/lit/ - Literature

>taught himself finnish just to read kalevala
What if it sucked? Seriously did he even consider that it might have sucked

What's with all the anti-Tolkien seething lately?

>creates entire languages for his fictional world
>but then just uses real month names from the Gregoriam calendar

>Numenor is Atlantis
>Gondor is Constantinople
>”Middle Earth” is literally Mediterranean in retard speak
>Valar are just Olympians through a Christian prism
>villains are literally called Easternlings
>the whole book is about how a Norf Kang wuz achktualhy the one to save Constantino-I mean Gondor from the Musl- I mean Easternlings
Why is this hack praised as a creative genius?

>>20760401
>rhymes "claws" with "yours"
evidently not

>Lectures people about morals and history
>supports a religion that supplanted and destroyed the religion and culture of his own people
>writes innumerable stories about how brown people and easterners are disgusting abominations who must be culled for peace
>writes about the romanticism of an english farmer despite supporting the society's destruction of this way of life
>never attempted to farm on his own
>thinks people can farm in waistcoats and suits
>just a sheltered academic rich kid

>>20413256
I love the persistent rumor that Tolkien was a big fan of Howard and read a lot of his work. There's not a ton of proof for it, but it's tempting to think of.

>>20332446
So you're saying it's based?

>>20032367
You sound like you're coping. Tolkien, whom Moorcock criticizes, is pointedly less of a hypocrite than Moorcock himself.

>>19797954
Yes. We will regard him as a a great storyteller who wrote a great tale.

In fact, I'll pay Tolkien a very high compliment. James Joyce is often regarded as the great writher of the 20th Century. Tolkien is looked on with disdain.

But I think, 1000 years from now, people will know who Tolkien is, but they will not know who Joyce is.

>Tolkien regretted writing The Hobbit as children’s fantasy because it undermines the mythological and historical back story that he developed because, as he argues in his essay On Fairy Stories, adult readers are unforgiving and critical by terming much of fantasy as children’s literature. In an article in The New York Times Book Review on June 5, 1955, Tolkien stated “The so-called ‘children’s story’ [The Hobbit] was a fragment, torn out of an already existing mythology. In so far as it was dressed up as ‘for children,’ in style or manner, I regret it. So do the children.” (Letters, p. 218). Tolkien clearly resents the negative adult perception of all fantasy as “children’s literature” and regretfully fell into this stereotype with The Hobbit. However, Tolkien is emphatic that “[The Lord of the Rings] was not written ‘for children,’ or for any person in particular, but for itself. (If any parts or elements in it appear ‘childish,’ it is because I am childish, and like that kind of thing myself now”

>"So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age—like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: This feels like an axe-blow near the roots," Tolkien wrote to his daughter Priscilla four days after Lewis's death.

Huft a buffty buff! bumble bamble
Dufft a nuffty hnng! dingle bimble

>Reading fiction book
>Character hears singing
>a delightful poem follows that would probably sound even better set to music

My only legit criticism to Tolkien is this: Why didn't Saruman attempt to take the ring of fire that Gandalf was wearing when he was held prisoner in Orthanc? Saruman always knew that Gandalf held one of the three rings of power and he was jealous as fuck because Cirdan chose him to weild it.
Has this case been addressed?

>>18640318
>This has to be one of the strangest places to proselytize christerism

Is it really? Christianity has always been spread to both the less-educated and the more-educated. The more educated are won over by readings of Scripture, by apologetics, and by theology. And some of them are, in fact, won over in a sincere way. If someone as smart as Augustine can be converted, why can't there be smart Christians?

Even in our own time, guys like Alasdair MacIntyre, serious writers and thinkers, have converted to Christianity, usually to Catholicism or Orthodoxy but always to Christianity in general.

So that's one aspect of why there'd be so much Christposting. The other aspect is that there's an inescapable amount of literature that comes to grips with Christianity, in one way or the other. One of the greatest works of Western Literature is basically Catholic theology in the form of an epic poem. There's a Protestant epic, too. Dostoevsky is full of Russian Orthodoxy. Nathaniel Hawthorne can't be separated from New England Puritanism. It goes on and on. Even anti-Christian works, like Joyce's Ulysses, are nonetheless impossible to understand separated from Christianity.

