LotR - Foreword

[Aiwendil]

I have been hesitant to enter the discussion for fear of repeating all the arguments from the Canonicity thread (though I do eagerly await discussion of the chapters themselves). But I guess that some people will be reading this thread that have not put in the necessary hours of reading to keep up with the Canonicity thread, so I'll repeat, briefly, the gist of my argument against some of the views espoused by Davem.

Davem wrote:

That’s what I find odd - why put in all that work if the goal is merely to produce an entertaining story, why struggle so hard to get it published, as it was, even if possible with the Silmarillion, if he really believed it didn’t mean anything?

I don't see why we must qualify it as "merely" an entertaining story. To me that would seem to be exactly the point. Why is it not enough to "merely" create a good story? Is the creation of a thoroughly and profoundly enjoyable work of art not something worthwhile in itself?

I, for one, think it is. And to be quite honest, this view strikes me as the one requiring the least clarification and interpretation in order to make it fit with Tolkien's statements about allegory and applicability.

But this certainly does not mean that it is not to be taken seriously! On the contrary, I think that Davem is quite right when he says:

He seems to want us to take it all as seriously as he does, place the same value on it as he does - but I don’t think his motive is vanity.

But there is serious and then there is serious. The issue becomes confused because in the modern and post-modern mind set "serious" can refer only to the most pretentious sort of allegory. I think the critical point is that Tolkien wants us to take it seriously just as a story, because Tolkien thinks that stories are serious things in themselves - not because they have some hidden meaning, not because they change us or teach us how better to live our lives, but just because they are good stories.

As I said, I don't want to get carried away; so I'll end on a completely different point. Mr. Underhill wrote:

I've always meant to start a thread that focused on Tolkien's working methods, and any such thread would certainly have to start here with the second edition foreword. I think it's great that Tolkien wrote the book mostly on instinct and without a clear outline. It seems you can divide writers into two groups -- those who plan, outline, and structure aforehand, and those who dive right in and trust to gut instinct, inspiration, and blind luck to carry them through. The latter method seems to me to be the most romantic and pure sort of writing.

I once had the very same idea for a thread, but for some reason I never got around to it. One of us should start one some day. The insight it affords into Tolkien's writing habits is certainly one of the most interesting features of the foreword - though of course it cannot compete with the exceedingly (sometimes tediously) thorough work of Christopher Tolkien in HoMe VI, VII, VIII, and IX. Also, it must be noted that the foreword cannot be considered the final authority on matters of the dates at which various sections were written - for example, in the foreword Tolkien says that the whole was written between 1936 and 1949, but it seems completely clear from the extant manuscripts as well as from a letter to Stanley Unwin that it was in fact begun not in 1936 but late in 1937. For these matters, HoMe is the most accurate authority.

[Mister Underhill]

Why is it not enough to "merely" create a good story? Is the creation of a thoroughly and profoundly enjoyable work of art not something worthwhile in itself?

I, for one, think it is.

And I agree. Although -- and here I risk opening an old, old can of worms -- this begs the question of what makes a great story profoundly enjoyable.

You are quite right that the hypothetical thread would be bound to range through HoME, and, I would add, Letters. I love his letter to Auden (#163):

...I had no conscious notion of what the Necromancer stood for (except ever-recurrent evil) in The Hobbit, nor of his connexion with the Ring. But if you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the comer at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlórien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horse-lords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fangorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystified as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22. I knew nothing of the Palantíri, though the moment the Orthanc-stone was cast from the window, I recognized it, and knew the meaning of the 'rhyme of lore' that had been running in my mind: seven stars and seven stones and one white tree. These rhymes and names will crop up; but they do not always explain themselves. I have yet to discover anything about the cats of Queen Berúthiel. But I did know more or less all about Gollum and his part, and Sam, and I knew that the way was guarded by a Spider.

It's possible that Tolkien is romanticizing here, but if what he says isn't true, then it ought to be. That sense of sheer discovery in the writing seems like pure magic, and does in fact make the First Foreword true in a sense, casting Tolkien in the role of transcriber and editor as much as author.

[The Saucepan Man]

I’ve taken a bit of time to catch up, so I’m coming rather late to this thread. Here are some thoughts that occurred to me while reading the (Second) Foreword and the many wonderful posts that have already appeared in this, the inaugural “Reading Club” thread.

