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Language and Literature
One of the initial and perhaps most general unities shared among Mac-Donald, Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien is their broad but overall unified perspective on language and literature. Because language and literature are the media through which humanism, existence, civilization, and all other aspects of life are discussed, it is important that we begin at the broadest level. The challenge, of course, is bringing the breadth to a unified point. As this chapter progresses, each point is intended to tie these authorsâ perspectives back to a simple but essential understanding of the universe: that something is behind, above, or further up and further in (to use McDonald and Lewisâs metaphor) than what is initially present. This concept contains the following tenets: language, though simply used to communicate, signifies something or someone behind it and its creation; the best literature hints at truth beyond mere story; and the criticâs every move should be to open oneself up to truth and seek it out. For these authors, there is always something behind the obvious, something to be discovered, pursued, contemplated. We will begin, then, with language, the building block of communication, which enables us to reach that truth.
THE AMBIGUITY OF LANGUAGE: FALLIBLE BUT POWERFUL
MacDonald, Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien are concerned with both the fallibility and the power of language. Linguists have repeatedly argued whether the signifier and signified are unified or they are arbitrarily assigned. In the former, each of these authors posit an original unification of signifier and signified, a Structuralist move that Jacques Derrida resists in his theory of arche-writing with its repeated âmovement of the sign-function linking a content to an expressionâ (60); in the latter, the power of language is utilized by separating signifier and signified by having the signifier refer to a different signified or, perhaps, as Derrida suggests, by having no true signified but only a series of signifiers. The power, of course, comes from the one who assigns meaning: the God who created language or the politician who declares the meaning of a certain constitutional right.
MacDonaldâs most obvious concern for the separating power of language appears in his understanding of Christian biblical scripture. GMD believes in the fallibility of biblical authors who could misrepresent Christâs words (Reis 33). In a letter to a woman who asked if GMD had any of his âold faithâ left, MacDonald responded firmly: âBut the common theory of the inspiration of the words, instead of the breathing of Godâs truth into the hearts and souls of those who wrote it, and who then did their best with it, is degrading and evil; and they who hold it are in danger of worshipping the letter instead of living in the Spirit, of being idolaters of the Bible instead of disciples of Jesusâ (qtd. in Greville MacDonald, George MacDonald and His Wife 373). For MacDonald, truth lies in the origination of language, and such origination cannot be reached completely by human authors or interpreters. He argued that Christ, of course, did not speak in Greek, and the translations made from itâas well as the Hebrewâadd an additional accent to skew meaning (Unspoken Sermons 434). He writes in his Unspoken Sermons that, even if we are unable to interpret a passage of scripture clearly, âwe cannot thus refuse the spirit and the truth of it, for those we could not have seen without being in the condition to recognize them as the mind of Christâ (46). Only when one reaches Heaven would she know how near she was to understanding the truth behind the words of scripture (434). Although GMD believes in the fallibility of language, he also believes in the infallibility of the truth behind language in scripture. Words only reach their full meaning when they are given directly from God; humanityâs use of language is flawed because humans are flawed, âSo the words of God cannot mean just the same as the words of manâ (48). Thus, while human language may be flawed, in the way Derrida suggests, MacDonald hints at a true language of the divine which is perfect in its unity of signifier and signified. As he claims in âThe Imagination,â words are âborn of the spirit and not of the flesh, born of the imagination and not of the understanding, and is henceforth submitted to new laws of growth and modificationâ (8). That is, they were pure before human corruption.
Nonetheless, MacDonald did not give up hope on words. His concerns about scriptural interpretation and refusal of orthodox doctrine in the late nineteenth century caused this minister to be deposed from his first and only church pulpit. Richard L. Reis argues that the most significant moment of MacDonaldâs life was his loss of a pulpit after being called into Christian ministry: âhe felt that he had to find another medium through which to disseminate his essentially religious message, and he chose literature as that mediumâ (10). MacDonaldâs prolific literary pursuits may have elevated him to a high status in Victorian England and abroad, but as his son, Greville MacDonald, records, he was and is repeatedly dismissed by many readers for his preachingâthough he felt he was serving a higher calling (375).1 GMD sought to take the reader back to unity by stressing truth in his literature, no doubt, Reis notes, as a means of conveying what he felt divinely inspired to share (33). He did not want people to âword-worshipâ or to be âoppressed by wordsâ (435) but desired that people understand words âfor their full meaningâ (48): that is, for the signified truth behind them. He desired to use language, corrupted by common use and misuse, in a poetic form that would bring words nearer to their original, pure, and distinctive meaning that was present in the imagination of God (âThe Imaginationâ 8â9). There, he believes, humanity can find truth and meaning behind and beyond everyday use of language, âfor if there be any truth in this region of things acknowledged at all ⊠The work of the Higher must be discovered by the search of the Lower in degree which is yet similar in kindâ (10â11).
