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The works of J. R. R. Tolkien

Discussion in 'Tilted Entertainment' started by Baraka_Guru, Mar 25, 2014.

  1. snowy

    snowy so kawaii Staff Member

    You really should get on that. Like, now, if not yesterday.
     
  2. rogue49

    rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

    Location:
    Baltimore/DC
    I take them simply as this...
    They are books I enjoy reading.
    And they are movies I enjoy watching.
    Again & again.

    Each enjoyable for their own aspects...certain portions I like better than others, some not.

    But just the fact that they have been "reviewed" by so many for so long, shows their significance and quality.
    Some like them, some don't...some like parts.
    But they keep talking about them, either way.

    Kind of like the Bible...but not.
     
  3. snowy

    snowy so kawaii Staff Member

    My paperback copy of The Silmarillion could do with replacing. I have multiple editions of paperbacks of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, so now my collection mostly focuses on acquiring hardbacks. This is not my entire collection of Tolkien books, by the way.
    [​IMG]
     
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  4. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    I will. Will you listen to the seminars at least?
     
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  5. spindles

    spindles Very Tilted

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    Yes, I've read the silmarillion (many years ago). I think it could be hard work for many people, especially as it doesn't have the flow of the hobbit or the lord of the rings. I wonder how many people have picked it up, expecting an "adventure" and got something a lot drier than they expected.
     
  6. snowy

    snowy so kawaii Staff Member

    I think it's beautifully written, but yes, it can be dry at points, and my first read through it was a bit of a slog. I compare it to reading the Bible if people ask me what it's like.
     
  7. Charlatan

    Charlatan sous les pavés, la plage

    Location:
    Temasek
    I put off reading The Silmarillion for years but finally read it about five years ago. I was more than pleasantly surprised at how good it was.

    I have read The Hobbit a good handful of times (at least once for each kid) and The Lord of the Rings over ten times. If anyone has read LOTR but not dived into the appendices at the end of Return of the King, you really should. It fleshes out many of the sub-plots.

    A note on friendship: I too have skipped the Sam and Frodo bits from time to time but I am very fond of the Legolas and Gimli relationship. I would love to have more of their tales than the paltry taste we get in the appendix. To me, the tale of potential enemies becoming tentative allies and finally the closest of friends, is powerful. It often gets short shrift in the face of Sam, Frodo and Aragorn's tales.
     
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  8. snowy

    snowy so kawaii Staff Member

    Agreed and agreed. I'd love a Legolas/Gimli story. Their relationship is the ultimate in the Power of Friendship.
     
  9. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    As an aside (and, I suppose, as my first comparison of an author to Tolkien): The Silmarillion was edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien, with the help of Canadian fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay.

    Kay is best known these days for writing long yet beautiful novels that are best described as historical fantasy, though he has a vein of urban fantasy as well. However, his first three novels, first published in the '80s, consist of a fantasy trilogy called the Fionavar Tapestry.

    I won't get into much detail since you can just check out the linked page, but it compares to Tolkien's work in that the books delve into a fantasy world that is mythologically rich. Kay borrows from various mythologies including Authurian legend. He elegantly weaves together these wonderful elements while infusing some powerful themes that run throughout. In many ways, the Fionavar Tapestry represents a wonderful following of the kind of work Tolkien did. However, let me be clear: This is not as directly derivative of Tolkien as, say, the Wheel of Time, or the Shannara books (as entertaining as you might find them). In it, Kay does much of what Tolkien did: He takes mythological sources and "repurposes" them.

    The main difference is that it's more overt in Kay's work. Tolkien was brilliant in making his sources strange and new. Certainly a tough act to follow.

    Regardless, I can't recommend the Fionavar Tapestry highly enough. If you like the concept of mythopoeia and the kind of literature close to Tolkien's heart, you should read it.
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2014
  10. snowy

    snowy so kawaii Staff Member

    @Baraka_Guru, you bring up one of the things I really love as a teacher about Tolkien's body of work. I find it incredibly accessible when introducing criticism and analysis. We're not typically getting down into the close reading/deconstruction/parsing, but rather I use it to illustrate to students the bigger movements and motifs. I use it as a kind of common language we all know--we've all read the books or seen the films, so we can discuss things like the Epic Quest, for example, or Lord Raglan's Hero Pattern without having to read something new to understand.

    Additionally, I used it in a Prezi this fall on the history of the English language (this book is amazing, I just wish it weren't $120; I read my mentor's copy. Amazon.com: A History of the English Language (6th Edition) (9780205229390): Albert Croll Baugh, Thomas Cable: Books). How?
    The Wanderer
    Lament for the Rohirrim - Tolkien Gateway

    The kids went nuts.
     
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  11. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
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  12. snowy

    snowy so kawaii Staff Member

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  13. Levite

    Levite Levitical Yet Funky

    Location:
    The Windy City
    I am so glad to see this thread!

    I love Tolkien. My parents read me The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion when I was very young: starting at age six or so, I think. My father-- who, like me, had been an actor before becoming a rabbi-- did each character in its own distinctive voice or accent. My mother, who's always had a good ear for music, set all the songs to tunes.

    As I got older, I read Unfinished Tales, and his incomplete and in-process work as published in collections edited by his son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien. From there, I went to his collections of stories, but also his translations of poetry. Tolkien's "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo" piqued my curiosity in Middle English verse long before I ever read Chaucer. It was largely due to Tolkien's influence that I taught myself Middle English in high school, and taught myself Saxon in college. Because of his passion for herb-lore, I was inspired to read Gerard's Herball, and some of the other English herbals, and translations of the Roman and Greek works that inspired them. And whereas I found CS Lewis' stories unbearably heavy-handed in their Christian allegory, reading Tolkien, and finding out how much he considered himself a Catholic even in his art, I was inspired to read the complete Christian scriptures for the first time as a teenager.

