Another one bites the dust....

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Despite the fact that scholars earn their living by teaching and writing literary reviews, abstracts, reports, critiques,etc. it's hardly an act of commercialisation.I know a great many who would laugh and scoff at that idea. Very few scholars become wealthy being a scholar.

Distinguishing between the "scholar" and the Paperback Writer may not always be an easy thing, though, particularly in the Age of Hollywood, where any visual or audio work of art is immediately viewed as a commercial product first, anything else playing second banana.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I'm not sure every case and example is decided upon by CT. Some of them smell to me like lawyers attempting to put a chill on any idea of using Tolkien in any way. That may well be an accepted legal practice but I think it hardly speaks well of an Estate that is supposed to want people to respect the author. Just think of the children who would go home excited to read The Hobbit, for instance, thinking they'd just spent some time in Middle-earth.

I don't think CT is necessarily the source of all the decisions. Lawyers though, are presumably acting on someone's instructions on how to handle different situations. Why would they be so quick to throw out the wheat with the chaff? That's what I'm trying to figure out.
Try as I might, I just don't see any sinister motive between the Estate's possessiveness. Again, I'm not saying I agree with every call they make, but I have to think there's some reasoning behind it.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

And age is no excuse for lazy thinking.

Possessiveness need not equal laziness.

[gondowe]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil
The Denham Tracts contain the word 'hobbits' in a long list of names of mythical beings. That is all. There is no evidence of any further tradition underlyling this appearance of the word, nor that Tolkien was ever aware of it. Even if Tolkien had read the Denham Tracts - indeed, even if we suppose that, contrary to what he said, he consciously took the word from the Denham Tracts - that still would mean nothing more than that he took the name and invented a creature to go with it.

To claim that any of this means that Tolkien did not invent hobbits - that is, his hobbits - is really somewhat ridiculous.

I agree, and even we could say the same for the Elves, his Elves.

Greetings