Is there honestly much left?
 

If i'm not mistaken, hasn't everything been pretty much covered in topics here? I mean if someone wants to find something out, they just look it up. There really isn't much to talk about except scraps and such. [img]smilies/cool.gif[/img]

Well, it's usually the newbies that ask the questions,because they don't know that they've been asked before becasue they've just gotten here,and don't know this stuff. And they're too lazy(nothing against newbies or anything)to sift through and see those things.

Scraps! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] Nice word! I live for scraps. [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

yep, if you were a dog, you would like it even more.(hinthint)

Hello West. Welcome to the Downs. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

That's an interesting point that you make, and one that has occured to me before. But, on balance, I disagree.

New topics appear in this forum on a daily basis. And a surprisingly large number of them have something new to say, or take a slightly different angle on an aspect of Tolkien's works. A good example is 'The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy' , which Estelyn Telcontar started earlier today.

Yes, sometimes the same issues come up for discussion. But everyone has different opinions, and often a new opinion can shed new light on something that has previously been discussed many times over.

And people can always read through old topics and add their opinions to those. Again, they might bring out a new angle that has been missed before and provoke a whole new discussion.

In any event, I really don't think that everything that can ever be said about Tolkien's works will ever be said. [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img] [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

That's like saying that humans have discovered all that there is to discover. People were saying that way back in the Middle Ages, and even at the turn of the century (the 1900s). I think that opinion will always be there, but new perspectives keep forming, and thus, new discussions will be generated. I personally think that it shows the deep-seated love for all things Tolkien-related that the members of this forum have. Most of us can never stop discussing things, even if they're the tiniest, most minute detail. In fact, it's those details that sometimes start the longest topics.

Do you REALLY expect anyone to weed through thousands of posts for an opinion on the old toby vs southern star or some such thing? I visit to find other insights,another viewpoint or something missed all together another way around a problem or poem. Its a discussion like I could never get in my real life (consumer lending) I enjoy reading what you all have to say.And Newbies keep things fresh and interesting.

I say keep sharing, keep reading and keep thinking. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I disagree, every once in a while, I'll think up something to discuss! I must confess more of my attention gets devoted to The Movies than The Books, but occasionally the books too! I think this forum, if not one of the more active ones, will still have its share of fresh and new discussion. Just go read the books again, and see if you can't come up with a new discussion! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Meow!

[ October 17, 2003: Message edited by: Liriodendron ]

Scraps can make gorgeous new works of art - take it from a patchworker! [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] Though I have sometimes thought it's all been discussed here before, topics keep coming up - some that fascinate me, some that don't, but are interesting to others. I think that there will be something new and interesting to talk about as long as there are new, interesting members joining the Downs. Each person brings a unique viewpoint with her or him, and this, added to the depth of Tolkien's writing, will keep book discussions going.

As for movie discussions, RotK will keep us talking till the EE is released, at least, so we're not finished with that yet!

Since this topic is not a book discussion, I am moving it to the Barrow-Downs forum (Announcements and Obituaries). Please keep it going there!

The reason why I think all Tolkien discussion, even the simple topics and questions, and even those which have been asked many times, are by nature good, welcome and even needed are because that is the only way new topics, ideas and theories can arise. It is hardly imaginable that someone would read the Legendarium and come up with a new idea which has never been thought of before right away. Discourse, naturally especially so on a high level, is the way to go to derive new insights. Many Books topics take a slightly different direction than intented if something was posted that interested someone else, but did not address the question of the thread directly.
As a side note, I urge everyone who opens such a new matter of discussion (if it is valuable) to open a new thread, appropriately entitled, and cross-refer in both the original thread and the new one. This greatly enhances the quality of the forum as a resource by making searching easier and more effective.

*applauds*
Quite right, Sharku.
Also, part of me wonders if the issue of Balrog wings would have been considered 'scraps'(probably is [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]), yet it has generated much discussion. I suppose scraps are in the eye of the beholder.
Peace

[ October 19, 2003: Message edited by: Yavanna228 ]

I had mixed feelings when I first read your comments. It's true that there have been times when I came up with a question intending to post, and then discovered that another thread already covered the same ground. So, in that sense, I do sympathize with what you're saying.

But, the longer I reflected on your question, I realized there's more than one way to approach the issue of new threads and ideas. First, I don't think it's asking too much to expect people to check back threads before they post a totally new question. In general, we're asking people to stop and think before they open up a new area of discussion, especially in an area like books.

Remember that the important thing on this site is not the number of new threads that go up here in a day or week. It's the quality of those threads and questions. In almost two years, I've read hundreds of threads here, many of which were totally forgettable. But there were others that stick in my mind and heart: some of them funny, some of them lyrical, and others showing insight and real feeling. It's those that make coming here worthwhile for me. Checking out what people have said in the past is just one part of that whole process.

