Tom Bombadil – An Intriguing Answer !

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Ditto. Great find, Faramir. And it's not hard to imagine Saruman in Sauron's place, because we all know Saruman was just a cheap copycat of Sauron.

I don't know...Sauron is known to have more of a sense of humor.

[Balfrog]

Jallanite

The rhetoric is becoming unnecessarily belligerent. It is disappointing that you are using ad hominem attacks against an author who certainly doesn't deserve such treatment. By repeatedly calling her a “crank” switches me off in continuing to try to engage in intelligent discourse.

The fact remains that you slammed this writer even before seeing her work based on speculation from others in a different forum who also had never read her work. It's a shame you were not prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt and refrain frpm attacking her essay with only a quarter of it being available. In short – we can all see the mindset was already formed and that she didn't receive a fair hearing.
Can we really see you as an adequate juror – let alone judge?

If you want to continue this discussion in an academic way – then please try to provide balance and objectivity. Your posts to date are so extreme they are beginning to possess an air of desperation.
Some of the arguments you are bringing in to justify your position of Priya Seth's essay being technically unsound, are very poor. For example:

(a) Using hobbit-lore in the form of poetry to buttress your arguments is highly questionable. Seasoned academics recognize the danger behind the 'truth' of that rhyme and refuse to consider its accuracy in understanding the origins or nature of Tom Bombadil (e.g. see S. Jensen on TB per slimy.com).

(b) Being fixated on the word 'enigma' being only interpretative in the way you want to think of it, is again not academically sound. Given as Priya Seth points out, the word's origin does lie in Greek and its root in 'riddle', then it behooves us to listen. We cannot absolutely preclude that Tolkien wasn't thinking that way. There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to acknowledge that.

(c ) As Priya Seth stated in the Preface to Part II - she did not pull her theory out of thin air.

https://priyasethtolkienfan.wordpres...cks-and-power/

There is logic to her proposal and she outlines its path. I can both follow it and understand it too. I'm not sure why you cannot acknowledge that the theory is a neat one and deserving of consideration rather than instantaneous dismissal.

Given the above – I will leave it to others to decide who is the real “crank”.

[Balfrog]

For those who want a more balanced and positive opinion of Priya Seth's essay – I personally found Part I:

(a) Well written and easy to read and follow.
(b) Logically laid out.
(c) The sub-divisions were helpful.
(d) The Summary was helpful.
(e) The usage of quotes from Tolkien's books and letters to bolster her theory is in line with other similar academic works.
(f) Not one quote has been mistakenly transposed.
(g) The avoidance – in general - of using quotes other than 'canon' is a plus.
(h) The avoidance of using material from hobbit-lore poetry and LotR drafts is a big plus.
(i) The fact that her theory is founded on two of Tolkien's letters (No. 153 & the 1964 one to Mr. Mroczkowski) means the grounding is solid. If Tolkien himself said that TB is an 'allegory' twice and emphasized it – then I see no reason why Priya cannot build on that. This is really no different than S. Jensen's theory that TB was a 'Nature spirit' because Tolkien strongly implied that in Letter No. 19. In my opinion, Priya Seth's theory has a little more weight because it was based on TB's character after LotR was published, while Jensen's is based on pre-LotR correspondence.
(j) Nothing different about Priya fitting her theory to include observations about TB and aligning them with Tolkien's quotes to bolster it, than other academics have done.

In my opinion, Priya Seth has not unreasonably extrapolated from the 1964 correspondence to P. Mroczkowski and rightfully explored the possibility of an 'allegory'. We must ask ourselves:

Why is this like a 'play'?
Why did Tolkien place emphasis on the word 'play'?
Why is it that the world outside contains off-stage characters such as 'stagehands, the producer and author'?
Why is it that Tom does not belong on-stage?
What precisely are the 'chinks in the scenery'?
Why are there simultaneous planes of reality that involve Tom?

Until now – as far as I can tell – Priya Seth has been the only person to offer up a solution that connects everything together. Kudos to her for having a go!

And to add substance to her theory, Priya has somewhat uniquely linked in and explained in Part II how TB performed all of those extraordinary 'tricks'

https://priyasethtolkienfan.wordpres...cks-and-power/


. How many theories after 60 years can do that!!!!

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Balfrog

Jallanite

The rhetoric is becoming unnecessarily belligerent. It is disappointing that you are using ad hominem attacks against an author who certainly doesn't deserve such treatment. By repeatedly calling her a “crank” switches me off in continuing to try to engage in intelligent discourse.

I agree jallanite is overly aggressive, and that this tends to move things away from discussion and towards conflict.

However, calling someone "a crank writer" after dissecting her actual arguments is not what is usually understood by "ad hominem".

The fact remains that you slammed this writer even before seeing her work based on speculation from others in a different forum who also had never read her work.

What are you referring to here? Has something been edited out of earlier posts?

It's a shame you were not prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt and refrain frpm attacking her essay with only a quarter of it being available. In short – we can all see the mindset was already formed and that she didn't receive a fair hearing.
Can we really see you as an adequate juror – let alone judge?

But you were the one who started the topic, asking for "any thoughts from others", regarding the then largely-unpublished essay. If it was too incomplete for anyone to be able to assess it fairly... maybe you should have waited?

And from that point on you essentially seem to be saying, "yeah, well, *I* agree with her", which is all well and good, but doesn't exactly give us much with which to engage.

