What breaks the enchantment?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bb

Also, I find that we tend to bring in this conceit of the Redbook to explain away many difficulties of the text--do we really at the time of reading say, 'Oh, this is the Redbook's writer writing here and not the story's usual narrator'

One could make a stab at an explanation along these lines...

Tolkien has set up in the foreword the conceit of LotR being a translatioon of the Red Book. It is a work with two main narrators - Frodo & Sam, but we are also told that the accounts have been 'supplimented by the learning of the wise'. We are also informed that the book from which Tolkien 'translated' the story was not the original book but a copy. He even includes an aside by Findegil the King's copyist.

What we seem to have then, is a version of the original work, which has been 'supplimented' through various copies & finally translated[ by an Oxford Don in the 1940's.

I think these multiple narrators/translators can easily account for variations in style. We are dealing with something akin to the way oral tales change over the years & 'grow in the telling' - albeit to a lesser degree. If the language in the Hobbit focussed part of the story is less 'archaic' & that in the Rohan/Gondor focussed part more so that is perhaps simply because the version Tolkien translated was not the original Red Book but one that came from the scriptorium of Minas Tirith. For Findegil, Gondor & Rohan were known commodities, & also as a Gondorian he would have taken a certain approach to the way his people & their nearest allies were presented in the historical record. Being less familiar with Hobbits (one assumes) he would have been less likely to tamper with those sections of the story, for fear of making a fool of himself.

Finally, we have to take into account the character of the ultimate translator, Professor Tolkien himself. He will necessarily bring a certain personal style to his translation.

All this, btw, remains within the approach of attempting to experience the story directly, because the figure of 'Tolkien the translator' is just as much a character within the legendarium as any inhabitant of Middle earth.