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Hercynian
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Post Tolkien's tabula rasa
on: July 15, 2014 11:35
If you study any history, you immediately are struck with how historians invariably compare and contrast their past subject or character to today's world, as well as give plenty of temporal context. Comments like, "...far ahead of his time, he succeeded in..." But as was once mentioned here, Tolkien's world seems largely a stasis Medieval or even pre-Medieval place, with only Saruman's "devilry" giving any indication of technological "progress." Middle Earth "history" is much more organic and evolutionary, rather than pegged to some exponential curve, as our world's arc seems to be.

I realize Tolkien was concentrating on an imaginary world, a place wholly outside of our history or context, and yet that in itself is rather significant and telling. As I've said elsewhere, Tolkien was a Neo-Victorian, and as such, his soul was embedded in the 19th century and the late 19th century English understanding of Romanticism. When scholars list his influences, they are all of that era. Also, the "mock-sales test" might indicate too he was Victorian, i.e., imagine his books coming out in the late 19th century during Tennyson's and the Pre-Raphaelite’s times. They probably would have sold -- because he seemed to be writing for that audience as well.

But Tolkien is not alone in his "clean break" with history. Back in the first half of the 19th century, Goethe and Schiller made their famous war against Romanticism . . . because they believed Romanticism had made too much of a break with Western historical continuity than was prudent and responsible. In so many words, Goethe argued that the best and brightest, the leaders of Western thought and culture should not be finding fairies in twilight forests, i.e., he considered this irresponsible irrationalism. Instead, he led a revival of golden-age Greek culture. This main rupture could be called the beginning of a serious crisis in Western culture.

Yes, Tolkien's works are often described as allegorical and parallel to our world and its history, but then he himself insisted they were not. And in a deeper way, I understand better why they are really not: Like so many, he wanted a clean break, a totally new beginning. If you still want to make parallels to our world, it might be argued that he wanted to go back to a pre-Roman Northern Europe and restart the story sans Roman civilization's drive to consolidate and progress.

To be more specific, when I read Tolkien I am immersed in a world totally outside anything a Western liberal arts education and subsequent life might contribute to or help in understanding. There is nothing "tone-setting" from our Western tradition: no Latin quotes, no allegory with our world, no typical post-Roman Western plots, no taking up of Western moral themes, no borrowing from Greeks, Romans, or even Medieval themes. Compare this with Byron's Don Juan or his friend's, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Both of these works are firmly embedded in the stream of Western culture. But not so Tolkien and his Middle Earth. If you asked Tolkien if he saw himself as a new voice for the Western tradition, he would no doubt say no. But if you asked whether he intended to make a clean break, start with a tabula rasa, he would probably agree ... because that's exactly what he did!

I don't know about you, but this realization is quite huge for me. On this realization, I just emptied my shelves of over 300 lbs. of classic Western "knowledge" -- as well as modern science works. Tolkien and Middle Earth is a whole new thing, a whole new place. And if I want to progress in understanding Tolkien, I cannot always be paging back to, searching for a plug-in to something in our Western tradition -- modern, recent or distant past. Tolkien offers no continuity with the West other than a physical landscape that is vaguely northern hemisphere temperate. That is, coincidently, why the Jackson films worked as well as they did filmed in New Zealand.
parluggla
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on: July 17, 2014 02:21
The critics -- who tend to be modern realists, which we've discussed before -- might also find fault with this whole "tabula rasa." That is, Tolkien doesn't fit into the flow, doesn't add momentum to an accepted trend. Rather, he seems to be off on something totally new and out of left field.

As far as why he started from scratch and created a whole new literature about a whole new place, yes, he probably did want to leave the modern world completely . . . all the way back to a pre-Roman Europe . . . and then build a totally different take on what might have been. Your average historian is usually very modern, and buys/re-sells the line that any life before or away from Roman and then Roman Catholic civilization was "nasty, brutal, and short."

I once watched a bit of Game of Thrones, and I definitely got the feeling that modern realists were in charge, pushing the "nasty, brutal, and short" depiction of their parallel-universe Dark Ages hell, i.e., the very antithesis of Tolkien and LotR.