What is the purpose of a foreword? This, it seems to me, is to provide the author with an opportunity to tell his readers a little bit about the book before they launch into the story itself. How the author chooses to exercise this opportunity is up to him/her. It is interesting that Tolkien uses his opportunity in different ways in the two Forewords that have been posted (and my thanks too go to Squatter for posting the First Foreword, which I had not seen before).

As to the First Foreword, I agree with Child when she says:

he seems to be talking to people he personally knows -- family, friends, members of the Inklings, and to those "admirers of Bilbo" who'd already crossed his path before.

As Squatter suggests, you get the sense that he is continuing a private joke shared with his family and scholastic co-conspirators. But, at the same time, he is opening up the joke to the wider audience that is encountering the book for the first time following its publication. And, while I would not go as far as some in wishing that the story really was real (*ducks metaphysical apples in a materialistic manner*), I do find the First Foreword charming for this reason. One feels rather privileged to be let in on the private joke. And it is, I suppose, valid to consider whether there is, in any event, an element of truth (or should that be Truth ) to the joke, in the sense that LotR draws on themes and ideas that have been conveyed throughout our history in mythology and folklore. In that sense, it might be said that LotR is a part of our history, or at least a presentation of aspects of it in a fresh (and beautifully crafted) vehicle. In this context, I am put in mind of the oft-quoted incident when a visitor asked Tolkien “Of course you don’t suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself”, to which he replied “No, I don’t suppose so any longer” (Letter 328).

So, Tolkien uses the First Foreword to continue the “myth” that LotR is a fragment of a real history. But he does also include some authorial guidance when he says:

But since my children and others of their age, who first heard of the finding of the Ring, have grown older with the years, this book speaks more plainly of those darker things which lurked only on the borders of the earlier tale, but which have troubled Middle-earth in all its history.

While still couched in terms of a commentary on the history of Middle-earth, this passage also serves to provide an authorial (as opposed to editorial) function in preparing his wider audience for the marked difference in tone from the Hobbit, the only work of his which they will previously have encountered.

And so on to the Second Foreword. As others have noted, this fulfils quite a different function. Far more than the First Foreword it is aimed at those who have not yet read the book, and it seeks to provide some insight and guidance to them. In broad terms, as I see it, Tolkien is here using his opportunity to accomplish three things:

1. to provide an insight into how the book was written;
2. to flag up some of the book's themes; and
3. to explain how the book should be approached by the reader (or, more precisely, how it should not be approached).

As to the first of these, like others, I get the sense from the Foreword that the book almost wrote itself. Tolkien states at the outset that:

This tale grew in the telling …

It started out as a sequel to the Hobbit, to satisfy “requests from readers [of The Hobbit] for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures”. But it:

… was drawn irresistibly towards the older world …

So, while the LotR was borne of a desire to satisfy his readers’ yearnings for a sequel to The Hobbit, Tolkien was irresistibly drawn back to the tales that he had been working on since his youth and it became something altogether more dark and epic. These tales of the older world were the ones which Tolkien really wanted to tell and, since he was given the impression that they were “unpublishable”, LotR became a kind of bridge between those tales and the later more childish tale, which had already received a favourable reaction from the public. While the book did not of course write itself, it was natural (almost instinctive, perhaps) for Tolkien to write something more than simply “The Hobbit Revisited”. And, although The Hobbit is (to my mind) a wonderful book, LotR is undoubtedly the better for this.

I wonder if this is the reason that he was so steadfast in his resolve to complete the book, despite the many delays and interruptions that he encountered. Once it became inextricably linked in his mind to the older world that was so close to his heart, did it assume greater importance in his mind? Did he then feel compelled to complete it and achieve publication of something that, for these reasons, had achieved greater importance to him? Is this the reason why, as davem states, he wanted his readers to take the story as seriously as he did? And would the story ever have been completed if Strider had simply remained Trotter?

As to how the Foreword flags up the themes of the book, Tolkien (as Fordim points out) identifies the Ring as the central theme:

As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but the main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit.

Again, the suggestion is that the story grew almost of its own accord. But what does Tolkien mean when he says that the Ring provides the main theme of the story? The Ring is a (the) subject of the story. How can it also be its theme? Since he gives no further explanation, this provides no real idea as to the nature of the theme that he is discussing here to a reader who is reading the Foreword and has yet to read the story. But what he is doing is flagging up for the reader the importance of the Ring in signifying the underlying theme (and, incidentally, highlighting the importance of the “crucial chapter”, ‘The Shadow of the Past’). And the Ring really does signify the essence of the story: the conflict between good and evil, between the corrupting influence of power and the ennoblement of the humble, between Sauron’s desire to control and the Elvish wish to maintain and preserve. Practically every “sub-theme” within the story revolves around that which the Ring represents and that which opposes everything that it stands for.

