[Child of the 7th Age]

Son of Numenor -

I am wholly unqualified to evaluate the ideas regarding reincarnation that The Ka has brought forward on this thread. I simply do not know enough about Buddhist thought to be able to judge her suggestion one way or another. What I am concerned about is that such questioning should not necessarily be dismissed out of hand.

Taking away Buddhist ideas from The Lord of the Rings may be relevant to the reader's spiritual life, but it is certainly not relevant to share such ideas in this forum.

I would respectfully disagree. It's not a question of religious belief but of the diverse thoughts and ideals that various human beings bring to the text as we read. Because we bring different backgrounds, we may see different things in the story. That raises another critical question. Just where do we draw the line in saying one idea merits consideration and another does not? Let me cite a few examples to illustrate my point.

Many, many Christian authors have written evaluations of LotR in recent years. A few of these critics, such as Joseph Pearce, are Catholic. Many more, however, are not. Professor Ralph Wood, for example, professor of theology at Baptist Baylor, explicitly acknowledges that he often approaches the text from a biblical vantage far different from Tolkien's. Another example is Robert Ellwood, professor emeritus of religion at the University of Southern California, who wrote Frodo's Quest from a theosophical viewpoint. Both of these men hold personal beliefs quite different from Tolkien (and from my own). It is their ideas that interest me.

We don't have to limit ourselves to questions of religion. There are many other examples of readers bringing ideas to the text that were different than Tolkien's own. Patrick Curry, for example, was a Greenpeace supporter in the 1980s. These ideas heavily influenced his own assessment of the environmental themes in Tolkien ( Defending Middle-earth: Tolkien - Myth and Modernity ). This viewpoint influenced the questions he raised and the ideas he put forward. While Tolkien was a "lover of trees", he was not involved with an organized ecological movement and his own views were expressed in a very different way. Just look at all the academic philosophers in Lord of the Rings and Philosophy who found reflections of many different individuals and schools in LotR ranging from Aristotle and Plato to the existentialists or Nietzsche.

It's interesting to note that the best studies not only suggest how certain ideas that interest a critic may be reflected in LotR, but also point out major differences as well. If I have a reservation about this thread, it is a practical one: I don't think we have any current Books posters who have enough background in eastern thought to speak knowledgeably to this question. (I could be mistaken here and, if so, I apologize for my own lack of knowledge.) And I would never claim that a topic such as this should take center stage in our discussions. But I don't see such questions as irrelevent.

It's possible we hold different views on this and may have to acknowledge that with a polite nod.

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Whoops! Where is Fordim or Bb when I need them? This is what happens when you listen to English professors and get curious enough to read modern criticism. (I spent a chunk of the afternoon reading Barthes.)