I guess I'm very thankful Tolkien did a tabula rasa for his Middle Earth.
Gandolorin
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on: July 19, 2014 09:39
LotR, Foreword to the Second Edition (page XIX in my 2002 special edition with drawings by Alan Lee and "Note on the Text" by Douglas A. Anderson):

"(But) I cordially allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

To which I would add at the end: "and by gaggles of arrogant and thus by definition ignorant critics."

My feeling is that clean break may go too far as a description. Verlyn Flieger, in her book "A Question of Time" (1997), shows quite a few sources for or influences on JRRT that surprised me. Some are probably quite obscure by now; not so Sir Henry Rider Haggard, better known as H. Rider Haggard, whose best-known novels are "King Solomon's Mines" (1885), "Allan Quatermain" (1887), and especially "She" (1887), which had sold "83 million copies by 1965" according to Wikipedia, making it one of the best-selling books of all time.

A clean break with the "modernists", no question. But there was certainly enough going on in literature before, during and after JRRT's time which was also outside the "modernist" scope. If this did not receive much attention, it was only because the "modernists" had hogged the pulpit, bleating about the superiority of the literature they preferred, even though that was often consciously written to be appreciated and "understood" only by a micro-minority.

(PS: can anyone tell me where Verlyn Flieger's "Splintered Light" might be purchased??? Originally 1983, revised edition 2002.)

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parluggla
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on: July 19, 2014 10:29
Sorry, Gandolorin, but I'm not a Verlyn Flieger fan. Yes, she's quite bright, but also quite the spin doctor, spinning Tolkien's obviously (at least to me) animist nature-based metaphysics back into a Roman Catholic frame of reference. Sure, Tolkien was personally a staunch RC, but if you didn't know that beforehand it would be very, very hard to call what he wrote RC-based or RC-inspired -- which is exactly what Flieger and many other Christians try to do. I will admit RC has a mysticism to it, even a nature-themed mysticism when you consider some of the saints (Hildegard, Bernadette, Joan of Arc etc.), but Tolkien is going quite a big step beyond that into a new sort of nature mysticism.

I have to agree with the original thesis that Tolkien was "clean break." One test of that is to consider how utterly unique and original his Middle Earth was to us. Sure, he "based" it to some degree on supposed pre-Roman Germanic this and that. Sure, he was, personally, a product of the extended 19th century. But I would say his originality speaks for itself. And all these attempts by people to explain him into their camp, to colonize him are ultimately dead-end. Another indicator of "clean break" was how fiercely independent and resistant of people co-opting him he was.
Hercynian
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on: July 19, 2014 10:45
@Gandolorin & parluggla:

Tolkien was very cagey at staying away from any sort of religious bull or proclamation or manifesto. Yes, I do think he was vaguely nature-pagan/animist, but he did it in a very subtle way. As I've announced, I'm leaving the Minnesota North Shore and will probably never again be in such close proximity to so much wilderness. I once joked that life is just one big Stockholm Syndrome. By that I meant, yes, you adapt and adopt to the people around you. You take on a lot of their memes, you even eventually mix DNA with them.

So what happened to me when I went out into the forests on hikes? Well, I might call it the forest's version of the Stockholm Syndrome. I could say it peer-pressured me, forced its memes on me somehow, in some unknown way. And that's what reading Tolkien seems like to me. He described a bond with the nature -- mainly Elf-forest -- that hinted at this sort of meme-mixing or rubbing off on you that happens with humanoid-nature interactions. So, no, he doesn't flog some religious polemic, but he talks about the subtle Elf-forest relationship that can't be construed as Christian in the least. And yes, "clean break" with anything other than, say, the gauzy Romanticism who were usually much more direct.
Gandolorin
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on: July 19, 2014 12:44
parluggla said: Sure, Tolkien was personally a staunch RC, but if you didn't know that beforehand it would be very, very hard to call what he wrote RC-based or RC-inspired -- which is exactly what Flieger and many other Christians try to do.


I agree that not knowing about Tolkien's staunch RC views would make it very difficult for readers, even RC ones, to find things (overtly) RC in his books. But here is his own view:

(Tom Shippey, "Author of the Century", 2000, Harper Collins paperback edition 2001, page 175, quoting "The Letters of JRRT", Humphrey Carpenter and CRT, editors, George Allen & Unwin 1981, paperback edition Unwin Paperbacks 1991 page 172, letter 142 to Robert Murray, S.J.)

