Tolkien the Metafictionist

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

And that is your opinion, to which you are welcome. Please respect those belonging to others.

Yet you seem not to respect my opinion in this matter. Fair enough. I don’t necessarily respect every opinion of every poster in this or any other forum.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Yet you seem not to respect my opinion in this matter. Fair enough. I don’t necessarily respect every opinion of every poster in this or any other forum.

While we don't have to agree with everyone here, we do tend on this forum to respect everyone, regardless of whether we agree with their opinions or not. Needless personal attacks, ad homimen attacks on the person rather than on the ideas, are not part of Downs culture and really diminish the quality of the discussion.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

While we don't have to agree with everyone here, we do tend on this forum to respect everyone, regardless of whether we agree with their opinions or not. Needless personal attacks, ad homimen attacks on the person rather than on the ideas, are not part of Downs culture and really diminish the quality of the discussion.

I quite agree. I try to concentrate on the ideas a post presents. I sometimes fail, as do we all. Still, I do not respect every opinion posted, at least when posted, but this is nothing to do with my respect (or lack of respect) for the person. But I try to treat them with respect.

[littlemanpoet]

Despite the risk, I will attempt some clarification.

By real I do not mean literally factual.

By real I do mean being about reality. More helpfully, I consider LotR to be "real", that is "about reality", in that it deals with perseverance, sacrifice, duty, love, hate, good, evil, life and death. Et cetera. Is there an aspect of it that is "real" in terms of place and time? Tolkien says that it partakes of our own history. The story is about us. In other words, it's real. It may not have literally happened, but it's real. It's about reality.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Tolkien says that it partakes of our own history.

That doesn’t sound to me like something Tolkien would say. Where did you find this?

The story is about us.

And who is “us”? Feänor, Beren, Lúthien, Húrin, Túrin, Tuor, Eärendil, Elwing, Elrond, Aldarion, Erendis, Gollum, Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Galadriel, Boromir, Faramir, Éowyn, and many other characters, mostly very different from one another?

In other words, it's real. It may not have literally happened, but it's real. It's about reality.

Tolkien writes about a world in which Elves existed, and Dwarves, and Hobbits, and Orcs, none of whom are real according to most people. They never existed according to most and I have read nothing that suggests that Tolkien thought or felt that they ever existed. Númenor or Atlantis also never existed, according to most.

See the definitions of real given by Miriam-Webster at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/real or those in other dictionaries. In other words, Tolkien’s writings on Middle-earth were not real according to the standard definitions of real.

Tolkien himself in his letters often called his main work, The Lord of the Rings, a romance. He even writes in letter 329: “My work is not a ‘novel’, but an ‘heroic romance’ a much older and quite different variety of literature.”

I admit there is much realism in The Lord of the Rings, as there is in many other romances, such as the Odyssey, the Aeneid, Le Morte d’Arthur, Norse romances of Sigurð, Beowulf, and many others. The Lord of the Rings seems to me to be more realistic than the Mahabharata or the Ramayana or the Finnish Kalevala. But I’ve never heard anyone try to make The Lord of the Rings into a realistic story before now. One of its charms is the elements which are fantastic and non-realistic which you do not mention at all, as is the case with every successful work which is called a romance. You grossly distort The Lord of the Rings by, in effect, leaving out the Ring.

See the definitions of romance given by Miriam-Webster at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/romance . Only the modern definition of a ‘love story’ of course does not fit. The Lord of the Rings is about reality, as you claim, but also about much that is intended to be very unreal, about faërie.

[Morthoron]

Some folks just don't get it. Oh, they'll say they get it, and cite any number of other literary pieces, complete with appropriate quotations from the author to bolster their sere and rigid view, and yet they have a fundamental disconnect in regards to what other people are saying.

For a magician to work an astounding illusion, it requires a suspension of disbelief, and in certain circumstances a wish to believe that the illusion is real. The audience knows that what they are seeing is an illusion, and perhaps some even know how the bit of magic was produced; however, for the eye and brain to be fooled, even among jaded cynics, makes the illusion all the more powerful, and the magician all the more celebrated.

Tolkien was a magician. He was not a conventional author, as the snobbish critics of post-modern literature would have you believe, and yet he compiled and created a world so compelling, a synthesis so complete, that the eye and mind, and more importantly, the heart, is utterly enchanted, and we are whisked away to realms we wish we could live in.

That is the magic. That is what is real.

We now return you to the stale interrogation by the grand inquisitor, who wishes to purge the folk assembled here of using their imaginations, because he lacks that ability himself.

[littlemanpoet]

Oh well. I tried.

I believe it was in The Letters, or Tree.

Enough.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Yet you seem not to respect my opinion in this matter. Fair enough.

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.

[Morthoron]

I believe it was John Lennon who put it most succinctly:

"Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye."

*Blinks*

Ummm...perhaps that wasn't the right Lennon quote for this situation. Never mind.

[jallanite]

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.

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?