There's lots more. For example, did anyone notice the homo-eroticism In
"The Return of the King?" Did Frodo leave because he did not fit into
Hobbit society as a gay man? Also -- Sauron as Hitler. Gandalf as
Christ. Anyway, I don't have time to think now -- something about
culture.
Like Spenser, Tolkein elevates and idealizes an England that could be but
is threatened by foreign and domestic forces that can be read as other
religions, cultures, etc. I think there's something in this idea.
This is fun!
On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Jacob Johnson wrote:
> Incidentally, I think that what we should really be focusing on is
> terminology. Would a Tolkein scholar be a Tolkeinite, a Tolkeinian, a
> Tolkeinologist, or a Tolkeinist? Also, some possible Paper titles:
>
> "Hear No Evil, See No Evil: Tolkein's Representations of a Do-Nothing
> West"; "If Looks Could Kill: Saren's (sp?) Evil Eye and Politics of
> Totalitarianism"; "The Little Hobbit that Could: Size Doesn't Matter
> When You're Right!"
>
> more?
>
> Jacob
> On Wednesday, February 18, 2004, at 09:54 AM, Roger Kuin wrote:
>
> > P.S> Still in great haste (M-J's birthday) -- do you really agree
> > with Dot S? Really really? I think her argument is full of you know
> > what. a) we advance like science; b) it get students excited. a) we
> > do NOT advance, "only a fool thinks of himself as at the head of
> > Time's procession"; b) students may get excited but it's a wrong,
> > wrong excitement -- they think the Elizabethans were just like them.
> > The rest of what you say is spot on -- but do you really agree with
> > DS? Kiss the other foot, O/B
> >
> >> I agree with what Dot says about current study of Spenser with
> >> (post)modern techniques, and am truly grateful for it, but only up to a
> >> point. The tendency to make so many early modern writers (or indeed
> >> writers of most past centuries) do the perp-walk as sexists, racists,
> >> or
> >> elitists does raise awkward questions, such as why read such guys if
> >> they
> >> are so limited to their cultural context (no, the answer is not to say
> >> they were not of an age but for all time--my class on 17th c. poetry
> >> was
> >> reading Jonson yesterday and agreed that to be for "all time" is a
> >> problem
> >> if like Shakespeare you are born in 1564 and the world was born in c.
> >> 14,000,000,000 BCE, and yes we were sort of kidding around). I cannot
> >> be
> >> the only professor to whom some grad students have complained that they
> >> have lost their initial liking for literature, if I may use the word. I
> >> *do* think that our increased awareness of gender, race, class, etc.
> >> etc.
> >> has refreshed the field, and I've been fascinated that when I spend
> >> time
> >> on issues involving sexuality, lesbians, etc. you could hear a pin
> >> drop,
> >> but we shouldn't forget the price. There's less fireside reading of
> >> Spenser than there once was (and of Tennyson, too, I imagine, and of
> >> Fielding and all sorts of wonderful writers) for all sorts of reasons,
> >> but
> >> I can't help thinking that the professionalization of literary studies,
> >> much as I am myself engaged with it, is one of them or that this is
> >> "progress"--a problematic word in all sorts of ways. But the real
> >> point of
> >> this posting is simply to pass on two details:
> >> First, the list might be amused to know that there was a clown in
> >> the
> >> greater NYC area a few years ago who called himself "Gandalf." He did
> >> kids' birthday parties etc. The Tolkien estate sued him, which I
> >> thought was pretty niggling (yes, that's a Tolkien allusion). He
> >> argued that Tolkien didn't make up the name and there was a court
> >> case. A local branch of Fox, I think it was, phoned me and there I
> >> was on live radio for about three minutes explaining that yes,
> >> "Gandalf the Clown" had a point. The station had given me a few hours
> >> to get ready, so I had a chance to locate Gandalf in some Edda or
> >> other and to read the bit, although the original Nordic Gandalf
> >> wasn't a wizard and the clown was, I think, straining a bit. I never
> >> did hear how the legal suit turned out.
> >> Second, long ago when I first read Tolkien in the English edition
> >> as
> >> a classmate got it from overseas and passed it around the dorm I was
> >> beyond entranced but sensed even then where the vulnerabilities were
> >> and didn't want want my other world shattered by academic analysis.
> >> I'm braver now. After Tolkien became an American cult classic I
> >> assumed he would fade away and so was disappointed but not surprised
> >> when my then colleague, Catherine Stimson, ended the somewhat
> >> disdainful pamphlet she did on him for a Columbia UP series on 20th
> >> c. writers by saying "Frodo lives--but on borrowed time." The "Frodo
> >> lives" is from buttons you used to see around campus in the late
> >> 1960s. I bet they're valuable now. She may have been right in the
> >> long run, but reckoned without movies. She too thought Tolkien mere
> >> pseudo-medieval, but she forgot that "pseudo" is in the eye of the
> >> critic: Spenser, if you admire Spenser, has intertextuality and
> >> *imitatio*; Tolkien, if you don't admire him, is pastiche. Anne
> >> Prescott.
> >
>
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