It is interesting that China takes a real pop at Tolkien in that interview, pointing out apparently contradictory statements regarding Tolkien’s ‘On Fairy Tales’. Tolkien grasped that 2+2=5 is an equally wonderful thing as 2+2=4. There is no contradiction other than those to be found concurrently in life. And fiction – even fantasy! – can be a bit like life. That is why a happy ending is something that occurs miraculously never to be counted on to recur but also why all complete fairy tales must have it [the happy ending] it is its highest function. Wish fulfilment. Suspension of disbelief. The leap of faith we make as readers each time we pick up a novel. The key word here is complete. China neatly side-steps the damage shot through at the end of The Lord of the Rings because it undermines his seemingly telling insight. Forget the passing of the world, it is at the level of the individual characters that it impacts upon the reader, that has little to do with any sort of inherent ideological value system – although whichever one it is may be a catalyst – and everything to do with personal experience. You get more than your fair share of Mahler’s 6th and Sibelius’s 4th symphonies at the conclusion, happy endings elsewhere notwithstanding. This is the level at which good and great literature can operate. This is art. No polemic necessary.

Tolkien had more than a bit of implicit Jung in him (as a formidable expert on myth and the symbolic power of language as history how could he not?), he isn’t just head with an axe ground into it. There is a happy ending in The Lord of the Rings but because it also is a complete fairy tale that is only part of the story. Irrevocable damage is done. I don’t know about ideology but a writer worth his salt who lived through the First World War and who saw the Second play out didn’t let that one pass.

As that proto-fascist, sex mad, misogynistic, ideological maniac of a traitor to his class David ‘erbert Lawrence once said: Never trust the teller, trust the tale.

And — well, there are better things to be said of a condition that it is better than the 18th century. (Worse things, too, to be sure.)

1) a medieval farmer, especially one who was not a serf or who lived without truly onerous serf conditions (France, forex, was particularly bad in this regard), almost certain had a better diet than a person who lived in a town or city in the 18th century; also, conditions of serfdom changed over time and in different regions, and that had a significant effect on health.

2) although some people did travel, the disease vectors were not as virulent because disease did not travel as frequently; that is, when an infectious disease came into a village it could really decimate a population because there was no immunity, but in the same way, decades might pass with no outbreak.

Interesting – was this because of better social organisation or partly because it was a little warmer in medieval times? Or some other reason?

But Tolkien’s outlook is Christian, so he does reject essentialism in the children of god, because they have free will and some of them do turn against god and choose evil, even the beings of the highest order.

But the beings that Melkor created, or rather bred, were made by corrupting the children of god, and this does seem to have made them essentially evil, being the products of this corruption, and they seem to have lost free will in the process.

I had forgotten about the Narnia clothes! I like that because it reminds me of jeans and a t-shirt!

So, as my sister the medievalist would say, which period and where and when? As you say, it’s all variable.

1. Lack of education — usually total
2. Commonly malnourished
3. Commonly exhausted — back-breaking labor is not hyperbole.

None of these really are conductive to lively thinking.

The Discovery of France by Graham Robb provides a detailed and well-documented — if rather horrifying picture of what it was like in France at the time of the Revolution.

Actually, they did travel. Some. Most people went on pilgrimages as far as 200 miles away; at least, he includes stories of peasants who were mocked for never having gone on a traditional pilgrimage. But that didn’t prevent them from regarding a bride who came from the other side of the river as a foreigner for her entire life.