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The Unquiet Dead
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<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/nenya.jpg" align=absmiddle> Re: no weapons at all, please
Sharku:
Your renderings of mid-twentieth century history strike me as polemical and misrepresentative. But as you keep insisting that you aren't going to "treat" history (each time right after a particularly provocative historical assertion), I'm willing to drop it.
Lindil:
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Quote:<hr> So to anyone doubting Galadriel's stature I suggest reading Unfinished Tales' 'History of Galadriel and Celeborn' for the bigger picture.<hr></blockquote>
I don't think that one can legitimately demand that
either the Galadriel of LotR
or the Galadriel of the entire posthumously published mass of notes be understood as
the Galadriel.
JRRT was an author and he can be held to account for publishing a book that was already distended to the absurd length of thirteen-hundred and some-odd pages
without appendices. Once published, it should be able to stand on its own as a work of art; its various characters should be adequately realized.
It is all well and good that the Professor obsessively constructed the back-story; I think that is why the book resonates as effectively as it does. But ME didn't, in fact, exist except in the imagination(s) of the author and his readers. So I am not sure why anyone needs to be saddled with missing the "bigger picture." One might as easily argue that those who resort to the author's private ruminations to defend the creative short-comings of this (terribly successful) novel are also, in some sense, failing to apprehend the "bigger picture."
Please, I hope that this doesn't sound like an attack; I warmly appreciate your comprehensive view of the work, but I am principally interested in JRRT's finished, published work and believe that it can (and should) stand on its own merits. And I believe that the Professor failed somewhat in expressing the deep superiority of the elves in which he seems so fervently to have believed. It has always been, for me, one of the nagging disappointments of a book which I have loved for twenty-five years.
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