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Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

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Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby Áthas » July 1st, 2005, 7:43 pm

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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby robsia » July 1st, 2005, 8:01 pm

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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby Leslie » July 1st, 2005, 8:02 pm

"What are you laughing at?"
"At myself. My little puny self," said Phillipa.
--Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede
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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby Áthas » July 1st, 2005, 8:27 pm

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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby Guest » July 1st, 2005, 9:01 pm

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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby Stanley Anderson » July 1st, 2005, 9:16 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby Áthas » July 2nd, 2005, 7:30 pm

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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby Stanley Anderson » July 2nd, 2005, 9:31 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby cheeky reep » July 3rd, 2005, 1:37 am

Do you mean to say that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you've never told me!
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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby robsia » July 3rd, 2005, 11:11 am

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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby cheeky reep » July 3rd, 2005, 2:07 pm

Do you mean to say that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you've never told me!
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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby robsia » July 3rd, 2005, 9:03 pm

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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby Adam Linton » July 3rd, 2005, 10:34 pm

A thoughtful engagement with this issue can be found in Patrick Curry's Defending Middle-earth. Check the index for "race, racism." One scholar, whom Curry cites, puts it well, I think, affirming that the appearance of racism in TLotR is deceptive "not only because in his non-fictional writings several times repudiated racist ideas, but because...in his sub-creation the whole intellectual underpinning of racism is absent." (p. 42)

See also Tom Shippey's work, especially J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century for dealing with other such dismissive (and inaccurate) labelings of Tolkien (i.e., "fascist," "classist," etc., etc.)

By the way, I find that such labeling is often used as a quick excuse by those who don't want to have to do the work of engaging with a piece of writing on its own terms.
we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream
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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby Adam Linton » July 3rd, 2005, 10:52 pm

See also Tolkien's statement, "I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones" from his Valedictory Address at Oxford (published in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p. 238).

See also Tolkien's searing response (in 1938) to a German publisher who wrote to inquire of Tolkien on what they would have understood to be the question of his racial purity. (Letters, edited by H. Carpenter, p. 37-38)

This is all I have time for now. Hope that it is helpful.

Best regards.
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Re: Question on "The Lord of The Rings"

Postby A#minor » July 4th, 2005, 1:13 am

As far as Tolkien not putting more girls in LOTR, consider what the Fellowship was up to! There's a long journey on foot, starving, being shot at, and then there's a war with slobbering, hungry ogres who would love to grind your bones to make their bread.
Here's one girl who would rather skip that combat mission! Especially back in Tolkien's day, women did not go to war as they do today.

Sidenote: A 23-year-old American female soldier just won the Silver Star Medal for courage in combat in Iraq. So cool!

Also Tolkien and Lewis (and the rest of the Inklings) were many times uncomfortable in the presence of women. They prefered the Oxford professors' rooms or the Bird and Baby. They were used to having only the company of men, without women, especially during their years at war and in college; so it is natural that their books should reflect that.
That was actually a point of conflict between Tolkien and his wife: She was jealous of all the time he spent with the Inklings.

The bonds and closeness that those men had is so lost on today's people. Tolkien was recreating that band of brothers in LOTR.
"My brain and this world don't fit each other, and there's an end of it!" - G.K. Chesterton
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