[littlemanpoet]

Thanks for the expansion, Lal. Have you read Beauty by Sherri Tepper? That and her other novels seem to fall within this class as well.

Bethberry, I'm glad I waited until a good month after rereading the book before I started this thread.

I'm not saying I accept Lobdell's thesis at all wholeheartedly; rather, it makes one think, and on those grounds I thought I'd share it.

Originally Posted by Bb

I have to wonder about Lobdell's terms of reference. Here at the end you say he uses 1950 to 1975 to pinpoint adventure stories, but these years are not the Edwardian years, which are the years between Victoria's death and the start of The War to End All Wars, named after the reign of Edward VII (1901-1910).

To clarify: Lobdell was contrasting the popular fiction of two different periods: (1) the Edwardian adventure story prevalent from perhaps 1890 until 1914, and (2) the so-called 'modern' adventure story of roughly 1950 until 1975 (or later). Thus, the morally ambiguous material is to be found in the later period which, I venture to add, seems to be carrying on well past 1975. So Lobdell considers the Edwardian novel as popular fiction to have died with the onset or conclusion of the Great War. Thus Conrad, Hemingway, Lawrence, Fitzgerald and other post-Great War writers are to be considered post-Edwardian, at least in mode if not time period.

I daresay I agree, davem, that LotR surpasses the Edwardian adventure novel mode while partaking of many (if not all) of its elements. Lobdell himself discusses in ensuing chapters how it is that Tolkien does precisely this. For example:

But only Tolkien wrote an Edwardian adventure story with the sweep of the philologist's world.(43)

Also:

When one contrasts the hit-or-miss eclecticism of the Narnia stories (especially The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) with Tolkien's careful use of linguistic objective correlatives [which Lobdell has just got done talking about quite a lot], one can see just how much difference Tolkien's philology made.(44)

But here's a new theme of great interest to me in Lobdell:

The theme of Englishness is combined with an un-English kind of art. [summarizing: the purpose of which, it has been argued, is to preach; in this sense, Chaucer, Malory, & Lewis are English] ... but Tolkien, like Rudyard Kipling, is not.(45,46)

By not "accurately observing the detailed minutiae of daily [English] life", therefore, Tolkien is writing as someone who is not really English, yet praises Englishness.

Thoughts?