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TMM wrote:
Not at all. Read it again.
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The sentence prior to the one you quoted is: “But finally it is what is left out of
The Lord of the Rings (i.e., sex and religion, according to him) that makes one wonder if this is really a book for adults.” That seems clear enough. I suppose themes like faith, friendship, loyalty, and courage are considered naively idealistic in the “New Reality” and suited only for children (or childish adults).
Quote:
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But the universality of Tolkien's work is not mythological in nature, it's the universality of wonder.
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I respectfully disagree. Do people read Tolkien over and over again only to enjoy the wonder of Middle-earth (or, as Jenkyns supposes at one point, to study its maps and Middle-earth lore)? There
is that, don’t get me wrong, but “wonder” can only sustain you through so many readings. I think LotR resonates on a deeper level than being merely wonderful, and disagree that it has nothing to say about the real world.
I’m a little confused about the expectation of LotR to stand up as a mythology in a comparison to Greek mythology. LotR is a mythic story, not a complete mythology, and the tidbits of the made-up mythology of Middle-earth we get are designed to help create the illusion of a “real” world. To say that LotR fails or is incomplete as a mythology is again to (IMHO) misapprehend the work’s scope and ambition.
Squatter, I note that your sig is particularly relevant to this particular line of conversation. I wonder what fiction you refer to. I searched Jenkyns on Amazon and only came up with five titles, none of them fiction:
Three Classical Poets,
Virgil’s Experience: Nature and History: Times, Names, and Places,
The Victorians and Ancient Greece,
The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal (editor), and
Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance.