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<blockquote data-quote="Akunin" data-source="post: 64018" data-attributes="member: 15">But you didn't put the second quote in your message (from a little further down in the text):This is what Tolkien fans call the &quot;Great Debate&quot; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />&nbsp; It's probably the most hotly-debated topic among fans, followed closely by the Elves and their ears.&nbsp; There is no clear answer as to whether the wings were physical or metaphorical, or whether the &quot;shadow&quot; is merely what we think of when we say a thing has a shadow or rather something more tangible.To make matters worse, a quote from The History of Middle-earth is often brought up:which is countered with Gandalf telling the Fellowship that he &quot;threw down&quot; the Balrog and the tale of Glorfindel's fight with a Balrog, in which both fell from a pinnacle of rock.I don't think we'll ever see a definitive resolution to the question.<a href="http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm" target="_blank">The Encyclopedia of Arda</a>&nbsp; has an excellent entry on the Balrog that goes into much greater detail on the &quot;Great Debate&quot;.As for the Elves and their ears?&nbsp; In The Letters of JRR Tolkien and The Lost Road, Tolkien describes the elves as having ears shaped like mallorn leaves.&nbsp; In Tolkien's notes for his invented languages, the Elves' words for &quot;Ear&quot; and &quot;Leaf&quot; have the same root.&nbsp; He noted that it was possible that because of this etymology, their ears were pointed, but never directly says it in his books.&nbsp; (This was taken from a note in Chapter 8 of The Annotated Hobbit.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Akunin, post: 64018, member: 15"] But you didn't put the second quote in your message (from a little further down in the text): This is what Tolkien fans call the "Great Debate" ;) It's probably the most hotly-debated topic among fans, followed closely by the Elves and their ears. There is no clear answer as to whether the wings were physical or metaphorical, or whether the "shadow" is merely what we think of when we say a thing has a shadow or rather something more tangible. To make matters worse, a quote from [i]The History of Middle-earth[/i] is often brought up: which is countered with Gandalf telling the Fellowship that he "threw down" the Balrog and the tale of Glorfindel's fight with a Balrog, in which both fell from a pinnacle of rock. I don't think we'll ever see a definitive resolution to the question. [URL=http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm]The Encyclopedia of Arda[/URL] has an excellent entry on the Balrog that goes into much greater detail on the "Great Debate". As for the Elves and their ears? In [i]The Letters of JRR Tolkien[/i] and [i]The Lost Road[/i], Tolkien describes the elves as having ears shaped like mallorn leaves. In Tolkien's notes for his invented languages, the Elves' words for "Ear" and "Leaf" have the same root. He noted that it was possible that because of this etymology, their ears were pointed, but never directly says it in his books. (This was taken from a note in Chapter 8 of [i]The Annotated Hobbit[/i].) [/QUOTE]

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