Thinking about it, it seems that Tolkien does give a further clue in the passage explaining how the story would have gone had it in fact been intended as an allegory of the “real war”. In suggesting that that the use of the Ring against Sauron and Saruman’s creation of his own Great Ring would have led to both sides holding Hobbits in hatred and contempt, he is indicating that the Ring is a corrupting influence and that the qualities displayed by those who seek to oppose what it represents are ones which should be valued. Sadly, but perhaps realistically, he impliedly concludes that they are qualities which are woefully lacking in the “real world”, at least among those with power.

As Fingolfin II states:

He says that in real life the Ring would have been used against Sauron, but in order to make a story of it he had to change reality to idealism

But perhaps he believed, or at least hoped, that the “ideal” still existed somewhere in “reality”. If so, I think that the immense and enduring popularity of LotR would certainly bear him out on this.

Finally Tolkien uses the Foreword to state categorically that the book is not to be taken by the reader as an allegory. While I accept that he was perhaps overstating his case in expressing his strong distaste for allegory, I neverthless find his concise statement of the difference between allegory and applicability to be profoundly instructive:

… one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

I have no difficulty in accepting this. Nor do I see any conflict with what he states elsewhere concerning his motives in writing LotR and his other “Fairy Stories”. To me, “allegory” in the sense that Tolkien is using it here requires two essential elements: it must be specifically intended by the author and it must relate to a specific set of circumstances. What Tolkien is saying here is that he did not intend LotR to represent any specific set of circumstances. Specifically, it was not intended as an allegory of the gobal conflict which was raging throughout much of the period in which he was writing the book. So, he is telling the reader, do not take it as an allegory of that, or of anything else, because that was not my intention in writing it. At the same time, he is (as he is bound to) giving his readers complete freedom to find within the book meanings which are applicable to their own lives, and doing so expressly. Yes, the book contains themes relevant to the human condition and the history of human existence. But this does not make it an allegory. It simply makes it applicable, in varying ways, to the “thoughts and experience” of the readers who share that condition and history.

Of course Tolkien had his own ideas as to what the book meant, and he accepts in the Foreword that it was influenced by his own experiences, but he does not impose those ideas and experiences on his readers. Even when he flags up the Ring as the central theme, he does not tell them what that theme actually is (and, in any event, themes to not equate with meaning in my mind: they simply provide a framework for applicability). So, Tolkien simply tells his readers in this Foreword that he wrote the book as a tale that he hoped would “amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them”, but leaves them to draw their own conclusions as to what it actually means to them. And I doubt that any who have read and enjoyed LotR could deny that he has succeeded in achieving this mission statement (even if some of us, while being deeply moved by parts of the book, are still waiting to experience that elusive moment of eucatastrophe ). Like Aiwendil, I run the risk of embroiling myself once again in the twists and truns of the Canonicity thread on this point ( ), so I will leave it at that.

But finally, and before I outstay my welcome (or perhaps I already have) I wanted to comment on one sentence which jumped out at me:

The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or write it again, he will pass over these in slience, except one that has been noted by other: the book is too short.

While I would not go so far as to describe any work of literature as utterly flawless, LotR seems to me to be pretty much nearing that ideal. I wonder what “major defects” Tolkien had in mind. But I find his comment that it is “too short” even more interesting. It contrasts nicely with CS Lewis’ belief, referred to in davem’s first post ( #5), that it would be “the better for pruning”. But that aside, I wonder what additional material Tolkien would have liked to have included. Or perhaps he was simply making a veiled reference here to his original wish to publish LotR and the Silmarillion together in two volumes.

Apologies for wittering on at length but, since I am not sure that I’ll have a chance to post again this week, I thought that I would simply blurt out all my thoughts at once. I’ll get my coat now.

[davem]

Aiwendil Not wanting to re-hash the old Canonicity debate either, I do think we have to ask whether Tolkien really was simply attempting to entertain. SpM has stated:

'And the Ring really does signify the essence of the story: the conflict between good and evil, between the corrupting influence of power and the ennoblement of the humble, between Sauron’s desire to control and the Elvish wish to maintain and preserve. Practically every “sub-theme” within the story revolves around that which the Ring represents and that which opposes everything that it stands for.

