Tolkien and Parody

[Bêthberry]

Estelyn, I still think you penned that out of a guilty conscious!

As to the question of what Tolkien might have thought concerning parody, we have a parody of his own to consider: the Introduction to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

He has a bit of sport with the dry, staid, sombre tone of much academic analysis of early oral literature. It must have been a hoot for him to treat his light-hearted verse so formally. In order not to repeat myself (and surely not out of the vanity of linking to my other posts), here is a longer consideration of the Introduction which I wrote for Encataire's [The Mewlips thread.