Yesterday I posted a query asking why we should fill up our imaginations with fiction: visions of ways God didn’t make the world.
Earlier today I posted a note that Jesus himself used fictions, therefore they must (in at least some circumstances) be okay to use.
Having established that, I’d like to go into the speculative basis of why they are okay to use.
Because fiction is such a part of our lives, many folks might pass quickly over the question of why we should do fiction at all and not register the full force of the question. For that reason, I tried to phrase the question as strongly as I could, even using prejudicial language and talking about "filling up our imaginations" with how "God didn’t make the world."
The first of these phrases makes it sound as if we’re cramming our minds full of fiction so that there’s no room left for anything else. In some cases, that may be true. Some people live in fantasy worlds, either in the sense of spending an unhealthy amount of time on fiction (like the Star Trek fans satirized in William Shatner’s famous "Get A Life!" sketch on SNL) or in the sense of being literally unable to distinguish fantasy from reality (in which case the person is clinically psychotic).
Those conditions represent the abuse of the imagination (in the case of obsessive fandom) or an outright mental illness (as in the case of psychotics). But just because a faculty can be disordered doesn’t mean that the faculty itself should not be part of human life.
In point of fact, it seems that coming up with fiction is something that is part of human nature. If it wasn’t for Jesus’ use of fiction, one could always say "Well, that’s just because of the Fall," but the phenomenon of storytelling is a true human universal. Every society has fiction, and that’s a pretty good clue that it’s something built into human nature.
The ostensible opposition between our imaginations and how God didn’t make the world is also prejudicial language.
After all: What does one suppose our imaginations are for, anyway? The whole point of an imagination is being able to envision how the world might be but isn’t–at least at present.
It’s true that we can use our imaginations to try to reconstruct the way that the world was or the way it might be right now in areas out of our sight, but one of its principal functions–and very likely its main function–is to enable us to model how the future might go. This allows us to plan, to envision how we’d like the world to be and then determine what’s the best way to move the world in that direction.
What will happen if I ask my boss for a raise? What arguments will be most effective in getting me one? Will this girl agree to marry me? How can I increase my chances of getting her to say yes? How can I get the baby to stop screaming at the top of his lungs? How can I get Fr. to end this liturgical abuse? Etc., etc., etc.
All of these are questions that involve envisioning the world a way it isn’t now. We may be using our imaginations in these cases to figure out how to change the world, but the point is that our imagination is still bound up, part and parcel, with the idea of fiction. Trying out fictions of how the world might be is what the imagination is for.
A person without the ability to engage the faculty of fiction has a broken imagination, and that’s all there is to it.
That’s only one reason why fiction is important, though.
More to come.
Do I qualify for a CHT for bringing this up first? 😉
(See post #7 for “The Way the World Ain’t”)
Oops!
I withdraw my request for a CHT. The above should have been posted under “A Knock-Down Blow”
I’m behind on the articles, so you may have mentioned this. I ascribe to Tolkien’s belief that fiction allows us to imitate the Creator. We are created in His image with a desire to make and build. Fiction is one of the places were we can exercise this divine desire.
Like all desires (as you pointed out) it can be abused. Particularly fiction can be abused when it glorifies evil or shows it as a superior or dualist force. Most supernatural thrillers I think fall into this category.
Following Nick’s lead, here’s a quote from “On Fairy Tales” in The Tolkien Reader.
—- quote —-
The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. But in recent times, in technical not normal language, Imagination has often been held to be something higher than the mere image-making, ascribed to the operations of Fancy (a reduced and depreciatory form of the older word Fantasy); an attempt is thus made to restrict, I should say misapply, Imagination to “the power of giving to ideal creations the inner consistency of reality.”
Ridiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate. The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. The perception of the image, the grasp of its implications, and the control, which are necessary to a successful expression, may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a difference of degree in Imagination, not a difference in kind. The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) “the inner consistency of reality,” is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation. For my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-creative Art in itself and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression, derived from the Image: a quality essential to fairy-story. I propose, therefore, to arrogate to myself the powers of Humpty-Dumpty, and to use Fantasy for this purpose: in a sense, that is, which combines with its older and higher use as an equivalent of Imagination the derived notions of “unreality” (that is, of unlikeness to the Primary World), of freedom from the domination of observed “fact,” in short of the fantastic. I am thus not only aware but glad of the etymological and semantic connexions of fantasy with fantastic: with images of things that are not only “not actually present,” but which are indeed not to be found in our primary world at all, or are generally believed not to be found there. But while admitting that, I do not assent to the depreciative tone. That the images are of things not in the primary world (if that indeed is possible) is a virtue, not a vice. Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.
— end quote —
Here’s one of my favorite parts from “On Fairy Tales”
—- quote —-
Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite.
I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.
— end quote —
That’s the term I was looking for, “sub-creator”. Tolkien makes use of the term all over the place. I still need to read, “A Leaf for Nirgle(sp?)”. He makes a compeling argument, made elsewhere by other Christian writers but without the same force, that God created us to create. We should therefore not be suprised by fiction anymore than we are suprised by bridges.
“Leaf by Niggle”
Leaf By Niggle – one of my favorite short stories.