[CLUE-Talk] Tolkien and allegory

[Timothy C. Klein]

* Dennis J Perkins (djperkins at americanisp.net) wrote:
> Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> I'm not a believer in literary analysis and avoided literature classes 
> in high school and college whenever possible.  The purpose of most 
> stories is simple... tell an entertaining story.  Good stories have real 
> plots to hold our attention.  They do not require analysis to understand 
> them, altho some people might enjoy analyzing them.  And trying to apply 
> analysis to stories from another era or culture is bound to produce 
> ludicrous results.

There's a lot of 'engineer bias' going on here.  I guess that is not
surprising.  As someone who has lived on both sides (I was at one time
pursuing a BA in English Lit., and am currently working on a BS in
mathematics and physics), I would like to think I have some special
insight.  But maybe not.  Very, very many stories that English Lit. types
care about are quite riddled with allegory, symbolism, allusion.  That
is really as plain as day.  Try reading 'The Wasteland' by Eliot without
those tools -- it will be neither entertaining nor enlightening.  (Of
course I would argue that is neither of those things *with* said tools,
but that is neither here nor there).

As for Tolkien, he has denied that he wrote it as an allegory.  Fine.
But if one is going to try to understand why it was/is immensely popular,
then allegorical argument are certainly going to come into play.  People
don't intrinsically care about Middle Earth.  Using arguments based on
symbol, allegory, etc. to justify its popularity is fine -- indeed,
probably absolutely required.

> I remember Asimov's autobiography saying that someone once told Asimov 
> what he meant in one of his stories..  The guy justified it by saying, 
> how would Asimov know what he meant?

Bah.  There are certainly post-modernists that get very carried away.
For a great example, read something buy a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet.  Yuck!
But nonetheless, the kind of thing Asimov is talking about is pointless.
If I can find evidence of a certain interpretation, *in the story*, then
it is true that the author's intent is weakened.  There is no way around
it.  If Asimov meant A, but a convincing case for B can be argued on
Asimov's own text, then you are at an impasse.  Asimov may say A, but if
his work says B, so what?  What is the permanent record?  It is the
story, not the authors intent.  Authors are imperfect -- they may not
always manage to capture their own intent as they intended.  Ultimately,
the story itself, and what people find in it, is what counts.  *Not*
what the author wanted the story to say.  However, if the author is
good, his intent and the message of the story will match.  But it won't
always be the case.

Which is not to excuse the blather that passes for some PoMo Lit. Crit.
But don't lump *all* Lit. Crit. into that category.  A lot of is not.  A
lot of is simply trying to understand why we find certain works to be
'great.'  And there sure as hell ain't anything wrong with that.

Also, there will always be different interpretations and disagreements
about famous texts.  It is not like math or science, where there is a
'right' answer.  But that doesn't make the exercise any less fruitful
to me.  A critical read of Yeats is just as satisfying as proof of
Fermat's Little theorem, to me.  Go figure.

Tim
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