[CLUE-Talk] Tolkien and allegory

[Dennis J Perkins]

Timothy C. Klein wrote:

>* 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.
>>    
>>
Uhm, Zonker did not say this.  I did.

>There's a lot of 'engineer bias' going on here.  I guess that is not
>surprising.  
>
Probably true in my case.  I don't know about Sean.  I love to read, but 
I am definitely firmly in the engineer/hard science camp.

>
>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.
>
But if you insist on using allegory when Tolkien despised allegory, 
aren't you misinterpreting the story?

>Tim
>--
>==============================================
>== Timothy Klein || teece at silverklein.net   ==
>==  Vanity Page: http://tinyurl.com/vkhp    ==
>== ---------------------------------------- ==
>== Hello_World.c: 17 Errors, 31 Warnings... ==
>==============================================
>
What version of Hello_World are you running?  My error count is much 
higher. :)