Tolkien and the Book - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Bêthberry · 09-30-2005, 05:07 AM

Another intriguing thread with which to embroider our thought! Good to see you returning to the shuttle and loom, Fordim. I hesitate--but not overly long--to say, with a woof and warp.

I have always been intrigued by that description of the effect of the Elven music upon Frodo. But to consider it here under a new light: For Frodo, the visions which the music and singing inspire are of sights unseen and lands unknown. This would seem to imply the experience of fiction--nay, fantasy. Yet at the conclusion of the experience, which Frodo says he begins to understand only towards the end, we find that the final piece has been created by Bilbo and Strider/Aragorn. And it is a tale of history.

Is the elven art devoted entirely to recounting tales of yore, the artistic remembrance of times past. À la recherche du temps perdu? Does elven art include the conscious and deliberate creation of stories that are wholly imagined but presented as if they 'really happened'? I know the demarcation is tenuous between history and fiction, yet we ourselves have this artistic difference, of stories wholly made up and stories that are histories. Did the elves? Is their 'knowledge', their 'lore' only completely associated with their past? Aside from Merry's Herblore of The Shire, which is limited to one botanical species only and is a history at that, are books associated with anything other than history in Middle-earth?

A secondary observation is that the elves don't appear to have something which we might recognise as dramatic productions.

not very entish today... in haste.

09-30-2005, 05:07 AM	#6
Bêthberry Cryptic Aura Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 6,003	Another intriguing thread with which to embroider our thought! Good to see you returning to the shuttle and loom, Fordim. I hesitate--but not overly long--to say, with a woof and warp. I have always been intrigued by that description of the effect of the Elven music upon Frodo. But to consider it here under a new light: For Frodo, the visions which the music and singing inspire are of sights unseen and lands unknown. This would seem to imply the experience of fiction--nay, fantasy. Yet at the conclusion of the experience, which Frodo says he begins to understand only towards the end, we find that the final piece has been created by Bilbo and Strider/Aragorn. And it is a tale of history. Is the elven art devoted entirely to recounting tales of yore, the artistic remembrance of times past. À la recherche du temps perdu? Does elven art include the conscious and deliberate creation of stories that are wholly imagined but presented as if they 'really happened'? I know the demarcation is tenuous between history and fiction, yet we ourselves have this artistic difference, of stories wholly made up and stories that are histories. Did the elves? Is their 'knowledge', their 'lore' only completely associated with their past? Aside from Merry's Herblore of The Shire, which is limited to one botanical species only and is a history at that, are books associated with anything other than history in Middle-earth? A secondary observation is that the elves don't appear to have something which we might recognise as dramatic productions. not very entish today... in haste. __________________ I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away.