Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle:
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Of course, there are huge differences between the Ring and Tolkien’s texts that I need not go into here (first and foremost being that the Ring’s creator wants to supplant Eru; the maker of Middle-Earth wants only to supplement the Primary Creator) – but the similarity of the relation (individual to Ring; reader to Middle-Earth) is quite striking.
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Have you reflected what you did write here? "Supplement the Primary Creator" is really the last think of all Tolkien would have intended. The "only" before this phrase makes it nearly a blasphemous statement for people deeply believing in a Primary Creator (as Tolkien had clearly done), even without considering the action it self.
Without a question the analogy is good, since the action of Sauron was clearly blasphemous in the same way. But it fails entirely if once the background of Author of Middle-Earth is taken into account.
And thus we come nicely bake to the subject under discussion: Your interpretation of Tolkiens writing was as freely made, as you wanted it all over this thread. But it can be proved as clearly wrong by considering the additional information available as can be the interpretation of
The Lord of the Ring as pre-war-novel or as supporting fascistic ideas. If you demand freedom in one direction, you can't deny it in the other one. The book as a stand-alone allows a lot of interpretations, and since a book is meant as a stand-alone publication, we are free to read and interpret it as a single item.
What makes the book so attractive is in my view the glimpses of underlying stories, which are at once recognised as the holes left by the author to be filled with our own imagination. Thus the book does at once fire up our own imagination and waking our interest for more information on the subjects of our imagination.
By providing the information the imaginations is more and more restricted. What is the art of Tolkien, which even the extensive editing of his son could not destroy, is that with each new information given or found new holes for your imagination will be discovered. And Tolkien was really aware of this, as is shown in his story
Tree and Leaf. And being less sure in his craftsmanship in writing than his son is, JRR Tolkien would have restricted the publication much more than Chritopher Tolkien did.
What is now the bearing of this to the topic? Well, even Fordim Hedgethistle in his first post had admitted that the approach of scholarly research is "entertaining and extremely informative". None of us would discuss here if it were not for this entertaining. And I think many have come here in the first place for exactly that informativeness of such approaches.
Thus it isn't suppressing at all that the scholarly approach get the majority of posts in this thread. Asking the same question in a forum, which would discuss literature and not just the story given in it, would probably turn the table.
Respectfully
Findegil