LoTR: One Book To Rule Them All?

[Particle_Man]

Tolkein is a huge influence on other books and rpgs. In some cases so huge that works are not so much "derivative" as "part of the average reader's expected universe". If someone were to write a book where there was a race called "dwarves" and they were all two-headed creatures that didn't use tools and communicated through interpretive dance, well, I think people's first response would be "those ain't dwarves". On the other hand, if you have an elder race that is fading, but keepers of forgotten and powerful magic/science, but they have green skin and are called Cryz, I think people's first response would be "the Cryz are just elves with green skin".

It is simply the template for most people's default expectation of dwarves, elves, etc. now. In rpgs it is even harder to get away from because, unless you have only 1 player, you will have the "team of adventurers who go together to do X" and that is going to resonate with Tolkein.

 

[mmadsen]

His opinion is rendered irrelevant because of this?

Who said that?

I found it odd that an English teacher would assert that The Lord of the Rings should be required reading, and I was interested in his thinking.

I also found it odd that an English teacher, right after stating that he was an English teacher, would make the kind of mistake English teachers are known for catching, not making. It's a mistake I'm sure we've all made; it just jumped out, given the context.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

His opinion is rendered irrelevant because of this? Thank you mmadsen for pointing out such a vital clue to defraud Crust and his false claims to authority.



Or perhaps you like having a little revenge on your English teachers who made judicious use of their red pens as you wrote your way through their classes?

Nah, it's just one of those very embarrassing situations - someone says he's an English teacher and then makes a mistake like that. Maybe we have found the reason all those people on the internet can't spell crap: Their teachers can't, either

It's like those people calling someone else stupid and making glaring errors in that very sentence.

 

[usdmw]

Well, I wouldn't normally comment on a topic this arbitrary, but the suggestion of teaching LOTR in high school seems patently absurd.

In my experience, the one great shortcoming of our educational system is reductionist thought. Shakespeare and Milton are too difficult, we should read Tolkien instead.... Clarity is too demanding, we should embrace postmodernism.... Positivism is too restrictive, we should allow everyone to be right - all the time.

Tolkien is a fairly difficult read for HS students. LOTR is a fairly difficult read for college students. If I were to add LOTR to my syllabus for a sophomore survey lit class, I could do so because ANY work can be approached critically. I wouldn't assign LOTR, however, as there are many works of greater literary value that are equally as interesting, and of comparable difficulty. This is not to say that Tolkien would always be a poor choice, but such a choice would require a specific or focused academic context.

If the justification is "Well, the kids will read this..." then you've given up. The idea is not to choose works that children will read, but to educate them. This means presenting to them the greatest works of literature, both canonical and obscure. Don't discourage anyone from reading popular literature. Encourage it, outside of class.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Plato described Aristotle as a foal who kicks his mother after sucking her dry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your comment seems to lack any gratitude for what Tolkien did for english literature in general, much less for us small segment of role-players.

Well, should I be grateful that Tolkien's work has caused the fantasy genre to be flooded with imitators of what I consider a novel of marginal quality in the first place? Should I be grateful that better writers such as Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, and Gene Wolfe are counted as Tolkien's lessers and have less influence upon the fantasy genre than he did?

Tolkien's strength was his ability to envision a total fantasy world and bring it to life in his work - but quite apart from the fact that I think he was a terribly stiff prose stylist and lacked all skill with pacing and characterisation, the specifics of the world he envisioned (and which countless jerks have imitated ever since) are pretty seriously distasteful to me. I consider Tolkien's personal worldview pretty abhorrent, probably because it's so rooted in a particularly conservative brand of Roman Catholic Christianity and an arch-conservative British sense of aesthetics - and The Lord of the Rings is the ultimate expression of that worldview I deplore.

So, I admire the achievement, sort of like the way I admire the achievement of building an enormous edifice I consider an eyesore, not least because it's been replicated all over the city. It's extremely well-constructed, but that doesn't mean I'm glad it's there.

Edit: I would add that Tolkien certainly drew upon mythological and literary forebears, such as Celtic and Norse myth, as well as stories like Beowulf, but the reason I admire his influences and not his work has to do with the way he changed the essential nature of his sources when using them in his work. It all comes back to his worldview.

Paul Johnson described the future of history as necessarily incorporating Western European culture and philosophy; it could be post-Western or anti-Western, but it could not be non-Western. I feel the same is true for fantasy myth and Tolkien: it cannot be non-Tolkien, so large is his influence.

That's why I phrased my comment as I did: I can't fully escape Tolkien's influence if I'm playing D&D, but the fewer influences from Tolkien there are in my games and game materials, the happier I am.

Eberron, to use an example, has elves - but they're really "elves in name only", with a very different culture and nature to anything in Tolkien's work, and sharing similarities only in that D&D's version of elves is partially based on Tolkien's elves, and thus Eberron's elves are graceful and long-lived and whatever.

Before Third Edition, my favourite D&D setting was Planescape, which has even less in common with Middle-Earth than Eberron does.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

If the justification is "Well, the kids will read this..." then you've given up. The idea is not to choose works that children will read, but to educate them. This means presenting to them the greatest works of literature, both canonical and obscure. Don't discourage anyone from reading popular literature. Encourage it, outside of class.

Anecdotally, my experience has been that the only people who think The Lord of the Rings is the best book ever written are those who don't read non-fantastic literature in general - and, since the vast majority of fantasy available is in imitation of Tolkien, it's not surprising that The Lord of the Rings stands out.

That's just been my personal experience - people who never enjoyed or paid attention to English classes in high school, people who never studied English at university, people who never read classic literature, people who simply don't have the experience to judge the true quality of The Lord of the Rings.

I'm making no comment about anyone on this thread.

 

[Toben the Many]

Why do people keep doing this. Tolkien only brought out what was already there, he did it during a time when fantasy was looke down upon by most of the reading world...and only after a long time, long time, did his work gain apreation. Nothing of his world, excpet for the islands of Middle Earth itself, is of a Tolkien singular creation.

No, nor did I claim it to be. All of his stuff from the races to the names he used were borrowed from other myths and legends.

But his work, in turn, heavily influenced other people. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Michael Morris]

Pease foks, kep teh diskution civul. T'aint ner cauze tuh critisize folkes grammer ner mak snarcy commints abot teh correcshins.

 

[Rel]

Let's knock off the sniping at one another about grammar or anything else.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Let's knock off the sniping at one another about grammar or anything else.

Thanks for translating Michael's post. My eyes were starting to bleed