Quote:
Originally Posted by Inziladun
Certainly, I respect your opinion. My issue is with the manner in which you express it. I wish that, as Bêth says, you would confine your comments to what people say, rather than the poster themselves.
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The same is true for me.
What you said was “If we didn't see Tolkien's works in particular as "real", would they be worthy of the time and effort spent on discussion, here and elsewhere?” Then you defined
we as meaning “‘We’, as in the readers. That's all.”
My comments were entirely on what you said, not personal. I am a reader of Tolkien and have been for years. So is Mithalwen. In this as on any forum people at various times have disagreements with other members, on what they said. Any poster will often find that another posters comment they disagree with entirely, and then the same poster will support their comments in another area.
The difficulty with the use of
we in arguments is that it often comes down to meaning
I and you and essentially means
you. By
readers you are, as you claim, meaning
readers that is
all readers, and by
all readers you mean
you. I don’t mean you are intentionally doing it, but to a critical reader being told how they read and what they appreciate is infuriating, when it is very much not how they read or what they read. I do not think you really meant to tell me that I was not a reader of Tolkien if I did not think of his writing as
real.
Well I do not think of it as
real. Nor do I think of any fictional work as
real. Especially fantasy fiction. Tolkien refers to the world in a fictional work as a
secondary world or
a secondary reality, subordinate to his own. He also for years worked as a Professor of English, in which he often thought unreal secondary works to be worthy of the time and effort spent on discussion, whether it was
Beowulf,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or
Pearl. And in his letters he appears to consider his own work so worthy, though never considering it to be
real either.
Tolkien never confuses a secondary reality with the primary reality. Two posters, you one of them, seemed to me to be doing this. If what you said is the difficulty, then, again, look at what you said: “If we didn't see Tolkien's works in particular as "real", would they be worthy of the time and effort spent on discussion, here and elsewhere?” I say yes, at least as worthy as spending time on many other kinds of amusement. That a person spends time on a play by Shakespeare or a book by James Joyce or supposedly lower levels of literature has no relation to the reality of such works.
Any literary work may
feel real when one is reading it, and even later when one is engaged in the study of it. But it is still not real, and I think it wrong to believe otherwise, especially when the work is sold as fiction.
You said, “I wasn't trying to "persuade" anyone. I was simply stating a thought about the matter.”
It seems to me that many posts are an attempt to persuade others that the poster is correct. What clue did your post contain to indicate that you really didn’t mean it? Why am I to be blamed for taking you at your word if indeed you really didn’t mean it? How was I to know? Or did you mean this thought about the matter? Then why am I to be blamed for my thoughts about the matter?
Where have I not commented totally on what other posters have said in this debate, along with my own thoughts about the matter?