Thinking about it, it seems that Tolkien does give a further clue in the passage explaining how the story would have gone had it in fact been intended as an allegory of the “real war”. In suggesting that that the use of the Ring against Sauron and Saruman’s creation of his own Great Ring would have led to both sides holding Hobbits in hatred and contempt, he is indicating that the Ring is a corrupting influence and that the qualities displayed by those who seek to oppose what it represents are ones which should be valued. Sadly, but perhaps realistically, he impliedly concludes that they are qualities which are woefully lacking in the “real world”, at least among those with power.'

which I agree with as regards the 'meaning' of the story. Tolkien clearly felt that his story, while it should entertain, should at least reflect his moral values, so that, one assumes, he would have excluded anything which, while it might 'entertain' would conflict with them.

In the George Sayer essay I quoted from there is the following sentence:
' All of life for him was part of a cosmic conflict between the forces of good & evil, God & the devil'

Further on the author reveals:

' Once he spoke to me of Ireland after he had spent part of summer vacation working there as an examiner: 'It is as if the earth there is cursed. It exudes an evil that is held in check only by Christian practice & the power of prayer.' Even the soil, the earth, played a part in the cosmic struggle between forces of good & evil.'

I think we must take this into account when we try to understand Tolkien's motives in writing - if the universe was a battleground between the forces of good & evil, then every person, & every decision & act of every person, every thought, perhaps, will aid one side or the other. Tolkien saw himself as a 'warrior' in a 'holy war'. And the methods of the enemy must not be studied. Evil must be stated to be evil, it must not be examined, even in an attempt to discover its weaknesses (hence his disapproval of the Screwtape Letters). LotR is as much an attempt at producing a 'weapon' for use in that battle as anything else - probably more than anything else.

Which is not to say we can't read it as simple entertainment. We just have to recognise that it wasn't written as that. And at the time Tolkien was writing such an attitude, such a way of seeing the world, was not popular - just the opposite.

On the subject of personal experience entering into the story - well during one of the major breaks in writing LotR he did write Notion Club Papers, which grows out of his personal experiences - Inklings meetings - but draws in the mythology with the breaking in of 'Numenor', which perhaps shows how his personal life & his imaginative life were deeply intertwined, & how the mythology couldn't be excluded from his writing. The mythology even crops up in Roverandom.

Oh, & as for him not having time to devote to writing - it wasn't just academic pressures that stopped him - Sayer recounts visits across a period of weeks after he's retired, & finding him sitting at his desk wit the Silmarillion manuscript at the same page with nothing done - apparently he'd been spending most of his time reading detective stories (Lord Peter Wimsey, perhaps )

[The Saucepan Man]

Davem

Which is not to say we can't read it as simple entertainment. We just have to recognise that it wasn't written as that.

I tend to agree that Tolkien did not write the story purely to entertain his readers. It assumed greater importance than this to him, which is, I suspect, why we get the sense that it almost wrote itself. But I disagree that we, the readers, necessarily have to recognise that or that he is requiring us to do so.

If we are looking at the Foreword for what it is, a foreword, rather than as part of the material on which to base an assessment of Tolkien the author (and, indeed, Tolkien, the man), then we must take what he says in it at face value. Readers approaching his work for the first time will have nothing else to go on. And here he is telling such readers that he wrote it as a piece to entertain, to move and to amuse them. While his reference to the Ring as providing the central theme points to the importance of the conflict between good and evil as a theme, readers do not necessarily have to accept this conflict as something which is real to them (or as real to them as the material which you have provided suggest that it was to Tolkien). They may simply find certain aspects of it, certain “sub-themes”, for example the importance of friendship or the the importance of respect for the environment, as applicable to them and leave it at that. Or they might simply allow themselves to be entertained, amused and moved by it without really analysing why. And Tolkien gives them carte blanche to do so here in the Foreword when he champions the freedom of the reader above the purposive domination of the author. He may have hoped that his readers found in it what he did, but he does not here require this of them.

[Firefoot]

And now I believe I finally have something to contibute here.

Readers approaching his work for the first time will have nothing else to go on.

