When reading TLotR I always felt there were other levels at which it could be apreciated. And I’ve long been aware of folk doing just that. My personal choice has been to not do that.
What might make TLotR special in one way is the extent to which it succeeds at various levels of enjoyment. I’ll suggest that relatively few works do that as well. For example, I may read a fantasy/SF story (not my fave genres but I dabble) and fell like, it’s a really good story, but that’s about it - a nice entertaining read. Other books - I suggested Ulysses above - are quite obiously incredibly impressive works of something or another, but I suspect a relatively small number of readers are able to read it as an engaging tale. A third category might be books that tell a decent tale, and there will be some very obvious and possibly limited subtext/themes.
TLotR can works as well as a bedtime tale as as a doctoral thesis subject - and undoubtedly countless other levels. And even on combinations of various levels at the same time.
Literary criticism is not my forte, so I’ll bow out now that I’ve spread my special brand of sunshine and fear a group hug may be imminent.
After years of reading LotR I finally picked up Beowulf last year (the Seamus Heaney edition), as it was suggested off-hand by a professor who was giving a small lecture on Tolkien. I enjoyed it immensely as a poem (word choice, meter, etc) and as a story. The similarities between Beowulf and Tolkien’s work were incredible to me. Not similarities in plot, but in general tone, language, and atmosphere.
I’m trying to communicate something that I don’t really have sophisticated enough language to express clearly, but I will say that Tolkien was far from a hack writer. He was also far from a good writer who just did a bunch of research to make his world more credible. He was a scholar whose wealth of knowledge formed the fundamental skeleton for his writing. I think when Maeglin quoted Shippey as saying Tolkien believed it possible, “to fel one’s way back from words as they survived in later periods to concepts which have long since vanished,” he stated exactly what it is that is so wonderful about LotR. The entire story is infused with concepts and thoughts that have roots in the oldest of Northern European literature, and therefore (speaking as a citizen of the USA) of our own cultural history.
That is what makes it “great”. As Maeglin says, LotR stands up to critical analysis of a precise and in-depth fashion.
So please, continue your essay, I am learning quite a bit.
Nice work, Maeglin! You are obviously a fan of the work (your nick, I assume, is taken from Maeglin, the betrayer of Gondolin).
I think your analysis is accurate. Tolkein used language to create a verisimilitude that puts the reader in Middle Earth. This is a hallmark of a great work of literature, fictional or otherwise.
I am inclined to enjoy fantasy anyway but Tolkein is the undisputed father of modern fantasy. Everything written since has his influence in it. Yet, none seem to match the originality.
It always amazed me how he could come up with poetry and song lyrics and would include them in the story. They fit.
Like these are songs I should know.
Including an epic hero myth further taps into the collective unconscious, building upon the foundation of language.
And you are right, too, asserting that Tolkein’s works express a literary history that is uniquely English. Rather, I should say, particularly Celtic.
I’m glad you’re making nice here, **Dinsdale ** and Maeglin, because you’re on the same side. You love the book.
I often feel stupid when I try to talk about books that are important to me. Half the time I say a book is great, that it was a really neat story I couldn’t put down, that it was “really well-written.” Real descriptive. When I try to say more, it sometimes comes out in the sort of pseudo-academic jumble that Dinsdale dislikes: “Tolkien’s characters display human fraility in a world where moral choices come to the point.” I wish I knew how to say it better.
So, I vote for Maeglin to continue, and I vote for Dinsdale to not bow out, but to tell why he likes TLOTR too, abjuring all “academic style” (speaking loosely, of course, and meaning using words which don’t crop up in everyday conversation), which I think may be harder.
Finally, on the songs and poems. I am terrible at languages and accents (my kids mock me when I try to do “voices” when I read to them). For a long time I was frustrated and defiant about not getting it. Finally, I started doggedly reading every foreign (or made-up) phrase I came across, using context and dictionaries, until I figured out the meaning. This has given me much pleasure, and I can do it more easily now.
Just wanted to give you another vote to continue the thread, Maeglin – I actually do know some of this stuff, but it’s a great read.
