The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum


Visit The *EVEN NEWER* Barrow-Downs Photo Page

Go Back   The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum > Middle-Earth Discussions > The Books
User Name
Password
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Today's Posts


 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old 06-15-2005, 03:47 PM   #31
littlemanpoet
Itinerant Songster
 
littlemanpoet's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
Posts: 7,066
littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
That you keep talking, davem, about mountains as "just material objects" points to how our language has developed into all the abstract distinctions that split off the abstract from substance. Not that this is bad, but it has come at a price.

What Barfield was saying, and what Tolkien built into the aesthetic experience that is LotR, is that we are meant to see mountains neither as big rocks, nor as symbols of spiritual things; rather, we are meant to see mountains as a unity. Think of Caradhras. No mountain has as much personality as Caradhras; but to say that Tolkien was using personification, severely understates the case. He was communicating that particular mountain to be perceived by (most) readers the way a pre-modern would perceive it, before all the abstract distinctions pulled away from the mountain all those things premoderns understood it to contain.

"Our stories" about mountains are quite a different thing than what individuals tell themselves. "Our stories" speaks to a communal experience that a culture, or part of a culture shares. There's a richness in that compared to the relative bankruptcy (pun not intended but I'll leave it there) of individualistic reinterpretations.

As to Tolkien and Williams, the Letters speak to the fact that they had a great frienship and quite enjoyed each other during Inklings meetings. Still, their creative imaginations ran along decidedly different paths. If not for Lewis, there never would have been a Tolkien/Williams friendship.
littlemanpoet is offline   Reply With Quote
 


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:40 PM.



Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9 Beta 4
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.