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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2042970" data-attributes="member: 7240">Joshua,In your last post, you misrepresented a number of my arguments.I made no assertion that Tolkien did any such thing. I simply made the following points:1. Tolkien extensively studied medieval literature in the process of obtaining his doctorate.2. Tolkien therefore must have been aware that medieval ideas of kingship included a belief in healing through the laying on of hands.3. Tolkien chose to make the revelation and reclamantion of Aragorn's true kingship a significant part of his LOTR narrative.4. He wrote scenes about Aragorn healing through the laying on of hands, using a plant called kingsfoil, in full knowledge that healing through the laying on of hands was a proof of medieval kingship.5. He created a Gondorian oral tradition that "the hands of a king are the hands of a healer."6. Given that Tolkien was a careful and intentional writer, the most rational explanation for this behaviour was the intention to make this reference.So what's your story? Tolkien depicts two healing scenes in the novel. Both involve the true king, healing someone using a plant called kingsfoil. He does so in full knowledge of the medieval tradition of true kings having the capacity to heal by the laying on of hands. What do you think was going through Tolkien's mind when he wrote these scenes and the prophecy fully cognizant of what they would evoke for any other scholar of the medieval period? Clearly you cannot argue that Tolkien did not know what these passages would evoke for someone with similar education to his own. So, how do you think he wanted these people to regard what he had written?Well, here we are just at an impasse. I don't especially like your chracterization of this kind of thing as "negative evidence" either. Tolkien goes to the trouble of showing Aragorn healing, and only Aragorn healing twice.You talk about this as though Tolkien hadn't deliberately constructed a plot in which Aragorn gets to heal people.So, let's suppose an author manages to write a book in which no women do anything significant. Can we conclude that this provides us with no evidence about the role of women in the world the author depicts? Surely even if you don't want to accept this point, you must concede that, at least in general, lacunae in books can give us significant information.That would be a good point if that is what I had asserted. But in fact, what I asserted was that Tolkien would have been aware of the symbolic meaning already inherent in the healing "prophecy" and laying on of hands. My argument is not that every good writer uses symbolism. My argument is that Tolkien would have known how scholars like himself would read what he had written. Again, let's look at a different example. Let's suppose there is a scene in a novel in which a character is executed wearing a crown of thorns, or executed by crucifixion. Would you argue that a good writer should produce such a product without taking into account that his symbols would be seen as Christian?Have you read Roman Catholic historiographic theory? I would suggest that before you make too much of this, you should look at writers like de Lubac or Chenu or go to the original sources and look at people like Augustine or the Victorines. Premodern Roman Catholic theories of history allow history to proceed with free will be also recognize that tropes will reoccur in the history. Developed for Scriptural exegesis, idea of multiple signification and recurring patterns in history was first used by Saint Augustine on secular history. So I don't see any conflict here. The advocates of this reading of history, in the past, made the same point Tolkien does in your above quotation -- that history could be read completely satisfactorily without this eye for symbols and parallels but that this did not discount other things that could be pulled from the text of unfolding events. Also I don't buy that this was some deep use of symbolism here. This was just a direct reference. But if you didn't have the reference, you could just read what the text itself said: "the hands of a king are the hands of a healer."The tools I am using are not the tools of modern literary criticism. There are no hidden symbols or complex parallels here -- just a direct reference to a thing in the past that, in case the readers don't get, he spells out the meaning of in the text anyway. Also, to suggest that finding non-literal meaning in texts or references in texts is somehow automatically grouped with the modern literary critics with whom Tolkien had differences is a great insult to the traditions of reading and writing that came before the modern period. I don't think Tolkien intended to paint Hugh Saint Victor and Saint Augustine with the brush with which he painted his colleagues.So are you seriously now going to take the position (a) that intentionally-written myth histories are not literature or (b) that myth does not include symbolism?Let's actually use a comparable example. What you're looking for in the text is an instance of only one character being able to do something. So, is the fact that only Gandalf does fire magic significant? Yes. Is the fact that Eowyn is the only woman who goes to war significant? Yes.Ok. (a) There is no metaphor here. (b) There is no deep hidden meaning here. (c) The text also directly states the information Tolkien references. So there is no big complex literary navel gazing going on. Why did I even bring this up? Because I was providing additional evidence in support of my 100% literal direct reading of the text.</blockquote>

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