"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

Point is, some authors may have been able to filter this religious element out of the story despite its being below the surface, so to speak. I did not find that Flieger stressed this point nearly as much as Joseph Pearce in his "Tolkien - Man and Myth ", HarperCollins 1998. JRRT's genius was precisely that those with the sensibilities to detect this, for whatever reason, could do so; but a majority, probably an overwhelming one, could enjoy the books without the slightest inkling of what "lurked" below the surface, and would have shrugged their shoulders if told about it.

Warning: going off on a tangent!
His orthodoxy (not eastern/Greek!) in his personal religious beliefs did not intrude didactically into his writings (where he towers immensely over C.S. Lewis). There is the old opposition of the Boetian and the Manichean views of evil: merely an absence of good, or dualism, with evil and good balanced. In his personal orthodoxy, JRRT was undoubtedly a Boetian. But just look at the myriads of "ors" in LotR, where he does not take sides in Boetian / Manichean explanations for events presented precisely in such "or" pairs.

And then a view I have come to hold quite strongly: JRRT is the 20th century's equivalent of the unknown Beowulf poet.
JRRT studied and lectured about Beowulf for decades. His lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics" was a paradigm change in Beowulf criticism. And much that he said (criticized) about the previous Beowulf critics fits quite well on the LotR critics.
Most decisively of all, both writers wrote about a period which was definitely pre-Christian. The Beowulf poet was writing about a time which was perhaps "only" four centuries before his time (of which there is no certainty, the range is between two or three centuries from about 800 AD). JRRT's Third/Fourth Age boundary may be as much as 8000 years ago (ages after the Third shrank in duration from 3400 SA / 3000 TA to maybe 2000 each). Both showed their definitely pagan protagonists as behaving in ways that would put those having received a Christian baptism in the last 2000 years to shame - between a very large (Beowulf) and a mindbogglingly large (JRRT) majority. The noble pagan, who without having explicitly heard about Yahweh or Christ, still behaved in a way that neither would find much to criticize about. (Possibly wild guess: wasn't there something along those line in the writings of St. Paul of the epistles?)

[Edited on 07/20/2014 by Gandolorin]
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tarcolan
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on: July 19, 2014 12:56
Verlyn Flieger's books can be found on ebay.
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Hercynian
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on: July 19, 2014 04:26
"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."


This is a quote from Tom Shippey, no? Even if Tolkien himself had said this, I wouldn't change what I've said. In addition, it could be argued that he anticipated the whole Margaret Meade anthropology revolution where the "nasty, brutish, and short" prejudices about any and all pre-Roman/pre-Christian life are finally exposed as false in the face of real research. The whole pre-Roman Germanic vibe seems to be long on "nasty, brutish, and short." But we still have plenty of modern media and various scholars going on about dark, murderous Vikings and the like. It's almost a racial stereotype. Tolkien -- and many others -- felt (in possibly a genetic memory way) that pre-Christian Northern Europe was a kinder, gentler place, e.g., a place of Elves who embody high sentience, practice full empathic expression, and live in nature as perfectly and lightly as butterflies and hummingbirds. That's the NoEuro pagan past I cling to.

I've had NoEuro nature-pagan "stirrings" since I was a kid. And to me at least I think I'm seeing these same sorts of stirrings in what Tolkien has written, i.e., Tolkien's stirrings have very much stirred my stirrings up even more. That's what I'm working with. Firing point and counter-point back and forth on an Internet forum only has so much use and value. Actually, the whole "action, action, action" nature of LotR or The Hobbit doesn't interest me half as much as hearing about Elves, Ents, and the wilds of ME described. So many times I just watch the LotR DVDs just to see the fellowship in Lothlorien or hear Treebeard talk of the old forests. And when I went to see LotR-FotR in the theater, and Galadriel began the film with the voiceover: The world is changed, I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air with the Elvish whisperings in the background . . . I knew a new era had begun, and that I wouldn't be the same anymore. . . .

