1 Introduction

Notes 1 Introduction 1. Twilight fan fiction has spawned E. L. Grey’s almost equally successful Fifty Shades trilogy. 2. Phelan conceives of the ethical position of the real reader as resulting from an interaction between what he terms ‘four ethical situations’: 1) that of the characters and their behaviour and judgments; 2) that of the narrator (the narrator is ethically positioned through being reliable or unreliable, as well as through different kinds of focalization); 3) that of the implied author (the implied author’s choice of narrative strategy will affect the audience’s ethical responses to the characters and convey the author’s attitudes toward the authorial audience); and 4) that of the flesh-and-blood reader in relation to values, beliefs and locations operating in 1–3 (Phelan, 2005, p. 23). These positions are entwined, so that the real reader’s responses to one of these situations affect his or her responses to the others. 3. See Pringle (2006, p. 203) and Mendlesohn and James (2009, p. 30). 4. For instance, eight of the thirteen dwarf-names in The Hobbitt are taken directly from a list of names in Võluspá, a poem from the Elder Edda. The list also contains the name Gandálfr – hence The Hobbit looks like an imagina- tive answer to how that one elf came to be travelling with a company of dwarfs (Shippey, 2001, pp. 15–16). 5. Tolkien kept revising his mythology until his death. Acknowledging the complexity of ‘The Silmarillion’, as well as the fact that Tolkien never com- pleted any consistent version of his legendarium (Nagy, 2007, p. 609), this book uses The Silmarillion as a main point of entry to Tolkien’s mythology. The Silmarillion represents Christopher Tolkien’s ‘selecting and arranging’ of the complexity that is ‘The Silmarillion’ in order to ‘produce the most coher- ent and internally self-consistent narrative’ (S, p. vi). 6. Within narrative theory, the terms ‘focalization’ and ‘perspective’ are used somewhat interchangeably. Gerard Genette (1983), has distinguished between focalization and voice. In this book Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglos- sia is linked to the concept of implied author, and the characters’ voices are regarded as dialoguing with the central voice of the narrator. Here, ‘voice’ can also refer to ‘the synthesis of a speaker’s style, tone and values’ (Phelan, 2005, p. 219). It further draws on Mieke Bal’s refinement of Genette’s term ‘focalization’, and the notion that the subject of the focalizing is the focal- izer and the object of the focalization is the focalized (Bal, 2006, pp. 14–15), which reveals that Genette’s internal focalization deals with the subject of the gaze whereas external focalization deals with the object of the gaze. 7. A comparison between the literary and film versions of the texts remains outside the scope of this book. 8. In this book the word ‘argument’ denotes the sum total of narrative means employed (consciously as well as unconsciously) by the implied author 234 Notes 235 in his or her attempt to move the reader emotionally and intellectually towards certain standpoints on value. Thus, ‘argument’ in this context is a concept distinct from the strictly logical and rational arguments required in philosophical writings. It emphasizes the rhetorical function of the implied author, or his/her ‘encoding’ aspect (Shen, 2008). 9. Phelan defines narrative progression as ‘the synthesis of a textual dynamics governing the movement of a narrative from beginning through middle to end and a readerly dynamics consisting of the authorial audience’s trajectory of responses to that movement’ (Phelan, 2007, pp. 310–11). Phelan holds that narrative judgements (consisting of interpretive, ethical and aesthetic judgements) and narrative progression are responsible for the significant interrelation of form, ethics and aesthetics in the narrative experience (Phelan, 2007, p. 3). 10. Within modern ethical theory a main distinction is drawn between conse- quentialist moral theory, deontology and virtue ethical theory. Important points of reference in the discussion of ethical theory in this book are among others Consequentialism and its Critics (1988, ed. Scheffler), Nussbaum’s Love’s Knowledge (1992), A Companion to Ethics (2006, ed. Singer), Velleman’s ‘Love as a Moral Emotion’ (1999), Plato’s Republicc (2000), Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics (2004), Chappell’s Ethics and Experience (2009), and Annas’ Intelligent Virtue (2011). 11. Imagery here connotes both the ‘mental pictures’ experienced by the reader, the ‘pictures made out of words’ in the text, and ‘all the objects and qualities of sense perception referred to [in the text] … whether by literal description, by allusion, or in the vehicles of its similes and metaphors’ (Abrams and Harpham, 2009, p. 151). 