XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: odysseus1479-at@yahoo-dot.ca   
      
   Larry Caldwell wrote:   
   >   
   > In article <20040902154625.04585.00000032@mb-m02.aol.com>,   
   > jadcox@aol.com (John Adcox) says...   
   > > It truly is an astonishing, and deeply mythic, experience. I can't think of   
   > > another work, except maybe Joyce's Ullyses, that better expresses the very   
   > > concept of mythopoeia.   
   >   
   > It's nice that you enjoyed the experience, but the story is the thing.   
   > Very little of the mythology is original.  Tolkien was a great   
   > syncretist, pulling together elements from almost every European mythos,   
   > a bit from the Middle East, and a few popular fiction writers.  The fact   
   > that he pulled it all together into a more or less coherent story   
   > assured his place in the literary history of the 20th century.   
   >   
   One could argue, though, that very little of *any* mythology is   
   original, if originality is characterized as dissimilarity to   
   anything else. There is no doubt that specific sources (the   
   _Kalevala_ e.g.) can be identified for certain elements of Tolkien's   
   'legendarium', but I think there's a great deal that, while having   
   analogies in existing mythologies or literature, is not obviously   
   derived therefrom except to the extent that these putative sources   
   have contributed to the conceptual milieu or general 'vocabulary' of   
   an epic or fairy-story style. And although I'm not as well informed   
   as I should be, I'm unaware of any precedent for a few of the mythic   
   ideas in the _Silmarillion_, e.g. the world having once been   
   illuminated by two Trees, one golden and one silvery, whose   
   respective rescued fruits became our Sun and Moon. Do you know of   
   one?   
      
   > The Silmarillion is almost as much a tribute to the editing of   
   > Christopher Tolkien as to his father.  J.R.R. never managed to get the   
   > Silmarillion into publishable form during his lifetime.  Christopher did   
   > quite a bit of rewriting, and left large hunks of it on the floor,   
   > before the Silmarillion went to press.   
   >   
      
   AFAICT the principal reason for JRRT's lack of progress was the large   
   quantity of material -- over thirty years' worth by the time _The   
   Lord of the Rings_ was published -- needing revision to meet a number   
   of criteria, some of them in places contradictory. These included:   
   internal consitency; consistency with the published writing;   
   accommodation of the constant stream of linguistic invention and   
   'evolution' (manifested principally in frequent & confusing changes   
   to personal & geographical names) that originally motivated the work;   
   scientific or 'common-sense' verisimilitude; and, especially in the   
   author's later years, ironing out moral and theological issues that   
   might make the mythos seem incompatible with his devout Roman   
   Catholicism. CJRT (assisted by Guy Gavriel Kay as 'ghostwriter') did   
   what he could, IMO achieving a reasonable degree of success, under   
   the circumstances, with some of these -- especially the first few.   
      
   --   
   Odysseus   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)