Utopian Shire - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Lindale · 12-01-2008, 07:48 AM

No offense to Wordsworth or any of the Romantics or anybody else, but I agree with Rumil and his "gentlehobbit" view of Frodo, Bilbo, Pippin and Merry. If you really look at it with even just the slightest Marxist eye, the ones who do talk in Tolkien's works are the high-born, whatever your term for them, with very few exceptions like Sam (who ended up as Mayor of the Shire anyway) and Voronwe (who was of the Noldor, but not exactly the nobility in the same way Gwindor was).

During one of my classes in English literature someone (not your poor little Lindale!) asked if any of the Romantics of England did experience what we may consider poverty. Did Wordsworth or Coleridge or any other of their sort work with their hands? The Romanticism in England, after all, did spring, from among others, a sort of dissent in the Industrial Revolution. And they're Romantics. They were young, geniuses in their own right, but they were young.

Somehow I can argue that only those from the middle class up can be Romantics; you never (or at least, you almost never do, or Aristotle never did see) find the working class happily philosophizing while working or about their work. And among the conservative middle class, which exists in some societies still, like mine, those who have a bit of the Romantics lose it or at least manage to repress it before the "real world" sinks in. Or, after college or a few years after college.

Marx was Marx because he lived in his own time and space and society. So were the Romantics, and Tolkien.

12-01-2008, 07:48 AM	#19
Lindale Ghost Prince of Cardolan Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: midway upon... in a forest dark Posts: 975	No offense to Wordsworth or any of the Romantics or anybody else, but I agree with Rumil and his "gentlehobbit" view of Frodo, Bilbo, Pippin and Merry. If you really look at it with even just the slightest Marxist eye, the ones who do talk in Tolkien's works are the high-born, whatever your term for them, with very few exceptions like Sam (who ended up as Mayor of the Shire anyway) and Voronwe (who was of the Noldor, but not exactly the nobility in the same way Gwindor was). During one of my classes in English literature someone (not your poor little Lindale!) asked if any of the Romantics of England did experience what we may consider poverty. Did Wordsworth or Coleridge or any other of their sort work with their hands? The Romanticism in England, after all, did spring, from among others, a sort of dissent in the Industrial Revolution. And they're Romantics. They were young, geniuses in their own right, but they were young. Somehow I can argue that only those from the middle class up can be Romantics; you never (or at least, you almost never do, or Aristotle never did see) find the working class happily philosophizing while working or about their work. And among the conservative middle class, which exists in some societies still, like mine, those who have a bit of the Romantics lose it or at least manage to repress it before the "real world" sinks in. Or, after college or a few years after college. Marx was Marx because he lived in his own time and space and society. So were the Romantics, and Tolkien. __________________ The heart does things for reasons Reason itself cannot comprehend. - Blaise Pascal Legal Madness.