[davem]

Ok, so I said I wasn't coming back. However, a number of other Downer's have said they missed me (one of whom is especially close to me - we actually met through this site)

Secondly, I realise that some of my earlier posts upset some people so, I wanted to explain where I was coming from.

Without a shred of sarcasm or satire (just to prove I can do it).

I want to begin with a quote from To Translate a Hero: The Hobbit as Beowulf Retold by Jonathan A. Glenn, which Drigel kindly pointed me towards. http://faculty.uca.edu/~jona/second/hobbeow.htm

In spite of such multiple treatment, however, studies of these issues are with few exceptions flawed in three dangerous ways: by the general critical sin of Sloppy Statements, by a tendency to simple-minded and profligate Parallel-Hunting, and by the Voilà Syndrome, whereby the critic impressively points to something but fails to ask that first of all critical questions, "So what?"

I think this thread has suffered from all three of the 'flaws' Glenn has listed, but we've tended to get bogged down in the latter two especially..

Profligate paralllel hunting ('There's a 'holy' city in LotR & a 'Holy City in the Bible', 'There's a special tree in LotR & a special tree in LotR', etc, etc)

The Voilà Syndrome, whereby the critic impressively points to something but fails to ask that first of all critical questions, "So what?"

Now, the latter question seems to have gone by the board. Or when I asked it my point was misunderstood. From the start of this thread I've been asking ' So what?' Now, that was taken to imply that I was saying 'This thread is pointless', & many, in no uncertain terms responded 'If you think its pointless go away & let us get on with it. But that wasn't what I was saying at all.

In any analysis of a literary work, that 'So what' question must be asked when comparisons are made. What I was asking was 'So what are you getting at, what are you trying to prove?' The closest I got was 'We're not trying to prove anything at all, just making comparisons.' This is where I took a wrong turn, & I admit it.

In response to this statement I attempted to show the pointlessness of making comparisons for comparison's sake. Let's take a series of statements:

1) There's a special tree in LotR & a special tree in the Bible

2) There's a 'Holy' city in LotR & a Holy City in the Bible

3) Aragorn was a king born in obscurity who coming was prophesied

4) Aragorn had arms, legs & a beard, so did Jesus

5) LotR was printed on paper in ink, so was the Bible

6) Both are long books

7) Tolkien wore trousers & so did Bilbo

Now, what can we say about all those statements - before we start judging whether some are 'serious' & some are facetious or insulting? We can say they are all true[. All those statements are literally, factually, completely true. No speculation involved. The next stage is to ask are any of them relevant to the discussion we're having? And the problem there is, until we're clear as to the point of the discussion we cannot say whether any or all of them are relevant or not. If the thread is just about making general comparisons I don't see hoow any of the above statements can be found offensive. The fact that some were found offensive implies that there is more going on.

Now, this is not simply a matter of saying 'Welll, some of the statements are 'serious' & some are 'silly' because ''serious' & 'silly' are value judgements based on what posters consider to be the point of the thread.

Now, I want to share with you two negative rep comments I recieved in regard to my post where I responded to the 'tree in LotR & tree in the Bible' (where I said 'of course Tolkien couldn't have come across a tree anywhere else but the Bible, could he?) & introduced my potential thread 'Lord of the Trousers.

Please don't post private comments. ~Mister Underhill

Now, the first was unsigned, the second wasn't, but that's not the point (not is the fact that I actually recieved more positive rep for my posts on this thread than for any other I've been on (7 or 8 lots).

So why am I giving you these? Because I think it gives us a clue to the problem. Let's say this thread was about Tolkien & Shakespeare. If someone started such a thread, saying there's a forest in A Midsummer Night's Dream & a forest in LotR, & there's a Wizard in The Tempest & a Wizard in LotR, etc, etc one would feel obliged to ask 'Yes, so what?' (ie not 'This thread is very silly, I don't see the point of it', but 'So what point are you trying to make? Are you trying to show that Tolkien had read Shakespeare? Are you trying to show that Shakespeare influenced Tolkien? Are you trying to show that Shakespeare was the first & best writer to deal with those things & that we should all forget Tolkien & move on to the Bard? ie 'Ok, so you've found all those comparisons, so what?

