UNDERSTANDING THE INKLING TRADITION: PART 1
As we argued in the last article, the only way forward for the fantasy genre is the way of the Inklings. That should be clear from the previous article. But what exactly is the way of the Inklings? What is this great tradition of fantasy to which the likes of Tolkien, Lewis, Williams, and Barfield belonged?
It is this question that we shall attempt to answer in the following series of articles. Our purpose here is to describe the great fantasy tradition of the Inklings in detail and to show why and how such a tradition can be revived. After all, as we declared in the last article, it is only through the revival of this tradition that the fantasy genre will have any future.
Who were the Inklings?
The Inklings is the name given to a modest group of friends, all of whom were enthusiasts of myth, literature, religion, and fantasy. These comrades in letters would meet at pubs and read the great tales of legend that united them. Sometimes they would even share their own projects. Many of them were professors at Oxford, but not all of them were men from the halls of academia. Their views were varied and sometimes even conflicting with each other, but they all shared this great love for storytelling.
Among the most notable members were the Catholic philologist and grandfather of the fantasy genre J. R. R. Tolkien, the great novelist and Christian scholar C. S. Lewis, the writer and critic Charles Williams, and the poet and philosopher Owen Barfield. Though they were more members in the group, it is the work of these four men that was important for laying down the foundations of the Inkling tradition. Despite their differences, they all shared a common understanding of reality and of storytelling that allowed them to feel at home whenever they were gathered around a pud to read their stories together. And it is this understanding that is essential to the Inkling tradition.
The centrality of myth
The central piece of this understanding of reality and stories was myth. The importance of myth for these men cannot be understated. It was what brought them together and what kept them together. But what is myth and what are the implications of it being so central to the tradition?
Today, society tends to see myth as synonymous with a lie, but this is not what the Inklings understood by myth. On the contrary, if anything, myth is among the truest things there is. Myth is a form of storytelling that is able to communicate some of the deepest truths there are. It transmits spiritual and foundational truths about ultimate reality, that is, about the Divine. That is God (and in the case of the pagans the gods) is so recurrent in mythology, for God, in His infinite vastness, is the deepest level of reality there is. In fact, that is what the word myth originally meant. Mythos (the original word for myth) was just a story about the gods. As such, myth is the perfect vehicle for exploring the most important issues in life and uncovering the deepest truths of reality, and that is why the Inklings treasured it and defended it so much.
The implications of this definition of myth are plentiful. Nevertheless, at the risk of being overly simplistic, we could summarize it in one word: transcendence. Being a story about the Divine, myth implies that there really is something beyond matter, space, and time. Contrary to what the modern world tells us, the natural and physical sciences cannot explain everything. There are indeed spirits and immaterial beings in the world that influence us in ways we seldom take the care to notice. Most importantly, there necessarily exists God because the Source of all things' existence, both visible and invisible. Furthermore, it is only in Him and through Him that all things acquire their meaning and, and therefore, there could be no such thing as transcendence without Him. Given this reality, men must transcend the mere physical plane of living and connect themselves to God and His spiritual Creation to have meaning in their existence. There simply is no other way. This the metaphysical basis that all the Inklings shared and which their tradition of fantasy manifests.
The origins of myth
Myth, however, is not a spontaneous thing. It did not come into existence for a random reason, and its origins are worth considering if one wants to have a good comprehension of the Inklings' worldview.
There are many theories proposed for the origins of myth, but the one we are here most interested in is the one proposed by Owen Barfield. In his work Poetic Diction, Barfield asserted that the origin of myth is language. It is in the language of a culture, argued Barfield, that myth is born. Tolkien seems to have adopted this view when he wrote in his famous essay On Fairy Stories that fairy stories (and myth by extension) originated in man's ability to mix words. By playing with words, men can make the sun cease to be yellow and make it green, for example. This playful intermixing of adjectives to describe nouns creates a new image in our minds, a new form, that is fantastic and refreshing, and it is from this game with language that the terrible monsters and glorious heroes of myth are born.
Nevertheless, here, one ought to remember another thing about language. Language is not an individual thing nor is it a universal thing. Language is a national thing, that is, an element that is particular to one specific culture, to one specific group of people. Myth, therefore, will also be intrinsically national and cultural, and this is why we often identify the various kinds of mythologies with cultural identities. There is no globalist mythology for the whole of humanity or individualistic mythology for a single person, but there is Greek mythology, Roman mythology, Norse mythology, Celtic mythology, and Egyptian mythology. Hence, if language is the basis of myth and language is national, it follows that myth will be national as well.
These are the origins of myth, and the Inklings knew that well. For the Inklings, myth was inseparable from language and culture. Moreover, since myth is the story of men about the Divine, then this mythic tale will be told in a specific language and for a specific people. Furthermore, it will be the story of how the Divine relates to one specific culture or people. In other words, myth is not just the story of God but also of how God and men (and specifically, the men of this particular culture) are related. It is a bridge between the world of the Divine and the world of fallen man, and this shows once more that myth is not supposed to be a lie or an entertaining fiction but rather a reality meant to be participated in.
Continued in Part 2...
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