Abstract
Welsh writer Saunders Lewis was, just as his almost exact contemporary J.R.R.Tolkien, a politically conservative Catholic with a deep interest in medieval myths. Both authors wrote fantasy based on Celtic tales, such as Lewis's play Blodeuwedd and Tolkien's poem The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun. While the latter follows the dicta of Tolkien's own "On Fairy-stories," Lewis created a more modernist work. Despite biographical and ideological similarities, the two approached their sources differently. Tolkien looked for unifying aesthetic principles that he called "unhazy unromantic momentariness," while Lewis used the traditional material to escape the constraints of romantic and realistic fiction.
This article concentrates primarily on one aspect of Lewis's and Tolkien's adaptation of the source material: the location of Faerie and magic within their secondary worlds. Tolkien, in a more traditional manner, separates the Faerie (where magic originates) from the world of Men. Lewis, while keeping the traditional Celtic Otherworld, sets apart the forest of the fey and the castles of men; magic is produced through their contact. Tolkien expected integrity in his secondary worlds, while Lewis wrote about the individual in conflict with the objective. Thus for the former, magic/enchantment is a neutral tool, and for the latter, a rare and dangerous power. As this article also discusses, their different approaches to fantasy explain different treatments of Welsh sources such as the Mabinogion, which Tolkien criticized throughout his life.
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