[Ivriniel]

And this for Morgothrond before I post the 'next bit' about Longintidinal de-The Hobbit-isation-of-the*r*-ing (ie Bilbo bearing the 'R'ing, not 'r'ing) hypothesi.....erbole.

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Ivriniel,

My replies, following the post where William C. Hicklin refutes your assumptions, were in accordance with his refutations. The incredibly circumlocutious posts that you offered later, while they belabored the thread in both a longitudinal and latitudinal manner, are not cogent to the refutations, nor do they in any way bolster your original assumptions.

Really?

The thought of Bilbo's magic ring did not have any significance to Tolkien beyond it being a folkloric motif, a handy device, for the furtherance of the original story. In fact, Tolkien says as much:

This one gets two 'reallies'.

Really Number one: Really - I haven't already said this, about as many times as Queen Beruthial had cats? and

Really Number two: Really, you really want to really say that, rather than an Unreally? (i.e. to borrow a Tolkien-ean fun way of 'backup up/out' of a dead end argument. As I often say, Feanor was UNfriends with Galadriel--forever (which pre-Facebook used to sound really hilarious to me n my kin, and friends who read the mythology. We used to laugh until crying about some of the linguistic nuances of the works, and Ungoliant's UNlight was 'verily or nigh' (choose one or the other) example.

Even after slogging through an incredibly rambling and obtuse series of posts (with various internet jargon asides, acronymic oddments and Ungoliantine fulmination that makes much of what you write impossible to read), I can say without equivocation that you have not unearthed a single jot or tittle to aid in the furtherance of your point.

Particular nuances and efferfecence-es (spelling mistake for fun--Baggins-es) I think you'll find Morthoron that many of my 'incredibly rambling and obtuse (you know OBTUSE means 'STUPID' not 'TANGENTIAL' don't you) have some little echo of what I loved about Tolkien's etymological and linguistic sense of humour.

And, yes, I'm the 'intelligent idiot' aren't I for labouring - just for you - to actually get out a cogent (sorry, it's cogent, Morgathrond) position statement. I'll summarise the heuristic.
"

...put a lid on the monolithic assumption that 'first publication' [of The Hobbit] means the same thing as 'first conceived' as a Ring [in the absolutist sense, as NOT BEFORE December of 1937]...

Guache self-quote, I confess, though, I do wish to highlight the important point 'stupidly' that I developed in the post series. And I add, that the donging-on-the-head of the --assumption-- does NOT preclude the conjoint, co-existence of the concurrent assumption, that

the ring was a ring in the ring that Bilbo found, in Hobbit Version minus 1000, written 3500BC (ie the 1937 Hobbit) and became a Ring (temporal causalisty loops give me a headache (*Captain Janeway, Voyager--omg, my brain hurts) by DECEMBER of 1937.

This, in my 'stupid' argumentative series means that -- contrasting the two assumptions -- there is a six year window of ***DOUBT*** about which (oh my god, my head hurts) hypothesiss-es hobbitses applies. That is, the Hobbit was READ by CS LEWIS sometime in or around or prior to 1931. We do not know 'which' 'Hobbit' Tolkien was referring to when he states that his ring was the ring not the Ring in LETTERS, for example (and I have QUOTED which LETTER he did say what he did).

Kind Regards to you, Morthoron. Thank you for the fun.