I agree with this statement very much, and that is why I find it both amazing and sad how few people I talk to actually take the time to read both the Foreward and the Prologue. When I was a first time reader, I remember being particularly intrigued by the Foreward, especially by such sentences as "I stood at Balin's tomb in Moria" and references to Lothlórien. These things made me wonder, and I was eager to read to find out what he was talking about. Then I came across the statements "Some who have read the book... have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; ... It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved." I had no concerns about the first idea: having recently read the Hobbit and finding it an amazing book I had been waiting for nearly a week to start LotR. But the rest of it made me wonder just what I was getting into. So before I had even started the book I was already interested, curious, and intrigued, and I must wonder what sort of a difference there is between reading the Foreward (and the Prologue) first rather than just plunging in at chapter 1.

[Bêthberry]

SaucepanMan and Firefoot, this was really what I was suggesting way back in my first post when I noted that the Second Foreward did not contain the statements of intent which can be found in the Letters. How are we regarding this chapter by chapter reading? Firefoot's remembrance is I think close to what I would find very intriguing about our process here.

SpM's statement: Readers approaching his work for the first time will have nothing else to go on.

Perhaps few of us here can 'go back' and recall entirely what it was like the first time we read LOTR (for some it was so long ago! ). Others cannot dismiss easily everything we have learned about Tolkien from a variety of other sources. It is not easy to return ourselves to the state of naive (I would use the word virgin, but fear many might object to that concept) reader again. Still, I think it would be very interesting to discuss here in this sub-forum the process whereby so many come to see the moral intent which they profoundly profess to find in Tolkien's work and which his Letters suggest. How and where and by what means do these readers take on this meaning where others do not?

My first post seemed to provoke a sense that this moral intent must be found in the Forewards. None of the arguments put forth by davem or Mr Underhill or Helen persuade me that Tolkien was obliquely hinting at a specifically Christian or Catholic meaning in the Forewards. Instead, I see, as Saucy has suggested, that Tolkien

may have hoped that his readers found in it what he did, but he does not here require this of them.

Tolkien is not the only author who takes this kind of approach, believing that his or her book serves a particular purpose, but wanting to leave readers free to find that purpose for themselves. (For those of you who might be curious, Charlotte Brontë was another author who wrote explicitly to create a 'page turner' but who also left records which suggest that she was content to sit back and let readers make of Jane Eyre what they would, simply a straight forward romance or a more complex perspective on the narrator, Jane, as a girl whose imagination is governed and controlled by her own reading in romance. Note, I am not saying this specific interpretation applies to LOTR, but the method.)

I think this moral freedom of the reader is absolutely imperative in Tolkien and relates crucially to his notion of free will. Telling readers explicitly as Lewis or the author of the Morte d'Arthur has done that there is a specific worldview that one must get from the books was, I believe, for Tolkien the wrong way to help people find the moral bearings which he discovered as he wrote in his story.

Tolkien came slowly to understand the full significance of his mythology--it was not something he planned consciously at the outset, but was led to realise in the very process of his writing. This, by the way, is for me a very significant point about writing, that the very act of writing somehow engages the creative mind to generate ideas. (It is certainly a way I come to know the characters I create in RPGs despite all the planning aforehand.) Mr. Underhill is very right to point out that there are different ways of proceeding as a writer and this was Tolkien's way.

I suggest that Tolkien wanted his readers to proceed in a similar way, to find for themselves in the act of reading this vital and profound truth if possible. He was content to accept the possibility, perhaps even probability, that not all readers would necessarily find this, but would still find worth and value in his writing. Perhaps Tolkien learnt, from his insistence that Edith convert to Catholicism for their marriage and her subsequent unhappiness or unease with various aspects of it, that faith is a personal experience that cannot be forced. (The Catholic Church does not itself demand that spouses convert to Catholicism upon marriage with a Catholic and this idea is speculation of course.)

All of this is, of course, an interpretation of the man and the writer based on my reading of his Letters and other works and various biographies. Yet even today when I read the Forewards, I see a writer content to suggest a general direction and tenor of interpretation without stating explicitly what his meaning was. Very few writers of the calibre of Tolkien choose to be so 'flatfooted' or empirical about their work. They rather hope that the writing itself will lend itself to interpretation without extraneous signposts. They place their faith in the story itself rather than in prose exposition about it.

I would reply to Durelin about my use of the term "personal self-expression" but I am called away and must return later.

[tar-ancalime]

Bethberry said:

I think this moral freedom of the reader is absolutely imperative in Tolkien and relates crucially to his notion of free will.

