XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox   
   From: hellekin_III@hotmail.com   
      
   "the softrat"  wrote in message   
   news:djkmqv0cau3bbblckb9mfoib8413auc5ln@4ax.com...   
   > On 6 Nov 2003 15:51:45 -0800, yzetta@yahoo.com (zett) wrote:   
   >   
   > >Now I am curious about how many 19th cent. Eng. Romantic poets JRRT   
   > >read. So some reason I can't think it was very many- yet there is a   
   > >Romantic feel to his work...   
   >   
   > Given JRRT's literary preferences, as elucidated by his biographer,   
   > Humphrey Carpenter, probably almost none. The only post-Chaucerian   
   > English of which there is a record of Tolkien reading is Spenser,   
   > Shakespeare, Milton, and 20th century science fiction/fantasy, and   
   > apparently he didn't like the Shakespeare or the Milton.   
      
   I may be wandering OT here but:   
      
   I think this fits in with what we know of other aspects of T's literary   
   preferences. The c19th romantic poets were distant descendants of the French   
   romantic literary tradition as exemplified by Chrétien de Troyes, Mallory,   
   and so on. Tolkien, by contrast I think, preferred the Germanic epic   
   tradition in English Literature. Much of the literature that emerged   
   following the Norman Conquest owed a lot to French influences - courtly   
   love, the exploration of the individual in personal battles between sin and   
   temptation and so on. Shakespeare and Milton owe much to this tradition too.   
   However, the earlier Anglo-Saxon literature -which cast vast sweeping epics,   
   where x son of x son of x avenged the wrongs done against his people's and   
   fought external (less internal) threats (represented by mythical beasts) and   
   so on - was swamped by the Franco-Romanesque stuff. I think Tolkien looked   
   more to the earlier stuff. Perhaps this accounts for the lack of romantic   
   relationships in the book (which is often a criticism) - Arwen and Aragorn's   
   relationship is confined to the Appendices - yet Tolkien cannot avoid   
   entirely the later literary influences - the "quest" (a Franco-Romanesque   
   speciality) is a pretty strong notion in the book for example.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)