Tolkien and the Book

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bb

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'?

Intriguing question. Essentially, the difference between memory & written record is that memory is 'active' & unfixed - what it records is changeable & updatable if new facts are discovered or enhancements desired. In short, memory is a living process.

Writing on the other hand is fixed, static, unchangeable - or if you do change it you are in effect producing something different. Records held in the memory are alive, written records are dead. Its perhaps significant that those who do not die have (are) living records of the past, so that in a way the past is 'alive' & evolving within them, whereas those who do die produce 'dead' fixed, records.

Hope that makes some kind of sense - the way a race or culture's lore is retained (in fact the very nature & form :fixed or changeable, active or static, open -ended or precisely defined) is a product of that race/culture's nature.

Except.....

Rohan is an oral culture, without written records of any kind.

('I'll get me coat....')