position the transcendent impulse of the mode of tragedy, and the behaviour it generates, as the source of crisis, and posit as a solution to the problem the integrative ethic characteristic of the comedic mode. They argue that a transition between these two ethics is necessary for the continued survival of the Secondary World. This thesis examines each text's use of narrative paradigm to articulate methods by which this ethical transition may be achieved. An argumentative trend is documented across the three fantasies through the representation of situation, problem and solution. In each text, as the Secondary World becomes more completely a closed physical system, the source of the solution to the problem caused by the transcendent presence and the achievement of ethical transition are both relocated within the control of human actors. The three fantasies express a gradual movement toward the acceptance of not only human responsibility for, but the necessity for action to remedy, the damaged state of the world. I argue that the texts' dominant concern is with the human relationship with and to context. Indeed, I argue that the three fantasies reflect the developing understanding of the human 111 role in not only precipitating, but responding to, environmental crisis, and may function as both a reflection of and an intervention in that crisis. 1V ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis was completed with the assistance of an Australian Postgraduate Award. For intellectual and financial support in the preparation of this thesis, I thank the Discipline of English at the University of Adelaide. For her support, guidance and many good suggestions throughout my candidature I owe special thanks to my supervisor, Dr Joy McEntee. For beta-reading and backing-up of flrles I thank Maria Wolters. For her constant encouragement and support, and invaluable last-minute proofreading, I owe special thanks to my dear friend Lindley Walter-Smith. For their constant emotional and practical support, and the financial assistance that allowed me to continue work on this thesis fuIl-time after the end of my scholarship, I am especially indebted and grateful to my parents, Jen and John Le Lievre. VI ' "It is sad that we should meet only thus at the ending. For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air. I do not think we shall meet agaiî." ' III:229 -Tolkien, vll 1 1 INTRODUCTIOI{ This thesis traces geffe development across three twentieth-century high fantasy texts: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea cycle and Patricia A. McKillip's The Riddle-Master's Game. I argue thatThe Lord of the Rings,the Earthsea cycle and The Riddle-Master's Game are all stories about saving the world-about the necessity of doing so, and the methods by which it must be done. In each of these three fantasies, the imaginary world in which the narrative takes place is under threat. In each, the imaginary world is constructed differently. I argue that as the concept of the imagined world changes between the texts, so the response to the danger that threatens it also changes. As the world changes, responsibility for not only the threat to the imaginary world, but also the solution to that threat, is shifted to the characters within that world. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien positions his imaginary world of Middle-earth within a cosmic order. He constructs the threat to Middle-earth's integrity as the characters' need to control their situations in despite of the greater order surrounding them. The solution to this problem is for characters to actively promote the cosmic order in the world. Tolkien argues that the world can be saved by a combination of public action that prevents damage to the world itself, and private confrontation with the need for control. ln the Earthsea cycle, Le Guin's imaginary world (Earthsea) has an inherent order: the Equilibrium. Le Guin constructs the threat to Earthsea's balanced state as her characters' need to escape death. She argues that the solution to this problem is for the characters to learn to accept the fact of mortality as part of the world's balance, and suggests that her characters can save Earthsea by consciously adapting both themselves and their societies to support that balance. In The Riddle-Master's Game, McKillip reduces her imaginary world, the High One's realm, to a closed physical system that is maintained by one character's conscious effort. She argues that the threat to this world is the individual's choice to act irresponsibly, and represents the solution to this problem as another, free decision to act 2 responsibly. McKillip argues that the imaginary world can be saved by a private transformation from an irresponsible to a responsible perspective, combined with public action to prevent damage to the landscape. In this thesis, I argue that The Lord of the Rings,the Earthsea cycle andthe Riddle-Master's Game constitute a series of thought- experiments in the area of ethics (patterns of human interaction with the world). I contend that Le Guin and McKillip can be read as writing back to Tolkien's original theory of world-saving through their adoption, and adaptation, of the structuring motifs Tolkien develops in The Lord of the Rings: in their fantasies, they develop not only the form of the genre, but its argument. 1.1 Key Concepts The word 'fantasy' has been used to mean so many different things, both in general use and in literary analysis, thatít is necessary to take some time here to define how I use it in this thesis, and why. In 1947, Tolkien published the essay 'On Fairy-Stories' in an attempt to define the 'radical difference between the fairy story mode and all others' (Seeman 75). In the essay, Tolkien responds to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Romantic theory of the imagination and the fancy (Seeman 75)by drawing a distinction between 'the mental power of image-making', which he calls Imagination (Tolkien, 'Fairy-Stories' 138) and the higher mental faculty of Fantasy. Tolkien defines Fantasy as an exercise of non-mimetic imagination, which is free from 'the domination of observed "fact" ' and thus can encompass 'images of things thal are not only "not actually present", but which are indeed not to be found in our primary world at aII, or are generaily believed not to be found there' (139). Imagination and Fantasy are the source of sub-creation; Tolkien constructs 'the operative link'between them and Sub-creation as Art (Tolkien, 'Fairy-Stories' 139), which is the specifically literary representation of what is imagined in such a convincing form as to inspire Secondary Belief-the reader's active acceptance of and co-operation with the 3 fantasypresented (Tolkien, 'Fairy-Stories' 132). Tolkien's essay constructs 'Fantasy' as'a natural human activity', the impulse of the human mind to create and confront imperatives, impossibles and alternatives in forms other than the strictly mimetic (Tolkien, 'Fairy- Stories' I44). The type of literary text that presents Fantasy in a way that other minds can access is in Tolkien's vocabulary a 'fairy-stotY' , or story about Faerie' Kathryn Hume, in her study Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature, moves away from both Tolkien's hierarchy of mental faculties, and his somewhat essentialist treatment of them. In place of Tolkien's categories of mental process, Imagination and Fantasy, Hume suggests that there are two creative impulses that govern literature. These impulses are mimesis, felt as the desire to irnitate, to describe events, people, situations, and objects with such verisimilitude that others can share your experience;' and fantasy, the desire to change givens and alter reality-out of boredom, play, vision, longing for something lacking, or need for rnetaphoric images that will bypass the audìence's verbal defences.