[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by davem

And one could equally argue - if one accepted that M-e was intended to be our world in some ancient epoch, that homosexuality didn't exist at that time & arose later.

Originally Posted by Anguirel

However, I think you're falling into a similar kind of historical trap yourself.

You're saying that Tolkien probably didn't intend his world to include homosexuality, and that that means homosexuality probably doesn't exist in Middle-earth. Not from a historian or a critic's point of view, it doesn't.

We're in a misleading zone already to talk about "homosexuality" as if it were a clear, uncomplicated subject. As you of course know that word is an ugly 19th century neologism.

I think I remeber reading from somewhere that in the classical age the Greeks construed the sexual roles not as hetero- and homosexuality but as "takers" and "givers". The former were adult men (over 35 or something) and the latter were younger men and women. So the line of separation is very different indeed. Tolkien was a learned man and I think he would have known of this sort of thing (unless this is based to some quite recent study on classical sexuality - which is a possibility as I can't recall my source right now).

Originally Posted by Davem continuing the earlier quote

But that is to assume a great deal, because M-e is not our world in some historical epoch, but an invention of JRR Tolkien. Therefore the question is, what did he bring into the secondary world from the primary one?

I don't wish to delve into biographics here but there might be reasons why the whole thing was problematic for Tolkien (his wartime experiences vs. his faith, the current world vs. the ancient world etc.). It's easy to me to see that the prof. intentionally tried to not bring the issue forwards but at the same time we may see hints towards homosexuality (as we categorise it) in his works through the examples some have voiced here already.

Originally Posted by Anguirel

Whether in the guise of angry Judaeo-Christian notions of sin, or heroic Classical notions of warrior love, (or heroic J-C or angry Classical, of course: David and Jonathan) homoeroticism is about in Tolkien, in both good and bad characters, and to deny its interpretation is as absurd as to say that no debt is owed by Tolkien to, say courtly love.

Here I think we come to the heart of the problem this thread began with. I do agree with Ang that "denying interpretations" is absurd. That is something we should not do in any case. The world of the classics would be rather dull if new generations were banned from re-interpreting the classics!

But turning some interpretations - which we all should have a freedom to form just the way we like - just for the sake of profit (guided just by todays' paying customers likings) into a bussiness that claims to be the world of Tolkien is almost just as absurd.

I think that both approaches, demanding one orthodox view of Tolkien's world or the open market value-based stretching of it to suit the liking of today's teenagers (or whoever play the game) are undermining the literary work itself.