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Originally Posted by Fea
Seriously though, you can find anything you intend to look for, if you simply know where to look.
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Originally Posted by Roa_Aoife
But you know what they say: "When all else fails, manipulate the data."
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Precisely. And I suspect this is pretty much what Tolkien did. I don't think he 'consciously revised' LotR during the writing phase to make it a Catholic work. I think he wrote it, gave it to the world, & was very surprised at accusations of a lack of spirituality, of pagan tendencies, &,
most importantly of being 'juvenile'. When some readers & reviewers started to suggest it had a Christian dimension, Tolkien happilly took this up & convinced himself that he
had written a 'fundamentally Christian & Catholic work'.
What it is, rather (I would say) is a work that came from his heart, & one that he didn't have much control over - he wrote & re-wrote it, till he found out 'what really happened'. He then attempted to
understand it, make sense of it - mainly for himself, but also for the readers who quizzed him on it. I think we're talking something much closer to [i]revisionism[i] than 'revision'.