Secondly, Sharku is right. Even if you pull up an older thread, read through it. You may well find there's something in it that isn't clear or wasn't addressed at all. Sometimes the best thing is simply to respond on that same thread and, by so doing, lift it up to the top of the heap for folk to add further ideas and comments. Other times, you come up with a question that's slightly different than the original one so you start a new thread. And, as Sharku suggests, it's helpful to put in a link referring people to the earlier topic.

Just think about this....people have been discussing authors like Homer and Shakespeare for hundreds or thousands of years, and I have a feeling they're still going to be discussing these authors a long time in the future! No one is saying that there's no more to discuss.

The real issue is not that we've exhausted all possible topics. It's a question of using your imagination and brains to come up with a slightly different approach or view. And you don't have a Ph.d. in Tolkienology to do this! Ask yourself a creative "what if" question and post it in Novices and Newcomers, something that's not been done to death before. All it takes is some imagination.

Or, go out and read something Tolkien wrote that you haven't looked at before, something other than LotR. UT and most of HoMe, for example, are now available in small paperback format. Buy one of these or get it at your libary. Then compare Tolkien's writings in LotR or Silm with what you see in the volume of HoMe you're reading: you should have no trouble coming up with questions that haven't been discussed here before.

I guess an honest answer would be this. If you just want to skim things lightly, without giving it too much effort, then a lot of the obvious questions have already been posted on this site. But, if you're willing to stand back a minute and invest a little of yourself--maybe even read something new, you can and will come up with new ideas.

I don't know about new threads or topics, but the downs seem slow to me right now. Less is happening and less frequently. But I know that little problem will be fixed up nicely when ROTK movie comes out. Firstly, we'll get tons of new little down's members running around, and then all the contraversy of the movie itself. Right now though, things are kinda slow in general. I wonder if theres something that could be done to speed things up again, until Dec. 17, like something new that everyone can participate in.

From experience, I would never ever complain about the forum in general being slow again.

The act of discussing is something worthwhile in and of itself. It is much enlightening to discuss things for yourself than to just read what others have said. Besides, if we left alone everything that has already been discussed, the forum would cease to be a forum and become just a reference tool.

*applauds* But I hope you think us older members are worthwhile, too. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] Can't we keep things interesting? I sincerely hope so.

There will never be nothing left to discuss about Tolkien or Middle-earth. That's all that I have to say. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

Especially since the editors of Vinyar Tengwar seem determined to strech out the publication of Tolkien's Linguistic writings [and historical scraps [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]] for as long a period as it took to see all of the Dead Sea Scrolls!

Actually, in the last few years we have seen a whole new level of scholarship in Tolkiendom, with Flieger's A question of Time and Splintered Light 2nd ed., Oxford Philology Prof.[!] Tom Shippey's Author of the Century and THe Road to Middle-Earth: How JRRT created a New Mythology 2nd ed. and the compilation of essays in Tolkien's Legendarium. Not too mention Tolkien's rather major essay [in density and import, if not length] Osanwe-Kenta and the River and Beacon hills of Gondor. Heck, I am having a hard time catching up with everything I can afford to get!

Of course ingesting is one thing, assimilating another and actually participating in communal discourse another altogether...

One might also note the resurgence of activity in the Books - activity on threads yet unexplored here, even.

Yeah, the Books is having a little renaissance, I believe.

Well...after much thinking and pondering, I have decided to revive this old thread.

I suppose you are right when you say that we can never finish talking about Tolkien's work, yet how much of that is splitting ends? Is that really....shall we say, good? How much is accomplished when we split ends? How much of Tolkien's work is disenchanted? Yes, I know this has already been addressed twice over in threads such as the Canonicity one I think...but there is a saying that I think applies here: Trying to disect a joke is like disecting a frog. In the end, they both die.

I haven't been here long, I know that I am probably out of place, and I know that I am not a Tolkien doctor, but it seems to me as if this forum is getting flat...stale...like a bottle of coke that has been in Tolkien's sun for too long.

I just think that it would be healthful for the Downs to expand. Right now it seems so...one dimensional...and is that a good thing? There are so many fantasy books out there (Narnia for one) that are just as good as LotR. Maybe we could discuss mythologies (mythologies that Tolkien built his legendarium on) such as Beowulf and the other Norse myths -- maybe even the Greek/Roman/Egyptian myths.

Let me tell you all that I love this forum and that you guys are the best mods ever. I have never seen a cleaner forum, or a more controled forum. And that is the reason I have not left it yet.

And I still love this forum too. I do think it's great...

So cheers to all.

