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None of those images could fit comfortably within Tolkien's mythology. If Tolkien had tried to fit them in there he would have been forced to take the mythology in a different direction, change its mood completely, or they would have stuck out like sore thumbs. This is because some images & symbols communicate particular ideas & psychic 'experiences', & cannot simply be taken by a writer & used as he or she wishes. The 'darker' aspects of northern myth communicated through these images weren't something Tolkien wanted to go into - for various reasons. ...
Of course, if you don't believe there is any objective, underlying 'reality' beyond the one we experience in our waking lives, then none of that will make sense.
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And I suppose that if you believe symbols and images cannot change meaning, you end up with this argument that a writer cannot use certain symbols and images, as they are beyond his power as a writer. Yet the Church regularly and frequently incorporated--some might say appropriated--pagan symbols into Christian iconography. And writers regularly and frequently take images and ideas and reclothe them as part of their argument, particularly when they want to say something about those previous meanings.
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*********** to anyone who reads the following *************
This was written in response a post which Bethberry has just removed, but is intending to to reinstate. I have included all of her important points in my quotes, though.
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Just to clarify, I deleted my post half an hour before davem posted his reply,--over an hour before I saw his reply. My reason? It seemed to me that my comments about fairy tales, which davem alludes to but does not quote, were taking the thread off-topic. (That's the reason I gave when I deleted it.) In fact, his post does not consider the kind of things I had in mind about extirpated modern editions of fairy tales--the degree, for instance, of physical violence meted out to the characters. I was here thinking of how vague Tolkien is about the experience of Celebrían, Elrond's wife, at the hands of orcs.
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(Now, who felt they'd been given a 'glimpse' of something by my first comment about 'sacred vows' & 'the Sisters at the Back of the North Wind'? - see how certain images affect you & can spark off that sense of something half glimpsed?)
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Not I. But then I recall some of your very early posts here on BD where similar points were suggested.