[Sleeping Beauty]

Great discussion Lush. Once again these posts get me to thinking about Tolkien when I should be worrying about other things. (Like Spanish) Enjoy the course if you get to take it. The you can start even some more thought-provoking discussions! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

I’m curious… In what context would you mention Tolkien in the average college literature lecture or class discussion?

In an average college lit class, it would be a hard thing to pull off. Tolkien is too deep to go into. War, the nature of good and evil, and Frodo himself has brought enough discussions here on the board I could write dozens of papers. Unless you had a semester at least, you couldn't even begin to unravel the depth to the stories. In my American Lit class we took a week to cover Huckleberry Finn and we barely scratched the surface. I don't even want to think about if in British Lit if Tolkien was brought up. But then again, my English professors agree with most of the literary community and believe it shouldn't be read except as an extra-curricular reading. But as in an historical aspect, I think he might fit in with the literature of post war. The Lord of the Rings carries well with people beginning to see and becoming more enlightened on the effects of war.

Clarification… In what literary category would a Tolkien discussion be apropos? For example, is there such a thing as 20th Century English Romanticism?

That's one of the things that I do believe that sets Tolkien out of canonization. His writing is out of place. Where do you put him? Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is easy because it is a war novel. The critics are still not sure where to put Frankenstein by Mary Shelly. Does she belong with the women novelists? Is it a gothic romance? Or is it science-fiction? Well, yes to all these questions. It is the same with Tolkien. Is it Fantasy? Is it a war story? It is yes on a lot of fronts. There is no champion really for Tolkien's work because they have no idea where the story fits. The literary world want to put everything into a category. They all want it to fit into a little box. Sad to say, but is true in most cases. Most things fit in well such as Adrienne Rich's poem Diving into the Wreck fits into feminism. But Tolkien really doesn't fit into the established category. It's like tryinig to fit a square peg into a round hole. The literary world gives up trying and just decides to consider a work not worthy of cannonization.

I wonder what you (forum in general) would like to see happen. Do you want Tolkien to be assigned reading in all British Literature 101 classes? Do you want to see a bust of JRRT in your college library? Do you want his poetry in every anthology text book? Do you want every literature professor to say at least one kind thing about Tolkien every semester? Would you like your college or university establishment to pump out one or two Tolkien essays per year? None of these things are likely to happen. And if they did, what would be the relevance?

I think of they did happen, Tolkien would start to lose some of the magic that surrounds the stories. It would become just like any other novel sitting on our library shelf. When we sit here on the boards talking about the books, we get excited just a bit. We are in a since a few holding something great in our hands that the masses really don't know that much about. That is what makes the stories seem larger than life. It's that feeling along with the greatness that is Tolkien's writing that makes the stories what they are. Now if they were introduced, you would start to see more criticism, more analyzing of the books. We do the same thing here, but it is not what would be on the mass level that every college student is picking up a copy of the criticism and reading it for class. I think it would burst our bubbles just a bit. I myself enjoy reading Tolkien outside of class. It is what I pick up when I know I should be reading the Great Gatsby and doing my deconstructionalist paper. It is my break from the literature world since I'm surrounded by it all day.

Moreover, he disagreed with my fundamental point about the validity of non-ironic literature.

Really? I thought Tolkien has some ironic feeling to his work....

And certainly there is material enough for a few courses devoted entirely to Tolkien.

I couldn’t agree with you more, as long as such courses approach Tolkien from a mythological studies perspective rather than a purely literary perspective

I certainly wish that was on my English degree requirements, I would have signed up in a heatbeat. Then I wouldn't have been handed back my paper on Gandalf as the Archetypal Father Figure in the Hobbit. *sigh*

[ March 31, 2003: Message edited by: Sleeping Beauty ]