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Hmm. I got the impression even in the books that orcs only stopped lopping each other's heads off long enough to destroy even worse enemies, then went right back to murdering each other. Even the two pairs of orcs from whom we get the most dialogue and names end up murdering each other's followers/each other/backstabbing and betraying.
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Feb 18, 2020 00:38
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Toll prof stopped updating his podcasts Rip
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Feb 18, 2020 00:38
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euphronius posted:Toll prof stopped updating his podcasts Five episodes dropped on Friday, though?
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Feb 18, 2020 01:35
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Five episodes dropped on Friday, though? gently caress yes ! Thank you They didn’t show because Saturday and Sunday episodes pushed them down the list gently caress this owns.
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Feb 18, 2020 02:15
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Yeah, sometimes they get all bunged up and then suddenly all post at once like someone unkinked the hose.
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Feb 18, 2020 02:38
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Imagined posted:Is that not exactly what I said? No. You conflate deliberate allegory with symbolism, and the "That being said" implies that you do see a contradiction.
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Feb 18, 2020 16:15
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Our sense of “allegory” is a lot more broad that Prof Tolkien was using it which leads to confusion imho These days if any part of a work of fiction can be applicable to real life we call it an allegory . Where as jrrt probably meant something formally set out as allegory like animal farm or snow-piercer There are def parts of LOTR that are applicable to the modern world
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Feb 18, 2020 18:37
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I’m sure I remember a quote from someone, maybe even JRRT, saying people tend to confuse “allegory” with “applicability”.
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Feb 18, 2020 18:41
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It was JRRT, it’s right in the same quote where he talks about disliking allegory
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Feb 18, 2020 19:18
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Maybe that’s where I got it from idk We today def use “allegory” way way way more broadly
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Feb 18, 2020 19:19
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Tolkien's a medievalist so he's talking about medieval allegory in the sense of one to one broad correspondences, like pilgrims progress or a miracle play or Narnia.
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Feb 18, 2020 19:28
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Personally I’m shocked the English Catholic didn’t like pilgrim’s progress
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Feb 18, 2020 19:31
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I mean I don't blame him that text is boring as gently caress.
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Feb 18, 2020 23:05
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The Lion is Jesus and also here's Santa. CS Lewis lived to make Tolkien mad.
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Feb 18, 2020 23:28
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All the petrified good guys were Frosty
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Feb 18, 2020 23:53
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sassassin posted:The Lion is Jesus and also here's Santa. CS Lewis lived to make Tolkien mad. The Inklings was just an endless cycle of Lewis trolling Tolkien with overly-specific allegories, and Tolkien trolling Lewis with cruel remarks about not being able to come up with a five thousand year long backstory for his made-up character names.
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Feb 19, 2020 01:17
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Tree Bucket posted:The Inklings was just an endless cycle of Lewis trolling Tolkien with overly-specific allegories, and Tolkien trolling Lewis with cruel remarks about not being able to come up with a five thousand year long backstory for his made-up character names. IIRC Tolkien also got salty about the fact that Lewis populated his world with monsters from all sorts of different mythologies willy-nilly. Like, "the lion is Jesus" was bad enough, but putting fauns and dwarves in the same world? *Pops monocle in Quenya*
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Feb 19, 2020 09:33
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That's really interesting! I bet the Sindarin word for monocle would have overtones of autumnal sadness, somehow.
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Feb 19, 2020 12:18
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Did elves need glasses? Do you think feanor and the other gemsmiths used like magnifying glasses?
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Feb 19, 2020 16:56
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Elves born nearsighted probably just abandon their hröa in a fit of temper
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Feb 19, 2020 17:22
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skasion posted:Elves born nearsighted probably just abandon their hröa in a fit of temper Gesundheit.
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Feb 19, 2020 17:35
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I was doing some reading about Herbert's Dune and found an article, apparently by a respected journalist, that confidently stated LotR was "about" the rise of Fascism and the trauma of World War Two. Made it really hard to take the rest of the article seriously. How does this stuff get published, honestly... skasion posted:Elves born nearsighted probably just abandon their hröa in a fit of temper I have failed, I don't get this reference 
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Feb 19, 2020 21:56
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WW2 was very traumatic for Tolkien as he had to wait ages to get feedback on his drafts.
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Feb 19, 2020 21:58
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Tree Bucket posted:I have failed, I don't get this reference Elves’ spirits (fëa) can choose to just abandon their bodies (hröa) if they don’t want to live in there anymore. There’s an essay about it in Morgoth’s Ring i think Specifically it’s what Feanor’s mom did skasion fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Feb 19, 2020 |
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Feb 19, 2020 22:04
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skasion posted:Elves’ spirits (fëa) can choose to just abandon their bodies (hröa) if they don’t want to live in there anymore. There’s an essay about it in Morgoth’s Ring i think Oh, that makes sense. Good catch. I always felt sorry for Feanor's mum.
