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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayOfTheFourElements" data-source="post: 7727210" data-attributes="member: 6904757">Medieval is in reference to Dante. Tolkien is, of course, a modernist.Yes, the school of deconstructionism analyzes texts in that way, but is but only of many styles of critical analysis. What deconstructionism does not do, however, is disconnect a text from its literary precedents, in this case Dante and Germanic mythology. As I have said before, presenting evil as abhorrent, vile, and ignorant has nothing to do with race, nor does the association between darkness and evil, which appears even in African mythology. I have said nothing of the LotR film. I haven't seen it, and therefore have no opinion on the matter.Source? I'm not necessarily going to buy that comment, seeing as most Englishman would have no little to no contact with the Empire at large. To the average Englishman, I except the Empire was little more than an abstract concept and, possible, a source of exoticism. Most of the English population, I would assume had little knowledge of the horrors which occurred throughout the larger empire except under the obscuring lens of British propaganda. Furthermore, because of the deeply rooted symbolism of evil and darkness and evil as vile rather than seductive, both of which where long established before the British Empire was established, I see no reason by Tolkien's symbolism and race are necessarily connected. It is just as likely that we have become a society obsessed with fighting and/or cementing racial divides and are looking at past works with an eye to discovering racial bias rather than allowing the greater picture of the western literary tradition speak for itself.Like I said, you can argue that depicting allegoric evil as ugly, abhorrent, and ignorant is problematic in one way or another. Same with the connection of evil and darkness, but what should be replace it with? Milton's depiction of evil as seductive and alluring is one alternative. I'm sure there are other's, too (evil is present in the hearts of all men, for example). Unless you want D&D to remove the dualism of allegoric good and evil (which is one option), alternative depiction of allegoric evil is must be found.To Tolkien is a writer of allegory, using the symbolism derived of a tradition old that predates the Empire itself.</blockquote>

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