Re:Why Michael Moorcock Despises Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
by 082349872349872 on Saturday April 13, 2024 @08:25AM
(#40022696)
> consider the massive decline in the real Britain's fortunes between Tolkien boyhood (~1900), and LOTR's publication (~1955)...
Tolkien called conlang'ing (and by extension, worldbuilding?) "the solitary vice": a phrase which would have had a different denotation in his Edwardian childhood than the rather literal denotation we ascribe to it.
Lagniappe: https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/8f425o/sex_in_you...
Exercise for the reader: how solarpunk would wider europe be now, if the British Empire and the German Empire (and their descendants) hadn't played Sith Master/Apprentice games, not once but twice, last century? (1914-1918 and 1939-1945)
Re:Why Michael Moorcock Despises Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
by LTom on Saturday April 13, 2024 @07:21AM
(#40022309)
Monarchy never really works for long in Tolkien's works either. The history of the kings of Gondor is all strife and crises, and in Tolkien's abandoned sequel already 100 years later “the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless — while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors — like Denethor or worse.” (Letter 256)
Re:Why Michael Moorcock Despises Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
by sorokod on Saturday April 13, 2024 @06:45AM
(#40022082)
Many of those I'd write off to Tolkien being a product of his times
Well, there are two products-of-their-time: the writer and the reader.
Re:Why Michael Moorcock Despises Tolkien and C. S. Lewis
by 082349872349872 on Saturday April 13, 2024 @08:22AM
(#40022677)
Since we readers are products of a time where we're incessantly propagandised (albeit more for economic than political ends), we ought to habitually be reading for both explicit text and implicit subtext.
Many of those I'd write off to Tolkien being a product of his times. At least his heroes seemed to have many ideals which are still accounted virtuous.
Tolkien's monarchism, though - even in the days of the Old Testament, it was obvious that hereditary monarchy never, ever worked for long. Because the heirs of great men always regressed to the mean. Pretty damn fast. (After King George III, Britain mostly solved that problem by turning their hereditary monarchs into mostly-symbolic figureheads.) And Tolkien served in the hellish trenches of WWI - a war which dug deep, dark graves for both hereditary monarchy and European superiority.
Hmm...in many ways, I could argue that Tolkien's fantasy writings were mostly escapism for him - to a old-fashioned romantic utopia, where "land of milk and honey, and the kingdom is powerful and prosperous, and the king is always good" was at least possible. And consider the massive decline in the real Britain's fortunes between Tolkien boyhood (~1900), and LOTR's publication (~1955)...