Imladris

look around
 

look at this: The Most Vivid Discussion Of Past Several Months

And note that main bulk of the participants are around for more than two years, and some even up to four. Would not they 'have seen it all" already? And yet, and yet, they keep breaking lances for more than 8 pages, hehe...

edit: Imladris, I have found you there. And you still think we are approaching an end of days? :eek:

At times I do feel that there is nothing more to discuss, but whenever I read the books again I gain new insights that I feel like discussing, only I feel quite shy initiating a thread. Guess it's time to overcome my timidity...

Starting a thread is a hard thing, for sure. What with all my 2,8K posts, I have started no more than two dozen, great part of which proved rubbish, and what is still on-goin is quotes and quizzes mostly.

I never said that. I still think that there are excellent threads out there such as the Canonicity one, though I do think that it began to be splitting ends.

As long as there are human minds there will always be new opinions, new thoughts on subjects...I never denied that.

As for my analogy between the coke and Tolkien's sun, flat coke tastes good too. This forum isn't dying per se...

I guess my main thing is that it'd be kinda cool if the forum could expand and those were my reasons.

ah, probably, I see your point. For myself, sometimes I half wish I haven't yet read anything by Tolkien, so the whole thing would still lie before me. On the other hand, probably I would not get same effects if I were to read it as I am now. We wonders, yes, my precious, we wonders...

I haven't read the arguments of the others, but for me discussing Tolkien has becoming quiet uninteresting, that's why I don' post that often lately. And since I'm here since more or less the beginning, I guess I have read and seen most of the subjects, though I didn't post on them.
I hope that the desire to think about tolkien will come back soon, since I re-read the LotR, Hobbit and Silmarillion.
We'll see.
But I guess in such a big forum, you can't avoid topics being covered twice by different people.
Allthough you can use the search function, there will always be different opinions nad different interpretations on similar topics.

Well, things have been discussed so much, in the last five years, on many forums, that there now seems to be "answers" for everything. :) I feel like.... what's the point of spouting off my *light* veiw of something, when some "loremaster" type will come right in and tell me the thoroughly researched, actual factual answer to something. I'm not saying that as a put down, or in a combative way, it just sort of takes the fun out of shooting the bull! :)

That's another reason why I thought it would be rather fun for the BDs to expand because not everyone is a loremaster at everything.

I don't think that you need to be a loremaster. Even someone "uneducated" in Tolkien can bring up interesting questions or aspects that have been left out by others. It would be boring if we only had overeducated know-it-alls, don't you think?

There are no stupid questions, just stupid answers. :D

My dad told me a story about a guy who wanted to close the patent office in like, 1902 or something because he said that everything that could be invented had been.

Now, this story is impossible to verify as being true, since I'm not sure where my dad got it from, but my piont is this: that things are still out there to be though of, as long as we've got weirdos with imaginations. And you'de be hard-pressed to find a place with more imaginative weirdos than the Downs. :smokin:

No, there'll never be a shortage of things being talked about on the Downs of all places :p.
Hey, this thread is a good example of that. One person wanted to know if there was anything left to talk about, & we've responded with 32 (counting mine) posts on it so far! That's a good example of why we'll never run out of things to say, discuss, argue, & laugh about. :)
Cheers,
Estel

Even if it took us 8 months to come up with all this...

Let's get ready to ramble...
 

Interesting question. I've actually been reading this thread for a while, but haven't posted yet since I have not visited the discussion forums in months (I post in Esty's RPG when I have ideas, check out what's going on here so I'm not totally clueless, and that's about it). So I've suspected that most people will just jump up to give me a lecture on never saying that there's nothing left to wonder. Personally, my only reply to that is that while life and the world contains infinite things to discover and discuss -- Tolkien doesn't, and to imply that his works are truly limitless is to think he somehow achieved full God-like creator powers. :) He is a man who wrote an amazing legendarium, which will still never compare to the wealth of ancient mythos from around the world and all the different fictional works of the modern era when taken as a whole, which in turn will never compare to the ever changing mysteries of non-fiction a.k.a. real life. There is a good reason there's a cliché that says "variety is the spice of life", which is why I'm very reluctant to agree with those who say you can never devote too much thought to the Professor. As a collective site, maybe not, but for each individual member, I think there is a limit. Some have a much more voracious appetite than others, but still.

I'm not as interested in delving into it as I once was. But that is purely a personal change of inclination. The Barrow Downs will keep getting new members who are fresh and excited about Tolkien (as has been said by others in this thread) and so as long as they're discovering new things about his works there will be things to discuss here. Maybe somewhere at some time they have been discussed already, but not by the same minds, and that is what should matter. So I see the whole issue of there "not being much left", as applying more accurately to personal feeling -- for some people (and I happen to be one) there is a point you reach where you realize that you don't want to know anything more about Tolkien, not because you think you know everything (I haven't even read HoME) but because you want instead to learn about something else entirely. I only have so much time in the day and so much head space to use. :D I mainly devote my computer time to my original writing and writers' group, and my writing is far more inspired by other authors whose works are "off topic" here, so hence the lessening interest in dissecting Tolkien as time goes on. All strictly personal views and reasons.

