Voronwë, I must admit that I don't at all read vison's post as prescribing what other people should think—just describing what she thinks. How is it "rejecting" an idea to just state that the issue in question isn't important to your own appreciation of Tolkien's LotR? This of all books is important to a vast range of people for a vast range of reasons, from "Aragorn's so kewl" on up.Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:But why is that something to be "sad" about (or anything reasonably approximating "sad")? We have long known that we come at this from different places and are not likely to agree on this issue. What is wrong with that? Isn't there room in the world for different perspectives?vison wrote:It didn't make me "sad" that you posted it. I did the little *sigh* and thing because it makes me "sad" that I realize once again that you and I are simply never going to "agree" on this issue. Not really "sad", but that little emoticon is about as close as an emoticon is going to get.
Why? Because we are coming at the thing from different places. LOTR and his other works mean fundamentally different things to you than they do to me. Than they are EVER going to mean to me.
That is certainly your prerogative. But that doesn't mean that the thoughts of someone like Verlyn Flieger -- or for that matter, of myself -- do not have value. Automatically rejecting ideas because "scholars think that way" is just as wrong as automatically accepting ideas for that reason. Please don't begrudge those of us who find value in looking at the meaning of Tolkien's work as applied to the world in which we live the right to do so.The quotes you provided are interesting, but the sentiments and ideas expressed in them do not apply to me in any way. It isn't that I "disagree" with them, it isn't that I don't understand them, it isn't that I don't comprehend them, it is that: I don't think about Tolkien's writing that way.
"Experts" do think that way. Scholars think that way. I don't. I have basically never found that anything written by such scholars of Tolkien as the person you quoted above have increased my pleasure in reading LOTR. Nor does learning more about the man himself increase my enjoyment. Rather, the contrary.
If you and I value different things about the book, that's not a rejection of what you value about it; I'm not saying your opinion is invalid because it's different from mine. In fact my experience of the book has been greatly enriched over the years by hearing what other people see in it that I may have missed. There's still plenty to talk about.