But of course! The author might just have intended that. :^D

A simple allegory is flat; it allows no reader interaction with the story beyond connecting dots to reveal the author’s intent. Imho, of course.

I think the greatest chutzpah comes from those who argue that Tolkien lied about constructing a Christian allegory. That’s a lesser form of “killing for Jesus.”

MithLuin: You’re very welcome!

If the Heretic Loremaster isn’t your cup of tea, you’re always welcome to write about lembas (or whatever) for the SWG …

(Yes, I am shameless! )

Thanks, you two!

Obviously, the lembas-stuff was something I’ve written about before, in various messageboard discussions. I was just distilling it here. Tolkien had a rich understanding of symbols and language, and that is why so many people learn a love for trees and stars just by reading his stories. But this means that the stuff he writes about is real in and of itself, without merely ’standing’ for something in the primary world.

I’m not sure how I would feel being an honorary ‘Heretic Loremaster’ – after reading the blurb at the top, I like the connotation, but I’ve generally enjoyed being Orthodox and sticking to canon .

I know when I am bested in experience and knowledge.

Heh. OK, this made me snort. Yes, bested by Norton. Worship it and despair! :^D

You hit the metaphorical nail on the head when you note that allegory is not the same thing as theme and how important inspiration and life experience are in what an author writes. Certainly my life experience colors how I read Tolkien these days.

Without going into specifics, I noticed a couple of reviews of Trinity in which the reader interpreted my fic as stating that the One Ring was an allegory for the atomic bomb. Although readers are free to interpret what they will through the lenses of their experience, that was not my intent as the author. Rather, I used Tolkien icons and contemporary icons (both man and device) to examine both the sublime and the horror of technology and the responsibilities that inventors must bear — a far more complex issue that simply the One Ring = the atomic bomb.

Certainly, Tolkien’s attitudes toward technology are abundantly clear in his work. The Ring is the Ring and the Silmarilli are the Silmarilli, but the themes of power and “delving too deeply into knowledge” are as applicable to these artefacts of JRRT’s world as they are to Oppenheimer’s magnum opus.

I really should not have made the “highly allegorical” comment in the story’s intro since that is misleading and semantically inaccurate.

MithLuin’s discourse on lembas is excellent!

But yes, back to the point…it strikes me as having more than a bit of chutzpah to state that JRRT was misleading in stating that his story was not to be read as allegory. He did allow the applicability interpretation and that I can happily buy into.

I liked your idea on allegory appearing more obvious to those who aren’t expecting it (like the Christian allegory of Narnia seeming obvious to non-Christians while just a comfortable familiarity to Christians). This is an interesting thought and seems to reflect my experiences, certainly. Certain aspects of the most recent Narnia movie jarred me pretty hard because, as a non-Christian, they seemed really blatant. I still enjoyed the movie as a fantasy fan, but those allegorical moments really jumped out at me.

And thank you for reiterating the point that a deeply moving personal experience might reflect in one’s writing without being allegory. Another Man’s Cage–which I’d say has probably moved more people than any of my stories–was terribly personal in places. I worked out a lot of my personal demons on that story. That doesn’t make it allegory; that makes me human and it the artistic creation of a human mind.

Like you, I am more comfortable with drawing comparisons than with blatant allegory. Meaning, you can say that Christ was priest, prophet, and king, and then show how Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn all are Christ-figures in a way…without suggesting that Tolkien sat down to create those characters to fit this model. The model is applied to the story, it doesn’t spring naturally from it (let alone form it). So, yes, you can get some pretty profound things out of how Frodo’s journey through Mordor is, in a way, like a Christian pilgrim learning to let go of more and more along the way. But all you can say is explicit in the text is that Tolkien made that journey *spiritual* by the way he wrote it. The comments on waybread, and the ideas Sam wrestles with point at more than just enduring hardship and privation. But in a general way, not a specific-enough-to-be-allegorical way.

George Macdonald, C. S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien all used the imagery of bread and wine as spiritual food and drink in their works…but in different ways. In “The Princess and Curdie”, the sick king is taken off the poisonous diet his corrupt councillors are feeding him, and put on a much ‘healthier’ diet of fresh-baked bread and wine. The parallel to Christian communion is hardly difficult to make. I enjoy Macdonald very much, and don’t see his work as terribly moralizing or anything, but this particular element is clearly lifted from his religious beliefs. Its role in the story seems allegorical to me.

Lewis feeds the same diet to Ransom after his return from Venus in ‘That Hideous Strength,’ but here it is allusion to the book I just mentioned! Ransom mentions the ‘Curdie’ books when explaining why he can’t eat normal food any more. So, while Lewis clearly intended to give this choice religious overtones, he got to it rather indirectly.

And then there is Tolkien, who gifts his Fellowship with lembas from Lothlorien and miruvor from Rivendell, to strengthen the weary travellers on their way. While he was well aware of what ‘bread and wine’ would mean (and included that phrase in ‘On Fairy-stories’), he separated them here. First one, then the other. They are clearly ’spiritual’ in that they represent the goodness of the elves (Gollum cannot eat lembas). But…is this merely a ‘communion is good for you’ message? Is it a simple cut-and-dry lifting of a symbol from one part of life (religion) and plopping it into another (this story)? No. Tolkien himself found communion very important, and I am sure he was…comfortable…with lembas taking on a spiritual dimension. But in reality, it fit a needed role in the story – how was he going to feed these people for months on end on a long journey when they couldn’t realistically carry that much food on their backs? It’s a much more integral part of his story, and can be explained from within without any reference to Christianity.

