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The Forest in Folk and Fairy-Tales

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It has been said that in literature a forest is a place where you can both lose and find yourself. Explore the use of the forest theme in fantasy literature and discuss its relationship to the forest of folk and fairy tales. *

Word count: 2700 words excluding quotes

The forests of legends, myths, fantasy and fairy tales have become laden with cultural and psychological symbolism: The ancient trees in dark, uncharted places symbolise the refuge of magic and mystery beyond man’s dominion. They represent the unknowable dangers and challenges of life, a forbidden place that nevertheless yields up reward for the intrepid trespasser, a place where tests integral to personal growth are met and overcome. The fairy tale genre and cautionary …show more content…

This forest is particularly deadly, mentor Gandalf thrice reminding the group to stick together and not leave the path: ‘Don’t stray off the track…you will never find it again and never get out of Mirkwood’ (Tolkien: 1966: 125) However this admonition merely serves to foreshadow that Bilbo’s coming ordeal will be faced off the path and alone.

* ‘The entrance to the path was like a sort of arch leading into a gloomy tunnel made by two great trees that leant together, too old and strangled with ivy and hung with lichen to bear more than a few blackened leaves.’ (Tolkien: 1966:133) *
Bilbo notices ‘dense cobwebs with threads extraordinarily thick’, in the ‘stabs’ of sunlight that penetrate the dark and gleams of bulbous eyes appearing when the darkness becomes stifling and absolute. In this nightmare reality, Bilbo’s allies are mysteriously spirited away and he is ‘left alone in complete silence and darkness.’ (Tolkien: 1966: 145) This solitude performs a dramatic narrative function: It enhances Bilbo’s desperate sense of being lost and marks the moment before the hero must find his strength and prove his autonomous control and competence. * The forest of the fantasy now provides a dire landscape and peril from which Bilbo must emerge having proven himself without anyone’s help. The life and death challenge meted out to Bilbo comes in the form of a hideous giant spider. As

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