[Aiwendil]

'Why do we discuss Tolkien?'

I wonder whether, and to what extent, this question is different from: 'Why do we enjoy Tolkien?' For me, at least, any work (of fiction, cinema, music, etc.) that I enjoy is one that I have a strong impulse to analyze, to ponder. And one of the very best ways to analyze something is to discuss it with others. So to me it seems quite natural that a group of people who enjoy Tolkien's work, and therefore wish to analyze it, should come together in a forum to discuss it.

Of course, this probably isn't the whole story. First of all, a lot more topics are covered in Tolkien discussions than simply literary analysis. And second, there are many other popular authors who nevertheless don't have so many discussion groups dedicated to their work.

Perhaps one thing that distinguishes Tolkien from others in this regard is simply that there is more to discuss when it comes to Tolkien's work. I don't mean, of course, that he wrote more than other authors - on the contrary, a good many were far more prolific than he. But, while the works of other authors can be (and are) analyzed at length from a purely literary perspective, Tolkien's works offer, in addition, other avenues of approach. One can discuss the history of Middle-earth, discuss things that lie outside or on the borders of the actual narrative texts. This is a far more sensible exercise when it comes to Tolkien that it would be for many other writers. It would be neither very interesting nor fruitful to discuss, for example, the ancestry of Nick Carraway or the history of West Egg and East Egg in The Great Gatsby. In a work like Gatsby, those things are simply beside the point; of course, there's a great deal of interesting things that can be said about the book on a literary level, but the facts and history about the fictional world in which the narrative takes place have no interest in themselves.

In Tolkien, on the other hand, the sub-created world, with its history and geography, languages and peoples, is as much an integral part of the work as are the features of the narrative itself. This may be related to Tolkien's own practice of treating Middle-earth as 'real', feigning to be translator and chronicler rather than author. For, of course, the interest of a chronicler is in the thing he or she chronicles, not in the chronicle itself. One reads a history book, generally, out of interest in the historical characters and events, not out of interest in the historian or the particular words the historian has used. Similarly, Tolkien gives the impression of having been interested in the personalities and histories of Middle-earth in themselves, and this inevitably comes through to the reader.

It is perhaps to be noted that, where other works do generate fan communities of comparable magnitude, they often exhibit a similar emphasis on the fictional world and its history. One that comes readily to mind is the Star Wars saga, which in a way comes across as a historical chronicle, a documentary on a galactic civil war, more than as a self-conscious piece of cinema.

Of course, none of that would matter if we didn't enjoy Tolkien's work on a literary level as well. So for a full answer to Aelfwine's question, one still must also answer the ancillary question: 'Why do we enjoy Tolkien?'