View Single Post
Old 09-05-2004, 03:55 PM   #501
littlemanpoet
Itinerant Songster
 
littlemanpoet's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
Posts: 7,066
littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Tolkien answers to Nurumaiel

You're not doing anything wrong at all, Nuru. Sorry to lead you to think so - didn't mean to do that. Or maybe I did, but stand corrected. Yeah, that's probably more like it. You're right. Leafa, having been a wayfarer, would have had a non-Rohirric experience, which would lead her not to think the way Ędegard would; and Liornung, a traveler, would have adjusted his way of thinking to account for all the differences he has seen in his travels. The same kind of thing happened to the crusaders in the Middle Ages. They left Europe to fight the infidel..... they came back changed by their experiences, with a broader perspective. So yes.

On....the....other hand, there is still my point about modernistic ways of thought, in which in terms of the individual is automatically the way we think. It's not that people from the middle ages didn't realize they were individuals, but saw themselves as part of a whole; so much so that to be cut off from family and community was like being condemned to death. These days it just as often means "freedom". I hope that makes more sense.
littlemanpoet is offline