[PrinceOfTheHalflings]

I have read Ms Seth's earlier book, as well as her latest writing on Tom Bombadil.

In the book, she spends several chapters trying to puzzle out whether the Balrog had wings, as if this was a particular puzzle that Tolkien had left us. However, there is NOTHING whatsoever in The Lord Of The Rings to indicate that the matter of the Balrog's wings was anything other than unintentional ambiguity. The great debate about the wings really only started after Tolkien died, as far as I can tell, so looking for coded answers in the text seems like a fool's errand. Of course, Ms Seth finds three anagrams that supposedly reveal the hidden truth. I won't spoil the surprise.

Her argument that Tolkien "must" have left a coded message about the Balrog is based on Tolkien being familiar with codes - both through his work in the First World War and also because he sent coded messages to Edith during that war to tell her where he was (something that was forbidden). He must have been pretty good because the military censors never noticed. However, just because Tolkien could encode a "secret message" in a text proves nothing whether there is one or more "messages" about the Balrog hidden in the text, and frankly it is quite easy to find all sorts of unintentional anagrams in a given piece of text.

I thought her Tom Bombadil essay showed more promise. The idea of the theatre/audience was interesting. However, before Part IV I thought to myself "I bet there's going to be another bloody anagram!" and, of course, there was. The anagram itself only reveals what most people assume about Tom - that he is a Maia. So hardly an "intriguing answer" is it?

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by PrinceOfTheHalflings

Her argument that Tolkien "must" have left a coded message about the Balrog is based on Tolkien being familiar with codes - both through his work in the First World War and also because he sent coded messages to Edith during that war to tell her where he was (something that was forbidden). He must have been pretty good because the military censors never noticed. However, just because Tolkien could encode a "secret message" in a text proves nothing whether there is one or more "messages" about the Balrog hidden in the text, and frankly it is quite easy to find all sorts of unintentional anagrams in a given piece of text.

People who expect to see secret signs and codes tend to find them, whether they really exist, or not.

Honestly, I've never gotten why the wings question merited the apparent controversy around it. To me it's just an interesting side issue. And they did not have wings, of course.

Originally Posted by PrinceOfTheHalflings

I thought her Tom Bombadil essay showed more promise. The idea of the theatre/audience was interesting. However, before Part IV I thought to myself "I bet there's going to be another bloody anagram!" and, of course, there was. The anagram itself only reveals what most people assume about Tom - that he is a Maia. So hardly an "intriguing answer" is it?

Yeah, the Maia argument is pretty shopworn. That's the go-to answer it seems, for any seeming immortals in Arda who can't be otherwise classified.

[Zigûr]

Has anyone ever read The Rule of Four (2004) by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason? It's a Dan Brown-ish novel in which the plot revolves around the idea that the obscure 15th century text Hypnerotomachia Poliphilli is actually a coded message which, if decoded, reveals the location of a number of Renaissance treasures saved from the Bonfire of the Vanities.

Pretty ridiculous stuff, as you can imagine.

The idea that Tolkien left anagrams in his work to reveal secrets always reminds me of that novel. It's notionally an intriguing premise for a narrative, but not very consistent with what happens in real life.

By the way, Balrogs did not have wings and Tom was not a Maia

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Has anyone ever read The Rule of Four (2004) by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason? It's a Dan Brown-ish novel in which the plot revolves around the idea that the obscure 15th century text Hypnerotomachia Poliphilli is actually a coded message which, if decoded, reveals the location of a number of Renaissance treasures saved from the Bonfire of the Vanities.

Yes! There were a whole lot of those secret-message-historical-conspiracy yarns published around then, and my aunt bought *all* of them. If that's the one I think it was, it's better written than most, but also more pretentious and *much* whinier. Sort of "The Da Vinci Code" as narrated by Holden Caulfield.

By the way, Balrogs did not have wings and Tom was not a Maia

What have you done???

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Has anyone ever read The Rule of Four (2004) by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason? It's a Dan Brown-ish novel in which the plot revolves around the idea that the obscure 15th century text Hypnerotomachia Poliphilli is actually a coded message which, if decoded, reveals the location of a number of Renaissance treasures saved from the Bonfire of the Vanities.

Pretty ridiculous stuff, as you can imagine.

Have you read Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum? It makes these other Dan Brown-type novels look like child's play. Perhaps that's because Eco is actually a professor of semiotics, and the satiric story is about three publishers who become bored with their work and decide to invent a conspiracy just for intellectual fun; fun until other conspiracy groups believe their crackpot plot.

In a world without PCs (1989), I had to read this with encyclopedias on standby for the amount of allusions, citations, quotes, etc. In certain parts it's completely mind-boggling.

Originally Posted by Zigûr

The idea that Tolkien left anagrams in his work to reveal secrets always reminds me of that novel. It's notionally an intriguing premise for a narrative, but not very consistent with what happens in real life

By the way, Balrogs did not have wings and Tom was not a Maia

Interestingly enough, did you know that if you played the original tape of Tolkien reciting the "Bridge of Khazad-dum" chapter looped backwards, it says:

Balrogses have Wingsies. Balrogses have Wingsies. Balrogses have Wingsies. Balrogses have Wingsies. Balrogses have Wingsies. Balrogses have Wingsies. Balrogses have Wingsies...

Some researchers suggest this was during Tolkien's White Album period.