tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post7169427631311768..comments2023-11-07T06:20:12.181-08:00Comments on Tolkien: Medieval and Modern: History as Myth and a Few Other Things As Well"Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"http://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-78038520250702691712014-04-25T21:41:02.296-07:002014-04-25T21:41:02.296-07:00Ian,
Thanks for the post. You make a very good po...Ian,<br /><br />Thanks for the post. You make a very good point that for Tolkien (as the <i>Notion Club</i> characters), myth is a particular kind of story, one that participates in Truth in some way outside our ability to define, which is why it can change the world in a way that, I think, Tolkien (though perhaps not we tired, third-millennium cynics) would consider impossible for mere fictions.<br /><br />I’m not sure that Ramer’s mental time travel isn’t intended by Tolkien to actually have a more literal effect of moving the dreamer’s consciousness to a different locus in space-time, though. He may not having some sort of race-memory, but be actually <i>there</i>, having an personal, first-hand view in some uncanny sense or other.<br /><br />Your points about Tolkien’s ellision of Third Age geography and topography and ours—and the concomittant joining of myth and history—are well-taken, too.<br /><br />Bill the Heliotrope"Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"https://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-15063780855448382002014-04-23T10:38:16.191-07:002014-04-23T10:38:16.191-07:00Pretty sure that's just the same English artic...Pretty sure that's just the same English article written in Tengwar and Cirth (Khuzdul doesn't even exist in any sort of developed form, and not even Quenya has the vocabulary to allow for any real translation of a technical article). Funny as all get out though.<br /><br />Your definition of myth is interesting, but is the effect on the primary reality really the only thing that defines a myth? I think that Tolkien would push back against a strictly relativist understanding of history--the "time travel" in the Notion Club Papers is definitely complicated by the issues you're talking about here, but I think you go too far in saying that a myth has to be rooted in the emotional consciousness of the contemporary world. What are the Papers themselves if not a story about a more or less completely forgotten (but fundamentally factual) myth intruding into the "primary" reality, where it had had no effect before? Are you proposing that Númenor still loomed large in the "collective minds" of the Anglo-Saxon people--when it showed itself after thousands of years as nothing more than a dream about a great wave? (Also, how does your collective consciousness bit in paragraph 3 contradict the history as myth stuff from paragraph 2?)<br /><br />Good stuff man,<br /><br />--Charlie BullockCharleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16996594885814038059noreply@blogger.com