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Feb 19, 2020 22:57
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skasion posted:Elves’ spirits (fëa) can choose to just abandon their bodies (hröa) if they don’t want to live in there anymore. There’s an essay about it in Morgoth’s Ring i think Didn't Celebrian do this too? Or did she just go over the water after being mugged by orcs in the Misty Mountains.
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Feb 19, 2020 23:49
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Oracle posted:Didn't Celebrian do this too? Or did she just go over the water after being mugged by orcs in the Misty Mountains. Yeah she just ditched on her family, not fleshly existence as such
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Feb 19, 2020 23:58
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Imagined posted:The people who insist that the LotR was allegorical or symbolic of WW1 or WW2, or of Tolkien's idealized childhood, generally drive me nuts. That being said, there are definitely some points in the books where I felt like his background as a combat veteran comes out. In particular, the passages in the 'The Two Towers' where the orcs are talking to each other about the progress of the war struck me as something Tolkien might have lifted nearly verbatim from his fellow soldiers during the war. He didn't associate orcs with warmongers and profiteers, but with cruel and violent people from Industrial Age warfare. Sauron and Saruman would be closer to modern age warmongers. The only profiteers I can think of were Hobbits. Some of Tolkien's quotes about Orcs: "...It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them..." “An ultimately evil job. For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs. Not that in real life things are as clear cut as in a story, and we started out with a great many Orcs on our side. (letter 66)” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
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Feb 21, 2020 15:10
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tolkien was an old-style social conservative. he would have no great objections to a lot of commercialism, except that he'd find much of it vulgar - he was certainly not any kind of militant for an egalitarian world order. tolkien believed that there were people fit to rule and people fit to serve, and that the former group had a particular obligation of protection and guidance to the latter. tolkien saw the disruption and filth of the industry and though that it was a great shame that people couldn't e.g. look after their families, but he was no fan of working-class organisations meant to represent an opposing force. he believed in his god, in the land, the family unit and the fundamental decency of man. his breed is almost entirely extinct today - i think maybe the last one around in the anglophone world is peter hitchens - because the progress of free-market capitalism is so obviously opposed to forces like community, family or fancy ideas of benevolence. it almost doesn't make sense to think of tolkien's political views today, because they seem so outlandishly quaint in the face of post-thatcher Conservativism
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Feb 29, 2020 21:34
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Hardly surprising. It's not a long jump from "there are people meant to lead" and some much less charitable viewpoints. But that's a conversation for another thread.
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Feb 29, 2020 21:38
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i actually think the sheer completeness of the death of social conservativism is quite fascinating, because it's really come to a point where an ideology which really was the working thought of major parties of government (and often still is the official ideology of those parties) is completely unrecognisable to modern readers. earlier readers had no problems with seeing this aspect of his work; moorcock famously wrote a whole screed about it. idk i think it's an interesting example of how the times inform the reader
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Feb 29, 2020 23:11
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Hang on, how long's this subforum been called "The Book Bran"?
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Mar 26, 2020 23:08
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Tree Bucket posted:Hang on, how long's this subforum been called "The Book Bran"? I think that I saw it last week, or maybe early this week.
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Mar 27, 2020 08:34
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Here's a long, interesting, sympathetic, and finally negative LRB article about Tolkien, free thanks to the pandemic: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n22/jenny-turner/reasons-for-liking-tolkien - it does take its time stating the obvious, though. The Salon article it quotes but doesn't link to is here: https://www.salon.com/2001/06/06/tolkien2/
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Apr 24, 2020 16:00
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Calls the Silmarillion enormous mad and unreadable, like please, I read that in high school. You just have to be a nerd to enjoy it. Also it's not even three hundred pages, IIRC.
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Apr 24, 2020 17:47
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SHISHKABOB posted:Calls the Silmarillion enormous mad and unreadable, like please, I read that in high school. You just have to be a nerd to enjoy it. Also it's not even three hundred pages, IIRC. I mean... nerds will read anything, no matter how bad it is. As a nerd who read a lot of Star Wars books, I know this. To the average person the Silmarillion is really, really daunting. It's like reading the Bible, which is also something very few people have done, even very religious people. For most readers, that is an accurate depiction of the Silmarillion.
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Apr 24, 2020 17:57
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I shouldn't have posted that, it's a very interesting article.
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Apr 24, 2020 18:00
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As a big fan of the Silmarillion, I will begrudge no one calling it mad and unreadable.
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Apr 24, 2020 18:18
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Yeah I don't usually recommend The Lord of the Rings let alone the Simarillion to people. I think Tolkien is a great writer, but he's not that accessible. Anyone can get through the Hobbit, but beyond that you need to have a certain set of interests and patience. Historians read Tolkien happily in my experience, for example.
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Apr 24, 2020 18:42
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I think the first half of Fellowship of the Ring is the only REALLY hard bit to get through. I wouldn’t say the rest of the book is that tough beyond that.
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Apr 24, 2020 19:59
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