Quote:
I think you're splitting academic hairs when trying to find fault with such well loved/enjoyed books.
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i.e. you think them faultless.
I am not ‘trying’ to find fault. That would imply that I have some desperate desire to find flaws within Tolkien’s works. That is simply not true. In fact, I have ‘found’ flaws. I did not go looking for them. I did not necessarily want them to be there. But being there I will not avoid their presence.
Reading through this thread I have seen ever more convoluted arguments for these events;
1. The use of archaic language.
2. The jarring change in style and tone.
For the first we have the view that either things can only be presented in a certain way if the language used is archaic. Or that archaic language is superior for these descriptions.
When in my view the simply answer is that Tolkien simply wanted it to sound epic and to ape the works he was fond of.
For the second we have had different authors posited. We have had the theory of hobbits referring to funeral orations for Theoden when writing their account of the events.
When, after reading the HOME series, the simple answer is that Tolkien began the book as a sequel to the Hobbit, with childish names and woeful characters (a hobbit called trotter with wooden shoes indeed), and that once he had morphed this into a sequel to the Silmarillion (partly no doubt because he could not get the latter published) he failed to go back and sufficiently correct the earlier clashes of tone.
This is the only conceivable reason for presenting a Fox’s viewpoint within the same book that soon blossoms with Lo’s and Behold’s left, right and centre.