All right, I swore that I would not post to this thread above once a day, but I simply cannot help myself.
Saucepan Man you wrote:
Quote:
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A reader who enjoys it as a cracking good yarn, but without any inclination to explore further the world which Tolkien created, will not be bound by (and most likely will be unaware of) the author's intentions. Those who are interested in learning more about Tolkien and his works (such as most, I should think, who post here) will be more inclined to accept such meaning as Tolkien himself attributed to his works. (emphasis added by me, F.H.)
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There is a wonderfully subtle shift in your language here that proves my point (ha!). At the beginning you say that the “unaware” reader is not “bound” by the author’s intention, implying that the relationship between reader and text is one of imprisonment or possibly possession. You then state that a reader who is “interested in learning” will be “inclined to accept” the author’s interpretation of the work (“the meaning…attributed” ). Both of these relationships are wonderfully evocative of the way that the Ring works on its ‘victims’.
If I may force the metaphor a bit: a reader like Gollum, wholly unaware of the power of the Ring – or, rather, wholly unaware of the intention of the Ring’s Maker – is easily captured and subdued by the Ring: “bound” to it. A more aware reader, one who is “interested in learning”, like Frodo (whose name, as I’m sure many already know, is Old Germanic for “wise by experience” ) is not so easily ensnared, and must therefore instead be lead by the magic/illusion/enchantment/power of the Ring to become “inclined to accept” it – or, rather, to accept the intention of the Ring’s Maker for the Ring (power/domination/self/evil).
The more I think about this, the more I think that this is an extremely fruitful way to regard the Ring: as itself a mirror of the text of Middle-Earth, of the subcreation that Tolkien undertook. The reader of Tolkien’s works is, in a sense, being subjected to enormous pressure by the power of the book(s) to “accept” their reality – to turn our back on what we ‘know’ (the Primary World, or, our own individual versions of it) and to embrace instead an illusion (the Secondary World). And this is a disturbing thing to happen. First, in our turn to the Secondary World, we are forced to become complicit in things that we are not perhaps particularly fond of (autocratic kings, rigid class distinctions, a fairly clear-cut hierarchy of racial superiority, inequal social relations between men and women, etc). Second, as soon as we submit to the power of the Secondary World we, in a sense, must give way to the power of that world’s maker: like all those who give in to the Ring, we have to allow someone else to become the arbiter of our “truth” – or, the definer of our desire.
Of course, there are huge differences between the Ring and Tolkien’s texts that I need not go into here (first and foremost being that the Ring’s creator wants to
supplant Eru; the maker of Middle-Earth wants only to
supplement the Primary Creator) – but the similarity of the relation (individual to Ring; reader to Middle-Earth) is quite striking.
(Or have I simply stayed up too late?)