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Old 07-16-2016, 02:55 PM   #17
Guinevere
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Quote:
originally posted by Formendacil:
We're talking about Silmarillion fanfiction from people who have clearly spent as much time on the HoME as I just did in the archives of this forum. That is not to say that fanfiction is written by bad people, but there is ample evidence that aiming for any sort of moral height is not to be found in this significant, invested part of the fan community, and a lot of the time their work may be spent putting elements of the gross back into the story.
Indeed!!

with reference to Gorwingels post # 8:

Quote:
he could have, very possibly, been trying to change the lives of his readers by subconsciously sneaking in his own observances on habits in our culture, and telling us (subconsciously again) how to effect our culture by mildly changing the way we act (manners, language, etc.).
I think there might indeed have been a desire to influence his readers, going back to the youthful enthusiastic ideas of the "TCBS" before WWI. Tolkien and his friends talked about what was wrong with the world and how their creative efforts would change it. Their goals were in essence to restore the recognition of truth and real beauty to a world they felt had lost sight of them.

His friend G.B.Smith wrote in a very moving letter, right before he was killed in the war:

Quote:
My dear John Ronald... my chief consolation is that, if I am scuppered to-night - I am off on duty in a few minutes - there will still be left a member of the great TCBS to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon...... May God bless you, my dear John Ronald, and may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot.
The Lost Tales, and then The Silmarillion, were never published in Tolkiens lifetime, but in the long years it took to write, The Lord of the Rings deepened from "the new hobbit story" into something he wrote about in 1971:

from letter #328
Quote:
From letter #328
Looking back on the wholly unexpected things that have followed its publication - beginning at once with the appearance of Vol. I - I feel as if an ever darkening sky over our present world had been suddenly pierced, the clouds rolled back, and an almost forgotten sunlight had poured down again.
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our timid hearts, and ugly Fact defeat!

Last edited by Guinevere; 07-16-2016 at 03:16 PM. Reason: wanted to add something
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