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Originally Posted by Son of Númenor
It seems to me that you are talking about your own interactions with the unfoldment of reality in the real world, not Tolkien's Legendarium.
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I was - but that was what was being questioned.
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Are you suggesting that the 'secular' (whatever that means - horrible metaphor in my opinion) viewpoint is one which the reader should consciously adopt in reading Tolkien? Or just that you enjoy doing so?
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The latter. There are different ways of approaching the text, without stepping outside it. One could read it, for instance, by missing out books 3 & 5, & just following Frodo's story, without the more 'action-packed' books. I'm sure that would produce a different effect on the reader. One can read it as a 'secular' work, assigning the references to the Valar as merely 'beliefs' held by various characters. My tendency is to read it fully accepting such things as 'facts' of that world, however, taking LotR as a stand alone work such a reading is entirely possible & we will get something entirely different from it.