Chesterton, likewise, worked âtoward the redemption and restoration of language,â according to Milbank, âsince the greater the disjunction between conventional speech and the thing or idea itself, the more extreme the paradox and, most crucially, the larger the opening for analogical relationâ (90). His use of paradox to understand truth often played on illogical assumptions or plurasignation. In The Ball and the Cross, GKC narrates, âThose who look at the matter most superficially regard paradox as something which belongs to jesting and light journalism. ⊠But those who see and feel the fundamental fact of the matter know that paradox is a thing that belongs ⊠to all vivid and violent practical crises of human livingâ (45). Paradox applies to the practical as much as to the linguistic. Indeed, words have, as MacDonald believed, lost sense in the original meaning, and sometimes those meanings can only be restored by understanding contradiction and paradox in their common human meaning. In Chestertonâs The Ball and the Cross, Turnbull, an atheist, charges MacIan, a fierce Christian, with seeming âunable to understand the ordinary use of human languageâ (79). Although Turnbull does not clearly state what is intended by the ordinary use of human language, the intent is clear when his opponent, MacIan, argues, âWhy shouldnât we quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they arenât important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isnât any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldnât there be a quarrel about a word?â (89â90). Clearly, a problem exists in the ordinary use of human language. As MacIan exemplifies in his argument within the story, there is no innate problem with the signifier bloodshed, as it signifies killing someone whether for war or as a just penalty; the problem occurs when the signified, killing someone, is under the signifier murder, which is unjust bloodshed (89, 92). Chesterton asserts that the simplicity of the ordinary use of human languageâsuch as not specifying the kind of bloodshedâdiscourages reason and critical thought, and, as a result, meaning is lost (Orthodoxy 117â18). According to Milbank, âLike the symbolists, Chesterton sees language itself as material, and a poem as an object. The difference lies in the fact that he also sees language, like his revolutionary poet [Wilde], as an eventâ (89).
When the event occurs, then, the listener is placed in a position of interpretation. Chesterton, in The Everlasting Man, posits that language, though dynamic in signification, bears an underlying structure that is static. GKC comments on the inadequacy of language to convey meaning when he discusses the relationship between taxes and pig. Whereas some word associations do not seem correct, associating taxes with pig fits for some unknown, underlying reasonâperhaps that taxes are made by pigs (66). These associations, for Chesterton, hint at an underlying signification beneath flawed human language; meaning, languageâs signifiers may go awry, but the signifieds do, in fact, exist beneath the surface, and listeners must do their best to understand the signified despite the fallibility of human language.
In line with GMD and GKCâs understanding of language, Michael Ward highlights Lewisâs view: âFrom one perspective, he has the highest possible view: language is a metaphysical reality with a transcendent origin. From another point of view, he sees that it is, in this sublunary world, subject to severe constraintsâ (151). Like MacDonaldâs expressed concern for the speakerâalso observable in Chestertonâs dichotomy of MacIan and TurnbullâLewis understands how language is affected, depending on the speakerâs spiritual state (143). In Mere Christianity, Lewis challenges the literalist readers of biblical scripture, noting that scriptural imagery of Heaven, such as harps, gold, and crowns, were intended to suggest the ecstasy, splendor, and preciousness of Heaven; otherwise, âPeople who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggsâ (114). Lewis believes that such literalist readings of language lead to misappropriation of symbol and meaning, of signifier and signified. In The Screwtape Letters, for instance, the demon adviser, Uncle Screwtape, advises his nephew, Wormwood, about the literalist value of language. These demons desire for humans to locate God in a certain part of the bedroom or within a certain sacred object; in this way, humans pray to the location or objectâthe human-made thingâinstead of God as He is: âNot to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to beâ (196â97). In other words, viewing human language as an end in itselfâas a clear conveyance of truthâis misguided. The individual needs to understand not only the difference between signifier and signified but also the truth that may be behind or above the sign. As GKC and GMD suggest, looking beyond the sign begins with understanding the speaker, as Lewis notes in The Screwtape Letters,2 and, accordingly, understanding the context.3 Lewis found that, through careful attention to words and context, one could arrive at a better understanding of truth. For that reason, he found poetry âto be the continual effort to bring language back to the actualâ (qtd. in Ward 151).
Tolkien, the most philological of the four, thrived on the ambiguities in language. The problematic nature of word and meaning led Tolkien through history and across languages to discover how words changed in meaning and form. As Ruth S. Noel asserts, a linguist is able to reconstruct culture because it is so integral to culture (3). Shippey recalls how Tolkien, however, had a particular interest in ambiguous words called âasterisk words,â often Old English, without referents or with reconstructed forms and used rarely (sometimes only once) (The Road 20, 243).4 For example, the word elf Tolkien drew from Old English ĂŠlf, Old High German alp, and, equivalently, Gothic albsâan asterisk word (57). Many of the names in Middle-earth are drafted from such mystery words, and the variations in meaning from one language or stage to another encouraged Tolkienâs creative drive. Tolkien, for example, used the asterisk Germanic verb smugan, âto squeeze through a hole,â and its Old English correlate smĂ©ogan (from a spell âwiĂ° smĂ©ogan wyrme, against the penetrating wormâ), meaning âto inquire intoâ or, adjectivally, âsubtle, craftyâ (89). This asterisk word provided two villains for Tolkien: Smaug and SmĂ©agol. It may be helpful to note that Tolkienâs reapplication of linguistic mysteries did not add to confusion in language; on the contrary, Tolkien applied the words in ways that preserved what he believed to be the meaning of the asterisk word.