I think it goes even farther than that: it is a way for Tolkien as an artist to show confidence in the art he has made. Only if the reader (or listener, or viewer--this is true of any medium) is free to interpret the art as s/he sees fit can the creator ever know if it stands alone and achieves any meaning at all, let alone the intended one. Authors who use forewords to go on endlessly about meaning or metaphor have always seemed to me to be the literary equivalent of parents who can't stop smoothing cowlicks, straightening collars, and wiping faces long enough to send their children out into the world to succeed or fail. And in the end, that's what any piece of art has got to do: regardless of the high or low intentions of the creator, it must stand on its merits. Both Tolkien and Bronte are quite right to step back and let their readers find what they will in their stories.

[davem]

Having been rightly taken to task , I must apologise. My explanation is that, being restricted to the forword I was attempting, at first, to analyse Tolkien's claim that the work has no inner meaning. Let me quote from John Crowley's novel Aegypt:

Dawn came; Doctor Dee wrote out in his scribble hand (he had four different hands he wrote in, besides a mirror hand) one meaning of Mr Talbot's book:

IF EVER SOM POWR WITH 3 WISHES TO GRANT

Which made little sense to him. But if he went backward - backward through the forest where the rooks called in the hawthorns along the track below the fortress, backward through the ogham & the Greek & the stars & the letters & the numbers, the same line could be read this way:

THERE WERE ANGELS IN ye GLASS 246 MANY OF THEM

And that made his heart pause for an instant, & fill again with a richer blood.

What I'm saying is LotR is a book which can be read in two ways, on two levels. One way of reading it gives us an entertaining, moving, work of art, a story. The other way of reading it gives us an exploration of Catholicism, language, history, folkore, the nature of time & most importantly of the man himself, the artist.

Of course, we must read it in one way or the other each time - if we try to read it as a story, continually stopping to analyse its other 'meaning', the ingredients of the 'soup', we are breaking it to find out what it is made of. Conversely, if we read it as an exploration of the themes & ideas I mentioned, & stop to find how Tolkien used those themes, the story will not affect us.

My point is LotR is both things. Yet these two things overlap - & that overlap is sometimes intentional, & the intervention of those themes & sources give a significance to the story. The dates of the birth & death of Christ are used by Tolkien to enhance the significance of the events in the story. This calls into question for me at least the claim made by Tolkien that the story has no 'inner meaning'.

This exploration of the Forword seemed to me the only place where such points could be made.

As I said, I am happy for this reading to focus solely on the 'story'. The underlying themes can be put aside totally - because the story is self contained, & Tolkien no doubt wanted it to be read in this way, yet, as Shippey & Flieger among others have shown, the other LotR is also there, under the surface, for those who wish to explore it, & it is just as much LotR.

It interests me - that's all I can say - that Tolkien should 'mythologise' the Virgin Mary into Elbereth - who is not in any way a figure drawn from Norse, or any other, mythology. Yet the 'Queen of Heaven' is present in Middle Earth, as one of the most significant 'off-screen' figures in the story, & Galadriel is present, as almost a manifestation of her, in the woods of Lothlorien.

Yet, I have strayed from the point - though beginning with the statement of the author that the tale had no inner meaning. I still don't believe that - though I accept that Tolkien may have wanted that to be true, or wanted us to believe it, at least.

I will, however try to curb my tendency to 'preach'.

Sorry.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I had to go back and re-re-read the Foreword to once again get my bearings in this (very interesting) discussion. The thing that struck me about the Foreword this time through – both of them, actually – is the invitation that the author extends to the reader to engage in a dialogue. What came through to me very clearly is the conversational tone of both pieces, and the sense that Tolkien is replying or responding directly to his readers. The significant difference that I see between the two Forewords is that the ‘first’ is addressed to a much smaller group of readers. In this sense the Forewords are very much a ‘forward’ look to the conversation that is about to begin – that’s very much how I think we all wish to think about The Lord of the Rings. Despite the differences in what we find therein, I think that all of us have a very real sense of carrying on a dialogue either with the text, with the author (through the text), or with each other (about the text). Some of us privilege or prefer the conversation with the author, while others prefer the conversations with the text or each other: none of us, I think, is claiming that any one of these conversations is the “only” or the “best” one, we just disagree about which one is the most interesting, fruitful or productive.