What's strange is ever assuming you could have a literature board without Christians in the first place.

Who are your Top 5 Literary or Philosophical Influences?

>"Thank you for your letter ... I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people."
What did Tolkien think jews are gifted in?

Recommend me wholesome works of /sffg/. Books with a love of beauty, goodness, and wonder. Things without overwhelming bleak, mean-spirited, or disgusting themes. Anti-grimdark, if you will.

Books for philology? I want to be able to know the history of words and also have a broader vocabularly of older English words to pull from when writing

>The dwarves of course quite obviously, couldn't you say in many ways they remind you of the Jews?
>All their words are Semitic, obviously constructed to be Semitic.
>There is a tremendous love of the artifact and of course the immense warlike capacity of the Jews to which we tend to forget now and then.

https://youtu.be/bzDtmMXJ1B4?t=635

Hmmmmmm.

>"Listen, Lewis. I know you haven't a clue how mythology conducts itself and since you're an Anglican you couldn't give a damnable scrap about upholding tradition or historical coherency, so I've decided to help you out a bit with that little writing project of yours so you don't embarrass yourself too badly in front of the rest of the Oxford chaps. The major revision involves the initial meeting of the little girl and the Faun. You'll notice my revision has converted the scene into a 40 page rape sequence. Rest assured, the length and minute detail is necessary. Of course this dramatically alters the subsequent plot of the book, since the little girl never makes it out of the wardrobe to tell the rest of her siblings whose names I've already forgotten. Instead, the book shifts focus to become a meticulous account of how the little girl is ravaged daily by the Faun and the other creatures you've haphazardly populated your little mythical closet with, and she remains chained in the dank basement of the faun's cottage in between the rapings. All the beasts and imps of Narnia assemble to have their way with her. The minotaurs, the dwarves, the werewolves, the goblins, the hyenas, the incubi, even the beavers join in the orgy and show themselves as the ravenous sex-fiends that they in fact are. In the later chapters I have that White Witch lady of yours make an appearance, and therefore we see an injection of a much needed lesbianism. I admit, it was a labor stretching this thing to 788 pages, but I feel the effort was worthwhile." -J. R. R. Tolkien, in a correspondence with C. S. Lewis, September 3rd 1949

>>16752732
>>16762187
It’s really not a very interesting story. What you need to understand is that 9 times out of 10, female professors who are really into deconstructing literature and School of Resentment style theory are BEGGING to get fucked by Big Canonical Cock. I am being serious. I am not being ironic. For my survey course of English lit from Beowulf to 1800, my professor fit this trope exactly; she was about 28, fairly cute (not an art hoe, but with shorter brown hair), and very into “fighting back” against traditional views of medieval literature. Queering Langland, "there were black people in the Middle Ages," all of that. On the first day, we discussed the concept of a literary canon, which she argued inherently favored those works produced by people in power. Needless to say, I disagreed. Because I happened to have a class in the next room right before her course, I was always the first to arrive, usually about 5 minutes before anyone else. We would have brief conversations, first about whatever material we were going to cover that day and then about random topics- other books and poems, little details of our lives, etc.
Slowly I began to realize she was dropping small hints of her sexual availability. Nothing too risqué. She would say things like "Old English poetry (she never said Anglo-Saxon because that was a 'white supremacist dogwhistle') is so elegiac, it always makes me lonely" or "anon, you might like this article on the York mystery plays, I found it very stimulating," etc. What's more, these hints always came after I said something to defend the canon or canonical authors and traditional interpretations. For example, one day I happened to namedrop Harold Bloom during a conversation about Shakespeare's use of the carnivalesque. She made a face, and I said "Love him or hate him, you have to admit Bloom presents a useful analysis of poetic influence across the history of English literature (or words to that effect)." She bit her lip, and for a second I wasn't sure if she was going to criticize our guy or what, but instead she mentioned that the Taming of the Shrew was playing at a local theater, subtly indicating she wished to go with me. We did end up going, and it was particularly fun to watch her watch Petruchio tame Katherine. She clearly loved it; I didn't bring it up, of course, but only a few days before she had said the play was irredeemably misogynistic. Needless to say, we had an enjoyable night.

Tolkien defends Escapism properly understood in his essay On Fairy Stories. “Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”