It really defies words (these included) what Tolkien does for me. It can't be described except barely. It can't be depicted expect fleetingly. It's so subtle that everything about the modern world runs rings around it continuously -- missing it each go-round. For example, just those few seconds of Legolas hearkening to the "Lament for Gandalf" in Lothlorien speaks of volumes of lit and acres of visuals. But here I am typing and typing trying to preach about it. Silly me.



[Edited on 07/19/2014 by Hercynian]
Gandolorin
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on: July 20, 2014 09:35
Hercynian said:
... For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

This is a quote from Tom Shippey, no?


Yes but not only. I found the quote in Shippey more quickly, but I also have a copy of the "Letters", and there the quote is in Letter 142 "To Robert Murray, S.J.", pages 171 to 173. Since he is addressing a fellow Catholic, and a Jesuit at that, I'm not surprised that he stressed the Christian / Catholic aspects in his writing.

I left only the last sentence of the quote on purpose. Notice JRRT writes about the "religious element"; not "Christian", not "Catholic". Now this is lawyerly nitpicking, which I do not like very much, personally. But the close attention to words, their meaning, what is said and what not, was also very much what JRRT's professional work was about. So I would wonder if his use of the much broader term "religious element" instead of "Christian" or even "Catholic" was on purpose, to avoid the narrowness, increasing from "Christian" to "Catholic, of the other terms. Going out on a limb, I would postulate that the "religious element" could include northern paganism. But then I might very well be punished by a professorial "not amused" glance from him for such speculation ..

Where I feel much more confident in my opinion is JRRT's unquestioned sympathies for "Northerness" (which C.S. Lewis shared in a fashion), and for the "virtuous pagan", both in Beowulf and his own work. I mentioned above the many Boetian / Manichean "ors" to be found in LotR, where he refuses to take sides. So if the "religious element" (here in a narrower sense) "is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.", so is the sympathy for the virtuous pagan. Neither is overtly stated, but both are there silently, to be felt by those with the required sensibilities; and to be ignored by tens of millions who were "simply" captivated by one of the best stories that has ever been told.

PS: in the foreword to the Second Edition, JRRT notes that he by then silently shrugs off the defects that he himself has found with the book by then (1966), except for one that "has been noted by others: the book is too short."

AMEN.

[Edited on 07/20/2014 by Gandolorin]
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Hercynian
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on: July 21, 2014 08:15
Yes, the book(s) is (are) too short. Tolkien would have needed at least five lifetimes to write everything that needed writing. The Silmarillion really suffered from his absence, as well as the Elvish languages. But what he did manage to leave us is quite unique in Western history.

Christianity is large and old and diverse enough to invaginate Tolkien. And why not? Nature worship? Just call it praising the Lord for His Creation. And the similarity between Lady Galadriel et al and the RC Mariology (Bernadette's "beautiful lady" ) is one-to-one. Verlyn Flieger's writings pull Tolkien hard into the RC tent -- which can be quite vast, if not cosy as long as you avoid its "rough neighborhoods" and don't do stupid things that rile the hierarchy. But as I've said before, Tolkien would have been branded a heretic not so long ago for writing about Ents and Elves and wizards et al. That's pretty obvious.

You might also say Tolkien's writings were like a great hagiography for a parallel-world set of saints. Just put "Saint" in front of Elrond, Galadriel, Aragorn, Frodo, Samwise, etc. But I still want to say Tolkien was tabula rasa, and not so easily co-opted into anyone's Big Tent, Christian or otherwise. Remember, Tolkien was of an era when the modern concept of pagan, Wiccan, Native American animism just didn't exist. To say definitively, "My works are like a great pagan manifesto!" would have been like coming out for little green men on Mars. Considering the times, Tolkien pulled off a miracle to get his particular nature worship out to the world. Ironically, I don't think anyone would consider him for publishing today -- exactly because of the nature worship angle -- not to mention his closet monarchism slant. Publishers don't like to support what might be construed as "too political." You can put as much nastiness and foul language in a fantasy novel as you want. But no politics that has obvious parallels to our world.

