[littlemanpoet]

Fordim Hedgethistle:

...the whole concept of the individual is a very recent invention. The idea that one’s “true” or “real” identity is internal and not external was anathema to the world view of the Anglo-Saxons. ... To this point we’ve been characterizing the debate in terms of modern “psychological” models of self in opposition to more ancient “moral” models. ... ‘these days’ our stories (and our lives) tend to focus on how we are in conflict with ourselves. ... The heroes of the book are just not individuals in the sense we think of individuality. They are not defined by their inner core, by what they are but by what they do.In Romance the human condition is explored not through individual characters, but as that condition is expressed in its various modes and parts within the stories of different characters. The radical thing about LotR for me is that it highlights the arrogance of modern constructions of self.

Fordim, I think you, davem, Sophia, Lalwendë and I are saying similar things, coming at it from different angles. I wonder if we can between us come to the basis that underlies the whole?

Sophia the Thunder Mistress:

Current philosophy is all in a twist because who knows how many centuries ago someone drew a hard and fast line between mind and body and now the concepts have been alienated from each other. In Tolkien's characters this dichotomy and need to portray the inner self from the first person perspective is absent because the distinction between their internal and external selves simply does not exist.

Sophia, you make the same point here that I do in the Mythic Unities thread, in my first post. Please bear with me as I arrogantly quote myself:

Mythic fantasy is story that contains the stuff of myth, legend, and fairy tale; it works like waking dream and nightmare; in it, concrete and abstract, previously distinguished, have been reintegrated; it is apprehended by the reader as a unity of meaning and being; the signal of this apprehension is a sense of wonder or a thrill of horror, or both.

Thus the mind and body are distinguished in modern life, and LotR has unified them. Check out Mythic Unities if you want more on this.

davem

Perhaps this is one reason why their souls are so 'visible' - this is pre-Freudian psychology - closer to Jung but closest of all to Catholic theology. The Saints & Angel are not 'Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious', but living beings present & active within their own dimension. ... This is not so much a 'fairy tale' view of the human mind as a medieval & pre-medieval one.

Is not the medieval or pre-medieval the "stuff" of fairy tale?

Lalwendë

I don't think we actually have to see a character's thoughts represented as they might appear in their own mind; we don't have to see "X thought that...." or "Y was thinking...". In the case of Gollum, we see through his behaviour how his mind works. If we are talking about characters with 'visible souls', then he above all other characters really does have a visible soul; his actions speak volumes about what is happening within his head/heads.

I quite agree with your major point, Lalwendë. Now to quibble. Sorry to belabor a point, but the difference between evoking character by behavior, versus evoking character by "going into the head", is worthy of careful distinction. The latter is "going into the head", the former is not.

By "intangible" I mean that we cannot quite 'touch' on the essence of his being, his purpose if you like.

He has been enslaved by the Ring for so long that his purpose is to serve the Ring. He has almost lost all hold on his own will. Isn't this the essence of his being at the time of the events of the book?

As I said above, I think Fordim's these days versus those days, davem's post-Freudian versus pre-Freudian, Sophia's internal versus pervasive, and my own psychological versus moral, are different subsets of the same discussion.

What's at the core? Is it linguistic? Philosophical? Literary versus scientific? Theological (heaven forbid!)? Faith versus Unbelief (uh oh)?

recklessly yours, LMP