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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shilsen" data-source="post: 1308197" data-attributes="member: 198">I think a big part of the disagreements that I see here is based on assumptions readers bring to the books. And the reason that Tolkien is not exactly popular among literary critics arises from the same assumptions. Tolkien was not writing a modern (or post-modern) realistic novel, which many of the best literary figures of his time were doing. He was writing a text (I would never call LotR a novel) which is much more firmly placed in the epic genre, drawing upon ideas and themes which one sees in the Homeric epics and the norse eddas, than in the literature of his time. Not in this case, since it depends on the writer's intent and assumptions. Divine providence in an Ibsen play or a Woolf novel is a cop-out. Divine providence in the Iliad or in the Faerie Queene, or in certain works by deeply religious authors such as C.S.Lewis's Narnia series and in this case, the LotR, is perfectly acceptable since it is a part of the author's world-view. Just because you do not believe that there is a divinity that shapes our ends doesn't mean Tolkien needs to agree with you. I am a confirmed atheist, but that does not mean I am incapable of appreciating that a structure of religious belief can be part of a work of literature.  I am. And I am fine with that, just as I can appreciate Paradise Lost even though Milton writes about a God, angels and a devil that I do not believe in. And just for the record, I believe that the depiction of a world where nothing happens fortuitously or through happenstance would be incredible unrealistic.  Sure. And perhaps for you the fact that Bohemia has a coast in his plays matters. For me it doesn't, since focusing on that and the fact that Richard III might not have been hunchbacked is missing the wood for the trees. If you consider what the play-within-a-play meant to his audience and how previous dramatists had used it, it's not difficult to see why Shakespeare (who was writing plays in order to make money) uses it.Sure you could, depending on the genre and the intent of the text. The right page for you. It's a weak defense if you're writing a realistic novel, perhaps. Tolkien isn't. The conception of realism changes depending on historical period, authorial assumptions, genre and a few other aspects. What's "realistic" for the Eddas isn't for a Broadway show, and what's realistic for a D.H. Lawrence novel isn't for a Dickens novel.And here's the point of my post. The definition of Bad Writing is dependent on what's being attempted in a text, the genre, when it is written, and a host of other factors. You are attempting to apply a single frame of judgement to Tolkien's work, and in my opinion applying one which is specifically incompatible with it. The equivalent would be me arguing that Sophocles' plays are full of plot holes because they rely on things which are unrealistic to me. Or that Shakespeare's characters are unrealistic simply because they speak in blank verse, which no "real" person would. When I sit down to read the Mahabharata, I do not complain because the characters have no internal monologue. When I read Tolkien, I am setting myself up to read epic mythology, not a realist novel. And so I expect what is appropriate for the former, not the latter. You expect something different, and unsurprisingly, you are disappointed. There lies the difference.</blockquote>

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