A good example of this is my own novel Marenmark (free @ runenberg.com as a pdf). I've heard comments like, "Too political." or "Tone down the vegan/anti-cruelty/feminist lecturing." or "Make Lady Graughfina a bit more human," by which they mean sluttish. And then I ask, "Is this the best book you've read since Tolkien?" Many say yes . . . then comes the big "but."

[Edited on 07/21/2014 by Hercynian]
Gandolorin
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on: July 21, 2014 11:27
C.S. Lewis had a flash of brilliance when he called LotR (I believe it was when FotR was published) "like lightning from a clear day". ALL who came into contact with it first probably responded with amazement - then splitting up into the two factions who progressed either to "WOW! Gimme more of this!!!" or to "SHRIEK!!!".

(There may have been a third faction, in fact it is very likely, that replied with shrugs - they have not felt it necessary to get involved in the fracas of the other two factions and have moved on a long time ago, as is their inalienable right.)

The latter (of the contentious) faction has been stuck on that level ever since then, making it 60 years that they have been stuck in an ever-deepening rut of their own making.

With LotR, JRRT broke just about every publishing rule of his time, never mind ours. And very likely even then it took a Sir Stanley Unwin to give the go-ahead for what his son Rayner estimated could lose the company 1000 Pounds Sterling then - 5000 $ or 20000 DM if the exchange rate was still 5 $ to 1 GBP at the time - serious money then!

The right time, a language genius with few peers in any age - Tom Shippey is absolutely right in calling it the book of the century.

If and when another "lightning from a clear day" ever occurs, we may be then be the ones on side scratching their heads - better than the irrational "SHRIEK!!!", at any rate.
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Hercynian
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on: July 21, 2014 04:51
The "Opposition" simply condescends. They don't take Tolkien seriously. They tut-tut at his legions of fans. The one thing that rationalist/atheists and lit modern realists have in common is a very patronizing attitude towards anyone who "believes." I believe in the world Tolkien created in some quasi-religious way . . . and that makes me a fool in their eyes, part of the problem, not quite grown up, and my favourite, "averse to reality."

And even amongst so-called "fantasy" writers he doesn't get much respect. Neil Gaiman said about Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: "...unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last 70 years." He also meant Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees (ca. 1926), and he very purposely meant to snub Tolkien. Why such a cheap-shot is a mystery, unless he really loathes Tolkien and just has to make it clear.

As I've read, LotR was published on a very tenuous arrangement typical of an expected loss-leader. Unwin wanted to give it a shot simply as follow-through after the moderately successful The Hobbit. We're glad he did.

Cynicism towards Tolkien abounds. I don't think many of the actors in the Jackson films were really "into" Tolkien. You can see them rolling their eyes and making snide remarks in the out-take videos.

Oh well, their loss.
Gandolorin
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on: July 23, 2014 09:27
W.H. Auden stated in a radio interview on 16 November 1955 after book 3 had gone on sale: "If someone dislikes it I shall never trust their literary judgment about anything again." (found in Joseph Pearce "Tolkien: Man and Myth" page 129 bottom, HarperCollins 1998 ).

I wouldn't go that far, since tastes vary, and if someone after reading it just says "I didn't like the book," fine with me.

But then the old master himself also put his finger in a wound of many of the opposition (Foreword to 1966 edition):
"Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."

My first sharp question to someone being condescending about it is always "have you read it?" If the answer is no, I immediately go into my "make my day" mode (think the Dirty Harry films). If they foolishly continue to argue, their memories of me will definitely NOT be in the "nice person" category (what you hear dripping is my sarcasm).

It is amazing how many of the opposition have no idea what they are talking about, they seem to rely on the opinion of an acquaintance (or the acquaintance of an acquaintance of an acquaintance etc.).
Neil Gaiman belongs more to the Douglas Adams "H2G2" world, where he has written some useful things. And has written books himself, by now, I believe.

JRRT's contractual arrangement with George Allen & Unwin was for profit-sharing instead of royalties per book. Best deal JRRT ever made, and I don't think GA&U and their successors were unhappy with the result either. Rumor has it that HarperCollins bought Unwin Hyman for exactly one reason: because UH had the rights to LotR.

