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Originally Posted by davem
An interesting book in this context is Greg Wright's Tolkien in Perspective. What Wright does is to divide Tolkien's M-e writings into 'wheat' & 'chaff'. The 'wheat' is any of Tolkien's writings in which he can find Biblical analogies (he has a soft spot for the Athrabeth) & the Chaff is anything else. In other words, as far as he is concerned, if you can't relate it directly to the Bible its worthless. He sees Tolkien's work as a means to an end - show his readers that the stuff they like in LotR is the same stuff they'll find in the Bible & by that means get them to move on from Tolkien to the 'real thing'.
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I find this kind of reading deeply troubling. Fine, if people wish to read texts in this way, and fine if they wish to draw analogies, but not fine if they wish to then build on this and effectively tell other readers that they are wrong, and furthermore, to even dare to tell
Tolkien himself that he was wrong. It's a very peculiar form of criticism to dare to tell the author that they were 'sinning' with what they wrote. He says there is too much 'long defeat'. I have to question if such readings simply stem from some form of 'guilt' - guilt that they shouldn't
really be enjoying this kind of work, this fantasy literature. What they read engages them as much as anyone else but then the little intellectual/theological pixie that sits on their shoulder intrudes and tells them what was wrong with it. Why can they not simply close the book if it disturbs their worldview so much? I also question if they can really be counted as amongst us, the fans, if they cannot accept such all-encompassing ideas as the 'long defeat'.