Mythic Unities in The Lord of the Rings

[davem]

Originally Posted by mark12_30

Anybody out there have a working knowledge of the septuagent? I'm developing a theory on a possible catholic perception of genesis 1-3 to speculate on whether that might show similarities to the Ainulindale...
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There's a very interesting essay in the collection 'Tolkien the Medievalist': 'Augustine in the Cottage of Lost Play: The Ainulindale as asterisk cosmogony' which may answer some of your questions. Its too long & complex to go into at the moment, but is certainly worth looking at. The author shows that the Ainulindale account is much more than merely 'similar' to the Biblical, & in fact could almost be seen as a variant version....

[drigel]

Facinating thread and posts!

The unifying factor for me is language. We are blessed to have the author's primary love and talent to be language. Through it, he was drawn into (or pulled back) ME, and with it, he was able to create something so concise in idea and purpose that people of many cultures can not only enjoy but relate to. Here was a man who also understood myth enough to recognize that the essense that translates so well was the truths that lie in the kernal of any myth. At its source of course was language of the spoken word.

Language, the words we use to refer to the 'things' of experience, affect the way we relate to them, so manipulation of language affects our behaviour, because it determines the way we treat things.

What other than language (besides visual art and mabye mathematics) decribes our universe? Here was the tool that binds (hehe) the story to the myths. Whats facinating to me is that what is the "real" feeling that we get? This gets into what makes a myth a myth. Is it the use of mythological references that makes the story real, or is it that we feel in our genes that there is something real in the myth that was referenced? Here IMO is the unifyer - we are all on different branches of the same tree, but it's roots we all share.

JRRT's world/myth to me is not the unifyer - its the idea that is presented. The sub-creation is as flawed as it's creator. His mind's eye saw something, and his language presented it to us. But his vision was only a splinter among billions.

Littleman - here is my shameless plug for my own thesis concerning hobbits:

hobbitses

[mark12_30]

Which rather implies that all those upon whom LotR has made an impact share the same, or at least similar, beliefs, and that those who do not respond to it in such a way do not share those beliefs.

Disagreed. Many folk who do not believe in Tolkien's catholicism at all nonetheless percieve the truths that he reveals, and describe his myths and eucatastrophes as impacting and working in their lives. And some who enter without the beliefs eventually come around to the beliefs through the working of the myth; therefore the belief can't be a limiting factor, or the lack of belief would block the impact of the myth and forbid the journey into faith of those so affected.

So why is it that LotR appeals to so many different kinds of people with so many different kinds of belief, and yet leaves many others cold?

We've wrestled with that before. But is discussion 'appeal' the same as discussing 'mythic unity'? Certainly the reader has to survive the books for the mythic unities to work. Perhaps their effect is stronger when there's appeal. But

Threadwise I think the pertinent question might be do the mythic unities under discussion transcend the readers' conscious belief systems, penetrating below their awareness and affecting them on a mythic level? However, although I do think that's a pertinent question, I don't see how we can decisively answer it this side of eternity.