A Defense of 'Lord of the Rings' against Modernist criticism

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

if you are so immune to the enduring and still pervasive influence of T.S. Eliot to claim that intertextual references neither confirm nor deny a text's significance

Bwahaha. Perhaps the curious matter is that which is meant by significance. What do we consider Great, and why do we think it so? I will blithely and committedly say that if something has created no cultural paradigm shift, it's not Great. Ergo Harry Potter is Great, and Great Expectations, I expect, is not. Yet which do we read in high school English?

And can Greatness be bestowed posthumously? Everyone knows that artists are dirt poor and misunderstood (excepting fiends like Damien Hirst) until well after death. So too with literature? Does the popularity and cultural milieu of LotR have postmortem effects on the Vulsunga Saga or Beowulf or etc? Would anyone care at all about Detective Comics if they hadn't created a spinoff with that weird and kinda interesting character, Batman? What I'm asking, I suppose, is if we can grant greatness retroactively, by way of what it birthed. And is it still great if nobody cares about it?

I suppose I'm asking a tree falling in the woods question. Proust. Proust is great, right? How many people have actually read any of his work? And how many people pronounce his name right? How significant is Joseph Conrad if his biggest dead guy claim to fame is, "More high schoolers didn't read my book than didn't read yours!"?

So what is significance?

If significance is a specific set of conditions in which only European white boys fit, then yes, I suppose we might run into some problems with literature that glorifies legends of border cultures. And in that case, LotR is basically a nerdy professor writing fantasy fan fic about myths.

However if significance is something that can be determined by the reaction of those confronted with it (either positive or negative), then we've got a bit of play room.

It might be fun to examine how each literary theory picks up (or doesn't) aspects of Tolkien: Freudian, Jungian, Lacanian for psychology, Kristeva, Derrida, post-colonial theory.

You minx.