elfling, welcome to the Downs, enjoy being dead! I agreed with your post.
Child of the Seventh Age, I do find something in these books, so that when you say 'England?' I say, 'yes.'
I guess what I want to find out is what made JRRT want to make an English body of myth and legend-- what about the land and/or the people near him did he want to express? I'll have to think about the points of comparison you provided. Tolkien's use of the Ocean and crossing the sea do seem to me to be tied closely to this purpose of making source-myths for England.
More or less quoting my post from the ‘...in the Shire’ thread: When I read RotK, I saw Theoden's charge as if a vision burned through the pages of the book – in contrast to the sections concerning Frodo or any of the hobbits where the narration's standing on the ground and there's a strong sense that one is in the landscape. I don't know where I'm standing on the fields of Pelannor-- mainly I'm seeing and hearing a battlesong and I seem to be floating, seeing and hearing from elsewhere. I know exactly where I'm standing reading Frodo and Sam in Mordor, how it physically feels-- or how it feels in the marsh between midges and neekerbreekers. The one point where I'm physically present in the narration and also seeing a remote vision is on the plains of Rohan, and I can’t see why that should be—still trying to figure that out.
It seems those roots you mention, Child are these parts of the story where it seems like a vision has burned through some unknown manuscript I'm holding in my hands.
Anyway, my reaction to you saying 'is it specifically English?' is 'Yes! --but in TWO ways:
primary experience: what JRRT drew from his life, experiences, and identity
and secondary experience: what JRRT drew from the literary sources he loved and studied. (that’s not meant to be a ranking of importance or value). Child, you seem to be interested in the role of that secondary experience: source-influence rather than life-influence.
Bethberry, I liked this idea of yours:
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To return to Anglic elements in Tolkien, it would be less the rural idyll or even the class model which you identify and more the way in which Tolkien has all the races--hobbit, dwarf, man, ent, elf--play significant roles in overcoming Sauron.
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Yes, alliance between unlike peoples, (albeit with a healthy amount of grumbling and eye-rolling), that’s a theme, and somehow it ties into that way of evading conflict --Hobbits have some and Bombadil has much. I persist in thinking that (the theme of alliance) English. I think there’s more English in first half of the 20th century English to it than anything else. Life-influence, then. I think Rimbaud’s class issues, which I mainly agree with, are similarly life-influence. (Particularly if we include disscussion and debate with friends, family and collegues in the category of ‘life’. I’d like to think I’m having a ‘life’, but who knows? [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] ) LMP, I think your examples of clan relationships are valid. I don't think Beregond's very good at remembering 'class' elements-- he's more like Sam after the journey through the marshes and Mordor than Sam before it.
Also, I thank you for your very kind words Child, but I must point out that this excellent quote is not from me but from Bill Ferny:
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Tolkien set out to find a particular soul for his beloved England, but what we found in reading him was something much more profound.
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I was talking about the likelihood of projecting ones own ideas onto 'Englishness', which is why I'm so nervous about addressing this issue, although I think there's much to it. Bill extended the idea to Tolkien's goals for England and its stories.
Bethberry, while I like the tree metaphor, I think Child's on to something with the onion metaphor-- I like your expansion into onion: crying while cutting. I know you didn't mean that metaphorically, Child, but think about it. It's painful to dissect a living thing-- it defends itself with volatile oils! Like those irritable letters and prefaces on allegory and hatred thereof. The onion OBJECTS to being peeled and diced! How to choose between legends for England and love of languages as the 'Basics', I don't know. You're probably right, Bethberry, there's no way to choose one.
In conclusion, ‘England’ for me will always be summed up by the strange taste of artificial raspberry in those squares of concentrated dessert jello my mother shared out when I was a child and we spent 3 mos in Nottingham (we didn’t bother rehydrating the jello so it was VERY strongly chemical-raspberry)—I hope they’re still making them, or I can never go back to England. [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img]
[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: Nar ]