Did JRRT encourage new ME stories? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

davem · 06-13-2007, 05:41 AM

I think that by its nature no mythology can be the product of a single mind. A mythology is a cultural product. Its what a people do with experiences/events. Its impossible to trace any mythology back to an individual - as Tolkien points out in OFS. In origin all myths were 'religious'. They were what a people believed to be true, stories about the gods they worshipped.

No-one in our world ever believed that the stories of M-e were true. No-one in our world ever worshipped the Valar. We all know that M-e is a fictional creation. It may be that in the far distant future people will have turned M-e into a mythology - but, at the risk of stating the glaringly obvious, that would be a terrible thing, & could only be a result of some kind of disaster. We, thousands of years after Homer wrote, know that The Illiad is 'fiction', & four centuries after Shakespeare we haven't turned MacBeth into a God. Being an optimist (in the long term) as regards the human race, I'm pretty sure that our decendants a thousand years down the line will still have access to some kind of computerised database/library system, & will be reading The Sil & HoM-e on e-books & not sitting round fires in dank caves worshipping Manwe - or believing that we did.

I even have faith that most of them will realise that there are other authors out there, whose works are just as interesting as Tolkien's & actually choose to read some of them, rather than sitting around in despair over the fact that they can't spend their whole existence reading stories about Middle-earth by A.N. Other-Writer.

06-13-2007, 05:41 AM	#11
davem Illustrious Ulair Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties Posts: 4,240	I think that by its nature no mythology can be the product of a single mind. A mythology is a cultural product. Its what a people do with experiences/events. Its impossible to trace any mythology back to an individual - as Tolkien points out in OFS. In origin all myths were 'religious'. They were what a people believed to be true, stories about the gods they worshipped. No-one in our world ever believed that the stories of M-e were true. No-one in our world ever worshipped the Valar. We all know that M-e is a fictional creation. It may be that in the far distant future people will have turned M-e into a mythology - but, at the risk of stating the glaringly obvious, that would be a terrible thing, & could only be a result of some kind of disaster. We, thousands of years after Homer wrote, know that The Illiad is 'fiction', & four centuries after Shakespeare we haven't turned MacBeth into a God. Being an optimist (in the long term) as regards the human race, I'm pretty sure that our decendants a thousand years down the line will still have access to some kind of computerised database/library system, & will be reading The Sil & HoM-e on e-books & not sitting round fires in dank caves worshipping Manwe - or believing that we did. I even have faith that most of them will realise that there are other authors out there, whose works are just as interesting as Tolkien's & actually choose to read some of them, rather than sitting around in despair over the fact that they can't spend their whole existence reading stories about Middle-earth by A.N. Other-Writer. __________________ “Everything was an object. If you killed a dwarf you could use it as a weapon – it was no different to other large heavy objects."