New Republic Article

[Mister Underhill]

TMM wrote:
Not at all. Read it again.

The sentence prior to the one you quoted is: “But finally it is what is left out of The Lord of the Rings (i.e., sex and religion, according to him) that makes one wonder if this is really a book for adults.” That seems clear enough. I suppose themes like faith, friendship, loyalty, and courage are considered naively idealistic in the “New Reality” and suited only for children (or childish adults).

But the universality of Tolkien's work is not mythological in nature, it's the universality of wonder.

I respectfully disagree. Do people read Tolkien over and over again only to enjoy the wonder of Middle-earth (or, as Jenkyns supposes at one point, to study its maps and Middle-earth lore)? There is that, don’t get me wrong, but “wonder” can only sustain you through so many readings. I think LotR resonates on a deeper level than being merely wonderful, and disagree that it has nothing to say about the real world.

I’m a little confused about the expectation of LotR to stand up as a mythology in a comparison to Greek mythology. LotR is a mythic story, not a complete mythology, and the tidbits of the made-up mythology of Middle-earth we get are designed to help create the illusion of a “real” world. To say that LotR fails or is incomplete as a mythology is again to (IMHO) misapprehend the work’s scope and ambition.

Squatter, I note that your sig is particularly relevant to this particular line of conversation. I wonder what fiction you refer to. I searched Jenkyns on Amazon and only came up with five titles, none of them fiction: Three Classical Poets, Virgil’s Experience: Nature and History: Times, Names, and Places, The Victorians and Ancient Greece, The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal (editor), and Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance.