What was it all for?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

So why can we not say the same about Tolkien's work? Why can he not have written it for us - to read, to enjoy, to be moved by? Why can he not have created his Legendarium because he thought stories are valuable in and of themselves, not merely as means to some other end?

We can say that. From his words in the Foreword to LotR that was his sole intention. Except is wasn't always his sole intention. At one point he wanted to bring about the moral regeneration of England & saw his mythology as having that purpose. What if he had died after completing the Book of Lost Tales? We could still treat that work as an 'entertainment', but we wouldn't have Tolkien's 'authority' (given us in LotR) to treat it so - if we did treat it so we would be going against his wishes.

Yet, as I said, over the years his intention changed (well, apparently it changed. In the letters we see a writer who is pleased when his readers point up religious parallels, almost feeling he has 'succeeded' in some way) but while his intention changes, his stories essentially don't. At first they are 'moral' tales: not so much tales with specific morals, ie 'parables' as tales which are in conformity with the moral value system Tolkien wished to inculcate in the English. Later as his intention changes & his crest falls, the motivation is merely to entertain, to move, but the stories remain the same.

I'm not saying anyone is wrong to read the stories as 'stories' I do so myself. This thread is asking what Tolkien's motivation was, as opposed to the 'raw materials' he used. In partial answer to SPM's point about considering sources I'd point out that whatever Tolkien drew on his creation, the whole, is far greater than the sum of its parts. So we won't be able to fully account for the whole merely by finding out all the sources. In the analogy the man built a house - not a church, or a tower, or a shop, or a school. He built a specific thing, because he wanted that specific thing & no other thing. In that context, the 'raw materials' are less important than what is made with them. A house can be built of brick, wood, stone, wattle & daub, concrete, plastic or paper.

Tolkien may use imagery, or take inspiration, from say Jerusalem, Rome, Alexandria, for his descriptions of Minas Tirith, but his purpose is to get the reader to think of Minas Tirith as a Great City, not to make them put down LotR & pick up their Bible or a history of Rome. In the same way, he may use images & language in his account of Gandalf's fall which bring to mind everything from Christ's sacrifice to Ragnarok, but again his intention is not to get you to put down LotR at that point & pick up your Bible or your copy of the Eddas - it is to emphasise the significance of the event within the secondary world, because that event is the point - Gandalf's fall is not a 'parable', or a re-write of something else. Exactly as the Beowulf poet did in bringing in references to Finn or the Bible - those references are meant to point up, intensify, the incidents in the poem for the aid of the reader.