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Originally Posted by davem
It just seems to me that the interesting stuff has mostly been said by the serious scholars & that what's coming out now is so obscure as to be irrelevant to most of us, & that even the interesting stuff can actually get in the way.
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I rather suspect that scholarship is much like fandom in that it has trends and styles and special interests. Once a topic has been explored to the extent that either scholars or fans wish, it quietly is relegated to the back of the library shelves or discussion forum backpages and a new topic arises.
What is fascinating about scholarship (as about pop culture or fandom) is that all the interesting stuff is never done and said. The boredom lies only in the minds of those who cannot see beyond the current fad. One particular approach will hold sway for awhile but it will pass and someone else, with a different approach, will suddenly bring to light an entirely new idea or avenue of thought. The current fad for sources which bores
davem (and in some of its applications, me) will wear itself out eventually OR will be overwhelmed by some scholars' new approach. That new approach will be something inspired by an entirely new imaginative appreciation of Tolkien and his stories and will lead to a swarm of papers in its fashion, eventually to fade out and be replaced by a new 'paradigm shift'. We need only consider the changes in, say, the appreciation of Kipling, to understand that scholarship as with fandom has its ebb and flow.
It is true that students moan about how everything has already been said about Shakespeare, or about Milton, or, now perhaps about Tolkien, but what is interesting is how new approaches arise which provide new ways of thinking about a story or an author. Literature, after all, isn't an archeology of digging up what is significant, but a vital process of the human mind, of making connections. Each new reading or new generation of readers will find its own unique approach, taste, preferences. Maybe the current trend is one which some fans don't appreciate, but they don't need to read it. And it won't necessarily remain the favoured way of reading. Some new writer will come along and make us see story in a new way--the way Tolkien made students see
Beowulf or fairey in a new way--and bam! people will wonder, hey, didn't Tolkien do that too? And they'll go back and read LotR in light of what that other writer taught them about story, or about character, and suddenly, there will be new interesting stuff to see in Tolkien.
In short, there is no limit to readers' or scholars' or fans' imaginations. Sometimes they just have to work a vein to death before finding new gems down another shaft.
Oh, and has Christopher Tolkien ever made any public comments on the scholarly stuff? As a scholar himself, has he expressed any opinion about that heavy lable "Tolkien Studies"?
You know, early BD topics of 'merit' were quite different from what they were when I joined, and again different now from the popular threads. Some people care that the Legendarium has to be consistent, and suss out every potential inconsistency. Others just enjoy the stories. And still others are intrigued by how comparing events and characters sheds new ways of thinking about them. And still others find their way back to earlier mythologies and legends through Tolkien. Chaqu' un a sa gout.