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Old 10-05-2005, 04:20 PM   #45
Aiwendil
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Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,224
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Lalwende wrote:
Quote:
The Silmarillion could be said to be written from the point of view of the Noldor. The story of Eol is a case in point; it is debatable whether he did wrong in marrying Aredhel, but the treatment he received when he went to Gondolin often seems harsh.
Really? If the facts reported in the Silmarillion are to be trusted, Eol kept Aredhel in Nan Elmoth against her will and forcibly married her.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that there's a difference between thinking that the Silmarillion is biased and thinking that it's false. But unless it is, in certain respects, false, the room for it to be biased is rather limited.

There's also the question of what it means to wonder whether a fictional story is "true" - what we mean to ask, of course, is not whether it's literally true but whether it's true or false within a supposed fictional world. But what defines that world if not the narrative whose veracity we're doubting?
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