    I read, along the way, the collection of Tolkien's correspondence edited by Humphrey Carter, Letters of JRR Tolkien, which I highly recommend, as well as his biography. In college, I wrote my thesis for my minor in English Literature on him, and read some academic discussions and critical examinations of his work. These, for the most part, I didn't much care for: academics often insist on psychoanalyzing motivations for this or that choice or attitude even when the writer himself (or herself) has left clear statements as to their thinking on the matter. And all too often, academic criticism ignores the discussion of aesthetics and other ways of appreciating artistry, which to me are of central importance.

    I re-read LotR, Hobbit, and Silmarillion every year, sometimes twice, and find new things each reading.

    I continue to believe that the Ainulindalë section of The Silmarillion is the most beautiful creation myth I have ever read, outside of certain interpretations of the creation story of my own culture. It never fails to amaze and move me.

    I also like the theme of friendship in LotR (and his other major books), but also the themes of humanity in nature, self-empowerment and maturity, family, and especially, art and artistry. The way he looks at good and evil is especially powerful and compelling, I think: evil arising from good gone awry, from narcissism and pride; good involving a willingness to serve and aid others, humility and respect for others, satisfaction in simple things and with one's lot, and above all the prioritization of interpersonal relationships.

    Tolkien's use of language is of paramount interest to me: his writing is rich, textured, elegant, with beautifully constructed images and a remarkable balance of presence-- closeness to characters and action-- and remoteness, a distance that creates a sense of majesty, of epic breadth and depth. It's why, to me, Tolkien more than any other modern writer reads like one of the great pre-modern epic poets, or even like Biblical literature.

    OK, enough gush for first post....
     
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  14. snowy

    snowy so kawaii Staff Member


    Oh please, sir, do go on. :) I agree with a lot of what you've said about criticism and analyzing an author's work. One of my favorite English professors was quite insistent that if it wasn't in the text, it wasn't in the text, and no amount of reading between the lines would make an analysis work if it wasn't in the text. I try to teach my students the same approach.
     
  15. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    And this is why Balrogs have no wings. :D
     
  16. Levite

    Levite Levitical Yet Funky

    Location:
    The Windy City
    Actually, that is precisely why Balrogs have wings: "The Balrog made no answer. The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew. It stepped forward slowly onto the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall: but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm." The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm" (in the edition I happen to have to hand, page 429, emphasis added).
     
  17. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    I read that as a continued metaphor/simile for the shadow it casts, from this earlier passage:

    The Balrog reached the bridge. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand Glamdring gleamed, cold and white. His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. It raised the whip, and the thongs whined and cracked. Fire came from its nostrils. But Gandalf stood firm.​

    When the Balrog draws its height up, it casts its "winglike" shadows further.

    The debate will never be resolved. I remain, faithfully, in the "no wings" camp.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2014
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  18. Levite

    Levite Levitical Yet Funky

    Location:
    The Windy City
    But in The Silmarillion, when Morgoth is betrayed and ensnared by Ungoliant at Lammoth, his cries summon to him Balrogs, who are described as coming "in a tempest of fire."

    Since when are tempests not in the air? And to be in the air, they must have wings.

    Indeed, in the draft version of the episode published in The History of Middle Earth (Volume X, Morgoth's Ring), they are described as having "passed with winged speed over Hithlum, and they came to Lammoth as a tempest of fire." (emphasis added).
     
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  19. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    I'll tell you what. If I ever come to you in a tempest of the regular kind (say, snow or rain), I'll come by foot, for I cannot fly. I'd try the same in a tempest of fire, but I'd probably burn to a crisp.

    It's "winged speed." We can go as far back as Homer and look at his use of winged, which he used as "winged words" multiple times. It can be interpreted as "words spoken with some urgency." In translation, Fitzgerald often avoided winged, opting for words such as rapid, sharp, or rough. Fagles often used burst or urgent. (Homer's Winged Words)

    [EDIT to add: I've seen it interpreted in Oxford as to mean "apposite" or "significant," which may also apply. If a situation is dire, "significant speed" or "speed that is apposite/pertinent/appropriate to the situation" would be suitable.]

    So in this passage from The Silmarillion, we can interpret "winged speed" as meaning "urgent speed" or "rapid speed" (or, more directly, speed as though they were flying, i.e., metaphorically). Indeed, winged in this case is interpreted as modifying the word speed and not as suggesting that the Balrogs had wings and were actually flying.

    Surely, when Gandalf tells the Fellowship, "Fly, you fools," he doesn't mean for them to literally soar through the air (that will come later, for some). In this instance, Tolkien opts for an archaic meaning of the word fly, meaning "to flee."

    We must remain open to the idea that Tolkien often uses archaic meanings of words, given his command of languages both old and new. This, and his rich use of metaphor, give his work the capacity for multiple interpretations.

    As I suggest, we also can't prove definitively that the Balrogs don't have wings. I suggest we can't prove it definitively either way. I'm simply in the camp that believes they don't have wings.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2014
  20. Charlatan

    Charlatan sous les pavés, la plage

    Location:
    Temasek
    I always pictured them as living shadow and as such were fluid at the edges.
     
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