[drigel]

So, are we destined to see the creation become increasingly placed in the service of finding out more & more detail about the creator? And, if so, will we actually gain all that much from doing so?

Barring a discovery of personal notes or transcripts, I would say the biographical subject had been covered years ago. We even have an entire book of personal correspondance to fans and loved ones, published decades ago for goodness sake... Most of the recent publications look to me like nothing more than money making ventures that are capitalizing on a recent upswing in popularity.

Unfortunately, we can no more get to 'know the man', but we may, at least, get to know each other (feat we already are on the way of accomplishing, however imperfect the medium may be) on the way, which would be quite signigicant gain.

great point. This site has caused me to think about Tolkien in so many different ways. Much like a good analysis from a Shippey or a Fliger, but exponential. The multitude of thoughts create a nice stream of consciousness, as it were.

I love to read some of the threads in the Books forum but this is why I put most of my personal energy into the RPG forums and private short fanfics. I truly believe that, if all I had focused on was the scholarly end of things, I might have left the Downs some time ago.

Im the opposite. Not that I dont appreciate the inspiration, though. And it's not the scholarly end as much either. I find myself most active on threads when the works are treated as a living thing. Their own life has enough power for me.

I honestly hope that LOTR never becomes one of those books that is required to be read and analyzed in classrooms.

please Eru make it so! I have said before that a LOTR analysis would produce more impact in a linguistics or humanties course, rather than an english class. Dickens yes, Faulkner yes, Hemingway yes, but Tolkien... no please.

At its best, discussion of literature ought to be a process of learning how to read with greater awareness, which to my mind means learning how to appreciate/enjoy story and book and verse in as wide a range as possible. Like all learning, sometimes this requires analysis. It also requires self-reflection and awareness of all the 'tricks' of language available to writers. Too often academics don't approach stories as creative writers would, but that in itself does not mean their approach can't produce minds in greater awareness of themselves and of story

Nicely put. It also depends on how the author constructs the work. IMO Tolkien used many scholarly layers in the construction, but it was for the intended affect of nuance, and the true (and scholarly) love of the essense of those layers. No secret high ended easter eggs (or, "look how clever and smart I am") in his works.

So perhaps all that can be said has been said .... for now .... but let some great new cataclysmic (or not so) event shake the current paradigm to its roots, and see what there is then to say about the man.

Perhaps - but ill pass on a return of a King! But, IMO, there will always be a yearning (at times more or less) for a time (or an imagination) that is beyond record (and scholars), where the land, and our souls were younger. Struggles there were then, but the air seemed clearer.