Minor details and other books (or "I think I've seen this before...")

[Elven-Maiden]

Interesting topic!

The battle between Gandalf and the balrog has a striking resemblance to some old paintings in my church of St. Michael battling the dragon. I think Boromir hit on the nose saying that LotR mirrors mythology, as it is the mythology/history of a fictional world. In modern literature (if you can call any modern books "literature"), there are many, many similarities to the LotR due to the fact that it was such a cornerstone in literature. To make sure that this doesn't turn into a thread listing examples LotR being copyied, you should limit it to a pre-Tolkien timeframe. But that's your call, Lhunardawen.

[Leyrana Silumiel]

Haven't been too terribly active in recent months; my honors thesis and other schoolwork has been taking up a lot of my spare time!

Lhunardawen said:

Now what does the Citadel remind you of? Minas Tirith! And the people of the City were known to be learned in lore, some in healing, still others in something else...all definitely using their human reason. But I was not able to find any connection to the "without the light of God" part. Unless they have forgotten Eru in the Third Age! (But then, that's another story...)

I think I could find a connection with the "without the light of God" part. According to Tom Shippey (in The Road to Middle-earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology), Tolkien was fascinated by the idea of virtuous pagans:

Tolkien did not believe in 'old religions' or 'witch-cults'; C.S. Lewis wrote a paper called 'The Anthropological Approach' which damned the learned variety of that error beyond redemption. Probably a major cause for their intolerance was that both, but especially Tolkien, had some idea of what genuine old paganism was like....Tolkien had grounds to suspect simple views of 'the noble pagan'.

Shippey goes further on to say,

Above all, to Tolkien's mind, there must have been present the problem of Beowulf. This is certainly the work of a Christian writing after the conversion of England. However, the author got through 3182 lines without mentioning Christ, or salvation, and yet without saying specifically that his heroes, including the kind and honest figure of Beowulf himself, were damned--though he must have known that historically and in reality there were all pagans, ignorant even of the name of Christ. ... The Beowulf-poet's dilemma was also Tolkien's. His whole professional life brought him into contact with the stories of pagan heroes, Englishmen or Norsemen or Goths; more than anyone he could appreciate their sterling qualities. At the same time he had no doubt that paganism itself was weak and cruel. .... The Lord of the Rings is quite clearly, then, a story of virtuous pagans in the darkest of dark pasts, before all but the faintest premonitions of dawn and revelation.

(All of these quotes are taken from Tom Shippey's book, Chapter Six, "When All Our Fathers Worshipped Stocks and Stones," pages 198-199.)

Hopefully I've gotten my point across without rambling. Does anyone think I'm on to something?

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Minas Tirith would definitely seem to be a place that highly values human reasoning, and is quite beautiful. It is imbued with the sense of the power human accomplishment and knowledge. But all the palantri, battlements and learning could not save it from darkness. Providence intervened in the simple act of a hobbit stumbling across a ring in the dark, and though the chain of events that sparked, the city was eventually saved.

I can easily see Minas Tirith in Dante's tower.