mark12_30, you may have been able to deduce from my posts here that I particularly dislike toads, and you would be correct in this. But I havent written anything that I meant in a roundabout way to represent my dislike or toads.
Bethberry,
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burrahobbit, this stricture against Allegory is an old chestnut always dragged out whenever the possibility of figuration is discussed in Tolkien's work.
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That is because it is a stricture SET DOWN BY THE AUTHOR, and is not the interpretation of anybody else. It is an explicitly stated by the author that he abhors allegory. I think that pretty much mens that he didn't use it. I know, for instance, that I don't use toads for anything.
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I take it to refer strictly to the genre of Allegory, like C.S. Lewis'[...]. I don't think it can be taken to dismiss all kinds of symbolic interpretations.
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YOU=WRONG.
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But I cordially dislike allegory <u>in all its manifestations</u>, and always have since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.
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You know, that seems to apply to more than just the Lewis sort of thing. That is from the foreword to LotR, btw. There is a bunch there about how LotR is not not allegory in the least bit. I would be well off quoting all of it, but that bit sums it all up very well.
[ June 16, 2002: Message edited by: burrahobbit ]