12. Dan Shen (2008) and Seymour Chatman (1990, p. 151) place the implied reader outside the text in their respective narrative communication diagrams, while James Phelan places the implied reader ‘inside’ the text, assuming that the real reader seeks to become the authorial audience (the author’s ideal reader); a text-internal instance. 13. The paranarratable: ‘what would not be told because of formal convention’ (Warhol, 2008, p. 226). 14. This books draws on Wolfgang Iser’s term ‘negation’, derived from his view of the literary text as a vehicle for bringing unfamiliar meaning into the world (Iser, 2006, p. 67). I understand Iser to mean that in order to express the unfamiliar, literature relies to some extent on the vocabulary of the familiar, in which it communicates, even if the familiar contexts are reas- sembled into new meanings. This means that contemporary social and ideo- logical values are encoded in the text, even though they may be negated. 15. The term coduction, coined by Wayne C. Booth (1988), connotes a similar transformation, which occurs to a reader or critic’s immediate emotional responses and appraisal of a narrative when engaging in critical conversation about such appraisals. 16. Currie shapes his scepticism towards the ethical role of literature on a Platonic mould. An argument or thought presented in a fictional text may seem right because it affects us emotionally and not because it is right in and of itself, Currie holds. ‘I suggest that one of the reasons we enjoy complexity in fiction (…) is that it provides the kind of distraction that lowers vigilance, 236 Notes helping thereby to generate an illusion of learning. Paradoxically, the sheer complexity of great narrative art, so often taken as a sign of cognitive rich- ness and subtlety, may increase its power to spread ignorance and error’ (Currie, 2014). 17. Wrongness: ‘a sense that the world as a whole has gone askew’ (Clute and Grant, 1999, p. 339). 18. Thinning: ‘a fading away of beingness’ (Clute and Grant, 1999, p. 339). 19. Recognition: ‘the moment at which (…) the protagonist finally gazes upon the shrivelled heart of the thinned world and sees what to do’ (Clute and Grant, 1999, p. 339). 20. Return: ‘the recovery of the land’ (Clute and Grant, 1999, p. 339). 21. Mendlesohn holds that portal-quest narratives are ‘structured around reward and the straight and narrow path’ and so are ‘a sermon on the way things should be’ (Mendlesohn, 2008, p. 5). 22. Attebery draws on Cawelti here (Cawelti, 1976). 23. Saler’s temporal placement of the New Romance coincides with Clute’s temporal location of the origin of modern fantasy (see Clute and Grant, 1999, p. 338). 24. For a discussion of the definition of transmedia relative to adaptation and franchise, see Hutcheon and O’Flynn (2013, pp. 179–206). 25. On this view fantasy – and its fanzines and fan conventions – have prepared people for the contemporary cultural and technological reality that requires the ability to mentally inhabit multiple worlds simultaneously. 2 Ethics and Form in The Lord of the Rings 1. There are many editions of The Lord of the Rings, since Tolkien, and later his son Christopher, corrected and revised the text (Sturgis, 2007, p. 386). The HarperCollins 50th Anniversary Edition is chosen because it is based on all the emendations made in previous printings, drawing on 50 years of Tolkien scholarship in order to achieve as accurate a text as possible (LotR xix). Furthermore, it is widely available, something which is important relative to this book’s project of examining the text as a popular work. 2. The description of the history of the Shire closely matches that of the early history of England (Shippey, 2003, p. 102). 3. Phelan distinguishes between the mimetic, thematic and synthetic compo- nents of character narration. The ways in which characters work as repre- sentations of possible people is their mimetic function (Phelan, 2005, p. 12). When characters work as representatives of larger groups of ideas they serve thematic functions, and when they work as artificial constructs within the larger construct of the work they serve synthetic functions (Phelan, 2005, pp. 12–13). All three functions may be activated simultaneously. 4. Due to Sam’s desire to see ‘Elven magic’ he and Frodo get to glance in Galadriel’s mirror. All Sam’s wishes come true. He is aware of this fact, and comments upon it (LotR 921, 934, 950, 954). 5. On the aesthetic role of sound in the moral argument(s) of The Lord of the Rings see also Guanio-Uluru (2013a). 6. Reading the front matter the reader’s entrance may take place earlier. Notes 237 7. They trace the view that evil ‘is nothing’ back to the Gorgias of Plato, c. 375 BC. 8. Plato’s contemporaries regarded moral and social law as changeable and cul- ture specific. Plato rejected this view, claiming that there is an unchanging moral reality, albeit one which is hard to access (the realm of Forms) (Buckle, 2006, pp.

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