Like Lewis, Tolkien alludes to belief in the idea of a true language in which each signifier and signified are bound to one another (106, 114). Perhaps, for this reason, Tolkien suggests that phonetics have certain aesthetic properties that elicit effect, meaning, or even historyâa science known as Lautphonetik (113â14). Such belief in a true languageâa language like that described by MacDonald, Chesterton, and Lewisâechoes in Tolkienâs Middle-earth, where creating languages was the basis for his fiction. Languages were not brought into the story for the purpose of the story; rather, the stories were made for purposes of languages (Tolkien, Letters 219). Hence, language begins in the heavenly realm with Eru IlĂșvatar, the God of Middle-earth, and his Ainur, or angelic lords, who sing the world into idea until, at once, it comes into existence with the utterance of the copula by IlĂșvatar: âEĂ€, the World that Isâ (Silmarillion 20). Then, from the time the elves are born and onward, separation occurs in people, geography, and language, among other categories. Language, here, has a transcendent origin that becomes less unified as the world evolves and divides.
LITERARY PERSPECTIVE: MYTH AND FAIRY-STORY
Thus, in Tolkienâs fictional world and in our Primary World, language, history, and, in effect, story are inexplicably joined at a root. Understanding how language connects with story is the next step in realizing the unified worldview of these authors. As Tolkien, in his âValedictory Address,â claims, language and literature are two heads of the same creature (230, 233). Lewis even points out in âThe Empty Universeâ that many theories have wrongly attempted to reduce all study that is not of a scientific discipline to being the offshoot of misleading signifiers in language (82). The nearest these authors get to such a theory is that something exists behind valuable literature in the way that something exists behind flawed human language. In the same way that true meaning exists beneath the surface of flawed human languageâsomething in relation with the divineâthese authors believe good literature also reaches to something beneath the surface: to deep truths. These truths are present in the literature they appreciated and, accordingly, created. Tolkien quotes Lewis in a 1955 letter to one of his fans: âIf they wonât write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves; but it is very laboriousâ (Letters 209). Their words echo MacDonaldâs 1893 âThe Fantastic Imagination,â in which he claims, âI will but say some things helpful to the reading, in right-minded fashion, of such fairytales as I would wish to write, or care to readâ (5).
And so they wrote what they read, sometimes including elements of what they read because deeper truths were present. Elizabeth Baird Hardy, for instance, believes Lewisâs Jadis is a model of Spenserâs Duessa (26); however, given Mr. Beaverâs assertion that Jadis is a descendant of Lilith, I believe Lewisâs source is more likely MacDonaldâs Lilith. Jadisâs cold, pale beauty and child-snatching of Edmund matches the same deathly beauty and kidnapping of MacDonaldâs antagonist. Whether Duessa or Lilith, Lewis observed a deep truth inherent in the character he chose to adapt, a truth which Jung picks up on in his Theory of Archetypes. Robert A. Collins asserts that MacDonaldâs âarchetypal figuresâ lead to the same conclusions as Jung some decades later, particularly the Shadow persona (8). Likewise, Flieger notes Tolkienâs borrowing from Jung, particularly in âThe Lost Roadâ and âThe Notion Club Papers,â for the collective unconscious and dream-memory passed from one generation of characters to successive others (Green Suns and FaĂ«rie 90). While accepted theories like Jungâs Theory of Archetypes seek to probe beneath the surface of the human psyche for truth, these authors reach some of the same truths by delving into the depths of literature.
In this example, we observe that truth is passed ancestrally from Duessa and Lilith to Jadis like they are genetically passed through Jungâs archetypes. In the same way, MacDonald, Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien believed truths evident in history are rediscovered and at times even made clearer in literature. It is no wonder that Tolkien found the blend of history and myth âirresistibleâ in Lewisâs Out of the Silent Planet (Letters 33). In Tolkienâs Letters, he discusses his adaptation of the Old English and Old Norse MiĂ°garĂ°r as occurring at some point in the history of this universe, despite the geographical differences (220). Tolkien and Lewisâs interest in history and myth is in agreement with myth-scholar Claude Levi-Strauss when he notes that âthe simple opposition between mythology and history which we are accustomed to makeâis not at all a clear-cut one, and that there is a...