[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

What if - just consider it, mind you - what if the sixpence actually represents something that both the literati and Tolkien were looking for?

Why on earth would Tolkien be interested in the literati's dropped sixpence?

Perhaps they were looking for the same thing, albeit with a different understanding of what it actually was, but it is rather presumptious of Shippey (or, at best, purely his subjective opinion) to suppose that Tolkien was looking in the right place whereas the others were not. I tend to think, however, that each party in this (increasingly stretched) allegory was looking for something entirely different. Good luck to them both, I say. Each to their own.

Originally Posted by davem

It strikes me that most of the critics Shippey is referring to don't actually know what Tolkien was talking about. They can't get beyond the 'Elves & Dwarves' - which to them are the same as the 'Pixies & Gnomes' of bad children's stories. Hence, because they can't see beneath the surface they assume there are no depths.

Which itself assumes that there are "depths" there which they would be interested in or which would be of some value to them. For some people there are. But for many others there are not. Let's face it, there is a vast majority of people who are not interested in what Tolkien had (or was trying) to say, or for whom his works hold little in the way of meaning. Some enjoy his works simply as cracking good yarns (which is indeed what I regard them as, first and foremost) and little more. Others are simply find that they do not appeal to them.

Even assuming that there is some hidden "Truth" which Tolkien's works have the capacity to reveal (a proposition with which, as you know, I am at best dubious), there will be people who, through no fault of their own, will simply not be able to perceive that "Truth" (if it exists) via the medium that he provided, although they may find (or think they have found) the means to do so via other media.

Which is a very long-winded way ( ) of saying that, while I deprecate narrow-minded criticism of Tolkien's works grounded solely on the basis that they are "fairy stories" or "boy's own tales", I would not criticise others for looking elsewhere for whatever it is that they are looking for or are interested in.

Through the device of the "sixpence dropped earlier in the darkness", Shippey is resting his entire allegory on the assumption that that is the only place where people should be looking. It is a self-serving (or allegory-serving) device and therefore gives rise to an assumption which I do not consider to be justified.

Originally Posted by davem

I've yet to come across one critic of Tolkien who could actually say what he was on about.

Can anyone, truly?

Or maybe they're just looking in the light 'cos they're scared of the dark (where the Goblins are......)

Or perhaps it's because they can see better and will therefore be better able to understand and make use of whatever it is they find ...