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Davem, your position would have more force if there were some existing tradition of gore, screams and viscera which Tolkien presumptuously violated. But the contrary is true: eliding over the blood 'n guts was the established literary mode: are you therefore condemning Tolstoy and Hugo and the on and on? It's really inaccurate and unfair to dismiss this convention as "Boys' Own Paper" when it was in fact the dominant mode of Western war fiction up until Tolkien's age.
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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