As to the movies & actors, there is a problem for actors (except for Christopher Lee, none were known worldwide in LotR) in such a film: The Film is the star. As per Wikipedia, only (not yet Sir) Ian McKellen was nominated for best Supporting Actor for FotR. And as for out-take snide comments, that may be in TH (though memory currently fails), I don't remember any in the EEs for LotR. If anything PJ has been catching flack more and more for his treatment of JRRT's material from actors (i.e. Viggo).

But we could have done immensely worse than PJ (with all his faults).
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Hercynian
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on: July 23, 2014 05:48
Total agreement, Gandolorin, with everything you've said. Yes, the films are not actor vehicles; LotR towers above everyone. I hope it's remade soon. I'd like to see what Alfonso Cuarón might do with it. He's as good or better than Kubrick, IMHO.

AFA nay-sayers and condescenders, Tolkien is like a pointed stick in the eye for the modern realist. Read him or not, they'll hate him.
Gandolorin
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on: July 24, 2014 02:29
Just remembered one thing from the FotR specials in the EE version (if memory serves correctly...)

Christopher Lee (for whatever reason) is recounting how PJ & Co. were pitching for the film in the late 1990s. Everyone was absolutely clear that doing it only in one film was utterly impossible. PJ & Co. were making a pitch for a two-film version; then someone said: "This is three films!"

To date I have never had, and I doubt that the future will top it, such a
"DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH???????????????"
moment.
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Gandolorin
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on: July 24, 2014 02:30
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pv
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on: July 25, 2014 06:04
Well, I'm back (had some issues with an elderly computer and browser!) Great discussion!
http://monstersandcritics.wordpress.com/
pv
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on: July 25, 2014 06:30
I noticed a lot of excellent descriptions of critics here - "modern realist," (Hercynian) "arrogant and thus by definition ignorant," (Gandolorin). But perhaps it was not Tolkien's philosophy or the bias of the critics in favour of realism that caused them to hold Tolkien in contempt. Perhaps it was the critters. Tolkien mentioned that people had a problem taking Beowulf seriously because of the monsters. Maybe they had a problem taking Tolkien seriously because of the critters - hobbits, elves, dwarves, ents, etc. I read somewhere that Tolkien lost a Nobel prize because of the critters.
http://monstersandcritics.wordpress.com/
Gandolorin
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on: July 25, 2014 01:14
JRRT in his Lecture "The Monsters and the Critics" caused a paradigm change in Beowulf criticism. But then, I would guess that all (or most) of the Beowulf critics could read the original Anglo-Saxon version. A very small, more likely tiny group of real experts.

Hundreds of millions of people can (and have) read the LotR - in the original language, never mind the translations. As far as I am concerned, Tom Shippey in his books has done the near equivalent of "The Monsters and the Critics" for JRRT. My guess is that more people have read Shippey's books than Anglo-Saxon experts ever existed who would have food for thought with JRRT's paradigm change lecture. I would also guess that more people have criticized the LotR than the above Anglo-Saxon experts ever existed. And I would guess with a pretty big certainty that the overlap of people who have read Shippey's books and people who have (negatively) criticized the LotR is near to zero.

As has been stated in another thread, what will the readers of the 22nd century think of what we read, and how our "critics" criticized books? Roughly spoken from memory (always a bit dubious, but ...) the bets are on long-selling books, with short-lived fashion excrements (which may very well include many "classics" so favored by 20th-century "critics" up to and including present times) will be greeted by vigorous head-shaking. Of course only our very young 'uns will live to hear such comments (as very ancients then). And as the US's greatest writer, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, once is reputed to have said: "Predictions are awfully hard, especially concerning the future."

But I will venture a last guess for this thread: gut feeling tells me that stuff which has been trumped as "oh so in" by diverse self-proclaimed "in people" has gone to the compost dump in exponentially increasing speed. Extrapolate that ...
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pv
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on: July 25, 2014 10:05
Critics often "analyse" a work, and tell you everything that it should have and does not have. Many of them suffer from the delusion that they can impartially identify all the attributes that make a piece of writing "good" in their eyes.("Tolkien's writing is not good because it does not have the attributes that make good literature. Good lit is realistic and Tolkien is not realistic." )

