What breaks the enchantment?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

This happened for me most recently in regard to an insight Lalwendê had, regarding the apparent ability of Sauron and his Nazgul to unbody a spirit then torment that spirit, not allowing it to escape into death. When I first read her insight I thought "Nonsense!" But as I saw more and more references to it in my own readings of LotR, I realized that Lal was right, and that my own understanding of this point had been enhanced, against my initial inclination!

This itself came from another re-reading, and it wasn't something I'd ever picked up on before. The last reading was carried out in the wake of reading many of Tolkien's later writings such as Osanwe-kenta and Morgoth's Ring. It shows that each reading is different to the last, that different points interest me or seem to jump out from the page. I do think that we bring our recently acquired knowledge to each re-reading in this way, or was it that I was consciously reading with 'care' as I was taking part in the chapter by chapter discussions? Would I have noticed this had I not been taking part in those discussions?

Originally Posted by davem

There is a difference between bringing our 'experience' of 'trees, hills & rivers, of bread & stone, wind & sunshine to the secondary world, because these things help to personalise the secondary world & make it as much ours as the author's, & bringing our knowledge of mythology, history, psychology, etc, to the secondary world.

Following on from what davem says here, are there right and wrong types of knowledge to bring to a reading if we are to read in the way he talks about? I often will read something which reminds me of something else in mythology or history, often strikingly so. But what I tend to do is consider whether Tolkien would have known about that correlation, wonder if he was making a play on something else and so forth. I did this last year when I watched a documentary on Newton and made a link to Saruman's breaking the Light. It was a consideration I wished to play with as I felt sure Tolkien would have been fully aware of Newton's experiments. Is this a valid comparison to make if we consider it within the bounds of whether Tolkien would have possessed that knowledge?

EDIT: And just to add context to the question, when I saw the documentary on Newton it immediately threw into sharp relief what had previously, to me, been a quite difficult to comprehend part of the story. I suddenly 'understood' exactly what Saruman had been doing or attempting to do. Or did I? Did I just apply that knowledge to what I was reading of this secondary world?