Despite David's compelling and thoughtful reflections on handling irate
undergraduates, what really grabbed my attention in his post was the following:
>In all seriousness, though, I don't think Tolkien has anything to apologize
>for in the way of style. It is, admittedly, an artificial style. But this
>is not, ipso facto, a demerit. Cf. what C. S. Lewis said about William
>Morris: "It is, of course, perfectly true that Morris invented for his
>poems and perfected in his prose-romances a language which has never at any
>period been spoken in England...The question about Morris's style is not
>whether it is an artificial language--all endurable language in longer
>works must be that--but whether it is a good one...I cannot help suspecting
>that most of the detractors when they talk of Morris's style are really
>thinking of his printing: they expect the florid and the crowded, and
>imagine something like Sidney's Arcadia
I am now trying in vain to imagine a pre-Raphaelite *Arcadia*, and I tip my
hat to any of Morris's detractors who apparently could. Nor am I having
much success with the necessary corollary, a Gilbert and Sullivan parody of
a pre-Raphaelite Arcadia--although at least there the complications both
possible and impossible in the plot wouldn't pose any unusual difficulty.
BQ
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