[The Mirrorball Man]

Originally posted by Mister Underhill:
“wonder” can only sustain you through so many readings.

It's my turn to respectfully disagree. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Tolkien created a world, complete with languages, a complex history, traditions and geography. Middle-earth is infinite, it's only limited by the reader's imagination. Basically, it's even bigger in its scope than what Tolkien intended. It's probably the most well-crafted imaginary world ever created, and honestly I don't think there's any limit to the wonder it can evoke in us.

I think LotR resonates on a deeper level than being merely wonderful, and disagree that it has nothing to say about the real world.

I didn't say that it has nothing to say about the real world (or if I did, I was wrong [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]). What I do think, is that despite its complexity, it fails to address some major facets of existence, such as sexuality and sensuality, transcendental faith and the nature of evil, among others.

It doesn't mean that The Lord of the Rings doesn't deal with important, universal themes that might strike a chord in any of us. It just means that there are other fundamental themes that are not developped, no matter how hard you look at the text. And since Tolkien's work is loaded with an uncomparable symbolic magnitude, the absence of these themes is all the more obvious and unfortunate.

And it has nothing to do with "New Reality" (whatever that may be), faith and sexuality are universal, timeless themes that can be dealt with in millions of different ways, whatever the current paradigm might be.

I’m a little confused about the expectation of LotR to stand up as a mythology in a comparison to Greek mythology. LotR is a mythic story, not a complete mythology, and the tidbits of the made-up mythology of Middle-earth we get are designed to help create the illusion of a “real” world. To say that LotR fails or is incomplete as a mythology is again to (IMHO) misapprehend the work’s scope and ambition.

Honestly I don't think that's how literary criticism works, and I don't think that's how it should work.

Tolkien himself declared that one of his goals was to create "a mythology for England", therefore analyzing his work with this perspective in mind is perfectly legitimate. When any author tells the reader about his literary ambitions, the logical critical question is always: "did s/he succeed?". In our case, Tolkien wanted (among many other things) to create an English mythology, so we should ask ourselves, did he succeed? Is his work successful as a mythology?

The fact that Lord of the Rings happens to be other things besides a mythological text is irrelevant. It is still possible to focus exclusively on this particular aspect of the book, and doing so doesn't lead to a missaprehension of the work's scope, not any more than concentrating exclusively on Shakespeare's comedies would be an insult against the Bard's skills as a poet and tragedian.

Shakespeare did write comedies. Are they any good? He included comedic scenes in his more serious plays. Was he successful? Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for England. Did he manage to do that?