[davem]

Originally Posted by Bb

Therefore, this is thread in which we can discuss, if you will, the validity of the concept of the long defeat. It is not a matter of clarifying what Tolkien meant so much as considering concepts of history. It is thus not a thread in which you can throw baggage at others simply because they wish for discussion's sake to consider other ways of thinking about history. You, after all, did bring in Blake.

But are we considering the same things? Put aside the conceit that Middle earth is our world in the ancient past & can we make any direct comparisons between that world & our own, or between various theories about our own history & ones about Middle earth?

I think this applies equally to concepts of Beauty. The history of Me is a history of fall from perfection & the fight against the Long Defeat. The Elves were created by Eru to be the height of physical beauty. Those are givens, facts, which cannot be disputed. As such we are not dealing with a 'theory' but an objective 'statement' about the nature of that world. No reader of Tolkien's Legendarium could argue with those 'facts', though they may disapprove of the story as a whole & wish Tolkien had written a different one. By the end of the Third Age the Elves have lost all hope for themselves within Me. Again, 'fact'.

In our world there are competing theories & value systems about both history & beauty & they can be argued about & one can choose which one appeals over the others or is more 'accurate'. In Middle earth one can't do that, because we only have one account - that of Tolkien himself. We can argue that Tolkien's values & beliefs are incorrect or out of date, but within Middle earth itself we can't apply those primary world values without being wrenched out of that world & left with nothing but a few dead 'leaves' of literary criticism in its place.

Of course one can take that approach, & see LotR as an 'anti-enlightenment' work - or a 'Catholic' work - which is much the same thing, but I think that all that does is 'dismantle the Tower to see where the stones came from'. In short, we're focussing on the storyteller & analysing his motives & values, rather than listening to the story he is telling us. One is free to place LotR in the balance on the side of the 'anti-enlightenment & see if that balance is tipped sufficiently to claim that the Enlightenment was a mistake, or use it as an argument against 'modernism' & for traditional Christianity, but to my mind that is a mis-use of it, as it would be a mis-use of any artwork. The purpose of Art is to open us up to something deeper or higher than 'theories' - eternity.

Which is my theory......