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#1 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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Depends. The difficulty is that the pronunciation guides were published as part of Lord of the Rings, albeit in the Appendices. Which means that they are not placed nearly as high on the hierarchy of accuracy as, say, the doors to Moria or the maps or the fact that Aragorn had grey eyes.
But how many visual cues about Middle-earth came from Tolkien during his lifetime? I think the difference is that envisioning something from a book takes much more imagination--and thus much more effort and wiggle room--for the reader than simply pronouncing a foreign word. You're given more liberty simply because of the differences in medium (so, we could have two completely different-looking, but equally canonical "Frodo"s but however we say his name it's going to sound pretty similar). The other thing is that we're given guidelines--which Tolkien says we don't have to follow if we don't want to!--in the books themselves, and we know that Tolkien expended a lot more effort into languages than into illustrating (though he spent a lot on both!). What would be really interesting now would be to hop 20 years or so down the road and see how much the "your mileage may vary" attitude towards mental pictures remains as more and more people enter the fandom with the Jackson films ingrained in their heads.
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#2 | ||||
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
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#3 | |||||
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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I would not say that the experience is "enhanced" or "detracted" if a reader chooses to adopt Tolkien's pronunciations (which is ultimately what he says the point of the Appendices is--to provide you with more information if you want it), merely altered. And honestly there's so little of the original experience that you can ever get back on a second reading, simply because you already know what happens. Similarly, does knowledge of the Silm enhance or detract a reader's experience of rereading LotR? I think that ultimately because of the nature of knowledge you can only go deeper when you're rereading LotR, even if you don't intend to--unless you get Alzheimer's. Quote:
If Tolkien had had more time to dither about these, because A&U rejected them, they would be completely different from what they are. But once they got published Tolkien tried his best to treat them as they were as set in stone. So I think that the pronunciations do require a somewhat elevated status compared to the illustrations if you're selling your take on it--though not nearly as high as the facts presented in the text itself. Quote:
And there are other visualizations that, if made available, would help counteract the monolithicness of the Jacksonian vision. I was pleasantly stunned by the symbolic, minimalist imagery of the Stage Show, which proved to me that there really is a completely different way of looking at everything that can still be valid. Quote:
Is this considered better or worse than this reader sticking with his/her original visualizations? Quote:
I think you and I at least agree that Middle-earth will always exist somewhere between the text and the reader... we just differ on where the fuzzy borders of that zone stand.
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#4 | ||||||
Illustrious Ulair
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#5 | |
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
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