So I see what Imladris means about expanding. But I don't really see that happening to this site: it is a Tolkien site, and as such is inherently limited to a very narrow list of subjects. It would have to change its very nature to "expand" into something that no one will ever tire of or feel has been personally exhausted. And why should it change? The fact that some members drift away is the nature of the beast, and there is no shame is lessening interest. That will happen whenever you narrow something down to a certain subject, even if it's a broad or deep one. There will always be a point where you get "off topic", and that can feel stifling when you start to discover different things you're excited about. So you would have to remain really into Tolkien to be able to keep finding original things to discuss about him, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Some members will return after a time, some won't, but the BD doesn't need to change to compensate since it gets reborn with every new batch of eager minds. Things would be much different if it was a small site with a mostly unvarying base of members. Then I think it would have to change with those people to stay alive. As it is, there are other sites and other forums for discussing other things, much as it may be painful to be a Newbie somewhere all over again. But such is life. :)

I'm not sure why I wrote that dissertation on a subject that's been well discussed (ha, déjà vu!) except that I've always been fascinated by the nature of growth and change, in people, places, etc. When is it good and healthy to move on or alter your purpose, and when should you stick to what you've been doing or believing? Perhaps that's too broad a question though, as it's practically the same thing as the debate between fundamentalism and liberalism. So to put it a different way, what is the difference between a fad you shake your head at later, and something that, while you may not always be as deeply engrossed in, you will still count as time well spent and a valuable learning experience? I know I stated one difference in the phrases "shake head at later" and "valuable learning experience", but both of those still have lasting impact on your memory, so there's probably less difference than you'd think.

Just because I want to be difficult --

The BDs wouldn't change hardly at all if they studied the mythos that Tokien himself studied. It would still be a Tolkie site -- not a LotR site. It'd be like it was just going deeper into what Tolkien himself did...if that makes sense... :rolleyes:

Ditto ditto ditto to infinity! :D

Cheers,
Imladris

Tales Before Tolkien
 

Good point. Have you read or seen this (fairly new) book out called Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy ? It's a little different kind of LotR related book than most of hte ones out there, featuring stories that supposedly inspired Tolkien. Once upon a time I got it from the library thinking I'd read them all and then post up a spiffy BD thread discussing the various stories and their possible impact on different aspects of his writings .... but I never actually got around to reading the book. So I'm not even sure what basis the claim that those are stories which inspired Tolkien is founded on. A heh heh heh.... These day I seem to be full of clever intentions that never actually come to fruition. ;)

On the orginal question...
 

This is really questioning most of academia, particularly the literary side. Not that the field should be bereft of question and left unchallenged by any means, but the question is perhaps broader than suspected.

For example, certain authors have been studied for thousands of years (some by JRRT himself). Others for several hundred years - and some chap from Stratford-upon-Avon is a good example of this. You may imagine that several million people studying the Bard for a over three hundred years might deaden the field a little, but far from it. Try asking a full-time Shakespeare-scholar (I know a couple) that there is little left to say, and they will smile at you, perhaps affectionately, but with a certain tiredness and a glint in the eye that speaks of a long conversation to come...

Not to compare Professor and Bard directly, mind, but if the text still has an effect on people (I removed the word 'profound' from that clause, but I'll hear argument), then there will still be much to discuss.

I'll take this argument to a somewhat long-winded but logical end-point: so long as people are unique and have unique reactions to events and stimuli, including literature, then discussion of those matters shall continue; from the mundane to the sublime. The key ancillary to this is, of course, that we must invest much in the education of each generation so that at least such discourse is fruitful.

Rimsky

I'm reviving this thread due to an observation of mine in The Books subforum. Whether I am merely hallucinating or someone has noticed this as well, I would like to hear your opinions.

I noticed that The Books has not been as active as it used to be since the Chapter-by-Chapter started. Don't get me wrong, I love posting there and I believe it is a great addition to the forum. But does this mean that most of the things we would like to discuss regarding the books are being, or will be, discussed there? Or is our worst nightmare of the lack of things to talk about finally coming true?

Or maybe it's just my vision problems... :rolleyes:

Lhunardawen, as I see it, the Books forum had slowed down considerably before the CbC sub-forum opened. That is due to many factors - no more movies to anticipate, so we've had much less traffic in the last few months; real life, which always gets in the way of online presence at some time, so that some formerly active posters have less time here; and the simple fact that there have been so many discussions already that it's difficult to find a fresh topic or point-of-view. Since the Chapter-by-Chapter sub-forum opened, it drew people back into discussions and sparked some branches that grew new leaves (= threads) on Books.

The slowing down you've observed came first, not as a result of the CbC discussions.