tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post3618891255790475373..comments2023-11-07T06:20:12.181-08:00Comments on Tolkien: Medieval and Modern: Breaching the Secondary Reality"Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"http://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-37521179928988409212014-04-17T19:29:55.087-07:002014-04-17T19:29:55.087-07:00Hmm, that's a really interesting point. I actu...Hmm, that's a really interesting point. I actually do think Tolkien does a wonderful job portraying the sense of loss I've felt, although I'd never before made the connection to how I felt before! Thinking about it that way definitely helps on an intellectual level, it's quite reassuring to know that the discomfort/dilemma was something Tolkien understood and had an interest in exploring. I think another example of this is in the last chapter of the Return of the King, The Grey Havens. I know it's not exactly the same, but it definitely instills in the reader this idea of choosing between worlds. In the end, the heroes and magic sail away into what is, at least for the purposes of the trilogy, the great unknown. At the end of the story, it's leaving behind adventure and returning to home and family. This doesn't really take away the sense of sadness at loss, but it does make me think about the necessity of returning home from adventure and leaving behind the fantastical.<br /><br />I love the connection to Smith of Wooton Major. I really do think that this "putting things together" makes it inaccessible to us in a way, but perhaps that mirrors this sense of closing in the trilogy. Putting together Tolkien's world is an incredible journey after all, and maybe "returning home" from it isn't such a bad thing. Perhaps the journey doesn't mean as much unless you can look back on it?<br /><br />I may be overstretching this metaphor, but I think those were both really interesting comments. Thanks for bringing them up!<br />MBMMBMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15430488368404856475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-83678454988262054502014-04-15T16:35:06.678-07:002014-04-15T16:35:06.678-07:00dyingst’s comment is really interesting. It remind...dyingst’s comment is really interesting. It reminds me of Smith’s “great weariness and bereavement” (Smith of Wootton Major 48) after returning home from his final trip to Faery. So long as he was still in effect blundering into and around Faery, he could go, appreciate it, and return. Memories of Faery remain for him during his village life. More than that, the two worlds are inextricably linked, and he is a kind of center of that link, something that walks in both. (I hesitate to say belongs in both, but I’m comfortable today at least saying that he belongs more in Faery, with his star, than ‘Alf’ belongs in the world of the village, where he is accepted and put up with but never quite ‘fits?’ I admit I may be oversimplifying for this comment.) But once Smith feels he has sort of figured out what’s going on (that kilted maiden is the Queen!), he also begins to feel he shall not come to Faery again (“I do not think that I shall ever return” to Faery!) (Smith 39). <br /><br />Again, I'm oversimplifying the story here, and putting aside for a moment the (too important to put aside) links between this story and the creative process for the moment, in order to just link the story for the time being to the process of receiving the world. Can we, in putting together at least enough of a picture to feel we have sufficiently 'figured it out,' make Faery in some way inaccessible to us in the way that it once was?<br /><br />I'm also reminded of - spoiler alert! - a reading for the April 16 class, Rosebury's "Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon," where he essentially says that some of the plot points in the Lord of the Rings were better before the backgrounds details were hashed out precisely in some other work. I'm remembering the example of the Black Riders' arrival in the Shire, and Rosebury's point that as a story it's better left from the sort of Hobbits' LotR perspective, and knowing exactly how and through what plans the riders were sent when they were ruins the impact of the unknown which, through their perspective, gives the sense of a terrible and unknowable power far away, but encroaching upon what is safe and home.(My print out is not with me, and from the pdf alone I'm struggling to find the page, but trust me on this.) Rosebury's a little prickly about Tolkien's works on occasion, I think, but I agree with him here, and found it akin to your discomfort, which I've shared at times in this class.Isabel Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13583883572515517229noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-15759681957820026072014-04-11T13:14:43.868-07:002014-04-11T13:14:43.868-07:00I really enjoyed this post. Do you think we see t...I really enjoyed this post. Do you think we see this sense of loss being played out within Tolkien's work itself? I'm particularly thinking of the requirements for the elf-friends to eventually turn back from faery, returning to a single reality (and we might think of many other examples, there's a way in which loss is very central to Tolkien's writings). If so, perhaps the works themselves can be helpful in reconciling these anxieties you bring up. <br /><br />dyingsthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02087241514388178221noreply@blogger.com