I, for my part, tend to privilege each of them at different times and in different manners – and in this regard I think that I am like everyone else here. When reading the book as a pleasurable story, I think of if as a conversation with the text as I concern myself with what I ‘get’ out of it. When approaching it somewhat more critically, I like to engage in conversations with others about the text in order to broaden or extend my understanding (the Socratic method is still, far and away, the hands-down best method to learn, after all!). When I want to learn about or explore the composition of the text, or how it came into being, I have a conversation with the author. All of these modes or kinds of conversation are necessary for a full understanding of the text and I am delighted to see that they are all going on at the moment – this bodes well, I think, for the discussions to come when we get into the ‘actual’ book.

I offer all of this here because I think that there is beginning to emerge in this thread something of an unjustified sense of ‘schism’ much like the one that came to dominate the canonicity thread, as different posters privilege different types of conversation. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing – quite the reverse, as this has lead to a lot of very interesting discussion. I only wish to point out that we are all of us in total agreement on the most important point here: that the conversations we have about and with the text and the author are all parts of a much larger Conversation: one that can’t ever really be concluded or perhaps even conducted except in a fragmentary and particularised way.

Sidebar: I share with Durelin, Seraphim, Mark 12_30, Alatariel Telemnar, Orofaniel, Child, Bêthberry, and Squatter the sense that it is, at the least, useful and, at the most, necessary, to approach LotR as ‘historical’ insofar as history gives us the greatest scope for conversation. When reading a history, we do not seek the meaning of the events by reducing those to the intentionality of the author (who is the chronicler of the events, not the maker of them); nor do we willy-nilly construct our own meaning for those events without making some reference to the meaning of the events to those caught up in them; nor do we seek the meaning of historical events only through conversations about them with our contemporaries. The point I think that I am making – and if I may be so bold as to suggest that many others are making here as well – the strength and promise of Tolkien’s ‘pretense’ or ‘myth’ or ‘fiction’ that he is chronicling history rather than creating a story encourages us to pursue the many different types of conversation that are necessary to get a full (but by no means complete or total) view of the matter he has recorded for us.

[Durelin]

Originally posted by davem:The point is, though, that LotR is full of such symbolism, which is not present on the surface, but it is there, under the surface

This is a perfect example of taking applicability too far. You may see symbolisms that relate to you, as it is your own mind reading and comprehending. But the symbols I see may be very different, and though I see them, that does not mean that they were placed there. There are just certain aspects of any writing that can be applied to life, religion, anything personal, etc, simply because all literary, historical, etc works were written by human beings. And once their read by human beings...

Originally posted by davem:We can also take the examples of the Fellowship setting out from Rivendell on Dec 25th, & the destruction of the Ring & the Downfall of Barad Dur taking place on Mar 25th - which as Shippey points out is the date of both the Annunciation & the old date of Good Friday.

Think of these as tributes...

Originally posted by Fordim Hedgethistle:The thing that struck me about the Foreword this time through – both of them, actually – is the invitation that the author extends to the reader to engage in a dialogue....In this sense the Forewords are very much a ‘forward’ look to the conversation that is about to begin

I think that this dialogue leading into a conversation just goes to show how necessary it is to explain yourself. Sadly, really, if you do not wish for people to take what you say the wrong way, you must show them that you are joking or serious or happy or sorry, etc. Through showing such emotions when you are having a physical conversation with someone in person, what you are saying can take on a different meaning, usually the true meaning you wish to express. Tolkien, or any author, in their foreword, has a way to express the kind of emotion the following dialogue is in. I said that this is sad, that this is needed, but perhaps it just shows how speech and writing are bonded at their roots, still, though we seem to separate them so much.

Originally posted by Fordim Hedgethistle:All of these modes or kinds of conversation are necessary for a full understanding of the text

What comes to mind is the age of Scholasticism, in which the early Roman Catholic Church attempted to bring classical (Greek and Latin) literature into context with Church dogmas, and, particularly, the Bible. They came to a basic conclusion that a basis of classical learning was needed to fully understand the Bible. The fact that the Bible emerged from the time of classical literature and was a literary work makes it an 'offspring' of the classics, the next generation. The study of classical literature gives you an idea of where the Bible and it's teachings are coming from. Perhaps it is best that you know where anything you read is coming from, and the more distant what you are reading is from you, the more difficult determining where it's coming from is. Could forewords, appendices, etc, all be considered necessary backing for understanding?

*Note: please excuse all useless ramblings. I just got out of a biology exam!

-Durelin