But more often than not, what they are actually doing is something very different - in actual fact they measure a piece of writing against a genre it doesn't belong to, which they are partial to, and find it wanting. ("Good lit is realistic, and Tolkien is not realistic. He does not talk about the dirt and grime on the streets outside his house. He writes airy fairy rubbish that has nothing to do with real life. Elves, goblins, I ask you..." )

What literary critics should do is what the art critics do. Place the work within its own genre, look at at what the artist personally is trying to do within that genre, and then look at how far he has succeeded. ("Tolkien was trying to look at life through the medium of the myth - he was trying to create a mythology for England. And through this medium he arrives at many truths that are relevant to us today..." )


[Edited on 07/26/2014 by pv]
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pv
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on: July 25, 2014 10:29
Coming to the question of whether or not Tolkien's work is Roman Catholic - it might be instructive to look at his stand on different issues, separately.

First, his view of nature. Tolkien's view of nature is not incompatible with Christianity. "Earth's cramm'd with heaven, and every common bush afire with God..." However, this idea of the divine manifesting itself through nature is not as central to the Christian faith as it is in Tolkien's personal faith. Here, Tolkien is closer to the Pantheists, the Shamans, the Native Americans, the Aborigines, the Maoris, etc., than he is to the Roman Catholics.

Coming to his view of sin and punishment, Tolkien tended to join the camp that argued in favour of forgiveness rather than punishment. (Both camps are compatible with Christianity, as these are personal interpretations of their teachings.)

Coming to his views on organisational hierarchy, Tolkien shows Sauron as having a hierarchical organisation which emphasised obedience of authority. His elves, in contrast, impose no authority at all. Gildor Inglorion walks behind the others. Elrond is careful to tell the Fellowship of the Ring that they are part of this Fellowship out of their own free will. The task they have elected to carry out has not been imposed on them by authority. Here, it would seem that Tolkien is more closely aligned to Karl Marx & co. and Martin Luther. C.S. Lewis, who was converted to Christianity by Tolkien, chose to become a Protestant rather than a Catholic. Perhaps this was his way of being loyal, rather than disloyal, to Tolkien's views?



[Edited on 07/26/2014 by pv]
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Hercynian
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on: July 26, 2014 08:57
Hello, pv. Yes, "critics" are typically those who went to universities where modern realism is all there is, i.e., mod real = literary fiction. Everything else is genre. It's snob appeal when you can't point to anything other than intangibles as superlatives. No beauty, no subtlety, no wonderment -- just effrontery and shock.

But then "rock" music went through a similar period. Back in the late 60s and 70s rock was breaking away from so-called "rhythm and blues," which was a label including blues, soul, gospel, and various "Negro" pop music. White kids, (like me) were defecting away from the rock bands that imitated R&B (Stones, Led Zep, Cream, etc.) and embracing British "fantasy" bands like Genesis, Yes, Tull, Gentle Giant, and ELP. Especially those early Genesis albums were hands-down very "Victorian fairytale" -- which drove many of our American music critics/gatekeepers up the wall! They used all the usual condemnations you hear against lit fantasy. They even stooped to calling us racist-elitist. Ironically, rock had also sprung a leak with the whole "hippie country-western" movement, but the critics were cool with that. Their motto seemed to be, "If you like gritty, grimy, low-brow fare -- white or black -- you're cool; otherwise, you're an elitist twit. Yes, it had all the earmarks of our reality versus fantasy arguments. But the three main "fairy rock" bands, Genesis, Tull, and Yes, got huge amongst the middle-, upper-class white North America. Peter Gabriel was like a fairy from "Midsummernight's Dream," Ian Anderson like the Pied Piper, and Jon Anderson was Peter Pan. Ironic that Genesis later went hard into shlocky pop and Yes started to cultivate a more working-class sound reminiscent of their more successful imitators (Rush in particular).

And one of the craziest things about that era was Led Zeppelin’s 4th album, the one with "Battle of Evermore" and "Stairway to Heaven," which were very Tolkien and Merlin/Avalon myth-inspired. But then that album had the raunchiest blues, too. That had to be the strangest Jungian twist ever!

Give Genesis' "Trespass" a listen. It's amazing Victorian-Gothic-Fairy fare. An aeon ahead of its time.

[Edited on 07/26/2014 by Hercynian]
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