[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

I think delving too deeply into the biographical aspect is fraught with danger - we don't know enough about the man . . . . I don't mean to pick on Helen here, but I think there is a danger of reading the text & making assumptions about Tolkien's life which may not apply.

At last something I can clearly agree with you about! I also harbour this deep reservation about biographical interpretation. I think it is very easy to read a novel--or, as Lal mentioned, poetry, especially such as that of a poet like Plath--and become inspired to read the story back into the author's life, which often becomes the next reading one does after the initial story itself. (This is also why I have reservations about determining the author's intent, but that's another story.) I think it is also true that where we lack specific information about an author's life, we become tempted to 'apply' the story to the life in order to make up for the 'gaps.' It is also difficult, without know how the creative mind operated, to ascertain the role of other reading in an author's inspiration. Often readers miss this, as readers will not of course share exactly the same reading experience with a writer (I include myself in this), and it is the reading of the language as much as the desire to explore one's life which informs one's creative urge. (For Bloom, it is also the desire to shake off this readerly experience which informs great writing.) Creative writing can be therapeutic but most of the most beloved works do not derive alone from life therapy--there is art involved as well--art as the deliberate as well as unconscious seeking of 'the right word', the 'beauteous form,' the sturdiest structure' (or flimsiest, as the need might be).

Here I might remind the discussion here of something we all know--the amazing way that language--linguistics--inspired Tolkien. He created the mythology at least in part to provide a place for his invented languages to be employed. Tolkien explores words rather than his own life, you might say. This is not to deny that his life also gets into the story, but to suggest that its presence in the story is not easy to isolate.

Originally Posted by davem

I think, in the post colonial period the inhabitants of these Islands have been forced into a rethink of our identity. 'Britain'/Britishness' seems to have been a concept which came into being with the Empire & has died along with it. The English were the last ones to hold onto the term & saw it as synonymous with English. Since the Welsh & Scots have reasserted their own unique identity in increasingly vociferous ways & have now gained their own Parliament (Scotland) & Assembly (Wales) & the same thing is happening in Northern Ireland, we English have come more & more to seek out our own identity, seperate from the Celts. Tolkien seems to have seen that coming & realised that just as the Celts of these Islands drew on their history & legends for their sense of identity, the English would seek to do the same.

And that Empire began, some have suggested, with colonising Ireland. Although of course it was the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who pushed out the earlier inhabitants to the fringes of the island.

Originally Posted by davem

Why have so many modern Americans not adopted the tales of the First Nation peoples & gone rather for Tolkien's Northern European inspired tales?

A bit of a broad generalisation there, as much of our reading is dependent upon the mass marketing of both our book and movie industries as upon readerly intent. I could name several Canadian authors who are inspired by First Nations mythology, but there's a truth about invaders and interlopers there, too.

EDIT: cross posting with Lal and now little time to reply. Wasn't York originally a Viking outpost? No wonder Yorkshiremen are so antipathetic to Southerners. And no wonder the Brontës received the kinds of criticisms they did--Irish and Yorkshiremen! (Gaskell used the Yorkshire heritage to explain away the 'inelegant' aspects of the works to Southern types.)

I am ever so fascinated by such internet sites as Mysteries of Britain--an incredible wealth of story and legend there. And wasn't Robin Hood a Yorkshireman who fought against the Norman French invaders?