Quote:
|
Originally Posted by davem
I argued this very point a while back - based on things Verlyn Flieger said in a talk at the Tolkien 2005 conference in Birmingham, but it seemed just about everybody disagreed with me.
|
Yeah, and we still argue about this one even now. :P
Mostly as I just don't have this difficulty fitting in The Hobbit with the rest of Tolkien's work on Middle-earth. I thought Verlyn Flieger was being unfair to say it was full of 'Pigwiggenry' and thought "Tut-tut! What a soundbite
that is!". Course I'm interested to see the rewrites, but The Hobbit as it is was quite Perilous enough for my view of Middle-earth anyway. It also has some nice grown up satire on English ways, which is most un-kiddy, and is easily dark enough to fit in, considering it is mostly about a smaller quest, not about the culmination of the Third Age and apocalyptic battles and returning high kings and the destruction of evil overlords and whatnot. And it has a ruddy great Dragon in it, which counts for plenty in my book.
