Spoilers What do people get wrong about Tolkien?

[Umbran]

Perhaps I mixed you up with someone else. Someone claimed that here was no evidence that humans ever made their own spellcraft. That’s what I was responding to, while also going on tangents, as is my wont.

I did say stuff to that effect, I think. There is no direct evidence in the text for it that I know of, so I think the point stands - Tolkien isn't a guy who thinks of humans as supreme and awesome, finding out the secrets of the Universe for themselves. That's not his ethos. He's much more about the power of the prime mover being handed down over and over again, diminishing a bit each time, until we wind up with an entirely mundane world like we have today.

The barrow wights were the ghosts of kings and nobles

The bodies of kings and nobles. The spirits to animate them were sent by the Witch-king.

... nitpicking the term I used isn’t particularly interesting or helpful.

It was helpful as a launching point for the history - the people who made those barrows were folks that had been interacting with Valar and elves for thousands of years, since the First Age, not independent people who had to work out magic for themselves.

Regardless of any idea of them being isolated, or having learned the craft of making magic items from someone else, the Numenoreans were Men, humans, not Maiar or anything like that. Special humans, sure, but very much mortal men.

With a touch of elven blood, but yes, mortals.

But, again, you seem to still be mistaking my point. I never said there were no humans who new how to work magic - I said there was no evidence that they worked it out independently. And I said that in support of the notion that it seems that "wizards" means something specific to Tolkien that is not the common wizard trope we have in D&D and much of the rest of modern fantasy. That should not be surprising - Tolkien was not writing in the midst of modern fantasy. Using the term as he did wasn't putting him in conflict of genre expectations, as the genre as we understand it now didn't exist at the time. So, we should not expect or insist that Tolkien conforms.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I did say stuff to that effect, I think. There is no direct evidence in the text for it that I know of, so I think the point stands - Tolkien isn't a guy who thinks of humans as supreme and awesome, finding out the secrets of the Universe for themselves. That's not his ethos. He's much more about the power of the prime mover being handed down over and over again, diminishing a bit each time, until we wind up with an entirely mundane world like we have today.

Who said anything about anyone finding out the secrets of the universe? Or about humans being “supreme”?

The bodies of kings and nobles. The spirits to animate them were sent by the Witch-king.

That’s not super clear, because while some spirits were sent thus, the specific spirit that dresses hobbits in grave clothes and sings a song about it is very much of that barrow.

It was helpful as a launching point for the history - the people who made those barrows were folks that had been interacting with Valar and elves for thousands of years, since the First Age, not independent people who had to work out magic for themselves.

How specifically did nitpicking the term I used remotely inform the unrelated point about Numenoreans learning magic from elves?

With a touch of elven blood, but yes, mortals.

But, again, you seem to still be mistaking my point. I never said there were no humans who knew how to work magic - I said there was no evidence that they worked it out independently.

And I correctly pointed out that there is however strong implications thus.

And I said that in support of the notion that it seems that "wizards" means something specific to Tolkien that is not the common wizard trope we have in D&D and much of the rest of modern fantasy.

I didn’t comment on this. I don’t care about how anyone uses or uses the specific word “wizard”.

That should not be surprising - Tolkien was not writing in the midst of modern fantasy. Using the term as he did wasn't putting him in conflict of genre expectations, as the genre as we understand it now didn't exist at the time. So, we should not expect or insist that Tolkien conforms.

Okay?

 

[Maxperson]

With a touch of elven blood, but yes, mortals.

A touch of elven and maia blood. Luthien is in the Numenorean ancestry.

 

[Clint_L]

Have you listened to the audiobooks of LotR as read by Andy Serkis? He brings the dialogue to life.

I don't doubt it - he could make the phone book sound good.

Look, I'm not denying that there is some good dialogue in Tolkien, just as there are some good lines in Star Wars. But Tolkien's default mode is to have someone declaiming rather than conversing. It works for him because Tolkien, but it's awful when his lesser followers try to emulate it.

 

[Dioltach]

Here's something else that most people don't know about JRR Tolkien: the J stands for "Jive".

 

[trappedslider]

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Balrogs don't have wings.

But they're objectively cooler with wings.

 

[môrgondír]

One of my favorites:
LotR isn't a trilogy, it's one book that was split into three volumes by Allen & Unwin prior to its initial publication due to paper availability and cost concerns.

 

[ART!]

I think people forget how much weird fantasy is in Tolkien. people think of elves and dwarves and boring fantasy stuff, but they forget about the Watcher in the Water and the unnamable things beneath the mountains and Tom "WTaF" Bombadil.

"nameless things gnawing on the roots of the Earth" really stuck in my head.

He's a complete outlier, whose style was wildly out of synch with 20th century literary trends. In many ways, he could be considered a bad writer. He's often expository, his dialogue is often stilted and not how real people talk, he relied heavily on stereotypes, his class and gender assumptions are regressive, and, well, actually, almost everything about his work is regressive (fantasy as a genre tends to be regressive by its nature). He has almost zero range - you can't imagine him writing a mystery, or a romance (lol), or, well, anything but epic fantasy.

I write all that as a fan. He's a genre of one, excepting maybe Milton, and his work carries an epic weight that not only outweighs all of his faults, but turns them into strengths. I find him almost impossible to critique, for this reason, because what he is doing obviously works, but only for him. His many imitators are miles behind - he's not like a Joyce, who changed the game for everyone and reinvented the modern novel, inspiring many more great innovators. Tolkien is Tolkien.

Right - he was not a novelist. He was a really good writer, but not a good novelist, but also had no interest in writing "a novel".

 

[Hriston]

One of my favorites:
LotR isn't a trilogy, it's one book that was split into three volumes by Allen & Unwin prior to its initial publication due to paper availability and cost concerns.

Well, actually, it's one novel written in six books, which works out to two books per volume.