AHHH THAT POST IS PERFECT AND WONDERFUL. Okay, no, but I really liked the idea of fourth age academia fanfiction. /giggles
Okay, one thing to point out is that Tolkien did consciously write his entire Middle Earth oeuvre as 'a setting down of a history' (not a precise quote, but definitely he did say 'setting down' somewhere).
intentionally constructed piece of political propaganda disguised as a heroic history.
I don't think Tolkien was quite so politically sophisticated in his construction of the history of Middle Earth. But The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit) are canonically part of The Red Book of Westmarch, which Bilbo and Frodo wrote. So it was, like, Tolkien writing what they wrote. If that makes sense?
A lot of the themes/plot in The Lord of the Rings, like Aragorn's story, drew largely on a lot of Norse and Celtic mythology. So the provable right to the crown of Gondor -- that kind of modern justification needed -- it wasn't the point.
he is clearly very aware of construction-of-story and construction-of-history
I agree with this! If only because he was a Professor of Philology (at Oxford, wink wink nudge nudge) and lectured in Old English and he would've had to deal with these things, I think. And like I said earlier, he didn't write LOTR as a story. He wrote it as PART of constructing this entire mythos for England (he's said, somewhere, I can't be bothered to dig that book out, that he wanted to created a full mythic cosmology for England because England was lacking in one, versus the Norse mythology &c). He didn't even really feel like writing LOTR; he'd finished The Hobbit, was working on what became post-humously The Silmarillion, then at some point I think he went back to LOTR because readers were like "AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED???" also he sent bits of it to his son who was at war during WWII. /tangent
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: Wednesday, 15 August 2012 06:21 (UTC)Okay, one thing to point out is that Tolkien did consciously write his entire Middle Earth oeuvre as 'a setting down of a history' (not a precise quote, but definitely he did say 'setting down' somewhere).
intentionally constructed piece of political propaganda disguised as a heroic history.
I don't think Tolkien was quite so politically sophisticated in his construction of the history of Middle Earth. But The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit) are canonically part of The Red Book of Westmarch, which Bilbo and Frodo wrote. So it was, like, Tolkien writing what they wrote. If that makes sense?
A lot of the themes/plot in The Lord of the Rings, like Aragorn's story, drew largely on a lot of Norse and Celtic mythology. So the provable right to the crown of Gondor -- that kind of modern justification needed -- it wasn't the point.
he is clearly very aware of construction-of-story and construction-of-history
I agree with this! If only because he was a Professor of Philology (at Oxford, wink wink nudge nudge) and lectured in Old English and he would've had to deal with these things, I think. And like I said earlier, he didn't write LOTR as a story. He wrote it as PART of constructing this entire mythos for England (he's said, somewhere, I can't be bothered to dig that book out, that he wanted to created a full mythic cosmology for England because England was lacking in one, versus the Norse mythology &c). He didn't even really feel like writing LOTR; he'd finished The Hobbit, was working on what became post-humously The Silmarillion, then at some point I think he went back to LOTR because readers were like "AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED???" also he sent bits of it to his son who was at war during WWII. /tangent