[CLUE-Talk] Tolkien and allegory

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 01-10 19:21, Dennis J Perkins wrote:
> 
> 
> 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.

I have one foot on the boat and one on the dock. :) I thought about going to
art school or film school, but loved computers, too, so opted for the more
"real world" choice of comp sci. Mostly I like real explanations to explain
the real world, so I go for the hard science, too. But there are corners of
the psyche and aspects of life that aren't easily explained by hard science,
and I'm drawn to those, too. I enjoy reasonable (yeah, by my definition) lit
analysis. I find some types repugnant, such as the ones discussed earlier. 

I think a lot of analysis of the arts can be taken too far, and can, in
effect, strangle any sort of enjoyment out of it. However, I don't reject
analysis outright and I think some of the tools can be handy to further its
enjoyment, and in fact, I wish I had been forced to take a few more classes
in liberal arts.

BTW, last spring I bought The Power of Myth (PBS series) on DVD and
thoroughly enjoyed this. I love this sort of stuff. I've only read one book
by Jung, and it turned out to be only partly by Jung, and a bunch of stuff
added post-humously. There are some more I plan on reading soon. I don't
think this stuff as hard science by any means, but I am drawn to it.

I remember seeing Eraserhead for the first time. Now, for the surface
"story", this movie doesn't have a whole lot going for it, and could be
summed up in a paragraph, really. I was just trying to get my head around
it, and told my friend (who owned it, and was watching it with me) - well,
I'm not really sure what it all means, but it reminds me of Philadelphia - I
saw this in my frosh year at Drexel. When he told me that it was Lynch's
reaction to living in Philadelphia (and well, fatherhood), I was a Lynch fan
from then on. It's so cool that something so strange could connect on a
level like that. I also started going to see art films (a lot of my friends
during frosh year were art students) more often because of this.
Unfortunately, a lot of them were just forgettable pretentious crap.
Warhol's stuff comes to mind.
 
> >
> >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?

Someone mentioned on here that he specifically rejected that it was about
WWII...I remember reading that in my teens. Until that point, I always
thought it WAS about that. So it's easy to see how someone can be wrong
about an author's intent[*]. I think Tolkien was using the term "allegory" in a
different sense than the term "symbolism", though, and that's why I posted
this article. This author is using the lens of Christianity, however, so
there could be distortion, of course. 

Tolkien despised setting out with the specific task of telling a morality
tale, but it doesn't sound like he despised ending up with "truth" via
symbolism, if that's what naturally fell out of his story-telling.  I mean,
come on: Sauron. How much more representative of evil does it get? The ring:
isn't there a bit of forbidden fruit aspect there? Maybe Tolkien didn't
intend these sort of things on a conscious level, but it's easy to see why
people think he did. 

I personally think Dune, for example, isn't a SF classic just because of the
surface story. It's a good one, but for some, there is also a
religious/mystical subtext (and it's not all that much of a subtext, really.
They call Paul a messiah outright) that resonates with those people.  Same
with Star Wars. Same with Matrix. And the LotR. We can argue about the
authors'/creators' intents, but I think it's clear these things have lasting
impact because of what people see in them. Maybe we should start a
book/movie club to discuss these matters. ;)

In the Power of Myth, they talk to Lucas, and he talks about his intentional
use of myths in Star Wars. I have to admit I was puzzled by this, since he
was inspired by Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress:
http://www.jitterbug.com/origins/kurosawa.html I guess Kurosawa was
imitating Western myths for his stuff. I guess it all goes back to what
Joseph Campbell talks about. These stories are told and retold because they
resonate on a level that is cross-cultural.

BTW, I did try to read one of the Lost Tales books, but I was probably too
young at the time. It bored me to tears. :)


[*] I still think it's hard to believe he wasn't influenced at all by
something so overwhelming. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers isn't really
about Cold War fear of Communism, too, but I again find it hard to believe
there wasn't the tiniest bit of influence. 

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at americanisp.net  
http://users.americanisp.net/~seanleblanc/
Get MLAC at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlac/
A man always needs to remember one thing about a beautiful woman. Somewhere, 
somebody's tired of her.