BTW, I’ve always liked the songs and poems – they go down much more easily if you think of them as folk songs or rhymes passed down by oral tradition (though in context of the story, not all of them are). I mean, the Child ballads aren’t all masterpieces of poetry either, are they?
Thanks also to Balduran, Qadgop, and Ogre. I hope you will post your thoughts on the subject as well. And yeah, I’d like to hear about sequent occupation.
As for the parallels with Cain and Abel, well, it’s definitely worth checking out. Critics have avoided Tolkien’s religiosity like the plague: he was a devoutly religious man, but there is no obvious Catholicism in LOTR at all. And plenty of paganism besides.
A new book of tribute essays deals with Tolkien’s religion a great deal. I bought it the other day but haven’t read it yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if it at least mentions the possible parallel in passing. I can’t remember the name of the book and am having trouble pulling it up on Amazon. I’ll get back to you with the title tomorrow.
When my fit of afternoon exhaustion passes, I will continue. And I would rather be buggered by the witch-king of Angmar than indulge in a group hug.
And on preview, thanks to everyone else who is interested. Please do not hold back from posting more of your own thoughts, as they are both extremely interesting and much appreciated.
And I agree with Humble Servant. I can’t think of a good reason why Dinsdale should bow out unless, of course, he just isn’t interested.
This is patently wrong. Gandalf was imprisoned in Orthanc before the Fellowship even set forth from Rivendell. Once he was rescued, he never went back to Isengard until its fall. Whatever high place he sat in when he strove with the Shadow, we can be pretty sure it wasn’t the Tower of Orthanc.
You’re getting your timelines mixed up. The Amon Hen sequence took place after Gandalf’s battle with the Balrog; the Tale of Years would seem to place Gandalf in Lothlorien at the time of Frodo’s vision atop Amon Hen.
No need. Recall “…next to this big 'ol rock of crack!” Pippin replied, and held up an immense crackrock…" and realize that Tolkien still produced an amazing work while hepped up on goofballs.
Maeglin, thanks for offering us this insight into your personal view of Tolkien! It’s fascinating, even if the mini-debate with Dinsdale almost threw me off. Glad to see you two got everything patched up before I got here.
I first attempted to read LotR when I was about 6 years old. The language and plot was a bit much for me at the time. I came back to it at about 8 years old, then reread it several times between then and early high school, adding the Hobbit as I went along. Then, like other things from my childhood, it became a thing of the past. I last read the collection about 20-25 years ago, I would guess. Since I learned this summer about the soon to be released movies I have thrilled to find a part of my childhood and past returned to me. I had been wondering how appropriate it was for me, with various other life commitments, to jump back into this world. I view your discussion here as a possible bridge between my former childhood pursuits and something with more depth and breadth. Please continue to point out sources and cites, as well as provide this analysis, so that others may choose to take from it what they will. Thanks.
[sub]and this is a damned lot of work to do this, so take your time. [/sub]
No, it was an unhappy invention of the good people at Rankin-Bass.
Actually, I heard the song before seeing the animated sequence. It was quite disappointing, really, as the visuals were far blander than the twisted picture that accompanied the song in my head…
(I think one of the orcs does say “Where there’s a whip there’s a will” at some point, but not in song, and certainly not in disco…)
BTW, I once mentioned to my comp class that I’d done settings of Tolkien’s songs, and one guy piped up with “Did you do ‘Where There’s a Whip There’s a Way’? My band plays that!”
Peter Jackson has already put together a 20 min bloopers from The Fellowship of the Ring which he screened instead of a speach when he recived an honary degree from Victoria University in Wellington NZ.
Well, it’s not sung, but something close to that line is in the books:
RTK, pg 255 (Ballantine paperback), Book VI, ch. 2:
"Now and again the orc-driver fell back to jeer at them. ‘There now!’ he laughed, flicking at thier legs. ‘Where there’s a whip, there’s a will, my slugs.’ "
From the cover story in the October Wired, which called Middle-earth the “first virtual world”:
I don’t remember the part of LOTR where the nude stream-bathing occurred.
This is from “The Return of the King”, near the end of the chapter “The Land of Shadow”. Frodo and Sam are disguised as orcs, and the orc in charge is speaking to them.
