Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Bethberry
This 'click' as you name it (do you know a book calledClick which Lynn Crosbie edited?) is an incredible feeling-
|
No, but I'll have to look out for it. this expression, that somethign just 'clicks' is a common English expression, & I thought is was common to all English speaking people - though I remember Jung referred to it as an expression the English have.
I suppose what I like about Tolkien's approach in Giles is that he doesn't, unlike the writers of Bored of the Rings & the Soddit, tell you exactly what he's satirising or parodying, so most readers will read Giles just as a story - though the odd references to old Lays might just inspire some of them to investigate further - perhaps he was doing something similar with all his references to other (unpublished) Middle earth texts in LotR.
Of course, it also helps to create the illusion of 'depth' in both Giles & LotR. but the point as far as Giles is concerned, is that the story works on two levels, or for two kinds of readers - the ones who aren't familiar with the old lays & medieval ideas/beliefs. will read it in one way (but miss a lot of the jokes) & the 'ones in the know' will read it in a very different way - just as readers of LotR who don't know the Sil will read that in one way, missing a lot of the references, & those who do know the Sil (& all the other ME writings) will have a different experience, based on what they know of the background material.
Back to Canonicity! So, what we bring to our reading of LotR (or any other book) & the way we interpret it, what it means to us, is not just a matter of the life experiences we bring with us, all the things unconnected to ME, but also on our knowledge of ME itself. I suppose this expands the debate. We can't simply ask what effect our experiences have on our understanding of LotR, we also have to ask what effect our knowledge of the history of ME itself has on the way we read it. So perhaps its a question of 'The book, the
books, or the reader'.
Is Giles a 'stand alone' book. or does a complete understanding & appreciation of it depend on a knowledge of the Brutus books, the lays & medieval beliefs generally? And further, how much of an understanding of those books can we have without the other, lost, books which inspired their authors? Yet those books came out of a primarily oral culture (which also applies to Middle earth itself, I suppose - to what extent was the population of ME literatate? What other knowledge did the readers, or hearers, of the Red Book bring with them? Can we read the Red Book in the way a Hobbit would? When Men of the Fourth Age heard the stories of the earlier ages, did they understand them in the way we do, or, because of their wholly different world view & value system, did they understand them differently, & take different things from them?
All the writings refer to
something, yet we all (& this also applies, within the Secondary World, to the hearers within that world) have baggage we bring with us. So should we attempt to free ourselves of that baggage, & approach the stories 'objectively'? How can we? Could even Tolkien himself do that? Yet, the thing we're interpreting & experiencing in our own way has an 'objective' existence in a sense - the accounts in the books are the same for all of us.
er... this should probably be in the Canonicity thread.
