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...implausible ring-representing-marriage theories...
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Implausible?! How dare you! [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
The board is open to theories of all shapes and sizes, subject to the ability of our membership to maintain a reasonable level of self-control and to keep the discussion within hailing distance of Tolkien. Even your homoerotic inquiry that foreshadowed the later, more explosive thread to which you allude was conducted at a reasonably intelligent level. In the case of Eve, the moderators bent over backwards to protect the integrity of the board’s policy of freedom of expression; the aforementioned thread was eventually closed not because of the ideas expressed, but rather because of the discussion styles employed and because the thread eventually wandered hopelessly off-topic. WWII threads have arisen in the past, but since the parallels quickly break down (and since WWII isn’t exactly a controversial hot-button topic), they’ve never picked up much steam. Other theories (I’m thinking in particular of a certain complex of Ring-symbolism analysis here) are perhaps ahead of their time, and are met with scorn, confusion, misunderstanding, or just plain old apathy – cases of pearls before swine and all that, you know, which nevertheless create relatively little fuss.
Religion is a notorious hot-button topic, yet we’ve had surprisingly little ruckus over it here, for a variety of reasons. One is that it’s difficult to assert that there’s
no Christian content in LotR. Even if we take the prof at his word, the simple fact is that Tolkien was as outspoken about his religion as he was in his denials of allegorical content. It would be rather amazing if certain symbols and motifs from his belief system weren’t found within his
magnum opus, even if the prof consciously intended a completely religion-free work. Probing for these parallels isn’t necessarily the same as claiming allegorical intent or content.
Another reason that religious discussion has never gotten far out of hand is that the prof was successful after all – his references to Christianity are so abstract and his anti-allegorical intentions so pure that he’s made no controversial claims which might give rise to doctrinal battles. You can see shades of Christianity (and other religions and cultural mythos, perhaps, if you like), but you ultimately have to accept Middle-earth for what it is – a “sub-creation” and not an allegory.