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Originally Posted by davem
Dwarves in the Legendarium do not take out musical instruments & sing comic songs. Trolls do not have names like 'Bert, Tom & Bill. Elves do not sing 'Tra-la-la-lally'. If Bilbo Baggins says they did I'd like to know what kind of pipe-weed he was smoking.
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Old Toby, but that's beside the point. What other trolls names do we know? What other troll conversations do we overhear? None. They're too busy fighting.
Dwarves, and elves, singing comic songs-- that's like saying, because the story of
Henry V is so majestic, nobody in the battle of Agincourt has a sense of humor. It doesn't follow. Galadriel being "Merry as any lass with daisies in her hair in springtime" disproves it. The idea that any playfulness is verboten, any comic relief is out of place, doesn't hold water in LOTR. Humor even shows up in the Sil, although it's a bit harder to find. "Nonetheless they will have need of wood."
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Originally Posted by davem
TH is a beautiful fairy story, very imperfectly assimilated into the Legendarium - not because Tolkien was a bad writer/adaptor, but because the story was being put to a use for which it was not originally intended. It does not belong in the Legendarium in the form in which it exists.
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I disagree. Original intent was clearly set aside, and although Tolkien had misgivings, clearly he got over them somehow and proceeded to connected the two. I do not see that connection as a mistake, a misplacement, or a mismatch.
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Originally Posted by davem
I admire all the attempts being made to 'explain' Bilbo's 'exagerations', but there's such a thing as 'straining at a gnat & swallowing a camel.'
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davem, honestly I don't think we're the ones swallowing the camel. Tolkien made the connection, despite some hemming and hawing (as was his wont, throughout the development of LOTR anyway, and was also the reason that the Sil wasn't published during his lifetime.) Tolkien put The Hobbit into the legendarium; we're letting him keep it there rather than arguing him out of his decision. Throwing out The Hobbit seems as utterly illogical to me as, apparently, keeping it in seems to you.
After all this I do notice that you haven't voted (few have.) Are you casting your vote for the final "Other" and submitting your new definition?