eowyntje:
I was the one who wrote (or is actually writing) and posted the essay on Minas Tirith. I have not found what
Teleporno claimed to have found, but I have made a lot of research on Entwives, and present my findings in my essay, which is still under work. My user name on Minas Tirith is
Herendil,
Teleporno and I are not the same person.
Child of the 7th Age:
I agree with you that
Teleporno has a tendency of finding hidden jokes in Tolkien, and that he probably did think that he found a joke concerning the Entwives, whether it really is a joke or not.
However, he is right about the fact that the Ents were partly inspired by the Great Birnam wood in Macbeth; Tolkien himself tells us that:
Letter #163, note:
Quote:
Their [the Ents’] part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war. And into this has crept a mere piece of experience, the difference of the 'male' and 'female' attitude to wild things, the difference between unpossessive love and gardening.
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Also note the last passage - it might hint at a parody of Tolkien's academic friends and their wives.
It does seem that Tolkien put some traits of the Inklings into the Ents (especially Treebeard). Perhaps the Entmoot was a parody of their meetings at
The Eagle and Child.
Biography:
Quote:
When eventually he [Tolkien] came to write this chapter [LR, ‘Treebeard’] (so he told Nevill Coghill [a member of the Inklings]) he modelled Treebeard’s way of speaking, ‘Hrum, Hroom’, on the booming voice of C. S. Lewis.
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Treason of Isengard, ‘Treebeard’:
Quote:
There are some small particular points worthy of mention in this first part of the chapter. In the fair copy corresponding to TT pp. 66 – 7 … his [Treebeard’s] ejaculation 'Root and twig! ' replaced 'Crack my timbers!'
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A note on this:
Quote:
A pencilled note on the fair copy says that 'Crack my timbers' had been 'queried by Charles Williams'. The same change was made at a later point in the chapter (TT p. 75).
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Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams were all members of the Inklings. In my opinion it is not that farfetched then to suspect that the Entwives were a 'parody' of their wives.