*That* is why it is not allegory. Not to mention that he would be *horrified* if anyone were to draw an explicit parallel between lembas and the body of Christ (which is what communion is to Catholics). [I know you've just finished saying that claiming I know what this guy thinks about something isn't exactly fair...but in this case...well, I think it is a somewhat-fair assertion.] So, yes, you can draw a comparison, and talk about how elvish waybread is a ’spiritual’ food because it refreshes the spirit while satisfying hunger, and is more potent alone….but you can’t honestly say that ‘lembas is really just communion’ because that wouldn’t really fit.

For the war stuff…there are supposedly tearstains on the part of the manuscript where he describes the Dead Marshes, and this has been taken as evidence that the description was based on his personal experience of the Somme. That may very well be the case, but it doesn’t make the book an allegory for any particular war. It’s allowed to have illusions and references to various battles, and that makes his battle descriptions better. But I will not address the idea of the Ring as the atom bomb, because I think anyone who sees it as that (and only that) is missing the whole point of the story. Yes, yes, it’s a powerful weapon. But it’s never used as one, and what makes it interesting has a lot more to do with revealing personal lust and other such things. I was much more comfortable with the movie interpretation of the Ring as a drug and Gollum as a junkie.

It is often illustrative to me the sort of responses I get when I ask for clarification of different critiques of my stories. When people criticize the canon on which my writing is based, I usually justify my choice and then ask them for any evidence they have to nullify my interpretation in favor of their own. I’m really not trying to be passive-aggressive: I’ve been studying Tolkien’s world for four years now, pretty intensively, but I still don’t know everything! If something is truly wrong in one of my stories, I want to know.

How many people have replied to these requests?

Absolutely none.

And these are not the Homers of the world either, on ff.net. I received some canon critique on the first chapters of AMC from well-respected writers and–being an absolute newbie at the time–asked from where their information came and got utter silence. Why? Because, doing my own research later, I discovered that the “facts” they were quoting me didn’t exist in canon.

I know that people make mistakes. I have been on the verge of similarly embarassing myself in the past with canon critiques, except that I have a personal rule about offering canon critique without a quote to back up what I’m saying. It’s not unreasonable, given the amount of material with which we work, that we get mixed up as to what is canon, fanon, or simply personal interpretation. I think that what’s notable is the way people respond: viciously, as though there was something more at stake than a mere unpublishable story based on a fantasy novel, as though it must be their personal mission in life to convert all others who hold a different view to the “correct” way.

I think, for me, what is the most frustrating about this is the way this sort of behavior in fandom bears such a strong resemblence to unchecked fervor and intolerance such as we see in “real life.” (And sometimes I do believe there is a connection.)

As for how Tolkien would have viewed those of us writing in his world, I’m sure he would have seen us as part of–how did he say it?–the “deplorable cult” that grew up around his work. At the same time, if he did indeed aim to create a myth that would be developed collectively by other writers and artists after him, then I think he would have understood that not all who followed him in this task would have made the same choices that he did. I think that people who claim Tolkien is “spinning in his grave” over something done to one of his characters fail to understand that he studied medieval literature, and if anyone understood the modes by which stories are transmitted and retold and reshaped among people, then he would. As sure as they cite the fact that he was a Christian as justification for their own intolerance, that quickly they forget that he was also a scholar and, as some of the later revisions to his world suggest, at times a brutal realist.

What was considered a guilty pleasure (reading Tolkien) and not quite respectable, when I was studying literature at the university level has become for your generation something to be studied and argued about. That’s quite an amazing leap in terms of academia.

My little corner of that world is Tolkien fandom. There is a lot more I would like to write about and re-create from the perspective of my own worldview and particular interests. What never ceases to amaze/annoy me is that so many people chose in that environment to claim that among the different ways the author may have influenced individual writers’ imaginations, some are kosher and others just wrong.

When I started my first major LotR fanfic novel (more than two years in the writing and still a WIP), I set it at the end of the Ring war and beginning of the Fourth Age and was greatly influenced by the social and cultural changes in the immediate post-WWI world (from Victorianism into the Jazz Age). I would say that what I was interested in examining, flew right in the face of Tolkien’s intent. While he looked back longingly to the past, I looked forward to examining a new world similar to the one where changes escalated beyond the fantastic for my grandparents.

However, taking on a long novel, using a large number of Tolkien’s major characters, although I often call it dramedy or soap opera, forced me to want to learn the history of the world I was working in and to take a step back and really learn The Silmarillion and related unpublished works in order to feel more comfortable with my own heretical and wildly speculative extrapolations.

How would Tolkien feel about that? Probably uncomfortable with what I am writing as result of taking his work so seriously and finding so much inspiration there. I quoted Mark Twain recently in a related discussion in another venue about how I approach Tolkien fanfiction. And it fits for me here: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.” I think as much as anything that irritates me about the discussions of Tolkien’s work and what he meant by them, is how often the people who want to argue them most vociferously haven’t bothered to seriously study them.