Interesting points, people.
I kind of agree with
Aiwendil about the repetiteve meter not being boring, but I yield to
Mith enough to admit that my opinion might be affected by the fact that I've read the Gest this far only in short pieces, no more than one canto at once and often far less...
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Mith
The good stuff in my opinion are the oneshe wrote for the LOTR battles.
|
I sort of agree though, actually all the poems in LotR are just brilliant. It's actually weird Tolkien's poetry has been discussed so little here in the 'downs.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by The Might
I have to agree with Mithalwen though, I don't think a Lay of the War of the Ring would have been as good.
|
Agreed. To sort of continue in
Aiwendil and
Pitchwife's line of thinking, different stories take different means to tell. And as for what I've seen, the story of Beren and Lúthien works the best in poetic form, although it would of course have been (even) much better had Tolkien finished writing and revising it. But even as it stands, it
is quite impressive.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Pitchwife
Another aspect: narrative poetry of this kind, whether rhymed or alliterating, already was an anachronism at the time the Lays were written - so much so that, when the Gest was submitted to a publisher, the reader mistook it for a translation of an ancient Celtic original! Even LotR, being the hybrid between novel and romance it is in my eyes, was anachronistic enough in its day, but I don't think a Lay of the War of the Ring (even supposing Tolkien had ever finished it) in, presumably, thousands and thousands of verses would have had any chance of ever being published - and without the tremendous success of LotR in prose, we wouldn't be reading and appreciating the Lays today.
|
I think it's sort of sad no one writes narrative prose these days. Although it's slightly "outdated" maybe, I'm sure there could be place in the vast literary field for a writer or two. Maybe I have to nudge
Greenie to start writing that.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Pitchwife
The alliterative form of Children of Húrin, reminiscent of Beowulf and other Norse/Saxon poetry, fits the bleak, tragic heroism of Túrin's tale, just as the rhymed couplets of the Gest are better suited to the more romantic and hopeful tale of Beren and Lúthien.
|
Which really makes me thankful he did the Tale of the Children of Húrin in prose, because excluding the few really cool passages here and there, I must say I find the beowulfian meter (I even took a course in literature from early medieval to romance, so I should know the proper name
) very tiring. I'm also looking for a time to pick up the Children of Húrin in Finnish because the story was inspired by Kalevala so it's interesting to see how it might be seen there (and I assume it would be even in the language because the translator is so good she can't have missed/misused it).