Now, in the case of that thread, if I had come along in my usual obnoxiuous way & said 'Well, certainly Tolkien couldn't have come across wizards & forests anywhere else, could he? Its not like there's any wizards or forests in literature other than Shakespeare, there are no forests in England that could have inspired Tolkien, are there?' No-one would have taken that as an attack on the source (ie on Shakespeare), because it clearly is not - it is an 'attack' on the way the source is being used (or misused in fact).

So why is it that my post, which drew such criticism (the first poster so insensed by it that they even forgot their own name) when I posted it in reference to such points being made in regards to the Bible?

Who knows? But one can speculate. What I noticed at Oxonmoot this year was that out of about eight different talks only one was actually about M-e. The others were either biographical (dealing with Sarehole & the places Tolkien would have known as a child, & another about the TCBS & his schooldays) or interpretations of his work from a Christian pov.

Now the latter ones were most interesting to me, because this is something I've noticed as being a bit of a current trend. There are a lot of books, essays & discussion forumsd out there which are focussing on this very thing - Tolkien the Christian writer - everything from 'Finding God in LotR' to 'The Gospel according to Tolkien'. Dozens upon dozens of the things, & in this case there is a very specific agenda.

This agenda is evangelism. The books make the most tenuous links between the contents of LotR & the Bible & play them up to ''prove' that LotR is little less than a Christian allegory. The White Tree of Gondor is the 'inspiration' for a whole chapter of quotes & interpretation of the Tree of Good & Evil in Genesis, mention of Aragorn leads in to a whole chapter on Jesus. Now, the interesting thing for me in books like this is that they do not mention any other possible influences - especially not Pagan ones. The Pagan/folklore connections & inspirations are deliberately ignored in the desire to 'prove' LotR is not only a 'Christian' work but nothing but a Christian work. The interesting thing about this approach is that while there are direct & clear comparisons to be made between Northern myth & events in LotR ( the Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad Dum & Surtr crossing Bifrost, etc) the approach of the writers of these Christian books & essays is 'this is a battle between good & evil (followed by a series of Biblical quotes & analysis on every conflict between good & evil mentioned). Now, the difference between these books & the (far fewer) ones that explore the Pagan inspirations is that the writers of the 'Pagan' ones do a lot of research & can provide specific examples of Norse or Saxon influences on Tolkien's work, rather than the general Christian ones in those books.

An interesting book in this context is Greg Wright's Tolkien in Perspective. What Wright does is to divide Tolkien's M-e writings into 'wheat' & 'chaff'. The 'wheat' is any of Tolkien's writings in which he can find Biblical analogies (he has a soft spot for the Athrabeth) & the Chaff is anything else. In other words, as far as he is concerned, if you can't relate it directly to the Bible its worthless. He sees Tolkien's work as a means to an end - show his readers that the stuff they like in LotR is the same stuff they'll find in the Bible & by that means get them to move on from Tolkien to the 'real thing'.

Now, we all have a tendency to make statements which don't actually reveal our agenda, or complete our thoughts - earlier LMP stated

....which I find interesting (and have for a while) that perhaps there is more reality to Ragnarok from the perspective of the gods who, in Christian teaching, would be denizens of the enemy; knowing themselves to be condemned, they do the best then can and are true to themselves out of a kind of self-respect/pride of heart. Just a notion.(post 315)

Now, what is LMP's point in stating that Christians think of the Norse gods in this way - what is he saying here?

1)This is what Christians think (& as far as I'm concerned they're right)?

2)This is what Christians think (aren't they silly?)

3) This is what Christians think (..... .......) - ie 'I'm just stating it for the record'

Raynor has fought manfully against the idea of Gandalf being inspired by Odin because, well, he find's Odin's behaviour on the borderline between obnoxious & downright evil - which he, of course, has every right to do, but while that tells us a lot about Raynor it doesn't tell us very much about either Gandalf as a character or about the way Tolkien understood him or what inspired him. Its equivalent to me denying that the area around Moseley Bog inspired Tolkien because I went there & fell in & so have very bad memories of the place. Clearly Tolkien did not think of Odin as 'evil' - he loved Norse myth all his life (& actually spent more time lecturing on Norse myth than he did on Anglo-Saxon.

BTW in my dim & distant past I knew a few Odinists, sincere, decent people. They would have been grossly ooffended & deeply hurt by comments like the above. Its not only Christians who can be hurt by thoughtless comments.

So, there you have it. A sarcasm free post. An Apologia. A devastating comeback. A boring self-indulgent piece of self justificatory nonsense from someone who won't just go away & leave everybody alone...