[CLUE-Talk] Tolkien and allegory

[Jef Barnhart]

Ok.. So I ave not read all the thread.

But this reminds me of an interview of Martin Scorsese. He was talking
about Taxi Driver and an interview that he had.

Reporter: When Travis(Robert de Niro) asked Iris(Jodie Foster) to go to
the country? Did you mean that people should become more of an agrarian
society?

Scorsese: No. He just wanted to go to the country and asked if Iris
would want to come along.

=======================

Try not to read to much into stuff.

Jef




On Sun, 2003-12-28 at 11:22, Sean LeBlanc wrote:
> Last week at the pre-study group dinner, someone mentioned that Tolkien
> didn't like allegory. I just remember being stunned to hear that. In
> retrospect, I shouldn't have been - I do remember that he denied some of the
> symbolism that people have since attributed to his work. Even Hemingway has
> done similar stuff, though, IIRC: saying his stuff had no symbolism in it.
> If Hemingway's stuff was "just" about, for example, an old man fishing, it
> wouldn't be revered all that much. (I'm sure old Ernie isn't revered all
> that much anymore as it is due to his macho persona...I could see some of
> the feminists sharpening the knives when I was in uni back in 1991 - but
> that's another story). But I think I'm garbling up the terms "symbolism" and
> "allegory".
> 
> Anyway, I thought I'd go googling for this since I had never heard that
> Tolkien hated allegory. It seems an odd position for him to take since he
> was supposedly a devout Christian. Anyway, found this:
> 
> http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/zenit-tolkien.html
> Should probably take this with a grain of salt given the source, though. 
> 
> Note this part especially:
> 
>  Q: Do you think this was Tolkien's intention?
> 
>  Pearce: There is no doubt that "The Lord of the Rings" is a profoundly
>  Christian myth, but that is not the same as saying that it is an allegory.
> 
>  Tolkien disliked allegory because he saw it as a rather crude literary form.
>  In an allegory, the writer begins with the point he wishes to make and then
>  makes up a story to make his point. The story is really little more than a
>  means of illustrating the moral.
> 
>  Tolkien believed that a myth should not be allegorical but that it should be
>  "applicable." In other words, the truth that emerges in the story can be
>  applied to the truth that emerges in life.
> 
>  There is, therefore, a good deal of truth in "The Lord of the Rings" even
>  though its author never set out intentionally to introduce it allegorically.
>  This is, perhaps, a subtle distinction but one which Tolkien believed was
>  important. 
> 
> 
> I found the opening question amusing:
> 
>  Q: There have been criticisms of some fantasy stories because of their
>  allegedly pagan orientation. Do you see Tolkien's works as being part of
>  this genre or is it different? 
> 
> Huh? Doesn't Christianity itself have some conspicuously placed holidays and
> traditions that derive from "paganism"? Anyway.... 
> 
> 
> Hope everyone had a Happy Festivus.