[davem]

Originally Posted by Helen

What other trolls names do we know? What other troll conversations do we overhear? None. They're too busy fighting.

Sorry, but the trolls of TH are different. The 'argument' is about why. Either Bilbo produced such a travesty of the facts as to call his whole account into question, or we have a totally unrelated story grafted on to the Legendarium - to the disadvantage of both.

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."

I'm not saying 'playfulness is verboten' - I'm saying in the context of the Legendarium [/i]that particular kind[/i] of playfulness is out of character. If that kind of thing did not appear in TH it would simply feel wrong in the context of the Legendarium as a whole. Its the wrong kind of 'merrymaking'. The Elves of Rivendell in TH are just silly - the epic 'tragedy' is absent.

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.

He put an adapted version of it into The Sil, & even after writing The Quest of Erebor he realised it didn't 'fit'.

Some of the details of tone & treatment are, I now think...mistaken. (Letter 131)

I might not (if the story had been more carefully written & my world so much thought about 20 years ago) have used the expression 'Poor little blighter.' just as I should not have called the troll William (Letter 154)

The Hobbit was originally quite unconnected, though it inevitably got drawn in to the circumference of the greater construction; & in the event modified it. It was unhappily really meant, as far as I was conscious, as a 'children's story', & as I had not learned sense then, & my children were not quite old enough to correct me, it has some of the silliness of manner caught unthinkingly from the kind of stuff I had served to me..(Letter 163) See also Letters 215 & 234.

Even so it (TH) could really stand quite apart, except for the references (quite unneccessary, though they give an impression of historical depth) to the Fall of Gondolin. Letter 257.

I think I can call on Tolkien's support - particularly in what he says in that last quote. TH could (should?) stand quite apart. One could not say that of LotR...

Originally Posted by Lalwende

Even if Tolkien genuinely hated The Hobbit (and I don't think he did - he was merely being perfectionist as usual) then the fact cannot be altered that it was published prior to LotR and without it there wouldn't even have been LotR. It is a fitting prologue to the longer work.

No-one said he hated it. I said I loved it, but as a work in its own right, not as a part of the Legendarium.

OK, so we might read LotR very well without it as we can get 'the basics' from the later text, but it is a sorry state of affairs when we are told that it is not necessary as though reading Tolkien's work was merely an ordeal to be got through. Where is the magic in that? We might as well read Brodies' Notes and have done. Flieger's argument sounded rather like a long-winded way of trying to justify why she didn't like The Hobbit and it didn't work as an argument as she contradicts herself.

I don't see it as 'an ordeal' I just don't see it as a necessary 'prequel'. The true 'prequel' to LotR is The Sil.

(Flieger's argument didn't sound 'self-contradictory' to me....waits for slap )